All language subtitles for Rem.Koolhaas.A.Kind.Of.Architect.2008.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX].eng

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(spooky music)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(merry music)

(speaker buzzes)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(fluid bubbles)

A recent example come from Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

He's already famous in architectural circles

for his writing and projects,

but he might become a hit now with the wider.

Rem as an individual has become a brand

that is very powerful to us.

On the other hand,

our reality's very different

from the media's perception of that brand.

And we're constantly struggling with...

We can get a lot of profit,

(chuckles) literally, and mileage

out of using that brand

even though it contradicts the way we actually work.

(spooky music)

My suspicious is it's

different in other countries

or, say, that's it's less of an issue in other countries

than it is in America.

In America, American media

really, really wants a star.
(pencil taps)

They really want an individual.

They want a sole author.

And so entire practices

of 150, 200, 300 people,

for instance, in architecture,

will be reduced to the last name of one person.

(Crock speaks in German)

(haunting music)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(network buzzes)

(nodes jingle)

(Crock speaks in German)

First was the input of the war,

not that it was really an input

but of course when I was a child

it was in a post-war situation.

So that was real poverty,

real hunger, real et cetera, et cetera.

So that was one input.

Then there was the input of

an overwhelming sensual tropical situation.

The situation after the war was chaotic,

but the tropics were even more chaotic.

Then I came back to Holland.

And suddenly, Holland was

a very boring organized (speaks in German),

kind of finished.

And that boredom was an important input,

which I really didn't like.

Then what was perhaps

two important inputs culturally

that were then in Amsterdam

where at that time Sandberg was the director

of the Stedelijk Museum

and basically organized a whole series

of totally revolutionary exhibitions

that were really deeply exciting

and kind of avant-garde.

Then the first input

that I could really control myself

was contemporary art, Yves Klein, that kind of thing.

But the second one was film

and, basically, the movies of Pasolini and Antonioni.

I would say that they,

in terms of my overall sensibility,

had the greatest impact

and then, basically, journalism.

And journalism creates

almost uncritical curiosity about everything.

And so it started this almost cannibalistic

relationship to information

(Chris speaks in German)

(disjointed music)

(robot speaks indistinctly)

(Bart speaks in German)

(enchanting music)

Rem and I first met each other

in high school in Amsterdam.

I walked into the classroom

as a transfer student coming from another school.

And there was an instant connection between us.

It was love at first sight.

Film Group 1, 2, 3 was really just

a little band almost

when you see pictures of us in the time.

We wanted to be a band.

We didn't even wanna be filmmakers that way, right?

And they basically were all my friends.

So, Jan de Bont, Frans Bromet,

both of them made a serious career

in film and television afterwards.

So that's it.

They were basically my friends.

And we made this one film.

And what we did is we all drew a ticket

like in a lottery.

And that ticket basically would have a name on it

So that meant, okay,

you are going to be the star of this movie

You're going to be the director of that movie.

You're going to be the cameraman of that movie.

There was actually a lot of thought about it

because another thing that were basically very much against

was French auteur film.

We wrote a few manifestos

in a film magazine.

And it was all about how everybody in a movie as an auteur.

The star is an auteur.

And the cameraman is an auteur.

And the writer is an auteur and the director, whatever.

(Bart speaks in German)

(dramatic music)

"The White Slave."

(Bart speaks in German)

(dazzling music)

I can't recall any very serious conversation about it.

On the one hand,

I remember that we really seriously thought

that the movie was about the end of Europe.

There was a thing at the time called the (speaks in German),

and there was this whole thing

about Europe being

on its last legs

(catastrophic music)

(vulgar music)

Mr. Koolhaas, why did you become an architect at all?

There is a very boring explanation.

My grandfather was an architect.

He made corporate headquarters for KLM and for Shell,

and was not quite a modernist

but also not a conservative architect.

When I was 14, I wanted to become a Brazilian architect.

And, in any case,

I think that the two professions,

scriptwriting and architecture,

are very close

because for both you have to consider a plot,

you have to develop episodes,

and you have to create a montage that makes it interesting

and a sequence that makes

the circulation or the path through or the experience

of a building interesting.

