1
00:00:00,400 --> 00:00:03,279
Speaker 1: City planning and architecture is the most important art. You know,

2
00:00:03,319 --> 00:00:06,080
I'm not an architect, but I can see that because

3
00:00:06,080 --> 00:00:10,359
it fades behind people's perception. It pre models the way

4
00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:13,679
that people understand who they are, what's their relationship to

5
00:00:13,720 --> 00:00:17,280
each other. You know what's inside, what's outside, you know

6
00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:21,239
what is above, what is below. Just basic orientation in

7
00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:24,839
your life is based on city planning and an architecture.

8
00:00:25,199 --> 00:00:29,920
And there's a deep alienation in modern living that comes

9
00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:33,520
from living in these horrible places and these these abstracted

10
00:00:33,560 --> 00:00:36,600
spaces with no center and no community and no sense

11
00:00:36,640 --> 00:00:39,920
of relationships. That's a call for people to take it seriously.

12
00:00:40,039 --> 00:00:43,359
For people who are studying architecture, that you're doing the

13
00:00:43,359 --> 00:00:45,840
most important thing. It's hard right now, It's hard to

14
00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:47,920
do it, but that is the most important thing.

15
00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:49,520
Speaker 2: To be done.

16
00:00:59,799 --> 00:01:03,359
Speaker 3: This is Jonathan Peeshol Welcome to the Symbolic World.

17
00:01:15,359 --> 00:01:19,359
Speaker 1: Rapunzel and the Evil Witch is officially available right now.

18
00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:20,959
It is not in pre sale, It is not a

19
00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:23,640
pre order. It is in the warehouse. You can just

20
00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:26,040
go to rapunzelbook dot com and you get the book.

21
00:01:26,159 --> 00:01:29,400
We have a new distribution system which has just been amazing.

22
00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:31,680
People are getting their books in a few days. All

23
00:01:31,719 --> 00:01:34,680
the pre sale and pre order books have already been shipped.

24
00:01:34,680 --> 00:01:37,760
People already have them. And so this is the third

25
00:01:37,760 --> 00:01:39,519
book where a lot of the symbolism is going to

26
00:01:39,599 --> 00:01:42,920
come out. It's our celebratory tone, the third book in

27
00:01:42,959 --> 00:01:45,840
the series of the Tales for Once and Ever, illustrated

28
00:01:45,840 --> 00:01:49,200
by Heather Pollington. This is where the symbolism is going

29
00:01:49,239 --> 00:01:51,200
to start to show, where the characters.

30
00:01:50,799 --> 00:01:52,159
Speaker 3: Are going to are going to repeat.

31
00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:55,840
Speaker 1: So I'm particularly excited about this book and the continuation

32
00:01:56,239 --> 00:01:59,959
of this series. And so go to rapunzelbook dot com

33
00:02:00,400 --> 00:02:02,640
now and you can just get the book get in

34
00:02:02,680 --> 00:02:03,239
a few days.

35
00:02:03,319 --> 00:02:06,959
Speaker 3: So thanks everyone. So hello everyone.

36
00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:09,960
Speaker 1: I am here with my friend Andrew Gould and with

37
00:02:10,039 --> 00:02:13,680
Michael Dimitt. We are going to talk about urban planning,

38
00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:19,080
about architecture, traditional architecture, about all the projects that are happening.

39
00:02:19,240 --> 00:02:23,080
Michael is an advocate for traditional architecture and for proper

40
00:02:23,240 --> 00:02:26,360
urban planning, and as many of you know, Andrew is

41
00:02:26,400 --> 00:02:28,719
an architect. He's been on my channel a few times.

42
00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:31,919
He is a long standing friend of mine. We started

43
00:02:31,960 --> 00:02:35,319
the Orthodox Art Journal Now in twenty twelve together and

44
00:02:35,360 --> 00:02:37,840
he is one of the biggest reasons why I actually

45
00:02:37,879 --> 00:02:40,439
was able to start icon carving. So I have a

46
00:02:40,439 --> 00:02:44,520
great debt of friendship and to him and so Michael,

47
00:02:44,840 --> 00:02:47,039
thanks for doing this. And maybe you can start by

48
00:02:47,039 --> 00:02:48,879
telling us a bit what you do. It's a very

49
00:02:48,879 --> 00:02:53,400
odd thing to think of a kind of architecture advocacy.

50
00:02:52,800 --> 00:02:54,439
Speaker 3: So maybe you can explain a little bit what it

51
00:02:54,479 --> 00:02:55,000
is that you do.

52
00:02:56,360 --> 00:02:58,560
Speaker 4: Well, thank you very much for having the name of

53
00:02:58,560 --> 00:03:02,960
this podcast. Well, some of the concepts may be alien

54
00:03:03,039 --> 00:03:07,639
to an American audience, because I think in the US

55
00:03:08,199 --> 00:03:10,400
you do what you want. If you want to build

56
00:03:10,400 --> 00:03:13,680
a Gothic cathedral, you build a Gothic cathedral. You're much

57
00:03:13,719 --> 00:03:15,919
more free in your mind in the US than were

58
00:03:15,960 --> 00:03:19,520
in Europe. We're always constrained by you know, by both

59
00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:23,080
by our municipalities have much stronger to say what we

60
00:03:23,120 --> 00:03:25,960
are allowed to build and also socially what we are

61
00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:29,159
allowed to do when, so it's a bit different. So

62
00:03:29,319 --> 00:03:32,159
what I do, what I've been doing the last fourteen

63
00:03:32,240 --> 00:03:38,639
years is social media advocacy for new tradition architecture. It

64
00:03:38,759 --> 00:03:41,360
began in my native country Sweden, but now it has

65
00:03:41,400 --> 00:03:44,400
spread to all of Europe. There is an architecture uprising

66
00:03:44,439 --> 00:03:47,879
in every European country. There is in Turkey, there is

67
00:03:48,039 --> 00:03:52,039
in Lebanon, there is in Israel. I was in contact

68
00:03:52,039 --> 00:03:55,560
actually with a woman in Syria, but now everything has

69
00:03:55,599 --> 00:03:58,080
fed away there. There is an uprising in India, and

70
00:03:58,120 --> 00:04:00,560
I'm also in contact with the professor at Hong Kong

71
00:04:00,639 --> 00:04:03,759
University that want to start something similar in China. But

72
00:04:03,840 --> 00:04:06,000
of course you know, they can't call something uprising on

73
00:04:06,039 --> 00:04:11,520
the social Chinese social media. Basically, what the advocacy and

74
00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:16,600
what the uprising movement is about is to make ordinary people,

75
00:04:16,839 --> 00:04:21,959
that is, non architects, realize that we can build beautiful today.

76
00:04:22,680 --> 00:04:24,040
Speaker 2: Most people aren't.

77
00:04:24,079 --> 00:04:26,399
Speaker 4: A well majority think that there is some kind of

78
00:04:26,839 --> 00:04:30,160
rational reason why we've been so ugly today. I think

79
00:04:30,160 --> 00:04:33,240
it must because, of course, or because if you won't

80
00:04:33,319 --> 00:04:35,720
hie standard of living, it must be ugly. And that

81
00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:39,319
is totally false. So when dig down into this, you

82
00:04:39,399 --> 00:04:44,959
realize that everything's about ideology and architects. Most architects, not Andrew,

83
00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:49,360
of course, are what we would call modernists, and they

84
00:04:50,680 --> 00:04:53,879
their ideal, actually I would say almost is to be ugly,

85
00:04:54,120 --> 00:04:58,199
because like modernist artists, they feed special if everyone hates

86
00:04:58,240 --> 00:05:03,360
what they're doing. So we do advocacy and we make

87
00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:07,800
ordinary people very successfully in Sweden, in Norway, now Germany

88
00:05:07,800 --> 00:05:11,959
and Netherlands thought very much realize that we cannot build

89
00:05:11,959 --> 00:05:15,600
beautiful if we want, it's a choice. It's not a

90
00:05:15,639 --> 00:05:19,399
necessity to build things ugly. We can build beautiful, and

91
00:05:19,879 --> 00:05:24,360
we also should build beautiful because all of the of course,

92
00:05:24,399 --> 00:05:28,000
you must have all kind of practical reasons today why

93
00:05:28,120 --> 00:05:32,480
promote beauty. You can't just say, you know, it's for good,

94
00:05:33,279 --> 00:05:35,360
it's for a higher ideal. You must promote it as

95
00:05:35,360 --> 00:05:37,839
you know. It's good for health, it's good for well being,

96
00:05:37,959 --> 00:05:40,759
it reduces stress. So of course we talk a lot

97
00:05:40,800 --> 00:05:44,480
about that, but also the democratic orgament.

98
00:05:44,959 --> 00:05:47,000
Speaker 2: If people want it, then we should build it.

99
00:05:48,639 --> 00:05:51,399
Speaker 4: So as said, this has been very successfully in my

100
00:05:51,519 --> 00:05:54,720
native Scandinavia, and it's spread to the other European countries

101
00:05:55,199 --> 00:05:59,360
and now in the public discourse in Sweden, most people

102
00:05:59,480 --> 00:06:02,879
know that that all the ugliness that they see in

103
00:06:02,920 --> 00:06:06,759
the built environment is built on purpose because the architects

104
00:06:06,800 --> 00:06:10,439
wanted to build this way. And that's a success because

105
00:06:10,480 --> 00:06:14,399
then you have a discussion, a proper discussion about urban environment.

106
00:06:15,120 --> 00:06:18,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I guess that there's a I'll be the

107
00:06:18,519 --> 00:06:20,920
devil's advocate for a little because obviously I don't really

108
00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:23,759
don't think this, but maybe Andrew you can pipe in

109
00:06:23,800 --> 00:06:26,480
on this as well, which is, of course, the argument

110
00:06:27,399 --> 00:06:32,600
is that traditional beauty is something either it's arbitrary or

111
00:06:32,759 --> 00:06:35,879
it's oppressive. Right, it's either arbitrary or it's an image

112
00:06:35,920 --> 00:06:38,399
of the old world of hierarchies, of the days when

113
00:06:38,439 --> 00:06:44,879
we had kings and aristocracies, and that modern architecture is functional,

114
00:06:44,959 --> 00:06:47,959
but it's also democratic in the sense that it's equalizing,

115
00:06:48,040 --> 00:06:51,839
you know, it has this kind of this this esthetic

116
00:06:52,079 --> 00:06:56,120
of equalizing equalizing things. And so how do you answer

117
00:06:56,199 --> 00:06:57,439
to those arguments?

118
00:06:57,800 --> 00:07:02,319
Speaker 5: Yes, that's the way they sell, always going to say

119
00:07:02,319 --> 00:07:05,240
that some of some of those things are lies, and

120
00:07:05,319 --> 00:07:09,560
some of them are true. I would the equalizing argument,

121
00:07:09,680 --> 00:07:13,399
I think is is largely true. You know, the communist

122
00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:19,560
governments liked building you know, identical housing blocks with identical apartments,

123
00:07:20,519 --> 00:07:24,600
you know, international modern style, not just because it was

124
00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:30,160
cheap and easy to build such repetitive buildings, but also

125
00:07:30,240 --> 00:07:38,120
ideologically they liked that it was equalizing. M hm, yes, yes,

126
00:07:39,879 --> 00:07:42,560
but of course I mean that that kind of socialist

127
00:07:42,600 --> 00:07:47,959
ideology is mostly out of favor nowadays. You know, the

128
00:07:47,959 --> 00:07:53,439
the the idea that that classical architecture, for instance, specifically

129
00:07:53,519 --> 00:07:57,759
references you know the time of you know, plantation, slaveholding,

130
00:07:57,920 --> 00:08:01,439
or you know, old regime for so whatever your sort

131
00:08:01,480 --> 00:08:05,959
of political enemy might be, that doesn't really hold water

132
00:08:06,120 --> 00:08:11,439
because traditional classical architecture was basically all architecture until the

133
00:08:11,439 --> 00:08:16,279
mid twentieth century. It existed in every you know, in

134
00:08:16,360 --> 00:08:20,839
every type of governmental and political system. You know, places

135
00:08:20,879 --> 00:08:23,319
like the Athens were public or the Dutch were public

136
00:08:23,439 --> 00:08:27,519
used classical architecture the same as you know, autocratic kingdoms

137
00:08:27,639 --> 00:08:32,600
used it. You know, the British Empire used classical architecture

138
00:08:32,679 --> 00:08:35,960
after a freed slavery, you know, just as Americans used

139
00:08:35,960 --> 00:08:39,159
it before freeing slaves slaves. I mean, it just it

140
00:08:39,200 --> 00:08:44,559
does not correlate to politics that way. It doesn't actually

141
00:08:44,600 --> 00:08:48,720
even correlate very well to sort of you know communist ideology.

142
00:08:48,879 --> 00:08:53,320
You know, yes, Communists justified their ugly architecture because it

143
00:08:53,360 --> 00:08:58,000
was equalizing. But Americans were building the very same ugly

144
00:08:58,639 --> 00:09:02,679
equalizing housing blocks in American cities at the same time,

145
00:09:03,360 --> 00:09:06,200
and they justified it because it was you know, of

146
00:09:06,240 --> 00:09:09,519
its time and of the nuclear age and looked.

147
00:09:09,240 --> 00:09:10,080
Speaker 3: Like the future.

148
00:09:11,320 --> 00:09:14,039
Speaker 5: You know, we justified it by claiming it was great

149
00:09:14,080 --> 00:09:16,759
and modern, and they justified it by claiming it was

150
00:09:17,519 --> 00:09:21,960
you know, equalizing and humble, um and you know, appropriate

151
00:09:21,960 --> 00:09:22,919
to the working man.

