"Here...the issue of response to an urban context becomes important, as both theaters occcupy urban grid sites.... The literal articulation of all programmatic elements tends to reinforce the object quality of the buildings, thus making a spatial response to the context almost impossible. This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the Mummers Theater, because of its Tinker Toy geometry and additive composition....

"Still, to a greater or lesser degree, both buildings are essentially nonspatial in character. Space is either all-pervasive and passive, or a calculated, encapsulated volume. Consequently, space is not used as the meditator or articulated link between the building and its context. It might be argued, in the case of the Mummers Theater, that it has no urban context worthy of recognition."

— from Klaus Herdeg. The Decorated Diagram: Harvard Architecture and the Failure of the Bauhaus Legacy. p53, 55.

"With the Mummers Theater in Oklahoma, referred to by Johansen as a 'fragment, not a building,' structure, function, and circulation are referenced by more fanciful electronic terminology. Components (the functional elements) have attached subcomponents where the attachment is intended to modify or extend the effectiveness of that function: structure, as in the electronic framework, is referred to as a chassis: circuitry is the connection and services. Whereas in the Beaux Arts, circulation was expressed by a hierarchy of movement systems of different widths and prominence according to the importance an amount of traffic and organized with respect to centrality and balance, Johansen's movement notion is one of tubes that support flow. Spaces are static, tubes express movement. The architecture is 'anti-geometric, deals with the imperfect— never design elevations, they are a resultant of a system of building—you feel proud of having found your way by discovering you have to find your way, you are part of a process as you complete it,' says Johansen. The theater is an overlay of five circuit systems performing separate roles each disregarding the organization of the other. The first and uppermost, the distribuiton of chilled water from the cooling tower; next, theater-goer tubes connecting lobbies to auditoriums: then bridges connecting sidewalks to public gardens; then automobile circulation connecting to parking entrances, and the fifth and lowest layer, basement corridors connecting understage areas."

— from Paul Heyer. American Architecture: Ideas and Ideologies in the Late Twentieth Century. p26-27.

"This fiercely unconventional building—a jazzy assemblage of raw concrete, plain wooden decking, and brightly painted steel ducts and towers—accommodates two shows at once. It contains both an arena theater (240 capacity) and a larger (592 capacity) thrust-stage theater."

— from Sylvia Hart Wright. Sourcebook of Contemporary North American Architecture: From Postwar to Postmodern. p57.

The Creator's Words

"Some architects in the United States are searching for beauty,...but I am not one of them."

"I am not a functionalist, as I started out under Bauhaus training, but a 'functionalist expressionist,' never losing hold of what I first learned but expressing it more dramatically. So I am not fighting function as have so many who turned against the Bauhaus towards formalism. I am interested in a return to basic fundamental experiences and processes—not caring whether they are modern or not. They are always with us. I am interested in the collective unconscious, which we must retun to and find a place for our collective lives....

"...Like the artist, the architect's search must be made alone. We can talk about collaboration with other men, planners, researchers, men of specialized technical knowledge, but ultimately the architect must make the balanced decisions and judgements. Again it is the dialogue between the artist and his work....

"...The position of the creative architect is a lonely one, for to originate means to have made the creative venture first, and alone. You have to have been everywhere, and first. The architect is also a philosopher in the sense that he has to have lived fully, have aware acute perceptions, and find an order and a meaning in life, which he then must state in such an essential and clear way that others may understand. He must be interested in the physical and psychic human processes that are to take these processes that makes a building come alive; his architectural forms can only derive from a correct understanding of these processes. He tries to pre-live all the possible experiences that others may enjoy them in the building's use; he pre-lives life so that others may see in his buildings a way of life. It is a huge responsibility, and a very gratifying task to fulfill.

"...Perhaps process is the most important word, as it explains more of what I am doing than anything else. I have great faith that through the emerging idea I will arrive at a successful form. It is fear that makes many architects seize upon the form first, instead of having faith in their own creative process. It is dangerous to rush into a preconceived idea of form, be it neoclassical or brutalist. I make mistakes, but I am no longer afraid.

"The creative architect should not read too much or be too aware of the work of others, but certainly he should be aware of his own derivations and sources. I am interested in the conditions and the environment of primitive forms of life, human and sub-human, and also in more primitive and prehistoric structures ...I am interested in the process by which the product evolved rather than the finally perfected form...It seems to me that when a building has been perfected, the architect has killed it. And I am more interested in life."

— John M. Johansen. from Paul Heyer. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. p340-342.