full interview_paul goldberger_1.mp3
Paul Goldberger [00:00:00] I think art and science are just inevitably intertwined with each other. Science is about finding patterns and truths in nature, which are often very beautiful. Art is about interpreting the world in a more instinctive way, let's say, that is not necessarily be on facts and information, but they inform each other. They use each other, they need each other they depend on each other I think and they enrich each other
Speaker 2 [00:00:45] Um, what is creativity?
Paul Goldberger [00:00:59] What is creativity is, seems like the simplest question. It's actually the most profound question that there could be. And what should be the simplest is actually the hardest to really answer and define, I think. Creativity is. Expressing feelings and ideas in a way that is both new and personal invention, its interpretation, its connection. Finding and making new kinds of meaning out of what's there.
Speaker 2 [00:01:50] Is it overrated?
Paul Goldberger [00:02:01] Creativity alone doesn't keep the world going, but it gives the world, and it gives each of us as individuals, deeper meaning, deeper satisfaction. Creativity isn't what... Seeds us. It isn't what Let me rethink that for a moment, because actually, no, creativity is not overrated. Creativity is essential, not just to artistic expression, but creativity is part of science. Creativity's part of engineering. Creativity part of problem solving. Problem solving is creativity, really. It's thinking of new ways to answer questions, to fix things. To make things, to build things, to improve things. We depend on creativity for food, for clothing, for shelter as we also depend on creativity for art. It's essential to everything in our lives. So no, creativity is not overrated. Creativity is absolutely essential. Without creativity there is no science. Without creativity, there is not engineering. Without creativity, we'd all be dead.
Speaker 2 [00:03:37] So art and science are fundamental to architecture. Architecture is really good for the child in many ways. Are they, are art and sciences equally fundamental in other pursuits?
Paul Goldberger [00:03:54] I don't think there's any pursuit in which art and science exist in such kind of equilibrium, in such a harmonic balance as they do in architecture. The making of a painting is purely an expression of creativity with no boundaries. The making of a work of architecture is both a creative expression and the solving of a problem. And it requires equal amounts, it requires equals amounts of art and science, I think, to work. You know, the greatest definition of architecture is the ancient one from Vitruvius, which still applies. Architecture requires commodity, firmness, and delight. Commodity, usefulness, a building has to fulfill a function. Firmness, it has to stand up. It has to be structurally valid according to the laws of engineering. Can't fall down. And delight, it is to bring us pleasure, like a work of art might bring us Have a wonderful day. A successful piece of architecture does all of those things. It's not successful if it doesn't work. It's successful if doesn't stand up, and it's not successful if does not bring us delight. So, in architecture we really see art and science coming together. As we don't. Necessarily in, you know, the writing of a novel or a dance or a film or a piece of theater or a painting. There is a lot of architecture that is now being produced by digital technology. For a long time, digital technology has been a critical part of the production of architecture, of helping us take ideas. And actually build them. Because we're now doing forms and shapes in architecture that are vastly more complex than they were, and digital technology is essential to making it possible to actually engineer and build these things. I remember hearing it said, after Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain opened in 1997. If they had had to do all the engineering with slide rules, it would be 10 years before the building could have even been constructed, that it would not have been started by the time it was finished. So digital technology is essential to helping us make architecture today. There's a difference though between using it to enable the construction of things that have been designed in another way and actually using digital technology to help design. We're seeing more and more of that now too. We are going see buildings designed by AI. I don't know the result of that and I... Don't know that that will necessarily bring us to a better place than human imagination. I mean, we're now at this moment of uncertainty as to the effect of artificial intelligence on human imagination and creativity and how those two things will coexist that makes this really a critical time to be talking about the meaning of creativity at just the time when we wonder if creativity might become obsolete as a result of artificial intelligence. So I think it's important to separate out the use of digital technology as a tool to enable the making of things that have been created through conventional creativity, we might say, human imagination, and the use digital technology to replace human imagination and what all that will mean. And I don't know what it's gonna mean. I don't know where it's going to go. And I I I don't want to say that it's the end of human imagination and the end of creativity. I hope not. We're at the first time in history where we actually could legitimately ask the question, at least, about whether human imagination and creativity will not have the same meaning when a computer can actually make something, design something, imagine something. Completely from scratch. I don't know where that's gonna go
Speaker 2 [00:09:30] So in the moment, is it art if it's created by an algorithm or a robot?
Paul Goldberger [00:09:45] You know, we can use words any way that we want. I remember a wonderful line, I think it was the architect, Philip Johnson, once said, art is what you can get away with. So, if you can away with having something done by an algorithm and call it art, I guess it's art. Certainly, lots of art over the years has been mechanically reproduced or mechanically produced, and we still feel it has value as art. The relationship between art and technology is so rich and so complicated and so long-standing. It's important to remember that there were people who fell. The authenticity of the original art object was so great and so essential. Reproductions in terms of color photographs were actually going to take away from the meaning of art and not help art, they were going to hurt art. Think about the Barnes collection, the Barnes Foundation, the great museum now in Philadelphia, that used to be outside of Philadelphia, where... Albert Barnes, the founder and collector, would not permit reproductions of any of the paintings he owned in books because he thought that that was just technology copying works of art. It was not actually art. You had to come to the museum and see the one-of-a-kind Renoir or Monet, whatever, on the wall. And we now realize, in fact, it doesn't work that way, that you actually can have an esthetic experience by looking at a picture in a book, looking at reproduction. And in fact that can often heighten the desire to come and see the real thing, and then you understand everything about the work of art in a far better way, I think. So technology has always been both a supporter of and handmade into art, but also viewed as its rival. And today, in the age of algorithms and robots and AI, we're still dealing with those same issues, really, which is the. Strange combination of these things as both enablers of and supporters of art and as rivals to it and concerns that it would in some way diminish it. It's not a simple case of you know real artwork material thing on canvas or paper good and digital technology bad, not nearly as simple as that at all and a lot of very very beautiful and meaningful things have been created by digital technologies too and and they can have powerful impact. On our psyches, our minds, our emotions.
