What is New? - Zaha Hadid

utopian and what isn't what is za has an extraordinary architect as you know she's incredibly intelligent incredibly thoughtful and super super tender to our field and to those of us in it she has been now I think one of the great teachers of the field both in person as you will discover tonight but also to the rest of the field but most important of all I think czar has simply the least boring person in our field and so it's it there can be nothing there can be no greater pleasure than to welcome the least the least boring person in architecture to this room a room that I hope there's our has still thinks of as her own room anyway and it's a bit of a return home for me personally again I just want to things are for for you know continuing in the work to risk everything and even here to risk those tender thoughts those new projects that work you're doing right now nothing could be better for us and that you're here [Applause] yeah I mentioned in this room so many times I'm very also delighted to see some well when I was here maybe 25 years ago and then 18 years ago whatever Steven Holl was always here is I'm very happy to see our own Robin Middleton who witnessed my early period they yeah they a 40 years ago was 35 or 38 years ago was horrible and and I was accused by one of my teachers to be an actress between rehearsals and of course I was very often it wasn't REM it was someone else a Brit you know because I kind of go and deliberately wearing kind of funny furs and and so on and and he was seen then if you look remotely clean that you were a decadent and corrupt but big this is the first time I'm not late because of myself Mick putting my makeup on a song I was actually standing outside the Mercer downtown and our car was late so we hijacked a car and which was standing there for another guest I told him I was just going close by and and the poor guy to take me a hundred blocks the last time Acts there is that journey from downtown to Midtown and this incredible rush was in the days I used to party in New York in the mid 80s and I was out with friends of mine the 5:00 in the morning and I took a taxi which and I said I'm not gonna take this taxis almost lost legs and then Cassidy incoming ridiculous in New York so this taxi literally ran through all the lights and as he was turning on 46th Street or whatever the car exploded every real went everywhere I mean at 5:00 in the morning so I'm sitting on a wheel this car in the middle of New York and the guy was almost gladly with us and you're going to give me another cab on 8th a being there wasn't a cab anyway as I was coming here I was thinking of all these moments also every time I come to Columbia trains and there were a lot of thing Patrick Schumacher was my partner and office was a tremendous guy a great teacher a much better teacher than I am I it has much more patience the last time I was with him somewhere when he had food poisoning which he had this time was in Moscow and a week before the white revolution so there would be another revolution here and anyway I was in a nice hotel and and he wanted an one in an ambulance there were two guys with me both pathetic and and kind of throwing up everywhere and doing awesome horrible things and when we left to Moscow summers and we do not let anyone give you an injection so you have to carry your own little you know things so anyhow we call final call an ambulance and the ambulance came and we had to take Pat it on a stretcher and this woman first opened a box with injections this long and he was like running away from it anyway I want and there was another guy with me was called Axel and me to come in this ambulance to the French hospital but the ambulance got lost because the girl the nurse and the driver were flirting and and and running around Moscow as you well know Moscow's consoling firts has many circles and it used to be many years ago and the days escolar Moscow with Ram and Pat and always people they were the taxi would ask you if you thought he thought they were a bit dodgy which circles you take because you know the depending on whether you want to quickly or long a fair dependent on which circle you took so and these two always ask us do you want you want to go around and we didn't understand what was going on I finally asked myself what is they mean said you know I'll show you so anyways guys would run in with the girls around Moscow so we were running around in this ambulance but anyhow the French hospital is fine this is a name of an album by Diana Ross what was it called motion in whatever locomotion this is one of my office specializes in names of objects which I don't remember like in a florists cloris has a thing is the show is this one getting limbs of some of these ideas which we really are dealing with in the office and does the furniture the show in Philadelphia is only about object and furniture and the installation is is about kind of maybe landscape and erosion because these are the themes we have worked on and with other project is a kind of the chairs itself for the tables on you drink the stipend you doing next in a part of segments of what it called dune formation next and I'm not sure what I showed here when I was here I think it's three four years ago but anyway whatever I sure none of these many of these projects had not yet really been may be completed or built maybe it was wolves bread was finished yeah I am members miss Roseburg because they wanted to want me to talk about concrete and I thought that was not ready I think I was part of a concrete conference the only way that Colombia could fit me in was them and in the meantime though many of the prep media without would have shown four years ago have come to me realize well so we have really focused the last in the last six seven years on trying to push further of the boundaries and try to really build without but one come one called a political project a utopian project to build it and variety players around the world so these are kind of some of the themes which were occurring