 Good turnout guys. Thanks for coming out. Okay, so let's all welcome Eric Corey Freed. He's so nervous. I am, I just ran. Okay. Eric is a lead accredited professional honorary fellow of the Institute of Green Professionals. He's a principal of organic architect, and which is an architecture consulting firm in California. Oh, that's wrong. Perfect. Okay. Over the last 20 years, Eric has published four books, served on the boards of over a dozen various organizations, including the England Empire Chapter of the US Green Building Council. In 2012, his firm was named one of the 25 best in green architecture, 25 best green architecture firms in the US. And he himself has been named one of the top 10 most influential green architects. Sounds surprised. It's a small group. Well, let's give it up for Eric. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I thought he was going to puke. This is my first time speaking at this school. I've spoken at RISD, and now after tonight, if I get brown, I get a free punch card for sandwich or something, I think. But it's great being here. I first heard of Roger Williams back when I was in school. I spent a year in Rome, and you guys didn't have an overseas campus at that point. You didn't have a Barcelona, Florence, or any of that. So you used to send Roger Williams students to Temple's program in Rome. And so we had four of your students. This was in 1992 before you were born and stuff. But I remember all four of them were incredibly bad at architecture. They were all, you know, I'm just kidding. No, they were really good. And in fact, I texted one of them a picture of the lobby just to mess with them like, look where I am. I'm going to show you 360 slides very quickly. And I'll share them with you. You can have them afterwards, if you like. So you don't need to take pictures of everyone. I mean, you can if you want. But that's annoying, but you can do that. And what I'm going to show you is I'm going to show you part of my latest research and part of why these guys brought me here. By the way, I've never been in architecture school that had this much glass block, cow wall and salmon colored triangles everywhere. It's really, it's really dated. OK, so before we begin as a law now, I have you all have to prove that you're human because apparently that's something we do now. Like I don't know if anybody encountered this where you have to show you're not a robot. Like this is bother anybody, but it really bothers me. Shouldn't the robots be the one that to prove? I don't know. Anyway, I do not live here. I live in a place called Portland in Oregon. And people say, why do you live in Portland? And for 20 years, I was in San Francisco and just from a resiliency standpoint, it wasn't really sustainable. So I looked at the map and I said, OK, what do we got? Well, let's see, these areas are going to flood. So I don't want to live there. And these get horrible snowstorms. I don't want to live there. And these guys just get tornadoes and these guys get drought constantly. And so it was the only thing left. Really, it's all I had. But please do not come there. You're going to suck it up for everybody else. Don't come to Portland. It's nice the way it is. So get out of your head. OK, so the bio you heard is totally wrong. It's very out of date. It's very old. But I for 20 years, I had a firm called Organic Architect. And really, the whole reason I had a firm was not because it was about me. In fact, I didn't put my name in the title. It was because I was trying to have impact. And a lot of our success and how we chose projects was would this have an impact? Would this make a difference? Would it change how people view sustainability or architecture? And it's kind of a good measure to go by. And then now I teach at BAC, which is in Boston, even though I live in Portland. I don't understand it either. But I teach at BAC and then I go there once a week. What once a semester for a week? And then on top of that, I've written now 11 books. It's not four. But and then I also I cone a company where we teach architecture students how to pass the license exams, which is a whole other discussion. And then in this quest for impact, five years ago, I joined the Living Futures Institute as their VP and was there for two years. If you don't know what the Living Futures Institute is, it's the people that make a living building challenge, the product challenge and so forth. And so while I was there, we launched Living Product Challenge and we launched the updates to Living Building and Living Community Challenge. And then after two years there, I switched to another nonprofit called EcoDistricts and then launched their certification and accreditation programs. And then I get, I don't know about you, I get very bored of things after I do them once. And so then I, after two years there, I left. And now I'm at a big giant engineering firm called Morrison Hershfield, which none of you have heard of, I'm pretty sure. But it's 1,200 engineers in 21 offices. It's pretty cool. And very few architects. And so all day long, and they're mostly Canadian. And so all day long, they mostly send me either jokes about architects, how stupid architects are, or Donald Trump. It's either one of those two. And so that's the hell that is my life. And what I'm doing with that company is I'm doing a couple of things. I'm working on our internal sustainability. So I'm leading us through our first corporate social responsibility report. And also improving that, but also our external sustainability in terms of who are the projects we need to work on. The model we're using that is this. These are the 17 sustainable development goals from the United Nations. Have any of you seen this before? Most of you probably have not. Here's what's interesting about this. All of the Fortune 500 companies are using these 17 goals to model their behavior. Your clients, essentially, in the future. Every one of them. But most architects, especially the large firms, are unaware that this even exists. And your work directly impacts at least 10 of them. And so we're using this as a roadmap to figure out where we need to be. The first two are no poverty and no hunger. So we're trying to figure out, well, how can we, as architects and engineers, have an impact on that? And it's very difficult. But the reason we're doing that is because a lot of crazy stuff has gone down. I don't know if you realize. Just in the last decade, CO2 levels have risen by 20 parts per million. Another billion people joined us on the planet. New friends. And then 25% of those all moved into urban areas. And that urbanization is just gonna continue. In that same decade, global temperatures have risen by half a degree centigrade, which has never happened before. And everywhere, except the United States, is doing something about it. It's kind of a crazy time. So I have this great sense of urgency over everything that I do. I'm very careful about picking and choosing what I'm working on. Because I feel like in terms of climate change, it's really kind of, it's gone up to 11, if you know what I mean. It's a little crazy how nuts it is. So I couldn't enjoy being an architect, a normal architect anymore. I couldn't sit and have another four-hour conversation with rich white people about their countertops. You know what I mean? It wasn't fulfilling. But it should have been because I so wanted that life. My whole life, I was told how great I was. I don't know if you have that experience or no. And how I was destined to like, oh, you're gonna sit on yachts with rich white people and they'll get your design houses for them. Like, great. I love it. But then once you get there, it's like there's no, they're there. You know what I mean? So I couldn't enjoy being a normal architect. So when I started my own firm in 97, I was bogged down by this. In my whole life, I've been haunted by this. And some of you, I know not all of you, because some of you are probably just statistically speaking, some of you are probably douchebags, but some of you are probably really good people that are struggling with this. So I'm reaching out to you folks specifically who are like, well, what is architecture gonna do? How am I gonna make the world a better place? Those are the ones I'm talking to you right now. Because buildings miss the point. Everybody thinks buildings are fine, but buildings are the problem. Buildings are responsible for half of our CO2 emissions. Do you understand? And that's why it bothers me so much that when I turn on the news, there's no coverage of climate change. And when there is, it's always like, well, let's see what Taylor Swift has to say about it. Who gives a crap? You know what I mean? It doesn't matter, which I mean, yeah, I guess I'm curious what you have to say about it. But still, it doesn't really matter in the grand scope of things. And as a result, most people are just so preoccupied with taking pictures of their breakfast that they miss the bigger deal. And the bigger deal is that we are surrounded