Theory of Architecture | #6 - Patrik Schumacher

I suppose I probably should start by introducing you so you are at recruit Mecca you are a very prominent architect and one of the most prominent architectural theorists as well thank you our principle of Zaha Hadid Architects and you also lecture at the optical associations right that's why I'm teaching master d3 studio and she called the design research lab and for over 20 years and this is our lead architect is gonna filled with ex students all the way from the board of directors to the new entries for over 20 years so that what's been teaching elsewhere and we bring our students from there but we also use these arenas for research and there's a direct translation from a lot of the experiments and that is we first try in the teaching arena then bring them slowly into competitions or to our internal research groups and then into practice and their real practice relevant research is so far they all end up in practice yeah well seriously the the this practice is probably one of the most prominent ones in terms of actually combining theory and practice and pas the reason why I started this podcast was to have the conversations that I didn't see going on in practice predominantly so how how do you sort of apply the the research that you do academically and in terms of theory on a day to day level within the practice well first I want to say that the major theorists of our field have all been unmold Lee have been practic practicing architects Alberti is the first and go through you know Palladio and sell you and many others including John Soane and Schinkel and Sampha as well as the Cobb use it was a major figure and many others in this there's the I exception so there's also role for in the division of labor for theorists who deep not research but the I believe that's an important reflection on my part that and my serializing is Israel practice Orient and practice informed in rem chorus is another one you could mention of the the major figures who all been practicing architects so how does it later relate so many levels so first of all there's an overview orientation of which what we're a society going so architecture theory has to be embedded in a theory of society and its prospects of development and progress so that you know where to invest your career and you know some kind of a dying site or in an end up an ultimate irrelevance II so so it's the first thing which and I've came to Architecture from philosophy political theory economics social theory so early on grasping what's going on what are the internal disciplinary revolutions what they mean and how they tie in with it's a social transformation that's very important because otherwise you're running down you know you end up on the wrong side of history access yeah but so that's the first thing that's that's the overarching headline and that made the results are something which this firms can why are you so successful why be moving from four when I started here thirty years ago I'm if one at forty now with the global reach and because we on the right side of history so that's the headline but but it also works through then it informs particular investigative strands what one should look at and how one were how in position himself for instance with respect to urbanism with respect to architectural paradigms and then one looks at to actually work accordingly and deepen the skill base make the experiments apply that with confidence and also when you present make explanations even if it's difficult and unusual and innovative there's a rationale behind this you also win through beauty and and it's a compelling visualizations so making making plausible and credible an innovation that's what we have visualization media for but we also need to underline it with with the rationale and that can be delivered and if you if you've thought it through you become quite eloquent on that level well that's what I see is missing from most practices is that that answer to the question why do you make certain design choices and that so tracing it back in terms of the theories that you're basing all of your design decisions on and then it's it's condition to me seeing just how integrated your theories seem to be where they're sort of wider social and political agenda as well informs the next always the kind of future oriented current research which it hasn't fed in yet and necessarily in all of the project but will be coming and I can sell it with confidence so the kind of methodologies we also developing there will be compelling back tracked practice methodologies sooner or later of course in a complex field like architecture particular was that level of let's say uninformed anti theoretical dilatant ism and lack of proper discursive kind of engagement for most architects there's an enormous amount of quackery in the field and that that that difficulty that's what I'm struggling with and that's why I believe we need this field needs to attract a bright and a new cast of characters then in the previous era which was an era of brainstorming and and let's say artistic searching for new modes and moods of working after the crisis model is new yet you have this kind of strange art world style cultural sensibility in the schools of architecture there there are art schools and you get an way with a very intuitive self conception of what architecture isn't what you about and what you're doing which is kind of anti discourse nearly so that's that's hampering and and that's that's what I've been struggling with so so you we advancing in a smaller group of people let's say compelling propositions where but but but is crackery all wrong always I'm interested in especially I'm gonna talk you second ago about your places of architecture yeah and it seems to me there's occasion every now and then someone like yourself will put forward a sort of holistic work like that there's sort of an integrated theory of architecture and I just finished reading and Nichols Alan Garcia's book a theory of architecture which does sort of a similar thing but they never seem to have the effect on the profession the perhaps sort of the authors like yourself might want them to assume I think that is why is it that really really well put together works don't trickle down well it's a difficult question I mean I don't think has always been the case that they don't trickle down and they will eventually trickle down and they will spread because there's also this is also part of a movement around something like a metro system which has been very strong and growing it's got kind of cut off a little bit independent and dispersed through the financial crisis in the last ten years of stagnation but but within that movement there is been also a lack of let's say societal rationals reflections so so there's this there's an engagement it became a little technocratic or the technique oriented it was very important initially it was more philosophically oriented it had more connection with with an understanding of new social dynamics and it's intuitively there but it's not widespread in its kind of arguments but there is a movement and I think things will spread around and I'm building out on my own following ship but I think liqueur boozy Andy and the early modernist this was quite a compelling story if you look at it in terms of this was also a movement theory led with treatises like towards new architecture and the city of tomorrow the two books of liqueur busy but there were others as well there were earlier anticipation sort of Akhmim or an architecture etc and and then there's a whole group of thinkers writers and institution like the Bauhaus that worked and that took over and from a small nucleus expanded out and then really transformed the totality of the built environment and the world of artifacts and that gave the planet a new physiognomy all the way through to everything we touch here and as well as urban environments and that has to happen again will happen again can again how do you think we're amongst our movements or beginnings about well we have movement we I don't know if sometimes kind of try to think where we have modernism start somehow in 1910 but I still a blue is less the cleanseth kind of explain Expressionism these would be cleansed out 1920 is a proper takeoff moment and where are we in that I mean we let's say the first 10 years until early 30s we had that from the 90s to the early 2000s we hadn't be on a similar place with respect to early manifesto projects they had the Barcelona pavilion and Villa Savoye beard then a series of manifesto projects F ways for instance Yokohama and so on and then they run into the kind of fascism and to kind of disruption and we are running into a kind of another disruption which is a kind of lack of North with respect to modernization with the stagnation of world financial crisis European debt crisis Arab Spring with all this and the and this not not continuing the project and actually all the schools which had elite schools and crime it's a leading schools were defrayed like the bars was kind of closed down so that so making this parallel so we are we we are somewhere you know in that in that strange mood and more in them in some way and authorities we're yeah we're modernism was was was was already killed in in Germany and I hadn't yet taken off in Britain or America mm-hm so in a kind of limbo but that doesn't mean that it's coming it's coming there's nothing else everything else was going on as either this kind of pompous I do what I likes kind of thing one-liner phrases Sunday speeches but promoting what promoting retro and what they're building here you know a thousand projects in London they all retro you could have built and designed these eighty years ago near rationalism and if that's what we're looking at as the solutions to contemporary societal pressures and opportunities we can shut down the discipline because if after 80 years of discourse research formal research reflection building up of tools and methodologies we doing that shut them all down you're not an academic discipline we are craft and nothing else and and and any any rationalization of these kind of projects is only to do with you know there's some kind of engineering advances under the hood but it's not at this of architecture that's engineering that there's now it's triple glazed and insulation and and in that of a smart heating system and and some kind of sensibility calculation doesn't imply that architecture with respect to autism we have contributed zero and that ties in with the kind of utter backwardness and bankruptcy of the distal as an intellectual force I mean we like you know son was compared to in a sociology emerged as a proper discipline through through a series of canonical works in the late 19th century finally under stein you know culture it in science reflectively coming to terms with what was happening in terms of modernization in a kind of capitalist context and before that you had kind of literary humanist kind of all over the place kind of hints and and and so there's a formation of a discipline our discipline has to yet to be refounded and and informed once more yeah we don't have a proper discipline yeah well that's that's one of the things that sort of I'm struggling with is how do you break that deadlock of sort of the dead end of the discipline as it currently is how do you how do you create that it starts with the discursive culture challenging this curse of culture where where it's good enough that you say oh well I like this I'm doing it my way and you can't you know there's a kind of shut like shutting down criticizing each other taking each other to task and imposing the problem and positing the problem of collectively defining discursively controversially the direction of the build environment and the discipline and the disciplines and the built environment contributes to societal flourishing in under new condition you know you need concepts like what I concepts are you suppose for his Network Society for instance which is so different from the mechanical mass production society of the nineteen fifty 60s so we need to start there and then understand what are the what what are the challenges for that in terms of densification in terms of mixed-use in terms of life patterns which aren't nine-to-five anymore and certain distinctions between work and leisure falling down you have globalization we have so many new challenges the level of dynamism complexity in the life process what are we what can we bring to that so I my fear of society is there's an underlying prosperity engine through technology mainly that active and then there's a number of framing systems