full interview_jamie von klemperer_3.mp3
Speaker 1 [00:00:00] As a young man, when you knew you wanted to go into architecture, what inspired you? Were there buildings, were there things that especially drew you to the field?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:00:14] Yeah, thinking about why I was drawn to architecture, which was not for me until after college, I mean, that I really knew I was going to pursue this field. But I was thrown to buildings early on. And I think it came, a lot of it came from travel. Travel is always a kind of exploration. My parents were academics who went to Europe. Once, twice a year, took us along. And so the kind of routine of, you know, plots the kid down in front of a cathedral with a sketchbook was, maybe they were getting rid of me for the day, but it worked. And so even from, let's say, age 11, I would sort of take it seriously that I was going to do something well. And you know you do a few things well in life and then you're sort of recognized or rewarded by a little bit of applause. Nicely done, young man. And people would crowd around me as I would do 11-year-old drawings in a sketchbook whether I was in the Greek Isles or in the UK or wherever. So I knew there was some kind of a pleasure that one got from relating what hit one's retinas to what went down on the page and became interested in the subject of what in many cases was buildings because people move around, buildings don't, and there's something you can actually capture and understand and analyze. So it was not probably until college that I really started studying buildings because, although it wasn't my major, I majored in history and literature. Still, one takes all manner of courses in the liberal arts schools. And Harvard had a marvelous art history department. It's probably the greatest strength of the whole university. It might be today. It was amazing. And a wonderful man named James Ackerman, a kind of a senior stentorian voiced, a wonderfully learned American Academy in Rome type person. He was linked to the American Academy. Taught a great course in the Renaissance facade, Renaissance façade, Renaissance palazzo. Florence and Rome. And that's a world which I could live in entirely. It's so rich and rewarding. But understanding something about the language of a culture and the language of an architecture that came with that culture. Understanding history and literature and art and architecture together. So I remember reading Jacob Burkhart, the great German art historian, historian of. Of the Renaissance, and so that was sort of my first taste. And then at Harvard there were more great, great courses, a man named, they will come back to me in a minute, but anyway, on modern architecture, along with some lectures by Vincent Scully when he would come up from Yale. For me, at that point, it was something I observed, I understood, I analyzed, I appreciated. Not something I did. I had no idea how or why or what was involved with the making of a building with an architectural drawing, really. William Curtis was the name of the great historian of Le Corbusier, who introduced me to modern architecture. I came to a kind of a, not an impasse, but, and not a fork in the road, but a point where the road didn't lead anywhere at the end of college. I didn't really know what it was I would do, and I thought about law because I had some great relatives who were great lawyers, and thought about diplomacy and thought about medicine. But then I thought to myself that I would like to find a field that somehow combined and the creative arts of making fiction, making things that didn't exist, because I had studied literature as my major, combining that with something more purposeful, something that had a social kind of purpose or mission or bent or agenda. And that was sort of the history that I had study. And architecture is both, it is known or is thought of or described as the mother of all arts. But it's really more than an art. It is an art and a science and a program of social betterment. It's as broad as dwellings and cities and buildings are broad in their purposes. So it appealed to me as a kind of synthesis of the social and the esthetic. And I was given a year after Harvard to go to Cambridge University to study anything I wanted. I think the organizers of this fellowship called it a year of grace, do what you want. And so I went to Cambridge and I studied architecture for the first time and I was hooked. And the thing that I had loved to do as a child to draw just sort of flowed through me and I could spend hours drawing, I still can today without really noticing that time has passed. It's strange, I mean, just about anything else, watching a movie, going for a run, reading a book. I know how to mark time, sitting in a chair at work. But when I start to draw, I can really get into something and then pick my head up and realize it's three hours later, and I've noticed that because it's dangerous for me to draw on trains, because I'll miss my stop. I just get wrapped up in it.
Speaker 1 [00:06:27] Yeah, it's the flow. So what do they teach you? If you could like tick off, when you go to architecture school, or you learn to be an architect, what do you teach?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:06:39] Well, the architectural education is divided into studio, supposed to be about half of what you learn, but you spend about nine tenths of your time in studio, and the rest you have core courses of structural engineering, mechanical engineering, site analysis, legal side of the profession, the kind of support practical aspects of what makes a building stand up and what allows you to deliver as an architect. The studio, however, is where you really pin your hopes, you invest your energies. It's what architecture schools are known for and it's impossible really to describe from one school to the next, how these studios work. The pedagogy is really checkered and inconsistent. So much depends on the studio professor you have and the way of thinking of that individual. But what you learn is Given a brief, given an assignment and a blank piece of paper, how do you go about starting with nothing and ending up with a presentation that's so convincing one hopes that you would be hired to do the project? Or your studio critic will give you great praise for what you've done. But architectural design is really not a linear process. So, it would be hard for me to say. We learned how to move from point A to B, C, D, and finish the project. There's a lot of assimilating varieties of sources of information and then coming up with answers which are then only stepping stones to the next and somehow come around to come together in a hole that is presented. So. The throwing away of the work that you've started with is an important step in the way to getting to the end of the process, which is a little maybe contradictory or paradoxical that you destroy work in order to make something happen. And there's a little bit, without being pretentious about it, of Wittgenstein's taught us at the end, I believe. He says we... Climb up ladders to get to a place, but only because we can throw the ladders away, and then we can achieve the next level of thinking. Well, I wouldn't say that architectural design is as elevated as Herr Wittgenstein's thinking, but still there's a little bit of that. And that has something to do with the learning process of what it is to make a building.
Speaker 1 [00:09:27] I mean, it's interesting that you talk about that because, as you know, we're really interested in the whole genesis of creativity. Right. And not just in art, but also in science and technology and all that. And, yeah, I mean the question of, is it a series of failures, or is it series of reversals? Right. To be creative? I don't know what your personal experience is.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:09:52] Yeah, well, I think as with many pursuits, you have to enjoy what you do. So if it's unmitigated, your question was, is architectural making and creation a series of failures that leads to something? And I wouldn't put it that way because there's something in the work that you have to enjoy in order to get the energy and the kind of moxie to go ahead and do something. So the process of coming up with the stepping stones that lead to a product is something that has to be enjoyable just the way, let's say, I'm thinking of in sport, you know, you enjoy practicing your tennis in order to go to a match. It's not drudgery. And if it were, you wouldn't be very good at the match because you wouldn't t learn and wouldn't develop. Thank you very much. There is, in architecture, never an answer to a problem, there's never a correct answer. How could there be? And perhaps those are the most interesting questions to work on, are the ones that have no distinct or delineated answer, I think, in some cases in the sciences and in history some other disciplines. There's no single answer, but there are regions of answer, regions of understanding and of conclusion that one's supposed to come to. And that's not true in architecture. And the judgment of a building's quality in design is highly, highly subjective. OK, it's true that most of us think that the Guggenheim is a great museum, and that's You know, Hagia Sophia is a great church, and that the Roby House is a great house, but if we step away from the canon of canons and just look at what's produced that we don't know about, we're making a kind of an individual judgment about something, about a piece of architecture, we'll probably come up with very different opinions.
