Thank you all very much for
being here this afternoon. I know it's really short notice,
and lots of you have studio, but this is a real treat
and a great opportunity. So we're also going to try
and limit this presentation and discussion to about an
hour, so that we can let you all get back to the studios
and other things just soon after 3:00. It's great that Rem is here. A lot of us saw Rem about
10 days ago via Skype, because he made the presentation
for his [? options ?] studio which is going to be happening
in Rotterdam during the spring semester. We already have a group of
students who've been selected, and they'll be meeting
with Rem and [? stefan ?] later on this
afternoon to discuss some of the issues
related to the studio. I think you know that Rem
has been really thinking very carefully about the
topic of the countryside for some time. You also know that we did have
an event here a few weeks ago on this topic. It's an issue that relates to
a number of studios, including the current one
that [? toyito ?] is running on the island
of Omishima in Japan. So there's really an
important set of topics. Rem has been very much
focused on the way in which the countryside
is now offering new kinds of opportunities
and new kinds of potential, especially, for example, in the
light of the incredible influx of refugees-- some
800,000-- coming into places like Germany. And that really completely
radically transforms the nature of the
disused villages and abandoned places which could
be an important part of what is actually happening, both
socially, economically, but also in terms of the
transformation of these places. There are lots of other
issues that are important. But I won't take any more time. So please welcome Rem Koolhaas. [applause] Hi. This is not really a lecture. I'm just going to present a
number or themes that I've been looking at, and
a number of themes that I hope to look at with
some of you in the coming year. And it's going to
really work in progress, because at this point, there
are many different directions, many possible outcomes. We will probably have both
a book and, at some point, an exhibition. But this is kind
of really midway. And to some extent, that is
why it is also exciting for me to present it. There's a cliche,
and that cliche is that we have reached the
point that more than half of mankind is living
in cities, and the rest is stuck in the countryside. I think that all of the recent
thinking in the last 100 years has been mostly about a city. I have participated
in that, and now there is, and has been, a number
of books [inaudible] and other media events that are
going to basically celebrate this switch where the
urban condition is the dominant condition. These are some entities. And at some point,
there was almost urban [? triumphalism, ?]
and that made me keen to look at what
happened to the countryside. What happened to
all the territories that the people who are now
living-- new people living in the city-- left behind. There's been precious little
thinking about the countryside, or arguing about
the countryside. But weirdly enough,
I think if you look at the current
modern unconscious, the countryside has
a large presence. This is a random newsstand
in the Netherlands. And if you look at the
magazines dedicated in some way to the countryside, it's
about more than half. So I would say that, maybe, the
countryside represent currently our repressed. This is the territory
of the city to-- sorry. This is 2% of the
territory-- sorry. Disbelieve everything
you read here. [laughter] Anyway-- 2% of the territory
and more than half of mankind. And then this is everything
which is not city and which, currently, I would argue--
particularly in architecture and planning-- leads largely
unchartered on one hand, but also [? in ?]
