Hello, everyone.
Good evening.
It is a huge pleasure for me
to welcome Charles Jencks, who
I admire greatly, both as
a colleague and as a friend
to the GSD.
Charles is a true polymath.
Introducing him is
not an easy task,
because he has made so many
different contributions
to architecture
during his career.
So let me start on a
more personal note.
Charles is one of the most
generous colleagues I know.
Generous, because he cares to
enter into debate with people
that he disagrees with as
well as he agrees with.
We all know it's easy, when
we hear an opinion that we
don't agree with, not to
contribute to the conversation.
In academia, we hear
a lot of presentations
and, I think, not
often enough debates.
Charles has always
struck me as someone
who is willing, when he has an
strong opinion about a subject,
to share it.
Because he knows it's OK
not to agree with everyone.
I share with him a
number of subjects
that are dear to me, the use of
history, ornament, form, style,
the discipline.
But we also disagree
on them too.
Our conversations can be
combative but collegial,
unlike the current
presidential debates.
I treasure my debates with him.
They are informative,
expand my own perspective
as an architect.
And I think they are good for
the architectural culture.
Because they treat subjects
of personal investigations
not as private territory
but as subjects
that belong to everyone.
And they should be interrogated,
debated, disagreed upon.
They're also incredibly fun.
Charles is a distinguished
theorist and a prolific author
who has written highly
influential books
on the history and
criticism of architecture
after modernism, in which he
has been a protagonist of change
in the direction of architecture
by continually attempting
to reach a synthesis
of seemingly opposing
architectural practices and
defining a trend amongst them.
The most famous example
of this, perhaps,
can be found in his seminal book
The Language of Post-Modernism,
in which he defined and promoted
the idea of postmodernism
and, as an umbrella condition,
embracing works as differently
as Venturi, Scott
Brown, Rossi, Stirling,
Hollein as an antidote
to the universalizing
tendencies of modernism.
This is because, central to
Charles's ongoing commitment
is the refusal to
reduce architecture
to a single mode of
expression and his belief--
and I'm quoting him now-- "it
is the historian's obligation
to search for the plurality
of creative movements."
His book of essays titled
Meaning in Architecture;
his tantalizing diagrams,
such as the ones supporting
his book Architecture
2000; the evolutionary tree
in The Language
of Postmodernism;
his later books, Architecture
of the Jumping Universe
and Critical Modernism
all embrace architecture
in this pluralistic
way, as a way
to argue for a multiplicity
of meanings in architecture
at any one point in time.
His preoccupation with
contemporary architecture's
ability to relate to people in
a meaningful way is one I share.
What does the huge diversity
of coexisting stars mean?
How do people
perceive that meaning?
What is it politically
capable of?
These are some of the
questions that him and I have
debated just over a year ago
at the Design Museum in London.
Whereas, I think
the agency of style
is to ground a static
experience of buildings
in the micropolitics
of everyday life,
Charles thinks style is
relevant as a visual code
to convey metaphors that
address the issues of our time.
In other words, I
think of style as a way
of making intentional
choices about how buildings
are arranged, to move
their experience away
from the present drive to
similarity and recognition,
to open up the possibility
for new types of action.
And I would say,
Charles thinks of it
as a tool to help
people to understand
the world as we know it.
Charles' provocation, at
a time in global culture
when some architects--
including myself--
are skeptical about a building's
ability to convey meanings
is that architecture is
legible and that the task
of the architect is to design
buildings that people can read,
just as they do with
language or literature.
This reminds me of Richard
Rogers' lecture two nights ago.
When describing his proposal for
the extension to the National
Gallery, he said
that the building was
designed to be read by people.
But of course, by
that, he meant reading
the parts of the building
relative to the uses
internal to the building.
Charles speaks of people
reading associations
external to a piece of
architecture, which reminds
me of Panofsky's iconology.
Except that Panofsky's
iconology was
a method of an analysis
for the art historian,
not the ordinary users
who perhaps, I would say,
lack the shared image
memories that Charles
proposes as an ultimate source
of shared meaning today.
But Charles and I agree a
lot more on the question
of meaning than he may admit.
I cannot think of a more
powerful evidence of this than
the remarkable Maggie's Centres,
a new type of building that
Charles and his late wife
Maggie invented in 1995 to act
as a home away from home for
cancer sufferers all over
the UK.
Now, ever since, Charles has
commissioned Maggie's Centres
to great architects to design.
And this is where I think
that him and I agree entirely
that architecture
carries significance,
not through familiar
associations,
but by being different
and inspirational.
After all, if he
didn't think so,
he would not ask Zaha Hadid,
Frank Gehry, and Richard Rogers
to design the Maggie's but
the local architects, who
would be far more versed on
familiar and shared motifs.
Charles has also designed
great landscapes and gardens
across the UK.
They belong to a lineage of
landscape design culture that
stretches between the history
of British Isles' Bronze
Age, earthworks, through
to English garden history.
They are sensual, bold,
and-- even for those
without the knowledge
of an understanding
of physics-- truly beautiful.
He has also created the Charles
Jencks Prize for Architecture,
a platform for architects
simultaneously devoted
to theory and practice
of architecture.
I feel honored to
have been one of those
who received it in 2005.
His passion and enthusiasm for
the relevance of architecture
in the world we live in today
is obviously infectious,
because his daughter
and son have
become landscape architects.
I hope you agree that
no one else before has
made so many different
contributions to architecture
as Charles Jencks and
are as excited as me
at having him here
tonight to speak
to us about his current
architectural preoccupations.
Please, welcome Charles Jencks.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much, Farshid.
We don't really disagree.
But it's fun to try.
That was very kind of you.
And thank you.
And thank you, [INAUDIBLE],
and all of you at Harvard.
I spent eight happy years here.
That's more than usually
students spend at Harvard.
And I have many friends
who have come tonight
who I haven't seen
for a long time,
and my family who are here too.
So it's a particular
happy moment to be back.
Especially my great
friends who taught
me everything I know about
physics, Gerald Holton and Nina
his wife.
And anything I might say tonight
about physics that I get wrong,
it's not his fault, I
don't think, but mine.
He taught at Harvard, physics.
And his famous book
Holton Enroller--
that's how they describe the
book, "Holton Enroller," not
the name, The History of
Physics and How Physics Works.
Anyway, thank you
all for inviting me.
So I'm going to speak
on the architecture
of the multiverse, which
is a controversial concept
in physics.
And it's a strange
one to talk about.
And it's, of course, a
metaphor, like the architecture
of the universe would be or
the architecture of nature
was in 1900, or
the art of nature.
As if nature, the cosmos,
and the multiverse
had intentionality
and was an architect.
Of course, this is
a very old idea.
Plato said that God
was the great architect
of all things, an idea
that has recommended itself
to architects for the
last 3,000 years or 2,000.
And Bucky Fuller called
architects of the universe
a universal practice.
So the equation has been
around, what am I going to say?
And I have a particular
take on it in my work.
And I'll be going
rather like a sketch
I'm going to give you tonight,
not in deep theory for Michael
Hayes.
I won't be giving
you the hard problem.
I'll be giving you
the easy overview.
Because it's a sketch.
In an hour, you
can't dig too deep.
But I'll say a few words
by way of introduction
about this jumping around.
First of all, my work,
as Farshid has said,
comes from the problem of
meaning in architecture.
And I would argue, it's
not only associations,
which she's been mentioning, but
the performative, the haptic,
the feeling, all of that.
And we live in a curious time
today of the iconic building,
when we have iconic buildings
without any understanding
of iconology or, as Panofsky
also said, iconography.
That is, the conventional signs.
What should a
building look like?
In what style should we build?
What image should it convey?
How should the
public relate to it?
These are all the
kind of meanings
I'm going to be
dealing with tonight
in the age of the
iconic building
or the age, also, of the
billion dollar building.
Which creates a real
crisis in architecture.
Because with a billion
dollars-- my argument
is that it's becoming
the new norm.
The new normal is $1 billion.
Because you can't make a billion
dollar building disappear.
Not even in New York
City can Donald Trump
hide billion dollar buildings.
If you're going to spend
$1 billion on a building,
you must take responsibility
for its meaning
on all these levels, on
all the different levels.
And there's a real crisis
when society, the client,
and the architect-- three
of the most important people
in negotiating what
those meanings are--
are more or less confused
as to public meaning.
And it's contested,
politically, socially,
economically, and so forth.
So I think what I'm going to
say responds to that crisis
in a way different maybe than
architects normally engage.
But I think they did
engage with the subject
matter of architecture
in the past in ways
that I'll be speaking about.
So that, by way of introduction,
to my quick sketch.
My old teacher here,
Sigfried Giedion,
had, in one of his
books on architecture
and the eternal present
and Egyptian architecture
particularly, showed
this amazing drawing
of the beginnings of stone
architecture of Djoser
in about 2800 BC.
And it shows the pharaoh, or the
king, sitting as an astronaut,
sitting back tilted
at 20 degrees,
looking through a
hole in his serdab
at the Northern Star,
the unmoved mover.
Because that was the only
thing in the universe
that everything rotated around.
And this is a code
of architecture,
a conventional code,
an iconic code.
And it told you how to build
the next 400 to 500 years
of pyramids, all of which
have these little astronaut
holes designed to see
the unmoved mover.
