WEBVTT 00:00:09.720 --> 00:00:11.720 and I would keep help. 00:00:18.620 --> 00:00:21.317 People that 00:00:21.350 --> 00:00:24.675 Do you think they'll apply it when we're finished, 00:00:24.708 --> 00:00:31.945 I'll be moving faster. Um, I'm Jeffrey Cook, and, uh, I teach at Arizona 00:00:31.978 --> 00:00:37.625 State University. Uh, and I've been there for my whole teaching career. Um 00:00:37.658 --> 00:00:45.426 , And when I first moved to the valley, um, one of the first people who I 00:00:45.459 --> 00:00:51.976 met outside of the university, uh, was Paolo Soleri and his family. And 00:00:52.009 --> 00:00:56.885 almost instantly, they became my family here. I had no family, uh, here in 00:00:56.918 --> 00:01:03.135 Phoenix. And so, um, through the years, we've shared many things. Uh, So, 00:01:03.168 --> 00:01:09.876 um, this is a special occasion for, uh, for me to share that, uh, 00:01:09.909 --> 00:01:16.956 friendship, but also, uh, some of the insights of, um of Paolo Soleri. So 00:01:16.989 --> 00:01:23.286 now, Paulo, you have to introduce yourself. Oh, God. 00:01:23.319 --> 00:01:28.986 I was born in Italy. That's it. That's the one. I came to this country 00:01:29.019 --> 00:01:33.796 when I was 26. I was here about three years and I went back to Italy with 00:01:33.829 --> 00:01:40.076 my family for five years, and then I came back. We came back to Arizona by 00:01:40.109 --> 00:01:42.967 way of Santa Fe. 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:50.846 So this series is labelled modern architects, so I want to know why you're 00:01:50.879 --> 00:01:53.217 here. 00:01:53.250 --> 00:01:56.617 No, 00:01:56.650 --> 00:02:00.316 we could We could discuss whether you're an architect. Because after all, 00:02:00.349 --> 00:02:05.266 there are people who are not architects who are doing it. And there are 00:02:05.299 --> 00:02:10.416 architects who are not doing it. I I Italian architect. You're you're an 00:02:10.449 --> 00:02:15.786 Italian. Italian. Um, but the part that I'm more interested in is the 00:02:15.819 --> 00:02:23.819 modern part. Are you modern, Uh, beyond? 00:02:23.860 --> 00:02:29.467 Well, I'm living in the in this age, So I, I guess I'm part of the modern. 00:02:29.500 --> 00:02:34.207 Do you? How do you place yourself in relationship to the other architects 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:38.475 in the latter half of the 20th century 00:02:38.508 --> 00:02:46.508 as a, um, not maverick is not the word almost as an outsider. 00:02:47.088 --> 00:02:55.047 So the the label modern architect does seem to embrace, uh, some well, 00:02:55.080 --> 00:03:00.106 well known names who who are somehow or other associated. But your name is 00:03:00.139 --> 00:03:05.245 not normally associated with those names. It's abnormally associated. But 00:03:05.278 --> 00:03:12.416 how many? How many are here tonight? How many a I a members members want 00:03:12.449 --> 00:03:19.916 to a minority? We can Where? Where the hold. 00:03:19.949 --> 00:03:25.987 So, um, in terms of your background and where How? How you got to wherever 00:03:26.020 --> 00:03:32.686 you got. Um, I'm really curious. What? Um what credit you would give to 00:03:32.719 --> 00:03:38.585 your childhood and upbringing in Italy and the kind of experiences you had 00:03:38.618 --> 00:03:43.797 as a child. Well, when I get that question, I always say, Well, we are 00:03:43.830 --> 00:03:49.866 environmental animals. We belong to a certain reality, which is the the 00:03:49.899 --> 00:03:54.987 terrestrial reality. So evidently the environment is very influential. 00:03:55.020 --> 00:04:00.146 Quite a bit of what we are comes about through the environment we are born 00:04:00.179 --> 00:04:05.376 in. So quite definitely my environment. My first, the first part of my 00:04:05.409 --> 00:04:11.005 life. My environment was the Mediterranean environment, though it was on 00:04:11.038 --> 00:04:15.927 the edges of it because I grew up in the in the Alps. So that's almost at 00:04:15.960 --> 00:04:18.955 the border with France. 00:04:18.988 --> 00:04:24.786 But still, the civilization that developed in the Mediterranean era were 00:04:24.819 --> 00:04:31.817 were very influential in my for my background Could could you separate? Um 00:04:31.850 --> 00:04:36.676 , since you lived in France for some time, could you separate the 00:04:36.709 --> 00:04:43.526 difference between the experience of living in Italy and in France? But 00:04:43.559 --> 00:04:48.877 not that much? Maybe the language was the main difference. But that's a 00:04:48.910 --> 00:04:52.745 very important difference. Well, because that French is your second 00:04:52.778 --> 00:04:58.145 language and I, I still I'm still trying to learn English. I lost the 00:04:58.178 --> 00:05:05.757 Italian so I'm stuck with some kind of patois. 00:05:05.790 --> 00:05:11.036 Then for me, an interesting part of your background, Is that it? I mean, 00:05:11.069 --> 00:05:15.395 we all have, uh, favourite images of what Italian life and culture and 00:05:15.428 --> 00:05:21.075 cities are. But, uh, but the city of Turin, where you spent a lot of your 00:05:21.108 --> 00:05:27.645 childhood, uh, does have a special flavour, Uh, especially because it's, 00:05:27.678 --> 00:05:33.486 uh it's a modern component. It has a modern component. And, um, it's the 00:05:33.519 --> 00:05:40.036 city of the factory of Fiat cars and, uh, labour movements and so on. Did 00:05:40.069 --> 00:05:46.546 did any of that rub off on you? Well, Torino developed it started in the 00:05:46.579 --> 00:05:51.356 Roman times, and then but the the main development was the Baroque area 00:05:51.389 --> 00:05:59.389 era era. So it tends to be a baroque city, but a very quiet baroque. P 00:05:59.738 --> 00:06:05.786 Montes People are always quiet. 00:06:05.819 --> 00:06:11.305 Um, I think one of the reasons to raise this question is that, um 00:06:11.338 --> 00:06:15.697 ultimately, I think tonight we may talk about cars and automobiles and 00:06:15.730 --> 00:06:22.067 automobile culture, and you grew up in a city which had a very distinct 00:06:22.100 --> 00:06:25.906 automobile culture. There was the the the launcher here, the Bugatti here 00:06:25.939 --> 00:06:33.536 , and few of the car manufacturers surrounding us right. So, as as a boy, 00:06:33.569 --> 00:06:38.096 you were probably, uh, fascinated as most young boys are with these 00:06:38.129 --> 00:06:43.877 machines. No, I was a bicycle person 00:06:43.910 --> 00:06:49.075 then. Then I was promoted to the to the motorcycle. 00:06:49.108 --> 00:06:56.899 Oh, did you have a Vesper? No, Lambre, which is like a Vesper. Yes. OK, Ok. 00:06:56.899 --> 00:07:00.877 And you left it behind. But I never had the Gilera. My father used to 00:07:00.910 --> 00:07:06.217 drive the gile was 80 some and was driving the Gilera going to the 00:07:06.250 --> 00:07:12.199 mountains and then climb up and then come back. Get the Gilera. Come home. 00:07:13.410 --> 00:07:15.410 Um, Paula's father, Um uh, as a hobby was a mountain climber. I wonder if 00:07:21.269 --> 00:07:25.616 you could say anything about how he introduced you to the outdoors and to 00:07:25.649 --> 00:07:31.536 the natural environment? Well, yeah, I tended to like the outdoors from 00:07:31.569 --> 00:07:37.127 the very beginning, but the fact that every other week or once a month at 00:07:37.160 --> 00:07:41.637 least we would go climbing. It was a very important experience. I didn't 00:07:41.670 --> 00:07:46.586 realise how important it was when I was doing it, but more and more later 00:07:46.619 --> 00:07:52.137 on, I felt that that was, uh, quite a lesson. 