good afternoon I'm Scott Poole Dean of
the College of Architecture and design
at the University of Tennessee and I'm
very pleased to welcome you to our
lecture today I see in the audience that
we not only have our faculty and
students but many of our alumni
thank you again alumni and I hope you
join our faculty for an award ceremony
that we're having in the A+ a building
after the lecture at 4 p.m. I also
extend a sincere welcome to those of you
who traveled from out of town and even
from out of the state to hear today's
extreme esteem lecturer and welcome to
all other friends of architecture and
design who are in the audience today
today's lecture is sponsored by General
Shale General shale stands for quality
innovation durability and beauty and for
the College of Architecture and design
it represents solid and steadfast
support for more than 40 years
general shell has supported our students
through workshops scholarships and
lectures like this one today I'd like to
take a moment to recognize Josh Brock of
general shell and his wife Keely please
stand Josh and Keeley
thank you and I want to convey our deep
appreciation for general shells support
I'd also like to give a shout out to
Mark Kinser who couldn't be here today
he's the vice president of General Shale
for his unwavering support the College
of Architecture and Design is thrilled
to welcome Craig Dykers to Knoxville as
co-founder of Snohetta Craig is
responsible for some of the world's most
compelling design work including the
Alexandria library in Egypt the
Norwegian national opera and ballet in
Oslo Norway the San Francisco Museum of
Art expansion and most recently last
week in fact the Times Square
reconstruction his work has led to
numerous recognitions and awards
including the Mies van der Rohe a
European Union Prize for architecture
the world architecture prize an alga
Kahn award
full disclosure I've known Craig for 37
years
from the time we were both classmates at
the little UT in Austin if I go see a
bit about no heta the firm he founded
with several partners in 1989 it's
because I'm so proud of what my friend
has accomplished this past fall he was
celebrated at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York as one of wsj plus's
innovators of the year in 2013 snow
that's know how to practice was
nominated as one of the top ten
innovative businesses in the world by
Fast Company and he's been the subject
of an expose in The New Yorker and if
that wasn't enough famed chef Thomas
Keller recently named Snohetta as the as
number one on the list of 12 things that
he can't live without great story is
improbable just a few years out of
school in the late 1980s working in Los
Angeles he had a chance meeting with
several Norwegian architects they agreed
to collaborate via fax from LA to Oslo
on a competition
for the modern revival of an ancient
library winning the international
competition nearly going out of business
resolving the contract then overseeing
the designing construction for over a
decade and finally finally completing
the project in 2002 when snow had to
entered the competition for the library
in Alexandria Egypt
Craig was 27 construction began when he
was 34 and the project was finally
completed when he was 41 throughout
Craig and his colleagues were persistent
and patient and when it was over they
had something of value something that
was really worth waiting for in the
meantime in Oslo he and his partners
creative one of the most
forward-thinking architecture and design
practices in the world their projects
are variously described as beautiful
stunning amazing incredible and so on
but their success I believe does not
come from targeting beauty rather its
significance comes from something more
simple ordinary and profound connecting
people the top navigation Anza head his
website reads people projects people
process projects people first from the
unconventional ways that Snohetta
interacts and collaborates in their
office to the unique buildings
landscapes and city spaces that they
design there's a common thread closing
the gaps that divide people together
they have created great public places
all over the world places that people
cherish and want to return to that unify
rather than divide them that help them
feel good about where they are that
enable multiple layers of society to
interact and communicate today Craig is
a worldwide ambassador for the value of
architecture and design through his
gifts as an architect and storyteller he
has elevated the perception of what
design can do to make the word about a
better more beautiful and especially a
more connected place
we're privileged to welcome Craig
Dykers to the stage today please join
me in welcoming
thank you it's very special to be here
the did you theater Bijou theater here
in Knoxville um it's a great place I
mean I think it's amazing that Tallulah
Bankhead once stood on this stage you
know that's amazing to me and I guess a
few others too a great acoustic in the
room and a really nice place to be so
thank you and it's nice to be here in
Knoxville again I've been here a few
times before and I have some friends and
even relatives here in the audience I
don't know if there there's a Vince and
Laurie over there they're my cousins
so we we are named not after a person
we're named after a place it's a
mountain this is the mountain in central
Norway snow I have to you maybe think
you've never heard of this mountain but
you actually have because inside of
Snohetta is the where Valhalla is
located in ancient Norse mythology and
probably many of you are familiar with
the story of Valhalla the Great Palace
of the Vikings and so when people ask me
if after they meet me and they say well
it's great to get to know you and and
you're very interesting but when do I
get to meet this no I have to person so
we give them directions to this mountain
and hopefully they make it somewhere in
central Norway we have a number of
Studios we have big to big studios in
New York and in Oslo we also have a
couple of other smaller studios in San
Francisco and Singapore and a pretty
good-sized studio in Innsbruck all of
these studios are somewhat autonomous
they're self-sustaining and they held
together by the culture of snow I had
two that we create as a company as
mentioned by by Scott our first
Commission which received when I was 28
was the revival of the Great Library of
Alexandria in Egypt a library that stood
within Western mythology is one of the
greatest centres of knowledge throughout
Western culture
it disappeared nobody quite knows how
some people think it burned down that's
probably a part of the reason why it
disappeared but it has been gone except
for its knowledge which extends into
many parts of our society today but the
structure itself is
disappeared and nobody knew what it
looked like so well we were tasked with
the idea of bringing this thing back to
life and building it on the coast of
Alexandria where Alexander the Great
founded this city and that Homer wrote
about in the Iliad and the Odyssey over
17,000 years ago when well he didn't
write about it 70,000 years ago but the
city existed 17,000 years ago sorry I'm
a little groggy I've got a bit of a cold
so please forgive me if I am I don't
know mispronounce my name or something
we'll see how it goes when we finish the
Alexandria library we were quite excited
and about nine years after we finished
it
it was receiving a great number of
visitors about 12,000 visitors a day and
then came the Arab Spring in 2011 and
the first images that were sent to us
were pictures like this of the of smoke
and burning and rioting in the streets
if you remember at that time it was
fairly challenging in Egypt over 200
people died in the streets of Alexandria
less than 200 yards from the library
because actually the library is where
the first intellectual discussions
started to develop democracy in Egypt
and then it it moved from there to Cairo
the streets of Cairo when we saw these
images which were just kind of posted on
the internet or sent my friends we
thought oh my god the library which is
exactly sort of right behind these
buildings where the smoke is coming from
we thought it's it's gonna get burned
down again fortunately it wasn't damaged
at all and in fact the next set of
pictures that we got were these where
people citizens of the city and students
at the university formed a human chain
around the library to protect it from
the riots and from damage what's amazing
to me is that these people represented
both anti-government and pro-government
forces so they set their politics to the
side to protect this building from
damage and to foresee a change in
identity for the country and that the
library would be a part of that new
identity so that was a rather special
gift for us the building somehow reached
a
dirty as we watched the city around it
in terrible turmoil we sent someone back
about 6 months ago to Alexandria it's
been around 15 years since the library
opened and so it's open now as long as
it took us to design and build it so it
was an interesting turning point some 30
years had passed what we found was also
terribly optimistic and hopeful first of
all the library is an institution that
represents gender equality unlike any
other in the region so over 50 percent
of the staff are female when we began
the project this would have been
unthinkable maybe 25% of the staff might
have been female they've expanded the
young people's library from 200 seats to
600 seats and young young women are
given the opportunity to learn in a very
direct way that they hadn't been able to
before so this picture was taken by the
the person that was down there that from
our office and it's the young women
looking at the model of the architecture
model and so they're seeing perhaps the
fact that they too could be an architect
one day which again was quite unusual
and we were happy that it's grown in
this way another thing that happened was
about eight months ago they lit the roof
of the library pink in commemoration of
breast cancer awareness and I remember
when we started the project in Egypt if
I were to have said the word breast I
might have been thrown in jail I mean it
was just unheard of that you would even
mention such a thing and now they're
using the roof of the building to bring
awareness of breast cancer to the
citizens of the region so it's been
fascinating to watch it change over the
years and I'm not really talking about
that project now because it's been so
long but you can find a lot about it in
magazines and so forth and books other
things that library brought us to a
number of new library projects in fact
one of them is not too far from here in
North Carolina in Raleigh which we did
together with some of my colleagues one
of whom is here Richard Ford somewhere
out there in North Carolina and this was
a project which was meant
to create a new identity for a campus
that had been relatively conservative
and how it understood architecture and
certainly conservative and what it was
library was thought to be so this new
building this new library became a
window onto the world for the University
and of course the world's window into
the campus itself the building has a
very gentle facade made of solar fins so
it's very low technology and one of the
things I enjoy about this image is that
in the night and even in the day the
fins reflect light in a very particular
manner so very soft kind of bleeding
light coming through these fins and this
is a very very soft line and I often
tell architecture students it's very
difficult for an architect to make a
soft line we make hard lines all the
time
certainly straight lines and
occasionally we'll take a straight line
and we'll kind of curve it and we'll say
well it's curved therefore it's soft
it's not a curved line is simply a
straight line that's been bent into a
curve it's not ephemeral it doesn't have
a kind of life or a time to it in this
particular case the this is the shape
this line is changing all the time so
you're always reinterpreting what the
line means and I think this is a
challenge for us as architects to
understand the value of the ephemeral
qualities in life and the fact that not
everything has to be so clear and
identifiable or kind of messed up and in
in a very predictable way inside the
building it has some very unusual
features there's a great staircase
yellow staircase that runs all the way
from the bottom to the top of the
building it's a five storey building and
we made sure that we made all the
staircases just exciting and dynamic and
really fun to be on and then we put the
elevators a little further away you know
and they're in a kind of gray area so
it's really funny to me when I watch
people come into the building you know
they'll come to the stair and like most