then this is on some older project can you go back Patrick which is aggregates and clusters like lions bundles and networks where maybe the company with supplies I can roam or their lives intersect like a Delta the work has also written very very implements in the last maybe 20 years through Suzy who did the composition in Cologne with land formation and topography and landscape as a way of dealing with very large programs can you go back one Patrick you jumped back one he is there not well so forgive him if his hopping around trying to desperately go back to bed so these are some of also the bridges this bridge on the left is a rope which was also completed and Abu Dhabi the connection between a blow job in Dubai next-next Nascimento Fogg Rafi assigned with Islamic Museum in Qatar which was later done by IM Pei where did that project which was about gradation of volume from very small to very large is the NTA of the world's book project nan foam for the royal the Opera House in Abu Dhabi or Dubai and also certain museums with the olivet Apocrypha and erosion like the Quebec library and which was to do with these volumes or valleys which are eroded and also based on the tree of knowledge so the three bifurcate and branches out to different places they these are kind of this is a de Pury in Chicago these are various studies for different projects that one on the right-hand is a product which is on site and for sir her china and beijing which is a very large urban block and the idea to create a kind of vertical topography which allows these these volumes to intersect through the kind of atreus and commercial facilities so china also is a company which means that you can actually have retail on different levels maybe on the top or on the bottom then there is no neck necessary it can accept segregation between these spaces a very large master's plans from the one Beijing for a swarm of towers to projects and places like Bilbao Istanbul Singapore landscape topography which is actually already done many projects have been completed not by us but by other architects there's a vape or early project for the Guggenheim in Beijing the Salerno ferry terminal a librarian and poor and then the the the icicle stations and in Innsbruck so I can go now and more detailed is the Society Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati which was done which we won in 1998 so it's now almost 14 years actually the year we got it I was teaching at Columbia I thought at Columbia three times once and the late 80s and in 93 which was a really great great studio and 98 and that's when I heard that I had won this competition so this idea of aggregates and lesser clusters appears again in a school which was done we've done in a can I go back with Patrick a school which is done in London and I kind of rather you know poor neighborhood the Academy program is a great program which is being cancelled by the current government it was a program where you don't have a sponsor and the sponsor it gives you can you go back can you go back one by selling me something on one thank you no stay there from okay I know he's not well poor thing so so the probe the sponsor will give us an amount of money and he will choose the focus of the school in this particular case is focused on math and sports hansae hence they're kind of running track and and the government would match it ten times so whenever this one gives three million pounds then Grameen were measured four thirty thirty million pounds there's a good metaphor school so all the schools are next the schools are the one which kind of defined by the concrete frame and the rowing track runs through it it's a very tight site it was a garbage dump and the intention is to the East schools would create can have really a very nice environment pursuers all the classrooms are with transparent with you a lot of transparency in terms of the joys are all glass it's for schools primary schools secondary schools or cluster together with a playing field outside so it's an urban side fitting in a lot like an incredible density on the side all the playing field is they can have one of the multi-purpose rooms which which you can see through the park also as you could use for other facilitates all the different interiors of the different levels a new project and in Michigan from MSU the museum for Eli Broad Museum and MSU Michigan University which is also kind of made of this you know not field but facade fields which are pleated stainless steel with two entries from both sides so that students and the campus and some moving through Assad can easily go through it it's a very simple diagram which has the fall also could have windows looking at there's a simple diagram on the interior where kind of there's a central spine which of that are galleries of different sizes which above and below sacrum low it's a one-story high or two-story high museum space so it can kind of really manipulate much more as some photographs on side this would be opened and in April seeing the windows which is so earlier and this might be not the collection which would be shown it is the Eli Broad pieces which sure we use for the renderings so when you are some of the walls are paper is concrete and the ground is all in wood so you know where the public areas are and where the galleries are so there you see they could have the detail of a stainless steel and there are two entries one which is this kind of card out courtyard with glass around it and the other one is on the on the other side Rome which is kind of made of many lines this is the the site in don't really have any avi flaminia and I'm not showing because I've shown this so many times here if you can go back I'm over X I think in Google Earth it there was one line which comes from the river all the way to the side which really in a way agitated the whole site and allowed for this lies too every time they turned they meet the certain geometry on this adjacent side so it's in a way quite contextual but so every line on the side we were all there for the