and I would keep help.
People that
Do you think they'll apply it when we're finished,
I'll be moving faster. Um, I'm Jeffrey Cook, and, uh, I teach at Arizona
State University. Uh, and I've been there for my whole teaching career. Um
, And when I first moved to the valley, um, one of the first people who I
met outside of the university, uh, was Paolo Soleri and his family. And
almost instantly, they became my family here. I had no family, uh, here in
Phoenix. And so, um, through the years, we've shared many things. Uh, So,
um, this is a special occasion for, uh, for me to share that, uh,
friendship, but also, uh, some of the insights of, um of Paolo Soleri. So
now, Paulo, you have to introduce yourself. Oh, God.
I was born in Italy. That's it. That's the one. I came to this country
when I was 26. I was here about three years and I went back to Italy with
my family for five years, and then I came back. We came back to Arizona by
way of Santa Fe.
So this series is labelled modern architects, so I want to know why you're
here.
No,
we could We could discuss whether you're an architect. Because after all,
there are people who are not architects who are doing it. And there are
architects who are not doing it. I I Italian architect. You're you're an
Italian. Italian. Um, but the part that I'm more interested in is the
modern part. Are you modern, Uh, beyond?
Well, I'm living in the in this age, So I, I guess I'm part of the modern.
Do you? How do you place yourself in relationship to the other architects
in the latter half of the 20th century
as a, um, not maverick is not the word almost as an outsider.
So the the label modern architect does seem to embrace, uh, some well,
well known names who who are somehow or other associated. But your name is
not normally associated with those names. It's abnormally associated. But
how many? How many are here tonight? How many a I a members members want
to a minority? We can Where? Where the hold.
So, um, in terms of your background and where How? How you got to wherever
you got. Um, I'm really curious. What? Um what credit you would give to
your childhood and upbringing in Italy and the kind of experiences you had
as a child. Well, when I get that question, I always say, Well, we are
environmental animals. We belong to a certain reality, which is the the
terrestrial reality. So evidently the environment is very influential.
Quite a bit of what we are comes about through the environment we are born
in. So quite definitely my environment. My first, the first part of my
life. My environment was the Mediterranean environment, though it was on
the edges of it because I grew up in the in the Alps. So that's almost at
the border with France.
But still, the civilization that developed in the Mediterranean era were
were very influential in my for my background Could could you separate? Um
, since you lived in France for some time, could you separate the
difference between the experience of living in Italy and in France? But
not that much? Maybe the language was the main difference. But that's a
very important difference. Well, because that French is your second
language and I, I still I'm still trying to learn English. I lost the
Italian so I'm stuck with some kind of patois.
Then for me, an interesting part of your background, Is that it? I mean,
we all have, uh, favourite images of what Italian life and culture and
cities are. But, uh, but the city of Turin, where you spent a lot of your
childhood, uh, does have a special flavour, Uh, especially because it's,
uh it's a modern component. It has a modern component. And, um, it's the
city of the factory of Fiat cars and, uh, labour movements and so on. Did
did any of that rub off on you? Well, Torino developed it started in the
Roman times, and then but the the main development was the Baroque area
era era. So it tends to be a baroque city, but a very quiet baroque. P
Montes People are always quiet.
Um, I think one of the reasons to raise this question is that, um
ultimately, I think tonight we may talk about cars and automobiles and
automobile culture, and you grew up in a city which had a very distinct
automobile culture. There was the the the launcher here, the Bugatti here
, and few of the car manufacturers surrounding us right. So, as as a boy,
you were probably, uh, fascinated as most young boys are with these
machines. No, I was a bicycle person
then. Then I was promoted to the to the motorcycle.
Oh, did you have a Vesper? No, Lambre, which is like a Vesper. Yes. OK, Ok.
And you left it behind. But I never had the Gilera. My father used to
drive the gile was 80 some and was driving the Gilera going to the
mountains and then climb up and then come back. Get the Gilera. Come home.
