Thank you George. We want to thank everybody for coming just really briefly because we do have a couple of these intros to intros the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center has for many years mostly in the long ago past had a really active dialogue and sense of collaboration with the with Georgia Tech and in recent years we have started this keynote lecture series called contemporary talks and when we do that we try to choose. I say we meaning me and my colleagues and. People we reach out to for some advice. We invite four or five significant practitioners in the fields of visual art or curatorial work art history gallery dealers architects designers we've tried to cast a very wide net to talk about visual art and culture and really bring in people that have never had a chance to talk about their ideas in the context of Atlanta in many cases these are people who are very well respected in the field in their respective fields and whose work you may know of but you just have not really had a chance to be in the same place with them. And so when we bring those folks we also try to look at key partnerships and people who we might want to play with in order to increase the attendance and the access and the visibility of those projects. So that's how we come to be here today I would as George was telling you about other things going on to the on the campus relevant to other upcoming stuff. Check out our website walk across Marietta Street I know it seems really daunting but we do some unbelievable programs down the street and we would welcome you to come to those as well. I have been asked to introduce Kiersten Tucker who is going to introduce Mimi and I have no idea except that she seems lovely what to tell you about Kirsten I know that you know her so she will speak for herself and why. Coming our guest for tonight and the format is that mean he's going to talk about projects she's excited about things that her partner Erika and architects have been up to and then we'll have time probably for a few questions at the end. So thank you for joining us and them. Thank you. Good evening. I have the pleasure of formally introducing me who on. Me is a partner at the firm and architects which she co-founded with Eric in one nine hundred ninety nine. Some of you may be curious about what the end stands for. It represents a variable as in a mathematical expression which can be interchanged for an infinite number of values based on these values a range of extraordinary design solutions can arise which is what has happened in Mimi's work. She and architects have risen to international prominence doing exhibitions installations and designing for clients all over the world some recent locations have ranged from C. old to London to Beirut and architects has also been honored with several prominent awards including a New York City public design commission award. Selection by moma for the rising currency exemption exhibition to a New York design honor awards. And I am New York building type merit award the architectural league of New York's Emerging Voices. And a R. and D. mention the Canadian professional room prize. Architectural records design Vanguard the MOMA slash P.S. One young architects program. And two New York foundation for the arts grants me also brings education experience after receiving her undergrad in architecture from MIT and masters from Harvard. She began teaching at such distinguished institutions as the hard. G S D and U.C. Berkeley. And currently She teaches design studios at Columbia and her design practice and philosophy emphasizes rigorous process complex understanding of the problem innovation and technical precision. She works toward simple designs that produce a richness and flexibility of experience with an economy of conceptual and material means. And finally she aims to define new intersections between architecture landscape art and technology in each project. Here to tell us more please welcome. Mimi Hong thanks so much and thank you very much. Just to it for the invitation and to the School of Architecture for hosting what are we really in control of can what we are not in control of be a positive thing. And what is invisibly controlling controlling us Tov my lecturer refers to a line of inquiry that we've been thinking about for some time about the amount of control that we have over our medium and the potential productivity of embracing indeterminacy in our work to let it stand. Do we control the outcome of our work through our tools and to what extent are we in fact already controlled by them all to. We are in is to achieve the richness and complexity of experience with in Qana mean of conceptual and material means but we think that there's a prevailing obsession with means that sometimes results in the reverse it tyranny of tools and techniques software and processes. Is producing increasing dullness of flattening of architecture to the surface and reduction of it to an image we think it's an avocation not only of responsibility but also opportunity. To some extent this is unavoidable and we are guilty of it ourselves. But is it possible that a majority of buildings and theoretical projects are largely controlled by means of representation and construction either unwitting either unwittingly or due to a misplaced obsession and we answering the right questions when we design a project as architects we often rely on parameters that are given to us in order to shape or response to program polity context. But are these parameters even correctly formulated in the first place. And is it sufficient agency for us to simply respond within the spectrum of information that we receive we've been in practice since ninety nine or two thousand. We've tried to address a wide range of skills in our work from buildings to installations interiors and more recently to urban skill. Or to put it simply or. How we put it it's buildings and almost buildings because regardless of scale it's the same for us. We are concerned less about formal consistency and more about consistency in approach. And about asking the right questions and framing the right parameters. So I'd like to show you eleven projects tonight. Roughly divided into three categories into related categories that we obsess about in every project The first is users. And then it's just. The second is conceptual and material economy. And the third is climate and strategy. And all of them and the underlining question in all of it is how do we embrace indeterminancy in our work kind of program control or predict the use of the building. Cultural