17 Words Inspiration Architecture

8/10/2019 17 Words Inspiration Architecture

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17 words inspiration architecture

0:11I'll start with my favorite muse, Emily Dickinson, who said that

wonder is not knowledge, neither is it ignorance. It's somethingwhich is suspended between what we believe we can be, and a

tradition we may have forgotten. And I think, when I listen to these

incredible people here, I've been so inspired -- so many incredible

ideas, so many visions. And yet, when I look at the environment

outside, you see how resistant architecture is to change. You see

how resistant it is to those very ideas. We can think them out. We

can create incredible things. And yet, at the end, it's so hard tochange a wall. We applaud the well-mannered box. But to create a

space that never existed is what interests me; to create something

that has never been, a space that we have never entered except in

our minds and our spirits. And I think that's really what architecture

is based on.

1:02Architecture is not based on concrete and steel and the

elements of the soil. It's based on wonder. And that wonder is really

what has created the greatest cities, the greatest spaces that we

have had. And I think that is indeed what architecture is. It is a

story. By the way, it is a story that is told through its hard

materials. But it is a story of effort and struggle against

improbabilities. If you think of the great buildings, of the cathedrals,

of the temples, of the pyramids, of pagodas, of cities in India and

beyond, you think of how incredible this is that that was

realized not by some abstract idea, but by people.

1:39So, anything that has been made can be unmade. Anything that

has been made can be made better.There it is: the things that I


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really believe are of important architecture. These are the

dimensions that I like to work with. It's something very personal. It's

not, perhaps, the dimensions appreciated by art critics or

architecture critics or city planners. But I think these are thenecessary oxygen for us to live in buildings, to live in cities, to

connect ourselves in a social space.

1 Optimism vs pessimism

2:04And I therefore believe that optimismis what drives

architecture forward. It's the only profession where you have to

believe in the future. You can be a general, a politician, an

economist who is depressed, a musician in a minor key, a painter in

dark colors. But architecture is that complete ecstasy that the future

can be better. And it is that belief that I think drives society.

2:26And today we have a kind of evangelical pessimismall around

us. And yet it is in times like this that I think architecture can thrive

with big ideas, ideas that are not small. Think of the great

cities. Think of the Empire State Building, the Rockefeller

Center. They were built in times that were not really the best of

times in a certain way. And yet that energy and power ofarchitecture has driven an entire social and political space that these

buildings occupy.

2 Expressive vs neutral


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2:52So again, I am a believer in the expressive. I have never been a

fan of the neutral. I don't like neutrality in life, in anything. I think

expression. And it's like espresso coffee, you know, you take the

essence of the coffee. That's what expression is. It's been missing inmuch of the architecture, because we think architecture is the realm

of the neutered, the realm of the kind of a state that has no

opinion, that has no value. And yet, I believe it is the expression --

expression of the city, expression of our own space --that gives

meaning to architecture.

3:24And, of course, expressive spaces are not mute. Expressive

spaces are not spaces that simply confirm what we already

know. Expressive spaces may disturb us. And I think that's also part

of life. Life is not just an anesthetic to make us smile, but to reach

out across the abyss of history, to places we have never been, and

would have perhaps been, had we not been so lucky.

3:46So again, radical versus conservative. Radical, what does it

mean? It's something which is rooted, and something which is

rooted deep in a tradition. And I think that is what architecture is,

it's radical. It's not just a conservation in formaldehyde of dead

forms. It is actually a living connection to the cosmic event that we

are part of, and a story that is certainly ongoing. It's not something

that has a good ending or a bad ending. It's actually a story in which

our acts themselves are pushing the story in a particular way.

4:16So again I am a believer in the radical architecture. You know

the Soviet architecture of that building is the conservation. It's like

the old Las Vegas used to be. It's about conserving emotions,

conserving the traditions that have obstructed the mind in moving


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forward and of course what is radical is to confront them. And I

think our architecture is a confrontation with our own

senses. Therefore I believe it should not be cool.

3 Emotional vs cool

4:39There is a lot of appreciation for the kind of cool

architecture. I've always been an opponent of it. I think emotion is

needed. Life without emotion would really not be life. Even the mind

is emotional. There is no reason which does not take a position in

the ethical sphere, in the philosophical mystery of what we are. So I

think emotion is a dimension that is important to introduce into city

space, into city life.

5:04And of course, we are all about the struggle of emotions. And I

think that is what makes the world a wondrous place. And of course,

the confrontation of the cool, the unemotional with emotion, is a

conversation that I think cities themselves have fostered. I think that

is the progress of cities. It's not only the forms of cities, but the fact

that they incarnate emotions, not just of those who build them, but

of those who live there as well.

