Thom Mayne - Early Career

Early Career

Mayne studied architecture at the University of Southern California (USC) with a social agenda and urban planning focus. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1968, he began working as an urban planner. During that time he recalls that "policy and planning were not going to work for me" and the he "needed a more tangible resolution.” Mayne found himself living on a commune with the grass-roots group Campaign for Economic Democracy, many of whom became his earliest clients.

In 1972, Mayne collaborated with five other students and educators whom he met at while at USC, to create the Southern California Institute of Architecture, or SCI-Arc. The goal of the institute was to reinvigorate formal architectural education with a keener sense of social conscience. SCI-Arc was “to bring to Los Angeles the critical attitude toward the profession that was being practiced at Cooper Union in New York and the Architectural Association in London.”