An Architect Rocks!

Tom and Thom

So how’s this for cross-promotion? LA architect Thom Mayne – he of Caltrans, the fab Pomona Diamond Ranch High School and many a global landmark – recently shared his musical influences with KCRW’s own Tom Schnabel.  As you can see from Thom's big beam, he clearly got a big kick out of talking music, supporting a theory I have that the so-called “rock star architects,” of which Mayne is now one, are in fact emulating, through architecture, the real rock stars of their youth. Why do I think this? Well, last time I saw Thom he raved about Shine The Light, the movie by Martin Scorcese about the Rolling Stones tour. It was evident that Mayne worshipped Mick Jagger. Soon afterwards, I ran into Wolf Prix, a fellow “rock star architect” who, like Thom, came of age in the age of rock stars, the 1960s; and he went on about his passion for Keith Richards. And what defines the architecture like that’s produced by this club of rock star architects (also including fellow boomers Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Jean Nouvel, Herzog and de Meuron and the slightly younger Zaha Hadid)? It's flamboyant, spectacular, iconoclastic. . . in sum, the architectural equivalent of a rock concert. I’m going to talk more about this, and how the "rock star" architects differ from the more serious younger generation, on an upcoming show, but in the meantime, go check out Thom and Tom.