 All right. Welcome, everyone. It's really a great pleasure to welcome Li Hu this evening. Li Hu is certainly no stranger to the school. For five years, he led Studio X Beijing, creating one of the first architecture and design hub in the city, a platform he successfully engaged to think about the future of Beijing almost live as it was going through some of its most extreme and rapid transformations. Then he became too busy and way too big with an increasingly interesting practice and highly visible commissions such as the recently completed Ocean Center at Tsinghua University, a building that takes the traditional campus quad and moves it up vertically to create a series of public spaces distributed in section for the meeting of minds. Or Hex Sits, a reconfigurable, reusable, and quite elegant building system which sits at the intersection of ancient Chinese wooden building systems and local viziers and modular explorations and proposes an alternative to the Chinese contemporary production frenzy, one that can be at once more flexible and more sustainable. Or the free-form new school for the prestigious Beijing number four high school conceptualized as an undulating new open ground which distributes a series of interwoven vertical gardens throughout the school that integrate inside and outside in an almost seamless way. These are just three wonderful examples of Li Hu's recent projects. And while they are three buildings operating at a building scale, they also clearly carry with them a unique consciousness of the city around, echoing the concerns Li Hu was bringing to the platform of Studio X. How to think and make architecture that is not only deeply embedded within its urban context but produces new possibilities for this context? How do we think through architecture about the city, its history, past scale and fabric, but also its future form, livability, and open and green space? And more importantly, how do you think through architecture about life, about people, and about creating new relationships, new experiences, and new grounds for exchange? As the name of his practice suggests, Li Hu's research and work lie in redefining the open and public grounds that buildings not only sit on but are anchored within, create around them, and then carry up through them, always weaving together the built and the natural at a time and in a place where rapid urbanization has created unprecedented challenges but also new opportunities for engagement and for invention. These opportunities are ones that Li Hu's practice is shaping through intense collaboration across the disciplines of the built environment, something that we certainly find quite important here at the school. But even beyond that, it's also interesting to note that collaboration is the first mention in Li Hu's mission statement for the office with an image of his design team working, indeed representing an unmistakable commitment to the same exchange and openness that he seeks to design through his architecture and his buildings. Open was founded by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing in New York City before establishing Beijing as its home base in 2008. The practice has been widely recognized with recent honors, including the winning prize of World Architecture Awards for Chinese Architecture, the Best Architecture Award of China Architecture Media Awards, the World Award of Asia Pacific Interior Design Awards, amongst many other. They've also been invited to participate in international exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale and the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennale. Li Hu received his B. Arc from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1996 and a mark from Rice University in 1998. He worked at Stephen Hall Architects from 2000 to 2010 and became a partner of the firm in 2005. During his time with Steven, Li founded and led the firm's Beijing office and was responsible for the firm's influential projects in Asia, including the Linked Hybrid in Beijing, the Van Khe Center in Chenjian, Raffle City in Chengdu, and the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing. Li led the partnership at Stephen Hall Architects in 2011 to focus on his practice of open architecture. But tonight we have this opportunity to reunite them both on stage with Steven, giving the response to the lecture. But for now, please join me in welcoming Li Hu. Thanks, Dean Andros, for the wonderful introduction. And again, thanks, Gisa, for inviting me to be back here. I always feel like home. Back to New York City. I often tell people that this is a city I actually grow up mentally and as architect. So I'm so happy to be back. Forgive my jet lag and my rusted English after living here, left the city for 10 years. Actually, exactly 10 years since I left. But I feel like I've never really left the city. And every time I come back here, I feel like coming home. So tonight, I'm very honored to be here to share with everyone through the stories of eight projects we have done recently in the last few years, except for one, all the other seven under construction or finished construction. I begin with this slide, where I like to see the world with no boundaries between countries, which is causing a lot of conflict these days. And I selected eight projects and they are distributed interestingly not after I put them together in three regions of China. I wrote the map a little bit, so it's disoriented. But they happen to be the three major metropolis in China's being formed and also being planned. The region around Beijing, Shanghai on the Yangtze River and the Pearl River Delta region. I begin with the sentence I wrote while I was asked to give a definition of architecture by this editor who's making the book called the Book of Quotes. Architecture is both a medium to express our understanding, critique and the hope of the world around us and the medium through which we can engage it with our best imagination, courage, persistence and strategies. This is how I see architecture. And with that, our practice is deeply engaged with the observation of the society that is evolving around our life. I'll just go through this following few images and scale something constantly changing is conception with the rapid urbanization and the conditions. And we are probably living in a time perhaps the most dramatic of the human history where you see a collapsing of time. The most current commercialism and people living, certain people living state of the mind of feudalism. And it's simply no longer easier to distinguish the East and the West or so meaningful to talk about the East and the West. And how do we see a program today? This is one of the biggest buildings, supposedly the biggest single mass of buildings in the world in Chengdu. And our conventional knowledge and what we know, the notion about the city, the nature, the village, the countryside, sometimes collapsed in reality. And we have to constantly question what we know really and equally the identity. And can the city provide the generosity we're supposed to provide? And living in China, I feel like I'm living in the kind of daily drama where sometimes the unexpected and imaginable happens in reality. Next to one of the most expensive buildings in the city, you can also find the most affordable food. And borrowed from one of the photographs from this very young documentary photographer that is the great driving all of us mad globally, not just in China. And among the buildings we've been, you know, built everywhere and you know, something is missing at the same time. This nature is being displaced and often we forgot about the future and the speed we're moving and sometimes it's so fast that it's leaving our soul behind and the urbanism or building without the compassion and what kind of personality is this shaping us into? And are we into too much into the image-making, you know, architecture or the city, is designed as a fantasy and from what point of view? And what can we, how do we look at the power, you know, the public space and today what's the concept of the public and the private? Is our freedom being pushed to the Oscar of the city, you know? Can architecture express the hope of the freedom and what this bubble has left us with? Problems, opportunities and things we have to face and reconsider and redesign and re-adapt to these things. And the air right when the tourist Beijing is probably most famous for the air quality but what's interesting is the air quality is changing lots of the previous notions about how building works. In the past we know cross ventilation is a great for green architecture but now we have to reconsider sealed buildings for clean air. Above all, my most worry is actually in the status of humanity. Among all the commercialism, has our humanity improved the human spirit from 100 years ago or from 5,000 years ago? And can we, what can we do as architects? And these are the questions constantly evolving coming to the mind among our work. I want to tell a short story about a bicycle and something I noticed recently is being a really inspiring event. China has known in the recent history that it's a kingdom of bicycles that quickly disappears and replaced by automobiles and in fact that's how most cities, new cities are being planned for no longer pedestrian or walking or bicycles but for cars. Until recently, only less than a year ago these beautifully designed bikes started to show up on the street and increasing at astronomical speed. So this is a small kind of startup company called a MOBIKE. I'm also a user of MOBIKE although I have my own bikes. What's interesting is that now the MOBIKE is everywhere in the city and people who abandoned bicycles are starting to return to using bikes again and I was wondering if the failure of the city planning today contributed to the success of the bike or in the other way around the success of this bike would help to fix the problem of the city because it helped to make the link, the last mile, what they call the last mile for what the subway cannot do. They link you from your home to the subway and the subway to your workplace and it become extremely popular all of a sudden. Of course the success is also being helped by the new technology of the smartphone and the WeChat, all these amazing new tools coming out. You know, it's something the city has tried over the last 10 or more years on the public bike system but never worked and always failed but this company and many