by morons. I don't know if you've noticed this, but we have to put signs up everywhere for morons all the time, warning them of things that you should already know about. So that's what I mean by couldn't be a normal architect. My priorities changed. I changed. That was the problem. I realized every project we work on have to be dedicated towards this. Every single building, every single project, every single client, we have to address this. Hopefully we won't have to in the future. Hopefully I can go back to designing houses for rich people. But until that time, the buildings are the problem. There's no scenario where we have a pleasant future without fixing our buildings. And most buildings just don't get it. Like they're just missing the point. They're not designed for this. They're designed around assumptions that are no longer true. And now that you're aware of this, you're gonna start seeing this everywhere. I call them glitches in the matrix. That's kind of what, because I see these things that are just nuts to me and no one else is commenting. And I'm sure some of you see this too, these glitches in the matrix. Like the other day I saw this. And this, you know what the Oreo people are like, you'll eat it anyway, you fat bastard. Like that's basically what they're saying. Or the fact that I saw this. Do you, does anybody, first of all, these are all real. This is a new line of what's called dessert hummus. And it's brownie and chickpeas. She loves it? Yeah, she's weird. People say this, good, I'm not gonna try it. And then like what series of events had to occur for this to happen? And was this ultimately, I wonder about this, like is this a good thing or a bad thing that this happened? I'm not even sure. Those of you who can't tell, that's lipstick. So these glitches in the matrix are everywhere, man. And now that you're aware that they exist, you'll start seeing them all over. And they're bizarre. And there are signs that we need to change how we're doing things. By the way, I know they cost more, but the inverted ones are so much better. I think they're, I think they're worth it. All right, so now the bad news. And this, I have to do this and get it out of the way. And all of your bright, shining, smiling faces are gonna fall, and I'm sorry. But here's all the bad stuff. What we're going through is unprecedented. If you look at 18 of the 19 hottest years on record, they've all occurred in this century. In fact, we've done more damage knowingly than we did unknowingly. We've burned more fossil fuels since the IPCC was established in 1988. We burned more fossil fuels since then than we ever did in all those years before. So we're doing this knowingly and CO2 levels just keep rising. This is the latest chart from NOAA. I downloaded these, this fetches it from the internet. So this is dated yesterday, right? The CO2 level that you're experiencing today worldwide has never happened before. This is the highest it's been in two million years. Do you realize how unprecedented that is? And the red line is where we need to be, which will give you a sense of the scale of the problem. Climate change has literally redrawn the lines of the globe all over. The tropics are getting bigger at 30 miles per decade. The Sahara Desert's gotten 10% larger just since 1920. Tornado Alley keeps moving for some reason, 500 miles to the east. The permafrost line keeps inching northward, 80 miles to the north. The hardiness zones are moving at 13 miles per decade and the wheat belt is shrinking 160 miles a decade. The lines are being redrawn. And if you don't think this will affect you as an architect, you are mistaken. I fly all over the country. I talk to people about this and it is bizarre. And it's especially weird in Florida where they're experiencing it in real time. If you talk to people in Florida, which you shouldn't do, I don't recommend it, but if you have to talk to people in Florida, they will tell you how high above sea level they live. Dude, it's fine. I live like seven feet above sea level. Great. Does markets and schools and freeways and fire stations and police, are they all seven feet above sea level too? Because if not, you're totally F, basically. It's bizarre to me that people think that they're safe this way. And we're experiencing this at a rate that we don't even understand. We now have 157 million more people that experience heat waves in 2016 than in 2000. It's becoming a common occurrence. And wildfires are getting so severe at various parts around the country, they're setting up air relief centers. They had to do this throughout California just this past year. Places that you can just go and breathe. That's where it's gotten to. And a lot of people ask me, is so is this just our new normal? No, it's not, it's just chaos. There is no new normal. It's just this and a whole lot of other craziness. So that's why I'm talking about this, I'm not here to debate climate change with you. If you want to, we could do it afterwards, I guess, but I'm here to stop it or at least mitigate it. And architects are the problem. And all of this is falling on your shoulders. You're inheriting a big mess, I'm sorry to say. It turns out that if you plan for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. I don't know if you knew that. And if you plan for walkable, regenerative healing type spaces, you get walkable, regenerative healing type. It's a phenomenon. In all of the history of architecture, this is never mentioned in any of your books. But if whatever you plan for is what you get, it's kind of crazy. So knowing that, now I want you to change what you're planning for. If you don't like carbon, and who does, then put on solar. And if you don't like solar, then plant a tree. And if you don't like trees, we'll screw you if you don't like trees. I don't know who doesn't like trees. I just read this book. It just came out last month called The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace Wells. And I just finished it. It's really depressing. And in it, he lays out what our fate awaits us at each level of degree. And it's all bad. So one and a half degrees, which is, we're already one degree now. It shows you the impacts. And the two degrees, which is what we're trying to keep it under. But the book is basically saying we're gonna go well beyond that. And each level, it just gets higher and higher. Actually, every degree up we go is another GDP of the American economy that goes away, basically, is how he explains it. And so now I'm thinking, well, how do I, what can I work on? What can I do that'll have the most impact to help mitigate this? What can I do to ensure that my 10-year-old little girl can at least grow up in a world that has food and water supply, essentially? We were not supposed to go out like this. I don't know if the human race was not supposed to die out from a self-inflicted wound. That wasn't supposed to happen. Like, it's kind of an abrupt end to our story. We were supposed to go out like winners. We were supposed to go out in about five billion years from now. The sun was gonna explode and just take us all on a glorious fireworks display. And that's how we were all supposed to die. And I was excited about that. I was looking forward to that. And now we can't, can't do any of that. That's stupid. And help is not on the way. I did the math. It turns out that the nearest alien life is 65 million light years away. So even if they're looking at you right now through a telescope, all they're saying is dinosaurs anyway, because it's all too late. Like, they're not gonna hear us. So to deal with this, what I do is if I'm not lecturing to people like you, I'm sitting at home rocking in the fetal position basically most of the time. I took up the new hobby. I'll show it to you. This is real. I take famous paintings and I add to them. It's real, it's subtle. Here, I'll show you. So this is Wanderer above Sea of Fog. This is Casper von Friedrich, right? Famous painting. And I think, what is he looking at? Oh, it's the Kilowatt, the, you know, the Winterbind Array in the back. That's kind of nice. Screw you, I said it's subtle. It's subtle. Here's another one. This is Andrew Wyeth, Christina's World. And you think, what is she looking at the house? Oh, it's the Three Kilowatt Array on the lawn. That's kind of nice. And then this one's my favorite. This is Munch's Scream. And you think, well, what is he screaming about? Oh, it's the coal-fired power plant that's killing everybody. That's, I tried doing it with movies. It doesn't work, it doesn't work with the movies as well. Cause only three of you saw this movie anyway. It's a good movie. It's just, it's, you know, an Oscar winner. Nobody sees those. I also, I tried doing another one where I took old paintings and removed all the gluten. It doesn't, it's too, it's too subtle. It doesn't work. Like nobody noticed, basically. And this is what I do now in spending, instead of spending time, you know, with my wife and kid. This is like the, what I've noticed is that we