Um, Paula's father, Um uh, as a hobby was a mountain climber. I wonder if
you could say anything about how he introduced you to the outdoors and to
the natural environment? Well, yeah, I tended to like the outdoors from
the very beginning, but the fact that every other week or once a month at
least we would go climbing. It was a very important experience. I didn't
realise how important it was when I was doing it, but more and more later
on, I felt that that was, uh, quite a lesson.
Then we would walk for many, many hours and never never saying one word
just climb up. It's something run down. Was it jumping the funny car? No,
the train, the train.
The funny car that came later. OK, And then when you graduated, uh, from
the, uh, the, uh, polytechnic in Turin in, uh, 1946.
What was it that was so attractive for you to come to Arizona to
apprentice with Frank Lloyd Wright? Because this was a really tough time
in Italy. Yeah, that was That was very tough. Yes.
Why did you Why did you believe that I happened to find a small book in
Italian about Mr Wright, I think was the first publication of his work.
And I was very taken by what I saw and what I read. So I wrote an awful
letter to Mr Wright in English. Your English?
It was a two or three pages later. And, um, six months after I got a a
short letter. Come front way, right.
That happened.
Um, so I came. Yes.
OK. I think it must have been very, uh, very stressful for your family for
you to live. Leave home at that particular juncture just at the end of the
Second World War reconstruction had barely been done and economic times
were well, I measured The economic times was that, um I got grants for two
years from the university. So the dean of the school had this made this
speech, and at the end, he said, Well, and now we are very proud to be
able to send one of our best architects to America by way of those grants.
But those two grants put together were able to buy about £6 of butter. So
that what that showed the the financial bankruptcy that Europe was in the
the the level of inflation.
Can you say anything about what? The experience with Frank Lloyd Wright
and at TES? And how did that contribute to, um, what you did later in life
? Of course. The first thing is, it introduced you to the United States.
Yes, which was pretty important, especially after 25 days in Ellis Island.
35 days in Ellis Island. OK, that was Christmas and New Year's in 1947
1948 46 46 47. Ok, we get those dates, right?
Um so So surely that that's a very important uh uh transition that you
immediately join, uh, a kind of extended family.
And one of the negative side was that I couldn't speak. I couldn't
understand. I was doing a dummy. So they put you in the kitchen. They put
him in the kitchen because I couldn't afford decorations.
Well, the the arrangement was that if he if he could come, Mr Wright would
look after him. But that still meant that you have to work your way
through. Which was fair. Since I couldn't pay, I had to do some work. And
, uh, in the year and a half that you were with the Taliesin Fellowship.
You were both, uh, up in Wisconsin and you were here. We were here most of
the time. We were in Wisconsin, one winter from October from October to,
uh maybe April or no. Yeah. You went to Wisconsin? I've been in the summer.
Yes. No, We Yeah, we came back. We came back to west in West was late, I
think. And we went through snow storms and all sorts of nice things. That
that's the That's the usual pattern. Um,
it is there, is there? I was asking what? That experience at Taliesin uh,
how that might have affected the direction of your life after you left.
Well, number one I was, uh, under the tutelage of of a great architect,
which is always very important. So that was one aspect of the of the
experience. The landscape and the light were very, very important
both here and especially here in in, uh, in Arizona. And then the
fellowship was evidently very important. And the way of life and the
activities, the scheduling and so on.
So it was so part of that experience was the rigour, the day, the rhythm
of the daily life. Oh, that's right. Yes.
And being having to to be responsible for something that would influence,
uh, you know, that's 40 or 50 people that were there being part of the
community.
Why do you live in Arizona?
Because we got when we came back in this country, we tried Santa Fe for
one for one summer. And then we decided to come back here, and we were We
knew a little about this area, so we decided to to establish ourselves
here. But the other thing is that I'm I'm a son addict. I'm a son
worshipper. and so whatever.
Maybe you should say what your name means.
You heard the song. So this is the translation of Soleri. But then I had
to add immediately. We are all so we were all the son. So nothing new
about that. It's just that you have the name.
