 Okay. So, I mean, this is, it's not a sort of lecture lecture in the sense that it doesn't reflect a kind of intensive body of research or work. It's something that was prompted by the kind of immediate circumstances that we're all in and that I propose this as a kind of open-ended potentially series of talks or events or kind of a prompting symposium or something that would reflect on some of the tendencies within the field of architecture. Within the field of architecture, from the perspective of the present, which is obviously a kind of unique one, but one which intersects in various ways, I think, with the concerns which we've all had for the past decade or so. I thought maybe there could be a kind of brief preface. Which is that I actually only met Michael Sorkin once very briefly at a dinner, but there was a kind of anecdote of my experience of his work that I thought might be worth sharing instead of sets a stage for things. I was waiting for somebody, I assume my now wife, who's perfectly late for things, in the Strand bookstore, and I was there for like 30 or 45 minutes. This is probably like eight or nine years ago right after I graduated from graduate schools working in New York. And I picked up the exquisite corpse off the shelf and was immediately Michael Sorkin's collection of essays and was immediately taken by the writing which was lucid and funny and within a few pages he'd completely created the kind of boys club of New York architecture, Philip Johnson and Paul Goldberger and including my former professors at Yale, many other people. And I thought, you know, it's a kind of model of clarity and speaking plainly maybe about the circumstances we find ourselves in not just in terms of all the kind of craziness that's happening in the world but also as architects thinking about that our own practices and our own kind of positions and the discipline and the kind of power structures that we interact with I think it's maybe a useful reminder that we should be, we should not hold on to any illusions that were in any less precarious or difficult position than many others in many cases. Also, you know, just to say not to be nostalgic about things but it is a sort of memory of a place like the Strand which of course we can no longer go to but hopefully comes back after all of this. So, I mean really this is sort of two thoughts can join. The first is that it seems like in many ways and these have been stated in many places, this current crisis is a kind of accelerant of tendencies that we recognize as having shaped contemporary culture since at least and I would think of this crisis as potentially a kind of bracket to the period that I think speaking generally generationally or sort of for the guests on this panel has shaped all of our entrances into the discipline and shaped the discipline more broadly. And related to that has been, I think the emergence in architecture of kind of intensive engagement with the idea of what I'm calling in this talk communal form. More broadly attempts to frame and produce new forms of community and new forms of commons through architectural form thinking about how architecture can actually give form to new social relations and social relations that obviously reflect the kind of particular circumstances that we've had since the financial crisis but you know, for a longer history obviously of late capitalism. So if this crisis is a kind of accelerant. It seems to be bringing us almost instantly to things that we've been speculating about for a long time, you know the digital mediation of all facets of our lives extreme social isolation, precarious or non existent infringement of rights under the auspices of crisis management, the failure to produce or secure adequate housing for many the medicalization of services by large large corporations, etc, and architecture I think has in many ways attempted to engage this reality which I think you know this this particular moment is revealing acutely through its exploration of new forms of communal dwelling and new sort of programmatic hybridizations of living and working that attempt to reframe those social relations in ways that are perhaps more utopia or more politically charged or more progressive and maybe a normal kind of casual language. And I think the present crisis offers all of us an opportunity to sharpen the way in which we position architecture in relation to the broader world because the world that comes after this will know to be an even more extreme version of the one that we're in now and one which will require architecture I think to be much more specific about the ways in which it can meaningfully transform or improve the conditions of those who are living in that world. I think there's you know interesting parallels of course to the period of the post war period, and the work of team 10 and the metabolists and the Italian radicals the early 1970s and others who were similarly maybe negotiating. And here I'm talking about, you know, architecture for the past decade or so I've been similarly negotiating or we're similarly negotiating a kind of rapid oscillation between the most dystopian and potentially utopian outcomes between the between, you know, sort of extreme manifestations of I don't have to say it. But just, you know that there was a period in the post war period marked by let's say, both the promise of a new world and one of rising levels of rising living standards and new political programs and one that in many ways is the origins of many of the problems that we find ourselves confronting now increasing inequality, the gutting of social services at exactly the same moment that another places new social services being proposed, etc. Also I think in this particular context. It's important to recognize the enormous influence that the work of OMA and others who've kind of descended from it have had on the field for the past generation or to the past generation which have sort of redirected a lot of the energy I think it was previously put towards either more explicitly formal or aesthetic ends towards something that engages much more robustly with program and particularly with the idea of kind of collective And then of course that you know the period since 2008 has been marked by any number of kind of intense and acute political conflicts and many of those have been structured or you know some organized in fact in very particular urban spaces or architectural spaces. And so I think the disciplines had a natural kind of relationship to that and desire to take on the problem of actually framing those spaces in a much more intentional and specific way in relation to exactly those sorts of political questions that some elements like Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring or Black Lives Matter etc have raised. Also to say that you know I think what one maybe note for those who aren't at the GSAP to understand is that at the school the students that the first three semesters the core or the course sequence of studios very much address typically the problem of the status of public space in the city of New York and the potential to organize new communities around public space moving from core one which Anna, one of our panelists here coordinates in which the students attempt to discover and reframe underutilized spaces within the city to core two in which the institutional building is reimagined as sort of conventional institutional building the school, which is what