have, we just, nobody's getting it because the other, like the other day I ordered a bubble wrap and it came, well it came wrapped in bubble wrap. You know what I mean? And I could have ordered nothing and achieved my goal, if you think about it that way. And as I go around the country, I just see that people are not, they're not getting it. This will surprise nobody, this is also in Florida. And speaking of Florida, you know, you see these headlines all the time, the city's most vulnerable to coastal flooding by 2050. And in 2050, 20 of them are in Florida. And this is bittersweet news for me because my parents live in Florida, so I don't know what to root for, you know what I mean? But this is happening now, they're dealing with this now, this is not a 2050 thing, like if you look at the city's vulnerable to flooding today, 22 of them are in Florida. So this is something that they're already addressing. The mayor of Palm Beach, Mayor Levine, told me that they raised all the streets. Do you know, by the way, you know what happens if you raise all the streets of a city? It dumps all the water under the buildings. It's really stupid. It made the problem worse, basically. This is what Florida's gonna look like in 2050. I was really proud of this, like in Photoshop and everything, and I showed it to my wife, and she's like, hey, Schmuck, Disneyland's in California. It's like, damn it! There is no way to pull the carbon out of the air that's causing the problem, other than planting trees, quite honestly. It's the best technology we have. We have no major scalable carbon sequestration technology, believe it or not. You'll hear articles about little things, but none of them are being deployed. What we're trying to do now is we're trying to mitigate. We're trying to land somewhere between one and a half and two degrees centigrade. That's what we're trying to get to. And it's a very narrow margin, and both are terrible. One and a half is, life's gonna suck, and two degrees, it's gonna suck more, basically. And we definitely don't want it to go above two degrees. And the best analogy I have to explain this for you is a dumb one, which is... You know when you go to Taco Bell and you order off the dollar menu? You know you're gonna get diarrhea, right? Like, you know it's inevitable? That's where we are with climate change. Like, you're gonna get diarrhea, but just how bad of diarrhea do you wanna get? Is it like, I gotta have a rough night, or I gotta call it sick tomorrow? That's basically where we are. And buildings are not capable of addressing this in any meaningful way. They're really designed for just the worst systems. Like, if they're too hot, you pump in energy. If they're too cold, they pump in energy. And we've been building the same way for 200 years. I'll show you what I mean. This is in 1918, and this is basically today, right? It's the same technology, literally. I would show you one from 1818, but cameras hadn't been invented yet. You see what I'm saying? We've been building the same way for 200 years. You could literally resurrect a zombie from the Civil War, put him on a job site, and he'll go right to work. And I guess that's helpful and convenient. But 200 years ago, we didn't know back then what we know today. We didn't know about asthma or endocrine disruption or formaldehyde or phthalates or carcinogens or climate change, for that matter. So as John Oliver would say, how is this still a thing? It doesn't make any sense. So what awaits you is an opportunity because we have a world that's desperately in need of redesign, and I'm staring at a room full of talented, smart, beautiful designers. So why aren't all of you jumping at the chance to fix this? What are you waiting for? What I see is I see a lot of people spending a lot of time on the wrong things. You know that some cad jockey in a firm spent hours getting the Bezier curves perfect on a sidewalk by freeway no one's ever gonna walk on. Great, but it's not what needs to be solved. What I'm asking you to do is I'm asking you to take a risk. What I'm asking you to do frankly is I'm asking you to risk failing. And the trouble is that you are literally being trained to not fail. Your professors with their best of intentions are trying to teach you not to fail. Failure's bad. When the building falls down and people die, that's bad, right? Granted. But I'm willing, I want you to take risks because we can't wait for you to feel comfortable or perfect. I want you to just take it in the face. Basically is what I want you to do because those are the buildings that we need. I need you to start building what I call weirdos. This building is a weirdo. This doesn't happen from a normal development process with a normal client and a normal project team. This is a dedicated client with a dedicated program and an over eager architect. And I have a new found love for this word weirdo because at home, I got a little weirdo. I got a little 10 year old weirdo at home and when I tell her and her friends, you guys are weirdos. They're all cocky, but like, yeah, we are. They're all bitchy about it. They own that word weirdo. They took back that word. They wear it with a batch of honor this generation. It's really kind of impressive. And so I want you to build weirdos. The bullet center is a weirdo. Dennis Hayes had to threaten to sue the EPA to get it built. They literally changed the building codes for the city of Seattle to make it possible. And it's the greenest office building in the world. That doesn't happen by accident. That happens by being a weirdo, taking a risk, being willing to fail. First building to be net zero energy in the city. First building in the city to have a living machine. First, first, lots of firsts in that building. That's a weirdo. That's what you need to do. To have real climate change disruption, to have your buildings actually make a difference is super hard and super disruptive. It takes a lot. But just remember that you are the heroes of this story. You're the good guys. Don't be afraid about taking these types of risks in the name of the greater good. Besides, what are you holding on to here? Buildings are gross. Their systems fail all the time. They're terrible. By the way, for half the room, this is what we call a urinal. And sometimes they do this. They just spit that out. If you don't know where to start, what I want you to do is I want you to think about how you measure success in a building. Yes, we measure success if it's built on time and if it's built on budget. But there are other metrics of success you can improve. If you're designing a store, you can improve the sales per square foot. If you're designing a school, you can measure the quality of education in that school. If you're designing a hospital, you can look at the quality of the healthcare that they're providing. And if you're designing a waiting room for that hospital, the real ultimate goal is if the waiting room weight is zero. That's your ultimate goal. If you're designing a house, you're measuring the level of comfort in that house. And if you're designing an office, you're measuring the amount of productivity that you're giving the employees. And your work affects all of those outcomes. You can change all of those things now. That is a powerful tool that you're being given. Our job is to solve problems. That's what we do. You're all being made into professional problem solvers. And no, I didn't put my phone down and help this guy. You wouldn't have either. That's the point. We're problem solvers. And sometimes the problems we solve are big and sometimes they're like, whoops, how did that happen? But still, that's what we do. Day in, day out, we solve problems. And so put it on your list of new problems to solve. Make every project about this issue. You have to be. Because there's only two futures that await you now. It's either gonna be Star Trek or Mad Max. That's it. And I'm really rooting for Star Trek, man. I've wanted it since I was a kid and I still do. That's what I'm rooting for. This is Robert Boyle. He was a scientist in the 17th century. He was so smart that we still use his law to create air conditioning. Boyle's law. It's how we still, to this day, still create air conditioning. It's kind of unreal. Boyle was so smart that 300 years ago, he made a list of things he thought humanity should solve. Things they should invent that need to be invented. And he wrote them down. And they're amazing. 