 Hello, everyone. Good evening. Thank you for coming. It is my honor to introduce tonight Shezzie Reiser and Nana Koume-Moto of the firm Rur. Shezzie Reiser Was a professor here many years ago. They've done these beautiful book projects and their consequences Which is a compendium of very significant projects and many of the stories That come with the projects I hope that we will see some of the projects in the book and their Consequences explore some of the consequences together tonight Shezzie Reiser joined Princeton School of Architecture in 2000 He received his bachelor of architecture degree from the Cooper Union in New York City and Completed his master of architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art He was a fellow of the American Academy in Rome in 1985 and he worked for the offices of John Hedduke and Aldo Rossi Prior to forming Reiser-Ume-Moto Reiser with partner Nana Koume-Moto Nana Koume-Moto Teaches at Washington University School of Architecture. She's a professor of practice there before teaching In Washington University. She taught here at Columbia Reiser-Ume-Moto It's a multidisciplinary firm Operated at a wide range of scales from furniture design to residential and commercial structure Structures up to the scale of landscape and infrastructure the firm comprehensive monograph Projects and their consequences was published last year 2019 and traces 30 years of innovative multidisciplinary investigations of form Structure technique and planning and has some very nice anecdotes too Reiser-Ume-Moto published before the Atlas of Nobel tectonics in 2006 And released the Japanese edition in 2008 They have recently they have they won two international competitions They type A pop music center and the Kachun for Porterminal both the schedule to be completed in 2021 O-14 a 22-story building that they built in Dubai Has received numerous international honors including the concrete industry Boards award and the of merit and the American Council of Engineer Companies 2009 Diamond Award Reiser-Ume-Moto has been published widely and they have received many awards including the Chrysler Award for Excellent in design in designing 1999 the John Hedwick Award from the Cooper Union in 2011 and The USA booth fellowship from the United States artists for architecture and design in 2012 I would like to read you one part two paragraphs of the of the book that that I felt Encapsulated some of the issues that that need to be discussed today and in this context Concepts in isolation are fairly easy to formulate and almost any intelligent person can create them Form and composition on the other hand are most grossly hard That is why they are revealed by so many In fact good ideas most often yield mediocre sometimes bad and really I'm very rarely good architecture would separate ideas from architecture are a thousand small problems and thousand small decisions the difference between being on point or off totally off is infinitesimal small Hence the stories of shana shana goose ingress tearing his hair Out over the angle of a hand or more directly pertinent to architecture The image of me is staring at the lines on a plan for hours and then a just in them Just a few millimeters How is this not the image of the pastime of a madman? It is what separates the seagram building from its mediocre look-alikes a few blocks away This is also the different that separate separates architectural ideology from Implementation the divide between the a particular type promulgated for mass production and the specific poor Prototype that is bonnet It is with great pleasure that I introduce you tonight chassis biker. Thank you. Thank you. Gallia for the introduction In many ways. This is a homecoming for both Nanoco and myself We spent a good chunk of the 90s teaching here and Had the privilege of working both with an extraordinary group of colleagues and also students and actually Gallia was in our studio in what 95 I think but just It's just hard to Well fathom, you know the time has passed but also To encapsulate in a lecture the scene at Columbia the whole scene and what it did for Multiple generations of architects actually So I'm not going to do that tonight and I'm not going to talk about Another family, which is the family business of R. You are which extends to my mother and my grandfather as well but rather to Guess in a way try to hint at Some of those concerns and those abiding interests Through the work that I'll be presenting So yeah, let me just jump in this is a Project which was over ten years in the making the Music center in Taipei. I think what characterizes much of the work In the office and which actually started with Bernard's prompts at Columbia was the Real desire to find a way of articulating not only architecture, but urbanism in from an architectural lens I mean in fact Bernard Much to the consternation of the planning people basically instituted a Series of studios that you know had the architects look at the city as opposed to you know Just the planning department. So I wasn't even aware of the frictions at the time I was sort of the recipient and kind of luck of Being able to be involved in those projects, but there were all kinds of politics, you know Running around Columbia all kinds of projects and Frictions which actually made the place so exciting the book Trying to kind of wrestle with The content of almost 40 years of work Was daunting we went through I would say like six or seven iteration some of the more kind of professionally posed others, you know trying other approaches and We were particularly Inspired by Citizen Kane Believe it or not because it allowed us not just to do a succession of projects like a project's book But to kind of weave back and forth between projects the context around the projects Associated interests in a much more non-linear way that and this idea of Cabinet of curiosities that it would be a kind of collecting point for The kind of seed germ of ideas and the architects I think many times do this, you know that Either, you know, there are false starts in a project or there are little bits which Get developed which might not go any further, but you've kind of tucked them in your pocket Save them for another project. So I think that's also characteristic of our design ethos and method that No project in a sense goes away There kind of a merge a series of Sustained projects In the office and I have to say most of these are retrospective. They're not pre-planned But retrospectively you see a certain consistency. That was part of the work of the book was to kind of trace back Retrospectively to see consistencies the first thing actually is the musical instrument problem, which was not a project, but it was a insoluble problem that was assigned by our Dean at Cooper Union John Hayduck, which took 35 years to at least figure out from our own Perspective, but to give you an idea of what I mean about This kind of movement of a project. This is sort of a condensed version This is what happens and I would say what a lot of very good architects do It's less about the argumentation per se but they work very directly with the kind of geometrical material of projects and in the case of in this case Cecil Bowman and you know as part of the serpentine Projects was a sign, you know over the years various architects He developed this really fascinating series of Geometrical structural experiments That he suggested to Toyo Ito he used for the serpentine plan the series of kind of rotated superimposed structural bents Ito gets the material and basically and Deliberately misreads the structural diagram basically fills in all of the spaces in between makes it volumetric And that essentially kind of produces the formal Aspect of his serpentine nine years later So Fujimoto who was Ito's assistant on the serpentine Revives the Bowman diagram again This time applies it to the Taiwan Tower ups the scale Enormously extrudes it on that kind of strange triangular site and goes back to structure So this I would say kind of encapsulates, you know the way This kind of information moves from architect to architect at least in this case and I would say that you know that happens not only within a practice or across maybe From a master to a disciple in the case of Ito But it happens in the discipline as well. So the top to well the top Refers to and I'll get into this a little later The kind of overall trajectory of the project of the surface Which is really kind of a transnational project and then the rod that project is something that stemmed from that within our own practice and I would say that the motivator and especially In the 90s and which has kind of persisted in our practice Up until today for better or worse is the competition. So this young cohort of You know teachers Would Hear