[? theorized ?] and speculation-free territory. Although, of course, as
[? mohsin ?] reminds you and me that many people
are now switching to thinking about
the countryside. There are a number of
subjects that I will not raise, for instance, the
effect of global warming on the countryside. That's a project that
I cannot show you now, but which we have done
in the recent past, which was an effort to
understand what the impact of Russia would be
on climate change, and how the currently very
fertile areas of Russia that produce a lot of
food will dry out, but where other territories that
are currently infertile will develop. So in other words,
there are many zooms that are possible
in this territory, and I want mostly focus
on two zooms tonight. Basically, my interest
in the countryside was produced by the fact
that my partner actually had a house in
Switzerland, and that enabled me to very often--
a couple of months a year-- basically walk in the
countryside, which was an entirely new
experience for me. And at some point, by simply
being alert to the village and to the events in a village
that was where her house was, I began to notice
significant changes, not only in their
expected changes-- such as the countryside
is emptying, farms are turned into houses,
the original population is disappearing to the city--
but more radical changes. And, for instance,
this was the village when I first came in there
probably in the mid '80s. And this is the village now. So there is a curious
situation that the countryside depopulating. But at the same time, the
physical scale of innovation is increasing. And if you look around, then you
see that also an authenticity like this one, which
used to be, of course, the absolute essence
of the country is being replaced by
a particular style of renovation-- very discreet
and minimalistic, where simply the enormous amount of
cushions kind of indicate, perhaps, the
overhidden agony that accompanies gentrification. [laughter] But when I, for instance,
started to-- slightly alerted to these changes, began to
document on a daily basis what is going on, I asked this
guy how long his family had, for instance, been
in the neighborhood. And he said, well, I
arrived here in the '90s. [inaudible] this affected
nuclear scientist from Frankfurt, and I
didn't like my job anymore. And, also, if you look at
who is actually husbanding the countryside,
working on it, it turned out that fewer and
fewer people were Swiss. And that there's an enormous
and not very well documented migration to this countryside. When I looked in
Italy, for instance-- and this was part of the
[? bienala ?] effort-- we discovered that
certain villages in Italy, and certain
typical Italian produce, like Parmesan
cheese was actually being produced, increasingly,
by Indian farmers that are responsible for both the
cows in large parts of Italy, but also the cheese. So if you want to
really know what I wanted to try
to understand, is how the countryside
could change in 100 years from this condition. And if you look
at this condition, you see that, in spite of the
fact that it's countryside, in spite of the
fact that it's poor, you still see a highly
organized, almost ritualistic, very
codified life, which is now in these
[inaudible] years replaced by a population which is
relentlessly informal, which is definitely not local,
and which is, in every sense, the urban population
influx, which is, perhaps, the
characteristic of our times. So I really wanted to understand
what happened in this interval. Now, if you look
at the countryside, you see the countryside-- the
beauty of the countryside is that it cannot shrink. And so, therefore, whatever
happens it will be there, and the only thing
that can change are the activities
on the countryside, or the densities
in the countryside. This is a
documentation where you can see that
agriculture is occupying fewer and fewer people in the
northern part of the world. It's still strong in Africa,
of course, in India, in China, and in South America. This is the Netherlands,
where in 150 years, the rural population went
from one quarter to almost 1%. So the theory underlying
the entire study is that ostensibly, the
city is changing a lot, but that, in fact,
the countryside is changing a lot more and has
to adapt much more radically. And that it is
currently the territory of genetic experiment,
industrial nostalgia, seasonal immigration,
territorial buying sprees, massive subsidies,
incidental-- anyway, whatever. So I will, later,
also suggest what I think the effect
of all of this will be on architecture, and
by also presenting it, perhaps, as a kind of early warning
as what could happen in architecture, in my view. So, let's first
look at agriculture. The tractor is a kind of
quasi-familiar entity. It's still being
produced, but produced of increasing not only strength,
but increasing sophistication, increasingly digitized,
increasingly digital apparatus, and, you could almost say,
increasingly an office. Because this is the way in which
kind of current agriculture is being kind of
reproduced-- each parcel digitized in kind
of small fragments in each little pixel
program of how to treat it which is partly based
on [inaudible] yield-- in other words, highly
technological kind of work. So we still think naively
of the countryside as kind of green territory,
but, actually, that green territory
and the real countryside is actually happening on
the laptop, on the screen, and highly programmed as much
as it clearly never was before. And you could even
say, more digitized than large parts of our
current urban culture because it is simply easier
to digitize in its entirety. So farming has become this. It can also be
done over the phone and increasingly uses also
technologies such as drones and other entities. It's becoming kind of
more, partly because it's so susceptible of
becoming kind of part of the internet of
things, it is actually becoming part of
internet of things. Silicon Valley [? is ?]