we're doing this year, or the library for the previous few years is reimagined as a kind of community hub and then in core three in housing which Adam among others teach this is a project from the studio that I taught several years ago in which the students are asked to rethink public housing in relation to new forms of public space and the new forms of public service that might attend public housing And I'm using the term communal form to distinguish it from from Hiko Mackey's term collective form which he used in the in the 1960s and 70s to sort of organize series of new speculations on large scale architectural slash urban investigations, but of course his terms I think would actually map on quite well. His terms being compositional form mega form and group form the three forms of collective form would map quite well on to any number of recent experiments. And in this case, these are somewhat specifically chosen zaga architectures project from the 2016 American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale which would sought to speculate on the future of Detroit and so you had 12 projects, which very explicitly took on the kind of distribution of the 20th century American city work AC's project from the 2012 foreclosed exhibition at MoMA in which you had five practices taking on the American suburb in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the foreclosure crisis and the master plan of Bobo's master plan for the territory of the gigantes public housing project in Mexico, which is one of a number of very interesting new mass architecture and urbanistic urban and architectural experiments to transform public housing in various places in Mexico which a number of the faculty at the studio at the school including once again Anna have been involved in you know so I think the architecture this kind of question of collective for communal form has been manifest in both the kind of banal ways in which architecture is a service profession that engages, you know the forces of real estate and commerce very directly in things like we work, which of I'm familiar with now and the explosion of new models of co-working co-living spaces that seek to, you know, to exploit a kind of class of precarious workers and start up companies. And then of course in its is more familiar to those of us, maybe in the academies attitude or position as a kind of form of critique as in the work of dogma which I'm sure many of you are familiar with which in many ways programmatically not like maybe typologically not dissimilar to we work in the sense that it tends to foster a new form of collective workspace but one which is meant as a kind of critique of the exploitative tendencies of capitalism and instead meant to offer an alternative, where there would be a kind of solidary insecurity that comes from the intentional gathering of a community of laborers, and we find the same thing of course in housing, and you know that any number of new co-living models with names like common the campus collective common space. So let me just take an example from doggins work, the kind of counter position of the critical model of the kind of found story of intentional community of people who live and work together in some kind of state of exception from the broader city and marketplace. And the work that has been done by you know many including many of the faculty here at GSAP has in many ways start to challenge norms around domesticity and the dwelling, which I think of course we're all now confronting as we're confined to our dwellings that oscillate from what or we could take a sort of two two polls within this the idea of the micro house as seen in an architects carmel place project with some of you may have seen in real life down in tips bay in which the housing unit is reduced to its kind of essential functions of kitchen bed and bathroom, and there is meant to be a kind of trade off both economically where more housing units can be produced, and also collectively in which other spaces in the building can compensate for the lack of space within the apartment. So there's a kind of wider range of communal spaces that are provided to the occupants the building. Of course these things run into the forces of real estate development and don't always come to fruition as the architects might intend or an honest firms project 110 rooms 22 dwellings in Barcelona which probably you have seen in person but which is also built you have the opposite I would say kind of end of the spectrum transformation of the dwelling into a series of generic rooms which are then kind of infinitely reconfigurable. So as opposed to the architecture as machine idea of the micro unit, providing for the kind of basic functions you have architecture as a kind of playing field into which many possibilities can be, or, you know, it within which many possibilities of kind of dwelling in various arrangements can be manifest. And in both cases of course there's a kind of attempt to position that in relation to kind of larger gestures towards the collective and and the interface between the individual in the city in the form of collective spaces on the lower levels. And this is something that you know from our current perspective it's hard to imagine that will approach the design of dwellings, the same again. But certainly like in our own practice it's been something that's been a kind of obsession, which is to say what is the nature of the kind of minimal dwelling and what is it that how does one define the limits of the kind of individuals in relation to the collective and so this is three iterations of a project to develop a series of tiny houses, so called tiny houses in Chicago, in which various configurations of the dwelling in relation to the kind of public space, or the the outdoor are proposed, ranging from a kind of conventional situation of street facing tiny houses with backyards to a series of street facing houses sharing one large yard to a series of individual units, each with their own individual yard, which of course we might now recognize as having a certain kind of value. And similarly, I would say both attempting to propose new prototypes in terms of, for instance, like speculating on a kind of approach to an infill lot as well as starting to document the actual lived experience of in, you know, particular because I'm here in New York of a New York apartment and starting to think about the ways in which those apartments have particular features that we might not recognize or be cognizant of when we are designing in a kind of blank slate fashion, which might actually suggest alternative typologies. This is taking a little longer than I thought of course. So I would just say, you know, I thought the, you know, this in this kind of open ended way that there's a series of themes or subjects which kind of emerge from the current situation that we might structure a discussion around and these would necessarily even be for this discussion but there could be a sort of serious discussions that unfold from this because I think I have some very specific questions for the panelists. But to say one is that much of this work on communal form or collective form has engaged a history of architectural types which now find themselves in crisis and of course we can think back to Corbusier's fascination with the ocean liner and the social condenser of course the Panopticon and the prison, the college campus, the cemetery, the hospital, these