Thank you all for coming. This is really quite an honor
for me to introduce Eric. I remember last
time he was here, Michael probably remembers
as well, he and Michael got into a shouting match
across Piper over the words that Fredric Jameson was using
in describing post-modernism. It was fabulous. [LAUGHTER] I won't say who won. I don't think
there was a winner. Who's still here? [LAUGHTER] Well, that's a-- that's
a subjective-- that's a subjective statement, of
which I am also still here. What difference does it make? And Eric is here again. Oh, which really tells you
a lot about the advancement of the discipline I guess. So it's been almost
20 years since I have done an introduction. So you'll have to be
a little patient here. I'll try to get through
this very quickly to listen to what Eric
has got to tell us. Eric Owen Moss has occupied an
extraordinary personal space in architecture
for over 40 years. And remarkably, in doing so,
remains a speculative, elusive soul. Simultaneously, he has
spend 100% of his time transforming one of the world's
most influential schools of architecture, 100% of
his time in the practice of architecture, and 100%
of his time contributing to the well-being and culture
of his native city, Los Angeles. He has defined a disciplinary
realm within architecture, few, if any of us, will truly
ever understand, let alone visit with our own work. For me, and I believe
for many others, it would be impossible to
address the work of Eric Owen Moss without referring
directly to his own words of his intentions
in architecture. I got this damn thing. I brought it all the
way from Atlanta. [LAUGHTER] This is his book, 1,500
pages, 1,500 pages. It's called Eric Owen
Moss, Construction Manual. It's only for 20 years of
his life in architecture. Your announcement, by
the way, was a little confusing about his age. It sounded like he
was born in 1973. It was '43, the same as me. [LAUGHTER] Somewhere in this book,
a 1,500 page book, chronicling Eric's work,
there are four statements that for me best
provides a insight into how he sees the possibility
for making architecture. The first is, "When I don't
know what becomes now, I know architecture
is finished." "When last year's words
become next year's words, architecture is done."
"The truth is never an enduring paradigm. But a provisional
one, in tension between its aspirations and
a realization of the limits of its aspirations." And lastly, "No durable
signature is my signature. My signature is never dry." I believe you have to
see the life of the world to be an architect
of distinction. And to sustain that
distinction, you have to make raw what you see. I was trying to think
about how I could possibly describe the work of Eric. And the only thing I can
think of is David Letterman. Do you people know who
David Letterman is? [LAUGHTER] I may be showing my age here. David Letterman used to
have this bit that he did. It was my favorite one. We watched David Letterman
every single night. We left the office
to get home by 11:35 to see David Letterman. And the reason was
that he, every night, reinvented television. It was amazing. And he had this one skit where
he built up all this anxiety. I mean it seemed
like 10 minutes. He talked about, OK, listen. Here's what's going to happen. The curtain's drawn. And he had this fake, like,
big huge velvet curtain thing. He said, now behind the
curtain is a person who is going to do a performance. Now, don't panic. Try to remain calm. It could be dangerous. It could be very easy. There's no telling what
is going to happen. And then he would pause. And he said, OK,
now what's going to happen, he's going to do,
when you open the curtain, something happened. And he said, then the
curtain is going to close. And then Paul Shaffer,
the band leader, and I are going to decide if it was
something or if it was nothing. Now, Paul would go first. And then I'll-- and then he
would start all over again. Now, understand what's
going to happen now. First of all, remain calm. And then we'll vote. So he opens a curtain. And it will always be something
like a guy in, like, way too tight leotards,
standing on his head, on a unicycle, juggling oranges,
or something with his feet. And he'll do the act. And they closed the curtain. The audience usually claps. He lets that sort of subside. And then he says to Paul,
Paul, what do you think? And Paul says, ah,
it's something. It's definitely something. David would say, ah, I
think it was nothing. And then they would
go to commercial. That was it, no other reaction
and never referring back to it. Unlike David, Eric is still
fabricating the anxiety of anticipation
with his audience, while relishing in the
response and moving on to the next intention. He's not David. And he's not Paul. And he's not the juggler. Eric is the person defining the
next disciplinary challenge. I want all of you to give Eric
Owen Moss a great welcome back to the GSD. [APPLAUSE] You know what, it's not
this with you, it's this. Thank you very much. Nice to be here. I was just walking
over and I went by a shuttle bus, a small bus. And on the side of the
bus it said, "Veritas." That's Harvard. You got to be a serious
character to ride in that bus. [LAUGHTER] In fact, I-- it's nice to
hear laughter at Harvard. Is that allowed? And I have to say, the last time
I was here, a few years back, the podium used
to say "Veritas." And I notice they've
taken that down. [LAUGHTER] So there must be
a reason for that. Moisan can enlighten you. Speaking of walking
over here, I was just ruminating a little bit about
the ubiquitous Friedrich Nietzsche, which is not to dump
a lot of esoterica on anybody. But sometimes, notwithstanding
reputations, people like that are of some use
to people like us. And there was a line
that went something like this, from Zarathustra. Nobody tells me anything new. Nobody tells me anything new. So I tell myself my own story. You know that one? Do you like one? And the question in all of these
discussions, of which there are now so many, about
art, and architecture, and what it means-- there
are many more discussions than there are progenitors. And the question is, if we
try to talk to each other, because this is an exchange,
is life private, and personal, and introverted, or is it
exchangeable, transferable? Can we talk to each other? Can we hear a story? I think we can hear a story. Because I think in Mack
representing the sorts of work that we have done, which starts
to sound a little arcane, and I hope it's not. And I think there is
something in my story which is communal,
which we all share. And then there's
another question, which is, if Nietzsche
is not correct, which wouldn't be
the first time, is there a common language? Is there a way to talk
about this stuff, this work? Is there is there a
frame of reference that we can share so
that you have some idea and I have some idea--
what you're saying and have some idea
what I'm saying? So this is part of
the subject matter. Can we talk about this? Can we share this? Do we belong to each
other and what we actually belongs to something that you,
perhaps in a different way, in a different form, also touch? Which brings us to Mr.
