WEBVTT

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[sil.]

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[non-English narration]

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I know it serves my purposes, I mean
there is the car wash, there\'s gas,

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there\'s nothing much more, I could ask of the gas
station. They don\'t have a very good candy selection.

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I mean I\'m sure

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things are built a certain
way for a reason.

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[non-English narration]

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No I think it depends, which study of ray you are
using, I know, I\'m more, seeing my husband, he wouldn\'t

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even look at the building. I have to be the one
say, oh look at this. So I think it depends on

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who you are as a person and what
you appreciate in your life.

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[sil.]

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But why was it made here
in the first place,

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well I\'m sure some of you know Montreal
was a pretty popular city in the 1960s,

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pretty hit place with Expo 67. Nuns Island
was been developed at that time and I was

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asked to work on this project.

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[music]

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It was not inhabited in any way
like you see today and the idea was

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to develop a type of sub suburb or a garden
city, very close to downtown Montreal sea.

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As you can see that it took us
about 10 minutes to get here.

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[sil.]

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Well my name is Mike, I\'m a mechanic
here, you know, general mechanic.

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Every year a different crew comes in and say this thing
is great. I am not one of those guys who could tell you,

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well it should be this way or that way. I know
it\'s pretty strong and I feel safe underneath it.

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Frankly I do not think that you need to be

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an expert to appreciate great architecture.

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The kind of singularity and capacity
and kind of silent portrait

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of Mies Van der Rohe, it was
in equivalent of it here,

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it flickers all over the place. I mean I was looking
up in that corner there and there\'s a pentacle,

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a five pointed star. The pentagon

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and the tetrahedron, I mean (inaudible) was struggling
to figure out how to make those things go together

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in the Timaeus and Bucky Fuller did it.
And whether

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I\'m an expert on Bucky Fuller, which I\'m
not, when I\'m expert on architecture,

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look I\'ve never even built a building,
so who am I to talk about architecture.

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You know, I have no right to
talk about it officially,

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but I come to… I come to place,
and I think every human being

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comes to a place where there is…
with what they bring. You know,

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if you… if you fell in love in a building in a gas station,
you are going to remember that gas station, right?

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[music]

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A friend of mine that lived in
Montreal told me about Nuns island,

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he said you should check out Nuns Island, it\'s full of
people just like you. Young urban professionals looking for

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a nice quiet place to live. Hello.
So I am driving by the island

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and looking at this gas in SO sign, but
it\'s it\'s it\'s a rather large roof.

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It\'s not your typical SO like the one down the street. So
I said okay, I\'m going to have to check this place out.

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[non-English narration]

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Anything Mies touched, turned to gold.

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So here they are.

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This is the old… before and after,
which do you think looks better?

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What the assignment was Mies was doing
the tall buildings, fill the mid-rise,

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and make the townhouse, and Mies did the
gas station, which is for me personally

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the one really beautiful building.

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The developers were not people of quality.

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It\'s very harsh to say and it\'s
mean and rude, but it\'s the truth.

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Normally there are mullions
that go all the way through.

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If you look at any of these buildings, you
look at the fence here and that there,

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still is a better building by far than
the kind of crap that is mostly built.

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Still better building, but
it has been much reduced.

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Chicago, America, Montreal, Toronto.

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Let us say the American kind… you know,

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there is conservatives, at
one level on the one here

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and bankers, if you think
about banking and bankers,

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all that, about this stuff, right.
And now it\'s 1948,

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and the developer Herb Greenwald

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Is trying to finance 860, 880, like…

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Doing work with Mies Van der Rohe in
terms of being pragmatic about it,

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trying to get financing and so forth
in the late 40s in the United States,

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with Mies buildings was anything but easy,
and there was nothing like in Chicago.

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There were bricked buildings
with openings, buildings,

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traditional bill goings. So now you are going to
a bank and you are trying to get an end loan,

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a construction loan and then the final
loan in the building. And they look

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at these drawings or models, whatever, he was
showing them and they don\'t look like buildings.

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They look like the skeleton for the
building. It looks like the final building

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is yet to be cleared.
So bankers looked at it

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and I\'m sure said things like, when
is the building going to be finished,

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what does it look like and then
Greenwald was forced to stay,

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this is the finished building.

