probably, can you reconstruct
kind of
the purpose that was supposed to have had.
Mm hmm you're the only, the only clear or cynically purpose was that as a
family group. I felt it was would be much richer to be part of. Not to be
isolated but to be integrated in a larger group. So that you're not by
having a bigger family let's say.
And I was saying that maybe is what, what has been translated later into
this idea of the tribal of the village and so on. And that was part of
some kind of evolution. You move from the single into the collective and
that's represented by the interest that they had in architecture and
environment in school. I was involved in houses
and then I got a little minds in clusters and then I got this in villages
, in towns and cities and so on. Yeah. Also at that stage you were, had
become quite interested in the apprentice system. The italian apprentice
system. The bodega. Yeah. Which was in combination with the frank, Lloyd
wright experience.
Which is also an apprentice type of
of life. Uh, I've never been negative about the academic process question
because its own usefulness and its only importance. So I never suggested
to anyone that they should not go to school or anything like that at the
same time. I felt that you need to add to that something else which is the
physical environment
in those parts of your professional or your activity which how physical in
kind
setting up apprenticeship is a very good place in our culture.
Yeah. Um
have trying to recall some of the early things that you did when you
return to Arizona and it seems to me that the Luxembourg bridges were
rather important milestone. Um, I think one of the disappointing parts of
that experience is the, is the way in which they didn't get judge
adjudicated as part of a competition. There was a priority. The final
priority because when we got the invitation, there were two months left
and you were supposed to be coming out with the project with the
contracting firm with everything ready for construction. So I knew that
there was nothing, nothing
any possibility as far as construction. But I was interesting. I was
interested in ideas. So I I did those four or five sketches. So what was
your purpose in doing the Luxembourg designs? A pleasure of designing,
putting down some ideas about bridges, that's all.
Mhm. Um it's rather interesting that you should have with that and with
some later studies, been quite involved in in designs that seemed to
satisfy the automobile and well vehicles. Whereas more recently you Oh
really become turned off by the automobile.
No, I am telling you what to do in the city. I'm not turned off in
automobile and as a device that takes man
from the city somewhere else. Mm No, I can see the price tag involved in
it
in for instance, in arcosanti of there are no accommodations for
automobiles. There will be in terms of simply a simply place the lock them
up I suppose similar to what happens when you arrived at venice. Mhm. You
put your car in a garage and Ok hmm.
Mhm. Mhm. Right. How do you, how do you feel now about your involvement in
making bells? I realized that it's your daily bread. But how would you
relate that very long term commitment two,
something that could be considered a little bit superficial.
How do you see making bills with your your chief goals in life?
I think it's it's good to uh smart to be active in in all at all levels
somehow all time. And if if if I was picked up and put into even the most
comfortable and in freeing environment but I couldn't do anything
physically. I would go I would go out of my mind in a few days so I need I
need the physical environment in the bears. No, no I'm not that much of an
involvement but in fact now I'm selling again because I I think we need
more money so I'm trying to to come up with a new line to produce more
think but also you feel the need to have your hands involved. Yeah. Well I
enjoy more and more gardening in the way in terms of physical involvement
in designing right of
I'm sort of interested in what you might have to say about work.
Uh huh. Work as a life activity as opposed to some other way of spending
your time. Mhm. Well if your mind your mind,
well it takes than anyone any anything is working away because supposedly
you go up by by doing almost anything. If your mind is totally idle then
no matter how busy you are, you're not working, you're just a busy body.
The thing is that I was saying if if I had to engage myself only with my
mind and I would not, I will really be in that shape. So I need I need to
be able to move from the from what you might call the pure speculative to
the very physical and that's why I feel very much the importance of having
an environment in which in which you can integrate us two things.
So when one minute you are sitting down writing something in the next
minute you're moving the holes or trimming a tree using here that uh but
it would be fairly easy to relate. That kind of restlessness and ambition
with the protestant work ethic which supposedly he's one of the
foundations of the success of the United States. Mhm. How do you relate to
the protestant work ethic? Well, if greed comes in then I don't relate and
that's not because because of a moral decision because I don't I don't
have any inclination,
you know to total accumulating things, it just doesn't it doesn't interest
me. So if if the addicts is to be productive because to be productive,
it's important for from men in general, I think I would agree if this,
this ethic is attached or is the bandwagon or is something that brings in
this very quiet but very, very powerful greed, eat of them? I'm not
institute.
Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. You've been interviewed many times too many times. I never
learned my lesson yet. What are the what are the typical sort of questions
that people ask interviewers ask?
Well, I don't know. I forget things. Yeah. Well, when they ask about about
the the ecology, the typical question is, you're treating people like bees
are like ants. What makes you think you have the right to do that for
instance. So it doesn't look good on from there, but in effect they are
passing judgment.
Well, it's very difficult to have a person questioning without this person
building the answering some questions,
but Well, what you've suggested is that a typical reaction to everything
that you're doing and standing for for comes into that kind of
understanding the crowding
well of automating. One of my experience is that life is in the thick of
things. So yes, but sickness doesn't have to be uh the uniformity. PBS I
don't mean thickness of matter. I mean thickness of events. Yes, but again
, the thickness doesn't necessarily force uniformity. No. And that seems
that seems to be part of the message that
people aren't getting well because it's quite naturally when, when you see
them a little model or a little sketch, evidently this cannot portrayed
the potentials of the possibility of whatever distilled diagram shows.
Yeah, maybe if this person had in mind a grade of phoenix
and then maybe they could, you could begin to say, well, look at the grid
of phoenix is not that important of,
well, first great variety,
but we'll accept anything that we're used to. In fact, we made we make the
models, we've ended the stuff of our life and we said, well, we just
improve this and that and we got it. We cannot very well accept anything
else that that doesn't belong to this,
acknowledge somehow known, contradict herbal thing that we saw we surround
ourselves with. That's why it's so difficult to do something which is out
of the ordinary. It's frightening, no matter what it is. It's frightening.
Would you see that as being one of the reasons why the architectural
profession has not been particularly interested in what you're doing? Well
, the liberal professions should be a little more clever than that,
frankly, because the architect should be able to to move from the
abstraction of an idea or a similar idea into a projection of what this is
my employee. So I'm not very
I'm I'm very willing to understand that
the difficulty of the layman environment environment. Mhm. Toward
something which is outside of the ordinary. I'm not at all willing to
accept that in a professional. Yes,
mm hmm.
In terms of your own life and uh comparing it with a typical mhm Uh huh
architect you have built very few things. Oh, yep, almost nothing,
practically, practically nothing. Uh what does that mean?
Well, it means many things he made one thing means that I, my moment of
frustrations,
frustration
and but it means also that it would be, it would be very foolish to think
that the professional architecture is construction or to mean that a
person fails because there's a title attached to this person and the title
suggested unless you build 50,000 times a year or something you have not,
you didn't make it or you didn't, you were not a success story or anything
like that. In fact it's quite evident that architecture involves more than
the execution of for some ideas at this point involves a geological
process.
How do you regard your many unbuilt project?
It was a,
has ideas that are sitting there with some marriage but being not being a
developed to the point of concreteness. They they are very abstract.
Do you do you see their value as primarily to yourself in terms of your
own evolution?
Oh yeah, if if all those things were canceled from my mind, I would be in
in that shape because they are very much part of my development,
which of those projects do you think you learned most from, of the unbuilt
thing, A Little one built.
Yeah, It's probably hard to even separate one like study from another. I
wouldn't
still it has not seemed to be tremendously important to you to publish
those study. Mhm.
I think they are sitting there and there will be will be useful from time
to time or maybe more organized way from now on. I'm really thinking that
we have a patrimony there that we should make use of translated into bags
of cement.
Excellent. Excellent.
Mhm. You just use the term we you're identifying a broader front of people.
Yeah, I didn't mean we the Pope. Uh huh.
I met with foundation.