But what what is, uh, Can you say anything about the special attraction of
, um, the the the valley here. And so the the lower part of Arizona as a
as a place. Well, I think I tended always to like to be able to look into
the distance. So if, for instance, if you're in a in a forest forest
forestation area, uh, the vegetation tends to cut your view, your view.
But there was more than that. I mean, the Arizona and New Mexico, they
have something very, very special to offer. Um, I remember usually mou in
valley and being floored by Monument Valley Canyon, the shea and things of
that sort and then the light. But also again, going back to your childhood
and mountain climbing with your father. When you get to the top of the
mountain, you can see almost forever. Yeah, but you you would do that once
once in a while, you wouldn't sit there for months or years. But you fix
that by Yeah, I remember when When I came here and they were pointing at
me at the mountains, I would say, What are the mountains? There were
little hills. There were mountains, OK, because you had done your climbing
in the Alps,
right? Um, had have you thought about living in some other part of the
Southwest?
No, I I'm done. I'm not a migratory or a nomadic person, Really. I'm
pretty set in my habits.
So the idea is that you have a nest, which you wander out of, but you
always come back to
OK,
um And when, um uh, when you came to the United States, then you you
married an American woman. Um What did she contribute to your thought?
Well, I sing mainly. She was a wonderful mother, An exceptional murder.
And
so the combination. I was a terrible father. So So we find some kind of a
balance there,
but this gave she she worked, You know, my work constantly, well and that.
But that also gave you an American family and an American outlook
from the main line. Philadelphia.
Um, when you first married, you went back to Italy for a few years and, uh
, Italy was still, uh, in this stressful economic situation that, uh, you
you just felt you couldn't. Uh Well, I was trying to find an activity
which would give me enough freedom to do what I wanted to do in
architecture and planning. And that might might have been a mistake, a
fatal mistake. But it might have been also the A very important, um,
condition to be in in a centre. I think, though I lost, um, let's say the
the profession maybe again something that now I feel it more and more
important.
And so it was in in Italy that you really learn to feed yourself to
support yourselves. Uh, the both of you, Uh uh, with, uh, crafts.
Um and that's where you, uh, you really began to develop that, uh,
livelihood that has supported your whole life. Yeah, one reason that we I
got into that is because before the university years I was in Artistical
called so called and you would get out of there as professor of fine arts.
So They gave me a access to some of the visual and, um, and a kind of
activities that I kept.
But when you move back to the United States, then you continued with this
craft business, and you really developed it, Um, in in particular, uh, the
wind bells?
Yeah, yes, but in, uh, we were travelling through Italy trying to find
something that would fit what I felt could be useful. So we ended up in
VRE, which was, um, a small town with many ceramics, family, family doing
ceramics. So we got to know one of those families. I began to learn
something about ceramics with them, and they asked me eventually to design
their own fabrica, which was the soleiman and fabric,
and so that that was a a pretty important series of lessons. Um, I wonder
whether you have any perspective on how the craft of, um making bells. Uh
, I mean, there's the obvious economic thing. It not only has supported
you and your family, but, uh, quite a large enterprise, but I wonder how
that has contributed to your method of thinking and how that has affected
your architectural thought. Where I use the term how I think, how is very
important, and I call it how. And the fact of working with your hands, for
instance, might have been influential in what my thinking developed into,
and that indicates that before I develop what you might call a theory or a
or an hypothesis about reality, I work physically in doing little objects
or those larger objects, like a small house or something. But it was the
physical presence that was very important and how you manipulate things
and how you transform this into that and so on.
So I I'm saying that because more and more I believe that harness defines
what the reality is from the very beginning. Well, that's that's what
gives it quality. Well, that was what the idea is in fundamentally,
how how matter becomes something very, very special. But the the
particular quality maybe, is that it's a human hand that has touched it.
Yeah,
what are your thoughts about the place of handicraft, meaning hand in
craft in an industrial society and post industrial society?
Well, I make a decision between the what I call the the Artisan activity,
the Craftsman Activity and the the Artist but they are quite different
from each other. And, uh,
and naturally, you can say that even even the technology of the microchip
has to have very much to do with the hands with the skilled hands. In fact
, the hand really is what defines our nature. Because if we didn't have
hands, probably would be at the level of the dolphins or the cockroaches.
