In Honor of Zaha Hadid: A Conversation with Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman and Deborah Berke

good evening everyone I want to welcome all of you to the concluding event of our open house for admitted students and thank our visitors for taking the time to come to Yale to look us over it was our pleasure to meet with you and I know that our faculty and students join me excuse me in hoping that you like what you have seen we can graduate you and are confident in the next few days you will make the right decision about your future education and I suppose you will say and we'll make them anticipate you'll say and we'll make the right decision about your financial aid but we will talk about that later Yale celebration of talent in all its diversity is a continuing and ongoing tradition it takes many forms the University Commission's important buildings that both compliment and contrast with what went before our school consistently brings leading architects to lecture and teach who may disagree among each other about how to proceed in architecture yet share the passion for architecture as an art but first and foremost our job at the School of Architecture is to nurture talent and to enable intelligence consequently we seek out the most talented students who show the greatest potential for the kind of independent thinking necessary for professional leadership last Thursday from this podium can we have the slides please last Thursday from this podium I shared some thoughts and memories of Zhou Hadid Norman our foster visiting professor my friend and our colleague who died unexpectedly seven days ago we were all shocked we remain so our school enjoyed a rail relationship and spirited collaboration with Professor deed including this spring term over many years she led advanced studios in our school in 2006 she received an honorary degree from the University since her death many have remembered professor Hadid as a creative and path-breaking visionary a role model for women in the profession and an uncompromising artist possessing a razor-sharp intellect she is very much missed when Zhou came down with the bronchitis that ultimately felled her Patrik Schumacher Hadrian's design partner who is also teaching with the studio agreed to step in and deliver a talk for this evening but with the sad turn of events patrick has to be in London this week seeing - the memorial for professor Saudi and innumerable other tasks as you can well imagine to honor our beloved colleague I am very grateful to Frank Gehry Eero Saarinen visiting professor of - Peter Eisenman Charles Gwathmey professor and practice and - Dean designate Deborah Burke three senior distinguished members of our faculty each of whom enjoyed strong personal and long-lived histories with Zhou I want to thank them for agreeing a relatively short notice to undertake this conversation in this evening so without further ado I would like to turn the evening over to Professor mark gage who will serve as interlocutor - this evenings conversation in honor of our friend and our colleague Zhou Adi mark Gage and the yes please thank you Bob this is of course a impossible task to try to fill in the gap left by Zaha not only in architecture but today I wanted to just tell one kind of funny anecdote about the last time she gave a lecture here usually I've been teaching here for about 16 years and when people give lectures they usually save their flagship projects to the very end so you can usually count on something really big showing up around the 50 minute in a lecture and Zaha in a typical fashion showing 400 slides and rapid-fire succession had hit that level of flagship project by like minute 8 and I was sitting in the third row and cesar pelli and leon career was sitting in front of me and i could swear simultaneously at the same time they both turned at each other and like Macaulay Culkin and home alone were like they could not believe how much work she had and how quickly she was going through it and they continued to talk about it later at the reception so a lecture by Saha was a real event it was a very fast-paced event and it was really overwhelming the amount of work and energy she put into her workings on these tie three of us about two and a half another above introduced the three distinguished senior faculty and I'm the guy with the big wheel here but it's a real pleasure and I'd like to thank you all I have a couple of questions which I love trying to hear this oh I know that I'm pretty much going to you know throw a piece of meat to the Lions and run away and learn a mess no gender appropriate to call it an actor instead of an actress now then we're all lioness we're all lioness who are like that there you go yes well I'm with you sister so it's hard to imagine an architectural world without zaha hadid in it certainly you guys have been in the game much longer than I had have and I wanted to start by asking a frank first because we had talked about this very briefly on the phone the other day but when Zaha came on your radar and so we could get a little bit of backstory on how she entered the profession and then maybe we can segue that to further conversation about education and practice down the road but well it's it's hard to do this to talk about her I think all of us loved her very much and she was a good friend and