Good evening. Welcome. It's great to see so many of you
here for the very first lecture of this semester. It's also wonderful to have
Jacques Herzog here with us. In fact, we have
[inaudible] here with us and all the faculty. Jacques Herzog
has been a faculty member, a friend of the school,
for a very, very long time. He hasn't lectured here for
a couple of years maybe. But he has been doing,
with Pierre together, a series of very
interesting studios, most recently the one in Basel
that has really been focusing on issues related to landscape
and the extension of cities and the whole question of
sprawl, which was a really amazingly exciting studio. A number of the students
who were in that studio are now back in the
school, or some of them have just done their theses. And these studios
have been going on for a number of years in
collaboration and conjunction with some of the
students at ETH Basel, and hopefully we will also
continue these projects in the years to come. I think I will try
to be very brief. But you know, Jacques and Pierre
are very, very special people, are very special architects. And they come out of school
at a very sort of, I think, special moment, a
particular time in the 70s, when they also started
their own practice. And I think they have
been able, partly because of that
specific moment, they've been able to be part of a series
of very important discussions that have been happening in
Europe in the late 60s and 70s, but also to go beyond those
discussions and to construct, in a way, a practice
that has been very unique and has been so influential, in
particular because of the way that they engage with
art very early on and the whole
issue of materials, new forms of sensibility,
the coloration of things. All of those really affected
their work in such a deep way. I think for many people who
were students here at the GST, for example, in the
late '80s or '90s, I think, things like the
Ricola building, I think, were very important projects
to really understand how such a simple storage
building could also be so evocative,
something that would have such a special
character, quality, almost as a monument for
a storage building. So there's a lot that
one could really say, and I think all
of you know this. But I think they've also gone
on and become, in many respects, specialists or experts in many
different kind of typologies, specifically a lot of museum
buildings with the Tate, with the Schaulager, which
is such a beautiful building, with the de Young. So one can also
see in their work how they are approaching a
certain topic in very different ways, in very different
conditions, but every time pushing the work
further forward. One sort of unusual
typology, in a way, for a contemporary architect but
not at all unusual for Jacques is the football stadium. And as you probably know,
he's a very ardent supporter of the football team in
Basel, against the advice of many people, I'm sure. But no, this is
a fantastic team, and he has built so
many of these stadia. And obviously now,
they are finishing the one in Bordeaux and
the one at Stamford Bridge, which is for Chelsea, which
is also going to happen. And this is also a really,
really exciting way to deal with this
idea of the stadia, of the kind of
place for warriors of the contemporary scene, at
least in the European context, and more and more becoming part
of the American scene as well. So we're very lucky
to have Jacques here because he not only
has been working on these very sort of particular
materially-based projects in the practice, but
has also, with Pierre, been involved in a lot of
theoretical and worldly issues, such as this discussion around
the countryside landscape sprawl. But also the work
that they did before with us focusing on Africa
and really always wanting to combine these two sides
of the practice, the kind of investigative, the kinds
of things that are really unusual for him, that there
are maybe sometimes uncertain territories with things
that the office has been doing in such a systematic way. Now they have an office
of over 400 people, and they're working
in lots and lots of places around the world
on 50 different projects. And tonight, Jacques
is just going to share a very few
projects with us. But I'm looking forward
to hearing him speak and seeing the projects. Please welcome Jacques Herzog. [applause] Thank you, Mohsen. Good evening. Thank you for the
invitation to lecture. I would like to thank,
also, many friends that I haven't
seen for many years that they join us tonight. As Mohsen said, I will just
present a few, very few projects, in fact, five only. And normally I try to
put together something from different periods,
but this time I rather present
very recent things, not things that we have
recently imagined or worked on, but recently completed
in the last year. And we have, in
fact, in 2015, we have finished or opened
11 different projects, out of which, as I said,
I will speak about four of them-- Miu Miu, [inaudible],
and BBVA, the bank, and Unterlinden at
the far left, which is a museum and
expansion and renovation project in [? alsace, ?] in the
French neighborhood of Basel. Maybe I go back one thing. Of course, I could also
explain a little bit the other projects. But the ones that I selected
make sense in comparing them. So rather than just speak
about the different projects, I like to come closer to what
was important to us in that I compare them with each other. So I decided to compare
Miu Miu with Prada that we've done 15 years ago. So they are somehow
siblings, very different, but one explains a bit the
other, or one works better with the other. I could, of course, also speak
about the stadium in Bordeaux, which is very close to our
heart, which I think is really an interesting stadium in
that it's so different from, let's say, Allianz
Arena in Munich. I could also have presented
those two stadiums. Because I'm deeply
convinced in football, which is such a European
sport-- it's a world sport, but it's such a European sport. It's also, of course,
a South American sport. It becomes an Asian sport,
even an American sport. But it's very European
in that in Europe you have like different
football cultures. You have, of course,
Spanish culture, but of course, you have
English culture, which is the homeland of soccer. You have German culture,
which we don't really know what it is. We just know that they win. [laughter] We just know that
they win always. And so there would be a
lot of flesh on the bone, so to speak, to talk
about these things and to associate the kind of
architecture that goes with it. Bordeaux, I think, is a very
elegant, refined architecture that would be impossible,
let's say, in England. And you will see maybe when
we present the Chelsea stadium for Stamford Bridge, which
has a much more Gothic, almost Lord of the
Rings side to it, and which is right, I think,
for this particular site in the west of London. Anyway, let's focus on the
first two projects, Prada Aoyama and Miu Miu, and they are
a kind of a juxtaposition of two totally different
types of buildings. You may remember
the project we've done for Prada, which
certainly, I think, is one of the best buildings
we've done, I think personally. And there are a few
ingredients, which I believe are still valid. And when we saw the
building again last year when we opened Miu Miu, you
could see, as an architect, how well a building survives
and lives without you. You've gone away. It's 15 years ago, and the
building is still very fresh. It's fresh because it's
what we have been thinking and developing is
still something that is very much worrying
us, is very much around us, and very much something that
I also like to speak about. Clearly this building is
about transparency, obviously. But it's also about this little
space, this little plaza. So we made place for
this little plaza, which adds a European element. Because normally, buildings
in Tokyo or in Japan are filling out every
single square centimeter so nothing is left
for the public. It's about this space. And as I said, it's, of
course, about transparency. We wanted the building,
which is made of glass, but is not just a kind of
glass facade like in an office building. But it has these glass bubbles,
which are literally seductive and attracting the
eye, the human eye, and the human perception,
bulging in and out, concave and convex. So that's a very obvious,
very seductive piece that we tried to achieve. But we also knew that we could
not just make a glass bubble, but they need to be structured. So that structure,
also, is something that we developed
for this building. So it's like stiffening
the building, but it's also presenting
enclosed, hermetic spaces within this whole and
large, open glass space. And this structure is
not just a decoration. At the end, it works like
the ornament of the building. But the ornament
is the structure, and the structure is the space. So the three main elements
and the ingredients of any architecture are
just somehow one thing. Whatever is defining the
