 Some of you, this is your first class, so you're jumping in the middle of a lecture class on American architectural history. And we are now in the post-war moment, we're looking at corporate modern American architecture. And so I thought that we would start by walking into one of the buildings that would have signaled to people living in other places. To many of you who are foreign students, the first contact with the United States would be an embassy, an embassy building. And so here is the United States Embassy in Mexico City. Now, most of you that have gone into an embassy, this was probably not your experience of the embassy. Your experience of the embassy is going into some sort of visa hall, and it's a rather unpleasant experience where you have to kind of wait in a room and get a number. This looks more like a library. In fact, it is a library. A lot of the buildings, the modern American buildings that were built by the U.S. government abroad, had libraries and I'm going to get into that a little bit because they had a program by the United States Information Service to essentially get people to familiarize themselves with the United States and they were trying to essentially win the hearts and minds of people. And they were doing this, of course, in the 1940s and the 19, really the late 1970s and this is so we're kind of starting at the tail end of this pictures at the tail end of that under the Jimmy Carter presidency, which was the late 70s and I'm home right now. If you guys don't mind, put your microphone on because I can hear it right now. Oh, there we go. I actually can mute you so I'm going to take that liberty to do that so that other people are not bothered by the sound. Anyway, so going back to this so the United States Information Service would have a part of the embassy, and they usually had a library, and it was for commerce and it was for culture and they would. They were open to the public so you could go to an embassy and just walk right in and pick up some books and hang out and you can see people here are kind of can you see my pointer and you guys see my pointer. Now I want to draw your attention to, to this book over here they clearly the librarian has set up a display and look at this book, the multinational corporation and social change. So as we talk about American modernism about commercial modernism, we need to talk about the corporation. And this book in particular is very interesting because we talk about social equity and social change right now. And here we have the corporation being sold essentially as a agent of social change. Now you'll be surprised to know that the authors of this book were really coming at the subject from basically left wing points of view from socialist point of view to more kind of what we would call, you know, like liberal today points of points of view. But they were really thinking of the multinational corporation as an as an agent of international development of positive change, and a lot of the things that that we would associate otherwise with the state. So in fact, by the late 1970s, even under the presidency of Jimmy Carter who was a Democrat, the corporation is being presented as fulfilling the role that we would have traditionally understood to be the role of the state. So, helping with international development typically it's governments that give money for international development but here, the idea is that corporations are the ones doing the development. So social equity that the corporation is a has a responsibility beyond shareholders to actually benefit the society and benefit the community to provide health care for its employees. These were things that in countries that would have a nationalized health care system would be very foreign. In the US embassies this idea is being promoted as a kind of American way of furthering an equitable society through the corporation. So I want to plant that idea in the back of your mind, and then I want to come back to it in a few minutes because I want to hear your thoughts on what you think is the role of the corporation. I want to bring things like for example health care since we are living through an international emergency on on public health. I want you to hear your thoughts on the various roles of government versus companies. Now if we were to just walk outside the embassy right we were we were inside this embassy like most embassies built after World War two had three entrances. This embassy was the ambassadorial entrance, and then over here you had the United States information services entrance. Now this fence was put in afterwards, but otherwise before this fence was put in. This would have been a direct entrance into the embassy now this fence was put in after the 1979 storming of the US Embassy in Iran. That you might recall was the beginning of the second oil crisis. That led to a lot of security measures and it led in a way to the end of this kind of open idea of the United States abroad and began the kind of closing off of US embassies. Now if you look at the building itself it's essentially an office building. So when we talk about corporate modernism. It's interesting to think that here the United States is portraying itself it's choosing to look like an office building a modern office building. So the US government is taking on the appearance of let's say a corporation, and you'll see that they're actually hiring some of the same architects. Now here it's very interesting because Max Brooks and Louis Sutherland, they were architects that worked on a lot of federal buildings, but they actually came together as a corporation, just to build this building in Mexico City. Now if you look inside of the embassy again at one of the meeting rooms. It's very interesting to see for example, the way that the the stone paneling on the outside which is this this veneer is actually used as almost like a transparent panel so there is this very this great interest in in using stone. As a kind of a light filter into this embassy. Now if you look over to the bottom right, this idea of using local stone as a light filter had already been used by Juan O'Worman who is the kind of one of the founding fathers let's say of Mexican modern architecture and he used that at the Central Library the very famous Central Library at UNAM at the University of Mexico. And so what this says is that the architects, you know the architects came down they looked at these buildings this had just been completed when they got the commission and 57. They were trying to make reference to local building traditions to local architecture. So the, the program of the United States to build embassies abroad, told architects to build embassies that looked like corporate office buildings, but that also made reference to local culture so they were supposed to be very modern, but they were supposed to be recognizable to the local population as a gesture of friendliness and so the aesthetics are very important there. When the embassy was built it was touted as a great work of engineering it was called a floating embassy because as you all know, Mexico City has a lot of earthquakes and and Mexico City is built essentially on clay on what used to be a big lagoon. And so it's a very unstable ground. So the embassy was built like swimming pool and the whole building placed inside of that swimming pool and it literally floats on the clay so it was both a aesthetic feet, but it was also a technological feet. And this idea of high tech was something that the United States really promoted through its embassies and it promoted it as a way to create a business opportunity for American engineering companies so they would bring in patents and technology to all of these places and start up businesses so it was about commerce as well as diplomacy the two went hand in hand. Here all all the images, all the buildings all the US embassies that were built abroad in this period between the late 1940s and the mid 1960s, this period of the Cold War so these are Cold War embassies. This is actually this images thanks to a preservation thesis that was done a few years ago on this very topic of these of these embassies and looking at what's happening to these embassies now. You can see the ones that are in green are the ones that are still owned by the US government, the rest have either been sold and are being reused for other purposes, or they're being completely abandoned some of them have been demolished like for example the one in Ghana. The reason for this is that the United States is now requiring a lot more security around its embassies and a lot more bureaucracy in its embassies these embassies have grown and so after after that 79 storming of the Iran embassy you started getting more and more security measures until 911 and after 911 now the ideas that you know they can't they can't fit in these in these camp, these embassies anymore, because they're in the center of cities, and they're too exposed to potential attacks. Now, if you look at the embassies architects, you will notice that these were built by some of the greatest modern architects of the period, from Neutra in Pakistan to Edward Durell stone in India to wrap some in Stockholm Marcel Breuer in the Hague. Walter Gropius in Athens, Jose Luis Sturt in Iraq in Baghdad. So this is really appealing to the greatest architects of the moment. Now, this was a very unlikely thing. And the reason why this happened, why is it unlikely, because any government expenditure has to go through Congress and what happens in Congress is that they say, design is too expensive. Why do we want to spend money on design, we have to cut down on the cost, and we have to actually build something that is, you know, turnkey, which is what's happening now right the US embassies now are being built by essentially firms you've never heard of before, like EYP and others that are building essentially, you know, bland office buildings and so called turnkey solutions that are driven by the bottom line. The reason why this happened was because the money didn't come through tax dollars, the money to pay for these embassies happened through war reparations. So for example, the United what happened was the United States went up during World War two spent a lot of money to defend, for example, Oslo or defend London, the UK. So the UK, Norway, these countries owed a lot of money to the United States. And the United States said, Well, instead of repaying the war loan, just give us a plot of land and build the embassy for