And their iconography was
greater than that of course.
But it's interesting
that there he
sits, at this mission-control,
like an astronaut about to be
launched into outer-space.
So the idea then of nature
and the universe, the cosmos,
has been around.
Oops, excuse me.
And Vitruvius and,
later, Vitruvian books
which illustrate him,
always go into the analogy
between the body and the
underlying proportions.
And in the first
book, he discusses
how the human evolved,
first in small groups
and then with fire and
then with language and then
with architecture and so forth.
And he shows the natural
conditions of architecture
growing that way.
And the ninth book of Vitruvius
is devoted to timepieces,
astronomy-- astronomy?--
astrophysics, and zodiacs.
The second book, I
just illustrate--
or these are Renaissance
illustrations
from the second book-- where he
tells you how to get the job.
The most important
theory in architecture
is how to get the job,
the first most important,
which he tells you about.
And the second most
important is how
to keep the job
after you've got it.
Anyway, you may
remember this little--
he was supposed to be
a very boring writer.
And so, to spruce
up his 10 books,
he has these little
introductions
where he shows-- he tells
the story of Dinocrates,
Roman architect
who needed the job
and who exercised hard-- good
body-- and oiled his body.
Came almost nude.
Put on a leopard skin.
And walked down to meet the
king, the Emperor Alexander,
and sat next to him.
And of course, in
a stadium, a man
with an oiled body and a leopard
skin looks rather unusual.
And so, the emperor says, hello.
And he says, hello.
I'm the architect.
And I want to design
your building for you.
In fact, I want to design
a whole city for you.
I want to design a city
in your shape, Alexandria.
And Alexander said,
what a good idea.
But how would you plumb it?
How would you get the water
to flow the right way?
Ah, well, I can do that too.
The water flows down.
Well, how can you get
the fields to work?
The corn to grow?
Well, I can do that too.
And you see, it's all here.
And of course, Alexander said,
well, it is a great idea.
I think I'll just ask
one of my advisors.
And they said, hey, forget it.
It doesn't work.
But the point of the story-- so
then, he says, I'm an ugly man,
So I don't get jobs.
But the story of Dinocrates
is that the emperor never
forgot him.
And so, when Alexandria
came to be designed,
guess who designed it?
He got on the telephone.
And that's the moral.
So in an age pre-bling, this
is the age before the billion
dollar building-- I'm
telling you this story partly
to tell you that the
architectural profession has
faced it again and
again and again.
How do you deal with big money?
The 1%?
The problem of symbolism?
Getting the job, keeping
it, and all the rest of it?
It's an old problem.
Read Vitruvius.
Now, another cosmic
precedent for what I'm saying
is, of course, [? Ledieu, ?]
in his show, La Show, he
illustrates.
Again, analogy is so important
in architectural meaning
for architects to communicate
with themselves through art
and through metaphor and through
story and through narrative.
All of those things inspire
the architect, as well as
their audience.
And of course, that's
very true of [? Ledieu. ?]
And so, with this
five or six drawings,
which Fiddlers
show are analogies,
this one-- if it's
the cemetery of Show
has that little phrase,
architect, architecture,
the architect is up
among the clouds, which
roil in termunctuous
turbulences,
vying with each other.
That's where
architecture exists.
That's architecture.
The planets.
And what does he show?
The Earth and of course
planets around it
and Saturn up there, if you
just look off, and then,
the sun below.
It's a very dramatic drawing.
And his words are very dramatic.
And that's why,
in the famous book
from [? Ledieu ?] to Corbusier
is an unbroken series
of thoughts on this theme.
And, excuse me.
Trained at Harvard
of course, I became
completely immersed in
Le Corbusier in every way
and particularly his
cosmic writings, of which
follow him for 50 or 60 years.
And this early postmodern
building of his,
Romchamp, which
is multiply coded,
the first iconic building of
Romchamp, along with the Sydney
Opera House, which
you can decode
both explicitly and implicitly
in all sorts of ways.
Here are five implicit
metaphors which
map one-to-one in certain
ways, some of which
are appropriate to the
job, praying hands,
or the nuns cowl.
You can see the shell.
The drawing is
rather literalist.
A ship-- there's a lot of
ship in all of Le Corbusier.
And Venturi's duck,
before the fact.
And what the monks who
took me around would say,
the metaphor that they saw in
it-- so this was, if you like,
an esoteric code.
But once they had told me
about it, I understood.
It was a happy
mother smiling here,
embracing her son and daughter.
In other words, the
anthropomorphic form.
So Corb, of course, is a
painter and a sculptor.
He multiply coded his buildings.
And a lot of these meanings
he talked about a lot,
he wouldn't talk about.
Now, the cosmos as an artist,
the universe as an artist,
before the multiverse
as an artist,
is again an old
idea, of prehistory,
of Plato, of others.
And these shots of Hubble--
this is 2015 version
of a 1995, the most famous
Hubble photograph which
revealed the origin of
a lot of stars in 1995
and became a photographic
record-- with corrected
color, of course-- of what's
really happening very close us.
Oops, sorry.
I better go back here.
It's called the Eagle Nebula.
This view of it doesn't show
it is an eagle metaphor.
But you can see that.
It's called, also, in another
metaphor-- maybe more known--
is called the
Pillars of Creation.
Pillars-- an
architectural metaphor.
Columns of uprising dust
and gas, exploding up.
And it's interesting,
the 15-year difference
in photographs-- or more-- 1993
to 2050, things have moved on.
And these stars have
emerged, and blown away
the gas and dust-- this
is a lot of gas and dust.
And more stars are emerging.
So it is creation of stars--
10,000 stars-- right in front
of us, right on our doorstep.
And it is a form of art.
It's photographic art.
And it's very moving.
So the universe is an
artist in many ways.
For you could say, well,
is the universe conscious?
Well, that's debatable.
But if you look at these great
satellite images, they are art.
And they have great
interest for me
particularly to
translate the universe
into a universal language.
The units of the
universe are what
I pursue in the age of
the iconic building.
What's going to last
for the next eternity?
That is, the next
13.82 billion years.
Because we know, sons die
after maybe 10 billion years.
But they're pretty eternal.
Atoms may live for
40 billion years.
So if you're going
to design an icon
and spend $1 billion
dollars, then you
need to know what
it should be about.
Well, so eternity
is a good idea.
Maybe.
You don't have to accept that.
But what's so
interesting about looking
at the universe as
a creative artist
is how dynamic the sun
in satellite images.
All the time, it's
like that drawing
of [? Ledieu, ?]
roiling and turbulent,
these tumultuous electromagnetic
storms, which send out
very positive things
like heat and light
that is photons
and photosynthesis.
So I'll come into this
later in iconology.
But basically, for
us, the sun has been
worshipped since the Egyptians.
And Apollo, the sun god-- god
of reason, the god of war,
Roman god, always a man.
Sol Invictus-- the victory
sun, sun as a man, victory.
And the Christians, Constantine
always fought with the sun
to his back, so it
blinded his enemies.
And of course, he changed
his solar symbolism to Christ
in the great battle.
And so, the symbol of the sun
became Christ for another 1,000
years, until Louis XIV took
it over and branded everything
in his empire with a stamp
of the sun, god, himself,
and a phrase.
So like Ford Motor Company
or any big multinational,
he had a logo and a motto.
And it hammered in the meaning.
You can see it all
over everything he did.
So he was the
first great brander
of the near-contemporary age.
Anyway, you have to
criticize the symbols that
come down to you.
And so, my work is
a critical work.
And there are not aspects
of this very benign sun
which are vicious and killers.
In other words, these flares,
these solar moments when
the electromagnetic storm
comes out and closes down
the Canadian area from Montreal
to Toronto to Quebec in 1988,
I think it was.
But it did it in 1930.
So this is killer storms.
And they may have
killed the life on Mars,
because Mars is electromagnetic.
Things shifted.
So all of this is very dramatic,
very much alive, very present,
and very much of our time, the
great golden age of cosmology.
Now, my work, as land
forms and landscape,
was inspired by this
part of Scotland
near where I live sometime.
And it's inspired me with,
of course, it's haptic,
it's bodily presence.
You drive through it in the late
afternoon sun in the summer.
And a metaphor pops out at
you, which the Chinese had,
which my late wife Maggie
first told me about.
The idea that a good garden is
a metaphor of rocks and water
or, as they said, the bones
of the earth, the bones
of the earth and the arteries.
The water-- you can
probably not see it here.
They are bones and
water, rocks and water,
and skin, which is pulled
tight in the summer sun.
So all of those
are bodily images,
which are natural to us.
You don't have to
understand Chinese gardens
to appreciate them.
And they show nature
as the artist.
Again, this metaphor,
which is a 19th century
one, which comes
out of photographers
who go to the Grand
Canyon and say,
I am going to photograph nature
without any editorial comment.
I'm just going to show nature.
Because I am alive.
I am a piece of nature.
I am the eye of nature.
I am nature taking
a picture of itself.
So that the idea of the
universe as an artist
and the nature as an
artist is an old metaphor.
And if you don't believe
it, look at the bowerbird.
Because the bowerbird
is not a human being.
And it constructs a building.
There's the male bowerbird.
And it constructs it
out of wattle and daub
and a lot of other material it
finds on the side, some of it
blue bottle tops and
other blue flowers
and then different
kinds of berries.
