 Welcome, everyone. We know the sign of a superstar when the auditorium is like this, which is really, really exciting. Welcome to the inaugural lecture of the semester. I'm thrilled to have with us Shohei Shigematsu to present the recent work of OMA New York, of which he has been leading partners since 2006. I first met Shohei in 1999. He was then working at OMA Rotterdam where I was just starting. The office at the time felt like the island in the series lost, set up seemingly, I know probably it's too old for you guys, but those of us Gen X might remember, set up seemingly in the middle of nowhere yet attracting a high concentration of young, hungry and ambitious architectural talent from around the world. At once a stage for the fiercest competition and the biggest black dressed egos, OMA was also an incredible place where collegiality, collaboration, odd forms of mentorship and lifelong friendships formed almost instantly, as if to overcome the feeling of being nothing but cogs in a brilliant wheel intent on changing the course of architecture. The very few of us who stood out always seemed to be trying too hard, but not Shohei. From my first days in the office, his elegant and unwavering coolness, which he combined with a uniquely dry sense of humor, rendered his presence special and with its own aura. Shohei was running a small team working on a cinema tech in Almere, a new town in the Netherlands. It wasn't one of the star projects in the office around which chaos usually reigned, and we didn't know much about it, but you could see Shohei and his team diligently just working with no drama, but with great discipline just chipping away in the shadows of the office. Until one day, we all walked in to see the most incredible red resin model, exquisitely beautiful building. There it was, sitting one of the most interesting projects in the office at the time, succeeding in working within a given approach and architectural language, while also inventing what became a seminal new section type for the office, the ice cream sandwich of mass void mass, which exuded the kind of mysterious beauty that Oma's best projects have uniquely produced over the past decades. It is in reflecting on Shohei's amazing trajectory from junior designer at OMA to partner in charge of some of the firm's most exciting current work that I was reminded of this first encounter which shed some light on why or how Shohei is today succeeding where many before him have failed. Since taking the leadership of Oma New York, he has transformed the office from an outpost to the main office in Rotterdam to a full-blown creative design firm with an increasingly complex and autonomous identity. From the Fener Arts District in Miami Beach to the Quebec National Bazaar Museum, the Audre Hermes Pavilion in Los Angeles, the numerous collaborations with artists such as Sarko Chang, Marina Abramovich, or Kanye West, as well as the design of the World Traveling Product Exhibition Waste Down, the design for the Costume Institute Spring 2016 exhibition at the Met, Manus X Machina, fashion in the age of technology design and of course the long-awaited new museum expansion. Shohei's leadership over OMA New York is demonstrating his capacity to provide continuity with the firm's body of work but also to open up new avenues for its future in terms of the types of projects but also in terms of concern and sensibility. Those concerns are still urban but today they reflect those of his generation and our time. Shohei is leading the design of a new civic center in Bogota, Colombia, a post-hurricane sandy urban water strategy for New Jersey and a food hub in Wiesville, Kentucky featuring a diversity of programs that reflect the full food chain as well as a new food scape of public spaces and plazas where producers and consumers meet. The strong sense of a generational shift in terms of conditions, typology, program scale but also concerns and ideas is one that Shohei has expressed repeatedly for OMA New York and its future. In a recent interview he stated, quote, my journey is starting now. That is quite an understatement for someone who has already achieved so much. We are excited to have him tonight on the eve of what is yet to come. Please welcome Shohei Gematsu. Thank you. It's an honor to be speaking at the first lecture of the semester and it's really a bit, I'm nervous because someone like Dan Wood and Michael Rock who actually mentored me in the beginning of OMA period is sitting in front of me so it's a bit of a strange moment where I see a lot of ex-OMA colleagues in front of me. The trick is that a lot of good people leave OMA and some bad people stay and I just hang on to my position knowing my capacity. That's how it worked. This is a project I worked with Amal and Michael Rock and Dan Wood. It was the UN City next to UN. Still this site is empty. It's kind of amazing. It was 2000, year 2000. It was a really incredible collaboration with KPF, Toyota OMA and Davis Brody Bond. This was maybe my first encounter to New York City. Now I owe you maybe an explanation of how OMA is evolving. There are about three major offices, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, New York. This is maybe a diagram that we put some energy on. OMA as a collective, it was started as a collective and as you know after REM took over as a kind of singular person architect it spawned so many different great architecture firms. But I'm the first generation because I stayed that I had to compete with all these kind of great second generation out of OMA. So that made me really think how OMA should actually evolve because of course OMA was known as an established office but at the same time I had to compete with great young energy and new ideas that also went through the same kind of process of learning at OMA. So it was a very tough competition. So somehow magically right now how OMA is evolving is not really a kind of centric incubator model but we're incubating each partners within the office so that we don't create any more competitors outside OMA. So me and Jason is basically leading New York office but basically everyone is working on their own direction and hopefully this will create a kind of unique architecture firm that also has individuality within the collective brand. New York office has about 70 people doing multiple projects because it's an academic environment I just wanted to kind of outline how we work. I think our architecture always exists between observation, general observation, our obsession and basically representation so architecture is always somewhere between the kind of final outcome and the kind of very abstract general observation. I also think we are the kind of generation that has highly affected by the kind of culture of observation that Venture and Scott Brown has introduced and I think Rem actually really did learn from them how to be specific and how to have general observation of the change that are happening in the world and then basically escalate that into an architecture. So it's not really a linear process but those different observation to the representation creates a kind of depth where our architecture can exist and architecture doesn't really limit itself to a physical architecture but it could be books, writing or diagrams that could influence the industry. So this is the research, how we create a kind of environment of really understanding the context, formal exploration. This is something that is misunderstood about OMA is that we really care about beauty and the form not just diagram and the clarity but so this laborious process actually really kind of feed the initial research back so it's not just a kind of formal exploration after a diagram but if the formal exploration is not successful actually we think back the premise of the concept and a very simple representation of the manipulation we are doing to each project and the outcome of the model we also use model as a communication device this is a Marina's model where we had a central space had different window types so we made a model that you can put your head inside and that became Marina's kind of performance device. This was a model we made for the Lucas Cultural Art Museum for George Lucas, we kind of challenged him by making a film at the outcome of the competition