Zaha Hadid

okay good evening I don't know seems to be a really mood I'm really happy that you're all here I'm particularly happy that that's all is here she has not been here for quite some time so it's great that she's she's back this has been really quite a week because we had Marina Abramovic here on Monday and then two halves are here on Wednesday I think it's really an incredible moment for the school because we've had two really significant people who have in their own way literally liberated their fields and if you in a way put yourself in the context of 1970s UK when Zaha started were really the very profession of of architecture and construction was in a completely different state and to just see since then what she has done and what she has achieved is really phenomenal for me personally this is really an incredible an incredible and pleasurable opportunity because I'm so happy that she is my friend and we have known each other since the very first day of school which is a long long long time ago and that we have managed to still stay friends for this time and I think it's also very important to say that Zaha really stays friends with people and that more than any of us she is the one who has been really keeping up friendships and caring for people and supporting people and I think this is really an important thing for detect of her stature - to be in that kind of position I am wearing a suit that she made me buy in her honor tonight and every time I wear this suit I I am reminded of absolved and plus the fact that it's a suit that you can put in a suitcase and actually doesn't crease so it's a I'm always thanking her for for this suit when we when we think about the work of Zod there are many many ways to to think about the work when she first started to develop her work some people talked about the fact that her work was calligraphic and that it was about the calligraphic line recently we've had Patrick Schumacher here her collaborator and partner who is very convinced about the role and importance of parametric ISM and in a way it's interesting to see how the office has managed to bridge that line between the the calligraphic line and really the whole domain of digital culture and and the impact of of computation on the work of the firm but when she when she was drawing by by pencil doing drawings with ink lines yeah the incline never pencil yeah sure the incline is very much like the way you might hold the brush because the incline actually had different kinds of thickness that is not a single line in the sense of an orthogonal perfection of the line but a line that has different weights and so the pen is really help like a brush and therefore the lines that are created also have the fluidity of something that is drawn rendered with a brush her early interest and influence was very much to do with the question of suprematism which was very different from really calligraphy in one sense but on the other because of the emphasis on the whole roll of feelings and emotions the emotions that are that are within the line of her projects became really critical in some of the projects that I believe are very important but actually weren't built for example witnessing projects like the the peak where today we talk about the discussion of the relationship between architecture and landscape or architecture and topography but it all still amazes me the way in which these projects actually deal with the question of representation in a way that represents encapsulate the architectural project but at the same time the city and the site and therefore it was it's been very important the way in which drawing as an act has been part and parcel of her project and I think this is something that really needs further careful evaluation in terms of its relationship to artistic practice to painting to the to the connection to landscape and so on and these were very much evident with early projects like the Vitra fire station some people talk about anchoring in relation to their work I believe that really Taha'a projects have in many ways exemplify this notion of of the connection to the site for example with the Gwangju Opera where you don't really see the project as a totality you have to move through things and the body is constantly implicated in terms of its relationship to the project which is which defies its object hood in some way and that's why even some of the early comments about her work defying gravity are still very much part of the fluidity of many of the that she has been developing obviously this this collaboration also with with Patrick and others in the office is a very important is an important part of the project as is the collaboration with other consultants like structural engineers and it's it's amazing to see not only the kind of major built projects but also the research projects the experimental projects in the firm really still continuing constantly this this range of investigations as we'll see with some of the latest the latest projects like the the MD the combination of office buildings in Beijing for Soho properties the Soho galaxy and the newly constructed Cultural Centre in Azerbaijan I am hugely hugely hugely happy and delighted that it is here please welcome Zayed Marcin was too embarrassed to say how long I've known him it's actually 40 years just over 40 years I know you both look young so nobody would believe us we did me to the first day of the the school of outreach in London and we're still friends he meant he was still friends despite my bad behavior I promised I would not tease him today usually that's my role was my role for a long time but I will not do it today but if this is a year which marks many kind of moments for 30 years I wonder peak is 20 years as Vitra was built steny assistance Inadi and for nefarious as an icon show which has something with a very important show in my Korean I think also and the profession because I think it was the first time it opened floodgates to different ideas of modernity apart from this obsession with the past I do worry however about this some recent flirtation by friends of mine some close friends some distant friends with certain moments in history the 70s and the rationalist period although other things very interesting but one should not forget what we were what we went through in the 70s and 80s I mean Martin was very kind to say that I was you know ostracized and nobody honestly thought and do anything or build anything that was not actually I didn't necessarily mind because I enjoyed the drawing and the painting and the work and design it was a very exciting peer in my career despite the difficulty because there was a moment of discovery and was very important