And all of that is to create
a garden and a house, a house
and garden, in order to get
a mate, to get the bird,
according to the bad pun.
So it's architecture, isn't it?
And it's by nature, right?
You can say that-- and it's
a kind of cultural form,
isn't it?
So it shows what a
lot of ethologists
are showing today, the
continuity between us
and the rest of
the natural world.
So our tradition in the West
takes this metaphor of Plato,
great god, the great
architect of all things,
a man laying out the universe,
earth, air, water, and fire.
By the way, water
is a fractal there.
But most of the
classical architecture--
this is a Gothic god of the 13th
century of a moralized Bible.
It's a Bible page.
He's stepping out of the
Bible to show his omniscience.
He makes the laws as
well as the forms.
And He makes it as an architect.
He's not a builder.
And He makes it beautifully.
And He makes it with geometry.
And He makes it
according to a narrative.
So that's one of the deep codes
of architecture in our culture.
And opposed to that, or not
may be opposed, but parallel
to that in a
parallel universe, is
the 2003-- but the 1992 maps
of the universe, as first seen.
This is 2003.
I operated on it.
Those crosses and knots
and so are my operation.
There is the Milky Way.
And there's the eye
of the universe.
But the point is--
I'm showing it here--
is that our golden
age of cosmology
gives us different iconography
and a different set
of understandings
than we inherit.
And it's changing.
And it's dynamic.
And it is a kind of golden age.
So architecture has to respond
to that and speculate on it.
And I do that with
artists and scientists
and friends and philosophers
and people on the street
and so forth.
In other words, it's
multiply-coded, all my work.
And some of it is asked for
to be explicitly an icon.
And this was one
of the ones I was
asked to design by Matthew
Ridley, the scientist himself.
He's written on the gene.
And he has a place near
a highly-traveled road.
And he said, I
want you to design
an icon that can be seen
from the road, which
is a gateway to the
north of England.
And so, I thought, what is
worthy of being an icon?
What do we respond to the most?
And of course, as the
painter Brock said,
the most important thing for
one human being is-- obvious
point-- a face of
another person.
So the face is the
most important thing.
We have more neurons in us to
recognize other people's faces.
And naturally, we respond
to people's faces.
Because we are human.
So it became a face and then
a body and then a woman,
then a woman of the north
and a lady of the north.
And then, she was called
lots of other things, which
were not too pleasant.
But she is very big.
And she's a mediation
of a coalfield
back here where they
were digging the coal.
She was called
"Restoration First."
Because they restored the site
to keep the local inhabitants
from being overwhelmed
by the dust and pollution
and so forth of the digging
of an open-cast mine.
30 or 40 big, big vehicles go
there and dig out the coal.
Anyway, iconographically,
she is of course a woman.
I had designed a man
she was cupping here.
But he was lost.
And part of what I'm
trying to say tonight
is, the problem of fighting for
meaning-- often, the client,
society, and other architects
may not agree with you.
And you have to fight
a lot of the way.
Anyway, so she's 2/5 of
a mile from toe to head.
And it's two miles of paths.
And for most of the area-- you
come into the forest here--
you see her hair.
My problem was to get everybody
to walk the mile or two miles
to end in her forehead.
So I adopted a symbolic program.
So it goes 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
And each area is
codified and refers
to things in the far distant
landscape, views that you see.
So she's outward looking,
until you reach the 10th point
at the top, which is the
goal, which is about 100,
120 feet up in the air.
It's the high point
and the goal point
of this walk through 10 stages.
So it's an explicit
symbolic program.
But it's full of
illusion, rather than
only explicit signs.
And it's interesting
that a photographer
spent a lot of time
there without asking
me or me telling him anything.
And he spent a
whole night when it
was very cold photographing it.
Here, reflected in
the water, the profile
of the woman and
her body, rotating
around the north
point, that point
that Djoser and his architect,
Imhotep, wanted to symbolize,
the unmoved northern star.
So there's stage 1, which is
a series of different faces--
eyes, nose, mouth, and
interlocking faces.
And you can see people
running around it.
And it ends in point 10--
that's the culmination
point-- and points
at the universe
and the eye of the
universe and even
says, "eye of the
universe," in case
you're wondering what that
eye is and what this is.
And it says, 10.
So you follow the bouncing ball.
So you go 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9 to 10.
And it points up, straight up.
It's a hand made out
of resin and concrete.
Well, a young man-- I
guess it was a young man--
didn't like my iconography.
And he took a sledgehammer to
it and broke it in many pieces.
But he left-- and I'm
hypothesizing here,
because he never
declared himself.
But I reckon he was 18 to
22, the angry young man.
And he smashed it.
But he left it,
right by the head.
So I picked it up.
And I paid for it.
And I had it redone.
My client didn't
really like this.
He said, I don't want sculpture.
Don't do that.
I said, well, look.
I don't want to be censored.
This is the meaning.
The 10th is pointing
to the universe.
And actually, to the sun.
You see the sun there?
And there's a
little earth there.
And it says, 93
million miles away.
It tells you how
to get to the sun.
Anyway, so censorship by
terrorism or by breakage,
by vandalism-- and so,
well, three months later,
we repaired it.
It was broken.
I repaired it a third time.
It was broken.
I repaired it a fourth time.
It was broken.
I repaired it a fifth time.
And so, I called Matt Ridley.
I said, look, Matt.
Will you pay for
half of this repair?
I want to do it in steel and
bronze, so he can't break it.
And Matt said, no, I
don't like sculpture.
Anyway, so I paid for it.
And it's still there.
So go and see it.
And the point I'm
telling you this--
it's not only the conflict
in codes and in meaning,
but also what's
called, in landscape,
the law of decreasing vandalism.
And they found--
there is this law
that if you plant some
trees for let's say
people who-- young men
don't like the trees
and don't like the idea.
Anyway, vandalize it.
If you keep-- and they vandalize
it-- and you replant it.
They vandalize it.
The third time you plant it,
they stop vandalizing it.
Because they say, oh,
people must care about us.
They want to-- and
they sort of give up.
Well, that's the theory of
decreasing vandalism anyway.
So symbolism-- now,
billion dollar buildings.
I think my feeling is
that they start in about
1992 with the Getty Museum.
And a lot of the age
of the iconic building
does start there too.
And I don't know if you
know the story of this.
Richard Meier, a
very good architect,
but a white architect in the
whites, one of the whites,
was asked, design this
building on various principles
of abstraction, like that
this is 405 coming down here
and the shifted axis.
So it's full of
esoteric shifted axes.
You wouldn't know that
unless I told you.
But believe me,
they are shifting.
And of course, it's in a
code of an Italian hill town.
And like Peter Eisenman
is building in Santiago,
another billion
dollar building, it
is formally very interesting.
But Meier won the competition
against Jim Stirling and others
and with the idea
that he wouldn't do
another white washing machine.
That's a metaphor
of the client, who
I happened to be talking with.
And Richard said, yes.
I won't do a white
washing machine.
I won't do a white building.
I promise.
So what did he produce?
$1 billion worth of off-white.
[LAUGHTER]
Anyway, he doesn't
see it as white.
But the Getty Museum does.
Anyway, it's in a code.
It is one architect's language
at a billion dollar scale.
And this is what I mean.
You can't hide the fact of
the lack of meaning here.
It won't go away.
And this is a $10
billion development
in Las Vegas, designed by Norman
Foster, Cesar Pelli, and Danny
Libeskind, the Crystal
Shopping Center.
And I can't remember if
Norman backed out finally.
I know there was trouble
and angry recriminations.
So I'm not sure he built much.
And I don't know how
much Cesar built.
But you can see what's happened
to Daniel's crystal metaphor
by Gucci.
And the $10 billion--
bigness is a problem which
Rem has not fully addressed.
Anyway, too much.
And it's gone broke twice.
It's a problem socially.
It's a problem architecturally,
economically, socially.
And our new embassy, the
American embassy in London,
is another billion
dollar building,
which has a kind of nice
alibi of being sustainable,
at least on the facade.
And it's an understated
moat around it
to keep anybody from
getting close to it,
obviously for
reasons we all know.
Anyway, for $1 billion
dollars, again,
it's really sad that the meaning
of this glass dumb box is
there, symbolizing
American I-don't-know-what.
Now, the iconic building
has produced great work
and interesting work.
This is one of the great
skyscrapers you all
know very well by Norman
Foster, so I won't speak on it,
just to show that is the
iconic building which
has all sorts of feelings and
overtones and performances.
It runs on vegetable oil, so
it's a very green building.
And it's called the Gherkin.
But you will admit that it has
a very non-mappable relation
to a pickle.
It really doesn't
look like a gherkin,
if you put a gherkin
on the screen.
And they call it a gherkin,
the taxi drives, everybody
in Britain-- from
Oscar Wilde on--
calls it a gherkin
in order not to say
what it looks like to them.
Because in polite
company, you're not
supposed to say those things.
But if you analyze it
as a multiple metaphor--
and these are Madelon
Vriesndorp's draw--
when I was writing The
Iconic Building, the power
of paranoia, paranoia-- remember
that the Eiffel Tower was hated
for 20 years before
it was accepted
and then another
five years before it
was liked and then another
five years before it was loved
by the modernists
and then five years--
it became the symbol of
Paris and then of France
and modernism and
the whole work.