myself Nanako Greg Lynn Hanny Rashid Who else Bill and Shulam Stan Allen. We would all enter the same competition Really knowing that we wouldn't win but it was It was about competing with each other out doing one another And then there would of course be a post-mortem and You know before that crank calls from Greg Lynn or he would sketch my scheme and whatever but That really formed the kind of energy At least among the young faculty at the school and I remember, you know vividly being just blown away by the FOA Port terminal proposal You know, I think that's important too that you recognize the work of your contemporaries how important that is and of course We wanted to outdo that so the the next you know major Competition that came up was the Kansai library in Japan. I think it was among the last open competitions in Japan and It was only much later that I began to make sense of The trajectory of That surface project and it came about because Nanako and I were invited To a round table discussion at MoMA in response to the Japanese constellation show Which I guess because it's MoMA there was Historically been an interest in national architectures and people are particularly, you know Excited about, you know, master to disciple or followers and how work is transmitted But it struck us that You know while this is accurate within a very circumscribed lens It really didn't tell the story of how that work kind of came to Japan so We presented this diagram very quickly, you know It really starts, you know after all of the oblique architecture in Paron It really starts full blown with OMA And if you could say kind of merging the parking garage, which would be an exemplary Idea of bringing a street into a building which would be part of Rem's model Building as an urbanism fuses those two things and then as it kind of Progresses both within his office, but also, you know, the main designers who kind of follow in that office But basically develop Into a more topological architecture till finally we get the FOA Scheme that Alejandro and Farshid did at the architectural association Now there was a really interesting kind of moment There where Cecil Bowman was their structural advisor And of course they wanted to produce a topological architecture that would be kind of surface-based as thin as possible He recommended, you know, exploring it through a concept by Robert Laricole called the isoflex system problem was that Given the spans and that really just the shallowness of the spans there was no way that that model would work I mean if it got more shape, you could probably make spans, but given the gentleness of those spans There was no way to use the isoflex kind of thin model Ultimately when the project Went into building which was something like four years later They had a parting of the ways with Baalmond and they worked with a very fine and older engineer Kunio Watanabe Watanabe Basically had them fuse a an origami Sort of folded plate system to the smooth surface and that was what was built Mitsuro Sasaki who was actually the engineer for all of those Sana projects and Toyo Ito saw Watanabe's project. He thought it was too fat. It's like not elegant not Representing the surface model. So he went about You know refining that We meanwhile Made a proposition for the Kansai library ran into the same problem I came up to Israel Sainik with a wax model Which was already drooping and Sainik said well, it's drooping here. It's gonna droop in the building. He also being of the same generation of engineers as Watanabe suggested a folded plate, but instead of a folded plate attached to each floor Superstructure and hang the delicate slabs under it So that actually initiated a whole series of projects Which we call the rod net projects. We kind of worked our way out of the surface project, but that logic continued for like 15 years in various kind of programs and sites and then Sasaki continued to refine the structural surface basically nailed it I would say kind of He was not the kind of originator But he did the final refinement and actually achieved that kind of desired state. I mean Personally, I think that's part of the problem too that in a way The structural surface is less interesting than the FLA scheme with the With the origami attached to the folded plate so the difference between an architectural Ambition I guess and then a purely kind of technical structural one So yeah, I mean I present this to our thesis students basically to just you know say that This becomes a kind of working model is rod net We kind of turned it inside out tried all kinds of transformations and would apply a model to Particular site in a particular program. So in other words, it isn't simply a matter of problem-solving I don't know around a particular site and program from nothing But these kinds of models become the vehicle through which you read the site in the particularities of program and Yeah, I mean the other thing is that those net projects really Delt with very different programs very different sites and they're very different places so Galya asked me about I don't have discussion about disciplinarity and and And the profession and there was a wonderful Very clear argument that Andy Zago put together About the discipline of architecture as opposed to the profession And so I'll just let you read it, but essentially I Think it's a very kind of clear articulation of where we do Ultimately have political traction as architects You know in the field the importance of the field itself and You know along with it its whole you know kind of history and kind of formal dimension Not to be jettisoned Too fast. I should go back. Sorry so it's Capacity unique to the discipline not to be you know quickly jettisoned so Andy goes on to Describe, you know the scale of the discipline as opposed to the profession and You know what comes out of it So, you know Seattle Public Library as a kind of disciplinary You know project as well as a wonderful library and then what how the profession would see a library and then he did an interesting kind of take on research how Kind of professional research is done and how it's argued He there was an interesting kind of piece by studio gang about birds being killed by collision with windows and This is you know genie's diagram of that and then she uses it She basically uses the rod net idea As an early adapter I would say but then argues for it You know as a kind of as a way of you know preventing bird strikes So Andy God bless him Did his own research and found out that you know far more birds are killed by house cats And so yeah his Andy's cartoon anyway this leads to the kind of the substance of the talk Which was inspired by this wonderful quote by Jean Lou Godard and You know kind of following on that that you know, I mean there's a lot of work in and around architecture But I guess I'm still wrestling with it But I think a much of what we see in the schools and in you know especially in the Academia our projects that I would argue deal more with them I don't know architecture is a finished off category that you could Advance arguments politically through other media as well architecture becomes just another subject matter So I'm going to show the three Big projects and four small ones First a Project that kind of hovers between architecture and another discipline our proposal Our kind of work on the Boris Goodenoff production at Princeton In 2006 it was never It was a world premiere because it was stopped in 1936 it was a collaboration between Prokofiev and and Meyerhold the director which Was suddenly ended because of Stalinist repression, but Meyerholds The thrust of much of Meyerholds work, and I don't want to simplify it, but That it goes very much against a kind of naturalistic theater even you know the work of Stanislavski. There's a tremendous interest in You know how the body kind of works in space as part of the drama. It's non objective It's not Representational in the normal sense One of the examples which he did with Luba Popova who did the set for the magnum is cuckold Is this machinic set? That you know is heavily interacted by The actors and it becomes a kind of index apparently when the gears are moving of rising and kind of settling tensions in the play But in other words, it's not It's it's the experiment of an architect I would say in scenic design as opposed to a set designer and you know very much in keeping with that we Looked for a way of creating a set which was very nearly an instrument for the actors to work With with their bodies which would also almost produce the kind of ether of the space itself to make visible that ether so he worked with About three-quarters of a mile of rubber tubing that kind of worked in tracks it would produce You know various kinds of sets, but this