Renowned Architect Thom Mayne to Deliver Fourth Annual Deedee and Herb Glimcher Lecture

“Critics are calling Thom Mayne...a maverick. One look at his buildings and you can see why. America's ‘bad boy’ of architecture just loves to shake things up.”—Jackie Craven, About Architecture

This year’s DeeDee and Herb Glimcher Lecture at the Wexner Center will feature celebrated architect Thom Mayne on Tuesday, February 27 at 7 pm in Mershon Auditorium. Mayne, the winner of the 2005 Pritzker Prize and the 2006 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award, will speak about his singular approach to design, spanning past and current projects. Mayne is founder of the Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary firm Morphosis (whose name means “to be in formation”), and his practice ranges from large-scale multipurpose buildings, educational facilities, and civic buildings to the design of chairs and watches. Mayne was among a handful of architects who, in the mid 1970’s, conceived and created the influential and progressive Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). He is currently a tenured professor at UCLA. This talk is free and open to the public.

Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin says of Mayne, “Having followed Thom’s brilliant creative trajectory over the last 20-plus years, it is indeed a pleasure to bring him to the Wexner Center and to share his achievements with Columbus audiences, across campus and throughout the region. There is no question that Mayne has hit his stride, and Morphosis is increasingly seen as among the foremost architectural practices in the world.”

Mayne’s notable projects have included the University of Cincinnati’s Campus Recreation Center (2006); the Federal Office Building in San Francisco (2006); the Los Angeles Caltrans District 7 Headquarters (2004); Diamond Ranch High School (1999) in Pomona, California; Silent Collisions (1999), a major installation at the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam; Sun Tower (1997), a retail and office building in Seoul, Korea; and a moveable set for the Charleroi/Danses Plan K Dance Group in Brussels, Belgium (2003). In New York City, Morphosis’s designs won highly coveted architecture competitions to create a nine-story art and engineering building for Cooper Union in Manhattan (to be completed in 2008) and an Olympic Village in Hunters Point, Queens (to be completed in 2012 even though the U.S. lost its Olympic bid). His most recent commission is for a new State Capitol building in Juneau, Alaska and for work on the Phare Tower in Paris. For more information on Mayne and his work: www.morphosis.net.

This event is presented with support from the DeeDee and Herb Glimcher Program Fund, which supports an annual lecture by a distinguished speaker in the fields of architecture and design.

The fund was created through the generosity of the Glimcher family in order to provide lasting opportunities for Wexner Center patrons to further enhance their understanding of the art and architecture of our time. Past Glimcher lectures were given by London-based architect Zaha Hadid, San Francisco landscape architect Walter Hood, and Dutch designer Petra Blaisse.

This lecture is presented with support from the DeeDee and Herb Glimcher Program Fund. It is cosponsored by Ohio State’s Knowlton School of Architecture.