identities are often too complex to be easily addressed in a shopping list of programs. So we put typically begin by questioning the program that we've been given and focusing more on the specific amenities that shape the end users experience. We try to anticipate use but also the misuses of our spaces. So in the first three projects. I want to talk about an architecture that we think provides a specific yet loose armature that allows users and also miss users to reconfigure relationships be it optical. Spatial social or thermal. Party well is an installation. We were commissioned by artist space which is a nonprofit gallery in New York to do an installation. The first thing we thought about was how do you create in the context of a gallery How do you create social space amongst strangers and we started with the most basic element that we could think of a wall. And we thought what if it's acoustic properties. It could could be dynamic could respond to visitors. So a party wall. You know divides property our party wall is a site for exchange is an instigator for dialogue. So quite simply we imagine taking the face off of a wall and playing with its insides. So in this instance it responds to. The closer you are the visitor gets to the wall apertures open up and so rather than being a divider. It's all set in the site for exchange. We worked with the programmer from and I do Media Lab for the for the hardware and the and the programming. And the sensors and this basically is the diagram instead of studs we have conduits that are structural that houses all the data and electrical wiring and the construction logic is basically all of the bands of phones are a slotted and sensors and servo motors and microprocessors in sequence and then rotated this is the kind of. We've learned a lot about soldering on this project and then it's rotated up drilled into the ceiling and this is showing on the section on the right stable state section on the left if it activated. So it was a bit of a Frankenstein. It didn't work. It didn't work and finally it worked and then it wouldn't stop moving and almost you know we were afraid there was going to walk out of the gallery. So what we were interested in which we didn't know planning it was that it is responding to the presence of visitors but it's also responding to itself. You wouldn't it didn't stop moving and we think it's because the foam is quite soft and the movement of the motors basically triggered the other sensors so it kind of assumed the radical life of its own. So it was not a completely control. Interactivity and that for us was fascinating. The fact that it responded to external forces and to itself that it was predictable and also unpredictable. This is something that we are still carrying with us. And this table isn't exhibition design that we did for the drawing Center another nonprofit gallery in New York for the drawings of Frederick Keesler who is an Austrian architect who immigrated to the States before the world before the second world war. He was most famous for his revolutionary designs for the times are the center sensory gallery and most famous for this house which he worked on for believe ten fifteen years. Philip Johnson labeled him the most famous architect who who never built over time. So the challenge in doing in exists exhibit design for his drawings with not ape him because he himself did exhibition design while also addressing three of his salient ideas. The first is enlist space. Second is what he called Call relisten which means that the relationship between things is more important than the things themselves. And then the third is that perception is the constantly mutable construct. So we design and list table it's one hundred forty four foot long. The snakes around the gallery. And you can see in the security cam shots the idea that it's constantly changing things that it's something that you don't experience all at once it winds around the gallery. So the relationship between viewer object in space is constantly changing the Joint Center by the way only exhibits drawings to get to the work and for the first time they did not actually use the walls to exhibit. Work and that was also something that we were interested in. So the other thing that we were interested in was that in a singular gesture. We could create a variety of perceptions of the work so there are these tilting panels for the drawings that did not fit within the table and the taller the larger the artwork is the more vertical The panel is and we were very happy with the decision to paint all white powder coated aluminum because everyone wears black and opening. So we thought that was a good thing. So ultimately what we were getting at was that with this boy this voice this not necessarily the shape of the thing that we're interested in but there are varying relations across the void and across the objects. So this may seem a little bit disconnected. But this is a very current project in our office right now we're going through is going to design on this. It's called the White House cultural education complex. It's basically the cultural center and visitors center to the oldest structure in New York and some say the oldest structure in the States a tiny Dutch farmhouse from the sixteen fifties. It has a lot to do with the first two projects for us. That's a couple things that we're thinking about in this project the house itself. So some shots of the interior and exterior of the house were trying to mind the house for clues for own insertion into the site. This is the site of a house that kind of sits in this depressed Bowl. And is surrounded by a very different context. We're also looking at Dutch farm houses and Dutch farm settlements and looking at the way in which. Of buildings kind of call Lessing around the farm landscape act as a singular as act as a singular building. And culturally we're looking at Dutch paintings from that period and thinking about layered spaces and. And filtered light. So it's in Brooklyn in East Brooklyn and it used to be the breadbasket of America and you can just kind of see in these pictures how radically the site has changed the farm grid last apparent in the early one nine hundred seven now completely eradicated. So quite simply the concept is the building is a portal between past and future. It provides a view of the house and it provides a very strong urban edge to its current context which is auto body shops. This is the site and so what we are obsessing about in this house is the space in between. It's basically a multicultural program multi functional space