152
00:09:23,080 --> 00:09:27,759
Speaker 2: But it's the same stuff. Yeah, it is a nouns

153
00:09:27,799 --> 00:09:28,240
an argument.

154
00:09:28,279 --> 00:09:30,320
Speaker 4: And there is a reason why they use this and

155
00:09:30,360 --> 00:09:32,919
talk about all this nonsense. It's because they don't want

156
00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:36,480
to talk about architecture. They always want to talk politics

157
00:09:36,519 --> 00:09:38,440
because as long as they talk politics, and if you

158
00:09:38,480 --> 00:09:41,360
swallow that bait, then they don't need to talk about

159
00:09:41,360 --> 00:09:45,080
the secture. But also if you put classical architecture of

160
00:09:45,080 --> 00:09:48,240
an acular architecture and modern starchitecture and just would compare

161
00:09:48,360 --> 00:09:52,559
their merits, okay, which one is more climate friendly?

162
00:09:53,360 --> 00:09:53,600
Speaker 2: Okay?

163
00:09:53,600 --> 00:09:56,200
Speaker 4: Then class glossy text of wings, which which one is

164
00:09:56,240 --> 00:09:59,279
more humane? Classic glossy text of wings on every metric,

165
00:09:59,320 --> 00:10:02,399
class clossy textually would win. That's why they never ever

166
00:10:02,519 --> 00:10:06,759
want to talk architecture, and they would go instantly on

167
00:10:06,879 --> 00:10:10,879
politics and talk all this nonsense because the only way

168
00:10:10,879 --> 00:10:14,639
they can win. As soon as they cannot talk politics,

169
00:10:15,039 --> 00:10:18,399
they lose. And that's why that's why you know, I

170
00:10:18,399 --> 00:10:21,840
have Okay, I use maybe offensive terms here, but I

171
00:10:21,879 --> 00:10:27,000
got something called a race card in these discussions. I'm

172
00:10:27,080 --> 00:10:31,320
half Jewish. My mother was born in a refugee camp

173
00:10:31,320 --> 00:10:34,440
in the Soviet Union. Her parents were Polish Jews. So

174
00:10:34,480 --> 00:10:39,399
they can't call me anotherby you know, because texture, And

175
00:10:39,480 --> 00:10:42,799
as soon as they can do that, they're just dumb,

176
00:10:42,840 --> 00:10:47,360
fun everything false. So everything is based on being able

177
00:10:47,440 --> 00:10:50,399
to label people and not talk about architecture.

178
00:10:51,039 --> 00:10:55,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just watched the I watched the Brutalist movie,

179
00:10:56,000 --> 00:10:57,159
which it was unbearable.

180
00:10:57,200 --> 00:10:59,360
Speaker 3: I really did not like watching it. I have to

181
00:10:59,399 --> 00:10:59,919
be honest with you.

182
00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:03,200
Speaker 1: And they have this crazy thing at the end right

183
00:11:03,279 --> 00:11:07,200
where the niece of the architect announces that the secret

184
00:11:07,399 --> 00:11:12,240
like motivation or reason behind the architecture is basically to

185
00:11:12,639 --> 00:11:18,679
recall the Holocaust and to recall the gas chambers. And

186
00:11:18,720 --> 00:11:21,159
I was like, what kind of insane thing is this?

187
00:11:21,240 --> 00:11:23,840
It's like, are you promoting it this way? Are you

188
00:11:23,960 --> 00:11:26,720
promoting it in the sense like like so now you

189
00:11:26,759 --> 00:11:28,519
want us all to live in the gas chambers?

190
00:11:28,559 --> 00:11:30,440
Speaker 3: Is that what you're trying to suggest? It was nuts

191
00:11:30,480 --> 00:11:32,639
because a wild it was a wild argument.

192
00:11:34,279 --> 00:11:37,000
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how is that what modernism

193
00:11:37,120 --> 00:11:37,759
ends up being?

194
00:11:37,799 --> 00:11:41,639
Speaker 6: Like this this this this nihilistic desire for us to

195
00:11:41,720 --> 00:11:46,120
live in inhumane spaces to remind us of our own horror,

196
00:11:46,240 --> 00:11:48,840
or to remind us of our own death or something.

197
00:11:49,120 --> 00:11:52,120
Speaker 4: But you know it's you know, with beautiful things, you

198
00:11:52,159 --> 00:11:54,080
don't need many words to describe it.

199
00:11:54,360 --> 00:11:55,600
Speaker 2: You know, beauty is instant thing.

200
00:11:55,639 --> 00:11:58,480
Speaker 4: If I look at one of Andrew's works, you know

201
00:11:58,720 --> 00:12:01,000
you don't need to know anything architecture. You don't need

202
00:12:01,039 --> 00:12:03,639
to know anything about symbolism. If you do, you can

203
00:12:03,679 --> 00:12:05,960
of course read a lot of things, but you can

204
00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:09,919
appreciate it instantly just being an ordinary layman. Never ever

205
00:12:10,039 --> 00:12:13,240
open a book about architecture with all this modernist type

206
00:12:13,240 --> 00:12:16,440
of architecture, because it's so empty, just like modernist art.

207
00:12:17,120 --> 00:12:20,720
Speaker 2: You need to invent a story. So what do you

208
00:12:20,759 --> 00:12:23,120
call it? They are snake oil salesman.

209
00:12:23,360 --> 00:12:26,159
Speaker 4: I think that's a word. You see, they have to,

210
00:12:26,159 --> 00:12:29,039
you know, they have to invent all this story. And

211
00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:32,759
they of course very narcissistic because they sell these stories.

212
00:12:33,159 --> 00:12:34,919
Speaker 2: And also they.

213
00:12:34,720 --> 00:12:37,639
Speaker 4: Don't how to say they don't they don't live like

214
00:12:37,720 --> 00:12:41,159
they preach. They made a survey there is probably very true.

215
00:12:41,159 --> 00:12:43,519
Speaker 2: In the US. They made us survey.

216
00:12:42,919 --> 00:12:46,440
Speaker 4: The Union of Swedish Arctics made us survey where Swedish

217
00:12:46,519 --> 00:12:51,720
articts live and overwhelmingly they live in classical architecture, and

218
00:12:51,759 --> 00:12:54,720
they was to work in classical buildings and then they

219
00:12:54,759 --> 00:12:57,879
make modernists for everyone else. And it's probably saying if

220
00:12:57,919 --> 00:13:00,279
you would look up where all these modernist architects live,

221
00:13:00,759 --> 00:13:01,960
you will see the same pattern.

222
00:13:03,519 --> 00:13:05,879
Speaker 1: And so tell us a bit about also city planning,

223
00:13:05,919 --> 00:13:09,639
because we tend to think about architecture at the outset,

224
00:13:09,720 --> 00:13:12,279
because that's our most immediate reference. You know, you see

225
00:13:12,279 --> 00:13:15,600
a building, you kind of see the but it seems

226
00:13:15,799 --> 00:13:18,039
you know what's exciting about what you're doing. And also

227
00:13:18,039 --> 00:13:20,039
with Andrew, what you've been doing, you know, for for

228
00:13:20,159 --> 00:13:23,480
decades is you're not just involved in building, but also

229
00:13:23,559 --> 00:13:27,679
thinking about the environment, thinking about city planning as an

230
00:13:27,720 --> 00:13:28,519
extension of.

231
00:13:28,480 --> 00:13:29,600
Speaker 3: The architectural idea.

232
00:13:29,679 --> 00:13:31,799
Speaker 1: So maybe Michael, if you want to start us on that,

233
00:13:31,879 --> 00:13:33,840
and then Andrew, I love to hear from you as well.

234
00:13:34,120 --> 00:13:38,399
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, apartmently, first of all, you know, when building

235
00:13:38,480 --> 00:13:43,120
sick this is we're talking about apartments mostly, but townhouses

236
00:13:43,159 --> 00:13:46,759
of course as well. Apartment living is not very attractive

237
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:49,919
in the angler world as I understood it, and the

238
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:52,519
reason for this, and I may be totally wrong, this

239
00:13:52,600 --> 00:13:56,279
is just my outside perspective is because you traditionally, except

240
00:13:56,320 --> 00:13:58,799
for a few places maybe in California, you don't have

241
00:13:59,519 --> 00:14:02,799
what you call it quote your urbanism. You have a

242
00:14:03,639 --> 00:14:06,159
green space in the middle and the building you know,

243
00:14:06,279 --> 00:14:11,240
and rops it, so you don't get greener you know,

244
00:14:11,440 --> 00:14:15,480
just have massive blocks. So that makes that you get

245
00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:19,799
very uneven density in the US. It either gets you know,

246
00:14:19,919 --> 00:14:24,639
townhouses or revealas or high rises. You don't get gentle

247
00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:31,000
density like three to six story buildings that are mixed

248
00:14:31,120 --> 00:14:34,240
use and that are so attractive to live in that

249
00:14:34,360 --> 00:14:36,600
even upper middle class want to live in them, like

250
00:14:36,639 --> 00:14:39,720
in Europe I would say continental Europe.

251
00:14:39,759 --> 00:14:44,120
Speaker 2: Then, so that's that's a problem.

252
00:14:44,159 --> 00:14:46,519
Speaker 4: But you have Now there is a woman in Chicago

253
00:14:47,600 --> 00:14:49,840
that does really, really good you should have as a

254
00:14:49,879 --> 00:14:54,399
guest sometime, really good advocacy for quote your urbanism in

255
00:14:54,440 --> 00:14:59,240
the US, just because I think and she thinks as well,

256
00:14:59,679 --> 00:15:02,960
it's only function a way to make it more attractive

257
00:15:03,039 --> 00:15:05,919
for middle class people in the United States in the

258
00:15:05,960 --> 00:15:10,600
angler world to live in apartment buildings because if you

259
00:15:10,639 --> 00:15:12,440
have a family, of course you want the kids to

260
00:15:12,480 --> 00:15:15,840
have some kind of greenery and in the court yard

261
00:15:15,879 --> 00:15:18,200
you have protected private greenery.

262
00:15:20,240 --> 00:15:22,039
Speaker 2: So yeah, so.

263
00:15:22,399 --> 00:15:24,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you also have windows on both sides

264
00:15:24,559 --> 00:15:27,399
of the apartment, which is one of the problems of apartment.

265
00:15:28,559 --> 00:15:30,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have windows.

266
00:15:30,519 --> 00:15:34,480
Speaker 1: What about like the spatial argument, because there's people I

267
00:15:34,480 --> 00:15:37,440
guess will make an economic argument and say that, you know,

268
00:15:37,440 --> 00:15:39,720
it's it's more cost effective to build a high rise

269
00:15:40,039 --> 00:15:42,759
or to build the condos that you take up all

270
00:15:42,759 --> 00:15:46,679
that space. Because you know, there's the density argument are here.

271
00:15:46,799 --> 00:15:50,159
Our city has agreed to a certain density, you know,

272
00:15:50,240 --> 00:15:53,799
for environmental reason and for all these reasons. So because

273
00:15:53,799 --> 00:15:55,440
of it, they're kind of in trouble, like they have

274
00:15:55,559 --> 00:15:58,480
to build these things that have more density in order

275
00:15:58,519 --> 00:16:01,000
to justify their requirement.

276
00:16:01,519 --> 00:16:03,600
Speaker 4: That's a good thing with city planning that it can

277
00:16:03,600 --> 00:16:05,879
be very political. I don't know how it works in

278
00:16:05,879 --> 00:16:08,320
the US, but in Sweden the politicians have the last

279
00:16:08,360 --> 00:16:11,919
world so we can choose the exact amount of density

280
00:16:11,960 --> 00:16:14,480
that we want and there is no goal of having

281
00:16:14,559 --> 00:16:18,000
maximum density. What you want is attractive and livable density.

282
00:16:18,039 --> 00:16:20,960
You want gentle density. You don't want tower blocks with

283
00:16:21,039 --> 00:16:23,080
hundreds of people that live like ants and no one

284
00:16:23,120 --> 00:16:27,480
knows everyone. You want create community spaces and the courtyard.

285
00:16:27,559 --> 00:16:30,799
Urbanism isn't very much. You have not too much density

286
00:16:30,840 --> 00:16:32,799
and not too bitter density. And you also have an

287
00:16:32,879 --> 00:16:36,919
enclosed space where you meet your neighbors because you know

288
00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:41,960
in this closed space the courtyard there it's a.

289
00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:43,279
Speaker 2: Close space, so it's not an open space for the public.

290
00:16:43,639 --> 00:16:46,039
Speaker 4: Everyone in the courtyard is are the people that live

291
00:16:46,600 --> 00:16:48,639
around the quarter and in the buildings around the courtyard

292
00:16:49,200 --> 00:16:51,960
or their friends. So there you have a lot of

293
00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:57,120
social activities. You have barbequ's birthday celebrations as such. And

294
00:16:57,480 --> 00:17:01,399
the balconies are centered towers quart up, not towers the street,

295
00:17:02,159 --> 00:17:04,440
so people sit on their balcony towers. You also get

296
00:17:04,440 --> 00:17:07,759
a lot of watchful eyes. I would say that you

297
00:17:07,759 --> 00:17:10,839
have architecture of community. You create community if having this

298
00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:14,079
type of a fixed the amount of people not to

299
00:17:14,200 --> 00:17:16,240
man and not to few, and you meet the same

300
00:17:16,279 --> 00:17:18,400
people every day. You don't need to be your friends,

301
00:17:19,519 --> 00:17:21,839
but you see them enough so it becomes, you know,

302
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:24,200
natural to have conversations as such.