institutional types of the kind of 19th century that have done so much to shape architect's ideas of how a collective is actually structured in architectural form are of course now this the most acute crisis in this pandemic. The second would be maybe a reconsideration of the discourse around health and architecture and kind of revisiting various ideas of what the necessary balance is between outdoor space and architecture from the kind of modernist vision of the city as providing these for these vast expanses of space which might be enjoyed by the occupants of the city which now is, you know, New York for instance considers closing streets in order to provide more space for its residents, we might think again about something like the smithson's diagram of the house the future in which they describe a vertical tube of unbreathed air which is a, you know, particularly apt phrase may be given current concerns at the center of that dwelling, which is otherwise kind of opaque at its exterior, and which Beatrice Colomina actually has written extensively about in an article called I can read there and I think 56 which you should look up if you're interested in. And of course these things intersect in interesting ways with the kind of post apocalyptic vision of the empty city which is structured so much contemporary fiction, or the kind of tendency towards the, the commune or the space removed from the world, and therefore protected and the idea that we might reimagine the necessity of exterior space in in ways which echo again of course various important experiments in in collective dwelling. And I'll start I'll keep going a little faster and you know most sort of importantly is that I think in terms of the kind of longer term is to confront the reality that it's like a fundamentally suburban country and actually architectures architecture as it's developed the United States is kind of primary theoretical contributions have been in the study of an imagination of kind of what we call suburban configurations, not urban ones and there might be something to be revisited in these in the aftermath of a period in which we're all in ways being encouraged to live suburban lifestyle. But I also want to say that I don't see this as a as a kind of in a very didactic way address coronavirus through architecture which I think architecture is not necessarily capable of doing in the sense that it's a very acute crisis which will pass and which will leave in its wake something else, instead to think about how we in the last decade from the perspective in which we recognize that the states of that work have been highlighted and revealed in new ways, and in which we recognize that work will be even more necessary in in in addressing the world to come. So, I was going to show some work from recent studios but I think for the sake of time I'll skip over it but just to say that, you know this is something we've been working on at GSAP in studios I've been teaching for a number of years now in terms of rethinking the potential of the kind of commercial office building or the loft building as a type that could be reoccupied by new collectives, striving to live and work differently. Together, and in one I think particularly apt way in relation to the panel here, this work intersects with I think a second characteristic of the kind of post 2008 discipline which is what we might call the post digital. I think for lack of better term I don't think that's a very good term, but a set of aesthetic and working method aesthetic concerns and working methods that I think have characterized the generations. Work and we've been working through these techniques the idea of architecture made of architecture the idea of architecture as an aggregation of discrete objects. And I think it bears questioning how these aesthetic concerns and these ideas of producing architecture as a kind of collective form in the literal sense that the form is a collection of things relates to the problem of architecture for the collective in the sense that architecture, in some sense is meant to house and shape the social relations of a community and I think these are questions that the panelists clearly have been working on we saw one of Anna's housing projects earlier this is one of the projects for House for the elderly in Brooklyn which of course you know we can recognize is another kind of site of acute crisis right now human as is inside outside between beyond project, which was exhibited SF MoMA, which is a speculation on new urban typologies. You know we might see it in sort of more detail in various or more color in various projects by each of the participants, which seek to make a kind of ensemble of a set of discrete parts. And then, you know, lastly I would say with respect to our position as architects and our own kind of precarity that's been revealed by this crisis in our own lives or in our in our practice, you know, I don't not think it's biographical but you know more widely the way in which architecture, the practice of architectures anticipated many of the kind of anxieties and states of precarious existence. And so I'm certainly acute in terms of the collapse of life work balance, the precarity of employment the lack of access to benefits etc. We might think about how each of you has in a way taken on the practice of architecture itself as a subject in the production of the spaces in which you work or live or live and work together so those are maybe two more specific aspects for for this group of young architects who I think represent a generation that has been concerned with these things and who themselves have specifically been concerned with these things. And then I think there's a kind of broader set of questions that I hope were perhaps clearly related or not posed as questions but sort of raised in terms of the ways in which the discipline more broadly has devoted its energy or substantial amount of its energy over the past 12 years to rethinking the kind of collective as a through through through architectural proposals and the way in which that has attempted to address exactly the types of conditions that are now so exacerbated by this crisis in which maybe from the position of this crisis we are can look at that work with new perspective and again sharpen the ways in which we propose it or we pursue it in the future in relation to what is to come. So, this our panel here is him and his lie I don't know what order everyone else is they are in on everyone else's screen but on my screen we've got him and his lie. Who's joining us from Los Angeles, where he's the principal of bureau spectacular Adam Frampton who's joining us I assume from Brooklyn probably not too far from me, where he's principle of only if and on a Pugin there who I believe is in Barcelona, normally somewhere in New York, who's the principal of my and I think all of them are in their home slash offices so maybe that that could be a place to start. I recognize on his from her website. I don't know if you're all muted or not. So I mean maybe one question. I think of you all of you as a little bit. You know as a kind of micro generation ahead of me but you know one question is how if we were to see 2008 as a kind of beginning in 2020 is maybe an end to a period in the discipline how the 2008 financial crisis and it's aftermath shaped your entry into the field and how the conditions which you recognize having sort of work through in the intervening 10 or 12 