300 years ago, Boyle said, we should find some way to double lifespan, some way to travel through the air, some way to survive under water, some way to transplant organs from a dying person into one that needs them, and some way to accelerate farming. And we did all of those things over the next 300 years. Boyle even went on to say, we need some way to create some malleable glass. Basically plastic, 300 years ago. Some way to position ourselves on the globe. Some way to eliminate pain artificially. And some way to have perpetual light. And yay, humanity. We did all of those things over the next 300 years. Boyle was so smart, he even said we should find a way to create scratch and sniff. I mean, he called it varnishes perfumable by rubbing. That's scratch and sniff. Holy crap, scratch and sniff 300 years ago. What a genius, what a visionary. But it raises the question. I have a room full of visionaries in front of me. What are the problems we need to solve for the next 300 years? What would you like to see solved in the next 300? Shout them out. We're already doing space travel. What about space travel? Be specific. Interdimensional space travel. For large distances. So getting you to go to Uranus. Okay, what else? I'm noticing a theme here. How do other planets in habit, okay. Terraforming. Okay, good. What else? Ooh, that's a good one. Okay. People are trying to do that now. Okay, good. What else? Moisture farming. Okay. So I had more time to think about it than you. So I'm gonna show you my list. My first five are all zeros. And I like zeros because it's a finish line. Zero hunger, zero homelessness, zero drought, zero carbon, zero waste. And I went real high level with it. My next five are up for debate. Maybe we could fix this experiment called democracy that's kind of gone off the rails a little bit. So tidy that up. Free energy. That would solve a lot of problems for people. Free energy storage. Because we don't really store energy now, believe it or not. Growing organs instead of transplanting them, actually growing them. And then my tenth one is the one that I really wanna talk to you about today, which is growing buildings. And that's what I'm gonna spend the second half talking about. But before I do that, I wanna do an experiment. Your dean gave me a tour of the school today and he was nice enough to tell me how smart you were and all that other crap. And I didn't really believe it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask a few people questions. And do you want me to do it with the whole group? Or do you want me to do it with like three of you that wanna stand up in front of the room? Which would you prefer? I'm not gonna touch you or anything. It's just gonna, it's just gonna, it's, all right, we'll do the whole room. Okay. How many of you, by show of hands, how many of you can identify problems that need to be solved around you, everybody? This could be in this building, on this campus, in this city, in this state, in the country. But right now, without any further training, without a degree, without anything special, could right now, today, if I'd have gone to your head, if you could identify problems that need to be solved, that bug you, raise your hands again. It's okay. Okay, so everybody, let's say. Okay. How many of you could brainstorm possible solutions to the problem that you just identified? Things that could potentially fix that. Raise your hands. Okay, not all of you are raising your hands this time. Interesting. Okay. How many of you could take your solutions for the problem that you identified and package it in a way that people could understand it? Whether it's a PowerPoint, a video, a diagram, an article, interpretive dance, whatever it is. How many of you could take your solution to the problem that you identified and package it in a way that people could understand it? Raise your hands. Fewer people. How many of you could take your packaged solution that you're presenting to people for the problem that you identified? How many could do it in a way and deliver it with enthusiasm and exuberance? Pretty much the same group. Okay, so let's recap. Most of you can identify a problem, come up with possible solutions to that problem, package it in a way that people can understand it and deliver it with enthusiasm to get people excited about it. About half the room, a little more than half the room can do that. Those of you that didn't raise your hands, let's single you out, why did you not raise your hand? What do you feel is standing in your way? I'm looking at you, front row, but I just told you the world is surrounded by morons. Did you not hear that part? What is your name? Olivia. You have graphic design skills, right? You're doing presentations. You have problem-solving skills. What year are you? Sophomore. Nobody's picking on you anymore, right? Okay, the people that kept their hands raised for all those, first of all, I think all of you should raise your hands at that. All of you have that power, but those of you that kept your hands up that were brave enough to do that, think about what you're able to do. We're able to identify problems that bother you and probably bother a lot of other people and that solving them would add value to lots of other people. You can package them in a way that people get excited about the solution and therefore be on your side. And the best part is, is you're not alone. You have each other. You have this whole group of people. It's amazing. Not only do you have each other, but if you have a strong enough solution to an idea, you have your professors who will help you. If it's a really good idea, the dean in the school, I'm sure, will help you. And if it's a really good idea, I'll help you. That's a really good idea, though. That's an amazing power, and you can do it without a further degree, without any other skills. So if you could do all these amazing things, what are you waiting for? What's holding you back? You gotta finish school? You got a big studio project? What is it? Tell me. What's stopping you from changing the world? This is a safe space. You can be honest, just to tell me. I already know all your answers, because I've done this thousands of times. Tell me what your answers are. Yes, ma'am. Yes. But would that stop you? Aren't there a lot of things the generations before didn't understand and you did them anyway? Instagram, for example? What else? What else is stopping you? Are you feeling complacent? You look like a determined young man. Okay. I would like to give you a voluntary homework assignment. I want each of you to think about a problem that really bothers you, that you'd like to see solved. I'd like you to brainstorm potential solutions to that and see if you can get yourself excited about the idea. And then in doing so, let's talk about how you could make it happen. Here's what I'm really proposing. If you came up with a good enough idea, I'm sure one of your professors, probably more of the hippier ones, will maybe let you do it as a studio project. So you're actually building in time to do it. It's kind of my point. This is an exercise I've done with every one of our interns and every one of our employees that I ever had. And a lot of times they fail, but that's okay. But there's three truths that were consistent with all of them, the hundreds of people that have done this. The first one is no one's gonna stop you. There's no age police. There's no Gestapo that's going, you kid, you're too young, go away. That doesn't happen. You might think it's gonna happen. You won't say it to yourself, but in the back of your mind, you're worried. It doesn't happen. Most people are so impressed that anybody's doing anything that they're like, yeah, go, please. I'm not gonna do anything. I'm gonna sit on my fat butt. You do it. So they'll be just excited you're doing anything. Two, passion and enthusiasm are your marketing plan. The world is devoid of passion and enthusiasm. And you adding to that will attract people to you. And third, the same people that get attracted to you, there'll be a whole other group of people that will be repulsed and disgusted by what you're doing and they'll go away from you. But that's a good thing. You don't want them around you. That's why it's your marketing plan. So think about what problem is you could be solving. Some people it's like, you know what? We need a bike share program on this campus. I can't believe we don't have one. I'm gonna start one. And I'm gonna rally a bunch of other students to do that. Or we need an electric shuttle or we need organic food or we need a green roof on this building. Could be anything like that. Or it could be even bigger. I just want you to think about it. Okay, I'm totally out of time now. But anyway, let me go through with you that experience that I had. And it was with the X-Prize Foundation. Who's heard of the X-Prize? Anybody? A few of you. That's good. The X-Prize was started in 2004. They had this very simple idea. The idea was they were gonna give $10 million to the first person that launched three human beings up into space, about 62 miles, return them safely, and then did it again two weeks later. And if you could build that spaceship, you got $10 million. It took seven years and eight different teams who spent about hundreds of millions of dollars pursuing this $10 million prize to do it. And finally, a team one. This is Bert Rutan. He's the guy in that hot denim on denim look that you see. And then next to him in the all black is Peter D. Amandus, the founder of X-Prize. And then next to him in the white shirt is some rich dude. So, but they did