building structurally is, at the same time,
space-making and the same time the expression of the
ornament, the ornament in a holistic sense of the
word, and not misunderstood as decoration, which is
very often something people can mix up, and in fact, has
nothing to do with each other. As you can see, those spaces,
those structural tubes, are for the changing
rooms, but also to present a dress
or something that one selects in a more private, more
intimate spatial condition. This photograph shows how
much these elements are really solid structure just
like the facade, and how then it's
totally changed through its fitting out. And with all the
Prada building-- you will also see that with Miu
Miu, which is the same company, Miu Miu is the nickname
for Miuccia Prada-- is all the materials and
all the furniture, all the lamps and silicon, and
all these [inaudible] elements, everything is designed. We've designed for that
building just as it was also the case for Miu Miu this year. The structure becomes more
obvious at night, of course. And the glass, this kind of
bulging convex and concave glasses, are here in order to
attract the human eye more. So this attraction
comes, of course, from this forming the glass. And you may have seen
those shop windows from the beginning of the 20th
century, these concave glasses, which are bending away from
the viewer on the street, which make the object
in the shop window almost real, as if
there was no glass. It makes the glass
somehow disappear. That's an effect of bending
the glass backwards away from the viewer. And that's, in fact,
the effect that you get when you stand outside
of the building in some of the windows, whereas others
are rather rejecting you. So it's almost an
interactive play between inside and outside. When we have been
asked to do Miu Miu-- this is the Prada building. It's on the same
street in Japan, in Tokyo, right
across the street. We were, of course,
happy, but also hesitating because
we knew that it would be difficult to
do a building which would be so well seen and well
accepted as the Prada was. But we said we are
interested not only in doing buildings,
which are, let's say, is number one, number
two, and number three. You can always do
something which is more accepted or less accepted. What we wanted to do is
to take the opportunity to do something which
speaks to each other. Just as you will see later
in the next two projects, that building, especially
on an urban level, can have this effect. This is just a box. But it's kind of a magic
box in that transparency, unlike in the Prada building,
is not a real transparency, but it's a game. It's a play with
transparency, with a kind of-- how do you say furtive? I have to check that. [laughter] Sorry, I'm soon there. Yeah, furtive, a kind of
a furtive transparency. The zoning, as you
could see here, does not allow for
a tall building just like Prada was, but
rather for a small one. And so we limited the height
and tried to make a box out of it, which is playing
with this idea of the box, with this simplicity, with
its radical simplicity, and with this very
simple, almost obvious plastic or
sculptural moment, which is this kind of opening,
slightly opening, which, as I said before, allows
for this furtive perception of what is inside. Of course, before
we've done that, we tried other things,
as you can see here. But we found this very simple
gesture the most powerful one. We then tried to
figure out, what could be the right
materials for that? We tried, of course,
metal, stone, wood, all these possibilities,
and decided for metal that would be
sharp like a razor blade. So it's a very sharp, also,
contrast to the fitting out, to the interior, which
is very, very refined, extremely carefully
crafted and designed. As I said before, the
interior is really almost like a theatre, and every single
piece was developed just for there. And for us, we look at those
projects, the Prada or Miu Miu, like also a
laboratory to develop new materials and new products. And this is also possible
because Miuccia Prada is certainly a fashion
designer that everybody knows. But what few people know
is how inspired she is. She's really one of the
great artists of our time, and she's also a really
very great collector of art and very knowledgeable person. So working with them
is a real challenge, an intellectual challenge,
and an interesting experience. There were moments where we
wanted to do the inside out of very rough concrete,
steel, and kind of an upholstered
foam, plastic shelves. We stepped away from
all these things and went back to more
traditional materials like brocade, but tried to find
a more contemporary version and mix brocade with
metal or with copper and juxtapose these materials. We simplified the arrangement. It's very remindful, as
I said, of a theater. We gave those spaces an almost
kind of an erotic character, a very intimate character. And there are, of
course, materials like these-- punching
these metal blades and these concrete tests that
we rejected and will perhaps use in other projects. And like always, we
tried many things, and a lot doesn't work
or doesn't lead anywhere. But I think sometimes
we find out something just because we tried. You cannot imagine everything,
and then you produce it. Sometimes it's important
to accept this testing. And for instance,
the Dominus Winery, this kind of stone
masonry, these loose stones that we filled in, the gabions,
is the result, of course, of some idea, but namely of
testing it and finding out about the potential for
the sun to shine through and to project those
gaps on the glass walls and to produce this lace kind
of shade that is so beautiful. So the copper and the
brocade and the sharp metal were selected to
go in the building. Also, the furniture
were developed for this particular
place and might find a way into other projects. There is also a gap
not only in the front, but also in the back,
so like the backdrop that is opening and lets
this kind of-- open up this little gap for
people to sneak in. Again, you can see
that here, which is kind of weird
opening into this very intimate interior space. And when I talk
about transparency, that might sound
weird in comparison to the building on
the other side, which has a real transparency. Here, as I said, we did
the building in steel, in very sharp-- like a
blade kind of a steel. But we wanted not to
do additional window. We just wanted this gap, which
allows for this furtive kind of look into the building. But on the other hand, we
decided to polish the steel. So somehow to create
a kind of a porosity, like enter into the material
and reveal another side. So it is a kind of opening,
but it reflects you instead of letting you into
the interior of the building. So it rejects your image, but at
the same time it attracts you. So there is this kind of
sculptural moment, which we find interesting, that real
transparency, a transparency which is rejecting you
and attracting you, and all the different ways and
all these different moments in between. So it even reflects the
building on the other side of the street. I would also like to present
two projects that we've done last year, which seem, at
first sight, very different, but we find it interesting to
present them in the context because they both speak of a
specific idea about the city. BBVA is a headquarter for a
bank, just for one company, but is like a little city. And Musee Unterlinden, Colmar
is renovation and expansion project for a monastery,
for a museum in a monastery. And Colmar is about a real
medieval-kept city, which in this part of the
city was deteriorated, was not in a good condition. It was somehow a place where
the monastery was isolated. You will see that later. So it's about bringing back
the quality of the city that it had before. And in the case of
the BBVA project, it is almost a [french], a
kind of a place in an area, in a kind of a wasteland
outside Madrid near the airport, almost deserted kind
of an urban landscape, where the idea is really how
to build there to do something which is more than
just do a building for a bank, more than
just a building that fulfills its function. So both projects
are, in fact, about, what can you do as an
architect to deal with a city before you deal with a building? Or how can the building
be done in a way that it works for the city? And that's why I show this
palace that [inaudible] liked so much, this comparison
of the [inaudible], the Palace of [inaudible], which
was transformed into a city. So this piece of the city is
the real heritage of the palace. And the palace as a building,
the power of the building, the permanence of the
building, was so strong and was so important
and that is [inaudible] belief that it always could be
the basis of a certain typology of a city. So what I think is still
interesting in this thinking is that buildings can
have the potential to work for a future
nucleus of a city. They can become part
of a place for people to live, which goes
beyond the function of a bank, or a museum,
