good evening ladies and gentlemen it's an exceptional pleasure to be in Luxembourg and I would have preferred speaking in Luxembourg young but as we are an international audience we have to speak the language of empire an empire which is still recent and if we look at the relationship of architecture and politics we find that if you find since think of politics French politics you think of what you don't think of the pyramidal of all the cities outside Paris you see you think of the building on top of the left if you think about English politics you think about Westminster Palace if you think about American politics you you think you have one or two images the White House or the Capitol building when you think about Europe as the political union you have no image really to think about and I think that that is probably one of the causes why brexit one because Europe is still an abstraction it doesn't have a built-in bewitch one could with love and pleasure think about now the right top right you have the Parliament in Brussels the Parliament the European Parliament in Brussels European Parliament in Luxembourg and the European Parliament in Strasbourg I do architecture because I'm in love with I was in love with Luxembourg I was in love with Washington I was in love with several places and that is what makes you do really live a project I think I'd make it Lively I can't imagine anyone dreaming of these kind of buildings getting kind of neurotic excitement which people who really love their work do have with their work and not just with persons but also with stone and mud so how could you think lovingly about this thing no that's a vanilla wine Brussels mostly occupied by institutional buildings our Lobby offices and then this extraordinary thing the European Union has built over the last 50 years one single structure of quality which was consumed use from the Elst and forget the third name it was a very fine building standing on cash back was a temple of justice for Europe in just through a small building a handy building or smaller tree than the Parthenon and it became a very symbolic building - it was the only building I left untouched in my later project I will show now mr. Perot has been asked to extend this bring it up to our spirit of the age or his spirit of the age and that is what is left nothing is left this is section through Luxembourg which you immediately recognize with this silhouette and and those two bridges and that is the scale it's a human artifact of extraordinary quality it was when I grew up and I and our family we grew up on the boulevard Avalon overlooking this beauty this extraordinary my father was in love with so much with the silhouette that he always filmed from our balcony sunsets over the town and then something happened in 1977 that the government mishegoss don't own the Prime Minister Commission the French architect I bear to design in order to bring or to ensure that Luxembourg would have a more track for having parliamentary European sessions to design this building for as the European Parliament now these are drawn at the same scale this is the the building I was talking about buy consume use the Justice Palace original justice a European Justice bulbs this the tower you know which has already been in its short life has been remade virtually four times I had in my class in the Lisi the gaff saw a person who was with father main industry was to restore this building permanently and the middle of the money with it and it was new them it was that was 1966 this building was 165 metres high cantilevering something like 50 metres and it was immediately derided in Luxembourg by sort of fall out the world's allusions to the sexual traffic and if you think of the symbolism in that this the Parliament is supposed to be sitting in this cantilever but it's before the break with scale and the idea of what should be modernity and one thought then it was not the pranky really did put Bilbao on the map but was bow which which put Frankie REE on the map and he had clearly one tried to put Luxembourg on the international map by making it provocative absolutely shocking statement there was such an opposition around the country that I felt by then I had thought and had worked out the theory of why the environment in which I had grown up which was almost perfect as far as architecture in town tanika's was almost perfect as an economic model because most of the country northern part of the country had been rebuilt after the war with non industrial methods not up-to-date methods and they produced the beauties which are now or hopefully it's the left Astana you know was virtually recreation of 1950s and 40s and 50s but meanwhile something happened with the Second World War that the culture of beauty which architecture of which architecture was one expression one expression of power and that you see that virtually throughout history all powers worldwide used beautiful architecture beautiful ceremony beautiful language beautiful manners good manners to build their authority to be respected and in a way to respect themselves because there's always something vulgar and violent about power but once you are installed you behave civilly and you will beautiful buildings you become a contributor to civilization and the good life what has been forgotten after the war is that architecture good manners and beautiful beautiful objects good town-planning our one of the essential means to build the common good the common good is not just the manner of social justice in something which creates a space where the different rivaling classes and individuals and organizations and religions can live in peace and can meet and can behave like good citizens that is what the common good is about it's not about just making things more just for everyone and it is that which has been abandoned as if by a strange event one doesn't know really what I have been thinking about this now for over 50 years and it's very difficult to explain but it has led to an D culture right in the culturalization of leading classes of the leading class particularly of architecture and the Warka textual schools who don't