June 21, 2022 • 57 mins
Read the article on Mr. Krier's work here: https://gettherapybirmingham.medium.c...
Leon Krier is uncompromising in his philosophy of design and philosophy of architecture. His vision of the past and future make him a controversial figure. He is one of the key figures in the founding of the new urbanism movement. Krier's architectural theory is fixated on designing permanent construction that will endure both physically and stylistically. His theoretical orientation is highly informed by the peak oil movement of the 1970's, but the implications are important for an urban and architectural future that is sustainable.
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(00:01):
[Music]
[Music]
i recently sat down with the architect
philosopher and urban planner leon creer
to talk about his theories about design
culture
(00:21):
economics and
society as they relate to architecture
and psychology
not all of mr creer's views are my views
however he is an enormously influential
and a very intelligent person i hope you
enjoy the interview
unfortunately it did not fit into a
traditional interview flow so i edited
(00:42):
some of the most interesting parts of
our conversation
by topic and
those follow now
these are mr creer's thoughts on craft
and skilled labor
i come from my parents my father was my
mother was a musician
(01:03):
and then my father was in a tailor
working for the clergy and
the bishop and so on so they were
craftsmen and he employed five to ten
people depending on the work
and they were fantastic people i mean
the people he employed they loved to
work there
and my father was a kind of artist who
(01:24):
who
never showed off but when somebody asked
him we're just looking at him how he
he
how he showed what
how to
to do a detailed
i mean he was a real artist
like
and that is the point of
craftsmanship is an incredibly
(01:45):
productive
and incredibly interesting
mode of of
of production
which is never boring because the the
craftsman always produces an individual
whereas industrial worker is always
alienated from his work he just does
something he can be replaced tomorrow by
(02:07):
anyone
and really a morris road there's no
skill it's a way of keeping people
unskilled no skill
no skill and the only people which is a
kind of control to keep a workforce
unskilled you know because then they're
replaceable and then you don't have to
pay them
totally yeah
but if you have a pianist if he has a
heart attack you you know to replace him
(02:29):
but you have to
they are not
the concert hall is not full of them
maybe by chance but they so individual
talent every individual has a talent
and and
that aristotle writes in politics about
this i always quote that i mean it's
virtually the only thing i quote the
person but that the economy must be
(02:52):
defined by individual talent
not the reverse
that the economy the form of production
influences what people should
do economy has to be shaped by what
people are good at doing how do you
rationalize that how you organize it
that you have a functioning society
is a mystery because the only
(03:14):
i don't i don't see much hope at least
not in my lifetime well you know we went
from a country that made things we were
manufacturing and now we have an economy
that's totally removed from anything
real you know like all the manufacturing
is overseas you can't go get a job
anymore everybody that's younger than me
they can drive a car for uber or amazon
(03:35):
delivering packages tearing their car up
and and causing problems for a pittance
and they're immediately replaceable or
they can work food service but food
service is also during a pandemic or uh
during a recession going to be something
that people don't have money to afford
so that's your whole economy and then
everything else is is gambling i mean
(03:56):
you look at the stock market it's
gambling it's not tesla's valued at 4
billion or something and they don't sell
any cars
it's because people know the stock will
go up and if i put my money in it i can
catch this wave and then but it's not a
company that someone's investing in
because it's profitable you know and and
that's the and that was
that that was the side at least where
(04:17):
trump was not wrong on everything but at
least he said we should get back
production to america that was yeah the
right idea
and um
i wish that it wasn't couched in the
racist language but i mean american
manufacturing is something that should
come back
yeah if you want to have a state that
doesn't fail
(04:37):
and that you know the not only
industrial work but also
craftsmen well at least in america do
you still and and that was interesting
thing in seaside there was a lot of good
craftsmen
now it was easy to find it was not in
germany these reconstructions of
historic buildings now in berlin potsdam
frankfurt
(04:57):
nuremberg everywhere there are
reconstructions i was involved in some
of these
and
you are never the problem is never a
shortage of craftsmen
if you have the right drawings
the right instructions
you get the right builders
so that can be revived very easily and
it's very very efficient
(05:19):
for instance in
brussels was destroyed was the first
city which had been entirely destroyed
by the french artillery in
1689 i forget
the end of 18th century 17th century
that entire city was rebuilt
including the main square
(05:40):
the the grand place and with the belfry
famous belfry flemish
houses with incredible
incredible amounts of glass all that was
rebuilt within two years
by craftsmen
and
this is another interesting quote from
(06:01):
an economist mill
mills
famously english economist 19th century
he said that we underst
we think that
cities are inanimate
objects
instead if you would accelerate observe
the city and accelerate what happens to
(06:21):
buildings within a lifetime
they would be like bodies moving
changing things even if they remain the
same
they would be moving because everything
is constantly being redone even
buildings which look like they are built
for permanence constantly changing color
materials of the base of the roof or the
chimneys
(06:42):
things move
and that is all this is he says the
activity
which is there anyway is then deployed
if a town burns down traditional towns
burned down many times
and then were rebuilt often very quickly
stone took a bit longer
(07:03):
but uh
oh and with very little bureaucracy in
luxembourg the the
the best quarter in luxembourg was built
1900 to 1910
stone palaces like you have not seen
anywhere and
even in rome doesn't have butter
done by architects from cologne and
(07:24):
paris and brussels and
you know
this was done by craftsmen who had come
from italy
about eight to ten thousand craftsmen
were living in tents in impermanent wood
shacks to build this city
during that construction which built the
(07:44):
most beautiful stone bridge in the world
60 meters
diameter
unbelievable
during that was planned by one person
one person in cologne
and one town architect
who had not even an office in the town
(08:04):
hall he worked from home
and he had no employees
so
the whole thing when you have a working
culture you don't need
all the norms which tell you how high a
table should be and so on because that
is the culture
and they don't need when you say a
(08:25):
sentence to talk correctly you don't
need some professor of grammar to tell
you all the time
how you should speak and articulate how
long it should take and so on
and once the culture is dead then it
becomes really difficult to do and you
know to build that palm brio
like it's just it's an institutional
wisdom and you get rid of that wisdom
(08:45):
you can't just go back and snap your
fingers and train it because no one
knows
and that's what happened to the
psychotherapy profession you know it's
like the things that i'm writing
you know you you you go back and you
read a psychoanalytic journal from like
the 1970s and before before reagan and
thatcher and the subjective you know
turn everything into a number stuff and
(09:06):
there's ideas about what you could
actually do
with a patient in therapy
you could you could sit there and say
this stuff and you you open academic
journals now and it's just like we
extrapolated 10 studies and then put the
information into a spreadsheet
controlled through a different variable
and the only reason that they exist is
because your phd is based on you know
(09:30):
like your academic standing is based on
how many people cite your article so if
you cite a ton of articles then a lot of
people will cite you
and it's not written for a human it's
written for a search engine you know
right yeah
yeah
so
you have a lot of work
(09:51):
i mean we're trying you know
on recent classical architecture and
building projects
because the
my problem is that at least we have lots
of colleagues who do now the right thing
with when i started i tried to find
people and it was almost impossible
there was one in belgium one in america
(10:13):
one here and there
well now you're being emaciated without
being attacked i mean does something
like alice speech what do you think of
something like that that definitely is
yeah
but it's very inspired by your work
you know well
but it's it's really
it's traditional architecture and that
is i i grew up in totally traditional
(10:34):
town which was almost undamaged
and
and most of the people who are involved
like under estuani was the chief planner
of
seaside and
alice he grew up
first as a child in in cuba and then in
barcelona
and then
his family returned to to america but
(10:56):
most people you know were involved in
that they had that experience
as children and or by traveling
no there is a lot of people but the the
the question is really and there's now
even in the congress of new urbanism
it's a lot of a lot of people practicing
(11:17):
this
and one can say
if if america or even worldwide this
would be applied this very simple theory
because it's not personal it's it's what
towns had to be like in order to
to function
before the fossil fuel
and then in 19th century the or late
(11:39):
19th century there were theories
involved there was a german there was an
austrian
particularly if a
finnish guy who wrote about
polycentric cities they didn't use the
terms but they they had almost
often based on in a paris which had been
reformed into
urban quarters
(12:00):
by the host
which allowed paris to function till
today because many people who live in in
narandi simon
almost never leave it
there are people who are never
i mean that's the the kind of extreme
but that you can't actually live in a
quarter
in northern quarter without
(12:22):
and i i picked up these different
theories and because they were
self-evident
and and particularly people like andres
duane and
james kinsler they they promoted they
helped promote it and and get me out of
isolation
get me all the work i did in america was
always because of understanding
[Music]
(12:44):
this my first job now in america in
virginia is not is the only one where he
was not involved
on the theory and philosophy of design
i was curious you know like your theory
(13:06):
of design you have uh quote at some
point about nature like the design does
not come from nature but it is
inspired by it an analogy or something
and i mean you have like someone like
frank lloyd wright who is trying to
deconstruct the natural space and make
the thing blend in you know and he would
make the students like go pick a
wildflower on the scene