Speaker 2 [00:13:33] So, perfect lead-in to my next question. You wrote in Why Architecture Matters, for we expect a work of architecture when it succeeds in its esthetic aims to be capable of creating a more profound set of feelings than a well-designed toaster. And that sounds a lot like what we hear about music. Yeah. Question of what is it when sound waves travel through the air, hit our ears, and move us in profound ways we cannot explain. Does architecture do that, or are there more concrete sources on aspects of... Architecture that don't make it as amorphous. The golden mean, for example.
Paul Goldberger [00:14:30] Right, right, right. What kinds of architecture affect us in different ways? The very highest and greatest works of architecture really do have a profound effect on our psyches. I mean, if you go into the Pantheon in Rome, if you're into Chartres Cathedral, if you got to Fallingwater, the great Frank Lloyd Wright house, or Mies Sandero's Edith Farnsworth house, or... The Guggenheim Museum. You do have this, I think, I do at least, this transcendent experience of awe and majesty and beauty that make you feel that you've experienced the world in a more heightened way that is not different from a great piece of music from a great painting, a great novel, a great film that really does make you feel the the power of existence, the power, of human imagination, the glory and sometimes even the pain and sadness of human existence, but, you know, every... Piece of music is not a Beethoven late quartet. Every novel is not war and peace. Every building is not Chartres. And there's also a purpose to things that just provide the background to our lives. I mean, I don't think you'd want to live in Chartres Cathedral. I don't think you, I think. You know, architecture touches us every day at every moment and the intensity of that experience is something that would be very hard to have every day and indeed if you had the intensity of that every day, I think it would either drive you crazy or it would lose its value. You know, if you listen to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony... Five times a day forever, you might start hating it at the end, or you would tune it out. The most intense experiences are special and heightened, glorious moments of really powerful feeling and existence. They're existential experiences. You can't have them every... Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 [00:17:31] She's just looking. Oh, okay, okay.
Paul Goldberger [00:17:34] She probably wants to be on the other side of the fence, and so, okay. Yeah, what you want to try opening opening letter in it. I think I think you probably will just sit here and be quiet Yes, I think it's because nobody got the others all went outside and she She is very social. She does not like to be Alone. I Lucy. Okay now just come on and sit quietly. I Think she will Yep. Yep Good. Anyway.
Speaker 2 [00:18:17] Existential beauty, end of thought.
Paul Goldberger [00:18:23] Great art is an existential experience. It's a powerful, beautiful, majestic experience. We can't have that every moment in our lives, nor should we. So there's an important role for architecture just as a nurturing, comfortable background to our lives. So some architecture does that. Other architecture does something more noble. It's really like, you know, there's music that you like to have on as a background to your life and your work, and there's a music that really makes you focus and takes you to another place. And they each have their value, they're just not exactly the same.
Speaker 2 [00:19:15] So on the subject of music, Gerda wrote, music is liquid architecture, architecture is frozen music.
Speaker 4 [00:19:29] All right, we need to wait for this so we can sort of move out.
Speaker 5 [00:19:31] Oh, yeah, Lucy, you're not supposed to be in the frame there, Lucy.
Speaker 4 [00:19:36] I know, she's cheating.
Speaker 5 [00:19:38] Mm-hmm.
Speaker 4 [00:19:39] Now, she's now out of the shop.
Speaker 3 [00:19:46] Okay.
Paul Goldberger [00:19:50] Goethe's line about architecture being frozen music. It's a famous one. It's true up to a point, I suppose. Ultimately, one of it, I think, it's a...
Speaker 4 [00:20:08] Keep the door open.
Paul Goldberger [00:20:09] Or we could try... I wonder if she wants to go outside. We could try a... You can leave it open. Is that little block on the floor there? I think... Oh, good. Okay, excellent. Thank you. Thank
Speaker 4 [00:20:26] He's looking around for people like you.
Paul Goldberger [00:20:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah see
Speaker 2 [00:20:35] Um, where do video games lie? Oh, are we giving up on Frozen music? Yes, we're letting, we are letting Gerda go. Gerda, yeah, yeah I think it's...
Speaker 4 [00:20:43] We don't put you in a box, it's just a little...
Paul Goldberger [00:20:45] Well, yeah, music exists only in time. Architecture exists in time as we move through it. You can have an instant experience of architecture without moving through it that still says something. Where it's music, one note of... A Mozart symphony is not to encapsulate it, whereas one photograph of a building gives you at least some sense of the whole. So in that sense, they're very, very different. They both depend on structure. They both do certain things together, and certainly classical architecture and classical music have certain structural similarities. But at the end of the day, I've never felt that that really takes you very far, despite the fact that Gail has said it.