and then subsystems which come into play politics is another one there's also outmoded we're still living with the politics of the 1950's so that I can read politicize but but they also seem independent we can do a lot with an architecture before politics is kind of also opened up although there are also synergies of prosit izing so so I feel that partly what's going on in London in terms of the backwardness of the architecture has also to do that with the clamp down on all innovation on topologies and planning regimes there has also been a kind of freeze so they're there these are kind of conspire to freeze a sort of innovation potentials so that's why I also get politicized would but you could I mean these are several there are several of those and I think as I said it starts with the kind of discursive content and I'll also which which is which is at conferences but also ahead at schools of architecture school of architecture you have this new curriculum there's no they kind of silos and and idiosyncratic researchers and there's a kind of lid live-and-let-live attitude and my analysis is that this has to do with the fact that this was appropriate when modernism there was a crisis and the cannons were in question the recipes were bankrupt and there had to be a new start and that requires at that point starting from scratch you know you get into interested in philosophy fun trying to understand you know there was also modernization theory was also bankrupt so you got into all this kind of post modernist deconstructivism that was absorbed but also artistic regimes and you're getting in a brainstorming chamber and and cast of character which is very different there's not you know it's kind of the world prick society's Frank Gehry's of this world made an impact and rightly so the great innovators who when but they also were tied up with with Peter Eisenman gonna show me around coulis I mean in that deconstructors and group for instance which I'm a family was and you had and and but it was right to have at that point something like the a a whereas an enormous degree of [Music] unboundedness I call it the brainstorming chamber and that's actually what the art world is and then the kind of assimilation between a discipline like architecture and art made sense temporarily it's actually what you found also at the beginning of the Bauhaus if you look at you know grow something like Gropius and Mies and later on as my and next to him it's kind of like eaten or Schlemmer I mean you just have to look at their faces and demeanor you know Malevich's he said these were mistakes but it's interesting as you look at the Bauhaus trajectory in the mid 20s they have been they were gone there you know there was a kind of getting serious and you had a you you end and you have Kandinsky and all of this was interesting and the Russian avant-garde there was a lot of flourish at the very early ages stages and then it towards the end of the decade and the the the selections had taken place the inspiration that taken root and you working through working out and rolling out mode and we had gone through that so when we when we start in the early 90s it was incredible electrification of a whole group of people of new potentials new ideas new concepts new philosophies and ten years later in a kind of down to business of working through the implications and starting first buildings workings and so so but and that got halted so that's what I'm saying we're kind of stuck in this kind of 30s limbo yeah well I think one of the things I think has put you or I suspect is is a reason for you being in such a prominent position especially theoretically now is because of your sort of philosophical and mathematical background we've been able to integrate those two disciplines with architecture and with us all interested in society in politics as well good to form a sort of cohesive intellectual framework effectively yeah and and it always amazes me how little talk of philosophy there is in octet schools especially and mathematics given how relevant they are especially on the theoretical side of architecture just some extent naturally it's difficult to bring everybody up to scratch but when we in the late eighties when I we had we were reading the losing coterie at school of architecture and that can went through for another five amit and out of the mid 90s and of course in the eighties was also a lot of reading of Derrida Foucault and that made sense as I said because this is the idea of kind of resetting the the fundamental categories and principles and and having therefore reflection on what it what what purposes are and how they're set and our language operates and what what the catalyst from before form follows function etcetera how they what was simplistic about it and so that was happening now and it makes sense to some extent that that you know you you can have these conversations number of years and you reach somewhere you weed out and you win these arguments and there's a new set of categories to work with and then work through you know so we have you know we go from the kind of it end up in authors not you know who've been leading this into this like Chris Alexander said he's not a tree and then you compare this with the horizon versus arborescent structures and you know which way way to go smooth versus try to space methodological abstract machines I mean you're probably a lot of the de-risk rotary kind of vocabulary things like and concepts like field conditions continuously differentiated fields ideas like folding so these came together and you and then you're working through then you start and this is what happens at AI DRL the kind of bookshop shifted gradually from from reading these texts to learning these techniques and you have software manuals taking one more space and when you in the and so there's only a limited amount of time and there's cycles of innovation which have also if you don't go through the basics anymore every now and then in physics and all these Sciences they would if they have a kind of paradigm crisis then the Philosopher's come come on but if they're working through a delivery of you know whatever a new power station or rocket the philosopher is in error I know in this sense the problem is always then to a limited time so when we do these when we bring in new generations of students on we take it for granted we have all this history and understanding and they only come in on the on the on the end of that that's difficult so they ideally they should kind of be brought up to speed and we still try to do that in some of our seminars but that's a difficulty so then you have you only those who've been around for the 15-20 years I have the full depth of and robustness to defend that also on philosophical grounds political grounds and then the kind of latest crop those who invest all that time in executing and creative code writing etc they are then vulnerable to it they could be kind of tripped up by by by philosophy that's that's a challenge but I want to come back to this I mean underneath all that is we need a much more mutually cast taking and and robust and frank debate we need to accept that what we're doing is subject to peer criticism and it's not our personal choices and this idea of a self realization through your personal work listen really get these concepts get in the way and they're also defense mechanisms and you shouldn't be allowed to just interview if you're dabbling in in a PA district of a major city you we shouldn't let each other get away with this dabbling and crackling and that's the tough one promise of course if you have the majority in a kind of crackery stage then you have they don't have the momentum and that's why I need kind of [Music] combatants who support the ramping up of the rhetoric and not letting everybody get away with their shallow claptrap yeah having these conversations because I want to sort of open up the intellectual sphere effectively for octave for theory and for people to actually justify what it is their dissolute because as there's just a complete lack of any one sort of putting forward any real logical arguments about why it is they make that particular choices in most practices and the profession is really suffering for that I think it's very constrained and yeah quite banal and the kind of I mean if you if you do the more you do just really replicate well rehearsed and corroborated standards then they might still be anachronistic you don't need theory so I mean the whole theory thing has tied in with innovation so that's why in if you have this kind of era and also theory then accelerates innovation but it comes as a necessity so if you have you know the design discipline or architecture starts as it as an academic design discipline with the Renaissance so it's before that other everything before that I call tradition-bound building indistinguishable from the miraculous and there is you just do what has always been done and you think a little but you adapt and you have it's very dogmatic and like every society process where routine dogmatic routines but really even include the Gothic legislation face Romanus is just a kind of an ambassador's vernacular of you know and anyway you have to say these are some monuments where there's a little bit more attention is one church and one palace not even past in the whole city and the rest is just the vernacular right and the Gothic of course there's some sophistication but it's not architecture because we don't have architects we don't have fully designed structures they grow up a hundred years kind of certain rules and methodologies yes there is something and there's no there's no Theory no discourse so it started roberta starts in the renaissance and it is important to see only in the ministers you have a fully designed design before building and maybe also as an effective contribution to discourse without ever building and that is because you've a full complete set of drawings plus visual simulation through perspective and then you can and then you also have theory you have to defend because if you don't if you do something different from what has always been done what's expected you have to explain yourself you have to make an argument and you also have to show through simulations through visualization to to to overcome that initial no resistance i mean an endless fan right so that's why architecture as has to come together and born with drawing perspective and texts whose planetary text and if you look at that it's very interesting because he is tying the good architecture to the good society the city good city layout it's the good polish the good city state and the and the end and the villa is the household and the way it's functioning and so there's a strong reflection of obviously societal purposes and and the advantages of these new repertoire and an emphasis on innovation a very strong and emphasis on originality innovation and so that's so important so theory has been incredibly important and and of course you can accelerate the development the build environment you can you know you draw up an ideal city and critique it and and you you you you you have an evolutionary process which before was only in the real on sight which takes decades transfer it onto paper you can kind of yeah simulate and critique and then the the acceleration was then happening with assertive role of ideal city-states soil city plants but also then moving from from the Renaissance into mannerism into Barack and near classroom this these these kind of transformations and the way they tie in with societal transformation and progress so you have actually architectural theory innovative thinking and arguments and but also at the same time where you have political theory guiding political reforms you start to have the early years of economic theory and and and and and this kind of disco discourses in the form of critical literature's and that's been modernity and that's been a great accelerator and so that's why I'm you know a few isn't very important it's not this is of course and it is of course guiding practice we thought also sometimes it's not a kind of la polla its own kind of nice reflections and feeling smart yeah and being making atmospheres or making bank making kind of sophisticated commentary that's not what it's all about in speak if you read my works and the author police is highly theoretical but it's consciously is looking looking forward to and hassle in and and and arguing for cc's which have practical relevance which orient you we had to go and not to go heuristics methodologies values to pursue and and and and kind of research programs going forward so volume one instead of the