other following are making this way through and make it work because the technology make it really user friendly and make you want to use it and plus it's a great design of the bike. So to read about that, the China bubble was blowing very large up to the Olympics and everybody thought it going to burst and I was ready for that I thought it's a great we can finally slow down to spend some more time thinking and then it quickly continue to blow even bigger and this continues of this pressure of the bubble and I was quoted on this Mark magazine probably lots of people hated that I said we built too much too fast. That was in 2014 but the speed seems never really slows down and I think that's probably more varying happening. So I began the first project. A school is a city with a farm and gardens and this is in fact our first project that accompanied with one and took us four years to design and build. I think it goes super fast in China and the skill we're working with reflecting on this I think the perhaps what helped to make it possible to make a design work is the way that it's not as established as other places in the world that allows a parallel design and construction otherwise there would be no way to get anything done properly. This is the location of the school and that's the center of the city that's where our office is and as the airport just gave a sense of the location of course as a young practice independent practice not a public institution that we're always push on the edge of the city to work where there's no chance for us to get any commission in the city. The school, China recently has been experiencing a boom of building schools the schools coming up everywhere. As a part of the new city being planned satellite cities and small towns being built around the countries where school is something required as a part of the new developments and equally here at this con Oscar also the fifth ring road in Beijing this new town is built very rapidly like this is in the year of 2006 and you start to see things being changed at this 2010 is when we started to design the project basically an empty abandoned farmland and the 2014 when the project is near completion you start to see the new city coming up and now so only 10 years time he have a new city and we probably know I don't know 100,000 residents and also the price of the apartment that went up probably five times over the last 10 years and the school is important because it helps to bring people out of the city and to be able to move here. So it was also a time when we're doing the design that as a parent I was looking for school for my daughter who just about age and elementary school and it's also about the time only few years after we moved back to Beijing and it was a worry that this is the conventional school in China probably same in many other countries that's the physical environment and they produced this kind of system that study and the test is a way to kind of to climb up this kind of social ladder perhaps it bothers me deeply and in the city environment and the kids grew up and they have very little opportunity to be engaged with nature and so this one thing concerns and a beginning point of the idea of the school that you know working against all perhaps the most difficult regulations building codes and high densities what can we do to introduce gardens and maximize your interaction with gardens and to bring a piece of memory of the farm also so we call it a garden school that we put in the schools the teaching activities in between the farm and the roof and garden and the ground where we you know putting some of the larger spaces like the gymnasiums the canteens and auditoriums as the shape of the part of the landscape and kind of half buried on the ground to create this kind of multiple level of the ground levels so that was the site and that was the project from view or the project really doesn't really have a special point of view to look at it or has a clear image but it's more about experiences we created from within you know the experience of the life living on this campus or the possibilities to be able to study in nature and create kind of rich experiences luckily the school really accept the concept of this farm on the roof and the practice of farming become part of the curriculum and they do this three seasons a year and even produce the food for the canteen downstairs so at the time the building opens and the one that welcomes the first group of students and we decide to make a map I was thinking you know the little map in New York City of the subway might put in your pocket so we designed this kind of tiny little foldable map for the students to get oriented and then I thought about the school is really like a city it has its own streets and little plazas and different places so this little map also shows the different components of the buildings that become part of the experience, a special experience working and studying the school the lobby that connects different spaces and different levels and the details we have to kind of invent on the construction site and the libraries as a very special practice the principal allows the parents to come to the school because in the new town like this there's essentially no public building no public spaces where the parents actually very fascinated of spending time after work with their students and the students prefer to stay in the school even after the school hours because it feels more comfortable to be here and the lecture hall over the pond and recently we just converted it into a small theater and again you know design workout again on the site even after construction documents and auditoriums also double function of theater and with a theatrical garden above music rooms and the dance rooms and dance teachers said this is the best place for her to dance and gymnasium take advantage of the natural ventilation and the daylighting there's a space below and a space above and it works very well to invert the concept of outdoor and indoor teaching so a lot of teaching start to actually happen in the space outside and in the political days there's a lot of space for the kids to run inside so the idea of that is to think and actually switch back and forth and there are 12 stairs in the building that I mean I think that I believe the stairs one of the most important spaces has kind of human scale so every stair is designed in different ways and you know the way that you can move freely in different ways up and down the building luckily it's capped by the school principal who is very open to the idea this is of course I forgot to mention this is one of the most famous middle school in China the number four if this is a different kind of school perhaps they would lock all the doors up and leave just one door as happened in most schools so every time I go back to visit and I'm so happy to see they kept all the doors open and not worry about the kids getting lost and the bamboo gardens bring lies to different levels even to the parking below and the canteen is this is a very large canteen that allows a thousand people to eat together and also at the time the avatars the movie just opened so I thought making this image of the floating island for the faculty to eat above and the students below and in China if you go to eat in Chinese restaurant there's always a VIP the VIP little small rooms so we make this kind of igloo because I was working on the design of the project the principal sometimes invite me to have this kind of small room with them and it was interesting that this become really a special place where the principal call some special faculty or students come to eat with them and have special meetings of course with the fundamental teaching space in the end interestingly become not even the most important space because the teaching can really happen anywhere but we still figure out a way to do the teaching in two different ways it's a room can be used in horizontally or vertically and has a kind of openness to the space around it and corridors like experience of like the street where people can share the books and the artworks and as we left lots of open space for the school and they start to use it for different things and this islands that flows you know this little semi-private spaces provide a different kind of scale in this very large buildings and it takes on different things like space for the students to invent whatever they like to do and as we're designing the building it's very complex very large in fact the still up to now the largest interior design project ever did and so there's always kind of corners you don't see on the plan you later on you discover oh there's a space there so we invented let's just do a rock climbing and it took us months and months to convince the school to provide this extra budget to make this work so you know it's always kind of exciting accidents having the process of the construction which have to come with new drawings and to make it work and the principle of the school is a physics teacher so that make the discussion of the easier to begin with and he said I want you to make the school like a textbook so I thought the most important thing a building can do is to show the honesty you know to let the students to experience the simplicity and the truthfulness of the materials you know how things start to work together and of course as in all the practice we do in China that with the speed we work with it's very important to continue to work on the construction site and continue to work on the details and a lot of these things are really really as I mentioned happened in the construction phase and the project is so large every time I go to visit the construction site it's exhausting experience to you can't even finish walking checking all the corners on one visit so I was always this is like my me burned out after one visit so since we did the school there's even a bigger boom of building schools and what's interesting because the school is very important in education in China they organize this every year a conference for school principals from all over China and it's called a 1000 principal meeting every year so I'm very happy to see one thing this project has done to the rest of the future schools that they set a new standard because previously school is like housing sort of ignored by architects because you know it's you don't make much money out of it and it's a lot of work involved so it's done without so much