303
00:17:24,960 --> 00:17:27,519
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know.

304
00:17:27,559 --> 00:17:34,400
Speaker 5: You also you also get the highest density with midwised development. Curiously,

305
00:17:35,359 --> 00:17:39,880
urban cores that have high eyes, like skyscraper building heights,

306
00:17:40,200 --> 00:17:42,640
they actually don't get more density for that because they

307
00:17:42,680 --> 00:17:45,480
need a lot of space between those skyscrapers. They need

308
00:17:45,599 --> 00:17:50,119
very wide roads for all the traffic and emergency vehicles

309
00:17:50,119 --> 00:17:52,039
that have to access them. They need a lot of

310
00:17:52,079 --> 00:17:56,480
space for all the scaffolding and so forth to build them.

311
00:17:57,200 --> 00:18:01,799
So like when New York City went from mid rise

312
00:18:01,880 --> 00:18:05,279
development in the nineteenth century to skyscraper development in the

313
00:18:05,279 --> 00:18:08,960
twentieth century, it did not actually gain any density for that.

314
00:18:09,200 --> 00:18:11,640
In fact, you usually lose density when you see that

315
00:18:11,839 --> 00:18:15,960
transition because everything's going to office space and to you know,

316
00:18:16,640 --> 00:18:20,200
giant penthouse apartments for the super rich, you know, old

317
00:18:20,200 --> 00:18:22,599
the dark apartments that nobody really lives in that are

318
00:18:22,640 --> 00:18:26,559
just investment property. Is in regular people can't even afford

319
00:18:26,559 --> 00:18:29,160
to live downtown and wouldn't really want to because it

320
00:18:29,240 --> 00:18:34,559
becomes a you know, an inhospitable, wind swept place. Yeah,

321
00:18:34,599 --> 00:18:38,319
so it's true. It's true that mid rise urban cores

322
00:18:38,599 --> 00:18:42,200
have the highest living density, but even that's higher than

323
00:18:42,200 --> 00:18:44,839
we really need. You know, in America, most new development

324
00:18:44,920 --> 00:18:48,400
is not urban at all. It's suburban's ball, which is

325
00:18:48,880 --> 00:18:53,480
very low density single family houses, or if it's apartment buildings,

326
00:18:53,480 --> 00:18:56,079
it's still low density because they have huge parking lots

327
00:18:56,119 --> 00:19:01,799
in between them. Yeah, I was lucky enough to grow

328
00:19:01,880 --> 00:19:05,119
up in one of the few American cities that has

329
00:19:05,200 --> 00:19:11,839
courtyard apartments, Brookline, Massachusetts. It's a beautiful Victorian garden suburb

330
00:19:11,960 --> 00:19:17,240
town of Boston that's a mixture of Victorian single family houses,

331
00:19:17,319 --> 00:19:22,559
attached townhouses, and courtyard apartment buildings that were typically three

332
00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:26,680
or four stories tall. And everybody of every class you

333
00:19:26,720 --> 00:19:29,240
know back then lived or mixed together in this town,

334
00:19:29,240 --> 00:19:33,319
and everybody could walk to corner stores. It was it

335
00:19:33,359 --> 00:19:35,400
was kind of an urban paradise, and there was very

336
00:19:35,400 --> 00:19:38,720
little traffic because of it, and it was very igh density,

337
00:19:40,359 --> 00:19:46,559
so we could really the fight here is increase in

338
00:19:46,640 --> 00:19:52,400
density from suburban density to sort of traditional urban mixed

339
00:19:52,480 --> 00:19:56,759
use density. In America, we have loads of land. There's

340
00:19:56,799 --> 00:19:59,960
no need for people to be building you know, Manhattan

341
00:20:00,200 --> 00:20:05,920
kind of urban core density to house or population. Frankly,

342
00:20:05,960 --> 00:20:09,839
in Europe does not either, because Europe doesn't even have

343
00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:13,799
a replacement birth rate. No, that's not exactly, there's not

344
00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:17,000
there's not a need for new housing in Europe, except

345
00:20:17,160 --> 00:20:19,880
in so far as there's you know, sort of runaway

346
00:20:19,920 --> 00:20:24,640
immigration and need to house you know, foreigners. That's that's

347
00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:27,480
a political problem of its own creation, right exactly.

348
00:20:29,359 --> 00:20:30,119
Speaker 3: And so the.

349
00:20:31,759 --> 00:20:34,000
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so difficult because when I mean, obviously

350
00:20:34,039 --> 00:20:35,599
I'm very convinced by your argument.

351
00:20:35,759 --> 00:20:39,799
Speaker 3: And so what is driving the madness?

352
00:20:39,799 --> 00:20:42,079
Speaker 1: Like what is driving because one of the things that

353
00:20:42,119 --> 00:20:45,359
I get the sense because it's not just about having

354
00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:48,440
courtyard building for example, like one of the problems of

355
00:20:48,640 --> 00:20:52,240
urban sprawl, of a suburban sprawl especially, is the kind

356
00:20:52,279 --> 00:20:56,240
of specialization of space where you have you have highways,

357
00:20:56,559 --> 00:21:00,559
and then highways connect huge shopping centers to like huge

358
00:21:00,640 --> 00:21:04,799
living areas, and there's this kind of disintegration of space. Right,

359
00:21:04,839 --> 00:21:07,799
people take their car, they drive forty five minutes to work,

360
00:21:07,839 --> 00:21:10,160
then they drive forty five minutes home, and there's all

361
00:21:10,200 --> 00:21:13,640
this kind of fragmentation. You know, is there is there

362
00:21:13,640 --> 00:21:16,440
a way to discuss because Andrew, you were involved in

363
00:21:16,519 --> 00:21:20,359
the building of of Ion, which was a very kind

364
00:21:20,359 --> 00:21:25,279
of experimental new urbanist project near Charleston where they tried

365
00:21:25,319 --> 00:21:28,359
to recreate this sense of you know, like a little

366
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:32,079
market with housing and a few churches, this sense of

367
00:21:31,559 --> 00:21:34,519
a of a center of a city center, and and

368
00:21:34,519 --> 00:21:37,920
and it's been very successful. Like obviously it made the

369
00:21:37,960 --> 00:21:41,720
prices of those buildings like just skyrocket, Uh, and so

370
00:21:42,599 --> 00:21:46,000
you know, is it possible to recapture that today there

371
00:21:46,039 --> 00:21:48,519
is a five minute city, like there's there's that people

372
00:21:48,559 --> 00:21:51,079
are talking about that. So maybe I'd like to hear

373
00:21:51,119 --> 00:21:55,160
your opinions on the basic problem of urban planning right now.

374
00:21:56,000 --> 00:22:05,519
Speaker 5: Well, well, yeah, well I think that's that's mostly true, Michael.

375
00:22:05,559 --> 00:22:06,039
Speaker 3: I mean in.

376
00:22:07,920 --> 00:22:10,519
Speaker 5: America, I would say, you know, it's been proven that

377
00:22:10,599 --> 00:22:16,720
new urbanist developments are politically popular, good for real estate value,

378
00:22:16,799 --> 00:22:20,079
good for the developer's bottom line. The things that stand

379
00:22:20,119 --> 00:22:27,279
in the way of it bad zoning. You know, these

380
00:22:27,359 --> 00:22:31,240
kinds of developments are typically in suburbs of older cities,

381
00:22:31,279 --> 00:22:36,039
and suburbs tend to have low density zoning, and they

382
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:38,839
tend to still be sort of holding on to this

383
00:22:38,839 --> 00:22:43,720
this fear from the nineteen sixties that high density means

384
00:22:43,759 --> 00:22:47,440
poor people and chaos, and it still tends to be

385
00:22:47,640 --> 00:22:51,440
old people who are you know, sitting on town councils

386
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:54,559
in charge of zoning and they just you know, they

387
00:22:54,759 --> 00:22:57,519
like their ranch house on a three acre lot, and

388
00:22:57,559 --> 00:22:59,880
they just can't picture why anyone would want to live

389
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:03,359
in a high density, mixed use kind of neighborhood because

390
00:23:03,359 --> 00:23:06,200
they remember when they you know, left that kind of

391
00:23:06,279 --> 00:23:12,279
neighborhood in nineteen sixty five. Yeah, so that's that's a

392
00:23:12,279 --> 00:23:16,440
big part of the problem is outdated zoning. Another big

393
00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:21,240
part of the problem is just regulatory regulatory stuff. You know,

394
00:23:22,319 --> 00:23:31,440
rules from traffic highway departments, traffic departments, fire departments, rules

395
00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:35,640
that require really wide roads, really easy vehic you know, access,

396
00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:42,319
really high parking to dwelling unit ratios. Yeah, these bad

397
00:23:42,400 --> 00:23:47,160
regulations make it really difficult to do urban urban density

398
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:52,640
or urban type walkable design. And then another big hindrance

399
00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:57,519
is is a talent deficit among the designers. You know,

400
00:23:57,559 --> 00:24:02,279
there's not that many classical architects or traditionalist urban planners

401
00:24:02,839 --> 00:24:08,799
or traditionalist traffic engineers to go around. So a developer

402
00:24:08,839 --> 00:24:11,480
who wants to build something that looks like a traditional

403
00:24:11,519 --> 00:24:15,240
town may have a really hard time finding local consultants

404
00:24:15,559 --> 00:24:18,200
who have the skills of the knowledge to do that.

405
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:22,400
They might they might find people who say they can

406
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:25,480
do it, but the results are often very poor because

407
00:24:25,519 --> 00:24:31,559
there are people who are trained at modernistic design schools. Yeah,

408
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:32,720
that's been my observation.

409
00:24:34,359 --> 00:24:35,200
Speaker 3: Rethink Michael.

410
00:24:35,720 --> 00:24:37,880
Speaker 4: I completely agree with everything he says, because we are

411
00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:40,359
having that problem now in Sweden. Real live so now

412
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:44,039
we have a political will for more traditional projects. The

413
00:24:44,079 --> 00:24:47,160
problem is that we have we have in a count

414
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:50,480
of ten million, we have five classical artiticsts, so we

415
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:54,680
really you know, they can't do a lot the works.

416
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:59,920
So it is you know, the sorry for butchering English.

417
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:02,799
I think you call it ox Sam's razor. You know,

418
00:25:02,839 --> 00:25:05,519
if you if you deep dive in, everything's about the

419
00:25:05,559 --> 00:25:09,319
ideology that they teach at school. In architecture schools, most

420
00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:14,240
architecture schools, percent of all architecture schools, they will not

421
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:19,920
teach anything about classical addition, classical city planning, classical architecture.

422
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:22,799
They will label it some kind of history lesson. But

423
00:25:22,839 --> 00:25:26,480
it's not so all the you know, all the things

424
00:25:26,519 --> 00:25:29,720
that we appreciate about the classical city and the classical

425
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,480
city planning or the cities that we visit. You know,

426
00:25:32,519 --> 00:25:36,319
when your tourist in Savannah or in in Charleston, it's

427
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:39,440
not by accident that they are so good. Everything's very

428
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:44,759
well planned. So you need to know these things to

429
00:25:44,839 --> 00:25:48,519
be able to do them. And because overwhelming majority of

430
00:25:48,559 --> 00:25:51,759
our architects are not educating this, they are even ideologically

431
00:25:51,880 --> 00:25:56,519
against to learn. You know, they have been ideologically conditioned

432
00:25:57,079 --> 00:26:00,279
to never look past, never look to the past, because

433
00:26:00,319 --> 00:26:02,279
the past was you know, we already talked about the

434
00:26:02,319 --> 00:26:06,000
classicist racist slavery. You know, they will label it in

435
00:26:06,039 --> 00:26:09,319
our way, and if something is you know, labeled that way,

436
00:26:09,759 --> 00:26:12,799
it makes people less curious to open a book because

437
00:26:12,799 --> 00:26:16,640
why should I learn from these racist slavery owning.

438
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:17,319
Speaker 2: Et cetera, et cetera.

439
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:21,039
Speaker 4: So everything starts and begins at architecto school because all

440
00:26:21,079 --> 00:26:23,839
these regulations that are bad, of course they are very bad,

441
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:27,440
but they are not written in Stolle. If all architects

442
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:31,440
were educated classical, you could have meaningful lobbing to politicians

443
00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:32,319
and we could.

444
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:33,720
Speaker 2: Change the regulations.

445
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:38,440
Speaker 4: But you know, I would say that most architects don't

446
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,759
know what regulations that should be changed make good city planning.

447
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:46,400
So that's the basic problem. So so you will always

448
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:48,799
come back to that. You know, people want to blame

449
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:53,440
capitalism or you know, capitalism built you know, one hundred

450
00:26:53,519 --> 00:26:55,640
years ago the world was more capitalistic and it built

451
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:58,960
marvelous cities. So that hasn't changed. The only thing that

452
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:02,160
changed is the or the texture profession that changed, and

453
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:04,400
then suddenly the more whole world became ugly.

454
00:27:06,119 --> 00:27:08,519
Speaker 1: I've had so many it's so weird, Like I've had

455
00:27:08,599 --> 00:27:12,240
so many architects come up to me in conferences at

456
00:27:12,519 --> 00:27:13,680
different speaking events.

457
00:27:14,039 --> 00:27:16,400
Speaker 3: They come up to me in this kind.