Durer, on your left. So please don't tell me
this is only Western Europe and there was Africa, and
Asia, and so on, and so on. But at least in Western
Europe-- so this is the end of the
15th century on you're left-- for students
of Revelation. There must be a few here. So we got war, famine,
pestilence, death. We have a spectacular,
remarkable well-known woodcut, where the images are
known, but the narrative is also known, meaning that this
is something which is shared, which is understood. You see it. You can read. You see it. You can't. You understand. So there is something in the
form language that's shared. Now, dial it up
another 400 years. So you know what's coming. But Braque, Gris,
Picasso, those characters. By the way, if you
look around 1900, I'd defy you, unless you're
an expert, to distinguish between those artists actually. So Braque, Gris, Picasso. And now, one starts to need an
interpreter or a translator. [RINGING] Oh, I never turn
it off because I'm afraid something might
happen to one of the kids. So we got Braque,
Gris, and Picasso. And as I said, an
interpreter is required. Now, the discourse
starts to be privatized. And I think my point
would be, we're continuing in that direction. So what might bail
us out of that? What could we count on? What would give us
some consistency, some predictability,
maybe science. So this is Phobos. You all know Phobos. You know the steeds of Mars? Mars has these two strange rocks
rattling around its periphery. It's not a sphere. It rotates the wrong way,
meaning it rotates retrograde. So the only point is
that, without getting into a complicated discussion
of Darwin, and Newton, and so on, that
those ideas as well, and the language that
accompanies them, are also to some extent not
only ephemeral, not consistent, and not entirely shared. Meaning science itself
has its problems. And what comes
from that, I think, is a question for all of us. And it's an enduring question. What is literature? What is music? What is architecture? So on your left,
you got to tell me if that's a plan or a section? But it's a map of
Finnegan's Wake. But it's not a literal map. It's a more conceptual,
abstract map. And if you play with that book--
I don't know if any of you have tried. You should. But if you play
it with the book, you will, of course, know that
the beginning is at the end. If there is an end
and a beginning, which is also a debatable point. If you write a sentence, if
your kid is in middle school, and you say, hey, capital
letter, noun, verb, period. That's a sentence. Is it? So along comes E.E.
Cummings and James Joyce. Or the question of the form of
the language, is it mappable? How is it spoken? How is it written, structure of
reading, end is the beginning, beginning is the end. And then you come to John Cage. You know Cage. So is music harmony? Is music auditory? Is music visual. I always thought this
was a little unfair because for the
musicians who play it, they're the only ones
who get to see it. We just get to listen to it. But never mind. Music is auditory. Is it? Music is visual. Is it? Categories, categories
of language, or learning, or literature,
or music start to break down. And I think this
is a good thing. I think it's a perfect thing. Because it-- [RINGING] Jesus Christ. Stop. A structural engineer,
something's falling down. [LAUGHTER] If he calls twice, that's
a-- If he calls once, it's congratulations. If he calls twice,
you're going to-- And then, and then our
old friend, on the right, and Mussolini's as well,
Giuseppe Terrangni, who makes the Danteum, as
you know, which is a journey. So it's architecture
as a journey through the Divine Comedy,
hell, purgatory, and paradise. Meaning the structure of
these pieces that surround us, what's literature, what's
music, what's architecture? This is a good thing. But it makes it more
difficult to say what it is and what it isn't, which
is why we're all here. You know this? You know the one on the left? Yeah. So on the left is
the Roman cistern-- the cistern-- cistern,
across the street from Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. You know it? Most of you, you know it. Yeah. And it's fascinating. And I think the point really
has to do with how culture moves and how architecture moves, not
in a Darwinian sense, increment by increment, but
sometimes cataclysmically, as an attack by one culture
or one architect on another. So you can do that too. You're here to learn to
attack, not to genuflect. OK. So these are the Romans. So the Romans,
what's their story? So there's a Greek
temple nearby, where the ubiquitous
Medusa-- remember the Medusa, with the snakes? And you hold it up
and you turn to stone. So be careful. Don't look. So that was a temple. This is a capitol, one of
the capitals of the temple. So this is my exit, Jesus. So I'm responsible for it. Nobody said it was so. Nobody has, in historical
art, historians, has since demonstrated
that it's so. But my sense is
that the Romans came and they dismantled the Greeks. The Romans don't have Aeschylus. They don't have Phidias. They got aqueducts. They got roads. They got coliseums. So it's a very different
culture, different in scale, different in content. But you can't quite
kill what you can't be. But they try. So they take the capital
of the Medusa, the capital. They flip it upside down. And they stick it under water. So this is the Romans talking
to the Greeks, my analysis. You're done, upside down. You're under water. And this is how they
made the cistern. Meanwhile, Mr.
Cervantes-- so you know the story of the
Don, right, and Sancho. And you've heard many
of the analysis of that. And Sancho, let's say, Sancho
Panza, who is his sidekick, nominally his
sidekick in the days when chivalry is
ending in Spain. And Sancho is everyman, the more
pragmatic, the more practical, the more conventional
point of view. And the Don is something else. Perhaps Sancho is the extrovert
and the Don is the introvert. And again, if you go back to the
original Nietzsche discussion, is it inside, is it private,
is it introverted, is it extroverted? This is also a
Jungian discussion. Is it introverted,
is it extroverted, and what makes you what you are? Is it this or is it this? Of course, it's probably both. But in this cartoon
or in this caricature, the Don is the introvert;
Sancho, the extrovert. So that Don and Sancho
show up on the hill. And the Don says,
they're giants. I'm going to attack the giants. And Sancho says, what the
hell's the matter with you? They're windmills. They're just windmills. And the Don says, no. They're giants. And he charges, and so on. And the question to you is, who
was right, giants or windmills? [MUSIC PLAYING] So this is from a film
by Victor Sjostrom. You should-- and I don't
know if Netflix has it. It's called The Wind. Do you know it? Do you know it? Sjostrom a Swedish director,
1928, Lillian Gish. The animation interested me. But here's really the point. The film is called The Wind. What's the wind? We're done here. We go out the door. It's windy. You put on a coat, you put on
your hat, and you walk away. So this is Sancho's
dealing with the wind. The Don says, no. The wind is a horse
flying in the sky. That's the wind. And in a certain
fundamental way, that transmutation
in architecture, the wind is the wind, no, the
wind is a horse in the sky, I think is what the
architecture aspires to do, build the horse in the sky. This is a little
more of the same. This is Lucian Freud. Again, this question of
artist as subject and artist as object. And another point, which
not only he has made, but what can we know
outside of ourselves, which it wouldn't
necessarily presume, I guess, we would know
ourselves too, or could we? But the point seems to be that
when we're outside of that, we're lost. So his subject, subject
and object, is himself. And I was looking around
when I put this together a couple of days ago. And I was trying to
find a project that was analogous to that,
something that would confirm-- there's always an
autobiographical piece in this discussion. And this was a project that was
done maybe 20 years ago or so. It's a small project. It was clumsily done. This is a sketch model. And the model was made