Mhm. Um Still one of the interesting things about the development of your
idea is the fact that while there there is a team effort in effect, there
have not been any other people who have been associated with these ideas
for an extended period of time who have achieved some identity. Uh huh. Um
Yeah and I don't know, I don't know exactly why that is so
yeah,
everything because I think at this point the concept is pretty clear and
can be totally separated from the totally Yeah and so I don't know,
I know that evidently will not be easy for me to have a twin person at
this point with which I could work in total lessons,
it would have been much easier many years ago. Mhm But alternatively
someone else would bring their own strengths and weaknesses which could be
a complimentary,
it hasn't been. I mean that it's simply the way things have happened,
there hasn't been any. Well I see program in one direction or another
raising that somehow quite normal though,
if there is a strong drive somewhere from somebody, it's not very easy to
have to have another strong that I've come in and work in tandem. It's not
that it's impossible but it's not the most normal thing to happen.
How do you see yourself in relationship to the Giants of the early part of
the 20th century in architectural terms? How do you see what you're doing
with people such as like a bustier?
Mhm. I don't know, evidently evidently the physical production is
enormously more the more substantial in mind from that point of view. I
it would be hard for me to to think of being there with them.
But what about the world of ideas? Well, I think in that in that world I I
think I have something very important and that you are as important as any
as any so that you have grown on and grown out of some of their leadership.
Oh I think so literally and I have so little interest now in architecture.
Such a sense of seeing what this architect does. That architect as I'm
the last thing. I mean in opening is a cultural magazine which in a way
it's bad but I really don't have any any interest or reading about
architecture
you won't
So what sort of magazines do you open magazine time bible. Uh huh. Do you
miss Life magazine? No not very much.
What's what and
and what is it on tv that Yeah.
Is most capital as an italian and then moves on the screen is it's very
hypnotic.
Uh But I think you get a great deal out of the documentaries, don't you? I
would I would never agree with anyone that tv is useless or its evil into
my dad. I'm very glad exists. In fact for me personally I don't need any
newspapers. So that's that's where I get my news. Mhm. My dairy vision of
of
contemporary events.
Uh
earlier you used a term frugality in a way of describing how you live. Uh
these do you really see that as being an appealing way for other people in
the United States to live? I'm just finishing a paper about it. And what
does it say?
Well it says that
for one thing it says that mediocrity and frugality are antibiotic. I'm
trying to explain it why I don't know if I can. No I mean without the
paper then I'm saying that at this point it seems to be the only thing
that would really
fit a little tight of mankind.
Yeah and I'm saying that take frugal condition which is which is a
Children condition is not an imposed condition. It's the condition of
whether you are more alert, More lady to do things.
Finally, little attempting
from a cultural point of view, I suppose we could find a precedent. So for
both points of view, there are cultures that have reached very high
plateaus based on frugality, very modest means. Uh But alternatively, yeah
, one can identify some very strong results from highly consumptive
consumptive situation. Yeah. The question that it was always that this
consumption was was conspicuous for the foreign minority, but it was based
on almost in a squalor, a lot of wretchedness for the majority.
So the leisure, the leisure classes in the past who were based on the oil
and the labor of the masses.
Now this is not necessarily so anymore. But still you don't see that as
being appropriate.
Well, evidently there must be a better way of developing your blind brain
and being a parasite most of mankind.
So in effect you would advocate
pretty strong ethic in terms of lifestyle. I would guess. So that's why I
have to we got this through the
people that are working with me, you know, more constant way than just six
weeks so that we're clear about about a certain number of things.
Can you describe how frugality might affect let's say one's diet.
You got me stuff.
Yeah. Oh I
I think that you can you can manage, you're feeding in a pretty simple way
without giving up the pleasure of eating at all, but naturally depends so
much on your background and also in your demands of youth, your body. And
actually when you're young, you're you're here too gulp amount of energy
that you need any longer when you're not
young anymore. But
if you go into a supermarket,
you are somehow that this made by the double thing, there's so much but
the daughter is so much, there is so little as far as real quality that
immediately you're struck by some kind of wastefulness that we should be
able to get rid of, right.
You have been in some of the european countries or Greece, you know how
much you can do with just about nothing. Clearly nothing. three or 4
things that you have the skill
putting them to get in the right way and you get it an incredible thing.
And then you enter into a
A two acre supermarket and you want to in effect, this is an application
of aesthetic genesis another level which is the level we're everyone not
only has the right to be, but anyone should try to develop because that's
the art of living, which is to make your life into an aesthetic process
into a graceful process
and you can do it with very limited amount of anything.