one of the things we shared was teaching at Yale I think that this has been a home to characters like us to meet and play with the students that come here and I used to try to schedule my teaching gigs here with her being here as Greg Lynn did so we could spend time together because it was a big deal I was doing the Vitra Museum in Basel and while I'm ranked Switzerland and the owner had hired Grimshaw first and me and bondo and then he was going to build another warehouse and I convinced him to hire seiza Alvaro and and then they were doing a firehouse and we all sort of had just heard about Jacques winning the peak competition I may have the dates and the times all screwed up it might have been fifteen years in between those events so forgive me but this is our remember and Ralph being a very open and generous guy and very intellectually stimulated by the likes of us guys us people was open to at least talking to her about doing the firehouse even though it was at that point I don't think she'd built anything except winning the competition and so a lot of discussion about backing her up with with the proper team to help her do it due to the building and it seemed alright everything was going good she made models and you've all seen the building it's a pretty for a first building is a pretty thrilling piece of work and Christine fireEye's from Berlin was also conspiring with me to help her and I got a call about three four months into it from the client saying oh my god it's not working so guess what Zaha couldn't be corralled by anybody yes the poor local architect even at that stage and so we all had to jump in and I get her on the right track but she built it and built it well there was a little bit of a SAG and one of the beams wasn't her fault a Swiss engineer made a mistake it's never the architects ville no no no and then the damn firemen didn't want to move into it and it really worked I mean it really worked as a firehouse I swear I guarantee you were they didn't want to move into it and I think really well fun views it as an exhibit Center ah but that got her started she got a parking garage or something next to it or down the street he in the same town then she got the ski lift Cincinnati and she took off like a rocket ah how does she do it how'd she do it Peter I mean she went from that to about four hundred people working and all over the world and pretty much good stuff some of it really great and great architect I think so Deborah you went to AAA at the same time it's all was there that's right we were in last night's in Bremen Ilias unit and to whoever said earlier today Ilias there all the time that was true then too I was a visitor for one year at the AAA and saw how obviously got her architectural education there and she was I Frank and I were talking about this earlier today she wasn't wearing Prada and it's a Miyake then she kind of made her own clothes but she was as dramatic sort of spectacularly dramatic in her presence at the school then as a student as she became in the profession itself she had that confidence then uh I don't didn't know her well enough to know whether she had the confidence or she was capable then of pretending to have the confidence vision architecture I think can be the same thing she certainly had the talent she had the talent for sure uh but you know later on in her career that that way of presenting herself people started calling her diva this and diva that Nolan craft but that wasn't her I mean that was her the way she dressed and things but happy warmer yeah I think people realized she was missing well she could be brusque wait I mean I mean let's know oh here we go Peter well I mean not to me but I loved you Peter yeah there were there were there were times when her public behavior was you could say problematic I mean when you weren't with her you could be far away again er we're talking about her you know welcome in you know really confused we know I think what we really ought to do is is realize that this was an extraordinary person number one I and I think that to me is more than anything I remember about Saha when one would ever come to London no matter how big or how small etc she was always going out of her way for one number one and she always called things like it was even with her success she was able to look at her colleagues and to the other Archy stars let's say around and say things that are really needed to be said I think she never held back I think she was a terrific critic as you know as as well and I thought she had an enormous integrity about even her former closest friends and her commentaries on people were very accurate and so as a person I think what what was part of her success was the magnet magnetic condition of her personality she was she may not have been a diva but she was she was electric right and when she walked into the room you know she walked into the room okay with no question about it she was never backstage and I thought that was wonderful in her and how much she had suffered I mean don't forget for the longest period of time and I'm not sure the difference between when I met her in 74 when she was around the Institute in New York when REM was there I don't know what year five or six okay but there's a long time from the peak competition let's say to the firehouse to Cincinnati I mean Cincinnati was