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[music]

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Pretty soon you get people are all like,

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fancier is the city.
People say, your building

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Mr. developer is not far to sealing gloves.
The market was established

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for a way of living, to
change Chicago financially.

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Market wise, behaviorally

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and then at the apogee
of it, architecturally.

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You know, there is a certain
class of people in Chicago,

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who love the idea of a brand new
different kind of a building

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and in time I got known
to the taxicab drivers

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as the glass menagerie. You hop into a cab and
say, you want to go to the glass menagerie,

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they knew exactly what
you were talking about.

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I was thinking to myself,

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will people be willing to move into
a glass building. No one knew,

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because there were no such building before. You know, they couldn\'t
charge anymore rent because it was a Mies Van der Rohe building.

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It had to stand on its own legs.

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They are considered luxury buildings,
but the plans and the space

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are no larger than public housing
spaces at the same time.

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They infect feel larger
than they really are,

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because of the floor to ceiling
glass and a flowing feeling

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between inside and outside and the view,
the vista of Lake Michigan or the skyline

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is part of the experience of
living in one of his buildings.

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[music]

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He saw that there was another special quality
involved with the placement of those two buildings.

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So that you broke up, you came down the avenue, come
down the avenue, space coming through underneath,

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you feel the openness. He was
very conscious about that.

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Those are not just buildings as a monument
there, they are part of the city structure,

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you walk through them, you are beyond them, you
are into them, you are dealing with the space,

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you are not tied in. And here it just seems absolutely
normal. I can\'t imagine it being any other way.

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I can be here, I can see the
lake, I can see nature,

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and I don\'t have to cut the grass.
No it\'s a marvelous experience here

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to be in the city, part of
the city, and yet I feel,

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when I want to be, I\'m
quite to myself here,

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despite of the glass. Some people don\'t understand
that you can still have your own intimacy

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and look out.

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[music]

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He smashed the bourgeois vision.

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He smashed the Bowser, and he would go
boom like this and drop out of the sky,

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a rectangle, the sort of rectangle,

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that the movie that 2001 made,
that was Mies Van der Rohe,

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he just dropped out of the sky, amongst
these apes, a piece of stainless steel,

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I had no idea what they were looking at.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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These exhibits that are presently touring
around the world, Mies in America,

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Mies in Berlin, they make that very
clear, that he like some other architects

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of the 20th century Frank Lloyd Wright etc.
Is one of the

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giants of that century.

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[sil.]

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Good afternoon everyone,

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if I could have your attention please, I am Mats Anderson, I am the director
of the Whitney Museum of American Art. I\'m delighted you\'re all here

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in this very un-Miesian space.
Probably no other architect found

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greater opportunities here or made a
greater impact on the American scene

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than Mies Van der Rohe. The exhibition focuses
attention primarily on his American achievement

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and the impact of his work on
American culture get large.

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As the legend goes, and it\'s all true, it was
Phyllis who persuaded her father to commission

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these to design the Seagram Building. In
that sense we over a debt of gratitude,

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not just for this exhibition, but for
one of the most important monuments

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of 20th century architecture. Phyllis.

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I knew it was going to be building build for Seagram,
let\'s put it that way, and so I was (inaudible)

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this is just such a fantastic
opportunity to have an effect

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a real effect on the quality of the city.

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So he created

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openness in the city, a freedom
of how one can move in the city.

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Because normally in New York or most cities, buildings
are… tall buildings are hard against the sidewalk

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and so you go in and you\'re swallowed up

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by an elevator and that\'s it.
Where in Mies\'s building

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you can move around it. There are
wonderful benches to sit under trees,

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and this is full of movement, freedom of
movement, which is quite extraordinary.

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If you think of it, there\'s
nobody else who has done this.

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The quotidian to the facadism of
the Park Avenue, he broke it.

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Mies\'s role in designing
the plaza, I think is an

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important part of what he accomplished and
what he contribute to… to architecture.

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By opening up that space in front of the
Seagram Building, or to put it in another way,

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by causing the building to receive from
the apron of the street, opened up

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that spot in Park Avenue, and I think led people
to do much the same sort of thing elsewhere.