also that I have an office which which continues that research and discovery obviously with the with 400 people it would be detrimental to only be doing experimentation although most members of my office think that's what they should be doing but it is sometimes a reminder that there's a reason why corporate offices the way they work the way they do and they've suss that out so we tried to change the rules all the time sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't work the most critical I think it works in terms of the work itself if I could healthy and there are many friends of mine here tonight who have I have known from days of my childhood too they serve they a - too much later years in New York and so it's very nice Adam here friends from Miami so kind of all present here from the South I thought here the first time in 85 86 I was invited by Harry Cobb my hair was the chair at the time then I was invited again to teach by Mac and I should say that I was severely attacked by one of your tenure faculty and was very interesting then because I you know I see smoke and I said you know listen Mac I I am some I smoke then well as long as nobody sees you it's okay or finds it so anyway I smoked everywhere I've given up smoking since so I'm now would be accepted at Harvard but those days it was not done but but not only that I wore funnier clothes and I was once sitting outside in that hallway on a show and which was actually a very nice show am I saying it was a very great show and this I was sitting there with a students chit-chatting and this guy came like a vault from nowhere and told me to put my letter my cigarette off but he said you are you are a bad influence on the students he didn't mean because I was smoking but I think he meant that the work was a bad influence on the students and the series were very angry maybe some of them agreed with him but my students were very angry because what was really rather patronizing to them anyway I was never asked to come back again for 20 years sorry Morrison I did come back here in 2004 when I had just won the Pritzker Toshiko was here and was very nice I served champagne to the whole audience and I remember that fondly it was a very nice moment that was a very important year for me obviously so the work I'm showing today is mostly the work I've done since the time I came here last so this were the project which were at the time had just completed Cincinnati Art Center Strauss boo carpark the ski jump these were on the drawing board service vehicle on the computer that the the bridge in Abu Dhabi that was a the early that was a very early project which was dealing with the idea of two ideas one which is landscape and landscape the lines of the tools and the other thing which I think was a very important across hard to occupy structure of course we could not occupy structure in this project because it was Umbridge and he can't go and sit in these large buttresses because you know for safety for you know security whatever but the idea of the occupying structure came out later another project so this was the bridge completed so this is all the verbage of completed since 2004 the master plan for Singapore the also idea of topography with kind of some of this being already built early sketches of Rome the idea of the comprehensive lines kind of striation the lines how they all intersect and bifurcate and cross each other and making this kind of Delta of the streams streams of the large streams being the gallery small streets being the all the connection between them this is already obviously I mean now then with sketching now it's where they built with a cantilever of the room above which is another gallery all in concrete the idea distraction on the on the skyline on the on the roof allowing light is a completely daily rich museum but the idea by is how to move between these bases and separate continuously as if almost you're walking through an Italian hill town as you move through spaces so the idea of fluidity and landscape begins to appear in some of earlier projects the house in California 10 years later still being worked on have been redesigned at least five times so there must be must have a catalogue of houses for the same client this is one variation but we didn't build a house in Moscow what is a bit like a ski jump so sorry the idea of the house as a kind of domestic space married with this idea of lifting of the grounds and also connects because Moscow - skyhook Leah need of and Melnikov and Alice its key in particular but match with the kind of a soft or fluid topography so there's a house made of two houses one on the ground which is with the ground which is all the public rooms and one which is wouldn't be with the trees because this is in a forest outside Moscow the room where they sleep is right at the and the top separated by the elevator or the staircase I think is a kind of any studies this on-site all kind fiber concrete with the engines in metal so these are kind of these two to the two worlds that are must the public world and the private world or the client the guy who works on this house helmet is not one of my favorite people in office so I'm always threatening him that I will send him to Moscow and the client can do something to him from the top of this building he avoids me he kind of slid around the office to make sure that I don't more do damage to him he's one of my Patrick's public favorite people another German you know they're kind of good when words come the worst thing can happen they speak to each other in the language no one else understands they understand each other very well but it even had a German PA which I managed to eradicate they do speak you mean English but if I say something a bit tough they pretend not to understand then they're kind of English lapses into some other thing anyway this house has been so perfectly perfectly made because helmet despite everything is a perfectionist everything is perfect he did my bathroom in my flat and everything is immaculate except he did not consider that if you use German drawers and you put Corian on them they're not going to be so lightweight so every time I go to the bathroom I touch this drawer and I think of how much it never opens I can tell I have lots of stories to tell about animals I won't go into them to connect and it's all to do with my bathroom like I was in Korea and they cause me music wanna stay in Korea I said but listen I don't know anybody in Korea I'm here for a groundbreaking I have to return to London it's not like I'm in New York and I can stay in New York and hang out with my friends what am I going to go and solve for four more days but why he said well we haven't