people as you probably know this is the
barbecue belt so everybody's like let's
just take the elevator
sorry but it's kind of true so we got to
get people off the elevators I mean in
my hotel the elevators goes up two
floors everybody takes
so so people will walk past the stair
and they'll go no I think I'll go to the
elevator but the elevator is exactly
like 35 feet away and about half way
they'll go now I don't really want to go
to the elevator and they'll go back and
take the stair and once they're on there
they've permitted and we made the stair
very the first stair very small it's
yellow because it's very energetic
yellow as a colour that gets you going
and as soon as people commit to the
stair they really enjoy it so there are
people that I've talked to in this
building that have gone through all five
flights all five storeys they've been
going to university there for four years
and they've never used the elevator in
the building so I think this is an
interesting commitment to moving people
through space because you have to be
able to move in order to think I often
say that if you're only thinking with
your brain you're not really thinking
you have to think with your whole body
your whole body is a part of a process
of thought in fact just for your
information we have just as many neural
cells in our digestive system and in our
torso as a small dog has it in its brain
so we have a full set of neural cells
that are used when we move and this is
why being active is very important and
buildings can help us become more active
another unusual character of the
building is this very strange thing on
the right it's a book robot sometimes
referred to as the book bot so there are
two million books in this building that
are housed on these little shelves metal
shelves and and they're accessed via a
robot and you think well god that sounds
horrifying it's like the future is here
and I'm dead but actually it's quite
it's quite interesting many books and
libraries now aren't checked out very
often it's only a fairly small
percentage of books that are checked out
so in order to save space for people we
put the books in this compact system
that the robot manages if you need a
book you can go online and like Amazon
or something like that commercial you
can see the spine of the book you can
open the book up you can read it it's
like it's a real book it's not just a
line of code and you ask the robot to go
get it for you and you can get a book in
about 10 minutes and what's fun is that
on the left here you can see these
little windows people love to go to
those windows and watched the robot go
get books so much so that they put in a
interactive screen here and you can up
to that screen and just tell robot bring
me a random book and and every one of
the robots there are five of them they
all have names like Bob and Jane and
Sally will go to see Sally go get the
book and when it when it goes get the
book the lights get kind of dark and
it's very exciting and I think gets this
thing and if if they're if the book
hasn't been checked out for more than
five years the computer screens in the
library freeze and they say this book
so-and-so has just been checked out
first time in five years isn't that
amazing and everybody stops and reads
the title and they write it down and
actually it's increased book circulation
a bit because people are seeing these
books being checked out for the first
time in many years so there's an unusual
quality to no interaction there's a lot
of stuff down here I'm just gonna Wow
when you get to the top of the building
there's a beautiful balcony that
overlooks the Great Smoky Mountains and
the countryside in the distance and of
course the middle of Central North
Carolina landscape and I'm sure I don't
have to tell you this but you are
blessed with some of the most beautiful
landscape in the world here in this part
of the country so you get up there on
top of the building and look out and see
it it's quite special so the students
often work their way all the way to the
top just to get to this spot and they
take the stairs and it makes them feel
somehow connected to who they're there
sitting with or next to another building
that has similar ideas embedded in it
you may have seen as the National Ballet
and opera in Oslo Norway that that is a
now finished I guess for about ten years
or in probably eight eight nine years
one of the interesting features of this
building is the rooftop which ramps up
from the fjord of Oslo all the way up
over the top of the theater and gives
you a view over the surrounding City in
the surrounding countryside it's all a
series of ramps so when you approach the
building you see all these ramps and you
may not know it but your body sort of
reacts to that subconsciously so
you start to change your feeling of
weight inside your body and seeing
something like that already prepares you
for being active on to the structure
itself so people love to walk up to the
rooftop of this building they get a view
of the city that they wouldn't have
otherwise otherwise we have a great many
events that occur on the roof and it's
been now a new sort of public space
inside the city of Oslo inside the
building there's a rather traditional
room very similar to the room that we're
in today here in the in the Bijou
it's a horseshoe-shaped room all made
for live acoustics and houses both
ballet and opera sometimes they have
performances outside this was an amazing
performance of Carmen inside the Carmen
was was performed live they only have
1300 seats they couldn't sell enough
tickets everybody loves to see Carmen
it's super sexy so let's go see Carmen
and and they they were there was such
pressure to see the show they simulcast
it outside on a cold winter day you can
see everyone's a little dressed up so
there were 3,000 people outside watching
Carmen simulcast well 1300 inside
watched it it was it was really quite
fascinating it wasn't the biggest
performance on the roof the biggest one
was when Justin Bieber was there we had
35,000 crying teenagers on the roof of
the building I don't think I'll ever be
able to have that said again I have that
many crying teenagers I mean there there
are a number of places to perform inside
the building in the lobby this is an
area adjacent to the toilets which we
had worked with oleifera liason to
create this sculptural work that clads
the toilet we like to say we have some
of the world's most artistically
designed toilets and as you go outside
you're able to walk down the roof right
down the ramp right into the water
so as you likely know most cities today
if they're anywhere close to water
you're usually disconnected from it so
there's a walk a river walk or something
but usually a drop of several feet to
get down to the water and so our
connection to nature is gradually being
removed
and so we wanted to reconnect you
connects get right down into the into
the water here and after we did this
project we cleaned up 60,000 tons of raw
pollutants that were in the fjord from
the industrialized era that existed here
for over a century so there were heavy
metals and methane gas and we cleaned
all of that up to make this building and
the result is that um flora and I have
returned it to the oslofjord
including these two beautiful swans that
now are there almost all the time I
guarantee if you were to go see this
building you would very likely see these
two swans are two very similar swans
nearby so there's a lot of interesting
natural wildlife occurring here
including strange human creatures like
like this one which is just out there
doing something strange when we finished
the building we were super excited about
it and we stayed up all night to read
the first reviews the critics to see if
they like the acoustics the sight lines
the performance the theater and
shockingly the first headline to hit the
internet was this which in norwegian
translates to a couple caught having sex
on roof of opera during opening so
unknown to us while we were sitting
there with kings and queens and
presidents and premiers there was a
couple of consummating the building on
the roof immediately over our head they
were politely asked to finish their
activities elsewhere apparently but now
it's I think it's some kind of a club so
there's like on the internet if you've
had sex on the roof of the operator you
can put your your name there at first I
was kind of horrified like oh my god is
this really what is our headline and
after some reflection I thought well you
know maybe that's not so bad after all a
lot of people gave us film pictures and
films and film clips and now with
YouTube there's and things like that
there's a lot of film clip things out
there's before those were well-known
people would send us film clips so the
next slide and hopefully the volume will
work it's it's a kind of musical piece
is a film clip that was sent to us at
random after the building opened
Wow
okay so this is completely illegal those
sizes the kind of a motorcycle daredevil
Wow so nobody knew that he was going to
do this it was just kind of a guerrilla
activity in order to get in trouble the
police came shortly there's the police
and then he took off Wow it was amazing
I couldn't believe it yeah so if any of
you were here getting AI a points you
just lost all your credits watching that
film I stopped it here the film actually
goes on he kept riding his motorcycle on
the building in many other ways I
stopped because of that really strange
car there which is actually a Norway's
first electric car that somehow was in
the background there and we actually
help design the advertising for this car
some years later but it was quite
fascinating to see how people react to
the building in different ways and that
theater brought us to a number of other
theater projects this one is one of the
more recent theaters we've designed in
Canada in eastern Canada in Ontario near
Ottawa in Quebec it's situated on Lake
Ontario and that's the view from the
lobby during winter isn't that fantastic
that's frozen Lake Ontario as far as you
can see it's ice this special place to
be when you're there in the winter you
can walk out on the ice and look back at
the building it's a actually a
renovation of an existing stone
structure that was there since 1905 with
an expansion that is a newer structure
it was historically protected and
landmarked the site so we had to be very
careful how we worked with the project
but probably the most important feature
of the building is the interior hall
which is a symmetrical inlined with four
types of wood all from Eastern Ontario
and everything in this space is designed
for live acoustics so there are some
speakers there the speakers are only
used for sound sorry for speech so they
were just down
for testing but actually you don't need
those speakers at all they can be
removed completely 4/4 music so the room
seats about 550 people and you can have
everything from a single soloist to a 70
seat orchestra and it works without any
electro acoustics whatsoever
probably not dissimilar to this great
room the the Bijou which has excellent
acoustics really I'm only miked because
I'm speaking but probably if you had a
great instrument here you wouldn't
really need much acoustical support and
so that was a wonderful thing to work on
something that just doesn't require
electricity and then after that we
started to work on some museum projects
this is perhaps one of the more
well-known in the United States the
National September 11th Memorial Museum
in New York City at the location of the
tragedies of the destruction of those
two towers and the terrorist attacks in
2001 our building is the smallest
building at the World Trade Center site
it's this building here these are all
office buildings that line the edges
that you may have seen pictures of and
our building was the only building that
was situated on the memorial where the
World Trade Center towers once stood
now those towers are fountains for
commemoration and memory the building
has quality of being very low and
horizontal and very intimate so in New
York City we often say that intimacy is
a luxury it's very hard to find intimacy
in that city and certainly if you're
single and looking for a date you would
agree with me New York City is a jungle
for the dating world but it's a jungle
on so many other levels so we tried to
make the building delicate approachable
visible in your cone of vision it's one
of the few buildings that's actually
horizontal in this area and it reflects
light in unique ways so as you move
around the building it's always showing
you daylight and ambient light in a
unique fashion depending on the time of
day that you're there this facade is the
north-facing facade of the building so
there's no direct natural sunlight on