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And as you look around the major cities right
now, especially in New York City let\'s say,

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you walk down Park Avenue and there is the Seagram
Building and while it seems very much on the surface,

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like buildings around it, if you
examine it closely, the precision

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the elegance of the materials,
the color of the building,

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its placement on the… on the plaza, it is
very-very unusual and in that sense quite unique.

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[sil.]

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This is Mies Van der Rohe\'s only
building in New York, isn\'t a shame.

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Do you know how many buildings
there are by Mies in Chicago? 45.

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Can you imagine what it is
to live as an architect

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in a city with 45 buildings by Mies.

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[sil.]

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[music]

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We receive a phone call one day,
asking us to come for an interview,

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regarding doing a new restaurant
in place of the brasserie,

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which had experienced an
electrical fire several years ago.

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I was in contact with the people who
are going to run the restaurant,

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and said, well you know there are three
possibilities, either you are going to restore it,

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or you can make a sort of… some sort of
form inside, or you can do something

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where the art is integral with the
idea of, all the things put together.

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So they luckily chose that last
route, which was Diller Scofidio,

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whose work is just phenomenal.

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First of all, a restaurant in a
space that was already designed

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by two major figures of the 20th century,
so first it\'s one of the great glass

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and steel buildings of the 20th century by
Mies and that was already donting enough

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and then an interior that was
designed by Philip Johnson.

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[sil.]

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The question, the very preliminary
question for us was in what way

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do we respect the history of the
space, but also give it a chance

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to have a new breath.

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[sil.]

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[non-English narration]

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Well first of all, I
think he was a nice guy.

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I think he was very humble,
he was a very shy person.

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He didn\'t like to go out in
public or tall or lecture.

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Personally speaking, I think he was very much unto
himself, while he may have socialize with people,

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the socialization was made a good deal
easier by the presence of the Martinis,

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the more Martinis, he had,
the easier was to talk to,

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but at the end of the day he went back to
his own place. In fact one day on a trip

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we were sitting for two weeks in a
hotel, he would just sit for hours

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and look out the window or think
about something. I got very anxious

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and I wanted to return home.
I had a family with kids,

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and I didn\'t like sitting in hotel
rooms and I said why can\'t we go home,

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you are sitting here all day long and
you are not doing anything and he said,

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what do you mean, I am not doing anything.
I am working. He was always thinking

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about architecture and I knew that
that was his real primary interest

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in life, solving architectural problems.

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He liked boxing. He would
watch boxing on TV,

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yes he admitted that. I asked
him, what do you do Mies

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when you are just sitting
around and he said, I watch TV,

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what do you watch, boxing. I had a fix

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every Thursday evening with him and we…

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I learned drinking martinis there and smoking
cigars, because he offered me very nicely,

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week after week, would you
like to have a cigar.

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He was a very interesting guy.

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[music]

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We are spending a good deal of time these days
trying to define who Mies was, what his essence was.

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Everyone will come up with a different
answer. I think speaking for myself,

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I would try to differentiate his work let\'s say
from most of the work that most people see.

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It tends to be very simplified,

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one would almost speak of it as abstract
architecture. It\'s free of any kind of normal,

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or let\'s say traditional decoration,
the materials tend to be associated

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with the modern period, in other words steel and
glass. Now that doesn\'t vary much differentiate him

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from other architects of the present day, but he
is one of the people who pioneered that idea,

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back in Germany in the 1920s. Mies early on

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in the period right after the first
World War, embraced new materials.

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This was a general topic within modern
architecture among modern architects

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and at the time, the main new materials really
to be, that people looked to where concrete,

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reinforced concrete and steel and glass.

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And so he made for instance a…
a landmark pioneering project

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for an all glass skyscraper in 1921.
They were sensation at the time,

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but they couldn\'t be built,
technically they couldn\'t be build,

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because industry had gotten to the
point where they could produce

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buildings like that, like the Barcelona
Pavilion, all in glass which was,

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you know, full of floored exposition.