458
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:20,400
Speaker 1: Of spirit of desperation, as if they feel lost, you know,

459
00:27:20,519 --> 00:27:25,559
they they have this desire to connect with ancient wisdom,

460
00:27:25,599 --> 00:27:27,839
but they feel as if there's no room for them,

461
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,599
and that there's no like you said, there's even a

462
00:27:30,599 --> 00:27:33,599
difficulty in learning how to do it, like it's even

463
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:36,440
finding the skills, it's difficult. And so it feels like

464
00:27:36,519 --> 00:27:40,920
the people are there, right, that the people who desire

465
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:43,559
to learn these skills exist, and that they're kind of

466
00:27:43,599 --> 00:27:47,359
they feel disconnected and alone, And so is there an

467
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:49,519
option for them? Like, is there is there a place

468
00:27:49,799 --> 00:27:51,920
that they can go? Is there groups that they can

469
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:55,359
contact so that they can at least form networks, you know,

470
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:57,799
in order to have some kind of strength.

471
00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:01,079
Speaker 4: Yes, they count. First of all, there's never been more

472
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:03,720
talent in the world than there is today. The problem

473
00:28:03,799 --> 00:28:06,759
is that all this talent is directed wrongly. So we

474
00:28:06,839 --> 00:28:10,640
probably have, you know, at least a million potential michel

475
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:13,160
Anulos in the world, but none of them are directed

476
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,839
to do author architecture. They probably do computer game graphics

477
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:21,839
or something. So's it's we have to have talent. We

478
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:25,000
have talent. You know, I say that number of people

479
00:28:25,039 --> 00:28:26,680
in the world that have accessed to, you know, higher

480
00:28:26,759 --> 00:28:30,200
education is very very large today compared to one hundred

481
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:35,319
years ago. But they're just directed wrong. There are places,

482
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:37,000
there are a few places. There are a few places

483
00:28:37,039 --> 00:28:39,599
in the US. You have a Notre Dame University where

484
00:28:39,599 --> 00:28:42,079
you can and now I think there is at least

485
00:28:42,119 --> 00:28:44,480
four or five colleges where you can starty to become

486
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:48,680
a Classicologitecht. And there's of course social media in the Internet,

487
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:52,200
so there's a lot of you know, different groups on Facebook,

488
00:28:52,279 --> 00:28:57,519
on Instagram, on Twitter, on red Ditch, every political spectrum,

489
00:28:57,519 --> 00:29:01,039
you know, would you prefer them? And you can find

490
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:04,599
like minded of course, you know, there is no really

491
00:29:04,599 --> 00:29:07,200
there is an English speaking architectu uprising, but there is

492
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:11,960
no specific US architecture rising. There is a small Canadian uprising,

493
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:14,880
but with the US it's it's hard to begin. Because

494
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:17,599
the US is a continent. You would need as with Europe,

495
00:29:17,599 --> 00:29:20,160
you would need one for every each and every state,

496
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,799
just for people to connect with like minded and there

497
00:29:24,119 --> 00:29:26,640
you find each other and there you hear you know

498
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:29,839
what options there are. I know in Europe, I get connected.

499
00:29:29,839 --> 00:29:33,359
I get a lot of students reach out to me

500
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,079
and I direct them to the study of options that

501
00:29:36,119 --> 00:29:38,720
there are. You know, the summer schools now you can

502
00:29:38,759 --> 00:29:40,720
do a monster and a doctor's degree in class glog

503
00:29:40,799 --> 00:29:44,799
texture in Trondain's University in Norway. And I think almost

504
00:29:44,839 --> 00:29:47,880
every European country now has a summer school. And they're

505
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:51,799
also talking now about creating a permanent class CLASSI texture

506
00:29:51,839 --> 00:29:53,359
education in Paris.

507
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:54,599
Speaker 2: So there are.

508
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:57,119
Speaker 4: Things going on now, but most important is that you

509
00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:00,440
just connect with like minded because then you do self

510
00:30:00,440 --> 00:30:03,160
study a lot of you can you can study yourself

511
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:05,680
and then of course you can take contact with people

512
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:10,039
like Andrew and you can do have an exchange. Well

513
00:30:10,079 --> 00:30:13,000
what books can I read? Where can I learn the simpleness?

514
00:30:13,279 --> 00:30:15,839
How can I learn the craftmanships? What students order to

515
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:17,440
work with these kinds of things.

516
00:30:18,079 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 1: Hmm, Andrew, you you're in the US, you've seen I mean,

517
00:30:22,039 --> 00:30:24,599
it seems like there is some change in theory. Trump

518
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:28,799
was supposed to pass this classical architecture bill for these

519
00:30:28,839 --> 00:30:31,359
federal buildings, and so it feels like there's that leads

520
00:30:31,359 --> 00:30:32,759
a little bit of wind in the sales.

521
00:30:32,799 --> 00:30:34,079
Speaker 3: Maybe you can tell us yes.

522
00:30:34,519 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 2: Yes, there is.

523
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 5: You know, my my experience is that outside of academia,

524
00:30:41,039 --> 00:30:46,640
outside the university, is the modernist ideology no longer has

525
00:30:46,799 --> 00:30:53,839
very much of a hold on architecture. I most most

526
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:58,440
architects that I have interacted with who are working on

527
00:30:59,359 --> 00:31:03,839
you know, projects around the US, most of them are

528
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:08,920
pretty willing to do classical architecture in theory. They just

529
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:12,640
don't really know how to do it well. Most developers

530
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:15,759
would prefer to do it in theory, but they're a

531
00:31:15,759 --> 00:31:19,400
little They know from experience that it doesn't usually come

532
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:24,400
out very well and that it's kind of complicated finding

533
00:31:24,599 --> 00:31:26,680
finding all the right people to get it done well.

534
00:31:27,559 --> 00:31:29,240
And so there's a lot of sort of you know,

535
00:31:29,559 --> 00:31:37,480
path of least resistance inertia that's perpetuating modernism. My personal

536
00:31:37,519 --> 00:31:42,079
feeling is that a really big problem is that because

537
00:31:42,119 --> 00:31:45,720
we've had you know, one hundred years now where architecture

538
00:31:45,759 --> 00:31:50,359
schooling is treated as as a technical scientific field in

539
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:55,240
to engineering, it's ended up being a field in which

540
00:31:55,279 --> 00:32:00,160
people with a sort of engineer's mindset, the a the

541
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:01,960
people who are attracted to the field, those are the

542
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:07,960
people who excel in architecture jobs, because architecture is not

543
00:32:08,039 --> 00:32:10,759
a very artistic discipline for the most part. Now, it's

544
00:32:10,839 --> 00:32:15,799
mostly a matter of understanding immensely complicated building codes, understanding

545
00:32:15,799 --> 00:32:22,440
immensely complicated mechanical systems, dealing with banks, dealing with money,

546
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:27,640
dealing with business stuff, keeping on schedule. It's all.

547
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:27,880
Speaker 1: You know.

548
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 5: The kind of guys who have you know, you know,

549
00:32:31,359 --> 00:32:34,880
masters of Business administration degree is actually do pretty well

550
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,359
in the architecture field. Then they know how to keep

551
00:32:38,559 --> 00:32:41,039
you know, money correctly categorized, They know how to keep

552
00:32:41,079 --> 00:32:43,599
things flowing, they know how to communicate with the lawyers.

553
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:49,720
And that's mostly what architects do. And so I often,

554
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:53,279
I often interact with architecture firms. Sometimes they're firms that

555
00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:56,359
are have been asked to collaborate with me on projects

556
00:32:56,359 --> 00:32:58,880
where the developer would like a more classical result in

557
00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:04,160
the project. And often the guys in these firms, you know,

558
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,440
they've really gotten over the ideology stuff. They're totally on

559
00:33:07,519 --> 00:33:11,200
board with new urbanism and you know, new classicism in

560
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:14,319
the theory, but they have no artistic skills with which

561
00:33:14,359 --> 00:33:17,279
to do it. They might they might stick some classical

562
00:33:17,319 --> 00:33:19,799
columns on the building, but they just don't. They don't

563
00:33:19,799 --> 00:33:22,359
have they don't have the eyes to see that their

564
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:27,000
work just is not right. And and when I tell

565
00:33:27,039 --> 00:33:29,079
them it's not right, here's how you make it right,

566
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:34,000
they get kind of defensive because they think classical architecture

567
00:33:34,039 --> 00:33:36,359
should be like a couple of rules you follow, like

568
00:33:36,359 --> 00:33:37,440
like following.

569
00:33:37,079 --> 00:33:40,319
Speaker 3: The building code. But it's not. It's art.

570
00:33:40,519 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 5: And art art can be partially reduced to rules, but

571
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:48,640
not entirely. And you know, guys who just don't have

572
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:54,119
an artistic temperament aren't going to be able to do it. So, yeah,

573
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:57,400
we really need to find a way. A long term

574
00:33:57,480 --> 00:33:59,880
solution to this is going to involve finding a way

575
00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:05,480
to get people with artistic temperaments into architecture. And it's

576
00:34:05,559 --> 00:34:07,759
not going to be by making them, you know, learn

577
00:34:07,799 --> 00:34:10,000
all the building codes and deal with all the bureaucracy,

578
00:34:10,039 --> 00:34:12,880
because people of an artistic temperament don't do well with that.

579
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:16,280
It's going to have to be a system where like

580
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:18,840
there's some people in charge of the artistic part of

581
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:21,760
architecture and other people in charge of the technical part,

582
00:34:22,199 --> 00:34:24,360
and figure out a way for those types of people

583
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:25,840
to collaborate productively.

584
00:34:26,679 --> 00:34:29,079
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are two I have two things that pop

585
00:34:29,159 --> 00:34:32,000
up in my mind when listening to you. One is

586
00:34:32,639 --> 00:34:36,800
that most of the architecture that we see is just horrible,

587
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:39,119
Like it's just boring and horrible and just.

588
00:34:39,639 --> 00:34:42,119
Speaker 3: And then what they seem to exist is a.

589
00:34:42,079 --> 00:34:47,679
Speaker 1: Few flagship, like wild projects that always kind of push

590
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:53,239
towards this futuristic image of the skyscraper or this really

591
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:56,960
deconstructed image of the building. And those are the ones,

592
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:00,280
those are the architecture projects that get the attention. So

593
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:02,599
you know, Google ham Bilbao and all of these, or

594
00:35:02,599 --> 00:35:05,519
the Shard or all of these kind of wild, crazy

595
00:35:05,559 --> 00:35:09,000
projects that that that get the attention. So those look

596
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:13,280
to people, they that's what creativity looks like. That's creative.

597
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:15,920
That's that's the artistic part. Like look at all this

598
00:35:16,079 --> 00:35:21,440
really creative architecture. That's one like And the other problem is,

599
00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:26,559
like you said that most of the buildings that try

600
00:35:26,599 --> 00:35:30,760
to look classical today they look like caricatures. And and

601
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:33,360
it's hard because you go into these sometimes you go

602
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:37,559
into these neighborhoods of mansions, right, these mansion neighborhoods, and

603
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:41,400
although the buildings are trying to look like classical, they're

604
00:35:41,679 --> 00:35:46,079
just hard to look at because they look like a joke.

605
00:35:46,119 --> 00:35:48,679
They look like someone took a classical building and made

606
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:50,960
a joke with it. And this is a this is

607
00:35:51,039 --> 00:35:54,639
like a this is millions of dollars in these buildings.

608
00:35:54,679 --> 00:35:57,360
Speaker 3: So I don't know what you think about those problems.

609
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:01,760
Speaker 2: Let's say, well, the two separate problems.

610
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:05,719
Speaker 4: How do you say that the buildings with strained shape

611
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:10,280
is their result of the modernist mindset, because you know,

612
00:36:10,519 --> 00:36:13,440
it began with pure rational buildings. You know that the

613
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:15,639
sixties billions, the seventies building you know, the one that

614
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:18,760
you see in Washington, those that the brutalist one that

615
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:23,000
people hate. But now it mutated to you know, narcissism.

616
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:25,920
So the only thing that matters, that is the promote

617
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:30,840
the n architecture education and among modernist architects is novelty.

618
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:32,880
It doesn't matter if the building is good, it doesn't

619
00:36:32,880 --> 00:36:34,800
matter if people like it, doesn't matter if it's beautiful,

620
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:36,039
it doesn't matter if it's functional.

621
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 2: The only thing is novelty. So how to create this novelty.

622
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:42,800
Speaker 4: They use computer programs because they can instantly calculate so

623
00:36:42,840 --> 00:36:44,760
the building, you know, won't fall down, and then we

624
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:47,280
can create all these strange shapes and then they win

625
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:50,000
prices because no one has ever done this before. So

626
00:36:50,079 --> 00:36:52,800
that's the crazy buildings, when architects get a free hand,

627
00:36:53,599 --> 00:36:57,440
it's based on you know, this insane ideology. The other

628
00:36:57,559 --> 00:37:00,800
the boring ones that we very boring boxes, they are

629
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:04,280
also because of modernism. They are because you know, when

630
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:11,440
developers in in every field, when you profit maximize, you

631
00:37:11,559 --> 00:37:13,280
do do it in two ways.

632
00:37:13,599 --> 00:37:14,880
Speaker 2: One is to cut costs.

633
00:37:15,159 --> 00:37:17,840
Speaker 4: The other is to add a value that people are

634
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:21,119
ready to pay more for. If we take you know,

635
00:37:21,559 --> 00:37:24,239
Apple smartphones, they cost one hundred dollars to produce, and

636
00:37:24,280 --> 00:37:26,639
people pay one thousand or fifteen hundred dollars for it

637
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:29,480
because it has a value that people are ready to

638
00:37:29,519 --> 00:37:33,320
pay more for. In architecture, very few people are ready

639
00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:36,440
to pay more for modernist architecture. So the only way

640
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:40,239
for developers to profit maximize is to cut costs. Why

641
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:43,119
the architects are uprising, we can show so many projects,

642
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:47,039
is because those developers that try class C architects here

643
00:37:47,039 --> 00:37:50,400
in Sweden, in Germany and France everywhere, they notice, oh,

644
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:54,440
it's profit maximizing to build this way. Maybe we can

645
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:56,840
cut cost, but also let's say we add let's say

646
00:37:56,880 --> 00:37:59,320
five percent cost. Then we can sell it for fifteen

647
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,840
percent more So the way to profit maximize is different

648
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:05,719
in the classical market than a modernist market. But with

649
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:08,719
that said, you can make a very cheap classical building

650
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:11,480
that's very beautiful because the classical is not in the materials,

651
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:14,840
it's not in the ornament, it's in the facade division.