presentation Steven was there and we were other you know all out at dinner and the boys were kind of talking about their projects I did not and and they said one of us will win it and I decided to leave the next day and he was like come on stay we go to our nowhere and I said no no no I'm in a bad home and I'm not saying because I've gone through so many all these competitions and you were sitting in your room waiting for them to call you to tell you lost I said no I'm going so I went on Saturday evening and a nine-day morning they called me to tell me to have one and I couldn't find Stevie and I know where he was a miserable and Hadrian's villa or somewhere anyway these mines are interior and exterior the lines were basically was the base on an older diagram where again it's going to field project where it's a campus where they are SEP several building but they all operate on the same as at one single field and these ribs the idea was that they rigged the object because it was mostly Deborah and the object could be rigged from their ceiling different with all the different staircases and my Honda MIDI is the kind of a completely mostly daily lit space and then of course it's going to control all the controlling all the kind of friendly lighting through the ceiling so this this is a combination of both lines and aggregates or clusters next there's a project which has not finished yet it's in annum on Montpelier and it's three departments a very large archive building and library which projects out of theater the other one is a sport and they as like a kind of an urban block was flipped up so it's all precast concrete the crevasse ISM between the lines are all the public areas is a part of the interior so the idea it's similar to the to the Quebec library where the idea of the Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge and so they these transparent spaces become the space which are eroded of the stone or the other rock and they've formed all the public and Pacifica city facilities and Stefan hopper work on this project was a maniac all the longing and money as are also curved there's a project which opened last year and these are all means this is a museum for Transport and Glasgow on two on the client and two so the idea that is a one continuous space but also it could have response to the very large shipyards and on the on the Clyde where they used to make the ships to take all the transport pieces across the world so it's so like a kind of a liquid color for shed or melted shed which has in it all the translation trains and exterior the roof escape which is get a part of the topography idea and this kind of this act educated roofs line they merely gonna live with that yellow color I mean you know people my office they always ask me what color should be and I was a gray or you know white and so they said oh they want color so I said lime yellow and they had to kind of they had to experiment that the Commission it should be green so they bought the samples of this kind of green and I said no no no looks like it without me yellow and so everybody the client likes it but every wonders why it's like that so the idea of the museum is kind of open on both ends and go back and as you move through it you end up with the weather this the ship which is part of the exhibits of the transplant minion the bridge which is also part of the exponents that are goes out so this interest in kind of structure the substructure is and concrete the search engine steel and it's cladded in this you know prefab concrete and it's basically on two levels so the act as a as an entry bridge and also as a as an exertion space the Virgin Abu Dhabi which took you know 20 years definitional damn the last time I was there they were knitting this teal literally the concrete is still written you know for their concrete this the substructure is in concreted over structure as in steel and the idea of this product was that kind of a continuous line like a like a dune which starts at zero and lift up so this idea of lines kind of connecting like and wrong going vertically luckily two by towers many of the towers we had worked on as show we did in Paris which is a oullette our research from on many different scale from very small to very tall like this is a competition for a project in Beijing so the idea of these connect our ways really connecting and disconnecting forming these can grate a chair Mexican another study for a tower in for Bilbao exoskeleton showing kind of the schedule on the exterior and this is the tower which is almost completed in Marseille where we we had done a lot of research on these towers which actually expand near to the ground because part of the project which we had worked on for many years was the ground condition and how the ground condition led to the idea of topography and landscape where the ground is slightly kind of inflated and the idea of the Hara the way it lands on the grommet it actually becomes like a skirt which meets the ground in a very gentle way so this kind of has two movements one to the ground one to the a bridge which connects to the educational facility so the central part of the tower is a PC this way the structure is also curved but and the settlers paths can have different glazing from the is of a shipping company and it's on the harbor and NASA and it's placed between the other motorways which can by FERC eight to go so it's like almost between the application of the motorway this is not my fish there's a tree which is higher up connecting the two buildings together actually the staff canteen and and the restaurant so we've kind of double-height spaces this is before anybody moved in and this is kind of a project between a tower and a pavilion and this for a can you go back yes this is a almost like two houses but connected not horizontally but vertically the client weren't a house which he bought this site in San Moscow with the with there all the trees and the forest and he thought if he's on the ground even cannot see the trees you may see their trunks so the idea and