Speaker 1 [00:12:11] When you get a commission for a new building. What do you need to sort of engage with the idea and to be creative about it? Do you need tell a, do you have to create a story about the building or what it's going to do, how it fits in the landscape?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:12:31] As a question, how when we come to an assignment as an architect, how do we start and what do we need to make our start? What propels us forward? What's important to us to know? And where do we started our thinking? And again, there's no single answer to that because it's a little bit like harvesting. You know, if you were to make a plan to do something ambitious and you were... To look for various issues that you need to understand well in order to go out and succeed. So probably the first thing we need, I need, and I think many of my colleagues, is to have some kind of personal connection to the site. You want to go and almost feel the soil, smell the air, hear the sounds, sit, stand and watch. What's going on in your immediate surrounding, see what kind of social life happens. We build buildings usually in cities. They are pieces of larger urban designs. So how our building fits in depends very, very much on the other buildings that will resonate or influence the path of movement or establish scale or color or light texture. So understanding the site I think is the first. Requisite and something one wants to know and wants to think about. Does one want to establish a story for a building? I don't think quite, the answer is yes, but not until you've sort of met the characters in the story. Because otherwise you're writing a story about something that it made the characters may change. You may find you're not dealing with the material that is actually there to work with. Weather is important. Buildings respond to climate. They are sort of, I don't know what you'd call it, Mediotropic. They follow weather. In the way that they shade from the Sun, that they work with wind or mitigate wind. And in today's world the issues of carbon footprint, of temperature change in the globe and so on, cause us to look very, very seriously at this. At the performance of a building. And that has a lot to do with the energy performance with the surrounding. Now, my practice is in 20 countries all over the world from time to time, it moves here and there. And so it's not as if I'm a community architect in one town and I know the people, the weather, the mayor, the wind, the sun, the holidays, et cetera. I sort of have to learn and that's also a joy and a pleasure. Getting to know something about Sundanese culture in Jakarta, or I did quite a bit of work in Jakart for about a 10-year spell, so that was a good example of just steeping myself in a place. Architecture is about the place, it's about the locus. Architecture is very much about mapping the world, at least the local world, to understand points are fixed and how buildings can occupy space. There is something akin to some aspects of science in that act. I think early architects were in a ways like map makers. They were also like structural engineers. They had to figure things out and plot them on paper. So learning about the site, learning about culture, the weather. And then most buildings have clients. There are some some ways in which architects like to avoid talking about the client It was my idea Why should I think about you know having my bills paid or listening to someone twist my arm? It's not important I was interested in a double square and the in thinking about shinkle or palladio Well, that's you know, not quite true in most cases as our great modern American architect Louis Kahn said The most important thing in architecture is getting the job, which he wasn't particularly good at. He was a great architect. He had difficulty getting a job. Finding a client, finding somebody who needs your services, but then begins a kind of a relationship. After all, it is a bit like tailoring a suit. Buildings should have something to do with the people who are using it. And if it's not just the individual, sometimes that individual is a stand-in for the kind of... Proto-individual, like the kind of person that will use your building. After all, it's about human beings. So it's also very, I find, very motivating in good and bad ways to work closely with your clients, with other people who need your building, it can be very difficult, they can get under your skin, but usually they motivate you, which is a good thing. Sometimes they're wonderful relationships of learning and sharing, and some of the people one has the honor, I should say, of working with are some of the world's greatest. Sorry, we're picking up the siren there. Even in Darien, a siren. Can you believe it? It shipped them out from the Upper West Side.
Speaker 3 [00:18:13] Alright, we're good. I think it's just going by now. Yep.
Speaker 4 [00:18:23] Okay, we're good.
Speaker 1 [00:18:26] Okay, so, well, this is something that...
Jamie von Klemperer [00:18:29] No, no, no. Well, OK, I'll just say. Working architecture is so much of a social enterprise, working with other people or working for other people and understanding them as your subject. It may not be as important as a body is to a doctor, but there's something of that in the kind of the laying out of the process of making a building. I think at some point though, after synthesizing all these various influences, sort of external to the actual drawing of the building, but coming from the surrounding context or human context, there then starts to grow on the page, in the model, in the mind, or now in the animated virtual reality that we make with our computers. There starts to form some kind of narrative, and it is a bit of a fiction. It's something that doesn't exist, after all, there's something on it that will be torn down or it's usually a blank site. So you have to sort of step outside of yourself to imagine something that has never been. Every building is different, is quite unique. Thank you. In making a fiction just the way one does I think in writing and I know this more as a as a reader of fiction than writer but you start to look for some kind of recurring structures, some kind of rhythms, some sort of echoes. In literature we might look for meter in poetry or rhyme in poetry, self-imposed structures. If we're writing a short story we look at echoes and foreshadowing and motifs of character sketches. In architecture, we look to establish a kind of framework, like a latticework, on which to put the various aspects of the building, parts of the building, that are going to be emerged, are going to be featured. So, for example, a column grid, the structural base system of a building, something that gives us an order on which to place our ideas. So, the sequence of spaces might have a kind of… a lyrical cadence, the way music does, going from small space in an entry hall to a larger space, back down again into some crescendo in a larger gathering space. And we seek, in a way, to entertain the way a musician or a playwright might, because we have an audience as architects. We want to please as either Christopher Wren or Vitruvius wrote, probably both, you know, what does architecture aspire to? Firmness, commodity, and delight. You know, use, commodity firmness, structure, but delight is not the thing that you need, it's the thing you want. And so it is a bit of a fiction as described as the thing beyond the prosaic and beyond the requisite. It's the kind the extra dimension of thinking one hopes to bring to a project.
Speaker 1 [00:22:04] If you had to introduce yourself very succinctly in terms of the kind of work that you do, how would you just tell us?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:22:17] Yes. Okay. Yeah. What is my specialty? What do I do with my life as an architect? I design, I make, I cause to be built large structures that shape cities. They make spaces in the cities beyond the buildings themselves. They shape public life. And that's the big picture of it, I believe.