and then in space and we've separated the two on either side of a covered exterior space largely because of their programming means there's a lot of events. Lots of community events that takes place out of doors which focuses on the House and focuses on the site as a kind of remnant of the circle Dutch farmhouse. There's this one moment in the house was a beautiful cabinet that is dark painted wood on the outside in the open and and it's a beautiful orange color on the inside that is another inspiration for us. So we're look so we're trying to. Really treat this exterior space that is the portal between past and future as interior space. So you can see in the plan that portal space in between the admin above to the left in the multi functional Gallery event space to the right. And then some very schematic I should you be showing you this very very schematic. This is a view from the street looking through to the house and then back from the house. Hot off the press very very much in process right now. The second obsession of ours is the idea of material and conceptual economy. So in the next four projects. I want to focus on the link between between those and more that we don't really subscribe to the so the divide between conceptually driven work and tectonic and material invention for us it's part of the same spirit. In a lot of our projects mostly in the almost building category. We try to minimize the amounts of materials tectonic systems building systems in general not that we're interested in Middle Men listen. But that we're interested in doing more with less. So the first project in this category is kind of you which we always are insulation moment. Yes one in two thousand and four competition that they hold every year for the courtyard. It's a museum but it's also a former school and in the summer. It is a kind of urban Hamptons. Which makes it actually sound a lot bigger than it is. But it's an urban oasis for. For for for the for the city and they host a weekly dance music session. So it's a lot of things to unpack and so that's kind of programming issues and then there's the site which is very grey very bleak. So for us we started thinking about the site not just as the ground to cover but the entire height from the ground to the sky because went once you enter into that courtyard the sounds of the city are muted and all of sudden your focus is up to the sky. So this is something that we started to call deep landscape. And quite simply we wanted to stretch this canopy over. And then pull down these rooms that are open to the sky and each of these environments have difference humidity and saturation point so they go from dry. The sand home to very wet which is the pool. And each of them are designed to provoke different modes of lounging and social interaction. So this is the final plan because you know. Of course we were inspired by Fry also when we looked a lot at his work. We wanted to avoid the catenary weather and we wanted to find a single tectonic system in a single material that would be structural that would be spawning that would provide shade and her by seeding So we found a bamboo consultant on line. We call him. Our bamboo consultant but he was really about to fence builder. But he introduced us to this species of bamboo actually comes from Georgia called philosophic aria. It's extremely flexible and this is the. Holds a twenty foot long and then thanks again and we use clean them blue because we're interested in making the brevity of the project a tactile experience so part of the idea was that it would turn over the course of the summer. It would turn from green to yellow Actually rather than August it turned yellow in July and rather than yellow it really became almost bone white so this is at the beginning of the summer. And what was also interesting was that it kind of mapped the sun exposure so the thicker more vertical poles stayed green or for longer and the thinner more horizontal poles became white and brittle and dry quicker. The other thing that we played with was the geometry of the grid we played with a bunch of grid geometries but we became interested in pinching the grid in certain areas in the courtyard in order to create a kind of a complete range of shadows and densities and we also pinched the poles as they came down to create seating. So we spent about six weeks on site testing every span every arch. And then went back to the digital model because we realized onsite and we kind of had to come up with all of our own building techniques for this because it's to our knowledge it was the first green bamboo structure of this size but we realized that our digital model was too flat all the arches were too flat and basically we had to inject air into all the arches and bump them all up and that is also something that we've been carrying with us. The importance and the and the potential of the non direct. Correlation between technology and and what you build and the fun of revising the three D. model and improvising. So the first to arrive is the steel and it's the steel is the structural base and second was the bamboo from Dudley GA eleven hundred poles stripped and shipped here. So staging ground. We organize them according to diameter which. Affects the rigidity of the poles watered them every day to keep them supple and dry. I mean supple and wet and then the splice types basically structural splices from that span and then the nonstructural ones that are overlaid on top and then just an example of the drawings that you can't see. From the tube from the three D. model translate it into two D. and then the simple connection types. And the very laborious process of basically translating every arc profile on the ground and then erecting them one by one and inserting them into the steel brings down below and then gradually the nonstructural members get laid on top and the after the fact cleaned up diagram of the sequence in reality it was very very interdependent and we kind of had to grow this mesh incriminates as we went along and example of a kind of phasing drawing that we did every day to build up the structure provisionally all the intersections. Were bound by zip ties. Like for trucks and then a systematically replaced. These are all the nodes systematically replaced with stainless steel wire. It was important to us that we were interested in bamboo because of its natural properties that it's often associated with the Third World and we wanted to we wanted to create a very precise engineered looking products so we purposely went away from the typical choir and coconut husk