 Let's see. Hello, good evening. Yes. I'm Jorge Daniel Benesiano, director at El Museo del Barrio, and I welcome you to our theater, our auditorium, this evening. I also want to apologize. We wanted to delay the beginning of this session because, as some of you may know, the sixth line is not stopping for us on 103rd Street. So a few people had to do a little extra walking and we wanted to allow them a little extra time, you know, to get here. So really excited about this. This is actually our second year in partnership with the Cooper Hewitt. We started last year on the Desenio panel series with one panel on fashion, another on comics, and our second year in the partnership is with this panel, obviously, on architecture. And the next one I'm also thrilled about is going to be on Beauty and it will be inspired by the triennial that just opened at Cooper Hewitt and I encourage you all to go. I haven't been there yet, but I'm dying to go. And as long as I'm plugging exhibitions, you should also know that we have quite a thrilling show here at El Museo called the Elusive Eye and it's kind of a revisit, critically rethinking of the MoMA project from 1965 on op and kinetic art. Their show is called the Responsive Eye, ours is called the Elusive Eye. And so really I think some good exhibitions to see at our respective institutions. Also I should mention that this Desenio series is supported by the Latino initiative at the Smithsonian Museum Latino project center, excuse me. And also it's quite amazing that we have not only a very distinguished panel of speakers this evening, but that in architecture we have a panel where the women outnumber the men. I think that's quite to the credit of the organizers to pull that off. And the speakers this evening, Diana Agrest, Monica Ponce de Leon and Enrique Norton will be introduced in just a moment, but I do want to acknowledge the moderator, Warren James, who has been a long time friend of El Museo del Barrio and we always welcome him back with open arms. So to give you the fuller introduction, I do want to introduce Brooke, sorry, Brooke Hodge, I'm almost going to say Hayes, Brooke Hodge, who is the deputy director at the Cooper Union. And please join me in welcoming Brooke and our friends from Cooper Hewitt. Thank you, Daniel. And thank you all of you for coming out tonight on this wet sort of windy evening, especially since we couldn't get off the train at the 103rd Street Stop. We're so thrilled to continue this partnership between Cooper Hewitt and El Museo del Barrio, our neighbor here on Museum Mile, and how fitting for an architecture panel that we're gathered here tonight in this beautiful theater. This wonderful collaborative effort to bring you a series of free public programs celebrating the achievements of contemporary Latino designers is possible thanks to a grant from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian's Latino Center. Since 1969, El Museo has been committed to sharing the full range of Latino cultures through its collections, exhibitions, and special events. Our design series is a natural extension of that mission and also that of Cooper Hewitt to educate, inspire, and empower people through design. As many of you know, it's been little over a year since Cooper Hewitt reopened following a massive renovation. In addition to offering fresh new visitor experience and exciting interactive exhibitions, we reinvigorated our commitment to reach the broadest audience possible and to offer a global lens on American design's advancements and achievements. Just last week, we opened Beauty, our fifth design triennial, which presents the work of 63 designers and teams from 26 countries, including Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. In fact, it's our first truly international triennial. One of those designers, Emiliano Godoy, will take part in our next disaneo evening, which is March 23rd, and that evening will take place at Cooper Hewitt. Emiliano will be in conversation with another colleague, Rodrigo Corral, and that will happen at Cooper Hewitt, so mark your calendars, and we hope to see you there, and you'll also be able to experience the works on view in Beauty. As our triennial demonstrates, the conversation around contemporary design cannot advance without the acknowledgement and appreciation of leading Latina designers like our guests tonight. The work of these architects spans the globe, and as Latin American designers working in the United States, they offer an invaluable perspective on current discussions of the built environment, urban development, and private and public spaces. We are so pleased to welcome tonight three architects renowned for their contributions to all facets of architecture. Thank you, that's like very blinding, but anyway. From buildings to education to how we think about cities, now I can really see my nose. Tonight's discussion will be moderated by acclaimed architect and urban designer Warren James, principal of Warren A. James Architects and Planners, a 100% Latino-owned firm based in East Harlem. Coincidentally, Warren was the first Latino architect to enter Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection, and his drawings are also in the collections of Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. Warren is also known for organizing the influential lecture series, The Making of Modern New York, Puerto Rican Architects in New York, at Hunter College's Center for Puerto Rican Studies. His studio designed the recent pinta and flux art fairs, and Warren is also part of a national multidisciplinary team that developed and planned a proposed National Latino Museum for the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Warren James. Good evening. Thank you. Bienvenidos al Museo. This is a home away from home for many of us. I want to thank tonight the Cooper Hewitt Museum for the leadership and the initiative Caroline Bauman, the director, Brooke Hodge and Susana Brown. In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian also has the Latino Center, headed by Eduardo Diaz. They make these kinds of presentations possible in New York. And finally, Museo del Barrio for hosting this evening Jorge Daniel Venesiano and a great staff that's very hardworking. Mil gracias. Tonight, for me, it's an honor and a privilege to introduce you to three accomplished and prominent architects of Latino heritage as part of the Cooper Hewitt series, Diseño. They're architects with capital A. Now, they're more detailed bios you can find in the programs, and of course you can look anything online. What you may not find in their bios and what is printed is actually the interpretations and the meanings of their work, the brilliant themes and metaphors of their built and unbuilt work. And very importantly, what their contributions are to American architecture today in the United States. I'll introduce each one at a time, and each will give a short presentation with just a few slides. After all three have presented, we'll have a more intimate conversation on the stage and we will open it to Q&A for everyone to participate. There are index cards to be handed out or have been handed out. Also, you can ask questions via Twitter and using the hashtags on the screen that will come up in a moment. And now, she has taught at the most prestigious universities in the United States and lectured around the world, a distinguished professor of architecture, always professing, and one with great panache. She's both an architect of books and publications who designs and builds with words and ideas and of built constructions full of lessons and intellectual weight. The architectural world in the United States today is interested in and familiar