or a football stadium, or whatever it is. And we tried to
conceive both projects with such a dimension
[inaudible], which such a thought in
the back of our mind. This kind of deserted
landscape as opposed to the coherent, more
coherent landscape of Madrid, the city we all know and
love for its liveliness, for the quality of life
it has on the streets, which I still think is
unbelievably amazing and can hardly be seen
outside southern cities, especially in Europe. But how can you
achieve such equality in this kind of chaotic areas? And in fact, this is the
place for the project. It is divided by highways
and by different models of a city of isolated islands
and of free-standing buildings. And in the case of
BBVA, the client bought that piece of land
on which there were already some buildings that were
not fully completed, so they were like modern ruins. And one of the wishes the
client had for the competition was that we would be
able, or the participants would be able, to somehow deal
with these given structures, because he was paying for it. So it was real material. It was something that the
client wouldn't want to lose. And we were quite
happy, actually, about the possibility to
incorporate them in our design. As I said, that's the reality
of that area, something that you could see anywhere in
the world almost and something that we saw as a challenge and
try to find an alternative. Those are the buildings as
we found them on the site before we interfered
with our concept that I will explain later. So that's the kind of ugliness
that is there and was there. That's shortly before
our intervention. That's the site for the project. So we said, whatever
we do here would not be just a building, a tower,
or some kind of block. But we wanted something
that is totally [inaudible], like a world in itself. But could be, once the bank
is not a bank anymore-- banks don't have this
kind of monopole kind of economic monopole
character anymore-- once it's more fragmented,
once it has changed, the building or the site
would have the potential to become a kind of the nucleus
of a different kind of a city. So since the beginning,
that was in our mind. And the early sketches,
low-rise buildings, that's a kind of a section,
and this kind of carpet like a piece of
textile that we would want to lie on top of the
landscape within our mind. With very thin fingers
and gardens in between, low rise, and the
same should happen in this kind of adjacent piece
where the first phase should be built, these
existing structures. And from the beginning, we said
we want to incorporate them in that we cut through them. We literally incorporate
and eat them up and make them become part of
the same kind of arrangement, almost in a kind of a
Gordon Matta-Clarkian way, or in a kind of a strategy
of Gordon Matta-Clark, to cut them, to open them
up, and reveal something that you would not
have seen before, and especially to not
accept the typology that they had
become the typology of the rest of the site. But vice versa-- use
their materiality, but reverse their character. From the beginning,
also, we decided to cut into the [inaudible]
and to the carpet and cut it out and tilt it up. This plaza, tilt it up and
make it into vertical piece. We had five and more
fingers in the competition. We wanted endless repetition,
so undistinguishable kind of buildings. We wanted more the repetition
and in and out and in and out, the change between
built and unbuilt, between garden and
interior space. But we could then live
also with four fingers. As an architect,
that's also a lesson that even now that we
are very experienced, we are still astonished
that we would never have accepted that in
the competition phase because we thought this would be
too standard, too conventional. But in fact, the effect
of this transparency that you see all the way
through works very well even with fewer fingers. This is the gardens that
run through the whole site. And that's the arena, this
kind of roundish place. Of course, this is another
one-to-one comparison. But to cut out this
space and to make it an arena kind
of a space where people would come
together was somehow in the back of our mind. We cut out that space
and tilted it up and gave it the same height as
the height of the existing BBVA tower. That is quite an interesting
building actually. So there is a kind
of a reference that we-- so there was a ratio
for the height of our building, of the new building. In the competition, that
building, that slab, was in the same
line with the rest. That also we changed later. We gave it a
north-south orientation. We wanted to free
it from the rest, and especially we wanted
to tilt it to orient it towards the highway as a sign. That is a wish of the client. We were, at some
point, not even sure whether we wanted really to have
a high rise of a taller piece. But at the end of the
day, it works pretty well if you're there, and especially
it gives you alternative spaces so you can also escape this
very low-rise spaces here and these gardens and
have meeting rooms and offices of totally
different special conditions. You can see the gap
between the interior space and the outside is filled
with these kind of stairs that we organized in a
way that they could also work as spaces to hang out,
to talk, to smoke a cigarette. So more than just normal
exit or escape stairs. That's the scenario
of how we proceeded. That's the existing-- where the
existing buildings, and that's the transformation of
them in the first phase to the fully-completed scheme,
where we cut, we took away. We cut and we added
to this structure. So we liked the
physical operation on those existing buildings. That is one part of why we
believed the building has become very powerful. You see this kind of brutal
concrete structure, which, with all these columns and
these slabs, which are really very straightforward, somehow
it inspired and informed the rest of the structure. So we not only reused
it, but we took on board the structure, which is
not dissimilar, by the way, to the structure
of the space here. We have these three
elements, the [inaudible], which is the carpet, the
plaza, and the tower. It's very strategic and
very almost dialectic. It accepts the slope, which
also I think is very important. It's not just a stiff
structure, but it has a kind of a gentle way to
follow the given landscape. It is, as I said,
totally transparent. It has these plants in between. So everything literally reads as
like a woven, horizontal layer. That was the rendering before
we developed the single details, but you can see this up
and down of the slab. You can see how the plants
and the interior space are blurring into each other. We added this element on top
that helps shade those gaps. You can also see
the irregularity of these gaps, which is
resulting from the fact that some structures
are existing, give the whole
thing the character of almost an old part of town,
which is also somehow wanted. And you can see in that image
or also in that image what I tried to explain earlier. Now, this is a bank. It's just one client. This person and that person
and that person, they all work for the same person. They have the same
kind of mentality. But they meet here. And it has already now a kind of
an aspect like in a small city. And I could imagine
having a bar here. You could have shoe,
whatever, repair. You can have a hairdresser. You could have different stores. That would be inhabiting
this structure sometime in the future. You could fragment it,
and you could give it to different tenants,
which, of course, now is totally different. But also the bank,
after problems we've had at the beginning,
honestly, the client now is very happy with this
very unusual way for them to work under one roof in
these kind of common spaces. Those spaces, of
course, are nice, but they also are
very useful for people to integrate, to have lunch,
to have even meetings outside. We also use that sculpture
form to collect the water and to store it and
to bring it back into these different gardens. So the whole project
has a very well thought ecological component. The building is
finished, more or less. The tower is not
yet even finished. That's why I cannot show
pictures of the inside. So it's really fresh. But I thought it was
important, nevertheless, because I think it's possible
to already understand the main ingredients, the
last one being the facade. This is, of course, a project
which, in fact, has no facade. Why should we do a facade
in a project inside where the facade is
actually the plants or is that space in between? So it's a non-facade kind of a
thing and potentially endless. But of course, there's
a strong sun exposure. So we had to develop
something, and we were very interested
in what you see here to give back the brise
soleil, which we are normally associating very much with
modernism, especially with Le [? corbusier's ?] attempts. And we thought that to
bring back the brise soleil could be a very
interesting challenge, to not copy Le [? corbusier's ?]