finished a bathroom so we came back and he said two days anyway came back and he was akane story short that was not ready three weeks later i'm sleeping in the other room the bathroom still going on and one night I got a knock on the door at 3:00 in the morning from the neighbors that Malcolm which took him months to do decided to the piping which was very sophisticated and was the new piping not welded held together with a some rubber thing exploded and leaked throughout the whole building and every flat below me had a puddle on their bed and so that was the end of Hamid and of course Patrick will always say it's my fault the bathroom exploded because I use a shower too much times anyway these are the poor builders one of them is helmet about to leap off from the ski jump since the siwash house was inspired by the ski jump in ezarik and but nobody is that lightweight this is some of the interiors that's going to take another few years according to the helmet time to be perfected also provides my fat check because I can't deal with that much anyway it would be it would have nice views from the bathroom from the whatever and there of course the client is exhausted they will never make it up that stairs to the bedroom they will stay in their Sona on the ground okay I'm going to run through these because this was also on scientists the Science Museum in Wolfsburg next to the Volkswagen factory this was that's what was kind of really then at that time completed it doesn't for showing all the all the most in this structure all the concrete work all the cones so the idea of occupying structure from the bridge appears in this building so this building has these were two level of urbanism one which is dealing with the armies of the ground which is arrayed two smaller buildings on the side creating one plateau where all the museum is a South Museum and these cones also have program which deal with daily kind of life in the city which is the restaurants theatres and and some all the entrances so and then and the whole ground is also another topography so these are two topographies up running at the same time one which is the ground which is like a landscape and the other is the cones cutting like a crater through the floor slab the floor slam is a waffle slab so it's quite thick and you don't need structure no columns whatsoever but you know stretches in all these pieces the structure is on the edge to support the steel roof which comes after this before the topping of the roof so you see this instruction and the inside and this is as the prefabricate paneling on one edge as is added some of these cones which they'll go all the way so on run to the shop or to the to the lobby so this the the grid of the roof is uneven and it suspends across the whole the floor with structure on the edges this is was the sketch was originally done I'm you know a Tanith car and honey I know is here he works with us on funella of competitions and projects the again the diagram for the BMW building in leipzig where it's two arms this is an also another print which was interesting which is attaching a central building which is an office building to the production facility and it's to kind of work as a new color workers a market of workers offering the same space or to everything happens on the same building the management design and connecting to to all the production facilities and so the idea that this building not only operates as a kind of a filter between all the facilities that the cars when they move from from being painted to being assembled pass through the building so all these activities and streams of flow within the same space the cantilever is above the kind of entrance so forms that can enter the minute it gets art with more officers it's basically an office building it is very similar to the GSD where it's a kind of a fat Patrick's favorite building is this college this is the gondhal and no but it is on the honey of terracing and the terracing other other so there any of the office it says not as an open office but it's divided by the different levels of the floors so it's not one continuous plane but a terracing so the idea of landscape comes into the interior of the workspace and and the cities are some studios for where they kind of michael order the car so you have the designers and the management when the car is completed they can check it out over there and in that conveyor belt everywhere the cars are running around a factory moving from one assembly to the other the other building which was also done as a completion in that year was Montpelier archive building a library which is a kind of a sectional building so it's kind of made of as if these spaces which are like rocks and the spaces in between which is transparent is the public areas so the the solid areas are where the archives are the library is everything which doesn't require a large the closes in between is where all the public facilities are the entrance and so on so this is a rendering there's a completed building which opened last summer with all the louvers this is south of France or all the looing for the light and all the innovation of all the mullions and part of interiors also misses earth so this is part of it as an archive children's library and so on projecting as a theater so they're called living stones because it's not like a series of rocks the idea of this kind of cluster or aggregates of spaces or in this case it's in a crock but spaces has appeared in other project like Cincinnati or maybe other product where they can have assembled over next to each other Syria so it's a horizontal building almost like a horizontal sky but these are aggregates of different programs there's three programs in one building so it's the the archive is building the library and the support kind of not facility but offices for the city has done for there not for the city of Mokpo nearby for the region so it's a kind of a a regional project sponsored by the president of the region the thing which Dakar is cut you know will be the auditorium the entrances so in this case I think the thing that makes it also work as these compliments of lines on the exterior where all the Mullens are so this kind of relentless you know line and the on lock in a way the early drawings you know the lines of the all the windows and also gives you directionality when you arrive these lines can have moved you up towards different parts of the building so going to many layers like a like a drawing on trace of the layers of the lines whether with the lighting and so on in a way similar scale at the is the Transport Museum in Glasgow which is kind of a like a shed a metal shed connecting to on the corner two rivers and a