Hi welcome to visionaries in this of. My guest today is a troll explorer someone who loves to hate the present in order to figure out the future im here with architect urbanist writer a thinker in his office to talk about the future of the city and the future landscape. Graham its so good to have you here on our program ive been wanting to ask you all kinds of questions Big Questions i was essential ones ill try yes but like i want to start with your exhibit at the guggenheim thats opening. So its called countryside the future. And its really funny you say that because most of the people ive spoken to big thinkers futurologist most of them agree that the future is within big cities that want to win become trees just big city so when you name it like that do you is it just a concept or do you really believe the future is now and its of course provocation but its a very calculating provocation because in 2007 the un said that half of mankind for sleeping in cities may see me from that moment cities are the only thing anyone has been looking at and cities has been what people have been kind of publishing about doing studies about. Intellectual concentration is going to cities. The prediction is that. Maybe 70 or 80 percent of mankind to live in cities and i think there are 2 point become a completely absurd situation that we you know over us are concentrating on very overcrowded kind of situations and that we leave the countryside to be its potential all its beauty all its history its. Its nature alone and so. Its more a statement that we should let it happen and that we need to look at the country again that we have to be prepared to live in the countryside thing and. Of course in a totally new way. And were showing some evidence of that between also showing the need for that but is it a statement that actually offer some solutions ill tell you im saying because like the country where account from its a huge territory and i see that 17 villages every year disappear from the number of russia and im not i mean its understandable the whether there are the monies in the cities Living Conditions all of that but maybe something for your perspective maybe a solution that youre offering could reverse this in my country well i think that people who leave because there is a kind of little interest or nation opportunity with this city and that therefore everywhere the city drains people away from the countryside from villages to prince prince in africa to prince in in europe but i think that if you got a very 1st indoctrination or 1st the propaganda of well actually that we are also making propaganda for it. Can come to show evidence for instance you know for going to be were living working with the university of nairobi we have 200. Potential students and they said we. Are spending really weaken the countryside. 60 percent of them saw their future in the countryside and for africa where the people you know typically have one foot in the countryside and one foot in the city so there are models of living in the countryside particularly with new technologies new kind of ways of. Using media new ways of using the internet that age who people to live there so ok were talking about the concept now which i understand but if we talk architectural wise for instance i was talking to your country man mark post i dont know who he is is this amazing guy a vascular physiologist who makes made out of stem cells you know and so were talking to him and he actually showed us the meat and right now its hamburgers but in the future its going to be steaks and all kinds of great steaks and everything and were talking and hes talking to me scientifically how in 3040 years farmers in the countryside and your countries big and farming arent even going to have cattle anymore because the media is going to be made out of you know by your reactors that you have in your house so everything because of technology yack youre saying its changing including the landscape including this space of how you know life in the countryside would look have you imagined what it would look like of course. Basically you cannot look at the countryside if you thought knowing that there will be an enormous amount of change in you but you can also not look at the countryside and. Realize that in terms of Climate Change theres an enormous pressure to actually keep more and more and more of the countryside there is kind of plans to preserve 60 percent or of the. Entire rules you know in terms of protected areas or reservations or whatever so yes everything will change but part of the chance to also be to live in the countryside in a new way if only to simply maintain it or to maintain a kind of presence there the fact that i think our cities are not that wonderful. Or cities or do kind of centers of inequality. You see whole generations that dont get a foothold in the city it is actually kind of really absurd that they dont live in the much more pleasant much more relaxing much more healthy environment in which more affordable and vibrancy of contraception so now youre talking to me as a thinker as a. Theory which you also are but at the same tight same time youre a man who thinks informs right so when we think your buildings its like far as this thing from the landscape of a countryside and you ringback may be in fear simple words explain how it would look informs the future of the countryside architecture life or space was. I think i think. Part of a generation generational 68 that you know already in the sixtys and early in the kind of seventys. Never been a hippie but of course hippies were perfectly able to imagine what it would be like to live in the countryside. They were confined having series how you could live in communes of course new soviets the have been can be incredible communes compiling and living in the countryside operating in the countryside i think. It will not be a kind of situation where suddenly everything looks different but i think. What needs to happen is that circle logical negativity about the countryside is going to reverse in the 1st instance also on a psychological level so i dont think its new forms that will happen oh no of course new technologies who implying new forms or new is forms but i see it more as a kind of base to me campaign. In the almost independent of architecture ok but and that as we for me also. One of the great revelations that in every profession you are always to the prisoner of the parameters of the profession and if you want to kind of think of a real