of where you're going to build the
(13:26):
building and then deconstruct it and
turn it into a pattern and then put the
pattern somewhere in the house
but your work
it seems to consider the setting a lot
but the work doesn't look like the
setting you know like things like career
tower you know this like the sketches
that you have with the
the metal gates hanging or a giant sheet
blowing in the wind on the italian
(13:47):
countryside it doesn't look like the
countryside but it talks to it i mean do
you
it's it's really the
hana avon spoke very anna aaron you know
the philosopher
fantastic the human condition and she
she says that architecture is an
artifice
(14:07):
and it is the artificiality
which makes it properly human
because
men is in
the natural environment
is not the space for man he needs to
construct his own space to become
properly human
because animals have that direct
(14:29):
relationship to to nature but we don't
and we are you know
we look for
shelter which is not just an uh
grotto so it's it's interesting it's an
artifice but yet which is properly human
whereas the
the industrial
artifice is no longer human that's a
(14:50):
stranger it's contrary it wants to turn
humanity into something else
well it's okay for cows which you know
because they move and
they're never
but if you build
buildings which are completely cloned
like
if you see now the destruction of mario
paul have you seen the
i mean the the buildings nobody will
(15:12):
ever regret of losing those buildings no
it's just disgusting it's just human
lives which are
being slaughtered but
the you know that architecture will not
create any nostalgia for something which
was worth having
so
what's what i don't know what will be
(15:33):
replaced by but
the the kind of the primal forms of
architecture that your work is trying to
kind of dig up that will last a hundred
years they're not a thousand years
they're not a trend you know there's
something inborn in humanity i mean do
you have an idea of where that comes
from like what the painter is channeling
is that something in our evolution is it
something in our
it seems like an almost mystical kind of
(15:55):
architecture a spiritual kind of quest
what is called timeless architecture
course of alexander wrote the book
called timeless architecture and the
title is is really what count the book
is full of uh christopher alexander
himself i mean i find terribly boring
and pompous
and i had the short experience with him
(16:15):
teaching it was just impossible and he's
the most
arrogant
false modest person i've ever
encountered but the title is is really
what what counts timeless architecture
does not mean that this timeless
it's timeless as long in relation to
human human life span
(16:36):
that you can actually live in something
which is not just and that is where hana
aaron is also interesting because she
says that
architecture has to
or to in order to create the public
space
it has to transcend the life
span
of you
it has to to be much longer than the
(16:58):
single human but
it has to to outlive the society in
order to to become a society
and
and that this poses
goes back to
that would be in
an enemy of hyper consumption
consumerist
disposability
it's not against consumption but against
(17:18):
consuming architecture because we are
consumers anyway we eat and
reject you know and
transform chemically but
architecture shouldn't be and that is
what actually industrial
thinking has done that it has
industrialized it has
transferred the industrial
the spirit of industrial consumption
(17:40):
even into the environment and now the
planet
now they want to save the planet but
look at the schemes
on the atlantis project
with the atlantis project when that
broke up what was it an ideological
(18:00):
difference between you and the uh you
know the people trying to build it or
was it a lack of kind of lack of funding
what is it that made that
they were they were very famous uh
gallery owners they had an enormous
a german political party or something
didn't they too no no no they didn't no
not at all
(18:20):
no they they were art collectors
modernist art collectors and that's why
i didn't understand why do they come to
me i mean
for their collection which is
i don't know joseph boyce i don't know
whether you know or like andy warrell
that kind of yeah rubbish i think you
know
oh it's it's interesting graphically but
(18:42):
that's about it it's not not really
grayed out
but no but the the
particularly the
hans jurgen miller he
he wanted that
and um
and he we had big exhibitions big
promotion a lot of he had a lot of
contacts because the modern art world is
kind of mafia which you probably
(19:04):
know about
and often very powerful because you have
to do with banks and you know with
politicians and so on
and because when you go to modern
parliaments in europe you only see
rubbish in on the world is
no i mean
except westminster and the french
parliament but most modern parliaments
are just
(19:24):
junkyards of modern art and twisted
metal i don't know
but anyway they wanted it and they
promoted it and then they got attacked
like they couldn't they didn't expect
this at all that they would be attacked
for promoting this
and
but they weren't even up to the the then
chancellor who
(19:45):
who wanted to promote the project
and the chief of the then german bank
the deutsche bank
and
and he wanted to help promote it despite
the bad publicity
but
but he was murdered
and
briefly after i mean nothing to do with
(20:05):
the project for other reasons
because he was critical of the of the
the early conceptions of the euro i
think
he thought was
in a plan planned disaster
uh and then
um
you know they
particularly there was like a breaking
(20:26):
point where they had a big exhibition of
the of the project in the documentary in
castle which is the most famous modern
archer is like miami basel new basel
miami
the design
design show
which tom wolf wrote about have you ever
seen that
book it's very funny it's about modern
(20:47):
art it's okay
or before the man in full
yeah
it's about somebody obsessed with
pornography so obsessed with pornography
that
you can't get free of it and it's
hilarious but he's also a modern art
collector and and he has all these
advisors of modern art to tell him what
(21:09):
something a nail on the wall why that is
now a great piece of art
it's fantastic
but um so documenta the project was
attacked by arson
thanks god the model survived but
and and the drawings on the wall were
just photocopies so there was no no
(21:29):
great damage but they were then so
shocked that they you know
they started to think otherwise and they
used then they went to an uh
to a german famous architect called
frayoto who who invented
light tensile structures you may
you probably know he
(21:51):
he was responsible for the roofs of the
olympic stadium in munich
you know this yeah
and
and but he was not you know he planned
something which is more like in
kindergarten i i don't like it at all
and
so but now the project is funny the
(22:12):
project is being dug out and this
frenchman did the the rendering
painstakingly for eight months he worked
on this because it's a lot of work
to do
you know and when you i did the drawings
at the very small scale so once you blow
that up in in rendering it has to be
you have virtually two it's
(22:35):
many more levels of work than
than a model which is the size of a big
table
but
you know the ideas is it's really what
is what you said it's it's something
which people appeal
appeals to people without explanation or
justification or doctoring them
(22:57):
and pushing them around
and
because that's what they what they are
looking for when they travel
on the architect albert speer and nazi
architecture and culture
well it's still you know whatever the
regime was and and criminal and and
(23:19):
genocide land
motivated looked by by hatred but on the
other hand it was the last like the last
wave of uh of classical culture
particularly also in urban planning
because after that there was no more
urban planning
and hitler who was a gifted artist i
(23:40):
mean whether one likes him or not and i
mean he was certainly a gifted the
refurition
rhythm and
all right and uh
but
you know he articulated a pain you know
i think he was able to intuitively see
suffering and then get people explain
that to people in a way that
(24:01):
activated something
unfortunately the cure was meant
a lot of
uh slaughter but but then the also the
interpretations of how hitler came but
there's now a very interesting book
about called hitler's american teachers
the american genetics
yeah society and the people who
(24:23):
articulated this well before him
henry ford was a huge donor and a lot of
notable americans i don't want to accuse
people i don't remember exactly i want
to start accusing people that they're
big names that were in the genetic
society saying hey and then you've got
people in the reich that are citing that
and being like look the american
scientists this is based on science but
(24:43):
it's it's american science it wasn't
german science well there's now a lot of
literature on on the intrication of uh
forget now the name but
um
there's an american historian he died
like 20 years ago but who wrote about
it's called wall street
and
nazi germany wall street and soviet
(25:05):
russia
and wall street
and
now there are three books really showing
the interconnection of capitalism with
totalitarian regimes yeah and um i mean
without the american industry the soviet
could not have built their factories and
or german engineering the sure
(25:25):
but the most advanced when it's walmart
that industrialized china you know they
built these monorails and infrastructure
to get people from rice paddies into
factories to build american stuff
and then all of a sudden we want to
compete with this country after we built
it
exactly you built your own nemesis
well that's built into the system i
(25:47):
think
you have to have a nemesis
now that is what what we always say in
the people around the cnu if if our
theory would be applied by good and bad
regimes whoever i don't care within
if he does this kind of planning it will
be better for russia if biden would
(26:07):
adopt this as national policy it would
be
certainly do a lot of good but where's
the west the
let's say the
where's now the counter project to what
is happening you know
the post-soviet or the post-communist uh
well there's no at least before the
(26:27):
people had the kind of hope maybe
socialism would be better than
capitalism but now there's no more model
there's not not even any opposition
anymore to there's no curiosity and
there's no imagination i mean even
and i keep taking you know what you're
saying about design and making it about
all you know aspects of culture but i do
think there's a relationship i mean you
(26:48):
look at these movies
i i don't go see them but you look at
the stuff that's coming out and it isn't
new ideas it's not somebody who has a
right who has a vision and sat down and
wrote a script it's just oh you remember
this from 1970 we dusted it off okay
it's reboot i mean it's just this
cultural or a burroughs of
of garbage that's being recycled but any
(27:09):
vision that is new or creative or
challenging or
people attack them much like when you
design atlantis
and and it's it's
there's a gut reaction where people know
that this is how it's a threat to this
existing order that i'm that i'm