Speaker 1 [00:22:47] That's a pretty heady task that you have assigned to yourself. What is that like? I mean, how do you feel when you go to Shenzhen or when you stand on 31st Street on the west side of Manhattan and you see your work that's going to outlast you, outlive you? Tell us about that personally.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:23:12] Well, the commissions on which I work are remarkable in location and scale and impact. I feel, if one can say, humbled, I hope, by these assignments. And I would say if I knew how important they were, I probably wouldn't dare do them. There are times when you get sucked into your work and momentum builds and then you're off to the races. If you thought about all the issues and the responsibilities and maybe the problems that could come with this scale of work, you might shy away from it. One of the first projects I did at quite a large scale was my design in 1992 or so in Shanghai, which became one of the best-known centers of commercial life in Shanghai on undertook with a partner at work, both of us were at that point, what were we, 35 years old or so. And he would say frequently, my partner thereafter, you know, boy, we were really ignorant. And if we knew anything about what we were doing, we never would have done as interesting a project because we wouldn't have dared to. So I guess my point is that sometimes the responsibilities of large-scale urban work are greater than one can appreciate. And yet in the cases where these buildings are put, usually there's something important that needs to happen. These aren't projects of vanity. They do involve advancing the infrastructure, sometimes the transport infrastructure of the city, or in the case of Chinese cities, allowing... Culture to grow at a time when it was so important for the Chinese to, as they put it, to stand up from this period of relative economic, social, and other torpor really. So it is thrilling, though, to get a hold of a great site. Sites are defined by their uniqueness. There's no other locus than this x. And that why point on the globe for any site at all. But for urban sites that find themselves in the middle of cities such as the ones I typically will work in, New York, Hong Kong, Paris, Shanghai, London, Vienna, on and on, the collection of buildings of cultural accomplishments around you are formidable. You're adding a chapter to a book in which the masters have worked and some have done some duds too. There's some parts of cities that aren't so beautiful or don't function that well, but by and large these are places where one has to rise to a fairly high game because you're Or another analogy you could say, you're painting a... A canvas to put in a museum and look what's around you, you know, you sort of, these are the holy, you, know, the great painters around you. So, but it's, as I mentioned earlier on, I think the city as a part of the architectural assignment, that's something that really drives me. And it's not true of all architects. Some would rather look at an internally consistent system to generate their buildings, a structural tour de force, perfectly arranged geometric essay, an experiment with a certain material. And all those are things that I think I care about a lot. But in addition to that, or maybe even before that, this question of what we call urban design. Of entering into a design dialog with those parts of a neighborhood around you that you don't control. That's interesting. I think it's not just because I enjoy doing that. I think that's what makes good urban architecture and in this country in particular, the United States, we've made a lot of mistakes. We've ruined neighborhoods. We've made false starts. We've heard ourselves, particularly in the post-war era. You know, one can violate the Hippocratic Oath as an architect. It's possible to do harm, and I think that's rule number one, is to understand the sensitivity of what's there.
Speaker 1 [00:28:13] Somebody want to chime in?
Speaker 4 [00:28:16] A quick one.
Speaker 1 [00:28:16] I've got some more stuff for them.
Speaker 4 [00:28:20] This is sort of like an art and architecture kind of question, I guess. I mean. Thank you. We go to an art museum to look at the paintings. We go together to get an esthetic experience. Most people don't go into a building to get that kind of experience. They don't. They go into the building. It's utilitarian. Whatever we do with it. But you, as an architect, are still planning that experience for that person to walk through that building. Can you just talk a little bit about that, both in utilitarian and esthetic terms?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:28:59] Yeah. And so how, if I interpret the question correctly, how do we think about the user of a building, the audience of the building? How do we, I think I'm gonna think about this about your question a little bit more.
Speaker 1 [00:29:17] It's a little bit like when I asked you about the gargoyle, like, who's going to notice? Yeah, okay, okay. It's little bit about, you're thinking about, same way that in our films we think about what happens in the 13th minute, you know, and people just watching, you know, hopefully they come out of it the way we want them to come out of it.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:29:36] Yeah, architecture is an art whose audience often doesn't know it's the audience, it's a public art. It's art that it serves the community, it serves people without their knowing it, and that's fine. It doesn't need an applause. We don't need a byline, we don't an award, and we don t need a pat on the back. It's always nice, but usually it doesn't happen. Because buildings are useful for many people before they are uplifting or sensational or moving, whatever. On the other hand, we are moved by buildings more than we sometimes know. And profoundly, a lot more than most people recognize. So take a case in point. It would be walk through Grand Central Terminal or walk through Penn Station. Which commute would you rather have? Does it matter? Well, hugely so. One building is, they both do the same thing. They both get you to track, you know, two through 16. They both connect to the subway system of New York. You can get a bagel or a coffee in each one. You can buy your ticket, they function. But one is uplifting. Grand Central Terminal. Maybe it's because of the loft of the great arch vaulted mural ceiling, which is probably 55, 60 feet in the air, compared to all of 13 feet at Penn Station. Maybe it is because the materials, which are a Texas marble and an Indiana limestone, rather than a gypsum board and painted concrete. Maybe it's a little better than that, but not much better at Penn Station. Maybe it was because the art of the way that proportions were delineated, maybe is a little bit about this sort of stage set of Grand Central Terminal that is like a Roman bath or a follower building that drew from the Romans and became a great bank in the city of London or you know, some other honorific building, but we recognize the kind of, uh, the staginess, the positive, in a positive sense, the staging is we feel, we do feel honored. We feel kind of dignified in Grand Central Terminal, which is why it's a great place to make a film. It's a right place to, you know where your 1950s hat and, you know, a raincoat and feel as if you're part of some, something that, uh was scripted in some beautiful way. A Penn Station is kind of that part of one's day walking through that piece of architecture, that space, is in a way lost time. So now, does the commuter coming from Long Island to Penn Station or from Westchester to Grand Central Terminal, does she or he know that this difference is there in this way? Maybe if quizzed and coached, but usually wouldn't mention it. But still it's a profound impact on their lives. There are very specific ways in which buildings make people's lives better. Of course, a house which is that much more efficient than a housing project where you only get so and so many square meters or feet because that's the way the public housing authority in Hong Kong or New York or Paris or whatever wrote the rules, you really are happy when you get one more closet or you can have one more kid because these things make a huge difference to mankind. Skill of residential planning, but so do the esthetic aspects of building. So there are all manner and number of ways in which I think buildings do make a difference. It was probably Winston Churchill, but everybody else who quoted him since, who said that buildings, we shape our buildings and then they shape us. Actually, the last person I heard say that... Especially well was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, quoting Church. He said it very well. But anyway, no, the buildings do shape more than the specific circumstance of the use to which they're committed. And I think we imagine and think about whole neighborhoods. Think about, for example, Soho in New York. The buildings that form the primary facade Lengths of the streets in Soho were made as semi-industrial Packing warehouse clerk work buildings made out of cast-iron in 1890s 1900 they're actually made of kit of parts. They were not expensive buildings, but beautifully done and today Any one of us would love to live shop work in SoHo other neighborhoods not so much now the design or that kit of parts fabrication of one of those buildings and so constitute a great act of art and composition and creation? Probably not. But altogether they make a place that's inspiring to us all. And I think that can be said of some of the greatest parts of London, of Paris. Huge parts of london in Belgravia, Knightsbridge, Mayfair were made of developer buildings. You know, where was the art there? But they were beautifully crafted, and together they made a fabric. And we would struggle to make something as beautiful today.