And it gives a certain suspense.

(shocking music)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(nostalgic music continues)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(eerie music)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)
(desolate music)

(glimmering music)

New Babylon.

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(shutter clacks)

Well, one of the beautiful things about architecture

is of course that,

no matter how pretentious or unpretentious it is,

it is always used.

There is no architecture that is inaccessible in that way.

And in that sense it has a very unique status, I think,

because books can be inaccessible,

music can be inaccessible,

place can be inaccessible,

but architecture cannot be inaccessible.

So in a certain way it is a rare privileged medium.

And that is that it has use,

which I think is, for me, for instance,

one of the last connections

to morality, (laughs)

which probably was a very important incentive

in terms of making, small as it was, the shift

from scriptwriting to architecture.

As students we all had to go

and do a documentary of a nice building.

And most people would go to Greek island.

And I went to the Berlin Wall to document the Berlin Wall.

This was in '72,

'71, or '70,

so it was not so long there, just celebrating

its first decade.
11 years, yeah.

And I was studying in the '60s

So that was in a very

countercultural flower power condition

where everyone was convinced

that architecture would liberate

and could be a form of liberation.

And so I basically went there

to see architecture and stare architecture in the face

and realized that it had an inevitable element of violence

and an inevitable fundamental performance

of exclusion and inclusion.

The incredible ambiguity was

that it was not a single building

because at that time it was really a series of conditions,

partly buildings that were bricked up,

partly building that were half taken down,

partly barbed wire.

So I looked at the multiplicity of expressions

for what was actually a single phenomenon.

(eerie music continues)

(Holger speaks in German)

"Voluntary Prisoners."

(Holger speaks in German)

(block rumbles)

Wasteland.

(Holger speaks in German)

It really remains a very important part

of our convictions, that there is

a fundamentally deeply nasty part of architecture

that is mobilized

in those contexts.

(menacing music)
(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(radiowoman speaks indistinctly)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(despairing music)

(Crock speaks in German)

(radio buzzes)

(Chris speaks in German)

"Manhattan is the arena

of the terminal stage of Western civilization.

(ambitious music continues)

Through the simultaneous explosion of human density

and an invasion of new technologies,

Manhattan became from 1850 a mythical laboratory

for the invention and testing of a revolutionary lifestyle:

the culture of congestion."
(music stops)

(hectic music)

"By separating exterior and interior architecture

and developing the latter in small autonomous installments,

such structures can devote their exteriors only to formalism

and their interiors only to functionalism."

(static buzzes)

(Holger speaks in German)

Ya know, different people write about New York

in different ways.

And I think Rem's writing about New York

from an architectural point of view

in a way that was different than, perhaps,

most architectural writers had written about New York

previous to him

made it not only interesting

but, I think, quite provocative.

(mystical music continues)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

"Manhattan's architects perform their miracles

luxuriating in a self-imposed unconsciousness.

It is the arduous task of the final part of this century

to deal with the extravagant and megalomaniac claims,

ambitions, and possibilities

of the metropolis openly."

(mystical music continues)

(Ole speaks in German)

(Holger speaks in German)
(obscure music)

Everyone who lives in New York

thinks about the grid everyday.

The grid is what keeps New York whole.

The grid is what holds New York together,

so the grid is part of our life.

And what disturbs me the most

is when architects who work in New York

don't respect the grid

and don't understand how important the grid is

to the fabric of the city.

(ominous music)
(Crock speaks in German)

"City of the Captive Globe."

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

Noise from order.
Noise from order.

(dog barks)

(Ole speaks in German)

It's a retroactive manifesto.

It's not even necessarily trying to say

this is actually what happened

but by looking backwards

we can put a set of rules on it that seem to be consistent

and that we can then take from those rules

and move on and learn something,

do something new with them.

So, the things that might be specific about New York,

maybe they're not relevant anymore.

But there are certain observations.

And the one that I refer to a lot

when I'm trying to explain things to clients

is the chapter of the Downtown Athletic Club

very similar to what I was saying about the idea of bigness

where you have a single building

which has the appearance of a single envelope.