this facade yet it's projecting light as
though it were being shined light were
shining on it that's because the the
facade has very tiny little
scratches in it that collects the
ambient light and projects it back out
no matter where it is it focuses the
light in a very unique way so as you
move around the building you're always
seeing it in a different way from inside
the building there's a great atrium that
brings daylight down into the museum
below the ground and in that atrium are
two magnificent columns that were
rescued during the cleanup effort of the
two original towers that were fallen on
September 11th and they sit against the
windows of the atrium and then distance
just behind is the New World Trade
Center tower that was just finished a
few years ago so you have the effect of
seeing time in juxtaposition with
architecture and structure one of the
wonderful components of the building is
how people like to look at their
reflections in the glass and the one day
I was there and I was going down the
steps and I looked up and I saw this
young girl and she's seeing herself in
glass and she's dancing and smiling and
her mother is behind her taking a
picture if you notice she's not taking a
picture of her daughter she's actually
taking a picture of her daughter's
reflection in the glass which is kind of
a magnificent idea that the daughter is
projecting herself into this glass and
the mother is receiving that projection
and she's smiling and I remember when we
started on there in the cleanup effort
at the World Trade Center site so many
years ago it was dust and calamity and
trauma and if those of you that are too
young to remember it probably can't
understand how difficult it was to be in
New York at that time and really in the
United States and anywhere in the world
and when we made the project initially
we said and we could just bring one
smile to this place of so much tragedy
then we will have done our job because
the memorials are about the past and
they're about the loss of life and the
commercial towers are about the future
they're about optimism they're about
things that we don't quite understand
but they keep the economy going and then
there's this little building with your
own reflection in it and as soon as you
see yourself in the building you
recognize that you're alive in this
moment in time and once that moment is
gone it's gone forever and so we need to
rejoice in each moment that
live and the buildings had that effect
in a very interesting way so here comes
a picture that it makes sense that it's
after the last picture but you might be
surprised to see it in an architecture
lecture I see pictures like this from
time to time in the newspaper most of us
do there's a lot of polarization in our
society a lot of division diverse
diversity has created challenges within
social structures and cultural
structures in our world and when we see
pictures like this we often look at it
and we'll start blaming people well say
well clearly the guy with the hat was an
idiot and he said something and another
guy hit him or clearly the guy with the
short sleeve white shirt on is just an
angry grumpy guy and he did he hit the
other one for God knows why or you'll
say well it's obviously the politicians
we've created some kind of political
movement that made something like this
happen we just go down the list and we
blame every single person except for
ourselves because we're not in the
picture but we're just one of those
people actually and if you're an
architect you definitely don't blame
yourself like what does an architect
have to do with this picture well the
fact is if you look around everything
that frames this picture the stairs the
plaza of the building the street lights
every single thing that is in the space
that frames this event was designed by
an architect or a designer so we create
the spaces where things like this happen
and there is clearly an effect on us by
the things that we make and of course
Marshall McLuhan understood this very
well when he said the environment is
environments we create becomes our
medium for defining our role in it so
think of it this way if you've ever been
to a zoo and you've seen a sad lonely
zoo and it's a bad cage save for a polar
bear and the poor polar bear is in there
walking back and forth and its licking
its fertility eads self-destructing
itself its aggressive it doesn't eat
properly it looks amazing it all of that
is because this polar bear was stuck
into a zoo cage that wasn't natural for
its living conditions if you were to
take that same bear and put it in a more
graceful more open more natural
condition it would probably lose most of
its traumatic condition
so if that's the case then we are
essentially like polar bears we're
making our own zoo everything that we
design is our Zoo this building this
room the lights the streets outside it's
our own zoo cage and we're designing it
and if we don't design it properly we're
gonna be just like that bear getting
very aggressive mistreating ourselves
becoming unhealthy and not able to
function in a you know in the natural
society so take this to heart it's very
important especially in the time that we
live in where you can freely walk into a
store and you know buy a gun but
apparently you can't smoke a cigarette
that's unhealthy but buying a gun is
healthy so there's a there's a lot of
there's a lot of challenges that we face
in our world though that we have to
address also as architects so sometimes
I say we don't just design buildings or
design things objects we design habitats
we have to understand that that
everything we do is a part of a habitat
that exists around us and frames our
lives most of us when we think of
habitat we think of the idea of biology
we'll understand that kind of thing
living organisms plants birds bees
organisms bacteria all the stuff that we
normally think of as sort of the biology
of the world well that's one kind of
habitat but it's not the entire picture
biotic habitat is only half of our world
the other is abiotic habitat in other
words things that aren't actually alive
so bits of rock soil without any living
creatures in it water without life or
air for that matter these things when
you extract all the biotic components of
them like a rock that's just a mineral
is a part of our habitat and it's the
interaction between these nonliving
things and these living things that
creates the world that we live in we
tend to shove off all the biology stuff
to the scientists and we tend as
architects to think about just the the
hard stuff but actually the two together
are very very important so how can that
have a relevance to how we understand
architecture well when I was in school
and it's I believe a little bit true
today still
that when we're taught architecture
we're taught about architectural
theories we're taught about formal
theories how to make form how to create
shapes that people will try to better
understand and even if you're not an
architect and you know about
architecture generally your information
is limited to what it looks like wow
that's an amazing looking building or
you know if you're an architecture
student I made this kind of shape that
wraps in on itself and does one of these
and you look at all of those things and
you know what is the consequence of that
the fact is that all of these things
that we make are essentially having to
be dealt with by people so the formal
theory related to objects must also be
translated to a theory about people we
have to understand who we are why we do
what we do the weirdest centricity is of
what it means to be a human being I mean
I often say you know I don't know about
you but when I look in the mirror and
I'm naked I'm like wow that is a weird
looking thing like I can't believe this
is me you know it's like there's all
this kind of extra fat over here and you
know it's just not a pleasant sight so
so you know weird strange creatures
we're weird fleshy blobs we do stupid
things we pretend that we're smart we
pretend that we're civilized we wish the
world were perfect it will never be
perfect I hate to break it to you you
know and in in some way we have to
understand all of these odd sides of who
we are sometimes I say that the world in
terms of architecture is divided into
two groups they're the architects you
have to straighten everything up like
put everything in a line make all the
walls straight make everything where
it's supposed to be and that's one group
and then the other group or architects
are just trying to shake everything up
like okay I'm gonna mess up all these
lines and I'm gonna make all these weird
axes I'm gonna make all these blobs so
you've got these two worlds
straightening it up and shaking it up
and I sort of feel somewhere in the
middle like I don't really care I just
want it to be about me and I want it to
be about you and whatever route that
takes that's the route that I'm gonna
follow well we've tried to learn about
habitat a lot in our office and one day
we started to realize there was terrible
destruction and B habitat in the world
and probably you're familiar
with this certainly during the allergy
season here in Knoxville you know how
important the flowers are and also food
growth to our life and bees are one of
the most important characters in
managing our food supply as human beings
and they're disappearing at an alarming
rate some of this has to do with
chemicals and well the only way we can
change that is to fix the companies that
deal with the chemicals but also it has
to do with the habitat for bees and
they're losing habitat to live naturally
most bees that you see especially
bumblebees the the humble bumblebee is
in a domesticated lifestyle so basically
they live in little white boxes and they
make their honey inside there and a few
times a day a human being will take the
top of it off with a smoke canister
smoke this like drug smoke in there and
they all kind of like that they just
pass out and then they get all their
honey taken away from them it's put back
in and ten minutes later they wake up
and go wow what the hell just happened
you know I've lost all my babies like
ten thousand of them and all the honey
you know it's it's a it's an extreme
habitat to be domesticated B so we
decided to try and work with this idea
so we designed some beehives we did this
just sort of nobody asked us to and we
we wanted it up beehives just in all
kinds of locations around so the bees
would have a habitat that wasn't for
domesticating honey we knew that if we
did that if it was an ugly beehive
nobody would want it so we had to make
super sexy beehives so they'd say yeah I
want one of those even if it has bees in
it so this was the first one that was
installed on the rooftop of a little
building in Oslo it's some of our
smallest clients there and these two
little beehives they can run for about
six years before you really have to
clean them out in a natural world it'd
be would occupy space and then
eventually it's poop and everything
fills up so much they have to leave but
in this case you can clean it out when
you need to and they'll stay so once you
get it going after the first year or so
and it runs on its own and you don't
have to do anything
we designed the hives after the natural
form of some of the hives that we had
seen and studied and we took a great
deal of care and understanding exactly
what it needs another
similar project was based on birds I
always find it amazing we all love birds
we're inspired by Birds and we're so
inspired by them that even in
traditional architecture I'm sure
somewhere like on this building well if
we look long enough we'll find a little
statue or an ornament of a bird
so we'll put bronze Birds on buildings
we'll put stone Birds on buildings but
if an actual bird is to make a nest on a
building we basically shoot it you know
like a real bird out of the question
only bronze Birds on my building and so
all the buildings that we make displace
all of this life that used to be in the
area where the buildings once were in
fact you could a certain level say that
architecture is a blight on nature a
friend of mine is a graffiti artist and
he was talking to me the other day he
said it you know he used to get in
trouble for graffitiing buildings
because he said your day your you know
you're destroying the building's the
architecture is what they told him he
said well alright isn't the buildings
destroying nature
you know everybody's destroying
something so we have to figure out a way
how to deal with that so in this case we
thought maybe we could make something
that would reinstall habitat for a bird
and fauna life in buildings so we made
this insert that would be inserted into
a masonry structure and it has a series
of rings on it and depending on the kind