teach any longer architecture there is one school in the world which teaches architecture is called not forum not so dumb dialog in Indiana now for instance if you look at this our money here the highest bill is a curtain wall isn't that interesting why would the curtain wall be the most important bill in the European Union when you look at the others the lower the smaller bills you look at them in detail with looking-glass it's full of errors it's like an ignorant has drawn these drawings I mean it's like making mistakes imagine you have autograph mistakes in the right thing it would be considered a scandal no I counted something like 17 major architectural mistakes in the builds it turns out there is kind of barbarity which is raining particularly by the elites who install this instrument now you know what about this why not because this refers to express our time but who knows what expresses our time nobody knows it's complete BS to think that you are an agent of the spirit of our time nobody knows what that is but we know what is the spirit of a place Luxembourg had fantastic spirit you felt it in every street in every building and it's mostly gone we walked yesterday and the beautiful Paris and you you still feel what the city was like but when you walk down the boulevard you have lost it the Bulevar while is now really a garbage of architecture and is already the second wave of garbage and the next one will be skyscrapers so why did this happen why is it that when we think or when we see reports that we see this beautiful building and why is it so important well when I started architecture a suit cut from my brief period at the school I never got notes the professor said in a plus minus zero but that was not the university recognition so we claimed that I must restart I said if I restart it will be much worse for you because I know what I am doing is good I mean no I know what I'm doing and it was not even traditional architecture it was still very futuristic but it was good design and he said finally I forced him to come to my table and shouted at him and said mister neighbors and the assistant said he'll need a professor a professor I said edibles varoom a commission honey not me and he said you must start again why we did this kind of thing the third rush I said well how interesting can you tell us about it there were 100 people sitting in the room quiet over there table no and he stormed off and I left the school because it was hopeless because sterling like the drawings and they worked for him for four years but I got so whenever you started designing the late 60 is something which approaches only traditional architecture you were called fascist or this is like spare you know why do you do this kind of thing so I got really interested in this subject and I published finally a book about it a beautiful book and will beautifully document it I worked even with spare for many weeks over selecting and I got then this thing the grossest pear fire thusly unclear would are classic some fair amount like architecture was responsible for the Holocaust and therefore you can't do classical a perfection that's exactly what my friend Peter Eisenman said is that architect classical architecture has been destroyed by the Holocaust okay I was called the Nazi there is even a book published in Luxembourg where somebody says what do I forget his name but his miss his real career is seen anti-semite well if I was I would say that I wouldn't have to be no it wouldn't have to be in doubt and this only since the republication of this beautiful book and introduced by Robert stern with Jewish who said of costlier I will introduce it to something being Jewish must be good you like this from then on no Marc use Asians so there is such an naivety about architectural judgment nowadays not so architectural historiography that you can't look at this particularly and if you look at it and you like it you must feel guilty but then you have feel guilty about Roman architecture about Greek architecture about Christian architect about anything which has to do with a collector it's always you can't find the reasons why you should feel guilty for having for admiring something because only thing which transcends criminal politics is out is beauty because even if this had been built now if this great axis of space and Hitler's in Berlin had been built it could be used today it would adapt beautifully to democratic society you wouldn't even have to change the names because aliens listen Allianz Mercedes Volkswagen who were all aligned on this axis they haven't changed their name was so interesting now the big skyscraper of is Ozaki in Milan has Allianz on it the Allianz building on their spare axis not see big Nazi insurance company was on the run spell so in earth the question I tried to us is can a criminal a war criminal a crime one who committed crimes against humanity can he be great artists of course he can is evident everybody knows that but you must not say and it is because of this introduction that we can't do classical architecture today without being insulted or being considered like backward now what do you think of this it's a beautiful elegant modernist building no some block building that building was a factory where the Heinkel bombers were built architect oomph he was he was not directly related to to miss but he would certainly worked in that spirit and with great quality and that was a soup Nazi building much more dangerous than party buildings or insurance buildings because that's where the bumbles were built has that architecture been forgotten for Bob forbidden after the war of course not it has become the only architecture possible now this kind of abstraction so I say that spare should have been hanged because he was definitely a criminal but his architecture was not criminal so what is it and we have all to try to understand this why is it that architecture was condemned but not technology because architecture is mostly technology before being out why was the technology and the morphology and the sociology of classical architecture rendered impossible and not this kind of technology which