obviously I liked him a lot so he has to kind of run up and down this is on Oh how many floors when there's an elevator but basically a private house is above the entertainment house on the ground all the kind of their spa and so on and interested in also kind of manufacturing and fabrication this is also made of paneling like a fiber concrete the edge is all in steel this is a kind of Banja and this product is really built almost like the diagram I mean literally the guy who worked on it in the office and me and him have a hail of inertia and so I was threatened to send him there to sit on the balcony at the Guangzhou Opera House so this is about the product about like two rocks sitting and eroded by their water on their Pearl River seen from above next to all the new towers when I went on site the first time there was nothing there not on the Opera but there was none of the towers it was just a empty site on the water so now this is part of a park one one of the pebbles is gray or black and the other one is white and the interior reverses one is interior is white the other one is interior is black this is a kind of a cage and part of the cage is transparent and part of it is solid when they met with the cladding so the idea that you never get through these spaces the two rocks nest over each other like these crevasses and the rocks to allow a kind of really multitude of special experiences and also a way to move through the building as if going until like a help part of the interiors the interior of the auditorium which is also form like gypsum and all in kind of gold for the weather all the lighting and conditioning or integrated asymmetry on the auditorium which allows is kind of the edges these are the balconies it's like a kind of a a shell when they're sure like an oyster within the you kind of rock stage all the rehearsal rooms also rib ceilings with lighting the second space the black space I think I should thank the Guardian for this I think it's a garden or the treaties between when it was where's our friend Roger you're nodding and anybody goes to Ranjana they can watch Mamma Mia and Chinese and later it would be cats in Chinese and this was a very nice actually dance but by Akram Khan who was a Krugerrand dancer in Britain it was very violent so you approach it on an oblique angle and from there from the park another Opera House and Jordan where the idea of the interior being like an erosion in the rock and Petra and this erosion allows you to really create not only a generous interior space but also in this case you can have you know performances and in the main lobby so kind of a semi outdoor space so the whole of the interior is carved out with the author on both sides of the building I hate people and drawings honestly it makes me cringe a for years I didn't I know about anything and if it was oh you don't like people you don't like trees and and and III hated shrubs so anyway it's a curse now on me that I do I do i presented by landscape i had trees do there's another project which was for a competition within in Bogota Colombia for a conference center and the idea that it is almost like making a new mountain but in this case it the mountain is also carved out but in a different kind of way so it's peeled and carved out so when you walk into the the conference centre and Expo whatever it is completely transparent to the exterior and using the plaza as an extension of the interior of the project this really also fascination and interest in the civic domain or the civic zone started with very very early on in my work weather declaration that the ground becomes and then then multiple ground and new ground there Olivia to ground the subterranean so that's when this idea of peeling and carving came up making it all part of this kind of really civic and public domain and allowing the ground condition to be very porous and transparent to allow people throughout this project so in every occasion of a project we try to really bring in or sucking the urbanism into the interior of the building this is an artwork weeded where the idea of the organic morphology and the clusters also come together the Chanel Pavilion in Central Park I said yes I do wonder hub in Paris but the show is no longer about Chanel and Chanel and show inside the interior was a part of the kind of radium matera research against the Jean Nouvel innovation the exterior the teria which is the tower research and this web-like space allow for paneling to project on or a seating so it's a torus so you can walk in into one end another thing which was where we're variant is also the organization of this the plan and and through early days and the idea of really from abstraction minimal minimalist kind of really work so you walk in one end you come out on the in the same position very more through the building and in one move this is kind of the construction this was a traveling pavilion was it went from made in the UK went to Hong Kong it was then put on a car park and then it went to Japan and then so this is this webbing could also become seating then it went to New York and then okay it was supposed to comes along a bit and now it went to paris the project in beijing just a very large scale composition of kind of topography like a mountain so each each layer like a kind of contour lines becomes one level and they are connected through these I hate people you know this is a kind of space which they do for exhibiting the project this is high-level walkways which kind of really again deals with the idea of the space being not only on the ground with a variety of levels cutting through the building and of course it gives you very odd and Jason sees between these spaces so they are neighboring building you see through it this kind of sensuous lines the interior of these other spaces the again going from the NCR and start to clip space which is being carved away on the exterior this is the showroom with the other project in Beijing which are literally three mountains as a kind of high-rise a new project which which we haven't