years or having been kind of raised in the Internet intervening 10 to 12 years are now sort of heightened and how you imagine moving forward after this when we all presumably can go back to work. I'm just going to say hello. Thanks. And I met for this provocative set of questions and conversation. But I'm not going to be the one to start as have been intensely participate the lady in this online talks, so I would just send my greetings to my colleagues and send them the word. Yeah, and conquer with on us initial response that it's truly a fantastic presentation that you put together. And you know on a personal level I find it somewhat healing you know, we're all undergoing a lot of things that I think that he's in moments of uncertainty so it's really great to have a moment to be able to process where we're at right now. As far as your kind of kick off question, the initial question of how each of us dealt with 2008. I think, you know, I can't speak for the others but at least from my point of view. The three of us, myself, Adam and Anna represents three. The first path is a kind of a fork in the road. As a matter of fact, Adam and I physically encountered the same fork in a road. We were both that only around 2007 2008. I mean, 2007, we were both. But I think took a slightly different path. He continued. I mean, in a very substantial way. And I sort of took off and do something else. But I think other kinds of folks in the road. If I were to kind of think about Anna's path and my path, you know, she decided to pursue a PhD around that point. So this type of immersion in the academy took form that way. But what's maybe funny about this, these kinds of folks in a road, all came back to GSEP. Yeah, thank you. I met as well for that. For the kind of presentation. I mean, I, we're all sort of told that at this moment, there's these kind of opportunity to sort of, you know, step back from everyday life and think about things and do new things. And I've personally, I've found that's a struggle actually with all my with all the extra time we now have at home. It's somehow it's harder to do more, but I'm very impressed how you've been kind of reflecting. Sort of on the moment that we find ourselves in right now and you've clearly found the time to kind of do that. So yeah, I mean, I think 2008, you know, as him and as mentioned, like, I had actually graduated from school in 2006. And so I felt like I kind of dodged the bullet on 2008 like I was, you know, established enough in a kind of office such that I could kind of stay there and I moved to Hong Kong for four years after that because Asia had been kind of less affected in a way by the financial crisis and so I kind of weathered it I don't think it would have been the same had I graduated and I think my trajectory would have been very different. You know, I don't know maybe for the better had I graduated in 2008 but different at least. But I think the current the current crisis it's harder to it seems harder that to maybe escape from it somehow I think we'll all I mean both because of the severity of it but also because I think it affects everywhere and everyone. But you know, I don't, I don't know. I mean I guess your, your presentation kind of offered maybe to if I could kind of read into what you presented kind of offered to different sort of forks as it were like one might be that there's a kind of retrenchment and move against the kind of communal turn I think when you alluded to kind of the new suburbanism in that maybe people would, you know, move into the kind of more individualistic modes and away and away from kind of cities away from but I think like that for me it feels kind of like too early to make that conclusion or I mean I think we still need to kind of also understand how things play out with the pandemic now and the kind of, you know suburban and rural territories like if it may seem that, you know, maybe in a way like the kind of community and support infrastructures that are enabled by the kind of collectivity and community of cities actually allows, allows us to kind of you know whether, whether things more I mean I think we don't know, we don't know yet and I guess there would kind of curious in a way I don't it's not particularly my area of knowledge but others may know like in a way sort of looking at these kind of questions after past after 1918 after kind of past pandemics I mean I think in a very superficial way one might say that the 1920s and 1930s didn't there was no well I mean I'm it's a kind of open question I guess but you know how did historically like how did these kind of events, you know transform thinking about this kind of collectivity and I think even on a very maybe to kind of zoom in something I've always wanted to do with because you mentioned the sort of the courses that we teach here at GSAP. You know I would be interested to take the kind of studio projects for the core three housing studio that I was one of several faculty teaching and look at the percentage of kind of collective or shared space in the projects and I think if you if you if you measured everything and added everything up I would guess that like 50% of our students projects were under various terms kind of collective or shared or et cetera and that's always something we're kind of talking about and kind of questioning let's say that these kind of proportions in specifically in housing and I would be interested to kind of do this exercise like you know less for this past year and then again for next year and also kind of in a way like measure or see how you know what what the what changes in a way I think that would be maybe also a way to kind of gauge the the temperature of these sort of things too. Yeah maybe one clarification or or I you know I don't think it's a strange position because on the one hand I of course and I think I said this to all of you in an email to don't imagine that the useful thing to do is is propose the kind of post coronavirus architecture in the sense that it seems like an acute problem which of course touches architecture in many ways because it touches everything but which it would be short sighted to imagine that architecture is somehow going to address in the future but instead to think that this pandemic has precipitated an economic crisis which seems like we to be as severe or more so than 2008 and has at least temporarily put us force us all to live in ways which we've been kind of speculating about or anxious about or anticipating at least since 2008 in terms of this sort of virtually mediated existence this weird mixture of sort of like your homesteading materials are delivered to you by Amazon, you know it would be preferable if it was an Amazon drone not a worker. So the labor economy is under enormous stress and so the anxiety is about mass employment and automation and etc. You know all these things are sort of brought to the fore. And so it seems like we're experiencing this weird sort of time jump or like acceleration into a future that we have been anticipating and addressing obliquely or explicitly through work on these sort of collective projects and so and I'm not sure exactly what it is but there's I don't know how it seems like an opportunity from this perspective this kind of unexpected perspective to reevaluate that work and to imagine how we would pursue it on the other side because it seems like it'll be more necessary than ever. And what's interesting to me about this the