 I think they're muted Ken. I think you're okay. I think they're just muted Good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much for joining. It's my pleasure to introduce Barry Bergdahl to start the program Good afternoon those in New York. Good morning. Those on the West Coast Contraged for those who are in Portugal and in Europe Welcome everybody. This is great honor falls to me to open the event Which is a celebration of the belated but beautiful publication in an English language edition of Alvaro Caesar's book imagining the evident published by Monad Books With Daniela Sa who will be introducing the book in just a moment. I Think season needs no introduction One of the few benefits of zoom and of webinars is that we can all all around the world be with him at the same time I don't think there's a single person on screen who is actually physically in the architecture school At Columbia, but it falls to me as a Columbia faculty member to represent the school and the Dean Amal Andros to Welcome you on behalf of the on behalf of the school. There's Great deal of information on each of the panelists this afternoon on the website of GSAP So I'm not going to read what is there if you want the full bios and backgrounds of each of the speakers but I'll tell you a little bit about the order that will be following Daniela Sao who is the publisher Monad books and the founder Monad books not only brings us this title, but a whole collection of wonderful work on Portuguese and in Brazilian architecture in particular recent works on Sao Paulo and on on Mendes de Housha And I think it is between Caesar and Mendes that there is now a kind of renewed architectural design and urban Relationship between Portugal and Brazil who's reflected in a publication program of Monad So she'll explain the book and then we will in sequence Not the sequence on the website, but the sequence I'm going to explain to you Each of us speak for a few minutes about Caesar's work about the book in particular Wonderful compilation of texts and of reproductions of some of Caesar's amazing drawings After Daniela will turn to Francesco d'Alcoe who's speaking joining us from Venice. I'm sure you all know his extensive Bibliography his many years as the editor of Casabella And so he will he will be the first to speak and then I will follow on Professor of architectural history at at Columbia University and perhaps the least directly connected to Cesar and then after me will speak Peter Testa Who's joining us from the other Venice as he just told us a few minutes ago on the other side of the globe in, California But a that was his destination after some time working directly With Caesar and also being a faculty member in the 1990s at GSAP So we all remember for those of us who are old enough remember your time with us Peter and thank you for joining and then finally we'll turn to To Ken Frampton who I would say personally is not only one of my mentors But it was through Ken Frampton that I was first motivated to seek out the work of Caesar on a first trip to Portugal many years ago and so Ken seemed to Daniela and I as the The best speaker to close the formal session and then we will move into what you're all waiting for so you have to stay online for a while a Chance to converse with Alvaro Cesar and to answer your questions that you might put into the into the question function So without any further ado, I'm going to turn the proceedings over to Daniela Sal congratulating her for the publication Thank you so much Thank you also on the Columbia To host this this event. It's really a pleasure And I would like also to thank the Royal Institute because we their support this book was possible to be made and Their support will work is very important also and I would like to thank to all the panelists here present To Ken Frampton from Francisco del Cuo very battle Peter Testa And also of course our student to be here with us He's always a pleasure to have this sharing moments and able to share it with a larger audience and it's also to them that I'm I direct my Acknowledgements to our audience Also in Portugal as I know many students from Portugal are also attending this session and across the globe which is a really wonderful and And very dear to us also as a publisher So today we are all gathered here on this book that I have here in end And I will just show some images Okay So I believe that you are seeing an image of the book, right? So okay, that's shared Daniella So I will have to share it here. I'm sorry Okay, okay here. Okay, right. So I'll go here around this book Which is wonderful and So this book imagining the evident and It could well have a title another title like how did I do some of my projects and I always have this difficulty in finding a more a more defined question one could ask to oneself and A more courageous task to share it with others. So this is So this is a very Very dear testimony of a life of work of An architectural thinking about his own process. So it is quite a Testimony to have now it edited in English. It was already Published in Italian the original edition is Italian from 98 and it was edited by the late collaborator the Italian We do a general Gregorio So now it has its English edition and of course that This book is also a conversation It was made. It is a result of three long recorded sessions and All all of them along is design process so In here we can find Caesar in his own words describing societies describing resources references Conquerors or Optical during his own process of project But of course that if we have here a book on an author explain his own own method We don't have here like a Process that one can follow to his own work. So It is it is a testimony on how inventing or creating Architecture or creating a new design. It can be a new chapel or a museum or simply share And these are these are texts from from the book it Sorry, okay So it is always addressing to this question on how did some Some person can do some of his own designs and it begins with a very defined quote So it begins with this sentence that says to begin with the obsession of originality is an unrefined and rudimentary process so We are here confronting with a text that that might address The novelty the creation the new and the first thing that it says to us and that beginning with that obsession of the new as a new form may not be quite a good a good way and The structure itself Starts with this question with this sentence this statement that repeat is never to repeat. It's again another defined Statement also as the title the title itself Seems to contain a kind of contradiction because we have on one side Imagining which is creating some something and on the other side the evidence so The fact the something that we can see with our own eyes and this contradiction is really interesting because the two relates to to each other What is more impressive in this in this text is that He addresses the idea of the novelty by ideas of or by concepts of such as banality and Caesar says and I'm quoting banality Has an ambiguous meaning Here say Caesar. I'm not using it to say an interesting or without quality but in the sense of availability in continuity and Then and this this sentence is very very precise the exercise of observation is a priority for an architect so this double sense of the of the Imagining and creating the new and then at the same time that he focused our attention on the the act of seeing in some way as the new itself is already there and it would be for us to have this exercise of seeing and this is an idea that Caesar reports many times this act of seeing that is built with a lot of practice and a lot of Experiences, but it is like I think that this is a very defined idea Very wonderful idea to think of that in some way to consider something new already there but We have to learn how to see it and that's why this concept of new it's constantly during the book Put it away of the new forms and originality and breaking new from scratch but it's like an exercise a deep exercise of seeing of a Kind of practice of attention to reality in that attention on reality is also very Visible very evident on his drawings this act of constant drawings and as we are speaking now in our table you cannot see but in our table are large-scale large-scale and drawings