going to invest in startups. These are new words-- precision
architecture, inspection firms,, surveillance. All these elements that
we tend to associate with the kind of
urban civilization are more rampant and
maybe higher developed in the countryside. There's also
artificial countryside. We see a lot of factories,
and former factories, and a lot of corporations
that used to be in electronics actually use some of
their kind of plant to turn into agriculture,
highly artificial agriculture, such as, in this case,
agriculture without any ground. So the notion that the
ground is necessary is also being going to
increasingly surpassed. You know all of this. And everyone knows it. But probably not the
kind of scale of it. Here, the same thing
for keeping animals, highly automated in every
condition, even the cleaning. And it's really
phenomenal, of course, that machines can be
devised that deal with this. And then come in every
kind of farm, no longer a farm, one of these kind
of emblematic offices where some people
behind a kind of laptop runs, manages, and
creates, therefore, insanely efficient agriculture. The pattern of territories is
really very radically changing. This is part of Khartoum. These are farms in Bolivia where
central village-like condition is the middle, or the center,
of radial developments that are then kind of separated
by kind of sections of tree. So what you see is that
the countryside, which used to be, of
course, the territory where nature had a
certain presence, is becoming
increasingly designed and you could even say
increasingly geometrical. The same is true in America,
as you know, or if you fly. And if these are
agriculture, then the kind of implementation of
the scale for animals is increasing astronomically
to producing landscapes such as this one. So nature, you could
say nature is over. It's a kind of theory that
intellectuals have supported and are introducing. And it, in a way,
relieves us, perhaps, for from the need for nostalgia. And you could maybe argue
that it therefore liberates us to engage this as a project. And as a kind of
exciting project, or is a source even, perhaps,
of a renewal of the culture. So what has become
really staggering to me is that the
more I looked at it, the more the countryside
is considered, or almost treated, as a kind of enormous
canvas on which almost any form of organized activity,
which would be extremely hard to make compatible with
urban life, and with the city, is now spreading over
the countryside simply both positive and negatives,
such as nuclear reaction, nuclear waste. If you see how complex some
of the nuclear waste stations are, also inscribed
on this campus, and that their complexity
is not only limited to two dimensional
organization of the ground but actually deeply three
dimensional configurations that go really deep,
about 2,000 feet deep, it's kind of really incredible
how complex and artificial all of this is becoming. And then if you look
at server farms, so we've now talked
about the natural things. But then the
unnatural things that are also forced into the
countryside, you could say, or choosing to be
in the countryside, is phenomenal, such as this. Now I want to do a
kind of parenthesis because what I can
see happening is that perhaps the
only way in which to look at this phenomenon
of high organization in the countryside is to look at
the kind of history of Landart. And that is maybe a weird
leap of my imagination. But if I look at
the kind of plants, there's a strong resonance
with, for instance, the Spiral Jetty of
Smithson in the 70s, or the Lightning Field
of [? volta de ?] Maria. Of course, you don't
see any traces, but it also had a
kind of similar desire for establishing order
in the seemingly natural. [? james ?] [? turrell ?], and
maybe most architecturally, that Michael
[? heizer ?], in Nevada, who has been kind of really
trying to find analogues of urban conditions that
have really phenomenal scale. And both in terms of scale and
even in terms of aesthetics, it's striking to me how similar
these are to what are currently emerging realities. I was recently on the border
of California and Nevada. As you know, in
California, you pay taxes. And in Nevada, you don't. So that many of the
infrastructural needs for Silicon Valley are,
apart from office space and human interaction,
are now organized in this neighborhood as a
kind of invisible complement. And I would say that there is
a new aesthetic emerging there that I'd like to introduce to
you as perhaps significant. This is the kind of
situation in '94. This is the situation in
2015, so 20 years later. And what you see is
the proliferation of rectangles that have
a tendency to become kind of increasingly large. And what I would say is perhaps
the most important quality of this urbanization is that
it is becoming an urbanization almost without people. And I think that
that has never before been kind of possible
to really think about that urbanisation
actually seemed to be the essence of
the human endeavor but that what we're witnessing
here is perhaps more robotic or a more machine-like
existence that doesn't need us, but that we need very intensely,
and that we depend on, even though it doesn't depend on us. So these are warehouses
but also server farms. The scale is almost
unimaginable. This is 1,500 feet. And I would here say,
if this is the history of land art in
terms of scale, this is the history of
these kinds of boxes, with the currently largest
building ever attempted by man being prepared. And as I hinted,
I think there is an implication for architecture
of these and perhaps [? van geary's ?] Facebook is
the first one, to his credit, to explore that condition. And I want to show
you, for instance, this is colossal factory, of
course, covered in solar panels and surrounded by wind farms. But again, an
incredibly intense piece of architecture but
without almost any need for inhabitation. I wanted to going to show you
[? supernet ?] constructions in Nevada. And sorry for the speed. And obviously, this is
not a very intellectual, well-argued kind