with Latin American and the Caribbean architecture worlds in part because of the New York avant-garde had her in the late 1970s an Argentine pod full of seeds. She's one of those seeds. For me, her work is seminal because it is about meaning and form. Help me welcome Diana Agrest. Here it goes, you won't see me otherwise. I have to do this very brief. But I have to say thank you so much. I can't see anything. Thank you so much, Warren, for that a little bit over the top introduction. I hope I don't sub point you too much. Thank you, everybody, for this invitation. It's a true pleasure and honor to be here. And particularly in the company of such distinguished colleagues as Monica and Enrique. So I'm going to go very fast. I have five minutes. So this first project is very dear to me. It's a Melrose Community Center in the South Bronx. It was the first new community center built by the city in 36 years. The corner where it's built was the most dangerous corner in the entire five boroughs. That made it really interesting for me. And what we proposed in this building is to have a glass facade, which you can see there, so that people could see in and people inside could see out. And because we believe that to see is the best tool against paranoia and fear. Another community center for Brooklyn, Brooklyn, community center near Rockaway. And after we did a glass in corporate glass in the community center, the city, New York City Housing Authority had a request for any architect that was building community center to incorporate glass. So this is the second one we did. And this also has glass. But the most important thing here is that we were proposing besides the formal rooms that were assigned for particular activities to incorporate a street for gathering and a space for informal meetings or any activity that people feel like doing. Now here it's going down south. And this is a farmhouse in Cosa Ignacio Uruguay, a gentleman's farm, I have to say, which here you can see the owner's pavilion. This is very sustainable. You can see the gutters where we collect rainwater that goes down as we use for lawn irrigation. And the roof is made outside and thatched inside. This also, the city is always important to me. So this is like a village which is organized through a set of walls that establish spaces for each of the houses. Actually, the farm is called Las Casas. And here's the horse table, which is one of my favorite projects and very inexpensively with local technology. And it has a good space for horses. Now here is the antipode because we're in Shanghai, China. So you have to go through the globe. And this is an international film center which has film production offices, film museum, hotel, et cetera, et cetera. And also it creates a major public space around cinema. And the challenge was here. It has a street film, street film, street there, film theme. And one of the challenges was there's a subway running exactly in the center of the site. And the last project is the John and Mary Papagen sculpture park in Des Moines, Iowa, the center of the country. This is a culmination of our work in Des Moines for about 25 years, which transformed the downtown of the city from a nine to five empty place to a vital city full of restaurants. It's one of the most desirable places for people now. There's the sound economy, great education, sophisticated people. And one of the proposals we had done was a strip of park, and let me show that, at the entrance of the city, where there used to be car dealerships with plastic little flags there. And so when John and Mary Papagen donated this extraordinary collection of contemporary sculpture to the Moynard Center to be exhibited publicly, we designed and built this park in the center, which is available for the public, anybody to see 24-7. When you enter the city's one side, when you leave the city's the other, the sculptors are there, they're lit at night. And it has become, I just read, selected by Dwell Magazine, which is very popular, as one of the best public spaces worldwide. Thank you. Thank you, Diana. Our next architecto has also taught at the most prestigious universities in the United States and lectured around the globe. The joke he and I share is that I was his professor. When he was going to grad school and I was in undergrad school, seriously, he teaches only when he can, because he works from two offices, one in New York City and another one in Mexico City. Because ten architectos, ten stands for Taller Enrique Norten, is getting buildings built in New York City. The awareness of Latino architects practicing here in the city has grown enormously. It's one thing to see these buildings built. For me, his urban work is significant, because, as you will see in his presentation, it is always very large public and urban forms as platforms and screens. Please help me welcome Enrique Norten. Good evening. Thank you very much, James. Well, I'm very excited. This is a great night. I guess I don't know how to use this. Okay. Anyway, I do want to thank very much El Museo, Daniel, an old friend. Thank you very much for inviting us. Cooper Hewitt for making this possible. Another old friend, Brooke. It's great seeing you again. Brooke and I, well, Brooke did an exhibition of some of my work. Many years ago and published a book, which I still cherish very much. But very specially, it's a great honor to be here as part of this panel, which I'm very much looking forward with two other very good and old friends, which I've always admired very much. Monica and Diana, thank you very much. Diana, it's very impressive what you just showed us. Congratulations. And I will go very fast through my slides. I don't have much to say because I'm really looking forward to this dialogue or this try a look or this conversation with Monica and with Diana, which will be facilitated by my professor, Warren James. So as Warren says, I have the honor also of having founded Ten Architectos. I also want to thank my colleagues from Ten Architectos who are here with us tonight. Andrea, James, Fernando sitting here at the first row. Thank you for coming. And we have just put together a few slides that basically the idea is to be able to show sort of like the range of scales and diversity of the work. This is a public building we're about to complete in the port of Acapulco in Mexico. It's a government building. It's the state hall for the state of Guerrero. The next one, which is a very different kind of work, but it's an intervention in one of the most beautiful historic centers in Mexico and the city of Puebla. And it's a museum. It's one of these private encyclopedic museums. So we had the opportunity to completely transform a group, a collection of seven colonial structures, put them all together, sort of rearticulate them and insert some very new and contemporary buildings that sort of bring them all together. You may be aware of this big building we completed here a couple of years ago here in New York called the Mercedes House on the west side of this island overlooking the Hudson River. And recently completed the... This is a small campus right in the center of Mexico City. It's a design and art campus, a wonderful school in one of the areas of Mexico City that most needed to have a reinvigoration and new energy brought into that center of the city. And last but not least, this is the one on-built project which we're getting ready to build. It's a new museum in Chapultepec Park in Mexico City which is an energy and technology museum and it's basically an extension of the park that would celebrate on one hand science and technology but on the other hand also the arts and new opportunities of the arts that will be coming together