652
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:15,320
Speaker 3: You have this.

653
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:20,039
Speaker 4: If I should explain classical beauty, Andrew will probably angry

654
00:38:20,039 --> 00:38:23,360
at Mehannah. And now it's from an outside, non artitic view,

655
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:27,199
So is it. Basically you have this three part facade

656
00:38:27,199 --> 00:38:31,480
division of almost every classical building. You have a base

657
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:34,880
with a baseline, then you have a mid section, and

658
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:38,119
then you have a roof section. And this three part

659
00:38:38,159 --> 00:38:40,840
division is like the human body. If you go out

660
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:42,440
and look at an old even if you can look

661
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:44,400
at a classical skyscraper in New York and they will

662
00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:47,800
have the same division. You know of the building. So

663
00:38:47,840 --> 00:38:51,440
the base is a bit, it's the highest part because

664
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:54,639
psychologically it makes us feel safe. Then you have the

665
00:38:54,679 --> 00:38:57,199
mid section and the roof section is the smallest part.

666
00:38:58,119 --> 00:39:01,239
So then instantly our brain can read this building and

667
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:05,480
understand this building. And because the baseline is the highest line,

668
00:39:06,119 --> 00:39:08,199
then it feeds that the building is stable, it will

669
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:11,000
not fall upon us, so our mind's relax of it.

670
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:15,239
The second part of classical beauty is how you place

671
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:19,639
the windows. So you don't have one set of windows,

672
00:39:19,679 --> 00:39:22,000
one row of windows like you see on the sixties building,

673
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:26,079
or like random like you see now or more contemporary buildings.

674
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:31,079
You have how to say, symmetry pairs. You have part symmetries,

675
00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:34,760
so you have many different symmetries on the facade. So

676
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:37,440
what you get is a building that is instantly readable

677
00:39:37,480 --> 00:39:40,480
for our mind, so you relax at the same times.

678
00:39:40,519 --> 00:39:44,599
It's the gentle stimulation with these part symmetris, not one

679
00:39:44,639 --> 00:39:48,239
symmetry on the facade, but parts symmetries. So here you

680
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:51,800
have the if I would say, the key for why

681
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:55,800
we find classical architecture beautiful, if we just reduce remove

682
00:39:55,840 --> 00:39:59,440
all symbols or ornamental or materials, it would be this

683
00:40:00,159 --> 00:40:01,800
ability and the gentle stimulation.

684
00:40:02,599 --> 00:40:05,760
Speaker 1: The proportions is what you said proportions as well. Yeah,

685
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:07,480
and you see that. Like I was looking at your

686
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:10,199
Twitter feed, Michael, and it was interesting because you had

687
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,800
several projects. Because when we think of classical architecture, obviously,

688
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:14,679
like you said, we think.

689
00:40:14,519 --> 00:40:15,119
Speaker 3: Of an ornament.

690
00:40:15,199 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 1: We think of of you know, columns with but you

691
00:40:19,599 --> 00:40:23,199
had several buildings that you know, we're quite we're not

692
00:40:23,639 --> 00:40:26,320
didn't look antique and finished like they they had a

693
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:30,280
basic a simple not modern, but like a simple finish.

694
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 3: But because of the proportionality, they still read.

695
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:36,639
Speaker 1: And because of the relationship between symmetry and variation, where

696
00:40:36,639 --> 00:40:39,280
you have love variation, but you also have a sense

697
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:41,840
of symmetry, then you can you feel like you said

698
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:45,840
that you have something that's both really something that's both

699
00:40:46,079 --> 00:40:49,039
relaxing but interesting at the same time, that doesn't doesn't

700
00:40:49,079 --> 00:40:52,079
threaten you, like like it looks like the pieces of

701
00:40:52,119 --> 00:40:55,400
the building are attacking you, uh, you know, uh, but

702
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:58,079
but it's also like it has this kind of solid

703
00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:00,639
and do do you want to comment on this? And

704
00:41:00,679 --> 00:41:02,400
also I still need I still need to comment on

705
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:05,719
the McMansion like problem, like the you know, this kind

706
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:08,519
of fake class that every bad.

707
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:12,440
Speaker 5: It's true that bad Classicism is even worse than modernism

708
00:41:12,519 --> 00:41:20,440
in most cases because because classical architecture does have traditional

709
00:41:20,559 --> 00:41:24,480
order to it, like it's a classical building is very

710
00:41:24,519 --> 00:41:27,840
recognizable how all of its elements are ordered in relation

711
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:32,320
to one another. They are partially answopomorphic. They also they're

712
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:38,320
also fractal. Like the proportioning, the proportioning rules that apply

713
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:40,719
to the whole building tend to apply to the individual

714
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:43,199
parts of a building. You know, the whole building has

715
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:46,039
a base, middle, and top, but an individual column also

716
00:41:46,079 --> 00:41:49,199
has a base, middle, and top. An individual window has

717
00:41:49,199 --> 00:41:51,840
a sail at the bottom and a projecting head molding

718
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:54,639
at the top. So every every part of the building

719
00:41:54,679 --> 00:42:02,440
is like the whole and that that kind of that

720
00:42:02,599 --> 00:42:05,159
kind of order, which which mirrors the sort of order

721
00:42:05,159 --> 00:42:07,960
that we see in natural forms, in trees or mountains

722
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,800
or living things. That kind of order is mostly what

723
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:14,320
makes classical buildings so beautiful. But it also means that

724
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:17,960
a disordered classical building is grotesque looking. You know, it's

725
00:42:18,039 --> 00:42:20,559
like a creature. It's like a creature with two heads

726
00:42:20,679 --> 00:42:23,440
or something, you know, or something with one arm chopped

727
00:42:23,440 --> 00:42:25,960
off or something you know. A a So.

728
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:29,719
Speaker 3: Right, I think what you said is exactly right.

729
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 1: And now that I can picture these these horrible mac

730
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:35,360
mansions in my mind is that one of the things

731
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:38,639
that happens is that they take the trapping, so they'll

732
00:42:38,639 --> 00:42:41,440
be like molding, and you know, there'll be all of

733
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:46,760
this architectural uh, you know, exteriority, but the proportions are wrong,

734
00:42:47,119 --> 00:42:49,199
and so you have to thing with the wrong proportions

735
00:42:49,199 --> 00:42:52,039
that look completely out of scale, and the windows are

736
00:42:52,079 --> 00:42:54,199
completely wild, you know, Like the lady was just like

737
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:55,440
I just want to window there.

738
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 3: I don't care what it does to the building.

739
00:42:57,800 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 1: And then what it and then in the end it

740
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,400
looks like like like a yeah, like someone with too

741
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:03,800
much makeup on something like.

742
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:04,920
Speaker 2: Yeah it could, I mean.

743
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:09,599
Speaker 5: The most common mistake with ignorant classical architecture is that

744
00:43:09,679 --> 00:43:13,079
the columns are too skinny for what they're holding up,

745
00:43:13,519 --> 00:43:15,760
like like you've got a little column with a capital

746
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:17,920
and then there's this big fat beam or this big

747
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:20,199
fat pediment on top of them, you know, and then

748
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:23,119
then it looks like you know, somebody wearing a you know,

749
00:43:23,199 --> 00:43:26,159
a big a big clown head, or you know somebody

750
00:43:26,159 --> 00:43:30,239
with a head too big for the body. Yeah, or

751
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:32,880
you see like some missing element to the moldings. You

752
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:36,159
have like the column and then you have like the cornice,

753
00:43:36,199 --> 00:43:38,679
but there's no entablature in between, so it like looks

754
00:43:38,679 --> 00:43:41,960
like somebody with no neck. It's it's it's a grotesque effect.

755
00:43:42,679 --> 00:43:46,360
The nice thing about Modernist architecture is in its in

756
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:48,920
its lack of order, in its total abstraction.

757
00:43:49,679 --> 00:43:51,480
Speaker 2: It is kind of anything.

758
00:43:51,159 --> 00:43:53,440
Speaker 3: Goes, you know, the building.

759
00:43:53,599 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 5: The building might not have anything appealing about it, but

760
00:43:56,039 --> 00:43:58,639
it might not have anything grotesque about it either, because

761
00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:02,079
it just kind of unrelatable. You don't really have any

762
00:44:02,079 --> 00:44:06,760
emotional reaction to it in many cases, and.

763
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:10,039
Speaker 4: That's the reductive part of it. You know, when modernism

764
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:14,599
has spread all around the world, it reduces everyone to

765
00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:18,840
a global consumer. There's no difference between a skyscraper and Stockholm,

766
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:22,360
one in Bangkok or one in Seattle, no difference at all.

767
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:25,719
You can't see where it is, there's no cultural expression,

768
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:28,119
and it's not even adapted to the climate. So this

769
00:44:28,199 --> 00:44:31,360
is also something that's you know, very important of classical

770
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:35,000
architecture does right, is that it's adapted to the local climate.

771
00:44:35,039 --> 00:44:38,519
And there are millions small details that classic dog They

772
00:44:38,559 --> 00:44:42,320
are found depending on where where where the building is built.

773
00:44:42,400 --> 00:44:46,119
Speaker 2: You know, does it drain much? Does the rain come

774
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:49,280
by wind sideways? So does it come upward?

775
00:44:49,599 --> 00:44:52,760
Speaker 4: You see all kind of these small solutions that are

776
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:56,880
in different places. And you know, when you haven't he

777
00:44:57,119 --> 00:45:00,400
an illiterate architect that does this classical you get a

778
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:03,480
lot of problems as you have with modernist architecture because

779
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:05,880
it's not adapted for climate. And then you get all

780
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:09,239
kinds of things that you didn't know what happened because

781
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:12,119
you never learned, you know, about the tradition.

782
00:45:12,199 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 2: I can give you a very good example.

783
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:15,480
Speaker 4: I live in Sweden where it rains and snows a lot,

784
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:19,480
Yet our modernist artists build flat roofs, so we get

785
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:22,320
building leakage, We get leakage and all water because you know,

786
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:25,639
it creates a pool on top of the floor. For

787
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:28,239
thousands of years, we built, we know, with broken rules.

788
00:45:28,280 --> 00:45:30,239
But suddenly we should be modern and now we build

789
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:31,880
with flat roofs, and now we get all these kind

790
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:36,159
of problems. And you can multiply this a million times

791
00:45:37,039 --> 00:45:40,199
for every country. You know what we lost when we

792
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,000
are abandoned traditional architecture.

793
00:45:42,599 --> 00:45:45,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, I think this is really what you're

794
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:49,239
saying is so powerful because in some ways, what you

795
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:53,719
realize is that modernism and modern architecture it really is

796
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:56,920
an abstraction on human experience, like it's a it's a

797
00:45:57,000 --> 00:46:01,440
deep abstraction. Whereas all of these solutions that our ancestors

798
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:04,000
came up with their you could see that they're evolved

799
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:07,440
with time, like they're just iterations on iterations. You can't

800
00:46:07,519 --> 00:46:12,000
find the person responsible for them. They're almost organically adapted

801
00:46:12,079 --> 00:46:14,519
to the human body. But then, like you said, in

802
00:46:14,559 --> 00:46:19,079
some places actually organically you know, embedded in the landscape.

803
00:46:19,119 --> 00:46:21,800
You know, they they they were developed by the people

804
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:24,679
there to adjust to their to their lifestyle. And of

805
00:46:24,679 --> 00:46:27,079
course you know, doesn't mean that we have to build

806
00:46:27,239 --> 00:46:30,480
like our ancestors, but we to forget, like to just

807
00:46:30,599 --> 00:46:35,400
simply throw all of that almost like Darwinian work that

808
00:46:35,679 --> 00:46:38,400
was done, like to just throw it out and say, okay,

809
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:42,559
now we're just going to create these abstract buildings. Is

810
00:46:43,079 --> 00:46:45,320
crazy that we thought that was a good idea, Like

811
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:50,199
the abstracted human, this international this international human that has

812
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:52,880
no that doesn't have their feet on the ground.

813
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:56,480
Speaker 4: You know, there's no culture, no nothing, no human expression.

814
00:46:56,519 --> 00:46:57,840
It's just a global consumer.

815
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting that it's even more like it's even

816
00:47:03,119 --> 00:47:05,679
more diverse to think this way. It is to say,

817
00:47:05,880 --> 00:47:08,920
you know, it's like I love Chinese architecture. I think

818
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:11,440
it's beautiful, but it hasn't It would be weird if

819
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:14,559
you just prop that down in in.

820
00:47:14,159 --> 00:47:17,239
Speaker 3: In Sweden or you know, in certain places like that.

821
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:21,920
Speaker 1: Every every place has its own beautiful things that they've developed,

822
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:24,039
and so we should we should be able to say, yeah,

823
00:47:24,039 --> 00:47:25,599
that's what we're going to do because that's where we

824
00:47:25,639 --> 00:47:27,880
are and that's the tradition we have. We can also

825
00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:31,760
then appreciate Turkish or Syrian architecture, all the different ones.