So from hatred to total love
is the power of paranoia.
And if you're an
iconic architect,
you should ask yourself,
is my building hated enough
to be loved later?
It's a hard one.
But this is a paranoid
building in the after 9/11.
It is necessarily military,
a screw, and a bomb--
you know, after 9/11.
So I did this collage.
And the publisher
said, no, thanks.
We don't want to sell it
under military hardware.
Try again, Charles.
Anyway, there you see three
more and three more again.
Madelon Vriesendorp added her
interpretations of a brain.
I think, rather
interesting a [INAUDIBLE].
My interpretation of the
Fibonacci Series in Nature
was what I was arguing about,
as a cosmic skyscraper.
But what we ended up with--
something of the Cape Kennedy,
Cape Canaveral launch pad.
And you can see, I
changed "paranoia"
to "enigma," because
my argument was
that, in the age of
the iconic building,
it is the enigma
which has become
the conventional sign of
the icon, as conventional
as-- the monument had
crosses and steeples.
The enigma-- since de
Chirico said in 1913
when he was asked
what he painted,
he said, I paint the enigma.
And it's a long argument.
But I think the enigma has
arrived in architecture
as the multiple coding of
metaphors and one-liners
into multiple liners.
And that's a very
positive thing,
especially with
most of them related
to nature or the cosmos.
So you see [? Rorschach ?]
and some of those and Bilbao,
of course, ushering in
the iconic age or our age;
and then Crystals of Rem;
and Coop Himmelb(l)au;
and Scottish Parliament;
and then Foster; and then,
the Bird's Nest.
Well, the Bird's Nest was
a self-conscious, explicit,
argued-for metaphor that
Herzog and de Meuran worked out
with Ai Weiwei.
And it won the competition
for that building,
a great building for the
2008 Chinese Olympics,
or Beijing Olympics
I should say.
So sometimes architects
are straightforward
and will publicly talk
about their public meaning.
And I show you just two
different takes on this.
Because I want-- I'm not arguing
that the cosmic meanings are
the most all important,
because I think social meanings
are as important.
And in our little-- I
call these little icons,
the little iconic buildings.
At least half of them are
little icons, especially Frank
Gehry's, which you see here.
This with this kind
of lighthouse tower,
this squat tower, and looking
out across the river Tay,
towards the distant mountains.
Just on the edge of the
hospital-- a mass big hospital
here-- with a wonderful
garden in the shape of a maze,
the metaphor of the
journey of cancer
being like a maze-- you
know, trying to figure out--
and Frank doing an
understated building here,
a kind of bungaloid
building here
with this funny rapped roof.
So immediately-- and this was
just after Bilbao, by the way.
And no one could figure out why
Gehry was designing buildings
so small after Bilbao.
Anyway, he did.
He was engaged by the
program by Maggie,
who was a great friend, and me.
And I'm also a great
friend of Frank.
Anyway, it's the cancer
program and the service
that goes on here,
which inspires
many architects to produce
really top buildings.
Among them, Richard
Rogers' and Ivan Harbor's
building for us, where
the icon is, in many ways,
a mixture of a kind of
internalizing and embracing,
orange, pulsating,
lively building,
as opposed to a white hospital.
It's next to one, a
mass big hospital.
And with a very nice
curvilinear garden in front,
designed by a good
garden designer.
And it embraces you on a spiral
path and recalls, let's say,
the Chinese orange-red as a form
of life, of the chi, of energy.
It does that very well.
It's a little icon with a
pavilion with a flying roof.
It's incredibly uplifting
and warm and inviting.
So meaning is multiple.
I'm not saying it
all has to be cosmic.
But I'm saying, the cosmic
meaning is what interests me.
And working out an
iconology is what
I've been doing for the
last 30 or 40 years.
And when CERN asked me
to design the center,
I tried to persuade
them to build
an area around their dome.
And I worked on an iconology
which they really liked.
But it was based on collisions.
Oops, sorry.
There's a picture of it.
I keep getting this wrong.
The collisions are like
their eye or their telescope
or their microscope.
They take two
protons, collide them,
and then they read what the
universe might have been back,
like, at the beginning of time.
And that's why, taking this
iconic picture of the man
himself, of Einstein's theories,
and putting Le Corbusier's
glasses on him and
his eye here is
how I designed, with my daughter
Lily-- we work together--
these landforms and the whole
program, based on collisions,
and asking the question, how
does the very small quantum
relate to the very big
universe as a whole?
Well, that's the program.
And that's the design
from the quantum,
the story of the universe, to
the present, and the very big.
And of course, we don't know.
These are questions.
We don't have the answer.
But it is the big question.
So the question marks that
you can inhabit and work
it, the cosmic rings.
Now, working with scientists is
really an interesting project.
And I've done that
over many years.
I worked with Jim Watson on
five or six different DNAs.
Ones here.
Here's Jim.
And I work against
Richard Dawkins.
So my idea I don't have time
to go into is double design.
It's a whole idea that
you have to get yourself
into the science as it's
understood and get through it
to create feelings and
metaphors which are
different than Selfish Gene.
Of course, Richard Dawkins--
very good writer and, in a way,
a very good man-- has--
[LAUGHTER]
--thrived-- well, he is a good
man, difficult, very difficult
man.
But he believes-- well, maybe
belief is too strong a word.
Anyway, he thinks that
the Selfish Gene is
a good description of genetics.
Well, it's as good as
the altruistic gene.
In other words, both selfish
and altruistic and neutral
are the way genes really work.
But he became the
scientist in charge
of the public understanding of
science for the British, right?
And he was given $1
million dollars by Gates
for his selfish genes,
selfish theories.
And of course, he denied
that he was saying anything
about selfishness.
He denied that he
was a Thatcherite.
But actually, the
young-- and this metaphor
became really odious
and pervade a feeling
of a lot of novelists,
like Martin Amos who said,
selfish gene, most
important m in his reading.
Anyway-- so my work is
a critique, an attack.
It is the landscape designer,
no longer alive, Ian Hamilton
Finley, who described a
garden not just as a retreat
but an attack.
And he did some really
interesting work
with gardens in that manner.
So my attack on the Selfish Gene
is to show, in this flying--
as it flies through the
cosmos-- the six cells.
The center of every cell is DNA.
This is the difference
between science teaching
in the universities
and the way I work,
which is to try to look for
metaphors and expressive
elements.
And you have to understand
how it works it to a degree
in order to map, say, the way
the DNA, A, C, T, G, and all
of that are pulled together
by the hydrogen bond;
how they come out.
I won't bore you
with all that stuff.
But it's essential
that you understand
what the science is saying,
in order to go beyond it.
And so, in designing
it, those six cells all
have a DNA of a different
type in their center.
And I used plants and walkways
and so forth to tell the story.
So it's a narrative, right
down to some of the details.
The five Aristotelian senses--
taste, smell-- are all there.
And the sixth sense is
called the female sense,
the sense of anticipation, the
sense of intuition, the sense
that you can feel the future.
And so, here was a sculpture,
which shows a woman.
She's bouncing on a
spring, a car spring.
And she has her
fingers in the air
here, picking up
the vibrations, just
as the plant, love in a
mist, vibrates all the time.
Because a garden is a sensorium
where the six senses make you
in touch with nature.
So she's looking-- her
mind and her eyes--
are looking at her brain.
And what happens is a
receptor picks up a signal,
goes into a part of the
brain, and she reads it.
And she says, is that illusion?
Or is it real?
So she's bouncing away.
Anyway, Gerald Holton, who's
in the audience tonight
told me once-- because I
don't speak any German.
Now, I only speak one word.
He said, Einstein
said, a good scientist
has to feel what is the next
thing, what is going on here,
before he knows or she knows
what's going to happen.
And he said, the word
was, [GERMAN], a sensation
at the end of your
fingertips of what it's
going to be before you
know it it's going to be.
So anyway, that.
I was extremely happy, that
one word of German I know.
I think I know.
I think I pronounced
it right, Gerald?
Yes.
OK, thank you.
Now, to go back to conflict.
I've designed parks in different
places and one in Milan
with a man who didn't
speak much English.
And I don't speak any Italian.
So we didn't converse much.
But it was for a
Alfa Romeo plant,
which had polluted the site.
And Marco Bernelli called me in.
So I said, well,
Marco, here's my design
geometrically, a school here,
a big area, a hospital here.
So pulling together the site
and a small garden of scent--
but a symbolic program
of, in this case,
prehistory in Milan--
history, of course, Leonardo
and the great Renaissance--
and the present,
that is DNA and
so a double helix,
all those different
ideas and meanings.
Anyway, built it
over many years.
It's taken 15, 20 years.
And more or less,
most of it-- when
I won that struggle--
was built as I had hoped.
And this is the
prehistory of mound.
And you're looking over
the DNA area there.
And I wanted the sun,
as in prehistory,
to bounce along the tops of
these beautiful stones-- this
is nature's art-- bounce
along as they do in
June 21, as the sun rises in
the east, which is over there,
and sets in the west.
It goes down there.
So all these rocks get bigger,
bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.
And you sit here.
And you look at the explanation
there in Italian or here.
It tells you things about
the galaxies and time.
And a solar clock there.
Anyway, that went in.
And he said to me, Charles,
I like your velocity.
I like your Alfa Romeo.
It's got a lot of velocity.