in this very important space in Mexico City. And I'm looking forward to getting into the conversation with my very distinguished colleagues. Thank you. Now, if we have all these teaching architects, we also need deans to run all these prestigious universities with architectural schools, with architectural professors and it's another form of designing and building, designing a curriculum, building the next generation of architects. This is what she's doing. Her appointment as dean was also the harbinger of what has become a tsunami of women architects as deans in the best schools of architecture in the country and this is what's making contemporary architecture new. With her own firm, she has been fortunate to build and to design real buildings, not virtual environments, both in the United States and the Northeast and in overseas, in China. For me, her built work engages and transforms advanced tools available to architects today. Technology and materials. Please help me welcome Monica Ponce de León. Good evening. Buenas noches. I am really, really excited to be here today. I'm very grateful to the Museo del Barrio, but also to the Cooper Hewitt. And I'm actually very nervous to be on the same stage with such distinguished architects that I have admired through my entire career. I also was not smart enough like them to put many slides, many images in one slide, so I'm afraid that it's going to be a little difficult to understand my work through the slides that I chose. I have always been interested in the material that makes architecture and in the relationship between the part and the whole. And I have been interested in technology, technology in all its facets, from low-tech, like the technology that it takes to put bricks together. This is a building that I did in China, an art center that I did in China. Too high-tech. This is a space that we did in Boston where we used digital technology as a way of shaping, cutting the wood that then got assembled and aggregated by hand into a different kind of space, a different hole. And this fascination for me with technology has always been mediated by a desire to create new environments and a desire to create new effects. This is a gas station in Los Angeles. And the idea that architecture can actually give you pleasure and that architecture can actually in a way make your day. The number of people that recognize this gas station just by driving by and then they see it on a slide and they're like, I remember that building. So just the fact that architecture can actually give you that twinkle in the eye and get you somehow to think about something else than your everyday life. I've also been very interested in the relationship between art and architecture and the sort of funny boundary that there is between the two. I have actually gotten commissions by the General Services Administration as an artist. So I actually built pieces of art inside somebody else's work. But in this project that I did in Lower Manhattan, this is the Conrad Hilton, I was commissioned to gut the whole building except for this solid drawing and then reimagine all the spaces around it. And what we did was not only redesign the volume of the space, the balconies were reshaped, the underneath of the drawing was freed as a space. We not only inserted new program, new materials, new surfaces, but we also suspended a series of veils in front of the silhouette as a way of creating a conversation between the space and the drawing. So for me at the end, what architecture has the capacity to do is to shape space to create new possibilities. This is a cultural center that we have under construction in Pompano Beach, Florida. And it's actually a combination between a cultural center and a library. And what architecture was able to do in this case was actually bring together two disparate clients with two disparate aspirations. The two clients were never in the room together. And they had arguments about the fact that one wanted the front door in the back and the other one insisted the front door should be in the front while not being in the room with me. So architecture was actually be able to reconcile these different desires and these different aspirations into a single building that actually represents the community at large. So I'm hoping that these are the kinds of things that we can discuss during our conversation. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to go to that slide because it went too quickly. So if you have questions, you can use these hashtags and these Twitter handles. For questions you can invite Diana and Enrique to come up to the stage. First, I want to ask Diana. And we're going to start with Diana because Diana is, as the other speakers mentioned, quite an inspiration for many of us. And Diana was the first professor, first woman who taught at Princeton School of Architecture. I'm not going to say the year, but I want to ask you, Diana, before you arrived in the United States, what was in your background and family heritage that made you want to be an architect? Well, for the public, I was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And I studied architecture there at grade school. I was very lucky. It was a great period in university. And then I went to Paris to pursue my interest in urbanism and in relation to the social sciences. And then I came here. So that's so you know where I was. But before that, my family, maybe, I don't know, they were building a house. My mother did interiors. They were at the magazines. She was self-taught, all this stuff. And I was good for math and drawing, I guess. And since you had to choose a professional career at that time, it wasn't like an undergraduate and graduate like here. By elimination, basically, I thought that was it. You know, architect would be a one. And when I started, I had no clue what it was. It's so hard to understand. But you had an affinity for drawing? Yeah, you know, drawing. You had visual spatial skills? Spatial, I can't say because who knew what space was. Once I told my first year teacher, I used, because I thought it was cool, I used the word space and he said, what do you mean? So after that, you know, I said, okay, I have to learn something. Welcome back to your education as well. Monica, did you have someone in your family? Did you always want to be an architect? As Diana was answering the question, I thought, oh my gosh, my answer is absolutely nothing. I'm the first one to go to college in my family. We absolutely, I never met an architect before I stepped foot in an architecture school. But I did started drawing plants when I was seven years of age. In Caracas. In Caracas. I came to this country when I was a teenager. I was born and raised in Caracas. And at seven years of age, I remember I started drawing plants of things. I would be in a doctor's office and I would be drawing a plant. I would be at my house and I would be drawing a plant. And my mother was like, what is this weird thing that this girl is doing? And you had never seen plants before? For some reason, I don't know. Maybe I saw it somewhere. I think probably the city of Caracas is responsible for my interest in architecture. In Caracas in the 70s, when I was growing up, architecture was very important and modernity was very important. Reinforced concrete was very important. I love reinforced concrete because I associated with my childhood. So please be kind to reinforced concrete buildings. They are Latin American. It's a Latin American heritage. They are the people who are opposed when they tear them down. I think the city of Caracas is responsible for me becoming interested in studying architecture. And obviously Buenos Aires, Caracas, and now Mexico City, did