Uhh, just following that idea. Maybe we don't need architecture.
And no, I'm not in for that because
architecture is done intermediary that it's absolutely essential, not not
architecture as maybe they are the architects, the architect being, you
know, the
the God that makes decision. But as that kind of in the environment which
connects you with to the with all nature too. Nature of such.
Whenever you have two persons to persons plus and institutions between
institutions And this institution is not necessary in the two person and
institution can be as simple as a glass with some wine or that played with
some red, but it can become as complex as a library, as a movie theater,
as a meeting place, as anything of the city. So this is necessary. So, the
frugality is not in a the concept of frugality is not the elimination of
means, but it's in the selective and creative leanness of the means and
the substance of them.
Because otherwise forgot it would mean that you
you slowly go back to the being a naked ape,
even forgetting that you cannot have 10 billions of negatives, you could
have only a few millions of negatives
ridiculous arriving in her own way.
Yeah.
So, you see frugality as being much more than an expedient. Absolutely.
It's a certain condition. See a sudden condition of grace where you can
really begin to perform if there's something in you that allows you to
perform. So, it's a privilege. It's not a conclusion. It's not a a
condition of the the handicapped. We're an inferior condition.
It's a an optimum
position for action.
Some people have suggested that you and your life have somewhat withdrawn
from the real life.
How do you feel about how you withdrawn? I'm not a I don't have a very
exciting life, my excitement. You mean? You don't know what I'm a very
routine life and
in many ways.
Yeah. But if if you're hoping to be able to provide some
uh some universal directions, let's say no,
maybe you should be more in the thick of things to use your quotation No,
I'm trying to build a thick thickness, which I I believe I can believe in
so that you really see as a primary goal. Yeah, we're not we're not in the
desert or our country because we want to get away from it. We want to
establish it there with some characteristics, frugality being one, the
other one being the being conscious that there are very fundamental
problems that we have to face again to make the list of energy,
non integrity in the sense of segregation. Um
the enormous amount of materials and
gadget trees and hardware that we seem to be mm convincing. Also they are
necessary indispensable and the pollution open. So the Children population.
Yeah. As I was saying, if those bells are not constantly ringing, we are.
It's very easy to go into a some kind of a binge which has a didn't
this doesn't mean that I think we are successful in what we're doing, but
we're attempting to do something in in those directions. Mhm.
What do you see as your life goal?
Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, probably. It has changed, it changes daily or yearly, but
where you're, where you are at the moment, what what do you see the goal
of you having lived
to introduce a certain understanding
of
of the discipline that life needs in order to to find freedom?
Well at least find a the beginning of a freedom
and the freedom. The freedom means that within a and the immense contest
of non living life is able to affirm itself and to move for and further
into transforming the non living into the living.
So within this scheme of things, choice is very important.
Yeah, a discrimination
for this process.
Yeah.
Do you have anything more to say
is going to be naptime?
I think I'm pretty well worked out.
Okay. The question that I'd asked at the end of the last session is one
that I really wish we could pursue but I don't know Oh about the
profession, well the profession and the,
you know, the ordinary person, it seems to me that environment is
something that everybody has to deal with. Uh huh. And somehow or other it
requires
professional expertise which obviously just by definition everybody
doesn't have and
it looks like we're in a absolute bind when you begin to look at the
global kind of responsibilities.
Okay. It seems like architects are in a very a controversial kind of from
position.
Yeah. Well
that because you were saying you sent two ways of looking at it from the
inside and from the outside
from both directions. We should realize that we have to trust we need
if we don't base life on trust we are we're in for
for the grading kind of of constant no
bleeding.
If if I don't feel well, I'm not going to the I'm not going to butcher or
to the so yesterday man, I'm going to the doctor. If I need a a government
, I'm not going to the play store to the psychiatrist, I'm going to the
tailor. So I had to trust in every act which I am bob. I'm trusting in the
expertise of someone else.
Then if I if I cannot do that the animal, I mean for the for disaster, I'm
just going to kill myself through doubt through envy through all sorts of
ugly and not very constructive things.