It has the coherence of what you would think

a building should be.

And yet if you X-ray it,

ya discover that,

unlike a traditional building that looks like that,

because it has the profile

of a traditional downtown office building,

if you X-ray it, your realize

that there's a very specific area for boxing

and there's a very specific area for an oyster bar.

In fact I'm referencing something

that always elicits some laughter

particularly in American clients.

But in "Delirious New York,"

there's a sketch of what is the reality of the proximities.

If you you zoom in, you would see

boxing ring, the oyster bar, the men's changing room.

So the result would be

naked men eating oysters with boxing gloves, right?

(oysters rattle)

(tin rattles)

(boxing gloves creaks)

(scissor lift whirs)

(car horn rings)

(chisel chinks)

(saw buzzes)

(Holger speaks in German)

(man speaks in German)

(Holger speaks in German)

If you look at "S,M,L,X" in Rem's book,

he mentions my contribution

to making him realize the buildability of architecture

and what it's about, the realities of architecture.

(mechanistic music)

Ah. Ah.

(lips smack)

(mechanism clicks)

(machines murmur)

(haunting music)

Rem in fact came to see me.

He heard about my work

and said, "Would we work together?"

And so we did.

And the first thing we did we won, The Hague town hall.

But we never came to build it.

Richard Meier got to build it.

But that was the beginning of a exploration,

that Rem realized,

I think, as he said to you,

that his progression into becoming

an architect, if you like,

was through this process.

So with Rem what was interesting was

there was not an idea to have a purity of form or anything

but to allow accidents to happen,

to make opportunism work.

And I like that whole attitude.

It was a refreshing attitude.

(weighty music)

Course, then the teams grew.

And our teams have also got to know each other.

So it's a very close approach.

We work as a collective almost.

(yearnful music)

(switch clicks)
(jolly music)

When you (indistinct) alone,

as you can see here, in architecture you're never alone.

That is a fantastic difference,

and that's why it is also interesting

to use one against the other,

because at some point it could really become very easy

to forget who you are

because you're always working in collective environments,

which is actually very good

because you can, in the best cases,

generate a kind of collective intelligence.

But it means that you don't always know

where you begin and where you stop.

I see.

(Clemens speaks in German)

(Chris speaks in German)

"Hey, (snaps) we need it done by tomorrow.

(Chris speaks in German)

Your four, why did you take it out?

Rem is also, I think, one of the people

who take programmatic concerns to the ultimate.

His analysis program is absolutely brilliant.

And, having worked with so many people,

I know the kind of effort OMA and his team put

into the analysis program.

And the way he tackles program

always ensures, I think,

that each building has a programmatic drive

And then we then can come together

to make forms out of those drives,

and then we invent back interventions

that then enhance the program again.

(unpleasant music)

(Clemens speaks in German)

(diagram swishes)

(gloomy music)

(nostalgic music)

To speak more directly

about what environment Rem created or authored.

He's created a situation

in which the inspiration can come from anywhere.

And really, what he has done is

he creates the space for other to have inspirations.

That is a radically different environment

from any other design environment I have witnessed,

and it's different

primarily because it's horizontal.

People unfamiliar with this process,

and, by example,

when we have new people come into the office,

students or new architects,

their first reaction is

that this is a very aggressive environment,

because they'll put something forward,

and immediately, it hits a lot of resistance,

a lot of attack.

And they take it very personally.

And then after a while people realize

that that process isn't about attacking people in any way.

It's just that if it's worthy of a reaction,

it will get a reaction, and it will get a very strong one.

And the reaction will be to attempt to take the idea apart

to see if it has validity.

(Clemens speaks in German)

(ominous music)

What Rem Koolhaas represented for us

was a kind of severe rationality

(woman speaks in foreign language)

(Rem speaks in foreign language)

Have feeling you're not working at the right distance

because I think everything is either too close or too far.

Would you please welcome

this year's Pritzker Prize-winner Rem Koolhaas.

(audience applauds)

Thank you. Can we have all the lights out.