which he kind of immediately kind of felt offended I think we thought this kind of handheld kind of movement was cool so we kind of superimposed these diagrams into the film you get quite kind of seasick because of this bad handheld camera. As you might know this was a project in Chicago where George Lucas' wife kind of single-handedly promised with the mayor to give this parking lot next to the soldier's stadium so it was a unique condition even when we started the competition there was already a protest because it was a public plan so our concept was to bring the gallery up and create a kind of winter garden at the top so that the tailgating parking lot is preserved so this was also our attempt to actually use the model and mix the media so the model we made the model for this film and then superimposed basically the movement and content inside I don't think George Lucas actually finished watching it so I will not finish this film 2007 there was a kind of project that we worked on and still really a pity that this didn't happen it was a residential project next to this one Madison Park which was already built when we started to work on we were commissioned to work on this smaller one that gives the lobby and the screening room at the bottom because this tower was already built the developer had the air rights and the FAR to build this much as blue shows but the developer also already sold the units here so they didn't want to block the view to the south so what we did was to basically sway away from the tower to provide a view to the south but also by swaying to the east you could provide a view to the Madison Square Park and bring the light to the residential unit below which became basically a kind of typical New York typology on the left side down so it looked like a normal building or it looked like a shy child behind the parents or a straight tower and it shows its entirety from the south so this was a project and this was a kind of structural diagram it went from punched window to more transparent curtain wall at the center you needed more structure so basically the facade represented the structural force we thought it was kind of an upturn moment this was going to be built we actually finished CD drawings and then somehow downturn hit and actually this got cancelled so of course this form has an upturn shape and a downturn shape but ironically we now got the project in the same street actually like a couple of blocks away that's the tower that we were working with so this is at the corner of Lexington in 23rd that we wanted to represent this kind of dual identity of Madison Square Park or Gramercy Park this location sits somewhere in between so the corner actually represents this kind of instability of the identity that this corner had and stitching these two streets together by creating this kind of three-dimensional corner and creating interesting reflection of the streets in open corner this was a kind of very tight zoning restriction where in New York there's a street wall restriction but interestingly the corner because of the corner articulation of the traditional architecture there's a kind of loophole to actually articulate the corner which you can't really do on the street facade so we used that loophole to design this corner the facade also moves from punched window to more open because two other buildings next doors were kind of interesting building and then had the punched window so it's kind of being contextual there's also 22nd Street side which creates an entrance that has a kind of instable grid and then Oasis big courtyard that hugs existing buildings and then creates many of these that basically faces this central space we also work a lot on public space nowadays as you know, Highline attracts more people than architecture nowadays and as you know, it is replicated everywhere in the world I was inspired by Mr. Scafidio's comment about this is not architecture because I felt during the recession that we were in danger by landscape architects because they could actually provide improvements without building and I thought this statement actually is not really kind of was not feeling that kind of danger so I thought doing something very different from Highline when we got the project to do something similar which was a bridge park in DC that connects Anacostia which is the low income area to a proper DC side typically of course the bridge actually goes up gently to create a clearance below but we continued further to create an X a kind of symbolic X in the central space where the two plates meet so if you're coming from one side it creates a gateway and on the other side you can actually create a program underneath so you create this kind of X bridge and you can have a view from the high vantage point back to the city also this is a kind of basically a vertical representation of Laun Fance DC grid so basically all these big skewed Xs as you know in DC where special moment happens special building are there so we thought this is a kind of interesting representation of that grid and creating a program around it such as performance cafe and plaza so it's more like a realto bridge but a bit more kind of funkier and have this kind of program and structurally it also works and also the water is not so clean so we created this kind of filtration demonstration that we project the kind of storytelling of Anacostia's culture or the history going through the water and this is the summer time, the winter time and because the Pentagon is closed and the airport is closed we simulated the Air Force One we thought that the city of Monument this can't really be a kind of strong monument because it's so skinny but we thought it could actually get to a $10 bill because of course X means 10 so you can actually make a new bill we also recently did the bridge in Mexico this is Godzilla because I'm from Japan I'm actually really keen on natural disaster and how the king is not enjoying like I'm really observing the natural disaster you know Godzilla is not really a kind of fantasy because for Japanese people it's a representation of this natural series of natural disasters so in Mexico there was an earthquake in September 19th, basically two years ago close to Mexico City and this city of Ohutwa was heavily damaged there is an entity in Mexico in Fonabit that basically provides social housing and also disaster relief basically recovery from the disaster so we were invited to do something here we decided not to do the housing because there are a lot of great architects who are already working on the housing so we decided to do a bridge because this river of course flooded heavily also and also used to be a kind of infrastructure of the city but now completely neglected so we took this point where the river actually winds like this it's like this like middle of nowhere no kind of interest to the river life or waterfront because the city is basically shuts off the grid to the river so this was a kind of intent to create a connection between two different sides which was demolished by the earthquake but also to create a kind of single axis that really focuses on central boulevard connecting into the two sides so this is basically where the heaviest demolition destruction occurred so we thought we can actually connect this area to the other side but back to the other side so that you can actually create this kind of continuation of the street but also make people realize that the river is an amenity to the city there was a heavy kind of budget restriction so we decided to use something off the shelf not really this is off the shelf but something already kind of engineered there was a budget to do a 100 meter bridge plus two public space we decided not to do this kind of public plaza because we couldn't really find a space for it instead we decided to actually elongate the plaza as long as the bridge so in short basically it's a double-decker bridge like an I-beam that you have two levels like this because there are 100 year flood and also maybe potentially even heavier flood that could happen so we thought it could be beneficial to have two datum and also daily use and more kind of quiet slow use at the top of course it's off the shelf I-beam so we studied kind of potential openings so that it could create different