really designed is kind of a car park in Miami where the interior is carved away so to bring it in mind I feel the furniture next can we run through this pattern there's a showroom which we did in London four bathrooms so with it the first level of the exteriors again it's all made in all the prefabricated concrete and different colors made in Germany shipped to UK and the interior all the interior pieces or the furniture was made in Austria including all the lighting so it's very again a simple diagram it's a very large space but the interior is one long kind of public space and of the space are these like cone spaces which house all the products and they're also house meeting rooms and some and idea that the outside like a backwater have a ripple a rippling effect on the on the exterior and on the floor the unfortunate thing the toilets are not terrific we're doing their next bathrooms for them so they kind of prevent even these cows are kind of carved out to see through and you can see the two color concrete's there's a show on parivar which we did on maybe two years ago there's a series of field projects which are for one is for cap stock which is a university research facility in Saudi Arabia now I'm kind of really all research and so these are the early studies some of them are tensile structures some are steel so it's a kind of complete field and there's kind of almost tabla rasa and of collision no existing topography and especially in between our different materials as can operas a kind of a shading space all the exteriors are tessellated some of these interior spaces which are again made up done side and this is an aerial view of the construction the sweets lecture so the scale is kind of quite interesting some of the someone in the propagated kind of elevations per Sode studies these are the stations for Innsbruck now we want to really make a station which are going up the hill to the kind of a ski resort and they are made they are like icicles so when it's snowing it feels as if you are part of the kind of their snow landscape the substructure again in concrete the superstructure is a steel cladded with this kind of semi opaque glass so there was no there was a similar there was no station like this they were lucky just a line going up the hill to so when you are you know up and that space you are you frame the view and looking out to the house so don't know which we want 10 years ago is still on site it is Italy I mean we won that the Samuels burg and ski jump anyway it's another shell structure so it's going to vary again a simple diagram it's a shell which has a kind of a ram which brings in people in and out in the real length i dint ask my earth will be ready in a run through these I put this specially for Steven Holl because he always sees me that I converted the military tonic and two arches so I'm back to the arch land and there's many studies of many campuses showing how we can look at this kind of the idea of the shells it's a movie on on shell structures and different countries there's obviously in in Baghdad of course we didn't win it because I thought it was not one you mental enough rhadigan not fast enough all the kind of really ribbing it's all scripted the ribbing of the structure and we finished better get stuck on the arch so he is asked to kill it till it gets there that's what it was a greater bottom so I think in a more recent development is like and become they become much more floral and fluid and so it is rigid and a cell structure there's a very small extension which we're doing for the serpentine gallery I'll also Tarasov next the Olympic site Milan is hosting their 2012 Summer Olympics this is the main stadium which is a mostly temporary the ODA which is up the Olympic delivery committee decided that most of this size should be temporary structures and not permanent this is a sad in East London called the knee valley which was a mostly a swamp and gasworks the building in the foreground is this one a four so this is the cladding the roof of the pool the original design almost like a pavilion also on the park the roof is a steel roof landing on three points concrete so the idea is like a wave or a kind of some sort of a sea living creature the interior of the roof is all in wood this is a the read photographs there was a another port which is an access port under the bridge as you come down this is where the athletes begin to go into the pool you walk under that roof the reaches on the sides are temporary they're only there because the capacity of this pool is 17,000 people and afterwards and legacy mode becomes only 5,000 people so this will be only this and then the rest of the stuff where the line above is reglazing is the area where there will be a new glass so associated something under a whale all the diving boards the side are very sculpted and the are kind of 3/4 of them and there was a launching event with Tom daddy was a great diver and the last product I show is a product for mbaku where it's a hybrid of really three programs it is a very large kind of mountain but it's three programs and three different like a mountain range so as it's a conference center auditoría museum and a library that the hype the pro ground the background is the library the two phases is the art area as long misses on site being Claddagh steel frame like Space Frame cladded and prefabricated concrete father laws thank you to materials underneath you so the idea is also seamless it means completely the ground and cascades all the way to the bottom of the side so just showing the process of their construction there's the beginning of the construction the steel is not supposed to be blue but they lucky blue color this is except timeline I'm sure the contractor will have an hours break down eventually but so far so good so again the three programs converge together and the lobby area and then they separate into different like very large rooms for the city so this pealing structure appears also on some of the interiors there's a library space the conference center allows