Please join me in welcoming Rem Koolhaas.

Thank you.
(audience applauds)

Can you switch the light off, please.

Can we have all the lights out, please.

(man speaks in German)

(creepy music)

(Clemens speaks in German)

Maybe you should stop and think before you draw.

What a revolutionary idea.

Course it's not really.

It's the way architects always work.

What we realized is

that the only we were going to get that space to think

and, God forbid, get paid for that space to think

is to call it something else.

So if you can now

legitimize that way of working and thinking

and call it something other than architecture,

Americans are like, "Hey, yeah, sign me up.

I'll write the check today." (chuckles)

And it's crazy because all it took was

rebranding and creating a new office

to give them exactly the same services

we were totally able to give them beforehand

(catastrophic music)

(Chris speaks in German)

(stressed music)

The irony of an architect

is that he or she

cannot define their own agenda.

You can have a whole series

of preoccupations, interest, competences, et cetera,

but you have no control over any sequence

in which it will be developed

or unfolded or applied.

And so that became

a very deeply unsatisfying situation.

And that's why I started to teach at Harvard

and start AMO,

because at least now we can occasionally...

For instance, through this switch I could look at Lagos,

which, in any other condition, I could never do.

(crowd chatters)

But one of the things that astonish me most

is that in all my time in Nigeria,

maybe three weeks now,

I've never seen a child cry.

And so we now have

a very minimal dimension of independence.

But it's very weak, in a certain way,

because still we need to make money.

But it enabled us, for instance,

to decide to work for the European community

or to work in Russia for the Hermitage

or to work in Beijing issue of preservation

Those are all things

that we had to do on our own initiative, in a certain way.

Rem is very aware,

and maybe too aware I would say

'cause sometimes he tailors his motivations too much

to this fact,

that you have to constantly reinvent yourself

if you're going to stay at the center of things.

(Ole speaks in German)

"Fuck context."

(duck croak)

(crane whirs)

(building thuds)
(cow moos)

(sheep bleats)

(sheep bleat)

(Man speaks in German)

It's really ironic

because that quote has always been taken out of context

because I really said it

in the situation

that you have to do a very huge building

and insert it in the city.

And at the time I really formulated that theory,

I was working on the theory of bigness

And was, again, a kind of polemic

against my European colleagues

who always have this rhetoric of relationship.

And basically, if a building is next to a building this way,

it has a tendency to become similar

First of all, I think that similarity is not a guarantee

for contextual sensitivity.

And secondly, there are many situations

that there simply is no context.

So it was just, maybe,

a kind of ironic statement

that context is in many cases a kind of overestimated issue.

On the other hand,

if you're working in Europe,

for instance, in Berlin,

context is everything.

Of course I deeply engage with it

and profoundly feel I'm thinking

about every issue of context.

But context is of course also political,

so it's not only the physics.

This embassy is not just a symbol

of the partnership between the two countries,

and expression of shared ideals.

More than anything else, it's a place of work

where relations between the Netherlands and Germany

are maintained and strengthened,

(lively music continues)

where interests are protected,

where information is exchanged

and mutual understanding nurtured,

(staff converse faintly)

where people work together

towards Europe's further political integration,

a place, in other words,

where the Dutch and German cultures meet.

But it's unmistakably Dutch.

(lively music climaxes)

Now, we're all familiar

with the current EU flag and logo,

which is that blue background with 12 gold stars.

And it's quite nice and classy.

But maybe it's time for something new.

The European Commission president, Romano Prodi,

has decided that it may be time

for something a little more contemporary

and maybe a little more arresting.

And one of the people who's involved

in, I suppose, pitching for the business

and has created a fabulous-looking potential alternative

to the current symbol of the EU

is Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas

who joins us from Rotterdam.

Now, if you can imagine, for listeners,

an old-fashioned pair of pajamas,

that design, the striped old-man's pajamas,

but, instead, with extremely bold and bright colors

and squashed together

so it looks like a really colorful barcode.

Yeah, I think that the pajama metaphor is yours.

But the barcode metaphor is something I totally endorse.