Speaker 1 [00:35:41] You deal with the, you know that we're interested in engineering and architecture. Design chase engineering to engineering chase designing. What's the, is it a, or is it the dialog?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:35:54] So what's the relationship between engineering and architecture in this shared kind of adventure of making structures? And of course that varies a little all over the map for different cases, but I would say ideally and in the projects that really are most important to us all, it's very much of a symbiotic relationship. It's like, you know, whatever two things that cohabit, like lichen is made of two different organisms. They cling to the rock together and they're happy. And I think the reason for that is that the things that we want from the engineer and we want for the architect are very different, but they're both very, very important. One may have to do with efficiency, with keeping the cost of buildings into a reasonable kind of a threshold. The engineer is responsible in quite a bit for that. That might have to do with the spanning of a long space or a bridge, not the architect's region of thinking, but those kind of physical issues of challenge are really, really important to doing a great building. What the architect provides, on the other hand... Very different, the responsibility for program, for the crafting of the different spaces that accommodate the uses, and also the look and the feel and the color and the texture to the touch of the building. So we look to the buildings that inspire us frequently. They are a kind of partnership, at least in the modern day. I think 100, 200 or more years ago, these professions didn't quite exist. And so the responsibility would have been probably shared and taken up by a single group of people and not two offices or two individuals working together. Well I'd say for a second, let me revisit for a sec. So about the relationship between engineering and architecture, the partnership or the alone with a dialectic. In my experience, When a structural engineer comes into the room at the beginning of the project, we sit down and talk. That's a plus, that's a list. It's as if we architects and I as a designer and being given a kind of ammunition, power of insight into something that I might have an inkling about, but I don't really know. It's if I can see into the problem more deeply. And in particular, since a good number of my buildings are very tall buildings, 123 stories tall in Seoul, I can't really wrestle with the problem until my partner in that case, it was Les Robertson. Is with me to think in ways that are far beyond what I am gifted at doing or trained to do and working with somebody who's really a brilliant creative thinker of science and engineering. I'm inspired by what he brings to the table and he does it without crowding out what I'm interested in doing. The shapes and the forms and spaces and geometries that I'm interested in. He's attuned to those interests that I have. But what I learned from someone as gifted and accomplished as Les Robertson is it continues with every project. It's a thrill to work with somebody that strong and that good. I think that might be true if you talk to a musician who, let's say, plays in a quartet, but a new violinist or new cellist comes in and plays in in a guest role, that's probably a great, great thing for the violinist to play for the first time with Yo-Yo Ma. Wow, what happened between those two instruments? And that's what happens between architect and engineer. And they, we understand and have walked through many of the same paths of professional experience and inspiration over time.
Speaker 1 [00:40:37] Okay, Marion?
Speaker 5 [00:40:40] Is there something that you always wanted to build that sprung from some deep creative impulse that you've not yet realized that you fantasize about?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:40:54] Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, so I've been fortunate to be employed as an architect for, you know, 40 years and to build 100 or more buildings of many different types. But there are some buildings I haven't had the pleasure of trying my hand at. And so there are a couple, perhaps, that I would love to... Have the chance that would be my dream to be able to design. One of them is a Parliament building Because I would love to do yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay Yeah, you know, I would Love to design a Parliament Building Who the hell wants to design the Parliament Building? Well, I grew up in today. I am fascinated by public affairs today, especially Who runs our country and why, how do we relate to these people? What responsibilities do they have? What's gone wrong in our country? And where should we be going? What's the structure of law, the polity that holds us together in any country? We're students of, of the things that happen in other countries. In the UK, in Korea, people throw sneakers at each other in the parlor. In the U K they, they don't curse, but they, you know, they just about. So a parliament building is a kind of physical manifestation of a culture and it represents the pride which people should take in their government and their government should take in them. When we look at the parliament buildings of New Delhi, so you see there the expression of the Raj, Sir Edwin Lutyens designing for the British Empire, well that's one picture. Of the relationship between public and architecture and public and the governed and those who are doing the governing. Our congress is kind of a piece of neoclassical, hugely decorated, overscaled but there's a kind of gravitas to it, that makes us... Tremble a little bit if we imagine walking up those steps. It's a very meaningful building. So buildings can have meaning. They're not just functional structures. And understanding the expression of these inert materials of stone and steel and stucco and wood and so on is a great opportunity for architecture. In our day, in the current day, Architects are called on less to tell the kind of stories and express the meaning that they were once asked to do 100, 200, 300 years ago. We have abstracted our craft to something that is more, um, more anonymous, it's not worse. It's not better, but, but there's a kind of a, uh, uh stripping away of those aspects of buildings that communicate, including sculpture, by the it. Most buildings were rife with sculptural decoration in periods of Renaissance, certainly not today. So I would love to design a parliament house. And I think something that we strive for in the creative arts, and I believe in science too, is to make something that lasts. And I was mentioning earlier in Thomas Kuhn's book of scientific revolution discussion in history, he talks about the lasting nature of a great scientific invention. Even if it's superseded, it has played a role as a building block. We may have moved beyond Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg, you know, Bohr, Planck, whatever. But Newton was still there to make the foundation. An architect wants to design a building that can contribute to society forever. And nothing is forever, but for a long time. It's why I love to work on university campuses, because people generally don't tear down university buildings. So I would love to design the parliament. Another building I would love to design, the second building I haven't designed, I love to design, is my own house. Now that's very, very basic. It's a basic instinct. We make our own dwelling. We feather our nest. We all do. We choose our paintings, our furniture, but to build one's own house, you have to sort of start from scratch. And there are absolutely no rules there. There's no client, there's a budget, but you kind of make your own budget, so that's your own problem. But it's a kind of a blank check, if you will, and it's probably something you don't do 10 or 20 or 30 times, or even three or four times in life, because it's a rather expensive proposition. Designing your own house is, in a way, like making a very public self-portrait. It's also your sort of one shot, in a way, at reaching