00:07:52.170 --> 00:07:55.986 Then we would walk for many, many hours and never never saying one word 00:07:56.019 --> 00:08:04.019 just climb up. It's something run down. Was it jumping the funny car? No, 00:08:05.119 --> 00:08:08.096 the train, the train. 00:08:08.129 --> 00:08:15.176 The funny car that came later. OK, And then when you graduated, uh, from 00:08:15.209 --> 00:08:22.817 the, uh, the, uh, polytechnic in Turin in, uh, 1946. 00:08:22.850 --> 00:08:28.856 What was it that was so attractive for you to come to Arizona to 00:08:28.889 --> 00:08:32.686 apprentice with Frank Lloyd Wright? Because this was a really tough time 00:08:32.719 --> 00:08:38.596 in Italy. Yeah, that was That was very tough. Yes. 00:08:38.629 --> 00:08:44.625 Why did you Why did you believe that I happened to find a small book in 00:08:44.658 --> 00:08:49.986 Italian about Mr Wright, I think was the first publication of his work. 00:08:50.019 --> 00:08:57.005 And I was very taken by what I saw and what I read. So I wrote an awful 00:08:57.038 --> 00:09:02.125 letter to Mr Wright in English. Your English? 00:09:02.158 --> 00:09:08.226 It was a two or three pages later. And, um, six months after I got a a 00:09:08.259 --> 00:09:14.625 short letter. Come front way, right. 00:09:14.658 --> 00:09:17.336 That happened. 00:09:17.369 --> 00:09:22.346 Um, so I came. Yes. 00:09:22.379 --> 00:09:28.206 OK. I think it must have been very, uh, very stressful for your family for 00:09:28.239 --> 00:09:34.677 you to live. Leave home at that particular juncture just at the end of the 00:09:34.710 --> 00:09:40.956 Second World War reconstruction had barely been done and economic times 00:09:40.989 --> 00:09:47.797 were well, I measured The economic times was that, um I got grants for two 00:09:47.830 --> 00:09:52.557 years from the university. So the dean of the school had this made this 00:09:52.590 --> 00:09:56.686 speech, and at the end, he said, Well, and now we are very proud to be 00:09:56.719 --> 00:10:03.696 able to send one of our best architects to America by way of those grants. 00:10:03.729 --> 00:10:09.407 But those two grants put together were able to buy about £6 of butter. So 00:10:09.440 --> 00:10:15.797 that what that showed the the financial bankruptcy that Europe was in the 00:10:15.830 --> 00:10:20.125 the the level of inflation. 00:10:20.158 --> 00:10:24.436 Can you say anything about what? The experience with Frank Lloyd Wright 00:10:24.469 --> 00:10:30.765 and at TES? And how did that contribute to, um, what you did later in life 00:10:30.798 --> 00:10:35.515 ? Of course. The first thing is, it introduced you to the United States. 00:10:35.548 --> 00:10:40.765 Yes, which was pretty important, especially after 25 days in Ellis Island. 00:10:40.798 --> 00:10:48.746 35 days in Ellis Island. OK, that was Christmas and New Year's in 1947 00:10:48.779 --> 00:10:55.755 1948 46 46 47. Ok, we get those dates, right? 00:10:55.788 --> 00:11:01.996 Um so So surely that that's a very important uh uh transition that you 00:11:02.029 --> 00:11:07.967 immediately join, uh, a kind of extended family. 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:11.427 And one of the negative side was that I couldn't speak. I couldn't 00:11:11.460 --> 00:11:17.645 understand. I was doing a dummy. So they put you in the kitchen. They put 00:11:17.678 --> 00:11:25.616 him in the kitchen because I couldn't afford decorations. 00:11:25.649 --> 00:11:29.956 Well, the the arrangement was that if he if he could come, Mr Wright would 00:11:29.989 --> 00:11:33.927 look after him. But that still meant that you have to work your way 00:11:33.960 --> 00:11:40.385 through. Which was fair. Since I couldn't pay, I had to do some work. And 00:11:40.418 --> 00:11:44.895 , uh, in the year and a half that you were with the Taliesin Fellowship. 00:11:44.928 --> 00:11:49.135 You were both, uh, up in Wisconsin and you were here. We were here most of 00:11:49.168 --> 00:11:55.157 the time. We were in Wisconsin, one winter from October from October to, 00:11:55.190 --> 00:12:03.190 uh maybe April or no. Yeah. You went to Wisconsin? I've been in the summer. 00:12:03.288 --> 00:12:11.116 Yes. No, We Yeah, we came back. We came back to west in West was late, I 00:12:11.149 --> 00:12:16.446 think. And we went through snow storms and all sorts of nice things. That 00:12:16.479 --> 00:12:21.866 that's the That's the usual pattern. Um, 00:12:21.899 --> 00:12:29.167 it is there, is there? I was asking what? That experience at Taliesin uh, 00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:35.047 how that might have affected the direction of your life after you left. 00:12:35.080 --> 00:12:40.157 Well, number one I was, uh, under the tutelage of of a great architect, 00:12:40.190 --> 00:12:45.586 which is always very important. So that was one aspect of the of the 00:12:45.619 --> 00:12:52.895 experience. The landscape and the light were very, very important 00:12:52.928 --> 00:12:58.226 both here and especially here in in, uh, in Arizona. And then the 00:12:58.259 --> 00:13:04.086 fellowship was evidently very important. And the way of life and the 00:13:04.119 --> 00:13:08.996 activities, the scheduling and so on. 00:13:09.029 --> 00:13:13.797 So it was so part of that experience was the rigour, the day, the rhythm 00:13:13.830 --> 00:13:17.696 of the daily life. Oh, that's right. Yes. 00:13:17.729 --> 00:13:22.677 And being having to to be responsible for something that would influence, 00:13:22.710 --> 00:13:26.586 uh, you know, that's 40 or 50 people that were there being part of the 00:13:26.619 --> 00:13:29.816 community. 00:13:29.849 --> 00:13:33.645 Why do you live in Arizona? 00:13:33.678 --> 00:13:38.946 Because we got when we came back in this country, we tried Santa Fe for 00:13:38.979 --> 00:13:44.856 one for one summer. And then we decided to come back here, and we were We 00:13:44.889 --> 00:13:51.807 knew a little about this area, so we decided to to establish ourselves 00:13:51.840 --> 00:13:57.116 here. But the other thing is that I'm I'm a son addict. I'm a son 00:13:57.149 --> 00:14:00.885 worshipper. and so whatever. 00:14:00.918 --> 00:14:05.576 Maybe you should say what your name means. 