is much more dangerous and which built continuously up the almond industry and of which even Eisenhower the president has never want so this is something you have to reflect why is that because the difference between modernism and traditional architecture is not one of style it's one of Technology because traditional architecture and traditional urbanism are a human scale human manufactory based on anthropology girl rhythms and measures and tastes and judgment and it is that scale which transcends political regimes this scale is supposed to be neutral but that is really ultimately dehumanizing and it's what leading to mechanical scale repetition separation apartheid and it is that subject which we have to you know you as architects have choose whom are you going to work for are you going to work for the human scale of a machine scale which is largely out of control and which is extremely dangerous nowadays so it is ironical that the crises which befell the artists and the architects after the war did not befall at all than Junius or those who design armaments and the car designers and the warbird designers worship designers and tragically and ironically these are really the great products cultural products it's not the architecture of the post-war period or the artwork which you find in our modem the modern MS or virtually in all the museum's of magnet which is mostly non art it's these were the only ones who survived where the feeling of beauty and form survived but unfortunately for consumed consumption objects are destruction instruments so the great change which happened after the war is what Ana hadn't identified as changing a world of objects of use of long term use into objects of long of short-term consumption and that is what we are facing today and that is ironically you know this how many million did that cost I don't know I think he got more than we got for 20 years of working on the justice palace for this junk and there's the same in London and in Villa felt exactly the same and he is considered like great art and nobody can forgot sake explain what is artistic about it and our museums are full of it and real art like my brother sculptures will never enter this museum it's next in fact and how how can this be caught up now this must be the greatest German German artist boys and insane kaffir and you know this guy and he was the major cause of trouble it's this extraordinary cynicism declaring non art repetitive clone consumption objects to be at work they are not they have nothing to do with out they can may be beautiful but they are cloned objects with a shop and consumption of destruction objects and architecture is something totally different so the subject of our talk tonight is in how far what is what is it what is so important about traditional architecture and traditional urbanism it is that discipline and the products is able to produce which create what is the common good I mentioned but which create the unifying factor for modern society which is that the inner the dresden the city of Dresden or Luxembourg of Stockholm or Palma de Majorca or Rome have some binding common factor which is the space between buildings which is a human scale space of great beauty and full of messages messages which don't need to be explained or excused like you are you asked anyone what this junk in the Museum of Art meant and you are being explained things you don't understand they quoting high diagram to show on the de novo it's junk it should be one should just stop these in a funding these and they will die their natural death the problem is that you know this is not Europe that architecture is against the common good is dividing society is destroying society I mean the people who are condemned to live there or to shop here or live in this episode the Kitsch repetitions I didn't it's several hundred of the same little shot shuttle Delaware or what will you call them and this is not Europe this junk just junk world is not just junk spaces junk world and should be stopped unfortunately that is what architecture schools generate teach and that is why I so welcome these reconstructions not only of the leaf foundation but also the exact shaft establish no marked because it is finally proving that the statements that you can't have this even if you like it you can't have it because we have advanced we are now gone well beyond that this progress was not a progress was a living civilization and this is what civilization is about to create spaces and objects we just have significant that people will just be attracted to it love it cherish it photograph it and no it becomes the common good and common space and that does need translation does need explanation it's international and this what unifies Europe it is actually the inheritance of Greek Roman and Christian City which creates which create this mobile which is now the universal city I had a project in Doha and I explained to the developer the difference between you know what Muslim City would we like and what the European city he said stop you don't need to explain we want the European city but with Muslim architecture because it's the universal model the Chinese the South American everyone wants European city but with their own local architecture and that is I think the model for the future and Luxembourg was like an a modern city and I discovered it later when I and I grew up in this school I I went to the listen in national enough and I really hate it every day in school but I loved the city now in the park and the beautiful landscape and all this was modern architecture rebuilt after the war this hairstyle and me we wanted to do a book about these architects were rebuilding they were all ashamed they say oh but no I'm do know this stuff forget about this were good to see the German embassy no zone in concrete and they were these people had done this marvelous work I Neyland forget their names but they were ashamed and rumors they were ashamed of what they had done there and they were glorious no and when I did I worked with sterling on the project for Dobby town center so I started reading Camille Rosita which was a revelation I