entrenched in the hierarchy of and i've
got to get it and it's a design you know
(27:30):
it's a it's a drawing of its physics
for me the most important because i
worked i left university to work for the
then most famous english architect
called james sterling he's now following
but he was
he did one brilliant building very
interesting but but then most of it was
rubbish and really horrible
(27:53):
and we and then i got i i went to this
guy because i left university you
learned nothing at the university but i
thought this guy is really genius i mean
he did one building which is really
formidable i never found out
how this happened
he refused any theoretical debate
and i realized the then most famous
(28:13):
architect had absolutely no clue what he
was doing
we i worked for three months on the
project for over 2000
houses housing units
and
uh after three months i said i can't
sleep anymore
this will be islam and you got really he
said you are wrong you know this
this the way it must be and and so on it
(28:34):
has to be
so this one long story short the thing
was built
it was demolished after 10 years over
two days
no no no it was it was like pretty good
not that bad but but really rough i mean
really rough
and it was called the runcorn town
(28:56):
center housing by jim sterling
and
so he came we live in the same i lived
in this old house we both lived in old
houses in indonesia why can't we design
like this where you live
oh but you don't understand you know
this is not
modernity is no
serial production and repetition that's
(29:17):
all
there's a
there's a
kind of crass american expression you
don't show where you eat
exactly
yeah the design is for the clients
where i want to live in my family
but you can't you can't flush and flush
it down
(29:38):
no
this was destroyed now the
the buildings were built by a loan
of the rank on development corporation
that loan matures in 2025 the loan to
the city of london
so the english this development company
which was government sponsored is paying
(30:00):
for buildings which disappeared 40 years
ago
well i mean and that's
that is the economic system you know we
and
it's extremely short-sighted
like the german award that
finished for the first world war
finished in
2010 i think
(30:23):
and how can
a society survive such
real they are mental mental disasters
and um i mean now also in america in the
crisis with mass murdering and so on
i mean you will have more
on your hands than you can that you can
manage
(30:43):
on the architect quinlan terry and
christianity
raymond eric but he was like an old man
and he was
particularly considered as a fantastic
(31:04):
draftsman but as an architect he
wouldn't count even though it was him
who had rebuilt
number 10 downing street
if he had not done 10 downings it would
just be a modernist slum like they have
everywhere and so when i asked around do
you know conanteria i mean it's
interesting was this weird and people
said oh
(31:25):
that's
ridiculous i mean he's a christian
so i said
since when i mean i'm not a practicing
christian but i grew up that way since
when this christian being christian is
that
outlawed
that's exactly what it is in a way you
know the the
(31:46):
i mean i wish i would be closer to
christians but
it's you know they are deconstructing
now even
what was the
what was something which stood on good
feet
now
we opened an enormous
cathedral in
in my project in guatemala just the
other day you see that camera
(32:08):
it's called crayola
okay
my the spanish is not good you know i
read it but i i don't have many people
that i converse about that
but there they still feel phil you know
a thousand people in in
for a church like this
with why it doesn't happen there i mean
like
like yeah
(32:29):
well seaside and the seaside chapel is
pretty full yesterday
yes yeah well in united states is much
more
there's much more practice
in religious practice than europe is
churches are dead
diabetes i grew up as a catholic
and i noticed that actually a lot of my
clients
(32:51):
are or would like to be or come from
that background
and
so there's something mysterious that the
the scale between private life
and the scale you meet
in the church in in the grand grand hall
is is like
(33:12):
a physical
uh also a scale a scale
experience and which is
obviously impressive something
well i i mean if you don't have an
elaborate inner world or inner a rich
richness vastness to develop self how do
you build externally you know how do you
have a vision for that you're just
(33:33):
chasing trends and fads and what you're
told to do a pack mentality of you know
where did you grow up
because often the people i
i relate to they grew up generally or
they experienced a
very nice urban
or rural
landscape and then they feel they lived
(33:53):
something real
which is not fantasy
where did you grow up in
in birmingham alabama
um so i mean a lot of the architecture
of the older cities is interesting and
historic it's it's rare and then it's a
southern city but it was built by you
know kind of northern industrialists so
it has a
kind of mixture of texture
(34:14):
um you know some stuff's nice some some
isn't um you know obviously the as a kid
you know you spend all of your time in
these uh middle schools high schools
that are just cinder blocks with no
windows it's a prison
final time
drop ceiling i mean we could who could
have decided such a thing that the
children would be distracted if they
(34:36):
could see trees and light you know
that's slavery
i i heard the story in in in florida but
it was for
so that people couldn't see in so that
the pedophiles wouldn't be excited like
they're not window shopping
i think you've got different problems
when there's enough pedophiles to be
(34:57):
waiting outside in school what did they
have such
people at command with such distorted
minds
i
in in the project in england i i had i
did a master plan for
a large school next to the
next to our
project and to integrate that in the so
(35:18):
people can walk
towards the school and so on and i
remember the chief architect of the
of the district was very became a real
friend and without him the project
wouldn't have even started because
you need somebody in authority to to
push this without too many explanations
and just saying this is all right
and
(35:38):
so we presented this master plan
and went to the to the board meeting
and
as we approached
the head of
planning of educational planning of the
education authority of dorset
approached came from the same parking
(35:58):
and there were
the young
there were girls and boys
streaming towards the school
and the the responsible for the school
for the educational authority indoors it
said
showing the towards the children saying
all material for rape
so i thought who is this guy i mean this
the guy was responsible for because they
(36:20):
were fencing in the schools and i said
we need
schools open i mean so they are in town
not not with fences and around
because they are part of public space
then
we presented the plan and after the
uh
the
the head was in a shriveled lady i mean
(36:40):
really very unpleasant and arrogant
she said you want to plan a piazza
in front of the school but you know this
is a space where boys and girls could
meet i said yes that's exactly the idea
she just
stuff angry they're threatened by
something that's very human and
(37:01):
important to our humanity what is what
is
i mean that's what humanity is about is
about meeting
on sustainability in ancient and
traditional architecture
(37:28):
so do you see things like like lead
design or whatever is that kind of a
distraction from a real project of a
real sustainable architecture so what
the lead do you think things like like
that here they have lead certification
yeah yeah yeah it's it's industrial
i mean
because it seems like you're checking
all these boxes to make your building
(37:49):
green but you're not preparing for a
future without oil you can't walk it's
not pedestrian
it isn't it isn't built out of material
that will last so you're going to have
to replace it
it's it's another way of consuming
environment
and
because
(38:09):
you know if you have natural materials
stone or brick or
wood
no you cannot build
unless you use that is that was
strangely the in a nail production 19th
century was
one of the first
giant industries which changed the
(38:31):
architecture
and by having cutting lumbar into
very small formats whereas before you
had trees you built carpentry out of
heavy lumber
now that they had this industrial source
where you produced standard piece of
wood
which you could nail together and that
is strangely the nail was actually the
(38:53):
first
synthetic product which destroyed
architecture because you can nail it
into any nonsense and still stands up
it's like an area like an airplane
structure you can't turn the upside down
you can't fly through the air
whereas a traditional carpentry which is
just packed
yeah
is that the easternian houses that
(39:15):
wasn't using pegs to do those
well that all traditional
building
assemblage is always
i forgot what is called isostatic and i
said that if you don't disassemble it
correctly it will collapse
you can't build an arch which is not a
real arch
(39:36):
whether it's a jack arch or flat arch or
the full center dart or mix the linear
art whatever they are called they need
to be
constructed correctly otherwise they
don't stand up
whereas you can make the most idiotic
useless shape
senseless shape casted in concrete
(39:56):
or building steel or with nailed lumber
and it stands up for a while
but on the other hand in the long term
it's subjected to so much stress
that
in the end they are eroded when you look
at when you analyze close by modern
concrete construction post-war
construction it's rotting from the
(40:18):
inside
i always wouldn't because people say you
can't use arches it's not modern
arches are
modern
all the time because modern means of our
time when you build notch today it's
modern
it's not it's techn it's just like
scissors
(40:39):
are not the question of modernity is not
the problem it's whether they cut or not
but there was quite a famous example the
nazis built 8 000 concrete bridges
flatbed you know
pillars and flatbed like this
all these concrete bridges which were
(41:00):
german high-tech of the 30s had to be
replaced in the 70s and 80s because the
vibration
uh creating
micro fissures which led in
and rot the the
inner steel you get those stalactites
that grow as the water drips through the
(41:21):
concrete and leeches
yeah very modern
but the only nazi bridges which still
work
are
steel
steel bridges there's one in in cologne
but above all many on the motorways
are the stone of the
(41:43):
the arch bridges concrete arches
they are cast in concrete but they are
arches they look like traditional
viaducts from afar
and so that even
the arched form the arch
is more
materially
a solid
then
(42:04):
know all the modern inventions after
so it's not just and it's interesting
that uh
that the arch has not only and
for us an emotional thing but also
particularly
structurally absolutely unreplaceable
element because the sagging makes it
actually more solid
(42:26):
or any cracks compress the
if something happens it's
compressed by the
by the pressure
anyway
yeah the weight is kind of like water
you want to channel it down to the
ground like but the arch on the gothic
cathedrals and
yeah and you don't need the reinforced