with a piece of lemon. So it's lemon. But it wasn't made
with a piece of lemon, so I could walk into
Piper Auditorium and say, hey, guess what? I made something out
of a piece of lemon. Isn't that fascinating? It's not like that. And it shouldn't be
understood in that way. I mean it's walled
out like that. But we were working
on something. And we were trying
to make something that was actually a tension
between possibilities. It wasn't a single thing. But it was in between things. And the line of
the lemon actually sufficed and began to suggest. And then ultimately,
the transmutation of that, which is
always also critical, was into blocks, which
are orthogonal pieces. So at first it was a
curve, that wasn't a curve. And then the curve became
a block, which in the end wasn't a block either. I think I have an
image of that later. I guess the point would be
that-- I refer to this as clumsy-- that what I was
doing was making something that I was unsure of. So there wasn't a lot to rely
on except my own instinct and a strange kind
of self-confidence, I have to say, which I could
never really account for, or explain, or blame
on my mom or my dad, or however it came to be. But to take on the
making of things and the development
of ideas knowing that there is a
certain amount of risk, not in a melodramatic way,
but in terms of an ability to actually give to a
client what a client needs in a more conventional way. So it starts out
as an exploration. And if we get it
right, by the end maybe we mastered it,
which means it's time to do something else. [MUSIC PLAYING] So my dad was a writer. And when he wasn't writing
whatever he was writing, he was making lists. And he used to
make lists of words and the interrelationship of
words in many different ways, in many different forms. And over a period of years,
now probably in the last three or four years,
every time I lecture like this, I have this list. This is my list. It's ongoing. It has nothing to
do with programs. It has nothing to do with costs. It has nothing to do with sites. It has nothing to do
with any of the sort of conventional programmatic,
pragmatic questions. This is just a list. [MUSIC PLAYING] I want to say maybe
it's in a dictionary. But it's a dictionary that
in the Finnegans Wake sense, wouldn't necessarily start
with A and end with Z. So that it would add
letters and subtract letters over a long period of time. And I think what
happens, and what happens to me when we
work, is that there really is an a priori
dictionary so that even the idea of originating a
conceptual idea at the onset of a project is a
little disingenuous only because this-- and the more time
goes, the longer the list gets. And maybe we need to
cut it or jettison it. But there is something that
precedes the work that we do. And that's the list. [MUSIC PLAYING] Maybe it's too long. Do you think the pieces
are too much alike? Well, here's the next one. [LAUGHTER] But this is different, maybe. So there is a discussion that
you only do in your life, as an architect, one project. It's all one project. It's not this site, or that
site, or the other site. It's never that. It's one building. Here's the one building. The other argument, which isn't
contradicted by the first, is there are no buildings
ever, discrete pieces. There are just pieces of things. These are the pieces. [MUSIC PLAYING] You know what helps
is the screen waves. Huh. So this adds something
that wasn't anticipated. Speaking of dictionaries,
this is an area of about 25 by 26 kilometers, south and east
of Nanjing, in a country that will go nameless. There are four sites. And this is a project we
started to work on in 2013. There are four sites. And the conceptual
discussion has to do with making a new
city in a wetlands area. And I have to say,
as a premise, this is not an ideological exercise
where somebody gets points for being green,
and sustainable, and preserving water,
and saving the landscape, and all of the sort of litany of
criteria which accompanies what I think is in many ways an
incredibly self-righteous component of the
discussion of architecture, which is not to discredit it,
but to mitigate the credit. I don't know what
constitutes environmentalism. It's an open discussion. It's a part of a discourse. It's part of the
discourse we share. But how to do it and
what its obligations are is part of this study. It's a big study. It's complicated. I just wanted to give you an
idea about it, and its scale, and its essential
premise or premises. And there are a few. One of which is,
we don't know what constitutes environmentalism. But there is an
argument here that we'll try any number of
different possibilities. In other words,
rule number one, you don't get to do the
same thing twice. So it's a dexterity discussion. There is an interest in
preserving the forms of water. There's an interest in water
aesthetically, visually. There's a discussion
of infrastructure and the role of infrastructure. For any of you
have spent any time in a city like Los
Angeles, it's zoned. Nominally, there's some kind of
zoning thing, whatever it is. But it's zoned, in fact, with
river beds, concrete river beds; and freeways; and
railway rights-of-way; and power line rights-of-way. The premise here is that there
is no infrastructure solely. But the infrastructure
belongs to the architecture. And the architecture belongs
to the infrastructure. This is also not a
planning project. And if somebody says, I'm doing
this as a planning project, it's not about architecture. Or this is a piece
of architecture, it's not about planning. So for effort,
the hypothesis, is to have the planning
obligate architecture. And reciprocally,
have the architecture work back on the planning. There are other questions here. I mentioned the dictionary and
the role of the dictionary. There are topological issues,
organizational issues, that in a sense are a priori. That means they
exist without form. And they become topologies
that have a form, but haven't yet
landed in the site. And then they add
the typography. So somewhere between that
topology and the typography and the topography of the
site, we integrate those pieces and begin to make and develop
the four very different areas. I'm not going to go through
all of the programmatic pieces. But again, there are four
fundamental areas, essentially a flat site. The areas are
connected with a tram that we're building, with
roads and with the canals. So anyway, four sites. The yellow is-- all
right, this ain't going-- but the yellow
material is what we're adding. Whoops. Backwards. So the yellow-- anyway,
this is the four. This is called the
Mountain Island City. This is called the Bridge City. This is called the
Superblock City . And this is called city wall,
city gate, the Citadel City. So I'll just go through
and give you a look. So this is the Mountain Island. Here, I actually extended a
lake to include the flood plain. The islands are all man-made. And the Mountain
Island, meaning there is this area for development,
and this area for development. Here is what we call the
Bridge City, which is, again, a piece of infrastructure, which
is not solely infrastructure. But has to do with a variety
of programmatic uses developed over the lake. The Superblock, the
Superblock City, which is a variety of dense
cities surrounding an existing piece of freeway. And the Citadel,
which is actually an area at the
top of a mountain, then percolating down
into the landscape below. All of these pieces deal with
water in a very particular way. I said it was visual. And we're interested
in that experience. But the idea, of course, as
you all know, is to catch it, to collect it, to
preserve it, to filter it, to let it flow by gravity,
producing hydroelectric power, to catch it again; to use
photovoltaics to power up, to send it back where
it was during the night, let it fall during
the day, and so on. So there's a water cycle in all
of these circumstances, that are also part of the story. And the way we did this, I would
say these are the typologies. These are the topologies. These are the typologies. For instance, this is what