of bird that you want in it you pull off
the layers so that the bird the right
sized bird can nest inside of your wall
on your building and not cause any
damage to the structure it's really
funny I was ask an architect to design a
birdhouse
you'll get things that look like I don't
know the Statue of Liberty or god knows
what they will have never once thought
about what an actual bird really needs
so they're like looking at red and
yellow stripes and all these kinds of
shapes but actually what the birds need
is just as beautiful as anything you
could ever dream up and so the form that
you see here is a reactive direct
reaction to to how the bird's nest one
of the thing ID --is was if you inserted
these into a wall like a CMU wall you
could rotate the CMU the block and put a
one-way mirror on the inside surface so
you could look in and see the birds
nesting but they couldn't see you
because it was reflective on the other
side so we're starting to try and build
these now that's the other small client
that we had for this project and another
project having to do with animal life
and also the relationship of animal life
to human life was a very well known
project that we made in northern way at
the foot of the mountain Snohetta that
were named after this valley is known
for the rare eye condition that wild
reindeer migrate through here once a
year
and so the migration of the wild
reindeer is so special people like to go
out and watch these reindeer in the
valley but of course all the noise and
the smell and everything affects the
reindeer and so they get nervous with
all the people watching them so we
created a Observatory where people could
be inside stay warm and comfortable and
not disturb the reindeer these are the
areas of wild reindeer habitat in the
northern parts of our hemisphere so the
structure itself is very simple it's a
metal box with a big glass wall and a
rather amazing wooden bench which is
made of solid wood which was CNC carved
by a robotic creature that was able to
make these shapes for us in full scale
one thing you'll notice is that there
are these funny flanges here and you
might say to yourself that seems a
little out of character that's because
they weren't in the original design so
what happened was after we built this
thing it turns out that unknown to us
there's a lot of muskox that live in the
area I don't know if you've ever seen a
musk oxen like little Buffalo's and
they're kind of cute looking but also
pretty scary and the males are very very
very territorial and the way we had
designed it was that such that the glass
was too low to the ground and the male
musk ox would see their reflection in it
and charged and smash their head against
the glass and it nearly broke the glass
and we were like geez I can't believe
that was not on the list of things to
check you know mucks musk ox attacks so
you know we had to clear out the ground
so that the musk ox can't be high enough
but first we had to strengthen the glass
just
case but now the muskox don't see see
their reflection in the glass anymore
but nevertheless despite the fact that
they can't see themselves they still
hang around the building like it's been
in two years after the last month sock
saw their reflection and they seem to be
like still going there for that
magnificent muskox in the sky and it
might return one day so they just live
there in the end sometimes in the winter
and this very unusual structure and we
also go there so since it's at Snohetta
this this little observatory our office
takes a trip there about once every two
years we climb up the mountain you can't
take yourself seriously if you named
yourself after a mountain and don't
actually climb it so we climb it and
then we come down we get a bunch of
schnapps and have a big big party it's a
lot of fun another unusual project
related to habitat I wanted to share
with you is our most recent project and
what in my mind our most interesting
project at the moment it's the
reconstruction of a waterfall in Oregon
you've probably all heard of the
Willamette River Valley a lot of wine
comes from there it's a beautiful River
and it has a beautiful waterfall or had
a beautiful beautiful waterfall about a
hundred years ago but over the years
industrialization has taken over and
there were a series of factories and
hydroelectric dams and they have
occupied the edges of this waterfall
such that the water barely runs anymore
it's almost impossible to actually see
the honor this is one of the rare
occasions that the waters are running
but for the most part it's still
understood well I guess I should say let
me go back a slide so to give you some
context the water used to run not only
here on these rocks but all the way
along this edge right down right off
this picture down to somewhere here and
all the way along this edge it's the
second largest waterfall by volume
behind Niagara Falls in the United
States and now it's just a little
trickle a little kind of little trickle
there the Native Americans that live
there still worship the waterfall it's
sacred to the eight or nine tribes that
live there they still what is called
fish for lamprey I don't know if fishing
is the right word because basically they
stand
under the water and the lamprey which
are kind of an eel are trying to get up
or falling all over and they reach out
with their hands the natives the First
Nations people and they just grab the
lamprey and and throw it in a bag on
their waist and they'll catch like 15 20
of these things in about an hour so it's
rather amazing to watch and you can see
here it's been a leisure place we're
fishing here's the the waterfall in more
ordinary conditions where it's mostly
just the rock exposed and you can see
the water used to go all the way to that
bridge and all the way along here and
it's all the water was diverted all of
these industries that we're here are now
empty so they've all moved out none of
this industry exists anymore there are
no longer paper mills there's no longer
wool mills the hydroelectric plant
barely functions so all of these
buildings are empty and you can't get to
the water and so it's a kind of a
tragedy so we've been asked to try and
reinvigorate the waterfall and bring it
back to life
but we can't just eliminate everything
because there some people are saying
just knock down all that garbage and
bring it back to what it was we want a
beautiful waterfall again because we're
habitat enthusiasts but then there are
people whose grandparents worked in
these buildings and they're like I don't
want to tear that building down that's
my family history and then they're kayak
people who say like I don't care what
you do I just want to have a water world
theme park so everybody is coming in to
this site with their own ideas what
we're doing is we're leaving key
buildings so we've had to register every
single building which is empty and
unused and some of them are dangerous or
gonna fall down so we're taking them
away and we're leaving some of the
exceptional ones and some of the masonry
ones and we're going to try and re
expose the natural habitat so what we
found was that if this is all the area
that's been built up by industry we
found after looking at it that most of
this is built on piles so when we were
climbing around underneath these
structures we saw that the original
landscape is still underneath it all it
was amazing they didn't dynamite it or
just pour concrete over it and so we
thought what you could do is remove some
portions of this and reexpose the rock
like this in different locations and let
the water flow again what's intriguing
is that some of the
buildings are now built below the flood
line so that when she let the water flow
again the ground floors of all these
buildings were flood very likely once a
year so we're designing them so that the
ground floors can flood and that can be
a part of the experience of visiting
this place so here for example is one
area where we're gonna peel back the
concrete basically expose it into
something like this and we'll build
little bridges that could take you back
and forth and we'll let the water run
through and back along the edges so that
the water will run again we're
registering flora that are growing on
the surfaces of all of these buildings
and trying to also create new habitat
for the plants that used to exist in
this area as well as the wildlife that
swims upstream in the Willamette in
order to make it work we need to make it
exciting for people because people won't
pay for stuff unless it's exciting so
we're making things ways to get through
these old buildings we're knocking walls
out so you can walk right to the edge
and look down and see the waterfalls and
then in order for it to work we have to
build with like giant saws we're gonna
cut through the concrete and create a
habitat for flora a higher enough up
that the people can mess with it in some
areas we're cutting through the tops of
the buildings and building new nesting
grounds on the top we're actually we've
built a calendar that shows the cycle of
animal and plant life throughout the
year and we've found a way in which you
can make it
festivals they're super exciting
festivals for people and drinking and
food and everything and they're in the
times of year when various plants and
animals are not mating or migrating so
that throughout the year it's its
calendar so that everybody gets the
benefit of the place including the
living creatures they have nothing to do
with us some of them when they flood
you'll walk over bridges and look down
and the water will reflect up onto the
ceilings so in this case we've cut an
oculus in the top of the structure and
that's sunlight coming down under these
surfaces so we're in concept design
right now and it's moving along pretty
well here's a tiny little project I'm
showing you some fun little small
projects they this is in San Francisco
and somebody gave us the Commission to
make a little parking lot park you've
probably heard of those here in
Knoxville they might
had some just take a parking space or a
place on the sidewalk and make it apart
for a week or so so our idea was to make
a rocking garden so it's a grass garden
and you sit on it and you can rock it's
got a surface underneath we actually
grew the the grass and in the soil in
our studio in San Francisco so for four
weeks we had all these ultraviolet
lights and we had to clear the whole
studio out the hardest thing about this
was that one of the studio people had a
dog and that dog was so badly wanted to
piss on that grass it was just
constantly trying to pull the dog off
the grass but we kept the dog away in
and we actually grew the grass and then
we put it out on the sidewalk it was
there for a week kids really loved it
because it kind of moved back and forth
it was very soft to sit in so it
introduced this kind of softness to the
hardscape that were so accustomed to in
downtown areas another unusual project
and since we saw a child in that last
image it's always fun to work with young
people and children there's so much more
random and relaxed than adults and so in
this particular case the Swarovski
crystal company in Austria asked us to
make a community center for all the
people work in their factory originally
it was meant to be a very fairly large
building for the adults the people that
worked in the building and then off to
the side was gonna be a very small
little thing for the adults who bring
their kids to community events they
could go off to the side and play but we
reversed the order so we put the adults
in this little thing and we gave the
kids this five storey tower so this is a
five storey play tower just for kids
they can climb up through it on each
floor there's a different trampoline
it's got amazing views and it's just a
great place for the young folks to be
even the architects this is one of the
architects doing the punch list on the
project to see if it actually will
function properly
but it's amazing views up there and you
know I guess it's because it's Austrian
kids they're not afraid of heights
so these uh view of the mountains didn't
frighten them and it's been pretty
successful another unusual little
project and I'm showing you lots of odd
little things because generally people
just talk about the big stuff
this was a little pavilion that we made
for a light festival in Singapore
the light festival only exists for two
weeks and normally you get all these
rather verbose grandiose pavilions and
they have champagne and stuff in them
and somebody shows off their lights and
then it's taken down after two weeks and
God knows what happens to it so we took
approach where we wanted everything in
the pavilion to be used again so that
once this pavilion was taken down
everything can be disassembled so the
main component of it is this light