4 Inexplicable vs Understood

5:28Inexplicableversus understood. You know, too often we want

to understand everything. But architecture is not the language ofwords. It's a language. But it is not a language that can be reducedto

a series of programmatic notes that we can verbally write. Too many

buildings that you see outside that are so banal tell you a story, but


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the story is very short, which says, "We have no story to tell

you."(Laughter)

5:49So the important thing actually, is to introduce the actualarchitectural dimensions, which might be totally inexplicable in

words, because they operate in proportions, in materials, in

light. They connect themselves into various sources, into a kind of

complex vector matrix that isn't really frontal but is really embedded

in the lives, and in the history of a city, and of a people. So again,

the notion that a building should just be explicit I think is a false

notion, which has reduced architecture into banality.

5 Hand vs Computer

6:22Handversus the computer. Of course, what would we be

without computers? Our whole practice depends on computing. But

the computer should not just be the glove of the hand; the hand

should really be the driver of the computing power. Because I

believe that the hand in all its primitive, in all its physiological

obscurity, has a source, though the source is unknown, though we

don't have to be mystical about it. We realize that the hand has been

given us by forces that are beyond our own autonomy. And I think

when I draw drawings which may imitate the computer, but are not

computer drawings -- drawings that can come from sources that

are completely not known, not normal, not seen,yet the hand -- and

that's what I really, to all of you who are working -- how can we

make the computer respond to our hand rather than the hand

responding to the computer.

6 Complex vs Simple


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7:17I think that's part of what the complexity of architecture

is. Because certainly we have gotten used to the propaganda that

the simple is the good. But I don't believe it. Listening to all of you,

the complexity of thought, the complexity of layers of meaning isoverwhelming. And I think we shouldn't shy away in

architecture, You know, brain surgery, atomic theory, genetics,

economics are complexcomplex fields.There is no reason that

architecture should shy away and present this illusory world of the

simple. It is complex. Space is complex. Space is something that

folds out of itself into completely new worlds. And as wondrous as it

is, it cannot be reduced to a kind of simplification that we haveoften come to be admired. And yet, our lives are complex. Our

emotions are complex. Our intellectual desires are complex. So I do

believe that architecture as I see it needs to mirror that complexity

in every single space that we have, in every intimacy that we

possess.

8:17Of course that means that architecture is political. The political

is not an enemy of architecture. The politeama is the city. It's all of

us together. And I've always believed that the act of

architecture, even a private house, when somebody else will see it,

is a political act, because it will be visible to others. And we live in a

world which is connecting us more and more. So again, the evasion

of that sphere, which has been so endemic to that sort of pure

architecture, the autonomous architecture that is just an abstract

object has never appealed to me. And I do believe that this

interaction with the history, with history that is often very

difficult, to grapple with it, to create a position that is beyond our

normal expectations and to create a critique.


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9:01Because architecture is also the asking of questions. It's not

only the giving of answers. It's also, just like life, the asking of

questions. Therefore it is important that it be real. You know we can

simulate almost anything. But the one thing that can be eversimulated is the human heart, the human soul. And architecture is

so closely intertwined with it because we are born somewhere and

we die somewhere.So the reality of architecture is visceral. It's not

intellectual. It's not something that comes to us from books and

theories. It's the real that we touch -- the door, the window, the

threshold, the bed -- such prosaic objects. And yet, I try, in every

building, to take that virtual world, which is so enigmatic and sorich, and create something in the real world. Create a space for an

office, a space of sustainability that really works between that

virtuality and yet can be realized as something real.

9:53Unexpected versus habitual. What is a habit? It's just a shackle

for ourselves. It's a self-induced poison.So the unexpected is always

unexpected. You know, it's true, the cathedrals, as unexpected, will

always be unexpected. You know Frank Gehry's buildings, they will

continue to be unexpected in the future. So not the habitual

architecture that instills in us the false sort of stability, but an

architecture that is full of tension, an architecture that goes beyond

itself to reach a human soul and a human heart, and that breaks out

of the shackles of habits.

10:26And of course habits are enforced by architecture. When we

see the same kind of architecture we become immured in that world

of those angles, of those lights, of those materials. We think the

world really looks like our buildings. And yet our buildings are


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pretty much limited by the techniques and wonders that have been

part of them.

10:45So again, the unexpected which is also the raw. And I oftenthink of the raw and the refined. What is raw? The raw, I would say is

the naked experience, untouched by luxury, untouched by

expensive materials, untouched by the kind of refinement that we

associate with high culture. So the rawness, I think, in space, the

fact that sustainability can actually, in the future translate into a raw

space, a space that isn't decorated, a space that is not mannered in

any source, but a space that might be cool in terms of its

temperature, might be refractive to our desires. A space that doesn't

always follow us like a dog that has been trained to follow us, but

moves ahead into directions of demonstrating other possibilities,

other experiences, that have never been part of the vocabulary of

architecture.

11:38And of course that juxtaposition is of great interest to

me because it creates a kind of a spark of new energy. And so I do

like something which is pointed, not blunt, something which is

focused on reality,something that has the power, through its

leverage, to transform even a very small space.