826
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:34,679
Speaker 5: For people, For people who have a normal love of

827
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:39,280
their own culture, there's nothing more satisfying than seeing new

828
00:47:39,719 --> 00:47:42,719
new or new buildings being done that is in the

829
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:47,199
tradition specific to their own nation. It's a tremendously satisfying

830
00:47:47,199 --> 00:47:51,480
thing to see when you see that. However, I'm afraid

831
00:47:51,519 --> 00:47:54,519
nowadays it's it's very fashionable to not have a love

832
00:47:54,559 --> 00:47:58,039
with your own culture, you know, among among you know,

833
00:47:58,119 --> 00:48:02,360
among liberal europea, and it's fashionable to despise your own country,

834
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:06,360
to think that your own culture is garbage.

835
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:11,320
Speaker 4: You must different between the populace and our elos. Of course,

836
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:15,880
the elights of Western Europe are totally They are more

837
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:19,280
loyal to each other than the country they represent the whole.

838
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:21,559
That's the horrible situation that Western Europe is in. That

839
00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:25,880
previously the Swedish elits were loyal to Sweden. The French

840
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:28,360
Elogs were loyal to Sweden. Now they are loyal to

841
00:48:28,400 --> 00:48:32,400
each other and not the people that they represent. So yes,

842
00:48:32,559 --> 00:48:35,719
and they are very post national and everything, and that's okay.

843
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:37,800
Speaker 2: Now we go into politics, but I keep it short.

844
00:48:38,079 --> 00:48:40,559
Speaker 4: But that's the funny thing now that we need to

845
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:44,760
you know, we need to put more expenses on our

846
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:49,599
defense in Europe. But money is just one equation. If

847
00:48:49,599 --> 00:48:52,880
you for fifty has told us that nationalism is bad

848
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:56,199
and white men are bad, who's going to defend the country.

849
00:48:56,360 --> 00:48:58,079
Speaker 2: Who's going to volunteer to fight for.

850
00:48:58,079 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 4: Britain or Sweden or France when all these things that

851
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:05,960
you want, you know, you need the young white man,

852
00:49:06,039 --> 00:49:08,679
I would say in Western Europe, if you want a

853
00:49:08,719 --> 00:49:12,039
defense and you have your bashed, your bashed.

854
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:12,360
Speaker 2: Did you have bashed?

855
00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:14,480
Speaker 4: These people not for fifty years, So they are not

856
00:49:14,559 --> 00:49:16,679
you know, they are not raising their hands to to

857
00:49:16,679 --> 00:49:20,639
to defend the content. Yeah, sorry that to never to

858
00:49:20,639 --> 00:49:22,559
want to defend something, you have to be able to

859
00:49:22,599 --> 00:49:23,159
celebrate it.

860
00:49:23,239 --> 00:49:27,360
Speaker 1: You can't defend your homeland, your traditions, your you know

861
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:30,320
everything about it. If you're asked to despise it, then,

862
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:33,199
like you said, it means that ultimately will just be

863
00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:36,840
taken over by whatever. There's no there's no inner glow,

864
00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:40,480
there's no inner uh, there's no inner light. And so

865
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:43,599
but it's it's it's exciting to hear that there is

866
00:49:43,639 --> 00:49:47,239
a bit of this this architectural uprising. In the United States,

867
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:50,760
it's more complicated because it's younger, right, It's the same

868
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:53,559
in Canada as well. One of the things for people

869
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:56,239
who are listening or watching, you should see what Andrew

870
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:58,039
has been doing. One of the one of the great

871
00:49:58,079 --> 00:50:02,079
things that Andrew has been doing is is really searching

872
00:50:02,119 --> 00:50:05,199
out local styles when he builds churches, where where he's

873
00:50:05,239 --> 00:50:07,519
going to build them, and then adapting let's say, the

874
00:50:07,559 --> 00:50:11,039
traditional shape of an Orthodox church to a you know,

875
00:50:11,039 --> 00:50:14,440
a New England uh style building, or even to an

876
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:18,360
Adobe style uh you know, yeah, you know, kind of

877
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:22,519
Mexican or or or Californian style. And so that's been

878
00:50:22,559 --> 00:50:25,519
a way in which to kind of give a sense

879
00:50:25,639 --> 00:50:28,960
to architects of what's possible and what The thing. The

880
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:31,000
thing about your work, Andrew, that's amazing too, is that

881
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:35,800
the buildings don't look there's they don't they're not nostalgic.

882
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:39,039
And this is the problem with the classicism sometimes that

883
00:50:39,079 --> 00:50:42,239
you see so sometimes the classicism just it just looks

884
00:50:42,239 --> 00:50:44,519
like a copy of an old building, Whereas what you're

885
00:50:44,519 --> 00:50:47,960
doing in some ways is extremely creative because you are

886
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:51,440
you're you're you're looking into the local styles and you're

887
00:50:51,599 --> 00:50:54,239
fusing it with you know, with the different purposes of

888
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:54,719
the building.

889
00:50:54,840 --> 00:50:57,599
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of possibility there.

890
00:50:57,920 --> 00:50:58,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, You're right.

891
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:04,159
Speaker 5: So I have well, I have a very interesting niche

892
00:51:04,199 --> 00:51:07,719
that I work in in that Orthodox churches in America

893
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:10,320
are not a very traditional typology. We don't have a

894
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:13,800
lot of old ones here. So yeah, it's kind of

895
00:51:14,519 --> 00:51:17,400
a case by case invention what should an Orthodox church

896
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:22,199
look like in each region of America? And that's a

897
00:51:22,199 --> 00:51:25,679
way of making them fresh and new. But also, I

898
00:51:26,519 --> 00:51:29,400
in addition to that, I really do want my buildings

899
00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:33,039
to each look fresh and new. I don't want them

900
00:51:33,079 --> 00:51:35,360
to look like copies of old buildings. I think any

901
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:38,440
good traditional architect does not want their buildings to look

902
00:51:38,760 --> 00:51:42,599
exactly like it's eighteen fifty or exactly like it's seventeen fifty,

903
00:51:43,159 --> 00:51:47,679
because in doing that would not itself be traditional, because

904
00:51:48,199 --> 00:51:51,039
you know, classical architecture looks a little bit different in

905
00:51:51,119 --> 00:51:54,599
every century through time. It always it always had a

906
00:51:54,639 --> 00:51:58,960
sort of fashionable evolution that made the people of any

907
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:02,199
given decade like they were building something fresh and new

908
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:06,400
that was important to people then and it's important to

909
00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:10,559
people now. So I you know, it's I would not

910
00:52:10,679 --> 00:52:14,039
say that my work is utterly uninfluenced by modernism. There

911
00:52:14,039 --> 00:52:18,440
are aspects of the sort of clean, crisp, sparsely ornamented

912
00:52:18,519 --> 00:52:21,920
modern esthetic that I that I do imitate in my

913
00:52:22,039 --> 00:52:28,199
work where I find it helpful, where I find it

914
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:31,960
beneficial in the traditional mode in which I'm working at

915
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:35,599
the time. So you'll notice that my buildings are not

916
00:52:35,840 --> 00:52:39,119
you know, dripping with ornament like an eighteenth century building.

917
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:42,039
You know, they do have a certain they do have

918
00:52:42,079 --> 00:52:46,199
a certain clear rationality, a certain sort of you know,

919
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:50,599
predilection towards clear glass and bright crisp light that you

920
00:52:50,599 --> 00:52:53,639
know appeals to modern people who are used to modern buildings.

921
00:52:54,679 --> 00:52:57,679
So yeah, in their way, my buildings are are of

922
00:52:57,760 --> 00:53:01,239
their time and appealing to the modern eyes of contemporary people,

923
00:53:02,480 --> 00:53:08,239
whilst also being completely vooted in millennia old tradition of

924
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:09,559
classical architecture.

925
00:53:09,679 --> 00:53:13,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is also in your work a in the

926
00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:16,039
There is a kind of minimalist tradition of an emphasis

927
00:53:16,119 --> 00:53:19,840
on materiality, which I find in your work, where you

928
00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:23,039
have a kind of great joy in the materiality of

929
00:53:23,119 --> 00:53:26,239
the things you're presenting, because in some ways you're presenting

930
00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:31,039
them in a world of glass and and gypsum and

931
00:53:31,119 --> 00:53:33,639
you know, fake walls. There's a there's a man in

932
00:53:33,639 --> 00:53:35,559
which you you're able to say, hey, this is a

933
00:53:35,599 --> 00:53:38,559
real thing, and and kind of feature that as part

934
00:53:38,599 --> 00:53:40,360
of it, because an ancient world they wouldn't have had

935
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:42,000
to think about that, right, It's like, well, this is

936
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:44,679
a build. You in some ways are saying, I'm doing

937
00:53:44,719 --> 00:53:46,880
this on purpose, and I'm featuring it as a as

938
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:48,199
a part of the Yeah.

939
00:53:48,039 --> 00:53:52,519
Speaker 5: And that partly comes from medieval architecture, which tended to

940
00:53:52,559 --> 00:53:55,400
show off stone as stone and timber is timber and

941
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:59,440
so forth. But that's also a harrormark of good modern architecture.

942
00:53:59,599 --> 00:54:03,119
You know, the the really good modern architects, the famous ones.

943
00:54:03,880 --> 00:54:08,920
They loved authentic materiality, you know, they loved showing off

944
00:54:09,000 --> 00:54:11,960
steel for what it was and blondze for what it was.

945
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:17,920
And Yeah, I was taught in my very modernistic architecture

946
00:54:18,079 --> 00:54:23,639
education to really, really emphasize authentic materiality. You don't see

947
00:54:23,639 --> 00:54:26,800
that much in one of the male modern building because

948
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:29,400
one of the male modern building is just is just

949
00:54:29,480 --> 00:54:31,719
cheap building. It's not really artistic design.

950
00:54:33,599 --> 00:54:34,400
Speaker 3: But yeah, that is.

951
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:37,039
Speaker 5: That is a certain place where you can find a

952
00:54:37,239 --> 00:54:45,360
sympathy between good modernism, medievalist church architecture, and Asian architecture.

953
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:49,000
Of course, you know Japanese Chinese traditional architecture has a

954
00:54:49,039 --> 00:54:51,239
very authentic expression of materiality.

955
00:54:52,559 --> 00:54:54,519
Speaker 3: Doanchael You've been dying to say something.

956
00:54:54,559 --> 00:54:57,199
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, really, I just want to say, you know,

957
00:54:57,280 --> 00:55:01,079
the difference between Andrew's architecture a firm like you know,

958
00:55:01,199 --> 00:55:05,280
Robot am Stern or most classical firms, I would say,

959
00:55:05,639 --> 00:55:09,119
is that Andrew create buildings with a soul. You really

960
00:55:09,119 --> 00:55:11,480
see that there has been a craft man's hand on

961
00:55:11,519 --> 00:55:14,000
that building. It's so you know, you feel it when

962
00:55:14,039 --> 00:55:16,239
you see them. That's different if you look at a

963
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:19,119
building by Robot i'm Stern, the big firm, or and

964
00:55:19,280 --> 00:55:22,679
if the most European classic large texts. It's a shape,

965
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:26,559
they have a classical shape, but there is no you

966
00:55:26,599 --> 00:55:29,760
don't feel that there has been a hand, a craftsman's

967
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:32,639
hand and touched it and have to say, and live

968
00:55:32,679 --> 00:55:35,920
in the building. So they are beautiful buildings, but they

969
00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:38,239
are a bit soul less. So when I see you know,

970
00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:41,000
when I of course I have not had the privilege

971
00:55:41,000 --> 00:55:43,480
to visit your buildings physically, but I only see them

972
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:45,599
on all the photos that you publish on the internet.

973
00:55:45,880 --> 00:55:48,039
Speaker 3: It's way better when you're there, by the way. Yeah, yeah,

974
00:55:49,039 --> 00:55:49,880
really amazing.

975
00:55:50,079 --> 00:55:53,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, they are amazing because they have even if you

976
00:55:53,119 --> 00:55:55,199
think that don't have that much ornament, they have much

977
00:55:55,239 --> 00:55:57,920
more ornament the most classical new classical buildings. And they

978
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:00,559
have this small dealerty this I think of a a

979
00:56:00,639 --> 00:56:04,400
townhouse that you build on Cannon Street in Charleston, and

980
00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:08,559
you have these small wooden cannons, you know that like

981
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:12,440
columns that lifted the balcony. These things, you know, make

982
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:16,440
all the difference this and lived in a building with soul,

983
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:20,480
And I've seen small ornamental details on almost all your

984
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:22,760
buildings that you do. And of course the interiors are

985
00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:26,320
amazing or all, you know, the craftmanship that is the

986
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:30,800
difference between your architecture and ninety five percent of all

987
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:33,760
classical architecture. And that's a problem that we have in

988
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:36,559
general in contemporary classical architecture, and that we discuss a

989
00:56:36,559 --> 00:56:38,960
lot that they make the shapes, but they are too

990
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:42,519
afraid or maybe they lack the artistic scales to create

991
00:56:43,039 --> 00:56:50,119
meaningful ornament and how the craftmanship details like the work

992
00:56:50,119 --> 00:56:51,599
of love. But how to say, I work with love?

993
00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:54,159
Not not just real estate.

994
00:56:54,639 --> 00:56:57,559
Speaker 3: Because architecture is the place to be. It has this.