lake not close to very large shipyards what they used to make these ships and the trains to go to through oddly kind of British Empire so that some of these trains which were shipped to of South Africa in places brought back to the museum so it's kind of a roof scape which is also like a landscape it's very crowded with objects we're not in charge of the exhibition but it's you know it's been a very popular venue we went through a lot of iterations about the color I wanted wide they wanted color so I decided to go for canary yellow and then they kept on asking wise at this color when they wanted a color yellow could be seen by everybody even those who can't see color I'm surrounded by the others by people who don't see color so I know what works anyway it's been a very nice product to do very nice client and so they kind of lit the the the kind of reminder of their sheds and nearby on the roof so they kind of like a section being cut off so it's like a kind of a third River and method which is being cut off and next to it here is a ship which is part this one so as an extension of the museum but it's art on the wall one of their pieces this is a another project which was which will commute recently in Michigan the road Art Museum which is a made also companies of Alliance based on also diagram which I did many years ago but it wasn't done as a building with an answer maybe a master plan but this was done as on the end of the whole building and it's a kind of pleated stainless steel surface showing it each of these segments is a gallery so it's not a very big museum but by by prospectively stretching these galleries they feel as if they are much bigger and and they have a kind of an interesting quality on their on the interior and some of these louvers of course bring in light and some of my glaze on the solid there is a kind of carved out space where the entrance is the Churchill entrance on both sides to the size of the building and 200 cells and showing also if I go back some of these kind of different gallery plans of these different galleries of course because of the metal the light changes on the exterior all the time so the vertical pleats are where the staircases are and the interior I was the staircase on the sign it was an installation before completion the Guangzhou Opera House I think it was just one around then so this is a one of the early product which we design as a total typography the idea of the kind of the whole idea of typography and landscape really came about about more than 20 years ago 23 years ago when we were working on a harbour development both in Dusseldorf and in Cologne and at the time you know it was looking at new areas and how these areas would be developed for to be part of the city extension of the city and but they have a particular scale they have a an urban scale and one intention was to avoid of building the generic product with a podium a podium and a slab or anywhere tower and to replace the podium with a with kind of a land formation land form so that's how the idea of develop of the topography how holiday with the idea of the podium and land formation because he start at kind of an incline and it's and with it that also in Cardiff so this was also the spaces met it's connected to the big park but it's basically like two pebbles and the two pebbles one is the opera house 1 is a muppet multi-purpose hall one is white one is black one is gold on the interior the other one is a different color I'm sorry so the interior is like a kind of an oyster almost like where all the lines are very serious made of stone the interiors are all innovative preformed a kind of like Egyptian board like a plaster boards and and the the exteriors also is like a caged and some of it is clouded in the other part is all clattering glass another product in China which is for a very large multi-purpose that Opera House Museum and a multi-purpose home it's like a flowers in the park so you can we cannot distinguish between the auctioneer of black between the ground and the actual project it's very early work so the even the interior is is is a way done almost like a graphic so kind of graphic space but this time not through a drawing but through computation with these kind of exaggerated black lines these are a lot of the theaters we've worked on for the past on a frontier specially Cardiff Paris Dubai Abu Dhabi Baku there's a new theater in rabat where the idea that through like a twist in the landscape you form two theaters one exterior one interior a contrast between the fluid exterior to the kind of prism like interior another project also on the ground is a the design center and so which is basically a park a real park and the project as a park so it is kind of you can walk over the building all matted plaid the idea of these rice fields and terracing and for example was interpreted and the galaxy Soho project but there's one Medusa do with terracing the other one was to re look at the idea of the city block and that is not a perimeter block but it's of a different configuration of the ground is not a tower or the podium it's not a series of towers but it's kind of a field of these almost like mountain escape which connect on different levels so that one level which is one datum on the ground second datum is higher up and this any of the program from that datum higher up to the ground is all retail and the one which is above is all offices and all these spaces have exterior business seen from from above almost like a series of egg like buildings with their own voice within so it's a kind of calmed out large side but also the each individual building has a second atrium so it's an under an exterior atrium with an also another interior HR so I was going to call galaxy because of this this is an outer thought of course I was always interested in this idea of a almost snake-like space where it allows you to view from different places it gives the kind of people in the offices immediate views you can see a bomb is can see below so this is one one domain where they connect and that's when they all connect together so it's like one continuous plan and it's very strange because next to this kind of landscape existing for Toms so these bridges connect some of the towers above but fundamentally on this datum down is all retail but the buildings all connect together and you can view you can view from different kind of almost like mountaintops these buildings or they're void and below so you as you enter the valley on this very large side is 1 million square feet of course you know you have to kind of really break the math unless it's a tall building but a series of project which are assembled together and as you enter the value