for all the techniques that you thought were so interesting and putting them into one creation. As if you're a writer now, you have a chance at writing one book. What will it be? So I have fantasized about that. And my partner in life, my wife, has also spoken to me. We have a nice sort of game. Talking about the house that someday we will build together, and I'll design. So I have an idea for this house. It's kind of a Marie Kondo house, you know, the master of order. It's a two-part house. It's perched on some kind of incline or even a cliff, so part of it, half of it cantilevers out over into a void, and it's divided. And it's like a tube. That's cut into two halves. One half is an open space with a very widely transparent glass wall looking at a beautiful view, and that room has very little in it. It's mostly light, space, some color, and a few things, but it's a space of calm, almost as if when we're floating in a void. Or looking out from a view from a mountain and just seeing a kind of a misty prospect, nothing much more. And the other half is filled with stuff. Every manner of collection of books, of stuff that you've made, that your friends have given you that remind you of something meaningful to you in the past. It's a repository, it's a memory chamber. So that's building that I I do want to build someday. I don't know how it's gonna happen or what it will look like, but I now have to do it. Yeah, speaking about the creative experience from childhood, where does one start and why? Does one know one's creative soul, you search for it? And hard to remember back that far in because these experiences are very much intuitive experiences. Your childhood is not something you manage, it happens. But I grew up in a household where people made things. They made things with their hands. They cooked things. They sewed things. My mother was a theoretician of comparative literature, but she baked pies, made tons of vegetables, and everything was made. My father was a creator of the mind, was a writer of history. But I think it's something that I find in my childhood making new things that were unexpected was a thrill. If you could entertain people, you could surprise them with something that They didn't think you were able to do. Uh... Maybe for your age it was a little special you know you were you were the kind of exhibit look what he could do But I experienced as a kid early on that I could draw beautifully, and it was nothing I found, or even today, I think is unusual, because for me it's a very natural thing to do. But it brought joy to others. And there's something that is motivating and nourishing and inspiring to the person who's making the thing when it inspires other people. And, you know, in this period of COVID, I was speaking with a orchestra conductor recently who explained to me how difficult it was to get his musicians to perform without an audience, because there was no echo, There was no response, there was no synergy. And that's kind of a profound issue for those in the performing arts. It's true for those who make things, and I believe it's true for those that create all sorts of things. So I experienced that as a kid, and perhaps my work as a grown person over the last 40 years and now for the next whatever, is an attempt to recapture that somehow, to continue that. The minute the work becomes a kind of, it lands on somebody's desk or rises on their skyline or in their, on their site, and it's a kind a yawn or, okay, keep going, that's the moment it's not worth doing anymore. It has to, somehow, creation is to take things beyond expectation. And so I think there's a social, human kind of nourishing that's going on. Between between the creator and the audience. There's another question though which is perhaps does one create things without an audience and I think that's that's surely deeply true as well for for most of us who make things whether we make films or or scientific scientific inventions or or buildings or or poems or paintings. Because I think the kinds of work that many of us are involved with, the feedback one gets is almost the sort of feedback one get from looking at something outside of oneself. It may not be a human being, but it's looking at a landscape that's beautiful, or listening to something that's beutiful. The minute something is completed, the minute a building is completed and one goes to visit the site. You are no longer the creator of the building. The building stands there without you. You are an observer. You're a passerby. And you can evaluate your work, almost in the third person, if you will. And that's something that's... It makes the whole thing more meaningful because it's not just yours. You could be critical of it. I've never finished a building. I probably finished 50 major buildings. I don't count them, but the first reaction I have is actually one of depression. I'm really hit hard because the thing that I thought was perfect in the way that this line segment met that column and this axis terminated in that, or this color resonated with that, it's not exactly as plan. Not a controllable world for any of us. And then that last, that feeling of being knocked down for about 20 minutes and then gradually maybe across the course of a day you ascend into heaven and then you're just so happy because even if 90% of what you hoped for was built, that's a great, great thing. So there's something about the externalizing of the thing that you make that's no longer you that is the thrill of making things and the thrill of creating things. And hopefully the effects of what we all make go far beyond anything we could experience or appreciate. So when I sit down to do a drawing, make a model, I can do it deep into the night without anybody looking or saying anything and it makes me happy. And even if nobody ever sees it, if, to make an analogy, I'm the novelist whose book is finished and it's put away in the file cabinet and it is never published, I'll still be happy. That reminds me of a passage in Balzac, midway through Paragorio, where he's talking about somebody, probably Rastignac, and he says that the measure of virtue is when one can do good things in silence. He who can do things in good silence. I put myself in that category. It's not a matter of morality here, but still, it's a great thing to be able to do, make your craft, do your thinking, create something, and not need validation from others all the time. It helps, but you don't need it.
Speaker 1 [00:55:34] It's interesting, we were just talking about that, you were in the house, same thing as filmmakers. You finish film and it's like, you see all the mistakes, it sucks, blah blah blah. And you know what often happens is a total stranger comes and says, Oh, your movie was great! You know, or I used to say, in the old days of three networks, people would say, We flipped channels, we saw this movie, we started watching it and then we saw you made it at the end. It was like the best compliment because they weren't doing it because they knew it.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:56:01] But probably, you know, film also, you...
Speaker 1 [00:56:03] Sorry, I think we're losing light.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:56:06] This is the last question. Okay, good.
Speaker 4 [00:56:11] Oh, okay. Yeah, very good, no, no that's fine. You have contributed to the New York skyline, you've built a few buildings, what do you think about it, what you think of how it looks, I have to tell you many people I know go, oh those damn pencil buildings, I can't stand them. Tall buildings in New York yeah. It's a change to where, you know, a lot of it has to do with memory.
Speaker 3 [00:56:37] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Speaker 4 [00:56:38] What you're accustomed to, what you love, the kind of things you love etc. Etc. When you see it now, how do you...
Jamie von Klemperer [00:56:47] In particular, Vanderbilt or any project that...
Speaker 1 [00:56:49] Marion sent us a picture of Thanksgiving because she has some friends and I think two of your buildings are
Jamie von Klemperer [00:56:55] Right in her way, right in the eye.
