 Okay, first of all, Ricky, thank you very much for your unwavering belief in architecture, which has been proved over several sessions of the Urban Age conference. I am not sure whether we deserve such a trust, architects, but anyway, I'm gonna, when Ricky told me quite a few months ago, he called me and said, well, do you know anything about Electric City? I'm doing a conference on Electric City. I thought that I could only say that I have been part of an experiment that I did a couple of years ago in Princeton as a commission from the former dean who asked me to get engaged in a program that was done through different schools in the US called Culture Now, which was aimed to see what was the, how do I move the slides forward? Okay, so I was a part of this Culture Now experiment, which was aimed to assess what, in what way architecture can contribute to American culture. And thinking about that, I thought that probably the most important phenomenon that happened in American culture in the last decades is the emergence of the Web 2.0, which is a space that changes. It was a very challenging question because I think it's a space that now everybody uses, not only in America but also elsewhere. It's a space that has pervaded political engagement, has now embodied a very important part of political forces. It's a space that is fundamentally challenging the very principles of architecture. So if architecture, and I have to say that for me, the interesting question about being engaged in this experiment was almost to see what could be the future, if you want style, what would be the traits of an architecture that is made within this realm. So this is the previous paradigm, which you all know is based on large buildings, pliant forms, custom made elements, etc. So what happens with architecture when, if architecture is the vehicle that tries to communicate, to represent things in physical forms, what happens when things now have an IP address and communicate with each other, what has been called the internet of things. When sensors, I mean we've seen already several examples of this world in the conference, sensors are communicating with actuators and controlling the environment. What happens when urban space, which was one of the primary means for a collective to come together, to share space, is now replaced by other vehicles that also help us to share content, to share intelligence. I mean it's, and how do these things merge? What happens when knowledge is crowdsourced, when editors are no longer there and we are basically driven by this media. I mean this is a media that has produced also very interesting examples of sharing, which was one of the, I think one of the main purposes of urbanism or architecture, sharing cars, sharing apartments or rooms, sharing intelligence, even sharing a financial endeavor through micro financing or this kind of crowdsourced finance. It was also, it is also I think a milieu that is starting to challenge the previous processes of authorship and patronage, which are now being replaced again by crowdsourced intelligence. So it was actually a very interesting question, how do we turn this world into something that has a physical effect. And my intuition two years ago was the time when there were a number of programs or engines appearing on the Web 2.0 like Foursquare or Google Latitude, which after having globalized content were starting to focus on location and were starting to provide, and cities would be now designed for people carrying one of these devices that give you a different impression of the city. So the hypothesis here was that this sudden turn from a worldwide Web to a localized interface between information and physical objects was maybe an opportunity to explore, that basically drove the experiment. It was an experiment that I did with students. We applied a number of theories of network diagrams trying to understand who are the agents that are engaged in each one of these engines. And we did quite a few interesting proposals that for example had to do with identifying and resolving food deserts in America and proposing vehicles whereby Web 2.0 devices could pair up with physical infrastructures that would, for example, optimize food wastage. We collaborated with different companies, literally. We were talking to Walmart and we were talking to a number of engines like Vimeo and Indaba. So we literally were working with some of these Web 2.0 engines in making, this was another project which was about regenerating Detroit using some website which is Indaba, which is a music shared website and using the kind of musical tradition of Detroit in order to produce certain elements to be distributed in the urban fabric to regenerate certain areas of Detroit. So in terms of creating new urban institutions, the experiment was very interesting, very successful. We identified a number of interesting new potentials where I think the experiment was less effective in actually bringing this to a close in terms of physical output. It was, there were projects that where you could identify already a number of, if you call, traits and I would like to go back to this first intention of the project which was to identify let's say the new style that will emerge out of the interface between physical objects in the city and these new technologies and that new style was not very promising in what we got out of our engagement with these Web 2.0 engines. Many of the projects were temporary, were scaffolding based, so it was maybe interesting as a project, but maybe not forthcoming in terms of producing a new architectural paradigm like the Guggenheim perhaps did at some point. And so what I would like to, but out of the experiment I managed to get a few ideas which I would like to share and to put on the table almost as a kind of polemical statement of what could be the architecture