is like one of the battle scenes That the forces of kind of pulling you would actually see the movement through this kind of skein of rubber tubes and It could also become representation Representational or acquire the shape of a specific architecture through these other tools As the actors worked with them So the idea of producing you know a kind of instrument for performance, you know was really kind of important in this design and of as many of you Probably know Meyerhold did not meet a happy end He was kind of persecuted and prosecuted and executed For being a formalist and this is one of his his quotes and It you know extended, you know to the whole intelligentsia who were Accused of that I reason why I say that is and present this material. I mean in addition to My interest in Meyerhold is what I perceive and I mean I see this at Princeton almost every Lecturer has to open their lecture with a kind of renunciation of form, which I think is just insane Everything has a form and so to me it's simply a limited kind of repertoire of you know formal use But you can see you know what happened From the Melnikov house, which still exists and Melnikov family still in there But this was the kind of the triumphant Socialist realism and it still continues, you know in reactions to Maya Lin's memorial The accusation of nihilism and then the kind of necessity of producing, you know realistic representation next to it and you know kind of equally from the right and the left or the right and the right however you would want to understand these two people and You know extends to criticism of our work as well so I'm going to come joke jump back a bit to our 014 tower in Dubai. It was Commissioned this is the kind of central area what they call business Bay Which was like the name says a business area in Dubai and It was commissioned after a competition that we entered with Very well-known architect Zaha Hadid actually won the competition which would have been built in that circular Island in the front never was built But the young developer who ran the competition for Dubai properties When off on his own was interested in our project, you know for the large tower that we didn't win And commissioned It was his first kind of independent project as a developer and our first major, you know project So it's a 22-story office Tower with an exoskeletal shell We engaged a lot of different people from all over the world to kind of do I really didn't have so much in a way of its own Kind of internal industry was really about bringing people from all over In particular the executive architect Christian Lebanese Our engineer was also our structural And well, he was our teacher at Cooper Union Israel Sinek who was a very right-wing Kind of anti-castro Cuban The contractors were two Palestinian brothers with a very small contracting company and The developer Shahab Ludfi the situation was really I don't know just strange bedfellows But we all worked, you know quite well It they couldn't pronounce Israel Sinek because they couldn't pronounce Israel at the you know, so they call it yas anyway, it was a it was a really kind of Interesting very intense very small group That got the project done So this is a kind of night view of the shell Here you can get an idea as a An outer shell form between 60 and 40 centimeters thick and then a one meter air gap But before getting to the actual enclosure of the of the building Which is window wall and then Parking down below and then an elevated kind of podium One of the things we had to confront and in a way you could call it a critical approach to this situation is that Typically in Dubai and this is kind of view of shakes. I had rode They will build the tower and then there'll be a parking structure immediately behind That's a kind of really typical and so they're kind of a dead street behind that kind of lineup of towers Hal Crow, which is a big English kind of planning company masterplanned business Bay and on a very I don't know Pomo way with you know large covered arcades at the base and Buildings that they expected to have a middle and the top and you were supposed to kind of screen the parking structure we were able to Convince the developer that since our project Was on a prominent site on the water that it would be better to bury the parking And then to elevate this kind of podium structure make it occupiable office so It was about you know a whole process of actually presenting this project arguing for the arcade like Development at the base that it would do those things We super elevated this podium Because it was a building right in front of the waterfront so we saw it as a you know way of kind of gateway to the waterfront esplanade and Then there was actually a very interesting proposal by OMA Who finally lost the plan? for business they went to Hal Crow about Continuous gardens on the second level so that's actually part of our project although It's sort of utopian because the neighboring buildings don't do that But kind of tipping the hat to OMA for doing the right thing. We incorporated that and so this is that kind of elevated Space and bridges then connect these kind of u-shaped bar building To the tower and pass through that gap and this is what happens down at the base now. I got this from About a year ago. There's a wind that the building induces Through the stack effect and so they work out under here So aside from the kind of idea of this being a gateway it actually functions You know as part of this Exercise club that's you know located at the base but You know working through the problem With cynic very interesting. I won't go into too much detail about it, but essentially With the dire grid You have enormous redundancy meaning that You know you can remove quite a bit of the material and the forces will find a way of working so We were able to kind of you know modulate the openings Have them drift and then Constant back and forth work with the engineer to find the kind of pads down to actually a gridded column Structure, you know below ground so it was a kind of trickle down of forces You know through this those dashes. You see are the connections to the floor slabs and This is that gap space looking up So it you know produces you know a rather strong stack effect actually And it was never measured precisely, but they estimated about a 30% Reduction in cooling costs for the building it just won a 10-year award actually from the council on 12 buildings, so and so this leads me to An argument about sustainability I Guess I would want to say first of all not to be misunderstood that it is very important But I think it's a minimal expectation for architects today to make a sustainable building But it's not enough and These you know both buildings have one kind of lead platinum ratings Which means they meet performance criteria, but the architecture couldn't be any more different Which leads me you know to the conclusion that luckily There isn't a kind of codified sustainable architecture. It's about meeting And you know certain goals in terms of you know material performance, however, you know that is done And I think that's always going to be I mean especially now intention with kind of disciplinary questions about architecture I mean if a neoclassical building and a Tom main building You know are both kind of meeting the numbers Then obviously architecture, you know isn't a kind of very peculiar position relative to this issue of sustainability meaning I mean somewhat independent Because in a way, you know you're contributing To something that's a statistical Condition to something that's enormous and invisible Unless you want to make it visible which means it then becomes a representational question Almost the inverse. I think of the black square by Malay, which I guess non-objective would apply to both But other than that and by extension architecture These are kind of working on a very different plane now, of course, you know, there are buildings that will You know actively want to represent the ethos of the sustainable But then I think one has to be you know very clear about That dimension it's kind of a symbolization of sustainability as opposed to whether or not You know it actually performs its sustainable function Anyway to kind of move on There was a lot of work on the geometry of the void forms in the project You know each depending upon where they hit the geometry of the building in In kind of purely convex or purely concave and in these kind of mixed zones where the geometries change We went through an enormous learning curve in the actual construction All of the scripts at the time that were done Were rejected This is for the automation of the production of all the forms They were rejected by the Chinese contracting company because they couldn't legally take