we call a stacked island. This is part of the hillside. So in the discussion
of environment, does the building deal with the
environment in a more effective way if it sits on the land,
in the land, under the land, over the land? So tell me because I don't know. So we're looking at the
assets and liabilities. But this is a piece on the hill. This is again the Mountain
Island, on the hill, into the hill, stacked island,
courtyard on the water, edge of the water, and so on. The hill side. And there are a series
of programmatic pieces, again following the hill. This is the tram station,
following the hill; dam up here, catching the
water; performance area, lifted above the hill. So on the hill, in the hill,
over the hill, under the hill. Now, we're on the
Bridge City; again, a number of topological pieces. This is actually a
tower, a turbine tower. You see the turbine
tower is here. The bridge over the river,
floating components, and so on. [RINGING] Is that me? Jesus. This is the Bridge
City structure. So these pieces
of the bridge are inhabited, all sorts of
programmatic components, rafts floating in the water. So again, in the water, on
the water, under the water, over the water. And the Superblock
City, a variable piece, which is described somewhere
in here, maybe here. And then the Citadel. What we call the Tributary
Village, city wall, city gate; come in, tram comes
in, water comes out. And this is a project that
was done in the early 2000s. There was a competition
for the Mariinsky, in St. Petersburg, which
you know is the Kirov. But this is spectacular, huh? So this is the Neva River,
no facsimile to the Charles, which freezes, and
melts, and refreezes. And one of the things,
and certainly history will teach us this,
that belongs to Russia, is that the seasons in
Russia are not simply seasons but seem to be ways of life. So the Russian winter has
a very particular kind of character, which I
think-- this, by the way, is an iceberg, which came
to be the Russian name for the project when we
first did the competition. This is the Mariinsky Theatre. This is the Kryukov Canal. This is the site for
the second building. This is a 19th century project. And I don't know whether
you're fans of ballet. I've gotten to know it a bit
because my daughter's a dancer. But if you know a little
bit about the Kirov, in a certain sense if
it weren't snowing, they could perform on any
street corner on Earth. They're spectacular. They're wonderful. It gives your life
a different meaning. This is a very unique and
special group of people, with a very particular history. And I think our
sense in doing-- this is the original scheme, which
they called "The Iceberg," that won the competition, although
it metamorphasized a bit. And my sense was always,
working with Valery Gergiev, who is the creative director, and
people who belong to the Kirov or to the Mariinksy, less so
the Russian side of the thing, which is a very
complicated story, notwithstanding their current
fiasco with Mr. What's His Name, and Putin,
and so on, and so on. Russia-- Churchill said,
a riddle, in a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. I don't think that's
changed a hell of a lot. So we did the project
in a time when Russia had moved from Brezhnev,
to Gorbachev, to Yeltsin, and was just turning
the corner to Putin. So it might have been a time
a little bit like the Kerensky era, after the Czar
and before Lenin, where the prospects
that Russia might become something other than it was. And maybe it can't do
that and maybe it can. But I think the
meaning of the project was a colossal optimism. Which is another
characteristic, I have to say, which belongs
to the work that we do, which doesn't seem always to be
justified by the circumstances you're facing. And nevertheless, for some
accountable and unaccountable reason, it's part of the story. So this is a clay model
done early in the project. And this is the original
19th century job. It's a huge, huge project. He had to produce nine
operas simultaneously, which has never been done. The inside, which in
the original scheme was actually asymmetrical,
which raises a whole series of acoustical
questions-- we'll discuss that in the next lecture. And this is the original
scheme, the winning scheme. And I think maybe if Nakazawa
had been around to advise us, we probably wouldn't
have done this. But we stuck it in the-- [LAUGHTER] Nah. He knows some stuff
that we don't know. And we stuck it in
the Russian pavilion in the Biennale, one
of the Biennales. So there was that and
there was the Bolshoi. And it raised a
lot of commotion, which is entertaining, but
ultimately not very helpful. So they decided to do
a second competition. So this is the second one. And I can actually remember--
I probably shouldn't say this. But in making an attempt to
dovetail a little bit more with this sort of 18th,
19th century traditions, of St. Petersburg, which belongs
in many ways to Western Europe, again in a classical
schizophrenic, Russian way, in talking about the building
divided into three pieces. And I remember Piritz coming
up to me-- he was on the jury-- after the discussion
and saying, Jesus, Eric, that sounded terrific. And then we looked at it. [LAUGHTER] So that's probably a little
too self-deprecatory for him. But it's a true story. And it went through a whole
series of-- they finally built it in 2015, with a Canadian
firm, a firm from Toronto. And they built an ice
cube, not an iceberg. This was the second
scheme that we did. So this must be 10, 12 years
ago, something like that. This is another one done at
about the same time, the Queens Museum of Art, and a
fascinating building. This is an international
competition that we won. And the building has a
very particular history, not only for America. I mean it belongs to the
World's Fair site, World's Fair 1936-1964. So all of that. But it was also
the first location for the new or newly
made UN General Assembly. And they partitioned
both Palestine and Korea in this building. So one could say to this
day the consequences of what was done
in that building belong to the
contemporary world, for better and or for worse. So we knew we were dealing with
a particular piece of history. There it is, next to
the World's Fair site. And the ever-present
Mr. Moses there, who is responsible for all that. And then I think the
sketch is I think reasonably self-explanatory. By the way, which probably
means it wasn't done that way. So there is a discussion
of, guess what, we did this, A, B, C, D. You see? And it follows this logic. When, in fact, if we retreated,
which is often the case, to the list or the
dictionary, the solution proceeds the analysis
which claims to be responsible for the solution. You know what I mean? [LAUGHTER] Not entirely. Go, man. This is also a piece of
our discussion, which seems very often to have to
do with excavating the site, meaning you can try. But you can't move us. We're dug in. By the way, we know
how to build this. We know how to do it. And we did it roughly the
same time a little earlier for the LA Philharmonic. So it is, to some
extent again, a question of making something and
learning how to build it. But this we knew how to do. This is another competition,
done a few years later for the Smithsonian. This is the MCI Center. This is in DC. This again belongs
to the 19th century. And the project
was, give us a roof. Because this is Washington,
DC in the Bush era. So, of course, they wanted to
build Democracy's Room, very appropriate. So the problem was to
make a roof for that. And these are glass
tubes, somewhere between 4 and 8
meters in length, roughly a meter in diameter. And the making of the glass,
or the points of the glass, belongs by analogy to this, what
always was fascinating to me, the Seurat work. You know Seurat, huh? And Sunday in the Park
at least you know. And it was always
quite fascinating because the sociological
content of those paintings, or many of them, are
extremely conservative. If you look at the bank,
at the sand, and everybody is behaving. And the dog is on
the leash, and so on. And yet, the painterly
content of that work is extremely radical. It's the dots and the points. So anyway, I