00:14:05.609 --> 00:14:10.946 You heard the song. So this is the translation of Soleri. But then I had 00:14:10.979 --> 00:14:14.917 to add immediately. We are all so we were all the son. So nothing new 00:14:14.950 --> 00:14:18.866 about that. It's just that you have the name. 00:14:18.899 --> 00:14:23.375 But what what is, uh, Can you say anything about the special attraction of 00:14:23.408 --> 00:14:31.408 , um, the the the valley here. And so the the lower part of Arizona as a 00:14:32.500 --> 00:14:38.967 as a place. Well, I think I tended always to like to be able to look into 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:43.616 the distance. So if, for instance, if you're in a in a forest forest 00:14:43.649 --> 00:14:51.649 forestation area, uh, the vegetation tends to cut your view, your view. 00:14:53.229 --> 00:14:56.677 But there was more than that. I mean, the Arizona and New Mexico, they 00:14:56.710 --> 00:15:02.787 have something very, very special to offer. Um, I remember usually mou in 00:15:02.820 --> 00:15:09.307 valley and being floored by Monument Valley Canyon, the shea and things of 00:15:09.340 --> 00:15:15.275 that sort and then the light. But also again, going back to your childhood 00:15:15.308 --> 00:15:18.706 and mountain climbing with your father. When you get to the top of the 00:15:18.739 --> 00:15:23.765 mountain, you can see almost forever. Yeah, but you you would do that once 00:15:23.798 --> 00:15:29.326 once in a while, you wouldn't sit there for months or years. But you fix 00:15:29.359 --> 00:15:32.366 that by Yeah, I remember when When I came here and they were pointing at 00:15:32.399 --> 00:15:34.746 me at the mountains, I would say, What are the mountains? There were 00:15:34.779 --> 00:15:40.307 little hills. There were mountains, OK, because you had done your climbing 00:15:40.340 --> 00:15:45.946 in the Alps, 00:15:45.979 --> 00:15:51.706 right? Um, had have you thought about living in some other part of the 00:15:51.739 --> 00:15:54.037 Southwest? 00:15:54.070 --> 00:16:00.496 No, I I'm done. I'm not a migratory or a nomadic person, Really. I'm 00:16:00.529 --> 00:16:05.856 pretty set in my habits. 00:16:05.889 --> 00:16:09.576 So the idea is that you have a nest, which you wander out of, but you 00:16:09.609 --> 00:16:13.907 always come back to 00:16:13.940 --> 00:16:16.467 OK, 00:16:16.500 --> 00:16:23.557 um And when, um uh, when you came to the United States, then you you 00:16:23.590 --> 00:16:31.590 married an American woman. Um What did she contribute to your thought? 00:16:32.570 --> 00:16:40.106 Well, I sing mainly. She was a wonderful mother, An exceptional murder. 00:16:40.139 --> 00:16:42.547 And 00:16:42.580 --> 00:16:47.927 so the combination. I was a terrible father. So So we find some kind of a 00:16:47.960 --> 00:16:51.907 balance there, 00:16:51.940 --> 00:16:58.856 but this gave she she worked, You know, my work constantly, well and that. 00:16:58.889 --> 00:17:05.335 But that also gave you an American family and an American outlook 00:17:05.368 --> 00:17:11.967 from the main line. Philadelphia. 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:18.717 Um, when you first married, you went back to Italy for a few years and, uh 00:17:18.750 --> 00:17:24.676 , Italy was still, uh, in this stressful economic situation that, uh, you 00:17:24.709 --> 00:17:29.877 you just felt you couldn't. Uh Well, I was trying to find an activity 00:17:29.910 --> 00:17:34.226 which would give me enough freedom to do what I wanted to do in 00:17:34.259 --> 00:17:38.295 architecture and planning. And that might might have been a mistake, a 00:17:38.328 --> 00:17:45.516 fatal mistake. But it might have been also the A very important, um, 00:17:45.549 --> 00:17:52.206 condition to be in in a centre. I think, though I lost, um, let's say the 00:17:52.239 --> 00:17:57.226 the profession maybe again something that now I feel it more and more 00:17:57.259 --> 00:18:00.377 important. 00:18:00.410 --> 00:18:04.967 And so it was in in Italy that you really learn to feed yourself to 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:12.406 support yourselves. Uh, the both of you, Uh uh, with, uh, crafts. 00:18:12.439 --> 00:18:18.406 Um and that's where you, uh, you really began to develop that, uh, 00:18:18.439 --> 00:18:23.897 livelihood that has supported your whole life. Yeah, one reason that we I 00:18:23.930 --> 00:18:31.217 got into that is because before the university years I was in Artistical 00:18:31.250 --> 00:18:39.250 called so called and you would get out of there as professor of fine arts. 00:18:39.959 --> 00:18:46.936 So They gave me a access to some of the visual and, um, and a kind of 00:18:46.969 --> 00:18:50.887 activities that I kept. 00:18:50.920 --> 00:18:55.575 But when you move back to the United States, then you continued with this 00:18:55.608 --> 00:19:02.127 craft business, and you really developed it, Um, in in particular, uh, the 00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:05.426 wind bells? 00:19:05.459 --> 00:19:10.916 Yeah, yes, but in, uh, we were travelling through Italy trying to find 00:19:10.949 --> 00:19:17.226 something that would fit what I felt could be useful. So we ended up in 00:19:17.259 --> 00:19:25.085 VRE, which was, um, a small town with many ceramics, family, family doing 00:19:25.118 --> 00:19:30.256 ceramics. So we got to know one of those families. I began to learn 00:19:30.289 --> 00:19:36.065 something about ceramics with them, and they asked me eventually to design 00:19:36.098 --> 00:19:44.098 their own fabrica, which was the soleiman and fabric, 00:19:44.289 --> 00:19:52.289 and so that that was a a pretty important series of lessons. Um, I wonder 00:19:53.608 --> 00:20:01.608 whether you have any perspective on how the craft of, um making bells. Uh 00:20:01.689 --> 00:20:05.686 , I mean, there's the obvious economic thing. It not only has supported 00:20:05.719 --> 00:20:12.416 you and your family, but, uh, quite a large enterprise, but I wonder how 00:20:12.449 --> 00:20:18.176 that has contributed to your method of thinking and how that has affected 00:20:18.209 --> 00:20:23.607 your architectural thought. Where I use the term how I think, how is very 00:20:23.640 --> 00:20:30.045 important, and I call it how. And the fact of working with your hands, for 00:20:30.078 --> 00:20:36.847 instance, might have been influential in what my thinking developed into, 00:20:36.880 --> 00:20:41.666 and that indicates that before I develop what you might call a theory or a 00:20:41.699 --> 00:20:49.387 or an hypothesis about reality, I work physically in doing little objects 00:20:49.420 --> 00:20:55.387 or those larger objects, like a small house or something. But it was the 00:20:55.420 --> 00:21:01.496 physical presence that was very important and how you manipulate things 00:21:01.529 --> 00:21:06.276 and how you transform this into that and so on. 00:21:06.309 --> 00:21:10.627 So I I'm saying that because more and more I believe that harness defines 00:21:10.660 --> 00:21:15.637 what the reality is from the very beginning. Well, that's that's what 00:21:15.670 --> 00:21:22.357 gives it quality. Well, that was what the idea is in fundamentally, 00:21:22.390 --> 00:21:27.857 how how matter becomes something very, very special. But the the 00:21:27.890 --> 00:21:33.416 particular quality maybe, is that it's a human hand that has touched it. 00:21:33.449 --> 00:21:35.906 Yeah, 00:21:35.939 --> 00:21:41.776 what are your thoughts about the place of handicraft, meaning hand in 00:21:41.809 --> 00:21:49.809 craft in an industrial society and post industrial society? 00:21:49.818 --> 00:21:55.325 Well, I make a decision between the what I call the the Artisan activity, 00:21:55.358 --> 00:22:00.446 the Craftsman Activity and the the Artist but they are quite different 00:22:00.479 --> 00:22:06.045 from each other. And, uh, 00:22:06.078 --> 00:22:10.956 and naturally, you can say that even even the technology of the microchip 00:22:10.989 --> 00:22:15.055 has to have very much to do with the hands with the skilled hands. In fact 00:22:15.088 --> 00:22:20.236 , the hand really is what defines our nature. Because if we didn't have 00:22:20.269 --> 00:22:27.137 hands, probably would be at the level of the dolphins or the cockroaches. 