recommend that you all read cumulative you haven't it's most important work about conceptualization of public space and I that was my first and while doing Dobby Sterling didn't want to go the whole way so he said when I saw destroying he said over but I would never dare go that far I said that's the way to go oh but we come to this because we didn't have the industry yes you we can't because astronaut was completely rebuilt with craft it was astronaut was finished well before the middle of the French reconstructions which were all done with system coming on disgusting industrial systems which were very slow and heavy and completely outdated by the time they were on the market I live in Berlin WA when I received this paper the little boy island and it said Park or parking and there was proposition that the park around the city of Luxembourg would be transformed into a gigantic car park because logically the zoning of the center city and the suburbs and the separation of certain suburbs and and city needed lot of parking a lot of pendulum movement and and sir I really panicked and I started thinking and and writing and it was even probably my article was published and I did a quick sketch about Luxembourg what it should be and pierre voirbo was the author of the zoning plan responded but was trying to write something critical you always need an outside Authority I didn't know yet what was happening in in Bologna but I knew Paris and I knew this work of Otto wagon and Otto Wagner Paris star on this amount that was money not only small was a model how modern metropolis should be organized oh that was forgotten with modernism Otto Wagner had stated very clearly that the large city is not just an exploded small city but is a family of small cities like exactly like the historic center Vienna and he repeats his door around and each one of these blocks people misunderstand this each one of these blocks is a city that was not in 1980 or 1910 not forget the other model was Eliel Saarinen the the father of Eero Saarinen was the genius more in town planning I think the in architecture and he wrote a book of the city where he formed it is idea that the city should be expanded in functional communities and functional communities he meant that all the other activities over town must be concentrated of a community must be concentrated in each of these and that was direct model for what Ivan elaborated for for Luxembourg and first for Paris Ketil ability which thanks to Sterling was in the jury I got two big prizes which allowed me to buy my house Naaman and then later for Washington DC I I always fall in love with the places I work on and Washington was really fantastic a bush sketch a fantastic City and nor was Jean was completely misunderstood by a washing was needed as far as tan planning goes and if Washington had been built according to law false planned it would have been the model for all Metro modern metropolis and I tried to dig out these ideas and reformulate them and the federal city would become for urban quarters each one of them the Lincoln or the Jefferson and Washington of course and the Capitol where each of these places which has now 15,000 of 50 thousand people working but have to drive home could live next to their work in three to four story high buildings and that's idea which also then commanded my plans for Luxembourg so I found out slowly by having to teach I never I I left architecture school and I always wanted to do an Diploma to a but I was invited to teach before I could get could go back to study so he had to dig this out and you know when you write about something you need an outside Authority I just didn't know and he want to recommend who should take care of Luxembourg so that his future would not become a nightmare of the Aussie absolutely not he was interesting but it was better painter than any athlete sterling had no idea about town planning and we built we designed and built an area of 30 hectares for Ronco newton which ten years later were destroyed the rongkhun corporation is going to pay until 2025 for over 2000 units housing units the loan no materials 1925 2025 for over two thousand years which were destroyed in 1985 after ten years of life so if that doesn't give you a shower and thinking and I thought how is this man he is only one after copy I really admired know for certain things but he had actually new clue about hunt planning and so cosy had no clue about town planning yet he wanted to reform the world of urbanism he had no clue about it so one of the major factors about a good traditional town planning is that you have the economy of the society which lives there large and small and vicious and modest creating a basic urban fabric which then houses institutions which are their common expression and their common good which are their collective representation and it's the marriage of these two which makes the real city by zoning those out onto the curves back and those out into mama and those aina you have no city you have a notional city a virtual city but you are basically a congestion the geographic congestion and how these traditional architect Ruiz is articulate is basically vernacular which comes from using local material that is what's irrelevant about human scale construction locally that you use local materials which then makes the difference the stone of answer and the stone of the verge are very different which give very different character to luxemburgo to or to Strasburg and out of this vernacular grows classical architecture by making an artistic emphasis of elements of construction it's not the language about my mother and your grandfather and the problems I have with women or with men or with I didn't work it's about a language of construction which refers only all these elements are to do with construction and how to to realize them is that because public buildings is the locus of classical architecture not private it's not for making suburban house little classical portraits because these buildings are collective and are much bigger and have to be read legibly and clearly from a distance that they are enormously big if you compare