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[music]

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Mies also was one of the great inventers,

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the great innovators of the tall building in this
country after World War Two, and there again

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when you see these things, you see how
he has used glass and steel to keep

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the the the materials and the
entire aspect of the building

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to a minimum. It was in-line with
his philosophy of architecture,

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being based in structure.
Mies never invented the form.

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Everything that he used in all of these
buildings were out of the factory.

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He never invented that, he did used
different sizes, but they were available.

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[music]

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When he comes to America, he really
develops a strong preference,

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
perhaps he had it already earlier,
a strong preference for steel.

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
First he want the steel to be, seen to be steel, not to
be buried, and not to be smothered by other devices,

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
but to register this deal to allow
it to be expressed. But then he also

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
used very particular shapes of steel.
He used the wide flanged section,

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
which has an I or an H in its plan.
He favored that

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
probably because again it was characteristic but
also because it would create shadow and profile,

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
perhaps for other reasons as well, but it allowed
him to achieve certain effects, visual effects.

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
Mies emphasized again and again
especially in his later life,

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
that proportion was extraordinarily
important for him,

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
not just the proportion of things, but also the
proportion of spaces between things. So you know,

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
we were dealing with a
fairly refined sensibility.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
[music]

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
The Maine center was the
major late work of Mies.

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
It was a major monument that many
people of my generation slowly,

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
but surely came to grapple with, that project is
something that I\'ve gone back to again and again,

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
in the way that often architects

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
go back to particular touchdowns in the history of architecture
as a point of reference. Mies I think needs to be seen as

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
an architect, who was distinguish,
let\'s say from many other architects

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
by the fact that he was grappling with
the conditions of the modern world,

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
the conditions of the Metropolis,
the conditions of new technologies,

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
which were experienced by many people as
problematic, as disruptive, as alienating.

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
He said that the only way to grapple with
them was to operate through these conditions,

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
rather than sidestepping, rather than side
stepping, rather than a nostalgia for the past

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
to really rework and rethink
architecture under these conditions.

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
I think superficially,

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
people look at Mies\'s buildings
and say oh another glass box,

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
but somehow if you look at the Mies glass
box and all of the descendants glass boxes,

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
how come his look always so much better.

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
It is a false impression that

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
the great architects are geniuses
that are struck by lightning

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
and the great idea is immediately there.

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
Many-many architects work in the
same way refining their war,

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
until they think it\'s right.

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:08.000
[music]

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
Mies\'s career is interesting
because it was truncated virtually

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
in the middle. He spent
about 32 years in Berlin

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
and he spent 32 years in Chicago.

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:43.000
[music]

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
What I first met Mies

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
at school, he was in his mid 70s then,

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
when you are of that age, you don\'t
sit down at a drafting table,

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
and you know, do all the design,

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
you would work on these things
yourself, certain parts of a building

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
and then you would take those to him and review
them with him, and he would offer suggestions,

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
or he would tell you to work on it
more, which was more likely the case.

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
He would come around to
the work they were doing,

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
examine it, usually puffing on his cigar,

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
very slowly and very deliberately, and say

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
try it again. Yeah work on it,

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
you never stop, when you think you\'ve
got this brilliant idea. You know,

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
you do two or three more solutions, start
over and do them over and then you judge

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
those three or four solutions
and choose from lowest,

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
as you find out from experience that these
solutions come from working on them,

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
not from trying to dream
them up in your head.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
And I think maybe that\'s part of his greatness,
that wants to exhaust all possible alternatives

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
and then discard them one by one,

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
until he maybe hopefully come up
with one or two that might satisfy.

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
Mies\'s impact

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
upon the education in architecture I think
goes back to the days when he first came here,

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
up until that time, the traditional way had to
a large extent emphasized the Bowser method.

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
He got away from that, again we get
rid of all that ornamentation,

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
dealing with very-very simple
and basic approaches to things.

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
And very shortly we got into what we had
never done before in the old Bowser,

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
we made models. This was the first time that we had dealt with
anything, that we could see the three dimensionality of it,

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
beam connections, window details,

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
full size in wood, in the office building.

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
Mies never let us go on to something and
design until we knew how it was being built.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
So he said Joe what do you know
about bricks, and I said bricks,

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
yes, well I said you could
build a wall with bricks,

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
so right there, he gave me a
pile of wood little bricks

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
and I learned how to put
up a brick bond wall,

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
how to turn a corner in brick, how
to cut a window in the brick wall.