that were here when we arrived So it's a constant presence this this act of exercising the eye and exercising the end To be able to see something that is already there but we cannot see it yet and that's I think is a very wonderful idea to to consider the new thing and And the ability of the new thing to have some kind of naturality some kind of obvious Some kind of evidence and and here we meet the title again Imagining what is evident. It is already there, but not only not anyone of us can be able to see So I think that what is more? Preciable in this book And I will show here some pages briefly is this kind of Kind of lesson that we get here on An architect that explain his own work is that we should not follow Because we don't have here like a process or a method to copy. We have here a position through the world facing the reality and that position that that Capability of see the world is is very intense on the drawings But it's also on the way in which he writes and describes reality and context and Situations and details as we can see here So all these drawings are also all are always working drawings as I can see also in the text The text is always a working text is a working is a text from from the point of view of who creates It's it's kind of a theory of design and not not not that theory of architecture, but the theorem of behind the person who will have this This practice of project and so The book ends a bit with this autobiography autobiographical note, which is very interesting and also did the drawing that accompanies it Which is an author facing himself in the mirror. I think that will be Kind of final testimony on this position of the artist of the architect Which is to find in his own process a way of relating to the world a way of Seeing the intelligence in the reality and with that working on the creation of new projects So so I think that this book addresses many architects to look inside also into also try to To go on this exercise of of how do I do some of my projects? And that's this can be very refined to to one because it's also a very problematic exercise, but I think that this This is what makes this book very very Great testimony. So I would I am very much looking forward to see what All the panelists will have to comment on and Once again, thank you so much for being present and be present here to to share ideas on this wonderful book We have this like lucky to have also sees that we does So I'm very much looking forward to have this this meeting and this talk at the end of the presentations Thank you so much. Thank you very very well We will pass on to Francesco Thank you. Thank you to everybody. It's nice to see also Through this mechanical tool so many friends around of the world Thank you Daniela for sending me the books the book which obliged me to go back and more or less to 23 25 years when I read for the first time the essays collected in this book In this book, it's Absolutely appropriate The title that had been used when the book was published for the first time imagining imagining the evident implies strong and fundamental distinction between imagination and invention Which is a topic that Daniela saw sublime and in essay published in The English edition of the book and which I think is Absolutely fundamental to understand the meaning of a Caesar's work Imagining and not invention Imagining is to discover what is hidden when Everything is apparently evident the evident of the things is not real if not explained and and Lighted by the imagination The evidence without imagination evidence without imagination is just a mute word Just a word which doesn't mean anything Imagination implies first of all the attitude that to give an interpretation of what is just already there and This was one of the greatest passage of one of the Essay, I would quote to honor Caesar in this occasion because Because the fact that I read this essays as I said more or less 225 years ago Implied for me an exercise today What does a Caesar represent for me? What does his work represent for me? because several of the statements I read in In those essays appeared continuously in my work as a kind of Continuous reference that Consciously or unconsciously I use of the continuous The exercise of the observation I think that this is one of the key to understand why Caesar is continuously drawing drawing for him is an exercise or two to observe to analyze that to to exercise the imagination Well, his works are not Naturalistic expression of what is there but always interpretation of what to the things that Transfer to the image and what the imagination could and can do about the materials that The evident offer to us There is no drawing without Imagination and Caesar is always drawing because this is an exercise of imagination Which brings him to nourish what is what he explained and in one of the essays Daniela published in this new book, which is the the second spontaneity There is a spontaneous relationship with the the first to spontaneous relationship with them with the we have with the evident Afterwards, there is a second a second Spontaneity which is nourished instead by the imagination and I think that this is one of the most important characteristic of the most important works by Caesar and is the key to understand that this continuous investigation about the Reality which is hidden under the evident represented by his drawings based continuous continuous activity as in a drawing This implies also and it is a direct consequence of the meaning of what evidence is for Caesar the fact that there is a kind of Returning Appreciation and then turn a turning a large Returning love for the idea of banality Banality is another aspect. It's another word which can be used as equivalent of Evident also under the banality Also, the banality implies the the use of the imagination What is banal always is a challenge for imagination and this is an aspect Which is perfectly represented as far as and the suit in a Caesar architectural work At the end of all that there is an attitude which is really really Really deeply modern and deeply rooted in one of the great problem of our age beauty for Caesar beauty for Caesar is when When the beauty is Empty of beauty Beauty is the beauty Without beauty without the research of beauty Beauty is the byproduct of this dire of the center sentence extraordinary passage I can read The true beauty is the beauty emptied of beauty This is one of the most interesting aspect I think we can perceive in a Caesar work and it is one of the gift that he gave to us Obviously this it's a kind of synthesis of all what he did During his architectural career, but our beauty emptied of beauty Beauty is not a need Beauty is the attitude which can be reached through the imagination not through the invention You don't invent beauty you find beauty when you are able to empty your activity from the need of beauty and this is very important and implies also something which is in my opinion Extremely meaningful to understand the condition we are leaving leaving in our age There is a phrase that was used in one of the great great text written in 1927 the famous lecture that Hugo von Hofmastal gave in Munich at the presence for instance of Thomas Mann to give you an idea when he The German title the German title I don't know The English translation of this but I try to do it the German title is Das schriftum als geistiger rounder The title means the work of writing in This German word that's a shift to implies the idea of work of work It's not just an exercise. It's work. It's work This work to which become geistiger spiritual and become the spiritual round the spiritual space Which is the space which identify a nation This great question, which is at the bottom of this fundamental Speech that von Hofmastal gave in 1927 Implies this This final statement which in my opinion should conclude any any way of thinking any Attempt to understand the real meaning of the greatest Works by season. I try to translate it in English But obviously to be correct. I should say it before in German the vulgarity There's plans is the business then in Literary, I would understand. I would translate Architech, Architech, Tunisian beruf The vulgarity of the plebs Is the most wicked in the architectural profession of vulgarity that plebe a maische