us. So what that meant was that the money was actually not having to go through Congress. So the Department of State was able to hold competitions and was able to put together a team of important architects that would judge these competitions and they chose it on the basis of design excellence. So it's quite an extraordinary thing and also extraordinary because the United States was for the first time building embassies before this the United States was actually renting space or going into an old Bozards building that was already there. So the United States has a real desire here to project an image. And this is the first time the United States is projecting this image and the image that they project is the image of an office building the image of a modern corporation. Now, you could think of this in different ways, because in Scandinavia, for example, they're very proud of a kind of technocratic state, right, that there is the state that functions very well, very well oiled bureaucracy and that this doesn't matter who's in power in a way that the state is, you know, functioning well because it has all these layers of administration and so on. Now in recent years, this idea of the state as a functioning bureaucracy which was a very positive idea in the 1950s and 60s that the state is a well functioning corporation that the leader of the president is a kind of CEO that comes in and out and is replaced every so often but there is a kind of stability to that administration that has come under a lot of fire in recent years with Trump, for example, saying calling it a deep state, right, and that that there's something negative about this so what was once considered positive is now considered negative. Now this image just shows you the kinds of architects that participated in these competitions, they were invited to participate in the competition now they ended up for example, Jose Luis Sert who was on the competition for London actually ended up doing another embassies stone ended up doing the embassy in India. So these, this team of architects was getting different kinds of opportunities and different kinds of commissions now the person that actually won the competition for London was arrow sarin and an arrow sarin is a very interesting figure because he was super famous at the time in the 1950s and early 60s and late 40s. And then in the 1970s completely fell out of favor in the 1980s, nobody talked about sarin and and he's only now beginning to be rediscovered so it's a very interesting. History sarin and was of course the son of Elial sarin and who we've seen before in class as the finished designer who came in second in the Chicago Tribune competition you'll remember him right. And so he was born and raised in this architectural family grew up with this you know working for his dad Elial on a number of projects and then created his own company as own architectural company in 1947 after winning the Gateway Arch competition for St. Louis, Missouri, and very quickly rose to prominence. So here it was his proposal for the US Embassy the very interesting thing about it was the way it's almost. It's a it's a very interesting design because you can see this checkerboard right this checkerboard pattern on the facade it's made out of Portland stone Portland stone is the, the limestone that is really all around London so very traditional material. And in between the Portland stone these these kind of corrugated pieces on the spandrel panel are gold so they are very kind of shiny. And so these window patterns are making reference to the window patterns of the local Georgian houses that were in the neighborhood. And this was quite polemical here the Georgian houses in that neighborhood you can see them over here. Why was it polemical because this this was seen as not modern enough, because what was seen as modern was the ribbon window the horizontal ribbon window right that this was what the Corbusier had specified as one of the determining kind of signature aesthetics of modern architecture and here instead of a horizontal window we're getting vertical windows of a very traditional proportion so modernists like Rainer Bannum and others were criticizing this as being too traditional and traditionalist architects those that were bozards train we're looking at this and and saying that it was too modern so he kind of was right in the middle. And so this gold for example this this this this gold treatment over here if the concrete for modernists was seen as a complete like you know over the top unnecessary non functional kind of buckling to to to kind of you know projection of wealth or you know we would call it a kind of bling you know aesthetic today. But of course what this was was a reference back to the 1930s this is this is this is really the our deco architecture that is that is being folded into this. And what is amazing too is when you think about it there are some precast elements here you can see that these windows are all those same precast, but look at the way that serenity is beginning to modulate the last window over here this one is actually not the same size. As this other one and then in this corner detail it almost looks as if the two windows have collapsed and now the frame has really shrunk to a corner a corner detail. So, serenity is both playing with prefabrication and also really paying attention to detail and that was actually one of his tremendous strengths was that he was able to do that. The he worked with big models, so that was one of the ways in which he sold his his his buildings and actually was able to work through some of the details here you see one of those models in which he's exploring a very strange and rather beautiful treatment of the way that the the whole structure of the building comes down on this first ground floor, which is very open and transparent and all glass and overlooking Grosvenor Square, which has been called also little America because this is the house. This is the square in London where American ambassadors have lived since the time of the revolution since the time of John Adams. So this is a very important location for America. Now, of course, the embassy just left and has now moved away from here and this is becoming a hotel. But what is amazing here is the way that serenity turns the grid of the building which would normally be going in this direction right straight down and he turns it at a 45 degree. And so what he gets is this really interesting treatment at the corners where that where the whole the beam system is kind of going in and out of the building. So the structure of the building is already creating this kind of zigzag pattern. When you look at it from the from the park across the street and that of course is replicated again in the spandrel panels and again replicated if you see over here in the mullions between the windows. So he's actually playing with this diagram motif in all of the in all of the spaces and creating a kind of language that is very dynamic but also very stately look at the entrance to the library. So all of these embassies as I said had three entrances one was the ambassadorial entrance was was the consular entrance where you would get your passport and the other one was the entrance to the United States information services. And here you had the library, just like the one we saw in Mexico City, and also a theater and in this theater they would also present Hollywood movies or different kinds of documentaries about the United States to get the local population to win their hearts and minds, essentially. So the pattern and unlike many of his other contemporaries got to embassies he designed to embassies, and I like to show you these in contrast because it shows you this idea about the local stone as being the kind of reference to the local, the local tradition. So whereas in London he was using the the white Portland limestone. Here he's choosing to use a black Labradorite look. And I say look very specifically because this is actually not black Labradorite. This facade is built out of concrete made to look like Labradorite. You see here, the facade is all black Labradorite is black. It's a it's a stone that you can find in Norway. And it turns out you can also find it in Canada right in the northeast of Canada but it's essentially a northern stone and in Norway it's very associated with Norway. So it's all black he called this building a building that kind of dressed up as a tuxedo because it's all black but then the borders of the windows are white. And the other thing that is white are these canopies that come out of the building to signify the entrances. This is the main ambassadorial entrance with the big American flag on it. This is the consular entrance over here. And then on the other side of the wall, you had the United States information services entrance. Now here's the interesting and this is maybe for Amanda who teaches investigative techniques and is into concrete. So this is my slide for you Amanda. The Mosai system after World War Two there were a number of companies that went into the business of creating precast concrete as the new miracle material to build a lot of buildings very very quickly. And so this is the building. This is the proposal of the United States was to take this technology the Mosai system was an American patent. A US company, they built the US embassy with this US patent but in the meantime they basically licensed the patent to a company in Norway inter big company as a way to spark a new construction manufacturing system. And so that was a way in which the United States was also trying to promote American business abroad. Now, if you then dial this forward all the way to the 2000s there is a book that you might all be interested in that's called Confessions of an Economic Hitman. And that book was highly critical of the idea of the United States going into other countries and basically paying American companies to do the development work. And the reason was that later they the US government was asked paying for this by asking the local economy to the local country to take out big loans to pay for these big, you know, highways or hospitals and so on and many of these countries couldn't repay those loans. So then the United States in a way became had more leverage with those countries so it's it's it's a longer story but in this case that was not true because Norway wasn't really taking out a loan. It was repaying the loan by actually building this this this embassy now what is amazing