American suburbs is more that I think it's a kind of fertile territory for possibilities in the future, both because there's so much of it and because so much of the kind of energy of American architecture in particular has been directed in one way or another towards its sort of production and theorization but not to say we shall live in the most suburban eventually suburban way but rather that the it's full of other interesting contradictions or possibilities that can be brought to urban life and vice versa and can help to shape our idea of how we all live together or what you know within which forms we all live together. But if you know again there's like something in this moment where we're all being asked to live you know if you had to travel the best way to travel be in a private car. And ideally you'd have a large backyard because you don't want to be too close to anybody else. And the more space you had in your otherwise vast and inefficient house the better because now everybody is there all the time together so you need all that space Okay so you know this is funny sort of irony is the fact that we've been resisting as a discipline or as you know as a kind of as producers of architecture resisting these tendencies and of course, some level we probably all be happy to have them, at least temporarily but you know there's also kind of interesting models where those things have been transposed into the city, and we can imagine the potential to continue to think through that transposition as opposed to insisting on a more kind of conventional idea of the city as a place purely of density, and the kind of minimum standard of architecture. I think we have to start understanding that the actual crisis as any other crisis. It doesn't it mostly allows us to understand how how our society is defined. So most of the things that are so there so visible were already happening before. And it's, let me put a case in order to understand it clearly, but Prechiarius work was already there before, but now it's much more visible because precisely is that part of our society that is more is having more impacts, and it's the one that precisely cannot be confined so actually to be confined has become a sign of social prestige almost and has turned visible the the inequalities that do exist in our society. And we can see that through the architecture as well. And I'm saying this because we have to be careful about you know like how we understand things and probably more than now more than ever, we have to be really careful about how we use the language for instance right like it's not about social distancing. No, it's about physical distancing, which makes a total difference. And I'm saying this because obviously, you know, the capital system that we're living in always tend to neutralize and and push us to put everything in the same basket in order to be, you know, more operative. And, and I want to say this because collective living or or sharing or, you know, all these words that now almost mean capital interest. They do have exist for a long time and the idea of collectivity actually emerge with the with the when the idea of nation state emerge. And so it's a long history that it actually can trace back, we could trace it back to the emerge of capitalist but precisely I would in this case, which we are referring it to collective house. We can trace it back to the 19th century, when most of the cities grow a lot and therefore that was suddenly a need. And all the collective spaces in relation with the domestic started to be argued and discussed, and it has been a conversation that started then and we have plenty of books about, you know, Monica left tracing the its origin to obviously the closest one as period really but on the theory and the thought about around sharing and the collective house has been always there. It's true that in the last decades, it has been capitalized one typology of collective house by the late capitalist, which is this co-working school living spaces that I met was referring to. But again I think that more than ever we have to be super careful and precise about not putting all collective typologies on the same inside the same basket, because we have to embrace diversity. Also, as an answer to how our society is shifting, we are living behind dichotomies, we are living behind categories that used to be a strategic tools for precisely this late capitalist to emerge. So how to transgress those systems for the benefit of the welfare society and probably I would say to start with to be super cautious about terminology and about how we understand things. Go ahead. And I think this point about capitalism and let's say conflation or reductive reading of what these types of conditions of sharing is super interesting and I think it's really important to underscore. And I think the kind of economic pressures that especially in a city like New York experiences is something that I want to maybe unpack a little bit. And I want to come back to this idea of the, let's say nuances of speculations, you know, or at least nuances of speculative persons. And, and I also want to use this kind of opportunity to address a previous train of thought, you know, obviously we're not doing a post buyers architecture right now in this discussion. I think to me the point, maybe at least from my understanding of Emmett's description, the point seems to be more about is there a way for us to retroactively speculate a type of mode of practice that could become you know, a momentum towards the future, rather than, you know, like what farm or shape what, you know, I give ideologies, you know, so let's just I want to come back to the early 1980s as a point of departure of saying something. But then before I say something about the night early 1980s, I want to say something about what I want to make a statement, which is, every speculative practice seem to respond to disasters. Or, or maybe saying saying it slightly differently. Maybe every single disaster I can think of a spawn something pretty radical. So, for example, you know, it wasn't that took a flood in 1960s for Florentine architects, you know, artisans, super studio to get together and say enough, enough with modernism enough with, you know, training Italian young Italians to believe that we're here to build architecture. When we can't really, we can't we're supposed to preserve up, you know, where we can even look back to moments where when a total complete collapse of the, I guess the Great Depression, you know, the international style exhibition was 1932. Right. I think the timing of some of these pretty important moments seem to correspond with major disasters. And I would say my practice, honest practice, Adam's practice, all had something to do with the previous one, which is 2008. Right. And if that's the current thought that we're trying to unpack here, are there modalities from which, you know, disasters, we respond to disasters by conventionally reframing practices. I want to come again come back to the early 1980s. I was, I was, I mean, late 70s, early 80s, I guess, you know, there was a mild recession at the time. And there was also I guess the oil crisis. So crisis, the Cold War, I think things were happening then. At one point at one direction, which is the pamphlet architecture storefront for art and architecture, all of that happened around that. Right. That is a type of listen applied idealism, where a group of people were basically