activities between two sides this was the kind of best we could do with some variation of the size and some openings so that you can go from one side to the other so you have this double-decker and but at the kind of middle of the project they said this space is of course privately owned so you can't really stroke a single line so we bent the bridge which I think it looked better in the end so this is the bridge that we are hoping that it will be built soon the museum extension because we are doing some museums I want to show you a couple of them as you know museum is doomed to extend so this is Corbus's response to that fate by allowing the typology itself architecture itself to extend endlessly there of course there is a kind of lot of extensions happening right now in the world as you know addition can be autonomous or competitive like in MoMA seamless you no longer know what's original and what's added or Guggenheim which the addition is completely kind of subservient this is one of my first projects that worked on in New York with Dan it was Whitney at the time, Whitney extension when we started there was an infamous proposal from Michael Graves being cancelled and what we did was not to actually demolish the brownstone in front but to launch the building from the courtyard of the brownstone and then loom over and have enough space between the Breuer building of course I said Michael Graves one is infamous but this also became infamous and got cancelled and even Renzo Piano took over but he couldn't even finish this addition in Upper East Side as you know hence Whitney moved to downtown there is of course there is not of course there is a conspiracy theory that Renzo Piano and OMA is the same office because we always start and he takes over which is not true but I hope it was true so now Karen Wan is here the deputy director of New Museum so we are blessed to actually do the same kind of extension to a very iconic architecture in Bowery New Museum so our site is here New Museum as you know is not as any other museum entities nowadays they have a variety of activities like Ideas City, New Inc, it's an incubator and not just an exhibition so they carry a kind of diversity of face Bowery as you know is the representation of gentrification which of course instigated by the New Museum in the beginning so we had to really address that issue too I can't really show you the detail at all but this is a site that the Sana Building sits and our site was skinnier and longer so we thought even before designing what kind of relationship can exist because we had done so many extensions and also I learned personally from the Whitney case that you cannot really overwhelm the existing but also you have to provide different curatorial strategy etc and of course New and Old, two addition of two buildings of course creates bad and worse or New and Old you know this kind of dichotomy that is of course dangerous so even before we started designing we collected images that are representing maybe potentially interesting relationship like Marina and her husband where of course people has to go through in between or a rocket launcher that rocket and launcher you know you have different roles but works together so in short this was an image that was released we made the gallery spaces that are aligned to exactly to the existing building basically all the levels are aligned so the new ink office and the multifunctional room but two things we added heavy infrastructure at the back where another freight elevator and other infrastructure is and then also in the front on the west side as a kind of public face with a stair atrium and two dedicated gallery elevator that really creates a public movement visible but also to create a sense of orientation while you're in the building and that supports the existing building because as you know current building has rather longer waiting time to go up and down so this was the image that was released I think there was a kind of very harsh comments to this design but we also created this kind of public plaza in between typically any extension actually hides more of the existing building but here because we are creating this buffer we are actually exposing more of the facade of the existing building so this facade is currently not visible but it will be and then the two elevators that are visible and a public stair that is also visible and some terraces that are attached to an upper function you can see here the profile of the stack gallery and basically this is showing the public face we also wanted to contrast itself to a vertical museum to a horizontal museum so here because of the extreme setback from the street actually the upper part really disappears and gives respect to the Sana building so it looks kind of highly distinguished but it's actually highly connected I hope I can show you more in the future we also did other museum extensions this was a museum extension in Quebec City this was existing museum complex this is a site that the museum bought for the first time to have an interface to the public street the main boulevard and so what we did was to create this kind of manipulation where you peel the ground and then basically three entities simultaneously extend not just the museum so the museum extend but also so as park and so as city underneath so you can see that the park continues above the museum and the city slides under and the art becomes a catalyst between the park and the city so this is how it's finished you can see it's next to the church these are the existing museums this was at the opening so this is a grand hall it creates a new frontage to the city as an entrance the ground level is almost like an extension of a street because it draws people inside to the column free space that is surrounded by courtyard a cafe, the atrium, the shop and the temporary gallery so it really acts like a plaza because in Canada half of the revenue should be made not through the donation but revenue should be made by using the building so it really acts like an event space so this is the entrance that really looks into the park and also it touches the church so the church will be also part of the museum in the future so actually this museum is attached to the church and the former prison because the former prison was also converted to a museum so it's kind of a dream job to design a building that is simultaneously connected to a church and the prison so this is the I'm just kind of showing off my shaking hands moment with justing so you can see this is a kind of public almost like a public plaza at the opening but now you can see many dance music events art installations gala another party and even the wedding so it's really used as we intended there is a courtyard between the church and the museum that creates this kind of dialogue between the new and old this is a shop looking into the church the circulation is also matched or circulation itself so it creates this kind of a programmatic spine so this is a monumental stair that really creates a serpentine stair that really distributes people from different direction so this is a tunnel that connects to the existing building which we use as a gallery space so this is the auditorium so this is a tunnel that creates the three longest mural that is produced by the local Quebec artist and in the gallery a series of windows that really embraces the park and this is a stair window we call where you go out of the envelope and creates this kind of moment that you are immersed with nature the facade is like triple glazed glass we wanted to create a kind of building that brings a lot of natural light through the facade and also it creates this kind of ice palace like texture because the outer glass is a textured glass so you can see the buildings of facade changing with its different light conditions throughout the day our right nox gallery extension is in Buffalo as you might know Buffalo was designed by Olmstead and this is where the museum sits it's 1905 building that was built for the fair World's Fair and the 62 extension done by Gordon Brunshaft SOM in the Olmstead design park so it's a heavily charged kind of museum our first scheme which done through a competition was to create and this we thought actually is creating a wall to go through this building