about this is of course the the treatment that this concrete that they were able to get it had a tremendous a tremendously thick or large pieces of of Labradorite aggregate in it, no sand, just the aggregate of of of the Labradorite and one of the particularities of Labradorite is that it has felt a spar in it. And so that gives this real interesting shine to the facade so it's a very. You can see some of that shine here actually comes through in this photograph that little dot over there is one of those shining speckles so the whole facade is kind of speckly and very on the one hand it's dark and black but on the other hand is very bright and and an area. Here's a plan by aero sarin and of the embassy it was a very difficult site it's a triangular site of any of you have tried to design a triangle building you know how hard it is. Nothing is square so you have to resolve these difficult corners, the way that he did it was that he created a central square essentially it's a parallelogram courtyard that led directly in from the street this is the ambassadorial entrance and off of this courtyard was essentially the stairs and elevators so the courtyard was functioning also as a lobby. And you would go upstairs to the different offices now if you go here, this was the US information services entrance so you would go through these doors and into here and be greeted by these V shaped stairs that would take you up to the public library, or or down to a public theater in this entrance would always be open so can you imagine a US embassy with an open door that anybody can just walk in. This was this idea of presenting to the world a notion of a self confident open America welcoming of all the world, essentially trying to compete with the Soviet Union. Right, they are trying to compete for the hearts and mind trying to align the world towards capitalism, whereas the Soviet Union is of course working very hard to align the world towards communism. This was the consular entrance and here you would go in and get your passport, and so on. I want to just focus on this space for a second. As you would go in. This is the entrance of beautiful terrazzo floor with bronze spacers. You would be greeted by an exhibition of American art. So they're very much promoting the American arts and culture. To the left you see this is the stair that would have taken you to either down to the auditorium or up to the library you can say you can see here it says library in English but then it also says bibliotech in in Norwegian. So it's very much catering to a local population if we were to go down these steps, you would find this small theater for about 100 people where they would play Hollywood movies you can see these are taken at two different times. You can see here the posters this is the Oscar ceremony so they would be they would get a real from the Oscar ceremony and they would play the they would play the the reels in in the and they would create cocktail events and they would invite the kind of crème de la crème of the Norwegian population but also have open screenings all of the furniture I'll get back to this in a second. This is of course furniture designed by arrow sarin and these curtains were designed by as astrid sent that who was a Swedish designer who worked very closely with sarin and Florence know and I'll get to that in a second but look at the colors you know everything is, you know very bright and and welcoming, you go up the stairs to the library and as you go up this is you can see the handrail over here you go up the stairs you're greeted in a little lobby over here that is very transparent if you look left you're looking right into that lobby. If you look right you look right out those windows and out those windows is the Royal Castle, the Royal residence of the Norwegian King and Queen. So the location of this embassy is extraordinary because it is, you know, right in the most important place in Norway now if you would go into the library. You would you if you would turn back you would see this is the library this is that that that beautiful atrium with a little pond in it. They used to have a little goldfish Norwegians would remember coming in here just just to check out the goldfish and go back out it was like absolutely no security. And this is the entrance to the library this up here is the entrance to the ambassadors. Ambassador's Hall. This is the main library over here, which you can see very open, just a reference librarian you could get books on how to do commerce in the United States, you know, different ways in which you can get a job in the United States how to be a student in the United States how to get a full bright. So many of you have maybe gone through this as foreign students you got all this information online. If you went upstairs this is the, the corner office this is the ambassador's office. The first ambassador to be here was Ambassador Margaret Joy Tibbets in her office here. You can see all of the furniture was done by the Knoll company the Knoll company is today still a very prominent furniture company. And Florence Knoll had met aero sarin in at Cranbrook Academy the Academy that his father had designed and led, which was a very interesting experiment in education where students work in art and the humanities all the way from kindergarten all the way to college. And so sarin and had been, you know, of course, like one of the star students and so had Florence Knoll and she started a furniture company and hired him to design some of his famous chairs he designed the tulip chair which is very familiar, but some of these chairs are also no designs. Now, I'm, this is now a different building that also designed by sarin and also with no furniture. Now this building is not an embassy. This is actually a corporate headquarters. So, very, very similar teams, very similar aesthetics you can see here sarin and tulip table, some of his series 70 chairs over here this is the promotional brochure from the Knoll company. This is all the same furniture that would have gone into the embassy was now being promoted as part of the corporate culture. And here's the interesting thing. And here's what I want to talk with you about and get your thoughts on this. These companies in the 1950s were providing their employees with all of these quote unquote perks. They had amazing dining rooms with top chefs that would come and cook. Beautiful artworks. This is an artwork by Harry Bertoya who worked on a lot of buildings with sarin. I mean, this is the architects and engineers drafting room. This is the technical center of General Motors General Motors is one of the massive major corporations of America in the 1950s they make cars and America's turning to become a car culture. And they hire sarin and to design their technical center in Michigan just outside of Detroit. Now, of course, sarin and is a Detroit boy. He is, he is a he was born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit. That's where the Bloomfield. The Cranbrook Academy is in the suburbs of Detroit. So here you have him designing the corporate headquarters and he is seen as the same guy, you know, it's the same thing to design a US embassy and a corporate headquarters. You get the same architect. This is this is that this is the guy to hire. So I wanted to get your thoughts a little bit on this idea of the government and the corporation as we think about the ways in which corporations were trying so hard at this time to really present themselves as great places to work. They are really fighting for talent. You know, there's very low unemployment, they need a lot of really skilled workers. And so they're doing incredible things like if you were to write to General Motors and say, I would love to get a, I'm interested to know whether I should get a job with you. They would send you a little, a little envelope with some slides in it, talking about how wonderful it is to work at General Motors. And each of these slides would show you one of the great spaces designed by Aero Saranen. For example, the main styling, the main exhibition floor, the auditorium, this is where the new models would be driven in and would be shown to the press. The studio, the color studio, this amazing space where, you know, the light was just right so that you would understand and could see perfectly the different colors and pick the right, you know, color matches according to, you know, Bauhaus color theory for the interiors of the cars and the exteriors of the cars. And of course, all with furniture by Noel. So let me just, so I want to pause over here and hear a little bit your thoughts on this. And on this notion of the, of the corporation, how do you, you know, just some, I don't know if anybody, let me see, and I can see your, if anybody has some thoughts. On the notion of the state as a corporation, you know, where do you see this today? Do you see, do you see the ramifications of this? Has this idea succeeded? Has this idea in your view failed in today's world? The idea that the this, that the government and the corporation are essentially kind of parallel or mirror images of each other. Should, do you, do you think that this was a good idea that the government and the corporation essentially should model each one on the other and that they, and that, and that the corporation should take over the idea of providing for health benefits, providing for education, a lot of these corporations. So for example, the GM technical center had pre-schooling for, you know, for their, for their employees. Was this a good idea? Was this a bad idea? How do you, how do you hear this, this, how does this seem to you today? Can you hear me? I'd like to share some thought of myself. I'm a new student here. I'm just randomly jumping into this class. I'm a second year UP student. So I think it's a very interesting question about corporation government. I think government can learn from corporate as they are competitive and it's, it's stimulate competitions to make things more efficient. But one of my concerns is that corporates are limited responsibilities, but sometimes you want this day to have unlimited responsibilities in terms of taking care of the public good. Like when hurricane comes or when major disaster comes, you cannot just say, sorry, we are bankrupt and we cannot take care of you anymore. So I guess that is my major concern about why they cannot be exactly the same, I guess, that that makes sense. Yeah, that's a wonderful, thank you for that. It's a wonderful way