that it's normally tied with in favor of the stainless steel. So while the bamboo is drying outside we planted the same species in the smallest environment that we called the rain forest which grew and grew like a weed while outside it. It became bone like. And this is a typical Saturday was very important for us that it made sense in a crowd of seven thousand and it also made sense in a more intimate setting. So this is the pool pan that you see and the fog. Over to the right. And then to to the left of you of the sand from the dry environment. And to the right to two little pads were introduced during the construction schedule. Basically two weeks before it opened we realized that we could not do the span all the way to the wall so we had to introduce two more dips down which we think made for a much more interesting space because it varied the scale of the dips much more so this is that's Eric standing in the fog. There's a couple things that we have taken. From P.S. one in to later installations. One is the as I mentioned kind of tactile quality of the change into real. Properties. The second is the interest in the interdependency of the structure and I'll talk about it later when I talk about when shape but the fact that it all worked together and it kind of all relied on its neighbor being rigid is at once. Interesting and also extremely difficult to pull off. So right after P S one we were in the Lower East Side the location of our office and a guy walked in off the street. And Eric was eating ramen and he said I need an architect. I want a stainless steel facade. And so Eric said come back in five come back in half an hour and put together this presentation. So it was extremely serendipitous he had actually dug for foundations before he found his architect so we had to work really really. And he had a kind of typical developer wish list a Windows balconies this kind of thing and we tried to combine them into a major organizing attribute of the facade rather than rather than a feature or rather than a kind of dressing. Of of the facade. So the first is the big windows and the Lower East Side was it was and is a rapidly gentrifying area and we wanted to connect to the street in a more direct way we took this request for bay window seriously and looked at all of a windows in the neighborhood from the beautiful to the. Ridiculous and we also looked at the air conditioning grills which is also kind of the the bane of developer buildings and we tried to marry the two of them. And this is a kind of funny example where this is not an air conditioning grill that is almost anticipating the air conditioning grille So quite simply the concept works out in massive scale the base bay window switch back and forth but also at a cladding level so the air conditioning grills basically become. Start from flat become perpendicular and flatten out again and they are organized to separate intake and outtake air and the cladding also switches back and forth so that the light and shadow effect that you get walking north versus south down the street is very different. So this is a close up of the air conditioning grill and then on the facade so you can kind of see the cladding is switching orientation from floor to floor. So some floors you pick up the Shadowline and some floors disappears and then this idea of kind of living in your facade or try to show in these two pictures the north and south view of the street. And then the switching concept. Again continues on the back facade with the balconies kind of a forced interaction between neighbors. So really it's about repetition. But within the developer economy model of economic repetition maximizing difference. So actually even though the apartment layouts are the same the light and view conditions are very different and then the ground floor. We designed it as a guy. Larry Sadly it's not being used as a gallery store if you need a satellite in space but it's a burgeoning gallery scene in New York and that's this neighborhood and we took the sheathing material and fold it into the facade. This is actually the lobby. So there's a little bit of switching going on here also. Continuing with the theme of material and conceptual economy. The A.B.C. department stores is under construction. We're doing the facades and the entrance entries. It's in Beirut. It's on the little red dot that you can see on the right. It's on a very important north south axis and with the Mediterranean to the west. This was the existing façade So really it's not that difficult to do something better than this but we took their logo and created a kind of perforated screen that changes in density and gradient as you move around the building. It's water jet cut aluminum and here you can see the shift in density it either gets more porous and luminous. As as it moves up or down and we're kind of switching that around on all the facades it improves the thermal performance as well in that it shields that cavity. But it's held off from the existing CMU wall and back that at night so obviously the location on the on the highway. It was very important that it is this kind of dynamic changing thing. So here's a mock ups in the office trying to this is a one to ten metric determining the the gradient the apertures. Halfway through the project they doubled the area with a cineplex and gave the project to us with more than with about forty percent of the with of the budget. So basically the first half is more than twice what we were allowed to spend on the on the second half. So we basically used the cut outs from the first half for the second half. So I guess it's a literal economy of means but for us an important way of stitching two projects together. So this is a more zoomed in rendering of those cutouts projected off the concrete walls of the second half. It's under construction and I think going to finish soon maybe me. So right after P S one we've got a lot of potential inquiries for Chinese restaurants and we really didn't want to be bamboo architecture so we stayed away from bamboo for seven years but last year we did a forest pavilion. We did a privilege in in Taiwan and given the distance in that we would not be there and given that it was Taiwan. We returned to. It was actually commissioned by a curator who was hired by the forestry bureau. And the backstory is that the government was trying to save the new growth forest in the region. The governor was trying to sell off to a private developer to build a casino. So that's the third reason why we chose bamboo something natural it is in an incredible setting it's in on