Speaker 2 [00:21:54] Um. Change of subject slightly, where do video games sit in the great sweep of visual arts? Are they art?
Paul Goldberger [00:22:10] I think video games are definitely examples of human creativity. If we want to call art that creativity that has the highest aspirations and seeks to be Um. Inquisitive about the nature of existence.
Speaker 6 [00:22:40] Hmm
Paul Goldberger [00:22:41] some video games might cross that line and fall into that category most don't uh... But Human creativity and human imagination encompass far more than just art. I think human creativity is so important to the making of almost everything meaningful. There is some creative element to it. Whereas... So... I tend to think that video games are, at their best, a wonderful example of human creativity and also of the combining of technology and human imagination in a profound and exciting way. But are they art? I guess some of them are. The endless is it art or not debates, we can go on forever and ever, and they kind of don't necessarily take us very far, or as far as we think they do. You know, it's art, it is not art. It is what it is, and it's an exciting and meaningful example of human creativity.
Speaker 2 [00:24:16] So, switching to the skyline, I told you about our painters, Ryan and Trevor Oakes and their concave easel. They painted this over 11 days in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Speaker 3 [00:24:33] Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 [00:24:35] And I am curious to know what you think of their view of the skyline, which is an attempt to... Um, reproduce that sort of, that moment in space, how the eye actually sees it. Not a trick question, by the way.
Paul Goldberger [00:25:07] I mean, I'm more intrigued when I look at this by, not by the concave nature of it, as I am by the stripes here that they've done, and the way the water is shown in all these different colors and sort of configurations and the sky as well. And the skyline is against these things. I mean that actually. Sex me is a more interesting kind of intervention of their creative imagination. Creating these stripes which are not how we see it. They make you think about the nature of the sky and what is the real sky, what is real water, and seeing side by side these stripes of different ways, any of which could be the sky, any of these could be water. Suddenly you're seeing them all together. I find that actually the most exciting and interesting thing about this as a work of art. And what makes it, to me, really a fascinating piece.
Speaker 2 [00:26:23] They do one strip a day, so it represents the weather of that day, whatever.
Paul Goldberger [00:26:30] The fact that that is telling you, that's the most interesting thing. I don't care whether this thing is concave, convex, flat, or what have you. That's the more interesting thing, that they're taking the constant skyline and juxtaposing it against the different sky and different water of different days and showing you how the same place. The same piece of nature, in fact, is different from day to day to day to today. That's, and making of it a very beautiful pattern. So there we see, you know, an observation becomes the gateway to a creative act that teaches us something but also gives us a beautiful object.
Speaker 2 [00:27:25] I'm super tall. Um, have they changed the nature of architecture? What is working on that field?
Paul Goldberger [00:27:41] The super tall buildings, you know, have been... Creeping into the landscape for a while. They're not brand new. They were mostly an Asian phenomenon until recently and now they've come to the United States as well. You want me to really talk specifically about the New York ones, or other things, or about tall buildings in a more general way? In a more general way.
Speaker 4 [00:28:18] The idea that, and we talked about this on the Zoom. Yeah, right, right. I remember, because you agreed with me, that the first time the secret tall went up when there was just one, it looked pretty cool. No, actually it wasn't. It just stuck out. And now that there's actually kind of a context with a bunch of them, even though each individual one may not be particularly good, I mean actually like the vanilla one. The other ones are kind of the 57 cheap ones. Mostly yeah, but they're simple math. Just like the the block fronts on Fifth Avenue Right, right, right Okay, okay, and so the idea is one better So the which is really becoming a dominant. I look I was crossing one of your bridge yesterday Yeah, yeah exactly. I know It's not so much the point as to whether this is the 21st century, it's a new way of looking at New York. That's kind of the area we're playing in. Okay, good, good.
Speaker 7 [00:29:26] Nope.