But I hate your ornament.
And I said, Marco,
I don't do ornament,
thinking of Peter Eisenman.
I don't do ornament.
I do symbolism.
It's all symbolic.
Oh.
Anyway, nice man.
We don't have to agree.
But it is a problem
when, Milan, like Madrid,
like every major
city, is surrounded
by a kind of battle of
different kinds of identities.
And while I wrote
[LATIN] and [LATIN]
and made it out of
kitchen knives--
I cut off the handles--
and the euro coin,
showing the sun bouncing along,
so that you could understand
the symbolism, what happened
was a graffiti artist came
along and graffitied everything,
including my symbolism, which
was OK.
Actually, they kept away
from the symbolism per se,
and graffitied around it.
I thought it was terrific,
a mixture of their meanings
and my meanings.
Anyway, the problem was
the client thought, oh no!
We must take Mr. Jenck's
symbolism away and keep it
under lock and key,
so it isn't damaged.
So they took away
all my symbolism.
And what's left is the graffiti.
I mean, there's a problem.
And it's a problem of meaning.
Anyway, there's a good
example of positive meaning
in another scheme in
another park in South
Korea, on the southern tip of
South Korea, in Suncheon City.
Korea-- South Korea
and North-- is mostly
mountains, 70% mountains and
30% valleys or flood plains.
And this one in
the furthest part
has a beautiful river, the
Dongcheon river here and, then,
a huge city surrounding a
mountain that they've kept.
So it's really interesting,
the Korean people.
Because they still
believe in shamanism,
in spite of the fact that
it was put on the index
by a previous leader, dictator.
And they believe in nature.
And they take walks in nature.
So they walk the mountains.
So the mountains
are all around them.
And 2013, they had an ecological
festival, a garden festival--
the first one-- a
national garden festival
called the Ecogeo Festival.
And they asked me to
design the center of it.
And then I asked and
said, could Lily do it?
And they said, yes.
And so, Lily and I and
others worked together on it.
Anyway, they put us at
the center of 80 gardens.
And we put forward a
narrative, "holding the line,"
hold that line, the eco-line.
Because what's happening is
that, everywhere, the city
is sprawling and the
concrete and pollution
are killing nature.
And you can see
factory farming here.
Anyway, what we did was we
turned their city inside out.
And we turned their
water inside out.
And we produced
our design, which
was the river that
gave the ecology, here,
the best wetlands in Korea--
which are down here, which
is why they said, well,
let's reinvent the city based
on ecology.
We turned their river which
comes from their mountains
around here into
this walkway here.
So their river
became our walkway.
Their city became
our eight lakes.
And their mountains
were miniaturized,
so that each one
of the mountains
you see from their
Bonghwa Mountain,
you can see the real thing.
And you see the
borrowed landscape here.
So we put their mountain in
that little miniature there.
And of course, that's an old
Asian idea of miniaturizing.
And then we put a
amphitheater there.
And then, there are 84
National gardens around there.
And there's a French
garden and Dutch.
So as we interpreted
their ecology,
they had a lot of ecologists.
But they didn't see it the
way we began to see it.
It's a 100-mile ecology.
So the ecology goes
all the way out there.
And it goes all the
way up the mountains.
They were talking about the
ecology of the wetlands only.
Anyway, we gave
them this program.
And we understood their program.
And then, they
understood our program.
And then, they turned it
around, turned it upside down,
what we turned upside down.
And then, they
performed it, amazingly,
in an Olympic-style performance,
focused on their wetlands.
And here, you see all
the great species,
including the hooded crane.
So we really understood
their symbolism.
And they performed
it with 5,000 people
at the Olympic-style
opening, where
but they did amazingly
strange things.
Like they had all of their
national costumes here.
This is women singing
on blow-up rubber boats,
while the white piano of
Liberace was playing here.
And a calf and a bull were
taken up there to be sacrificed.
So you know, it was very hard to
read directly their symbolism.
But we could understand.
Lily and I sat there
completely gobsmacked.
Because they didn't
tell us they were going
to do a Olympic-style opening.
And they used us as their stage.
And so, 100 hooded
cranes came down,
the black crane, which is
the symbol of the city.
And they danced on the water.
Actually, it's one inch below.
And they floated there
to piped-in music
and amazing things happening.
So ecological regeneration
of the economy.
So ecology versus the
economy or industry
was there to our performance.
And as things happened, of
course, ecology and the cranes
and all the goodness
of their landscape
was supported with the
shaman, the boat man singing
and poetry of the 13th century.
You can see, by the way, the
military of the 13th century
wandering over our bridge.
And he comes by.
And he sings.
And this is all translated for
the people who are listening,
10,000 people
listening, and went out
to national broadcasting.
And then, suddenly,
there was an explosion.
Bombs went off.
And these erections occurred
on our main mountain.
And I thought,
here is symbolism.
I interpreted them as some
Asian gateway, with a rope.
Actually, what they are are
pylons, industrial pylons,
showing the triumph of industry
and economy over ecology
and the destruction
of the ecology.
So then, a fact--
[LAUGHTER]
I know.
It's incredible.
I mean, then, the hooded
cranes-- a hard rock band
started playing here.
Jet skis came in.
And all the hooded
cranes were murdered.
And--
[LAUGHTER]
And then, a factorY--
I'm not kidding.
With Liberace playing
here, a factory exploded.
I'm giving you the short
version, by the way.
[LAUGHTER]
And then, the hooded crane
and her lover were separated.
And they ran up our hill.
And she was singing.
She would sing and
stop on our hill.
And they'd sing beautifully.
And she looked so beauti--
and then, the motorcycle gang
came in.
And they chased her
up the whole hill.
And then, at the top, just
as she was going to reach--
and of course,
they're filming it.
Look at them film there.
As she reached the top, they
hit her, knocked her down.
And she's dying.
So the ecology is dying.
She's dead on the
side of the hill.
And everybody sighs in sorrow.
And then-- and this is
also unbelievably funny.
Then, these young children
come out, 10 to 12,
all right Next t-shirts,
the next act and the NeXT,
incorporated.
And how did it end?
Well, all the 84 nations came
in and sang the "Ode to Joy"
of Beethoven and held hands
while ecology was reborn.
OK, so you see, every now
and then, you win one.
And they're funny.
It is now five million people
come to the first year-- sorry,
I've gone wrong--
and for the next.
And it has regenerated the city.
So it was a set of meanings,
which drew from their desires.
And we drew things from it.
And then, they drew
it back from us.
And then, it came together.
So it's interesting.
It's now the National
Garden of Ecology in Korea.
And the curious thing is that
no one knows a bit about it
outside of Korea.
No one is ever asked
to publish-- no one.
The BBC wasn't interested.
No one's interested.
It's really curious.
Anyway, there we are.
Recently, I was asked by
Richard Buccleuch, who's
a very old friend, to do another
coal site-- desolate coal
site-- in Scotland, which
really was polluted,
which had been smashed open,
coal mining, in which there
was just rubble and
desolation and desert.
And when I went there,
I thought, well,
there's no money.
I mean, the first
problem is the client
didn't have any money to spend,
which is always a problem.
Which the architect faces
just as much-- actually,
if you architects want to be
happy, because life is tough
and you aren't paid well, just
think of landscape architects.
Because they're paid less well.
And when they run out
of money, the landscape
is the first to suffer.
It's true.
So you're not at the
bottom of the food chain.
But there are people below you.
Anyway, I had no money
and this polluted site.
What do I do?
And so, I thought,
well, I don't know.
But as I began to look-- first
of all, the wind whipped in.
I realized suddenly,
hey, a desert
in the wettest part of Britain.
It's amazing to have a desert.
It's reverse gardening.
So one idea then
led to another idea.
Let's see if I missed an idea.
Anyway, I did the minimal thing
I'd do, a north-south line,
scalloped some of the edge.
The coal had been dropped there.
Designed two galaxies
stripping each other,
a solar amphitheater,
and other things.
But very quickly in this model.
And yes.
And then-- that's what
I was looking for,
this slide-- I found out,
doing research on the area,
that Auchentaggart
Farm, in the 1870s,
a labor dug up this
gold lunala-- it's
called a lunala-- for
the moon, a cosmic shape,
made out of gold, beautiful
gold, tooled gold.
Gold with ornament you
can just make out here.
And it'd clip here.
This is better than
Mycenaean gold in a way.
It's like the Irish gold,
showing the relation
between Ireland and Scotland.
Anyway, Auchentaggart means
"field of the priest."
And this was about
1/4 of a mile away
from the site, this
incredible cosmic necklace,
which is about 2300 BC.
So for 4,300 years, coal and
this crossroads of Scotland
were existing on the river.
And so, the cosmic nature of
the site became what I designed.
And we looked at the site.
And since there was no money,
what we had were some boulders.
We found 300 boulders.
And I classified them in
500, then 1,000 boulders.
And finally, I said
to Richard, look.
Richard, we have
boulder fatigue here.
We've got to do something
with these boulders.
We can't just bury them.
And he said, OK, what can we do?
And I said, well, let's
build the first multiverse
in the universe.
He said, what's a multiverse?
Well-- so I told him what
scientists are thinking
that the multiverse is.
And we built it, this
ironic multiverse.
Because of course,
how can you put
the multiverse in the universe?
Here you see it flying
through-- you can
put a universe in a multiverse.