Speaker 5 [00:56:56] No. The end. You can stop talking. Okay.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:57:01] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, right. Right. Right
Speaker 4 [00:57:02] I'm just saying, yeah. And Mary had him like sharpie to death and turn. It's curious what you think about it emotionally is now and, you know, how it's changed.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:57:09] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so what, what is it, what does it like to, what's the feeling of, of, uh, participating in, in, in large building projects and in making things that, uh the change of skyline, a change of city. And what does that feel like that step back and think about that, uh, of having done such a thing. And, um, I have to say it's a variable reaction and experience. It depends on really how much merit is in the building, both its usefulness, its beauty, etc. Not all buildings are the same and not all architects are as unsuccessful or as successful as they are from one project to the other. But, for a project that rises to the... To the modicum of some at least reasonable level of success, you know, you're not embarrassed by it, and I can't say that too many of my works I'm embarrassed by, although I won't lie there are a couple somewhere in the world that I wish I hadn't done, but for a project that one's proud of, it's sort of a feeling of imagining there's something rather permanent. Of one's achievements. Now, I think we all live with the knowledge that everything we do will be erased someday. And everything will be forgotten, you know, remembered by our children, our grandchildren maybe. Those photographs that come from one place to another will be, they'll perish in a fire. So nothing's really forever. But even that of temporary permanence of making something that adds in a positive way. To, for example, a city as great as New York, is in a way a life's achievement. And it doesn't keep you from going to the next one, because we always feel as architects, I certainly do, that the greatest building I can design will be the next One. Haven't done it. I've only scored a, you know, a B-plus on anything. It doesn't matter what. It was an A at the time, but now it's all gone down to the level of a B plus. I have to have the chance to do the thing that I really want to do. And yet for those buildings that are finished and take their place in a city skyline, it's a wonderful feeling. I think architecture is something, it is a very hard profession, but I never hesitate to counsel. When I counsel young students, people who want to be architects, if they really want to do it, I can't think of a better way to spend one's life because of this opportunity of participating in the places that you live. So I think it's a great feeling.
Speaker 1 [01:00:19] I just want to do one more thing. Can you just look at the camera and say your name and your profession?
Jamie von Klemperer [01:00:31] I'm Jamie von Klemperer, I'm an architect.
Speaker 1 [01:00:38] One more time. And you know what? You can do that again and then do it again and say I'm an architect in New York City.
Jamie von Klemperer [01:00:48] I'll do the first, first hand, yeah. Hello, I'm Jamie Von Klemperer, and I am an architect. Okay, again, I'm Jamie von Klemperer. I'm an architect practicing in New York City.
full interview_jamie von klemperer_5.mp4
Speaker 1 [00:00:00] So first of all, when you look out, what do you see?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:00:06] Uh, well, um... Of course, I see the city in all of its different pockets. And so, in a way, I forget that I'm in the building that I designed because there's such a fascination with your eyes just drink in what's around you. And also as architects, we think of ourselves as students of the city. And so finally, our subject is there in front of us. And it's sort of challenging. You studied and you understood zoning and traffic and materials of neighborhoods, but now you see it all together. But it's a very gratifying feeling because in a way, even though this building's an office building with lots of tenants, lawyers and hedge funds and accountants, et cetera, et cetera, the building is also about this moment, about being high up and about. Being the point in the city that's right at the crossing of the belt and the spine, 42nd Street and Madison Avenue, and next to Grand Central Terminal. So you feel, now I get to occupy the center. That's what we were working on for 10 years. So buildings take forever to achieve, like journalists who write a story and it's next week you see her. But our work, it takes 10, sometimes longer, years. But it's usually here to stay. And so that's another feeling when we're in our buildings. When they're complete, we think, hmm, we get to experience this now, day two, but somebody will be here 10 years from now or even 30 years from know. And so there's a kind of timelessness about big buildings and about tall buildings and feeling that probably they will be here as monuments. Hopefully not as ruins like pyramids in Egypt, but they could be. So all sorts of emotions I think run through anybody's mind when in this situation you're at the top of a tall building, but for the architect it's even more a flood of lots of reactions.
Speaker 1 [00:02:31] What about the fact that you work 10 years, but you can't test it out? It's not like, you know, we were just interviewing video game designers. They play test everything. So they didn't know how people could respond. We screen our movies and rough cut to see what people think. You build a building. It's like if you didn't count on something, you live with it. So just tell us about it.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:02:52] Right, so yeah, it's true that for those of us who make buildings, there's no beta testing. What you see is what you get and what you got is when it's done. And somehow also it's a design. You know, many things that we design really carefully in this culture, we design to be repeated. Amazing things that Steve Jobs and his team did, iPhones and there are millions and we all benefit, But a building, there's only one. Its circumstances, very particular, its site, its purpose, its dimensions, its client, the period in which it was conceived. And so the uniqueness of a building, in fact, we kind of rather have more than one for all the effort we put into it, but there is only one. And so also I think to achieve a building of this scale, one can say, I am the author. I designed this building. I did the first sketch. But very soon you realize that you're not. You're one of a cast of thousands of financiers, of lighting designers, of contractors, of bricklayers, of steel people. You're part of an army. And you walk into the building, you're kind of anonymous. You blend in. You're sort of like an extra in a movie, maybe. You're Cecil B. DeMille, but you're actually... Just a Roman walking around picking up a stone and arranging the toga. So, and that's kind of nice in a way to be anonymous in something which you feel you had some central role to create, but you don't have to claim that. And you might not have to take the blame either if various people were cursing about the building and you want it to be an anonymous. So. But definitely it's a celebration, I think, a big building of a culture of the many it takes to achieve something like this. And I'm not saying that just to be generous or to say some kind of cliche, but it really is, I think of all the people who work through the winters, multiple winters. In this case, during the pandemic, to achieve this building. And so, It's beyond a team, it's a culture that builds a building.
Speaker 1 [00:05:25] So, as you know, we've been filming all sorts of artists, scientists as well, but artists, different fields, some of them are working with robots and all that sort of stuff, musicians, but why is architecture different and special?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:05:43] Yes. Well, architecture positions itself somewhere between art and science. Ars and Techni, architecture, the creative and the scientific. Architects sometimes repeat the line that architecture is the mother of all arts. Someone said that, whether it was Vitruvius or Alberti or I don't know who. But in a way, that makes sense, because architecture pulls together. It harnesses structural engineering, proportional studies, urban planning, color theory, the anthropology or the sociology of how people behave and act in a great train station, if you're designing that, which in a we are. That's a train station in the base of this building. So, an architect... Maybe the jack-of-all-trades, maybe the master of none or just a few, but to understand the structural engineering principles of lateral forces of earthquakes and wind, of tune mass dampers, the tensile strength of steel material properties, or the science of sustainability and climate change and carbon, and computational fluid dynamics. Should understand that, but he or she should also understand that those who really master those fields are the people whose work go truly into the building. So in a way, the architect is like an orchestra conductor. We may play an instrument like a concerto player, but may not. Could be just someone who harnesses all of these different factors. But I think. Every architect considers themselves a little bit of a fan of or a buff of science or someone who is actually participating in science. It's applied science, not pure science, but it applies itself in every building, the engineering, the air systems, the geotechnical subjects. So many architects like to go on about technics. And the best buildings make, for the discipline of architecture, little advances in the science of building. And then there is, of course, the art. That a building is a place where we expect people to feel, first of all, comfortable. We need to understand their psychology. But ultimately we'd like them to feel inspired. Inspired by the shape and the form and the color and the composition of a space. And an object, a building's an object that you walk inside becomes a space, but that's the kind of thing I think we all recognize in a building a beautiful proportion, a beautiful sense of composition, of textures, of hues, and tones in the material. Of this in a utilitarian object. So we can't lose sight of this duality of the art and the technology that balanced and brought together, fused together, make a great, great building.