that may emerge from the engagement with these processes and these technologies. And I would like to say that a number of these processes have to do with, I bring this image because the first phone is a phone that is made out of the assemblage of devices to listen, to speak to, every one of the elements is visible in the object, is a discrete object, is very different for example from the Guggenheim and the kind of parametric continuous, pliant form that we have seen emerging in the last few decades. And so that type of phone is now this. We've gone through a phase in which technology has become virtually totally integrated in certain forms, in certain geometries. But the proposal that I would like to make is that perhaps that continuity, that style of continuous variation may actually be changing. That the new paradigm of, or the new canon of architecture probably will be discretized, will be again an assemblage rather than than this kind of seamless continuity of the previous models. And there are a number of reasons for that. This milieu, this web 2.0 now enables us more than ever to customize products, to crowdsource intelligence that enables people literally to become makers, to become producers. It's another very important lineage that is emerging where people are actually able to acquire intelligence and apply it in producing objects that look like this. This is a self-made track that one guy called Andy in the States put together out of crowdsourcing intelligence and pieces from different places. Customization of products, Ikea disobedience, recent show at MoMA from Andres Hake was exploring this type of almost the evolution of the design agents to a wider base of actually to the users, the evolution of the design agency to the user. So these processes of crowdsourcing and customization I think are crucial in terms of perhaps producing a new architectural paradigm, a new architectural canon and I believe, and this is where in a way the manifesto or the statement comes forward, is a canon that rather than being highly technological is going to be more driven by low technologies and the skilled production. You may know that this is what this is a lock-com bolt, something that Ikea uses in order to enable everybody to assemble furniture. This is another example of the architecture that is emerging from these processes, the wiki house where you see also a system of elements that can be assembled in order to produce a variety of objects that are part of a series and yet not designed by, affected by the system itself, but not designed by a single mind and have this kind of combinatorial nature. This is another example of things that are happening and I believe that some of these processes have to do with the formation of a new paradigm HHF art farm project that actually uses industrial off-the-shelf products in order to assemble architecture. The container, the unit of contained space is suddenly a very widespread paradigm that all kinds of architects are using in order to produce physical objects in the city. These are some of the examples that I found this one around the corner from here in which suddenly this container of the shelf container is suddenly assembled and is used to produce the new urban facilities that have to do with that are accessed through the web etc. Discretization I think is one of the or discrete variation versus the smooth continuity of the parametric. I think that one could perhaps identify as a current tendency that is enabled and supported by some of these engagements with web 2.0 is experiments that have to do with units, containers in the case before in this case bricks, but units that are not customized, that are all the same, but in whose, where the project is in the assemblage between of these units, some examples from Gramatio and Coller and also some other examples of established architects who are actually learning from these processes and trying to capture the images that emerge out of this this new brave world of the web 2.0 and the customized production. The idea of the unfinished is something that is also present in this devolution of the design agency to the user Alejandro Aravena is one example that you all probably know Giancarlo Massanti, another architect that is exploring this idea of some sort of combinatorial assemblage of open systems that are finally decided in time by the user obviously the Torre de la Concordia. It's very interesting how many of these experiments are done by architects in Latin America. I mean thinking about what Enrique was saying before about non-planning or almost how the political and economical infrastructure in those countries is in some ways producing a certain capacity to engage with this type of of systems. I think that if there is one model that everybody is talking about now probably is the SLAM, a very ad hoc and also talking about some of the things that Richard was mentioning and writing recently had to do with perhaps this emerging as some sort of latent paradigm that everybody is suddenly becoming interested in. Other paradigms that have to do with this world is the pop-up show where actually containers in the city like the one that we are inhabiting now are suddenly activated. This idea of urban recycling is another I think strand in the developments that emerge out of this world of the pop-up shop of the city that is made for a certain moment in a certain space of the city trying to recycle some of the existing infrastructures and I mean of course I think Tate Modern is perhaps one of the local examples of this and maybe a very advanced one because it was done a long time ago and it obviously has had enormous impact in how the city can be reused, can be transformed. The city is almost like a carcass that is inhabited that is used by these other processes that are pervading. I remember always Jack