design but since then all these principal have seen what school can be and they start to talk to architects finally but we still turn down most of the commissions because either is too fast and the budget is too low to make it meaningful or is it too dense or the site is not appropriate until recently we finally picked one commission I want to do something completely different because if the Beijing is about microphone or from Professor Frampton's words when we got the opportunity to do a school in a different climate in Shanghai I'm going to try something just the opposite to explode a school into pieces and to create a different kind of experience where we can put the architecture the non-architecture or the space in between them equally important and place them like throw the dice on the campus and finding a balance between them and form a different very different kind of campus experience so this is the first commission we accepted after turned down most of the other opportunities next I'm going to move to move east to the coast where we had the opportunity to work on two smaller buildings finally the first one a camp with a theater so this project happens when we're working on the school where in fact was recommended referred by the principal who is a friend of this organization who's starting to build the very first camp in introduce the American camp education to the Chinese occupational systems they first work with the architect Kangokuma's office for six months and they were not happy with the design the things not working out and they're running out of time and for some reason they must get the building done by July in 2012 and we I was very suspicious if this is possible giving only six months time to do a building quite complex from design to build in only six months time and the deadline is not moving anywhere it has to get it done so that's where the building sits in the city of the small town called the Beidai River if you look at the Google Earth this is one of the few places that didn't change much and this is why it began it's just a little fishing village but in the late 19th century the western missionaries start to discover this vacation place because you know it has a really beautiful beach in north China but it was a populated after Mao started to swim in the ocean and this is where the central government set up places like the Camp David is where this leaders of the country spend their summer in the months from late July to mid August and that's precisely the deadline of mid July because no construction is allowed after mid July because they got it opened so when I was rushing we got basically one week time and until one Saturday morning I finished a sketch I realized maybe this is the way to go you know it's a site has a three meters drop I'm gonna sit on a slope and I have to come with some strategy to make it work I know it's impossible to get the design finished in such a short time so I thought what if I just make a flat roof so I began with a simple flat roof for two reasons first it maximized the playground spaces for these kids and secondly this allow us to continue to work on the program underneath so I make a roof this building began with a roof so it has a roof and the shapes come naturally from the site basically you know I draw a line around the offset from the zoning regulations and around the corners so here we have a design and come with the structure and then later on we just start to develop different programs around this courtyard so it began with a courtyard and a flat roof and the program continued to evolve at the beginning I was proposing to have the basketball court so you know part of the sports and later on become a theater because then came in the operators that we run theater so let's make a theater but in fact it's a great thing because in the whole Beidai Heu there's no theater this will be the first theater and then some of the room become a hotel a little tiny little hotel for the faculty so anyway so that's a part of the it's a frustration but also excitement you know sometimes it will make things better along the process and this flat roof really works in the process of the construction and you know allows this at least a very comfortable temperature for the contractors and it allows the interior work can go parallel with you know the curtain wall and everything around it so I never believe that they can get the work done but magically it happens it literally took them three months to build a project from scratch and the holes are very well and even up to today oh by the way in the year following the institution was able to get Kenya Hara to make the sunnage when the building first opened there's no sunnage there's no time for the sunnage so one of the most important space of this project is this theater and it becomes a thing that can transform the buildings so as we're working in the theater I thought what if the theater can opens and it bring in the courtyard into the space and it kind of swallows the courtyard so the courtyard becomes part of the theater and it changes the position of the audience and you know the spectator and the performance in different ways and this is at the evening of the opening night in July I forgot July 16th when the first door opened and then the first layer open shows the second layer which is actually the envelope of the theaters that become the projection screen as you can see outdoor movies when that layer opens up again the theater and the courtyard connects and they're really having fun of the space I take advantage of the possibility of how to use the space the other interesting thing is that at that summer Beidahe had the biggest storm in the recent histories even the new train station got completely flooded so I was really nervous and lots of people are coming for the openings and right before the opening was a huge storm and everyone's nervous because we made a little crazy design in this the theater and the courtyard is flat so you can use instead of making otherwise making a step of foot differences but it works out as everyone is watching very nervously if the rain going to come into the theater I didn't and the drainage and the way design is kind of during the along the path along the slope really works to bring the water away goes underneath and out of the building also working with the industries this door six meters tall we're rejected by most of the fabric so that's not possible and until one day we found one place in Guangzhou and they actually made it happen and it works very easily by a single person to move this thing open and close so the second project in the same city slightly south when we're asked by this very interesting young entrepreneur who is the owner of this developer company who experience a very interesting almost accidental success story of making a library on the by the sea who was designed by a friend of mine but got famous overnight on the internet with the social media so that bring a lot of success for his development and then he started to invite more architects to make what they call the pavilions small architecture as part of actually the communal communal space for this kind of holiday resort development and that's where the site is by the by the sea this is the southern map of 2008 since Google we can see the history which we could never imagine in the past and that's basically now and that's where the little small library is so he first came to us because he saw the camp project he said I want you to design a kindergarten you know, camp he thought it's part of similar to kindergarten and I asked him what else do you want to build he said maybe a museum I said okay I'll do the museum because I want to always do different things she said okay let's try so we start working in the museum I question sometimes what's the relation with the building to the site you know if a building can be put on the sand by the sea and it can also happen put it somewhere in the mountain and what's the connection really here at the very beginning I thought I want this building to have a deep connection to the site at the site I chose or we discussed where to place this museum well, literally museum is a what's really a museum is questionable but you want basically a different kind of place to show art where you can watch the sunrise having breakfast and also being you know surrounded by art so you know this idea is still being discussed but anyway what's special about the site is that there is luckily preserved a natural sand dune it's a capitalist shape because there's a very special local species of trees that grows in the sand and help to maintain this shape you know to prevent the sand going to the other part of the city that's this kind of sand dune at the very beginning I thought about what if we build something into the sand rather than destroy anything here or just play them randomly on the beach in a way maybe it can also help to keep the sand the sand dune for the future because most other part of the sand dune is already destroyed and later on I thought about what if we make a dialogue there's another thing that is almost in the opposite position that is in the ocean and that is really deeply connected to to the to the space here so and so we'll make two museums the one and we'll split this program into two so one part going to the ocean and the idea that to to create a kind of experience a program almost to see art instead of you know our common experience of how we see ours today and that with the tide rise and falls then sometime you can walk over sometime you cannot so I begin first with the space in the sand that that's the that's the very special formation of the sand that just took recently in the winter and some of the inspiration from you know the early discovery of art and how nature changed the you know the shape materials and so in deeply I thought let's make a a collection of spaces that you know that carved into the sand and the some for the art some for other functions and that was the beginning of the concept and we start to work on the possibilities of this how this can work and this is some of the early models we built and the interesting potential of the brain lies into the space and the kind of mysterious of spatial qualities and start to invent the programs and how they work with different spaces so this perhaps the one of the smaller project we did if not the smallest but it took us a long time to develop we've been working on this project for