you are immersed in this world where there are these buildings and this kind of bridges and hill surrounding you so every every kind of building is slightly different and these voids also differ so that multitude of kind of really a spaces which are carved out like eroded where you can have you to the to the sky when it's a my populated at night with all the lighting the interior of the one of these boys so you have a building above you kind of avoid in a roof over the situation on the ground and this is was a at an event in in October or they were look 20,000 people in one space this is a second search on a building which is like again to do with like three towers but three mountains this is the one which was copied literally by another thing but you know my view on this is that I'm not going to waste my time you know kind of suing everybody and people misunderstand me that I was a bit blase about it but I thought you know I think that coping is not okay if a Syrian copies you then it's okay because in learning curve you know maybe in China they out there was like that that sort of thing but it's done and I know how they got the drawings this is not the copy that's the red one but their same but you know good luck to them I don't I think it's more important that you are constantly you know spending your time on thinking of new things or thinking of how to do things better than to really don't to sue a buddy I know there's some architects who like doing that sort of thing suing maybe if somebody really I mean I've been ripped off a lot I can say and people think is very comforting entering and I think so but you know I'm not like an idol man this is a catalogue of really a lot of bill Thao as we try to do I think what is interesting is that after 9/11 every thought nominee will design a tower towers are finished the opposite is correct everybody wants into a tower and so we've been trying to do one for ten years with the one in the middle is Marseille which was completed last year and so the one thing which we didn't look at from the beginning was how the building means the ground does it just touch the ground does it flare up on the ground does it does it kind of like have a big lobby you know what what kind of structure for a skyscraper you know so I think that that was really the looking at the ground condition and the openings and so on there's a mouse a tower this is a very difficult job I mean it was a nice project which was a difficult job to do these are other studies of other towers and different parts I'm just going to go in as a master plan for a large site in Beijing with exoskeleton or they're all the scans on the exterior not on the interior with very variety of voids so the building bifurcates and connects again in a way the diagram which we looked at before in Rome could become almost like an a vertical study it gives you this amazing kind of views and spaces where you have you know in terms of the kind of quality space when you when you are inside of some of these rooms looking in another study for towers in KL where the artists curtain is smaller on the ground and it gets bigger as you move through the tower these are all kind of competitions on some things like that two towers also in China how they connect on the ground a lot of research has been about the structure and and how these buildings meet the ground again either meeting at a very delicate point or they meet it together to form almost very large lobby or retail so the whole the ground is all connected and to the to the towers accomplish you for a New York tower on Park Avenue the next to the Seagram building also exoskeleton was the whole of the we had to kind of keep their podium but to optionally want to give the podium which existing or to change it but whether whether very large voids higher up to get focus also on the ground that you on your on Park Avenue you see not normal and go this idea that the top of the tower is what is more significant but then the base becomes more eligible and look at the quality Lobby these kind of gardens which are suspended in on the minor 10th floor and your tower in Miami where the structure also indicates the kind of apartments so there are three divisions on the lower base which is have three apartments per floor then it become two apartments so there's a double single division and then there's one apartments all the way to the top so the structure also shows the organization of the Tower with balconies kind of almost kind of fading as you move up look again the study of the podium there's very early kind of research on that particular tower the central bank in Baghdad so kind of to look at alternatives and there's like an Iraq where kind of climate is very hot to move away from the only idea of kurtal modeling but to think of an interesting way of luring so to allow shading so this looks like an almost like like a kind of a cactus different studies of the of the luring across the whole building and structure what they're under the ground finishes on it's not far from the Magna University by tag which not shown here is on the river so kind of the delivering also opened up towards there towards the view of the of the river sorry some of these interiors this is a very very very recent study of also another tower study this time it's kind of towers which not twist across but every bit twist twist like a rope kind of like a bundling so the bundling is is together vertically they can a bundle together the different studies of also balconies or or linear lines or how to land on the ground the surrounding is also all retail this is an Australia some of them connect together that on the ground they become one one is a hotel one is apartments so depending on each program what they are they have an impact on the exterior so they are kind of thicker some of them are thinner but basically all likely is kind of twisted spaces these are shells we did four and tents and fabric for the serpentine may be now six seven years ago and this is a study we did for arm that piece with it for the Venice Biennale which is all an anime new images mean folded and cut and assembled together with all the product which are on the edge which are models of all other shell structure and as looking through a space on the ceiling with all the bolts and you can see the models here on the side and with that one wall which was to do with the research with my Vienna students on shells also Kendall on line now these are project widget for the Alves for the tram stations not on the other side of the Hesburgh ski-jump the structure is made of steel metal and the substructure is in concrete and they're clad in kind of glass they act like icicles or this chanel