Skip to content

Architecture Quote by Thom Mayne

“In architecture, you arrive so late. I look at doctors, lawyers I know, and they're all buying boats and bailing out at 62. My career is just getting started.” quote by Thom Mayne — Download Open image

“In architecture, you arrive so late. I look at doctors, lawyers I know, and they're all buying boats and bailing out at 62. My career is just getting started.”

About This Quote

Source Interview: Podcast with Architect, 2021

The speaker feels left behind as peers retire early while his own career is just beginning.

In simple terms: Peers retire early, he feels behind.

Key Takeaway

Embrace your timeline, focus on growth.

Themes

career age comparison growth

Mood

reflective determined

Type

advice career

When to use this quote

early career planning
financial planning
mentor seeking
work-life balance

Key Concepts

architectural practice career timing generational shift

Questions to Reflect On

How can you define success on your own terms?
What steps can you take now to advance your career?

A Different Perspective

Success may depend on personal choices, not just age.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.2 out of 5 (4 ratings)

More by Thom Mayne

I think all good architecture should challenge you, make you start asking questions. You don't have to understand it. You may not like it.…

Image

The multiplicity of ideas is what I'm interested in.

Image

I've been such an outsider my whole life.

Image

For me the meaning of my work is much more fluid.

Image

The multiplicity of ideas is what Im interested in.

Image

There is no modern prototype for a campus. You have to have a completely different model which has to do with transparency and exposing…

Image

Architecture is a negotiated art, and it's highly political, and if you want to make buildings, there is diplomacy required.

Image

We're producing spaces that accommodate human activity. And what I'm interested in is not the styling of that, but the relationship of that as…

Image

No matter what I've done, what I've tried to do, everybody says it can't be done. And it's continuous across the complete spectrum of…

Image

I'm not a tabula rasa type. In some ways, the more constraints I have, the work is more interesting to me.

Image

I lived in a state of rage from 12 to 20. Until college, I was beyond an outsider. I was a voyeur of life.

Image

I think a lot of people have the Frank Lloyd Wright model in their brains. The architect comes in with this act of creation…

Image

Explore all 56 Thom Mayne quotes

More Architecture quotes

The bones of my architecture are very much related to the structure, to the physical fact of how a building can stand up; it's…

Santiago Calatrava

Image

A man walks down the street. It's a street in a strange world. Maybe it's the third world. Maybe it's his first time around.…

Image

The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonades and sculptures were added because there were people in Athens…

Image

Society understands the architecture of academia and knows there are relevant qualifications in different fields, and the media accepts the idea of specialisations and…

Image

I just think structure can make a book feel so much bigger. It's the architecture. You could use flimsy materials if you wanted to,…

Image

When I am asked what I believe in, I say that I believe in architecture. Architecture is the mother of the arts. I like…

Image

Some architects have a preconceived notion of what a building should be

Curtis W. Fentress

Image

The essential functions of the mind consist in understanding and in inventing, in other words, in building up structures by structuring reality.

Image

London, from the architecture to the culture to the fashion to the accents, feels like it's a special place.

Image

A wiki works best where you're trying to answer a question that you can't easily pose, where there's not a natural structure that's known…

Ward Cunningham

Image

Architecture is not a profession for the faint-hearted, the weak-willed, or the short-lived.

Image

As a result of reading science fiction when I was eight, I grew up with an interest in music, architecture, city planning, transportation, politics,…

Image

Browse all 3,013 Architecture quotes