Speaker 1 [00:09:23] If I'm a painter, I can paint a canvas. People see it or not. If I am a musician or composer, I create a piece of music. People can listen or not architecture is in a different realm. You can't just sort of, oh, I'm an architect, let me do something, because there's too much at stake.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:09:43] Yeah, an architect does not control his or her canvas.
Speaker 1 [00:09:48] But even just architecture, per se, as an art, architecture is more than just a person's expression.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:09:58] Yeah, architecture is a sort of social art involving constituencies of many, many people who use buildings and the many people who create buildings too. So the building is is is not It doesn't fulfill its purposes in one brush stroke or one sitting down to do a composition. It takes time. During which time we can reflect and maybe question what we thought about. Now some buildings have been designed very quickly. It's a fable that Frank Lloyd Wright designed Frank falling water in a day because a client told him he was coming and. Frank Lloyd Wright was late and he said, I'll get to work. And he sketched through the night. But I think the point about, I'm not sure I'm getting to your point exactly about the...
Speaker 1 [00:10:56] I'm just saying, like, if you are a creative figure, but it's, and it isn't really about collaborating with other people as much as the fact is that your art has to work. Yeah, okay. A lot of art. Right. We don't ask that. Right, right, right. Yeah. I'll give you an example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were, yeah you know what I'm saying.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:11:15] Yeah. So. Architecture is, well, it's one of the things that we need, food, shelter, and clothing. It's a basic need for us as human beings, individuals, and as a society. So architecture is very much a service, an art and a science that's a service. But without the kind of housing for New Yorkers who... Emigrated and came to these shores and needed a place to live or for the family that's moving up or who, you know, kids have kids and need more space or we need public space for our public rituals, our celebrations. An architect and the buildings are supplying us all with a kind of a stage and a place where the things that we need to do can work. And so, in that sense... Buildings are not pure pieces of art. They're not experiments in science. They're usable devices. They have lifespans. We don't not use them because we don't want them to wear out. The more we use them, the better. And we have to maintain them. So that aspect is of the building and making buildings is very gratifying. Because you feel maybe OK, you're not a doctor. You're not saving somebody's life. But in a way, you are safeguarding the health of a society. It's said that a healthy society is one that appreciates its buildings and its built environment, has great public squares, great streets. And so that's something that can inspire us all as users of buildings. And to make a building with those thoughts in mind is tremendously motivating.
Speaker 1 [00:13:17] It seems to me that of all the arts, architecture has the most influence on people's lives. I think that's what I'm trying to say. You can't avoid it.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:13:30] No, of all the arts, one could say that architecture has more immediate and unavoidable effect on our lives than painting or sculpture or musical composition, which we can all enjoy and appreciate. But you can't help but be in the public square or have the roof over your head. One reason why many people want to be architects of all professions As kids, they would say, well, I used to dabble and build buildings out of blocks, et cetera. It's because we all use buildings. We all tinker with buildings. We all are architects, in a way. And we're certainly all students of architecture. And as we know, everybody's an architecture critic. So if you make buildings of any kind of a public note, you never stop hearing about them. But it is an art for the public. It's an art for everybody and every society can in a way define itself by the way its buildings work, how they look.
Speaker 1 [00:14:43] Yeah, can you answer to me? Yeah, yeah, OK.
Speaker 3 [00:14:50] I'm looking out here, I'm behind you, and I'm seeing a lot of buildings, is there a harmony to all of this? Is that an object? I'm getting at like, the environment can be something that looks disharmonious, more harmonious than where you are.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:15:16] So as we look out the window and see the city in front of us, we all see many things. Is it chaos that we see out there? Is it a cacophony? Or is there something that makes kind of overarching sense? Now, when I look at the city, one of the things I see, first of all, are materials, colors. Parts of cities, not because someone decided they would compose them in red brick. But because of the materials that were available at the time or made sense to the construction trays at the time, make for whole neighborhoods of red brick and whole neighborhoods of glass and aluminum or whole neighborhoods of limestone or precast. And New York is a little bit of a mishmash, but there are detectable and distinguishable trends that give the city its sort of fingerprint. And we also see when we look out at cities, we see geology. Because usually the rise and fall of buildings reflects the immediacy of bedrock or of good foundation material below. So in an area that was marshier and swampier way back when, when we were choosing whether to develop a certain part of town, then the buildings never rose above a few stories. Where bedrock was really clearly reachable, high-rise buildings sprung up. So the graph. Of the height of the city, and the graph of the geology below are roughly the same. So we can see something about the earth in the city. We also see tremendous social patterns of politics and history coming together. The social housing on the lower east side over there, the New York City Housing Authority buildings of a certain kind and style. 20-Story buildings with punched windows. That says something about our aspiration as New Yorkers, 1930 to 1960, 1970, and a lot of ideas about how governance should work and economics and distribution of wealth. We see that in our city. We certainly see also symbols of great pride and sometimes vanity. The great high rises over there is the Chrysler building. So Walter Chryslar and those who made and owned great car company wanted to see their prowess in a tall building. And then we see some tall buildings that are more about the public commonwealth. I guess the Empire State Building, which failed economically at the time of its construction, became a building for and about the state. New York State, it's grander. And then we also see the buildings that aren't there. We see the World Trade Center. Anybody who's lived in New York long enough doesn't look down at that view and not imagine those forms. And so we think about that tragedy, the reaction to it, what we made of it as New Yorkers, and how we bounced back. So, of course, the form of a city tells story after story after story, and one of the joys that we have sometimes is to walk around with a historian and have them read the visual text of what's in front of them, and you could spend an hour walking down any single block in Manhattan or the other boroughs because of the stories of who lived where, what was built how. Which tradesmen built what kind of buildings at what cost. So it's a tremendously rich repository of culture.