It's basically a code

that represents on the left Ireland

and on the right Greece,

in other words, the two extremes geographically

of the current member states,

and that would as the union extends also extend

also extend Eastward.

So Ireland would always be the defining edge

on the left side.

Unless the States joined.

So I appreciate you taking my call tonight,

Rem Koolhaas, who's an.

Very much.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.
Thank you.

It is a pleasure, bye.

(chuckles) Thanks, bye.

(music stops)

(man chuckles)

Pretty good questions. Intelligent, huh?

(Ole speaks in German)

(disfigured music)

(man speaks in German)

(Ole speaks in German)

(Clemens speaks in German)

(disjointed music)

(lips smack)

You know we're working for Prada, right?

You know we do three stores,

one in L.A., one in New York, and one in San Francisco,

and we're now venturing

in things that are more directly more directly related

to their identity

and less with architecture?

And do you think Prada is in decline?

I used to buy a lot of it,

not so much anymore.

I wear most of all Ann Demeulemeester.

Oh.

And with that

I wear Jimmy Choo shoes almost exclusively.

(Rem chuckles)

Really can totally imagine you now.

(Clemens speaks in German)

(epicenters hiss)

(man speaks in German)

(Clemens speaks in German)

(man speaks in German)

(enchanting music)

We did not only make a public building,

but we also made the building public.

(mystical music continues)

(Crock speaks in German)

(control board bubbles)

(friendly music)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(woman speaks faintly)

(man speaks foreign language)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

We are living in a very strange condition

where sometimes we do

very rational forms of architecture

that are really completely argued

on a rational level

where we have a lot of negotiation

with clients or with boards

and where we have to explain every step.

Of course the amazing part of working on a competition

is that you can show in one go

something that you consider your last word

and that the clients then have to take of leave.

But once they take it, it give you a much greater influence

an much earlier influence

on how the building initially look.

I also want to show you some of the context

and make a revelation

about the strange things

that can trigger

and that can inspire in architecture.

For instance, a building like this one is something

that our office doesn't have the freedom to make,

because this part of the architectural spectrum

is claimed by others

who do it better than we have ever dared to do it.

So in that sense,

even in our position or especially in our position,

we have to be very careful what we do.

Or our freedom is not complete.

The external element's the tunnel,

but it never made it into something really attractive.

And the plans were actually deeply unattractive.

And this was then the first presentation we made

to the client.

Your thing is a storage space.

And we will take out of it the living room,

a (speaks in foreign language), your space,

her space, their space.

And here you are.

And it mean that it's spatially very interesting

because you can change geometries.

And there will be transparencies and perspectives

going through the entire space.

The house was also a project

that was based on a shoe box.

But instead of positive shoe box,

which I really hate,

we had a void shoe box

or the negative of a shoe box,

drilling a tunnel through this volume.

So it was an incredible opportunity

of having both shoe box and no shoe box

or being acoustically correct

and yet architecturally fascinating.

The major concert hall was drilled through the house

and (indistinct) smaller concert hall.

We formed the volume even larger, bigger,

in connection with the open one

and where suddenly the house had turned into...

And here you see the operation necessary to turn.

And it fitted wonderfully

because not only did you have the main hall in this way,

the smaller hall here.

But any other important programmatic element

could be excavated from the house.

It was a space for cyber music,

a space for an entrance of course,

an element for young musicians.

And the depth of the building could be

the area for rehearsals.

So the beauty of the whole story

is in the (indistinct) way that I presented this in Porto

three weeks ago.

And it looks very much

as if this project will be selected.

This building was, as I saw it, too lungs.

The walls go up.

And the shape comes round it with voids.

There's nothing in it at the concept.

There was just that and a shape.

And then I decide to put in a minimum strength

to everything, like 40 centimeters,

knowing it will not work.

That's another strategy that has come,

so that puts inherent weakness.

Then I go and put instabilities,

which become interventions.

So lines come into space,

the big props you see flying.

So at the entry,

which is dramatic here,

it's coming from the prop lines flying in space.

Why are they there?

They're there because this was weak originally.