of presentation. And the transformation
of architecture that this kind of
building announces is what I would like to
explore in the Harvard studio that we will organize now--
is this kind of building. What is this kind of building? What are its properties? How does it work? And how do we relate to it? This is the interior. And when I say this, is
that this is an architecture that nobody is prepared for. I think that none
of us have thought that the a building could be
this radical, perhaps, first, this extremely
abstract, this codified, this [? uninflected ?] by human
need, this distant from us, and, nevertheless,
kind of produced by us, and needed for us. So what I find very
interesting-- life in this building,
do you call it life, or do you call it
process, or do you call it-- and so what are we,
as a profession, kind of doing with this kind of environment? So here you see kind of
some other images, all highly regimented and
organized with kind of very few and occasional
kind of signs of human scale, such as this one. Obviously, not intended to
facilitate communication and with a kind of occasional
architectural articulation of the main ingredients. And here, you see the
grimness, weird kind of combination of grimness
and a kind of '60s frivolities in the color. I really am deeply ignorant
of this kind of thing. And I hope that by the
end of our activity, we will understand why
this column is red, and the floor is
red, and not green because, presumably,
there is a reason. So here, some kind
of human work in it. And therefore, inside the
kind of [inaudible] casual. That is the kind of
human counterpart of those environments. So what I think
this is announces, and you can see not only
in America, not only here, but also
Singapore, for instance, in the industrial
part of Singapore, the emergence of an urbanism
which is kind of basically really based on
these containers that presume some kind of
urban public space because it's not all building. But there is space
between the buildings. And that somehow has
to be either maintained or is there for
the convenience, I guess, of barely
extant population. So how do you conceive
that kind of space? How do you conceive
buildings that are extremely demanding and
kind of highly technological but barely inhabited and
still based on human control to some extent? And still needing some
percentage of human presence? I think that if you would
kind of, for instance, look at a portion
of the [inaudible] in this kind of environment. It's kind of probably
less than 1/100 of a percent of
the total surface that would then be
kind of dedicated to human happiness, or human
intercourse, or human comfort. And for me, I find it
kind of really important but also exciting
to begin to explore what kind of new conditions and
what kind of new possibilities that offers for us-- not only
in kind of choosing colors but also in
conceptualizing the new because I think that one
of the kind of problems of the 20th century
has been a desire to shape the new that exceeded
the need to shape the new. And therefore the new became a
kind rather symbolic enterprise than a kind of real
enterprise, in many cases. But I think we're now
confronted, genuinely, with an entirely new situation. And therefore, the
need to invent or think about a new repertoire. So my underlying
thesis is that we're facing a kind of situation
where, to be happy, and to be human, we are
kind of whimsical in cities and increasingly
unconcerned with need and increasingly preoccupied
with fun, or pleasure, or interaction. And that we can only do
that at the expense of, or as a kind of
counterweight, to an enormous hyper-Cartesian
organization of the rest of the world. And so I think we are clearly
all kind of stuck here. But I have an intuition
that it might be actually deeply exciting and probably
also deeply worrying and kind of highly agonizing
to begin to think about this. This is a kind of typical
graph that we see. OK, the rural population
is decreasing, and the urban population
is increasing. But I predict that,
actually, this red territory, will offer much more kind
of surprising conditions than this blatant-- one
increases, the other decreases. Because in order to maintain
this declining countryside, I think some of this
population will share, perhaps, both urban and rural presence. And if you look, for instance,
at the world population, you see that kind of basically
50% is urban, is employees. Very few are left as farmers. But there is this
whole wide category that is currently quite hard
to define, or hard to know. And that's where I
think that architecture has to connect itself seriously
with anthropology and sociology to begin to understand what
is happening here in its own. Or this [? shot ?]. So this ambiguity of
population I think you can already begin to see it. This house of the agonized
hedonist in Switzerland, and this apartment
in this view of Dubai probably have
something in common that they look both
abandoned, or at least, at large part of the year, they
are abandoned, that are only occasionally inhabited. And I think that one of the
effects of this transformation of the countryside is that
the state of semi-abandonment will begin to categorize
much of the countryside, as it already does, but also
much of the city because there is a kind of shuttling. And if you look at
New York, you can see a very similar
phenomenon already happening. Kind of buildings that
are incredibly intense, but the largest part
of the year, empty. I actually could stop here. I will only kind of
show-- no, I stop here. Didn't you want to say
something about the immigrants and migration? Do you have
something about that? The only thing is-- Or I can ask you about that. I show it in a minute. Or maybe here. It works better without words. OK, so one of the things we
will do in the next term. So in the next term,
I would like, roughly speaking, to do two things. This new artificiality of
building, and the new scale, and on the other hand, with
my partner in this enterprise, Nicholas [? mack, ?]