saying, Well, we're not going to get jobs anyway, you know, who cares, let's do something interesting. Let's, let's fully apply our idealisms. You know, I think that's what that was a type of, you know, incredibly speculative thinking about since architecture cannot be real, let's do something unreal, you know. But then I want to come back to the 19 early speaker because early 1980s because you're touching on suburbanism as a site. And there was something that happened then to which is new urbanism. In the 1980s, if I were to identify the type of foot in a row where people didn't respond to a disaster that didn't respond to, you know, what the contextual cultural context around them. One type said, Well, let's do something hopefully stupid. Another said, Well, let's do something hopefully applicable, which is new urbanism. And they came out very differently. Right. And so, I mean, a case in point of kind of economic pressure that may have pushed one direction versus another. But the eventual economic pressure did push the Steven the holes of the world to have a practice. But based on the kind of initial prepared men, a manifesto moment that was presented to him because of the mild crisis that he had to deal with, you know, but then you the different type of manifesto that was put forth by new urbanism played out very differently. I don't know, you can tell us your opinion, I can tell you that my opinion is not extremely favorable. New urbanism. I just want to, you know, say, conclude this train of thought by saying, I think there's an economic pressure, especially in New York City, that's not just triggered by the coronavirus. It's just been brewing in the background for at least 1015 if not 20 years. You know, I'm, I had a Canadian education. You know, my, my tuition, my debt, my relationship with debt is not insane. I think I can speak for on that I can only speculate that a European education also does not need for walking around with an invisible house on her back. Most Princetonians I know, also, we're lucky enough to have a different kind of economic pressure around them. So this this idea of, you know, forget forget about it's just be idealistic is not possible. It's not possible, especially a place like you said, in the city like New York. And so I just want to, you know, see if people respond to this idea of the ideal, fully ideal, or the ideal practical. Because, you know, what else are you supposed to do here, supposed to eat. There's such a moment of optimism there in your train of thought until we got to the end of that train of thought. Yeah, I do think it's important. I don't know if I have a, an answer to that but I do think it's important to like on a kind of been on, like all of you have been on zoom a lot, and I think there's always the question of like how to see the, the potentials out of the current crisis despite all the sort of challenges that we're facing right now and I, you know, I think there are. I guess the potentials of like how our kind of society and system might change afterwards but also what Jimenez was kind of alluding to like professionally how do we change. And how do we kind of how all our own, you know, practices adjust or, you know, be more entrepreneurial or, you know, reflect the fact that the new situation we're moving in so yeah I don't know I like, I like this idea that well it could go the same way in the 80s towards the kind of more, you know, visionary and speculative kind of mode but yeah it's maybe for those of us that have the kind of privilege or fortune to do that too. Yeah, I mean there's a an intersection between the ambitions in the studios we teach and in the practices we hope to build and in the, you know, writing we do, or research we do to address the broader collective through architecture and to propose new forms of living together you know new new ways of supporting community or building community and then there's the oftentimes it seems absence of that within the within our own discipline and it seems like this crisis is going to precipitate a need for that because without it, not all of us, I mean, maybe I don't know about the four of us but many people won't be in the field at the end of it potentially, which or, you know, our positions in many cases or the students who are, you know, graduating will be extremely precarious and so it does seem like there's an opportunity to think about how we build a kind of collective or organizational power within the discipline which for various historical reasons or cultural reasons maybe hasn't been very good at doing that. At the same time that of course we imagine how we can serve the broader communities of the world outside of the field of architecture, or just to recognize that we're part of those and we're not we don't occupy any particularly special status. Let me be, let me throw a positive also message as mine probably was a little bit dark before and maybe recall in what I meant point out about the 2008 crisis that is true that all of us we came out from there and precisely even if before I was saying that there's not a before and after by that I meant that crisis as the one that we're living in just unveil social structures or problematics that were already there but it's true that through this part of unveiling through suddenly the fact that most of things that probably were there but not that much visible we in an easier manner we can have a critical reaction to that and and and precisely we I would love to think that we start the office with that aim since the beginning it was not the best time to open an architectural office in Spain when there was nothing to build and precisely the only needs that we had at the time it was to stop building so so I think that first demands to understand the discipline in a wide sense. So as an answer I think that you can never step out of the field as soon as you have entered it because architecture is a is a type of knowledge as soon as you have as you as soon as you have it. And it's really difficult to step out and it's a permanent learning and that demands us to know how to answer to certain things. And on another positive note and before also I recall the word for a state it in the United States we have to remember. I'm sorry that I'm kind of quoting really old things and from the old past, but it's important to know why we are here and how do we leave tracing back to centuries. And this scenario that we're living in is not just because of the last crisis is because of a lot of historical changes that emerge. And it's important to understand that the welfare state in the United States started after in the 30s after the 1929. It was a consequence of reaction to the huge crisis of 29 that suddenly the government started to include policies that would assure the welfare of citizens, mildly in the 30s, and it's still quite limited nowadays in the United States. So these moments of crisis for instance can allow to shift social structures. And it's precisely a good moment to produce architectural resistance that can, or by that I mean, physically and physically in all ways, in all formats that try to answer precisely to those realities that we think that they should change. Viola, I don't know if you're still here, I don't know if we have a. Hold on a second guys I need to. Hi guys sorry. I just want to check on time I know it's two o'clock but. Yeah, I mean, starting. There have not been any drops in the number of participants