new frame of core architecture volume two is a new agenda of architecture knife set a research program which I'm working through right now like like you know this what I called a semiotic approach and I'm working on volume three which is a new practice market we're bringing it bringing it you know bringing it to band and that was also what you know if you look at city for tomorrow it happened I mean have this lecture when I show you the images of the city for three marine habitats and and tons of photographs of the build world from the from the 50s and 60s oh yeah well it's it seems to me that there's a big gap between the theorizing that goes on in academia and in written works and that kind of thing and the actual practice there's a lot of a lot of practices that sort of talk a good game effectively but then don't seem to be implementing what it is that they're talking about and just lightly save swill regurgitating the same kind of designs over and over again which with no reels or shift in in philosophy that's right so I mean we need some more I mean the problem is what we're doing here we'll be able to do is it's also because embedded in a research community peer groups you have many conferences you workshops you know the whole kind of everybody's learning Rhino you have various peoples developing new tools and their scientific papers our research team can read them and build on you need that it needs a cumulative collective effort to get somewhere and Tecton ism as the latest idea for medicine in the last 10 years is something very sophisticated anyway compelling and and but it's still kind of marginal but it's a real progress over what we've done 15 years ago was weak able to do now and on the more in more than what on some of my projects with the semiological project and the focusing on social functionality I am doing social like occupancy life process modeling in an interesting ways to capture to make tractable on a new level of complexity and dynamism the social process because we can't handle them by staring at a plan and making some labels so this bit of an isolated search so while in the Tecton ISM front in terms of integrating also engineering fabrication logics and having complex geometries and and environmental parameters flowing into a sophisticated artifacts which also deliverable downstream because they're kind of pre constrained the the I've wrote cumbersome to point on I'm showing all this and saying we need to shift gear and home in on developing tools and intelligence and commitment and values on the social functionality aspect and win that and they are precursor Celica so Alexander billion space impacts there's old and and that's at the moment is still in kind of an isolated research and therefore just takes far too long and is not tough to bring that into real projects it's it's it's too much so so that's why that's why I'm trying to build a PhD group I'm building I'm in building a school to make that happen what's a needs more money etc setter because these unknown non-trivial methodologies neither Aztec tourism in technology you have to really invest quite a bit in in skills although you helped by by by a lot of online tutorials or and and and and community of people can come together but there is a higher level of sophistication required you can't acquire that by in school of architecture we dabble around in all sorts of directions and then your final projects you're trying to do something sorry yeah so differences between your original setting out of parametric ISM and Tecton ISM the world wants to sort of evolution been in terms of your own theoretical framework in Asia so so feminism is obviously is a big kind of expansion of the repertoire but also what I one of the headlines is maintaining legibility in the face of complexity and how we discover this so so constructors is the first take at building up much more complex bourbon textures buildings because you have new potential first of all you you no longer restricted orthogonal so all sort of angles coming in and the great moves of layering intersecting superimposing different ordering structures which operate simultaneously which means also there's a lot of porosity and openness in these and but there when you work like this it's quite liberating and you very quickly and you can try to affiliate to several contextual geometries which flow into your site it becomes very very the way I'm illegible and chaotic so you build up complexity but it becomes opaque and then you get you even get lost on your own drawing where was a drawing and and whereas and you know it's kind of indigestion so my medicine comes out of this with with with discovering the kind of legibility potentials of curvature when you intersect and fuse and morph between blobs or complex trajectory you can you can find and and and also totally new concepts like gradients grading transformations so to build up and this ties in with with all of societal forms so you have intersecting domains of competency you have instead of black and white two or three categories you have everything and in between you want more variety of either an urban field of block sizes or in or in a large that's a google campus of types of spaces and you can order them along and kind of gradient from you build up the spectrum and then you have a second spectrum interfacing this or that idea you can kind of form unities not just the kind of fragmentation if you can of scatter of things but you can kind of form make these have scattered pieces and shape swarms with them and then like swamp formation you have these tools where you where you can have you know vector fields and swamp formations and and and so that is that is PI mattress ism and you form a repertoire yeah they initially don't recognize any build ability constraints engineering constraints and you end up therefore with building these structures where the Porsche of stretch yeah is kind of two millimeter and but also what I realized so with me when we work the through that is a congeniality between these new kind of Carolinian complex geometries with things like momentum lines with things like and optimized shells and then you get a sensibility we in Paris and we work initially with facets then only was nerve surface this is one kind of geometry line based on I mean and but now we have you know now you have tensile forms ruled surfaces compression-only shell curved folding so you have a whole panel I first of all of characters which we can distinguish so we have more richness of varying yet all the routers are freeform curvature and we can optimize for for structure so we take out all this hot is severe and we get that's my key point which nobody else gets always buying into we get a much more subtle and varied repertoire for articulation because my point is when with parameters ISM original you do something like Google campus with 20 buildings or and many many many spaces even though it's so rich in you so very it becomes monotonous and disorienting so we need more differentiation and unity and and Cali a visual distinction and tying things together without falling into chaos so there really is a congeniality of the tech tourism technical engineering sophistication and repertoire and the articulatory requirements of managing a very very complex integrated you know information which environment that's where the pictures for tectonic minutes is really so much more sophisticated and rich varied so if you look at this image permit ISM is like it's the world of fish and whales and Tecton ISM is the full panoply of let's say the endless forms of nature hmm there seems to be a very fundamental shift between the sort of the external almost facade is another I'd hesitate to use that word of the panel ization effectively and the other example of the Aquatic Center always comes to mind for this when you see it in section and I think that was talking to other people about your work over the years that's always been the main criticism I think is the sort of the the form finding over and above anything else and it seems to be a very fundamental shift to be moving to saying actually oh we're going to concentrate on using the tools of already using but for structural optimization and for efficiency and for using the emergence structures that come out of those as the sort of the architectural devices and as the ornamentation and as the service of the forms that come out and all of a nation is this translates into a characterization into information so that that's always been the case by the way it's not you know it's also kind of misunderstood it operates below subliminally for a lot of people but they've taken a lot of information about you know you know how you dress and how you the mean and how you decorate or articulate your house it's a network of similitudes and contrast of fitting into a kind of matrix of distinctions so so then it's gonna stood yeah I mean that's except that's quite true by the way we the previously or paradism projects they were also informed of course by by the key functionalities of of arranging spaces relative to each other and contextual conditions because when we work these forms we of course all problems as we squeeze and push these blobs and and splines around because we have to and we have a larger search space and somebody else is minimalist it's just shifting boxes around so it's trying to solve something with a very very crude and insensitive search and they don't find the solutions we find and their solutions are somehow in ours as a subset but but they're not going to be so but that's not easy argued because you've gone through so many steps of elimination and it's difficult to summarize and it's a multi objective searches that that why your project is better you people feel it when you when you when you walk them through their future building and they see okay so all of this is here and then this could work and so on so yeah this that's a kind of intuitive check and maybe they listen and a competition entry through several of these presentations and they feel ya hear this in this solution there's a lot of things wrong or this work that work this is tools now this is too vast this is I can't find myself and in hours they get more invitation in maybe they also like the look and feel of it and then also not still be dismissed what characterize maybe the way they want to have their institution next experience but but it's not going to be kind of superficial we're working from the inside out as well and we can with chromaticism you can't so easily do that with with many other styles for instance if you have a value you don't have a Sode ism near rationalism ask because we have you don't stand for something I think again a lot of people have seen have made this distinction between parametric ISM with a capital P as a style with it is the practice and parametric modeling or paramagnetism as a modeling a method effectively and there's not necessarily a link or as closer linkers perhaps you might think there is between Memphis you can use those tools Abdullah can project but you don't have to I mean it's not essential and you in a sense you shooting with cannons on on boards or something so so so there's if you properly and it's the same with you know the superior feminism as a model shows up mineral reason can cannot actually absorb a lot of the engineering optimization we can absorb because they are excluded whereas an we are a pro a congenial so we for instance wrap a facade with which often is curved but then you put shading elements they they they're they should migrate in the gradual transformation respecting the different Sun angle conditions and if a building across is overshadowing then there's a kind of blur where this can open up and and that's the look and feel of pair mattress ISM but you know the underlying rationale is it's not been to reach that look yes some applicants might do that they just go by the look and feel so you can fake it but one thing is also you cannot guarantee but you can really say this can't possibly be of the most optimized sophistication whereas the minimalist version cannot here you can fake it but you know why would you you don't have to if you only if you kind of if you don't understand anything you'd a blur and crackery guy and and some sometimes does this happening out and that is this that is undermining the paradigm but but it is the it it looks way it looks because it is the life enhancing and and optimized and efficient morphology and we should learn to like these kind of apologies and to find used like learn to hate all the morphologies which by necessity are clearly wasteful where everything is over dimensioned basically and