No mammals, but not, uh, not cultural mammals, just social mammals. So the
the the existence of this manipulation
instrument, which is fantastic, has made us to develop slowly from a from
a million average into this very special phenomenon We are. So you
identified three levels of involvement you men mentioned The A is was very
much, uh, from the very origin of of, um, life and communal life, the
manipulation of things to serve immediate needs and developmental, almost
traditional way of going about producing tools and, um in governments and
everything. So it's a very function oriented activity, and it requires
quite a bit of self discipline
to be rooted in an environment in a certain
humanity.
The craftsman. It's a more recent invention when we are not able to be
artists we turn out to be craftsman. So it's very much an idiosyncratic,
uh, expression of the individual and the syncratic as the problem of being
delusional now and then because, um, we think we are doing something
beautiful. And then we find out that we are We are just expressing an
idiosyncrasy that might be irrelevant to other people's.
And history is able to, you know, to discriminate and to sort out the
quality. Oh, the excellence from the from the mediocrity that we live in
in the average.
Do you have any thoughts about, uh, the star system? Um and I'm referring
here, especially to architects, although it also applies to sculptors and
painters and so on. Uh, where, uh, there are certain individuals who seem
to get a lot of attention. Um who, uh, well, maybe I should let you carry
on from there.
Well, one thing that might be tangent to this is that, um a while ago, I
thought that as architects, for instance, we tend to to enjoy to come up
with beautiful orchids. By that I mean beautiful and very, very, uh,
useful buildings. And we love to make them into beautiful objects and this
is very important, but it doesn't really touch upon habitat in the sense
that habitat and agriculture are two fundamental and indispensable
activities, and that that translates in a metaphor that we cannot only
have flowers. We have to have forests, and the forest is the the whole of
the habitat that we constantly have to develop, trust, form and generate.
So there is a There's a danger of making beautiful orchids scattered
around but disconnected with with reality in many ways. Yes, so if they
are really beautiful, that's it. The aesthetic is paramount. If they are
only on the edge of being beautiful, then they might not be essential.
So in terms of, uh, um, sort of professional responsibility, Or maybe it's
, uh, maybe it's a human responsibility. Uh, how do you, uh, how do you
sort those things out? Uh, who who should be tending the forest so that we
have or so that the orchids have a place to live?
We should. Since we are part of the forest, we are all responsible for
that. We are all responsible
and, um,
we we tend to forget about the forest because we're just admiring
brilliant in some ways, it's easier to to produce flowers. Let's say
beautiful flowers is always difficult to produce, But
so it's the segregation of an activity that by definition should be
universally embraced because we do need shelter. It's UNESCAP. Not only we
need shelter for individual and the family, but also the institution that
we have. This library is a good example of that.
And that's also the reason why I believe that the city is the answer and
not the exurban sprawled and now is beginning to terrify us, and rightly
so, because it's, um, it's not going to work. So your your analogy for
humans is that the city is the forest,
which would sustain with, uh, with many, uh, what do you call it?
Reservations or, um, qualifications? Qualifications? Yes, One is that the
city itself
is really a sort of organism, a pseudo or para organism. That's why I can
compare it to an animal or a tree or anything that is a living system.
And the reason is that as any living system in the city, the city that
works should have a great quantity of interactions and in relationships
and connections and, uh uh, all sorts of, um, what do you call it?
Synergies and so on going on, which are the characteristic of any organism.
And my pet notion is that as an organism is a fantastically miniaturised
and incredibly complex system, So it should be the city.
So miniaturisation and complexity are a CPA known for life. There is
nothing in the living a reality that is not complex and and miniaturised.
Um, in in the 19 sixties, um, Paulo was associated with the school of
architecture at a SU. And for, uh, each of those summer schools, you
produced a poster, and I've just been looking at some of those and it's
it's very interesting the messages on some of those I mean, some of the
messages say students don't take, uh, you know, don't steal this poster.
