At SCI-Arc last Wednesday Eric Owen Moss, introduced by good friend Thom Mayne (who broke Moss’s brain down into its essential parts, as seen above), lectured on his firm’s most recent projects; an impressive combination of new technology, structural research, and wild rule-bending that has unfortunately produced precious few actual buildings, but many competition near-misses around the world. The good news is that this trend is turning around, and the firm is near completion on several ambitious new works in the LA area, including the bendy Gateway Art Tower in Culver City, a new hotel on the Sunset Strip, and a skin-as-structure residential building in South LA. Moss also provided details of his upcoming book, Construction Manual (AADCU), which he described as a cross between a building code directory, the dictionary, and the bible.

At the lecture Moss also shared his architectural, and other, insights. Here are a few of the choicest nuggets from a lecture full of great one liners and deep thoughts:

“A system is no system”

“The idea of being comfortable being uncomfortable.. or uncomfortable being uncomfortable.”

“If you’re on the cover of Dwell Magazine, you’re in trouble.”

“Here are Rodin The Thinker and Honda the Promoter”

“What you see is what you don’t see.”

“We have made an effort not to establish a method of drawing and modeling.”

“What can you do with a block that makes it an unblock?”

“The block learns from the curve; the steel learns from the block; the window learns from that.”

“Failure is not necessarily a failure.”

“This is the three in the morning scheme.”

“What makes implausible plausible.”

“We wanted to make things you couldn’t photograph.”

“Steel is progress. Wait a minute.. maybe it’s not.”

“One sketch fits all.”