it. And now all of us have the ability to have essentially vacational space travel because of the X-Prize. Hundreds of millions of dollars spent in pursuit of this $10 million prize. So it clearly wasn't about the money. So that's what the X-Prize Foundation does. So a couple years ago, they called me and they said, we want you to design the X-Prize for buildings. And I said, okay, how does that work? And they're like, well, we'll give you a schedule and a budget, and then we'll give you two fellows from Deloitte and two grad students and your team of five will develop what the X-Prize for buildings should be. You will then compete with eight other X-Prizes at our annual summit at this fancy resort in LA. And each of you will present your case for your X-Prize to our audience of advisors. And I said, who are your advisors? And they said, oh, nobody, Elon Musk and Larry Page from Google and Ariana Huffington and nobody really. And so you're gonna present to our advisory team at 250 and all of their age and appropriate dates. And then they're gonna vote on your prize, basically. And then to do that, they gave us a crash course through what's called Singularity University, which is another kind of spin-off that they do. And they taught us about what's called exponential thinking. That if you wanna solve a problem, don't just take the old solution and try to improve it a little bit. That's incremental thinking. This is exponential thinking. How can you solve a problem in a new way so it literally goes viral? And there's a whole format I'm not gonna go through, but I'll give you some examples of how you've seen this in action. For my entire life, Kodak was synonymous with cameras and film. They dominated that industry. They literally invented it, right? So when I was a kid growing up and when I was your age, Kodak was the name in cameras. Now they barely exist and they've been eclipsed by a little startup called Instagram in terms of Market Cap. When I was a kid, Hyatt was the name in hotels. And their Market Cap has been eclipsed by a company that doesn't even own hotels. Airbnb is the largest hotelier in the entire world. That's exponential thinking. It's kind of documented in this book that Peter wrote called Abundance. And what he said is that really, we don't have the not enough resources. We have enough resources, just they're in the wrong place. And when seen through the lens of technology, few resources are actually scarce. They're just inaccessible. And yet this threat of scarcity kind of pervades our entire worldview. Everything we do is hunter-gatherers. It's kind of broken into our DNA that we always look at things in desperation and we really shouldn't. So what the XPrize is really asking is what is your moonshot? What is your goal if you're gonna spend all of your effort, all of your ideas, all of your money to pursue something, what should it be? And then they walk us through this funnel of how we define this problem. And so that's the approach we took to solve the XPrize for buildings. The whole thing was sponsored by Lowe's oddly enough. And that's not a joke, that's real. And they're really cool about it actually. And then we presented this at this really fancy resort, which we didn't get to enjoy because we were walked inside the whole time. And then each of the nine teams had to design their own room. So this was our room, it was really trippy. And a lot of people said it was like being on acid. I've never been on acid, but that's what they said it was like. And they were, you know, it didn't photograph well, but you got the idea. And then this is me presenting it to the 1,000 plus advisors and their dates. And I'm so happy I'm not wearing the same outfit. Okay. And there were amazing people in the room, man. There were like great, cool people in the room. Like there was, one guy came up to me, and I said, oh, hi, who are you? And he said, I'm the founder of Uber. And I go, oh, the douchebag? And he's like, no, the other one. I'm like, oh, nice to meet you. And then like the founder of Airbnb was there, right? And like just amazing, cool people like that. There were celebrities there. There were these great, like, I didn't know who half of them were, but the one that I did recognize was Pharrell. Pharrell was there. And he was just, his outfit was amazing. It was just this weird homemade sweater bespoke thing and these handmade shoes from Adidas. And it was wild. And then he grilled me with questions about what I'm about to show you. And he knew more about this than I did, which is surprising and embarrassing at the same time. And I said, Pharrell, Pharrell, can I tell everybody that we're your favorite when I'm on stage tonight for the final thing? Can I tell everybody that our prize is your favorite? And he said, no, don't do that. And I'm like, okay, can I tell them that we're in your top three? And he's like, fine. So then on the night on stage, I'm like, hey, everybody, Pharrell said we're in your top three. So you can all suck it like that. It was fun. So what I want to do is I want to show you, I want to show you part of the presentation that we did at this summit and to give you a sense of the prize. And it starts very simply enough that the way we build buildings is stupid. Think about it. We mine valuable resources out of the earth. We put them on fossil fuel-based ships. We schlep them all over the planet. And when they arrive on site, they're not ready for construction. We have to assemble them by hand, bit by bit. Every single building is a one-off. Every single building is a bespoke prototype. And we're not at all leveraging any of the technologies that we've developed in the last 100 or even 50 years. But there's a potential revolution that's awaiting us. A revolution in the building industry that's not just part of the green building movement, but one that if we're not careful will totally pass us by. And it's a revolution in biology, in DNA, in sciences. And if we start to mix those two together and tap into nature's technologies, we could transform how we build our buildings. So that's our big idea. And we call it, Pro-struction. Pro-struction is the opposite of construction. Get it? I like that word, screw you. Okay, so that's the idea. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you our X-Prize, what it is, and then I'll work backwards to show you how we got there. But very simply put, grow us an eight-foot wall, eight feet by eight feet. Have it match the typical properties of a regular wall in terms of strength and weight and so forth, but add in certain biological features. If you can do this, start to finish in six months from when you kind of plant it, you win $10 million. Pretty straightforward. And a lot of people said, well, why a wall? Where'd you get the idea for a wall? Who knows where ideas come from? Ideas are just in the ether. They're just there, who knows? Now I studied understudents at Frank Lloyd Wright and Mr. Wright used to describe his architecture as organic architecture. That was the word that he used to describe it. And so my whole life was this promise of organic architecture, truly organic. In fact, I think of Mr. Wright as the first truly green architect. But Mr. Wright didn't know what you now know. He was unburdened by things like formaldehyde and VOCs and drought and smog and asthma and carbon and mining and pesticides and climate change. He didn't know back then what he knew today. One of my other mentors was a man named Malcolm Wells, the father of underground building. Mack used to say that if we have a duty or responsibility that if we're gonna build a building we're gonna scrape the site, we're gonna restore the nature that we destroyed in the process. Really great, by the way. But we don't build that way. We've been building the same way for 200 years. And the way we build is just for a brute force. It's a bang, it's just crazy. And these buildings are not designed to go outside. And we build the same way everywhere. So if it's in Arizona or Alaska, it's just, it would just crap these things out all over the place. There's a number of trends that are already happening. Things that you're already part of, maybe that you're experiencing. We know that building manufacturers are gonna be more and more transparent with their materials. They're gonna be less and less toxic, less and less bad. They'll never be good for you, but they're getting better and they'll continue to get better and better sourced. That's been happening for 30 years. We also know the building codes themselves will get less and less prescriptive, more and more proscriptive, and much more focused on performance. A federal energy code, for example. But we're still missing the point. This is a living wall, right? I've done a lot of these. It's beautiful. Plants on the wall, it absorbs CO2, produces oxygen. Great, this is a living roof, same thing. They're great, but it's biological material on top of dead toxic, lifeless material. What if instead the whole building was alive? What if it was an actual