perversa da profesão Architech tonica La vulgarità della plebe vulgarity of plebs This is really something which is so far from any of the Most important work from the attitude I would say from the moral attitude of sins the vulgarity of plebs To stay away from all what is vulgar For this reason, I think that Alvaro Caesar is one of those human human beings which in my opinion are part of The spiritual nation of which I am honored to be part. Thank you Thank you, Francesco. I made a mistake in suggesting you go first because now it's very hard to follow you after that Wonderful insightful homage So I've written something just not to be too long and to leave time for us to hear from Peter and Ken For me, it's a really huge honor to be part of this panel this afternoon as I have first inspired by Ken Frampton's teaching and writings been seeking out Caesar's buildings on trips now for over 30 years and I am proud to have been able working with Pedro Godanio to have brought some of Alvaro Caesar's projects into the collection of the Museum of Modern Art during my tenure there These included some of the types of drawings that are as much the argument of the text collected together in imagining the event Evident as they are an invitation to think about the very nature seems to me of the act of architecture The book itself as we've heard is 23 years old given to us now in English in this beautiful design and presentation Thanks to the mentorship program of Rolex where Caesar performed one more of his countless acts of generosity As he is as much a teacher and educator in Porto and beyond as one of the most consequential architects of our time One is struck from the very first sentence that this is at once a volume of reflections That is quite unlike most statements of that time in 1990s Even as it resonates with the longest traditions of architectural thinking and theory Indeed the idea of respect for tradition and a refusal of the avant-garde fetish of originality Is characteristic of Caesar's position and of his work from the outset as he began work with Fernando Tavara One of the first lines of the first essay in the book Caesar says architecture has no meaning and less in relation to nature That it seems to me might be read either as a Prediction of the environmental and climatic crisis that is fundamental to our existence now two decades later Two decades after these lines were first printed in Italian and to the very opening lines at the same time and in the argument of the Abiloges 1753 essay on architecture loge's collection of six texts on buildings a kind of similar collection of essays on Building landscape design in city is often considered a very starting point of modern architectural thought a text that was at once a Fundamental revision and yet at the same time a reflection upon the oldest book on architecture that we have that of atrovious But nature for Caesar is neither a metaphor for Enlightenment reason nor of its child structural rationalism as in loge for Caesar Is as much interested in human nature Which for him has as much to do with our inner being as with some higher disembodied reason He's some of many phrases. I love I wonder how they are rendered from Portuguese, but they're fantastic in English He speaks of tough intuition and in another passage of instinctive wisdom The human animal Is more than a reasoning brain Calculating loads and spans she or he is an inhabitant of a complex world of sensations and reactions That draws much from the unwritten and the unspoken The drawings in the book it seems to me are somewhere between that unspoken and the utterances that company them. I would like very much in the Second part of this seminar to hear Caesar reflect again on these provocative inventions of his tough intuition and Instinctive wisdom as to hear about some of the many projects that have developed from his intuition and wisdom Since these words were crafted over two decades ago Nature for Caesar as he writes and draws in such symbiotic harmony is more about the nature of the site the inhabitation of the site of the terrain of the place as It is about an abstracted notion of nature in the 18th century sense or in the ecological Consciousness per se as it is developed over the decades of since Caesar's own early practice it is trees qua trees rather than trees as metaphor for structure and it is a sense of place that is it once as Pragmatic as Vitruvius's notion that the choice of site is the first skill and contribution of the architect and yet and something Nonetheless that transcends any pre-lapsarian nostalgia Nor is it simply a pragmatic relationship to resources to a healthy respect for solar orientation for water resources Or prevailing winds as in Vitruvius's first book Caesar's nature is also the poesis of the site Embodied in the story recounted in the book of Fernando Tavoro's iconic analysis of the challenge of building the Boa Nova project for Caesar's hometown of Matosinos that first brought attention internationally to his design genius The building should be here he quotes Tavoro as saying Tavoro said that of the difficult site wedged between the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean and the passing traffic During these initial works Caesar relates as the book veers into an autograph autobiographical passage Relating a significant moment of encounter between pragmatics and poetics at the genesis of each of his own projects And he continues an irrepressible and prevailing idea began to blossom that architecture does not end anywhere It goes from object to space and by consequence to the relations among spaces Until it encounters with nature Caesar continues with a line written in the 1990s, but I think even more powerful today. So again Caesar me Reading back to you Caesar your words This continuity which may also exist among all its eventual Dissonances is currently in crisis and natural locations are beginning to suffocate Even though it is quite clear that architecture has no meaning and less in relation to nature Continuity is perhaps the concept that ties together all of Caesar's commitments The very ethos of his practice for it applies to the reciprocal relations of building in sight of architecture in nature But also of architecture and human perception of time and of the designing impetus of the architect in relation to the history of architecture Reflection on the nature of influences a word I always prefer to replace by the more active interests this reflection on the nature of influences on Frank Lloyd Wright or on alto on Breuer that occur in the book is something that I think should be very instructive for students of architecture You can see that there are at least 200 of you listening Caesar's is a conception of the human as part of nature not in dialogue with nature Human activity is in dialogue with nature such that Caesar can speak beautifully of Intuiting the site to find the precise location the place that is as he writes and this is another absolutely beautiful phrase The site that is ready to receive geometricity as You can see the texts as much as they they see they seem as short as prose poems are also like compressed soil Filled with richness potent not only for understanding Caesar's practices practice over many decades But for undertaking architectural design or architectural criticism and history today What is beautiful in this volume is the complete absence of photographs of the finished buildings partly perhaps because each of the projects is so well known But also because the book is about the hand and the mind of the architect before Construction begins the choice and placement of Caesar's drawings integrate with the integrated with the text is exquisite The two work in symbiosis and continually reinforce this notion of the search for continuity Excuse me for a moment to bring the perspective here of the art historian But it was this symbiosis of text and reproduced drawings that made me understand Perhaps even intuit in Caesar's words the profound meaning of the frequent extension of Caesar's thin but powerfully drawn lines that form the building's volumetrics into the larger space of the sketchbook sheet Or are they projected from the space into the sheet to form the building? Just as the buildings are about continuity with nature atmosphere and site And