the idiot what was 20 years from the peak to Cincinnati Cincinnati so I mean let's face it there was a tough struggle for her remaining who she was in the environment that she was in and and don't forget the she was in a colonial environment and she chose to stay in London and I think there was an enormous energy that propelled her keeping loving for those 20 years because some people could have given up and I think Cincinnati was one of her triumphs and you know and and that opened the floodgates that say and I think she never looked back but she never forgot who she was how she had to struggle how other people had to struggle and you know I thought she was an enormous Lea a person of enormous integrity and who her friends were uh-huh and she knew who her friends were over the years that's it yes right she never deserted those people ever so that's not a diva right no well I remember seeing this photograph from Philip Johnson's 90th birthday I think what year was that look to Bob to history for in 1906 so much 1996 like the personnel Rainman of architectural but in that picture it's kind of striking because really there's like 20 guys there's Frank and Peter and Jack Robertson David childs and Stanley Tiger men and I'm leaving out like Bob where were we I think was that the fourth season or C yeah but it's literally like 20 of the most famous male white architecture architects you could recognize and then Zaha they're wrapped in a white cape and I remember seeing that and thinking like how did she break into that that's like not just the upper echelon architecture that's like the whatever the hallowed circle of New York architecture nonetheless in her being from London to kind of follow up on Frank's question of course she was like immensely talented and overcame quite a few obstacles not only being Arab being a woman at that time period but how did she get from that position as a star student at the AAA winning a competition that wasn't ultimately built to that stratosphere in less than really about 15 years 10 or 15 years what do you think it is that allowed her to be a comment Joseph Jimin Benigni wrote a piece where he a eulogy where he starts out by saying Zaha was a comment what do you think propelled that comment I would take a guess a commitment to her work she you know she really believed in what she was doing it was you make original it always had enormous energy but I would argue commitment and if she had integrity about people I think she had commitment to the work and I think it's a great lesson for future architects who were here I'm talking about that I mean I think it's really important to place her not in the professional but how what she would mean to somebody that's going to start architecture and 80 percent 90 percent of this audience are future architects and to me that commitment to being good you know in our own idea of what good was and she wasn't going to tolerate mediocrity that's what I mean she was brusque when there were things that were mediocre about whatever she was in Cynthia would tell you a story about when we were at a any conference in Ankara and she reminded me today that we were being housed somewhere Cynthia can tell the story better but she refused it was student house I don't know if student housing she said this is no good for anybody we're not going to and everybody said yeah this is no good and Cynthia had to go and and and quickly find you know hotels that would take these people I mean that's the kind of thing she wouldn't accept mediocrity yeah but she made a commitment to learning how to build those things yep yeah so but that was no easy right easy thing she found the programs and the people at new hutter yeah deliver and she found that in Patrick there's a a partner Patrick Schumacher so we keep mentioning the I know the peak was a obviously an incredibly pivotal moment in her career and I guess the question is maybe per Deborah taking over the school and thinking about the next generation of architects I was thinking about that the peak competition and there's some interesting I don't know there apocryphal stories but I think it was her scheme had already been rejected and herati Sasaki rescued it from the pile and the client came and said he wanted a building that looked like his new Lamborghini did you tell me this or no it looked like a new Lamborghini so they pulled it around I physically pulled it out of the pile and the rest is history but I was thinking about this because the Guggenheim Helsinki competition in which everybody every architect the world was trying to recreate Frank's success in Bilbao received 1715 entries so for this kind of young generation just the feel of sylheti with the computer the ease of access of information it's almost as if the competition as a vehicle has been taken off the table like if Zaha was graduating from school now with her talent and drive how would she make her career in the absence of that avenue of a competition do you enter competition still I feel but I don't think the competition is as limited in its opportunities as you presented by the Guggenheim example I think there's still many opportunities and competitions and the invited competition I thought you and getting invited but and and I think Frank's role in Vitra is a key part of that story as well that the way you move forward is to get