But, uh, that was a problem, because they were they were too beautiful.
Yeah. Can something be too beautiful? Um, but, uh, the poster I'm
referring to in particular is the one that started off. Life is in the
qualified, thick of things qualified. The qualified was in parenthesis.
And then there was this development, uh, of thoughts. And the first one,
the first paragraph began, uh, with something about, um, the biosphere and
this thin mantle, Um, the thin skin of the globe that supports life and
then developed through, uh, to, um, uh the concept of thickness and depth
and density and complexity. And, um, the last line had to do with the city
, Uh, in the image of man, you remember that?
It's, um I don't know that your message has changed so much.
Well, it's been refined. Well, yes. Then it's become much, much richer.
But And that That poster, uh, from I think it was 67. Um, came just at the
time when you, uh when the When the word archology uh, came came out.
Would you like to, uh, explain what you meant by archology? Well, maybe
the the origin of that is that I. I had the experience of the city and the
experience of the countryside from the very beginning of my life. And the
two experiences were were integrated
that it was very nice to integrate the two the two domains because I think
that they enrich your life. So at a certain point in thinking, in terms of
habitat, I felt that that, uh that the chance for everybody to to
experience those two domains is essential.
In order to do that, you have to move to this highly complex and highly
compact system so that you are inside an urban condition. You walk out and
you are in nature or vice versa.
What the sprawl does is to in a way, to kill both of them. Nature goes
because you are destroyed by moving into it, and the city is not there
because you haven't been to being able to develop a city with within a
system which is utterly segregated segregation.
So the words Garden City don't cut it? No, to my knowledge, no,
the there is lots of nostalgia there, which is a justifiable nostalgia,
but we cannot live on nostalgia.
We had to move to our reality now and then.
And the reality is that number one, as I was saying, life is in the thick
of qualified thick of things. The only is that the planet has a certain
size and cannot take what we might be demanding now from it, and very
quickly, 10 billions of people married to the American dream are going to
need about 10 planets or something like that, Or maybe 15 planets. So they
have the American dream as to alter itself.
Or we need new planets for parking lots. No.
Yeah. It brings me again to the the the China situation where a a again
merry into the American dream means to have about 500 million automobiles
for China. 500,000,400 millions. What? 1 million for for Africa. Another
56 millions for 100 millions for South America. So we end up by having a
population of 10 billion with about 3 billion of bills. So that requires
probably seven or eight or 10 planets
Keeping in mind. Yes. Keeping in mind that the automobile is only one
element of consumption of hyper consumption. But it's only one.
It happens to be the biggest. Which one is one of the problems?
Um, so this is this is an idea which you, uh, began to, uh, broadcast
in the, uh, in the late 19 sixties. And then you published your book. Um,
the MIT press book called Archology, in which you demonstrated 30 um,
models. What? Which were symbols? They were not city plans. They were
symbols of ideas. Um, what's happened to that word in the currency of the
world? That's Yeah, that's 30 years ago.
There might be 10 people that knows about it.
Well, I don't know. It seems to me that the that the term archology is a
recognisable term in the literature now. Maybe that's not much, but that's
I think it's in one dictionary in the moment.
Uh, big deal.
Um, why hasn't that idea become more popular? Or maybe I should say, Why
hasn't it become more essential as a as a way of, of, of reconstructing
the world number one? My limitations, your limitations in every field,
including architecture number two. The fact that the idea presents a a
condition that is antithetical to the American dream. It's as simple as
that. So to ask a suburbanite to reverse its own priorities and move into
the city,
it's It's not very enticing.
That means
what does that mean? Well, it means that unless you experience something,
uh, you are really not married to what the explanation comes about. So if
you never experience the urban condition or the urban effect, there is no
reason why we should even think about or consider it as something positive
, something that has to be experienced. You don't want it. And as
Americans, given the the immensity of the landscape, given the youth of
the of the of the culture, uh, the city remains almost a fringe thing that
is not necessarily positive. So we take the city as somebody has to be
accepted but not necessarily embraced or experienced or loved. Loved.