where you have all sorts of wasted spaces and leftover spaces and so so that's it I mean you look at the the endosome of nature I mean that we find beauty in them we find coherence and and with all of them that none of them is designed according to visuals visual kind of pleasure they have they look the way they look because that's that's a kind of epiphenomenon and that's the way you know and the radical functionalism had that attitude and and so in but I'm saying one more thing so that's on an on a technical functionality as well as organizational principles there's morphologies now I'm laying on top of this something else which is the functionality of appearances because they they they but it can be overlaid and isn't a totally contradictory venture which is that you that these spaces are arranged properly they adapting properly into the conditions they sit and connect up the things they are cool occasionally synergetic with and then but to make it really happen you actually should articulate make transparent you should empower users and users and visitors to see what belongs together what is where what connects top with what in the context what leads to where I was coming so there's this kind of visual language visual communication agenda which is an absolute critical agenda for social functionality there's no point in making all these arrangements and then nobody finds them they remain obscure these distinctions are placed and order but the appearance the monotony of the appearance or the visual chaos of the appearance hides that so we cannot particularly because we're no longer in that world where where we usually rely on people knowing where they're going because it the same place away for 20 years like their own kind of pocket but even then I mean even I have to concentrate sharply to find my entrance door every day in this because they identical so that's a waste of time so so visual first of all is these morphologies the starting point is set of mythology's which are working and we should learn to like them on top of them and then with those repertoire I'm having an additional work effort which is I called also the compositional stands we over sign it where you where you where you wait trying to make transparent and you trying to make legible and you also encode a semiological text into those in a way it's not only the perceptual grasp ability that's one thing so you start psychology it's one of my researches so it what allows you to kind of separate figure from from background or how can you group this kind of group group how do you group elements into entities and sub entities you can't you know if I look at this table that kind of 50 things it's just chaos and grouping things like by similarity by contributing duty by continuity by but the way to describe a figure that's the way I'm decomposing a complex scene and this is becoming a problem now because we are facing complex urban scenes and I can at least go in there least and to it like another giving more fun now than previous and we should at the moment of course we're tempering this but yes of course because if you go to you don't have that problem in in a very kind of in a suburban thing on in the city which has one square with one church and one palace and then a kind of neutral fabric or something you know renaissance composed plaza with three objects which and neat and separate and distinct now if you have mixed-use complex interlacing institutions uses offerings hundreds of different offerings piling into an urban density and I want much more than sir then legibility becomes a problem also if you have this kind of endless connections through if you go into Hong Kong could be quite confusing if you go into an airport or the shopping mall you have to then boil it down to the two to the simplest of mental map diagrams there is a problem so this these issues are serious challenges in my view and an intelligence the discipline should build and they are sort of wayfinding experts and so on we don't look at that and but also then they use silence but you can't kind of signage we sign that means got a moisturizer dinner the full-on you know structure the major spatial moves the fenestration they are they have to do that develop doing that it's a article orienting navigation orientation work well in terms of the sort of intuitive you so what another thing that's always still thought I'm decided on in terms of your work is the the use of the curves of care of linearity but especially on the macro scale when it's better when it comes to plans for example because you don't receive a plan when you're standing on the ground walking around it and I wonder about whether or not there really is much utility in applying those sort of curbing cover linear geometries oh no such a macroscale well on the urban scale percent I'm very very convinced about that also you give urban character identity figure you know this is my research into figuration country you know and not just in its a space and there's an objective configuration what is textures more permanent what's connected more what's more centrally connected up in these he calls in the non describes there is invisible characteristics they should become visible and how do you do that and so so but under curvature side also in the space if we have very complex spaces with multiple deep vistas it's very very helpful because if you start and we start tried it in with with flat planes and sharp corners and you end up with a kind of eligible kaleidoscope it's difficult to hierarchical to to to articulate and I have a lecture where you can find we're demonstrating making parallel compositions so I'm hearing a repertoire have only straight lines let's even an orthogonal and Here I am building up the composition with with blobs and ellipses and intersection if you go for it things like intersection for instance if you intersect the cube with the cube the result is yet another cube which is blind and indifferent with respect to which two cubes are intersecting large cube small cube rectangle the the intersection space has no registration but if you take two ellipses or even circle and ellipse the intersection shows you which two how big is that space because it gives you every intersection and and whether as an ellipse ellipse also how large it is which direction lattices so that's what called information richness similarly if you say block colors was gradient colors you can color code a plan but if you make it in gradient you can show you faded off from the entrance or you faded from the center to the periphery so gradient coloration is superior to block coloration as in information from delivery curvature when it comes to computing of complexity superior to rectilinear so the effort and these are the tools or the let's say these are the repertoire and also the aesthetics of permit racism has two striking each of these feet features striking advantages over the kind of minimalist repertoire this is the kind of demonstration I make and and and that's are called the superiority of the curve and it's just compelling argument and the same as when you when you wanted to fit into a side which isn't which isn't rectilinear I mean and and also mediating between levels where it eraser project you know they Stanley shapes entrances on underground overgrown different levels landscape so so how do you solve that well you get it clear figure you with clear hierarchy of trajectory you you kind of nearly effortlessly move through around because you can move underneath over sort of things which and and the extensive use of sloping surface for instance which is similar to that's folding 101 and we could do much more this way outdoor spaces in interior lobby spaces why can't there I mean there's regulatory nonsense coming up where you have to have no kind of handrails and like that everywhere but if you look at me look at some of paneer like like Oscar Niemeyer yes you know the lobbyist flows and goes weird once and that's the kind of the there's just a call to superiority of the curve and it's just an sub sub and it's one aspect of the superiority of pry medicine now he's even saying this is usually people kind of find as revolting right they find that treat the pretense and an H and an insult to what they're doing but that's what I said earlier if we don't allow to say something like this then we don't have a discourse yeah let's go all home and do our own home knitting yeah well it's not even it's not even just the fact of putting forward a particular alternative like primaries I mean it's merely saying that maybe there's an alternative to what you're doing that's better you have to say this is better this is not oh this is different no this is not different this is better and you look at somebody and they're kind of they're revolt in horror and using in kind of cultural outcasts I don't know that's I'm saying the culture of discourse is dysfunctional and that's the meta argument of to first win and I was just doing it and instead of saying if if things are just different we never get any very accepting just you can't you know it's just accepting difference and saying something is bad it's the end of conversation that's no conversation until heaven well people I think use any criticism they can find of your work or anyone elses work was put forward as a reason to not change anything so if there's one aspect of your work or anything else that someone doesn't like they'll say oh well therefore the whole thing's invalid and also stick when doing now which is they're completely ridiculous argument isn't it they they can't defend it and as and it goes even so far there's this guy in at the AAA a Victoria really who is he I like him to some extent because he is in project which integrates strong let's say formal compositional stance you should have one it's not it's all equal you know what kind of morphologies are we working with we are pre setting our whole career maybe with the wrong set of formal report of us you know at least you have but you have one you know it's kind of when everybody has and so this is self reflective on any anyways officers and here's architectural theory which is also tied and tied up with booth the political stance problem with this you saw that this so respect him for that and there's a certain energy and let's say passion in in these works was doing with the students at the end so problem is that it's wrong for my repertoire and it's a backward month and it's it's the wrong politics it's a way back with politics so in and he has to he has to end up saying no way I'm challenged him and he significance cannot answer I have to admit the he thing because he's he is resting with the new rationalism of early Aussie look there's a certain fascination with with making a a bar like galat asa making a kilometer long and heaven and heaven having a kind of neutral square grid running on it's a kind of a you know super studio meant that as irony and I don't know about Pierre Victoria so much schemes he calls his farewell to dogma great and I don't know how serious is he I but I think it is serious and so he makes this kind of mega square imprinting it it's like inspired by it's just a new tool inspiration he loves this kind of Rossi early OMA impositions it's a kind of super studio taking literal which was meant to be a dystopian kind but so he is has to say and I say I said why okay why you hooked there this is 75 don't you think there's nothing exciting nothing happened no innovation it through the 80s and 90s do you don't mm do you recognize nothing of this he can't he has to admit that somehow architectural progress stopped in 1975 and I mean just just then you have to say why him didn't we shut down yeah or was it all was it all some kind of aberration why do you think that did happen is it is it the pernicious Ness of sort of through carriers and Derrida's and French left bank side influencing academia in the architectural sense as well of putting forward this sort of subjective idea as opposed to any potential of an objective truth or well no I mean I think I submit that the that's a post-structuralist postmodern modernist loops of reflection and I don't see that as a negative I mean it's either the transitional stands of breaking up and deconstructed over theory that it's very healthy I've learned a lot there's a lot of insights there and and that the grant narratives which we had which was kind of rolling out a certain that's a modernization model irrespective of local conditions and that the idea that you they would have you know in 1950s looked at we can just roll this out and cross former colonies and so on and you have you have kind of linear role of