support yeah I got that happen to me and and so the competition is a small part of that and the support of your colleagues your teachers the people you've worked with when you're really good and when you work really hard yeah that's how it begins to unfold so my first work came recommendations from other people in the design field oh yes architecture mark ID one of the things that characterizes her as really unique has to do with the term I spoke on here last fall that is Authority and what's interesting about Zaha as opposed to other people know and I think it characterizes something very unique about her as teachers you can teach liqueur BCA you can even teach me slander oh you can teach Aldo Rossi I mean there any number of acolytes who do Aldo Rossi in Italy today probably better than Rossi the one thing you could never do was teach Saha because it was so unique to her being and her artistic sensibility that even though she was an authority it was an authority that could not be taught and I think that that tells you something very unique about her being I mean a lot of people can do Frank right a lot of people can do easy hey I like the markings of a try and imitate Frank come on that's annoying is not succeeding I didn't they lose him as a model all right you couldn't yeah you're do you strike as a model I just mean that as a compliment come on I will say they don't they don't use AHA it's harder it's not my personal signature yeah much harder right so that ring whatever was mentioned in the other that's something I had talked to a number of students today about that kind of curating and network of allies and friends and mentors and clearly Zaha had a guardian angel in in Frank with a vitro project were there any key mentors and your career moving forward were there any really really important ones that you would like to credit the names would mean I don't know I think what were the teachers or colleague Fred Fred uh sure was a graphic designer designer worked with themes for a long time he I worked with him at the Gruen office close friends he was called by Danziger to do a studio and Danziger and Fred got me to do it uh so that was the first building that's always the hardest one to get seems speaking from experience and a lot of that came from people I work with that grew and so that had worked with me for about four or five years and Philip Johnson he could go both ways the dynamite stick now the funny story with Philip is by accident I made a lamp that looked like a fish and it was it was it was and Philip heard about it and he and David Whitney his partner called me to have dinner and they lectured me on you mustn't do this Frank this is a negative thing to do in the starting career in architecture was and then a week later Aggie guns bought will ask me to make one for her brother who was getting engaged and there was an engagement party in New York the fish lamp was there and the next morning I got a call from Jasper Johns Philip Johnson's know buying them and Philip wanted one so now when I was at my open house in the 90s Philip Johnson was teaching here teaching a studio in which Peter isin there was as ta right that's right for real but I was you know a little nervous and I went up to the sixth floor and was running to get into the pit to see her review and I ran smack into Philip Johnson like like chest to chest and he kind of like stood back and he goes well but where are you from I said I said well I'm from Nebraska sir and he said Oh son you got it all wrong this building says architecture on the front not agriculture but Peter you also I would imagine Philip Johnson was something of a mentor to you but Colin Rowe also who were your big mentors and allies as you were founding a career I I would say mentors not allies I mean I think there's a big difference okay um certainly Colin was an enormous influence I mean and Tony can certainly attest to that I think at a certain moment Manfredo tough really was a was an enormous energy and influence and at the at the end let's say Jacque Derrida was you know we spent a lot of time and did a project in a publication together those will be the three main outside influences let's say outside of Philip I mean Philip there's no question that Philip was really important to the Institute and what we were doing there and he was I mean I can remember one of the great gestures of folk which is what ties you to these kinds of people we've been working on house 10 and the client wanted to build the thing in the fall and I told him don't worry we'll get the working drawings done during during the summer and that summer I went with Bob Stern and others to Europe and messed around with the Biennale if you remember right it was it was a marvelous time and we we had a great time I came back from Italy and the clients there's the hole in the ground no drawings right and so on the spot he fired me boom like that and you know this house was something we put a lot of time in and so I went to a dinner that the new members dinner at the Century Club and I was sitting next to Philip and he said to me how's the house going I which is what he would always ask his you know friends and young younger architects and I said it's dead he said what do you mean I said I said I got fired he said how much did you lose I said ten ten thousand and without saying