to the park beyond so the idea was to create this kind of Olmstead bridge light condition where the program goes up and then creates a gateway to the park so almost kind of revealing the Brunshaft building and creating an atrium below and then a museum above and then keeping the dialogue between the Brunshaft and the 1905 building but there is an upper mass and a kind of covered courtyard so to really minimize the footprint of the intervention so that you don't have to build anything on the park after this was announced there was a kind of heavy protest you can see here hire another firm this was a kind of high kind of vicious he's a rank amateur no comment but anyway we took it seriously so we moved the site so instead of here which we learned that some people really want to preserve here in the north at the parking lot in the beginning we thought here it could be kind of multidirectional building because you're liberated from this kind of heavy history axial building so we kind of unwinded the rooms of the 1905 building and made this kind of pine cone-like building with terraces next to each galleries and then a central atrium which we liked but there are some kind of different comments from different direction and in the end we kind of settled to this project where the location is the same so it's confusing the map is flipped but on the ground level there is a kind of two directional cross gallery and then four quadrants, four corners that houses a different program and then the two kind of flexible gallery on top so there's a kind of room-like condition on the ground and more kind of box typical box-like condition at the two levels above which I thought it could you know our inspiration was of course there are many inspirations but like Viralotonda by what was it I always forget sorry Palladio, sorry like it was a kind of hybrid of the kind of directional cross and the kind of room and the box which we thought it could be interesting reference because the gallery could sit at the heart of the building but to create a promote an openness we put different program into the four corners like loading, gallery and lobby and office and what we did also is to connect the top of the two galleries and then at the bottom of the ground to create this kind of what we call a sculpture court or promenade around so that you can actually enjoy the park throughout the year without being cold so it's covered almost like a winter garden that really wraps the building so you can see here so there's a double height exhibition space and the four corners that shows its transparency I think we really wanted to create something completely different to the boonshaft of the 1905 building which is hermetic and more introverted here much more extroverted so you can see here the galleries and the atrium this is a second level where this promenade really wraps the gallery so you can always escape to this promenade where many kind of type of different exhibition or gala or different type of activities could happen and the art there's a bridge that connects existing building to the new building which is cladded in a kind of highly polished metal and glazing in 1962 building we're converting this arm to atrium but also educational wing and the roof is now designed by Olafur Ellison it's called Common Sky to really create this kind of spectacle art installation as a roof we also actually this perineology we were always interested in depth how to understand the art world more in depth this study was done in Colombia actually perineology it's about how art events are actually infiltrating through the world this is the amount of biannuals that are happening in the world currently so in a given moment there are like 19 biannuals happening at the same time so you can imagine how art events are becoming more and more popular we also are investigating how art market is shifting for example the art fairs are dominating museum exhibitions in terms of attendees so our theory is more like the Bilbao effect where we actually my career started like 1998 and that was highly affected by Bilbao effect but now I think it's kind of changing into a kind of art basal effect where like people are content with tents and I think this is a kind of very dangerous shift for an architect or maybe you can call it a healthier shift because municipalities of course don't want to have or private entities don't want to have too many of a big building but something more flexible and more mixable with other industries but of course experience in those events are highly kind of generic so I guess we can do something about this these kind of observations led to propose something unique in Miami Beach this is in Buenos Aires in Puerto Madero where Alan Faena single-handedly made this area as a most expensive real estate in Buenos Aires by converting this former silo to an expensive hotel with Philip Stark and he came to Miami Beach buying this hotel here Saxony and then building a condominium by Norman Foster but we got these three sites to do cultural building it was kind of it started as a kind of ballroom but because of the Miami Beach's art basal effect we proposed to make something more than a ballroom so we decided to propose something like this urban urban urban urbanistically basically there are two buildings smaller sites so we decided to in one big site so we decided to create two four equal volumes we also decided to create this one kind of center by creating a kind of round building and then in the end made a building that actually is a hybrid a combination of a square and a cylinder so you can see this kind of four equal rather equal volume that this one looks like two buildings but actually one with a plan like this the square has a black box theater and this one has of course an event space but in a round and a dome so you have a highly distinct internal space that are connected that could be used as a single space or separate space so you can open and actually use as a single space or you can have two simultaneous events on this side you this is an area that is the creek and the water the ocean is so close so we decided to actually connect via big window so on the black box side there is a kind of big window that people can use also as a backdrop for the event there is also a lobby that is also like an amphitheater that is also a third event space so you can actually have three simultaneous events we also didn't want to attach a canopy to this kind of pure volume so we cut the volume and slide the landscape in as an entrance where it became a kind of covered plaza and this cantilever we basically utilized the façade so this is a kind of structural façade where there is no column inside which creates this kind of series of arches as a structure to sustain that in the end became almost like an organic kind of palm tree like pattern or like a seashell like pattern which was almost like 300 different window types which was cast in place so you can see how close it is to the beach and that appears like a seashell and while you're going up basically you have a view to outside this was basically during the construction which client always thought this was a great building because they you could actually see out from an event space but he didn't really know that we are building internal wall so he was very disappointed when the internal wall was built so what we did for the opening was choreography for the dance performance by Pam Tanowitz so we simulated the shadow movement of the opening day and then simulated the shadow how the shadow could cast through the fenestration there was no wall into this space and then project mapped that movement as if there was no internal wall that was kind of played together with the dance and we made this kind of big stage with the pigs that people can go in Sotheby's so art world is changing a lot so as the auction house we were lucky to be involved when they were really contemplating their own basically the organizational structure and the business model and I think the building was could really reflect that ambition to really change the entity itself so of course the auction house used to be a kind of place where the auction happens but not really other activities but nowadays the auction house itself is a multifaceted art entity art