living entity? Imagine the possibilities. Imagine if it truly was a building like a tree. It makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, provides habitat to hundreds of species. And what do we do with this structure? I don't know, let's cut it down and write on it, I guess. Like, we're missing the point, you see what I'm saying? So the question became, how do we design an XPRIZE for buildings? Why isn't normal green building enough? For 30 years, I built buildings like this, beautiful little green buildings oriented to the sun. Why wasn't that enough for me? What was wrong with it? What was missing from this? And finally dawned on me. That's it, life, that's what I wanted, damn it, life, I wanted real life. Wouldn't you, who wouldn't want that? The reason we're growing one wall is because if you can grow one, you can grow three more. That's basically it, it's the minimum viable product. We even mapped out all the things that we need to happen in order to get to growing a wall and all the things that would happen after that. If you wanna grow a whole building, great, but the minimum viable product is growing one wall first. We even mapped out what would happen if they were to achieve this. First it would start out, we'd launch the prize, then you'd have, I don't know, some team successfully complete it two years later, maybe. We'd have the first commercial use, and this was already coming up at the summit. The Airbnb guy said, would you grow walls for our projects? We'll grow pods and rent them out, right? Then you had the first AutoCAD plugin, so you could basically connect Revit to a DNA compiler, that'd be kind of fun. You'd see if code use, the ICC and the ICBO would recognize construction as some accessible alternative method. I already had a conversations with the ICC about this. The best selling Christmas gift that year would be Barbies grow your own dream house, like that'd be kind of amazing. Every kid would want that, I would think. Then you'd see like the USGBC and the WorldGBC would accept construction as automatic platinum. Then you'd see the first skyscraper built with normal steel frame, everything else, but all the walls, all the infill in construction, cutting the labor and the cost in half, essentially. And then corn would cease to be the number one crop, and eventually it would be building materials. And then eventually we would grow whole buildings. But none of that starts without incentivizing the prize, that was the idea. None of that future comes true unless we incentivize that thing first. And so in setting up these prize requirements, it's very tricky. You wanna make them restrictive, but not too restrictive. You don't wanna lock people into things they can't solve, essentially. We did a bunch of red team testing on this. So somebody said, why can't I just grow a hedge? There, I grew a wall. Well, first of all, a hedge wouldn't meet the strength or fire requirements, so shut up. And no, it's a hedge, no, it wouldn't work. So we had to think about why wouldn't it work and how that works? So here are some of the requirements. I'm going through them very quickly, but you get an idea. In terms of strength, the prostruction wall has to be as strong as a regular wood frame wall. So it has to hold about 300 pounds per linear foot. It has to have some insulation value, not a lot, but just enough for a bare minimum. And also some sound transmission efficiency. It also can't be too heavy. It can't weigh more than 50 pounds per square foot because if we wanna use it with existing buildings that would be too heavy. And it has to, very important, it has to have at least a one hour fire rating where the building inspectors wouldn't touch it. We also made provisions for how you do plumbing and electrical in a prostruction wall. And I won't get into that, but you can see how it is. We also had a thing around moisture and humidity and so forth. We even broke it into phases. So you can do the first phase where you grow a form over some sort of scaffold. That's $5 million. And if you can kind of manipulate it so it grows its own scaffold, that's another two. And then if it had some of these biological features, that's another two. And if it creates that interface between AutoCAD and the DNA compiler, well, there's another prize. We even had to define the word grow because we couldn't leave it up to chance. And so basically it's untouched by man or machine left to nature's devices. And while most of you are probably thinking it's plant-based, in truth, nature has a wealth of technologies to choose from. Plants are actually pretty slow and pretty weak. So it might not be plant-based. In fact, we kind of expect it'll be a hybrid of three of these. Maybe coral mixed with mycelium mixed with coral, maybe. And I know it sounds like science fiction, but it's actually possible. That's the craziest part. In researching this and in talking to scientists, there are people that are actually trying to do this. Imagine the possibilities. In construction, we have global supply chains that are horribly inefficient. In prostruction, everything is sourced locally. In construction, we use CO2 as a waste product. Prostruction uses it as a building block. In construction, we build the same way everywhere and prostruction can adapt to each site uniquely. And only in prostruction or in construction do we consume and consume and consume and consume to the point of excess. In prostruction, everything would be limited through equilibrium. What's making all this possible is for the first time in human history, we know now how a zebra gets its stripes. We know how a leaf heals itself. We know why the firefly glows. And it's all possible through DNA, understanding DNA. And just one of these inventions could radically transform how we build buildings. Think about your arm, just your own arm. It thins out in the middle in the point of lowest stress and thickens at the other point for the highest stress. It's broken into two different bones to help alleviate some of that stress. Just that one innovation could transform structural systems. And by the way, it's all done in a material that's four times the strength of concrete and half the weight. It's amazing. Your bodies are already amazing. So construction could already abandon that paradigm where we apply structure and then skin and then lighting and plumbing. When you were born, you didn't come out of skeleton and then wait for the muscle crew to come in, right? And then they had to get signed off on and then wait for the skin crew. Like that didn't happen. You came out fully formed and you grew together. That's what prostruction could do. So we could switch from mass production to mass customization. You wouldn't need paint anymore because the pigment could come from within. You wouldn't need lighting anymore because the whole surface could glow just like a firefly. Every building could be a lead platinum building. Every surface could be a sensor or smoke detector. And if you pull a picture out of the wall, the wall could heal just the way your skin does. You could even change the color based on your mood or the time of year. Oh, it's Valentine's Day. Let's make the walls red. Okay. You wouldn't need street lights anymore because the trees themselves could illuminate and light your way home. And the walls could be designed to absorb all the bad stuff you don't want. So all the VOCs are all the CO2. And this is very much designed to work with existing construction. I went to have a client, they did a $350,000 kitchen, just a kitchen. And then 10 years later, they ripped it out. That's what rich people do, right? They put the things and then rip them out. So do that. Put in your crappy IKEA kitchen, but the whole building around it could be construction essentially. This could even be a chance for us to look at old buildings from the past and rejuvenate them. We can even do cool things like build the way bees do where we orient the whole building to magnetic north. You could even bake the building code itself into the DNA code that you're using. So if you grew a stair, each riser could be automatically be eight inches. You wouldn't need building inspectors anymore. Nobody's gonna miss them, believe me. And anything that you see as a mistake on the site just becomes food and fuel for the next batch to grow it again. So this is very much designed to reverse that desertification in that narrow band where most humans tend to live. And it's very much designed to grow and evolve and change over time. So you could grow what you need now and then if you get married and need more space, you could grow another room. And if you have kids, you could grow another room. Imagine the possibilities. Every surface, a sensor, a battery, a heat sink. And it's all possible. That's why I want us to grow our buildings. Healthy, abundant buildings for everybody. This would be like you getting the medicine before you get the illness. It's probiotic, it's preventative. Only the men are gonna understand this joke, it's