it made me reflect on the fact that Caesar in part inspired perhaps by Le Crébusier's graphic demeanor prefers over and over again Perspective views from above or below the horizon line Rarely asserting the canonic renaissance two-point perspective with its insistence on the horizon an artifact In fact of human optics rather than of nature It is this Decentering that marks already a fundamental continuity between nature and architecture between the site and the designing builder As a historian and one who has taught many students who have passed through this school I am especially drawn to reflect on Caesar's words about the history of architecture about great masters About the process of accumulating influences over the decades between study and the mature work of an architect Always striving these words strike me as a way to close this small appreciation of Caesar's huge contribution to architecture Captured in this exquisitely modest volume The passage comes after mentioning his readings of Gideon as a student and his joint admiration of Alvaralto in a frank word right So here are Caesar's words and I think they're really resonant for students of architecture He says I believe that the meaning of apprenticeship in architecture is precisely to broaden one's range of references At the outset there is always a charismatic figure that captures our interest And here I like this shift that's occurring in what Caesar's saying from influence to interest So at the outset there is always a charismatic figure that captures our interest and consequently has decisive influence on us The articulation of these influences he continues is an un-repeatable act of creation An architect works by manipulating memory There is no doubt about that both consciously and most of the time subconsciously Knowledge information the study of architects in the history of architecture tend or should tend to be assimilated until they fall into the oblivion of the unconscious or subconscious I should end there But I also want to ask Alvaro Caesar if he might later on say a word about a building that continues to occupy my thoughts for months and months after each time I visited Each time I encounter the Bero Camargo Foundation Museum in Porto Alegre in the south of brazil where I had But spend much time while we were preparing an exhibition At MoMA I came away obsessed with that building. It is a building in which inevitably and i'm sure Francesco del Calwilly Agree with me in which inevitably franklord writes dugenheim was one of the subconscious thoughts But it is a building so profoundly original So intensely and unexpectedly engaged with a site Once again a site hard on a waterfront and a highway as in the early moments of caesar's designing for the seafront in Masatino That I see there the possibility for the editor of the revised version of this beautiful book to illustrate that beautiful thought about the continuity Of our own intellectual development not only with nature, but with the history of human creativity So thank you so much for this wonderful book and for the invitation daniella and Alvaro Caesar for the beautiful words Which I think is a little book that one can consult over and over again And I'll pass on to to the p testa beautiful Thank you so much francesco and barry for Really wonderful observations and setting up a great conversation here. I also want to thank daniella for her wonderful introduction and the gsa pp for hosting this conversation with Caesar So I'm going to take a little bit of a different tack And I'd like to highlight three allegorical pieces in the book But first I wanted to set up a scene or set the scene By describing the caesar office and model of practice During the 1980s and early 90s When these texts were written This is a period that coincides when I worked As a collaborator in caesar's atelier and I realized in rereading the book the certain familiarity with a number of these pieces during that time so the office At that time as I came to know it in 1984 Was in the what was called the patio d'alegria And occupied a u-shaped wooden pavilion above a garage and hidden behind A nondescript office block on the ru d'alegria on a hill above the center of porto At that time we were five or six young collaborators working on an ad hoc collection of drafting tables There was no receptionist secretary publicist computers plotters or any of the things that make up the contemporary office landscape Drawings were produced with high precision using ink on cans on paper Intolerant of mistakes Cesar did not have a set space But was I remember as I remember always in motion And often in a cloud of smoke A hybrid of artist studio artisan's workshop drafting room and archive The salient impression was that of a chantier A temporary office set up on the building site of some impossible project This was a veritable nomadic office A provisional space able to absorb the presence of builders artisans manufacturers students material suppliers journalists and clients So the Cesar office offered another take on interdisciplinarity A generosity where architecture The disciplines and crafts are on an equal footing and whose emphasis was on producing unstable Integrative objects that are never finished So Cesar Often in those days And I think continues to work generally with a single collaborator assigned to one or more projects And he invariably initiated projects with drawings and annotations Taken from his infamous caderno preto the black a4 notebooks that he was never without These drawings were paired with other drawings geometric matrices And all sorts of models Cesar's sketches are not impressionistic but lucid precise And comprehensive much like his writing in one case about saying And then the other about seeing both His writings and sketches are allegorical In that they illustrate or convey semi hidden or complex messages To read these drawings required a process of unlearning An apprenticeship in learning to see free of interpretation Work proceeded not so much step by step But as an all at once-ness in which all the elements of the project are present at the outset Like holds that cannot be taken apart A syntax without synthesis that defines the special character of in my mind every Cesar's work In those years work literally extended on to building sites continuing to refine adjust and expand on the initial idea I recently had the opportunity to revisit the sketchbooks as guest curator and caesars archive at the cca Where there are 300 of something like 500 plus cadernos That form one of the largest collections of exploratory drawings of any architect in the history of the discipline What most resonates with the writings in imagining the evident as I think Daniela so beautifully stated at the outset is the commitment to new ways of seeing As the first means by or re-seeing also as francesco delco suggested as the first means by which architecture becomes speculative Cesar's interface and particular way of seeing has a latent multiplicity of perception that we are now just beginning to grasp In those days Cesar was his own cloud and the cadernos his portable flash drive Turning more directly to imagining the evident. I'd like to briefly highlight three stories that stand out particularly to me In the opening sentence in navigating through hybrid cities Cesar writes I have always had difficulty defining the boundary between plan and project This simple statement Compresses decades of working on the city from the solid experience in porto To the reconstruction plan for the historic core of lisbon shown here after the fire of 1988 Where he relaunches the idea of the gaiola and more recently Reestablished connections between the multiple strata of lisbon's core To the expansion plan for macau involving two vast urban platforms detached from the coast And when seen with the social housing at evra designed and built over decades beginning in the 1970s And his community based projects from this period for the hag but also venice and berlin Cesar's trajectory Describes the most complex praxeography of the architecture of the city post-siam Rossi and latenza So the second topic or the second piece that i'd like to just briefly address Um Engages the idea of transforming conventions in particular the pieces titled simply house and church Speak to an idea