Paul Goldberger [00:29:29] New York is a living city, it has to evolve and grow and change. There's a part of me that misses having the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building dominate the skyline. They are beautiful, they are special. I grew up with them. They're incomparable. Yet, we can't treat the sky line like Colonial Williamsburg, as a sort of fixed object. As the city evolves, it's inevitable that there will be more tall buildings. I'm very mixed about the whole crop of supertalls that has come up, particularly because a lot of them represent something sociologically that is troubling, separate entirely from anything that they represent as pure esthetic objects, as pure works of architecture. You know, they are mostly commodities in the real estate market owned by... Wealthy investors from around the world who barely live in them, and they are not occupied very much, which is not good for the city. People are not invested in a neighborhood. These huge buildings on 57th Street. Filled with apartments owned by people who are mostly gallivanting around the world and come for two weeks a year and couldn't care less what's around them and never walk on the sidewalk in front of their buildings and are in no way connected to the city, then what do they mean and what do they do for the city? Not that much, really. So they're all troubling on that level. As Works of architecture, they're very uneven. Some are better than others. They represent an enormous range from kind of vulgar and tawdry to elegant and discreet. And together now, they do constitute a whole new genre. And I think the city oddly looks a little bit better for having a lot of them than it did when there were just one or two. Sticking out all alone. It is tough because, you know, today, for people who've been around a few years, as I guess I have, you feel sentimental about the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building the way you might feel about a beautiful block of brownstone. And I wish in a way that it were possible to keep the view corridors, say, to these buildings open. I mean, one of the great things about the Empire State Building has always been not just the beauty of its form itself, but that there were no other very tall buildings near it. So you could see it from everywhere. And you could that whole shaft of it rising from anywhere in the city. We're now... You know, losing that gradually. There's a very tall building that's been proposed for next to Grand Central that would be right up against the Chrysler building. Would also be a huge loss, I think, in terms of the overall urban fabric of New York to lose the Chryscler building as a sort of strong and independent object on the skyline. But we've already lost it from a lot of areas and I mean, one of the realities of any urban environment is that everything does have to be thought of in conjunction with everything else. That's not true, say, with art, or literature, or music. You can have an art collection with lots and lots of different things that represent different ideas. And you can move them around and have them make continually different connections with each other, depending on how you hang what you own. You can't do that with architecture. You can say, oh, this is a beautiful building if it were somewhere else. And you know, you can't move this tower here and move that tower there. Move the Chrysler building a few blocks away so that beauty can still stand visible and not be blocked by other buildings. That's one of the both challenges of architecture but also part of its glory is that it all exists in conjunction with everything else and you know buildings together make an urban place. How successfully they do that or don't do that is a key part of what goes on in architecture and that's another thing that makes architecture distinctive and different.
Speaker 4 [00:35:04] That's great. Can I just do a follow-up on that? Okay. What is it that this is not about the esthetics? Yeah, yeah. This is about the challenges of being an architect and an engineer on supertalls. It just seems like it's a whole, like, wow, how do they even make a 98 story building in that? Right, right. So can you just talk about what is the challenge of working in that field, that scale? Thank you, Marion. And look at Marion.
Paul Goldberger [00:35:33] Well, architecture has always depended on engineering. In Gothic cathedrals, we're triumphs of engineering, as much as triumphs in design. The new crop of super-tall buildings depends a lot on development in engineering that have made it possible. Not just to go very tall, we've been building tall for a long time. Remember, the Empire State Building is, you know, 90 years old almost, and with a hundred and two stories. The mere fact of building tall is not the thing. It's that we're now able to build very tall and very thin. The ratio of height to actual footprint, to actual size of the building where it hits the ground has changed enormously. We can build more lightweight structures. We can support them more easily. They do not need to be sort of big and squat and square. So that in turn is really what has led in part to the explosion of super tall buildings in New York as residential buildings. Remember it was, and not very long ago that every very tall building was an office building. It was just a matter of course, you assumed it would be an office buildings. Residential buildings were not 70, 80, 90 stories tall. Nobody had, you know, apartment 90A in some building on the 90th floor. That didn't exist. Now it does exist. And that's because we can build very thin. A thin building is of no interest for commercial tenants. Offices. At least pre-COVID when people went to offices. Offices wanted enormous space, very big horizontal space so that you could put lots and lots of people who work together on the same floor. Apartments, it's exactly the opposite. You want something small and narrow because especially if it's small enough so you can make one apartment fill a whole floor, you can sell it for an awful lot of money because you can say to people, oh, you can look. North and east and west and south and you can have this whole floor isn't that amazing and it works in a small building or half a floor or what have you. The advances in engineering that allow us to build stable buildings that are very tall and narrow and the rise in the real estate market's demand for very expensive residences in cities like New in Hong Kong and London and Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, other places. International cities, those things have kind of come together to give us this super tall phenomenon right now.
Speaker 4 [00:39:01] Is there a special challenge as an architect to maintain whatever esthetic, you know, ambition you have when you're working on that scale? I mean, you have somebody who can design a beautiful beach house and it's a little jewel, okay? Ziffertals are the opposite of little jewels, so the question is, if you're an architect and you're trying to make an esthetic statement, you know, and working with an engineer. One of the challenges, and just if you don't mind, we are, since one Vanderbilt is an office building, that is kind of our, we're shining a light on that, not on them.