the east coast of Taiwan it's their ecological resort area but it's also extremely difficult because it's in the middle of nowhere and the other people who were invited were artists and we are often we are often invited as artists. And we are not artists and we don't pretend to be. And so we always try to as we say do an almost building that still has programatic and architectural dimensions to it. So we suggested to them because of the presence of these Aboriginal tribes in that region we suggested that it be a kind of cultural venue. Dance is very important to this and it's a way in which to communicate and and tell stories and so we suggested that it be a kind of performance venue for the miss and very loosely you can see in the in the roof and the plant itself some similarities to the growth of trees feelings. So we were not we were there to supervise a little but it was really built by by the time we nice contractors the interesting story is that the Taipei contractors who were brought in to do this were professional naysayers. They just didn't think it was possible but the local armies because they knew bamboo and because they were expert bamboo builders became convinced that they could do it. So essentially the project became divided the Taipei country. There's did the foundations and the steel and the local armies did the bamboo. It has all the same details and techniques S P S one but a very different structural system so. P.S. One is an interdependent mesh and this is a series of vaults that are actually curved bolts that are braced against each other. I love this photo. This is actually them repairing after the opening and this is the setting so that around the ring is for from we imagine stage plays a spectator all collapse into one President Ma actually came for the opening and opens the festival underneath one of the arches. This is not Photoshop. That's the opening ceremony and this is actually the closing ceremony which we were lucky that our photographer could have could be there for a third obsession is an idea of climate as strategy and this is becoming increasingly important to us we don't mean to suggest that we are Leeds. Experts and this is not in place of Leeds. But there's something dulling about the checklist mentality of Leeds and so we've been thinking about climate as a concept. How can it actually shape the building effect its organisation really impact the morphology of buildings. So the next. They're there for projects in this category two of them are very related. Then. The Villa is a is a villa in Mongolia ten thousand square feet. We were not we were given that size as New Yorkers we couldn't fathom what someone would do with ten thousand square feet. So we created in our house and in our house the inner house is fully heated and has the more expensive materials the outer house is partially conditioned and it's rougher basically what you need and what you desire. It's also about material and thermal economy trying to minimize the energy that you consume and use. So if in a typical home next to the exterior is insulated in a villa villa in your house has most of the insulation and the exterior and the outer house has the rest. It's three floors what we were interested in was maximizing the difference between the three you can kind of see how they stack up living living on the first two bedrooms on the third. And the outer house is this kind of three storey multi-story in between space that connects them. So the first floor which has very specific orientations to the landscape and then the second floor which is kind of all the living space in the round one big space kind of a donut. And then four bedrooms simply facing north south east west and then the main thermal zones the brighter pink being in her house and the lighter one. The outer hell. Yes I'm going to skip these because you can't see them and what we were interested in was from the inner house you would get the sample to me as views of the exterior but also of the outer house and from the inner inner house as I mentioned has the more polish materials the outer house is rough is white is only top lip and as in this abstract. And we were interested in this idea of living that expands and contracts with the seasons so in temperate weather. You would live in the inner and outer and in extreme weather because in Inner Mongolia. The average temperature is minus five Celsius in extreme weather you retreat to the inner house. This is the top floor bedroom from the inner house looking out to the bathroom in the other house and then The View. Upon entering. We got tired of waiting for it to be built. I think actually the client is in exile. So for the sole design Olympiad we built a one to five normal mapping model. So with the air up. They helped us to capture one day of the winter how the House would perform thermally and we transcribed that in this very large model where the temperature of the outer and inner house is recorded in these dots. So Blue is very cold. Green is a little warmer and red of the entire house is the warmest So it's somehow trying to explain the link between form and performance Double X. House is the cousin of Villa. Villa and actually also the cousin of the white cough Cultural Center which I showed you in the beginning again thinking about this live. The idea of living in a kind of you know X. in A in A. House that can expand and contract doublets house was designed for home matter which is a company that sells house plans online trying to compete with the more traditional house and so these are temporary house. It has no sight no client no location which sounds luxurious but it's a nightmare. And we just spun our wheels for a long time trying to find the right parameters to do to design for so. So given that there is no location and we kind of had to design for every location we designed a house that had to experience the exterior the proper exterior and exterior that is covered and sheltered in the idea is that of course depending on your location in the in the U.S. the materials would change according to the thermal performance that would be desired. So from shingle to metal whether you wanted to dissipate or capture heat. This is the first floor living level second in the third where exterior spaces finally meet in the middle of the X two years ago moma commissioned us and four other teams to. Look at the problem the very specific and real problem of climate change in New York and specifically the more frequent storm surges and flooding that will happen in the near and far future. So our site was number