extrapolated from that. But the points, the points
actually-- and the way this works-- and I
have to say also, in looking at a number
of these things, I think I have to
acknowledge there's a very particular
fascination with glass and the biblical
admonition-- I think it's an admonition--
that life is understood not so clearly, but as if
through a glass darkly. So this maybe you've be heard. But later, presumably in the
next place, it clears up. So whether we get
to the next place or not, or whether it clears up. But the idea of a glass,
which is there, and not there, and can play both
roles, and the tension between the possibilities,
I think is of great interest to me. And the hypothesis here-- you
have to say, we won this thing. We won this thing. And they took it away. They gave it to Sir Norman. They said we couldn't build
it, that it wasn't buildable. Even though we walked in with
half of Europe, and London, and New York. And they said you
can't build it. The way we were doing it--
these are Vierendeels. This is existing. This is existing, a series
of Vierendeel trusses. And then these trusses span
between the Vierendeels. And you can see here the
cable, and here the strut. And there's a glass roof on top. And then the
lengths of the tubes actually belong to a different
programmatic disposition in this space. This is the perimeter
of the space. And programmatically they said,
OK, among other things-- why? Did I blow somebody's eyes out? Sorry. That there have to be two
venues for presentation, like theatrical presentation,
but not like Carnegie Hall. But something
which is plausible. And one was a smaller venue
and one was a larger venue. And these are the stages. So that the topography
of the ceiling, which is translated into Seurat,
which is into the points, which are the glass tubes,
which are the compression members of the
chords of the truss, belong not only
to the structure, they hold up the glass roof
span between the Vierendeels. But also work acoustically
with a form, which belongs to the program of presentation. And this is actually an
amalgamation of these two. This is another one. I think Peter Rowe
is actually a friend or a colleague from the
GSD, going back a ways, was on this jury. I don't know whether
the results matter. I thought we won this. Yet, he gave us second place. Sometimes I think
people are more interested in the
story than the result. But maybe that varies
from place to place. Anyway, this is the northwest
center of Mexico City. This is a train station, which
was about to be rehabilitated. And this is the site for the
Mexican National Library. So this is another one of
these invited competitions. And this was the
first step-- actually, you can read this--
but the street. And then an elaboration
on the streets. And then this
acoustic mound, which buffered this transition between
the trains and the library. And then the program. And then a series
of courtyards here. There are actually
four courtyards that belong to four
programs in four seasons. And then finally,
rolling up the front, to make this public space,
that belongs to the train and to the building. I'd like to say
something about this. I'm not quite sure
how to describe it. But somebody invited me
recently to Abu Dhabi. And said, Eric, can
you give us a lecture? And can you tell us how
the architecture here can be more consistent with
the history of the area? And my response,
obviously, was a little bit late for that discussion. But there is something
about this intersection of a new culture,
which seems to be more of an international
proposition maybe, and a local history. And one of the things that
we were looking at here was what belonged to
Teotihuacan, or to Uxmal, or to Chichen Itza, or
to the history, which is a spectacular history,
of pre-Columbian buildings? And is there an exchange? Is there something that might
belong to this project that would make it different
than if we were building it in Guangzhou or something? So that was part
of the discussion. Now, whether that was
managed successfully or not, you can tell me
in the restaurant. But this is part of
the aspiration making. This is a study model,
and the train, and so on. So four programmatic courts. And again, the form of the
court belongs to the season. So for purposes, operational
purposes, four seasons. And then the making
of the courtyards so that they belong to the spring,
summer, fall, and winter. Here's another one, a
little bit later, in Almaty, in Kazakhstan, a peculiar place
by my lights, for many reasons. And we were asked to participate
in a competition for what I guess we call euphemistically
a mixed-use project, whatever that really means. But in a developer sense,
it probably has to do with, gee, there are hotels, and
there are retail, an housing, and now all of those things. So without trying to
get into what that means or what it omits. So this was the program. And then we were actually
working with Guy. Do you guys know Guy Nordenson? He was working with
us on this project, as structural engineer. And the area is problematic
in terms of seismic issues. So we introduced,
in a conceptual way, the strategy that
the building might be elastic in quite a literal way. I know "literal" is considered
a pejorative term, not esoteric enough. But nevertheless,
in a literal way, to see whether we could make
a building that would respond to the seismic conditions. So this is the program, the
light wells, and the beginning of the development of
the interrelationship of the program and the base. And you can see as it
begins to transform. Guy's first reaction
was, my recollection, that if we did that,
the building, which is not far from China,
would wind up in China. Meaning that what we had done
was conceptually intelligible, but had to be substantially
modified or dumbed down in a way. And we did that
with a cable net. But you can start to see how
this came to be modified. Since we were working
on this, somebody asked this us to do
something in the Biennale. So we built it in the Biennale,
to see how that would work. And then you can see how
the cable net worked, which solved the problem
in this direction, but didn't solve
in this direction. So the housing components
actually turned out to be braces perpendicular
to the direction of the main frame. And it's a series of-- This is a public space. So when you're in
that space, you have access to all of
the different functions of the project. And then it opens up. So there's a reciprocity
between what's inside and Republic Square,
and back and forth. Another one, roughly
the same time. You probably know this one. So this is Guangdong Museum. And this is the Pearl River. This is the site for
the museum there. And I think our argument,
which is an easy one to make, is that speaking of ubiquitous,
the commercial development of the city, which is pouring
over the city in all directions and it hasn't stopped. And what we proposed was to
make this mound and to say, this is the line where
commerce ends and the arts begin, on the edge of the river. So this is the mound. And on the mound, we
proposed something we called the Glass Forest. So this is a mound. This is a walk. And the walk between the
opera house and the museum, we called the Long March. And these pieces, they're
really essentially two programmatic components. The solids, that is no light. And the other pieces,
which programmatically could tolerate light. And the way this works, contrary
to commerce in Guangzhou, is a much more introverted
world, a garden. So one comes across the
mound into this area. And then enters into
this site, in and down. So more introverted. This is a series of diagrams. And this is again the Long
March, the Glass Forest, the mound in here, and
then entering the garden. Again, a much more
introverted world vis-a-vis commerce
and Guangzhou. This one, very recent,
the Angewandte in Vienna, quite an unusual
school or it has an unusual history, 20th
century, 20th century, 19th century. And this was also an
invited competition. I don't know, a
couple of years ago. I'll show it to
you just briefly. And this came out
of an instinct, what we called the
birds on a wire, existing, existing, existing. And then loops, which end