progress I mean they some of these there were had lessons to be learned and and and and empties these things didn't happen that's by these you know and they also did this the the revolutions the socialist dream and Marxist dream of the revolutions of the of the 60s didn't happen and that was a lot of you know it's a certain extent is the kind of post-revolutionary depression but it's also reflect if his own kind of x Maoists who had these simplistic modernization theories had to be come crashing down so I and I've learned a lot I mean there's a lot of in there and the grant narratives were temporarily suspended I mean that's what I said earlier also an architecture but doesn't mean that grant narrows forever impossible that's nonsense and so we have to see them as a in a dialectic as as an influence yeah it becomes pernicious if that's if you get arrested there and you and you get the Lu deluge totally disillusioned about building more complex sophisticated grand narrative unify its again the the grand house is saying is something I've struggled with because it's sort of a paradox really I guess there's I try and make the distinction I suppose between sort of mono perspective or grand narratives and maybe multi perfect rival grand narratives that I tend to look at things from multiple angles basically and and this is why sort of bring in the idea of an objective truth or a more scientific way of working in architecture about trying to discover what is actually better on an objective level and measuring that in various ways rather than sort of going in with a singular single-minded ideology single perspective and saying oh I'm gonna do everything in terms of this like maybe the modernists did look absolutely agree with that and and I think the discipline is should should be after these challenges we need to incorporate certain loops of reflection you can have societal dynamics of a complex and self-feeding and and but we intend and and underlying economics is very complex and so so we but but there's also science can be very very fruitful and that for instance the science of space syntax is very interesting so I'm up so that the odd process of architecture volume two is fully incorporates the totality of like let's say and end critique of its limitations and how to go forward so we need unified theories which brings and also the work of crucify Samba is integrated and this later it is critiqued so so there is we need to build a new curriculum we need to build a new science based discourse and practice of architecture and I call it C or E let discuss in practice of architecture and we need to integrate a lot of insights and there are some things which which I mentioned which have also been worked through a lot and there you can have yeah there is something like objective truth one has to be cautious about these these phrases what I'm saying you have comparative so yeah of course the underlying objective conditions and truth in terms of solutions there's always a solution space they could always be on scene and considered options and that's there we it's always temporary in this sense but I can say hey I'm making an argument which is compelling about a series of decision I'm offering and and solution search spaces or particular solution which rams me not sure to say this is superiority and this is superior power on many levels because its many factors pros and cons there's an overall appraisal of this which I still find compelling so I'm a bit cautious you know calling the in the arena or forward-looking propositional offerings objective tools but in terms of the underlying conditions there is something like objective truth of course and also but then you have to praise the importance of that reality versus another and it complex is all I'm very familiar with the social sciences and economics way the way you have to relativize to assumptions and also the importance of multiple objectives when they when they come in buddy but I think the the the overall appraisal is overwhelming in favor of a well done sophisticated pre-medicine project now if you take pick up individual projects of us ours or anybody's of course there's also a lot of scope for critique and surf critique but I have the I have the the criteria and have the I have the heuristics and values and success criteria mapped out which allow me to criticize each of our projects so there's a clear if I had more time to work through and consider there's three eristic switch allows me every additional months I'm spending i'm ramping up the performance of of my project so and that's not something which any other paradigm can easily offer yeah well even just having that ability to self reflect and to critically analyze what it is that you would do differently about project to apply that the next time I think is something that most practices don't really do and that's probably a large part of why they keep regurgitating the same kind of architecture effectively and but I mean we're talking about we're creating a healthy discourse in in architecture and reuniting the debates around theory how is it that you sort of break that see you if you like and do that create that environment in architecture given the source static nature now what about challenges I mean you're sitting in conferences even on something like London real estate forum in this front row and pick out speakers positions and it's shocking how quickly things crumble in front of you I mean particularly politicians or deputy mayors I mean except true they never there confront something like this and you can swing a whole panel around on on abolishing standards in housing I mean but which then thought of when I first stepped onto the panel so there's you it is it is not so difficult sometimes and you have to be discovered you know what you're doing and and people don't realize I mean I'm unusually euro diet and I had thought things through for systemically for many years so that's very something unusual they never confront so it's at the rarity and also that I can make give lectures and talk is because I've sorted through read up and written written and taught these these books and text and so on so I can and out so but I'm never doing that hominem and you have to do it in a charming way I'm also challenging in in the conference my own best friends and colleagues and and put something at them and to show them that they have to shake up and you know letting them get away with everything or just because your friend I'm not gonna challenge you in and and sometimes it's tough because maybe they can't immediately and so I can't but it does something and then you maybe there's an age problem sometimes if you well establish you get defensive and you feel that you're your authority is undermined so I tend to see that that with more established figures of course it becomes a kind of a threat and the mining they were never meant to be is meant to be empowering what exactly it's a different mindset isn't it like when you've got say a principle like yourself who say you get some little junior person who makes a really good criticism how you react to that as whether you see it as either a threat and completely shut that person down or an opportunity to learn and improve and be better see it's a completely different way of different you know different established figures you know criticize each other yes that's something you have to be able to cope with and I'm happy without criticism and always want to you know itself improve and and I'm I'm identifying with the work we're doing here but it's not a hundred percent it's ourselves self-critical I'm more I like the the flourishing of the business as a vehicle but I'm not wedded to this I'm thinking the whole discipline I'm thinking differently I want to change the the cities of the world and and the way that this one can make contribution to that so that's more my thing I see myself more of a leader of discipline rather than this firm firm is a good vehicle it gives credibility as well and and and a lot of people have gathered around here and and and they're doing great work but it's also II and and it's good to have many project there's always one or two or three one can try this or that with and make a little stuff innovation has its own constraints so love that but but my overall that's what energizes me is bigger than that's what's happening here so I'm quite happy to to to to always to see others flourish as well and and I find it interesting you look a lot of others are doing this once competitive in a nice way but also won't empower the other other figures and I'm happy to receive criticism for this for the idea of self improvement for it for the yeah well I admired the kind of fire that you've brought to the architectural debates over the years and to some degree have controversy I suppose but maybe that's more reflective of this of the environment of architecture and it tells what the political side yeah I was interested in your article for was the Center for Policy Studies I think the about housing yes for the Adamson industry last one and you've described herself as an anarcho-capitalist which I found particularly interesting they mentioned some of marks his early works and subtleties in his arguments I think it's very easy to sort of broad brush marks as insane and beyond the pale but actually there's some Marxism is incredibly important intellectual current and I like schools and movements that's where you make progress but also the works of Marx and angles I mean is also there was a collaboration there and he had absorbed a lot to reach the works of Hegel but also the works of the English economist and French economist and he was way way deep think and incredibly resourceful and also like inspired man's ambition I mean submission was really to the human project and how to shape it and and and allow it to flourish in a cellar right so yeah so Max and I'm including Lenin as somebody I don't and and and with you know this is not a this is not a mean of course it's tragic mistakes and and historical tragedies of early engage with and he made some mistakes but he also reached somewhere for this kind of group of intellectuals to take over the Czarist empires and Petersburg and what they unleashed in its what twenties in terms of starts a the whole Russian constructivism is from I mean and art and science it was amazing so so and and and I have collective works on my shelf so so so the here's somebody who is not a time waster but he's going to philosophy he's goes into into into philosophy of science and and Trotsky as well because they're struggling also their reflections about the use of language and the meaning of language because they using language and trying to understand the world but also trying to communicate their they have their project was so much more vicious and complex than anybody else's project at that time that that they were they were they're making big intellectual advances you know there's a kind of pre anticipation of pragmatism and also pragmatist conception of Winston's language that these are kind of full and essentially was kind of then fully redeemed kind of anticipations let's say and something like historical materialism as a as a way of writing history and also with with the forward conscious for forward planning of shaping of history these things spend what doesn't stand as a particular anticipations particular recipes and and visions of where extrapolation from tendencies they they observed that didn't work out I mean I have mother here was sincere for that but I'm actually working really but they're they're Oh dove tail I mean doesn't there many X Marxist who are now libertarian Senor are capitalists by the way exactly because there is not because it's still the same project it's a it's about the transformation of societal system and seeing societal political systems as barriers and factors if they have become obsolete in alchemists ik2 unleashing the human potential which comes to technology through education through globalization what would so there's the same project but different recipes and insights and lessons learned yeah I don't think many people are able to make those kinds of distinctions between some sort of subtle arguments and sub arguments that certain thinkers who might be sort of tiny for the broad brush made and enter sort of square those with other thinkers because I know you've mentioned Hayek and Mises as well in some of your later work and sort of how does the sort of the more anarcho-capitalist or libertarian side that's opposed that's what's got you in most trouble in the video but how does that sort of influence your architecture now and is that an accurate