Paul Goldberger [00:39:38] Right, right, okay. Well, one Vanderbilt is much bigger. Right. Right, one Vanderbult is, you know, a full block and is really... One Vanderbolt is really the 21st century version of the Empire State Building. And it's, you know, very large, has a large central Manhattan site, and is a commercial building, not a residential building, because it does offer these very large more play. And it's an attempt to create a sculptural form on the skyline, which is what the Empire State Building is. I don't know that it's as successful as the Empire state building, but you can certainly see the desire on the part of the architect to do something other than just a box. That's clear. I think when it comes to building very tall, uh, architects can... Express their creative ideas as freely as they do in a small house. It's a challenge to build a tall building that's very beautiful, but just as we've been seeing it since the 20s and 30s or even before, I mean, look at the Woolworth building, which was once the tallest building in the world by Cass Gilbert, where height and elegance coexisted perfectly. This new generation of supertalls. In this new generation of supertalls, I think architects have tried to do what they would want to do in a not so supertall building, so that we have buildings like one Vanderbilt, which are a kind of modern interpretation in glass of a sculptural form, so that it has some distinction at the top on the skyline and has a base that relates to the city around it. We see buildings like 220 Central Park South, which is a very traditional building by Robert Stern, but much, much higher and taller. So sort of stretched out, but covered in limestone and with the esthetic of a sort of traditional New York apartment building from before World War II, but recast in this new scale. Uh, we see other modern interpretations like Vignoli's 432 Park Avenue, which is sort of simple and abstract and stark. Um, and then sort of rather glitzy ones like, uh, 157 West 57th, which, uh is a little bit garish and I don't think particularly interesting, but, um, so there is nothing about the super tall that prevents an architect from using whatever design language he or she would want to use. I'm disappointed that we haven't seen enough rather new and creative responses to it. I mean, I think shops to super tall buildings, the Brooklyn Tower in downtown Brooklyn, which is actually quite a beautiful form and shape. And their building on West 57th Street, 111 West 57 Street. Those are residential buildings that I think try a little harder to not be glitzy and garish but also not be entirely traditional and not be. To modern sculpture in glass, like one Vanderbilt, but try to evolve something new. In any case, yeah, it's a challenge that. Like most architectural challenges, I think we have a mixed record in. We've done a few good things and some pretty lousy things operating at that scale. But, you know, there were an awful lot of ordinary buildings from the early decades of the 20th century too. Everything was not the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building or the Woolworth Building. You know, they were a lot of mediocre buildings built in those years. And in fact, even more. In the years after World War II, where in the 50s and 60s, we had a handful of great skyscrapers. Most of them were really hopelessly mediocre.
Speaker 2 [00:44:40] Architecture as an educational tool, I told you about the story we're doing at Friends Seminary, where seniors and first graders are working together. What is it about architecture that makes it such a strong educational tool?
Paul Goldberger [00:44:59] I think architecture is a great educational tool because it forces you to confront everything. The essence of architecture is that it's about everything. It's about how you live, it's what you want, it is about esthetics, but it's also about practicality. It's also, you know, about fulfilling a function but of going beyond the function at the same time. It's about how buildings fit together to make a larger place. The lesson of the whole being more than the sum of the parts is one that you can teach beautifully with architecture. The lesson about solving a practical problem, but doing it in a way that transcends just the solving of a problem and shows creativity, imagination, and the making of a work of art. Clearer way to teach kids about those concepts than to have them delve into what's involved in the making of a work of architecture. And of course, I didn't even talk about the structural side of it, the fact that if you don't do the calculations right, if you don't learn your mathematics, the building may not stand up. So you have all those things and you need to talk about and learn about. The reality of materials and about the relationship of buildings to place. You can build a house of bricks that will work in one place and maybe you would want to build of some other material in another place and why that is. All of these things. Architecture teaches lesson, what other subject is simultaneously a lesson in mathematics, sociology, finance, cultural history. Materiality and structure, political history, and human desire and human imagination. Architecture touches all of those things, so it's a challenging thing to make it as a teaching tool, but it's an amazing teaching tool because you've got to touch all these basis really, to understand it.
Speaker 2 [00:47:35] So fundamental to architecture, to being an architect, have to know about architecture, art, science, mathematics, engineering, et cetera. It's the only, probably the only discipline that demands that of youth in this day and age. Do you think it's important for kids to have both, to have the science piece and the art piece in their education?
Paul Goldberger [00:48:02] I think all kids, no matter what they do with their lives, should have some exposure to both art and science, because these are two ways of looking at the world that reinforce each other and complement each other. They're not totally separate and distinct ways. Than I think. Understand. You understand, I think, poetry better if you know the boundaries of the world. You understand science better if your mind is excited by beauty, by music, by poetry, and so forth. I've just never understood how these can be seen as completely opposite ways of viewing the world, but yeah, an architect's training is difficult because... An architect needs to have some familiarity with all of these things as well as with the things that will go on within buildings. I've never felt architecture was a great subject for undergraduate education. I think you're a better architect if you have a liberal arts undergraduate education and understand the world. And then as a graduate student, you start focusing on all the specific things you really need to know to know how to make buildings.
Speaker 2 [00:49:43] So, kids are instinctively creative, they're playful, they are imaginative, and those instincts are often muted or lost as they move along in school and everything becomes siloed and foxed. How do we get that back as adults?
Paul Goldberger [00:50:10] I've been struggling with that, with exactly that, how to. How we hold on to that innate creativity and exuberance of childhood through adulthood is I think has always been one of the great challenges of life. I don't think that's different in our time, although maybe it's even harder now because we seem to be pushed even more. Toward quantitative metrics by the nature of data and the systems today that we use to gather data. We have so much more of it in every field than we did before, and it has a way of sometimes squeezing out qualitative rather than quantitative views of the world. I I think the fact that we are not teaching enough architecture, art, music and literature in school is a serious problem and our education system seems to be more focused on test performance and again quantitative metrics than it is on creativity. We've been struggling with this for while, but... We seem to be farther now from a solution, not closer. I think that's a big social problem that is beyond the scope of any of these individual fields to resolve.
Speaker 2 [00:52:03] So, Jamie is on Clemper when we talk to him, and he's the constant we need to have creative... Spirit, creative underpinnings talks about the need to try and try again and you try again. There's sort of a kind of fearless reimagining about, you know, balls up the piece of paper, throws it out, starts again, balls it up, starts again. Is that kind of try, try, try again a doorway into creativity?