three the fifth one was actually the tip of Manhattan which is here. So this is Brooklyn Staten Island and New Jersey. And we were asked to image imagine to speculate on how the city would change in response to and a very acquiesce future our site was extremely large and it's a very very large problem. And so rather than design everything we try to show a window onto how a city would grow in response. So it's part speculative part utopian and part very real. So New York is subject to Category three storm. So basically everything under twenty feet would be flooded and which is what's shown in the boom in the area that we're looking at like a lot of waterfront sites. Basically the residential is completely cut off from the waterfront because of the industry. So we simply wanted to bring the land base initiatives to the water and the water based initiatives to the land. That's a first idea. Second is an idea of dispersing infrastructure. Again as architects we cannot hope to design and solve this problem. So we try to combine design with zoning initiatives and to borrow a lender is term America. We thought of as acupuncture urban isn't. So the idea that we would kind of plant infrastructure. Seeds and that and which would then sponsor habitat and organic growth around it. We know from New Orleans that a single line of defense is extremely vulnerable. And so we had a kind of layered system a layered redundant system of defense. So starting from the water. We designed. It's an archipelago of islands and barriers and then Piers. And then waterfront housing. So the first is the islands and barriers. This is an actual proposal at our site. So that's the Verizon a bridge connecting Brooklyn to Staten Island. It would have disastrous ecological consequences on the big day and on the river which actually flushes twice a day. It would constrict the water flow it would completely change the habitat. So does a barrier have to look like this. We imagine a barrier more like this like an archipelago connected by a dynamic series of inflatable structures and this technology actually exists there are three hundred inflatable dams across all over the world. And the idea is that the infrastructure is largely invisible until there's a storm and then you get a kind of defensive edge protecting the city. It's there and then it's not there. The second line of defense. If the islands and barriers fail is the public water front. So in a similar way we designed a series of piers that would connect. The the waterfront that would create growth traps sediment and sponsor habitat and the more habitat. The more it's a flex the waves. So the peers are infrastructural but they are allowed to. To create organic growth in order for them to function as waste attenuators wave breakers basically. And then finally moving in the red line that you see is the twenty foot inundation zone everything on below that is at risk. So we designed what we called acquiesce neighborhoods. If in a typical city. You share a street and you build up from that in the neighborhood you build the roof first and then and then you build it down. So it's not a skyline but a waterline. We're building. The more risk you're willing to take the lower you hang your house. And the idea also is that waste all waste would be off the grid so waste would be treated through these floating treatment wetlands which would would survive a storm surge because there would be on floating concrete Pontins. So this is a little video that kind of captures everything this is the islands and various concrete barges would bring prefab elements in sight. It's basically the pressure the. The pressure from the high so the water that causes it to inflate and ninety nine point nine percent of the time it's not there the public water front was important to us to simply bring the city to the water. The other paradox that we were working with with that for every inch of water that we were going to get in New York. There was something like thirty thousand new inhabitants. So you can't run for the hills. So how do you reconcile density with living in the context. And then during a storm the roofs become a safe haven the shared public safe evacuation zone. The last present in this climate as its catalyst strategy category is probably the most literal one. It's. Another. Almost building that we did in the south of France in prevails. We were commissioned by the Savannah College of Art and Design again as artists to do an installation in their satellite campus. So again in the search for for program for use. We decided to do. Almost as fictional extensions of the medieval fortress walls of the city. We it's partly because we had to come up with a concept before visiting the site. There are two things that we learned from our research one is that right behind our site. It was the former castle. The former the castle that used to belong to the Marquis de sad and it's where he escaped to when he was kicked out of France is now on the character death. We thought we would go somewhere with that but we didn't and the second was that there are very very strong winds in this area and in the medieval period crimes of passion were forgiven. During the mistrial because the wind would drive people crazy. So we decided to build two pavilions that would respond to the wind. And idea of architecture that would take shape. To take its shape and reflect its external conditions. So rather than blocking the wind or letting the wind pass through we wanted the structure to respond and in its angular geometry it speaks to the limestone heavy masonry construction in the area. But in its dynamic behavior. It speaks to the lushness of the landscape. It's surrounded by all of the trees and cherry orchard in the entire thing is swaying in and billing the construction logic had to be very simple because it's the South of France is very difficult to find as a bolt in the summer. So it's and it's very difficult to access the site so it's basically designed as a series of staggered tripods and with this project we we revisited the two ideas that we were interested with in P.S. one in turn interdependent structure and the well primarily the interdependent structure which I'll get to later because it's a lot of problems. But first to go down is the the tripods and then pretty strong upper tripods. Loose like sails because they have to be tightened in place and then they're strung together and then an inner layer which is again strung together so because it's an extremely interdependent structure. If you tighten one and the other end loosens So it's this kind