But you can't put the
multiverse in the universe.
Anyway, so that's what you see.
It's flying through here.
You see the north-south line.
You see the galaxies
stripping each other.
You see the super-cluster.
You see the north
point and signs
and symbols and explanations,
both explicit and implicit,
throughout.
And we've done that.
We've built it over three or
four years, from 2011 to '14.
It opened in 2015.
There, you see it under
construction from the air.
There's a painting I've
done of it looking down
on the solar
amphitheater, the sun
amphitheater, here,
where 5,000 can
collect for open-air ceremonies
of the towns and the locals.
And painted with the sun
shining on the south access
into the solar amphitheater.
And what it is is an illusion,
which you actually can see,
like a rainbow.
It's very rare.
The sun would be here.
And when the ice
clouds form, it shows
this complete circular form.
Anyway, painting, drawing,
computing, modeling,
and interpreting,
what is the meaning
of our relation to the sun?
--after Apollo, god
of the sun, sun gods,
after all of the things
I've told you about.
I found out-- of course,
I didn't know this.
But I knew a bit of it.
But those are those
incredible storms that occur,
these electromagnetic storms.
And here comes a
flare, a killer flare.
And what does it do?
It's aimed at the Earth
in this rendition.
And it hits our
electromagnetic shield,
which is here, which protects us
and turns the storm, the flare,
in both directions
away from the Earth.
So allowing the
sun and the photons
and the gravity to embrace us,
and deflecting the killer storm
into the aurora borealis or the
southern one, the great dance
of lights, the Northern Lights,
which you can see in Scotland.
So an art of rhythm
led me to paint
this painting of the sun as
a woman, a quizzical one,
with electromagnetic storms as
eyes, nose, mouth, and a flare
coming out, being deflected
into the beauty of that dance,
as we follow her
through her spiral
motions around the galaxy
every 200 million years.
A critique of the
male sun god-- coming
from the Russians,
victory over the sun,
if you know that
great drama of 1913.
This is in that
critique mode and using
a different interpretation
of the sun than Malevich did.
And we managed to
build it last summer.
And here it is in view.
And you see the
primitive stones.
This is arte pauvre.
And two little signs
here, for those
who want to read about
where the rocks come from
or what it means, are
let into the stone.
So those who want to follow
some of the symbolism,
it's explicit and written.
And it communicates
with the town,
the teachers of the schools,
the students, and the poor.
Because this is a very
poor area of Scotland.
And we had performances
on a high-art level
too, with great performance
artists who dance and play
around here in the desert.
So what we've
managed to preserve
the desert in the
wettest part of Scotland.
And here, you can
see Andromeda being
stripped by the Milky Way.
They are the two
galaxies which will
interact in four billion years.
We know that, or we
think we know it.
At least that's the odds
on bet, that they'll
become a super elliptical.
And you can see, in the
center of Andromeda,
first of all, these beautiful
stones-- the art of nature--
and then, a black
hole and renditions
of that in different graphic
form or physical form or both.
Leading from the two galaxies,
Andromeda and the Milky Way--
people know what the Milky Way.
A lot of them know
Andromeda is going to hit.
And they come to the
super-cluster of galaxies
on their walk to the north.
And in this night painting,
you can see that walk,
after always getting bigger
from these two galaxies,
to a super-cluster
with dark matter
and all of that, a zigzag path
up to the multiverse itself,
the culmination.
The theory of the multiverse
is that 30 or so parameters--
here's not Patrick Schumacher's
parametric but real parametric.
The runaway expansion of the
kinetic force of the universe
produces universes
that fly apart
or gravity that is
too strong, collapse.
Whereas, our universe is
fine-tuned with not only
gravity and the kinetic force,
but these 30 parameters,
the constants, and so forth.
Extraordinary.
Sort of amazing.
We are living in the
golden age of cosmology.
We must use these ideas
coming from scientists,
from astrophysicists
and cosmologists,
as a background for our art.
So there's a view down with the
badly parametrized universes
will fly apart or the
gravity too strong.
And then, just right
universes, Goldilocks
universes, leading to
our universe there.
And again, a seat to sit on that
explains that in graphic terms.
And then, the stones, carved
in the most primitive way,
with words telling you,
this one is ripped apart.
Because the kinetic
force is too strong here,
gravity is too strong here.
It says, gravity 2,
number 2, strong.
So 100 boulders, 100
universes, in this multiverse.
And at the top, the
seat has a description
of those that fall apart,
because their kinetic force is
too strong or gravity
is too strong.
And well-balanced universes
lead to our universe.
And that is sculpted on the tall
very interesting boulder, which
is nature's art.
So naturally, we can't
prove the multiverse exists.
It's a hypothesis.
It's a speculation, one that
maybe many people hold today.
But like all theories,
something skeptical in all of us
arises-- at least, in many
of our minds all the time.
And so, we burn the
multiverse every year.
And our celebration
is on June 21.
We have the solar
performances with the towns
and with good
performance artists.
And we burn or explode it.
You see it exploding
there in drawing
above the carbon,
which of course, it
comes out of the coal.
So I say this because
the imagination is always
going beyond what we know.
And it is our space
in cultural time
which would question the
multiverse as well as any idea
that we know the whole universe.
So that the imagination has
to burn, from time to time,
what we love-- the
phrase actually
coming out of Le Corbusier.
And I ended with this shot here
of a strange 1870 painting,
drawing, or graphic
really that's colored,
which is quizzical,
published in Flammarion.
And we don't actually
know quite what it means.
It's slightly hippy,
but of 1880 time.
German-- it has German
overtones in this nice village
here with Monsieur Sun up here.
And it's a nice
pastoral landscape.
And this man-- evidently
it's a man-- walking along.
And he stumbles, he trips, he
falls with his walking stick.
And he falls
through a worldview.
Look, he falls through
the old world view
into a new world view, which
he says hello to, I guess.
We don't know what
he's doing actually.
It could be his
heartbeat going on here.
But the symbolism
that I interpret
is that it, more or less, is
a very good analogy of where
we are in cultural space time.
We know where we've been.
And we know somewhere
where we're going.
But we are breaking through
into a different worldview.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Charles.
I'm going to start with
a couple of questions
and then open it
to the audience.
Well, I love the
landscapes, the gardens.
I think they're quite
different to when you look at,
when you critique or celebrate
the architectural Works
It seems to me that when you
work on your own landscape
projects, you use the metaphors
more as a food for thought
and, through working
with them-- actually,
you described them
constantly in the images.
But I would say
they actually get
processed into something new.
You insist that people should
still see the reference
to what you started.
I see them somewhere
else, which I
think makes them actually
really interesting.
When you look at
architecture, I think
you look at them as
if they are sculpture.
I think architecture is
artificial in nature,
with its own rules,
with its own mechanisms,
with its own possibilities.
And the creativity
of the architect
is how it plays
or even constructs
that artificial nature.
You choose to completely
suppress all that creativity.
And you stand outside and
talk about how it is received.
And even in that
kind of reception,
you treat people as an
audience, whereas architecture
is produced for them in
many, many different ways.
So why reduce
architecture to sculpture?
[LAUGHTER]
Yes.
I wouldn't want to
reduce it to anything.
I don't think it is just
sculpture, of course not.
I also, like you,
appreciate materiality
of the space, the rules, and
the going beyond the rules.
So I've never said
it's the only thing.
This is where I think
our differences are
more apparent than real,
if I may say, Farshid.
I do think architecture
is about performative use.
And that's why, for me, deep
icons relate to the use.
And they tell us
something about the use.
So they're comment on the use.
And I wouldn't want
to underrate that.
By the way, as a Harvard-trained
architect, I have to tell you,
functionalism was the reigning
doctrine-- partly coming
from Le Corbusier who said, we
look at the functions first.
I'm not sure that's ever true.
But you also have to look
at performance function
and materiality and the
10 books of architecture.
And you could say that I'm
concentrating on book number
three.
I don't know, one
part of architecture,
it's the communicative part.
And I agree that it isn't
necessary to be understood
always.
It's to be perceived
unconsciously.
After all, Walter Benjamin
said, architecture
is the only art which
you can correctly
perceive without knowing it.
I mean, you can't go to the
theater-- you're supposed
to listen to the actors.
You're supposed to
listen to the music.
But it's perceived
unconsciously.
Now, that's true.
So a lot of people
fetishize that truth,
I would say, and reduce it
to performance or whatever.
And what I'm really
arguing for, if you're
hearing what I'm saying, is that
architecture is a public art.
And one of the freedoms
of architectural art
is to mean something.
And in an age of agnosticism,
in an age of neutrality,
in an age of reductive
functionalism,
in an age of the Selfish
Gene, or a whole lot
of other odious metaphors-- like
Big Bang or wimps and machos
or military metaphors that
scientists whip off and claim
that the universe
started in a Big Bang,
like, say, you mean your
mother was a firecracker?
I think you have to
criticize reigning metaphors.
So my work is
critical, explicitly
because I think architecture
is a public art,
has been in the past.
And in the past,
we had agreement
between the people-- the client
at least, and the architect.
Although, of course, there's
always been discensus.
We know that.
And I admire your
work particularly,
because you do push beyond the
known and beyond the familiar.
And you defamiliarize your work.
That's one of your goals.