them to the human scale of the vernacular of the houses of the workshops and so on so it is that difference which creates the city and this is when you look at tourist maps this is a project I didn't take but when you look at tourist maps you see generally the public realm the public buildings expressed in three dimensions and the others in two dimensions because this interests the family and some friends and this interests everyone and not just of this quarter but of felton and it is that which creates a city and that's why I'm so against skyscrapers utilitarian skyscrapers the other distinction of class frnd vernacular you find in the laying out of towns that you have we call that a medieval town but has nothing to do with Middle Ages it has to do is responding intelligently to geography and topography to dig out and fill in as little as possible this is usually the way the Romans plant in the the plain and then but the really interesting towns are the ones which mixes and that is what Luxembourg was about was a mixture of fiscal and vernacular geometry and the world the modern world was dictated more or less by engineering and by land surveillance and land surveying used to no use strings and optical instruments and therefore having rectangular or square shape is much more easier to quantify than to have an amorphous shape that is why with modernism and modern bookkeeping and so on the right angle ROM there's no other reason now once you have you completely forget this kind of geometry it's very difficult to come back and but now we can because of it's so easy with and you know ii haven't in a mostly shaped block or a square shaped clock with the computer you have the surface in a second so now if you build a traditional town with the mixture of uses the mixture of classes and mixture of institutions private public economic commercial because that is what is the urban life is about is mix italy and proximity it creates such a magnet of value that it attracts also the parasites and the Predators who are going to buy up the best land and just begin to destroy your beautiful farming that's what happened in oxberg know in the last twenty years it happened worldwide and say luxembourg is no exception and the idiot mayor of Paris is trying to get these fellows now down in central Paris because this is completely absurd futureless a prospect for your humanity imagine you feel every single site with skyscrapers there's no more interest only the rich who live up on the last floor have view all the other support gets more and more dingy the more you go down and that has no future that's why I limit my towns if I can to three floors sometimes for now and I would make a universal law there must be no town with buildings higher than three floors then people say oh but you are you want control of it no it's a common sense because the town must be walkable horizontally and vertically that has three floors that will that has no flaws it's amazing for building America that has one floor its most important big building in in England and that has nothing at all and it is the most important building in the universe so this idea that you create importance by having stacking up utilitarian floors is nonsense the traditional city is a horizontal spread with vertical emergencies but which are mostly is for a symbolic they are not you till turn there may be the creative view and so on so it's the zoning which is the first culprit of the destruction of our cities and it's the separation of public and private of long creating lots of long distances between residence and work and concert halls and so on and it is the city by definition is a mixture of things so out with suburbia I think this politically irresponsible to go on and on and on and building trams destroying cities just to be the stupid tram is most stupid thing to do to Luxembourg is to build that stupid I heard the conference of the chief plan of Bordeaux in this was in Mexico she talked for one hour don't build tram it's too expensive just have small buses no because it is just have you seen the destruction which has been creating this proton so in suburbia is immoral is a sin against reason now you find that human cities have been built around around the globe and throughout the ages built on this 10-minute limit whether it's burn or Luxembourg pre na or Florence Bern Munich egg mob and even Hidayah an African town because they have the same measure of legs as we do the argument after all whatever you think and it is this organization which was otto Varna Saarinen Camilla Sita and caliber biggest out there dodging stop the form of the German city which we translated for the shield our sector madam affirmed level Almonte they are the most important documents everybody can forget everything else because they contain all the intelligence you need to build a proper town that intelligence was destroyed by the suburban by the weight which is called caused by this enormous unlimited the expansion of traffic and necessary car car trips and circulation and I got this from Florian's site you know this map I don't know whether it's an official but it has happened exactly what should have been not had happened to to Luxembourg it's this spreading out of suburbia instead of this diagram which should be considered as something not to do which is now become the rule and that the large city is the family a family of small towns who have all the specific facility their own character their use and population but that is what they are and this should really be out now yet that is what dominates now the the scene in Luxembourg and this is absolutely no questioning of it and what does it to can you do you know anyone who likes this part from the architects who are proud of it but this is what it was and this is what I propose because the critique of tiburce project the critiques in the papers were Universal but they were so badly articulated that every time somebody said you can't do this engineer would prove of course we cannot in even more than 60 meters but so I tried to do I did the project which was burden analysis and the proposal a critique and the project so