what we called the dead ends. So the end of dead ends. And those birds had studios, had
cafe, had exhibition and jury area, all of that. There was a development
of the site. This is the existing
19th century building. And that leads
actually-- this drawing was done by a lady who
belongs to you guys, I think, apparently--
the Apocalypse, as it's been called. I think this is the last of
a series of competitions. We just did this a
couple months of ago. We were invited to do, again,
Russia, the Russia National Bank, which is Putin's bank. So when all else
fails in Russia, Sberbank will remain
standing, we think. There was something
about, again, Russia, the riddle and the
mystery, and all of that, was once known as
the White City. This is that Jura limestone. It goes back to the
13th and 14th century. Again, to extrapolate
the discussion of Mexico, the Mayans, the Aztecs,
Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and how to bring
something forward, which belongs to a
pedigree, without literally reconstituting it. So I'll run through
some of this. This is Skolkovo Technocenter. So Putin, aspiring to make
another Silicon Beach, Silicon Valley, all of that. So the bank is the heart of
that project, a huge project, 130 square meters on this site. This is the site, as given. This is about 500
meters in here. About 300 in here. And the beginning of the making
of an organizational strategy, which we called the Polar Grid. There is a program, a kind
of great hall program. I don't know if you've
run into it here. But there seems to be a
fair amount of discussion now about what's called
the New Workplace, the New Workplace, which
seems to have to do with a lot of technology firms. So women have little children,
people bring their dogs. It's interesting. And I'll show you this
project in a minute. We did one in Los
Angeles recently, for a company called Omelet. And a friend and his girlfriend
went up there the other night, went to see the project. And the owner came out
and served us beer. So they serve beer. They have wagons with
Cheerios, and all of that. And somewhere there's ping-pong. Does that sound foreign? I think it's not. Whether it's sophisticated
enough for you, I'm not sure. But it's ubiquitous. It's all over the
place and seems to belong to a group
of people I think the CNN pollsters
call Millennials, whatever exactly that may mean. And the program, the way
this was given to us, was introduce this hall as
an area for socialization, for information, for
restaurants, for gathering, for the entire area of
Skolkovo, which they are in the process of building. So I'll just run through this. These are executive
meeting centers, again a huge, huge project. I'll only show this
because this has to do with the intersection,
a particular structural piece, which is made both with a pipe,
and then the end of the pipe is actually crushed in order
to make the intersection with another piece. So this is obviously the great
hall, executive floor, offices, media center, theaters,
a complex program. I think this is
the last of these. We were asked about a year
or two ago-- maybe you know the Mayor for Urban Affairs
in Barcelona, Antoni Vives. And this is a
project for Termicas, which was a power plant
built in the 1970s and terminated in 2010. And will be converted
to a mixed use project. [MUSIC PLAYING] I cut some of it off. There was a piece that
had to do with, again, the environmental discussion,
with the tide coming in, holding it, letting it go. But I'll skip to the
next piece, which has to do with an area in the
center of Los Angeles, where we've been working for more
than 20 years for a very unusual client, a woman and
a man, who inherited much of the area, at the
time a disintegrating area of manufacturing
that was mostly going to Mexico or to East Asia. And it feels now very much
like making something from what was originally not very much. It began as an experimental
project that was quite fragile. And has become over
a period of time now, and maybe this is
predictable in a way, that the politics, the
sociology, and economics of our culture first
looks askance at something and then begins to
be interested in it. And then in the end, if you're
not careful, they swallow you. So it starts as,
we don't want it. And it winds up with,
you belong to us. You have to be careful of that. So whether that's resistible
or not, I'm not so sure. They're a series of sites. By the way, I should say that
Los Angeles is-- whatever constitutes a city, it
probably has its own area for discourse in terms of
what it is and how it's made. But one of the issues is that
there is Hollywood, and West Hollywood, and Santa Monica,
and Beverly Hills, and Burbank, and Culver City,
and all of that. So it's not a
homogeneous jurisdiction. It's multiple jurisdictions. And the often used, not to say
abused, term "fragmentation" probably applies to
any attempt to plan in a consistent way
over long distances what that city might be. Which has allowed,
in a different way, a lot of piecemeal development. So this is an area
which straddles. This is what's called, in
here, the Los Angeles River. Euphemistically speaking,
it's a hunk of concrete. And water runs through it. And this is actually
Los Angeles. And this is Culver City. So I'll run through this
quickly and give you an idea of something. You can see the dimensions
here, to give you an idea. This is one piece
of the project. There are several pieces. This is a project. I must have shown this
here a number of years ago. It was done in the late
'90s for Cineon Kodak, an air rights building, in
the air, over this road, for Cineon Kodak. In an area which is really the
riot zone, the 1992 riot zone. So it was the first
building, new building, that was built in that area. And then we began
recently to add to that. This has been purchased and
remodeled by this owner. And then there are
a series of steps. These are 10,000 square foot
pods for start-up companies. That building proposed
to be enlarged. And then there are two towers. So this is a project, which
is about to start now. So you have to be patient. Don't forget about that. So patience has a
different definition I think in architecture, than
in almost any other endeavor. It's important to
keep it in mind. So this project has been
around for about 16 years. It started, I think,
in the late '90s, 2000. And it began as an
exhibition that we were asked to do at the Wexner in Ohio. And in that project,
that's an Eisenman project, which is essentially
a discussion of grids. I start with Z grid. And the grid is bent,
and the grid is turned, and the grid is microwave. Whatever happens to the grid,
but it's always the grid. And in a Hippodamus, Miletus,
chasing it all the way back, in the sense of what
the grid might be, the one thing that it
doesn't seem to indicate is, in Yate's his old phrase,
the center doesn't hold. The grid has no
center, although it might imply one with absence. So the Dancing Bleachers
project had actually to do with introducing a
different kind of geometry, that suggested a different
organizational hypothesis. There might not be a center. But there might, which is
absent from the strategy at the Wexner. So we built that. Another one we did
a little bit later, at the flak tower in
Vienna, for Peter Noever. And roughly the same
time, we started to work on this project, which
came to be called the Wrapper. And that project was originally
two hours-- two towers, not two hours, two towers. It's been about two hours. But two towers. And the beginning
of the description of the exchange in
this, what we call a polar grid, which I think
is a contradiction in terms. But the idea that a center
might exist around this block. Again, this belongs
to 1999 or so. This is close to
the current version. This is the Kodak building. This is the river, Los
Angeles, the riot area, and Culver City over here. So this is the plan as
it's presently constituted. A difficult project
because there's no building code that can account for it. It has no columns. It has no beams, in
a conventional sense. So we have to write the program. So we have to walk into a
room with the ERA people and the city of Los Angeles