umbrella and it shines light down on to
a space where people like to play and
sit and talk and each one of those
lights that you see is a solar-powered
solar-powered light system so basically
one lamp has a solar panel generator on
the top and during the day it collects
the Sun and then at night it lets lets
out light so each one of these could be
taken down and shipped to a different
location where in the countryside where
people don't have electricity there's a
lot of people in Malaysia and in in the
areas around Singapore that actually
don't have access to power and they have
to get to their water their wells and
these things so these could be all just
redistributed and the wood structure
which is bamboo and wood could also be
used to make other structures win so
people started sending us images we've
gotten a lot of images back from their
region this is a young boy who's going
down to get water the little garden
that's for their family and he's got one
of the little lights there and they use
it at night to go down and get water so
it's it's been pretty successful we've
heard quite a lot of them are still
being used I would like to talk a little
bit about our office you know I'm
talking a lot about studio habitat you
know we have our own habitat the habitat
of our studio I often say if you
talk to an architect about their
political beliefs most of the most
architects are generally kind of
left-leaning progressive people they're
like yeah we like you know society and
we like all kinds of people and you know
we want the public realm and everything
and then you walk into their office
they're the most hierarchical structure
display places you've ever been in your
life like there's a boss at the top and
this army of slaves doing all their work
and you know it would make the Vatican
blush if they saw how most architecture
studios were organized so you know how
get why is that how
when we say one thing and then live in a
very very different way so in our office
we've tried to take over and try to a
few different things one thing is that
we're not just architects we're about 30
percent landscape architects
we have interior architects branding and
graphic designers and other people
working together we try really hard to
keep a balance of 50% male-female it's
difficult in our industry but if keeping
male/female balance is difficult that is
nothing compared to ethnic balance the
ethnic balance in our office is
atrocious and it's like that in most
architecture offices so we only have
about 17% minorities although about 30%
of our leadership are ethnic minorities
we do are very proud that we have 14%
left handers in our office that's like a
big deal I don't know any of your left
handers out there but we got your back
and I think all of this mix makes makes
for an interesting office we get very
physical we're always making things
together we're constantly making stuff
and I like this picture because this is
even an intern this person here an
intern from Mexico actually that's oh
that's someone here was talking about
Ian tonight he used to go to school in
Blacksburg that's him
so they're making making a model
together you know it's hard enough to
just get people to sit and talk together
but to get them to actually make a model
together it is quite an achievement so
we really work hard to make that kind of
an atmosphere one of the things that
makes that possible is that we installed
a beer tap into our studio so it's not
easy to get people to do things together
so we we put in this beer tap and it's
it was great it was a little
embarrassing so we put a fruit bowl out
in front of it afterwards so we would
look a little bit healthy but actually
the beer tap is probably the center of
attention
next to that space is a place where we
can all get together and we work
together and we eat together so we eat
we don't we don't have enclosed office
room sorry in closed meeting rooms we
have one giant room which is attached to
the beer tap and everybody works at that
and they also eat lunch together so we
eat lunch together and we work at the
same space it allows us in this room to
come together and talk about different
things there aren't separate meetings
going on in separate rooms this is in
this picture so
projects going on at once so the
acoustics are very important so you
control the acoustics you can have a lot
happening in a single space and here's a
sort of time-lapse of this is our oslo
office so here's some of the tables we
sit there we work on them in the morning
then it's suddenly lunchtime they come
out people start to send up lunch then
everybody eats and we're leading at the
same table and then eventually food is
over there's a few stragglers and then
we go back to work
and so you get to sit next to other
people that are working on different
jobs then you might be working on it's
it's an important idea to eat and meet
together so now I'm going to show you a
few more projects in detail this was one
that we recently opened it's the Ryerson
Student Center in Toronto
it's a unusual Street very commercial in
fact it's the most commercial street
we've ever worked on so crazy and that
this right here the Zanzibar if any of
you are from Toronto you will know that
this is the most famous strip club in
all of Canada so it's the first time we
had a strip club next to our site and
actually you know what at first I
thought that strip club you know what
does that mean who cares and we didn't
really think about it but just like the
muskox problem this came back to haunt
us so I'll tell you a funny little story
before I show you the project you'll see
in a moment that the building is quite
large a glass structure with lots of
views and lots of daylight it's
wonderful to be inside the light comes
in and everything but right next to it
because of the sight this is before it
was built this is the site here it
overlooks the rooftop of the Zanzibar
strip club well the women that danced
there for privacy go to the roof to
relax it's the only private time they
have so they started they started
looking up and realized after we built a
building that there were all these
students gawking at them and they got
really upset and they actually sued the
university for invasion of their privacy
and they won which is just fantastic I
think and so they had to get a little
privacy Terrace built for them up on top
of their strip club so you know that's
one of those things that isn't on the
list either like muskox attacks and
strip club privacy issues
you always got to think about everything
this is the existing library I was built
in the 70s you can see why people hate
architects I I'm sure that this building
looked really great in drawings like
this was made before computers and it
was probably drawn by pencil I used to
draw I still draw like that you know
every little brick had that perfect
little graphite mark on it you know I
was probably just gorgeous and this is
what it actually comes out like all
these windows these are the windows and
they're actually up at 7 feet high so
when you're in the building there's no
way to actually see out except for those
little strips that occur in only two
locations on every floor so and to
rethink this whole thing and actually
the strip club and all the crazy life on
the street was much more interesting
than this academic building made for a
library so we wanted to try and deal
with that the first thing we realized
was that there's the Zanzibar here we
needed to include retail in the design
so we didn't want to make the library go
all the way to the street we wanted the
street to feel commercial but how do you
make that without having this problem of
walking through a Starbucks or something
to get to the library so we lifted up
the ground like the Oslo Opera in a way
and tucked the retail in underneath it
and once we lifted it up it allowed us
to create this Plaza which faced south
and you know in Canada sunlights a big
deal so if you can get sunlight you have
to make space for it so we ramp to the
surfaces to catch as much sunlight as
possible and shape the building to bring
daylight down on to that plaza so that
people would interact there as well as
create a new retail solution and a new
entrance to the library this is our
first concept sketches one of the first
I put this in because of architecture
students do really crazy things and
there's nothing wrong with doing
something crazy but you have to know
where it is that you're going to jump
off the cliff and where you got to step
back so I show this because I'll compare
it to the final building you'll see much
of the same characteristics of this
sketch but nowhere near as as crazy or
radical as this because I don't think
this would have worked well actually in
real life
so here you can see the building in one
of the renderings it's a fretted glass
with this new plaza and this blue chip
that kind of rises up from the ground so
you can still see that quality of this
plaza and this blue thing
lifting up over your head those are
those blue chips that you see are
actually aluminum panels painted with
iridescent paint I'll show them to you
in a moment in more detail but they
reflect light in different ways down
onto this new plaza which is extremely
popular especially on a sunny day so
everyone comes there to bask in the
sunlight and the blue chips actually
change the color of the sunlight so it
goes from the yellow to a slightly
cooler blue light over people's heads we
chose this blue it was really funny
because the original idea was well if
you were a Canadian and it was winter
where's the one place you'd probably
want to be other than standing in the
snow waiting for a bus and we all agreed
it would be the Caribbean so we went in
and looked at Caribbean pictures of the
Caribbean and found these blues of the
ocean and the end of the end of the sea
and so we made this kind of Caribbean
blue and most people don't know that but
I think they kind of feel it when you
look up it changes every every panel is
identical so none of them are different
they're all exactly identical but
because of the way in which they're
folded and your angle of incidence of
the reflection it makes them all look
sort of unique and different and what's
great is when you see people crossing
the street you know today of course
everybody's got their nose and their
phones so we like people who are like
texting away and they'll get to this
crosswalk and they'll stop wait for the
light and then they'll look up and then
they'll see this thing go whoa what's
that that'll last for about ten seconds
and then I'll go back to texting or
whatever but for that 10 seconds they
had some understanding that there was a
real world around them and it wasn't all
like texting and virtual and and so
there's a like a little mini victory
here's how the panels were made they're
actually a single sheet of aluminum
which was scored with a CNC robotic
device on the backside they were painted
with a kind of car paint like an
iridescent blue so they're it's all one
color but depending on the angle of
light different and then they were
folded by hand so every single one of
these panels was scored by a robot and
then folded by hands so it's a it's like
a Oregon
me building and then put into place so
this is a picture I took just using my
little phone on selfie mode straight up
so it's not a very good picture but you
can see the change in quality of color
and light and the next thing I'm going
to show you is a little short film this
was taken one evening I was there and
you know because it's commercial and
there's a strip club and everything the
lights are like all crazy all over the
place and they're big LED build words
with Calvin Klein underwear on them and
all that light is just everywhere and so
these surfaces collect all that light
and send it back out into the world so
there's no electricity required to get
that kind of an effect it's it's rather
interesting to see and at night the
chips come into the building and form
the roof of the lobby which is adjoining
a set of stairs that leads you up into
the library itself there's a little
coffee shop there wonderful little
coffee shop here one of the things
that's amazing about this is that's
actually a Starbucks and we negotiated
with Starbucks to take all their
branding off their coffee shop because
we said if you're gonna be in this
building people are gonna buy your
coffee no matter what you don't need to
have a green mermaid it'll all work out
fine and they agreed so this is the only
Starbucks probably in the world that
doesn't have a green mermaid on it and
and it works very well and they're very
happy and they sell a lot of coffee it
actually reminds me of some other a
little story if you don't mind I'll
share with you when we made the hunt