ideas, but to rethink it and come up with alternatives
or with other moments in it. That would have been
a kind of logical way to start to use concrete. But it was too heavy to
use very straightforward rectangular slabs. But this was take
away too much light. Then to just chop
it off a little bit, that was not enough. Then to give it
this kind of form, that was having too much of a
Saudi Arabian, Abu Dhabi, Dubai kind of a style, which
we also didn't want. And we then tested
all these things, which are some very
mathematical forms. And we somehow liked them,
but some were just too much. But while we went into
this, we understood what actually a brise
soleil is in contrast to just enormous sun
shade or a store. It is actually a very
powerful architectural tool, because somehow-- you
can see that here better, perhaps, no, here--
because somehow it creates in front of you,
we have developed elements with different
width of the window. But it creates like a
space in front of you, so it's like a space
between you and outside. It's not just a layer, but it's
a real space, which gives you a certain intimacy, which I
find very interesting component, a very interesting
element that normally you don't have in a facade. Those are other tests where
this idea of the space outside is even taken further,
almost like an interpretation of those sun stores that
we know from Venice, where they are done in fabric. So they would really be
almost like capsules, like little tents in front. But we then decided for simpler
versions, with this cut-out, with this thinner forms,
but with different width and different height,
and different width according to the size of the
office, the size of the room, meeting rooms or individual
cell offices, whatever, and of course the
different orientation, east, north, west,
and accordingly the different size
of the panels. And applied to the facade. That's the layout of
these different versions. And put them back in the tower. We have double-height, even. We create an enormous
variety of expression, of sculptural expression
with this very simple element that we did in a kind of
artificial material panels. We decided to go for white,
which of course works best with the sunlight conditions
and with the idea of the inside not being inspired or
influenced by colors that would not be
appropriate in an office or in a business context. Of course, I could speak
more about the detailing of the foot, of how
we attached them, that we make them like
mechanical elements, et cetera. But this image I think
is kind of interesting, because it shows how much
[inaudible] the sun becomes almost an organic dimension,
with a very simple element that is arranged in a
very rational way. Now, the Unterlinden project is
of course a totally different thing. But I like its context
to this idea of the city and the life in a
city, the careful way to treat with an idea of
urban space, of public space, of the street, of
possible meeting places. And to use the context, whether
it's a headquarter of a bank or whether it's a museum,
is actually not so decisive. Colmar is a small city
in the north of Basel, between Mulhouse and Strasbourg. It's about 45
minutes from Basel. And it's a city which has
kept its medieval character. It has almost a side
that is remindful of Venice, due to
its open canals that you see especially in the
old part of the city, which have kept not only
a practical side, but now become of course
a tourist attraction. It's very much a tourist city. It has quite a number of
historically important buildings, monastery, convents,
churches, and other buildings, nice buildings. But especially, it is
world-class for one thing. It has this convent
that we talk about, which was turned
into a museum I think in the 18th or 19th century. But the look of it outside,
as it was presenting itself before our intervention. It is well known for this
painting, which is certainly one of the greatest medieval,
Renaissance medieval paintings of German Renaissance,
by Matthias Grunewald, the Isenheim
Altar, early 16th century. This is really a mad, almost
surrealistic painting. And it attracts visitors
from all over the world. Everybody knows this
from the art world, but also beyond the art world. And you can see-- I
don't now of course want to speak about the
building, that altarpiece. I just recommend you go see it. It's very inspirational. It's sheerly-- it's
really amazing. So we were of course
very happy when we were contacted to
renovate the site, not so much originally
the space where this altarpiece was shown. This is an old image how
it was presented together with other important paintings
by Martin Schongauer. Martin Schongauer is another
great, great Renaissance painter, who is from Colmar. That's how it was
presented until the '50s, until after the war,
and then was transformed into a kind of a gym, with
this kind of weird floor and this kind of bazaar
style way to present it. And now, after the renovation,
this is of course still too empty, but that's how
it presents itself now in the freshly restored church. But I will speak about
now the whole project. This is the convent
as it presented itself urbanistically. Cut away from its former
context, the Ackerhof, this was one kind
of building context. The space in
between is an almost deteriorated abandoned
kind of a bus station. And so immediately we thought
when we got the job to renovate this and to incorporate
[inaudible]-- this is a newer
Baroque building-- that we would first of all see
it as an urbanistic project to bring together that, to
make this something that works together. And paradoxically,
we found a solution in cutting it into two
pieces even more, in that we opened again this
little river that was hidden under the street that
was once in the medieval time open and was part of
that system of canals that I showed you before. So that was one
ingredient, almost like a symmetrical axis
that is between the convent side and the Ackerhof with
the neo-Baroque building and our new basilica
that I will explain and this little pivotal
building that I would also explain later. So I will speak about the
different interventions, which is the restoration and
making this into a unit again, the basilica, the
monastery, and the wing where you enter. Before our
intervention, everybody entered on this side,
which was quite awkward. Now we opened this
side and show a face to this plaza, the
new Plaza Unterlinden, with the water
canal in the middle, this little pivotal little
house, and the Ackerhof, which was once the kind of service
court for the convent. So to bring these two
elements together, that is the urban plan. The other thing is then
the architectural methods to do this. And the third level
is the museography, the museographical idea, which
I also will briefly present. We have been working together
with Jean-Francois Chevrier, who is a French theoretician
and writer and a specialist in contemporary art and
especially photography that we've been working with
already in previous projects. That's again the urban plan,
the canal, this little pivot, the new basilica,
and the old convent, and the Ackerhof,
this new place. First element, the
restoration of this part. This is going to host
medieval ethnographical and archaeological pieces,
especially of course the altarpiece of Grunewald,
the Schongauer paintings, and other spaces. So we freshed up and
renovated and brought back the spaces in the monastery
that were totally deteriorated and in bad condition. That's the space between
these two buildings after our intervention, with
the freshly opened canal, this little house that
I will explain later, and that facade, which
now is the main entrance into the convent. And that's the new
basilica, this new wing for contemporary art that
speaks to the old building. First we renovated the church. You can see the kind
of juxtaposition on the other side,
the new basilica, which is like the brother
element of this piece here. We wanted the old and the
new to be like defining, like framing the
whole urban plan. So we tried to
make the courtyard around this amazing
piece of architecture in this central courtyard,
really again a suite or a sequence of
interesting spaces. For this reason, we had to