almost two years by now and that's the view from the roof how different kind of cells and bubbles and start to also working together and emerge sometimes and we built this model to to show how the structure works this kind of thin shell concrete structures of course this is a model without the sand which will be put back after construction these cells and also although it's the smallest project we did I proved to be the most difficult one by now and we're still working with contractor engineers to figure out what's the best way to do the form work was important in this project that how the space relate to the light and every space have a different connection to the sunlight and we work on with the possibility of the software to analyze and introduce light differently into different spaces and working on the possibility of how to make a kind of device to to catch the sand and the sound and the special wind around it and become part of the space in this one the largest cell where we is the main space for showing art and other functions the skylights allow a certain time of the year the direct light on the floor but it never hits the wall and so that's it make this very special shape of the light in another kind of studio space where the light the direct light never enters the space and the space connecting different cells so then we start testing how this can work although we have tried I had a fantasies like how to make the form work I thought about one idea can be ice so we make frozen ice of the shape and in the winter and the mouse in the spring after we pour the concrete but that was rejected by the contractor so it's too hard it was too hard but it's possible actually it could be a fantastic idea but it's too hard to control that perfect timing I can try that in the smaller scale now we thought about the 3D milling of the rigid form as the a form work we even found out where to buy this 3D cutter from Alibaba it's not so expensive but again rejected by the contractors they still think it's too expensive too complicated they don't even read our drawing so well and then we thought about making sand that was for a long time the working drawing showing by a layer the sand also recommended by an engineer from Arab that was also rejected by the contractor so it's just too hard to control but I think they are right because when you use the vibrators after you pour the concrete that can destroy any kind of form work that's not rigid enough so in the end they've returned to the most conventional wood form work and paint taking the cutting strips of basically inch inch and a half that's like lots of intensive labor which I never would do but that's what they choose to do in the end and that's what the markup of course to convince the client to do this markup which is you know quite complicated I invented another project that said what if we make a swimming pool by the sea that's going to be the next project so let's make like a rock pool using the natural ocean water which hasn't been one rock pool yet in China and then we need a bath house or changing room by the sea so this markup won't be wasted it will be the future changing room for the people come here for you know in the summer so this markup just this concrete pool happened about two weeks ago and right before I left Beijing they take out the form work and surprisingly you know if you earlier rendering it was all showing a kind of smooth surface because of how we imagine the form work out of the sand or form to be relatively smooth with a placer over it but after I see this markup I thought perhaps we changed the design that just to show this texture of the real form work I don't know I mean I'm still working on it but basically this is what happened in the practice that the mental effects we never imagined that happened in the process and but it happened with this great leader of the contractor was an old gentleman who retired by the way hired by this on this construction site and he brought this kind of craftsmanship to the project and I often learned a great deal from this this man I respected you know the projects that this bring surprises to the work and then on the other side as a dialogue is another very special space for the art in the opposite to the other organic you know cluster collaborative space this one will be about more about solidarity and is is geometric and is alone in the ocean go about 150 meters into the into the ocean so the very original idea is that to make a rock make a piece of rock that just rising from underneath the ocean and become almost like just a part of the nature of course what make it feasible possible is that this part of the sea in China is very very shallow it goes out miles and miles and even at 50 kilometers away from the shore it's only 50 meters deep so at this point we're going 150 meters out it's only 3 meters deep but 3 meters deep in the end actually proved to be very difficult to construct because you can bring the boat to do the pilings and also at the time China's building an island in the South China Sea so they have called all the construction boat to the South China Sea to build islands so we have no way to get any boat here plus it's too shallow so and this is actually much much more difficult to build than any other thing I have imagined and I'm working with engineer from different places from London from Beijing trying to figure out a way to build and still being discussed but most feasible way to do this probably we're going to build a temporary island with sand with a shoring and after the project is finished you take off the shoring and the ocean wash the sands away and here you come to the building I even had a fantasy in my mind how to build this building is to build on the beach build the whole thing on the beach and then drag it to the ocean and this idea works I was even telling Stephen about this concept when we met but the problem is after you drag it to the ocean there's no way to make sure it's level so our engineer asked me are you okay if the building is a little bit off I said no not possible so it's going to be a very abstract object in the ocean which sets an order in the true Norse geometric relation to the earth so I also present this project very differently I thought what if we present this project almost like an art exhibition so we we made 16 drawings on the square you know Hasselblad square format Instagram format and as I print them on the watercolor paper and pin them on the wall there's a little tiny little exhibition and it's how we present it on the project and it was luckily immediately approved by the client with these 16 drawings and those are the objects that are collected from the site and built entirely out of concrete cast in place concrete and with in black pigments so it's like a black rock sitting in the sea and with a rough surface and I hope the oyster will come back to you know and to occupy the surfaces so become really part of the nature and that's how they sit in the ocean and set up a true north south directions and it's like a space for you to experience I can put in a way that it's like a life of artists perhaps where you can there's one tiny little cubic space for the artist studio for artist residents perhaps and then this is the key of the space it's a square six meter by six meter room as you're showing one art at a time facing the ocean so this is the idea I hope to bring a new concept of how we see art today and by the way I just had the opportunity to make a even faster project last month for the Ulin Center in 798 in Beijing taking this concept further to make one where I was asked by the museum to design the exhibition space for 23 artists I had the concept to make one museum for each artist so for this four months of the exhibition we transformed the museum space into 23 small galleries but that the idea really came from this project that the the galleries also space as a dialogue to to the sea where the inspiration which I am always fascinated by by ocean by the sea and in the process of design I discovered that there is kind of the back of the space we can take advantage of that and and perhaps at you know at the high ties where you can't walk over so this kind of journey that you can come by boat in this kind of secret place behind where has kind of strange quality of space in the light and maybe there's also a way you can swim away from the space and we make a very special opening on the top surface that allow light to come in to the space below throughout the year but precisely at in the winter solstice just a lot a single moment of light and maximize in the summer for six hours of that summer solstice and in the rain the rain will be collected and dripped through the hole so in the space you can also have a different kind of experience with nature and this is a complex drawing showing how this special form of cuts in the concrete so now I move to Shanghai in the year 2013 2013 we're invited to to work on a project to in the west westbound of Shanghai to rethink the future of this kind of oil tanks that's where the site is that's the center of Shanghai that's the 2010 the World Expo on this site which used to be well that's now but in before 2002 this site used to be abandoned airplane field very very old airport which actually were abandoned for probably half a century since the war and Shanghai started to develop this part because a very large site and the city expands become part of the city and right now is perhaps the most important development in the entire Shanghai part of the reason that art our museum is a very important part of this site now is leading the art scene in China is that because the large amount of site they have to develop some commercial buildings that provide the funding for these art projects and here's the site of the tank around it was just recently announced this is a museum by David Chippefield Central Pompidou is going to have opened their first satellite compass here and Sejima is working some maybe their first spacecraft here and here's going to be a very crowded space for the dream what's called the dream or studio so we're surrounded by the business but the site is special because in the very early days this part of the site has been planned as an urban park also it's kind of strange neighbor is a helicopter port maybe the first in China so this was the old days when it was used by the airport first built by the Japanese before the World War II we have in the early research we're