anything the next day an envelope came from Philips office and I opened it and there was a note that said this is a long term note loan don't worry about it and there was $10,000 will you be my Philip I'm I mean that's so you know it doesn't happen very often but there it is so many even call I mean as a patron yeah and that was more of a she was a friend no he looked after a lot of us huh he looked after the a bunch of us yep a knowledge you say you're a question and it's a two-part answer I'd say mentors and two of the three of them are here and might be surprised to hear this are actually Tony Peter and Ken at the Institute where I showed up as a very young woman having gone to art school and it was like being immersed in a full-body dye bath of architecture I thought you're going to say to maleness to a lot of wonderful women who work there who went on to do great and interesting and important things so there was that that was immersion in architecture in the Indigo bath of architecture and and the other isn't from architects at all to people and I'm going to use this to come back to Zaha one will Miller from the Commons architecture foundation because I got a job out there and that brought a level of visibility to my work that hadn't come previously and that was a wonderful thing and the support of patrons of architecture like that I think remains critical and the other and the reason this gets back to Zaha is it's because it's about knowing what you believe sticking with it and saying it sometimes fiercely I interviewed for a job in Louisville Kentucky many years ago I did not get the job went to a small firm from California two years later my phone rang and voice on the phone said I want to hire you to do a hotel for me you won't remember me because I wasn't in the room I was on the Polycom when you interviewed for that job in Kentucky but I liked everything you had to say I wrote it down I have a project for you now so to the point being made about Zaha she knew what she believed she wanted to go and do that that's true for everybody here to know you learn and then know what you believe and hang on to it fiercely because it will get you work I know the a couple people have written about that period in AHA's life between winning the peak and going through all sorts of trials and tribulations with winning the Cardiff Bay competition twice and it being taken from her to the point where she finally essentially got a Cincinnati bill which as I said was a 20-year period of struggle and I've wondered if maybe Frank because you're so celebrated and so many wonderful things are written about have you have you had periods like that in your practice where you were actually struggling and where you everything wasn't firing on all cylinders where you had to well get a loan from Phillip Johnson we're getting things built were there any down times I think so isn't it is this conversation one of it no I pretty much I I didn't take any business practice courses or anything but I had a sense from the beginning that I I knew that borrowing money was a bad thing to do I didn't have a lot of money we were really not in poverty but difficulty but when I started I I wouldn't borrow money and I made another rule that everybody that worked for me would get paid so I wouldn't take any freebie labor and I also added to that that at the end of the year they would get a bonus so for five years I worked alone day and night but stuck to your guns and I think that works by the way I think I would advise people to understand that now there are ways to borrow money and if it's family money and stuff like that it doesn't get you in trouble maybe but Peter did you ever pay the money back you know yeah not in so many words no I accepted the gift I I remember I think it's important to put him into perspective too because there were lean years we went out to UCLA again Robert was with us and for a thing called seven days in May I believe what was called at UCLA in 74 Oh what I this is and and we were all of the Eastern architects the Venturi's were there Scully was there Colin Rowe everybody went white Gray's you know whatever and we were invited by the silvers okay and the silvers were Caesar Pelli know that's the story and Caesar and Tony Lumsden and at et cetera I can't remember that he knows all of the names because and man we're going to all give lectures at UCLA and the first day there were lectures I was wearing a UCLA sure I remember and he remembers that and so everybody said there's a party at this garage and we were all in big fancy Cadillac cars when we drove up this garage right there and I asked one of the guys from the server said whose garage is this I mean or whose it's a big place right and there were a hundred people there and you know it's a very festive party and I they said it's that guy over there right and I said who's he and he said yeah he is Frank Gehry and I and I said why is he given the party he's an architect but he wasn't good enough to be in the silvers right that was a full story yes it was yeah that was my first introduction to it right so he also went through periods of time of weather world was problematic well there was a backstory I'm not going to mention names but go ahead glad I wasn't invited but two people at work for me were put on the silvers and they were using my buildings and