995
00:56:57,719 --> 00:57:00,760
Speaker 1: It is a participative space. It's not it's not just

996
00:57:00,800 --> 00:57:03,239
a place to put things in. And so you know

997
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:06,559
when you sense the participation of the person that made

998
00:57:06,559 --> 00:57:10,960
the building, it increases also that sense in you, that

999
00:57:11,039 --> 00:57:15,639
the sense that you are inhabiting a purposeful place, right,

1000
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:18,719
not just not just a building that could not just

1001
00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:20,559
a space, It could be anything that it could be

1002
00:57:20,639 --> 00:57:22,559
kind of moved from one thing to the to the next.

1003
00:57:23,000 --> 00:57:24,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, well modern the whole way.

1004
00:57:24,719 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 5: Modern architecture works as a as a business practice. It's

1005
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:33,760
extremely divorced from the construction site and from custmanship. Architect

1006
00:57:33,920 --> 00:57:37,599
architecture offices produce a set of drawings, it goes out

1007
00:57:37,639 --> 00:57:41,440
the door. Somebody else who has no artistic sense it

1008
00:57:41,519 --> 00:57:45,519
all typically interprets the drawings and builds the building, and

1009
00:57:45,599 --> 00:57:48,639
their goal typically is to make the building as flawless

1010
00:57:48,679 --> 00:57:51,519
as possible in the sense of making plastered and stockard

1011
00:57:51,599 --> 00:57:55,320
surfaces as perfectly flat at corners as perfectly crisp.

1012
00:57:57,159 --> 00:57:57,679
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1013
00:57:57,719 --> 00:58:03,199
Speaker 5: So the few a few contemporary architects whose buildings do

1014
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:06,119
seem to have that human touch. They tend to be

1015
00:58:06,199 --> 00:58:09,639
the sort of artisanal designer builders who are in charge

1016
00:58:09,639 --> 00:58:12,440
of their own construction sites and really, you know, hire

1017
00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:14,719
their own guys and pick up the trail and show

1018
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:17,039
them what to do. And I do a fair amount

1019
00:58:17,119 --> 00:58:19,880
of that myself. Most of my buildings are built close

1020
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:22,000
at hand, and I'll go on the site and I'll

1021
00:58:22,079 --> 00:58:24,519
just grab a paint bush or grab a trail from

1022
00:58:24,519 --> 00:58:27,480
the workman and show him how I want it. I also,

1023
00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:30,960
I also experienced it building things myself, so I know

1024
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:32,679
how to do that. I know how to make most

1025
00:58:32,719 --> 00:58:34,159
anything on my own buildings.

1026
00:58:36,639 --> 00:58:37,320
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know.

1027
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:41,920
Speaker 5: Interestingly, America's you know best architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who

1028
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:45,760
falls in this interesting place sort of in between traditional

1029
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:49,559
and modern. His buildings have a tremendous amount of human touch,

1030
00:58:49,639 --> 00:58:52,199
soul to them when you visit them in person, a

1031
00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:56,719
very small scale, very handmade. I meant, every little detail

1032
00:58:56,840 --> 00:59:01,079
on them just seems like beautiful, little handmade and polished thing,

1033
00:59:01,239 --> 00:59:04,360
and he he was very much on his construction site,

1034
00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:08,559
very very particular with showing people how to build every

1035
00:59:08,559 --> 00:59:09,039
little thing.

1036
00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:13,360
Speaker 1: Well, one of the problems is also the people that

1037
00:59:13,519 --> 00:59:17,320
have the money, you know, don't necessarily have that attention

1038
00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:21,239
as well, Like they wouldn't maybe not have the capacity

1039
00:59:21,320 --> 00:59:24,800
or the desire to see that because they're basically making

1040
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:26,960
something to sell most of the time.

1041
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:27,519
Speaker 3: Anyways.

1042
00:59:27,760 --> 00:59:30,800
Speaker 5: Well, a lot of Americans with money have that sort

1043
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:35,159
of you know what I would call, in a derogatory sense,

1044
00:59:35,360 --> 00:59:39,239
a bourgeois or new money taste, where they want the

1045
00:59:39,320 --> 00:59:42,960
look of things that are traditional as a as a

1046
00:59:43,039 --> 00:59:45,480
you know, as a branding thing, as a sort of

1047
00:59:45,559 --> 00:59:50,039
virtue signaling you know, something to something to instagram, as

1048
00:59:50,039 --> 00:59:53,400
it were. But they don't actually really like old stuff

1049
00:59:53,400 --> 00:59:55,559
for old buildings, Like a lot of a lot of

1050
00:59:55,599 --> 00:59:59,719
the people who commission the classical McMansion, You take them

1051
00:59:59,719 --> 01:00:03,039
to an actual historic building and they think, ooh, it's dirty,

1052
01:00:03,079 --> 01:00:06,039
there's mildew on it. You know, the plaster is cracked.

1053
01:00:07,119 --> 01:00:10,039
You know, it doesn't have a giant, luxurious closet for

1054
01:00:10,079 --> 01:00:12,119
me to you know, put my shoe collection. Is I

1055
01:00:12,639 --> 01:00:17,199
couldn't live in this you know they actually there at heart,

1056
01:00:17,239 --> 01:00:20,039
they're really modernists who want a very modern building that's

1057
01:00:20,159 --> 01:00:24,079
entirely designed around modern conveniences. They just want it to

1058
01:00:24,119 --> 01:00:28,880
have a look that is reminiscent of the aristocracy of old.

1059
01:00:29,039 --> 01:00:33,119
So it looks good on Instagram, it's worth.

1060
01:00:33,159 --> 01:00:37,000
Speaker 4: It's equally bad. In Europe, everyone is new how to

1061
01:00:37,000 --> 01:00:38,880
say that. There are money, you know, upproming people that

1062
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:41,960
have the committed class the last fifty years, and they're

1063
01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:45,360
so afraid to be labeled having bad taste. So they

1064
01:00:45,360 --> 01:00:49,239
open a magazine and they feel, I should like this today. Okay,

1065
01:00:49,280 --> 01:00:51,519
I like this today. I should drink this wine today. Okay,

1066
01:00:51,519 --> 01:00:54,679
I drink this wine today. You know, there's no individuality

1067
01:00:54,679 --> 01:00:56,960
at all. It's just, you know, the magazine tells them

1068
01:00:57,000 --> 01:00:59,760
what they should like and what is considered a good taste,

1069
01:01:00,119 --> 01:01:01,679
and then they will follow us slavishly.

1070
01:01:02,360 --> 01:01:02,519
Speaker 5: Well.

1071
01:01:02,519 --> 01:01:04,199
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm curious what you think,

1072
01:01:04,239 --> 01:01:06,679
because this is something I've seen here and it just

1073
01:01:06,800 --> 01:01:12,639
drives me crazy, is in some ways architectural fashion shifts

1074
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:14,679
where all of a sudden that we have had this

1075
01:01:15,039 --> 01:01:17,000
I think it was about twenty years ago we had

1076
01:01:17,000 --> 01:01:21,639
this crazy shift which went from a weird kind of

1077
01:01:21,679 --> 01:01:25,119
neoclassical not like almost kind of like castle looking houses

1078
01:01:25,159 --> 01:01:27,280
where that a lot of you know, a lot of

1079
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:30,039
fancy stuff. And now it's every single house has the

1080
01:01:30,039 --> 01:01:33,679
same design here all through the province. It's like black

1081
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:39,039
with like maybe some graystone and maybe brown with like

1082
01:01:39,159 --> 01:01:40,039
black windows.

1083
01:01:40,519 --> 01:01:41,119
Speaker 3: And that's it.

1084
01:01:41,239 --> 01:01:43,639
Speaker 1: And they're like kind of new modern, like kind of

1085
01:01:44,360 --> 01:01:48,639
low grade modern modernist style with the kind of flat

1086
01:01:48,800 --> 01:01:52,360
roofs maybe but or a very little roof and everywhere,

1087
01:01:52,400 --> 01:01:55,119
all of a sudden, it just like and these houses

1088
01:01:55,239 --> 01:01:59,360
just take over. Every single development has the same style everywhere.

1089
01:01:59,519 --> 01:02:03,039
And the thing that is that that is actually what

1090
01:02:03,119 --> 01:02:05,000
I described. It's people are afraid.

1091
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:06,760
Speaker 3: They're going to hate them.

1092
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:08,519
Speaker 1: They're going to think, oh, these are the houses in

1093
01:02:08,519 --> 01:02:11,480
my parents, because it's just this horrible fashion that goes

1094
01:02:11,519 --> 01:02:13,239
through the population.

1095
01:02:13,880 --> 01:02:15,039
Speaker 2: Because people are afraid.

1096
01:02:16,199 --> 01:02:18,920
Speaker 4: It's because people are afraid because the lifestyle magazine told

1097
01:02:18,920 --> 01:02:20,880
them that this is what they should like. And if

1098
01:02:20,880 --> 01:02:24,480
you are, you know, being middle class or upper middle

1099
01:02:24,519 --> 01:02:27,360
class or striving, it's not about the money, it's about,

1100
01:02:27,400 --> 01:02:31,440
you know, the culture. So you don't dare to trust

1101
01:02:31,519 --> 01:02:35,159
your own eyes, you don't trust your own taste, if

1102
01:02:35,159 --> 01:02:37,239
the magazine tells you that this is what you should have,

1103
01:02:38,719 --> 01:02:42,000
you buy that because we communicate in that way. So

1104
01:02:42,039 --> 01:02:45,039
then other people who recognize that here leaves a sophisticated

1105
01:02:45,119 --> 01:02:47,000
upper middle class person because he lives.

1106
01:02:46,840 --> 01:02:47,599
Speaker 2: In a black box.

1107
01:02:48,079 --> 01:02:51,039
Speaker 4: So even if they don't like it, they like what

1108
01:02:51,119 --> 01:02:53,400
it communicates to other people that have read the same

1109
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:56,679
magazine and then understands, ah, this must be a sophisticated

1110
01:02:56,719 --> 01:02:58,599
middle class person that lives in this pinion because it's

1111
01:02:58,599 --> 01:03:02,400
a black villa. So it's we are social creature. Unfortunately,

1112
01:03:02,559 --> 01:03:06,119
we are social creature that makes us do bad choices

1113
01:03:06,159 --> 01:03:07,559
because we want to be like everyone else.

1114
01:03:08,320 --> 01:03:10,519
Speaker 1: And it's and it's weird because we you know, we

1115
01:03:10,840 --> 01:03:14,519
had to make our house about five years ago because

1116
01:03:14,519 --> 01:03:19,119
we had our houses flooded and you know, everybody's doing

1117
01:03:19,159 --> 01:03:21,239
one thing here. We actually had to bend the rules

1118
01:03:21,239 --> 01:03:22,960
of the city in order to be able to rebuild

1119
01:03:22,960 --> 01:03:25,639
the house the way we wanted to. And Andrew helped

1120
01:03:25,679 --> 01:03:28,079
us a little, you know, he designed the facade and

1121
01:03:28,159 --> 01:03:30,719
kind of helped us to get the proportions right and everything.

1122
01:03:31,159 --> 01:03:34,480
And it's a very simple, like wooden house, you know,

1123
01:03:34,679 --> 01:03:37,360
with with the very kind of symmetrical windows and a

1124
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:41,800
nice like port with the and everybody stops in front

1125
01:03:41,800 --> 01:03:45,000
of our house. There's nothing special about it. It's just

1126
01:03:45,360 --> 01:03:49,360
it's just has a normal human proportions, like it just

1127
01:03:49,360 --> 01:03:52,800
looks like a normal house the houses should look. And

1128
01:03:52,840 --> 01:03:55,360
then everybody stops in front of our house and everybody's

1129
01:03:55,360 --> 01:03:59,639
surprised to see and it's just so funny. But it's

1130
01:03:59,719 --> 01:04:01,559
it's a little bit as a sore thumb because it

1131
01:04:01,599 --> 01:04:04,559
sticks out of all of these these brown like weird

1132
01:04:04,719 --> 01:04:06,679
houses that are that are are being built.

1133
01:04:07,840 --> 01:04:12,719
Speaker 5: Well, you know, sort of fashionable house buildings has always

1134
01:04:12,760 --> 01:04:15,360
been with us. You know, if you consider you know,

1135
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:19,760
walking around London, you know every every Georgian you know

1136
01:04:19,880 --> 01:04:25,800
block of townhouses in London, they all look much the same. Yeah,

1137
01:04:25,800 --> 01:04:28,519
I don't. I don't necessarily think having a sort of

1138
01:04:28,519 --> 01:04:32,199
a strong fashion of the decade is always bad in architecture.

1139
01:04:32,239 --> 01:04:35,159
It's it's just a question of is their quality there.

1140
01:04:35,280 --> 01:04:38,599
It's like, did the did the trendsetters who promoted that

1141
01:04:38,639 --> 01:04:43,320
fashion and do the architects and builders who you know,

1142
01:04:43,440 --> 01:04:46,840
materialize that fashion? Are they are they up to the

1143
01:04:46,880 --> 01:04:51,239
task and are they doing good work? In nowadays they're

1144
01:04:51,280 --> 01:04:55,159
not just because the entire culture of architecture and building

1145
01:04:55,239 --> 01:04:59,039
is pretty bad right now. And of course that's not

1146
01:04:59,039 --> 01:05:01,880
true of all the arts. You know, obviously there's other

1147
01:05:02,000 --> 01:05:06,320
areas in which contemporary art you know, has has much

1148
01:05:06,360 --> 01:05:10,519
better talent, you know, movie making, for instance. But it

1149
01:05:10,639 --> 01:05:13,079
just so happens that there's a there's a talent, there's

1150
01:05:13,079 --> 01:05:17,159
a talent that's movie making. That might be, that might

1151
01:05:17,199 --> 01:05:20,480
be true, that might be true, maybe it may bee. Well,

1152
01:05:20,519 --> 01:05:22,559
where do you think the talented artists are going?