responsibility for them And that represents a certain moment. I think in the history of construction The other thing that we learned which somehow was not factored into the purely geometrical question Was that the form work, especially at the bottom of each poor Was being crushed slightly deformed by the kind of pressure of the concrete so the quick fix actually was Wrapping each one of these kind of foam forms with melamine strapping to harden them enough to hold together But the lower floors of O14 are kind of funny because they had to be hand-ground back so Some of them are more like arches some of them are like squircles and then it finally, you know Got regularized as you know, we learned more This is one of the kind of office spaces. We didn't design the furniture or the interior but the the view is out and then kind of a view of the The roof where the shell kind of emerges, you know free of the floor slabs Okay, then Quite a few years later we explored the kind of derivative project, you know from O14 but looking at Kind of fully kind of three-dimensional development of space. This was for The Hong Kong pavilion at the Venice Biennale. We were given the typology of the building and the use and We developed a scheme that would essentially address The inequities of you know, the different kind of groups that live in Hong Kong to make a mixed You know a tower where Wealthy people middle-class and you know poor and transient people would live together And so these kind of bubble-like spaces become common spaces For the building there are a series of ramp localized ramps that lead the residents to these common spaces and then this is kind of illustration of one of those zones So the office is kind of simultaneously involved in these kinds of projects, which I advisedly call research but also, you know in in the construction projects as well and so I'm going to show a couple of what we're kind of calling chamber projects again more along the line of experimentation and Research the first being the flux room, which was part of a show That Zaha Hadid curated called latent utopias back in 2002 And so we were interested in really literalizing there was a lot of discussion about flow and I mean of the the connection between material Behaviors and flow patterns we wanted to literally kind of explore it through the vehicle of magnetism so We worked with the advanced geometry unit at Arab in London with a scientist who is expert, you know in magnetic design and waves And created a chamber completely covered with solenoids that were all hand wound had to construct 5000 needles on gimbals Magnetic needles that would then respond to magnetic flux This was the kind of sketch. It was really interesting that we worked this out at the Otis elevator factory in Yonkers And we couldn't figure out why we were getting these strange artifacts in the in the needles And it turned out the rebar's in the floor were also influencing the magnetic field and Created different alignments than the script Anyway, it was a you know a very intense project Zaha had actually bail us out because we were in the whole $60,000 I think which he did And It took a lot of kind of off-the-cuff experimentation There was a real Problem in getting the control systems that would be you know off the shelf And then I realized that toy train control systems and their chips Maybe would work because they basically deal with acceleration deceleration all of the things that We needed these to do and in fact they did so we were able to kind of take care of that problem But it was you know a major Kind of undertaking wiring this thing and then working on Routines and scripts to get this thing to move It's very strange too because We were looking aesthetically at these kind of smooth flows like the school of fish that Jeff Kipnis was talking about What actually happened? Because this is what the kind of scientists call a contaminated scale Friction inertia all of the things that kind of Happen at this scale and magnetism as opposed to the very small Which is what they normally experiment in or something the size of the CERN Don't Involved this so the scientists were really excited that they were able to see a statistical sampling of Magnetic needles and how they worked second is a project That where we just completed actually today It's part of a show that Is based on the work of Daniel Lopez on Bucky Fuller? He did a series of projects at many schools actually Including Princeton called the geoscope which was kind of a geodesic dome that then had map of the world applied to it and you were to go inside of that dome and Thereby kind of understand your relationship to the to the globe in a different way and I guess to the cosmos and Yeah, just some examples of that. This is the pattern thinking book, which is really a marvelous book I mean, it's an enormous kind of repository of work in the archive at Princeton and other schools of These experiments and we were asked to design this show so Kind of independently came up with the idea of producing a an inflatable that you would enter I Was you know also looking at biology there's kind of blastula form and embryology kind of an open hollow ball of cells That could be You know rethought of as a an inflatable and This is the logo that we created the mission patch and then this is what Rendering of the design so we have 42 projectors projecting into this inflatable Kind of inwardly and you actually go into this hatch and then would be Basically have the show presented to you and so Daniel Lopez is working on you know the Curating all of that material it remind us of the kind of Los Alamos gadget Which is the first atomic bomb and then this is the inflatable in its first tests We also had to make a cradle this all happened within one month We designed it in about four days and then the cradle will then carry Lighting and then this gel like material for people to lie in and Yeah, this is kind of the earlier state where They're still working on the electronics down below with the inflatable above the completed sphere and then this was Today actually the first sort of kind of show is being presented so I Encourage everyone to come out maybe on the 13th if you're interested There'll be a roundtable discussion and you'll be able to you know experience the Geoscope to It was also a really interesting collaboration done and mainly on Skype and I just kind of give this quote from Stan Alan that it was a great interdisciplinary Project because everybody stayed in their own discipline Okay now to the larger projects of Taipei Music Center This was a project that was 10 years Information before it was given out in competition. So it was really part of a concerted effort By the Taiwan government To acknowledge their music industry, which was one of the first in East Asia But was not really kind of didn't have a kind of visual presence or a place that would they would belong to they were kind of scattered Producers in Taipei and various other places and the ambition was to bring all of those people together in this piece of urbanism really where Bands would be created and rolled out and have performances So I don't know you too would not be at this place They would go to a stadium, but this was in a way for a smaller scaled you know set of both production and performance venues and clubs and that cube that you see over there is a small museum and archive so It was you know let out in competition two very difficult Sites actually form that most of the competitors Chose to consolidate the entire project in one site in a way following an OMA model I would say where you would have an urbanism in a building and we were the only ones who actually spread the project out over both sites which Initially posed problems because of the kind of acoustical codes in Taipei But luckily we were able to get around that But the ambition was really you know to as in many competitions that the building be Iconic it be visible it would be you know projected on Many different kinds of platforms and media Even if you didn't ever go To this place it would be immediately kind of given the identity of the music center But we were also very interested in you know what happens during the downtime And I think that was one of the things we argued for that Consolidating the project into one building either it's open or it's closed and We argued for you know a design that would be you know used by the you know Local people is an everyday site and then it would go over to performance mode, you know mainly at night We went through many design iterations the project The winning project in the competition was not the one that was built But this can just show it briefly Involved you know connecting the two sites the long site and then the consolidated site with a bridge