trying to find out what has been done to oil tanks and we realized there hasn't been any realized project about how to convert oil tanks there's been lots of work on gas tanks and other tanks well oil tanks are very interesting because it's made of purely out of thick steel plates so its structure it's kind of super strong structure to resist this enormous pressure from a full tank of aviation fuel but here's the story of the project that in a way is happening often where we work that throughout the project things change constantly and that's the nature of maybe China today that the speed of change and instability and constantly happening around you this is where we first given the project that we were asked to look at this these five tanks here smaller one and bigger one and the original program we were caught to work on is theaters mostly into theaters but the other thing special about this work is that and actually I often enjoy to do is to program the project well that's I think that's perhaps a very interesting part of the the nature of the practice that as architect you do have the opportunities to write a program and we often volunteer to do that because there isn't any specialized firm who does programming for cultural project or public works that often the program written in a kind of random way and then you perhaps building a mistake so I think writing a good program is very important so we work on we first working with the city and come up with the program as the theaters because that's what the original idea but through the process because this powerful neighbor of the helicopter port they're part of the army so they're very powerful they start to change the site and then we got another powerful neighbor called the DreamWorks Studio also pushing the limits so we're working with not only the changing program but also changing site so you are commissioned to do one project but you end up doing several projects because the things keep changing but of course you don't get paid for multiple projects and as we're developing the theater and performing our center programs and later on the client found out that they are making lots of theaters at their DreamWorks Studio making gigantic theaters so there's no more need for more theaters on the site so they're looking for people who can run the space and then here came this powerful art collector one of the top three art collectors so they signed a contract with the client to run the space so now we're changing to museums now art museums but to make to contemporary art work which is in China the public institution is not really funded by a sustainable funding that a museum often doesn't really run very well what you see although China has probably built over 4,000 museums I've heard in the past 10 short 10 years but very few really function very well because it's easy to make a building but it's difficult to make a building especially a museum doesn't really generate revenue to support its operation so we came always working together with now the new client programs that can support its operation so we're going to have a live house, restaurants an event multifunctional space in addition to some other potentially commercial space to support this space for the art and because the site is planned as a park that literally no construction is allowed so how to make it work still although you can do anything within the tank which doesn't really count you know so in the new politics in China that we used to have a powerful leader who can just do whatever they want but now as things start to evolve that even a anybody at the planning department can reject the whole thing if it doesn't follow strictly the regulation so we have to work with that regulation that no construction is allowed or you don't get any square meters allowance for that so we have to come with a structure that qualifies or defines as a basement which is okay so making this what we call a super surface that connects the tanks to make it functional instead of being totally independent and it works very well because it connects you from the street you can walk up to the other side where the site kind of naturally slow towards the river so taking advantage of the height differences and we start to develop this idea of the super surface connects them and this urban forest there's a massive urban forest super natural and making this two large urban plaza you know for different kind of events of the city and that's basically the massive plan today the idea that to transform the content from oil to art and other civic life and transform certain ways the shape for different use of space so this is where different tanks that three smaller one, two large one to different functions inside we're keeping just the surface tank entirely intact but by putting in different things inside the the live house with a bar below and you know this the club above on the restaurants with the kind of cut out courtyards which just help to make sure we're working with the overall square meters under the regulation and one of the tank for showing art will keep it exactly the original condition to show kind of large artworks or installations one by inserting multiple layers to turn that into a more conventional gallery space and the other one making another layer inside acoustic layer inside to make it work for performance and this building also become kind of a stage for kind of outdoor performance, outdoor concerts and that's the space we inserted under the green roof start to connect all the things together and then provide the kind of back of house needed for the space and that's the section so every tanks is transformed differently and they're connected by the roof above as you can see the sunken plaza come into the side and making the kind of steel plate rims and stairs bring you up into the tank and this shape this kind of shape expands out is also required by the structure to build to protect the original foundation of the tank so it doesn't collapse during the construction or afterwards going to the other tank and this is what the inside one the empty tank for the art the other more conventional one and this is the space for performance or multiple event space and then this is a special work we did our competition we spend the longest time on for nearly one year working on one competition it's also the only project was not built out of all the eight I'm showing tonight which is a pity but it's we're very kind of honored to invite to participate in this competition in one of the perhaps the most prominent site in Shanghai it's a space to have kind of life to intentionally empty for the past 20 years of building this new Pudong area of Shanghai and that's where the site is it sits on the kind of interesting position of the past this is a photograph from the 1930s from the kind of horse racing field and this is how the city has evolved in the probably a photograph taken from the 1960s to a recent time I call that a postcard city because the city really about making this image but it's also representing for a long time it's showing the symbol of the development of China today but what's happening really on the ground is a different story you know it's a city represent a typical Chinese cities where it's more about making image less about urban life and the personal experience and perhaps this opportunity to me is more about building a museum but rather to rethink how we can deal with this city today so I thought about a different kind of urbanism or naturalism on the humanistic one can help to re-link this kind of fragmented cities together and that's where the site is and so we propose to rebuild this the river bank into a new kind of urban park and also rebuild this kind of abandoned fragmented space underneath the TV tower and then connect them with another park so then the museum what kind of museum should they be some of the sitting in this kind of interesting important connection it should not be just another object which we've been building for too long maybe it's something new that is a something that bridge art and nature so here comes the concept that we can work out a possibility of building that is both a park and a museum and program a museum differently that away from the conventional museum spaces which is often another kind of image but here it invites people to come in and being the activities of the urban life and the activity of the nature become part of the museum experience here you can see the solid space of the art space and open space in between is where the social functions and the parks come in and you can actually visit this museum in the other spaces more museum hours and some spaces open 24 hours a day the park being completely part of the park and it's showing some different unexpected moments of how the nature and art can kind of come together and sitting in the library so the attempt is just to rethink what a public institution can be and what a urban architecture can be at this time of the history unfortunately the conservative jury pick another object from a one of the Pritzker winner up to today they still did not announce publicly who's the winner although I think they're going to build it unfortunately so well move to photo source come to the Pearl River Delta region this is Hong Kong this is Shenzhen and Guangdong and Canton I just noticed afterwards that the three project we did here happened to be all next to a new train station they built this bullet train station so there was moment of overlap of the project I was working on the construction site here and also this is under construction I can go from this site to another construction site in less than 20 minutes amazing because otherwise it would take you the whole day to travel but the bullet train takes only 20 minutes to go from one side to another site so haxi's the interest of mass customization begins with when we first founded the open architecture that's of course part of the names about that when we were asked by one of the biggest developer in China Wang Ke to design a showroom for them that's where the project is now it's a tiny project about 600 square meters next to this monster train station for one of their biggest real estate project in the city as you can see this is the map of 2016 but only a few years ago in 2010 and in 2008 it's still just rice farms and complete countryside but you can see the train station is being built the foundations are done and then in 2006 10 years ago there was nothing