to put it. I'm curious about this notion of the, the limitations on the responsibility of the government and that the, that the government should be unlimited. What, what, what do you mean by that or what do others think that you mean by that? I'm curious how, how I think that is very much culturally based. So I'm from China and traditionally in the very old Chinese stories, we have learned like when the, when there is large flood, there's some kind of hero that will lead the public to fight with the flood. So traditionally I think it's in Chinese culture that we have a large state but rather like a relatively small society so that you are giving out part of your personal right so that you can expect more from your government. But I guess things are quite different in the US because I guess there's way fewer large catastrophes in this country and that is why a strong organization is not expected from the public and people think they can take care of themselves, they can be responsible for what they do. So freedom is more valued here, I guess. That's, that's terrific. Thank you for that. Other people have some thoughts on this question of the, the government and the corporation. We talk about this a lot right today. In terms of, for example, even, for example, if you look at some of the candidates that are running for president right now, they're arguing that we need to take the health care out of the hands of corporations right in America, you need to get a job to have health care. Because the big corporations are able to leverage the amount of employees that they have to bargain the price down of insurance, so they give you a discount on your insurance because you are more people being covered. So that's, for example, my case with Columbia University, I'm an employee of Columbia University and I have health insurance that is provided to I have to pay for it but I pay for it much less than if I had to go out into the market and just buy the insurance. So today we have politicians saying that is bad. We, that is, that is a debate today, right? That is bad. We need to have the state take unlimited responsibility for the health that like Mao was saying, of the, of all Americans and other parts of the political spectrum, people are saying health is not a right. The government is not responsible for your health. We need to allow each individual to do their to decide whether they need health coverage or not and to buy it on their own. So how, how do you see this early history of the state today? If you had to, if you were in charge of the Department of State and had to design a new embassy, would you tell the architects today that they should do what they did in the 1950s and make the embassy look like a corporate office building? Or would you say it should look like something other than that? But to the point, not to necessarily interject and make it a bigger, a bigger question or a bigger point, the complexities of contemporary world and creating an embassy in the political, social, economic, demographic, contemporary scenario is different from the 70s. So the corporate push could not just say easily happen but it could be easier to happen back then when there was less of a, was the burgeoning moments, the starting of the globalization and the process and the multinational corporations being as the stewards of quote unquote civilization in a way. So it's, it's, it's easier to transplant that idea into government being also multinational creating ties and bonds everywhere, as opposed to now where essentially operating the government as a corporation, or as a for profit entity in a way, leaves scenarios such as the multi trillion dollar injection of money into the economy rather than saving people's lives. And the past, if I'm not mistaken, election cycle, where some candidates were stating platforms along corporations are people too, defending their, their political spending and their donors and super packs and etc etc. So I would say that the issue is much more political than actually, like, in this context, the built environment would be resultant from the political influence of factors rather than the other way around. Bruno, you're from Brazil. How do you see the similarities between the United States and Brazil well obviously from the point of view of architecture by the way, the, the technical center, just as a brief kind of thing over here the technical center, oh wait a minute, I'm going, the technical center if you can see this dome, which is the theater where, where the, where the cars would be shown. That was very much inspired by Nehemiah in Brazilia. I mean, the whole technical center is a kind of owed to Brazilia, when you think about it. Well, now when you think about it when you look at it, right. So they're very much looking at Brazil. And the modern, the new world, the American New World, right. Now Brazil with Kubi shek in the 1950s had a very different idea about government. But today, perhaps closer to the United States, what do you think. The current president is nothing but Trump's pet. So it's hardly well all of the mighty have fallen because back then with Kubi check and the original proposal for modernism in Brazil was to be stewards of advancement of technology of innovation. And now the political spectrum took a hard swing to the right due to a confluence of a myriad of factors you to summarize most of them related to public spending and corruption. So essentially, the idea of modernism as the modern, the very streamlined, the very high tech, the creme de la creme of architecture and development and innovation is always being something that pervaded the entire movement, like throughout the entire world and all the manifestations. But from the standpoint of governments, it started earlier in Brazil because it was the not state sanctioned in the sense that it was authoritarian but it's state chosen or state appointed style for exactly showcasing this innovation showcasing this newness this fresh new take on architecture, which then filtered outwards with publications and great names like Nehemiah, Lucio Costa, Afonso Eduardo Hiji, etc. That they would often be commissioned or be in publications or be written about and people would outside of Brazil will get you know the style and then we would result in like the General Motors headquarters don't that is very reminiscent of the Oh Jesus, the Aukka, the theater, one of the theaters that Nehemiah developed for São Paulo. Right, right. It's interesting that in the GM technical center. Sarin and you're right I mean was looking at Brazil, but was not doing what he was doing in some of the embassies which was to try to have some sort of reference to the local culture. Right in Norway he's using the local Lebrouderite stone in London he's using the local Portland limestone. What he's doing with the companies is very interesting he he was trying to he was trying to almost use the company culture itself. So he's using that needed to be expressed right whereas in these embassies he's trying to express the culture of the place through the choice of materials and the kind of proportions of the windows and so on. These windows and I'm just reminding of this because the windows here at the GM technical center which you can see in this image over here. He's actually working very closely with car manufacturers, and they had just developed the gasket, you know the rubber gasket to be able to glue the windshield in the front of the car, the window of the car, right to the to the to the steel frame. So he used that in these windows for the first time so he used the technology of the car companies to start developing what we now it's very common. This this this glazing system for facades, you know facade glazing system this is 1956 it's very early. So it's very interesting you know that he's that he was thinking he, and this was in a way the criticism that he got right he got the criticism for being for changing too much his style from one corporate from one client to another. I wanted to hear maybe somebody from the United States about or another country, you know about this notion of the, the state and the corporation because of course in a lot of, let's say socialist countries. The state owned the companies right they were state owned companies so there was very different there was not the differentiation between state and company was not as clear as the United States from an economic standpoint. So still this notion of the state and the corporation was still there. But so I want to hear from people in the United States how you see this corporate versus government. Some would say public versus private. Take a stab at it. Yeah, go ahead Katie. And I think the idea of government entities or government embassies the overlap in the architectural styles, the uniformity of language is a reflection of capitalism as the driver of the American economy but also American society for the last close to 100 years I guess we're getting on now. I mean in terms of the government abdicating responsibility for the people to the private sector. I personally think that that is an abject failure, which we see in our living today and the fact that 20% of the population is out of work. 3 million people are applying for unemployment in addition to not having money. Because those people no longer work, they don't have health care, they don't have access to health care and if they want it, they're going to have to pay the private market through Obamacare to get it back with money that they don't have, because they're not working. I mean I, I don't know how anyone looks at that and says this has been a success. America has perhaps a strong health care and research system but we have the sickest people with shorter life expectancies than other areas in other developed countries, where they have public health care. That doesn't really relate to the architecture but just functionally it's an abdication of responsibility that American people who aren't wealthy have been suffering for four decades now and we're going to see that play out in live action in the future effects of the pandemic that's happening now unless the government institutes a socialist policy or a public health policy to pay for pandemic health care, in which case we have all seen the failure of capitalism and the private sector, because we did it most in a pandemic and a crisis of our country, we can't use those principles, they're failing our people and now we're instituting a universal basic income, and the idea