Paul Goldberger [00:52:48] There's a great myth that creative people just come up with a brilliant idea, the light bulb goes off and there you are. Almost everything is a result of trial and error and trial and and of many, many attempts.
Speaker 3 [00:53:11] Hello.
Paul Goldberger [00:53:14] You know, I forget, it may have been Le Corbusier who said that, you know, maybe it was Thomas Edison, I should better check this out before we use it, said that genius is 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration. That, you know, it is the tough, difficult effort, trials, and also just sometimes just pushing the boulder uphill just a little, little bit each time. And sometimes seeing it roll back downhill and so forth. It's very tough and very hard and there's no magic involved. There's just a lot of thinking, a lot struggle, a lot work. It was Thomas Edison who said that, actually. Genius is 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration. It was Le Corbusier who said, creation is a patient's search. Which underscores the same idea that it just is not.
Speaker 3 [00:54:33] BING!
Paul Goldberger [00:54:36] It's long, often frustrating, difficult struggle. We talk about not wanting to see how the sausage is made in a factory. Well, creativity has its share of sausage making too, which is kind of long, frustrating, dull, unappealing. And gradually something emerges.
Speaker 2 [00:55:09] I'm going to move on to materials and if anybody has anything else about creativity.
Speaker 4 [00:55:14] I just want to say one thing. A number of people... Have, we as creative people, have talked about, they've used the word the dance. The dance? The dance, the dance between, the dance between an, like, an architect and an engineer, or an artist and their IT person who has to do a great job. Okay, and I'm just wondering is that kind of a, a theme through a lot of art making, whatever the, whatever the genre is, that, um, There's kind of a, you know, it's like can we do this, you know, what does it take? I mean even if you're a painter you have to deal with you know canvases and quality of paint and you know conservation issues and things like that. So I don't hear what thought kind of a somewhat high-level thought about about the dance, about is this something that that is It's just part of the creative process.
Paul Goldberger [00:56:11] Um The creative process is always framed by certain kinds of realities. They shift and change depending on the field. Probably a novelist has the fewest constraints. It's just his or her imagination, but there are still constraints. An architect has a great many, You know, an engineer has to... Be a partner and show that it's buildable. Some of the greatest works of modern architecture have been enabled by partnerships between great architects and great engineers who really together did a kind of creative dance, as it were, and changes are often made as a result of the engineers. Concerns and the dialog between the two. So yes, just as also the making of film. I think of, you know, there's the director, there's a screenwriter, the director. The studio, the editor. All of these people are, you now, working together to find a way to make creative imagination actually exist in the real world. That go from the creator's imagination into material reality and physical reality. So there's always a connection, even new digital technologies. A digital artist still has to deal with the limits of the technology and quite possibly. Relies on an IT expert in the same way that an architect will rely on an engineer to actually help him or her realize this concept and make it real.
Speaker 2 [00:58:32] So a hundred years ago in the days of Zoom, you said the paradox of architecture is that more than anything it exists at a point of intersection between creative and let's say pragmatic concerns. My whole view for my whole career has been that it's fundamentally impossible, but sometimes it's actually achieved. Which is that something is creatively brilliant and makes you see the world in a new way. And yet, at the same time, it's solving a problem and doing practical things.
Speaker 4 [00:59:21] We don't have to do it in one chunk, the first time I think it was the art of the editor.
Paul Goldberger [00:59:27] Ah, okay, okay.
Speaker 4 [00:59:30] That's a lot. That's alot.
Paul Goldberger [00:59:31] You know, the paradox of architecture is that it's an art and not an art at the same time. It's an Art and yet it's also the solving of a practical problem. The greatest works of architecture are those that do both at the time that reach the highest levels of artistic expression, give us that feeling you have in your gut when you experience something of esthetic beauty and power, and yet are also doing their practical function well, housing people well, giving them a place to learn, a place heal, a to. Study, a place to work, whatever their purpose is, and are doing both of those things in kind of perfect harmony. Doesn't happen always, but it happens sometimes. And every building has some combination of creativity and problem-solving within it.
Speaker 2 [01:00:49] Would you say one thing for me? Sure. Oh, thank you. Good. Good. Okay. Good. Um, the fact that it's fundamentally impossible, but sometimes actually achieved, to do these things.
Paul Goldberger [01:01:11] I wonder what I meant by fundamentally impossible.
Speaker 4 [01:01:15] Would that mean? Hmm
Paul Goldberger [01:01:23] You know, it's rare, maybe it's impossible, for a work of architecture to achieve perfect equilibrium between its role as a work of art and its role as the practical solution to a problem. But that's certainly the aspiration. That's what you hope for, that's what you aim for, and every now and then it happens.
Speaker 4 [01:01:53] We good with that? Yeah. Good. We can use some of these. Yeah, we can use a lot of these ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is great. Good, OK. Good, good, OK, yeah OK. Hit it out on the fly.
Speaker 2 [01:02:04] Okay, good, good. Which ballpark did he build? What did it look like? Right, right, right.
Speaker 3 [01:02:10] Right, right, right.
Speaker 2 [01:02:13] Okay, three more sentences. For it to work and be meaningful, it must be as powerful and profound and creative act as a great painting or a great piece of music or literature.
Paul Goldberger [01:02:33] For a building to be truly great, it has to give you as profound an esthetic experience as the greatest painting, the greatest novel, the greatest. Piece of theater, the greatest film, the greatest piece of music.