I remember sitting with headache and and the person was lecturing he was showing the Concord Pavilion and so on with them he said you did that right I said yeah he said why is he I said because he's a silver at the time I was doing developer work and wasn't considered you know intellectual enough for for the group for something I would so I went to Uli urban land it's two in Texas for a conference with shopping center developers and stuff and a gentleman that I will remain nameless was part of that event and spoke about other about architecture and spoke about the New York architect community and he sort of depper Kotori about he didn't mention names but he just said you know not for developers that's this is a different culture there's rather negative about them lyric 5 yeah and so then I came back to LA and I was supposed to go to Harvard to the urban design conference which I used to go to regularly because I spent some time at Harvard you don't my loves mission just a little bit of time I love I've been here longer anyway I was going to leave that afternoon on a Monday afternoon I had the tickets and everything I was going to leave for Boston and something curious I went to UCLA to the silvers conference and that person who spoke at the UL I got up and turns out he was a great friend of the whites the silvers and the greys and everybody and he spoke just the opposite you saying just the opposite in that in this conference and I thought what the hell's going on here and then Peter gets up and starts whoo I was terrified of because there was one of the guys in my office Craig Hodges that knew you and he would as a Yale graduate yeah he was always telling me to look Peters this genius and he he made him you know appear don't go near he's scary so the curiosity I went and there's Peter I follows this gentleman who is now saying nice things about him who said bad things about him before he's got his sweater on and he's to say better I'm sure same sweater I said you saying talking about is this his process and he's describing the euphoria he has was drawing and how it takes him into another Zen move moved into outer space and he's describing this and so it sounded like all my artist friends who got stoned all the time it sounded familiar and I kind of liked what he was showing how six or four or something which I didn't understand that the stairway to nowhere and the master bedroom bed had a slice through it so that part I understand my parents who definitely understand anyway it was it sounded good so I then cancelled Boston and had a party at my loft my office my garage but I invited all my artist friends for protection so I had everybody enjoy that all became famous later but they were all there and supported me and protected me from these bad people anyway we became friends I got hustled big time and I ended up putting five grand into the Institute with a lip stand and started going to meetings and fell in love with this lovable creature what's interesting because we have for the admitted students the the New York five was the group of lights which were poor proto Noonie of Nouveau modernism you know mod real - it's a Bob Stern was one of the graves which was first modernist assorted this and I think the silvers described as more technologically interested in West Coast group I guess that it's interesting because we have some well you didn't quite make it but you're not are a silver now I'm sure they didn't make you how important was it having a group like that like practicing with a group or at least having an affiliation with a group of other architects that supported a similar idea on port would it was it having a kind of cabal moving forward in your early career oh I I mean first of all if you're competitive which a lot of architects are I am very competitive I mean today is like Nirvana for me being competitive against Harvard you know one of the great great excitements right I mean you know this a day you want to win okay that's true I mean I you got to have competitive juices lower today or you know we're right and if you're competitive you got to have a team and there is a Robert and I know less competitive we had two teams and sometimes we'll play against one another sometimes we play together and it was really in those days very important and uh has to have meetings we thought conferences I mean what would you know invent things to do because none of us had very many other things to do and it was in those days the world we survived and I think to all of the people that were involved they were we look back I mean Robert and I would look back and I think Frank would too to say you know would that would we had some teams today of young people would there were those kinds of struggles because we were thought we were struggling over something pretty important I mean it looks back and you say not so but we thought it was important at those days and because we did believe in what we were doing and we did have a commitment and there were love energy poured into those kinds of things and you know would one like to see that today you betcha you don't like there's teams today you you seem to think as a team that the triple O's but I'm I ain't convinced I mean that I don't see him play much I threw it out for Frank this is Oscar rod said the only thing worse than being talked about it's not