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
So all of these things suddenly
brought to me the idea that

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
the craftsmanship, what
goes into good construction

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
really went home with me. So that\'s where

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
I really began learning about architecture.

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
He was trying to make a language.

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
He had said this many times, what I
want to do is, develop a language

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
that people can use and you know,
people did use it to a degree,

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
but you know, what great architecture is

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
and who makes great
architecture are artists,

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
great artist, and he never talked
about that. In my whole time

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
he never talked about being an artist,

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
but an architect, a master builder.

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:48.000
[music]

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
What he does with the structure is to transform
them into a visible emblem of the structure.

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
So that at the New National Gallery
we have the extraordinary roof,

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
this gridded waffle roof,

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
it creates a symbol really

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
of what technology could be, what
the potential of technology is

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
as a form of art. But the
universal space idea of course

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
is one in which presumably the space itself

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
is large enough and neutral enough that it could
serve any number of different identities.

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
So that the building can
stand and remain there,

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
but at the same time the function changes.
Here is an architecture that

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
wants to simply frame and support the
unfolding of life, that is encouraging

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
a an experimental approach to living,

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
that isn\'t already defined at the outset.

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
So at the New National Gallery
not only did it provoke

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
new ways of thinking about the display of art
but it provides… it has provided a setting

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
for all kinds of events. I think that there

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
is something there that the architecture
is, in Mies\'s hands reduced

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
to the minimum really, it\'s reduced
to, he once said, almost nothing.

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:33.000
[music]

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:48.000
[non-English narration]

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:08.000
[music]

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:18.000
[non-English narration]

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:48.000
[music]

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
Our current civilization is
so unbelievably accelerated

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
that the profession of architecture is inherently
too slow to follow it, initially we try

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
to make faster and faster architecture,
but it became clear that

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
there are a large number, a vast
number of issues in the world

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
that still needs architectural thinking, that still
need thinking about relationships, proportions,

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
sequence etcetera etcetera, but
they don\'t necessarily need

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
to be articulated in the form of building. I
think you only have to look at the images,

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
there is a of anthropology, a lot
of sociology, a lot of politics,

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
a lot of things that
comes with the economy,

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
that those were all things that Mies never
presumably looked at or cared about.

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
You know, it\'s partly by choice, because… partly
because all of that is getting very impose

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
on us today. Genspace is a sum
total of our current achievement.

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
We have built more than all
previous generations together,

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
but somehow we do not
register on the same scales.

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
What I am saying is that, it\'s on almost
global scale, the significance of architecture

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
has diminished in direct
proportion to its notoriety,

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
let me put in that way. So I think that… that
is the dilemma that we are wrestling with.

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
So we can all produce a lot of architecture,
but I think it\'s harder and harder to produce

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
important or meaningful architecture.

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
Mies is a perfect sample. When he build
Seagram Building, it was a kind of time that

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
he could really make an incredibly
strong representation of what

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
a company was. He put an
enormous amount of money

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
to do it and I think that what is happening
today is, there is more celebrity

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
and more media attention, but I think

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
if you look at the work, and if you also look at the
money, and look at the architecture. I am a 100% sure

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
it\'s less than it was then in that period.
I think the beautiful things for instance

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
of this building is that
it\'s entirely spectacular.

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
It doesn\'t make any gesture, it doesn\'t
have a very strong expression,

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
but it\'s still both kind of
incredibly useful as you can see

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
and deeply exciting for
its openness to the city.

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
So… I think that very few
buildings that are build today

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
have this kind of flexibility,
this kind of modesty.

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:48.000
[sil.]

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
I consider myself as a writer. Of course the
individual works, are going to be… are important,

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
but just I think that only through books
can you generate a coherence today.