Speaker 2 [01:03:00] One more, architectural history is filled with engineers who have made great architecture possible because an architect can come up with some wonderful visual things, but is it buildable or not, and an engineer will either help make it so or explain why it can't be.
Paul Goldberger [01:03:23] Yeah, I mean, we talked about that a little bit before, but not in quite these words, yeah. Architectural history is filled with collaborations between architects and engineers. You know, engineers are necessary either to enable an architect's imagination to be realized, to show how it can be built, or to show that it cannot be built and then encourage the architect to move in a different direction. But either way, the engineer is an essential part of the partnership.
Speaker 2 [01:04:03] I'm happy. A couple of quick questions about materials. So architecture is always evolving new materials along with new developments in technology that you get new possibilities. Are there designs in architecture, art, or music that have reached their optimal potential irrespective of advances in technology?
Paul Goldberger [01:04:33] Not quite sure what that means. So we know it's a story about hyborgans. Ah, okay.
Speaker 2 [01:04:40] And the technology of pipe organs has not changed for centuries. And the building techniques, in fact, we're doing a story at Trinity Wall Street, where they've got a new hand-built organ that uses a metal rolling technique that was used in the time Mhm.
Speaker 3 [01:05:01] Mm-hmm. Mm-hm. Mmhm.
Speaker 2 [01:05:06] So, at some point, hundreds of years ago, someone hit the nail on the head, and very little has changed. Are there other examples of that?
Paul Goldberger [01:05:19] Yeah, I can really only speak to, I suppose I can speak best to architecture, but I think in every field there are things that are done traditionally and that continue to be done traditionally, and that are wonderful, that just exist side by side. With advances in technology. In literature, we see e-books, but we also see, you know, conventional printed books which have not disappeared at all, which continue strong, thankfully, they're wonderful. And we, in painting, you know in painting I don't think there are huge advances. That have changed the nature of painting with oil paint on canvas from what it was years ago. And that still has great meaning and relevance while there are also new things side by side. Architecture depends hugely on new materials, but at the same time, you know, brick is brick and brick is a wonderful thing. And you can... Do with bricks what people have done for a thousand years with brick, and we see a certain amount of traditional building going ahead in stone and wood, and all of those things, maybe they get tweaked or tinkered with at the margins, but they just continue to exist as part of a broader set of things that are in the world today. I mean, you know, I'm very happy that new materials have not driven out all old materials in architecture, but there's some extraordinary things that new material have enabled. I've just written this book about an amazing house by the Atlantic Ocean that has an extraordinary shape. And the roof and wall structure was done with a carbon fiber glass composite material built in a factory that does super yachts and things like that. And so there you have the most advanced new form of material creating a shape that that could not have been made years ago. But a lot of this house is also of glass. And glass is glass, although we see many advances in glass technology, too. So. In architecture, we see both new materials and we also see ongoing development in old materials. I mean, the technology of glass is different from what it once was. It's better from an energy performance standpoint than it was. We know how to do certain things better, so we can build glass buildings that are not ridiculous greenhouses the way they once were. So all of that is part of it too, the ongoing evolution.
Speaker 2 [01:08:59] I have one last question about materials, and then you guys may have some questions. So you see a woodsmith, a great furniture maker, working with his wood, and you can see that he loves that wood, the way he touches it. In architecture, do you have to love the materials you're working with in that same sort of way, or are they sometimes just a means to getting a structure built?
Paul Goldberger [01:09:28] I think the best architects love the materials they build with and respond to them and care about them. I mean, Louis Kahn used to say that, you know, I asked the brick what it wants to be and it said I want to be an arch. I mean he sort of felt materials as if they were people. Khan also said... The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building. I mean, he very much thought of materials in a poetic way. I think the best architects do care about materials and also obsess over subtle differences in them. I mean I, you know, I know many architects who will not trust someone else to choose a marble say but will fly to Italy and go through quarries and look at six or ten or twelve different ones at the source before deciding what they want and will not accept you know a little sample sent by airfreight to look at in in their office they want to go and see it in the in the earth in the quarry and So yeah, that's another way of caring deeply about materials and feeling an emotional connection to them. Or I think of an architect like Tadal Ando, the great Japanese architect who's done such magnificent things with concrete. And I mean, he feels concrete as if it were a living thing. And his concrete is more beautiful than almost anyone else's too.
Speaker 4 [01:11:24] Ok, I have a question out of left field. Maybe it's something you've thought about, maybe it's not, but we have a story about it. Roller coasters. Do you ever, do you think about it? Do you think why people like them? I mean, what happens?
Speaker 2 [01:11:39] What they look like. Yeah.
Speaker 3 [01:11:40] It's like how they're built, how they are built.
Paul Goldberger [01:11:43] Yeah. I have not actually thought about them a lot. I mean, old roller coasters were pretty primitive structures, not terribly interesting as structures. I mean it was all about just, you know, the experience of up and down and the rapid change and speed and so forth, and how it affects us internally, really. I mean, roller coasters were a great way of showing that there can be enormous creativity in using technology to create a certain kind of diverting experience, just as video games in our time are, too. You know, they may not be great works of art, but they are engaging and exciting, and they are definitely... Of an example of some kind of creative act.