of public health care or not making people pay for the health care that they need for the pandemic, and we are all going to try to live on this $1,200 a month which is based on the federal minimum wage that we all haven't raised in I think it's like 30 years. And now everyone's like I can't live on $1,200 a month and we're realizing that a major sector of the American workforce has been asked to live on that for 30 years despite skyrocketing costs because of the private sector and other avenues. So again, on the architecture front I think capitalism is king and that's why even the new embassies that are being built still look like modern office buildings like the one that just got built in London and opened in 2018. You still see that ubiquity of architecture but on a more global human scale, failure. We're going to see a bit of a shift, and we will see this shift in the late, I said that we started at the end right with with with Carter. We're going to see a shift in the 1980s in the idea of the corporation. And I think we need to also account for that Katie in your comments, which I think are spot on to. We need to account for that shift as we look back at these ideas of the corporation because the 1950s and 60s idea of the corporation was very much this notion that the corporation was accountable to the people into the community. By the 1980s, you have a shift with the ideas of Friedman, the economist in that in in what is a corporation. Friedman says, we've been getting this all wrong. A corporation is only accountable to its shareholders and its only responsibility is to make money. It should not be thinking about the planet. It should not be thinking about the community that it operates in. It should be blind to that, because it should focus on making money. And that was that that has become the way that we think about corporations now corporations will say we need to we need to only worry about money and by the way the other thing that they did was to start linking the salary of the CEO of the corporation to the stock price of the corporation so that the CEO would be incentivized if shareholders were making money. Whereas before the CEO salary was linked not to the shareholder value but to a multiple of the lowest paid worker in the company. So if the lowest paid worker Katie to your point about minimum wage made minimum wage, the, the CEO made, let's say, six times 10 times the minimum wage today the CEO maybe makes 400 500 times the lowest paid worker, because they're peg not to the minimum wage but their peg to the stock price. I just want us to dial back. Imagine a world in the 1950s, where the idea of the corporation is caring only for profit wasn't there. What was there was this idea that we are coming out of the 1930s, we're coming out of the Great Depression, we're coming out of the member that Roosevelt basically nationalized a lot of industries. And we are, we are privatizing that right that is the free market is the idea of the post war era. The free market was also an idea that the United States wanted to promote around the world. And it's a very important idea because the they were. They were thinking that this would be the new world order that instead of empires dominating lines of production. They would have instead a free market with everybody could exchange all good all, you know, primary materials and raw materials and finished goods, all these could be exchanged. That was the free market and that of course required a lot of work from the United States to make the case abroad about that because they were also competing at the same time with the with the Soviet Union. Any thoughts on this as we're how we like if we peel back those layers now. Does does the GM technical center look, let's say, better or worse as an expression of. I don't know how to call this the benign corporation or the responsible corporation. Does it become more appealing would you have liked to work at the GM corporate center. I'm going to give you an image of what it was which we saw just a second ago. Would you have liked to work. Oh man, sorry about that. Would you have liked to be one of these draftsman. Nobody. I think it would be a good place to work. What would make us a good place to work. It looks like from their amenities they've got nice amenities. At least trying to get people to come in. They're making a good. From the pictures you've shown and everything. Would anybody not like to work there. I think that this sort of like provides like a false sense of security to employees. I think the corporation is saying, Hey, I can give you everything that you need. What happens when the corporation lays you off and says goodbye. Very good point. Very good point. It would be interesting to look at the layoff patterns of corporations back in, in the 1950s and 60s. Versus today. I know that for example, this is the generation of my parents, maybe your grandparents, you know, they, my parents worked at the same company their entire life. My parents worked one job for 40 years. I don't think that that's very common today. Is it. I mean, do you guys expect to work in the same company for 40 years. The companies don't expect us to work there for 40 years. That's right. What about the fact that some companies like, you know, that are very desirable to work at like Google and things like that, you know, they offer these kinds of similar amenities today. They have the, you know, fancy dining room and the fancy lounge and the kind of, you know, daycare for their employees. Yes, but because they don't expect their employees to actually leave and work. Not full time in the conventional sense, but never actually leave because they have the amenities and everything there. So they're supposed to always be working, always be at the headquarters, always be at the office and just quote unquote live there. So they replace their leisure time with being in the company. They replaced their like a socialization time with socializing within the company. And of course there's the point of with the creative type industries that are of course require some downtime. But then again, it's all to the point of, Oh, let's make this environment. So people don't want to leave or can't leave. And, you know, to the point that they're the desirable companies. So workforce is very much a expendable resource for them. Also, those perks aren't aren't uniformly applied to all of their workers. They hire a lot of contract programmers who aren't eligible for the benefits that they give other people. And then like the support staff, the people who work in those cafeterias and those on-site gyms and their janitors, like not everyone benefits from the beneficence of corporations today either. And I kind of doubt that they did in the 50s and 60s too. I've actually visited the Facebook campus in Menlo Park and a Google office by Seattle and it really is kind of true. All these amenities and I've had the food, it's like so healthy, but also very tasty. We have this sort of lifestyle that you can exist almost entirely within that environment. And I think that's of course evocative in the modernist kind of setting. It's almost like we're seeing yet again another, you know, resurgence in the trends or at least until now, like during this time at JFK, there was like this, what was the future of air travel? What was the future of working at a place? And I think it is successfully evocative of that. And it's, and I think it's more of a, and I'm talking almost purely in an environmental, like a personal environment standpoint in which let's say even capitalism kind of brought on in a sense, a good competition of what is the best environment sort of to work in. At least at the very least visually, maybe it doesn't have the proper success or the connotation of, you know, benefiting the underprivileged worker, but that's sort of my idea of it. There's a fundamental difference in the nature of the industries, right? Like when we talk about Google, what Google does today, I mean, it does many things, but it's very different from like the ones like we just saw, right? Because the general model, it was basically a production, like the industrial production company and it needs to put people in the workplace. But for Google or some other tech company, like a big part of their work doesn't need to be, doesn't need like workers to be there, right? So then this makes the very fundamental difference like for the requirement of the workplace and also like why Google provides those welfare stuff or like daycare. Is it because they want the worker to stay there with their children all the time in the office or some other reasons? This is a very interesting conversation because of where we all are right now. We are all stuck at home and not at a workplace. And this idea is very important in the 1950s and 60s of creating the right workplace. And I think Chris is right in terms of the aspirational nature of these places. Look at these images of TWA. They hired Saranen to make a building that would be an icon, an instant icon, and that it would represent the excitement of airline travel and the modernity of airline travel. By the way, when he designed this building, there were no jet engines. Airplanes were all propellers. Have you guys, I mean, some of you maybe have never flown a propeller plane. You've only flown jet airplanes. When jet airplanes came around, they also became much bigger airplanes. So therefore this building became obsolete. But look at this interior. Like nobody had seen a place like this. This was just pure organic expressionism using really pushing the boundaries of concrete formwork in order to give this kind of perpetual motion of the eye. Your eye somehow cannot rest anywhere because there are no corners. So this building is just flowing like air. And this kind of architecture of movement, there was some of this in the 1930s, some German expressionism, Einstein and others, not Einstein, the one that equals MC square, but the architect had worked with expressionism of this kind. And you had some work in the 1930s that for example, modern architecture, you've seen these kinds of diner architecture that has the kind of swooping corners and the round corners. This is all kind of, he's processing, he's processing the 1930s and trying to imagine the future of airline travel. And of course, this is all about an experience and it's about providing this really amazing experience. And he's thinking about it all. He's thinking about not, that's what's amazing about