of nightmarish process of tightening loosening tightening loosing tightening loosing on on and till it settles down like tired spiders weaving and we have. So it really worked almost too well. Two days before the opening of a freak storm hit and and nearly blew the thing over but really with a gentle wind it would ripple and with a strong wind it would literally fold and then come come back and in the evening the string would glow and during the day. It almost disappears and blends in with the agricultural fields in the distance. So I want to close with a little video of the dismantling of P.S. one. We actually sold the bamboo to Matthew Barney who needed it for his film that he was working on they needed straight pieces. We knew that we had curved pieces. Really we just needed to make some money back. So we said it will be fine and we gave him an axe so of where to cut and the fascinating thing is as soon as the these large segments hit the ground. They were completely flattened without any memory of being conformed in this curvilinear shape for five months. No memory whatsoever. So what in fact are we really in control of. Hopefully the way that we formulate a design problem. Hopefully the scaling and situating of our ambitions. And the critical leveraging of our production tools the list of what controls us is too long and too boring to get into. But somewhere in between are the moments where we happily relinquish control and that is in the multiple interpretations and misuses of our environments in the varying relationship between our work and its inhabitants or it or the environment. And in the productive influence of fluctuating external can do. Whether it's weather climate. Or people. That's ultimately where we try to in our efforts. Thank you. I. Just need to question. Yeah. It's hard because I have no idea what it would be like to be an artist but I guess I say you know I have enormous respect for artists and I think it's it would be naive of us to propose work and pass it off as art. But it's more of a process doing installations like that is is always interesting because it's a laboratory. For us to test building techniques but be because there's a very public realm a very socially you know interactive dynamic component to it. So so we ultimately are very interested in that kind of work but I say that we're not artists and we don't want to do that because ultimately we're interested in architecture and we're interested in feeding the furthering the the profession furthering the disciplines so we again we get we have a lot of inspiration from outside of the discipline but ultimately we are interested in pushing architectures so we think about program we think about use we think about the the users. We think about how it will be interpreted. I suppose some artists wouldn't care about those things but because we are you know are almost buildings really inform our buildings and so there's a you know we hope that there's always a reciprocity. We always try to find architectural opportunities in those commissions. We we would have measured the site and surveyed the site much more carefully. Basically. When we visited the site we we were not come we were not one hundred percent sure what we were going to do and so we took measurements but not very careful. It's so and what we didn't realise was there was quite a significant drop in the site in both sites there were two locations for these pavilions which just completely threw everything out of whack completely out of whack and the second thing that was very difficult was that the college gave us four students and then we brought two of our stuff and there was a kind of you know drinking the Kool-Aid moments. Well four weeks of that where they thought we were crazy and they thought you know really know what we're doing and we had to convince them that it was kind to work but you know not having a team that we were very intimately familiar with like we did. Yes one was also difficult and then I guess the third thing was that we built a full scale Maka but only of the first level because we couldn't find a space that was tall enough so you know because we didn't kind of fully test all those parameters and because we weren't there on site extensively before it started this hard you. I might be exaggerating when I when I say that there. There was there's a lot of improvisation. On site there was a lot of improvisation for when shape and a little bit less her P.S. one but it's a point that I like to make because we are very interested in technology but for us it's a means to an end. So ultimately whatever we use to get there. We actually prefer that all traces of technology are erased because we're much more interested in the social interactivity and the dynamic call it is of the work in the end so. So we try to find opportunities to race that and we're very critical of work that is a one to one correlation between computer model However you. You know model that and the thing itself because we think that it's extremely empowering to discover things like the span doesn't work and you have to introduce to new depths or whatever it is on site and we think it's very empowering that that kind of discovery could could feed into the process and vice versa. So I'm not saying that it happens all the time. But what it does do is when we build our own installations that kind. Experience empowers us to push our contractors in a more traditional setting much further. And also that we are able to control the work flow and the work sequence which again you know in a trade more traditional architect builder relationship we could be more involved in planning and designing the sequence and thinking about it very early on rather than somewhere in the middle of the design process. Yeah I should say that the rising currents the New York area city project is very very different from. It's not it's not it's it's more aligned with what we teach. Actually it's more aligned with this gale of projects that we like to develop in our teaching it was a completely speculative project that was initiated by MOMA. It's part of a new series where they invite. Architects and designers to think about a very current topic. So for example the one that is opening now is called foreclosure and it's about the foreclosure crisis. So it is not tested. We spoke to a lot of engineers hydraulic engineers Marine engineers the whole gamut. But it was a very. Sense Charette it was actually two months. So it's a little bit crazy in that it's just the tip of the iceberg. But what we tried to do was we tried to you know