This cubic building which is also you know still a museum would actually have Seats in it, and then there was a moving stage and so Typologically we moved from a stadium as single focus to a circus a very of course Roman idea Opened the circus up at both ends and then kind of grew a branch to connect to you up to the other side and the idea was that It would be a you know the the site would be flexible in other words there would be an open park the stage You know in a major Outdoor performance would be kind of held way back and then as This robot stage moved towards the cube you could handle You know a medium-sized crowd and then have open public park in its wake and Then finally for you know very intimate performances the robot stage Which would fold while it was moving would actually kiss the cube and there would be you know in very close Proximity for you know much smaller intimate kinds of performances This is some of our study models mainly for the type a pop so you see this geode like Image in the center. That's the seating On the face of the cube and this was the rendering of how it would look if you were sitting in that seating and Yeah view kind of looking down in a you know small scale performance so About a year into the project It moved from being a public Governmentally run project to the music industry and basically we had to start over They actually increased the scale of the main hall from three thousand seats to five thousand and We really began in earnest to work very closely With you know many different stakeholders so the mayor the woman to the right of him as a well-known songwriter the Promoter of May Day as a man on the glasses in the glasses and then the local architects who was actually I Think Michael Fay might have been in your class at Columbia So he was part of that that firm that was very important But anyway enormous sort of redesign took place. We went back in The continuum from circus You know to the elevators station went back to us the circus idea and Then here and I guess this probably connects more back to my Rossi experience They you know kind of interesting Transformation from a circus to a plaza which took 1200 years in Rome We basically had to do this every day in other words It would be performance and then go back to public space and so this is kind of a rough construction shot Probably about a year ago You know of the creation of that kind of open Circus space and this the fabric around it which is Restaurants and shops and then a more recent picture now from within the plaza looking towards this Hall of Fame building and Then this the seating which also kind of leads you across the street to the main hall But it also is used for spectatorship and Then some renderings we made of the kind of two different modalities one the before the outdoor performance space on the left and then Shopping and its use as a plaza So those are the kind of the primary elements of the project the main hall for five thousand these large live houses and clubs the outdoor performance space and then the Hall of Fame and museum and We worked very carefully with these sort of liminal conditions with the staircase in the cube when it changed from being a geode It became the primary circulation For the museum and so there was also kind of a history of Music in the staircase as part of the exhibitions But I think it was you know Important you know that we kind of extend the project to the whole site that it became in other words a kind of a new neighborhood and this is a Where we were coming from relative to this project. It was an old industrial site So we worked with a built ground which in a way resonated with the natural terrain around it And then these object buildings Kind of sit on the constructed ground of the plaza and Also under the theater and then you know this bridge which cuts across which creates actually an elevated entry to the theater So we were really interested in this kind of new horizon Taipei incidentally uses that as a Kind of datum all of these there are a whole system of Elevated pedestrian bridges. So this project in a certain way Orients itself sectionally to that elevated approach And we're also very interested in the kind of silhouette of the buildings You know especially because the buildings will be kind of visible In twilight and at night And so the character of those Silhouettes were a particular interest and also working with a kind of groundwork in a way For the fabric so looking at even stupas and these sort of ground-based elements And then the shadow the silhouette of these large imposing roofs that would be seen at any point in the project so the this bermed up A structure hides all of the service to the back of the theater all the trucks kind of delivered to that Level in in the berm and then the public spaces sort of flow over that and Then there is again, I'm going to elevate there are two levels of entry Into the lobby one from the bridge across the street and then the lower level lobby, which is More for well people coming off the street proper, but also for red carpet events But I sort of show this in comparison because they're Basically very similar projects in terms of the scale and even the typology of the theater these big fan shapes And so we were trying to defeat the verticality that you normally have in a theater like that because of this You know pedestrian bridge and this new horizon. We were creating Whereas Bernard's you know, you can really see how high this theater gets We were also particularly interested in the materiality of the site not to represent I don't know old standing seam or corrugation, which you see but To try to push those technologies as much as we can these are this is actually the steel decking under the corrugated And we were also interested in you know peculiar finish This is a it's called alomite and it's an old form of anodizing particularly in Japan Mainly see it in Japan. They use it on aircraft to and it had a very interesting The theory was that it would blend would see in sky in a different way Than an aluminum aircraft so we were looking at that and then also at I Know not cheap corrugated construction, but this is the actually a detail of a yunkers 52 transport and it's kind of a detailing tour de force how to kind of connect corrugated material together so Drawing from those technologies, you know and though that way of detailing was you know particular interest to us So there was a lot of discussion back and forth on the rolling of these sections And how to achieve these geometries This is a view from the lower level in the theater Nanako and on the upper level bridge entry so it goes right the bridge is basically Co-extensive with all of the salons and all of the waiting spaces It's more bridge wrapping the core of the theater and this was one of the the Early openings where they were testing sound and you know invited a group of You know people in to hear the the bands So this should be opening officially this summer This is kind of a view from that entry bridge and then the arcades which are really necessary and Then a view into the plaza as you walking from the street You'd get a sense of the scale and also the kind of looming roof You know of the main hall all of the elements being visible, you know from that This is the industry shell and it also serves as a kind of overhang for outdoor performance And then a view back at that stair So really yeah, I mean it kind of created this new kind of ground at the upper level And you can see Nanako standing on the roof. We're trying to get this to be a public space. It isn't yet They probably have to put railings up Unfortunate, so this is the final project. I'll be kind of discussing tonight the Kaohsiung port terminal, which will open next winter Again, it was part of, you know, a major international competition Kaohsiung wanted Not to create a post-industrial situation, but actually superimpose Public space and building and this new the port of authority tower and a new kind of cruise ship terminal and ferry terminal Along the edge. So it was both a planning project and an architectural project But I want to go back to the last of this sort of problems Which was something that John Hayduk posed to the thesis students at Cooper Union in 1981 John You know took this as a kind of warm-up exercise, but he had hoped That it would actually the the analysis they did and they did exquisite drawings of musical instruments Which you see in the book of this oboe just blew me away Stan Allen did this and he did a triangle so his irony was there even you know But I was completely entranced by the biomechanical stuff and it was right right into it Anyway, so of course the first sort of response at the Venice Biennale Which was an open one that Rossi did was to try to do