Sarenin, right? Is he's thinking about the building, but he's also thinking about the architecture of the body. And so he's designing the furniture to go with the building, to make reference to the building, to make a total environment. And so he has these, of course, this was not drawn by Sarenin, this was drawn by an illustrator, but this idea of a kind of glamour of travel, of the kind of excitement of a new kind of environment, of a new kind of architecture, of an architecture that is really inspired by the thing that is, that function. So if it is an embassy in another country, it's pulling on the kind of local building cultures ever so slightly. And here it's pulling on the corporate, the idea of flight. And of course the red is the red of TWA, right? That's the corporate logo. Otherwise this carpet would be a different color. So I think this is very important the way the conversation is going, because you've now made me think, and I hope made each other think, about these interiors in light of a kind of work culture. And also that is very different, I think that oftentimes when these are discussed, they're discussed as a kind of consumer culture, right? Like you're the passenger buying this product. But in fact, this was also the place that you would go to work, and you would be proud to work for TWA. I am the child of a airline employee. And I can tell you, my mother was a computer programmer for Iberia Airlines. And we were very proud of Iberia Airlines. Of course Iberia Airlines was a national company. It was the national airline of Spain. Now Iberia Airlines is owned by British Airways, because Spain sold it. But there was some pride in even your parents working for one of these companies. By the way, I still have my frequent flyer card from TWA. It's a little piece of cardboard that is typed by a typewriter that says my name and a frequent flyer number. Let's look at an actual office building by Sarenin, the CBS Tower of 1965. By the way, Sarenin died of a brain tumor in 61, so he actually didn't have a very long career. And what's amazing about Sarenin is how much he did in essentially like 10 years. Because he really breaks out on his own in 1947, let's say 15 years, and then he dies in 61. So he really has the 50s to build. And he just is building like crazy. With a relatively small office, by the way, and he's on the plane constantly. He is traveling. He's sending sketches back to the office. He's meeting with clients. He's just nonstop. And he meets the CEO of CBS, who says he wants a different kind of skyscraper to what has been built in Manhattan, not to that point. A different kind of skyscraper, which is a corporate headquarters. So the whole building is supposed to represent the company. And they're big enough companies that they get to build themselves a skyscraper in New York City. What was the last big company that built a big skyscraper for their purposes in New York City? Help me out here, guys. What was the last skyscraper that you remember being built to the glory of a company in New York City? New York Times. Which one? Is it the New York Times? Yes, one of the, that's one of the big buildings that went up. Yeah, absolutely. Any others? The New York Times tower. Absolutely. Good. That's a good one. More recent ones. JP Morgan. Oh, the two, like 270. 270 park. The JP Morgan is tearing down a building by SOM. My dad worked in that building and then he got kicked out because they're tearing it down. So that's, you know, we're getting now skies. Now that's a whole other level. You tear down a scratch skyscraper to build your own skyscraper. But finance industry is still building skyscrapers. Brian Park. The, the building on the corner over there. That's a bank of America, right? They just built this skyscraper on the corner of Brian Park. Okay. What does CBS do? Nobody knows what CBS does. They're a broadcasting company. That's right. They had radio, this thing called radio that none of you listen to. And television, this thing that none of you use up either. Radio and television was huge in the 60s. Right? This is, this is what everybody, everybody watched. So this, these are the, if you've seen Mad Men and so on, right? It was the media types is that Mad Men, they were working for these guys for advertising. But this, this, these are the big corporations of the 1960s and seven. These are the media conglomerates and CBS was one of the major ones. Do you know what Seagram made on the right? That was the big corporations of the 1930s and 40s. Weren't they a distillery? That's right. They made alcohol. They make ginger ale. They make ginger ale too. They made their money with alcohol. They're a Canadian company. Whiskey, you know, et cetera. And, and they built their fortunes of course in the 30s and 40s. So by the 1950s, they're making their big play in New York City, bringing their headquarters to New York City. And they hired Miss Vanderbilt to build this skyscraper, which was to signify the future of building skyscrapers. A radically different way of building a skyscraper than what was there before, which was the Bozard skyscraper, right? Which is just down the street here because this, the Philip Johnson Seagram building is on Park Avenue. And just down the street is the, the skyscraper by Warn and Whitmore that is over the Grand Central Station. And it's a Bozard's building. You all know that building. So this is very much a kind of new way of building buildings that Miss Vanderbilt perfects in Chicago as he comes to America in the 1930s. And he's coming to America in the 1930s. He picks up the IIT job as chair of the department of architecture over there, builds part of the campus. And this is his big break is to build this big building. And it's one of his students actually that suggests the commission to him because one of his students was the daughter of the CEO of Seagram, Phyllis Lambert. Phyllis Lambert has since gone on to become one of the great philanthropists of architecture. And she started the Canadian center for architecture, but look at how different these two buildings are starting with the massing of it. I mean, they're both kind of very abstract, you know, almost platonic solids, but their facades are completely different. And by the time that Sarenin came around in the 1960s, this is 10 years after Phyllis, Mies van der Rohe and Phillip Johnson did the interiors here basically. But he is reacting to Mies van der Rohe. He is saying Mies van der Rohe is not the way to do skyscrapers. And he is also reacting to the whole way of reorganizing education that's happening in America, right? Because on the one hand you had the French Bosar architects. On the other hand, you had these European German types who are fighting it off against the French in schools, right? The Bauhaus types, they're German. By the way, they, French and Germans went to war, right? Sarenin is Finnish origin. He has that Finnish romantic architectural background. He's kind of derived from France, but it's really its own kind of Nordic tradition. And so he is proposing a different way to do architecture. And he's using stone as an element. And look at how different the facades of these buildings are with Mies using steel. By the way, the steel here is totally decorative. Look at the way in which this I-beam is just basically welded to the spandrel panel. And then you have the spandrel panel here, then glass and then another spandrel panel. And the I-beam, almost like a railroad track, is just going straight up the building. But you could take it out or you could make it something else. In fact, what Sarenin does is that he gives it this massing and he gives it, again, he uses black stone. He uses labradorite over here. And the labradorite is actually a veneer. It's just sitting. You can see it here. It's kind of, the whole thing is concrete, but it's sheathed in this black labradorite. But what this does is it gives the building a much more massive, almost telluric, earthy feel where the building kind of springs out of the ground and it actually pushes into the ground. And if you look at the way that they are at the base, on the left, you have the CBS tower on the right. You have the Seagram building. The Seagram building is picked up off of the ground on Piloti. It's still within that modernist tradition of lifting the building up and letting the ground plane go through. So the white travertine that is in the plaza in front is sweeping into the building and it's becoming the elevator course. And you can see the elevator course in the background through the glass on the Seagram building and you just walk right through. And then the whole elevator, the whole building is kind of lifting up, right? Kind of like wearing shorts or a skirt or something, right? And you're just walking underneath the building, whereas the CBS tower, it's these whole building is pushing down. And if you see the reflection over here and you can imagine what it is, the reflection is the steps that you have to go down into to get into the building. So the whole building is actually down and dug into the ground. Why Sarenin would do that is kind of strange, right? Because he could have just gone straight off the street and have the street go into the building, but he didn't want that. He wanted you to have this feeling of the building having weighed down into the landscape and pushed itself down. So he's very much responding to this, what for him had become the kind of corporate look of America, which to him was bland and which was everywhere the same. And in fact, if you look at the Mies building, you know a building that looks just like it in every city in America and oftentimes in most cities around the world. Because what Mies was trying to do was precisely to have absolutely nothing to do with the company that he was working for. He wanted to make a building that expressed its constructive nature that was about steel construction in a way made that steel construction a pure aesthetic expression. He wanted to get to the architectural expression of the frame steel building and to kind of show that. Whereas Mies was coming out of this tradition of the Beaux-Arts, right? Where you can see some of these buildings in the background over here. These are all Beaux-Arts building. Those Beaux-Arts buildings inside of them, they also have a steel structure, but they hide it behind the stone and they're trying to give this a kind of aesthetic expression that for Mies was superfluous, had nothing to do with the construction of