00:22:27.170 --> 00:22:34.976 No mammals, but not, uh, not cultural mammals, just social mammals. So the 00:22:35.009 --> 00:22:39.347 the the existence of this manipulation 00:22:39.380 --> 00:22:45.847 instrument, which is fantastic, has made us to develop slowly from a from 00:22:45.880 --> 00:22:52.976 a million average into this very special phenomenon We are. So you 00:22:53.009 --> 00:23:01.009 identified three levels of involvement you men mentioned The A is was very 00:23:01.299 --> 00:23:06.726 much, uh, from the very origin of of, um, life and communal life, the 00:23:06.759 --> 00:23:12.897 manipulation of things to serve immediate needs and developmental, almost 00:23:12.930 --> 00:23:20.065 traditional way of going about producing tools and, um in governments and 00:23:20.098 --> 00:23:27.627 everything. So it's a very function oriented activity, and it requires 00:23:27.660 --> 00:23:31.276 quite a bit of self discipline 00:23:31.309 --> 00:23:37.006 to be rooted in an environment in a certain 00:23:37.039 --> 00:23:39.266 humanity. 00:23:39.299 --> 00:23:44.756 The craftsman. It's a more recent invention when we are not able to be 00:23:44.789 --> 00:23:51.555 artists we turn out to be craftsman. So it's very much an idiosyncratic, 00:23:51.588 --> 00:23:59.588 uh, expression of the individual and the syncratic as the problem of being 00:23:59.779 --> 00:24:04.325 delusional now and then because, um, we think we are doing something 00:24:04.358 --> 00:24:07.756 beautiful. And then we find out that we are We are just expressing an 00:24:07.789 --> 00:24:13.186 idiosyncrasy that might be irrelevant to other people's. 00:24:13.219 --> 00:24:19.967 And history is able to, you know, to discriminate and to sort out the 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:27.045 quality. Oh, the excellence from the from the mediocrity that we live in 00:24:27.078 --> 00:24:30.776 in the average. 00:24:30.809 --> 00:24:35.867 Do you have any thoughts about, uh, the star system? Um and I'm referring 00:24:35.900 --> 00:24:41.976 here, especially to architects, although it also applies to sculptors and 00:24:42.009 --> 00:24:47.857 painters and so on. Uh, where, uh, there are certain individuals who seem 00:24:47.890 --> 00:24:53.696 to get a lot of attention. Um who, uh, well, maybe I should let you carry 00:24:53.729 --> 00:24:58.045 on from there. 00:24:58.078 --> 00:25:03.857 Well, one thing that might be tangent to this is that, um a while ago, I 00:25:03.890 --> 00:25:11.890 thought that as architects, for instance, we tend to to enjoy to come up 00:25:12.318 --> 00:25:20.318 with beautiful orchids. By that I mean beautiful and very, very, uh, 00:25:20.789 --> 00:25:27.166 useful buildings. And we love to make them into beautiful objects and this 00:25:27.199 --> 00:25:34.897 is very important, but it doesn't really touch upon habitat in the sense 00:25:34.930 --> 00:25:41.397 that habitat and agriculture are two fundamental and indispensable 00:25:41.430 --> 00:25:47.486 activities, and that that translates in a metaphor that we cannot only 00:25:47.519 --> 00:25:53.276 have flowers. We have to have forests, and the forest is the the whole of 00:25:53.309 --> 00:26:00.897 the habitat that we constantly have to develop, trust, form and generate. 00:26:00.930 --> 00:26:06.656 So there is a There's a danger of making beautiful orchids scattered 00:26:06.689 --> 00:26:12.555 around but disconnected with with reality in many ways. Yes, so if they 00:26:12.588 --> 00:26:18.097 are really beautiful, that's it. The aesthetic is paramount. If they are 00:26:18.130 --> 00:26:24.516 only on the edge of being beautiful, then they might not be essential. 00:26:24.549 --> 00:26:30.785 So in terms of, uh, um, sort of professional responsibility, Or maybe it's 00:26:30.818 --> 00:26:38.276 , uh, maybe it's a human responsibility. Uh, how do you, uh, how do you 00:26:38.309 --> 00:26:43.627 sort those things out? Uh, who who should be tending the forest so that we 00:26:43.660 --> 00:26:48.217 have or so that the orchids have a place to live? 00:26:48.250 --> 00:26:51.696 We should. Since we are part of the forest, we are all responsible for 00:26:51.729 --> 00:26:56.426 that. We are all responsible 00:26:56.459 --> 00:27:00.805 and, um, 00:27:00.838 --> 00:27:07.266 we we tend to forget about the forest because we're just admiring 00:27:07.299 --> 00:27:13.335 brilliant in some ways, it's easier to to produce flowers. Let's say 00:27:13.368 --> 00:27:17.887 beautiful flowers is always difficult to produce, But 00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:22.166 so it's the segregation of an activity that by definition should be 00:27:22.199 --> 00:27:28.285 universally embraced because we do need shelter. It's UNESCAP. Not only we 00:27:28.318 --> 00:27:31.986 need shelter for individual and the family, but also the institution that 00:27:32.019 --> 00:27:38.206 we have. This library is a good example of that. 00:27:38.239 --> 00:27:42.496 And that's also the reason why I believe that the city is the answer and 00:27:42.529 --> 00:27:49.946 not the exurban sprawled and now is beginning to terrify us, and rightly 00:27:49.979 --> 00:27:55.456 so, because it's, um, it's not going to work. So your your analogy for 00:27:55.489 --> 00:27:59.666 humans is that the city is the forest, 00:27:59.699 --> 00:28:06.857 which would sustain with, uh, with many, uh, what do you call it? 00:28:06.890 --> 00:28:14.890 Reservations or, um, qualifications? Qualifications? Yes, One is that the 00:28:15.818 --> 00:28:18.456 city itself 00:28:18.489 --> 00:28:26.489 is really a sort of organism, a pseudo or para organism. That's why I can 00:28:26.588 --> 00:28:33.456 compare it to an animal or a tree or anything that is a living system. 00:28:33.489 --> 00:28:37.877 And the reason is that as any living system in the city, the city that 00:28:37.910 --> 00:28:45.206 works should have a great quantity of interactions and in relationships 00:28:45.239 --> 00:28:52.266 and connections and, uh uh, all sorts of, um, what do you call it? 00:28:52.299 --> 00:28:58.890 Synergies and so on going on, which are the characteristic of any organism. 00:28:59.630 --> 00:29:01.630 And my pet notion is that as an organism is a fantastically miniaturised 00:29:06.779 --> 00:29:12.496 and incredibly complex system, So it should be the city. 00:29:12.529 --> 00:29:16.976 So miniaturisation and complexity are a CPA known for life. There is 00:29:17.009 --> 00:29:25.009 nothing in the living a reality that is not complex and and miniaturised. 00:29:27.229 --> 00:29:33.026 Um, in in the 19 sixties, um, Paulo was associated with the school of 00:29:33.059 --> 00:29:38.986 architecture at a SU. And for, uh, each of those summer schools, you 00:29:39.019 --> 00:29:43.946 produced a poster, and I've just been looking at some of those and it's 00:29:43.979 --> 00:29:47.526 it's very interesting the messages on some of those I mean, some of the 00:29:47.559 --> 00:29:52.627 messages say students don't take, uh, you know, don't steal this poster. 