remove all this stuff here, which could be
like in a bathroom. And we brought back-- this is
still not finished, this space. We brought back
the amazing quality of the old spaces,
which were more appropriate for the
collection of 14th and 15th-- for 15th and 16th
century painting. Especially the ceiling
is very interesting, because to do the ceiling
in the medieval time, they reused wood that they
found from different buildings, so that in itself is an amazing
piece of architecture that was hidden behind this ceiling. The Grunewald piece that I
already briefly spoke about in its new presentation. So that's this part here,
this wing and this wing. And now our intervention. In this entrance part
here, we reopened this part so the main entrance
goes through here. And then we totally
renovated this. We brought it back
to an original state, which it never really had. But we removed all
these small walls that were taking away some of
the generosity and the openness and the permeability
towards the central court. And we also did not want to
bring in a modern language that immediately you could
see, well, that's the old. That's the new. I don't think that this is
interesting to show to visitors what is old and what is new. When you look
carefully, it's clear. You immediately see
what is old and new. But that's why we decided to
work with the pointed arch as an ingredient in an
abstracted way that would make the transition much more smooth
and much more interesting and to make it much more
especially into one thing and not into two things, but
something that would allow for a much more interesting
walk and a more organic walk through all these spaces. All these things
are of course new. But especially it
has two elements. It has this kind of doors,
which are always having these pointed arches,
like deep spaces, and those stairs that
are winding themselves through the building. We developed a lamp
just for this building, and also furniture. From that stair actually, you
go from the main reception room down into this corridor,
this kind of gallery that is connecting the old wing with
the new wing, the old convent with the new basilica. This is a decisive
element to connect it down where then you encounter this
pivot element on the ground. That's before the intervention. So this is really literally
hidden away or cut away. And that's the bus station. And that's how it looks now. This little house
here sits on top of this corridor
that is connecting this wing and that wing. And this house is inspired
by this little building that sits exactly in the same
place that was the entrance gate to the former Ackerhof
that was like a farm somehow to support the convent. And we somehow
liked that element very much, in that it is a link
between these two elements. And especially, it
breaks down the scale between this and this. So it's like an element that
it was very risky to do this. And modern architects wouldn't
normally want to do this. But we were very interested in
it and tested it many times. It's a very simple form,
but these simple forms, as you know, is something
we are very fascinated with and we believe have a
very strong potential. Whenever we use it, we
don't use it as a trademark as it may appear. We use it when we
believe it makes sense. And in this case, this
little house that of course has a much more abstract
form than the previous one-- we tried something
that was almost a copy but that would be too much of
a Hollywoodian simulation-- is of course a place
to gather before you go into the Ackerhof. But also it is a big skylight. It's a skylight that sits on
top of this connecting space underneath that you
can see in and out. And especially, that
is a very good way to-- like a paver
between this and that. And also, it's not just
sitting on top as a decoration, but it has a depth. It has a function. It is like a lantern that
brings daylight and orientation between the upper side and
the lower connecting gallery. As you can see
here, that's where this little house sits on top. And that's the
connecting gallery. This is not just
a corridor, but it is a gallery that
is very carefully curated by Jean-Francois. And that's the kind
of daylight that comes down from the street. So that's this element here. And that's underneath
this connecting piece. Then we have done this little
place here, this little garden with the trees. And then finally, of
course, the new basilica, which is the place for
contemporary art, which is here. And they are done
in the same material that we will talk about later. You can see the pointed
arch, the Gothic windows, which are reappearing
in a more abstract way. We were sure-- and that's
also, of course, risky. That's also something
that architects, contemporary
architects don't do. We were extremely-- I
was extremely fascinated and attracted by that,
especially how to do this. You cannot just do this. You cannot just make
a Gothic window. But it's interesting
to find out how you could do it so it works. And you can also not
just do a basilica, again with this very simple form. But what exactly, how
exactly do you do this? And we then tried to
literally cut away a piece and gave it a very
interesting hint of modernity and of like a barn that
would make more sense in the context of
the former Ackerhof. This building has three
floors, exhibition floors, and this kind of big stairwell
with this kind of stair that winds itself up and down
in a similar way as the stair that I showed you before,
which brings people down from the convent into
the sunken gallery. That also is something that
we studied very carefully, that is a space in itself
in that basilica, which has the same materiality and
the same formal language as in the convent. So that again is very important,
to not make these stupid steel stairs and this kind
of transparent glass whatever lifts, but to make
this as an element which speaks with the other one,
which has a coherence. Now the exhibition
spaces are special. The panels, we've done something
which is forbidden again, to make walls-- I
always hated this when I saw that in the '50s
in the Nazionale Gallery. Walls should be on the
floor for the simple reason that the painting
should be presented in a more or less solid
and simple context. We made an exception
here, because the spaces are a bit low and a bit narrow. And especially,
we believe it was interesting to do this in the
context of this very collection of Ecole de Paris, the
kind of French equivalent to abstract
expressionism, which is in itself a modernistic
movement, where these panels, these kind of
flying elements come from. And indeed, the character of the
space, this kind of breathing character is working very
well with this particular kind of art that is part
of their collection. The contemporary
collection, in fact stops in the '50s and '60s, which is
the high point or high moment for this kind of
modern French movement. So again, even these
walls are to do with a particular
or specific given, even in this kind of almost
near-medieval context that had a reason, we
introduced something which has a totally different
historic context, which is this modernistic,
1950s kind of walls. It was opened last Saturday
actually, by Mr. Hollande. And it was, of course,
well received by the French because it's an example
that in the periphery-- that is an ongoing obsession
of the French, that too much concentration is
of course the focus on Paris as the only city in France, that
high class or great quality-- I speak of Schongauer and
Grunewald, of course-- is also happening in the
periphery of their country. Going back to the
materiality, we somehow liked that kind
of strange masonry which was fixed many times. It also was changed. This is an intervention
of 19th century in the 18th century breaking
up the medieval window. So it's really a mixture, a
mosaic of different times. And we liked the roughness
of the materiality, which is natural stone
and brick in a mixture. This roughness was
also the reason why we decided to go for
something that is not the same thing, but has kind of
very rough, unusual character. And we developed this kind of
technique to break the brick and to show the broken
side outside instead of the good side. So we put the outside