fine. And so that's the most important part. It shifts that paradigm from cut, slash and burn to grow, regenerate and build. This is not a new idea. This is one that's been around for a while. It basically just stacks a bunch of trends that are already existing. We've had low emitting materials now for the last 20 years. You can get them at Home Depot and Lowe's, right? We have zero emitting materials now. They've pretty much caught on for everybody. Now we have agricultural waste-based products, wheat board, farm board, rice board. Those are now pretty commonplace. You can order them from a lot of manufacturers. The next big explosion is gonna be bio-based. That's just now starting to take off. Right now it's a $65 billion market. It'll be two trillion in the next five years. And if you stack these trends, you can see the next logical conclusion are living materials. That's where we're headed. And this is not me saying this. DARPA, which is the research arm of the U.S. military, they put out a call for proposals for people to grow plywood and to grow drywall. It's part of their engineered living materials program that the government funds. It's kind of amazing. So this idea is not anything new. It's just piecing together lots of disparate ideas that aren't really talking to each other. It's just weaving that thread. And what's making all this possible is for the first time ever in human history, human beings can now cheaply and easily edit, catalog, and replicate DNA. And the cost of which just keeps going down. And it's done through a technology called CRISPR. CRISPR is a molecular scalpel that we can program with any DNA sequence of engines. And it's one of the tools that is making biology and computation. Biology is the new digital. We're basically swapping DNA the same way that you swap MP3 files. That's how easy it is. A little bit of code. If you're wondering what CRISPR stands for, don't bother, it gives me a headache. But you get the idea. And it's part of a growing field called synthetic biology. So I looked up the top 20 synthetic biologists in the world and then I contacted them. That seemed like a reasonable thing to do. And so I ended up talking to the synthetic biologists at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. And so I met with all of them. When I went to MIT, I looked on their website and growing a house was on their to-do list on the synthetic biology website. So I knew I was in the right place. And so I went to the Weiss lab for synthetic biology and I met with Professor Weiss. I don't know how he agreed to meet with me. He just, I guess I'm persistent, but he agreed to meet with me. And he was so cute. He looked like he was right out of central casting. Like he had the lab coat on and everything. And then this was his office. And it looked, and it was, you know, weird little crazy office. And here's how smart he is. That's his lunch order. You see what I'm saying? Like, he's a smart dude. Super smart guy. And he met with me and we talked about this idea. And I said, okay, I want to grow a building. So what if I wanted to have a wall be a smoke alarm? He said, oh, that's easy. I, okay, what if I wanted to absorb VOCs? Easy. What if I wanted to change color or to glow? Easy. And as I kept going through these things, he kept saying, oh, that's easy, that's easy. And I started to get very uneasy by his use of the word easy. Because that's not a, I don't know if you know, it's not a scientific word. That's a, that's like a me, that's a word I use, easy. Like that's not a, and I said, why is it so easy? And he said, we already know how nature does all of these things. We would just drag and drop the snippets of code to do that like software. I said, okay, hot shot, if all of this is so easy, what's hard? And he pulls out his phone and he flips around and he shows me a picture. And he said, see this? Yesterday we grew a liver. Say what now? Yeah, it was pretty easy actually. I took skin cells from the back of my hand. We programmed those to be stem cells, which is easy. And then we commanded those to become a liver. And I said, are you telling me you cloned your frigging liver yesterday? Is that what you're, is that what you're saying? He's like, oh no, it's not a clone. It's a better liver. Like we improved, this is, this liver is much better than my liver. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, this liver can do things my liver can't do. And I said, we mean like juggle? Like I don't understand, what can this liver, he said, this liver can send us a message if it encounters disease like cirrhosis. And I said, like a text message? I don't understand. I'm an idiot. So, you know, and he's like, no, it basically releases a chemical and we have a sensor that alerts us when that chemical is present. So it lets us know. And I said, okay, I'm shmucky the architect trying to grow a building and you're growing livers. Like that sounds a lot more important. Aren't I, isn't this a huge distraction? And he said, no, because the liver that I grew is only this big. We have trouble growing things to scale. We have a scale problem. And we can't grow anything much larger than this. That's the trouble. Your prize would help us figure that out. And then I realized this is not a growing a wall prize. This is a grow things big prize, really. And if we could tackle that, he could then finish his work growing real livers for real humans. The way they do this now is through what's called a scaffold. This is a coconut husk. This is a scaffold. And Apple is mostly scaffold with Apple DNA woven through it. You, you're a scaffold. You're a walking, talking, breathing, farting scaffold. You look literally, you move around, right? Your frame, your framework is all there. And when I think of scaffold, I think like this, like you do. And that's basically what it is. It's just a scaffold with a living tissue on it. And nature has hundreds of ways that it develops scaffold. So ultimately, this is a scaffolding prize, really. While I was talking to Professor Weiss, I said, how do I, you know, just to be safe, how do I make sure that, I don't know, Jurassic Park doesn't happen? Like how does, I just don't want that to happen. And he said, well, first of all, your buildings, it's not gonna chase you around a kitchen. And if it did catch you and try to eat you, it would do it really slowly. And I said, is that, is that a biology joke? And he said, yes. And I said, oh, okay. So if you're like worried about swamp thing or whatever, like apparently that's not an issue. But think about where we are as a species. You've kind of hit the wall, right? Because I can develop three-dimensional things that I can print in three dimensions. And I can create amazing geometries I've never even conceived of before. But our buildings still look like this. I have electric vehicles capable of running hundreds of miles on a single charge. But our buildings still look like this. I have 3D digitizing scanners that capture the building instantly in 3D in real time. But our buildings still look like this. I even have an app in my pocket that tells me when the hot donuts are ready. But the donut shop still looks like this. Every major technology is improved except our buildings. So we are ripe for a disruption. We need a disruption because this is not Photoshop. This is California. When the power goes out here, these people have to check into a hotel. And when the water goes out, they have to move. This is not sustainable. This is our chance to look at old buildings from the past and revitalize them. This is our chance to look at old infrastructure that is inefficient and revitalize that too. This is our chance to rethink the building codes. Not all of you, here, let me explain. You're not gonna get what's wrong with this, but there's a balcony. But there's no door to the balcony. But the building inspector said we needed a railing, three foot, six inches high for nobody. For when Spider-Man comes over, I guess. I don't know, but so that's kind of the problem. This is our chance to look at all those bits of paradise that we turned into parking lots and revitalized those. Because I don't know if you realize it, but some buildings are so sinister and so evil, it takes you a minute to realize it, but it's there, my God, it's there. And besides, architects are not very well liked. I don't know if you know this, I mean, when you get out into the profession, every one of your clients will have, and oh my God, I hate my old architect's story for you. It's really depressing. They even made a commercial about it. They're working hard, you know that it's true. You need a brand new soap that works hard too. No one's starting to take to the world. I like the tile at the end. We build most of our buildings outside in the rain, which is not easy to do, and the job sites are dangerous places. They're routinely over budget and over schedule, and worker productivity has gone up in every other field except construction. It's actually gone down in construction because we're