business entity so they are involved in art fairs, private sales so they are not no longer just a singular entity so what we did and also there are a lot of activities in different locations and also a lot of web utilization for the purchase and diversification of the goods this York Avenue building no one really knows this is the headquarter global headquarter of the Sotheby's building which sits on the kind of hospital district of 72nd in York it's like a palazzo like a big fat building which they currently are not really utilizing it well because their public function like gallery and the office are completely mixed everywhere randomly so the vertical circulation is basically not working so we did the massive plan for a year to really restack the building into a workspace to a storage and a flex gallery basically all the public function comes at the base and the kind of sales room as a theater at the center so currently quite dispersed is quite clarified while they are building they wanted to use the building while the renovation is happening so they we kind of outlined the phasing into kind of seven different phases to achieve the final goal which was also a very tough negotiation with basically workers and operations so the first phase is done is public galleries down so in the future this will be offices and basically this will be the high end storage so this kind of public phase was brought down rather than creating a kind of singular big gallery space which tend to be the kind of typology that of course every museum wants for the flexibility, Sotheby's instead wanted to have a flexibility through diversity because their business model is to create a unique selling rooms to each potential customers as well as creating this kind of big exhibition so they didn't want to have a turn over time of building temporary walls in big galleries rather they wanted to have multiple different rooms basically turn a room into a sales room so we decided to provide a wide range of rooms like 40 different rooms that are clustered differently so they can actually use different clusters for different events and different exhibitions but each room can be also tailored to a sales room that ambition of course didn't match the column grid that existed so you will see how we decided to actually embrace the column and then expose them as a kind of feature of the gallery of course the column is the enemy of the gallery but we thought in this case actually creates a very unique experience in the character to the galleries so this is a double height space where we actually reinforce the concrete column so it's very fat on the ground level on the second level where you have a lot of windows towards 72nd street that was also a problem before that it was not really visible and double height space and here also another double height space we reinforce the column again so you can see the original size and then the reinforced size that are slightly fatter this is actually open to public anytime so please go and visit it's actually quite enjoyable different experience to a museum because you can actually see the price so you really feel like you really see the art in a different way also the density of art is quite unique as you can see they're really packed with art so it's actually quite interesting experience because this was a Kodak factory before it was converted by KPF in 80s so we decided to actually expose the column and the column cap of course when you're trying to create a drop ceiling you will hide the column cap so we decided to create this kind of cove detail where you expose the column cap while you're finishing the ceiling and we hatched the column to expose the aggregate well this is just how it was successful I have so many so I gonna skip some of them so this is the first building in LA I think when I first joined OMA I was working on a universal headquarters led by Dan Wood which unfortunately got cancelled since then we've been trying so hard to do something in LA it is happening which is extension of a synagogue in Wilshire Drive this is existing temple and this was a parking lot where there was an international competition to do a gathering space basically a building focused on gathering so what we did was to took their kind of suggested box and then basically swayed away to create a kind of a gap or a wedged gap to the existing temple to pay some respect and distance and also there was a historic school behind so we also swayed away and instead made a kind of parallelogram to the Wilshire Drive that made also this kind of dynamic shape so it's actually only two manipulations of the box that created this shape which we thought in LA where a lot of buildings are still quite laconic and kind of basic we didn't want to over design the building so we decided to start from the box and then conceive something unique there's three major gathering space one that mimics the dome of the temple that a lot of program faces down onto so it's something like this it's kind of vault space, wooden vault space where a lot of events could happen that connects basically the Wilshire Drive to the courtyard of the historic school so it's almost like a tunnel too, tunnel space there are another chapel space that frames the stained glass window of the existing temple that has like half inside, half outside to really kind of enjoy the weather of LA and then roof is also an event space so you can actually see this is a highly almost like a machine of gathering space and those three voids are interconnected so you can actually have unexpected views through those voids to different moments in the building and this is a lobby where it's like an Indian while you go up to each along the kind of vault into different level the facade is inspired by the the dome, temple dome space which is really consists of series of hexagons so we made a hexagonal one pattern, one unit which is a hexagon and a single rectangular window that could be rotated according to the program that overall creates this kind of playful pattern this is a current mock-up so which is under construction let me think which one I will present fashion or performance UIC or fashion fashion week, yeah, right on Med Costume Institute this was 2016 and the theme was man versus machine basically portraying the blurring boundary between man-made and machine-made basically auto-couture and ready-to-wear boundary so not typically of course a fashion exhibition consists of a single designer or single era or single culture instead this one was really about the differences and the similarity of the different time so our instinct was that this people really had to focus on the detail of the garments the site was in the Lehman wing luckily so there was not really a gallery space this was an atrium and a corridor space also this Lehman wing actually sits at the furthest point but at the kind of central axis of the museum so you can see there was a full of natural light and not even a gallery space where we had to do the exhibition which resulted to think for us to think that we had to create our own environment as you know, once you enter there's a lot of classical language and especially before you get to the Lehman wing there is a medieval court where you have also like church-like situation so we were highly inspired by that context so we decided to actually create a kind of cathedral-like section to cover the existing Lehman wing which we called Ghost Cathedral covered by the light membrane, translucent membrane also to black out the atrium we put the dome in the center and we also added the new floor to this kind of atrium so that people can just arrive to this space and then stay in the center not going down so this was a kind of even if it was temporary we added any square footage to their building for past I think, I don't know, 100 years so they are very nervous Susan really helped us to really get through this so you can see this existing structure and then the intervention was a single circle and then we used a gap between the structure existing building and the gap to create this kind of series of pochets that are basically a space to exhibit this is a membrane it's a kind of a scrim that is typically used for theaters which becomes very solid when you have a light from the front but when