that people could articulate intelligently what they don't like about what's going on and so it was - to have two new quarters which would be replicating the size and character of the old town and even have a pedestrian walk over to the which has now been messed up by the great master I am pay I didn't think his master he's just a jerk bad architecture he did some decent revision buildings in the seventies but that was about it after they tried up so I did this to alarm the population we had big press conferences and there was a lot of talk about it but then even at some point the director Kersh perky invited us with a question to see whether we could do something about and of course I would have loved to do something but didn't go that way they asked Bofill instead and fulfill his master of the large mechanical scale has no clue but how to do real Tansen so instead of having this scrapped the zoning plan of our go and consider building a model town which could become the capital of Europe so that Europe can shine the European institutions can then show the model of what Europe wants to be what it was and what it can be in the future maybe with more social justice but certainly not to do the kind of mechanical monsters which were and the clue is the Cartier now qartheen in French means a quarter in in English but you say also I can see the top the quarter of a cake is actually not the quarter is just a sledge of the cake which contains all the qualities of the cake and that is what the car key is about that each quarter has all the qualities of a town now this is a comparison of scale this car today all cuts back in Berlin brief in France Tim garden in Africa and then cosy a Carmack's of space axes and cozy sandy now you see that space axis was still now in the scale in human scale they were terrible terrible people but they would have built still an interesting town because the that was a scale of things which was meant to be an imperial scale but not everything was Imperial in that project so when we look at the what this car Goomba is talking about our community is that the city is a family of uses of large medium size and small lots which allows the right-wing parties of society to live as neighbors along beautifully shaped and proportioned streets later in a dis kind of model became abandoned 19th century of accumulation of capital enormous wealth public or private buy up enormous amounts of land and built bigger and bigger buildings finally no you have this kind of size of a city but you have one architect design the whole damn thing with one detail said the it is really to look at towns what is the mature part of town as the old city of Luxembourg walls what is a good part of town like the Avenue de la liberté and then gets the poor poor around he because there were industries intermixed it uses which were not which were left from before and then they are completely fragmented part of Townsend tan out of town and now out in satsang or wherever they are and then the European so-called European quarter body which is just confetti of isolated buildings where five thousand people work at the time 78 and then try to drive home and of course everything is stuck so the idea of building a quota including residence and work is the model so that and that is what what we call the city within the city that each of these quarters is a proper City now the future would be not to expand more of this kind of thing but how to revise this or that or that and for that you need different techniques now this would be the there was very little to do instead of demolishing the most beautiful buildings in town around the vulva yl1 started to in Taba inner destroying beautiful buildings in tea and replacing there were a lot of empty sites where one could have completed or which one should have completed or here the which we did later with my brother or creating avenues and creating new opportunities like in 19th century all that was possible maturing areas which are not mature yet and then building a town now all these buildings are kept and it becomes a real town where the people who work they can also lived it and that becomes and the the larger town cities within the city and the view from the valley and so on that was European Parliament that was the the famous building which is here revised with more a durable facade and a nicer top that was the Parliament building on the square would be nice quaint front beautiful park in the backward and linked by arcades and the huge larger over the park overlooking the dry Ashland here I kept mr. consensus masterpiece because I tried to find out what else he Adam and it's strongly influenced by Eero Saarinen a building for bridge building for da da ba da bomb the cultural complex beautiful cotton carpentry and it would be spectacular building if it faced a small square this would be the both the stock exchange this would be library for a book yes a library and this major Avenue which would here have this the university late homage to the mundaneum of lucca busy with student housing in this covered building day and night and a stadium in town we didn't need a bus to to go to dug into the rocks below the outer third I got some work with the bell now niceand and his boss they came to electrode mine and I thought these are the my enemies they said no we completely agree with you and Rishi and myself we we became consultants of the point show say for a while doing projects like that and nothing came of it then later governs the minister public works give to robbing myself the justice seated largest is hope proposed my brother proposed the palace and I propose a small city and gurbles decided this was what they wanted to do town architect forgot his name but he was completely upset and state architects they hated it they was a war seven years I gave up just because was so unpleasant to talk to these people and then the webs kept on number of 13 years to get it completed but it was too because if you have a large building if you have a very large organization it doesn't need to be one building because the the organizations within this very large institution have nothing