library in North Carolina the librarian
wanted a table when you walked in which
had all the technology available so that
if you didn't know how to use a digital
camera or a 3d printer you could walk in
all the technology would be there a
support person would come to you and
show you how to use it and it was very
clean and minimal and and the librarian
said it really looks like an Apple Store
can we call it the Apple store and I
said to her well probably there are some
legal issues here you better not call it
the Apple Store but she was she was
adamant she's calling since he wrote
Apple Store on it and of course within a
week she started getting cease and
desist letters from apples lawyers you
can't call this an Apple store you don't
sell Apple products etc and so what she
did cuz she was a genius she went out
into the North Carolina landscape and
found a family
whose last name was Apple and got them
to donate money to this thing so she
could write their name on it so it said
the Apple store and so it was it was
legal that was a good one the building
the building is quite unusual in that
it's a vertical library and we decided
we would make each floor of the building
unique something special so that we got
off the stair or off the elevator you'd
walk into this place and every floor
would be something incredible and
exciting and dynamic and we wanted it
all to relate to the natural condition
to the landscape to the places that you
don't often get to see if you live in an
urban condition um so we have the floors
that are called the Sun and the beach
and the forest and each of these floors
are so radically different I'll show em
to you in a minute that in fact I'm one
of the elevators they just took the
numbers off normally you'd get in an
elevator and say I'm going to the fourth
floor and this is the panel it just says
I'm going to the garden or somebody says
I'll meet you at the beach and actually
that works just fine you don't actually
need the numbers and so everybody
connects to each floor in a very special
way and it's not related to an
abstraction like a number so for example
this is the bluff level when you get off
there's this amazing foam thing that
just rises up off the floor and goes
right up to the ceiling it's super soft
and it's meant to be a chair and when it
when we open the building it started to
get populated so on the bluff you can
climb this Bluff and sit on it in all
kinds of ways oh here's another funny
story when we built this the life safety
inspector came in and said what the hell
is that
it needs a handrail around it you know
36 inches and he made us put in it was
ready to make us put in a handrail it
was like we had to design everything we
were ready to give up like you know you
can't so then we finally told him hey
wait a minute you know what it is it's
it's actually a chair it's it's not like
a piece of architecture it's a chair
it's just a really big and strange chair
and in fact many chairs are there the
butt is about 20 inches off the floor
right so so if you were to stand on a
chair you'd be breaking the regulations
because you'd be over 18 inches off the
ground and you don't need a handrail
around every single chair so once we
convinced him it was a chair he said
okay and we did
have to put the handrail around it that
was pretty interesting this is the floor
called the garden so when you walk off
the lift it's beautiful green it's all
very bright this is actually the floor
for people who have learning
disabilities some of them have economic
challenges and can't meet their their
payments for their tuition so we wanted
the floor to feel content and one of the
things that you'll notice about it is
this very weird green glass that as you
approach the the offices where you would
have a meeting or have some some common
classrooms you'd say to yourself why the
hell would I want to go in there it's
like green and scary like I'd look like
a piece of cheese if I walked into this
room but actually this is just green
film and it's on the glass and so as
long as the light on inside the room the
light will be stronger inside than
outside so the energy of light transfers
through the glass and it makes it look
green on the outside but if you step
inside with the lights on it's
absolutely normal so here's a woman
cleaning of the room and this is a
picture taken at exactly the same time
when I stepped inside the room so on the
outside it looks like this and on the
inside it looks just absolutely normal
and I've seen people walk up to the
doors and kind of reluctantly walk in
and like look inside and they step back
outside like how is this happening it's
a kind of an interesting challenge and I
think you know giving people challenges
is important to the opposite effect
occurs on one of the other floor is
called the Sun so on the Sun floor it's
this beautiful warm red and it looks
like everyone's boiling alive inside and
you think well I'm not I can't go in
there I'm gonna you know cook like a
lobster and what happens here is again
it's normal on the inside but at night
when the classrooms are not being used
and you turn the lights off
then of course light goes the other way
and the room is filled with red lights
so the students like to go up there at
night turn the lights off and just hang
out in this red room you know and they
just bask in this kind of fake sunlight
and it's really funny funny to see
another flirt called the beach
the beaches that has no traditional
chairs or tables so you sit on the floor
more beanbags or other kind of strange
things it's a Siri
of maple terraces that come down to a
blue carpet that looks like a lake or an
ocean and the lights are like the Sun in
big circles people love to go into this
space it's really boisterous very loud
and in fact it's so much going on in
that room that like on Thursday nights
you can go there they have a
breakdancing Club that shows up in the
library it's amazing and I remember well
did this room the librarian said to us I
want a floor where anything can happen
and now in retrospect I always tell my
clients you know be careful what you ask
for because anything happens here and
they're having problems with like
similar to this on the roof of the Opera
there's all kinds of things happening in
the corner they can't control but most
funny I think is students show up with
bathing suits on and beach towels and
bring beach balls and they hang out at
the beach in evening and so they're
they're trying to get that under control
on the break dancing is another thing
that they they've now limited it to one
night a week at the top floor is a floor
called the sky and it's exactly the
opposite it's quiet it's peaceful you
you have this soft light everywhere
around you and it's dappled light coming
in through the glass so it's like being
under a tree when the sunlight hits your
face and it's exactly the opposite of
the beach dead silent and you don't need
any people to tell you to be quiet if
you make a noise
the students will tell you to shut up so
it's self policing because they have
their own space where they can be loud
and they have a space where they can be
quiet and they move back and forth
between these these two worlds and it
makes for an interesting place to study
we've been doing a lot of research we've
gone back after about a year we did some
some you know interviews I like this
when I go and do some breakdancing and
go back to studying it's become a very
popular most popular building on campus
now and in fact other the other UT which
is University of Toronto also comes
there and studies now even though it's
Ryerson University it was mentioned that
we just completed the reconstruction of
Times Square so we've been working on
this project for about eight years
everybody knows Times Square it's one of
the great icons of American life it's an
intersection of two streets Broadway and
7th Avenue and it's
can traditionally been a traffic jam and
a hellacious crowd of people who are
from mass tourism buses getting off and
freaking out like this and if you're in
New York or you can't get through and
you're so upset
and all the people from you know
Nebraska stuff like that so um so one of
the things that we did was we put up a
camera and we started to watch density
levels across Times Square
well this map was created it's called a
population volume map and so if you look
here it might be a little hard to read
but wherever there's green that means
there's not a lot of density and
wherever it's read density is heavy you
can see there's almost no green a tiny
little bit up here and we used to call
this map the pissed-off map because
everywhere it's read is where people are
angry and so our job was to make all of
this red and change it into green if
that was possible so we worked with the
city and we permanently removed
automobiles and all vehicular traffic
from Broadway running north-south and
replaced them with pedestrian plazas so
the cars only run on 7th Avenue and we
made all of these pedestrian plazas more
useful for large groups of people in
different ways so it just opened here's
some of the images of of the the project
now that it's it's complete all of these
spaces are new and they didn't exist
before it's funny I was just out there
for the opening and I was standing here
and one of the one of the newspaper
reporters said to me so what do you
consider a success of this project and I
said basically because we're not getting
hit by a truck right now
that's a good thing
we've done we've done a lot of on-site
analysis so we spent hours and weeks and
days just watching people this usatoday
stand was used in 30 different ways in
one hour
I mean people put their coffee on it
they had meetings they used it for
photographs it was incredible to watch
students prior to the project we're
sitting on the streets it was terribly
unhealthy and dangerous we also created
these kind of little light pucks that
are embedded in the pavement so that
they capture the light they're all
stainless steel they capture the light
from the marquees as you move along and
they're also like the old film noir
movies movie house marquees that many
people think of when they think about
times
we're so here you can see some of these
in place one of our ideas was very
counterintuitive we said to them we
don't want to use any electricity in
Times Square you got more than enough
electricity you don't need anymore so
we're going to use no electricity on the
ground plane we do is just going to be
reflective or deal with the light that
exists and everybody couldn't believe it
they were like it's Time Square you have
to make flashing LEDs and everything but
it needed a sense of balance and so we
provided that balance with these
reflectors they become very popular and
I've seen them now in a couple of TV
shows they they recommended this one
sent us this Instagram picture she was
very excited that her boots match the
new paving stones they're about 350
events a year all the way from group
yoga to rodeos that occur on Times
Square in the past everything related to
an event had to be dragged in using a
generator and cables and now we've
created some benches and big benches 50
feet long five feet wide and inside of
them are all embedded all the
fiber-optic cables or the acoustic and a
sound system needs electrical power
everything you need to put on a
performance so they don't have to drag
stuff across Times Square anymore so
theoretically Times Square is now
officially wired and you can sit on
these benches in different ways lay on
them in different ways I like to watch
people on the benches because they hire
at one end and lower in another and of
course in dense circumstances people sit
anywhere even if it's they have to climb
to get up on to it so I noticed when
we'll sit down on this end they're very
serious and adult like because their
feet are firmly on the ground and when
people sit on this end when their feet
are up in the air they're like children
they move their feet back and forth like
kids in a highchair and they act a
little more youthful they're very very
comfortable on your butt so we said you
know design everything to make your butt
happy because of your butt's happy
you're gonna be real happy too and so
there's these soft edges that allow
people to sit in different ways the
different heights of backrests sometimes
people don't even sit on them they just
stand on them and we've done some
analysis here the analysis is amazing if
you look at these figures we've created
and nearly doubled the amount of state
and tax revenue just by providing
public space in Times Square there's
enough tax revenue from Times Square
pedestrianisation to pay for seven times
the parks and recreation budget per year
in New York City or half the police
department budget and the New York City