some of these this pealing to bring in light into the space the lobby is converging together some of the interior spaces yes I can brain Janus lobby and the idea that kind of the test basically more is for rooms with the interior lobby being part of the rooms the interior is all laminated wood and this is a almost completed and it has these detail of the exterior where it kind of just feels a we like a kind of a fan I also like a shell a photograph before they install all the seating a nice posing it's done by a guy in my office was a great guy called soffit that's it thank you [Applause] we have questions please use the microphone because there are three other rooms that I was named drop the back I'm curious what your attitude is towards organic architecture or parametric architecture in your own work and if that's important to you and your in your design that what was it possible what was it but if parametric the idea of parametric architecture I think we're better canasa that easier parametric is his is his speciality well I guess my question is if it's important to you at all in the work language is I think what we try to do is to really achieve a a fluid fluid space as really it's about space and how to achieve fluid space and also the medication that you know it's a seamless kind of condition in terms of urbanism is the one continuous service projects and fluid on the exterior and interior so that was we try to do in this last period of seven eight years no question sure it's okay I really appreciate that you're putting together a slideshow with a number of construction photos but I was wondering about what you think about the tectonics of architecture and materiality and how that relates to the direction of work that you're going towards them just in terms of the look of it is much more monocoque to use Greg Raglan's term by that what do you think of how materiality relates to the future of your architecture mature out and tectonics architectural change maybe its Columbia conversation I used to come to reviews here I had honestly not understood anything they said I'm sorry I don't mean to I think that I mean part of it they're really the focus in the last view is is to focus on structure and on material because now we're now there is availability of materia which we did not we could do it before but but in the level of complexity to achieve complexity and materiality wasn't really as many easier of course through computing but also the material research is enormous and I think it's very exciting I mean and and also yeah I think it was it was difficult to achieve all these things before so I don't I'm sure that we can do stone building but I think the investigation into multi materials also allows you these possibilities yeah you so you're arguing that this forms have motion embedded in them the form is motion is only for the first slide yeah which now I used to actually talk about motion a lot and I I didn't add the idea that of course I people try to convince him for many years that buildings don't move on and not with design project we could move around but the idea that the way you control and and manipulate geometry it you could feel it's almost like moving but of course it's not moving or suspended or so all the idea which has to do with a lightness of the building the way it lands on the ground the way it touches the ground the idea the structure the column the column kind of really a research was all based on the idea of lightness and that it almost touches the ground very gently so like if life like life is motion and that form is motion you like capturing the motion then once you capture the life you will kill it do you can I argue that your forms up like det motion rather than moving much nothing that frozen of course because you have to build them and grow them in a frozen motion it's like standing in a traffic light thank you no I mean the car can move budget to temporarily stationary till we find a way that they really move around the city um I was wondering if you have any like fantasies about inventions that would happen in the realm of like physics or or like materials or things like that and is that application like you're anticipating something like that sorry I didn't understand it would you fantasize about certain sort of amazing developments and materials or something that would be or like do you like do you fantasize about inventor I don't fantasize at all so you're just totally satisfied with like our our technologies application to architecture you don't you're not frustrated at all by the pace of Lake architectural technology can translate sorry I then that COO sticks are not good in this room no I think the answer was no if you learn to work the answer is no no way oh I see that's what she means no I think it's not I think it's a it's in a way I think that the bill to work in in a sense almost has more freedom than the you know the drawing because I mean with the drawing with the painting you know you only have two or three materials and I think it's so now you can you know do many more things I throw materiality and and fabrication and structure I mean structure I mean it idea of structure was to really I can have liberate these spaces from you know concrete it's a response to the idea of you know the city made of repetitive floors and production and now you can do a single item I mean it doesn't have to be the idea of for a productive production like it did in the early part of the century or even in the sixties so we moved away from one one idea of doing a building to another precast concrete and gives you much more speciality or special conditions on that put on these projects hi um I am I wanted to say we I really appreciate um the scope Doric duty of your shapes and geometries I was just wondering if you ever wanted to consider ecology and climate impact in the architecture we do actually I mean even the pool many these products are or anything this particular concrete it's a we're very conscious of it now it looks very important but it's not just only