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Growing Up, I Thought I Was White. It Didn't Occur To Me I Was Asian-american Until I Was Studying Abroad In Denmark And There Was A Little Bit Of Prejudice.

-Maya Lin

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Growing Up, I Thought

Maya Lin

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Growing Up, I Thought I Was White. It Didn't Occur To Me I Was Asian-american Until I Was Studying Abroad In Denmark And There Was A Little Bit Of Prejudice.

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I Can't Shout Out, "do This." I Don't Want To Be Prescriptive. I Want To Give You Facts, And That's The Way I've Always Operated, Whether It's A Historical Fact Or A Scientific Fact, And Then You Actually Have To Connect It In Your Brain.

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My Goal Is To Strip Things Down So That You Need Just The Right Amount Of Words Or Shape To Convey What You Need To Convey. I Like Editing. I Like It Very Tight.

We Know Under Nebraska There Is An Underground Aquifer That Is Probably Underneath The Whole State, But What Form Does It Take? I Kind Of Want To Focus On That, For Almost Political Means, Because We Keep Digging More Wells. We're Not Replenishing, And We're Having A Crisis In Water Around The World. But How Do You Visualize It? I Don't Know, So I Know What I Want To Study.

It Terrified Me To Have An Idea That Was Solely Mine To Be No Longer A Part Of My Mind, But Totally Public.

You Have To Let The Viewers Come Away With Their Own Conclusions. If You Dictate What They Should Think, You've Lost It.

We Were Unusually Brought Up; There Was No Gender Differentiation. I Was Never Thought Of As Any Less Than My Brother.

Differentiation

In Art Or Architecture Your Project Is Only Done When You Say It's Done. If You Want To Rip It Apart At The Eleventh Hour And Start All Over Again, You Never Finish. I Was One Of Those Crazy Creatures.

Warmth Isn't What Minimalists Are Thought To Have.

I Always Give The Analogy Of The Earth At Night Picture, Of 7.3 Billion Of Us, Right? And Everyone Says, "well, That's Population." Well, If You Took The Entire World's Population And You Lived At The Density Of Manhattan Proper - Not A Bad Place To Live - How Much Space Do 7.3 Billion People Take Up? The State Of Colorado. At Which Point I End My Lectures, Because I Want You To Be Thinking ... Is This Really A Question Of Population, Or Is This A Question Of Land Use And Resource Consumption? And Let's Face It, The Top 1.3 Billion Of Us Are Doing All The Damage. Sorry.

My Grandfather, On My Father's Side, Helped To Draft One Of The First Constitutions Of China. He Was A Fairly Well-known Scholar.

Architecture Is Like A Mythical Fantastic. It Has To Be Experienced. It Can't Be Described. We Can Draw It Up And We Can Make Models Of It, But It Can Only Be Experienced As A Complete Whole.

If You Don't Remember History Accurately, How Can You Learn?

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Competitions Are What You Do As A Good Exercise.

I Though About What Death Is, What A Loss Is. A Sharp Pain That Lessens With Time, But Can Never Quite Heal Over. A Scar. The Idea Occurred To Me There On The Site. Take A Knife And Cut Open The Earth, And With Time The Grass Would Heal It. As If You Cut Open The Rock And Polished It.

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I Think I Needed To Really Move Past My First Public Work As Memorialist, And Be Equally Balanced. It's A Bit Unusual, To Be Working Between The Architecture, The Art, And What I Would Say Is A Synthesis, The Memorials - They're Problem Solving, But It's Very Symbolic. You Get This Triangle; I Need To Be Balanced With Those Three. They're All Equally A Part Of Who I Am. I Love How Different They Are, And Yet They're Coming Out The Same Thing, Whatever It Is.

It's Only In Hindsight That You Realize What Indeed Your Childhood Was Really Like.

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