So we could perhaps say that especially about the newest cities.
Well, the other thing is that to come out with the with the what do you
call a city? It's something that requires so much knowledge, so much
experience, a little bit of wisdom that is difficult to combine into one
enterprise. That's why we need laboratories,
City Laboratories, where things are taken to levels of almost absurdity in
order to find out where they break down and start again, experience again
failures and keep going, because that's what we do in every field science
, technology.
It's test even the religion, of course. So that's a that's a process of
test to failure.
Observe the failure and and we can say we, but that's too expensive or a
Slava Well, look at the cost that we are paying the price we are paying
now for for what we are being embracing, which is abandon the city and
come out with the with the paradise.
The Garden of Eden, which we are finding out, is, uh, it's a very,
uh
or, um Well, it turns out to be pernicious. That's the the terrible thing
about it.
What are your thoughts about? Uh, maybe I should mention that 30 years ago
as a uh, not Not only did he, uh did Paulo publish this book? Oncology. Uh
, but, uh, he, uh, broke ground on the smallest of those sketches, which
is what we know as a kanti 770 miles north of here. So, um, it's coming up
to its 30th birthday. Yes, it is. It broke ground. And it 70 um, and, um,
like all cities, it's unfinished. Um, but I wonder whether you have any
observations about, um, about how it's going. Observation number one is
that is not even a small town. It's a little fragment of a small town.
Well, fair enough, but people might come out and say, Where is the city?
Well, we have, um we have the beginning of so at the beginning show and
say, this is what we are trying to explain and this is what an application
of it. But there are fragments. But there are people living happy,
productive lives there, productive lives
they could leave. But small communities are very, very difficult animals.
I mean, they are They should stay away from small communities. That's why
you're recommending the big city.
So the the the complexity offers checks and balances. Um, where there is
not enough complexity there, quite definitely. And one reason is that we
don't have the means of importing complexity, So we're developing some
complexity on the site. But, uh, we are economic animals, as we know,
because we are consumers. So there are limits to the poverty of the
consumption, and we are very poor in. In retrospect, would it have been a
better move to have gone, um, south of the tracks in Phoenix or to one of
those deserted neighbourhoods in Detroit to start the first archology? No.
No, because, uh, there the vested interest would have been enormous. As
we know simply the real estate holding and everything else you know, laws
rules and regulations and so on. Then there is the resistance of the of
the of the people or the environment to something that might be might look
very, uh,
the pharmacy national. Yeah.
So I think to move out, that was a good move.
And in fact, at the very beginning, we we didn't have any conception. We
could do whatever we wanted. We had, um uh a rezoning.
The hearing at the beginning. And there was a a laundromat guy, a cowboy,
a lawyer and one a politician.
So we got rezoning. 3000 people on 15 acres or so. Really? Which wouldn't
have been possible in Phoenix. No. No, it's still not possible. We got it.
We are? Yes. Yes, yes. Then you should have sold it.
That's the Scottsdale way.
No, not Walt Disney. Um, Elvis Presley, the the the impersonators. There
is one that is connected with the the corporate system. They came to us
and said, we have $10 million for you. Cash if you want to sell.
This was about what, Six months ago. Really? Yeah. So we we were on the
edge of Walt Disney,
but we said no, I don't know why. But we said that
you said you were poor.
Well, cheers. If you know what what average average wages he would
collapse.
Well, we are really. And we are trying an economy of frugality within,
evidently an economy of abundance. So the difference is quite substantial
and makes the relationship between the two quite difficult.
Um, it it's interesting that the number of people who come to visit cos
Santi and also our kazani you have over 50,000 visitors at each place. I
would say 40. Well, what do they learn?
Are you to him?