My critique, if I
may turn it around
now and criticize
your work-- you
are too interested in affect.
And affect is only one
of the many meanings.
And it's the empathetic, which
your work is very good at.
But I would say, what you
need is more symbolism.
But you would say
I need more affect.
Well, let's have dinner.
No, no, Charles.
No, no.
Charles, I would say, I leave
the meaning construction
to the people who
experience those affects.
And you are adamant that you
feed them with the meanings.
And I think it's
an impossible task.
I don't feed anyone any meaning.
No, we agree.
Because why do I
spend so much time
participating with
the local communities?
Going out and speaking to the
schools and I [INAUDIBLE].
No, I know we agree.
But it's very important in
the context of, I think,
a lot of students here that we--
[INAUDIBLE]
No, no, no.
No, it is fun to disagree.
You said you are focused
on book number four?
[INAUDIBLE]
Three.
Why separate-- even
if let's just say,
well, you are interested
in communication.
Let's say, well of
course, buildings
perform by people turning
them into thoughts
and meanings and feelings.
Why separate it from actually
the art of construction?
And I mean that
in a broad sense.
How does architecture become
critical if you separate them?
How does the architect
question how to make decisions
in terms of assembling
buildings if you don't connect
the production of
architecture to the reception
of architecture?
You just look at the reception.
And I just think that
leaves the architect
in a very difficult position.
You take the side of the
client and the branding.
And I think they're
bad examples.
Why not get good examp--
the Bird Nest is not
the best example of the
Herzog-de Meuron Project.
They are a fantastic office.
And yes, you're right.
Maybe in a kind
of a competition,
they chose to talk about
it as the Bird's Nest.
And maybe it is actually
quite evocative of the idea
of a nest.
But is that what makes
it a great stadium?
Obviously-- you want
an ironic answer?
Go ahead.
OK, bird's nest soup is the
most expensive soup you can buy.
It's about $100 a bird's nest.
Anyway, that's one
of the reasons.
And when Ai Weiwei took
a pot and he dropped it,
he was making a comment of
the pot as a receptacle.
So if you look at the
building, it's multiply coded.
And that's always been
what I've been saying.
The problem with the iconic
building is it's a one-liner.
And an icon must
work on many levels.
And these are coded.
So the short answer is, look at
semiotics, the theory of signs,
and see that
everything-- clothing,
why am I in a
sub-Harvard jacket?
Think that's an accident?
I didn't notice that?
Very good.
Yeah, you didn't notice it.
[LAUGHTER]
OK, the whole point
is that everything,
including the things that we
don't like to think about,
is symbolic.
The things we betray-- so if
you study Umberto Eco, who
is an old friend of mine.
And I really thought he put
semiotics on another level.
The problem with what he's
telling us is that words--
why am I speaking to you now?
Why am I using the verbal words?
Why don't I give you
a building instead?
And you just give
me another building.
And we just exchange
buildings without talking.
Why do we talk with our mouths?
Well, we do because,
as semiotics show,
is that speech and
language is imperialistic.
It's cannibalistic.
It eats up all of the
different semiotic systems.
And so, as the
semioticians say, as soon
as you have an umbrella,
you have a sign of rain.
And as soon as you have a
society, you have shared signs.
And these signs are stereotypes.
And they are how
I am communicating
to you through words.
So the words are like
the visual metaphors
I'm diagramming there.
They're meant to suggest
that these codes are
shared public codes.
And the architect,
in the age when
there isn't the shared
meaning-- and this
is where there is a problem.
And this is where you have to
know that meaning is always
negotiated in the end.
Let's take a Christian meaning.
When the great heyday
of the Christian West
is supposed to be Chartres
Cathedral, a great building,
where the architects
gave up the money that
was to go to the
architecture and they gave it
to the sculptors,
so the sculptors
could design the
greatest sculpture
in the west of that time.
And they also gave
up some of the money
to the stained glass, and some
of the greatest stained glass.
And they gave it up.
And all the trades
were working together.
So Chartres has always
been considered the home
of the Western Christian ideal.
And what's his name?
Adams who wrote the great book,
Mont St. Michel and Chartres,
the man from here wrote the
whole history of civilization
as the Dynamo versus Chartres.
Anyway, be that as it
may, the Chartres thing,
if you look deeper, as
a Marxist might look,
say, actually, when the
Bishop of Chartres--
although 60% of the economy
of the Ile de France
went into building
Chartres, and Chartres
was a great collective
expression of their beliefs
in the architecture
and the sculpture
and the meaning of the universe,
actually 20% of the population
was bloody angry
that their money was
being spent on the wrong thing.
OK?
Now, that shows that even
our symbols of integration,
of collective well-being,
have the dissonance.
And so, we are living
in a dissonant era.
Now, there's no question, in my
struggles-- and I've only shown
you two, where
they break my hand
or they graffiti-- that's minor.
But all the things that
the clients refused to do
or society hates-- you have
to negotiate everything.
You have to fight for it.
If you're an architect,
Le Corbusier was right.
You've got to fight for
what you believe in,
even if it's stupid, as
Corbusier's urbanism was.
But he was a great architect.
And he was very poetic.
And he faced this negotiation.
So I can only say, maybe
the semiotics thing
is over-stressed when I write
a book on the iconic building
and over-stressed in
the rest of my work.
But I think if my
defense is that we
live in a great
crisis of meaning--
I'm not the first person
to say this, by the way.
As you know, it's been
said for over 200 years.
--when the collective symbols
and meanings of our society
are in conflict.
So that's the short answer.
OK.
I have so many questions.
We'll discuss them later.
So I think I should
open it to the audience.
So questions, please,
from the audience.
Anyone,
Thank you, Mr. Jencks.
My name's Harry Allen.
And I'm a Hutchins fellow
here at Harvard this year.
And you started by talking about
the billion dollar building.
Now, I'm also--
outside of Hutchins--
working on a multiverse project
myself, which is what drew me,
as well as your
reputation, to seeing
this presentation tonight.
As I said, you started by
talking about the billion
dollar building.
And what's interesting about
the idea of the universe's
architecture is that, on
the multiverse's side,
a billion is really
far too reduced
to talk about anything
of its formation.
Everything is far outside the
scale of any kind of numeracy
almost that we possess.
And on the side of
fine tuning, which
is how the universe works on
its most microscopic levels,
a billion or a billionth
is really far too large
to talk about the
scale of relationships
between the
constants that exist.
So I guess my question
is about numeracy.
How do you address the
multiverse and the issue
of numeracy when these
numbers are far, far
outside of human experience?
Do you just ignore that
quality of numeracy?
Or do you suggest
in some other way?
Well, as I've been intimating,
when you don't have any money
to spend investigating
how you would express it,
it's very hard.
And in this multiverse,
the only thing
I've really been allowed to
express in a more detailed way
is that relationship between the
sun as a positive, embracing,
if you like, woman or not, with
its gravity, with its heat,
and its photons, and
this magnetic storms
and its solar wind.
So there is a more translated
metaphor worked out.
With the multiverse
itself, for instance,
I didn't stop and show you
the super-cluster of galaxies.
But in there, the
avenues of the rivers
of gravity, dark
matter, the scaffolding
assumed to be with
gravity but before matter.
I've constructed very
primitive metaphors,
which are expressive,
using what I had to hand,
which are these rocks.
Three different kinds
of rocks-- red rocks,
red sandstone, which can be
quite beautiful-- I showed you
one or two; white and
yellow sandstone; and then,
80% of the rocks are mud stone.
And when I've been saying, I
don't speak buildings to you,
I have to say that corny phrase
a lover makes, either way, is
say it with flowers.
Well, I have to say
it with boulders.
And saying it with
boulders is bloody hard.
Because they're huge.
And they're inert and unsculpted
and there, arte pauvre.
So I can't address in a more
direct way your question.
But I do think it
is a good question.
Because how do we relate to
the billions of bignesses
and billions of smallnesses.
I think you know the poetry, the
famous phrase of William Blake,
to see the world in a
grain of sand and eternity
in a-- you know,
everything is analogy.
Martin Rees is a friend of mine.
He came to the garden, the
Garden of Cosmic Speculation.
He said, Charles, I
really like what you do,
because it's all metaphorical.
And actually, us scientists,
we can't even tell you
how a hydrogen atom works.
And what you're doing is
showing relationships.
And I was really pleased he
said that, because it's true.
I think meaning is relationship.
And we have so much
trouble relating
to billions and
billions and billions--
Carl Sagan's problem.
You know, there's
billions and billions
and-- anyway, I think the
artist problem is to scale.
And Corbusier was
onto this, to scale.
Because you can scale
up into relationships.
And scientists can do it
in their mind very fast
and have no problem with it.
And if they can do it,
artists can learn how
to use relationships, I think.
I haven't been able to do it.
But it's a good question.
Yeah, hi.
I'm this side, here.
Yeah.
I'm Sehedj.
I'm in the Art Design and
Public Domain Department
here at Harvard.
And before I start,
let me say that I
sees a strong
similarity of your works
and Roger Anger's works in
Auroville, Pondicherry, which
the whole master plan
is actually based
on the concept of the cosmos.
At the center being
where the sun meets
the water and stuff like that.
And I also had
the good privilege
of having a glimpse of
your work when I was
working in New Delhi in a firm.