you have a light from the back it becomes very transparent so overall it creates a very complex transparencies so this is a new floor that we added and we put the Chanel dress in the center that the pattern was projected to the dome which is in the end the blackout all the structure was done by a very off the shelf scaffolding it was a very difficult project because we couldn't really prove that this project works and even like a week two weeks before the opening it was all scaffolding because we didn't want to start putting the membrane until the scaffolding was done because the membrane was very sensitive so basically at the time the director president came two weeks ago and thought it was all construction sites still and really freaked out so it was very difficult to convince that in the end it will be like this where the scaffolding was all covered the membrane and creates this kind of transparencies so this is before after before and one thing we were focused on was not to use too many video screens because we thought nowadays fashion exhibitions tend to overuse monitors and show catwalk pictures too much that we thought it would distract people's attention to really focus on the garments itself so we did use the media but only in the way that integrated to the architecture so it's project mapped to each poches and only showing the detail of the garments so no flat screens the media gets turned on and off so you can see the translucency of these poches if you're not on you can actually see the garments behind every designer had to actually make a centerpiece for the gala night as you know one of the biggest events of the universe so I had to present to Anna Winter as you can see was not really a successful meeting in the beginning she eventually took her sunglasses off this was the double spiral we kind of designed one is actual flowers the other was laser cut flowers to really simulate the man versus machine this was the kind of version that they delivered unfortunately what was kind of amazing was that we designed the red carpet together with this that actually spills onto the red carpet which we thought it would never happen and it was reported as highly distracting red carpet because there are three colors but we thought actually if you look at the pictures it's actually highly successful because there is this kind of round part in the center where people thought celebrities thought that that's a point to stand this is like perfect, like hiding so after that we designed the oar exhibition in Denver which uses a metal panel to reflect can I just present one more thing so this is the end mixed use I think when I'm teaching here in any universities nowadays mixed use is such a kind of common project and mixed use often actually avoids really confronting with the specificity of each program so I think it's a very dangerous path where of course a lot of colors in the section always looks great but actually none of the program is actually well thought out and I think that's a tendency that is happening in the school but also in reality not to mention it was Rem who actually discovered or publicly stated the potential of high rise having different program in the downtown athletic club also the increasing land value simulation of course shows that the land values goes up in the center of any given city of course the hybridization of program happens this is a city of Tokyo which is big enough to have different characters of the city or towns represented by different colors here which you if you compare that to a dinner table it's like alacalt style kind of exciting dinner which you have conversation stimulator of basically different dishes nowadays there are a lot of big commercial mixed use building that are developments that are happening also in Tokyo for example this one Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown have exactly the same kind of ingredients so basically people tend to follow the success of the other to actually deliver a similar kind of programmatic constellation which we call it a bento box project which of course in a single container you have different program but it's always the same so what used to be more kind of dynamic and different in terms of experience in the city there are a lot of bento box in the city that actually creates a kind of predictability to the city so we are, we as an architect ask by the developer to design through different facades, different shapes exciting building but if the program is the same basically the experience will be inherently the same so what I'm saying is that as an architect you should think of a way to actually be engaged in the programming too and I think this is not just Tokyo but it's happening everywhere and I think that this is a project that I'm doing in Tokyo, this is a final project this is a 260 meter tower next to three existing towers it's at the Tokyo Bay Area and close to Tokyo Tower this is in the new axis coming from a new Olympic that is happening next year this boulevard is actually a former boulevard that was planned by Makasa when Japan lost the war basically Makasa drew this line to actually connect the Bay Area to the American Embassy that remained now as a kind of new boulevard ironically a new axis of the Olympic Mori building has been building many towers since Roppongi Hills so now it's not just a freestanding Roppongi Hills tower but they have been building many towers so our site actually sits at the junction of three zones that they are planning to develop so what we thought is that our tower could be the one that connects different towers not just the kind of freestanding tower because this new axial condition that activity in green actually continues which in the city of Tokyo it's really rare to have a notion of axis because it's quite chaotic in terms of its grid so rather than a tower that connects doesn't really connect itself we kind of emphatically connected the tower through a bridge park so that this tower actually connects the axis and then draw activity in green and then create a network through different Mori towers that's how we present it so you can see here this is existing plinth with the park there's a bridge park that penetrates through the center of the tower like this in order to achieve this we are moving the central core to the side core at the Sky Lobby so that the park can actually go through the dead center of the tower which we thought was very important because the public space actually claims the center of the tower which of course typically occupied by the elevator cores so this is a central area where the park actually penetrates through of course there are retails on the both side but this is a public space and that axis actually goes up and then make each program has a special program in the center so that this axis is actually visible from everywhere in Tokyo so you can see here this is a model that Vincent actually made you can see one side it's a shape that one side is this kind of pyramid shape the other side is the opposite of that and the center is basically connecting those two shapes and there is a new metro station that is underground so it's also connected to the network of the Tokyo Metro network so for the first time Tokyo Metro can actually have this kind of big underground plaza when they get off and at the top as you know Roppongi Hills also has a museum here we are also proposing some kind of a media museum slash gallery where it's focused on media and business and so on and at the top a park and also an infinity pool not as big as Singapore but a kind of tiny pool that overlooks the Imperial Palace so you can see this new axis that goes vertical, a park and the connection through different towers that Mori is developing thank you that was an amazing trip sorry I'm too excited my favorite part is these scrolling through the 100 projects you were going to skip tonight there it was really an incredible lecture and just amazing to see the work not just how much work but the quality of the work the diversity of the project, the scale and you started the lecture sort of by reminding us that even if OMA in a way launched it's an idea of the diagram that the work of the office moved well beyond the diagram and I think you insisted on the notion of beauty but you know as