using 200 year old technology. So productivity has gone down and labor costs keep going up. And so the profit margin for being an architect or a contractor keeps shrinking. And so your opportunities for research and development keeps shrinking. And then we make these materials further and further away, and now their costs keep going up because there's no economy of scale there either. We're the only industry that has a 37% construction waste, so we throw away 37% of the building essentially. No other industry can afford to sustain that. Do you imagine if Apple threw away 37% of an iPhone every time they made it, it wouldn't happen. So pick your market failure basically. The whole industry is doomed. You just don't realize it yet. Labor waste, climate materials, we're headed off a cliff. This is not sustainable. I'm jumping ahead, sorry. I put in like two hours worth of stuff, so. We're also the only industry that doesn't really have a research and development section, right? Look at RRND compared to let's say aerospace or automotive and you can see why they're able to crank out new models all the time and we're not. So if you want innovation, it's not gonna come from within the industry. No candle manufacturer invented the light bulb. The post office isn't the one that came up with email. That's not how innovation works. Innovation comes from outside. It's a disruption from outside the industry. If you wanna change construction, you gotta do it from some other idea. We are not the first creatures to build on this planet. Lots of creatures build stuff. It's kind of arrogant to think we're the only ones. This is the paper wasp. It builds its nest in a matter of hours. It takes wood pulp from local trees, makes it with saliva and makes a form of cement. It can change the hydrology of the cement based on the humidity in the air. And it, by the way, does it on that cool hexagonal pattern, by the way. This is the weaver bird. It builds its nest in a matter of days. It takes local grasses and makes it in this cool tripod structure and uses its own body as a tape measure. It makes the opening just big enough so the weaver bird can get in, but none of its predators. It's amazing. This is a termite mound. These little critters build these things 14, 20 feet tall. They create little air holes around the side of it so as wind passes naturally over the shape of the form, it pulls the air out through passive ventilation. Air conditioning, basically. This is the silkhenge spider. To protect its young, it builds a literal fence around its babies, which is so adorable I wanna scream, right? This is the bagworm moth. It builds a little ziggurat for its babies that they eat their way out of. So it gives them a little snack as they're born. And then my favorite, this is a little guy, is the Japanese pufferfish. Now the Japanese pufferfish knows that he's ugly. He gets it. So what does he do to attract a mate? He draws on the surface of the ocean. He uses his little fins, he uses his little mouth and he uses his little shells to scoop out a pattern on the floor. And he creates a geometric pattern to attract a mate. And when they swim overhead, they see the pattern and they swoon. I don't know what they do after that, but you got the idea. What are you holding on to here? What's so great about this old technology? It doesn't work. Sometimes the results are just stupid and sometimes they're catastrophic, but either way, we're really bad at this. I'm trying to figure out what to show you, all right. This is my old mentor, Malcolm Wells. He drew this in the 80s. And this was his, he did it for fun really, but the idea was that you'd grow a house, a literal house and you'd plant them as crops. And you could build a housing development that would grow in stages. And this idea is nothing new. This is Mitchell Joaquin in New York. This is using pleaching. He's essentially bending real live branches to create the structure of his building. This is Vincent Cabot. He's literally growing buildings over a husk. This is Mark Fornes. This building would thicken in the summertime and shade itself and thin out in the winter and let the sunlight in. This is James Hubble in San Diego. A building looks like it could just take flight, essentially. This is Ernie Burden, where you can't tell where the line where nature stops and mankind begins. This is Eugene Sway. This is building as an organism. This is David Benjamin. This is Edmoma. These are mushroom-based bricks that were grown, not formed, grown, mycelium that's grown, and then placed by robot in a parametric pattern that's foil along the top to reflect light and keep heat out of the structure. This is Neri Oxman in MIT. She trains silkworms to be her contractors. They built for her what she wanted them to. This is not a new idea. So while scientists are trying to grow, I don't know, cosmetic luxury pets, like, permaids or whatever the hell they're doing, I'm just trying to grow a wall. I'm just, you know, it's easy, basically. And if you're worried about the scientific implications or the ethics of it, this is a not, you're not gonna eat the building. It's not a GMO thing. It's not weird issue. And the scale is also not that big of an issue because we can be off, you don't need a 300 DPI building is, you know, kind of the thing. We could be off by inches because we are all the time anyway, right? In real life, we're all, we'll just shim it, right? That's all you need. So this becomes this kind of perfect stepping stone to using this in other applications. And so putting this team together was actually not just the work of the five of us, but lots of other firms that helped contribute to this effort. We also got donations and sponsorships from lots of other great firms. And then we even launched the design competition with my friends, Michelle Kaufman, David Hertz and Jill Ferenbacher on Inhabitat. And we asked people to imagine what would construction look like. And we received 300 entries from 14 countries. And some of them are very hobbit-like, which is fine. And some of them are pretty Zaha Hadid-like, which is also cool, and everything in between. And this is only some of them. You can see the rest on Inhabitat, but you got the idea. Some of these I remembered seeing before. So I think that they kind of recycled some ideas, but that's OK. That's the power of using nature as a technology. That's the power of putting in your mind that nature is a powerful technology. That's the benefit of creating this paradigm shift. We need to rethink how we look at nature and how we look at materials and see them in a new way, because nature is technology. You've heard of better living through chemistry. This is better living through biology, essentially. And if we could do this, we could provide healthy, abundant buildings to everybody and save the 7 million people a year that die from indoor air quality exposure. So let's grow our buildings. Let's grow beautiful, abundant, healthy buildings. There's an old Japanese proverb, and it says, vision without action is a daydream, and action without vision is a nightmare. So let's have a vision with some action, basically. Let's grow a wall. Let's match some of the typical properties of regular wall. Let's add in these biological cool things. Let's do this in six months and win $10 million. So doesn't that sound good? If we launch this prize, we're launching the idea of healthy, abundant buildings for everybody, affordably. And just in the time that you've been sitting here listening to me, there's about 400 students in the architecture school, I think you guys said, right? In the time you've been here, all of your fellow students, in the time that I've talked, collectively, you've released almost 140 liters of CO2. Collectively, your gross, disgusting bodies have shed about 80 liters of sweat. And as you've been here, you've been inhaling in, sucking in 1.5 million liters of air and 600,000 some liters of oxygen. And your skin has shed 128 million gross, disgusting skin cells on the chair and on the floor and each other. It's gross. And the building has done nothing to accommodate you. It's done nothing to replenish that. But imagine if it did. Imagine if the building anticipated your physiology. Imagine if it anticipated that and made you feel better about it. And the more time you spent indoors, the better you felt. Wouldn't that be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Really? Wouldn't that be redefining victory for everybody in the 21st century? OK, thank you very much. If you want the slides, feel free to email me. Otherwise, you can email me anyway, if you like. And if you want to follow along, you can watch online with those links there. Thank you so much. Have a good night. Oh, thank you. Even better the second time. Oh, good. So I hope you all are feeling inspired and want to win that $10 million and save the entire human race. So we have refreshments outside. And if we're all very nice, Eric will stick around and we can ask some questions. But they go up coming.