to do many have nothing to do with each other therefore you can have the code superior who code R&D small who social services the tribunal de jeunesse all different buildings and they can function beautifully and then we are promised with the Pompey who we thought that six meters was not enough they change their own rules and I said I am God heavens I have other things to do they gave up this is where we grew up opened myself and Mariana and my sisters and we loved it this was the old letter e and we overlooked the beautiful town just where now the just his palace happened when we did this project was sort of published in the Luxembourg papers and we were slaughtered like we're committing a crime against culture again against the site-geist this happened at the same time nobody not a single journalist protested against this they protest against our justice policy now when we got it through then there was kind of protest of the oddness architect yeah but this is such a big organization we should really give it to many architects okay because that's what always did in his projects he may be too many architects which I'd do as well but so I responded this wasn't in a paper called fall and accusation and we were really fed by the state architects so I did them destroying at the same scale Citadella music of monsieur papa mr. frank gehry mr. Denis less than forgettable at once but can't read the Monet on uncurse Park has ever one claimed that this is too big for one architect no of course not then he died and we redesigned ourselves but there was such an aggression that was completely white white such an aggression because we live in democracy and there are many different opinions about everything why not what architect and that is why I wrote the book called choice of faith architecture choice of faith because we live in democracy you have to have a choice otherwise this is not democracy the Prince of Wales was my only find in England for I lived at 25 years and when I got this job Sterling said you shouldn't resign they destroy Charlie long here is Nydia well I have been working for him for 25 years I had never seen any sign of idiocy on the country I was never royalist I found that actually there is a role for a person like him who stands above things and can he makes a lot of money with this but he doesn't compromise because he's we are building in town and of palm brain this was built like 15 years ago this was completed is now completing but we have started the third day of four quarters that was the first quarter around two are still very vernacular no classes may apart from a few portraits which ternary they got wrong even though wood drawings were impeccable but then they don't know they're literally the builders were illiterate and we were then produced with one of the architects ten trees we produced a book how to get your house right no white columns are put the way they are and and why overhangs shouldn't be of a certain size now so that's first quarter second quarter third code is already largely being and you are now hardly finalizing the force and this is each of this is smaller than the center of old Luxembourg it's about 30 actors 20 it is about seven actors and about 1525 factors of 30 I forget so it's really the model of the city within the city the quarters the family of quarters produces the polycentric city that large cities should be polycentric as Paris was at a private lecture for Margaret Thatcher just her secretary and myself for two hours talking about this and she said if I only had known it was at the end of her reign I would have done something about it because Paris is the model of the of the capital city now how to organize a capital city how to organize large it's the quarters in Darwinism on this very intelligent organization which no not taught in schools now so there is a hierarchy of three one two three four quarters which is linked by a high street which unifies the whole town and these high streets meet under what is the Civic Center where all the avenues are converge so there is a local scale but this is also the Metropolitan scale and there is a regional scale and all this is design ten minute limit that the main squares are ten minutes not more than ten never more than ten minutes from the the whole town the the main square of the whole town and each one you can cross in less than ten minutes and so you can and this is the traffic hierarchy through traffic outside and then slow traffic mixed traffic with presents and at work inside this distribution of employment we have as many places of employment in town as we have housing units and that gives a very complex image of sizes and scales large buildings are on the air jewelry's of the court isn't getting smaller and smaller except on the main square which is on these major avenues so that was the first case so this very vernacular feel about it even the the major building the village hall is here and enlarged like an enlarged the vernacular building like stables and so on because to keep the main language this classical language for the main square so there's a hierarchy geographic hierarchy a use hierarchy traffic hierarchy and so on and particularly we refuse to have large national house builders but we use only small local buildings with up to 15 employees who can look much more we know the market much better the local market and they have all been extremely successful and we have now even very good architects we used to have terrible architects and you know try to reform hambre but now we have extraordinary architects who sometimes we trained and because talent is born every day when you are trained the right way you are not taught you must not do this you have fantastic talent in classism now but they are not very well known but this happens all around the world and the pond breeze is very beautiful place that's my only object of design so far the rest are just correct and this one - that's the that's you know instead of having our Richard Serra announcing the good news we have that's the edge of town there's a walk how long just like on the around the city I worked with column column