steel reinforcement which you need when
(42:46):
you have flat
you know
so it only compresses that's why roman
roman concrete you know
the actually the
pantheon in rome is the biggest
concrete dome in the world
[Music]
it's 2 000 years old you could actually
(43:07):
roll that
because it's a solid piece which becomes
one
in time and i saw a similar thing in
greece
once in a ruin which was not an official
ruin but there was a roman roman theater
in northern greece
and because of an earthquake part of the
amphitheater
(43:29):
had broken away and lay on the ground
like this with arches going
sideways with the legs with the
and it lay there like for hundreds of
years and it was absolutely intact
the construction is very interesting and
also
(43:50):
because people that's something i don't
understand why people love ruins
that's one of the things that roberto
garrison says in the book is it's
reminding us of this kind of existential
reality that even the greatest monuments
and and
to our own ego and
will crumble and they evoke this really
uncomfortable stirring in us
(44:11):
to to look at ruins um and so anything
that you know when you're kind of
contemplating grandeur in life and
you're in your
classical painting you have to put you
know modern people on these fallen
columns to remind you that
the modern people will one day be the
the ancient column covered in ivy yeah
(44:32):
but there's a counter example in in
japan the the ise shrine the imperial
shrine in isi
is they rebuilt every 20 years in wood
the same form
you know that you know it houses isn't
that that's the one that houses the
imperial katana the things given by the
(44:53):
the sun empress and the uh mythology of
the empire yeah yeah
no one's seen them that's wild that the
construction workers everyone looks away
when they take it apart to rebuild
i traveled and you can't see it
it's in a beautiful forest and
the craftsman they are dressed like
angels in white cloth with wings i mean
(45:13):
almost like with high shoulders
spectacular
but you can see
uh smaller buildings which are done the
same thing
and it's always fresh wood
so the building is never there's one in
construction one which stands
once the 20 years is finished the one
finished is being burnt
(45:35):
destroyed ritually i think they take it
apart and then the new one shines
and so you have always like
gigantic
full
wooden trusses no
and it's um
actually you can't speak of sexy
building if ever there was a sexy
building it's these temples i will send
you
(45:55):
images it's unbelievable
and
because and that is the interesting
thing to that in order to have
permanence every generation has to
rebuild it like human beings
20 years like generations
yeah just thing
psychological also
(46:16):
and that is always compare that to you
know this building is thousand years old
but in fact the material is only less
than 20
next to the partner which was destroyed
200 years ago by an explosion they would
probably still stand there i know the
archaeologists who
who now
they repair it you know they
(46:38):
like like denture ridiculous just
rebuild it ah but that would be faking
the marble is still there
in the in the same quarry
they built one in nashville i think
they're uh or not athens and athens yeah
not bad well it's concrete but it's at
least you get the impression of the
(46:59):
fulbright but it's the classicists who
would complain if you rebuilt it and you
painted the statues
you know in the original colors they
were gaudy and very bright and everyone
would complain that's supposed to be
white that's what classicism is you know
well i think now there are enough
classes to would support it
(47:20):
unfortunately the government is paying
you know they have like a budget like
for national defense
to to turn that ruin to restore it not
as a building but as a ruin
it was the most high-tech building
in the ever thought of
when you have the the column
and the man
forget now his name but anyway he he
(47:43):
showed me through the building site
and
you know when you have the fluted
columns you have the columns with the
fluting
the riddles which are outside and they
have sharp edges
so he said yeah the looking glass
point count a very strong looking glass
(48:03):
so follow the you see follow that
that joint
which is the different drums standing on
it
follow that line and then there was one
of the
the ridges one of the aries is the the
vertical sharp
edges had been broken away by a recent
(48:24):
earthquake
but just small damage
so follow
and the joint went through that damage
so follow that line and you don't see
the joint
in the damaged
surface
it's so precise that the only thing
which announces the joint
is micro
mushrooms some something growing in the
(48:45):
in the water
because you know
because they take these drums apart in
order to restore and do the feelings
of marble
computer you need a computer to
calculate the surfaces
but those surfaces were so precise of
the drums
a tearing that it takes 48 hours for add
(49:08):
when they lift it
for air to get into these joints which
are joint without mortar
or without any material
so it was like a perfect fit
so can you imagine the technological the
precision of
of
tools and and techniques
to create such a thing i mean airplanes
(49:31):
are primitive compared technically
just the raw
the technique to be able to do that
every every drum weighs i don't know 20
tons
on technocracy
(49:56):
i have to look it up well that because
you know the technocracies in whether
you are in iran or or in
the united states or russia the same
spirit
of technocracy
yeah
well it's
i think it's a
people have a disbelief
(50:17):
that
we've been tr we've been told to
distrust our
our feeling our intuition our felt sense
that that isn't rational or that that
isn't reasonable or that that is too
utopian because if people felt that they
would know that this is wrong that it
doesn't feel good it's not benefiting
anyone that and and you're kind of
(50:39):
shamed if you have any imagination or
any creativity you're you're shamed into
you know you don't
try and have any faith that there could
be a better world you know
yeah
whereas the better world is already
there if you look around
that's i i always say you know it's like
having to teach people to fall in love
(51:01):
[Music]
they forbid people to fall in love
edward edinger is another young game do
you know do you remember him he's dead
now edward edinger he wrote a book
psyche and archetype
no
um one of the things i thought was
(51:23):
really interesting in psyche and
archetype is
edinger like
yeah
he he says that um
you know the the circle or the sun disk
yoong was kind of obsessed with these
sun discs if you read the red book or
something it's like the earliest
conception of the self and that before
(51:45):
children have an ego when they're still
two whatever they're kind of one with
the universe they don't really know that
they're a separate creature yet the
earliest versions of what they draw when
they draw themselves is a circle and so
he has a study where he follows how kids
draw who what they are
all the way up as they age
and it's like hundreds of different kids
(52:05):
drawings and it always starts with a
round object and then the round object
splits into four parts it has that
quadrant its circle and then they'll add
legs and arms and eyes and things later
but he says that that circle that's
bisected by that cross is kind of one of
those that quaternity is a this old
archetypal image and that that's
(52:26):
something that
the earliest depictions of the garden of
eden and the descriptions of it was that
it was a circle with four rivers flowing
through it and four gates you know
and
it's the beginning of that polycentric
city you know that it isn't a grid
uh center and periphery how interesting
i i don't find it
so we build these external things based
(52:48):
on an internal map you know that
requires intuition and a felt sense and
a creativity that you have to trust if
you're not doing that if it's all your
ego you're just chasing a trend and a
competition in a community and it's
consumerism and you know uh
planned obsolescence
unhappy consumers
[Music]
(53:15):
on children and hope
you have you have children
19 children yeah
how old are they
how old are they uh violet is at four
and when is one
(53:35):
oh gosh
are you not scared for them because it's
what you i mean the world they are
facing it's
you you won't sleep anymore
it's very scary i think that you have to
you have to be willing um to have faith
and if if you teach your children not to
(53:57):
be afraid of themselves they'll see
through these things they you know i
think one of the things i tell patients
a lot is that the same way that you
control your children is the way that
you're setting them up to be controlled
by the world
so if you teach them to hold their own
authority to feel their own intuition to
crush the creative vision
you're empowering them but if you teach
them authority is important the priest
(54:19):
or the president or that you have to
the daddy you know then they're just
gonna go out and join a cult or a
political movement or you know or if you
teach them oh your relationship to the
world is vulnerability you have to be a
victim or whatever it is you're just
setting that up
them up to be controlled by an abusive
spouse or a politician a religious
leader or whatever yeah and if you trust
(54:40):
teach them to have authority to hold
their own autonomy then
that's you know the best thing you can
do but that's scary you know parents
don't want to do that
so you are an optimist i
there i don't know
there's an austrian
uh child psychologist it's called
(55:01):
um
michelle hutter who wrote a book called
six seven what happens to children
between the age of six and seven
because
you know when children grow up they
start talk
as soon as they talk
they ask questions
you probably experience that every day
300 questions per day what is this what
(55:24):
is that why here why they
[Laughter]
when they are six when they go to school
they they are told shut up and answer
only
only what you are asked
i never listened to that i remember
being angry at it and i didn't fight i
didn't make a scene but i just shut down
and i'm still angry about it you know
(55:45):
that you have these people who are
telling children not to trust creativity
and intuition just because they have all
this unlived life they're afraid of
themselves
and
and they're they're getting in the way
of a better world
you know the union indian
conceptualization describes that pretty
well with the shadow the unlived life of
(56:05):
the parent is the biggest force in the
child's life because it's these things
our parents never master it's all these
places where they're kind of afraid to
go and then
kids react to that same fear and learn
that these places are forbidden but if
you really know yourself you're
comfortable with everybody and it's the
people who are the most violent and the
most angry and the most uncomfortable
(56:27):
with themselves that cause all the
problems that you're describing
yeah
well we were lucky
to have good parents
well thank you so much for your time and
your life's work i appreciate it it's
inspiring you know those ideas ripple
it's like you put the stuff out there
you don't know who sees it or
who it inspires so i appreciate it
(56:49):
your video will be will be is is is very
is a bomb
sorry
your video on on the atlantis thing is
is a bomb it's fantastic because it's