00:29:52.660 --> 00:30:00.377 But, uh, that was a problem, because they were they were too beautiful. 00:30:00.410 --> 00:30:06.597 Yeah. Can something be too beautiful? Um, but, uh, the poster I'm 00:30:06.630 --> 00:30:11.276 referring to in particular is the one that started off. Life is in the 00:30:11.309 --> 00:30:17.367 qualified, thick of things qualified. The qualified was in parenthesis. 00:30:17.400 --> 00:30:21.496 And then there was this development, uh, of thoughts. And the first one, 00:30:21.529 --> 00:30:27.516 the first paragraph began, uh, with something about, um, the biosphere and 00:30:27.549 --> 00:30:35.549 this thin mantle, Um, the thin skin of the globe that supports life and 00:30:36.598 --> 00:30:43.946 then developed through, uh, to, um, uh the concept of thickness and depth 00:30:43.979 --> 00:30:50.766 and density and complexity. And, um, the last line had to do with the city 00:30:50.799 --> 00:30:58.799 , Uh, in the image of man, you remember that? 00:30:58.848 --> 00:31:05.367 It's, um I don't know that your message has changed so much. 00:31:05.400 --> 00:31:10.847 Well, it's been refined. Well, yes. Then it's become much, much richer. 00:31:10.880 --> 00:31:17.726 But And that That poster, uh, from I think it was 67. Um, came just at the 00:31:17.759 --> 00:31:25.759 time when you, uh when the When the word archology uh, came came out. 00:31:25.799 --> 00:31:33.799 Would you like to, uh, explain what you meant by archology? Well, maybe 00:31:33.949 --> 00:31:38.156 the the origin of that is that I. I had the experience of the city and the 00:31:38.189 --> 00:31:42.926 experience of the countryside from the very beginning of my life. And the 00:31:42.959 --> 00:31:48.486 two experiences were were integrated 00:31:48.519 --> 00:31:53.926 that it was very nice to integrate the two the two domains because I think 00:31:53.959 --> 00:32:00.246 that they enrich your life. So at a certain point in thinking, in terms of 00:32:00.279 --> 00:32:05.956 habitat, I felt that that, uh that the chance for everybody to to 00:32:05.989 --> 00:32:10.585 experience those two domains is essential. 00:32:10.618 --> 00:32:15.026 In order to do that, you have to move to this highly complex and highly 00:32:15.059 --> 00:32:21.256 compact system so that you are inside an urban condition. You walk out and 00:32:21.289 --> 00:32:25.617 you are in nature or vice versa. 00:32:25.650 --> 00:32:32.117 What the sprawl does is to in a way, to kill both of them. Nature goes 00:32:32.150 --> 00:32:36.585 because you are destroyed by moving into it, and the city is not there 00:32:36.618 --> 00:32:40.696 because you haven't been to being able to develop a city with within a 00:32:40.729 --> 00:32:46.815 system which is utterly segregated segregation. 00:32:46.848 --> 00:32:54.848 So the words Garden City don't cut it? No, to my knowledge, no, 00:32:56.670 --> 00:33:03.607 the there is lots of nostalgia there, which is a justifiable nostalgia, 00:33:03.640 --> 00:33:07.887 but we cannot live on nostalgia. 00:33:07.920 --> 00:33:13.315 We had to move to our reality now and then. 00:33:13.348 --> 00:33:17.627 And the reality is that number one, as I was saying, life is in the thick 00:33:17.660 --> 00:33:22.467 of qualified thick of things. The only is that the planet has a certain 00:33:22.500 --> 00:33:30.107 size and cannot take what we might be demanding now from it, and very 00:33:30.140 --> 00:33:35.436 quickly, 10 billions of people married to the American dream are going to 00:33:35.469 --> 00:33:40.295 need about 10 planets or something like that, Or maybe 15 planets. So they 00:33:40.328 --> 00:33:45.196 have the American dream as to alter itself. 00:33:45.229 --> 00:33:50.815 Or we need new planets for parking lots. No. 00:33:50.848 --> 00:33:57.097 Yeah. It brings me again to the the the China situation where a a again 00:33:57.130 --> 00:34:02.035 merry into the American dream means to have about 500 million automobiles 00:34:02.068 --> 00:34:08.836 for China. 500,000,400 millions. What? 1 million for for Africa. Another 00:34:08.869 --> 00:34:15.686 56 millions for 100 millions for South America. So we end up by having a 00:34:15.719 --> 00:34:22.146 population of 10 billion with about 3 billion of bills. So that requires 00:34:22.179 --> 00:34:27.956 probably seven or eight or 10 planets 00:34:27.989 --> 00:34:31.106 Keeping in mind. Yes. Keeping in mind that the automobile is only one 00:34:31.139 --> 00:34:37.655 element of consumption of hyper consumption. But it's only one. 00:34:37.688 --> 00:34:43.416 It happens to be the biggest. Which one is one of the problems? 00:34:43.449 --> 00:34:51.449 Um, so this is this is an idea which you, uh, began to, uh, broadcast 00:34:51.719 --> 00:34:58.695 in the, uh, in the late 19 sixties. And then you published your book. Um, 00:34:58.728 --> 00:35:06.728 the MIT press book called Archology, in which you demonstrated 30 um, 00:35:07.030 --> 00:35:11.816 models. What? Which were symbols? They were not city plans. They were 00:35:11.849 --> 00:35:19.849 symbols of ideas. Um, what's happened to that word in the currency of the 00:35:20.099 --> 00:35:26.195 world? That's Yeah, that's 30 years ago. 00:35:26.228 --> 00:35:30.316 There might be 10 people that knows about it. 00:35:30.349 --> 00:35:34.807 Well, I don't know. It seems to me that the that the term archology is a 00:35:34.840 --> 00:35:40.986 recognisable term in the literature now. Maybe that's not much, but that's 00:35:41.019 --> 00:35:48.557 I think it's in one dictionary in the moment. 00:35:48.590 --> 00:35:52.646 Uh, big deal. 00:35:52.679 --> 00:36:00.115 Um, why hasn't that idea become more popular? Or maybe I should say, Why 00:36:00.148 --> 00:36:07.345 hasn't it become more essential as a as a way of, of, of reconstructing 00:36:07.378 --> 00:36:12.345 the world number one? My limitations, your limitations in every field, 00:36:12.378 --> 00:36:19.146 including architecture number two. The fact that the idea presents a a 00:36:19.179 --> 00:36:24.586 condition that is antithetical to the American dream. It's as simple as 00:36:24.619 --> 00:36:32.619 that. So to ask a suburbanite to reverse its own priorities and move into 00:36:33.090 --> 00:36:35.385 the city, 00:36:35.418 --> 00:36:41.936 it's It's not very enticing. 00:36:41.969 --> 00:36:45.026 That means 00:36:45.059 --> 00:36:49.796 what does that mean? Well, it means that unless you experience something, 00:36:49.829 --> 00:36:55.486 uh, you are really not married to what the explanation comes about. So if 00:36:55.519 --> 00:37:01.006 you never experience the urban condition or the urban effect, there is no 00:37:01.039 --> 00:37:05.856 reason why we should even think about or consider it as something positive 00:37:05.889 --> 00:37:12.445 , something that has to be experienced. You don't want it. And as 00:37:12.478 --> 00:37:17.497 Americans, given the the immensity of the landscape, given the youth of 00:37:17.530 --> 00:37:25.530 the of the of the culture, uh, the city remains almost a fringe thing that 00:37:26.418 --> 00:37:30.787 is not necessarily positive. So we take the city as somebody has to be 00:37:30.820 --> 00:37:38.820 accepted but not necessarily embraced or experienced or loved. Loved. 00:37:40.800 --> 00:37:47.115 So we could perhaps say that especially about the newest cities. 