the city influence you or the family influence you? No, nobody influenced you. I'm listening to Monica and I could have said exactly the same thing. And I totally agree with Monica. Well, first the question, no. Nobody in my family, no reference to architecture, nothing. But I think what Monica brings up, it's most important. The enormous tradition that our countries have as modern countries, in modern architecture, how important and well taken and absolutely embraced into our larger communities that permeates probably in the life of everybody who has the enormous privilege to be raised in one of the Latin American capitals. And on that note, Enrique, your education began in Mexico City as an architect? Yeah, I went to school in Mexico City. Then a graduate got my first degree as an architect from Mexico City. Then as you well know, I came to Cornell University where you taught me. Everything you know. Yes, and then I got my master's degree here in the States. So it was then half and half, so to speak, half Mexican education, half American education at that point. Yeah, I don't know the exact percentage. But yeah, I went in both countries. Then most of my academic career as an educator has been in the States in this country. And back to Monica, your architectural education took place entirely in the United States. Oh, here. To the point that I actually cannot talk about architecture in Spanish. I struggle. I can talk about personal things in Spanish. I can talk about love life in Spanish. I talk to my children in Spanish, but I cannot talk about architecture in Spanish. That's quite all right. And Diana, I know that you had both a European education and also an education in Argentina. Yeah, but I want to say that So your formation was both... Yeah, but the United States was very important to me because when I was in... I tried to make it very short, but I skipped the last year in high school. It wasn't there to myself. And so I told my father that then I'll come to the States. We have a big American family. And I think it was a one-sided thing. I think my father ever agreed to that. And so I started architecture at 16. And then at some point my father said, well, you know, I want to take you on a trip, you know, special, you know, to Europe and the States and me and my younger brother and so on. And I said, no, no, forget it. I mean, I don't remember. I missed my whole year in school. So I said, okay, over the holidays. And what do you want? I said, well, Europe is all old. I have nothing to add. So let's go to the States. And so I came here and the trip was basically tailored where I wanted to go. And so first stop was Miami and then it was Washington, Chicago, New York. And since I had spent a week non-sleeping drawing the Lake Shore Driveway, means when they're drawing Chicago, all I wanted to do was see that building. But most importantly, I came to New York and I went to the Guggenheim. And that was extraordinary because it was my first experience ever of space. Then I understood what space was and I still, I love that building. I always did and I still do. Yeah. Well, and did that open up the world for you in terms of New York architecture? And then that encouraged you and actually stimulated for the teaching of architecture? I'm not sure. I think I started teaching because I felt I had something to say. I started questioning all the ideas that I had learned as I call them inherited of urbanism, urban design, urbanism. As I was before I even graduated I had that huge urban project for my thesis. And so I started searching ways of thinking about it and I went to Europe and this and that. And so I started to do critical work and so I started teaching very briefly in Buenos Aires between Paris and New York and developed some ideas. And then when I came here the opportunity happened that, you know, I was invited to submit or whatever my credentials are, consider myself for a teaching position, junior full-time teaching position at Princeton. And so somebody said, you know, you were in a review and they didn't really like you. So I had run out of my University of Buenos Aires fellowship and I did and then I started teaching and I had these ideas I thought to teach. I thought most of my life. Well, you were the first woman teaching at the School of Architecture. Yeah, I didn't know that. I went there without knowing anything. I went there, I went like, okay, I'm running my fellowship, I need a job. They told me about these. I said, Princeton, okay, but for architecture it wasn't like Harvard, you know, okay, fine. So... It's not like Harvard. I had a project we had built that actually was in the Latin American... Department. No, at MoMA recently. It was prior to coming here. And I showed that project and with that I talked about everything, my life philosophy. I had to do that. I had two hours interview with the dean. Then I gave a public lecture. But I went like, you like me, take me and like me good night. I go and look for something else. Which is the best thing could happen because I had no clue what Princeton was. No clue that I was a woman, no clue there hadn't been any women before. There hadn't been women students until two years before. In my mind, in my world, that wasn't a possibility. So why would I think that? The point is that I got appointed and it turned out it was also kind of... I won't call it competition, but there were 10 other people considered. So I got the position and then I learned after. I learned the hard way. Well Enrique, did you learn the hard way when you came to start teaching and the hard way of trying to combine practice and teaching at the same time? Well, I guess mine was probably a little different. The reason I started teaching is completely the opposite of what Diana said. What was it? Diana said she started teaching and I'm sure it's true because she had something to say. And I started teaching because I thought I had thought not learned enough. The only way for me to stay as a student would be to start being a young professor and sharing the very little that I had to share but then keep on learning. And then I went on for years and years and years. And you're still learning? I'm still learning. I have to say that's the best part of teaching is the learning. Yeah, exactly. I've always said that. The moment I stop learning and I get bored and there's no reason for me to teach anymore. Well, we won't hold you to that. But Monica, your first experience teaching and education, transmission of knowledge to others? I have always thought and had a practice at the same time. And I went through school straight. I went from undergraduate straight to graduate straight to teaching and practicing. So for me, architecture has not been independent of academia. They're one and the same. It's all mixed together. I don't see practice and academia as opposites. I don't see them in a dialectic. I see them as all part of architecture culture. And now shifting a little bit, Diana, I want to emphasize the built work. And I know that there's a great deal of other work and your partner, Mario Gandolsonas at the firm. And the two projects that I wanted to ask you about was Melrose, which is in the Bronx and you showed that one. And you did not show this, but it's here in the Northeast and it's well known as the extra house in the Hamptons. And Melrose, to me, is a mixing chamber because the site is within the towers in the park. Absolutely. And the complex belongs to the New York City Housing Authority, also known as NYCHA, which sounds like some chemical. But this project was sponsored and supported by NYCHA and I wanted to hear from you about that experience and what were the challenges of that project. I love that