the steel. Now remember that Paul Cray was fighting this. Paul Cray was saying, you cannot just get rid of the stone because the stone links us back to the classical, links us back to the whole history of architecture and the game that we should be playing aesthetically is to actually reconcile that classical architecture in what we've come to know as classical modernism. Mies takes a whole other approach. Mies says, let me take just the steel and try to make an aesthetic expression out of the steel. That's why he puts that steel column, which is actually inside the building which he had to wrap at the base of the building. Those columns, if we go back over here, you can see the actual column inside this square. Inside this column is the actual I-beam, but he couldn't just leave the I-beam exposed because that would mean that that was not fireproof. He had to wrap it in concrete. Here you see the actual I-beam is inside of this column, which here he paints it white so that you kind of feel like it disappears. Actually, he puts the I-beam decorative I-beam in front of the actual I-beam in a much smaller version of it. He's working with steel construction to try to give expression to steel construction. Of course, the whole thing is, how do you know is a steel building? At some point, you have to see the grid. That ground plane is very important because it allows you to actually walk in between the grid. The grid itself becomes exposed. Not all of it is exposed because actually the building gets wrapped in the back. This is actually the restaurant, the Four Seasons, which was the interior was designed by Philip Johnson, and through which you can go in through these stairs at the back end. But all the front of it actually has the grid right out in the street to be walked between, to be experienced as something beautiful in its own right, and structuring of the whole architecture. You can see the relationship between the grid and then what goes behind it. The grid of the building lines up with the grid of the paving. The whole thing becomes this kind of universal space. This universal space is about the purity of construction, is about the purity of architecture. If Mies had been giving this job by CVS, he would have built this same building. In fact, Mies, if you look at his work in the Federal Plaza in Chicago, that would have been a good one to compare this to, it's this same kind of expression. It's still the travertine floor. It's still the kind of bronzed colored steel, which is the steel, the look of steel when it comes out of the factories, this kind of bronze coloration. So Mies was working from a purely architectural point of view where as Sarenin was really pushing for the idea that you have to give expression to the company. Now this is a very famous interior. So I also want us to focus on it. It's the interior of the four seasons. You would have gone straight in through the lobby. Here's the stair that would have taken you through. So either you would have, if you're here on the right, you would have walked up Park Avenue, either gone through and taken the elevator up. So very effortless, right? Or you would have come in. And this would have been the company, the company lunch room, right? Now to Katie's point, this was a very expensive restaurant. This is really where the CEOs went to have lunch. Not everybody, the secretarial staff, not everybody could afford to go here. Everybody else went to the local, you know, falafel place kind of on the corner over there, right? The Seagram building was not like the GM technical center. The GM technical center, you couldn't really go anywhere to eat. You had to really stay in because you'd have to drive for half an hour to get your meal. So here people, they were benefiting from the fact that people could get a meal somewhere else, but this was very consciously an extremely elite place with paintings by Picasso and kind of the greatest. The Rothko was hired to do these paintings over here, but he actually went to eat at the Four Seasons and withheld his paintings and said, I will not, he was a communist. I will not have my paintings be decoration to capitalism, he said. So I'm paraphrasing. He didn't, you know, I don't know, close enough. But then his paintings ended up, you know, in a museum. But here you can see this incredibly richly decorated interior with bronzes and beautiful chandeliers and incredible lighting. All of it, the Four Seasons, you know, this is spring and I think winter over here and summer, et cetera, right? Each of the dining rooms is a different season. So all of these, all of this furniture was, some of it was built in, designed in situ. All of the hardware was designed for this particular building by Johnson and Mies van der Rohe. Now think about it. This is so interesting because so much a skyscraper, think about all the doorknobs that are in a skyscraper. There are literally thousands and thousands of doorknobs. So you can, as an architect, decide to design a new doorknob because there is so many to make that there is efficiency and a manufacturer will fabricate the doorknob for you specifically for your building. So a lot of architects got into product design and this doorknob that was designed for the Seagram building was then sold in a line of production to anybody that wanted it. So it, but it became a new source of revenue for architects because they could now have a license on a doorknob and every time that doorknob was sold, they would get a commission. So a lot of very large corporate offices in America like Gensler and others liked to do skyscrapers, like to do these buildings that were maybe 500,000, 400,000, 300,000 square feet because you got your fees in furniture fixtures and equipment could go even higher than your architectural fees. So then you get architectural offices that spawn interior design offices within them and also that have the engineering within them and they become one-stop shops. Now that was not Mies. Mies was really the designer and he was subcontracting all of those other things. And so if you, but next to Mies was this other company that was becoming a one-stop shop and that was Skidmore, Owens and Merrill. And Skidmore, Owens and Merrill is a very important American company because they started as a government contractor building essentially housing for the war effort as they did here in Oak Ridge. They're trying to get a lot of housing done very quickly for the government and so they develop an engineering component to their firm, an architectural component, a furniture fixtures and equipment interior design component, and they become huge. They model themselves, they say the architectural office, the future of architectural practice is to become an international corporation. We have to stop thinking in terms of the single designer like Mies van der Rohe, like Sarenin, right, we're trying to uphold. This is, we need to be a large corporation. There's power in numbers and by 1970 they were, they grew, they were starting in 1936. So 25 years later, they were a thousand employees, 21 partners, 45 associate partners with offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and Washington DC. And they were providing to their employees the kind of safety and security that those big companies that they were working for were also providing. So this is very interesting to look at SOM in terms of that kind of model for practice and I want to emphasize that because within that, they then had to face this whole thing that, well, you know, they were still competing with Mies and they were still competing with Sarenin for projects and clients did want the great designer. So what they came up with this idea that they would have creatives within their offices. And so they were modeling themselves a lot more on the kind of structure of the marketing firm, of the Mad Men. And if you've seen Mad Men on TV, right, where you have basically a structure where there is an accounts person that is going out and getting the job and there is an office manager that's making, you know, the paychecks and payrolls and HR and all that stuff. And then there is a creative person that all they think about is expression and aesthetics and making the thing look good and kind of styling like the car companies were the same, right? You have the kind of under the hood types and then over the hood types that were doing the styling, the kind of look and feel of the thing. And the greatest designer of Skidmore, Owens and Merrill in the 1950s, the person that kind of drew all the attention was Gordon Bunchaff. And he designed the lever house, which is just across the street from the Seagram building and was for the lever company, which made soap. The lever company was a soap company. You can still buy a lever soap. And what was very interesting is if you think about the way that the Seagram tower hits the ground or the way that the CBS tower hits the ground, this building hits the ground very differently. This building has a base and a tower. Now think about the fact that this is a really old move, the move of the Beaux Arts Architects. Beaux Arts Architects were doing base and tower because of the early attempts to build a kind of low rise city that was essentially like eight to 10 stories tall. And then on top of that would be a very tall skyscraper. So Bunchaff is playing on that idea, but then he's taking that base and he's shrinking it down and making it super slim and elegant and not bulky in the way that these Beaux Arts buildings had. And he's just doing a two story structure. And he's doing the PLOT grid. So he has this open plaza, but then he's lifting the building a one story building, a two story building is lifting one story above the plaza. And then on top of that, he's putting the big tower. And here's Park Avenue and he's turning the tower 90 degrees to Park Avenue. So he's actually showing the edge of the tower to Park Avenue, which is very unconventional move. And having the big long side of the tower facing the building is essentially an outdoor raised plaza of the building. So this is quite a different kind of engagement with the street. Design of the building, massing of the building has a courtyard. And this whole floor was given over to the new thing, the IBM computers. And probably this entire floor had the computing power of your laptop. And this was the future of how the company was going to be run. Now above that computer room was a big outdoor garden with a shuffle, you know, they could play shuffleboard