00:37:47.148 --> 00:37:50.175 Well, the other thing is that to come out with the with the what do you 00:37:50.208 --> 00:37:54.675 call a city? It's something that requires so much knowledge, so much 00:37:54.708 --> 00:38:00.217 experience, a little bit of wisdom that is difficult to combine into one 00:38:00.250 --> 00:38:05.195 enterprise. That's why we need laboratories, 00:38:05.228 --> 00:38:11.635 City Laboratories, where things are taken to levels of almost absurdity in 00:38:11.668 --> 00:38:19.668 order to find out where they break down and start again, experience again 00:38:19.849 --> 00:38:24.467 failures and keep going, because that's what we do in every field science 00:38:24.500 --> 00:38:27.316 , technology. 00:38:27.349 --> 00:38:32.217 It's test even the religion, of course. So that's a that's a process of 00:38:32.250 --> 00:38:35.287 test to failure. 00:38:35.320 --> 00:38:43.077 Observe the failure and and we can say we, but that's too expensive or a 00:38:43.110 --> 00:38:46.396 Slava Well, look at the cost that we are paying the price we are paying 00:38:46.429 --> 00:38:53.345 now for for what we are being embracing, which is abandon the city and 00:38:53.378 --> 00:38:57.115 come out with the with the paradise. 00:38:57.148 --> 00:39:03.776 The Garden of Eden, which we are finding out, is, uh, it's a very, 00:39:03.809 --> 00:39:06.316 uh 00:39:06.349 --> 00:39:13.477 or, um Well, it turns out to be pernicious. That's the the terrible thing 00:39:13.510 --> 00:39:18.077 about it. 00:39:18.110 --> 00:39:23.497 What are your thoughts about? Uh, maybe I should mention that 30 years ago 00:39:23.530 --> 00:39:30.856 as a uh, not Not only did he, uh did Paulo publish this book? Oncology. Uh 00:39:30.889 --> 00:39:38.889 , but, uh, he, uh, broke ground on the smallest of those sketches, which 00:39:39.079 --> 00:39:47.079 is what we know as a kanti 770 miles north of here. So, um, it's coming up 00:39:47.119 --> 00:39:55.119 to its 30th birthday. Yes, it is. It broke ground. And it 70 um, and, um, 00:39:57.409 --> 00:40:01.997 like all cities, it's unfinished. Um, but I wonder whether you have any 00:40:02.030 --> 00:40:08.655 observations about, um, about how it's going. Observation number one is 00:40:08.688 --> 00:40:12.646 that is not even a small town. It's a little fragment of a small town. 00:40:12.679 --> 00:40:20.679 Well, fair enough, but people might come out and say, Where is the city? 00:40:22.688 --> 00:40:26.956 Well, we have, um we have the beginning of so at the beginning show and 00:40:26.989 --> 00:40:31.247 say, this is what we are trying to explain and this is what an application 00:40:31.280 --> 00:40:36.287 of it. But there are fragments. But there are people living happy, 00:40:36.320 --> 00:40:43.876 productive lives there, productive lives 00:40:43.909 --> 00:40:48.497 they could leave. But small communities are very, very difficult animals. 00:40:48.530 --> 00:40:52.615 I mean, they are They should stay away from small communities. That's why 00:40:52.648 --> 00:40:56.126 you're recommending the big city. 00:40:56.159 --> 00:41:01.936 So the the the complexity offers checks and balances. Um, where there is 00:41:01.969 --> 00:41:06.376 not enough complexity there, quite definitely. And one reason is that we 00:41:06.409 --> 00:41:10.986 don't have the means of importing complexity, So we're developing some 00:41:11.019 --> 00:41:18.756 complexity on the site. But, uh, we are economic animals, as we know, 00:41:18.789 --> 00:41:23.155 because we are consumers. So there are limits to the poverty of the 00:41:23.188 --> 00:41:29.727 consumption, and we are very poor in. In retrospect, would it have been a 00:41:29.760 --> 00:41:37.760 better move to have gone, um, south of the tracks in Phoenix or to one of 00:41:37.889 --> 00:41:44.945 those deserted neighbourhoods in Detroit to start the first archology? No. 00:41:44.978 --> 00:41:50.546 No, because, uh, there the vested interest would have been enormous. As 00:41:50.579 --> 00:41:57.135 we know simply the real estate holding and everything else you know, laws 00:41:57.168 --> 00:42:02.206 rules and regulations and so on. Then there is the resistance of the of 00:42:02.239 --> 00:42:06.865 the of the people or the environment to something that might be might look 00:42:06.898 --> 00:42:10.717 very, uh, 00:42:10.750 --> 00:42:14.405 the pharmacy national. Yeah. 00:42:14.438 --> 00:42:19.675 So I think to move out, that was a good move. 00:42:19.708 --> 00:42:23.037 And in fact, at the very beginning, we we didn't have any conception. We 00:42:23.070 --> 00:42:29.307 could do whatever we wanted. We had, um uh a rezoning. 00:42:29.340 --> 00:42:37.340 The hearing at the beginning. And there was a a laundromat guy, a cowboy, 00:42:38.688 --> 00:42:44.327 a lawyer and one a politician. 00:42:44.360 --> 00:42:50.675 So we got rezoning. 3000 people on 15 acres or so. Really? Which wouldn't 00:42:50.708 --> 00:42:57.497 have been possible in Phoenix. No. No, it's still not possible. We got it. 00:42:57.530 --> 00:43:03.675 We are? Yes. Yes, yes. Then you should have sold it. 00:43:03.708 --> 00:43:07.666 That's the Scottsdale way. 00:43:07.699 --> 00:43:14.376 No, not Walt Disney. Um, Elvis Presley, the the the impersonators. There 00:43:14.409 --> 00:43:19.066 is one that is connected with the the corporate system. They came to us 00:43:19.099 --> 00:43:24.236 and said, we have $10 million for you. Cash if you want to sell. 00:43:24.269 --> 00:43:30.195 This was about what, Six months ago. Really? Yeah. So we we were on the 00:43:30.228 --> 00:43:35.345 edge of Walt Disney, 00:43:35.378 --> 00:43:40.695 but we said no, I don't know why. But we said that 00:43:40.728 --> 00:43:43.497 you said you were poor. 00:43:43.530 --> 00:43:51.530 Well, cheers. If you know what what average average wages he would 00:43:53.619 --> 00:43:56.577 collapse. 00:43:56.610 --> 00:44:01.445 Well, we are really. And we are trying an economy of frugality within, 00:44:01.478 --> 00:44:08.945 evidently an economy of abundance. So the difference is quite substantial 00:44:08.978 --> 00:44:14.186 and makes the relationship between the two quite difficult. 00:44:14.219 --> 00:44:19.287 Um, it it's interesting that the number of people who come to visit cos 00:44:19.320 --> 00:44:25.506 Santi and also our kazani you have over 50,000 visitors at each place. I 00:44:25.539 --> 00:44:31.517 would say 40. Well, what do they learn? 00:44:31.550 --> 00:44:35.876 Are you to him? 00:44:35.909 --> 00:44:40.586 Is it is it? Do you think it is a learning experience or is it more of a 00:44:40.619 --> 00:44:45.767 curiosity or entertainment? Well, most of them comes out of curiosity or 00:44:45.800 --> 00:44:52.376 by bells. Some of them go back, leave with some notions, especially that 00:44:52.409 --> 00:44:56.276 we gave tours. And 00:44:56.309 --> 00:45:00.747 so there is a certain impact or certain influence, but I wouldn't be able 00:45:00.780 --> 00:45:07.675 to measure it. But you've also had, uh uh, maybe it's very subtle, but a 00:45:07.708 --> 00:45:14.577 lot of influence in terms of of, um, young minds in, uh, in the sense that 00:45:14.610 --> 00:45:21.686 since, uh, 1960. Well, since since what? 59 was your first apprentice? Um 00:45:21.719 --> 00:45:28.307 , that there have been, I guess, several 1000. Um, young people who have 00:45:28.340 --> 00:45:34.106 worked with you for various periods and we're now at the stage where some 00:45:34.139 --> 00:45:39.146 of those people, uh, have, uh, led full professional lives and have 00:45:39.179 --> 00:45:47.179 retired. Um, so we have the bag ready for the money. 