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:08.000
[music]

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
When Victor Hugo wrote this will kill that, I mean he
basically said that architecture will be killed by the book,

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
because the book has something that\'s
distributable, it\'s it\'s easy it\'s fast, it\'s cheap

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
and architecture as a cultural
communicator is fixed in space,

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
it\'s it\'s you know, it\'s heavy, it takes
a long time, it\'s very expensive,

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
and then one could say that… that
the Internet will kill the book,

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
right by that logic, that electronic
media will evaporate the book,

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
but we know still that the book is still around, it\'s pretty good shape,
architecture is still around and it\'s in pretty good shape, and in fact

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
the media has never been more conscious of
architecture than it is now in the last 10 years.

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
It\'s hard to be an architect,
it\'s hard to hire an architect.

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
Even Brad Pitt is now thinking about
going to architecture school,

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
so there is a interesting new relationship
between media and architecture,

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
and maybe for all the wrong reasons, but
we\'ll take it any way we can get it.

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
When you do a piece of architecture, it\'s a
little bit like like like raising a child,

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
you know, at the certain age they
leave home, and you can\'t control it,

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
and in a sense architecture
is that way you do it,

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
you put your heart into it, and then
you hope that people respect it.

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
The best control you can have is having a
really good piece of work. So we try to think

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
in a contemporary way and we hope that
those ideas have longevity in the future.

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:28.000
[music] [non-English narration]

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
Whatever, the scale was, Mies gave
it the same care and consideration.

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
He was remarkable that way.

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
So it wasn\'t the matter of scale,
it was the matter of intensity.

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
He considered any kind of building,
whether it\'s a factory or a gas station

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
or a power plant to be worthy of
serious architectural pursuit

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
and the detailing that you do

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
for a gas station in his mind was
as important as the detailing

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
for an art museum, shall we say.
No question about it.

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
These are all objects in our
site, in our daily lives,

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
and all architects want to
improve our visual clutter

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
and create a better scenery

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
for our eyes.

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
[music]

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
Service stations have gotten a
bad reputation for the noise,

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
it could easily be a neighborhood nuisance

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
and so our effort there was to minimize

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
the impact of a service station in a
low-rise Community. Like you know,

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
normally an architect plays the

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
court gesture, the full, that stands up
before clients and does a kind of song

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
and dance, and tries to persuade the client

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
to do a project, this is very funny

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
because this, the developer was
standing up, trying to persuade Mies

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
to work on the project. So while it
was done under the Miesian parameter,

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
it was really done by Joe and Jerry.

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
We essentially depressed the three or four
feet below the existing street system,

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
and then we put a big roof over everything

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
so that all the lighting came
from underneath the roof.

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
The SO sign,

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
which you see sticking up for
miles, we lowered it to the ground,

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
because we know, why have a
high sign, it\'s not necessary.

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
Everyone knows that this
is a service station

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
and it\'s primarily for the
neighborhood people anyhow.

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
By then Mies was pretty
much on his last legs.

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
He seldom traveled, he was staying

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
in his apartment. He had to go around in a
wheelchair, so he didn\'t come to the office

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
very much. I don\'t think he
ever saw the finished building,

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
even, as he died the next year in 69.

00:51:55.000 --> 00:52:03.000
[music]

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:19.999
How does a person look at architecture
and learn about architecture.

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
Having taught the history of architecture for a number of years
I have to… I have to provide a rather unsatisfactory answer.

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
You have to look a great deal, you have to look and look and
look. You have to pay attention to the details of buildings.

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
It takes a lot of time, a lot of booking,

00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
in a certain sense a good deal of talking with
people who know something about architecture,

00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
so that it begins to work by osmosis,

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
but only then. The hope is that humanity

00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
is touched by things, when they are done thoughtfully
and whether they\'re conscious of it or not,

00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.999
is not so important for me.
I mean there\'s moments

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
when I am touched by something
20 years after I come to them,

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
like this building. You have to go to a
place and experience things for yourself.

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
And it may be that… that
you can get a lot of value

00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
out of something without having any
idea that the word architecture exists,

00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
certainly not even knowing who the person
is, who designed the space shuttle,

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
tell me, I don\'t know, you know, who designed…
we don\'t know who designed the space shuttle.

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
Now could you get architecture
to that sort of pitch whereby,

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
you would look at this thing and
say I don\'t know who built it,

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:45.000
but you know the space shuttle did get
built and it\'s a hell of a machine.

00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:10.000
[music]