some a drawing as beautiful as the musical instrument So it was an anamorphic projection of of the guts of a clock And I guess there's some little element of modernist in me It didn't work it was you know work for Dalí as an image, but it was not something that you know I was totally happy with it was a really difficult problem by the way them the students the thesis students couldn't couldn't Ever really integrate the musical instruments into their final thesis were the best they could do was you know Kind of very precise drawings of roof ventilators. I don't know But it was like a very hard nut to crack and John himself. I would say didn't even know What he wanted that was part of the reason So flash forward 40 years later we get this MEP drawing back From the engineers and they say they did it we didn't draw it But they basically did the musical instrument which in retrospect made a lot of sense I mean it was a kind of branching system. It was ductwork. It had to navigate a complex form. She got you know got me kind of Captured in anyway, so that kind of leads me into you know the port terminal It is part of a much wider system of cruise ship Lines it actually does connect to the Yokohama port terminal as well Neil Denari did an amazing Proposal, which unfortunately didn't get built for the Keelung Harbour. You should look at that And then this is what we confronted on the site It was You know massively polluted it when you kind of cut into the ground There was literally a lake of oil under the site so that delayed the project for something like five years they were sucking oil out and Monica Ponce de Leon wanted us to do presentations on post-industrial, so I started to look into this site more carefully and We found out that Mitsubishi Built large tanks here because this was the base of the Imperial Japanese Navy It was a major base for capital ships And of course it was a target for the US Navy, so I was able to find T4 is our site, so it was bombed and There I mean everything is you know is there for the looking, but it was just extraordinary To see them kind of material and a history And the politics of the site, you know over time So the challenge was to superimpose Ah Keep well keep the industrial waterfront working at grade Create a new public level Elevated public level can extend that in our plan along the entire edge And then in a sense to insert the terminal in between So this sort of codes those levels in the project as built All of the baggage handling and all of the kind of mechanisms for that happen at the service level There's an intermediate level, which is the terminal kind of surface proper and then the blue is public Boardwalk and then we kind of generated a master plan along with the competition for that And the ambition really was to have it extend all the way along the edge But of course we had a very defined architectural problem and you know defined the project that way But all of those elements are still there So this is a view from the water a view from the land side The concept was really to make kind of three big tubes of space that would fuse together Be visible from one kind of entry point be no super clear and That We'd be able to kind of connect at a higher level The unticketed public could be able to use Restaurants and shops at the upper level, which is you know the boardwalk So it really works like an airport I'm going to Go straight out from an elevated drop-off our initial proposal was more romantic Like New York where you would enter the ships from the surface of the pier But that got eliminated when we worked with the Arab logistical people on how cruise ships actually work And so it's really a kind of bundle of Public space infrastructure and then this kind of tubular building We worked very hard to Create thick walls that would house all of the vertical circulation In the pochette as well as places of refuge for fire to keep the kind of spaces You know the main public space is clear Also, you know introducing other kinds of programs You know for the vitality of this space, you know when ships are not in port So this is a quick animation of The project you from the landward side The drop-off Into the kind of lobby space and then basically the views down each one of those, you know large Tubes of space that lead out, you know to the ships and there's one of those restaurants You know looking down at the main space which gives access both to people in the boardwalk and if you have time up in From the terminal So this is it the project as it stands now Again next a lot of work being done on the facade and the interior fit out The diagram structure Didn't change this project really didn't change essentially from competition to completion because we were working with it engineers instead of the cultural people and Then this this was done actually for Farshid Musavi She wanted an analysis for a show in London of the structure circulation and cladding of the buildings This is one of the kind of well like planters of large trees and shrubs We'll be planted in this and Then the kind of overhanging Cantilevering lobes So this gives you kind of a sense of the you know the section of the building the elevated restaurants and then they kind of in the lower level the Connection to the boardwalk as well as they can overall spaces One yeah other comment which relates to form We had a tri-lobe model for the initial phase of the Taiwe Taipei music center And then modified it basically kind of changed it So I'm going to go into a little bit of a detour just about the politics of imagery starting with the the Guernica the influence, you know both of Jericho and raptor Medusa that kind of composition, but also his own, you know very strong Formal and organizational language his figural language in a way pre well it does pre-exist the content It's still a powerful thing And so when Colin Powell presented at the UN in front of the tapestry they pulled curtains over the Guernica He was arguing for the Gulf War and then this sort of transformation as well, which is right next to our office Using the Guernica Composition, but then dealing with the local kind of scene and politics at East Harlem so yeah, the bull becomes a pit bull and You know various other elements are transformed to you know more kind of local concerns And it's continuing to change so the graffiti on this painting is in a way a territorial mark on top Superimposed on that painting. Anyway, I'm gonna get back to this. We're almost done We were looking you know at this trilob model for many years since the Cardiff Bay opera house And I realized we could basically just turn the arrows from Theater which focuses in on a stage to entry which focuses out and still use the morphology Which is what we did so this is sort of a lineage of projects on the trilob that we've been kind of pursuing for years and You can see also the way in which you know that organization can be kind of shifted from the Melnikov model to Cardiff Originally was more an acoustical argument to about fusing shoebox halls together, and then I'll close with this Construction accelerated construction Thank you, thank you so much For sharing your work, it's so beautiful. I mean we could talk about the work itself or just the work or The importance of the work one of the images that stays in my mind is the images of your Table with all the different models That evolve through time But I'm going to choose to talk about something that I think we many more of us share and that And and it's these diagram of the Profession and the discipline and the proportion of one and the other and your assertion That the time at Columbia then they made 90s With Bernard it's like Show me put all of you together You had you have been creating this family for a long time, you know from Japan To Cooper Union you have been working on this network of people and accumulating people that Combined that came here from, you know, Stanley whether Stan brought you here or Bernard and then Greg Lynn came through Princeton and Stan and all these group of people are here Bernard is giving certain Direction as to where the school is going you are contributing your own Investigations the Yokohama competition comes along and I remember as a student how all of us saw the the different projects that were emerging and then What you said in the lecture that I think it's very important also to see is that when Alejandro side Apollo and Farshid Competition entry competition was Published everyone acknowledged how important that was and that's The kind of the energy of the discipline that you know You see a group of people pioneering different directions keeping dialogue then one project emerges And then within a few years every office, you know morphoses are using those tools and Some of those tools may