Police Department is the largest
standing militia in the country outside
of the Army and the National Guard so
enormous amount of money comes here
we've reduced crime rates we've reduced
pollution levels we've increased use of
the area by pedestrians so it's been
generally so far a success while we were
working on that project we expanded the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art which
is Mario Botta building that you can't
see here on the other side of our
project in the central part of San
Francisco fairly substantial project
once completed it made the San Francisco
MoMA actually larger and gallery space
than the New York MoMA so it's now among
the largest modern art museums in the
world
it was located just behind the boat the
building which is here if any of you
have been there in an area that was
previously considered an alleyway it's
trash collection and so on the boat the
building responded to these big roadways
and we wanted our building to respond to
these little alleys which had been
blocked off and forgotten about for
years nobody even knew they existed but
we wanted them to become the core of our
design so you can skier we had to relate
though to Bota in a particular way this
is before our expansion in years after
you can see that the building sort of
terraces up and actually links this Art
Deco building to the postmodern
structure in the foreground so there's
some idea that all the buildings are
welcome at the party and we also
recognized that there was a new transit
terminal happening nearby to the south
that would make these these alleyways
more exciting here's a picture of one of
the alleys before our project was
complete beautiful little Victorian
structures that are more or less just
abandoned and not used anymore
we made the building more porous added
three new entries the original entry was
only in one location on Third Street we
formed the building like Ryerson to
allow sunlight down into the areas that
would be cut where people would collect
them we lifted the building off the
ground we didn't make a straight
building we made a curved building so
that as you looked between it and the
sir
pounding buildings your I would be led
deep deep into the heart of the block
and so this is one of the earlier
sketches with a sort of pregnant like
shape that's raised off the ground and
here you can see it when it was
completed from a nearby condominium
tower the the building as you approach
it from some of the main boulevards
rises up almost like a cliff you feel is
this cliff like shape is entered into
the heart of San Francisco I like to
take pictures of our buildings from
weird locations a lot of these are my
pictures I don't take the ones that you
show the whole building
I walk around and I find myself in a
weird spot and I look up and I see the
building and I like to take images of
that because that's how people see
buildings through the fire escapes or in
the weird alleyways and at night
sometimes they they look very different
this is one of the alleys nearby where
the building is located towards the back
of this of this small alley and it rises
up in a rather exciting way here it's
sort of peeking in between things I
sometimes our friends send me things
like my friend sent me this picture he
said hey I'm in the Colombian embassy in
San Francisco and I looked out the
window and saw your building and there
it is and then one time I had this
amazing opportunity a friend of mine
installed the Bay Bridge lights in San
Francisco on the Oakland Bay Bridge and
he said I could go up and see these
lights and see their installation so I
got to climb the catenary arch on the
Oakland Bay Bridge I actually climb that
baby
and I all the way up to the top was
fantastic and I took a selfie which is
what you got to do when you get to high
places and and so I took the picture and
then I got at home and I thought well
wait a minute I bet you can see the
SFMOMA in there so if you look really
carefully just that's right it's right
there yeah one of the great things about
it is is that it's horizontal so once
again like the New York Museum
commercial buildings have to be vertical
they they're forced to build to the
property line and go straight up in the
air a cultural building has the luxury
of laying back on its back so getting
that kind of horizontality was an
important issue and you can really sense
it here adjacent to the skyscraper
there are new ways to come in if you
enter from the new building or if you
enter from the old but they'll meet in
one location this is the new entry which
is adjacent to a beautiful Richard Serra
sculpture there's now 40,000 square feet
of free art space in this building you
don't have to pay money for and that's
as much area dedicated to art I was as
was in the boat the building that you
had to pay 20 bucks to see so once we
did the expansion we made more free yard
space it's free of charge for children
under 18 years of age so young people
get to see works of art as you enter
you're able to rise up and look down
into the Richard Serra piece which is
quite unique to have that perspective if
you enter from the boat the building you
see right through both vota and the new
expansion by by us so this is on the
left the way it used to be this stair no
longer met code so we had to disassemble
it also we would needed views into the
new expansion in the back so on the
stair now allows more light in and gives
you a view back to a garden which we've
created at the furthest point in the
building away from you once you go up
those stairs you're in a sort of art
court as you rise up a very tiny little
stair only 13 feet and that's the thing
to the left if you look in this picture
these are the lines that they used
because for the elevators so they
anticipated everyone to take the
elevators and we said no believe me
they're not going to take the elevators
they're gonna take the stairs but they
set these things up anyway and because
the stair is so small it's only 13 feet
up and in the context it looks tiny
everyone goes to the stair and once
they've made that first run they're
committed they take all the rest of the
stairs all the way up so the elevators
are hardly hardly used at the top of
that stair in one gallery with callers
you look out to the garden that we've
created this is nice because you have
Calder outside and inside and every time
you open these doors there's no
vestibule so when you open the door the
air comes in and it makes the Calder
Mobile's move which is the way they were
intended to be seen that garden is quite
unique and it's a living garden so as
you look at it you'll see there are
different plants in different locations
there are over 25,000 plants on this
wall we designed all of them locations
together with a botanist so here's the
planting plan for
that wall I love it this is the each
type of plant is put in a location which
gets the proper amount of Sun or shade
considering its typology over half the
plants are from the San Francisco Bay
Area so they're native to them it's
spawned here's outside looking along
that wall
it's become a very popular place for
selfie pictures of course and the stairs
inside once you get up the first little
stair rather dramatic they go way up
into the building they're inspired by
some of the topography of San Francisco
some of the fun stairs like the filbert
steps on the near the Embarcadero in the
on the coastal areas of the city at the
top of every set of steps there's a
place to sit and rest and sometimes you
look at the garden sometimes that the
landscape around there's the the
galleries are very very simple all of
the light that you see here is
artificial the galleries in the United
States won't allow natural light into
the galleries in Europe they do it's
funny in Europe when I design a museum
the and and and you just have a skylight
and you're in the room and the clouds go
by and it gets a chateau that everyone
loves it it's like wow shadow that's
neat moving and here in the US if the
shadow goes by it's like oh my god we
gotta get the shadow under control you
know those build baffles and let's make
yeah you know the shadows are like wiped
out engineered away so unfortunately we
weren't able to move too far into the
world we would like but what we did do
is that just on the other side of this
wall are the only natural light windows
so there's those big seating window that
you just saw with the garden that that's
all natural light coming in and it gets
stopped by this wall but what we did was
inside these coves we put all the
ambient light inside the cove that's
facing the same direction direction as
if it was natural light coming from the
same windows so in other words the
artificial light directionality is the
same as the natural light and it makes
you feel at least a little more
comfortable this was very hard to do we
had to design these these sine wave
shapes very carefully with engineers and
you can see the results here they also
use less can lights and less energy this
building uses 30% less energy than a
museum of it's the same size anywhere
else in the world I like this picture
it's funny I find that generally
speaking people with color go to color
things and people with black and white
go to black and white things I don't
know if that's true or not but sometimes
it is oh it's so hard to see this this
is actually the toilet in one of the
toilets we've got these amazing toilets
and when you walk into them there's it's
just a boring white door that has like a
picture of a woman or a man on it and so
people just kind of you know how you do
I'm tired I'm gonna open the door and
it's it's like this blast of color and
in this case it's red it's just extreme
and people kind of are taken aback but
they are the most heavily Instagram
toilets anywhere in the world so this is
a woman is she's actually wearing a
white dress and it just looks red and
everything you're bathed in color and I
know it's led me to believe that if we
could get everybody to spend ten more
minutes a day in the toilet the world
would be a better place I'm sure of it
it so it connects us to a kind of real
presence here's a view of the view of
the the facade it's inspired by the
topography in the landscape these are
very high technology facade panels there
are 800 panto 600 panels and every one
is unique they're sort of cementitious
panel with a very high engineered sort
of fiberglass material that it's sort of
like making a surfboard so it makes them
very very light and what's amazing is
that although all 600 panels are
absolutely unique it was cheaper to
build a panel like this than to use a
unitized repetitive system this is the
first time that we can say that in
contemporary industrial life and that's
because the robots involved so a robot
makes the shape out of foam here's the
foam and then the cementitious panel is
pressed over the the form that the robot
made and then that form is used to carry
the actual panel to the site to the
construction site the panel's lifted off
installed and then the the foam is
brought back to the factory and then
it's dumped into a machine which you
know misses it back to a new form new
mold and then the robot comes and makes
a new form robot doesn't care if it's
the same as the last it's the same to
the robot if it's different or this
so actually the cheaper the mold the
cheaper the construction the more
expensive the mold which means you can
do the same form multiple times without
reconstituting it cost more money so
amazing that all of these panels every
one is unique and they were all drawn
out and they were cheaper than like a
matte metal system of one of these
suppliers that you might see on display
in a AIA convention somewhere at night
they they actually reflect the ambient
light in a very beautiful way we just
opened this building it's the caves at
Lascaux in France the ancient caves that
were painted 20,000 years ago I realize
I've been talking a long time do you
want me to stop or I can okay it's only
a little bit left okay I'll go I'll get
continued we're almost near the end this
built is to recreate the presence of the
great caves at let's go painted by
Neolithic peoples over 20,000 years ago
the original caves are nearby here and
our site is here but these caves have
become decaying because of human
presence so people coming in and out
brought bacteria and humidity into these
caves
they're so destabilized now that they're
closed off permanently to human traffic
so nobody can go in there's only a few
people allowed any year and so as a
result the only way you can experience
these beautiful caves is to go to a
reconstruction they've been working on
the reconstruction for 50 years and
we've been working on this project for
about eight so we finally opened it a