project because of the process. We were selected, there was a fantastic program that David Burnie was heading, which was Design Excellence and that's how we got selected. And the great thing about the project was when the site was a challenge, it was an open, Grand Concourse, 154th Street, open like a wind blowing everywhere. There was nothing holding that corner. And it was among three houses groups, Jackson, Maurizania and Melrose. And so it had to have a symbolic role on one hand, but from our point of view, it also had to hold that site together number one. And it had to address these three, so it wasn't although it was located with Melrose houses, it had to feel that it was opening to everybody. So I can't explain it real, but the entrance, so the gym, which is the elliptical volume, really holds that corner and also establishes an identifying form while the bar where all the other activities are is connected by, let's say, a connector, which is the entrance. So what that did is that that was really facing everybody. But also what it did was that you could use it, lock one site, use the other, could be used all the time. But the process was the most important thing because we decided, we presented three projects, three alternatives to the representatives of the community in one of the houses in the community center they had then within one of the buildings. It's fantastic people, fantastic. And mostly women, and they were incredibly smart and perceptive and have good ideas. We had really, I love to do that. I love to interact in this process with the people, particularly when it's city or community group. And so they chose one, which of course was the one we liked the most. But then one of the things that happened is that when I proposed that I had thought about this idea, like it's very common sense, like when you feel paranoid, if you don't know, you don't see, your head keeps on going. So I said, well, everybody's barricading behind walls. Everybody's afraid of everybody else. What if we put glass and people inside can look out and people out can look in. Transparency. And the people loved it. And then we said, well, we thought maybe we could put some. Great, no, they said. We're going to do it, we're going to do it right. No protection. Nothing ever happened, not a piece of glass was broken. Well, to me, in architecture, according to the world, what is it? Nothing. I mean, there's nothing new about that. It's no great contribution. But from a social point of view, it became so meaningful. So that was a great satisfaction. Well, and I think also the juxtaposition of the forms, because of the towers in the park, the same monomaterial, the brick, and the compositions of the spaces. But you're building in the iconic shapes that one can identify, I think, add on and engage everyone. And this is perhaps an example of the most public project that you have, just like the Sculpture Park. Take me now to the private house, that was the extra house, which also is a series and a family of forms almost suspended and elevated in a green field. Yeah. Without the towers. Well, I chose not to put it, because, I don't know, it's too private. And it was supposed to be a Tuscan villa, but the client wanted. So it's a metaphor of the Tuscan village. Well, it is he called it a Tuscan village. And the interesting thing is, when this client was a really difficult client, he came, he was chopping around for architects. You have to see a lot of architects. A lot more known than we were. But he's a model in our office, which was that concept, was exactly that house. Of the family of forms strung together. It was not only a family, no. They were all very similar. Yeah, it was a family, but at the bar, they were displaced, a whole former game there. There's two and three, and they're displaced, and there's never mind. Was a play on the classical villa, and the city. Exploded. Exploded. And the city and all that. You know, things architects think about. But in any event, he left. He went chopping around. One day he came back. I said, I want that. But then he had these narratives, and he wanted a clock tower, and he wanted these things. First we started with all the same, like little houses. They're like little clapboard houses, and they were on Piloti, on columns. Elevated. So you had the green, and there was these little houses connected by this vaulted long space. And they were connected by bridges, and it was built with actual bridge structure. For actual wood bridges, connecting them. But then we started following the client, playing with what his fantasies were. So each one of these little houses became, one remained like that. They all went to the ground. Then another one became kind of like a lighthousey. And one had became, like, didn't have a roof, but we made an empty room, like a metaphysical room. You couldn't access that. With windows, everything opened to the side. A prohibitive void. Well, this came from seeing beautiful ruins, where you have the ruins, rooms open to the sky. And it's so fantastic. So this became that metaphysical. So that was... But Deanna, this goes back to these projects to me are, they're always embedded with meaning. There's lessons to be learned, architectural primal lessons in them. Even after the fact, and even if you don't tell me this, or tell our audience... Well, the good thing about that project, if I can interrupt you, I don't know if this will mean a lot for the audience here, but you know, people tend to put you in boxes. So if you did white geometric abstract quote, and quote because white is abstract anyway, it represented another period. There you were modern. If you did anything that had clapper or whatever, you're post-modern. But the fact is that this was not trying to be a traditional house. It really wasn't. It was using the elements. You use clapper, you use whatever you have there. So the good thing, what I love about this project, cannot be put in a box. Stylistically, which is one of the things I like a lot. Well, that's one interesting thing also that in the work of Enrique, the Mercedes house, Enrique, that you did, and the Hotel Americano in Chelsea. You didn't show a Hotel Americano, but maybe the audience has visited the building in Chelsea. I love that. So the idea of the platforms, and I've seen a lot of the work that seems to be platforms and buildings that are containers for platforms for either growth or for expansions. But the other one is the screen. Chelsea Hotel is one example of what I call the screen. In the Mercedes house, which you showed, the building is actually a screen to hide the hideous Verizon building behind. And the building is a Z-shape, but it's a stairway to heaven. Can you tell us about these two projects, the Mercedes house and the Hotel Americano here in New York? They're very different projects. Of course. The solutions are so totally different. And they were very different challenges. One is really, I would say, a very quiet infill project in Chelsea. It's just feeling in a void that existed there. And the one opportunity was that facade, to really interact with the city. And that's where the energy went. So there was this sort of like trying to create a condition of depth, a condition of transparency and translucency. That also allowed us to use the screen as a protector of the facade. Also to become part of that industrial part of the city that Chelsea used to be. When we built it, that street was only clubs and old warehouses. Now it's changed a lot. Even in these few years, it's already changed very, very much. But that was a very quiet project. On the other hand, the Mercedes house, we had the opportunity suddenly to design a building that basically was going