really done for a large public
so yeah i hope so um
i i um
(57:09):
do you mind if i take segments from the
interview and then put them out you know
as like a video no no no i have no
problem with that
well thank you i appreciate it and i
will i'll talk to you soon
nice to meet you have a nice evening
bye-bye
[Music]
[Music]
i recently sat down with the architect
philosopher and urban planner leon creer
to talk about his theories about design
culture
(00:21):
economics and
society as they relate to architecture
and psychology
not all of mr creer's views are my views
however he is an enormously influential
and a very intelligent person i hope you
enjoy the interview
unfortunately it did not fit into a
traditional interview flow so i edited
(00:42):
some of the most interesting parts of
our conversation
by topic and
those follow now
these are mr creer's thoughts on craft
and skilled labor
i come from my parents my father was my
mother was a musician
(01:03):
and then my father was in a tailor
working for the clergy and
the bishop and so on so they were
craftsmen and he employed five to ten
people depending on the work
and they were fantastic people i mean
the people he employed they loved to
work there
and my father was a kind of artist who
(01:24):
who
never showed off but when somebody asked
him we're just looking at him how he
he
how he showed what
how to
to do a detailed
i mean he was a real artist
like
and that is the point of
craftsmanship is an incredibly
(01:45):
productive
and incredibly interesting
mode of of
of production
which is never boring because the the
craftsman always produces an individual
whereas industrial worker is always
alienated from his work he just does
something he can be replaced tomorrow by
(02:07):
anyone
and really a morris road there's no
skill it's a way of keeping people
unskilled no skill
no skill and the only people which is a
kind of control to keep a workforce
unskilled you know because then they're
replaceable and then you don't have to
pay them
totally yeah
but if you have a pianist if he has a
heart attack you you know to replace him
(02:29):
but you have to
they are not
the concert hall is not full of them
maybe by chance but they so individual
talent every individual has a talent
and and
that aristotle writes in politics about
this i always quote that i mean it's
virtually the only thing i quote the
person but that the economy must be
(02:52):
defined by individual talent
not the reverse
that the economy the form of production
influences what people should
do economy has to be shaped by what
people are good at doing how do you
rationalize that how you organize it
that you have a functioning society
is a mystery because the only
(03:14):
i don't i don't see much hope at least
not in my lifetime well you know we went
from a country that made things we were
manufacturing and now we have an economy
that's totally removed from anything
real you know like all the manufacturing
is overseas you can't go get a job
anymore everybody that's younger than me
they can drive a car for uber or amazon
(03:35):
delivering packages tearing their car up
and and causing problems for a pittance
and they're immediately replaceable or
they can work food service but food
service is also during a pandemic or uh
during a recession going to be something
that people don't have money to afford
so that's your whole economy and then
everything else is is gambling i mean
(03:56):
you look at the stock market it's
gambling it's not tesla's valued at 4
billion or something and they don't sell
any cars
it's because people know the stock will
go up and if i put my money in it i can
catch this wave and then but it's not a
company that someone's investing in
because it's profitable you know and and
that's the and that was
that that was the side at least where
(04:17):
trump was not wrong on everything but at
least he said we should get back
production to america that was yeah the
right idea
and um
i wish that it wasn't couched in the
racist language but i mean american
manufacturing is something that should
come back
yeah if you want to have a state that
doesn't fail
(04:37):
and that you know the not only
industrial work but also
craftsmen well at least in america do
you still and and that was interesting
thing in seaside there was a lot of good
craftsmen
now it was easy to find it was not in
germany these reconstructions of
historic buildings now in berlin potsdam
frankfurt
(04:57):
nuremberg everywhere there are
reconstructions i was involved in some
of these
and
you are never the problem is never a
shortage of craftsmen
if you have the right drawings
the right instructions
you get the right builders
so that can be revived very easily and
it's very very efficient
(05:19):
for instance in
brussels was destroyed was the first
city which had been entirely destroyed
by the french artillery in
1689 i forget
the end of 18th century 17th century
that entire city was rebuilt
including the main square
(05:40):
the the grand place and with the belfry
famous belfry flemish
houses with incredible
incredible amounts of glass all that was
rebuilt within two years
by craftsmen
and
this is another interesting quote from
(06:01):
an economist mill
mills
famously english economist 19th century
he said that we underst
we think that
cities are inanimate
objects
instead if you would accelerate observe
the city and accelerate what happens to
(06:21):
buildings within a lifetime
they would be like bodies moving
changing things even if they remain the
same
they would be moving because everything
is constantly being redone even
buildings which look like they are built
for permanence constantly changing color
materials of the base of the roof or the
chimneys
(06:42):
things move
and that is all this is he says the
activity
which is there anyway is then deployed
if a town burns down traditional towns
burned down many times
and then were rebuilt often very quickly
stone took a bit longer
(07:03):
but uh
oh and with very little bureaucracy in
luxembourg the the
the best quarter in luxembourg was built
1900 to 1910
stone palaces like you have not seen
anywhere and
even in rome doesn't have butter
done by architects from cologne and
(07:24):
paris and brussels and
you know
this was done by craftsmen who had come
from italy
about eight to ten thousand craftsmen
were living in tents in impermanent wood
shacks to build this city
during that construction which built the
(07:44):
most beautiful stone bridge in the world
60 meters
diameter
unbelievable
during that was planned by one person
one person in cologne
and one town architect
who had not even an office in the town
(08:04):
hall he worked from home
and he had no employees
so
the whole thing when you have a working
culture you don't need
all the norms which tell you how high a
table should be and so on because that
is the culture
and they don't need when you say a
(08:25):
sentence to talk correctly you don't
need some professor of grammar to tell
you all the time
how you should speak and articulate how
long it should take and so on
and once the culture is dead then it
becomes really difficult to do and you
know to build that palm brio
like it's just it's an institutional
wisdom and you get rid of that wisdom
(08:45):
you can't just go back and snap your
fingers and train it because no one
knows
and that's what happened to the
psychotherapy profession you know it's
like the things that i'm writing
you know you you you go back and you
read a psychoanalytic journal from like
the 1970s and before before reagan and
thatcher and the subjective you know
turn everything into a number stuff and
(09:06):
there's ideas about what you could
actually do
with a patient in therapy
you could you could sit there and say
this stuff and you you open academic
journals now and it's just like we
extrapolated 10 studies and then put the
information into a spreadsheet
controlled through a different variable
and the only reason that they exist is
because your phd is based on you know
(09:30):
like your academic standing is based on
how many people cite your article so if
you cite a ton of articles then a lot of
people will cite you
and it's not written for a human it's
written for a search engine you know
right yeah
yeah
so
you have a lot of work
(09:51):
i mean we're trying you know
on recent classical architecture and
building projects
because the
my problem is that at least we have lots
of colleagues who do now the right thing
with when i started i tried to find
people and it was almost impossible
there was one in belgium one in america
(10:13):
one here and there
well now you're being emaciated without
being attacked i mean does something
like alice speech what do you think of
something like that that definitely is
yeah
but it's very inspired by your work
you know well
but it's it's really
it's traditional architecture and that
is i i grew up in totally traditional
(10:34):
town which was almost undamaged
and
and most of the people who are involved
like under estuani was the chief planner
of
seaside and
alice he grew up
first as a child in in cuba and then in
barcelona
and then
his family returned to to america but
(10:56):
most people you know were involved in
that they had that experience
as children and or by traveling
no there is a lot of people but the the
the question is really and there's now
even in the congress of new urbanism
it's a lot of a lot of people practicing
(11:17):
this
and one can say
if if america or even worldwide this
would be applied this very simple theory
because it's not personal it's it's what
towns had to be like in order to
to function
before the fossil fuel
and then in 19th century the or late
(11:39):
19th century there were theories
involved there was a german there was an
austrian
particularly if a
finnish guy who wrote about
polycentric cities they didn't use the
terms but they they had almost
often based on in a paris which had been
reformed into
urban quarters
(12:00):
by the host
which allowed paris to function till
today because many people who live in in
narandi simon
almost never leave it
there are people who are never
i mean that's the the kind of extreme
but that you can't actually live in a
quarter
in northern quarter without
(12:22):
and i i picked up these different
theories and because they were
self-evident
and and particularly people like andres
duane and
james kinsler they they promoted they
helped promote it and and get me out of
isolation
get me all the work i did in america was
always because of understanding
[Music]
(12:44):
this my first job now in america in
virginia is not is the only one where he
was not involved
on the theory and philosophy of design
i was curious you know like your theory
(13:06):
of design you have uh quote at some
point about nature like the design does
not come from nature but it is
inspired by it an analogy or something
and i mean you have like someone like
frank lloyd wright who is trying to
deconstruct the natural space and make
the thing blend in you know and he would
make the students like go pick a
wildflower on the scene
of where you're going to build the
(13:26):
building and then deconstruct it and
turn it into a pattern and then put the
pattern somewhere in the house
but your work
it seems to consider the setting a lot
but the work doesn't look like the
setting you know like things like career
tower you know this like the sketches
that you have with the
the metal gates hanging or a giant sheet