sort of description of your some general political storms I suppose yeah it is that's my political stance and and it is immediately relevant when you have political situations where to always try to prevent more empowerment and scope for for political in situ and more power always be against them always opted for and called for more [Music] dispersed and scope of action through individuals firms free charities free associations non-government log of ermine non-governmental nonprofit organizations I have course included there so that's it in and that immediately feeds into I want to praises planning regimes and how one analyzes the let's say problems like the so called housing crisis which is a crisis supply crisis and an over relation crisis in my view and how one also praises and the value ler supposedly alleviating efforts on top of all the regulatory it kind of frees up which is an affordability system which makes things worse so that the these are these are insights which come out of that discourse but it has also based very broadly in in science in economic science because a lot of these analyses are shared by virtually a huge majority of economists and on the other hand also accepted a collective action issues and negative externalities being abundant in in the in the build environment arena so so yes that brings me into trouble because these these these is also false culture of discourse in general in society not only in architecture which I find Pro Matic this kind of over exaggerated political correctness way we are certain dominant themes if you deviate from them you cast out it becomes it becomes toxic it goes ad hominem very very quickly I've been excluded from a conference recently and then my surprise this my first I was really quite depressed or shocked and we're supposedly some speakers signal that they wouldn't want to join as long as I'm still kind of speaking so and and organizers the organizers made the decision to disinvite me the collateral as far as you can wear the being the platform there's a badge of honor in terms its intellectual diversity yes I mean it's but it's it's a horrible horrible culture because it leads to a lot of self-censorship as well and it shows also I mean opinions which have to defend themselves like this there they are after you know such suspect and they are in fact and I was part of a left and I mean we weren't like this I mean the the left is becoming it's kind of appeal is eroding I think it before the first time you have a lot of libertarian students actually intent and there's a first first time a counter movement in student bodies and young people which means to socialists or left-liberal and maybe there's a defensive nough stare I don't know there's many theories why this is but it's it's it's highly problematic and and the ad hominem thing is what's really how really the the killer and all this I mean to be to be smear to be to be name called is totally uncalled for yeah and undermines the ability to sort of have a proper argument about ideas and thoughts doesn't it and you know and and it becomes kind of damaging I mean to two people so so I mean I've survived and I'm not gonna be easily subdued but but it was it was problems it's a shame but I'm not stopping slumped I'm giving you my opinions once more yeah well I think it's your you sort of stand out as almost one of the lone voices are willing to sort of stick your head above the parapet initially actively on this what if you once you talk to people and you know under the outside you know in on the sides and so on you get a little agreement you know the strange thing is certain these positions might actually have less than majority support but this kind of veil of disrespect ability of these counter-arguments even if there would be more than 50% that could hold on for a while until it cracks and crumbles but I get you know I was just recently at a Negroni talks this few days ago talking about social housing and or debility crisis and you know it was it was was actually much better there wasn't many journalists there was no camera running and I get quite a bit of agreement I get you know it's not the one I mean that people reflect or at least and also afterwards after the talk people come and express agreement so that that helps have you seen changes in the attitude of the students you work with the ia in terms of how they approach so the political or philosophical side of them well not really it's I mean our group of students is maybe slightly unusual I mean we have very international and we have known much British contingent it's a bit of the it's an accident of history the AAA and the grant regime where they excluded which makes the a nearly zero British for indigenous let's say yeah so and there's the great alternatives right around the corner at the box so that make that makes a little bit different and it's a bit of a shame that this is kind of there's an exclusion there now I didn't see much in Macedon because also you get people who have probably worked it's a little different there's a polarization at the air at the graduate school and largely in the left liberal kind of tendency and I I support it it's a shame if that takes over let's save it becomes the a becomes a debating Club and people don't design or learn skills that's and should it should you should do be able to do both ideally yes well one of the things I've noticed over the last few years especially with masters projects is the the main focus of most of the projects is a socio-political agenda rather than an architectural solution into a particular problem and often you have to sort of pick apart within the sort of fancy drawings and the sort of quotes of saying we're gonna rebuild the whole world and create this utopia whatever you have to sort of really pick apart all about to actually find the architecture it's a problem I mean yeah there's been a tendency in the last few years do you get kind of Photoshop collages with slogans and cetera or also investment in some kind of graphics which I don't know if they lead to much I think there's because as a there's not a recognition that there's actually very sophisticated project people could participate in we need more people to come on and help us maybe a real chance to real impact rather than making these kind of fantastical journeys into syncretic journeys there's a lot of battle they had that a lot this kind of Peter Cook like those narratives fan fantastical narratives and you spend a lot of time on them and that is the waste of time lock stock and barrel I mean my view as if real mundane project briefs and tasks if you think they're boring minutes implication from you never go to Mars or go to then then then you haven't really understood the the thrill and an interest and have interest in our discipline again so it's been not right I mean in Peter who's also one of those characters who you know I was a great academic argument was interesting it was in this industry at the station transition where it was but but there is a kind of strange false conception of discipline as you know playing with I funny ideas curiosities originality for the sake of originality drawing for the sake of drawings I mean it was a kind of art school thing of yes with ideas with narratives was fine I mean this is very non strategic is very kind of if you compare this to the bars and it's like it seems kind of they don't know where they don't want to go anywhere yeah well it's it seems to be very it's almost easy and almost a cop-out to create projects within with this will open brief I did whereas if you gave sort of a set of massive students a really really mundane brief like a five bedroom house on a boring evil plot to succeed and to excel within such a frame of mediocrity takes so much more skill and expertise than it does if you're building as iceballs you've done such project we've done quite a few kind of medium-sized London in the first projects I'm not working on a slightly larger kind of series of interventions into Stoke Newington these are kind of incubator spaces and making it a mixed-use network society cluster of office spaces or cowork incubate Google's campus style and shajen is kind of group at the ivy they're doing high high density residential cool living they're thinking about new forms of marketing and building communities online to bring them together exchange of rules shared rules you know sophistication building new tools new new new conceptual style with new ways of life in the city and then also new technology customized modularity and so on and in my case also developing these architectures embed them into urbanism but also running unity simulations of the interaction scenarios and I build models of the all different actors different firms and and actors and sub actors protocols of interaction and so on and how they fill those spaces and how the spaces themselves also adaptive and reconfigurable and so on they they are very pragmatic but on the edge of innovation but very tangible projects where you have to bring a lot of good interesting ideas a lot of skills and a lot of compelling later on scenario development and visualization but they're very down-to-earth and you're on the level so you could I could go to this and these can be shown to a client's to to local district mayors whatever and they would they would make sense I mean the same we've done in New York last year Google campus and so on and they would their feet you know this little bit on the inner edge what we're doing here we've done a study for the collective - collating block in in in Tottenham there's a lot of innovation and they look and feel much more like cool living your space so so that's the way we approaching it and that I think is more healthy and you can have all the philosophical and sociological and political arguments about that about concept of ownership about you - you know about the societal purposes and political frameworks on the project so an IV I agree so we you know and that kind of is not is not happening enough and there's a kind of lost opportunity but also a lot of these characters I mean it's disempowering for them if they come out of the five years having done five of those and it's gonna be very hard for them to I couldn't hire any of them because III don't know what they can do they haven't designed anything which I can appraise ya know I know as this kind of the intelligence yeah it's very adolescent I mean and and and our school like that's cool I mean ask you know I have a theory of art I mean that's that makes sense a little offending the decision of the art world but it's a very very different thing that's a freewheeling browsing of of opportunities and problems and issues and things unfinished and fit leading to something as a reservoir of creative industry audiences to come in maybe to utilize to do something else throw in front of audience provocations of the publications that kind of I call the brainstorming chamber platform a freewheeling exploitation which needs some funding to get somewhere because for us to make an innovation we need kind of incubator arenas and sometimes even for early if conceptualization I mean we are we are let's say this maybe there's earlier stages from what we are what we do at the design Research Lab they would exist in some kind of an art school but I think it's you if that now all architecture schools are doing that that's false that's a problem I mean do you think there's what are the major changes that you think architectural education needs to undertake in order to first to get us or a decent discourse going and then sort of be able to apply that practically and theoretically I think we're in a stage of and we have to get out of the art school face we need to move move to the kind of second politics and which then what happen continue that IIT and GSD with with Gropius and Mies etc I mean they delivered modernism I mean seriously and we need to deliver parameters and that's what I believe I mean I mean if somebody else has another idea what are you delivering this good sliver nothing yeah and and we should I mean we deliver something but we only a small group within the end there's been a few other units this was much more coherent in the 90s and the early 2000s but the whole cluster of units in there and the Graduate School together with dear L and M Tech and landscape urbanism this was one community of research including Columbia University something's going on at the GSD so there was much more and now some of these things have been kind of fragmented and dispersed and backtracked and mostly you know this kind of post financial crisis because you had also the what was nice about that boom