a German writer, we want to look at the effect
of the new immigration in Europe that is enormous and, of course,
that causes many problems. The numbers are breathtaking. Here you see also how,
in terms of cycles, the kind of intensity
of this has barely been seen in the kind
of post-war period. We are really talking
a million people. The whole of Europe
is trying to, in a kind of fairly chaotic,
but also understandably chaotic, way, respond to it. But I think this could be one of
the more exciting things is how such a flow of immigrants
could intersect with fundamental kind of
political and economic issues in a country like
Germany, which, apparently, for most
of the immigrants the preferred destination. Here you see how, in
the whole of Germany, the density of immigrants
is orchestrated. And here, you see how, in
the former East Germany, vacancy, and emptiness, and
depopulation are really rife and how a very important
political and economic issue for Germany is how, in a single
organism, or a single state, deal with this extreme imbalance
of affluence and density on one side and emptiness
on the other side. So there is a kind of
very intense discussion whether those new
immigrants should actually be-- I can only use the
word used-- or should begin to inhabit or conceptualized
as the future inhabitants of almost a abandoned
rural countryside in the heart of Europe as here. So this is now a very
crucial discussion that is happening
around Angela Merkel. And this is also
something that we want to document and actually
see with our own eyes and kind of witness. Sorry for the journal, but
this is some of the arguments. [speaking german] what
speaks for it and what speaks against it. I don't know why one typeface
is bigger than the other. But anyway, a lot
of things for it, and a lot of things-- and here
you see how this kind of issue, and therefore the issue
of the countryside, is, of course, also a
highly political issue, which incidents related
to refugee crisis predominantly in
the eastern part. Anyway, so this
is the dual things I would like to
present today-- one, how the countryside actually
is constantly subjected to new populations and
therefore new cultures, and how, on the other side,
the countryside is becoming the territory
of unprecedented scale that will need new kinds
of architecture imagination to think how that
could be accommodated. Thanks. [applause] So we have about
20 minutes left. And we'd really like to open
this up as quickly as possible. Maybe while you're thinking, I
can just put a couple of ideas on the table, get Rem
to react to those. And then please raise
your hand and there are mics that can come
to you very quickly. I think these are very
interesting thoughts. And I think a lot of
them haven't really been quite resolved because
they've been up in the air. Many, many of the
thoughts for a long time. I think when we had
some of our own sort of internal
conversations, and I was thinking about books like
Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, which is
a book from the 1970s that we discussed, it's very
clear that, even at that time, there is this idea of, on the
one hand, a kind of nostalgia, sort of romanticism, of the
countryside, which you depicted very well with your advertising
for the [inaudible] backpack and the Switzerland scene. I mean, on one level, the
countryside is a refuge. And at the same time, you
are now presenting really this idea of the
hyper artificiality and the rationalization,
or the rationality, of the countryside. I think those two conditions
seem to exist simultaneously. That even when you
see the big landscape, there's the space between those
interventions that presumably is still a kind of
landscape of refuge because it takes time
to get into that. So I'm just wondering,
on one level, how you're beginning to think
about the reconciliation of this idea of the countryside
as a kind of refuge, something that everybody
loves to maybe participate in, and then the kind of
association that you are now observing with the highly
objective-- tagged on to that, there's a little bit of we
also have the experiments of [inaudible] and
[? super ?] Studio, and Andrea [? branzi ?], with
the kind of agricultural turned into a certain set of
artistic practices. So I'm wondering how
you see that evolving in a way in its sort
of reincarnation as you start seeing the
red of the interior, the incredible kind
of intensity of some of these sorts of spaces. Perhaps we can talk
about the immigration if nobody else asks a question. But how do you how
do you see these two sides of the countryside? Well, I think that the
nostalgic kind of situation, although we feel its pull, and