here literally so that's where we inherited the site basically it's a blank site but soon gonna be something like this and the sites where we sit on this pavilion we're going to build as a showroom will be there just for a few years and that's a very common typology in China where there are temporary buildings being built everywhere as a showroom for real estate developers and for a while that this kind of sales pavilions or showrooms the rare opportunities for architects to experiment to become experimental opportunities things being built building all crazy shapes but all torn down in a short two years sometimes in six months and so I thought can this be done differently you know with inspiration from the local Brazil or Jean Provis in their early their probably life long experiment into different kind of building systems and taking the inspiration from nature the structure behind nature and this very inspiring work by Stephen Wolfram who claimed he discovered the secret behind everything in the world it's a book I bought when it first came out so we come with this kind of building system that from a single module with 40 square meters there's a four meter on the edge a typical hexagon I take on the inverted cone shape or funnel shape with one single column and it never works with a single unit you have to work as a group so the idea is that the column and this beam are working together in a way as a coherent structure or almost like an arc and the inverted cone with this single column also function as the rain pipe so it supports the building also connect the rain water but then they can be reconfigured in different ways and this in fact is actually our tool with the client to figure out the program and the distribution layout of the programs and we made this kind of oops we made this kind of IKEA type of diagram to show how the pieces work together and the contractor who won the bit has this gigantic factory in Hangzhou and so we requested that we let's first experiment with a prototype built full scale in the factory in this mock-up allow us time to test the different details and connections and this building perhaps is by far the most precise construction we ever did everything was controlled fabricated in the shop in a factory put together we removed all the pieces on the truck bring down from Hangzhou to Guangzhou over quite a long distance and this shows the sequence of how the things works to make it reusable everything has to be reusable including the floor so things are coming to a different kind of modules of concrete and steel and everything is kind of bolted instead of welded together where typical the Chinese counter like to weld everything they use the welding thing as a glue people like to just weld everything together it's easier but here they have to face different challenge everything is kind of come together with kind of bolt connection and that's the rain pipe also the structure and the facade come in also in this was put up quickly in less than a month on the site and the ceiling has this gap to allow the lighting and other infrastructure to go my favorite space of this project is kind of empty the void the one that's missing unit that is a little kind of zang garden and the special details allows the water to drain around this steel structure to go into the pond next project is is a competition oh my neck is twisted this competition we won in 2014 for a new cultural complex so we work as three architects working together for this kind of team competition and after that each one got to pick one project to develop so I picked the theater because I haven't done opera house before so I said let's work on the opera house the most technically challenging work ever so far in terms of design because just the density of things happening there but what's interesting about this project again 2007 2017 over the 10 years time this project is in the the outer part of Shenzhen where they are building a new district heavily populated with factories like one of the largest electric car factories all kind of happening around here so a new city is being built and this strip of opera house museums and the libraries are the center of the town as a kind of cultural works so when we began the project we did the research about theaters in China being built over the last 15 or 20 years China has built lots of theaters concert house, opera house in just about every major or non major cities every city has a theater but most of the theater happening in this kind of different shapes but with a kind of conventional form in set but what's happening as we check the status of the theaters that most of the theaters heavily relies on the subsidies of the government to just support the survival because in a way opera house operas it's not really part of Chinese culture at the moment that really has any program to show to sustain the operation is super expensive and often the space is closed for a long time as an interesting joke that in Tianjin there's a giant opera house and one day winter they had this ballet company from Russia to have a ballet show and at that time the day of the performance they have to cancel the show because the space is too cold and the reason is too cold because there's no performance for the last few months so to turn on the air conditioning it takes days to heat up the space so that's just the reality of the space so we thought we really have to reinvent the program and by adding space to general revenue and to put out the public programs to make it more open to the public to use building instead of having empty and then adding a black box which is much much more feasible and easier to use than this kind of giant 1500 C's auditorium and then bring the different gardens of climate so within the same budget after months and months of working with this back then has a very liberal leader of the new district they were able to accept this new proposal to rewrite the program into something else and more richer than what they begin with 1500 C's opera house and I guess I was thinking to do something different from the other object making theater let's return to a very simple shape of the box so let's put all this kind of dramatic life things happening in the box but what's different than most the other opera house or theaters in China that it will have a vibrant urban life and our activities rounded instead of having just empty box inside so that's the space now the black box and then this is the journey takes you around wrapping around you know the theater space for the public and taking it to different other public spaces and to the roof different kind of gardens and the building just recently maybe takes another six months or maybe a year to get it done but here you can see how the other kind of public space wrapping around this the theater space the last project is a project we just finished recently but it took five years to design and build again I remember when we first got the project we were required to get the project done in two years I remember but it turned out to be five years which is luckily gave us a lot more time to develop details and rethink lots of things we couldn't think through so this project is for Qinghua University and happening in a college town we found out in China has built more than 80 college towns in the past few years that college town in a way is just a small but example of instant cities you know the city being built and designer built nearly overnight and so this campus was built and designer built in only few years time and as a typical problem of this kind of new cities that it likes is plans in the urban life I noticed very few people walking on the campus because there isn't that much support function you can use I also notice that in this kind of space designed for research lab who doesn't understand how the lab works that in scientific research the labs often had to be reconfigured in a short five years time when scientists move on to different research topic but the building doesn't it's not adaptive to that so you see this existing campus have all these professors hiding on their own mechanical shaft everything on the outside making space inside full of kind of toxic fumes and so the the origin of campus has kind of axis and connecting different teaching buildings and the dormitories and the building were designed to happen to be set on the very end of the axis and also as the very last building to be built on this site and this provides the opportunity for us to to make something that can and provide what is campus missing you know taking the notion of a more kind of friendly campus quad structure and make it vertical into a vertical campus by making and carving this gap between the different offices in the labs it bring nature and the public life into it and provide a space for you know people to meet and what they call a humanist approach and also by putting the shaft and mechanical support on the two ends it allows a future you know reconfiguration of the labs while also the lab intentionally allows an actual shaft space for them to putting on different kind of equipments in the future and this shows on different levels where you know introducing different you know the areas and exhibition space shops and the space where we have this open air by making certain program onto this kind of level of the open air it also saves the energy because this will be air-conditioned free with the kind of cross ventilation this project we have to face out of all the aid I've been showing tonight the lowest budget for around $80 square foot $80 square foot so we have nothing else but the structure which is make it a simple strategy that we let's try to make something completely out of concrete because it's the only thing we left so it's nothing additional as possible here so this building is literally built out of completely out of concrete the shading is also pretty extruded cement and that's the contractor building this former of the skylights amazing way of making this happen I'd like to keep we have a project station on site to follow through the construction I attempt to tell everyone to not to screw around with the concrete to keep the original texture so one day he called me said he went out for lunch and when he came back from lunch the contractor started to put a plaster over this concrete and they considered it not perfect so every time I came to the site to visit I bought this sander so I had this little by little send out the