had talking about this city as dealing with a mountain and I think that perhaps some of these processes are operating with existing urban topographies almost as if they were mountains and the architecture is some sort of inhabitation of them. So this is basically some of the trends that I identify as perhaps the emergence of a new paradigm enabled by these new technologies that I would like to propose today for the discussion. Thank you very much. Maybe before we move on I'll just ask you a question or two. I think it was interesting that you began by looking for a style as if architecture was sort of existing in some abstract world in which it moves from style to style. Implicit in that is of course some question of capital that is to say that architecture needs like any product to repackage itself and it seems to me that part of what you've discovered with which I'm in complete agreement is that you have as essentially as the economy has come apart you also have it's not just technologically driven right it's about who's going to pay for these things. So you have now a lot of these much smaller projects cheaper and they are participatory. I was thinking of one in San Francisco called proxy community along a redeveloped area. I won't take too much time but where a highway came down wanted to have something in an empty space because the economy could not support the buildings that were supposed to go there. Went to the city. The city put out a RPF and said you know come up with something and an architectural firm there came up with the idea of essentially containers for a series of shops and other things so it was a kind of pop-up urbanism. Handsome, capitalized, very successful. Not terribly architectural so my question to you is I mean so what is the role actually of the architect then if it's not if you're not going to design a Guggenheim what how does this mean the architects what is the architect supposed to be doing now? Well I think that the architect is probably supposed to be doing more or less the same that it was doing before which is to formalize these processes into structures physical structures but I and I don't know I mean I don't have the perfect answer to simply the probably the relationship with the user the relationship with the client is going to be different there is not going to be the big patron and the big architect but a multitude of of patrons that perhaps I mean when you look at Kickstarter and all these devices of crowdsourcing finances you don't you're not talking to a to a client you almost have to invent the project and put it out there to see whether it takes whether whether people engage with the project so I think that perhaps one of the one of the possibilities is that architects need to become more entrepreneurial and more capable of identifying opportunities and putting there in the public realm to see whether people are prepared to finance them. I always when I was doing this experiment I always remember a famous sentence from back minister Fuller who once said there will be a time where when people will vote with their wallets and I think that we are through this media we are starting to reach a situation where actually people put their money where where their beliefs are and those beliefs are are are gonna have to be maybe the architect is more that kind of person who generates a belief that then attracts capital. Yeah I mean do you find this an issue or a problem with the the incompleteness the temporiness the the idea that this is I mean in the sense it embraces the notion of architecture is in fact generally not permanent I mean do you do you think that's an opportunity for architects or a particular challenge? No I think I think it is an it is an opportunity and and you know these things are also going to be permanent some of these buildings that I was showing from Herzog de Maron who are in some ways capturing this idea of a sort of discreteness of the new canon of architecture of what I would say is a new canon and the fact that the figure of the building is not is not a pristine complete figure but something that is almost made by an accretion of cells by an accretion of parts you know there may be one way to put it is that if it answers a need then people will value it I was thinking of the paper museum church that Shigeroban did that was part of the relief effort and actually that's lasted for well over 10 years now partly because people like it so they take care of it we build all sorts of permanent buildings made out of concrete and steel and people don't like them they come down after a few years the Eiffel tower had planning permission for five years there you go so it's you just mentioned accretion I just want to one thing which came out of your presentation very clearly to me which is first of all a sort of modesty about what the profession is about which is very welcome I don't think you even showed one of your buildings which quite something but the notion of the notion of accretion brings something else not just the assemblage the system and the combination but also a sense of time that actually begins to say that the incompleteness that we've talked about means that one has to have attention to what happens in five ten twenty thirty years which on the whole has not been the case is that something you've been yes I mean I mean the impossibility to or the unfinished the the the paradigm of the of the the element that grows that is unfinished that incorporates a number of I could have perhaps shown a few projects but I thought it was more interesting to simply leave the ideas on the table that architects can or have to learn to produce or the new architectural paradigm is is perhaps about incompleteness and and and that incompleteness needs to be physically and visually manifested right that's what thank you for that we need to move on