Mallahan with the was the pattern of this hairstyle and he is is very there isn't a story about this that virtually the only architect in Luxembourg who does very energetically and with great talent tradition like traditional Luxembourg architecture is Irish no it's funny it's not the peasants who do you go to the brick brick or Mac or whatever it's called this is a town I designed together with Andres Duany 20 years ago in near kanaka called holy book we lost control I I ought I got some architects involved including in his thanks to column that this actually was started because the local government wanted to the mayor wanted it but the local government were very much against it and Colin threatened them with the lawsuit and then we want the the model buildings were were done and from then on we lost control and it has become for something going completely by its own it's really quite good this project that did in in Alessandra and Italy that was the last one and I was commissioned by the mayor of room to do a very large project for outside Rome how to reform terrible suburb and from then on that was in 2011 I used to fly every week every two weeks maximum every three weeks at least once to Italy ever since I did that project was not one image was published in Italy in a public meeting the folks have said Leon sie macht Oh loan you are dead I said I'm not here and come somewhere and he turned around turbulent there was also runs a piano is a trend so Leon romantic Nemo come a monumental story go this was in front of 3,000 people where I was actually chosen to do this project but it was an order to the press just to kill it and they have been that in Italy since then I used to have lots of projects there but still in there with a bit of an international reputation you get work out as well and now we do a bit of Italy and Spain in Guatemala and hugely successful this is called kaya lab is the center of Guatemala City and these are the properties we are working on these this is nearly complete we are starting this one and this is a hill town hundred meters above this which is now is going to start in three or four years its most successful development in in Guatemala and that's the client young boy and it was all this was started building we planned it for seven years built now in since 2011 and that is the point because they are still going to church they're active Christians and I said because I grew up as active Catholic but then lost having gone to many times to confession but I threw there being Christians I said you must built the Christian City because the Christian City is actually the University is the basis for democracy for public space allowing different classes and different incomes to meddle and befriend and that is what urbanism is about is really building common space and those are just the sacristy and the chapel behind the dome is now rising 60 metres high of the church they still go to church and that's the next I committed terrible sin I allowed one skyscraper but I just correct it I don't do it because they make now so much money of course if you make so much money you want to make more money because rich people always feel terribly poor the problem is once you build skyscrapers they are going to be bought by the real criminals and then you are out you lose control and you get New York this is town near san miguel de allende which is again different cities within the city and has negra garter belt with small farms to feed the town and that was engineered that idea was engineered by almost one who wrote a small book which is fantastic called Eureka agricultural urbanism agrarian openness were published by the prints found Asian worth reading his project didn't didn't take off not to conclude you know this what I'm doing happens a lot around the world is lot of building looked in Francis rosin rosin south Merck done often by very great architects and but it never gets publicity doesn't get any exposure in the media have you ever seen talk about welderup other than derogatory in the Parramatta never one says we tried everything with the city it's impossible you know it's a problem which is not as though they are now two major examples in France where the problem of the city is solved which is welderup and placebo Besson and the authors of these are all in this list of this is called the Driehaus price you never heard of the dress buys the biggest architecture present the world hundred thousand powers I was the first recipient thank you and since then you know they've been the last one was more askew law with whom I I did lot of work in the past all these people do a lot of work the largest college built in is not in this painting back Halloween builder at Yale built in New Haven is by for several thousand students by Robert stern and Robert Stein employs three hundred people and his office designs mostly classical buildings but also some modernist buildings because that is what a modern actual modern firm does it responds to the market what the market requires but does that very well and if we don't do that well is the Kitsch industry takes over and dominates so I propose with these architects to found to make a project for a new capital of Europe which i think is necessary my last initiative and it will be located in fasten hi fastened he was the first atomic power station in France which has to come down just cannot survive it is next to an island between the Rhine and the Rhine canal between France and Germany the main stakes stakeholders of Europe is next to a defunct NATO base it's about the size of which would allow a capital city of about 50,000 people in human scale fantastic architecture so attractive that people will begin to love Europe you police means beautiful city and this will be paid for by selling all the disgusting buildings in Brussels the disgusting European buildings in Luxembourg and they discussed in European physics in Strasbourg making a huge fund to create the loan to build this new capital of Europe and that's it so it could look like that they're really attractive and people will don't need an explanation to like it thank you very much you you