Is it is it? Do you think it is a learning experience or is it more of a
curiosity or entertainment? Well, most of them comes out of curiosity or
by bells. Some of them go back, leave with some notions, especially that
we gave tours. And
so there is a certain impact or certain influence, but I wouldn't be able
to measure it. But you've also had, uh uh, maybe it's very subtle, but a
lot of influence in terms of of, um, young minds in, uh, in the sense that
since, uh, 1960. Well, since since what? 59 was your first apprentice? Um
, that there have been, I guess, several 1000. Um, young people who have
worked with you for various periods and we're now at the stage where some
of those people, uh, have, uh, led full professional lives and have
retired. Um, so we have the bag ready for the money.
Well, some of some of them seem to be very grateful for that experience
that they had with you, uh, in the sixties and seventies. So, um, do you
have any thought about the kind of seeds that are represented in those, um
, in those, uh, in turns, those apprentices?
I'm not sure, because I tend to generalise because I think it's necessary
to generalise. And that makes my language somehow not easy to to buy into.
And that might have been an obstacle beside the paradigm. Still trying to
learn the language. No, I'm not trying. I'm just fumble around.
And then again, the ideas
I think they are radical in the sense of going back to to the roots. And
they're not radical in the sense of being fantastic or exotic or so. But
that's another reason why the the influence might be might have obstacles.
Uh, the follow through has never been very good. We could have followed
through, you know, through mail and contacts and reunions and so on. We do
some of that, but not much.
Uh, Paula, you're still very active. Um, what drives you?
I enjoy it. Of course. Of course. I think there are responsibilities that
when you feel they exist here to try to work with them,
And, um, I feel I have responsibility
because I think I know something that
and you travel all over the world. No, I'm no longer No. I go to Phoenix
one a day.
Yes, but not that much, but, uh, people in other countries and other
continents have been very interested in, uh, I mean, not not. Maybe
they're interested in you as a person also, but they're interested in your
ideas. Um, particularly in Japan. Could you you comment? Why? Who are they
interested? Well, probably the main reason was that, uh, from the very
beginning, we got a number of Japanese young young friends. Yes, So many
of them were architects.
And then I I had the great fortune of having Tom Ai coming many years ago.
and he's my right hand in terms of, let's say, architecture and planning
or whatever. And he pulled in more, more students from Japan.
And then I always said that Japan represents in in a way of frugality is a
very good representative of what it's meant by frugality, which means that
some kind of a lean
expression that is a consequence of quite a bit of interior of what
reality is knowledge
and, uh, Southern T and, uh, what you might call good taste or whatever ST
style or
and then they live on a little piece of land with no resources. So the
ingenuity in, uh, carrying on with their own culture is has been always
admirable.
So
if another archology is started, it might be in Japan.
Well, we got the building, right,
But is that still going? Well, it's going in the centre. They they got the
some of the ideas from myself and two other architects, and they're
working with them. This was, uh maybe you should explain it. This was a
combine of, uh, uh, large Japanese corporations. Yeah, I think it was
about three years ago, and, um, we we were told there were 97 corporations
and some banks and some input from the government from the government to
try to develop ideas that would, uh, face the problems of of, uh, of a
Japan that was fully developing into a tight technology culture and how to
shelter what, 90 millions of Japanese on A on a real estate, which is
really minimal compared to the to the states is zero. So they're very,
very worried about what's going on with the with the fact that the rice
paddies are becoming asphalt parking lots.
And in general, they are worried about, uh, what's the next step?
And so three architects, one from the United States, um, 11 from
Netherland and one from Japan. So that was Graham Cool house. Um, and, uh
, the third one. I don't remember his name. But each of these three
architects were invited to, uh, produce a design of a so called hy hyper
building. Was that their name or yours? Is that their name? And they they
assigned they had a square kilometre. And on that square kilometre, you
were supposed to be developing ideas for the residential and living
quarters of about 150,000 people, plus a transient
population of I don't know if it was another 100,000 or so,
so I found it interesting enough to try to do something. And, um, your
architectural, your proposal was, uh, how many stories high. And then it
had some subset. I don't remember a story, but divided one kilometre by,
say, five metres in, Come up with the stories. Um,
well, we depend on what? What I call terrace. Every 30 or 40 story. There
would be a, um a story which would be much deeper, much higher, and would
be a the place where you would develop the next step into building the
building. So it would be the construction resources, so it would be a
construction platform. But then when the building was finished, this
became a park. So this is this is an outdoor space, which is a cavity that
runs through the whole building up at various points in in the air. But
the main, uh, the main The thing that I mainly try to emphasise was the
how to combine the the vertical
element with the horizontal landscape, which is always a problem,
apparently.