blowing in the wind on the italian
(13:47):
countryside it doesn't look like the
countryside but it talks to it i mean do
you
it's it's really the
hana avon spoke very anna aaron you know
the philosopher
fantastic the human condition and she
she says that architecture is an
artifice
(14:07):
and it is the artificiality
which makes it properly human
because
men is in
the natural environment
is not the space for man he needs to
construct his own space to become
properly human
because animals have that direct
(14:29):
relationship to to nature but we don't
and we are you know
we look for
shelter which is not just an uh
grotto so it's it's interesting it's an
artifice but yet which is properly human
whereas the
the industrial
artifice is no longer human that's a
(14:50):
stranger it's contrary it wants to turn
humanity into something else
well it's okay for cows which you know
because they move and
they're never
but if you build
buildings which are completely cloned
like
if you see now the destruction of mario
paul have you seen the
i mean the the buildings nobody will
(15:12):
ever regret of losing those buildings no
it's just disgusting it's just human
lives which are
being slaughtered but
the you know that architecture will not
create any nostalgia for something which
was worth having
so
what's what i don't know what will be
(15:33):
replaced by but
the the kind of the primal forms of
architecture that your work is trying to
kind of dig up that will last a hundred
years they're not a thousand years
they're not a trend you know there's
something inborn in humanity i mean do
you have an idea of where that comes
from like what the painter is channeling
is that something in our evolution is it
something in our
it seems like an almost mystical kind of
(15:55):
architecture a spiritual kind of quest
what is called timeless architecture
course of alexander wrote the book
called timeless architecture and the
title is is really what count the book
is full of uh christopher alexander
himself i mean i find terribly boring
and pompous
and i had the short experience with him
(16:15):
teaching it was just impossible and he's
the most
arrogant
false modest person i've ever
encountered but the title is is really
what what counts timeless architecture
does not mean that this timeless
it's timeless as long in relation to
human human life span
(16:36):
that you can actually live in something
which is not just and that is where hana
aaron is also interesting because she
says that
architecture has to
or to in order to create the public
space
it has to transcend the life
span
of you
it has to to be much longer than the
(16:58):
single human but
it has to to outlive the society in
order to to become a society
and
and that this poses
goes back to
that would be in
an enemy of hyper consumption
consumerist
disposability
it's not against consumption but against
(17:18):
consuming architecture because we are
consumers anyway we eat and
reject you know and
transform chemically but
architecture shouldn't be and that is
what actually industrial
thinking has done that it has
industrialized it has
transferred the industrial
the spirit of industrial consumption
(17:40):
even into the environment and now the
planet
now they want to save the planet but
look at the schemes
on the atlantis project
with the atlantis project when that
broke up what was it an ideological
(18:00):
difference between you and the uh you
know the people trying to build it or
was it a lack of kind of lack of funding
what is it that made that
they were they were very famous uh
gallery owners they had an enormous
a german political party or something
didn't they too no no no they didn't no
not at all
(18:20):
no they they were art collectors
modernist art collectors and that's why
i didn't understand why do they come to
me i mean
for their collection which is
i don't know joseph boyce i don't know
whether you know or like andy warrell
that kind of yeah rubbish i think you
know
oh it's it's interesting graphically but
(18:42):
that's about it it's not not really
grayed out
but no but the the
particularly the
hans jurgen miller he
he wanted that
and um
and he we had big exhibitions big
promotion a lot of he had a lot of
contacts because the modern art world is
kind of mafia which you probably
(19:04):
know about
and often very powerful because you have
to do with banks and you know with
politicians and so on
and because when you go to modern
parliaments in europe you only see
rubbish in on the world is
no i mean
except westminster and the french
parliament but most modern parliaments
are just
(19:24):
junkyards of modern art and twisted
metal i don't know
but anyway they wanted it and they
promoted it and then they got attacked
like they couldn't they didn't expect
this at all that they would be attacked
for promoting this
and
but they weren't even up to the the then
chancellor who
(19:45):
who wanted to promote the project
and the chief of the then german bank
the deutsche bank
and
and he wanted to help promote it despite
the bad publicity
but
but he was murdered
and
briefly after i mean nothing to do with
(20:05):
the project for other reasons
because he was critical of the of the
the early conceptions of the euro i
think
he thought was
in a plan planned disaster
uh and then
um
you know they
particularly there was like a breaking
(20:26):
point where they had a big exhibition of
the of the project in the documentary in
castle which is the most famous modern
archer is like miami basel new basel
miami
the design
design show
which tom wolf wrote about have you ever
seen that
book it's very funny it's about modern
(20:47):
art it's okay
or before the man in full
yeah
it's about somebody obsessed with
pornography so obsessed with pornography
that
you can't get free of it and it's
hilarious but he's also a modern art
collector and and he has all these
advisors of modern art to tell him what
(21:09):
something a nail on the wall why that is
now a great piece of art
it's fantastic
but um so documenta the project was
attacked by arson
thanks god the model survived but
and and the drawings on the wall were
just photocopies so there was no no
(21:29):
great damage but they were then so
shocked that they you know
they started to think otherwise and they
used then they went to an uh
to a german famous architect called
frayoto who who invented
light tensile structures you may
you probably know he
(21:51):
he was responsible for the roofs of the
olympic stadium in munich
you know this yeah
and
and but he was not you know he planned
something which is more like in
kindergarten i i don't like it at all
and
so but now the project is funny the
(22:12):
project is being dug out and this
frenchman did the the rendering
painstakingly for eight months he worked
on this because it's a lot of work
to do
you know and when you i did the drawings
at the very small scale so once you blow
that up in in rendering it has to be
you have virtually two it's
(22:35):
many more levels of work than
than a model which is the size of a big
table
but
you know the ideas is it's really what
is what you said it's it's something
which people appeal
appeals to people without explanation or
justification or doctoring them
(22:57):
and pushing them around
and
because that's what they what they are
looking for when they travel
on the architect albert speer and nazi
architecture and culture
well it's still you know whatever the
regime was and and criminal and and
(23:19):
genocide land
motivated looked by by hatred but on the
other hand it was the last like the last
wave of uh of classical culture
particularly also in urban planning
because after that there was no more
urban planning
and hitler who was a gifted artist i
(23:40):
mean whether one likes him or not and i
mean he was certainly a gifted the
refurition
rhythm and
all right and uh
but
you know he articulated a pain you know
i think he was able to intuitively see
suffering and then get people explain
that to people in a way that
(24:01):
activated something
unfortunately the cure was meant
a lot of
uh slaughter but but then the also the
interpretations of how hitler came but
there's now a very interesting book
about called hitler's american teachers
the american genetics
yeah society and the people who
(24:23):
articulated this well before him
henry ford was a huge donor and a lot of
notable americans i don't want to accuse
people i don't remember exactly i want
to start accusing people that they're
big names that were in the genetic
society saying hey and then you've got
people in the reich that are citing that
and being like look the american
scientists this is based on science but
(24:43):
it's it's american science it wasn't
german science well there's now a lot of
literature on on the intrication of uh
forget now the name but
um
there's an american historian he died
like 20 years ago but who wrote about
it's called wall street
and
nazi germany wall street and soviet
(25:05):
russia
and wall street
and
now there are three books really showing
the interconnection of capitalism with
totalitarian regimes yeah and um i mean
without the american industry the soviet
could not have built their factories and
or german engineering the sure
(25:25):
but the most advanced when it's walmart
that industrialized china you know they
built these monorails and infrastructure
to get people from rice paddies into
factories to build american stuff
and then all of a sudden we want to
compete with this country after we built
it
exactly you built your own nemesis
well that's built into the system i
(25:47):
think
you have to have a nemesis
now that is what what we always say in
the people around the cnu if if our
theory would be applied by good and bad
regimes whoever i don't care within
if he does this kind of planning it will
be better for russia if biden would
(26:07):
adopt this as national policy it would
be
certainly do a lot of good but where's
the west the
let's say the
where's now the counter project to what
is happening you know
the post-soviet or the post-communist uh
well there's no at least before the
(26:27):
people had the kind of hope maybe
socialism would be better than
capitalism but now there's no more model
there's not not even any opposition
anymore to there's no curiosity and
there's no imagination i mean even
and i keep taking you know what you're
saying about design and making it about
all you know aspects of culture but i do
think there's a relationship i mean you
(26:48):
look at these movies
i i don't go see them but you look at
the stuff that's coming out and it isn't
new ideas it's not somebody who has a
right who has a vision and sat down and
wrote a script it's just oh you remember
this from 1970 we dusted it off okay
it's reboot i mean it's just this
cultural or a burroughs of
of garbage that's being recycled but any
(27:09):
vision that is new or creative or
challenging or
people attack them much like when you
design atlantis
and and it's it's
there's a gut reaction where people know
that this is how it's a threat to this
existing order that i'm that i'm
entrenched in the hierarchy of and i've
got to get it and it's a design you know
(27:30):
it's a it's a drawing of its physics
for me the most important because i
worked i left university to work for the
then most famous english architect
called james sterling he's now following
but he was
he did one brilliant building very
interesting but but then most of it was