being talked about so at least we made the cut yeah in mind but that's the subject for another symposium I wanted to um well Frank you had a kind of group but I know you were really heavily influenced by the art community and you had a lot of artist friends it seems like and when these guys were mostly hanging out with architects maybe talk about that early interdisciplinary play between your artist side and your architecture yeah yep yeah so there was a small architecture group in LA that that existed and when I did the Danziger studio there was a lot of shooting at me because instead of having the window flush with the exterior plaster I recessed it and so I created a sort of a fake pole shade that didn't exist on the inside that was a terrible danger thing to have done for these people and so they started yelling at me I didn't care much about what they were talking about I was really looking for a way of working that was about building but making things not necessarily going in the shop and banging doing stuff but to get closer to the construction because some of my early days before architecture I was a truck driver and I used to install breakfast nooks and things like that and I was always doing things with my hands and during the course of the building of the Danziger studio several of the artists I would find them on this construction site so I became friends with them because they were positively interested in what I was doing I knew their work I knew them from their work I'd followed their work already I knew who they were and to get invited into the club so where they were working where I were they would come to my place I was working and it was kind of a very hands-on thing many of them were building their own studios off and on changing it a couple of them would change you know you'd go to dinner Saturday night and you'd sit in one part of the studio and it would be all set up like a stage set and then two weeks later would be another part again and different paintings there and I like the dynamic of it I like the immediacy of it the directness of it I could understand it I could get into it and I wanted to keep doing that it was different than what the architects were doing and they engaged me a lot by the way just so we don't leave anybody out Deborah Burke was on a team - yeah and spoken much about it what is next she she what you were on a team no I'm not going to say I wanted to get into the conversation no I was gonna have her over here she was out of town she was on her TV yeah you mean the young architects of the Institute no no I I may be wrong weren't you weren't you involved in a magazine okay so yeah we're being kind and gracious and I I appreciate that but come on that was it - you left your team behind no no no no at all but the team I remember and being important and were the people I hung out with in New York when I moved back to New York after college and they were artists and writers and we occupied the city of the night and I think my ongoing interest with sort of invading old buildings and transforming them has to do with that urban existence early in my career I don't think this is the team that Peter is actually talking about but but these were my teammates and and we haunted the then dangerous streets of New York City and invaded buildings in a variety of ways that remains my muse she has the team I'm talking about Peter's trying to start something no I ran over make sure everybody she also it was part of the reason where the world was are you're on a team now we now know that a vitamin I thought you're on this team I'm just kidding I mean this is this a team is some is is sort of out an outlier group right this isn't my art group by Wednesday well I think I have a final question and then we'll open it up in audience a little bit but with Frank's permission can I read that first statement you made in the art forum sure sure okay so Frank wrote the piece regarding Zaha in art form the first paragraph is I think a good good place to at least start a question that'll end it my friends AHA died yesterday morning she was a mere 65 years old when I saw her last it was a couple of weeks ago at the Yale University architecture school where we were both teaching terms studios this term something that we have been doing regularly over the years we do it not only because we like to teach but also because we like being together when we teach so over the years we have managed to arrange our schedules to be at Yale at that time so that we can meet and greet and talk and drink and complain and have fun and explore the wonderful culture of Yale University I guess my final question to each of you is why do you teach and why Yale thanks for teaching here talk first and you Todd here and 80 started teaching here in the early 78 78 yeah no I don't think I mean I was taking when I would be a visiting critic with Jim which yeah I mean I would be on juries on Jim's juries all the time but I was teach doesn't matter I was teaching where parallel with Jim yeah I I don't yeah I can answer the question I'm here because of Bob and we're all here I think one of the things the one needs to do is appropriately give credit where credit has been due for 18 years and I had the choice of being at Princeton or here and I was really ready to go to Princeton and Bob said you got to come here