it's constantly irresistible, I think it's becoming harder
and harder to sustain. And in a sense
that, for instance, if you look at, in
Europe, or in America, how the whole kind of
culture of wellness is subverting kind of
larger and larger parts of the countryside,
how, for instance, preservation and particularly
the new form of UNESCO preservations, which
is not preservation of physical objects,
but preservation of cultural practices,
such as a particular kind of bread in France, or
a particular kind of flute playing in
China, how that is also creating this kind of pressure
of artificiality maintenance and bringing with it
tourism, and, therefore, bringing with it
accommodation and, basically, all the things that really
kill with authenticity. So I think our
only-- and that is why I try to introduce the whole
notion of land art, perhaps. And I think your
references to [inaudible] or Andrea [? branzi ?] are
also highly relevant there. Because they were able
to at least articulate an un-nostalgic presence
in the countryside and to articulate and look for
or maybe kind of a new kind of sublime, simply
a sublime of scale, or a sublime of contrast,
or-- but what appeals to me is of course the non-nostalgic
dimension of these entities. You can find them abhorrent. But I think that,
at the same time, they offer the hope of
a abandoning nostalgia in the kind of relationship
with the countryside. So here I think is
this is the dilemma. Because I don't want you to give
away anything from the studio. But in a way, I think
there's a correlation between part one and part two. Because when we
then start looking at the numbers of 800,000
people, for example, entering, the massive scale
of this enterprise also now requires a kind of
piece of highly orchestrated rationalization. So now we also have
to face this idea of, how do you actually
accommodate 800,000 people in the countryside? And the way of doing
that that doesn't turn it into a sort of absolute
hell, in some way, is also a really scary prospect. So the sublime of the rational
versus the accommodation of simply that kind of
scale of people, I think, is an incredible challenge. But it also seems
like one really needs to come up with strategies
that have the capacity to kind of respond to just the
scale of this kind of crisis. This is also why,
for the first time, as part of the so-called
[? project ?] on the city, we are considering
also opening it up for design because we think
that, in this particular case, simply staying on the level
of a researcher is not enough. So to any thoughts, questions? There is a hand back up there? There is a hand here. Could we get a mic there? Could we get a mic? Maybe we can have at least
two or three questions at the same time? Anybody else? This is the opportunity. So please, you go ahead and
then-- here first, please. You're going to organize
studio in Rotterdam. I'm wondering why don't you
organize it in Friesland, for example. [speaking german] I don't think we can
hear you very well. You're going to organize the
studio in Rotterdam, in spring. Why don't you organize it in the
countryside of the Netherlands, in Friesland, for example. OK. Let's also get the
other question. Yeah, OK, I have a
question or a query about your characterization
of this as new because it really seems to
me much more of a continuity. A lot of the projects
that you described in terms of their
scale and technology are actually kind
of a replication of a kind of high
modernist schemes we've seen across a rural
or a natural landscape, whether dams,
hydroelectric schemes. We've seen this in the
US since the 1920s. We really see this
around the world. The Gezira Scheme, which
is an irrigation scheme, that's also 30 years old. So why are you talking about
this as new, is a question? And why are you characterizing
this as architecture. Because what I see
is infrastructure? An infrastructure that's within
certain kinds of enclosure, that are physical and
spatial enclosures, and they're also more
privatized than the earlier kind of mega
infrastructural projects. So I think if you talked
about those continuities, there would be a lot
more to say and it might be a more provocative inquiry. So maybe you should have
answered the first question. Well, let me deal with
the second question first. I entirely agree. And if you are familiar
with what we typically do, we don't have a kind
of naive beginning from scratch and assumption
that something that we observe has never happened before. On the contrary,
you could accuse our work of a kind of overdose
of historical consciousness and too much of kind of
retrospective consideration. So of course, it's very