They've come to support certain things

in a very pragmatic way.

This thing needs something there.

And what's the strongest point in the ground?

There? Okay, down there.

So Rem and I have adopted these techniques

of opportunist moves

but poetic in a sense.

They are poetic.

Those props in that space are poetic.

There's no doubt.

If they were run at some other angle,

maybe there it would look crude.

But the two long props...

But then comes the short prop

off the top to the roof,

like a joke almost,

because a normal traditional way woulda been

to make that wall longer and just take it out

in a sort of pure way.

And it's a phrase that Rem and I coined long, long ago:

stupid but smart.

What people are not prepared for today is to admit

that a lot of the architectural activities are unconscious.

I mean we think we're doing certain things,

but in fact we're doing totally different things.

And I think, particularly in this building,

there were so many surprises also for ourselves

that occur to us at the different phases of realization.

And I think that, talking privately,

one of the things that I think this building has as a theme

is to work in a way that the void space is more important

than the substantial space

and that an absence can be more important than a presence.

And I think that this room is really

the absolute proof or evidence of that.

And that has been something

that I've been thinking about for a long time.

And I think that this ultimately, perhaps, related

to a moral resistance against architecture

and against creating things

with incredible effort and difficulty.

And I've always believed

that taking away is easier than putting there.

So that is the private issue that is important for me.

(blocks scrape)

Seattle and Porto were done side by side.

One is obsessively logical.

And one is defiantly irrational.

And they look like sisters.

So it's not even that the end product needs to be different.

But Rem is more and more okay

with a project that is defiantly irrational

whereas some of us

can only deal with

the highly, highly, highly, highly, obsessively rational,

understanding that the result may actually look similar.

I'm really, in a way, tortured, to some extent,

that, since I'm not interesting

in scripting exhaustively

what all the reactions are,

I find it very difficult to not only design them

but also to build them,

which is a fiercely complex and demanding process,

but also then to explain them.

I'm more and more interested

in withdrawing from that kind of situation

because when you explain them,

actually, you give a very boring and limited account

of what you actually think is happening.

So I'm actually filled with ambiguity about it.

(woman echoes indistinctly)

(wind murmurs)

(bird chirps)

Berlin, Germany, 1997,

Rem Koolhaas and his staff have been commissioned

to design the new Dutch embassy located

on the banks of the Spree,

their idea, to deconstruct the typical Berlin block,

(deformed music continues)

the result, a combination of block and independent building,

a building which proves itself as a variation

of the architectural promenade, emancipating it,

a series of cavities that seem to be cut with a pickax

from the volume of a cube,

forming a zigzag trajectory,

a spacial fantasy

that unfolds within a strictly cubic space

where it continually twists and turns upon itself,

constructing a controlled and joyful chaos.

(Clemens speaks in German)

There is a tension

and a rejection of certain things automatically

when we create together.

And it's a tough, tough, brutal Dutch aesthetic.

It's a Calvinist, almost, rejection of certain things.

But the other side of him comes out.

And, as you see in this building, other building,

there's a very sensual nature.

And it's first thing I noticed

when I saw what he was doing,

which I responded to.

There is a sensuality in materialities and in textures,

which is important.

I've fundamentally rejected modernism as a thing.

And the simple streamlined box-like machine-like forms

as a final end of modernism

I rejected though Rem works, in a way,

in a modernist tradition.

But it's different with the way the materials are used.

And I enjoy that all the time.

(drum rolls buzzes)

(kindly music)

(man speaks in German)

(Clemens speaks in German)

(bewitching music)

(mystical music)

(obscure music)

The Dutch have a very strange sense of sarcasm or humor

that the rest of the world doesn't.

I mean, when I first moved to Holland,

I actually though that the Dutch didn't have sarcasm.

I just thought, "Okay, the people are devoid

of any sense of irony and sarcasm,"

and then at some point I realized

it's just a very, very rarefied form of it.

The idea that you look up

and theoretically look up someone's dress,

maybe the word is perversion,

there's a certain delight in perversion

that's very, very Dutch and is very, very Rem.