11:56So architecture maybe is not so big, like science, but through

its focal point it can leverage in an Archimedian way what we think

the world is really about. And often it takes just a building tochange our experience of what could be done, what has been

done, how the world has remained both in between stability and

instability. And of course buildings have their shapes. Those shapes

are difficult to change. And yet, I do believe that in every social


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space, in every public space, there is a desire to communicate

more than just that blunt thought, that blunt technique, but

something that pinpoints, and can point in various

directions forward, backward, sideways and around. So that isindeed what is memory. So I believe that my main interest is to

memory. Without memory we would be amnesiacs. We would not

know which way we were going, and why we are going where we're

going.

12:52So I've been never interested in the forgettable

reuse, rehashing of the same things over and over again, which, of

course, get accolades of critics. Critics like the performance to be

repeated again and again the same way. But I rather play

something completely unheard of, and even with flaws, than repeat

the same thing over and over which has been hollowed by its

meaninglessness. So again, memory is the city, memory is the

world. Without the memory there would be no story to tell. There

would be nowhere to turn.

13:23The memorable, I think, is really our world, what we think the

world is. And it's not only our memory, but those who remember

us, which means that architecture is not mute. It's an art of

communication. It tells a story. The story can reach into obscure

desires. It can reach into sources that are not explicitly available. It

can reach into millennia that have been buried, and return them in a

just and unexpected equity.

13:52So again, I think the notion that the best architecture is silent

has never appealed to me. Silence maybe is good for a cemetery but

not for a city. Cities should be full of vibrations, full of sound, full of


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music.And that indeed is the architectural mission that I believe is

important, is to create spaces that are vibrant, that are

pluralistic, that can transform the most prosaic activities, and raise

them to a completely different expectation. Create a shoppingcenter, a swimming place that is more like a museum than like

entertainment. And these are our dreams.

14:24And of course risk. I think architecture should be risky. You

know it costs a lot of money and so on, but yes, it should not play it

safe. It should not play it safe, because if it plays it safe it's not

moving us in a direction that we want to be. And I think, of

course, risk is what underlies the world. World without risk would

not be worth living. So yes, I do believe that the risk we take in every

building. Risks to create spaces that have never been cantilevered to

that extent. Risks of spaces that have never been so dizzying, as

they should be, for a pioneering city. Risks that really move

architecture even with all its flaws, into a space which is much

better that the ever again repeated hollowness of a ready-made

thing.

15:13And of course that is finally what I believe architecture to

be. It's about space. It's not about fashion. It's not about

decoration. It's about creating with minimal means something which

can not be repeated,cannot be simulated in any other sphere. And

there of course is the space that we need to breathe, is the space we

need to dream. These are the spaces that are not just luxurious

spaces for some of us,but are important for everybody in this world.

15:40So again, it's not about the changing fashions, changing

theories. It's about carving out a space for trees. It's carving out a


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space where nature can enter the domestic world of a city. A space

where something which has never seen a light of day can enter into

the inner workings of a density. And I think that is really the nature

of architecture.

16:03Now I am a believer in democracy. I don't like beautiful

buildings built for totalitarian regimes. Where people cannot speak,

cannot vote, cannot do anything. We too often admire those

buildings. We think they are beautiful. And yet when I think of the

poverty of society which doesn't give freedom to its people, I don't

admire those buildings. So democracy, as difficult as it is, I believe

in it.

16:22And of course, at Ground Zero what else? It's such a complex

project. It's emotional. There is so many interests. It's political.

There is so many parties to this project. There is so many interests.

There's money. There's political power. There are emotions of the

victims. And yet, in all its messiness, in all its difficulties, I would

not have liked somebody to say, "This is the tabula rasa, mister

architect -- do whatever you want." I think nothing good will come

out of that.

16:48I think architecture is about consensus. And it is about the

dirty word "compromise." Compromise is not bad. Compromise, if

it's artistic, if it is able to cope with its strategies -- and there is my

first sketch and the last rendering -- it's not that far away. And yet,compromise, consensus, that is what I believe in.And Ground Zero,

despite all its difficulties, it's moving forward. It's difficult. 2011,

2013. Freedom Tower, the memorial. And that is where I end.


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17:17I was inspired when I came here as an immigrant on a ship like

millions of others, looking at America from that point of view. This

is America. This is liberty. This is what we dream about. Its

individuality,demonstrated in the skyline. It's resilience. And finally,it's the freedom that America represents, not just to me, as an

immigrant, but to everyone in the world. Thank you.

17:37(Applause)

17:42Chris Anderson: I've got a question. So have you come to

peace with the process that happened at Ground Zero and the loss

of the original, incredible design that you came up with?

17:52Daniel Libeskind: Look. We have to cure ourselves of the

notion that we are authoritarian, that we can determine everything

that happens. We have to rely on others, and shape the process in

the best way possible. I came from the Bronx. I was taught not to be

a loser, not to be somebody who just gives up in a fight. You have

to fight for what you believe. You don't always win everything you

want to win. But you can steer the process. And I believe that what

will be built at Ground Zero will be meaningful, will be inspiring, will

tell other generations of the sacrifices, of the meaning of this

event. Not just for New York, but for the world.

18:26Chris Anderson: Thank you so much, Daniel Libeskind.

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17 Words Inspiration Architecture