So we must delegate to other people into our institutions things which are
going to transform our lives
and and hopefully there are some expertise even there that makes the
doctor to know a little more than the butcher and they'll know a little
more about the government's than Mhm. And the pharmacist. So as an
architect, we had to be worthy of this trust
and uh the business of being creative. It's most of the time in the
business of being selective. That's why education is important because we
have to try to
being become more selected by by elevating they the quality of the choices
that we make through our own education.
But what we enjoy most of the time is not the fact that we create
something that we enjoy most of the time is the fact that we have options
and we make a choice which you feel. All right. So again, if I had to buy
a pair of shoes, I'm not going to make a pair of shoes. No, I used to make
them for myself. But they were sandals. But you go you go in and from the
selection represented to you. You pick up the parachute that you identify
with. So this is a delegation this vicarious nous and sometimes you
bringing me mrs you copy you see something which attacks you and you say
you attacked so much that you want to make something which is similar to
it. So you copy with the little variations and you come out with something
that you feel you made yourself solely general with you. But most of the
time it's a copy of something that you enjoy seeing or feeling or
experiencing. And we should have that enough
enough immunity to understand that That's most of what we do and enjoy be
vicarious being
doing. Act of nemesis and trusting.
That's a pretty strong case for professionals.
We're both ways. There is it indicates the responsibility of them and also
the fact that they should be trusted
because if you don't if nobody trusts anybody else then is a
Everybody from one south?
All right. Mhm.
Mhm. Does anyone here have any questions they'd like to pose?
Yes. Uh huh. Mhm. She actually pulled with the package
but she Mhm, creativity
and the question they offer.
How do you know when the media
That's a good question and now you don't know.
Yeah.
All right. It seems to me that when when you tend to to perform in a way
which is not really a making you feel better, but it might be able to fit
you in a certain frame
which goes for respectability. For instance at that point you have to be
very careful because that's where you media actually my caribbean. And
what if you're really honest with yourself then I think you cannot be
mediocre.
But if you begin to act
for the sake one thing that you really don't believe in, but you feel that
it's an opportune to stick with, then you fall into the
into the condition of mediocrity.
So you can be terribly humble, terribly ignorant in many ways and what you
might call an gifted and never be mediocrity.
Well, you can be very gifted. Okay, very fortunate um and have a certain
drive and be terribly mediocre
because in a way you are there is malice. This hypocrisy.
No. Portuguese involved in what you do
and naturally we are all prey of those things. So we are we are all
mediocre in many many of the things we do. The point is to be able to get
off and then we'll be able to see ourselves and try to do something about
can't do a thing like that. We do so many things with our lives that in
some fields we cannot escape levels mediocrity. And those are the fields
where we should accept the judgment of the pirates of someone else because
we might excel in one direction and then knead the terribly guidance in
many other directions. Oh
um the first part of the question,
the first part of the question I forgot.
Mhm. Oh you had something about
create creativity?
Well I was just trying brain is wearing occurred. Mhm.
Are there any other questions? Yes. You said that we have to defend
of some other people otherwise we're then and I'd like to know you've
always felt this way and that applies to a whole spectrum of fields there
are some fields that we do have to depend on. Mhm. Although we can manage
well, we all tend to specialize some of so when we specialize in a certain
direction, that's where we tend to
to interrogate ourselves when we need expertise. So if I'm a doctor and I
don't feel well my my investigate through my knowledge what my problem I
made by me with me or if I'm an architect and I have a problem or
environmental. Mhm. The kind I might I might get my except stays out and
try to get answers.
But evidently we cannot be experts in every field so we need help
desperately most of the time.
Have you always felt this deep? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't you don't have
to consciously be aware of that. But if you examine
you're
existential posture, you find out that you are utterly dependent
constantly from everybody else.
So it's the norm is that you're dependent, dependent animal. The exception
is that now and then you're able to
to offer
to society or to life something that might make you
together.
Um Let's see the
special.
Mhm. I missed the other day and I had it before and I missed the first
part
going on. Yeah. A pretty elementary
nation. But something yeah, indicated yes. Thank you. Service. This was
that once the egg like creature. Mhm. Sandals from the trees to the ground
to the horizontal plane and began to to travel and to observe other
animalsinto