have originated in OMA They go back through a student and so the the discipline somehow has a loop There is a very curious loop. Yes And so my question to you or my response to your question is like you share that Andro Sago diagram, but you know a lot about Drawing some flows and diagram. Isn't it much more complicated than a big circle where they kind of a smaller circle? So, yes, how would you illuminate a bit of how that How does that work? in your own work that you go from Teaching to doing these really large project and is keeping kind of the middle ground of architecture, you know The yes the houses the apartments. Yes, so how does that? Well, I mean, I think it was also Just a function of the you know competition culture Most of those competitions were for large buildings, so it was somewhat absurd I think that you know The whole generation went after You know had the hope and also the interest in you know making big claims big statements right off the bat But you know FOA got it, you know, yes, they did it and I think the other thing was that Rightly or wrongly we were encouraged Because there was the dialogue and everything that we all did got published and talked about so the importance of the small magazines stand was Coincidentally the projects editor For you know that MIT press right public publication Assemblers assemblage, so I think you know you were sort of egged on even in a foolish way, it's not a practical or realistic Thing to do in a way, but I think it did advance Us academically as the assemblage magazine advanced all the theoreticians You know, of course it also vanished as soon as they got tenure Yes, but you know, I mean I think that was part of it too is the excitement of doing that, you know not only doing the designing but also Discussing the work and you know, it was an end in itself in a sense And I think the discussing of the work, you know, I like one of the images that come to mind is Sylvia loving arguing for for this Things happening and and and are you in Few years later against the profession professionalization of the profession in a way how Everything became instrumental. Everything became useful and the kind of excess of experimentation Disappear, I mean, it's also in the technologies. I mean, I think Jeff Kipnes very rightly pointed out that You know BIM and all of those technologies are not to make expensive buildings cheaper But to make cheap buildings even cheaper You know, it's not what yeah, but I should point out that Actually, we didn't start up with a big Proposal like we have been doing that which I love so much. Yes. The biggest care is my thing But we start up with furniture scale and the landscape. Yes proposal and we built lots of that But always because of landscape including this garden object, but also some architectural element always had some infrastructure aspect in that and then we really When we start doing competitions in cope will incorporate it Infrastructure system into the building. Mm-hmm. So that that's Made us to easy to develop bigger project. Yeah, we stand actually we did the Venice Gateway competition with him Which was a real breakthrough. Mm-hmm an enormous research project on the water supply. Yes I remember that gift. Yes and went nowhere and then we decided to try a competition and It clicked. Mm-hmm. It wasn't it was a I also wasn't self-generated It was a deadline. We didn't have to invent the program. Mm-hmm and suddenly It was an enormously liberating coming out of Cooper Union where it was mainly and Cranbrook, which was mainly about a hermetic You know self-generating project. Mm-hmm But yeah, I mean even those small projects were influenced by the economy I mean basically we avoided teaching for five years like the plague and then Economy tanked in 1991. So I had to teach And so we didn't have those small projects anymore. Mm-hmm. Didn't show them today, but yeah I mean that was it was the same year, you know, Tom maim went bankrupt the first time. Yes Well, some people have been preparing for for that happening again Objective way to kind of quantify or I don't know maybe qualify Architecture on an objective level and I wonder as certain other like parametric models for like flow analysis and Measuring how efficiently the air is Moving all of these other things become more available. Do you think that takes away? too much agency from the architect to Explore new ideas or Was already in a sense. I mean all of the structural analysis programs were essential in developing the o14 building Because you know, we were given Rough parameters for how much the scale and the drift for all of the holes But then we were constantly sending them back To the structural engineer who would run the programs and then you know Well, you've got to move this there and there and then there's a constant, you know kind of back and forth between that kind of You know that kind of work But I think you know, I guess Asserting kind of authorial control over it. I mean the decision-making there was a lot of You know a latitude in a redundant project like that so it could have taken many different You know configurations, but I think I think we're still probably you know Heavy-duty authors. I have to say we're not But I think I mean, you know, there's also a lot in those Programs in a sense and then that those routines which are in a sense impersonal So it's about some kind of give-and-take Between you know architectural will and what the building can stand doing Yeah, and I and I think what were the argument that you're making in the lecture is that that Is or will become the minimum requirement right off an architect in the same way the law is the law And it's like so that to anchor your work solely on that It's it's like anchoring your work on fire egress and and and so that The discussion needs to include that and at the same time will be on Man I was actually relieved when I saw you know Bob Stern's project and Tom's that so many different types of architecture are possible And or that can meet the constraints there wouldn't be a sustainable architecture. It's sustainable buildings. Yes, but not Fortunately not sustainable architecture. Mm-hmm. I was curious in talking about winning the pop music competition Through the articulation of the project is a set of discreet objects It seems like or maybe just a general comment seems like your practice is interesting in the way that it seems to hold intention on the one hand the kind of flow and what we understand from that 90s architecture the idea of the continuous surface and urbanism as Flow and on the other hand, maybe more the Rossi idea of the field of discreet objects in the city and I'm Curious if you could comment somehow on the relationship between those two urban diagrams in your work. Oh, yeah, I mean Almost that kind of intuitive reaction and realizing at some point that what Yokohama port terminal needed was objects But I mean, I think there's just yeah, I mean there are different strands of History in in the office It's something that in a way you work through. I mean that There those are looming shadows over us Rossi and Heyduck Then the work that probably came more out of our contemporaries But you know, we were practicing already almost ten years Mm-hmm before Colombia You know, we're oldies. We're not yeah Greg was on the low, you know the young end of the spectrum stands a little older than I am Yeah But yeah, so I went through a lot. So the influence stand is probably more explicitly than the influence of Moneo Yes, it's more clear But there are these funny contradictions that have to get worked out in the work They're not, you know immediately obvious and they did pose a lot of you know angst Yeah, and the discussion of flow versus the object Was very much present in those final reviews, you know, it's like it was a very heated Context and I remember people remarking that all our projects were cow stomachs with like, you know like that and and and so like also the way form see kind of Influence, you know the influence in the Way things yeah a constant battle for us Yeah, I mean either there was a lot of dazzle and excitement at the time about those programs But we were actually, you know in some kind of a lot of tension, you know, because There's a certain inertia in those programs. It's just gonna produce Smoothness whether you like it or not. Yeah Yes, and you know, you're very Both of your ins because I think you both have this tendency of kind of creating a smooth form and then giving it a knife edge You know a very precise joint and so that Vocabulary insisting on that recover vocabulary goes many way against the tool because the tool wants right, you know Exactly Right, right So is always trying to approximate the analogue model and then being disappointed or trying to do