pavilion which moved around from in different cities Hong Kong Tokyo New York and then now in Paris which is also like a tourist where it's made of father glass so you enter you enter one side and you come out on the other this is the study for the extension of the serpent on the news and punch on secular gallery this is the magazine which was where they stored ammunition and the park has been for the past on how many years basically a garden shed spent at least by the serpentine which is a one on gallery in the park they were meant into a gallery so that has to be renovated and extended as a kind of a public room or a kind of a multi-purpose room or a social space is the tensile structure extension shall like structure a vent kind of beam with these columns which are and steel which allow light into the building so that I think the way the reason why God would manage to get the planning permission for this is because it's a lightweight structure attached to a Wriston building made of brick and they can erect the roof these columns and the fabric is lifted to be attached on the top allowing light to come through the space there's the combs when they're installed before they install the turnstile which is kind of double double layer two for insulation they're kind of edge beam just bend and as the structure is lifted as a fabric is lifted up to attach to the top of these columns and I'm a living this is a project with show about crew which is a very large which is basically three projects it's a library a conference centre and a museum there's three buildings becoming one building connected for like a large very large Lobby nothing can you open that company never covered lots of funny I can't drink from it as I'm jogging no I just want to know just just to twist it thank you very much so again this is a completely seamless continuous service project where the actual building is made of also fiber concrete the ground is another kind but the idea that is almost one surface so the whole ground Murders what the exteriors are also worked on originally by Hanif spaceframe cladded with this material the landscape which is also terracing this is due to open any minute we're negotiating opening details so there's as on side the space frame some of the interiors so it's very large lovely where these buildings all meet together the whole of the most of this the fabrication of the exterior was done in Sharjah and shipped to Azerbaijan the whole interior of the theater as laminated wood all done in Turkey I mean yeah these are not photographs are the interior of their theater rimmed shells many studies of different projects mostly Middle East the pool as one of the shells unsigned a steel roof landing on three points one in the front and two in the back or like large buttresses or they pull underneath the ceiling is all made of wood unfortunately during the games that blackened all this out environment they called it dressing they dressed up the pool mostly advertising so the wings the yellow part is going because they say the wing which go away and the other part it remains the capacity change of course from during them games with seventeen thousand now it's nothing wouldn't be five or more the way be roof the concrete damming board another project we did for the another pool complex lose the diagram for the Tokyo National Stadium which we just won a few months ago come two months ago so it's a exoskeleton and second of again a shell which is been hollowed out and the hollowed areas as made of stress kind of tension and covered in fabric so you can have a the option to open it up let's open it or close it one is simply closed so actually that it also has within it a museum and bridges over one area to go to neighboring sides so it's also means the ground and it kind of seamless way the walk way is on the edge so you see this roof and under with this image my magic things it's a secret but it isn't it's like a kind of flower it's an airport so it shows the the actual terminal extension of the terminal and the airport city is also cell structure structure with the these kind of openings which are like a flower which is brings in light to the interior you know a field of these roofs different layers of the interior like almost two terminals one one inside the other so their business class is separated from the from the ground and the idea that you because of their you know flower shape you can move at any point from all these points rather easily I think that's it maybe we have time for for a few questions I think it's maybe a few can I see who would like to to start maybe I could get a few as there's one here can I see one or two other hands so can can we get a mic to thank you thanks for a amazing presentation that was really enjoyable to watch I was struck by something you started off with the comment that was made to you about being a bad influence did you think that you were a bad influence at that time well actually I came in touch with all these students to this day so I couldn't have been a very bad influence but I have every thought that I could be wrong I kind of went to put words in his mouth but I think he thought that the the studio and the show was a corrupting the students because it was not at the time maybe the still to this day they were entered and into rigor and our ego was different so I'm not sure whether brig is still here as that does it changed moisten hello no I don't know and you know III don't know what to thought I mean I think some of the students obviously I still have not nightmares of him because of me but many many of them I remained very close friends with and and I think those years were I think I think years years no matter what are usually very exciting if you find the right person to to study with I mean I remember my years that they the first series were horrible and the last years were great and you know I think that an even the years which were bad I was so angry with my teachers that I I was going to be damned to be treated the way I was treated and had made me more focused maybe or choose something I mean what I wanted to do maybe my we did not and we never coincided in the same Union did me so we kind of did in the first year when we used to go to this wedding to go to the Global Village you forgot he never showed out that's why so sorry Morrison he was a good guy I told you she promised but it's going to happen so I'm very curious about the end and that you know I think when you did when you did the peak there was a time when you used to talk about confetti and the fact that the peak the drawings are not drawings that are they don't really have that much curvature in the in the big drawings of the peak