rubbish and really horrible
(27:53):
and we and then i got i i went to this
guy because i left university you
learned nothing at the university but i
thought this guy is really genius i mean
he did one building which is really
formidable i never found out
how this happened
he refused any theoretical debate
and i realized the then most famous
(28:13):
architect had absolutely no clue what he
was doing
we i worked for three months on the
project for over 2000
houses housing units
and
uh after three months i said i can't
sleep anymore
this will be islam and you got really he
said you are wrong you know this
this the way it must be and and so on it
(28:34):
has to be
so this one long story short the thing
was built
it was demolished after 10 years over
two days
no no no it was it was like pretty good
not that bad but but really rough i mean
really rough
and it was called the runcorn town
(28:56):
center housing by jim sterling
and
so he came we live in the same i lived
in this old house we both lived in old
houses in indonesia why can't we design
like this where you live
oh but you don't understand you know
this is not
modernity is no
serial production and repetition that's
(29:17):
all
there's a
there's a
kind of crass american expression you
don't show where you eat
exactly
yeah the design is for the clients
where i want to live in my family
but you can't you can't flush and flush
it down
(29:38):
no
this was destroyed now the
the buildings were built by a loan
of the rank on development corporation
that loan matures in 2025 the loan to
the city of london
so the english this development company
which was government sponsored is paying
(30:00):
for buildings which disappeared 40 years
ago
well i mean and that's
that is the economic system you know we
and
it's extremely short-sighted
like the german award that
finished for the first world war
finished in
2010 i think
(30:23):
and how can
a society survive such
real they are mental mental disasters
and um i mean now also in america in the
crisis with mass murdering and so on
i mean you will have more
on your hands than you can that you can
manage
(30:43):
on the architect quinlan terry and
christianity
raymond eric but he was like an old man
and he was
particularly considered as a fantastic
(31:04):
draftsman but as an architect he
wouldn't count even though it was him
who had rebuilt
number 10 downing street
if he had not done 10 downings it would
just be a modernist slum like they have
everywhere and so when i asked around do
you know conanteria i mean it's
interesting was this weird and people
said oh
(31:25):
that's
ridiculous i mean he's a christian
so i said
since when i mean i'm not a practicing
christian but i grew up that way since
when this christian being christian is
that
outlawed
that's exactly what it is in a way you
know the the
(31:46):
i mean i wish i would be closer to
christians but
it's you know they are deconstructing
now even
what was the
what was something which stood on good
feet
now
we opened an enormous
cathedral in
in my project in guatemala just the
other day you see that camera
(32:08):
it's called crayola
okay
my the spanish is not good you know i
read it but i i don't have many people
that i converse about that
but there they still feel phil you know
a thousand people in in
for a church like this
with why it doesn't happen there i mean
like
like yeah
(32:29):
well seaside and the seaside chapel is
pretty full yesterday
yes yeah well in united states is much
more
there's much more practice
in religious practice than europe is
churches are dead
diabetes i grew up as a catholic
and i noticed that actually a lot of my
clients
(32:51):
are or would like to be or come from
that background
and
so there's something mysterious that the
the scale between private life
and the scale you meet
in the church in in the grand grand hall
is is like
(33:12):
a physical
uh also a scale a scale
experience and which is
obviously impressive something
well i i mean if you don't have an
elaborate inner world or inner a rich
richness vastness to develop self how do
you build externally you know how do you
have a vision for that you're just
(33:33):
chasing trends and fads and what you're
told to do a pack mentality of you know
where did you grow up
because often the people i
i relate to they grew up generally or
they experienced a
very nice urban
or rural
landscape and then they feel they lived
(33:53):
something real
which is not fantasy
where did you grow up in
in birmingham alabama
um so i mean a lot of the architecture
of the older cities is interesting and
historic it's it's rare and then it's a
southern city but it was built by you
know kind of northern industrialists so
it has a
kind of mixture of texture
(34:14):
um you know some stuff's nice some some
isn't um you know obviously the as a kid
you know you spend all of your time in
these uh middle schools high schools
that are just cinder blocks with no
windows it's a prison
final time
drop ceiling i mean we could who could
have decided such a thing that the
children would be distracted if they
(34:36):
could see trees and light you know
that's slavery
i i heard the story in in in florida but
it was for
so that people couldn't see in so that
the pedophiles wouldn't be excited like
they're not window shopping
i think you've got different problems
when there's enough pedophiles to be
(34:57):
waiting outside in school what did they
have such
people at command with such distorted
minds
i
in in the project in england i i had i
did a master plan for
a large school next to the
next to our
project and to integrate that in the so
(35:18):
people can walk
towards the school and so on and i
remember the chief architect of the
of the district was very became a real
friend and without him the project
wouldn't have even started because
you need somebody in authority to to
push this without too many explanations
and just saying this is all right
and
(35:38):
so we presented this master plan
and went to the to the board meeting
and
as we approached
the head of
planning of educational planning of the
education authority of dorset
approached came from the same parking
(35:58):
and there were
the young
there were girls and boys
streaming towards the school
and the the responsible for the school
for the educational authority indoors it
said
showing the towards the children saying
all material for rape
so i thought who is this guy i mean this
the guy was responsible for because they
(36:20):
were fencing in the schools and i said
we need
schools open i mean so they are in town
not not with fences and around
because they are part of public space
then
we presented the plan and after the
uh
the
the head was in a shriveled lady i mean
(36:40):
really very unpleasant and arrogant
she said you want to plan a piazza
in front of the school but you know this
is a space where boys and girls could
meet i said yes that's exactly the idea
she just
stuff angry they're threatened by
something that's very human and
(37:01):
important to our humanity what is what
is
i mean that's what humanity is about is
about meeting
on sustainability in ancient and
traditional architecture
(37:28):
so do you see things like like lead
design or whatever is that kind of a
distraction from a real project of a
real sustainable architecture so what
the lead do you think things like like
that here they have lead certification
yeah yeah yeah it's it's industrial
i mean
because it seems like you're checking
all these boxes to make your building
(37:49):
green but you're not preparing for a
future without oil you can't walk it's
not pedestrian
it isn't it isn't built out of material
that will last so you're going to have
to replace it
it's it's another way of consuming
environment
and
because
(38:09):
you know if you have natural materials
stone or brick or
wood
no you cannot build
unless you use that is that was
strangely the in a nail production 19th
century was
one of the first
giant industries which changed the
(38:31):
architecture
and by having cutting lumbar into
very small formats whereas before you
had trees you built carpentry out of
heavy lumber
now that they had this industrial source
where you produced standard piece of
wood
which you could nail together and that
is strangely the nail was actually the
(38:53):
first
synthetic product which destroyed
architecture because you can nail it
into any nonsense and still stands up
it's like an area like an airplane
structure you can't turn the upside down
you can't fly through the air
whereas a traditional carpentry which is
just packed
yeah
is that the easternian houses that
(39:15):
wasn't using pegs to do those
well that all traditional
building
assemblage is always
i forgot what is called isostatic and i
said that if you don't disassemble it
correctly it will collapse
you can't build an arch which is not a
real arch
(39:36):
whether it's a jack arch or flat arch or
the full center dart or mix the linear
art whatever they are called they need
to be
constructed correctly otherwise they
don't stand up
whereas you can make the most idiotic
useless shape
senseless shape casted in concrete
(39:56):
or building steel or with nailed lumber
and it stands up for a while
but on the other hand in the long term
it's subjected to so much stress
that
in the end they are eroded when you look
at when you analyze close by modern
concrete construction post-war
construction it's rotting from the
(40:18):
inside
i always wouldn't because people say you
can't use arches it's not modern
arches are
modern
all the time because modern means of our
time when you build notch today it's
modern
it's not it's techn it's just like
scissors
(40:39):
are not the question of modernity is not
the problem it's whether they cut or not
but there was quite a famous example the
nazis built 8 000 concrete bridges
flatbed you know
pillars and flatbed like this
all these concrete bridges which were
(41:00):
german high-tech of the 30s had to be
replaced in the 70s and 80s because the
vibration
uh creating
micro fissures which led in
and rot the the
inner steel you get those stalactites
that grow as the water drips through the
(41:21):
concrete and leeches
yeah very modern
but the only nazi bridges which still
work
are
steel
steel bridges there's one in in cologne
but above all many on the motorways
are the stone of the
(41:43):
the arch bridges concrete arches
they are cast in concrete but they are
arches they look like traditional
viaducts from afar
and so that even
the arched form the arch
is more
materially
a solid
then
(42:04):
know all the modern inventions after
so it's not just and it's interesting
that uh
that the arch has not only and
for us an emotional thing but also
particularly
structurally absolutely unreplaceable
element because the sagging makes it
actually more solid
(42:26):
or any cracks compress the
if something happens it's
compressed by the
by the pressure
anyway
yeah the weight is kind of like water
you want to channel it down to the
ground like but the arch on the gothic
cathedrals and
yeah and you don't need the reinforced
steel reinforcement which you need when
(42:46):
you have flat
you know
so it only compresses that's why roman
roman concrete you know
the actually the
pantheon in rome is the biggest
concrete dome in the world
[Music]
it's 2 000 years old you could actually
(43:07):
roll that
because it's a solid piece which becomes
one
in time and i saw a similar thing in
greece
once in a ruin which was not an official