workarounds and But also we didn't have a computer. Well, for many years The computer And then for many years you had the computer to design but not to build and so it's like integrating all these techniques from Many decent many many different disciplines Require this level of obsession of knowing that you want, you know This or that and it's evident in the work that you're about to open No, it was absurd too because honestly we were not Aren't experts in computation So, you know, it was throwing yellow trace over a computer screen and sketching it Hacking up 3d printed model to get wanted. I don't know. So, you know, we belong to this very, you know Particular generation Which and you described it with citizen Kane tonight which makes it more clear to me how you did that Steve Hall who's home with the flu wanted to be here. He had the same reaction when the book came out He was trying to figure out the autobiographical quality and he just blurted that out to me And I said no, I noticed as well including pictures of having dinner with Quinter and Kittens Etc. Which I brought up but the reason I bring it up is that I think Gallia your comment about the the curve and then the cut and Your description of like hacking up a 3d model and not having the computer, etc So the autobiography makes sense to get to the root of those kind of things how they happened, you know And that they happen in context But I have a I'm thinking of a kind of bigger autobiography The the team 10 put out a well, there's an archive of team 10 letters from 10 years ago You probably have it the big orange yellow. You don't have it. Yeah, there's a description in there of building to loose 20,000 for 20,000 people halfway through and The students are objecting that Ken Dilla says become a lackey for capitalism the project's too big How could you work for the state by the time it's done? It will be obsolete You know, we can't work for this scale anymore and it describes this intimate kind of crisis that's going on Autobiographically, which I never heard in anywhere near that clearly to clarity until I saw the archive so I think of like a Your generation a lot of people's recent generation by that I mean the last like since the 70s and of course you're much younger than that But the a scenario of recoiling from these large state-based projects, which had huge amounts of form attached to them Like Ken Dilla's Josephson was 120 degree angle was appropriate 130 wasn't so it seems to me like there's a battle between the discipline and the practice But through some sort of relatively large project that gets cut into a kind of still life Like this will sound bizarre, but the one project with the raw steel It looked like you built it out of steel anacondas those columns are big fat round things in other words there's this kind of monstrosity quality you're after and You're is the form the form of the building is the form the form of the column is the form this I think the things are like super capitalized there by they are of the profession They're of all the money, you know, Alejandro early on wrote about flexible accumulation of capital I'm trying to indict Ram and Stephen and everybody else for surfing that economy and not admitting it So I feel like you're in that economy that a lot of people are trying to deal with today by being less Disciplinary mm-hmm, but you're trying to find this kind of monstrous form still I don't know at monstrous, you know the term you of course know those term both of you know the term monstrous in its History, but in other words, I wonder the question. I was gonna ask you as simple as like Robert Kappa Got a like a camera and could chase the war Right Picasso stayed home in the studio make your amica He stayed a painter and kept the discipline of painting alive, but could object to the war or speak to it Garnica got the camera and used it and ran and got in the battle. I'm not gonna go cap. Yeah Yeah, so I feel like you're probably more like Kappa Both of you Then Picasso, but I think you're giving a lecture that's sounding like you want to be Picasso In other words, I think you have a million new tools in there that are not formed Or that form is it not the right term anymore? Maybe or form would start an unnecessary war With the current kind of economic. Yeah, I think it's probably just I like it but it was my reaction to you know Ligatory introductions. I've been hearing which have to Denounce form before the lecture is presented. I mean what is it was Gallia is very precise read that and it's That but that very precise reading of the spline and then the cut and your question That's a quality of form. That's really hard to get to describe and to make able to be public What is Form is like sex is better than than it's poking about Also a Nanoco in her own way, I mean I was brought up by a formalist You know my mother is an arch formalist. Yeah, so I would get you know, you're a great teacher What's that? Like the quality that is So I'm just curious about I guess you guys kind of mentioned it Just like the notion of intuition and how do you judge sort of what's right? You sort of had a long career with lots of different tools and sort of lots of things to judge yourself and the work against And I'm just wondering if that's something you think about do you trust yourself more? Do you trust yourself less? Does it something that you consider as you sort of test ideas that you've had for a long time against? Where you are now and where you sort of want to go? Oh It's it's quite complex because each pro project is you have to include so many different aspects of the Architecture vocabulary, so decision-making is step by step. It's not the something that is come at once Because we start with something, but we know that doesn't work. So we have to keep working Right So it's very difficult to answer that question But I think I mean the other part of it is that you almost have to In a funny way the intuition is the least personal Moment actually Ego has nothing to do with it at least It's almost something that has to be done like it's like a martial art Like that it's trained in a way trained into you and then the worst thing is to start thinking about others or judgment or I Mean it sort of almost have to pull back from all of your training and all of the things you have to manufacture to tell the students that are of you and It just you know Then you can actually make a reasonable judgment But if I have Jeff Kipnis come in and start giving me you know complex arguments and reasons I get completely Confused so I have to go back To being very neutral And just responding they're getting a fresh eye on something. I don't know if that helps Answer the question. There's almost you know like looking at something too long you lose it Yeah, it makes perfect sense that you would need to be ready for the intuition, but you cannot Yeah You cannot Arrive to it any other way than by being ready before it you know you cannot Manufacture not intuitive response. It's either there or it's not there Have you have you prepared yourself to it or not? Have I fooled myself for like five days? Yes We went through the certain period when we are young We had a lot of influence over John Heduck and other professors in Cooper But also Jesse had the experience of working for Aldo Rossi. So every time we do the project You know we keep walking and then suddenly realize. Oh, this looks like a John Heduck's work. This is no good We had to just scratch that thing and start again And then it keep going like that all the time because we are told by John Heduck that You can't copy anybody's work, but also same time we had to keep developing it And Heduck was really interesting. This was there had a scene with him once where I was kind of he shoved a sketch at me I had to draw up and so Almost passive aggressively. I I drew it up exactly like the sketch And he looked at me like you know what's going on here, and I know what's going on here Get the fucking proportions, right? And I did it, but yeah, so we I mean he had that here Much better ability than us, but you know, I think that's part of it, too It isn't even literally what's drawn, but he knows, you know, what's expected best part of the training to yeah I mean it was just Yeah, I don't know if that's even taught now Well, I think a lot of the intimacy of professor student. It's now It's now not possible. It's not it's now not Permitted in a way. It's like it's too intimate of you know, it's like it for a teacher to Say so directly what you are doing. It's not what you're supposed to do get it, right? It was for him, of course Project better was for him. Yes. Yes He wasn't going to mess around, you know Yeah, I see I see I see Nanako jc such a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for