00:45:48.128 --> 00:45:53.217 Well, some of some of them seem to be very grateful for that experience 00:45:53.250 --> 00:46:00.236 that they had with you, uh, in the sixties and seventies. So, um, do you 00:46:00.269 --> 00:46:05.345 have any thought about the kind of seeds that are represented in those, um 00:46:05.378 --> 00:46:12.365 , in those, uh, in turns, those apprentices? 00:46:12.398 --> 00:46:16.227 I'm not sure, because I tend to generalise because I think it's necessary 00:46:16.260 --> 00:46:24.260 to generalise. And that makes my language somehow not easy to to buy into. 00:46:25.320 --> 00:46:27.320 And that might have been an obstacle beside the paradigm. Still trying to 00:46:28.438 --> 00:46:34.905 learn the language. No, I'm not trying. I'm just fumble around. 00:46:34.938 --> 00:46:39.017 And then again, the ideas 00:46:39.050 --> 00:46:42.827 I think they are radical in the sense of going back to to the roots. And 00:46:42.860 --> 00:46:47.967 they're not radical in the sense of being fantastic or exotic or so. But 00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:56.000 that's another reason why the the influence might be might have obstacles. 00:46:58.030 --> 00:47:00.030 Uh, the follow through has never been very good. We could have followed 00:47:01.458 --> 00:47:07.896 through, you know, through mail and contacts and reunions and so on. We do 00:47:07.929 --> 00:47:13.186 some of that, but not much. 00:47:13.219 --> 00:47:21.219 Uh, Paula, you're still very active. Um, what drives you? 00:47:21.878 --> 00:47:27.845 I enjoy it. Of course. Of course. I think there are responsibilities that 00:47:27.878 --> 00:47:33.767 when you feel they exist here to try to work with them, 00:47:33.800 --> 00:47:38.376 And, um, I feel I have responsibility 00:47:38.409 --> 00:47:42.416 because I think I know something that 00:47:42.449 --> 00:47:48.135 and you travel all over the world. No, I'm no longer No. I go to Phoenix 00:47:48.168 --> 00:47:51.856 one a day. 00:47:51.889 --> 00:47:57.635 Yes, but not that much, but, uh, people in other countries and other 00:47:57.668 --> 00:48:02.936 continents have been very interested in, uh, I mean, not not. Maybe 00:48:02.969 --> 00:48:06.827 they're interested in you as a person also, but they're interested in your 00:48:06.860 --> 00:48:13.586 ideas. Um, particularly in Japan. Could you you comment? Why? Who are they 00:48:13.619 --> 00:48:17.276 interested? Well, probably the main reason was that, uh, from the very 00:48:17.309 --> 00:48:23.376 beginning, we got a number of Japanese young young friends. Yes, So many 00:48:23.409 --> 00:48:25.836 of them were architects. 00:48:25.869 --> 00:48:33.869 And then I I had the great fortune of having Tom Ai coming many years ago. 00:48:35.349 --> 00:48:39.816 and he's my right hand in terms of, let's say, architecture and planning 00:48:39.849 --> 00:48:46.896 or whatever. And he pulled in more, more students from Japan. 00:48:46.929 --> 00:48:53.807 And then I always said that Japan represents in in a way of frugality is a 00:48:53.840 --> 00:48:58.557 very good representative of what it's meant by frugality, which means that 00:48:58.590 --> 00:49:01.396 some kind of a lean 00:49:01.429 --> 00:49:08.405 expression that is a consequence of quite a bit of interior of what 00:49:08.438 --> 00:49:11.997 reality is knowledge 00:49:12.030 --> 00:49:18.885 and, uh, Southern T and, uh, what you might call good taste or whatever ST 00:49:18.918 --> 00:49:23.296 style or 00:49:23.329 --> 00:49:29.396 and then they live on a little piece of land with no resources. So the 00:49:29.429 --> 00:49:35.896 ingenuity in, uh, carrying on with their own culture is has been always 00:49:35.929 --> 00:49:38.856 admirable. 00:49:38.889 --> 00:49:41.126 So 00:49:41.159 --> 00:49:48.956 if another archology is started, it might be in Japan. 00:49:48.989 --> 00:49:52.836 Well, we got the building, right, 00:49:52.869 --> 00:49:57.057 But is that still going? Well, it's going in the centre. They they got the 00:49:57.090 --> 00:50:01.336 some of the ideas from myself and two other architects, and they're 00:50:01.369 --> 00:50:05.767 working with them. This was, uh maybe you should explain it. This was a 00:50:05.800 --> 00:50:12.336 combine of, uh, uh, large Japanese corporations. Yeah, I think it was 00:50:12.369 --> 00:50:17.445 about three years ago, and, um, we we were told there were 97 corporations 00:50:17.478 --> 00:50:21.517 and some banks and some input from the government from the government to 00:50:21.550 --> 00:50:28.896 try to develop ideas that would, uh, face the problems of of, uh, of a 00:50:28.929 --> 00:50:36.929 Japan that was fully developing into a tight technology culture and how to 00:50:37.679 --> 00:50:44.856 shelter what, 90 millions of Japanese on A on a real estate, which is 00:50:44.889 --> 00:50:49.986 really minimal compared to the to the states is zero. So they're very, 00:50:50.019 --> 00:50:54.385 very worried about what's going on with the with the fact that the rice 00:50:54.418 --> 00:51:00.206 paddies are becoming asphalt parking lots. 00:51:00.239 --> 00:51:05.727 And in general, they are worried about, uh, what's the next step? 00:51:05.760 --> 00:51:12.175 And so three architects, one from the United States, um, 11 from 00:51:12.208 --> 00:51:20.208 Netherland and one from Japan. So that was Graham Cool house. Um, and, uh 00:51:20.708 --> 00:51:26.146 , the third one. I don't remember his name. But each of these three 00:51:26.179 --> 00:51:33.526 architects were invited to, uh, produce a design of a so called hy hyper 00:51:33.559 --> 00:51:38.046 building. Was that their name or yours? Is that their name? And they they 00:51:38.079 --> 00:51:42.416 assigned they had a square kilometre. And on that square kilometre, you 00:51:42.449 --> 00:51:49.606 were supposed to be developing ideas for the residential and living 00:51:49.639 --> 00:51:56.267 quarters of about 150,000 people, plus a transient 00:51:56.300 --> 00:52:02.945 population of I don't know if it was another 100,000 or so, 00:52:02.978 --> 00:52:09.166 so I found it interesting enough to try to do something. And, um, your 00:52:09.199 --> 00:52:14.836 architectural, your proposal was, uh, how many stories high. And then it 00:52:14.869 --> 00:52:20.405 had some subset. I don't remember a story, but divided one kilometre by, 00:52:20.438 --> 00:52:27.296 say, five metres in, Come up with the stories. Um, 00:52:27.329 --> 00:52:32.396 well, we depend on what? What I call terrace. Every 30 or 40 story. There 00:52:32.429 --> 00:52:37.405 would be a, um a story which would be much deeper, much higher, and would 00:52:37.438 --> 00:52:45.438 be a the place where you would develop the next step into building the 00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:51.155 building. So it would be the construction resources, so it would be a 00:52:51.188 --> 00:52:55.416 construction platform. But then when the building was finished, this 00:52:55.449 --> 00:53:02.376 became a park. So this is this is an outdoor space, which is a cavity that 00:53:02.409 --> 00:53:07.827 runs through the whole building up at various points in in the air. But 00:53:07.860 --> 00:53:13.336 the main, uh, the main The thing that I mainly try to emphasise was the 00:53:13.369 --> 00:53:17.615 how to combine the the vertical 00:53:17.648 --> 00:53:22.267 element with the horizontal landscape, which is always a problem, 00:53:22.300 --> 00:53:24.467 apparently. 