 Hi Gallia. It's really a pleasure to be speaking with you today. I always think about your practice and your teaching as bringing things together whether you know bringing the social and the artistic or the high and the low or the north and the south and I'm very kind of curious or wanting to ask you more about how this this impacts how you think about practice and you've constructed your own approach to both architecture and teaching. Things that we think as opposites, you know, art and social elite and expression are popular and elite and also virtual and physical. Right now. So the idea is always like if a new medium comes into play, let's say photography, then painting may die. And so in the 1900s, people would make the case that photography would displace art and painting. What happened is actually the contrary with the advent of photography art and painting in particular exploded. We did not have a it flourished and we have not had a moment more prolific in the art world as after 1920. And so what I would say is that this moment and as I prepare the class for I prepare the seminar for art and social infrastructure, the virtual actually will make the physical more relevant. We will have much more offers that are virtual but the moments in which we meet in a seminar will be even more precious than they are. People will have will make an effort to go to a seminar and meet in a group where you have 12 people or 20. And so what I predict is never a good word, but what I see is reevaluating of those interests and the word reevaluating it's very important to me because I'm teaching about values and I think that one of the things that we architects do is materialize the values of the time. And so I think that my relationship with the art world it's not from the point of view of art as an elite thing, but art as a value for all of us. And the reason why the art world has exploded in the last 20, 30 years it's because it's one of the mediums where more people communicate in and so it's in a in a network society where people come to it from different backgrounds, from different languages, from different ideologies art, it's still something that builds up consensus. And so it's really teaching it's really about updating myself in the consensus of the moment. And what's great about Gallia, your sort of contribution, analyst contribution to G-SAP and the school is this kind of dialogue that you've created between your practice and your teaching and this feedback group, which has been incredibly enriching to see grow and expand and as you've built more and more and design more and more for the art world or art collectors, etc moving increasingly in the public realm with your own practice and how you've brought these questions to bear upon your studios and your seminars. And so one question that I have for you because I do feel like you are sort of you know, pioneer in your practice in the sense that you've always one, I think reflect on how you work, how architects work, you have the sense of always taking a step back and sort of designing your practice. I think of you as someone who has constantly made choices in terms of the kinds of practice that you want to have and you bring those questions to the students. And so two questions, one is where are you taking your own practice and what are you excited about? And then in relation to that where do you think practice might be going for the next generation of students and you know, what is exciting for you to imagine in light also what you just said, the physical is more is craved more than ever right now. Exactly. So I think of practice as opposite to size. It's not about how big anything is, it's how intricate it is, how you are connected to it. And so I could not imagine teaching if I was not a practicing architect because that's the medium in which I express the bulk of my interests and so you're right, I design the office to feed a way of being and a set of values that are with me and it has shifted over the years from working with artists to working with collectors to working with institutions to designing exhibitions to decide now museums and things like that. But it's not about whether let's say a children's museum for that it's for thousands of people today in the middle of Manhattan 80,000 square feet. It's not about the size of that versus an exhibition of the marginal artists from Paraguay in a museum of American society, for example. It's not about size. It's about the connection and the intricacy of the relationship of that particular thing and the values of that particular thing and the way you communicate to other people. And so for me there's no distinction between urban architectural or ergonomics or design. It's all within the spectrum. And so it could be a chair a bench in a public plaza or it could be a reconsideration of a downtown of a city passing through the scale of residential architecture passing through the scale of institutional architecture. All of those things landscape environment they all connect. They are all part of thinking and I feel like we have a repertoire of ideas all anew. And it's also not about the latest idea. Some of the considerations that I'm putting forward now with my students and my work are 1,000-year-old ideas. My interest of working with Bricks and Mesa reconstruction, you can trace that back to city and architecture thousands of years ago or Mayan architecture thousands of years ago. And it connects to El Adiodieste in Uruguay 40 years ago. And so I think the idea of pass and present, big and small, intricate or large. It's not we are too used of thinking about dualities and at this moment it's about increasing the repertoire of ideas and increasing the spectrum of people working together. So I think another thing that we are very strong at Columbia is at the sense of working as a team and not as a kind of you know divisionary architect. We are we are like a team school and we have been a team school for a while. And the last thing that I want to ask is so you you went to Columbia. Actually, I remember you talking about your Brick project you know very early on I think what you you had just graduated. So I love that you're coming back to that and and that the life of an architect as a practice is a kind of sort of spiral. What about New York? I mean you're an unbelievably cosmopolitan you know person and do you think New York is still important? Do you think learning coming to New York to be in an architecture school is important? How do you think the the the city figures at GESAP and in the way that you teach for example? Absolutely. I think that the intricacy of connections in New York cannot be replicated someplace else. I with the with the spread of the virus I have been receiving emails from people that live in rural Argentina three hours away from the closest airport like I have castings that are doctors and and pharmacists and teachers in uh Hernandez or Rodin three hours from an airport five hours from an airport and they have two cases of coronavirus in a town of you know Very far away and so I think even though the network is super extensive and super connected and intricate the node of connections that happen here in New York and the intensity of discussions and the ability of uh, you know Gathering that data that happens somewhere else and then immediately putting it in context with ELAS for example the Institute of Latin American Studies Sending that to them connecting to people uh, and so I think whether it's in architecture or whether it's in um international affairs or whether it's in law uh being in New York We can talk together online here and it feels like you would have to screen uh, you know for days In uh far away places to be heard. So I think here it just takes Like that and and things get connected immediately. And so I think the it will be New York will have it come back. It will definitely go a couple of states back and then forward But I don't um I've been here. I've been here through the 1988 crisis um 9 11 Superstorm sunday the 2008 crisis and uh, and every time Um, I have been in New York again and it has come back um Stronger and so I I I think that um, we are going to be hit very strong right now, but it will we will come back Um, and we will be relevant again Gallia, thanks so much for you know your optimism and But also your perspective. I really feel like you bring an amazing perspective to the school and to the students and I'm very excited to be together again in the fall and to Imagine come back over and over again as stronger As we think about how we're going to live in the future. Thank you so much Gallia. Thank you Amal. Have a good time. Yes. Bye. Bye