of architecture as both artistic and cultural practice Discussing the marco de canavesis church one of several masterpieces in this small book Cesar articulates the complex and uncertain process of of addressing changes In liturgy in both liturgy and society and their pressure on conventional architectural elements and models of space That make up a church Transformations that ultimately lead to an inversion of the of the apps Which in marco de canavesis is no longer concave but convex in his words An intuition to preserve the relationship between the objects and movements that are part of the celebration The church took on the form of a negative sculpture In which relationships of continuity and intention were established between the various parts So in this piece cesar clearly articulates an idea of architecture as a rule bound representational form artistic and that it is an art of its own And cultural since it has rules and is it and is its own representational genre Speaking to his overarching idea To repeat is never to repeat while the elements of architecture are known The outcome is open from the beginning so as to produce something that cannot be known beforehand Essentially The last piece in the book uses his vast but still relatively little known furniture collection As a vehicle to probe the limits of design A great aphorism here is his statement My main concern when designing let's say a chair is it should look like a chair Moving towards serial production He remarks the quality of the result depends on the pursuit of both autonomy and the ability to establish relations Concisely articulating the principle that solitude In the world is the condition of distinction for belonging to an aggregate Caesar defines banality as availability in continuity As is often the case in these texts Caesar speaks to new configurations of time sequencing and history and tries to liberate architectural knowledge by using its generic potential Essentially, he posits the paradoxical idea that a great work of art must be at once generic And yet contains something absolutely unique As he says at once banal and sensational So while the Caesar office has over the years changed and the scope of his work extends now to multiple continents The ethics and ideas that animate imagining the evident remain relevant and resonant with contemporary work and life Thank you very much. I'd like to turn over to Ken Frampton Well, this is uh What can I say you're rather different? A hard act to follow or a series of difficult acts to follow and I Will make it sort of fairly brief. I think I mean many things that have already been said and and I suppose I was going to begin and I will return to something that's already been emphasized and which occurs at the very beginning of the book Which is this Staggering statement to repeat is never to repeat Which is combined of course with this Uh Warning to begin with the obsession of originality is an unfinished and rudimentary process I mean, I think these two things occur very early in the book and of course, um Very much all to be read together and and uh I I saw when reading to repeat is never to repeat It reminded me of Roland Barthes Repetition different which I think is uh It's really the same thing basically and and also of course it evokes tradition and This idea of tradition. I think is very profound in Jesus's work and uh what in in in evoking tradition. I'm reminded of Tien Niu Dawes who Is responsible for the aphorism that That which is that which is not tradition Is plagiarism you know and so This is question of what is the role of tradition in relation to imagination in relation to seeing of what what As it were is already there, which is the point that Then yellow mode Ma Said at the beginning. I mean, I think this this question of tradition in relation to To seeing what is already there Has been approached already by other speakers and and and I think One of the most interesting aspects of that is this question of references Somewhere these are remarks, you know how uh References or or one or two references are evident in the work of a young architect Whereas in the work the mature architect, there are it's hard to really identify the references because there are so many references that have been Fused together so to speak across time and across memory I mean this relationship between memory and imagination is touched on here this this um This point made by del co this this important of the The relationship between imagination and interpretation um Imagination and return interpretation with respect to the wheel. I think this is something that also daniella has Has touched on this question of the wheel and um so this is um one of the Important points that I mean, I think you want, you know, just taking the book at face value Not having seen the italian version and seeing only first english portion I I I felt uh on on reason is title Imagining the evidence that uh, it's somehow enigmatic Very enigmatic statement and unpacking what it means To say imagining the evidence Let me just think how and and I think the the writing of These are and of course other commentaries by gregotti and by monad by ma You know Explain in a way what what this can be, you know imagining the evidence in relation to the wheel and It made me think how, you know in english at least The word evident and the word invent Both end with v e n t and how They're almost reciprocally connected to each other, you know in the work of ziza To imagine the evidence Or rather you could put the other way around to invent Is first and foremost to imagine the evidence. I think that uh The ending v e n t in both cases is is I think a fascinating connection And one of the um interesting points that um daniella has made In her post script to the book is this question of um Well her citation of a schoenberg In in relation to the work about a flows and this emphasis upon intuition And I think one of the most interesting phrases in this Post script of ma is Drawing as an instrument of intuition. I mean, I think that is an extraordinary synthesis in a way In looking at the work of ziza, you know drawing As an instrument of intuition drawing as a way of seeing of course and drawing as a way of projecting I mean, I remember that Ziza Once somewhere said to me a long time ago That you know how to get over the panic of the white sheet of paper Is to start to draw What the site wants to be and I think this question of What the site wants to be I mean you can see that of course in certain early sketches in relation to the Malagaira housing at evera, you know, there are sketches where The housing seems to be emerging out of the ground and out of the paper at the same time as though the the mind looking at the site is imagining What could emerge from the site so to speak Of its own accord, you know like a kind of inverted archaeology, you know and that I think is a very Very remarkable Thought and an idea and and also something that architect or students ought to really Bear in mind. I think the other Point I would like to make because I don't want so much has been said and I don't want to go on for too long Is to talk about this issue of banality because I think It's related of course as someone's already said to seeing what is already there But not there yet, you know this ambiguity between Well, it also relates to my idea of inverted archaeology in a way to to to to Yes to see what To see what is already there, but is not There quite yet, you know this this idea this idea of creativity, which is so beautifully summed up there But but the the the other aspect of banality reminded me very much and it relates actually strange enough august parry Had a particular view of banality He said that the building should look as though it has always been there, you know so Here we have this kind of reciprocal two figures very distant in time but over this issue of banality where The building looking is that it has always been there Could be related to seeing what is already there, but it's not there yet. I mean, I think this Is a kind of circle around the concept of banality I think that's about all I want to say. Thank you Thank you so much, uh, can uh, I believe that uh now you see that we'd have something to to say Maybe you would want to explore this kind of This idea of banality