to occupy a whole block of New York, which is a very, very rare and unique condition. And because of the context, it's across the park. It's across the park and across the river. And across the river. But you also, there was an existing building behind. Which is the Verizon building. And so the building is hiding that as a way. Well that was one of the intentions. But really the whole thing was trying to negotiate the different scales of New York. And to try to open up the building into the rest of the city. And the great opportunity to really start with a thing what type of building has not been done in New York? How do you do something that is not what has already been done and there has a lot been done here? So we didn't want to do what they call a point tower. Now we see all of these huge towers. We didn't want to do that. We didn't want to do a podium with different buildings on top of it. So we started trying to get away from that. And then little by little we started discovering this sort of fun different way of dealing with all of that. And that's how we little by little came to there. Right, but it's still inside the language of the wedding cake of New York City and the setbacks. Well because you know in New York you always sort of have those parameters. Like there are many, many zoning. That building is within every zoning requirement that exists in New York. So within all of those the easy way is just to take all of those zoning requirements and just build them, which is what most people do here. And here we have the opportunity to take them as challenges within all of those parameters to try to invent something else. I don't know if we really accomplished that much but I think it's a different type of building. We're very proud that it stands out and has its own vocabulary. I love that, Bill. Well, thank you very much. No, you can tell it's really taking, I love that kind of approach that you take the restrictions of the code, of the zoning code and you use it to your advantage just interpreting differently like the setback, right? People just, as you say, they take the easy way but the stepping is very carefully done and not easy the way you did it. So it's brilliant. Thank you, Deanna. And Monica, the two projects I want to mention from your work was the Battery Park City, the interiors and how all that got shaped and this is what I was referring to in terms of technology and materials, materiality and craft. So tell us about that one and also you did not show it but it's well known in the architecture circles is the main library at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and in there there was an existing building and you had these insertions inside almost like little buildings. Also technology and materials played a prominent role and I see it also in your recurring work. A lot of the work cannot be made unless you have cutting edge technology. It's interesting that you selected two interiors so it makes actually an easy comparison. What they have in common is that they both worked very hard to create a public space. In the case of the RISD library the library is actually at the ground level of a building that contains the dormitories for the entire sophomore class of the entire college which means that it is full of students and they use the library really as their living room because there is no other public space in the building so it's the library but it's also where they spend their time. It's like Diana, it's another mixing chamber. Correct, correct. And they're mixing space. And then Conrad Hilton is part of the right of way for the public in Battery Park. So it's one of these public spaces. It's a public space but of course the regulation says that it needs to be only 15 feet wide and what we did is that we treated the entire space as a public space. In the case of Conrad was at God Rehab so we did the entire space. In the case of RISD it was an existing historic structure and a historic structure in the national register so our job was to not mess it up so we did more insertions into the space but we used digital technology in both cases as a way of producing the formations that set apart the new from the old. So for us it was very important that the new really read as something that belonged to our time but kept good company with the pre-existing. The pre-existing in the Conrad was the solo it whereas the pre-existing at RISD was really the space from the 1920s. And RISD what is the material used for the pavilion? It's just particle board. Particle board? Very low budget. RISD was very, very low budget and in fact one of the reasons that the client decided to use digital technology is because it was cheaper to use digital technology than conventional millwork. And is that the same at Battery Park City? Battery Park is the inverse. It really was very inexpensive in terms of its architecture when you look at the shaping of the balconies they're Korean and they're pre-formed for example. When you look at the plaster work it's very mundane everyday plaster work. The forms are strong but the actual detailing is very, very common every day. The veils were really treated more like an art installation than architecture and this was an interesting debate actually between the client and me what makes it architecture versus an art installation. And I was not so interested in the boundaries but for him it was important that it be architecture. So the fact that they actually helped illuminate the lobby for him made that jump into architecture. And since we're here in the Latino, Premier Latino Museum in the United States tonight and women who have changed our careers and our architectural practices I wanted to ask you about women and Latinos in the fields of architecture and the world of architecture. What has changed and what has yet to change? Monica. You know it's a difficult question for me. I'm a dean, I'm a woman and I'm a Latino architect. But I sort of went through my career not thinking or worrying about either. I sort of did as others do what I love and just kept on doing, right? The numbers are this small. So the numbers are not with me. Like when you look at the percentage of women in schools versus the percentage of women in the profession this is not promising. When you look at the percentage of Hispanic architects in the profession this is not promising, right? But by the same token I actually think it's an excellent moment for Hispanics to go into the discipline because there is a thirst for more diversity, a thirst for multiplicity of ideas, a thirst for multiple backgrounds. And I think that our voice is louder, quite honestly. And I think that we're having a greater impact in the discipline as a whole. Yeah, and Diana, what's your perspective? Well, I was the first in so many places but first I want to say something. I love the fact that I was the first woman to bring some teacher architecture and here I'm next to Monica, the first dean of women here, who became the first woman dean at the same school. So that to me gives me great, great pleasure. It took them a while but it was good because then it was Monica so there it is. They were waiting. But look, I have to agree with Monica in the sense that I wasn't thinking whether it was a woman, whether it was, let's call it a foreigner, and certainly Latin. I just went about my life, you know. I was just doing what I wanted to do and didn't think about it because first of all my background, I had never been questioned about doing architecture because I was a woman ever. In Argentina they would tell you, oh, what a nice profession for a woman because of aesthetics, beauty, you know, all that stuff. Certainly I'm sure I had women professors. I had