I saw the work beyond beauty it's also just sheer expression of every single element whether it's structure material, layers, programs this is kind of accumulation and excess of contrasting aspects that come together and it's incredibly complex and three-dimensional and certainly not diagrammatic and I was interested to see how that line of thinking produced new areas like the bridges taking an aspect that has always been the building as a series of bridges but now literally the exploration of the bridge itself, incredible bridges and really beautiful kind of inventions and then kind of bringing back the bridge to buildings the building as bridge but this time not just as a stack of cantilevered beams but rather sort of bridging different parts of cities and taking the kind of thought process on preservation but seeing how much of the office now is not just taking the metropolis as context but literally another architects building as site and how much work you're doing in terms of kind of this conversation and these additions and also seeing the kind of opposite or rather a lot of the projects are exploring the envelope in your way and the sort of skin and the wrapper even in the last met exhibition the kind of beautiful where you have it both ways, the expression of structure but also the kind of form and so I guess I'm just sharing some thoughts because I could see some kind of continuity but I could also see some new trajectories and I was curious having grown with the office and what do you feel is most results, I mean is about this continuity and where you see these kind of moments of change or invention or how do you read that kind of evolution? Well I think that the diversity that you're mentioning is becoming a weakness to be honest because I think when we are actually competing, of course architecture is not only about the competition but when we are in our generation where the complexity that Rem and OME have been delivering is no longer possible to actually deliver in the way that we were delivering so I think we really have to invent a way of communication and the way of designing and also telling the design that is not the way that OME has been doing like a kind of heroic and also always challenging the typologies and so on. Of course we have that essence of those things but we are of course focused in building, we are also focused in those observations that are that interest us and that hopefully creates a kind of space that wasn't really possible by Rotterdam and I think of course New York had a different moment since 2006 but I think we are finally finding the luxury to really think ourselves and to define what we are even beyond OME otherwise our office becomes too laborious to understand even internally and also externally. Of course the diversity is great but you can also say we are completely out of focus and I also want to hear from different people that I respect how they think about it because of course each project is great but what is our you know main message or main goal as OME New York but also as me as an architect. That's a big question but I Yes I'm the first one too. No I think well I'm interested in this since the office was so much a result of a set of conditions. Of course with someone who actually sees conditions in a very particular way but I'm interested in your comment that the kind of complexity that was able to be produced and maybe was appropriate to a certain time in Rotterdam is no longer of our time today and maybe in New York but that is that context in itself enough to produce a different kind of trajectory here for the office. You think it's a kind of self excuse that the complexity cannot be communicated because you start your own office after OME and probably you understand how tough REM was always to create such a radical direction that is consistent on newness and radicality which really is difficult in terms of business and also as a stamina I can't keep up with it. Is it me who is thinking that using the kind of time as an excuse to not deliver that or you think it's actually changing? I think it can be a different form of discipline. I mean that's what was always interesting. I remember when we did the Prada exhibition there were two teams, the Prada team and the Herzog and the Moron team. The Prada team was 20 people all night producing four models, it was a complete mess and the Herzog and the Moron team had sent two people they showed up at nine, they were done at five it's just a process of a particular but certainly I mean just looking at the work tonight there were I mean if I the new museum or the by the way the Albright Knox Museum is really beautiful the bridges are incredibly intelligent in their kind of there's a sort of simplicity to them but they're very complex and I think it's an efficiency of means is a different form of discipline so maybe we idealized the the chaos but Well I guess you know when we were studying Rem was highly inspirational and well Rem still is maybe but to the younger generation are we inspirational and if I were the student probably I won't say so but Well the auditorium is pretty full tonight so show you're doing okay. No but it's just curiosity but is this inspirational or I don't know Fujimoto might be more inspirational you know so I don't know if our role has shifted from you know Rem's era who was of course very focused on giving inspiration to the industry but now we are instead building more but you know less inspirational that's a kind of of course a dilemma that we have and that's a kind of of course in this dilemma actually we personally I kind of stopped thinking about it because of course I can never be Rem I of course carry the ethos of OMA but we have to be ourselves to continue so that's where we are and as I said we are really looking back the production of past 12 years now and then really trying to understand the you know our chain of thoughts Well I would say that the kind of art and cultural institutional work you know is quite specific maybe to New York and wasn't so strong at the time that's a kind of difference but I also think that students today are asking different kinds of questions they are not just asking how do we innovate formally or materially or how do we reinvent the discipline or there's a lot of questions about how do we actually survive and reinvent the practice of architecture and you know what what does it mean to practice how does one practice what are the ingredients that architects have at their disposition and you know it was very interesting to me that you claim that you know we should stop saying that it's not important to build anymore and kind of leave it to everyone else and reclaim maybe the importance of the you know the building that's kind of one possible position where I think a lot of questions are around whether architectural practice needs to be about building and you know that that would be a clear distinction so I also think that the questions have changed and the idea that you're building a different kind of practice with you know is also has it's a different kind of form of innovation in a way Well the only thing I can say is that it's still exciting for younger generations to start with There are a couple of many Columbia grads in the office now Good, keep hiring them please They are mostly kind of leading projects so Well on this I would just want to ask one last question and then open it up you know I one of the let's say interesting part about you know this sense of you know taking over a sort of body of work and is that you kind of articulate the history of the of the office better than the office itself and suddenly there are words that I don't think that have emerged like observation before research you know that there's a difference between the two and representation which was never a word that was mentioned isn't it but yet it was always clear that there was a kind of representational project both kind of aesthetic and visual but also in terms of you know identity that these two poles are kind of clearly articulated is quite interesting and I just would ask I mean it's a little bit the same like what do you have today as observations on the future of architecture I mean what would be some of the questions that or answers or observations that you have