and and they're kind of from this idea that you know we should really only renovate and but you can also through the through the geometry of some of them projects at another a much big a ecological kind of freedom in terms of how the impact on on this side so we are very conscious of it now you know and but with that one can also do very interesting things and like vernacular materials and solutions for yeah I mean I think that it it could be interesting terms of persuasion like you know cooling and air conditioning and ventilation and song this is all been taken into come but I also believe in the advancement of the field and I think that that's very critical but I think one can learn from these economy research and other kind of local conditions and experiments to enhance what is whatever is done now okay thank you um I actually appreciated the the one with the shed now sort of stretched out and I really like the form from above and I think it was kind of interesting in conjunction that with what you said I don't like people figures or I don't like people because I'm joking oh yeah I'm glad um because is sort of sad because from underneath that would sort of read as a pattern from above that's the only situation in which you sort of see didn't I cashed out of that form it's almost like the building was an architecture designed for helicopter is not not designed for people inside helicopters but architecture for helicopters and I guess you could have one could think about other kinds of architecture like architecture okay and as me too but I wonder that's when I fantasize to fly through yes okay well I guess that's great because that's sort of my question is like who do you design for and I'm not asking like the demographic or like the program or you know what they do otherwise cannot go some of these build projects I think that uh from the ski jump to wrong people are really propelled to them because I think people want to experience something other than their domestic situation or what is very familiar to them and so you are designing for these people who are I mean for example in Rome and that particularly there was no public space and now you find everyday in the evening many people going to that Plaza which was not meant only as a Plaza but to cannot really go into it also to go into the museum as like walking on the Conover sulfur hill town so of course is done for people you know and and I don't like them in renderings that's all but I guess what I'm asking is how do you feel that your math background contributed to your designs well maybe in the beginning and abstraction and my interest in geometry I mean it was a long time ago so I'm not sure how it affects me now but I know in the beginning it impacted on on the abstraction and how did you convince people that your designs were buildable well I took a long time I trained a lot myself because I always believed that I mean they were very simple in those days and you know people looked at the drawings and then it didn't land on the ground I thought is not possible I always believed there are so I was never one moment kind of hesitated and I had really also the help of really great engineers in London and and they're kind of not necessarily made it made it logical I think with them one can work out you know the common sense of really structure and as an architect you have to sort of know how the building would be built or stands up even if they don't work out all this detail and I can't claim to be an engineer but you have to have some sort of common sense about it so I don't think every client in the world is convinced and nothing would change I think the city's wanted something other what is know and a neuro birthing is the advancement in the field is really amazing and there's many projects in many countries which have been very exciting nothing that I don't know I said in Britain and America I think because most of the book is corporate is much more difficult as opposed in Europe with the competition program a large young group firms inexperienced firms you know variety of Ages to actually do public projects because what happened will change that you can only do public projects through competition programs and then allow made it possible for me to enter these competitions and and when some of them if I had just been doing like private houses or opposite phase which I would love to do would be much more difficult to bounce over there and then and when you started your career you started with a very marked or rely on a very marked representational style and as you progress through build work and for your later work yes sure maybe in my my final year the AI the the kind of the drawing became was also Chum and drawing was very important to lot of people and I have to kind of say that album barosky who was the chairman of they a I think in London drawing but he also and I think in the day I never D never declared this but in the late 70s early 80s after he made a conscious decision to support people with which had a kind of work would have a projected reality and nothing was a very critical move on his part and therefore you know people like myself really benefit a lot from it because he gave us a platform to exhibit and to teach and so on so I guess my question is what is your current stand on architectural drawing and representation I think it's a dead-eyed you know which is which is which which is a great chain because I really enjoyed it but I mean you know I mean after I sketched something but my office don't understand it and maybe maybe there is a whole course here I'm sketching but honestly I'm what took thousands of years to kind of perfect their beautiful land drawings is gone I mean you can't I'm not sure how many artists will will retreat back but architects I I think maybe in some remote place or they I don't have a computer they can but it's really as I mean it said it was an art form I mean I know that you know it was unbelievable and I personally myself enjoy it and for me I have to say it's a great loss because I mean