(horrifying music)

(Rem speaks in foreign language)

(contemptuous music)

(apprehensive music)

(disjointed music)

Here.

(unhinged music)

(Rem speaks in foreign language)

(bewitching music continues)

(calculating music)

(vulgar music)

For a theorist

it should indeed be possible

to call out for mechanisms of different kind

for all things we have,

a mechanism of theater,

a mechanism architecture,

a mechanism of sociology, and so on.

And maybe one possible mechanism of architecture

consist in that distinction between private and public

or inside and outside

or up side and down side

and the articulation of these distinctions

is the mechanism which makes up for a building.

And I think, in this pattern, which you called, I think,

"Stacked Freedom" for (obscured) in Bordeaux,

you've found a mechanism

which both accepts traditional house

and turns it upside down

for a very specific and special situation.

But I think that that was actually really the reason

to write those patents.

They are all mechanisms.

They are all machines in that sense.

But you wouldn't try to look

for some basic or some elementary mechanism in architecture?

I ask this because I've never met an architect

who would go into answering a question

at their one mechanism,

which is of course a very, very silly question,

a serious ask.

Well, I certainly have a nostalgia for a one question.

One of my reason

of the endless preoccupation with Mies Van der Rohe

is exactly that,

how somebody could find the same answer to every issue.

But I don't think we can do it.

(ominous music)
(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(euphoric music)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(euphoric music continues)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)
(gloomy music)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Bart speaks in German)

(gloomy music continues)

If you look carefully

at where our greatest effort has been invested

and where our greatest, maybe, originality is,

it's that we did to the section

what in the previous part has been done to the plan.

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(creepy music)

(mystical music)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(creepy music)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(door creaks)

(Crock speaks in German)

(disjointed music)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(building crashes)

Rem is very concerned

not only with the shape of the building

but also with the way

in which he can warp that shape and manipulate that shape

with spaces that begin in one place

and extend into another place.

So I think that he is interested

not only in the method of enclosure

but also in the interior organization

within that enclosure

in a way

that is not necessarily articulated

by the enclosure.

Another way of creating, then, a synthesis

of our work

is to try to find

a way, exactly as you saying,

that things can be indeterminate,

because indeterminacy was the big '60s thing,

and yet have an identity

or yet have a form

or yet be somehow at the same time not open-ended.

Almost every one of our projects starts

with that, a realization

that nothing can be entirely predicted

but that certain structures can be engineered

and give a shape to something

because without shape

there is nothing eventually to react to.

So I think it's very true.

So it's complexity and shape as-

As almost contradictory.

Opposites?
Yeah, yeah.

If you read, Rem's essay "Bigness," I think,

comes a long way to describing that process,

which is an architect should

try to solve specific problems

in very, very optimized ways

and should also let go

of how those now-solved things interact.

There's a moment the thing is either too big

or too complex

or too whatever.

And in fact you shouldn't try to dictate

how every interaction in a building occurs.

You should solve problem A and problem B and problem C,

and you should allow there to be zones between A and B

and A and C and B and C

where you have no control

and no idea what's going to happen.

And that end result,

when you come back and look at it as architecture,

looks like complexity and shape.

I see the "Seattle library" and "Casa da Musica"

as the end of a 18-year progression

and that the next horizon is the CCTV building in Beijing

as another scale jump.

(menacing music)

(Ole speaks in German)

(Chris speaks in German)

(enchanted music)

(stern music)

Rem actually put into print his displeasure,

his disappointment with America.

And that made life for us in America quite difficult

for a period

because it's one thing to have heard rumors

that a person is displeased.

It's another for your client to call you up and say,

"Well, what the hell's this

on page seven of "The New York Times?"

(Chris speaks in German)

From Xidan crossroad to east,

the detailed condition of the sites

of Beijing Books Building and its surroundings

were beknown.

Xidan crossroad is at a joint

between the Chang'an Avenue of 100 meters wide

and Xidan Street of 70 meters wide.

At it's (indistinct) stands the several modern buildings.

At the southwest corner is a newly built Minsheng Bank plaza

with modest image and facade of glass wall.