and how it How it works with your On working process because your your work one could could not say that is panel is far from a common Work, so how do we deal with this? this contradiction for wonderful Speeches that I heard In them there are a lot of things Very easy to consider by reason with attention with The difficult to understand everything because of sound because of the lightning also But Noted some special things that impress me Interesting that about the comments on some of my work when I like Kindness If I understood well a kind of archaeology Inverted inverting And that I like very much I find Things that in my work I feel and practice uh Maybe I could refer first that When I make a project My intention What I look for Is that it appears inside where it goes As it had been always dead dead And all the Sweet of the studies go Using doubts First of all And intuition As fields For Studying all of them deeply To find the miss the mistakes of each one Doubts is very important for the development of the other project And after much time After putting many ideas out It's not it's not this is a big mistake To find something I have a conviction And that means the answer something that I look Imagining I look and I say this is the Detail here in this site Like it has been always there So It's to discover something That's true. I think it's like auto critics and so I find That should be there And even sometimes To imagine that the other things That are there before Uninfluenced That's what I did after This is a little the way I I work And to speak about Banality as you said I think I remember in one of the texts I mentioned this To look to an exhibition of chairs In paintings, I think There was a line big line of chairs by different Famous architects Wonderful most of them wonderful chairs This object that is the most difficult To design one of the reasons Is that there are million million states Nates through centuries They are some are very beautiful some are not But we we having our mind our memory a lot of them And when I visit this exhibition I looked through this file and I stop in one I don't know why when I went to that one there to stop And it was a tonne A tonne chair And I approached and I read Adolf Luz So it's a tonne made by Adolf Luz You look you have no doubt this is clearly a tonne But then there is something that attracts my my eyes And it's In this way that I use I use in a not negative way The the word Banality As a component Needed for a result in terms of not being Some brilliant idea To put in that object or in that But it's the results of So many things we know about in the scene And why you did not You did not put over a phone Each thing And I have to do a different thing Because when we do a different thing Usually Make them a balancing Because there are many many people concentrating Doing a different thing So in a way in a moment there are Lots of different things that become It will be the same or almost same With some deductions About this about Banality Yes Francesco now I was thinking to address to you because this idea of banality. I suppose that have Much to do with your own participation here when you underlined This vulgarity of the plate Would you like to to to comment a bit more on that? I missed one of your words some few words. Can you repeat? We were talking about banality That she was talking about it and how it finds like in a way of working and I found that this is very close To what you were saying in your own communication This idea of the vulgarity of the plate So I I think they they they Are really close as an idea of work and even an as an idea of creation of the disability of invention Well in uh in a scissor in a scissor says and also what he did The idea of banality is absolutely the opposite of what we usually understand With using this word banality is something which is without value, which is linked to To the absence Of imagination and so on Instead in scissor is part of what you say the evident the evident is Uh Is all what exists without meaning if we don't apply to it our imagination Our capacity of create which is not to invent Which is completely different for this reason. I quoted this fundamental essay by Funhoff-Mashtal because he insists on the Role of doing of making a work which is completely different from the Romantic idea of invention we have There was something that I would like to say about season It's very clear also from what you published in your book that The the works the meaning of the work he did for the activity in Portugal After the revolution With the creation of the soul experience and so on It's very clear also from what he does. He did many of his work, which is his Personal attitude But there is something which is very different from the idea We usually have of the architect of the intellectual person Which is involved and Engaged in the social Historical problem Which is the idea of Again, I should use a german word geisel quick kite which is to be Open to be able to to be open It's not to be some to be friend of everybody, but just to be open And this is completely different And there is another and final aspect that I think that is very important to understand season and to understand the work for instance that Geiselik kite this is a So such a goal it's a sociability. Let's say in this sense, but not some not a Continuously This attitude is part of an aristocratic attitude What is the major characteristic of the work that he and also tabula did? They are aristocratic They are not populist People they are aristocratic For this reason they can perceive the meaning of the banality. They can use banality because they are aristocrats Not in the terms of you give it To the social they are aristocrats intellectually aristocrats They are this is the problem Which doesn't mean the Absolutely the idea of the aristocrat, which is far away from our everyday problems from the problems of the peoples and so on and so on From the social contradiction and so on but that you are facing all this problem with an aristocratic attitude exactly what Was written in this fantastic essay Europe the european culture is aristocratic Afterwards can be everything but is aristocratic To be a great architect implies to be aristocratic And aristocratic first of all and this is very is very It's very clear in a Also, obviously in the book You published but in general in the most beautiful scissor's work It's aristocratic. I never saw I would say something which is more Aristocratic of this of the swimming pool in like an epauleta. They are absolutely I'm aristocratic but Aristocratic implies that you have a gazelle height attitude In the evidence in what is banal What is banal for everybody is not banal for season The way in which he uses his stones the way in which he He uses his wood the way in which he designed This little little rooms inside of the swimming pool is absolutely aristocratic It's the stupidity to think it's just real Not to to understand the banal to but to be slave of the banal to think that the This incredibly beautiful district housing district Alvalo where shushu leaves which is the name Where shushu leaves Shushu In force Exactly I meant in force This is Is the most aristocratic place you can design. I mean Exactly exactly the same way which Uh, some of the work of buruno tout were absolutely aristocrat This is Simple. This is something that you should understand. I mean I when I saw the works of tavola It's perfectly clear to everybody who is not a simple slave of the banality The fact that these are aristocratic works Aristocratic and in the same time very social Because I don't know if this is the good translation the english word sociability But gazelle height is is what I I I will is the real word I would like to use Yeah Well, I speak no I agree with all your words And works According to Moment the reason they are used have different meanings Uh, this book is called Imagine imagine the evidence and I could write another book possibly with the title avoiding banality or avoid the evidence to be imaginative And sometimes we use The words in a sense in them and in other But for instance when I spoke about banality in the way I speak Uh That is a provocative way Refer to other kind of thoughts But one thing I retained interesting thing when you speak about Yeah