maybe wasn't official it wasn't official but that there was a you know there was so much work yeah you know we had 20 project in Spain alone for instance and but there's also many other could that focuses minds on working on something which has tangibility as an excitement you know young architects and it also the take of China a lot for a lot of these careers to me to be kind of kicked off and and in the problem is with the financial crisis there has been this kind of that a lot of that energy has stopped and faded and then there was a lot of reflection about capitalism a lot of anti capitalism Occupy movement political politicization of the student group and they were grappling with that I mean I was never that's when I became a libertarian I quickly realized and I was really prepared for that I wasn't afraid doesn't mean that we have we have a radical reset of a direction of a civilization and feminism is not absolute obsolete not not at all so to appraise that event properly I was able to do that a lot of people didn't and they get kind of distracted into into this politics look I'm I'm you know in let's say into false politics into a into enough anti-capitalist dreams which we've gone through I mean I was you know I was actually became a Marxist in that era of market socialism the transformation of Eastern Europe where where there was and you could see it happening the way the way the way the Disco's itself and its protagonist keep introducing more and more features of capitalism and became kind of pro-capitalist by without real logic and in particular when the tasks were also set and what then and we really were doing and so so I've gone through all this I could appraise that that the prospects for socialist revolution and radical democracy know yet do not chance T yeah how many technologies and things there are and startups and things like all of the innovative technologies that are coming out which are effectively so very almost libertarian pro-market the animation the low regular technology it should tell you something and the great the libertarian movement is overlapping largely and a lot with this tech sector and these are you know these are the smartest the press the brightest the energetic the and the missionaries of all of our age and that's very healthy and that's another kind of hint of somebody who thinks all about tenesmus this is totally on the wrong track if all these ki-- the voice this industry is large highly sympathetic yeah I think there's a fear among a lot of people isn't that if you sort of take off the reins and let everything run free that bad things will happen and it's sort of a risk oh yes small see conservatism is all we have to keep trained and tyro let's risk it we have to risk it I mean I'm it's an existential thing because we have ten years of stagnation already meaning we have zero productivity growth or per-capita income grows in Europe I mean it's a scandal in an era of takeoff everybody talks about yeah I mean we have made leaps and bounds of productivity but as some have been D frayed and and we can do all we can and and and kind of dissipate it elsewhere so there's a net you know ok 0.1% or something which accumulates to 0.5% in ten years which is nothing and that's the UK overall Europe so that's a scandal and and it's crazy and we have all these potentials and to be not letting them happen we're not letting rip so in 20 years we look back we don't have these promises fulfilled yeah they're not happening and another 10 years I don't have three more decades of more or less stagnation of where we could double per capita income you can work half all work you know sixty percent and have everything double or if everything everything you want to double and triple and and and that that prosperity means cumulative and if you hamper if you if you don't grow and where you could have grown you don't see it in one or two or three years but in 15 20 years we all around I mean we imagine we could have doubled GDP for us and the freedoms and luxuries we given and also there's more together to give away in charities I mean a lot of these entrepreneurs they're the profit and loss system is actually raining them so that they actually doing useful things rather than you know being off on the hobbyhorse missions and okay the Bill Gates these characters have earned so much they've given so much in that hard test of profit and loss they have underwrite to defray the rest maybe some of this spreading around that some good but I think the reinvesting in proper for profit would be much more effective prosperity for all investment well in the big at the big area that you've mentioned before in terms of these sort of economic theories is around planning effectively and and you've spoken about planning as a very the last remaining highly regulated market and I'm still I'm still undecided as to what is the appropriate balance between sort of letting rip and letting innovation run and protecting existing people's interests and I think most people have that sort of nervousness and that fear that if you open up the market all kinds of chaos will happen that's the problem when we I don't think the day's three bears us out and and only way you have to do it all at once you can kind of gradually roll back gradually you know in which direction are we are we turning the dial that's the first inside and we ramping up more and more you want more and more of what what worries you to be kind of handed over to I mean who are these characters to making this decision I know them less should be met them I've been to parliamentary subcommittee meetings and they're not series that should chatting with all sorts of things they're not prepared then a professional because it don't have to be it's very different from the way I operate here and I mean if you look at all these MPs I mean you know I have some respect for some of the ministers I mean it's quite interesting sound elitist but that's what people I can I can talk to and if I have a certain respect for they were also the only ones some of them David Cameron who wasn't in the end also in a petty thoughts that with respect to expenses because they have actually emissions and ambitions there and and but look I call them the clowns over there I mean you can't I mean they they they have fantasies about what they're gonna regulate and what they wanted to fear with their they do know knowledgeable enough they have known the real incentives calling them back in its demagogy which are all kind of rhetorics which would drive them I mean I have to think about this 50 percent of GDP there kind of goes through their hands partly is redistributed or rationed out and and and and a lot of eaten up in in the process and and how much we can do the other 50% they could all afford I mean and and what they're doing the regulatory so they eat up the fifty percent but the other fifty percent where it which which is still for us to keep they are infringing on how we use it as consumers they use it as producers so they're there so the totality of production half of which they eat away they are kind of constraining they could be much more so we could be estimate if you get them out of the way we would inflate that overall and we could keep a much larger part and the government I mean that's the characters I know them and they are mediocre even on ministerial level someone who are great a lot of people like me Liam Fox and there's some good people in there but but but and I had respect for Cameron not at the theater she isn't in learning he hasn't forty five volumes of off of theorizing and debating and snow they have their own little debating so it's mediocre characters a bunch of clowns with pretenses which we keep handing over more and more of decision-making powers which they are patently cannot cope with and there and there and they're in there and they're really stunting and I think I've known I mean if you good at other countries the sophisticated people and organizations are corporate corporate entities there's big give me any larger corporation they outperform any ministry any in terms of the the level of internal continuous improvement I feel they have they have the internal change management groups consultancies work at them they have pressures continuously to gutten regroup it's not ideal there's also problems there but but I think in you see with you go into other countries it's the only entities which can actually get things organized so so in Morocco it's a kind of phosphate company because they have also you know pride in you know business leaders working there Lumpkin Saudi cetera these are the organizations who actually and and and they are vilified these these are the heights of our that's a culture and these are the heights of this is also sophisticated leadership knowledge which you learn and in business cuz I've gone to business school so so and that's all kind of vilified by adolescent kids running around wanting to shut down well on the solut deregulation of planning kind of thing because I think it's it needs to be done need to sort of put the strongest arguments against as well as an idea but if you what would you say to the idea that there's a fear that well the possibility that if you do deregulate too much that the sort of the existing successful entities but they're something like London say will run away with all of the success and you'll get a greater inequality of distribution of wealth to such an extent that you start causing disability and acne there might be great those those those places who do these reforms first will run away and then everybody else will catch up I mean that was a great moment of Thatcher I mean that sure was was was doing things and everybody else was put on alert and had to do other things including China actually thank so ping was inspired by Asia so that's what we need we need somewhere to break through this and sin but at the moment there's a feel like you can have ideological cartelization so they're all doing the same recipes they're all encouraging yourself to do the similar recipes and you don't have to show you of course it has been an advanced place backfoot place it's not going to be effectively challenging even they do if they grow fast so both on a national level I was sometimes taking independent Scotland going left go crushing Reformation itself and then but London could be great place to to to break so yes run away and look the provinces they don't have to shape up or they they could move to London a lot would be much more affordable at that point what if though because you're increasing the demand for a single place and I think it's fine place to apply those the increase in supplier was respect and then it finds its in equilibrium maybe then there's a kind of sub center emerging or Birmingham has a chance or there becomes a conurbation I think the problem is right now yeah it's just not happening on we have a big project hold up / - it's nearly 2 now fears and planning we finally got planning and then the central government caused it and it's going to be another year so there's so many project like this that Bishop is good yard which it will not develop for 25 years I mean I look actually at the rejection right up it's it doesn't stand up to any scrutiny it's a bunch of I don't know what empowers him to to trash such a work fully work a plan high-density new new kind of mixed-use project because it doesn't fit the character of Liverpool Street characters maybe gentrifying there's a bit of light overcast on on a bunch of buildings with a few characters might or might not like to look at this new skyline I mean there's this atrocious absence of rationale this deserves to be kind of I mean it's illegitimate and there's so many examples I mentioned also a Texas example of a kind of as the car park and supermarket in ananda and the idle talks this is a NIMBYism of the worst order and it's and all these standards and standards as I said under the ground it talks so the first thing is the restrictions is there's a land use planes freezing up plots which are dedicated to office or commercial are frozen up central government tried to come in to the rights of development rights and all the powers had the opt-out chance to opt it out everything so he is a freezing up there then it comes to residential you can see the distortion that sometimes decides the land values are permitted land values and they have been increasing gigantically as Martin or multiple of GDP where was only happy to be all the permanent land values why because it's this restrictive news it's an artificial political scarcity of land not only with because its land at all the density some lands are not then