in or the inside out and made different tests. We have tested this
technique already in the context of
Chinese projects that were never realized, but
find this a good moment to take this heavily burned brick,
rather dark brick, which you find a lot in the
Alsace context, and to develop this kind of
wall, which the nice thing is has more the effect
of some knitted work, rather than of masonry. Now, the Gothic window,
from the beginning we knew that we wanted something
that was just cut out so that you can see this is
not really an arch in stone as a finished form, but is
potentially just as if you cut it out with the scissor. So we had to carefully study
how to hold it up in place and especially also how
to morph the form outside to the inside, where
we didn't want to have the same kind of pointed arch. So the space, the
window would describe a kind of a morphing
between outside expression and interior regularity
or interior frame. So we did not want to do what
the medieval masonry has done or neo-Gothic in
the 19th century or even 20th century
Gothic, which was always falling in the trap of doing
this kind of concise framing, which has a much more
conventional appearance and is much more a finished
given form, rather than something that has a fuzziness. So we tested in a
mockup how to do this and to maintain some of this
kind of fragile, fragility that we also like very
much in the surface of the broken brick. As I said, we wanted an
exterior and an interior form to come together and to make
for what it is that window, so that you can see
that here, that it's a niche that you can go in
and that inside is a rectangle form. It's not very well visible here. And the morphing
creates again some kind of interesting organic
form that can be interpreted in different ways. But I think that
image shows quite well the potential of those little
niches within the basilica. And indeed when you go there,
that's also the reaction that you get from people. Whether you like it or
not, is a different thing. But it works. People feel very
much like this is part of the convent
on the other side. It's become really
something that is working as a new whole with
this water canal in the middle. Now, I show a last project in
very few images, Chaserrugg. That's very Swiss,
ugly word, somehow. It's very guttural. But what is interesting
for those who speak German, this does not mean--
"chase" means cheese. But this here is actually a
Roman Latin word and means kaiser, like Caesar,
and means emperor. And "rrugg" means the back. So it's the back of the emperor. And it's an alpine station
in a very beautiful part of Switzerland, in the
pre-Alps, not too far-- it's in the southeast of Zurich. And the interesting thing
is that the client-- this is a private project--
owns that lift and those two stations. And we started with this
top to remodel this here. And I will speak
about that piece here on the altitude of
2,100 meters, a ski station and a ski lift. And in the next phase, we will
develop a little hotel here and a little station here. And you can see the beauty of
this amazing landscape, that's this chaserrugg,
this kind of back, which is like a
cliff above a lake. And you can see the
Alps in the back here. So these mountains are
just about 2,200 meters high, whereas the Alps in
the back are double as high. Of course, the
beauty attracted us. And then when I
say it's a puzzle piece of metropolitan
Switzerland, it means that the
interesting thing is that Switzerland is nowhere
very urban, but nowhere also very rural. It is the most urbanized
landscape perhaps that I know. And it's certainly interesting
that within an hour or two you can literally go from
one place to another. And so these kind of resorts
or whatever the intervention would be here is something that
almost has an urban character. You can go there
within very short time. That's in the valley. And that's the
in-between station. And that's the top. And that's a diagram
which shows the plan. This is existing,
but is in bad shape. That's very kind
of interesting kind of a train that is running
on a track that has a very consistent stone architecture. And from there, the
next run, the next phase or the next sequence
is a cable car. It's a kind of a funicular
train that brings people up to the top station. And that's how it looked before
our intervention, rather ugly. I mean, it's just
separate, the station where the cable car arrives. Then you have a kind of a shack. And you don't stay
longer than needed, because it's just to
drink some warm tea, but it doesn't have any
quality of you want to stay, you want to do more
than just have a drink and then go back again. So the client said we could do
more here, because take more advantage of the
beauty of the landscape and of the possibilities to
ski in winter and to hike in summer. And so we decided to
not leave that village, but to try to incorporate
everything into one thing so it's just one spot. That should look like this. And that already-- let's say
the way the funicular arrives is a surprise or tries to create
something special in that it cuts out what is not
needed, but leaves the rest and thus creates kind of like
a key that enters into a lock and opens up a totally
different world than you would expect there. And that's how we have
worked on this project. It has these three elements
basically, the arrival point for the car, the cable car,
then the gastronomic part, and the big roof or
the service part, and the restaurant or the
bar and the roof on top. And of course, we had to redo
this whole technical part at the same time. All of that we wanted to
cover and restructure with one single material, which is wood. The challenge was to
find a structure that would work in a very
simple way but also could be these cantilever,
resist very strong wind forces it has up there. And with the rather
small surface that was given on the top of
that rock with the cantilevers, that we wanted not to do
too much in a daring way, but we had to accept
some cantilevers so everything together is
working as a structural as well as a sculptural piece. Again here, what is
form-making is at the same time structural and ornamental. Also here, lamp and
furniture, everything is part of the architecture and
part of the whole expression of the building. It's very simple, basic. But the plan is of course
once the hotel will go in the middle station
that people would be able to use that
whole infrastructure also outside let's say functions that
you could do during the day, so it would also
allow for parties or use the restaurant
for other purposes. For this purpose, we
designed these niches, which are nice to have lunch. But you can also close them so
they work like little chambers so you can sleep
there, like in a train or like in these capsules. So we worked on this kind
of intimate, intimate space versus the larger
space around it. It also attracts
locals, as you can see. And yeah, that's the last image. That's this kind of cantilever
towards a rather amazing landscape. That's the last picture, and
thank you for your attention. [applause] If you like to talk
and ask some questions, I will be very happy
to do that if possible. Let me just ask you a
couple of quick questions maybe while people
get warmed up. You explained that there are
11 projects that were finished in 2015 and you showed four. Yeah. What was the criteria
for choosing the four? Well, I thought that
Unterlinden and BBVA would be very interesting to compare. And that was-- those were given. And then Chaserrugg I
think was interesting because nobody expects us
to do something like that. And of course, we don't
have yet so many pictures that show the beauty of this. I think it's a very
beautiful little project. So I wanted to show that we
like to work on such projects. This is very intense. You have to make a lot of
effort to make it work. But we do that as much as we
do the Tower for Roche or BBVA, or larger scale projects. I think that's very important. That was the important thing. And the same is
true for Miu Miu. I think you have to see it. Somehow it's a bit
stupid to present it, because it's not so spectacular. But when you see
it and are there, then it's quite interesting. So I think that was