itself so the idea of the fragments or the dispersal dispersal of the of the project as if the project is actually coming apart seem to be very important for you because that was the the way in which you also dealt with something that might have at one point a kind of totality but this totality was in a way denied you didn't want to represent that whole so it was very important to to really experience this idea of the separation of the elements they're coming apart of all the elements now with with the towers it's very difficult to make towers that really deal with the idea of the separation and therefore you're dealing very much with a combination of the structural unity but at the same time you're dealing with some some elements of movement within the system within the totality like you talked about the flower so the flower is somehow unfolding but nevertheless it has that object it has that sense of totality so one thing is really I'm sort of curious about this this idea of the shift from the spatial condition of the things that that are defying the notion of the whole define the notion of totality to now being really in some ways concern with the problematics of totality of wholeness but wholeness that has it's own sort of internal structures like the way you describe the structure of something like a flower and so I wonder if you have some thoughts about this but this for me is also just like part of the question of where do you think this investigation is going because of the way you describe the shell structures even in the serpentine you know the juxtaposition in terms of in terms of the future of architecture for you it's kind of curious really quite interesting what are the next things because you're getting to the point where some of the things that seem to be almost impossible you have realized them so what is there for for discipline what what is there for this just being on the level of urbanism on large-scale project is still I think we have a long way to go you know I think that has not I'm in terms of or not our scale of a city but a very large segments of the city I think we're still dealing with kind of normal Street pattern or normal you know curves or the idea of transportation has not really changed very much you know I think this thing I think that would be that I would say the next level of investigation on an urban level having under on the level of the building itself I think is how to really in a way as far as I can see that all these the fragmentation and all that chaos on the kind of level of the city which was shown in the drawings was almost going to sucked in the building much more through kind of fluid morphology as opposed to through fragmentation and then this is this is something that's important in terms of the way that you're working with the with the various consultants I mean how today come into the office for you I mean when you well I think they they the engineers my staff from the start I mean they are not seen they don't come nature they are they work from the beginning with us we have one mic maybe here one there can we get a couple of mics is there somebody else who already has a mic so you can please you go ahead and then maybe we can get a few mics here one of the qualities that I enjoy most in the work is the feeling in in the line of the building that there's like a connection between the the mind and the hand and the expressiveness of the line and imagining myself clicking away and Rhyno and it's sometimes difficult to capture that and so I'm wondering as you develop these these forms in the office how do you translate between drawing and and that digital space can I get a couple of questions so that you would remember that so you work as and this is probably a follow-up on Dean Watson's question your work seems to have changed a lot over the years but one thing that's always consistent whether it's a build project whether it's a drawing there is a sense of intensity of saturation almost excess in every everything we see my question is what else do you think you know besides things like exploration or in elected the more intangible things what do you think has remained and will stay consistent throughout your work I think what occurred earlier which was the the idea of the kind of civic domain which was not necessarily I mean it was very obvious but it wasn't interpret always I mean it took a while for her to be interpreted what is our intention of the at the Civic level I think that's one thing which sure the Isla Negra German also this idea of lightness it moved away from fragment to the idea of the landscape and how connects the ground to the ground condition whether it's broken or separated or whatever also remain another condition because I always thought that is the most powerful layer it was the ground condition and that it was kind of partially not negated completely by the modernist but it was not addressed and that we have to accept the fact that the murderous idea of abandoning the ground was a problematic and that when we returned to complete that modernist project that we look at the ground again and enrich it and I think I was the other part of the research or the work and so that all these studies were there in Beijing whatever is looking at how he did with the what the kind of public domain but it's interesting that you mentioned in terms of the next space or the next phase of work more focus on the city that the city has this kind of the normative conditions masters in an interest and I think it's not something which has not changed because too much but it seems in things like the Soho properties building I mean also the buildings are becoming bigger I mean they're much much larger so that the city or whatever is that public space is actually now internalized to some degree so when you have your judgment alright well I mean you have a lot of things that are these multiple towers or separate elements and these separate elements have a shared common and that commonality represents some level of the domain only as an exterior space I think it could also be an interior other space I mean you know I think it may be due to work in engineer with whether whatever meant you think about the exterior the public space in a different kind of way but if you're in Europe or North America and China where weather is quite harsh I think - really and bridges tear domains it's very interesting you had a and thank you for coming it's been a real treat I I'm in a class right now with Antoine Picon and we're talking about ornament and we spoke the other day about the role of the diagram and all of our work at the GSD and how it's become this tactic to explain our control of information versus