building department. So there are 21 people in the
room and 22 points of view. And to make a case that this is
intelligible in a construction way and a structural way. And we've now done that. It's taken awhile. And the way it works,
these pieces, which we call the ribbons, which
occur differently at each level. So where those
pieces occur, they're connected with elements
that are now called cords. From ribbon to
ribbon, the cords run. Sometimes they
run into the core. Open plan, no
internal structure. And then these girders run,
supported by the cords. Here, the ribbons curve
not only in one plane, but in two planes. So there are very
substantial questions about how to build
this, how to put it up. In the conventional
way, when you put the columns, you put the
beams, you put the columns, you put the beams. You go home. In this case, it
may be that we put what is the structure of the
floor, scaffold the floor, and come with the ribbons later. It's a complicated discussion. There is a special steel
that's coming from Germany. The fabricators are
in Oklahoma City. So we got almost everybody
involved in this thing. It looks like it will work. Anyway, this is base isolation. So this happens
from time to time. I think Raphael's
project in LA did that. And they were going
to separate the base, the building above from the
building below structurally. And it apparently saved
us a fair amount of money in order to do that. I don't want to say
it's counterintuitive. Everybody says it's
counterintuitive. I'm not sure exactly
what that means. But if the idea is to support
the building, meaning you support it here. And it goes all the
way down to something which will prevent
it from moving, this is the opposite
of what's going on. In other words, it
moves in the plane of the base, which is called
the isolation plane, which is drawn here. There's a lot of
this stuff going on. So you have to
understand this is better than this by our lights. There's something called
finite element analysis, which we're now through with. It was fascinating actually. And you see this in
so many professions. If you talk to a doctor that
belongs to our generation, let's say, and you look at
the next generation or you people's generation,
and the use of scans and technical equipment, and how
one extrapolates between what that information tells you and
what you know as an instinct or as an understanding,
how to diagnose this thing. And what we've found
is that to some extent that the engineers seem to
be subject to the machines. In other words, you
know the old line about who's flying the plane? This is a drone flying in a way. And the discussion is difficult
because the understanding seems not to precede the content. But seems to follow the
technical analysis that comes out of this,
which admittedly is quite a complicated
piece of conception. I also have to say the
engineering belongs to us in a conceptual way. We do it. We follow it. We monitor it. We drew it originally. Which is important to
understand and, in my view, important for you to do. So that this is not
something you know, I sketched it on a plane. And I photographed it. And I e-mailed it to the guy
who is sitting in Prague. And then I went to
the next lecture. And we try as best we can
to sit on these things, and monitor these
things, and be a part of the decision-making project. So I think in many ways the
structure belongs to us. And I think some of the problems
attendant on that are also. This is the isolation plane. So W&W, these fabricators
in Oklahoma City, are developing ways and modeling
how this might be constructed, which is not established yet. In other words,
what's the chronology? How do we actually fabricate
and build this project? It actually starts about
40 feet in the air. And there is a
train now, in case you haven't been
there in awhile. It's called the Expo Line. I mean it's not like
Shanghai, Beijing. It's not going 300 kilometers
an hour, more like three. I mean it's a 19th train. It's like that train that
goes from Tulane down to the waterfront. And if you've got nothing to
do, you get on that train. And it's kind of New Orleansish. So LA emulating all
of it, New Orleans. But anyway, there's this damn
train that runs along here. So we remade the
whole intersection. You come through
the intersection and actually enter the
building underneath. And again, the building
starts up in the air. This is something
we did with Peter Sellers and Esa-Pekka
Salonen a number of years ago, for a music program
in LA, the LA Philharmonic, called the Green
Umbrella Series, which is this funny
experimental music. I guess unless you're
talking about Kanye, and Jay-Z. You're
talking about Mahler, and John Cage, and Bartok. You're talking to people
who are a hundred years old, which is experimental music. I don't know
whether that's true. But nobody shows up for
those concerts in LA. Boston, being much
more sophisticated, probably has a
different response. So the only way they
can get you to show up is to throw in a little
Beethoven or Mozart. What they decided to do
was to make this project as a small theater. And they asked us to do it. So these are some of the-- this
is a kind of fascinating piece. And this is a lesson
worth learning. When we talk about
these projects, when we analyze them and try to
understand what they might mean or suggest, when certain
things take place, when they're done in the
chronology of thinking or technical development
probably matters. This sounds like a
pat on the back to me, which it probably
is and shouldn't be. When we bent this
stuff, everybody said you can't bend the glass. You can't draw it. You can't fabricate it. You can't install it. It will break. It will leak. And they'll sue you. That's what they said. And every one of
those things happened. Every one happened. But the lawyers are gone. The owner is smiling. And guess what? It's up. So did I say patience? Durability is probably
another component. If you did it now, if you did
it today, if you did it today, it's a different proposition
to make it in Shenzhen, to make it in Barcelona. Cristacurva makes
it in Mexico City. So again, the meaning
and the attendant risk is quite different. That's the entrance to
the project in this area. This was actually a polluted
site, which we cleaned up. And it became an
outdoor area in a park. This is a project. It came to be known
as the Stealth. I'm not a fan of
America's military. Somebody else named
it and the name stuck. So I simply repeat it. That sounds ridiculous. And this is the garden. It's a stage. And this is a big production
meeting conference area. You can see here
that piece, where the pipe is crushed in order
to meet the other column. This probably belongs to your
Greek favorite, Heraclitus. You can't step into the
same river, or you can. You can't step into the
same river, is it once? Or you can never step into
the same river at all? But whatever it is, the
section of the project changes immediately or
instantly over its length. So it's always a
different section. This is a redo of the
Smithsonian project, which we showed to the lady and the
guy who are the Culver City clients. And they said, OK, if the
Smithsonian won't do it, we'll make the effort. Parking, program,
program, Sun diagram. And this is a project that's
just under construction, a level below grade. It's a retail project. This is a bridge at the street
level, retail and restaurants. And then because it's
LA, it's also parking. The dimensions are
quite different here, rather than the dimensions
in the Smithsonian. The operational
principle is similar. This is 24 inches in diameter. And the pieces run somewhere
between 4 and 8 feet in length. So the scale is quite different. And you can see the
cable and the hardware. Which is now worked out
and completely understood, notwithstanding admonitions
from the Smithsonian. You can read the diagrams. You see the collar at the top,
the tube, the steel plate. And then this piece here,
which holds the cable. And they're making it now. Whoops. That happens once in awhile. Don't be discouraged. And the tower discussion,
[? Brian ?] [? Kusi, ?] Al [? Burst, ?] [? Tat ?]