given that it was that moment we we tried for something that would really stick with a wide range of audience. So we spoke with planners we still spoke with people from the Planning to apartment. We spoke with community people obviously other practitioners and thinkers. So it's not tested in the in the way that you asked about it but we tried to on the one hand create a big vision but grounded in as much reality as possible. It's funny because right after the exhibit closed and then the bird in the head of city planning unveiled a new zoning ordinance which she tried to show had actually reflected a lot of the ideas in the in the show to be honest I'm not sure it's it's one of the very very big topics that as an architect. We are one of many disciplines that should be thinking about the problem. And so we're trying to think about it in a more reduced scale in in our work in terms of climate but it's it hasn't directly led to something for us. Maybe because it's a very different scale of thinking than what we know. Do you know I mean we want to build more permanent. It's not all by design. But you know our stuff gets taken down. There's there's a couple of couple of things that arise out of that one is the second life of the project we try not to be around for the dismantling of our projects because that's way too depressing so actually that film was done by by MATTHEW CARNEY screw but the idea that it would have a second life is important. So even when we do the easy from role installations. We try to anticipate where it's going to go next. So the. The head landscape for scat in France was very excited to inherit all these pipes which he turned into irrigation pipes you drilled you know because they were already drilled with all those little holes he turned them into irrigation pipes. So thinking about that. I think should be a part of every project but you know we kind of joke that every year we do we know we should do one money losing venture a year and it's always these installations. It's it's it's so important for us. The fact that they're not around for long. For example the bamboo project the way in which you typically build with bamboo is with dry bamboo which has been cured of and treated of to get rid of the if it's that like to nest in bamboo which it usually requires a big kiln and which is why. Typically you have the kind of hierarchical structure where there's you know the primary structure and then the secondary which is the smaller pieces that are lashed together we would not have discovered green bamboo if we had to design something that had to last you know maybe there would be a way around it but the fact that you know it was only going to be up for five months. Is is freeing as a complete freedom to to explore something that just wouldn't would not last and resist whether And and all of this playing with so it is money losing but enjoyable because it's very freeing. I mean in building in our current building projects or there's lots of interrelated ideas right I mean it's hard to separate out but the idea of indeterminacy for us is actually in the three categories. So for example the whole idea of whether And as a scan of external condition that you're not completely in control of really shaping architecture influencing its organization influencing its experience and use is something that we tried to explore with Bill Avila. And the double X. House and also why coffee. You know that space in between is an exterior exterior space that you know except the elements in Villa Villa is that the idea that you know temperature would dictate the boundaries of your house right in the winter your house is much much smaller than in temperate weather so it's so so for us. That's part of the kind of dynamic conditions that we try to anticipate and I mentioned you know just try to create a kind of a loose armature It's not that we're interested in architecture as a blank slate and it's you know completely free because that's a conceit as well but how can we provide a loose armature that structures your experience and structures the use but also is loose enough to allow for a lot of uses. At the risk of sounding completely wishy washy. There are so many people who inspire us but just because I just answered this question for grey matter. The question of who I would have dinner with. My answer was Lena Obeidi the Italian architect who emigrated to Brazil after the war because of her because of her and her connection to the local climate local materials and local building processes for the social engagement of her work but also at the same time responding to a more global and international set of concerns. So I often look at me. Nobody has a lot of artists who inspire me but because we worked with her on a few projects a Sarah Z. is someone who we really look at her father is an architect and you know of course her work is very architectural very spatial and plays with. Architectural kind of spaces and scales and it's extremely whimsical and and fun. And in terms of contemporary people I typically teach the traveling studio at Columbia every spring. So we've been very lucky to travel to a lot of places with the students and so just thinking about their recent trips to Japan. And to Brazil. I think that that would kind of cover their wishy washy very wide spectrum of incredibly sublime reduced spatial ideas that would be in the Japanese camp to really iconic old almost brutalist architecture in Brazil and maybe we're jealous of their climate in that they don't have to deal with all the weather conditions that we have to deal with that that is probably the spectrum of inspiration for me right now but honestly I think that's one of the being outdoors. I have to credit my younger brother who studied at Georgia Tech for his undergrad which is the last time I was here he took a high school drafting class taught by this very sweet man who told us that penmanship and lettering was the key to a successful career but I can't write anymore because all I do is email but I guess it started in high school and I started in undergrad. And there was just tell saying too to Kelly that. My my brother is an architect and I didn't think I came from a family of architects. But. Just a couple of years ago I discovered that my mother kept a secret from me. The fact that she worked as a draft person in an architect's office when she was young so against you know architecture as a career because she's you know and then I realized when I was thirty five that you know it was from inside knowledge. So that's the short story. Thank you very much was.