Speaker 1 [00:19:18] So, you've already told us, I think, back in the interview at your house. We talked about the blank slate, that's not desirable, but within, do you want to go find out who's talking? Curious about whether you would rather build a building in a built environment like a city or whether you'd rather be in a kind of a green open space. Do you have a preference? Maybe you'd like it for different reasons.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:19:58] Yeah, whether designing a building in the middle of a city, a totally established environment context, is preferable to building... A temple or a house on top of a hill by itself or in the woods. I think as an architect, both of these instincts are overwhelmingly exciting. Starting from scratch, building the primitive hut, asking yourself, what does it take? What do we need in a house? How do we value light? What about nature? The elements are so... Immediate in that assignment of designing a house in the middle of not much of anywhere except maybe nature. At the same time for the urban architect in a way that has no meaning because buildings communicate with their surroundings. They shape the pathways of pedestrians. They echo the brick patterns or the facade textures of buildings next door. And so they're they play part in a play of thousands, a cast of thousands. But I think we never, as architects, really forget the importance of both of those instincts. And in a way, when you're designing one, you think of the other. There are isolated buildings in the middle of nowhere. They make references to cities, to some ideal city of the Renaissance. And then there are also buildings in middle of town where we think of something more elemental. Pure form of a square, of a use of a material, the stone that came from a quarry that was in the middle of nowhere. So that's an interesting balance, this kind of dialog that the building has, either with the context of a particular place or with something a little bit more abstract and absolute because it's not next to anything.
Speaker 1 [00:22:06] I just have one more and then we can go downstairs. So, are you on to the next one?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:22:18] This building, which took 10 years to draw, conceive of, and build, is completed. It's done at its beginning its life as a place we can use and inhabit. Here we are. But for the architect, nothing is ever really finished because there's always a kind of a stream of new work. And when an architect doesn't usually work on one project stem to stern, a little bit like a... Cook with many dishes on the stove and going from pot to pot or from chopping to flipping, there are projects in many stages of gestation. And so moving on to the next project is something that it brings a thrill. As architects, we're sort of addicts for the new project, the new challenge. What wasn't I thinking about? What was that question again? What problem was I meant to solve? Or maybe there's an idea I wanted to try, and I never got to. Because that project was never, we never won that competition for the building that looked like a donut that went sideways and cantilever. Never got to do that. Here's the opportunity. So I would say for architecture and architects, in a way, hope does spring eternal, that the greatest project is always the one we're working on. Early on in its stages, but then the gratification comes from the one that's just about finished. So this kind of multiple stage love affair that we have with the different projects of many different girlfriends or boyfriends is real. It's kind of an inspiration that comes to you with the next assignment, which could be a very humble assignment, it could be something very grand, but you're always faced with this possibility. Of doing something that you haven't done before, maybe nobody else did before, even just recombining basics of cubes of masonry material or maybe doing something outlandish with a new technology. But going on to the next project is kind of the, if the architect is Hunter, there's always something moving around in the bushes, something new, and it's the thrill of getting the job. Is actually very, very important beyond a business sense. Because you know, once you start a project, it is like having a child. You're going to rear that child. You're gonna educate that. You're go to make the building something special. So, no matter what the project you've finished, the next one is more important. And then you come back to enjoy this, but still, the greatest is yet to come. Which is why architects never retire. You can't imagine. Why he would stop doing this.
Speaker 1 [00:25:16] We get to do that parliament someday, kid.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:25:23] The zenith of the architectural practice would be a building whose purpose is the highest of its kind for governmental buildings, a parliament. For a building that's something to do with the arts, a great museum. A concert hall where someone jazz, classical piano, whatever, will play. And we are kind of, we live with those kind of aspirations.
Speaker 3 [00:25:54] Can we talk about things of addition?
Speaker 1 [00:25:57] We talked about comparing the top four here. We haven't, but not on camera. No, maybe we should. Yeah, we could do that. Just briefly, just to acknowledge.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:26:10] Yet here at the top of this tall, tall tower of one Vanderbilt is very, very special installation of art and mirror work that Kenzo, the artist who came to create this, made after we designed the building. We didn't know that this hall of mirrors would exist per se in this form. We did create a construct in the initial design of a crystalline top that would so transparent. And have so many interesting views, from platform to ground to high platform, that we'd be dazzled by this feeling of being in the clouds, in the sky. And so Kenzo, in his own way, with his own thoughts about air and a certain narrative, created something we couldn't have dreamt of, and we couldn't imagine something more apropos of the idea of this building. Because there is a kind of infinity of these reflections of looking down and seeing this vertical Versailles of mirrors going up and down and up and down such that we actually feel scared to look at our own feet if we take it all seriously. So it's an interesting layering you could say of the arts, many buildings and many buildings of history. Are repositories of art. You could say the art of the sculpture in Notre Dame or many of the great cathedrals of Europe greater than the architecture. So that's a wonderful thing. When your building is just creating a little bit of a platform and then something vaults way above it in the visual arts, in the conceptual arts as this is. It's an interesting creation for us as architects, also because this notion of perspective, which is the way that we all study how to delineate space, has been kind of, it's taken a new form in this multitude of reflections. So we can't really position ourselves exactly. One thing you do in a perspective, when you draw a view and the Renaissance architects, Alberti and Brunelleschi made a system out of this, but it was all about. Positioning yourself at one point. And part of what happens with this system of mirrors here is that we don't know where we are. And that's how we are truly in the sky.
Speaker 4 [00:28:48] I have a question. Do you think New York will have a construction going on as it is itself its character?
Jamie von Klemperer [00:28:54] This is a city that loses character.
Speaker 4 [00:28:55] Yeah.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:29:00] That's a good question.
Speaker 1 [00:29:01] I mean, yeah, this is a new generation, you know, of architecture.
Jamie von Klemperer [00:29:07] I think maybe not so much of this building, but a number of high-rises have been put up in the last 10 years, particularly along Central Park. The question has come up, are we erasing our city as we're building it? Are we losing track of, after all, the skyline has a very, very distinct shape. It is almost like the profile of a human being we get familiar with. But then it changes. But this is a question New Yorkers, and many city dwellers, especially New Yorker's... Had been asking themselves for more than a century. At some point, I believe when the Equitable Building was put up, or the Singer Building downtown, the Municipal Art Society at the time, it's an old institution, questioned whether buildings should be allowed to go above 11 stories. And so we continue to ask, is this too much? And there is no answer. But in fact, there's no way to control. And the city is a reflection of the dynamics of economics, of business, of politics, of human will. And so in a way, it shouldn't ever fix itself in one cast, frozen profile. In a way a city is like a shark, stops moving and it dies, or becomes a little bit of a kind of a nostalgic a tourist destination, plenty of beautiful ones, records of their past. This city, like many of the great market cities of the world, wants to be about its time and maybe even a little bit about the future. And so it cannot stop this change.