certainly lots of friends in school and we had a vita, you know, don't forget that. A vita. So anything was possible but I was like to say that. I'm glad you did. You know, but the point is that I became conscious here only because it was so weird. Well, it's true. Some people were telling me like, you know, like there's something special, you know, but on the other hand, it was hard because I was in a world where I was with a lot of very smart people. I was very lucky and I was at this place in some architecture and urban studies, founder of Peter Eisenman and he actually welcomed me. You know, he was the worst male shovingist. I can say it if you tell him because he knows it. You know, but he was good. He welcomed me. Then he of course, but the problem was not the public problem, it was your colleagues for women architects. The colleagues. Your colleagues. And so I have to say that one of the things that looking retrospectively, I'm happy that I was able to do without even trying just because I did what I did was open doors or maybe facilitate a little bit more for other women that came after me. Certainly what we supported of my women students, but I think that you can't go on thinking that this happens to me because I'm a woman. You just do your thing and I hope, I think it should be easier for women that came after me. Well, here in Rika, the question is, is your office, how many women work in your office? My office has a lot of women. I love it. I love it. I think it's fabulous that we have all these very talented and intelligent women. As you said before, we have two offices. Both offices, the partners that run each one of the offices are both women and they're amazing. Bravo. I think it's great. I love it also that the profession is getting so much more populated by women. It was really a boring and lonely place. It was awful. We were all getting very tired of these man egos. Now I love it. Now I even go to meetings and to parties of the profession. There's a reason to be there. I love it too because it was very boring to be the only one there. Especially in New York. I don't think that in other places was that bad, but New York was definitely a very... When I came here first, it was very much a man, sort of a male profession. Well, times have changed and we've run out of time and we have questions from the audience in cards that will be delivered and we can actually ask a couple more. Thank you. Here's one question. Is there an approach to urbanism and community spaces that is distinctly Latin? Enrique. Yeah, I don't know if it's Latin. First of all, I must say that the word Latin needs a very weird word. I don't like to use it. I don't know if I'm Latin. I don't know if I'm Hispanic. You're just Enrique. No, as Diana said it before, it's very easy to throw people into boxes and this is another box to call whatever Latin architects or Hispanic architects. Nevertheless, I do think that there's obviously traditions that are related to cultures and that are related to places and I'm going back to Monica's first statement about modern architecture. I don't even want to go back to pre-Columbian architecture or to colonial architecture, but there's just a fantastic tradition of architecture and urbanism, that it's modern and it's of the 20th century and it's unique and it has a quality in a scale in certain conditions of proportions and colors and light that you can really only find in our great Latin American city. And there are two questions that are somewhat related to what you were saying. Are there particular elements that you consistently insert in your work or every project, something that you would consider your own mark? Me? Diana. Well, there are different scales, but I think that one of the things that it's important, I wrote this and I believe it and I say it, that the city is the unconscious of architecture. The city is the unconscious of architecture, like analytic unconscious. And to me, whatever I do is start with the city, even if it's a private house. There's something about we live in urban culture and there's something about what I love most about the city is urban culture and public space. And I think when you get into that always is something that's present in one or another in the architecture. You take the farm, the farmhouse in Uruguay. That was a bunch, my client had a building there and things there. They were like, and one day I said, okay, I drew, I made these walls creating these spaces as you could circulate connect. I said, listen, this is like, you can have a bunch of objects floating there. Let's make it, this would make it like a village, like there's something they relate together. So that's like an urban concept that you put into a private, the same as the Sac-Pont House. So, and I think that from my point of view, I'm not saying anybody has to do this for myself. When I did my first house that I designed, Les Echels, which is a house for a musician in Mallorca, which had this huge stair all in glass. It's 1975, it's long, a lifetime ago. The house for the musician in Mallorca? In Mallorca. That was a spectacle. It was about spectacle. And you could go this whole house through outside. It was a place for to make musical theater, et cetera, et cetera, without ever going in. But you could go in. So it was an urban concept that was generating this house, which is a private house. So it's always the city and urban issues and the type of public space that you find. And I agree in our cities, the cities Latin American cities have a European mark tradition. Correct. And therefore, the public space has an important place in them. And I think that's something that is important to me and it's always been part of my architecture. Well, it's interesting because I wanted to mention and highlight that Buenos Aires today is a city of 12 million people, which makes New York City... It doesn't make it any better. I know, but it makes New York City look like a Swiss village. And the same thing with the Distrito Federal, the Mexico City, with 23 million people. So your backgrounds, respective backgrounds, do come from very dense, very populated city environments. Yeah, but the 12 million people is not the city I know. The Buenos Aires I have in my mind, which is the one I grew up with and the one I still visit, is that when you go to Paris, everybody go Paris, Paris, Paris. Yeah, Paris within the Peripheric Boulevard. Go outside, that's a different Paris. So I would say Buenos Aires is like that. It's a fantastic city because it's a fabric city. It's a city of monuments. It's a city of fabric. I'm going to step in because I think Diana said something really important. Yes. And I want to say it again, which is about public space. Yes, Latin American cities and Latin American capitals take a lot of that notion from obviously our European backgrounds, but done in the New World. So it's New World urbanism that then went to Europe from Latin America. And one of the big difference that I always say, and I totally concur with what Diana says, that public space is probably the most important thing and the difference is that for many Anglo cultures, including the United States, with probably the exception of New York, which New York is a big exception, public space is the space of nobody. In our country, public space is everybody's space. And that's a huge difference. It's in a huge different way of looking at architecture. That's true. And speaking of public space in New York City, it's like your experience and your background with, you know, having lived in Caracas and having that be part of your formation. In New York City, where we have 30% of the public is Latino, can a Latino architect design public spaces differently