the criterion for me to show small-scale and
rather larger things. But of course, I
could have-- when you mentioned that
in your introduction, it would have been interesting
to present Bordeaux together with Allianz Arena. But I somehow had in
the back of my mind that it would have been
nice to show Chelsea, but it's not yet
possible, you know. So I think that's
always interesting. This is a school, so
this didactic moment to explain things in
comparison I think is more interesting than
to just show something because it is nice or
attractive or spectacular. We are less and less
interested in that side. We are much more
interested in-- actually I also don't really know
whether something is great or just good or really great
or really mediocre, you know. We don't have these
kind of terms. We just like to work with
great intensity on things and try to really
understand what we do and why we do something. And that's then how I speak,
but I could have as well taken any other project, honestly. No. Part of the reason
why I asked you is because with the
idea of you doing so many variations
of the same project, like the stadium or
the museum, there is the question of, what
is the relationship of one to the other? And I think with a
number of the projects that you showed, for
example with Miu Miu and then showing the
starting with Aoyama, there is always
this relationality of what you had
done and now you're going to do something
different, and the way that you see Miu Miu
through the lens of Prada and it's of course a
very different building, it has very different materials,
or the way in which the Colmar project is dealing with
all the new, the question of historic preservation, the
introduction of a new kind of building in that context. So all of those
I think also were very interesting in terms of
their relationship of something to a precedent, to another
moment, to something else that you had done. And I think just in terms of
the discussion of typology, because this was also
such an important part of your own upbringing, your
own education, your work with Aldo Rossi
as a teacher, I'm just wondering
whether you can speak about this idea of the
transformations that happen with something which is a type. Like you said that Bordeaux--
in some ways you're right that if you do that in
England, it's too-- Fragile. Too fragile. And in England, it
needs to be tougher. It would be seen
as too sensitive for the crowd in a way. So how is it that
something is a type but it's also in a way
dependent on these variations of condition? And you could see Miu Miu
in the same kind of light, because it's a retail
building versus the sort of-- Well, I think that
we can-- of course, you know I could speak
endlessly about things. And it would be great
ones to just speak about, renovation, preservation. I was giving a talk in
New York at the Armory because we do this renovation
preservation job in the Armory. And it would have been
interesting to talk about this in the context of Colmar
also, because I think that our approach
of preservation is different than it was
for instance for Scarpa or for others, where
the juxtaposition-- where what we do here would
have been a nightmare, you know? So this is somehow we were
very much also thinking about the thinking of Ruskin,
in the 19th century, who was, of course, a very
ideological person, but also Viollet-le-Duc was
ideological in some way. And so our attitude
is different, but I'm very aware that it's
also a historical position that is again another position. But it's interesting, because it
says something about our time. It's psychological. Architecture is
highly psychological. And that's why architecture
is highly specific. Architecture is and has
never been generic, never. It is specific. And that's why our
buildings are different. It's not that we want to be so
funny to make them different, but they are different
because in Spain something is different, has a
different ingredient, different ingredients
than in France. And it's not that I want to
give the French what is French, what I believe as coming from
Switzerland, this is French. But this is like if you look
at the city, at the place, I think these are things
that an architect understands and does-- I don't
say automatically, but it has a logic behind that. And yeah, but we don't
have Bordeaux on here, but I could give you
also any other example. I think that of course,
BBVA couldn't be done in England either or in France. It's absurd. I think it's very Spanish. It has a very more Moorish kind
of influence in that project. Maybe this part of
the city reminds me more of southern Spain than
somehow the center of Madrid, perhaps because it's
more deserted, more arid. I don't know. But that somehow I think is
inherent in that project. Maybe we'll see if some
of our Spanish friends will agree with your comment. But are there any
questions, comments? Catherine, yeah. Do we have a mic? If you can just
wait for the mic. Thank you. I've always been
struck by the fact that your work seems completely
fearless in the sense that you are not afraid
of the Gothic window. The Gothic wind--
I mean, how one avoids a kind of
typological face-off, which is what really the passage of
time and history and so forth is based on constant throwing
things away or putting them at a distance in
order to then sort of push in another position. And so it's kind of
astonishing that you almost anoint the Gothic window with
a sort of contemporaneity that gives it a chance to come
back and have a role to play. But it's really very unusual,
I think, partly because I mean, it's like Francis
Bacon says, you have to really do
battle with precedent. You can't do
portraiture anymore. You can't do Gothic
churches anymore. And so I'm not sure
you're doing battle. You seem to be able to enter
into that very delicately with massive structures. So I find that
really interesting. I mean, I don't
know if you agree. I very much appreciate
what you say. I honestly am-- maybe that's
a question of getting older, but I was always attracted
by things that are forbidden. And if we look back, modernity
has forbidden so many things for no good reason. And I said a bit
naively-- this afternoon for the first time
I was thinking when I speak about this project
that the new basilica wants to speak to the
convent, because I think that they look at each other. And I think the windows--
and that's maybe a naive way to explain it, but
it has something. They look out. They look at each other. And windows are like
eyes in a building. A child sees windows
like an eye in a face. And they look at each other. And why should they
not have a similarity? But when you come close,
it's obvious this is not a medieval window. It's different. But it has this moment. It has like a moment. And it's not a simulation. It's not a Hollywoodian
copy, you know. I think that's very different. And more we work with
preservation projects-- I mentioned the Armory--
I'm aware of this. In America, preservation--
and we've had battles. These were battles. They want you to
delayer a space. This is something
we also want to do. But we want to keep the naked
surface of what is there. And then we bring back
a kind of ground tone so that when you go in a space
you don't see all these flaws and that was amended like
Scarpa has done, for instance. He wants to see, oh,
this was a wound. Or [inaudible] was doing
this after the war. And I understand them for
psychological reasons. We are not interested
in that anymore. I want to go in a space in
that I want to understand the space as it was. And when I go closer, I see, oh,
that's not really what it was. But it's in a very simple
way just has the ground tone, let's say. And this is like
the ground tone. And then you go closer. And then it's another painting
or it's another surface or it's another way to
make it or produce this. And that's difficult
to find, because you have to find a solution
for every specific case. There is not standard solutions. And in the Armory, the
spaces were very different. Some were very damaged. And then the American
way to preserve is to find out how
it was and then they make on top of the
old layer, they make a new one, which