00:53:24.500 --> 00:53:29.655 But there is almost an inimical confrontation between the what surrounds 00:53:29.688 --> 00:53:35.195 the skyscraper. And this, uh, 00:53:35.228 --> 00:53:39.256 well, the the tower with the elevators. But I'm thinking about the the 00:53:39.289 --> 00:53:41.436 biological 00:53:41.469 --> 00:53:45.787 the Liga 00:53:45.820 --> 00:53:52.356 that every town has to develop. Show the virility of the city. 00:53:52.389 --> 00:53:57.345 And so I try to connect that with what I call the womb the the the 00:53:57.378 --> 00:54:01.577 surrounding of this Liga. So that together they would come up with a A 00:54:01.610 --> 00:54:04.635 more, 00:54:04.668 --> 00:54:07.236 uh, more 00:54:07.269 --> 00:54:15.269 functioning and more logistically useful useful condition so that the 00:54:18.110 --> 00:54:23.316 ground level was very important. And then how you trans trans transfer 00:54:23.349 --> 00:54:30.425 from the ground into the upper levels? 00:54:30.458 --> 00:54:36.566 Um, recently, you did you, um, did a little diagram explaining these three 00:54:36.599 --> 00:54:44.126 terms the geosphere, the biosphere and the noosphere. 00:54:44.159 --> 00:54:51.256 Never mind. No, but they have applications for For what you think. Yeah, 00:54:51.289 --> 00:54:57.046 well, we we come from the geosphere in a sense that we are mineral matter 00:54:57.079 --> 00:55:02.936 becoming living matter. That's one of the great miracles. 00:55:02.969 --> 00:55:06.997 And then from from the very beginning of consciousness, which means about 00:55:07.030 --> 00:55:11.327 four millions of years ago, we began to develop 00:55:11.360 --> 00:55:17.896 what one could call the new sphere the that which hovers on top of the 00:55:17.929 --> 00:55:25.767 biosphere in a sense. And that's the the intellect that the the planet as 00:55:25.800 --> 00:55:30.006 on its own skin. So they have the geosphere as a base. You have the 00:55:30.039 --> 00:55:35.376 biosphere as the envelope of life, and then the new sphere, which, uh, the 00:55:35.409 --> 00:55:39.126 term was used by the chain. I think at the beginning, and now it has been 00:55:39.159 --> 00:55:43.155 used by the by cyberspace 00:55:43.188 --> 00:55:51.037 in cyberspace can be very responsible for putting strength and and, uh, 00:55:51.070 --> 00:55:57.827 power into the into the new sphere with some with some reservations. 00:55:57.860 --> 00:56:02.916 Because what cyberspace is doing is produce an enormous amount of wealth, 00:56:02.949 --> 00:56:06.695 at least for some minorities. And this wealth translates in hyper 00:56:06.728 --> 00:56:12.856 consumption. So you are loading the new sphere, which is a fe with the 00:56:12.889 --> 00:56:18.135 with the geosphere product, which is what we need. Whatever we think we 00:56:18.168 --> 00:56:24.706 need to surround ourselves with in order to to make it So there is the one 00:56:24.739 --> 00:56:31.537 of the paradoxes of the of the cyberspace. Is this almost confrontation 00:56:31.570 --> 00:56:38.345 between the the the transcendence of matter by where the microchip and 00:56:38.378 --> 00:56:42.217 then they're coming down with even more matter, because we are getting so 00:56:42.250 --> 00:56:47.655 wealthy and so able to manipulate and to transform and to surround 00:56:47.688 --> 00:56:52.865 ourselves with all sorts of goodies. 00:56:52.898 --> 00:56:58.227 So this this is a case then where miniaturisation is sort of backfired? Uh 00:56:58.260 --> 00:57:04.276 , the richness of it, uh, is going to choke us. Yeah, but we we should 00:57:04.309 --> 00:57:09.115 develop also some wisdom, some some more knowledge and eventually some 00:57:09.148 --> 00:57:15.595 wisdom. But, uh, I mean, the microchip is a is a confirms to me that the 00:57:15.628 --> 00:57:20.635 importance of, uh, complexity miniaturisation because that's really a a 00:57:20.668 --> 00:57:23.967 gigantic step 00:57:24.000 --> 00:57:29.256 where the brain is no longer possibly necessary eventually, because the 00:57:29.289 --> 00:57:36.155 microchip might develop its own brain systems, which is still a big 00:57:36.188 --> 00:57:38.195 question. 00:57:38.228 --> 00:57:45.115 So it's a, um it's a step forward toward the breaking out from the 00:57:45.148 --> 00:57:51.296 biosphere as a source of life into into the cosmos. 00:57:51.329 --> 00:57:55.646 But there are dangers which are very rare. There 00:57:55.679 --> 00:58:02.626 we will be able to get a smiling and laughing and crying computers 00:58:02.659 --> 00:58:06.236 that's still problematic. 00:58:06.269 --> 00:58:10.876 And what's the role of architects or architecture? 00:58:10.909 --> 00:58:18.267 Flesh to, uh, to silicon, for instance. So we tend to 00:58:18.300 --> 00:58:24.537 the mind to make less important the question of shelter 00:58:24.570 --> 00:58:30.217 which naturally make the access to space far easier 00:58:30.250 --> 00:58:36.537 because, um, once intelligence is separated by flesh, then we can really 00:58:36.570 --> 00:58:42.017 colonised move into the cosmos. 00:58:42.050 --> 00:58:47.717 This is a pretty long haul, though, isn't it? 00:58:47.750 --> 00:58:51.787 Few thousands of years here. Few thousands of years there. Pretty soon you 00:58:51.820 --> 00:58:54.646 build aeons. 00:58:54.679 --> 00:58:59.686 Uh, but we have to remember that we are really star for the star. We are. 00:58:59.719 --> 00:59:06.796 We are jokingly saying, Well, we are a star. We are stuff of the stars and 00:59:06.829 --> 00:59:10.336 and that eventually, is going to be the the making or the or the breaking 00:59:10.369 --> 00:59:15.577 of intellect. If we remember where we come from, if we remember, there is 00:59:15.610 --> 00:59:22.026 a reservoir or that which we come from, which is, uh, practically infinite. 00:59:22.059 --> 00:59:30.059 So there's quite a bit of work to do to get somewhere. 00:59:30.869 --> 00:59:35.135 What do you think your legacy is? 00:59:35.168 --> 00:59:42.756 It's not. A few months ago, I I was asked Mr Ward to nudge to nudge 00:59:42.789 --> 00:59:47.925 reality to our self revelation. Whoops. 00:59:47.958 --> 00:59:52.267 Push reality just slightly in the direction of what I call self revelation 00:59:52.300 --> 00:59:57.727 , which is making reality into so sensitised 00:59:57.760 --> 01:00:00.865 domain. 01:00:00.898 --> 01:00:08.898 1020 billions of years. We may make it. 01:00:11.530 --> 01:00:18.486 Thank you very much. 01:00:18.519 --> 01:00:22.767 That it 01:00:22.800 --> 01:00:30.095 OK, 01:00:30.128 --> 01:00:37.186 thank you. 01:00:37.219 --> 01:00:44.747 You wanna take that out of these things? Yeah, right there. I got it. 01:00:44.780 --> 01:00:49.626 Yeah, 01:00:49.659 --> 01:00:54.267 OK, OK, Yeah. 01:00:54.300 --> 01:01:02.300 Let's go into water. 01:01:24.360 --> 01:01:26.809 Thank you.