I remember that when I I began studying the museum in brazil When I arrived first time to the site I was Not happy When I saw that as a neighbor to the future If you think that it was a power that I didn't like at all Suppose 15 floors tower And I thought how can I do here in this small site that I have a museum So near this tower it's very no problem It's better to forget because the tower is there When I visited first time The building already in South floor I arrived I saw first time the concrete against the white concrete again this beautiful side covered by luxurious vegetation That I decided I cannot touch that I I looked at the building and of course was that the tower And I was not so impressed And we did the continuation of the construction each time visiting I liked more the tower No flying immediately then I saw the realism It had broke the possible isolation of the museum And also when some people they should an idea of excessive for title reason of the museum I don't agree but there is this critique I said no to look at the tower They will look to the to the two buildings So the tower became a good friend and also made me think of the not sure result of the first thought with something because it's not sure the first thought about how to do the building So it's continuity and as I have told before the download the of the is for the process of work Is it easy for you to understand when the project is working and you feel like ha I've got something in hands Does it get easy? It is not completely working there are always scenes and one of the the tragedies of situation for architecture today is that I use years ago when I began I used to visit the construction and I would discover that would be that in that way and then ask the building I don't like I like to use it also like this and you'd say but that costs money and you think a lot of guys no problem I'm not so interested in that scene so you don't do that and you use the money of the amazing the experience the experience of spaces and volumes growing that is a permission to discover more scenes that in the end the project is never finished and after we leave the project is finished other people will work only and so there is this continuity again the word continuity is to take against to be difficult if not impossible I cannot arrive to work without any meaning so you change this because there is a director of work that has more power than the architect and he says no, nothing you change everything what is finished there as the process could finish in the drawings to use models which I imagine but it's not the same to fit when it's full and the person that project it there is a dimension of surprise also things are not finished in the report yes I believe that today that will be more and more difficult with this all complexification of the building site yes there are two things that I notice and that impress me one is this consideration is that the work is finished when which in a way is in the line of the field of attention to the materials the role of materials in the project of a building and so more abstract drawing model is finished in the address is not a single responsibility of the architect the other thing is when increasing happily the evolution of situations the need of teamwork for architecture today there are engineers for structure for treatment and that is good is good if it is assumed as teamwork is very good but many times like different scenes making part of a project when the architect makes the drawing before in Portugal people ask the architects ask the architects a risk for your character like a sketch make me only a sketch a risk important is a risk has two different meanings is like risk one is like a line sketches and risk is the problem and the other risk is the line for an architect a line is always a risk because in Portugal teamwork is needed in the very good and very important in this development of ideas for a building but it transforms the architect makes fruition and then is given to a company of engineers to the risk and make as they seem better and more economic and so and so they make a structure project and then treatment comes engineer that puts a lot of grids in the ceiling and so and what I like it is to talk with him and find the good solutions with the ceiling is not a account of projects more those scenes for fire the scenes for view which we are making spying, black cameras and so and so but we are creating borders between everything this is the engineer this is the architect I was thinking Peter Testa that making architecture in America might be, I don't know quite different from the practicing in Portugal and even more the practicing when you yourself were a collaborator with CISA I think this is, yeah this is a really interesting point that also I think in describing the office I thought it was important to bring out the model of practice and exactly what CISA is just describing right now that students of architecture look at magazines and think that these things are transposable but things are connected to, and this is something CISA teaches us as well and very aware of is that things are connected to a cultural milieu and model modes of production and social reproduction and that it's not so easy to just move an idea from one world into another and I think that world is now becoming as Ken has also often spoken of becoming globalization has made it such that the kinds of constraints that we face here in America are now everywhere pretty much in terms of insurance companies in terms of regulations in terms of also the way in which the building industry is organized and so I think this is a much larger discussion but I think it's an extremely important one for architecture and I think CISA by bringing that point across repeatedly I think is really significant because it means that the model that I described was very much of an interdisciplinarity and a flat ontology if you will in terms of across these different crafts and I think just as Ken has described architecture and discussion today that may be without nature but I would say also without some model of craft and that doesn't necessarily mean handicraft but that's some way of engaging the way in which things are put together some idea of architecture as a Baukunst is essential and I think that that's the biggest challenge facing us in its age of BIM and these various kinds of building information modeling systems and blockchain distribution of materials and so forth so I think this is something that the apprenticeship that CISA describes is essential to be able to know how to put things together but that also putting together a building out of stone in the menu I feel gave me an ability to operate across very different material systems so I work in a very different situation but I always that experience was absolutely fundamental to making it possible to think about other things that may include even automation and besides all this you had in recent years quite a large experience in building in Asian country in South Korea in Taiwan and also in Manhattan with Sky Scraper and did you feel any constraints on your work because they really look really much Caesar's so and I imagine the different context of that the first thing I could say is that working in different countries is a very good exercise in the dedication of any architect by different reasons first we see directly things we knew about with books we know the people that are making it the problems they have we have talks about the dealing with the atmosphere of the town for instance understanding I like very much the person to go without program or company ideally to feel in a moment most in the town because there I have successive experience I began having the feeling not rigorous rather rigorous of the atmosphere that's done after that the reasons of that that is already of conduct second thing that constraints when I have more in Europe in general particularly in Portugal one thing is the increasing of bureaucracy when we make a project we have submit to many many departments each one or the people which one have a part of power and they don't work who wants to lose that power then there is a fight not only successive appreciations but a fight between the appreciations not only in Italy in France and everywhere in