Patrick would remember and Simon is he would remember I used to be hysterical fanatical about line drawings precision and they were drawing which I'm sure I threw out where every non-crossing corner was circled in red pen because I knew blue you can print it out and one show or they can rub it up and red is dead so you know for me it's a great loss and I enjoyed the kind of culture of material because it also always there was a an error factor and when you did models you design and you did them I don't think many people have that facility and maybe they have it here but I then have it in Europe the facility to draw and to think as you're drawing on making models so you can change things and models now in the drawings are really exactly as you throw them but of course there are people who are more talented even drawing on the computer and more abstract and has a different depth and than others I mean I can't say that's all the same it isn't and but I've been competing also brought something else with it not it's not speed you know to brought another another layer of investigation which which is very interesting and I think that the next few years you'll find in terms of you know not only material for cladding but also structured maybe hybrid structures when material and structure becomes you know I'm an island girl in my office few years ago um and I was asking about product she was doing I said what is that what is that said that's a space between things answer well what it was a specific and and I also have a habit of somebody upsets me I grow on and so and she said buddy don't need to detail it I was like one nice and you can just build it from the computer I mean she really believed that and I couldn't believe my ears and she's a girl my office singing the chicken they she can give that drawing with an space which doesn't know what it's doing and they can build it and that but eventually you can not neutrally and they burn and also there is this idea that you know as an architect if some an idiot and the computer designs for you I mean there are historians and art critics in the UK who obviously their knowledge of everything is zero is believed that you know it's possible because of the computer so I think you but I even through teaching I think the generation which did know how to draw Nick models my hands on and then learnt computing they're at a very kind of great wealth offer of kind of culture material and Mohammed could be taught it's not different possible you know and I think that what I think is also interesting about computing that you don't have this kind of enormous difference between you know and when you're students between people where they're good at it or not with it they can learn it and and you know I serve a great Japanese student who was a very very talented crazy and needs to always say you know he had ten thumbs because he couldn't draw either going to get the students who could draw to teach him the drawer just couldn't do it but he was a great bread designer and I'm not sure what he's doing our what they ever learnt it but um I mean as I was saying earlier you know when I started they a was a very similar I don't think it was even as great I mean with grimmer they're just now because there was no respect for architects there was no work in the 70s so when you have we had to kind of really reinvent the professional thinking of there is a similar moment now it is very exciting you know the only lacking thing as there is a less interest in precedent and history and I mean Robin used to have always lectures on the weirdest topics and very good and we had to inner even if you're not interested by passing through the lecture hall you see these things and I'm sure that maybe they do this at Columbia but I think in English school there the ignorances is is devastating you know like I say to again my office or you know miss product by Paul Rudolph he said who is that is that some German and so you know I used to quiz them I'll give up you know like you know do a quiz session once to see my day I asked him to do a seminar Rietveld and he said why I gave me this why don't you give me something well-known and he lemeneux gratefully never then you win an Oscar Niemeyer they never know anything but and there was just idea that they a that knowledge prohibits creativity and I'll tell you it does not so I think that you know it's all you know it's all has to be kind of weighed out too much of one maybe perhaps the other but I think that it was a very I mean you know I was I was a 1 it was a three-day week and the whole London was pitch black there were candles in the shops and we had to negotiate with our friends where to spend the evening to watch pop music and also to be able to shower to work I remember is dead in freezing cold wearing mittens and drawing it out hours because there was no no light in had to work use a candle said with luck 19th century and there was no possibility but I think that really also you know we couldn't accept that as a life is going to be a terrible and so I brought an incredible excitement an athenian was brought and bother stealing the teachers and wrapping in that particular moment in our national history influenced in the next 30 years and it was very critical nothing I can stop on you losing your voice I'm losing my dearest um so there are there are moments of magic in every school I think the answer to that question was could be published immediately as a incredibly thoughtful reflection I mean you're just listening to roar intelligence operating and and I think it even to those of us who know you work we think you know know you're working really well is unbelievable the different directions in which it's going as a kind of a research it's the exact opposite of a kind of churning out a winding of the wheel it's amazing work thank you thank you

Channel: Columbia GSAPP

Views: 102,064

Rating: 4.8945827 out of 5

Keywords: GSAPP, Wood Auditorium

Id: O7j7gTBqijA

Length: 74min 26sec (4466 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2012