1153
01:05:22,599 --> 01:05:22,760
Speaker 3: Then?

1154
01:05:22,840 --> 01:05:25,800
Speaker 5: I mean, where are they going to find their home? Yeah?

1155
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:28,960
Speaker 1: Exactly, there's they're all terrified of ais but it was

1156
01:05:29,000 --> 01:05:31,840
going on. But I mean, I think people, I think

1157
01:05:31,880 --> 01:05:35,800
the idea of people moving into architecture and too and

1158
01:05:35,880 --> 01:05:39,559
to thinking about the environment, that's the if we want,

1159
01:05:39,639 --> 01:05:42,519
if we want the change to be deep, that's where

1160
01:05:42,519 --> 01:05:45,719
it has to happen first. Because I've said this several times,

1161
01:05:45,719 --> 01:05:49,159
but city planning and architecture is the most important art.

1162
01:05:49,280 --> 01:05:49,400
Speaker 3: You know.

1163
01:05:49,519 --> 01:05:52,360
Speaker 1: I'm not an architect, but I can see that because

1164
01:05:52,480 --> 01:05:56,199
it it is because it fades behind people's perception. It's

1165
01:05:56,199 --> 01:06:00,280
actually it pre models the way that people understan and

1166
01:06:00,360 --> 01:06:03,480
who they are, what's their relationship to each other. You

1167
01:06:03,519 --> 01:06:06,880
know what's inside, what's outside, you know what is above,

1168
01:06:06,960 --> 01:06:10,840
what is below. Just basic orientation in your life is

1169
01:06:10,880 --> 01:06:14,880
based on city planning and an architecture, and there's a

1170
01:06:14,960 --> 01:06:20,440
deep alienation in modern living that comes from living in

1171
01:06:20,480 --> 01:06:24,239
these horrible places and these these abstracted spaces with no

1172
01:06:24,400 --> 01:06:28,400
center and no community and no sense of relationship. And

1173
01:06:28,440 --> 01:06:31,880
so to me, that's a call for people to take

1174
01:06:31,920 --> 01:06:35,599
it seriously. For people who are setting architecture, that you're

1175
01:06:35,599 --> 01:06:38,079
doing the most important thing. It's hard right now, it's

1176
01:06:38,079 --> 01:06:40,239
hard to do it, but that is the most important

1177
01:06:40,239 --> 01:06:41,000
thing to be done.

1178
01:06:41,079 --> 01:06:45,599
Speaker 5: You know. It's interesting the people who design movie sets

1179
01:06:45,719 --> 01:06:48,960
and the Disney imagineers who design the theme park stuff.

1180
01:06:50,800 --> 01:06:53,840
Those are people who have very good architectural skills and

1181
01:06:53,880 --> 01:06:57,639
who would have become traditional architects if they lived in

1182
01:06:57,679 --> 01:07:01,880
the nineteenth century, but they into the sort of virtual

1183
01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:05,400
reality of you know, movies and theme parks because it

1184
01:07:05,480 --> 01:07:07,800
was an outlet where they can really do artistic work

1185
01:07:07,800 --> 01:07:12,440
in a traditional style. But maybe maybe maybe what you're

1186
01:07:12,480 --> 01:07:14,719
describing is that we're going to see We're going to

1187
01:07:14,719 --> 01:07:17,199
see that invert that people are going to start saying,

1188
01:07:17,239 --> 01:07:19,480
you know, I'm through with working for Disney, I can't

1189
01:07:19,519 --> 01:07:22,880
really put my talents to good use. There's too much

1190
01:07:22,920 --> 01:07:25,440
bureaucratic and political crap. I'm going to go back to

1191
01:07:25,440 --> 01:07:27,519
the real world and where I can do real art there.

1192
01:07:28,679 --> 01:07:31,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, we would see that planned city that they have

1193
01:07:31,519 --> 01:07:33,039
a Disney's Well it's not bad.

1194
01:07:33,119 --> 01:07:34,679
Speaker 3: Like I haven't. I've seen a little bit.

1195
01:07:34,760 --> 01:07:38,119
Speaker 5: I I I you know, having spent almost my whole

1196
01:07:38,119 --> 01:07:40,480
life vowing that I'm never going to Disney World, I

1197
01:07:40,519 --> 01:07:42,840
actually did end up going to Disney World because my

1198
01:07:42,920 --> 01:07:46,000
children forced me. And you know, I have to say

1199
01:07:46,039 --> 01:07:50,360
the the the Victorian style architecture at the Magic Kingdom

1200
01:07:50,480 --> 01:07:53,000
is really good. It's like, it's really really good. It's

1201
01:07:53,039 --> 01:07:57,039
total the detailing is totally correct, the materiality is authentic.

1202
01:07:57,159 --> 01:07:57,920
Speaker 3: I was amazed.

1203
01:07:58,199 --> 01:08:01,119
Speaker 5: It's it doesn't I'm we're going to let anybody get

1204
01:08:01,159 --> 01:08:03,559
away with the like the phrase like the Disney effector

1205
01:08:03,599 --> 01:08:07,039
that's Disney World architecture meaning it's faky I speaking, because

1206
01:08:07,360 --> 01:08:10,079
the actual Disney World architecture is actually really good.

1207
01:08:12,360 --> 01:08:15,199
Speaker 1: As Disney collapses, all you did the architects go back

1208
01:08:15,239 --> 01:08:18,439
into the world and make make beautiful things for real people.

1209
01:08:19,159 --> 01:08:21,560
Speaker 4: I must also add, you know, it's the film industry

1210
01:08:21,600 --> 01:08:25,319
that saved classical musical So because if you want to

1211
01:08:25,359 --> 01:08:29,199
hear good contemporary classical music, that's from movies. You know,

1212
01:08:29,600 --> 01:08:32,119
the jingle of Indiana Jones Stall was all that is

1213
01:08:32,119 --> 01:08:36,239
classical music. No one listens to contemporary classical music because

1214
01:08:36,279 --> 01:08:36,640
it's just.

1215
01:08:36,640 --> 01:08:37,600
Speaker 2: A bad noise.

1216
01:08:38,000 --> 01:08:40,319
Speaker 4: But in the movie industry you've really got some very

1217
01:08:40,359 --> 01:08:42,119
good new classical masterpieces.

1218
01:08:42,880 --> 01:08:44,760
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's fun to talk.

1219
01:08:44,760 --> 01:08:46,479
Speaker 3: All right, So I think we're I think we're going

1220
01:08:46,560 --> 01:08:47,079
to wrap up.

1221
01:08:47,079 --> 01:08:49,600
Speaker 1: But I would say, Michael and Andrew, you know, to

1222
01:08:49,720 --> 01:08:52,640
other people listening. You know, Michael, you described yourself as

1223
01:08:52,680 --> 01:08:55,119
an activist, so I would say, what's your pitch?

1224
01:08:55,159 --> 01:08:56,840
Speaker 3: What do you what do you want people to do?

1225
01:08:57,000 --> 01:08:59,680
Speaker 1: Like, what would you like people that are watching to

1226
01:08:59,680 --> 01:09:00,439
to to do?

1227
01:09:01,000 --> 01:09:01,319
Speaker 2: Well?

1228
01:09:01,800 --> 01:09:05,399
Speaker 4: Okay, I self promotion is never beautiful, but for people

1229
01:09:05,439 --> 01:09:09,680
that are interested, I can There are two web pages

1230
01:09:09,720 --> 01:09:12,960
that one can use. I created them both. If you

1231
01:09:13,000 --> 01:09:18,720
go to wwwneutrat dot org. There you find a directory

1232
01:09:19,279 --> 01:09:25,159
of class clarchitecture schools of class clarchitecture firms divided by country,

1233
01:09:25,399 --> 01:09:27,720
and also you find an AD class. It's a Google

1234
01:09:27,720 --> 01:09:30,359
map players the AD class of New traditionality section.

1235
01:09:30,439 --> 01:09:32,039
Speaker 2: We can find a lot of Andrews work there.

1236
01:09:33,039 --> 01:09:35,239
Speaker 4: It's a complete Google at class and you can find

1237
01:09:36,000 --> 01:09:40,359
thousands of beautiful new classical projects. And you can go

1238
01:09:40,399 --> 01:09:42,520
on a discovery over the world and see what's happening,

1239
01:09:42,600 --> 01:09:45,239
you know, in different countries and through the you know,

1240
01:09:45,319 --> 01:09:48,159
through the through this web page, you can also connect

1241
01:09:48,199 --> 01:09:50,640
to the different social media pages and then you just

1242
01:09:50,680 --> 01:09:54,119
can connect with like minded because the most important thing

1243
01:09:54,279 --> 01:09:56,239
is for you, as a non architect, you just know

1244
01:09:56,399 --> 01:09:59,439
that beauty and uglies is a choice.

1245
01:09:59,560 --> 01:10:02,319
Speaker 2: There are no rational reasons for all the ugliness. It's

1246
01:10:02,359 --> 01:10:04,720
a choice. We can shoose the beauty if we want to.

1247
01:10:05,600 --> 01:10:10,079
Speaker 1: That's how about you, Andrew, Well, yeah, I would say.

1248
01:10:10,079 --> 01:10:11,960
Speaker 5: You know, if you're a young person who has an

1249
01:10:11,960 --> 01:10:17,600
interest in going into artistic architecture, you know can consider

1250
01:10:17,640 --> 01:10:20,119
going to school for it. There are some classical schools

1251
01:10:21,399 --> 01:10:27,399
in America now that that train classical architects, you know well,

1252
01:10:27,880 --> 01:10:30,319
and you might even be able to partner with a

1253
01:10:30,359 --> 01:10:34,000
licensed architect the way I often do, so that you

1254
01:10:34,000 --> 01:10:36,359
can do projects without having to go through all of

1255
01:10:36,399 --> 01:10:40,600
the the sort of bureauatic hell of getting licensed and

1256
01:10:40,640 --> 01:10:45,600
so forth. There are definitely partnership arrangements that allow people

1257
01:10:45,600 --> 01:10:50,560
to concentrate on the art side of architecture. And you know,

1258
01:10:50,600 --> 01:10:52,720
if you're if you're a patron, if you're if you're

1259
01:10:52,760 --> 01:10:55,880
somebody with money and you want to do something about

1260
01:10:55,880 --> 01:10:58,920
the ugliness of the world, you can you know, become

1261
01:10:58,920 --> 01:11:04,359
a developer. You know, find find a talented designer who

1262
01:11:04,359 --> 01:11:07,239
can do beautiful buildings, and you know, think up a

1263
01:11:07,239 --> 01:11:10,159
project that you could do, you know, not one integated

1264
01:11:10,199 --> 01:11:12,600
community that no one will ever see, but one that's

1265
01:11:12,680 --> 01:11:15,359
like you know, in a in a town. You know,

1266
01:11:15,439 --> 01:11:17,640
find old find a beautiful old town that's got like

1267
01:11:17,680 --> 01:11:20,600
an empty corner lot, and build the best building in

1268
01:11:20,600 --> 01:11:22,520
that town on that lot and put the place on

1269
01:11:22,560 --> 01:11:25,359
the map. You know, find find a little project with

1270
01:11:25,399 --> 01:11:28,199
a big impact that will really make thousands of people

1271
01:11:28,239 --> 01:11:31,279
wake up and say, wow, we can build beautiful things again.

1272
01:11:31,880 --> 01:11:33,079
Speaker 3: Hm hmm. That's great.

1273
01:11:33,159 --> 01:11:36,840
Speaker 1: That's a great call, you know, especially the one about

1274
01:11:36,880 --> 01:11:39,359
because I know a lot of very wealthy people are

1275
01:11:39,439 --> 01:11:42,880
building these these houses for themselves, like you said, you know,

1276
01:11:42,960 --> 01:11:44,079
behind gates and everything.

1277
01:11:44,119 --> 01:11:45,119
Speaker 3: And that's fine.

1278
01:11:45,159 --> 01:11:47,159
Speaker 1: Obviously if I had the money, that's what I would

1279
01:11:47,199 --> 01:11:50,239
do for myself too, But doing it out in the

1280
01:11:50,279 --> 01:11:53,760
community and waking people up to the effect that beauty

1281
01:11:53,840 --> 01:11:56,800
has on our perception of ourselves, of our space, and

1282
01:11:56,840 --> 01:11:59,279
the people around us. I think that's a wonderful call.

1283
01:11:59,359 --> 01:12:02,199
So Andrew, thank you for what you're doing. Michael as well.

1284
01:12:02,640 --> 01:12:04,840
You know, I think this is great, important work, and

1285
01:12:04,880 --> 01:12:07,880
so everybody, I will put a bunch of links also

1286
01:12:07,640 --> 01:12:11,199
to Michael's social media, to the website you mentioned to

1287
01:12:11,319 --> 01:12:12,960
Andrew as well, and so you can check it out

1288
01:12:13,479 --> 01:12:14,720
and follow through.

1289
01:12:14,760 --> 01:12:17,560
Speaker 3: So thanks everyone for your attention. Thanks thanks both of you.

1290
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:18,359
Speaker 2: Thank you than Jev.

1291
01:12:19,000 --> 01:12:21,880
Speaker 1: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to

1292
01:12:21,920 --> 01:12:24,600
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you

1293
01:12:24,640 --> 01:12:27,720
can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscriber tires

1294
01:12:27,800 --> 01:12:30,760
with perks. There are apparel and books to purchase, So

1295
01:12:30,840 --> 01:12:32,920
go to the Symbolic World dot com and thank you

1296
01:12:33,239 --> 01:12:34,000
for your support.