Speaker 4 [01:12:54] Okay, can I just? I just wanted to point that out, because in fact, we're doing one of our hours is about, it includes video games, it includes board games, and it includes pipe board games. Right. And all of those are about kind of producing a really strong emotional... Can you just speak to that, just give me a 10,000 foot view, speak to the kind of need that people have for these emotional moments and how you get there.
Paul Goldberger [01:13:29] I think what the roller coaster does is... Take what is a natural kind of neurological response we have to space and movement. You in a situation in which that all becomes so intense that it becomes very powerful emotionally. The drop, the climb up, all of which are kind of metaphorical of life, you could say, too, and forces you literally in the pit of your stomach to feel intensity and drama. I think that's what the roller coaster does. I mean, we know now because there's been much more neurological research done. People do have innate responses to different kinds of space, to different kind of places, to different colors, to different degrees of decoration, to views of water, all these things. And one of the other things that we generally have an innate response to, you know, is certain kinds of movement. I mean, that's just physiological. And the roller coaster takes that fact and just compresses it into this very brief and incredibly intense period, which forces an emotional reaction. It's kind of cool in its way when you think about it because it really is also a little bit of a metaphor for the drama of life, but compressed into this three minute or four minute, whatever it is, intense experience.
Speaker 4 [01:15:24] People have said that it's also like, you know, you're on the verge of death.
Paul Goldberger [01:15:28] Yes, yeah, well, yeah. Right, but it teases you about being on the verge of death. You don't truly expect to be, you know, you expect to walk out of it, obviously. That's the magic. Right, right. You know you're not really going to die, but you feel you're right, right, right on the edge, yes, of course. That is right.
Speaker 2 [01:15:52] I have one more question about materials, and that I was thinking about the concrete and the mirror and marble. Is it important for artists to have relationships with their materials?
Paul Goldberger [01:16:07] Visual artists, you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's hard to imagine artists not having relationships with their materials. I think its essential for a visual artist to feel connected to the materials that he or she chooses to use. I just can't see how it would be otherwise, really. And an artist who works primarily in digital technology is gonna have a relationship with the computers and the software that helps them create this in the same way that an artist whose medium is photography is going to have a very close relationship with a camera. They use, and so that in effect becomes, an artist has a close relationship either with materials or with a tool, or both, depending on what they're actually creating.
Speaker 4 [01:17:14] One question, I mean, you have gone over this again, you've gone over the search already, but... What makes a great building? What makes the building that endures? What makes it that does more than merely when you look at it, you go, oh, that's a great moment. What is it? Is there something intrinsic? Any answer that maybe in terms of the art or also the practicality?
Paul Goldberger [01:17:48] Mm-hmm A great building uses form and material in a different way from what has been done before. It makes you feel that you're having an experience that you haven't quite had before. And makes you think in ways you haven't t thought before. It can be Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water which makes you think of There's this horizontal plane floating over the waterfall and the relationship between the natural and the man-made, which comes into such intense, powerful focus there. The Gothic cathedral, where the relationship between structure and light is so profound. A building, a classical building in which we see order and... Generally, not always, order and symmetry and a language of different pieces put together in a creative way that beautiful in its proportions, elegant in its execution. Feels somehow pure and direct, and looks easy too, by the way. I think it's important to say that great buildings like great performances. Works of great achievements in athletics, any great achievement looks simpler than it really is. And so the message of it comes through clearly to you. And. All the complexities kind of hidden. There's a, I forget now who said it, but this is as applicable to architecture as to anything else. But one of my favorite lines is, it takes a lot of reality to make a fantasy. There's always a lot behind the scenes, but the result is pure and perfect.
Speaker 4 [01:20:35] There's one more, one more. You've been really patient. One more question. I'm going to have to change this card if you would otherwise like to. We have one camera. That's fine. Okay, this is going to be really quick. Which is... You know, he's doing stuff about computer art. Yeah.
Speaker 3 [01:20:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 [01:20:53] Okay, is there always going to be a tension between... The existing way of doing things, of creating things, and new ways of expressing creativity. You know, photography coming in in the mid-20th century, and it's like, well, that's not painting, okay? Therefore, it can't be art and creative. And then, of course, now of course. Of course not, all right? Is this going to be like, is this an eternal conversation, eternal tension that goes on in the world of creativity?
Paul Goldberger [01:21:27] You know, I think there will always be new technologies and new ways of making things. And there's always gonna be some tension between the old ways and the new ways. And then they just coexist. I mean, we saw that in the 19th century as photography arose. Was it an art? Was it not an art. It was rejected as not an artwork for a while and then clearly became one. Was film going to drive out or invalidate theater and drama? No, it did not You know, I think they will always find their own kind of way of co-existing. And the world of creativity always has room for more under this tent. There will always be new ways of making things. New ways of imagining things, new ways of thinking about things that will always change. And they will always coexist with things that, first, the actual creative things that we inherit from times before us, and new works that people choose to make in traditional ways. And we still have wonderful painting. Even with photography. Look at how much extraordinary painting has been made in the last hundred years. And in fact, how being liberated from documenting reality allowed painting to do all kinds of other new things that it didn't have to do before or couldn't have done before. So sometimes new technologies and new ways liberate creativity and allow older mediums and older approaches to find new directions too.