close to infrastructural. But I think that it's a bit--
and I also explained it as such that there is the thinking
in Silicon Valley, and the kind of interaction,
and the kind of informality of the kind of workplace
of Silicon Valley. And yes, these are let's
say infrastructural kind of results of some of
their kind of thinking. But I think that to
call it infrastructural is still not eliminating it
from the architectural agenda. I think that, at this scale,
and in this configuration, and I think that some of the
kind of pictures or images I showed you are really
compelling in the sense that the degree of simultaneous
inhabitation or emptiness which turns out to be
completely charged, I've never seen before. So I presented
modestly in that way. Well, I think that,
basically, we're going to travel in
Europe as a whole. Whether it is
Rotterdam or Friesland, which is only one hour apart,
is not really relevant. I mean, once you're in
Europe, the two conditions will be completely
accessible, as there are almost everywhere there. One hand here, one hand there. You go ahead with the, please. So my question-- Can you stand, so
that we can see you? Please. Yes. Thank you. So my question responds
to the autonomy that of technology
introduced to the farms it reminded me of a visit I had
to a Scandinavian organic farm, a dairy farm, outside of Malmo. And the count who ran
the farm explained that he very purposely has a
couple that tend to the cows because he said that they
make more milk, and the milk is sweeter. And so as we anticipate
the robot future and look at the impact, or the
residual, or the resistance, of the human, I'm
wondering if you have any ideas, or
thoughts, or intuitions, about how the human is going
to play out as the robots come? I would like to kind
of really answer. I think it's a very
good and very important issue, whether the
organic, in the end, will be able to deliver the
needs commensurate to the needs that are obviously emerging
and increasing every moment. But that is also
something I really would like to welcome as a
kind of subject for the studios to really think that all these
different narratives, all these different
rhetorics, are all as necessary or inevitable
as they claim to be. And that would be both for their
kind of technological side, as for the organic
side, which, as you look into the organic, et cetera. Anybody else? Yeah. My question has to do
with the issue of scale that you brought up earlier. It seems that there's a link
between the global aspect of cities and then the
regional or local aspects of the countryside, and the
link of scale between those two. Seeing that the
large data centers, and the projects you are
showing in Reno, Nevada, have this kind of global
scale, and there are just these links to the cities,
versus the tiny scale of the super regional
appropriation of the house in Switzerland. And so it seems that
the population influx is going to have to somehow
mediate between those two and that those now exist
in this categorization of either hyper
regional or hyper, either generic or global. How do you see the kind
of space between those? Well, in the descending
curve of the countryside and upward curve the urban,
I created a kind of red area in between because I think
that the narrative of these two opposing trends is
completely inaccurate. And so therefore, we can really
try explore that inaccuracy and hopefully have a
more accurate model of the interdependencies
and interactions. And, in a certain way, I think
that when I went to Africa just before the year 2000, I was
really struck by the fact that it seemed as if
very few Africans live either in the city or
in the countryside, and that there was a
kind of constant going or interaction and
traffic between the two. And I have a feeling
that, at a different scale or in a different method,
that we're actually engaging in that kind of situation. I was curious about
the responsibility that you see about
your work, considering the global crisis
that's at play right now and how you see the
theoretical conditions that you're working with. And if you feel
like this is how you intend to deploy it in terms
of being practically applied? Well, I think that the word
deploy and the word work are not really
appropriate in this case. Because I think that the huge
kind of freedom that Harvard has offered me is to have a
life separate from my life as an acting architect. And that sounds kind of
maybe like an excuse, but I really kind
of reject the way in which what we
are going to hoping to investigate and
to discover really be pulled into an
operational dimension yet. I really want to guard very
much against that for the time being. Thank you very much.