is exactly like the old but is a total fake. That's like silicon breasts,
or like these kind of things. That's a totally different
mentality, you know? And I am not against
that, not at all. What, silicon breasts? Not at all. No. I'm not again-- [laughter] I'm just saying-- yeah. I'm just saying I think
this is interesting that you have to-- you touch
the real mentality, which is different. And we stand for another
attitude in preservation. And that's why I think it's
interesting to discuss. And honestly, we continue
this exploring this kind of potential of history. And it's absurd to believe
that architecture-- like that was Mies' obsession of course,
that there is something beyond that is the
ultimate new, that is the ultimate new language,
that is the real sublime. This is the most stupid,
intellectually stupid idea you can have, and this is over. But I don't think that we
have a better solution. We just have a different one. And finally, I have
understood a little bit what are the ingredients
to deal with this. And to make a project is just
a proposal to do it this way. It should not be affirmative. I think projects
should always have a little moment of hesitation. And I think that can be seen. That's also why
we very often have surfaces which have a kind
of irritation at the surface. And this broken brick has that. It's a very fragile, but
nevertheless very powerful materiality. Any other-- please. Thank you so much for sharing
your projects with us. I want to ask an irresponsibly
naive question, after maybe two or three observations. So the first is
that maybe you'll agree that many of
the projects you show talk about architecture
in the here and now, an architecture that's
about being there and about kind of understanding
it-- everyone's kind of looking around, I'll stand--
about being there and understanding
it in that way. That's my first observation. My second is about
something that happened when you
approached the podium, which was lots of people wanted
to take photos of you. And I think this is kind
of interesting in relation to the first observation,
in other words, how the architect is related to the
here and now that he creates. And the third
observation I guess is a word that you
repeated a number of times, which is intervention. Throughout the
projects you showed you were speaking about
interventions on previously built works or in the city. And my naive question
is, what do you think the architect
should be doing today? What is his mandate,
his or her mandate? What is the kind of urgent
problem of architecture that he has been called to answer? How do you think
about that question? Many questions at a time,
but a few are simple. The here and now is the only
interesting thing in our lives, I think. And architecture is interesting
because it expresses that more than anything else. Architecture is only that. But of course, we live in a
world where most of the people know the projects
through websites or through illustrations
or publications. And sometimes if you go see
them, you are disappointed. Sometimes you're not. It's even better. But I think that
architecture only survives when this here and now
continues to really function. I mean, I always take the same
example, a Gothic cathedral or any great building. If you are there, you could not
imagine your impression, how it was before you had seen it. It's now that this effect is
so different from the purely visual impression. And that's what I
mean by here and now. And it also is the same thing
of your own physical experiences and essential experiences
that you can do with your body is different from
just looking, I hope. And that's the same thing. Architecture is
very much bound to our archaic human conditions. That's the great thing about it. That's why I hope it
continues to survive. And the other thing is, what
can you do as an architect? I don't know. But I gave two examples, which I
think is something we try to do is that a project has
always a potential, always. And good architecture is if
you exploit the potential. You can always exploit
it a bit or less. I make a comparison
with football. There you have 11
players and you have two different trainers. One trainer is
successful or more successful than the other one. Why? Because the good one exploits
the potential of the team more. Is it more offensive? Is it more defensive? Is it more in a
ball possession kind of a way that you try to train
them and to instruct them? So those are-- that seems
ridiculous a comparison. But it's pretty much what
you do as an architect. You can do a building
that has a potential to open up part of a city,
to make it public and lively. Or you can make it
hermetic and it's a lost-- it's a waste of money. That was his architecture. Architecture is not about
if you like it or not. That's very personal. But if it's good or
not is not personal. And I say that here so
that I please Scott. Beauty is everything. But beauty is not--
beauty is not decoration. Beauty is a much
more complex thing. But beauty is really-- and
if I give you the advice, go for beauty, you cannot--
that doesn't help you. So I think you have to have
strategy and break down things. And when I said the
urbanistic potential and then the architectural
potential and then the museological or
museographic potential, these are the standard
lines for this project. That's how we tried to proceed. Maybe one of the things that
was very clear with the four projects is also in some
ways the differences in the qualities
of the interiors. And you spent a lot of time
looking up this word furtive. And I was sort of imagining
the transparency, the openness of the Prada store. And then in a way,
there's a kind of sensuality of the
Miu Miu and the idea that the box is almost closed. There's a kind of secret thing. It's just opening and you
get this kind of glimpse into the interior,
which is almost like a kind of illicit
look inside the interior with those fabrics and
materials and things like that. And yet that kind of
quality is very different than the mountain lodge-- Of course. --where it's a very different
kind of sensibility. I think a lot of people are
interested in this question of the issue of the sense or
the sensibility of the interior. What do you mean by
furtive, exactly? There is actually-- there
is actually another a word that I didn't know,
which is even more interesting than furtive. I have to-- ah, I got it. Surreptitious. Surreptitious. Surreptitious. Surreptitious. Surreptitious, yeah. That's surreptitious glance. It's even more difficult
than furtive, surreptitious. That's interesting, because I
think transparency is actually not so interesting. I think what's to
do, what is behind transparency is perception, is
our way to perceive something. And perception is just a means. It's just a way to do this. But the gap, the little gap,
this kind of furtive moment is another strategy
for the same thing. Ultimately we are very
interested in issues of perception. We have been as close as we
have been trained, of course, by [inaudible] and Aldo Rossi. We have been close to artists
like especially Remi Zaugg, but also of course
without knowing him at that time Gerhard Richter,
where artists who are extremely focusing on issues of
perception and illusion and-- So the nature of the
encounter with the piece is different between the
Aoyama and the directness of that visibility to this
almost hesitant, different ways of sort of coming
across the Miu Miu. Yes. That's not so direct. And also, but maybe less
important in that context, Miu Miu as objects, as
fashion, I don't know how well people
know that, have a much more erotic and
much more exclusive character, so full
transparency on that material would be absurd. You know like,
boosh, all that sun. It's more like in the boudoir. Exactly. It's more like a
boudoir, like this. And so we try of course also
to do things which make sense for the client, not only
for the city and et cetera, but it's more
interesting to talk about that in such a context. But as I said,
with Miuccia Prada, these discussions are
super-interesting. And it's only about these
things that we talk. So Jacques, thank you
so much for sharing these beautiful projects. [applause] Fabulous.