But there is almost an inimical confrontation between the what surrounds
the skyscraper. And this, uh,
well, the the tower with the elevators. But I'm thinking about the the
biological
the Liga
that every town has to develop. Show the virility of the city.
And so I try to connect that with what I call the womb the the the
surrounding of this Liga. So that together they would come up with a A
more,
uh, more
functioning and more logistically useful useful condition so that the
ground level was very important. And then how you trans trans transfer
from the ground into the upper levels?
Um, recently, you did you, um, did a little diagram explaining these three
terms the geosphere, the biosphere and the noosphere.
Never mind. No, but they have applications for For what you think. Yeah,
well, we we come from the geosphere in a sense that we are mineral matter
becoming living matter. That's one of the great miracles.
And then from from the very beginning of consciousness, which means about
four millions of years ago, we began to develop
what one could call the new sphere the that which hovers on top of the
biosphere in a sense. And that's the the intellect that the the planet as
on its own skin. So they have the geosphere as a base. You have the
biosphere as the envelope of life, and then the new sphere, which, uh, the
term was used by the chain. I think at the beginning, and now it has been
used by the by cyberspace
in cyberspace can be very responsible for putting strength and and, uh,
power into the into the new sphere with some with some reservations.
Because what cyberspace is doing is produce an enormous amount of wealth,
at least for some minorities. And this wealth translates in hyper
consumption. So you are loading the new sphere, which is a fe with the
with the geosphere product, which is what we need. Whatever we think we
need to surround ourselves with in order to to make it So there is the one
of the paradoxes of the of the cyberspace. Is this almost confrontation
between the the the transcendence of matter by where the microchip and
then they're coming down with even more matter, because we are getting so
wealthy and so able to manipulate and to transform and to surround
ourselves with all sorts of goodies.
So this this is a case then where miniaturisation is sort of backfired? Uh
, the richness of it, uh, is going to choke us. Yeah, but we we should
develop also some wisdom, some some more knowledge and eventually some
wisdom. But, uh, I mean, the microchip is a is a confirms to me that the
importance of, uh, complexity miniaturisation because that's really a a
gigantic step
where the brain is no longer possibly necessary eventually, because the
microchip might develop its own brain systems, which is still a big
question.
So it's a, um it's a step forward toward the breaking out from the
biosphere as a source of life into into the cosmos.
But there are dangers which are very rare. There
we will be able to get a smiling and laughing and crying computers
that's still problematic.
And what's the role of architects or architecture?
Flesh to, uh, to silicon, for instance. So we tend to
the mind to make less important the question of shelter
which naturally make the access to space far easier
because, um, once intelligence is separated by flesh, then we can really
colonised move into the cosmos.
This is a pretty long haul, though, isn't it?
Few thousands of years here. Few thousands of years there. Pretty soon you
build aeons.
Uh, but we have to remember that we are really star for the star. We are.
We are jokingly saying, Well, we are a star. We are stuff of the stars and
and that eventually, is going to be the the making or the or the breaking
of intellect. If we remember where we come from, if we remember, there is
a reservoir or that which we come from, which is, uh, practically infinite.
So there's quite a bit of work to do to get somewhere.
What do you think your legacy is?
It's not. A few months ago, I I was asked Mr Ward to nudge to nudge
reality to our self revelation. Whoops.
Push reality just slightly in the direction of what I call self revelation
, which is making reality into so sensitised
domain.
1020 billions of years. We may make it.
Thank you very much.
That it
OK,
thank you.
You wanna take that out of these things? Yeah, right there. I got it.
Yeah,
OK, OK, Yeah.
Let's go into water.
Thank you.