in the call so I think folks are still engaged and interested so if you'd like to continue the conversation. No questions have come in from the chat so if there's any guests on the call who are interested in participating in the discussion feel free to go ahead and submit your kind of questions now but if you'd like to wrap up with final thoughts while we wait for questions you're welcome to do that as well guys as the panel. Okay, so yeah I mean I thought. I don't know because I at least have studio this afternoon, but maybe to honest point I mean I think it gets to to what I. And I don't think this is a fair question for you or a kind of reasonable forum in which to fully explore it given that we have like 30 minutes on zoom, but you know exactly. It falls towards a kind of radical or critical architecture. That I think this particular moment offers us the opportunity to evaluate and sort of sharpen in preparation for its need in in the future I mean right now if we're sort of on pause we can imagine that that what's to come will be extreme, but if there is to be a useful critical or radical function for architecture in that context it will have to have learned from its previous iterations whether it's the 1980s or the 1970s or the 2010 the 2010s the 2010s. You know each of these each each crisis is him and us points out brings with it a kind of new. architectural thinking and representation and new ambitions for the discipline and so. Given that we've all in one way or another attempted to propose alternatives over the past 10 years. And I think it's interesting you know to him and as this forks in the road I mean Anna, I think you've undertaken a kind of. Long historical investigation of the the kind of collective dwelling through the framework of the kitchenless city I mean Adam I think about your work on Hong Kong and the ways in which. You know kind of unfettered commerce, I suppose an intersection with some kind of urban planning can produce. And sort of urban constraints can produce a radically different form of public space in the form of the kind of interconnection of Hong Kong's central core and him and as of course through like narrative and other forms of speculation, I think have attempted to. make the corners to work in whether it's like the corner of your own office to build yourself house or whether it's the. You know the kind of cartoon or other things which might traditionally have fallen outside of the kind of discipline as mediums to work in but I mean maybe that that as a reframed as a question like if you each had a thought on. It's not fair to say like what we could do or like how the you know what the critique should be but rather to start to think about how the in what medium, or through what techniques the critique might be made. And this might also be an opportunity to reflect on our sort of zoom existence, you know which is our current medium of, of necessity I guess. Each of you have attempted, you know beyond plans and sections or proposals for clients or competitions to construct a kind of discourse or a way of representing and articulating ideas, which now you might have some have had some time to reflect on. I don't mean even in this exact minute but you know this kind of historical minute but over the past over the first third or you know quarter whatever it is of your career. And from this position might have some insight into how to kind of transform or continue moving into the future. Yeah, I mean that's also actually a discussion that we're having now in my, in my GSAP studio like, you know how does the, since everything is on the screen and everything is over zoom now how do we, you know how do how does it how does the modes of representation shift and how do we kind of communicate our work and that's, you know the current and hopefully somewhat temporary somewhat persistent situation of the screen but then I think beyond that the, you know, the world in which and the economy in which the students are moving into and I think it's too early to draw any conclusions but I think there's on the one hand like nobody can build models anymore which is sad and disappointing but on the other hand, you know they're also thinking about how other other modes, you know, building websites are ways in which they can kind of, you know, prepare their manifestos that actually might even not only suit the current moment but suit the, the, you know, the profession as it exists in a year or two in the future when, you know we may not be maybe more important to kind of communicate to people outside of the profession to I mean it could go both ways I would say but, you know I would say that from at least from my students there's a feeling like, how do we now change what we're doing to kind of speak to an audience, a broader audience as well so in terms of representation that's one, one thought. So, you know, how to move forward I think this question, maybe answered by, you know, what will your answer be when the moment in which the question comes to you, what more can you lose. I think in 2008, I faced a question, what more can I lose. And the converse conversely the opposite flip side of that question is, what's there possibly to be gained, you know. And so this feeling of what more can I lose was in some ways really liberating, you know, I think if we were to rush with the attention of optimism, you know, it's liberating to encounter the moment of what more can I lose. I remember, you know, about a year ago I had a chance to, you know, I had a chance to sit down with you're not Freeman, you're not Freeman passed away recently. But, you know, I was doing an interview with him, we just, you know, he couldn't really hear so we had to communicate via the medium of drawing, doing and writing. And so we sat across each other. Basically, you know, I had so many pretty, let's say sophisticated questions, you know, I want to know whether or not the clients work coming from similarly per Asian context, whether or not he finds you know, architecture has something to do with the way that he eventually produced a spatial city, or whether or not, you know, the residues of the found objects. And so I just started by, I said to Sean had something that he just kind of cut through all of this. He just cut through all of it by saying, Well, I survived the Holocaust. When I left the camp. I just had pants and shoes. So I have. The question of, you know, what more can I lose one more can one lose. I think it's, it's a sobering moment. It's difficult. Obviously, it's, you know, scary, super scary. And, you know, we're, we're about to face it again. And I don't know, you know, over the course of what is lifetime how many times can you endure this question of, you know, how much, what more can you lose. I think, you know, I want to spend this question of what more can what can I lose to this question that you know not cookies asking the comments session, tech section. I'm just going to read out loud her question you mentioned, I mean, I think she's mentioned referring to Anna. You mentioned how policies that influence the current state of welfare were reactionary. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on my theory that depending on the political climate and agenda of a place, the architecture will reflect or be representative rather with that political thinking economics or social order will follow suit and interested in exploring how architecture in turn can influence politics. I think that's a really great question. I think that's at least from from a place I like to end on, you know, I think. You know, I think the idea of idealism can influence policy. And I think the representation of idealism has so much more power down line than the shackles with bureaucracy. And I think, you know, so the subscription of idealism, I think at a moment in which, you know, you might encounter the question, what more can I lose. On a note like that, that I think, you know, if you can find the strength within yourself to exercise your idealism, I think there might be hope yet. Let me follow up also answering to a question that the dinner brought up and it's kind of related. She mentioned she was actually, let me read. She says, if we diverse to use in the notion physical distancing, instead of social distancing, we are really finding what social means, and that is this virtual connection is socially acceptable. Coming back to what I said on another talk, this fourth industrial revolution is making us rethink the way we live, connect and behave, but it should not in any case disconnect us from the essence of human connections. We can see how the new generation is already suffering from social entities, and these connections as they have been brought up with conscious access to social media and digital platforms. I think that coming back to the idea of social disconnection and the online reality, the digital world that we're living in, it has its good and bad points, as Jimenez was pointing out before. I think it's just a tool. Obviously the entity that we are suffering these days, it's attached to the, it's related to the fact that media is bombarding us with the actual emergency and among other things. It's more than ever visible the cyber control, cyber control of bodies because we cannot move but cyber control to the point that some of us we are even being tracked by governments. So we are seeing the bad side of the coin of the digital world that we're living in. So let me correct, obviously physical distancing and doesn't mean that online socializing is actually the only good tool. Social online relations don't deny all the type of relations and they should not deny. The question from Jonah here. I think you're on mute. We want to answer this last more answer discuss the last question and then maybe we wrap up for today. This is from Jenna Rowan. Now, a doctor of architecture, I believe. I can read it recognizing that there's a transience to the current crisis there is a particular spatial aspect of it that may persist isolation separation from each other. This passes to architects have any social responsibility to confront the acceleration of that tendency. For example, making places worth visiting. Jonah congratulations on becoming a doctor. I think the short answer is obviously yes. Short answer is obviously yes. But I think clearly, you know, I feel like there's maybe even an opportunity to think about the flip side of your question, which is, which is probably right, you know, this might persist people might become more comfortable with the idea of where they are. And, you know, the, let's say specificities specificities of the qualities of the domestic interior might change to, given that their people might spend more time at home. So I've, in a way, optimistically architect architect the quality of architecture might add that as both in terms of the public, because now we have to get people to go out and private, because people spend more time doctoring up your own homes. I mean, I was trying to get at that in the presentation which is that I think this is the suburban aspect of it which is that maybe this process to reconsider what architecture worth living in actually is, and to expand somewhat our idea of what we're proposing as the kind of minimum dwelling or whether the kind of minimum dwelling is the right attitude towards the problem of producing a, you know, a place for somebody to live in, because we recognize obviously already many of us are living and working and doing childcare and recreating and doing any number of other things in limited space, and this current crisis allows us to recognize that it allows maybe everybody to share in that reality which is a reality for many people already. So maybe our shared experience of what it means for all of life to be kind of collapsed into a few hundred square feet prompt some reconsideration of what those few hundred square feet should be or whether a few hundred square feet is enough. I mean it's interesting we all answered we're answering the question in terms of the kind of domestic realm and I think that's it's kind of telling of course it's because we're all locked in our, you know, couple hundred square feet apartments or many of we may be locked in our apartments but I think it's also because all of us in a way have this interest in housing in our practices right which is maybe one way in which our trajectories were inflected by 2008. But I mean I do, you started Emmett with Michael Sorkin and I think maybe also kind of coming back to the city is important and seeing the kind of potential of the current crisis in the city is important not the house and I think that we do, you know, one kind of positive I think the way in which we see the city right now without cars on the streets. You know you mentioned the ideal way to get away would be in a car but actually the bicycle is kind of quite an important mode right now at least in New York City. For me personally I think we see the city, you know with less pollution we see and we see the value of like the kind of exterior spaces that we have in our, you know, in our in houses like anecdotally like I'm, you know, my apartment is 500 square feet but I have a kind of outdoor balcony which I see, you know, indeed kind of recognize the value of more and more when we're kind of cooped up here so I think the, you know, I do agree with Jonah's, you know, kind of question or point. It's not only like after the kind of current moment it's maybe also seeing what within the current moment to right. It's a, I would say that it's super interesting these days. There's a positive note here coming. These days, more than ever, or more than often that the usual media is filled with articles and talks about architecture. At least in Barcelona in Spain, like the TV shows how good how to improve your home during quarantine and they're asking architects to talk online and on the radio conversations about how should we improve in the future, not only our healthcare spaces and infrastructures and and related and relating them to possibilities of resilience how they could grow and decrease for future epidemics, etc. But also how our homes have been able to adapt to the actual situation and turn visible the reality for most of our houses in Spain that they're not that well designed so how to improve that in terms of quality of light and you know the possibility to have a little bit of an outdoor space etc etc. So I, yeah, like at the end probably Jimenez is right we are all from the same generation that we're a little bit idealistic and and maybe and at the end of the day deeply optimistic and that's why we could survive to a crisis so that would be the first appeal to take a lot, a lot of optimism. But it's true that might all these conversations are already on the media is due to the actual quarantine situation might affect to the values of our spaces and cities are behind.