found and yeah it's hard to say in a single observation but those things like how the mix uses becoming the dominant typology or the landscape and architecture integration and how architecture should actually deal with the landscape as a means to communicate I didn't show today but what I did in GSD about the food research food as a catalyst to really look at the world's change the global change and also the typological change those things you know it always starts with a kind of slight kind of hunch level and then cultivate it using this kind of intellectual basis like the schools to really cultivate those that's that's the kind of initiative that architects can gain and of course you know Rem was always very good at that and that part we are really trying to continue to come up with something that we are interested in and trying to capture always a moment of change that could influence the evolution of architectural typologies so it's hard to say what it is but you know the only ways to really look at extensively what's happening in the world and come up with those topics that could potentially covers the our you know the future Hi there I'm interested in the process sort of that you mentioned in the Albright Knox gallery of releasing a plan and the media responding to it and then you changing your design as a result of the you know outside pressure and changing again and I'm wondering you know I'm especially in the current like political climate I don't trust everything I hear from the media or trust that the feedback I'm being given is necessarily the right path and I'm wondering what your process is as an architect to hear criticism and value it or to trust the strength of your own decisions you know in the design Yeah maybe it came across that way but it was a little bit of a joke that that single tweet actually kind of changed our mind but let's say this way that both us and client had a misunderstanding of how Boonshaft building was loved how much it was loved and these protests actually have gone through it but the time and the energy that takes to go through it we collectively decided it's not worth it and we decided to move the site so it wasn't an easy decision and it wasn't for sure not just through the pressure of the radical commentators but it was all for the kind of it was a collective decision but yeah we actually look at those radical comments quite seriously we monitor them through tweets and that person I blocked because he personally attacked me but we take it seriously because there are some truths in it but not necessarily to listen to it of course a firm like us there are a lot of people who wants to comment something radical so we are used to it but at the same time we are quite serious in acknowledging them but often these kind of comments happens when there is a limitation on the material I think even like you know when that comment came we only released like 10 slides that showed a kind of radical move but there was a lot more research, a lot more depth into a project but often of course only portion of it gets communicated and that basically not knowing actually creates such a superficial criticism but to what extent is the feeling of that fragmentation that you talk about you're a victim of Oma's own success in the sense that a lot of these moves or ideas that were initiated 20 years ago have now become so common and so part of the practice that we take them for granted you can't have a building now that doesn't have a stair that's also an auditorium every single building has that in some way so these ideas have so filtered into the consciousness and the way that we think about applying the metropolitan to the architectural that now we see it everywhere but it's also a kind of crisis in that aspect where an architectural practice is so schizophrenic in the sense that every project is different and so the only thing that can tie them together is the power of your own thought that threw them and that line is that something that you can find as you're making the work or you can only find it retroactively after 12 years to look back and see which projects fit and which ones don't and then slowly weeding them ones out that don't so that you start to see continuity that way that you can never see continuity as you're doing it somehow it's only in retrospect I think it's just us or me that of course I started as the outpost to continue OMA and suddenly we started to do a little bit of an independent direction that's why this kind of schizophrenia or like OMA but not OMA still exists but now we are completely focused on not OMA but not successfully yet as you were saying like we often discuss in the office please don't do typical OMA as a kind of starting point because we still see what we only see our evolution in that way as opposed to maybe the outposts sorry the offices that spawn from OMA maybe has more kind of not luxury but more probably easier to continue what OMA has been doing because they kind of can envelope in their own trajectory but here we have to be even more critical about typical OMA move and typical OMA material selection but it's not successful yet but we are discussing that and I don't know the way to achieve it unless you really completely change the way we work or the way we start like okay material or something else like as you mentioned like Herzog and Domron but that's also I don't know almost like throwing everything that we learned but I guess that's the only way or is it the moment we're in now where that sense of mission or heroism is missing somehow do you see that as a general condition or as a specific condition to yourself I think in general it's like that a little bit but some people don't really have to are not shy of doing things so they are quite powerful offices if they don't think too much like we are thinking yeah but it's difficult but that's why I guess one thing that we are missing is like a sense of collaboration I think OMA despite of the dominance of Rem I think there was a much more openness to collaborate with other thinkers and other architects and other designers now I think we are a little bit insulated and we don't really have we are not embracing the power of collectively thinking about the way we get through the current moment so Hi I'm sorry if this is such a generic question but speaking of the questions that we are going to be asking in the younger generation it comes to architecture and practice I think everybody can agree that few of the biggest issues are climate change and the energy crisis and so on I just wanted to ask as a leader in the practice how do you see the firm going forward with regards to these issues how you view them how you maybe plan to tackle it or is it just such an issue that is so embedded in the practice in general that is not like something that you put forward it's the latter last one I guess in our case that we are actually working with the post-Sandy thing in New Jersey and many of course projects are sustainable in the kind of checklist level but we are not really engaging proactively the way the sustainability could be evolved so we are a little bit maybe not behind but we are not putting those themes forward as a means to design it because partially because I just don't think using those issues as a means to defend your design is not healthy in my opinion like Bjarke's big view or whatever that really come across to me as using the disaster as a means to really radically renovate the urban edge in New Jersey if you actually carefully model the flood it really comes down to a couple of points of the streets where the water comes in you don't really need a big park to prevent the water so for me that is actually a more better solution to surgically fix those points where the water came in imposing a grand vision over the disaster but that's of course but we are interested in sustainability and how the energy generation could change the way that the city in a much higher level we are maybe interested in alright well that was amazing please don't worry no it really was incredible and to be honest it's also incredible that you are asking those questions of the office and what it stands for today and I think many in your position would not so it's very inspiring that the search continues thank you so thank you