Europe except Switzerland because doesn't belong to the European community because some of the rules are restrictive that come from European community I am a European but I suffer much the direction this Europe takes year and day and respect to architecture much so I have for instance speaking about constraints constraints in China and mainly in more still more in Korea I have 15 glorious years of work there the projects were not so difficult to be approved and main thing the owners the owner is always the first architect the owners wanted quality and the supportive much conditions of work were very good and the the elements of this condition was enthusiasm of the owners looking for an architect because they like it and they want to work with them so very good that you see up here in 15 then came the the regimes and the everything stopped and I doubt that it means in the same way that I experimented this in China in New York it was much more comfortable for me it was not so difficult to to approve it was not difficult to do there was not bureaucracy that for instance if there was a doubt about some thing about figuration or implantation or so we conducted the department in New York as possible for that and immediately they they would say come here and we discussed that and not me most of the times but people in New York which were contact for me direct contact for architecture would go and things were so and then during the construction I did not feel problem I did not feel how is happening now much in Europe the builders ask systematically to change the project if they win in competition construction and then they say we have an alternative here and these and these and then two alternatives it is a problem for New York New York for me was a pleasure and also I had the chance that the building is not high it is not a skyscraper it does not quite seem how in Europe 38 40 floors but by chance the plot is narrow and then the proportions of the building are very good in my opinion but that was a chance but what I see was more sure the demands not ambiguous sure is this and second for development of project we could talk with the responsible body and here for instance if I want to speak with the fireman responsible they always say no no send the drawings and then we it means that we can send drawings and we remove a chance of drawings but in the bureaucracy and I had a new atmosphere of I have the power so in opposite of the audible ambience of dictatorship of seats now is free but power is fragmented as everything so they you don't know who your interlocutor is who to call yes I know that there is someone that defends his small power yes of course I understand and Kenneth Fremton I was thinking that well with your work in the last 60 years that help us to build this idea of Western architecture so I was thinking that in this long run that you have been accompanying practice of architecture of architecture how do you feel that the major challenge would be in future architects and I was I'm also thinking on the students that are watching us on your panoramic view that we owe you so much how is your perception of our future as a profession, as a craft yes it's difficult to sum it up in a few words but I think that there is still a certain well the difference between bureaucracy and Portugal and the surprising relative ease of his own relationship to the bureaucracy of New York for example which I find somewhat remarkable that the American or anyway the New York situation is more direct and more accessible and also you can get at them and discuss things etc. and from his point of view the Portuguese situation seems to be very Kafkaesque that you just send us the drawings we don't want to discuss anything, just send us the drawings I mean this is already very negative and so that the situation changes in different places I think even now despite globalization etc. etc. I think that there are different ways of practicing architecture in different places at different times I've just for example been able to sort of expand this modern architecture of critical history to go beyond the transatlantic Eurocentric world to other countries you know well in Africa and Asia and so on and when one looks at that work for example when one looks at recent Chinese work let's say young generation working in the provinces mostly because of the change in political the direction of the interest of the political power has shifted a little bit away from the mega city fortunately to put to re-energize the provinces of this huge country and the younger generation are working there and producing I think very interesting work and well I don't know exactly how they deal with bureaucracy and so on I have no idea I just simply don't know but one recognizes of the products the culture of architecture is very alive at this particular moment there I think with the young generation working in the provinces and you know so it's different in different places I mean I think that Peter Tester is very right in speaking with considerable fear about the impact of BIM and automation on architecture and the question of being able to create work to imagine work in a particular place I mean the problem with the with the with the rationalization of production the transmission of the building industry is I think this problem that the question of the the question of nature tends to be totally discounted you know the operation is a kind of techno economic operation and only that and well then of course it's extremely difficult for the architect to be able to relate the building to nature and this brings up another thought in my head which is of course actually in this beautiful book Alvaro talks about fragmentation you know the hybrid city I mean there's a very beautiful passage where he describes this moment when he is sick in I think a place called the Villanova looking at sea from a balcony and he describes the experience as wonderful and as being before the fragmentation so the fragmentation is enormous and rather universal I think but in the sense the fragmentation of of cities you know the diffusion of the city you know through unending suburbanization I mean this is an enormous fragmentation and extremely destructive of the relationship between the relationship that Alvaro was talking about between the building and nature you know I think that this is the problem today and it's of course a problem that transcends architecture because this this what can I say this instrumental attitude towards nature is already becoming the problem you know I mean this whole problem of climate change is obviously an issue that can only be mediated or mitigated through a more nuanced attitude towards development and building and so there is this well in the end of course political tension between the more nuanced mitigated attitude towards nature and towards building in relation to nature and a highly instrumentalized globalized ultimately capitalist maximization you know this is what is going on in the worldwide scene and this is extremely difficult to produce a work which has a balanced relationship with nature so this is the challenge I think it's rather a lot too much response to a relatively simple question but I don't see you know it's a very complex situation we are living in yes of course so maybe I do this session I don't know if anyone wants to say some final words some final idea it's already a bit late in Venice I suppose so I don't know if you want to say something or anyone and if not we will close this session for today and maybe some others will come let's see or not I don't know if you want to say something and last word no we would be talking by hours yes it's not comfortable yes you have to make these by parts we will have other possibilities yeah wonderful to see you by this see you bye thank you thank you very much Professor I hope to see all of you one day here in Porto and also of course Kenneth Fremton so let's see us again one of these days and thank you of course for this sharing experience it was great to hear everybody it was I think a terrific very interesting event for me fantastic thank you very much everyone thank you stay well everyone thank you it was a pleasure to see you all beautiful and I do hope to see you again soon we hope so personally not through the computer thank you