 Architecture itself lasts well beyond the life of an architect, beyond the users who commissioned it, and that architecture itself is very powerful. It shapes people's lives, it shapes people's understanding, understandings of cities for generations to come, and it has the kind of power to even shape one's kind of image of themselves and an image of their own city. So I think architecture as a discipline is extremely powerful. I think our own city here, New York City, is understood as one of the kind of global cities. In that sense, New York City has both a kind of image, a kind of popular image that shapes people's understandings of what the city is and how it works, but it also presents in a way a kind of challenge or a kind of, there's a gap between maybe what we understand New York City to be and how it actually functions and how it actually looks and is experienced. So in that sense, I think people come to New York and they're simultaneously incredibly stimulated but incredibly overwhelmed and frustrated in all the kind of complexities and kind of dynamic qualities of New York. And I think many cities are like that, but they might have a kind of image or a kind of spirit, a kind of quality, but then there are also things that architecture does or doesn't do that maybe shapes their daily lives. And many cities work very hard to, in a sense, close those gaps to kind of many cities aspire to be certain things or that they understand what their kind of image is and they work hard to, in a sense, live up to that. In some cases, New York by being a kind of modern metropolis, it's also known as a kind of tough town and in a way its architecture is a kind of, you know, it has a kind of ruggedness and a kind of, you know, in a way a kind of brutality that, you know, is maybe reflective of some of the kind of toughness of the town as well. So it's both kind of, I like to think of New York City, for example, as both simultaneously modern and barbaric at the same time and that's really the kind of, in a sense, the quality of the architecture and it's very much, in a way, part of the sensibility of being a New Yorker and understanding what we expect from our spaces. The design studio is a place where individual action and individual creativity is measured very directly by the people around them and that is something that I think is really unique to most disciplines that are dealing with a kind of artistic or creative enterprise. Where architecture becomes even more complex than, say, music or a kind of artist studio even though those are demanding and complex disciplines is that there's also this idea that somehow an architect's work can be measured by others very directly in a very public way. Not only you, but me, all educators, but your average person on the street fully expects that he can publicly evaluate a work of architecture and so that creates this enormous kind of dynamic tension between what an individual student is doing in the studio and then how it's measured sort of outside of the studio and that's the other half of the equation. But an architecture studio is very much a kind of paradoxical space in the sense that it is a place where you come and work on your own, you put on your headphones, you put on the blinders and you work but at certain times it's an open space. Your work is on display, it's publicly reviewed and it's part of a community, it's part of a culture of making that you are part of and you have both a kind of personal responsibility a personal stake in the work but you also have some very important public responsibilities you have a responsibility to share your work and be part of that culture and community and that again is I think relative say you've probably visited some of the artist's cubicles on campus and the way in which say the Fine Arts Department is very much about the cubicle each student is given a room on their own and their work is only unveiled at the very end as a fait accompli that's very different from an architecture studio it's both personal and public it's private and public simultaneously it makes it a very unique I think kind of creative space in that sense the kind of patience and understanding and insight almost intuitive insight that I think a teacher has to bring to the equation that allows a kind of personal development to take place those are the best teachers of all who both kind of can demand and kind of in a sense give give an assessment on the spot on a kind of ongoing basis of the work in an evaluative way but also has the kind of intuitive sort of abilities and insight to draw out the kind of best kind of personal qualities of the work the best professors kind of you know surf that wave just before it's kind of falling over and you know with just enough energy behind them to keep it going so that they're not in a sense overwhelming the student with what they think is right and wrong because at the same time they want to nurture that energy of the student and they want to draw out the best ideas of the student so that it can be both a kind of very personal work but also a public work as we were discussing well you know crudely put it's to keep all the plates spinning I mean that's the hardest part it's a lot of it's really you know in that sense it's a form of kind of managing chaos I think is the very best thing and so the dean I think more than anything what I feel I do is really just kind of enable people to think enable people to to kind of find the space to create things that are their own things and that includes both the professors as well as the students that they need to find the time and the space to really invent something completely unique and new and contemporary I think if faculty and students get that sense that that's why they're here that that's the kind of opportunity that they're given then I've been successful