simply designing out of pleasure and so I'm wondering what your thoughts are on pleasure and architecture with regards to beauty and ornament well I mean I think at the end of the day I think space is supposed to kind of enrich your life and I don't mean to be corny I think that's what should do without it as a serious cable or interior skateboard because I think that those of us who are lucky have a home you know so I think that's why I think the public domain is very important because not everybody has luxurious places to live that's why schools should be very interesting you know libraries theaters you know museums nursing I mean we did a very nice could a London a very dense site you know and despite the density of the study on the side we managed to going to create a kind of playing field and a running track and I think that and the students really although it's a very difficult neighborhood and so I think that we should not forget that most of it our mothers are privileged and I think it's very important to focus on how to create space it gives people - Metro - pleasure within a very nice small project and Scotland for the manga Centre which was a Cancer Care Center and was a very small project and just the way it was placed in what could have been a Robin it was a hollow which was originally a kind of a corner pit but it had grown over the years and to kind of this green area and just the way one can place a small thing and in geometry I presenting as a and and and has a big play in how you can make a kind of space feel good and so I think that that that I still think is a born another thing there is also I mean I I am semi puritanical but I I think also I think people should have fun yeah so it was nice to see you doing the project in Baghdad yeah so I knew you always used to have very very strong ideas about the role of modernism in Baghdad and now you're doing this project yeah I think there was some very beautiful in a modernist houses actually say the South project I know what happened to it but there was some very very interesting I mean that area this in Baghdad which is it got very nice gana City suburb you know naively I always thought it's still the same and so I people who coming from Baghdad and I said sure what is it like and I said was completely dilapidated and you won't forget that because people left 20 years ago and we always has been abandoned that it's like a kind of a decaying City there's something which you don't you know you don't think when you are abroad and these are kind of realities on the ground you know and so I think there was a an enormous kind of connection between that kind of landscape and kind of modernism any last questions maybe your very hesitant an but maybe you can have the last word thank you for an amazing lecture I just had a question regarding your approach to the first kind of steps in architecture we usually start either if it's an urban scale we start from the current urban fabric if if it's a smaller scale architecture we start from let's say circulation or or the phenomenological experience of the space that we want to create what's your approach in like your first steps into going into design um I mean the rules are changed I mean it used to be maybe many years ago we start off with a sketch or drawing you know even I do that now they don't understand what I'm doing so you know that's lost you know trying to explain somebody something through a sketch I used to get very excited by drawing or someone you can culture material models or whatever that's gone they can't draw they can't make models you know they don't even understand what I'm saying so so only quite recently and of course there's Patrick who was my translator who doesn't translate anymore so there was nearly no rule I think now is more like others a team they all look at something and nothing you have to also you learn from your own repertoire you know so people will say what inspires you I mean you cannot have two forty years at every time you do something you get is you have to find inspiration you know I think you know own repertoire nothing that's also very interesting when once in a while you know I I that's my personal problem that I don't like always my my common word is I don't like it and and if those who don't know me too well in the office they think you know that was that and but those who know me well meaning it just doesn't work or whatever it is so another thing that I didn't show the most recent work on doing or their very young team which are actually scenes of Patrick which I grabbed because whenever I found someone who can work with me they always take input somewhere else so I have two teams now one which is my Austrian students and when funding ended not all Austrian so long journey or check whatever who are very good and some of them are from the RL and so they could have understand they start scared we kind of start sketching and few of them maybe find few iterations and we start focusing on one of them and developing it so the idea recently with the kind of the idea of the twist of the rope that the tower could be based on that that was taken not literally like a row but too many twists and how you know starlagurl within a reason he also masterplan hainan was also based on a strange only if a grid which I would I didn't show but and another master plan for a smear which was you know was saying so they like say or maybe it's like a kind of like a a peacock or whatever a feather but so the idea of feathering so that what that implies because of the kind of roofs and how he stretch the lines so it becomes becomes again like kind of calligraphy but it's it's you know after doing this thing for a few years you know what that means that you know it's a building with a tail anything works cannot have a tear what does it mean so you always not think at the same time as how you can you can build it you know what kind of material so you have to think that from there kind of from the start it's been really hugely inspiring to see okay to see what what architecture can do and what you've really managed to make happen because it's not just the question of the imagination which is incredible but actually to to deal with the realization of those ideas which i think is fantastic and phenomenal and it's really also inspiring to see what you've done so anyway thank you all very much you

Channel: Harvard GSD

Views: 214,051

Rating: 4.8864355 out of 5

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Id: DhHiYU3kL0E

Length: 84min 42sec (5082 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/ChestrfieldBrokheimr]

nice lil presentation, a few funny bits. but meh, not a fan of her. respect, yes; fan, no.