Complex . . . but just what did Mayne mean?

Pritzker Prizewinner's Lecture: Genius or chancer, that was what architects were asking themselves after Pritzker prizewinning architect Thom Mayne's recent talk in Dublin's National Concert Hall.

Architects came in their droves eager as always for insights on how others design. Those architects who also teach usually explain their work and the design process in a clear way. Yet Los Angeles-based Mayne, who's gained a reputation as a maverick architect, took a more philosophical approach.

"Architecture is nothing more than the concretisation of the world. I'm redefining the notion of logic and how we interpret the world," he said. "I'm interested in reconfiguring our world and finding a way of making connections."

The Pritzker Prize is said to be the architectural equivalent of the Nobel prize for literature and this lecture was beginning to sound like an attempt by a renowned poet to describe basic writing skills.

Mayne did have more definitive things to say, such as how he began his career by making models for nearly 15 years as a way of organising ideas in a more realistic way than was possible through drawings. This helps to explain how he creates his complex structures that combine an extraordinary mix of elements.

As he says, "It found its way later into all types of work as we became interested in the specifics of the tectonic and the materials, the reality of the project as a response to an idea structure."

Another explanation for his creation of buildings "as relations of things", was his architectural training in the 1960s. Schools had just moved on from a concentration on the study of Modernists such as Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. This was Robert Venturi's time of post-Modernism and the combination of various elements - both Classical and contemporary - into buildings. Venturi invented the phrase, "Less is bore," as a contrast to Modernists' dictum of "less is more". Hence, perhaps, Mayne's ease about juxtaposing various pieces in the one building.

The brain doesn't work in a linear way, he explained and his architecture was organised like a "walk in the forest: you never get confused but things are in a complex order".

Most architectural lecturers who visit Ireland manage to refer to James Joyce in their talks and Mayne did not disappoint, comparing this complex thinking to Joyce's stream of consciousness.

The talk was as complex as Mayne's buildings and some architects were happy to glean what they could from it while others thought it just a verbal mess. I spoke to three architects afterwards who had been inspired by the talk.

One said he wanted to give up working for the commercial organisation he is currently with, as there was obviously so much more to architecture. Another said he would go to work the next day with renewed vigour and that, while he didn't agree with everything Mayne said, it was a privilege to have such an esteemed architect visit Ireland, and he would certainly be taking some inspiration from him.

The third said that the talk had afforded a rare opportunity to take time out to think about architecture in an abstract way.

Mayne is the type of teacher, he said, who could talk the talk and inspire students to go off and explore different avenues.

But there was dissent - much of it not heard until the next day because it came from people who had walked out half way though.

One architect complained that it had all been pretentious rubbish while another thought Mayne was a complete chancer. Another said that the talk was full of cliché-ridden archispeak and that Mayne came across as a pained, self-conscious intellectual.

So, genius or spoofer? The Pritzker judges obviously think that the former is the case.

Despite being complex, Mayne was personable and funny. Near the end of his lecture he said that his wife had told him not to be so abstract in his talks and to tell more stories. She's onto something.

The talk wasa organised by the Architecture Foundation and sponsored by estate agency Hamilton Osborne King.