plaster they put over this concrete so now finally you can see the not perfect concrete again and the students found this wall is perfect for practice tennis and because this is really I guess he found a bit of personal freedom here finally there's something you can play with on campus on the roof we made this kind of tiny little theater to watch the city and the city has changed so much since we work on the project for the last 5 years and I must say it's less beautiful than before that's the very deep testing pool underground which this building has a 20 meter deep basement by building this basement it already used up half the budget so we have only $40 for the buildings above and this shading works very effectively the building sits on the kind of luckily 45 degree orientation by putting this on the south east and north west facade it shades building very effectively that we are able to use just a single pane glass by calculation and still keep it performance well enough and there's some kind of strange moment and then this it's not really about the giraffe looking at the buildings but more about that this building with this kind of outdoor space a lot of this professor who would just normally sit in the room all the time drinking their own coffee don't even share coffee machines that have the opportunity to look at that nature look at this giraffe their space in the building we're often questioned in China that there's always we have a client coming to us saying your building don't look Chinese so what's your do you have anything Chinese in the design of course our building don't look Chinese as some others do in the early time of my study the two things has always influenced me very deeply on the left side that how the buildings works as a way a frame spaces instead of being an object on the right side is a book about making buildings or almost like an instruction of making buildings dated back in the Song dynasty that in a way it really allows buildings to happen in China without architects that things are already pre-described in a very systematic way from how the structure works in a modular ways and down to various details so I think this systematic thinking and how the role architecture plays in making spaces has often always deeply influenced my thinking about architecture among others and then borrow the words from Likubuzi object of poetic reaction we make our first book open reaction architecture of poetic perhaps radical reaction I'm going to end my lecture with this sentence project open is an ongoing investigation through practice and research on the power of architecture to reorganize the relationships between oneself and his spiritual being one with others and with nature around us thank you very much sorry it took too long so I have to start with a story because Lee worked we worked together for 10 years and my first project in China we were invited by Izasaki to do a museum in Nanjing and we're in Nanjing it was a nice kind of cultural project took us 12 years to build it by the way everything we do takes much longer than what you do it's amazing our projects take 8 years from the first sketch until the building anyway that was something that's another topic about speed and time we were together and you got an email that said they wanted us to come to Beijing to do 8 towers like 30 stories tall they wanted us to redesign it or something like that and I said that can't be true tell them they have to send us a ticket business class ticket from Nanjing to Beijing so he did they sent us a ticket we went to Beijing they picked us up at the airport in the white Mercedes they took us to the Beijing hotel they paid for our hotel in $5,000 in cash and American dollars the next morning we went and at the office there was a poster on the outside of the building that said welcome Stephen Hall and his partner Lee Yu and so I said well you know this they might be real so they wanted us to save this industrial building and you know put a new skin on a planning diagram of 8 towers basically they wanted facades and they wanted a name and I said look this site in the middle of Beijing is so important so I convinced them to give us 3 months and $300,000 to do a totally idealistic then we went back to the you were in the office right we went back to the office and we started to try to use the building that they wanted and for a while and we said this is terrible so then we decided we're going to make such an idealistic scheme it would be like a utopian scheme we're going to take away the sheds and all the crap that they wanted it was really industrial building they wanted to put an art museum or something so we were going to make a pond we put a cinema tech we connected all the buildings with bridges and it was a completely utopian scheme and the main client that didn't come to the opening I mean to the presentation in New York but Lee and I presented it to like 10 people that flew from Beijing and they stood there in silence like staring at what we had done they wouldn't say anything and I thought no way this is like okay we did it we had our beautiful thing I can put it in the museum of modern art or whatever it's great and then like two weeks later they sent an email they said your project our budget however we're going to raise our budget to build your project don't take anything out which was blew me away I mean that's the linked hybrid project we wrote the program together right we had to rewrite the whole program but I would just say that that was the moment of China in the year 2002 to 2008 before the Olympics which was an unbelievable moment to be in China and to be working and that's how we started together and it was incredible I mean they really would do it after the Olympics something kind of it sort of went down right it changed but I think what's amazing is the work you're doing you're carrying on that idealism I thought especially for me the first project has all these dimensions that we were working on in the beginning you know the sense of the fact that it's a school I mean that brachiating form is a little bit some of the things that we were trying to do with the horizontal skyscraper but forming gardens I think that the fact that you achieved all these spaces in such a kind of you know that was also a short project right was what three years two years well it took four years to build but the initial design was a competition so we had the idea we had to work out a scheme in two months and we worked I remember we first had 30 schemes and then we chose the one I thought probably the most promising I think it's a beautiful project I'm going to be a critic like a professor is that okay? I'm going to tell you the projects that are great and the ones that are not are my students here I think the first project is absolutely amazing it's fantastic almost in every way and especially in the social way the second one also the way the courtyard theater you know the way the theater opens to the courtyard I mean the idea of trying to make a diagram that had to be just the site I think that was a way to start that's the way we did a project recently as well I mean sometimes you have to make a quick start it was a smart start to realize this courtyard connecting to the theater is amazing I think it's an amazing project the dialogue with the sea it's fantastic it's all about idealism Villa Malaparte is there for sure you admit Villa Malaparte is in there it's in there I mean I think then I start to lose it I mean I get to the oil tanks if you're given a problem it may be a specious problem I would have to say that structure is 20% of a project if they say you want they want you to use all those oil tanks but then what you end up with formally as a compromise you would have to say that saving the oil tanks was it really worth it I remember the project that Wolfprix did in Vienna do anybody know that oil tank project outside of Vienna it's not his best project you might have to try to reject I don't know that's my museum in the park, Shanghai I think this concept is great but why wasn't it more like the diagram I would say that that could have been something more like the diagram instead it went to just sections in shapes that are in a way rigid I mean look you presented something so beautiful and poetic with this dialogue with the sea and then right afterwards you just box it up with us how about that between those two well I tried to discover the potential of every project every project has offered different opportunities in the dialogue by the sea it's really trying to establish a deep connection to the sand to the water in the case of Shanghai I am trying to work out a I don't know what you have problem with the boxes but I'm trying to establish a simple relationship between the art space of the art and the rise of the social right but the concept you showed the concept as a diagram of these two hands which is a beautiful diagram alright but I mean in a certain sense look everything is rounded here I mean in a certain sense the building kind of ignores the diagram in other words it doesn't really follow the conceptual diagram I would say couldn't it be more well I don't know I mean it just seemed to be okay and then let me finish you got eight projects man I'm going to let me finish okay because I want to just summarize I think that the sixth project nesting hexagons is too much Walter Nash it's like a 1970s field theory project but it's beautifully executed so like when I look at the idea in the beginning of it I thought come on this is done by Moshi Softy Walter Nash but what I really loved about it is how beautifully it's built and it was quickly done so that that won me over when you realize it so well but in the beginning I would have said try something else alright and then the the vertical campus I thought was a beautiful project and that was a project that was started at the same moment of the first one so to me is I would say if I was going to be your professor criticizing you after only seven years of an office right you're only seven years old I made a diagram of all the offices I didn't put it up because it was too selfish that started from SHA and by the way they're out here there's Tim Bade there's Martin Cox of and then I think somebody from ARO is here and I was so proud by the way to have nine offices around the world that people were more than three years in SHA and they're doing great work all of them you know and I felt very very proud about that so I was very happy