ruin but there was a roman roman theater
in northern greece
and because of an earthquake part of the
amphitheater
(43:29):
had broken away and lay on the ground
like this with arches going
sideways with the legs with the
and it lay there like for hundreds of
years and it was absolutely intact
the construction is very interesting and
also
(43:50):
because people that's something i don't
understand why people love ruins
that's one of the things that roberto
garrison says in the book is it's
reminding us of this kind of existential
reality that even the greatest monuments
and and
to our own ego and
will crumble and they evoke this really
uncomfortable stirring in us
(44:11):
to to look at ruins um and so anything
that you know when you're kind of
contemplating grandeur in life and
you're in your
classical painting you have to put you
know modern people on these fallen
columns to remind you that
the modern people will one day be the
the ancient column covered in ivy yeah
(44:32):
but there's a counter example in in
japan the the ise shrine the imperial
shrine in isi
is they rebuilt every 20 years in wood
the same form
you know that you know it houses isn't
that that's the one that houses the
imperial katana the things given by the
(44:53):
the sun empress and the uh mythology of
the empire yeah yeah
no one's seen them that's wild that the
construction workers everyone looks away
when they take it apart to rebuild
i traveled and you can't see it
it's in a beautiful forest and
the craftsman they are dressed like
angels in white cloth with wings i mean
(45:13):
almost like with high shoulders
spectacular
but you can see
uh smaller buildings which are done the
same thing
and it's always fresh wood
so the building is never there's one in
construction one which stands
once the 20 years is finished the one
finished is being burnt
(45:35):
destroyed ritually i think they take it
apart and then the new one shines
and so you have always like
gigantic
full
wooden trusses no
and it's um
actually you can't speak of sexy
building if ever there was a sexy
building it's these temples i will send
you
(45:55):
images it's unbelievable
and
because and that is the interesting
thing to that in order to have
permanence every generation has to
rebuild it like human beings
20 years like generations
yeah just thing
psychological also
(46:16):
and that is always compare that to you
know this building is thousand years old
but in fact the material is only less
than 20
next to the partner which was destroyed
200 years ago by an explosion they would
probably still stand there i know the
archaeologists who
who now
they repair it you know they
(46:38):
like like denture ridiculous just
rebuild it ah but that would be faking
the marble is still there
in the in the same quarry
they built one in nashville i think
they're uh or not athens and athens yeah
not bad well it's concrete but it's at
least you get the impression of the
(46:59):
fulbright but it's the classicists who
would complain if you rebuilt it and you
painted the statues
you know in the original colors they
were gaudy and very bright and everyone
would complain that's supposed to be
white that's what classicism is you know
well i think now there are enough
classes to would support it
(47:20):
unfortunately the government is paying
you know they have like a budget like
for national defense
to to turn that ruin to restore it not
as a building but as a ruin
it was the most high-tech building
in the ever thought of
when you have the the column
and the man
forget now his name but anyway he he
(47:43):
showed me through the building site
and
you know when you have the fluted
columns you have the columns with the
fluting
the riddles which are outside and they
have sharp edges
so he said yeah the looking glass
point count a very strong looking glass
(48:03):
so follow the you see follow that
that joint
which is the different drums standing on
it
follow that line and then there was one
of the
the ridges one of the aries is the the
vertical sharp
edges had been broken away by a recent
(48:24):
earthquake
but just small damage
so follow
and the joint went through that damage
so follow that line and you don't see
the joint
in the damaged
surface
it's so precise that the only thing
which announces the joint
is micro
mushrooms some something growing in the
(48:45):
in the water
because you know
because they take these drums apart in
order to restore and do the feelings
of marble
computer you need a computer to
calculate the surfaces
but those surfaces were so precise of
the drums
a tearing that it takes 48 hours for add
(49:08):
when they lift it
for air to get into these joints which
are joint without mortar
or without any material
so it was like a perfect fit
so can you imagine the technological the
precision of
of
tools and and techniques
to create such a thing i mean airplanes
(49:31):
are primitive compared technically
just the raw
the technique to be able to do that
every every drum weighs i don't know 20
tons
on technocracy
(49:56):
i have to look it up well that because
you know the technocracies in whether
you are in iran or or in
the united states or russia the same
spirit
of technocracy
yeah
well it's
i think it's a
people have a disbelief
(50:17):
that
we've been tr we've been told to
distrust our
our feeling our intuition our felt sense
that that isn't rational or that that
isn't reasonable or that that is too
utopian because if people felt that they
would know that this is wrong that it
doesn't feel good it's not benefiting
anyone that and and you're kind of
(50:39):
shamed if you have any imagination or
any creativity you're you're shamed into
you know you don't
try and have any faith that there could
be a better world you know
yeah
whereas the better world is already
there if you look around
that's i i always say you know it's like
having to teach people to fall in love
(51:01):
[Music]
they forbid people to fall in love
edward edinger is another young game do
you know do you remember him he's dead
now edward edinger he wrote a book
psyche and archetype
no
um one of the things i thought was
(51:23):
really interesting in psyche and
archetype is
edinger like
yeah
he he says that um
you know the the circle or the sun disk
yoong was kind of obsessed with these
sun discs if you read the red book or
something it's like the earliest
conception of the self and that before
(51:45):
children have an ego when they're still
two whatever they're kind of one with
the universe they don't really know that
they're a separate creature yet the
earliest versions of what they draw when
they draw themselves is a circle and so
he has a study where he follows how kids
draw who what they are
all the way up as they age
and it's like hundreds of different kids
(52:05):
drawings and it always starts with a
round object and then the round object
splits into four parts it has that
quadrant its circle and then they'll add
legs and arms and eyes and things later
but he says that that circle that's
bisected by that cross is kind of one of
those that quaternity is a this old
archetypal image and that that's
(52:26):
something that
the earliest depictions of the garden of
eden and the descriptions of it was that
it was a circle with four rivers flowing
through it and four gates you know
and
it's the beginning of that polycentric
city you know that it isn't a grid
uh center and periphery how interesting
i i don't find it
so we build these external things based
(52:48):
on an internal map you know that
requires intuition and a felt sense and
a creativity that you have to trust if
you're not doing that if it's all your
ego you're just chasing a trend and a
competition in a community and it's
consumerism and you know uh
planned obsolescence
unhappy consumers
[Music]
(53:15):
on children and hope
you have you have children
19 children yeah
how old are they
how old are they uh violet is at four
and when is one
(53:35):
oh gosh
are you not scared for them because it's
what you i mean the world they are
facing it's
you you won't sleep anymore
it's very scary i think that you have to
you have to be willing um to have faith
and if if you teach your children not to
(53:57):
be afraid of themselves they'll see
through these things they you know i
think one of the things i tell patients
a lot is that the same way that you
control your children is the way that
you're setting them up to be controlled
by the world
so if you teach them to hold their own
authority to feel their own intuition to
crush the creative vision
you're empowering them but if you teach
them authority is important the priest
(54:19):
or the president or that you have to
the daddy you know then they're just
gonna go out and join a cult or a
political movement or you know or if you
teach them oh your relationship to the
world is vulnerability you have to be a
victim or whatever it is you're just
setting that up
them up to be controlled by an abusive
spouse or a politician a religious
leader or whatever yeah and if you trust
(54:40):
teach them to have authority to hold
their own autonomy then
that's you know the best thing you can
do but that's scary you know parents
don't want to do that
so you are an optimist i
there i don't know
there's an austrian
uh child psychologist it's called
(55:01):
um
michelle hutter who wrote a book called
six seven what happens to children
between the age of six and seven
because
you know when children grow up they
start talk
as soon as they talk
they ask questions
you probably experience that every day
300 questions per day what is this what
(55:24):
is that why here why they
[Laughter]
when they are six when they go to school
they they are told shut up and answer
only
only what you are asked
i never listened to that i remember
being angry at it and i didn't fight i
didn't make a scene but i just shut down
and i'm still angry about it you know
(55:45):
that you have these people who are
telling children not to trust creativity
and intuition just because they have all
this unlived life they're afraid of
themselves
and
and they're they're getting in the way
of a better world
you know the union indian
conceptualization describes that pretty
well with the shadow the unlived life of
(56:05):
the parent is the biggest force in the
child's life because it's these things
our parents never master it's all these
places where they're kind of afraid to
go and then
kids react to that same fear and learn
that these places are forbidden but if
you really know yourself you're
comfortable with everybody and it's the
people who are the most violent and the
most angry and the most uncomfortable
(56:27):
with themselves that cause all the
problems that you're describing
yeah
well we were lucky
to have good parents
well thank you so much for your time and
your life's work i appreciate it it's
inspiring you know those ideas ripple
it's like you put the stuff out there
you don't know who sees it or
who it inspires so i appreciate it
(56:49):
your video will be will be is is is very
is a bomb
sorry
your video on on the atlantis thing is
is a bomb it's fantastic because it's
really done for a large public
so yeah i hope so um
i i um
(57:09):
do you mind if i take segments from the
interview and then put them out you know
as like a video no no no i have no
problem with that
well thank you i appreciate it and i
will i'll talk to you soon
nice to meet you have a nice evening
bye-bye
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