Lean, Max Bill, Lou Kahn. This I just went to
see recently when we were presenting the Russian. This is Shukhov, this diagrid. But they've remodeled it. And they made a mess out of it. I mean this is a
project you should know. It's a spectacular project. It goes back to the '30s. It was about to fall
down, that they stuck in, instead of understanding. Technically, what it is,
they stuck in a lot of steel. And I think really
destroyed the project. What's great about
this for me is that it has no program really
in a conventional sense. I guess you could say, in a
more conventional lexicon, it has to do with media. Because it probably
wouldn't exist-- it's right next to the
train, the New Orleans train that runs through here. So there are a series of
exhibition areas going up. There's an elevator in here. There's, again, the
excavation, a garden, and a podium for lectures. And the train runs here. It needs an editor actually. It was designed. And when we got it approved,
it can't do the sort Ginsu Times Square stuff. So you can't sell
Nike, and Under Armour, and things like that. So it has to be something
which belongs to the arts, and to culture, and so on. And under that admonition,
the approval was given. I think this is the
second to last project. This is a project which
is under construction now. It's really two projects. It's two towers. Two small towers, the same
in plan, the same in height. And the truth of the two
is not one or the other, as I would define that truth. Again, to go back
to the beginning, whether we share
that definition. Maybe we do. Whether we share the language
when we talk about truth, maybe we do. So this is a tension
between possibilities. And in this case, this
was an original study, which was then broken down
into horizontal components and vertical
components, and then further horizontal components. As the curve steepens, the
frequency of horizontality increases. And then there's the
structure, which follows. We'll get to that in a minute. But the structure then belongs
to the shaping of the outside. So it follows that, by analogy,
as a series of straight pieces. So this is the first tower,
which is an existing condition. It held an industrial press,
went back to the 1940s. So we stripped that. There's a curtain here, which
hasn't been installed yet. This is obviously a drawing. And then built this
garden in the sky and used the system, the
Smithsonian system of cables, so that these containers, the
stainless steel containers, are struts in a truss that
hold this up and then support the sky garden. And then the second
tower, which is this one. And as I describe the
horizontals, and the verticals, and then the increased frequency
of the horizontals as the curve steepens. And then we start to
make the legs, which again are derivative and
belong to the a priori form of the curve. And you can see the relationship
here between this and this. It's interesting
what this became. You know the French Laundry,
Per Se, Red Medicine guy. So this is about food. So I didn't know
much about ballet until my daughter
started to dance. I didn't know much about
food, except In-N-Out Burger. Sorry. You don't have that here. And then we ran
into this character from the French Laundry. So now they're making a
five-star restaurant here. It's probably a little too
expensive for all of us. But the discussion
of food and the role of food, the construction of
food, the imagining of food. I think it's all vegetarian. I think I have a deal
that I can go in there and eat free all the time,
which doesn't help me very much. But it will become-- so
this is a restaurant. This is a garden here. The other tower is over here. This is a garden. So you get a drink over here. You sit in the garden. This is a little building
called the Wedge. And this is something
called the Ditch. So this is the restaurant,
the garden, the Wedge, and the Ditch. So you enter on this
level, the seating. There are only 22 seats
in the restaurant. This is the kitchen. There's a deck up above. You can see the banquettes. This is one of these
projects, since we're in the home of the
infamous Walter Gropius, where we actually are making
everything, every chair, every table, every banquette. So it's an unusual context,
where at some point somebody says typically, well,
the building can take it. When Gensler comes in
to do the interiors. Sorry if those guys are here. So we're making everything
in this particular project. So the banquettes. So this is a mock-up. You won't see this piece. This is all cushioned. This thing slides. And then this is the Ditch,
and the bar, and the Wedge, and all of that. And this is the garden. That's a steel egg crate,
that reddish color. The concrete is precast. And there's one more piece. In a restaurant of
this "magnitude"-- that's in quotes-- when
you're done eating, I think there are
two dinner services. I think one is at 5:30. One is at 8:30. And as the maitre d' escorts you
down, he escorts you by this. And they give you a gift. And the gift is not a
chocolate chip cookie, which would be fine with me. But they didn't ask me. It's a scent. And if you listen to
this guy, this guy can go on like Arnold Toynbee
or something, about food, and service, and all of that. So these, which we
made, are these vases that contain the scent. And you're given a
scent as a memento when you leave the restaurant. So this is the holder
dinner of the scent. And then the last project
is one that I think I mentioned at the beginning. We built a garage for
about 800 cars here, a very simple structure. Ramps down, ramps up, attached
to the face of the building. And then ran up
two floors of steel in anticipation of an
office building, which wasn't built for 10 years
because it apparently couldn't justify
it economically, whatever that may mean. Nakazawa will
explain that to us. So there it sat
for about 10 years. This is the original project,
an open-- it's actually quite simple organizationally. So the ground level, which is
the top level of parking, open. And then a series of privatized
elements, from private offices, to conference rooms,
to eating facilities, and so on, and so on. Those blocks on the top. So that was the original study. The steel coming vertically. The truss running this way. Steel frames
perpendicular to that. The glazing, which essentially
faces north, which is this way. Rhine zinc, the metal envelope. The plan, actually you
come out of the garage. You're in the
garage, down below. You come out of the
garage, receptionist, hall, up the stair, up the
elevator, bridge. On the second floor, open
work area, conference room. It actually works
organizationally I think in a very efficient way. And I think it raises a
very interesting question about form, and shape,
and space, and utility. Because if you actually go
into this damn thing, whatever your sense of it is when
you look at the building, and the meaning of the
form, and the shape, it's incredibly efficient
and operationally super-intelligible. It works. And this is, again, this is
a New Workplace stuff, where people who were engaged seem
to be able and, in fact, welcome this kind of venue. So this is the
garage and the ramps. And I'll just go through a few. The only thing we did to the
garage, you can see here, was the finish. The finish is the
fireproofing, which only occurs on the big steel. This is the east elevation. So this is the Cheerios
and beer section. I don't know what the
hell to say about this. Whether to be embarrassed by it. I thought it might interest you. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] -That's this bad-assed new
building you're all admiring. ERIC OWEN MOSS: And that's
the reason I show it. It was made by the company
who operates in the building. So you get a sense of how they
look at it, how they understand it, what they do. They're a media company. So they do YouTube,
and they do billboards, and everything in between. But I thought you might find it. -Nourishing sunlight, abundant
space, and peace and quiet. We also have many chairs. And one chair man, Don. -I'm Don. -We've got some rooms
that really mean business. -Grand challenges. -Creative solutions. -Commerce. -And some where
fun is mandatory. [MUSIC PLAYING] ERIC OWEN MOSS: You see. I didn't make it up. -We're up to our beards
in cutting-edge topology. ERIC OWEN MOSS: This
is not an anomaly. Maybe it should be. But like I said, I thought
it would be of some interest to you. -We're up to our beards in
cutting-edge technology. Also we have ghosts. No, we don't. [LAUGHTER] But, most importantly, here
we can really be ourselves. To the Pterodactyl. -Cheers. -OK. That was weird. [END PLAYBACK] You want to work there? I think Mack already
dealt with this, which is-- I don't want
to say it's out of date. Construction Manual is, of
course, a facetious term, in case anybody missed that. Interesting. This is actually done in China. This IS cut a bible
school in Nanjing. That's how it was done. And then I recommend--
this is one we just did with Rizzoli,
which is just out. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]