over here. So there was all these ideas about, you know, being a great place to work, being open, being, you know, a fun place to hang out, taking care of its employees. And here you have the view to the street. This was a proper facade, a curtain wall, the first curtain wall in New York where the whole glass is hanging in front of this, of the slabs. And so you can see that expressed in these horizontal bands, which are actually glass as well, but they're the part of the glass that is right in front of the slabs. So they're the spandrel panels. But if you can see here, the whole thing is glass all the way up and down. So this was quite a radical move. Now I want to pause here for a second and ask you guys about SOM. Because I think that, you know, as you think about a place to work yourself, and we've been talking about that, I wonder whether the SOM model, the SOM model to be like a large corporation is appealing to you, or would you rather be, you know, or not because, you know, the idea of a Gensler or an SOM that started at this time was to be like a modern corporation and to provide, you know, to give better wages, to give better healthcare coverage, to provide more stability so that they wouldn't have to fire people. If it, you know, if there was a kind of, you know, one job ended, you could move them to another job because there was plenty of jobs to go around inside the office. And then to be kind of like a department store, you had the people that did hospitals, the people that did, you know, schools, Gordon Bunch half did office buildings. So I'm just wondering whether you would have rather work for somebody like that in the late 1950s, or would you have rather worked for a kind of star designer who maybe had a small office, but if they lost the big job, you would have been laid off. I would say there's benefits to both kind of working. I mean, on one hand, you have more job security, you probably have more benefits with the larger corporations, but then from the smaller, not one man shows, but the more star architects, you get more, not personalized attention, but you can make a name for yourself more working under the star architect and then branching off from there. And it's more personable working for a smaller company, at least in my experience. And going off of that, which is this is something that I think about all the time with internships and jobs, but I had an undergrad professor to tell who gave me really good advice to say go where you're most needed. And oftentimes by going to a smaller, more specialized organization, you'll then be given additional responsibilities that you wouldn't have if you had the same position at a larger firm where there were a million people to do the job. So looking for the place where maybe you get more personal attention and responsibility for certain people as a benefit in itself, even if there's a little less security. So you're willing to trade off security for opportunity? I am, but I think that depends on who it is. And it's, you know, it depends on what, it's a privileged point of view to be able to trade off security for opportunity. It depends on what your background is, what your situation is. And not everyone has that privilege to be able to give up a secure job or something that could be a better opportunity. And that better opportunity means if I gather correctly, faster growth. So you're getting more responsibility quicker. So presumably you're going to get paid more faster than a large corporation where you are going to take a longer time to get that responsibility. Is that right? Yeah, not necessarily in terms of financial dollars, but in terms of like, you know, professional growth. Yes, it might be faster in a smaller firm. Well, financial dollars equate to professional growth in most trades. I mean, the more you grow in, in experience, the more you get paid. Yeah, but sometimes the smaller firms have a smaller starting point than some of the bigger firms too, depending on. Right. So paying you less to get more, but giving you more experience or there. So they're squeezing you. The smaller firms are squeezing you. You're doing more for them. But it's a short term. It's a short term. You know, since. I guess it's different if we were planning on staying at a company for 50 years, like people did in the 50s and 60s, but nowadays it's, you know, short term costs for long-term benefits. I see. So you're, you're planning to be there short time. You're basically biting the bullet for, for a short time. Okay. I guess I would also just say titles are really important in architecture firms. And in a small company, sometimes you can rise through the ranks, get a higher title faster and use that to leverage into a more visible position at a larger firm. But I mean, I don't think of start architect offices as small offices or as places that you go to climb the ladder quickly. I mean, when you're talking about smaller firms, rarely today do I think of a start architect's office as a small firm. That's true. Start architects have now become incredibly large corporations, right? There are hundreds of employees. I mean, there is like the Peter Zumpthor model also though, which I think is kind of the more traditional where they take, there are the architecture firms that are intentionally small. They take less projects because they want to build a consistent image. But like, I don't know the, the model that there are these firms that have interiors that have different design groups that specialize in different industries like civic and healthcare. I mean, that seems like it. One is pretty prominent. And two, it caters to the modern idea of job mobility, security, being able to provide things that, you know, architecture firms are so volatile when it comes to the economy and, you know, the construction industry, the fact that it depends upon a strong economy and that it's a very real idea that you would be laid off in a recession at an architecture firm, depending on the size and bigger firms, I guess, can give you that security that a lot of other firms can't. Can I also just, I would, I would say though maybe in contrast to what Will is saying, until you've been at a big firm for a long time, like they're going to be willing to let go of you really quick because you're basically a draftsman, whereas in a smaller firm where you have a relationship with your partners and with everyone in the company, like they might try harder to keep you. I'm saying this from personal experience in my life right now. They might try harder to keep you longer because they value that relationship and not just like what you can draft and how quickly you can get it out, at least in your early years of working, I would, and maybe more. Let me, let me show you one last project in the time remaining. I just wanted to show you this other amazing building designed by Gordon Bunchaft in New York. Right off of Bryant Park, just north of Bryant Park, manufacturers, Hanover Bank, this was a radical building because it didn't look like a bank. When you think about this messian idea that architecture should just be responding to the new technological construction methods, new, they weren't so new. I mean, we're talking about steel construction, which by this point had been around for like 70 years. But still, you know, we, the idea that it should just express the construction and be pure in that sense. What that led to was this really radical thought that a bank, which had traditionally been represented by solidity and almost prison-like kind of, you know, rusticated stone, something very heavy, something you could protect. Now the bank becomes glass and open. And the vault, which is right here on the street, you can see the vault right here on the street. And this is the street. So this guy's sitting on the street, and he's looking at the bank vault where all the gold is. So all he has to do is throw a stone at this thing and he can walk right in. But of course, then you have to get through this vault. And the very idea that it's visible makes it harder to actually rob because you would see people robbing the building. So it makes it more secure, the eyes on the street. So he's really breaking with the whole tradition of building banks with this incredible double-storied floor, with this luminous ceiling. You would go up the escalators to the second floor. There would be this banking reception on the right with this, again, Harry Bertoya, who built a career doing sculptures inside of these corporate buildings and doing the screen behind which would be the secretarial staff. And the building having just this really beautiful entrance off of the side street. I think it's this 40, I can't remember if it's 44th or 43rd. So it's not on Fifth Avenue, the entrance. And you would go through these doors, through the secondary door, right? What's on Fifth Avenue is the bank vault. And you would go up the ladder. And up the ladder, by the way, here's another sculpture by Bertoya up at the top of this ladder. You'd have the big banking hall. So everything very open, very luminous, you know, there's a kind of the idea of the future of the workspace, the future of the commerce. A lot of these ideas that we've been talking about in class today now applied to banking. So I'll leave you with that thought. I think it was a very, I'm very happy with the discussion today. I think we, we, we, we struck a really good balance between the lecture and a good discussion about the meaning of these buildings and the radical nature of it in terms of the workforce, the changing patterns of the workforce, the changing expectations of being an employee and the relationship between corporations and the state in relationship to the basic functions of, you know, of, of, of the human being of providing for, for human life and for social, for social life. I think all this, all the more pressing today that the government has asked us to basically relinquish the workspace and to sit at home and work from home. And that the workspace has become essentially zoom. So so much to think about in terms of the aesthetics of zoom and the dean has invited us to think about that today in her email about this grid that we're all having to live with and, and the, the kind of the whole history of the grid. So thank you all for, for participating in class today. Thank you for your attention. You're all free to go now. If anybody needs to stay and wants to ask a last question, I'm happy to answer them. Otherwise, I'll see you next week.