few weeks ago the original idea is to
sort of take the natural landscape and
sort of slice it and then just gently
lift up the landscape so that you arrive
through these cuts in the ground we
wanted to make sure that everyone knew
that they were not going to the real
caves because I can't tell you how many
people have been to the other facsimile
that they made in the 1970s and I meet
them and they say I went to the original
caves it was amazing I don't have the
heart to tell them they were actually
fake so now we want people to know when
you go to these caves you're seeing
effect simile they're not the real ones
but you should have a great experience
anyway so the way it works is that as
you approach we built in the agrarian
landscape lifted up the ground and you
enter through this sort of arch and then
you
take an elevator up to the top the
elevator lets you out outside and you
walk towards the trees and the the
reconstructed caves are in the same
angle and same sort of character as the
original caves and then you re-enter the
building from the outside going into the
caves and then you walk through the
caves and then you exit again and I'll
show you what happens when you exit
here's the building in the context this
is a town called Mountain yak in
Bordeaux which is where let's go this is
the Lesko Hill here and there's our
project as you approach it in along the
sides you can climb up over the top of
it it sort of peels up out of the ground
and creates this sort of contemporary
cave like quality and we don't have a
lot of pictures of it because it really
it was only two weeks ago there that we
opened it about I think I snapped this
picture so the landscape still hasn't
grown in yet and at night of course in
the evening it starts to grow the
presence of the interior lobbies to the
exterior and as you walk under this
giant concrete form you really feel the
presence of the form of the building and
it's it's actually striated with
different finishes and so on that were
quite special that's up on the back of
it you can walk up on the top and get an
overlook the area so after you've taken
the elevator you go outside you come
into this passage it takes you along the
edge of the cliffs and once you go
through that you enter the cave so
there's a door that you have to walk
through and the cave itself is very
unusual this is a rendering we made it
an exact replica we had to model it in
every way we used the most of highest
technology scanner to scan the original
surface of the case the scan was so
strong that the the CNC devices couldn't
actually use the information so we had
to dumb it down like 30 fold in order to
make it and then we had on painters
working on the surfaces of it each area
is supported by a truss system that
holds this new cave new reconstructed
cave in place there's some amazing
features about it that I like to tell
people one of them is that of course the
original cave may 20,000 years ago does
not meet ata standards so we had to make
it wheelchair accessible it meant we had
to take the entire cave and lift it
three degrees so it would be of the
correct slow
and then in one area of the cave it gets
so narrow that a wheelchair wouldn't fit
through we needed to widen it but you
can't just widen a cave right it would
like so we had to actually take about 20
feet on either side and slowly gently
changed the area because you know all
the paintings on the surfaces every
painting is related to the contours of
the cave so you you can't just push it
out of the way 18 inches so it took a
lot of time to get that worked out so
this is the original shape and that's
the wheelchair-accessible shape and
there you can see the original angle and
then the wheelchair-accessible angle
there were a team of 30 painters 20
scientists all working as I say for 50
years on this reconstruction they're
actually made out of the same materials
the same elements they often painted in
the same light conditions as the
original painters sometimes they used
high technology to scan because some of
the paintings are so complex that you
couldn't possibly just look at a defect
simile and paint it there are two to
intents I know one knows how long it
took to paint these paintings it could
have taken ten thousand years thousands
of people or could have been done by a
one crazy person in their lifetime we'll
never know
and here's once you enter this is the
actual cave and they're just just
stunning I really can't tell you how
amazing these paintings are and the
people so long ago made them each piece
is beautifully integrated into the
surface of the of the walls they were
deep deep deep in the earth they had
only a four light animal fat so we the
reason we know and we actually lit these
in the way that they were lit when they
were made because they took animal fat
into the into the caves and they poured
it into little divots in the rock and
put a little wick in there made of grass
and that's how they got their light and
so we recreated those those positions
here's some of the detail of this thing
that's inside of our building it's
pretty special if you just look how
perfect the the nuances are of each of
these pieces and they this was done with
manganese just chalk on the wall and
things and so once you go through that
cave you enter out into this space back
into the light then you walk through
again back into the building so you know
that you're finished with that and we
actually have a big vestibule and what
to move through that vestibule there's a
number of educational things but most
importantly is we actually made two
caves so one cave is completely
reconstructed you walk through it nobody
tells you much you just go wow this is
unbelievable and then when you go into
the museum we made another whole cave
and we deconstruct it and pulled it all
apart and that's where you learn the
history in the art of the cave painters
themselves so you can see how we've
suspended these caves over the viewing
area and they're all suspended by cables
which go way up into a skylight so
that's actually natural light there and
the cable structures themselves are
hanging almost from the sunlight down on
to these structures and then we have
very little light down at the bottom so
they almost disappear and that's really
actually the way it looks there's also a
big kind of three-dimensional crazy
world where you can learn about
influences of cave art there's a lot of
other projects we have we're doing a
couple of libraries this is our biggest
project you'll probably hear about it
next year it's a 1.2 billion dollar
Cultural Center in Saudi Arabia there's
a library in Philadelphia a couple of
libraries we just made this little
treehouse hotel you might have seen it
in the news it's a hotel in Sweden where
every architect is gives in an area to
make a little treehouse so we made this
treehouse hotel so you can sign in to
the hotel and you get to stay in this
thing overnight and you go up there and
what we did was we went on to the site
before we made our project we looked up
into the sky where all these trees were
and we took a photograph of the site of
the sky before our building was built
and then we printed it on the bottom
side of the building so that now when
you stand under and look up you see what
it used to look like before we made our
building and there's a little net so
inside the hotel you can step outside on
this net and hang out around the tree
trunk as it penetrates directly through
the building and there you can see the
little net so there's those doors slide
open and you can walk around on this
thing and actually hang out in the trees
which is pretty cool the last few things
I'll show you only have two things left
we just opened a project in South Africa
for Desmond Tutu Archbishop Desmond Tutu
is sometimes referred to as the arch and
he's an amazing guy he's still alive and
he's got the most amazing sense of humor
and we are asked to make a commemorative
work for his life and the work of his
importance to the constitution of South
Africa which is under strain today as
many constitutions are around the world
on the site is located just near the
houses of parliament and it's a walkway
where people often move through through
Cape Town and that's what it sort of
looks like today there's the
Archbishop's original Archdiocese on the
right and the house of parliament on the
left and a couple of people selling
peanuts on the street we've created a an
arch that is made of wood and it has 14
strands of wood and the 14 strands of
would represent the 14 sentences in the
preamble of their constitution and the
14 chapters that represent the
Constitution text and body and they're
all strung together in this kind of
basket weave so they're all
self-supporting they don't really need a
structure to hold them in place because
it kind of like a basket we made a
mock-up so it's about a one-third scale
mock-up and we actually built the
mock-up on a stage in Cape Town South
Africa about a month ago and opened it
to Desmond Tutu and he made his first
public appearance in two years he's been
fighting cancer so he's very near near
death and he there he is there and we
made this mock-up as we're now building
the real thing it was great so when he
saw it first he looked at it and he has
his cane he's very weak what do you
think you know it's this abstract thing
and goes it's really great but I think
you have to work harder to get my nose
right that was good so we had about 59
59 choir and choir of 60 roughly there
to open it it was a great event have any
of you ever seen this it's a little
dolls house we made we actually made a
doll's house for kids to play with
generally young girls but also young
boys the idea was to get young people to
understand the value of design so you in
this doll's house you you reach into
this opening and you pull it apart and
once you pull it apart the top floor
opens differently than the bottom but
once you open it there's this whole
world in there of all we designed
everything we designed the wallpaper but
we bought some of the doll's house
furniture from a doll's house supplier
but not everything because we want to
the child to also have their own dolls
house furniture and that state didn't
you know everybody worked on it in the
whole office it was amazing and it
didn't all work out so like you can see
the staircase didn't actually touch the
ground that was an error in our drawings
stuff like that there was this amazing
tree when you opened it the trees sort
of just appeared in the living room of
the house there's the tree that would
don't suddenly appear in the in the main
room this is the vanity the for the
little dolls the front door in the back
door we designed all this stuff we even
designed a little mouse door and there's
a mousetrap and a little mouse right
there it was fantastic to work on
there's the mouse opening everybody
worked on it and what I found was that
architects lose sight of what reality is
so easily and when you were working on
this thing you were actually building
the real thing and so everyone just
committed so so heavily - I often say
this is our most expensive per square
foot project it's about $10,000 a square
foot because it's only like three square
feet so it was a great to see I'm going
to stop with last image we won a
competition about three years ago to
redesign the national currency of Norway
it's actually it was in print and now
it's being distributed next month so
when you go to Norway you'll start to
start to see some of this money it was a
really unusual thing to win it was part
of our graphic design work what we
designed was a set of money that is a
horizon of different views of the
landscape through across water in
different wind conditions so the higher
the value of the money the more wind the
more wind the harder it is to see what
you're looking at so lower here so the
great thing about this is that you could
take all this very unusual looking stuff
that's almost like artwork you could cut
it up and you could glue it all together
and you would get a work of art that was
exactly equal to the amount of money you
just cut up to make your work of art and
so we can all give the art to the masses
everybody has that possibility because
money doesn't have a lot of value
anymore at least it has a value in terms
of its aesthetic properties so thank you
very much for for sitting in and it's so
long and listening
I don't know maybe their lights come up
or something about fish boils or anybody
want to ask a couple of quick questions
one or two before we leave like where's
the toilet where's the beer can I get
out of here stuff like that anything
real quick not used to Knoxville asking
questions alright well I guess that's it
thanks a lot and have a great day and
maybe I'll see you all later
great