So my question is,
architects somehow, I
feel, have this constant
urge to impose in a way
their idiosyncratic beliefs, to
build an artifact in the built
environment.
Whether you
mentioned, maybe, say,
Richard Meier's constant need
to build a white building no
matter what.
Or even the fact that your
constant need to rebuild
that figurine of the
thing pointed to the sun,
it has to be a certain way.
My question is, before
we go to the universe,
how do we make architecture?
What tools do you personally
use to make architecture a more
community-centric approach?
What are the ground
studies which
one does before getting
onto a symbolic approach?
And
Also, you've done a lot of
projects all throughout.
And when you go to
these different places,
do you also delve into the
mythology and cosmology
of the place you're building?
Or do you follow a
universal approach?
Well, you can probably
guess my answers.
As a post-modernist--
modernism was universalist.
Postmodernism was
local and universalist.
So I listen and try
to get in the local
as well as follow what
scientists are telling us
about things.
And is the universe
itself local?
Huh, that's a good question.
Does it have-- The
classical answer is no.
The laws of the universe work
everywhere in the universe.
And that's universal.
And I think the
interesting truth, though,
is that all science has
a kind of history to it.
It emerges in history and
emerges through a culture.
So it's embedded.
Even science, even
the universal,
is embedded in a particular
way in a culture.
And I am not trying,
as a modernist,
to say that this kind
of symbolism is enough.
For sure, it isn't.
I think this is
where I don't really
have an argument with Farshid,
even though it appears we do.
I think it's layered.
Meaning is really layered.
And a true symbol is
related to the local use
in the very intimate present.
But it's layered all the
way up to the cosmos.
And that's what I think
architecture is, that art which
brings that layering out.
And of course, it
always brings it out.
So the architectural historian
can date it within 10 years.
It's interesting that
even-- well, of course,
there are buildings that are
very hard, which are replicas.
Say some neo-modern
buildings looking
like the international
style, built
in an international style,
are very hard to date.
Except actually, if
you look at the way
they deteriorated or not and
the plumbing or something.
It's very hard to fake the
time, even with a universalizing
style or the universal.
So my predisposition
is to go to the local
and to interview people.
If you think the client--
the client, of course,
is a very privileged
part of the job.
But so are the people
who are going to use it.
And so are the people
who live there.
And so are the children
who are going to come
from the people who live there.
So who owns the meaning
of architecture?
It's clear that
that is over time
and it's a plural audience.
And pluralism is where we live
today in the global village.
And it's great
philosophers-- Isaiah Berlin.
And I think that's about
enough for me to say.
Thank you.
Hi, thanks very much,
Charles, for the lecture
and for joining us here.
I have one question in regards
to the very astute observation
that you made in on the era of
the billion dollar building.
There's somewhat of an
interesting corollary in terms
of the current age of the
so-called anthropocene and age
of urbanism today, which
is that in relationship
to the quantitative and the
cosmological analogies that you
make and direct relationships,
there's also one on the other
hand, not unrelated,
of the chemical age
of the one-part-per-billion.
Which is particularly
important in terms
of an age in which we now see
scents, emissions, effluents,
concentrations,
whether or not as
to resource extractions, all
the way to industrial pollution
that we now recognize
in a different way.
I don't have a question so much
as just sort of a soliciting
a sort of reflection on, maybe,
another side of the billion
dollar building
and, potentially,
the one-part-per-billion,
how that could potentially
influence thinking about
environments, urbanization.
It's a very big question.
But I just was in New York
at the Botanic Gardens,
taken around by the
head, and showing me
the rocks and the celebration of
the American landscape in part
of the New York Botanic Gardens,
if you been there or you know.
And because I love rocks,
he was taking me to rocks
and showing me rocks.
And he said, all these rocks
are, of course, original rocks,
maybe unlike some of
the rocks that were
put by Olmsted in Central Park.
But actually, they're
not original either,
as someone was
talking-- oh Farshid--
about the artificial nature.
Because pollution
has changed them.
They're all black.
Because even, not in
the center of Manhattan,
but-- they've been
changed constantly
by recent civilization,
the last 200 or 300 years.
And so, the head-- his
name, a wonderful name
for the man who runs
this original forest,
his name is Forrest-- and I
said to Mr. Forrest, so what
is your philosophy
of how to preserve
this American virgin forest?
To think, he's just
told me that you can't.
So then, what do you do?
Well, he said, in the past, we
thought we could get it back.
And we got rid of all
the invasive species.
And so, we kind of try to
get rid of invasive species,
knowing that whatever we
do is going to mark it
and is marking it and
is actually artificial.
It's partly artificial.
And in a way, it's like an
architect asking themselves,
in what style should we build?
And what meaning
shall we put in?
What function should
we articulate?
What should we suppress?
All these choices.
And I think what I'm
trying to do is to say,
this is a freedom that we have.
Meaning is a freedom.
We're in a crisis of meaning.
We have to think.
We have to struggle for
the meanings we care about
and build what we think are
the most important meanings
in our time, a time of
collapse of religions,
a end of negative nationalisms
too and positive nationalism.
The post-modern theory was
the end of meta-narratives.
And when meta-narratives end,
architects are in trouble.
Because they have no common
meanings that Farshid
can talk to her client or
society about directly and say,
I'm going to build
you this meaning.
I'm bringing this
meaning to the table.
This is what I'm
an expert in doing.
Because society is confused,
agnostic, or neutral,
and driven by multiple clients.
Now, we don't have
a client anymore.
We have five banks in a
billion dollar building.
We have three accountants,
firms, and 15 board members
who are arguing.
What kind of a client is that?
Client's walked off
the job and doesn't
know what the job is anyway.
So my feeling is, you
write a book called
How to Fire the Client.
And the idea is that the
client has, in a way,
walked off the job.
I could ask Richard what
he feels about the client.
[INAUDIBLE]
The client-- it's very
hard to pin down, Richard.
Isn't he or she?
Because there's a
multiple client.
And it's an economic client.
And the client doesn't
have their confidence
to be what a client needs to be.
I think, in architecture
today, the client
has walked off the job.
So you should fire the client.
The first thing you
do when you get a job,
say, you've got to
be a good client.
I don't know.
[INAUDIBLE]
Your response would assume
there is a common symbolism.
I would disagr--
No, no, no.
No, I'm saying there isn't--
You are saying that-- if
I understand rightly--
if you don't give the symbolic
right to the building,
the client will walk off
the site [INAUDIBLE].
But my point is, I
don't think symbol--
and I agree with you-- in
itself has a great meaning
without all the rest.
No.
By the way--
Yeah.
Just let me get to one more.
Yeah.
One thing is I don't believe
that the symbolic-- when
I look at the things
that you've got,
you interpret the symbolism.
Which in many ways, you
can call it universal,
but it's very personal,
in my opinion.
Going on with that, there
is also the question of,
I don't think this has
been any different ever
since the first hunt.
This has been a discussion--
it's continuous.
We are always in a crisis.
As I keep on saying,
Wren got so fed up
when he built up
some [INAUDIBLE],
he build a wall the way around.
It hasn't changed.
We're always at war to create
buildings of certain ways.
But it's not the symbolical
that's the critical problem.
It's the combination of
the prices a construction,
the costs, and all
these-- I don't think
the client is the problem.
I think there are ways through.
And I'm worried about
leaving some symbolism
as being the
leading inspiration,
because it's changing
all the time.
Well, I wouldn't say it is
the leading inspiration.
First of all, we agree
that there's a crisis
and it's made-- I mean, Wren
is a classic example, right?
So the crisis has been around.
But in some periods,
it's been easier
for the relation between the
architect and the client.
And clients are not-- when,
in the era of the Wren Slab
Building in London,
most of the buildings
have absentee clients.
That's what I wanted you to see.
Well, they do.
That's why London is so rotten.
And that's why most
cities are so rotten.
Because the client isn't
pulling their part of the deal.
That is capitalism is failing.
It's not just capitalism.
Also, socialism failed
in the same way.
[INAUDIBLE]
They both failed.
I didn't say that.
I didn't say that.
I said, capitalism is failing.
You added a rather
important part.
No, no.
Well, capitalism is failing.
But of course-- all
economics, as the end of life,
is a failure, which is common to
both socialism and capitalism.
Two isms invented and coined in
1820, two old railroad trains.
I just want to pick up on
something that Charles has--
as a way to really wrap it up.
I completely agree with
Charles that the space
of making decisions
between how do
you put all this
stuff together to make
a piece of architecture?
--is really the space of
freedom of the architect.
And you could call this how
you give meaning to this.
Now, meaning can be significance
or it can be signification.
I would say, you
are interpreted--
you are championing the idea
of-- what kind of meaning,
in the sense of
signification, the architect
is going to introduce
to this exercise
of putting a building together?
Maybe another way
is to say, well,
what significance does this
have in a certain context?
I think that was a question.
And I think maybe we should
just keep this as a question.
And I think what is
really important--
and I am encouraged
by-- I think we've
moved away from just a simple
excitement of the digital.
And I think everyone--
practitioners,
students-- are all really
trying to tackle issues of,
now that we have these exciting
tools and now that we know more
and that we can
measure the universe
and we have a lot more data, how
do we make decisions with it?
And how do we make a difference?
I hope you've all enjoyed the
lecture as much as I have.
Please thank Charles Jencks.
[APPLAUSE]
