|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Maya Lin
Artist and Architect
I really sometimes question students who have chosen to go into like an architecture school from day one, because I think they're missing out on the English courses, the science courses, the math courses. If you can afford the time to do graduate and undergraduate, I would broaden your mind in undergrad and then specialize. Because I think for both art and architecture, you have your whole life ahead of you. Don't think that at age 18 you want to like just focus in on your own personal world. It's like, open it up for a while. I think it's invaluable.
View Interview with Maya Lin
View Biography of Maya Lin
View Profile of Maya Lin
View Photo Gallery of Maya Lin
|
|
|
Maya Lin
Artist and Architect
I had spent my junior year abroad in Denmark and in an architecture studies program, different school. Yale doesn't have a junior year abroad. In fact, you have to tell them that you're going abroad to study something they don't teach which is, they didn't teach Danish, so I could--because I love going into a culture, if I like the architecture. And I love Scandinavian design. So, boom, I went to Denmark. And one of the very first projects, we were all given different segments of Copenhagen to study. I was given this area called Norbrow, which included this enormous park, probably half the size of Central Park, that was also a cemetery. Because in Europe spaces are so tight that you, you have multiple uses. So your cemeteries are habitable, I mean, they're parks. They're--people are walking through, people are strolling through. And I think it was very interesting. And then as I went through Europe that summer I went to Père Lachaise in France. And it was just one of those things. So when I came back to Yale -- I don't know how this conversation came up, but we all -- there were a few of us that thought a course as our senior seminar that focused on the architecture of death essentially would be really interesting. And what does that mean? It's like, God, at the time the reporters had a heyday with it. It's like morbid curiosity. It's more like how humanity deals with mortality in the built form.
View Interview with Maya Lin
View Biography of Maya Lin
View Profile of Maya Lin
View Photo Gallery of Maya Lin
|
|
|
Maya Lin
Artist and Architect
I try to think of a work as an idea without a shape. If I find the shape too soon -- especially for the memorials, which have a function -- then I might be predetermining a form and then stuffing the function into the form. Instead, what I try to do is -- for two to three months -- read, research, understand anything about the site. And I don't just mean the physical site. I mean the cultural site, the historical site, who's coming, what the needs are, what I think needs to be done.
View Interview with Maya Lin
View Biography of Maya Lin
View Profile of Maya Lin
View Photo Gallery of Maya Lin
|
|
|
George Lucas
Creator of "Star Wars"
George Lucas: I came from a very avant-garde documentary kind of film making world. I like cinema verité, documentaries. I liked non-story, non-character tone poems that were being done in San Francisco at that time. And that's the film making that I was interested in. Francis Coppola, who was my mentor, sort of -- he's a writer and works with actors -- stage director -- and he said, "You've gotta learn how to do this." And so I took him up on the challenge and wrote my own screenplays, learned to write and work with actors.
View Interview with George Lucas
View Biography of George Lucas
View Profile of George Lucas
View Photo Gallery of George Lucas
|
|
|
Paul MacCready
Engineer of the Century
Having a brain that works a little differently than what best fits the school system, you learn to cope and emphasize the things -- You sort of do it the way that best suits you. I did most of my learning during the homework rather than the class period. A lot of dyslexics are very creative people. They have some real problems to overcome, and they figure out good ways of overcoming them. In fact, the jails are probably full of dyslexics who are very bright in figuring out how to do crime, which is what they are left with when they can't fit into the school system.
View Interview with Paul MacCready
View Biography of Paul MacCready
View Profile of Paul MacCready
View Photo Gallery of Paul MacCready
|
| |