and it was really important for him to make that gesture and it was important for me to take it in the way it was made and for me teaching is one of the three important things in my professional life that I do and it is very important to me I never miss a beat with teaching a building is important and in writing is important and to me I get a lot of energy from every time I teach because you're in touch with brighter people than you are faster people and if you compare the debating about the young faculty right now I'm talking about the young spoons and they look younger and faster and brighter every every every year so I and one of the older guys the the Silverbacks and all the new guys right and that combination is is is very important right and the having had somebody watch over one which Robert does right and to give us a flute of young horses fabulous nothing better and y'all has always been that kind of place and I know that Debra in that tradition it's always been as Robert it's a standalone architecture school it has always had an architect who practices in an important way as a Dean right and it's unique in the fundament of architecture schools since the war since the Second World War I can't speak before because that's his purview but that'll be next week's like next year but is that going to divide the world I don't think they are above I think that to have here tonight the the grand senior Bob Deborah fabulous you know for them unbelievable and it could only happen here yeah by total accident that one of our great friends and colleagues past and we were able to put this group together terrific I teach cuz it feels good that makes it selfish it does good that makes it generous and it feels best here that's it that was easy and I would say I never talked as AHA about this but I would recommend it there's a freedom a willing to explore a willing to put collisions together I I was put on a jerk on a Leon creer jury one Leon who finally became friends with me after he realized that I had read the Camilo skip the book and I quoted from it once and he all oh my god I was a friendless but then he didn't like me after I did the Eisenhower memorial so I'm trying I'm in good shape but I think there's that kind of open friendly kind of controversy that goes on and and it's probably I don't know any other place where you can pull it off and it's been conducted it he took it to a whole new place that it hadn't been and I think I think we learned a lot from that thank you well thank you very much he will open the floor to a couple questions we have time and I believe there is a microphone person there okay so you have a question raise your hand they got to be the questions it can't be all dead no they will you just have to give them time it's a question ever we need to get the mic because there are people in other rooms thank you for the discussion Peter mentioned the sort of replicability of Ahaz Authority but I guess I just want to ask how that might be compared to say Frank Lloyd Wright who was some sort of idiosyncratic and irascible Authority in architecture who in many ways saw to it that his authority was replicated and whether that was something of AHA's agenda to make her design aesthetic into a style into a goal for designers well when I started school in 50 I'm a little beyond from being behind Frank Frank started in 30 I think but when I started imperfectly ever everybody had Frank Lloyd Wright books on their desks they had the nature of materials they had any number of Frank Lloyd Wright books and it was the authority in the school because it was above our school and we weren't doing bizarre but we were doing the next best thing to it was Frank Lloyd Wright and I can tell you from personal experience a personal story in 52 we had Paul Rudolph as a critic and Paul set a project and I was in his studio and I did a Frank Lloyd Wright project and they the juries were closed in those days when they opened the doors I went in and I had gotten the highest mark in the class of first mention from doing absolutely practically tracing Frank Lloyd Wright so the next project was a yacht club and I had remembered from reading my books that Frank Lloyd Wright had done a thing called the Yahara Boat Club and so I traced off the Yahara Boat Club and turned it in and I was really excited when I heard Paul Rudolph was coming back to be on our jury in in 52 and I thought hey another top-grade right and so I raced in after the jury was over and there was a big X which in those days meant you had failed the six weeks and it caused me to go to a summer school to make up the six we couldn't do it any other way and I went up to mr. Rudolph and I said mr. Rudolph what what's the story here the last time I got a first mention and this time I got a Chomp and he said it's okay to do it once not twice and with a big lesson another question well then if not I think we'll thank Mark for putting together a wonderful set of questions and our great speakers and guests and faculty from Gary Deborah Burke Peter Osmond for sharing their thoughts about saw and about themselves you

Channel: YaleUniversity

Views: 51,724

Rating: 4.8289204 out of 5

Keywords: Zaha Hadid, Yale, architecture, Yale school of architecture

Id: x0itDZeBaUU

Length: 65min 49sec (3949 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2016