from anybody, any other architect? I think that what is important about the Latino heritage is what Enrique just pointed out, that public space is space for people as opposed to for nobody. And I would say the same of architecture. One of the amazing things about architecture in Latin America, which can spill over, in my opinion, it should spill over into the United States, is that architecture is something that is understood by everybody. Everybody thinks of architecture as representing them. Everybody has opinions about buildings. Everybody thinks that those public buildings are for them. Somehow in the United States, that heritage, that is very Latino, is not one that is shared by the public at large. And in my opinion, it should be brought to the public at large. I have one last question. And that is Diana and Enrique and Monica. What is the biggest challenge for architects today that you would like to impress on young students who are beginning considering architecture or starting architecture careers, the biggest challenge that you feel they're going to be facing in the future? So I don't know if there's a challenge. My advice, in other words, instead of talking about a challenge, I actually want to give advice because this is what I do for the living as a dean. My advice is open your own office. I mean, work for somebody for five, ten years maybe in order to lend the ropes, but open your own office. Right after school. No, no, as I said, you have to work for somebody for a little bit to gain experience. But have as your goal to open your own office because that actually is what is going to empower the Hispanic community much more than working for the SOM or working for this other corporation or the other corporation. I actually think that by having practitioners that represent themselves and that represent their ideas and their belief system, we're actually going to change the face of architecture in the United States. That's good advice. So it's not a challenge, it's more of an advice. Enrique, what's your advice to the youngest architects emerging? You know, I think this is separate but together with architecture. I just think that it's a great moment where the Hispanic communities are maturing in this country. You know, there's second, third, fourth generations of people that are coming out of the greatest universities. We can see it here. And obviously, we are all raising in this country of immigrants. And as the communities become stronger and especially the Hispanic community becomes much more mature, we're going to be seeing more and more Hispanic architects or in any other profession being protagonists in our communities at large. So I don't think it's different from any other group, you know. It's just, you know, and as Monica says, my advice is that people... Well, I would agree half of what... You can work for Enrique. No, no, no. The advice is don't work for the corporations. No, your advice is send you the resume. That's a good advice. Send the resume to Enrique. Those that really love architecture and that are in architecture for the good reasons and that are really committed to doing the best for the community at large through space, through light, to form should stay and do it. And they'll go very far. And Diana, your words of wisdom. I want to have a combination of advice and I don't know what I... Maybe it's more on the advice side. My first advice and I tell this to every student, you have to have your truth. If you don't have a truth, you can't do anything. So that's number one. You have to believe something. Change it tomorrow if you want, but you have to have it because that's what's going to drive you. If you don't have that, who cares, right? Architecture is a profession that requires passion. If you don't have a passion, it's a very tough profession. I can say this retrospectively, fortunately I didn't realize until I was too old to go back. That's happened to all of us. But, you know, it ain't easy, you know. So that's number one. On the other hand, I agree with Monica. It's good. I never even worked for anybody which is a big mistake because there's no rehearsal in architecture. You make a mistake, you pay the early. But if you go to school and you have to get student loans and so on and so forth, and you have to pay that. I'm being very realistic here. You ask for challenges, right? You go through getting a graduate degree and you have to pay that. Architecture doesn't pay well, period. All of you who are architects know this very well. Those who are not architects should know it. You don't make money. Very few people make money with architecture. So that's something you have to think about. And a lot of people don't follow architecture for that very reason. On the other hand, you know what the luxury is? It's that you really love what you do. So you have to think what is worth more. To love what you do the rest of your life or to be just fighting to make money. So that's what I can say, but that's autobiographical so who knows if it's the right thing. Can I contradict Diana just a little bit? Absolutely. Go for it. It is true that architects don't make as much as somebody in Wall Street. No, actually I'm a dean so I actually know these things. But when you look and I'm going to be really nerdy, when you look at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics we actually make more money than the average engineer. Average engineer? Yes, this is true. News to us. This is why I'm being nerdy and saying it to this audience because I'm tired of the myth. So if you look at the average engineer, the average architect, the average architect makes much more money than the average engineer. It sort of makes sense. They work for us, right? Mechanical engineers and structural engineers. So it sort of actually makes sense when you think about it, right? So that's one thing. And the other thing that I have learned is actually that the majority of the medical profession makes about the same as the majority of the architectural profession. It's only the heart surgeons and the brain surgeons that are super highly specialized and make more than us. So actually the architectural profession is more average than we think. So I would not actually discourage people from studying architecture because of the economics, because the economics actually are not so bad. And when you look at scholarships today in architectural schools, I do have to say that underrepresented minorities have an advantage. So don't not apply to school because of the financial condition because you actually will be most likely a great candidate for a scholarship. And the other thing, say it again. Very good commercial. This is totally an information. But I think it's important because we live with these myths and we perpetuate these myths. No, I agree, Monica, but when I see the medium of what architects make and then you see what lawyers make, I'm going to go too. My brother is a lawyer. No. My job, my, there are more lawyers than architects. There are plenty of lawyers. Anybody says an MBA or lawyers, any of those are officials. Architects are usually honest people. That's the problem. Architects are honest. So what I'm saying, my point was not to discourage people because, but that you have to really believe in it that you love what you're doing to make that decision. And it's passion. And Enrique, you feel the passion for architecture. Monica feels the passion. And Diana, you are, for all of us, an inspiration about passion for architecture. And I think that with that, I want to close tonight. I want to thank again our distinguished panelists. It's a joy to see you. Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure. Everyone, thank you.