I think that the cultural situation is very different

in Beijing than it is in New York

and perhaps the timing is, well,

something which is to Rem's advantage

in that it's a moment of change

and it's a moment to be seized.

And I think that Rem has the good fortune of being there

at a moment when there's a positive force

enabling a major change to take place.

(Holger speaks in German)

(mystical music)

(Ole speaks in German)

(obscure music)

Rem and I have talked for about 10 year

about how to do a high-rise building,

and we did a building about seven years ago

for a Korean client.

It was going to be the slenderest building in the world,

most thin building,

400 meters I think.

And we were sketching like this,

stupid but smart.

What d'ya do?

How do you make the tallest, thinnest building?

Well, you put another building against it.

So the idea came to put this up

and put another building against it.

So we made a design with buildings

all supporting each other.
(gloomy music)

And so when CCTV came,

Rem phoned me up, and he said, "I'm thinking of a loop."

So that's how we start.

Just a word happens.

"Make a box fly"

"A loop." I said, "What do you mean?"

And then of course

if you look at the early work on the Korean project,

one building went up.

It came to a collar.

So one building came this way.

Another building came this way.

Then there was a collar in space, a collar.

And through the collar came the tall 400-meter building,

which is only 20 meters thin

because the collar was like a harness.

So when the building shook with the wind,

it would hit the collar.

And the collar would take the loads

down the other two buildings.

So it was really a first

to break the typology of high-rise.

And if you look a CCTV now,

if you go up and along the collar and then down,

so the central building is no more,

this becomes a loop.

And we didn't do it that way.

Rem didn't think of it that way.

He just thought of a loop.

But if you look at the analysis of these forms,

you actually see

that, actually, what was there is similar.

And so CCTV became this extraordinary loop in space

where the building wants to collapse,

but, because of this thing, it holds itself up.

So in one direction it's like a simple portal frame.

In the other direction,

it's like a leaning cantilever slightly,

which allows us to put 10 stories out in space.

It's at 240 meters.

A 10-story building goes this way and that way.

(soaring fanfare)

(reporter speaks in foreign language)

(interpreter speaks in foreign language)

(audience applauds)

(mystical music)

(Ole speaks in German)

The whole intent of taking the entire

conception-through-production loop of television

and sticking it into a single building

is both about control but also loss of control,

that these things happen next to each other.

And frankly, there's gonna be moments of serendipity,

moments of chance,

moments of loss of control that's much more powerful

than if these things are
(music stops)

in Beijing, Shanghai, the outer ring of Beijing.

(lulling music)

(Ole speaks in German)

(model hums)

(model beeps)

(model rubs)

(model squelches)

(model hoots)

(model rubs)

(dog barks)

(man speaks in German)

(jet whooshes)

(Chris speaks in German)

(soldiers shout)

(Rem speaks faintly)

(mystical music)

(Crock speaks in German)

(machines whir)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(model warbles)

model buzzes

(Crock speaks in German)

(Isabel speaks in German)

(Crock speaks in German)
(Isabel speaks in German)

One of the exciting things about architecture

is that it gives you so many reasons to be modest

because there are so many level on which you can fail.

I would say that Rem is discovering

that China in particular

is starting to look a whole lot like America.

This rhetoric of "Go East,"

turns out going East isn't any better than going West.

It's just called people with their own issues

and their own constraints.

And maybe the Chinese don't have boards.

But you know what?

They've got political formations

that look a whole lot like boards

when it comes down to making decisions.

So the cultural differences are there.

But the ultimate reality,

in terms of practice,

is not so different.

So I think that Rem's optimism for the East

is a little more in check,

and I think his pessimism about the West

is a little more in check.

And we're starting to realize

that it's just the environment of the world

and you have to

(ethereal music)

tailor each project to each person's constraints.

And this is never gonna be easy

There's no golden land that you can go build in.

Every place is gonna have problems

They're just gonna be different ones.

But everyone's gonna have their problems.

Everyone's gonna create constraints

that you think are unnecessary or shouldn't be the case.

And that's just the case.

(ethereal music continues)

(nostalgic music)