to be here tonight to be your critic so I think if I was going to summarize I would say that the vertical campus building has all this idealism that the very first building does the school garden farm as does the dialogue with the C and if I were to make the lecture I would just present those three and then try to say what your theory is because I worry that today you know the problem with practicing as an architect today is people are not really you know forced to come up with a theory they're basically the value system was sort of started by OMA and that is bigness that is the biggest office I think that's not really a value system that we should hold I like Alvar Caesar's idea that he once he had a little bit too much work he would give it to Solte de Marat or you know kind of branch it off and I think that to me is a better strategy than trying to have a huge office so I wonder in your future are you trying to have an office of 150 people or 200? No, that's for sure I mean I remember you were saying that when I first started the office you said the ideal size is a football team. Right, 11 Well, you got bigger now Well, we had one project that took 11 You have three football teams now, right? I have two Yeah, but it's not like a hundred It's not Anyway, I but I think it's very important that you are working every single detail of every single project that's very important I'm equally suspicious of any operation that beyond that has become a you know, it's a different kind of operation I wouldn't call it commercial but but it is a new concept now, you know this is a value system that I don't agree with and I think it was started, I'm sorry, with OMA and it's a kind of the idea that just say yes and the idea that you make a bigger and bigger office You can't really do the details when you do that You can't do, I mean that hexagonal project it comes alive in the details It's incredible where the troughs are I mean, you feel like Carlos Scarpa is there Right, I mean I think that architecture is experienced that way it's important that when we go to a building, we touch the handle of the door, we see the light and I sense that that's in some of your work I just hope you would hold on that line and give up on the 200 person office idea of what's the goal you know, I mean what's the goal of but that's never the concept, I mean the I think there's a belief I've never gave up and I always believe in the you mentioned Carlos Scarpa details are an experience part of the human experience I'm trying to emphasize what I'm looking after looking for is what can you use architecture to express the kind of human spirit which I felt that in this chaotic world today is really missing do you think are we better off than the ancient great time not really in the humanistic level not really, we're highly advanced in the technology and the material life, but not the other way around so don't worry about that, I'm going to No but I like the beginning of I really did like the beginning of the talk where scale, time, knowledge reality, greed future speed, power, freedom bubble, all of these things that we all need to think about as architects that's in the foreground and I think that all of us need to keep those things in the foreground personally, I don't think it would be better in Greek times where you don't have electricity you don't have toilets New York City was full of horseshit it was really smelly in 1850 there was no electricity I think that we live in times that could be by architects and great design and ecological buildings could be fantastic I think our project at Beijing Linktibrid is an example 660 geothermal wells that heat and cool the project it completely works today you were there when we did the visit after 8 years it's completely working with recycled water it was about forming urban space and not forming an object I mean it's full of idealism it exists as an example that it can be denser we don't have to go back to the 19th century in fact I'm very excited about the fact that those potentials exist I just hope you get the clients that can let you do it I think it's fantastic maybe the scariest slide in the show was that very idealistic first project and then what happened around it how all those buildings were built around it in the same time that you did the project in 5 years or so well I mean I agree with you the moment before Olympics and after certainly it's different in many levels before Olympics the developers are working with reality that the price goes out every single day so they have literally no worries it's the time of risk taking today it's a different place the the mentality is going more conservative less willing to take risks what about this ocean project what's this guys not more conservative that's pretty amazing yes so but the opportunities still exist even there are rare species of clients who are still looking for idealistic things and that's why we filter through them like I mentioned I turned down at least 50 commissions of schools I said no to those because I don't believe they offer opportunity to make a good architecture I tried to say no to LinkTiber thank you for that so anyway do we have some questions questions there hi Lee who is an old friend I'm not an architect or anything I'm a political scientist but I've been following Lee who's work since we got to know each other in 2008 I want to recall a similar conference at Qinhua architecture school we were as a social scientist I was very interested I'm still very interested in the social impact of buildings I remember I commented on your project with Stephen Hall actually the Beijing project the kind of philosophy really reflected in your name of your firm is openness and the connectedness beyond the environmental ecological kind of the innovation so I think in the last almost 10 years I see your project that philosophy of openness and connectedness if I use two words to summarize your design philosophy seems to be there still there but my question is this is related to what Stephen Hall commented about before 2008 these things seem to be risk taking a lot of openness now this seems to be a lot of pull to pull back if you use a philosophy the authority the clients the society that forces you you want to open up you want to reach out, connect between human and nature and human very interesting that take your example of that school design you have a lot of open space throughout all your eight projects and then you also mentioned in passing you mentioned something about when air is polluted that kids have to come in so that's another kind of pulling sort of inwardness that pulling so how do you reconcile this sort of the pull of you want to open up where everybody kind of now going backward inwardly so how do you philosophically and as a practice how do you sort of fight back and reconcile well that's a very good question and you touched on many topics the first is China going more conservative today yes for sure New York City yes for sure I think in the late 90s maybe it's going more conservative globally as in China we actually in fact in our practice we have lost any public commission since or opportunity to do real public work for many years our last project that is purely public work is still the theater in Shenzhen and because of this they were still having that strong powerful planning department we're waiting to intervene into the operations but that's lost with new political system people don't want to make any mistakes and it's suspicion of that and literally all the public workers are now managed by bidding companies you know they confuse architect with contractors everything goes through bidding which actually allows more corruption to happen so since that I mean I was so disappointed by the many opportunities I said we're not going to be doing any more public works for now which is true things are going more conservative so we have to seek in a different way if we're still making efforts to make some kind of social contribution we have to look for different opportunities you know I mean I'm so jealous Stephen working on this amazing public works commission around the world when I was when I have an opportunity to work with this oil tank yes it's no idea I have to make it work but wait one is built I think it will be amazing but you have to just make something out of the not so ideal scenario I mean back to your second question about being open we faced lots of resistance like the vertical campus project it was a fight all the way through you know when the professors the Qinhua professor you know Professor Lu, no Qinhua professors are so conservative and so in a way selfish, claustrophobic when they see the open space we create the first thing they said is kind of close it off I need more space you know everything's coming out of real estate idea I want more space so I'm like working in fear all the time I'm trying to find different strategy to save something it's being very difficult but like Spinoza said good things are never easy they are as difficult as they are rare that's the thing precisely I have to constantly telling my team in the office and I would say to all students don't take the message of the negativity that things are difficult think about this is a moment to contemplate and to reestablish what our principles are the definition of theory comes from the Greek word theoria is contemplation a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based and then there's another definition a theory is a set of organized principles that explain and guide analysis one of the ways theory is defined is that it is different from practice and my position is that we talk too much about practice because here we are at university it should be about what are they you know the idealistic things and that's why I like the first project and the last project because in a way they start with these super idealistic positions and you realize them but I'm actually interested in the first part of your lecture and how that could be developed in your book time, knowledge, reality greed, future, speed, power freedom, bubble I think these are the principles in a way I like Lucan's statement architecture doesn't exist you know that what exists is the idea of architecture and as a university and as a place we're not really interested in practice we're interested in what the idea is and we'll go out and practice afterwards but here it's about ideas of course right one he teaches, he runs second anyway thanks everyone