ever not permit it and like bishops good yard but also what you can do soon since that you on this side you can only do commercial whereas residential the pressure is like four fold your fourfold value multiples sometimes on on and on equal sides which according to the market collocation Lee the same they should have the same price so so that's where we start but then you have all these restrictions of the oval density which I think usually imagine easily doubling up every development here in terms of volume and then you can 1/2 average unit size if you love for cooling even much more stronger you get at least four times to maybe six times population density on these same sites and they would still be desirable eminently marketable and the this is prevented in the name of affordability but a lot of people would only be able to afford these more dense or smaller places now we are for at forty people working here none is ever eligible for social rent including receptionists to make more much more than that so most of the affordability is going into this is these are let's say I think that the key work at key workers it can only tense phrase all of our people are heroes okay there's nothing for them when it comes to the intermediate part which is it's actually only our senior associates and associates can afford it because use a minimum of forty five fifty sudden it literally as conditions of entering that so you suddenly give you give it so so this is the absolute pretense affordability system and that makes a huge delay and a huge difficulty particularly as you change it as you ramp up to fifty it's holding up all sorts of projects but it's not helping anybody the reality is so you saying in a single apartment we fifty square meter and has to be only eight units on the size it has to it has no overlooking and so on so that is decent living and I make it affordable that's a lie that's it's it's it's ridiculously absurd notion it's it stands up to no scooty in the meantime and you're saying everything that I'm talking about cell oh you recreate rabbit hatches people living in rabbit hatches now and you you don't give them better chances because all of these people where they're living they're living in flat shares and sharing a flat they have a former kitchen or other bedroom as an apartment in a council house which was kind of right to buy yeah so so the the discourse is highly dishonest because these recipes are indefensible and the risks you talking about and they're they the the the what we're talking about is you know for instance giving permit to these for co-living applications with the collective has running and sitting on and offering this product into the market who's gonna be hurt by who's benefited by holding these up I mean there is not you know this lunch is not going to kind of become Mumbai slum lament a third of the uber and the Ryanair argument isn't that the by allowing a reduction in sort of minimum standards you actually open up access to so many more people who can then afford to access a service that they couldn't access before but I think that's that I don't I can't really think of many criticisms of that side of it the side where I would try and play devil's advocate well is the protection of existing property owners say so say you want to build a skyscraper right next to somebody's too bad detached house in the suburbs or something now what do you think is there going to be the appropriate mechanism to ensure accountability and ensure that inappropriate things aren't killed the most logical people hear this there's always going to be some kind of grad your transformation of ownership rights okay now we seem to we have established some kind of an ownership rights through the political mechanism which is NIMBY istic my district I need to be I can prevent everybody else here and and but but ownership right migration change if that's unhealthy there needs to be start discursively challenge and could be eroded that this kind of right to prevent in my neighborhood this transformation because I kind of it's my neighborhood and we collectively own that so I'm that could be challenged but we're going to also work with it and I think it ultimately should be charged because there's lots of in many ways ownership rights also that issue the owner company there's been many constraints on this may be far too many which he wrote ownership right which is effective control over directing resources and and and and activities and so on so but I think in the residential there's a kind of strangely also let's say council tenants have a kind of strange sense of the treated as owners or tenants treated more like owners I mean there's something about freezing up too much so wait you you you protecting but then the overall in its a kind of sub collective which which which which allows to freeze up the oval so that you can't build even as a runway anymore in the UK so so that but but I wanted to come back so in terms of ownership that should be row today should allow more freedom and you shouldn't have that if you wanted to have a dynamic thriving metropolis an integrated labor market there's productivity for everybody and enhancement for everybody and yes you would then have to suffer the fact that something is close by undermining the value of your house or undermining the view you were used to you know it's trade-offs given thing but there's an interesting guy this is a movement called Jim be who you know this guy my backyard yeah he said okay we can do another way slightly more palatable perhaps give the right not to individuals but make little kind of groups like a street and he was thinking and he's very constrained these kind of hot we have the main student in the side streets which usually have the two-story roll-off of terrace houses and give street by street the right to say we upgraded into a kind of Georgian six to five story second market and I Praetorian is man look any other such ideas of showing making making tests making releasing things I mean the the right the development right thing was quite interesting curiously they have no standards on the development right it should be aware of it so if you could we get have a permission to convert this into residential we could make be kind of no standard restrictions we can make the units as small as we like and and and it shows also that there's a market for such for sure such things and of course the first mover once you have frozen up the first move i windfalls once you once you allow small units in the market at the first they will be overpriced and we're super profits but they will be rolled quickly and and then you have a first move on launches temporarily because there's been so no supply of this and physically sorry square meter 25 squared xx square meter unit is half of cost on then 41 which is now the minimum and then you can you can but people that would be very happy to pay kind of let's say they could be later on 30 square meter and now actually small units they're sold wake and rented to very close of the 25 square meter flat and a BBQ missile is rented a very very close rent to 40 because people just they don't care about their will to be here and later on this will be even also so there's this fear the one has to think through multiple steps and and we make some risk taking if if all hell breaks loose I will be the last to not see the say okay if I was had a wrong hypothesis you call the plaque on this or you bring back something yeah I mean not you know it's how huge is the risk but at the moment we just frozen up I mean the GLA is now looking at co-living because it's such been such a great place at the collective um sure but they do it the wrong way they they own they don't allow it without regulatory freezing it right away and with just no discovery process where they still discovering how large this unit should be how many amenities work we actually measuring for them utilization with senses etc what's the mix of you know free co-working should we they have a kind of instance a better linen service and and in various things on the GLA is kind of on to this and I wanted to make obligatory the bed linen service and they want this frees the unit sizes and wonderful give minimum amenity space is to make it I mean this paternalist protectionism I don't know it's just false and wrong let them tease out where in and there may be versions where there's less amenities and and amenities it's not even though it's not dehumanizing I mean I I know it can't be because I lived in the former in Brixton in a former kitchen this was my flat I'm gonna share a toilet and forty percent of New York apartments are illegal according to current standards the people living in them there so to pretend that that the prevention of this product is is kind of the prevention of living conditions some councillor finds unlivable but people living at this because they make choices I mean and to not allow the market to tease that out and would make that make make that much more healthy because now we have these the the people are coming have to squeeze and the existing council flats or whatever pterosaurs I used me all the share terrace houses in you know shared living and well that's in flats own terrace houses Mienfoo until I finally could afford an apartment I mean that's that's not should I say dehumanizing yeah I don't I never chose to be in that net it stood together had a much much larger luxurious flat with the car in the yard and and I chose London all right one last thing before we wrap this up and going back to your own work I've always been curious about why it is that you have such a monotone or color palette in all of your work why why is everything white and then it's I don't know what your theoretical justification is there's so many funds one could work on we love to develop a more rich material palette and any it's not it's not an ideological stance well I was very sad to see that the stadium the wooden stadium go yeah refused because I from the renderings I thought that's absolutely beautiful yeah and I personally I think that when you combine the kind of form finding that you do here with sort of rich material and color palette as well that's when you get a really really integrated effect you definitely want it is it's tougher it's more complex tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu deal with the handle we like and and every firm and an individual has a kind of personal style as a kind of I would say is a negative default because you have you not infinity versatile so so so and that makes a bit recognizing you called out a little bit that I see personal styles as limitations simply because you've invested a number of skills and repertoire and and and you have to repeat to some extent and you don't have a time and energy and and that's why we also need you know schools to in takes longer to build up your repertoire and then yet it comes in and when the meantime the kind of more oiled machine is geared towards routine and a lot of my work is to kind of inject ready off so it's not a choice - we would love to be much more versatile what do you think you need a sort of fifth album kind of equivalent that's completely different to your previous work to sort of experiment with that's also something I would enjoy mmm because there's a tendency I think in large practices to get the sort of the in-house style effectively and clients start coming to you because they want their anyhow style always hated that I don't like that it's it's there's a pressure both from clients and sometimes from kind of self routinization where where the staff will self look up always the earlier projects to interrupt that I mean who generally is tough it's all I mean doesn't be totally original I mean but at the development of that paradigm so so I'm very happy to be recognized by spiritism but I don't want to be recognized at society's architects projects so if you put a project out yes permit isn't for sure or tectonic if that phrase catches on should be identified but if they if they can in easy spot resided architects between you and the next or next competitor in terms of style so yeah okay well thank you very much it's been an excellent conversation thanks jack thanks for your prompting and patience and giving the platform thanks very much you

Channel: Buckland Architects

Views: 22,677

Rating: 4.908884 out of 5

Keywords: architecture, theory, ZHA, zaha, hadid, patrik, schumacher, parametricism, autopoiesis, architect, bruce, buckland, architects, technology, parametric, parametrics, grasshopper, podcast

Id: xqE9czLsSO4

Length: 123min 26sec (7406 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2019