solution maybe you should look to solution that is defined by the architectural field just moved outside talking about professions. I am observing right now how so many professions are becoming slowly obsolete and youre wondering which one of that is going to be obsolete tomorrow so youre saying in your Space Architecture per se disappeared in the 20th century what does it mean for the kind of political comment i think that. Strong and good architecture is. Related to the Public Sector i think the. Architecture is there can probably prefer a profession that works for the public and when i say architecture disappeared i think if the new public client lurch new disappeared. In a kind of period of new liquidity is more and more conventional to private and i think that therefore you know nobility of architecture or the kind of good intentions of architecture that were in question and maybe even 40 years ago have simply evaporate that. Kind of pressure on the part of it thats also evolution no part of it oh of course of course its evolution and im still an architect within that system and im not saying you can do architecture but its a new kind of mentally different kind of move that youre playing in the current culture and then you could play 40 years ago and live long enough to going to realize that things that seemingly change forever may be able to change again a different direction or even to. What to read from us but i like. Things that are changing so drastically in my lifetime are the things that globalization has changed and whether you like globalization or not its here its reversible and then what you have as a given is that problems have become Global Markets has become global is there such thing as global architecture. I think its a very crucial question because we us feel we have to put through all sorts of globalization no we have almost the referrers kind of vast greek equalisation. Disappointment with their globalization. I would say yes theres a global architecture and its not an architecture that looks the same everywhere but it is an architecture and that engages different conditions everywhere in a different way for instance. Did. We. In the city of seattle in the kind of 1st part of the 21st century maybe 10 years later did the Qatar National library. Value the relative value. Or the ambition and quality of each of the buildings is completely different even though i was the. I was the author and its completely different because you have a different form of interaction with a different culture with a different. Form of know how with the different technologies with different environments so i think that its extremely important to kind of right now to at you know do good globalization and to maintain and to uses them for it because i think it would be too simple to say ok it was a mistake we go back and lets forget about it its so funny that you bring out. Seattle and qatar say even though on the same arch tack that those buildings are so different because. One of the downfalls of globalization for many is the loss of identity and for instance when you look at the buildings especially in europe like you can say this is a money and building this is a barbarian tavern italian. But when you look at modern buildings all high skyscrapers still the same this Everyone Wants to do Something Like you or zaha hadid and you dont they dont. Theres a lot of that and its 2. Thing to have 2 opinions about it if there is so much similarity it means that people like similarity and therefore do identity is not necessarily a problem because its actually something that people like because maybe it gives a kind of family or tea everywhere or kind of repetition of the same expectation the same environment so i wrote an article about the generic city which is going to simply say ok you can continue to complain about it. Maybe people like to tell him why would they like it on the other hand i did to be a nominee in 2014 in venice and i was there every single country to describe the history of the last 100 years. And those 100 years are of course the period that each country had to become in some way. That could really showed the incredible diversity the incredible eccentricity over every kind of story do incredible expression of modernity. You will see how different it was formed. In. Different cities from underneath the in finland so i think that if you look carefully. The story about disappearing identity is. Money doesnt talk. Is proving this. Spending has made. Housing. Our back with rahm call has rahm your term bigness in architecture from what i understand its the fact that everything is sort of anonymous in a way that it can be a library or a hospital or a building where people leave Apartment Building and you wouldnt make we he wouldnt know the difference looking at it and i just somehow because i was a political journalist in the past had this parallel until recently all the politicians and leaders looked alike i. Q. Would not make a difference they were like all great and then all of a sudden people started voting for the most unexpected people trump or johnson or like Mattingly Penn almost became president friends i mean you can like them or hate them but theyre certainly not average so i was thinking did they do this this was the need of people to have something that is not to go beyond a little beyond Simple Technology actually do you think Something Like that could happen in architecture where we go back to some extravagant things. Things are not traitors you know maybe extravagant is not like quite the right you could even say that are to state your kind of events who dat except during already in the last 20 years and you could even think that exactly because we became so dominant dominated economic incentives that you know theres not a single developer who tells you please do something really boring and really neutral. Rich prebuild dont notice its all about please make an ark im pleased to be noticeable please be exceptional please be. So in architecture weve had the period. Were going to more extreme to apologise and leave it to you to church home satisfying to us what about the whole bigness thing because i see it too i see what you see i dont like it. You know. This was just a kind of way of may be exploring but also reassuring people and. You knew you know ive been a kind of writer you know as part of my activity i simply sometimes see that certain issues are. Becoming kind of big or inflated or critical. Tragic simply because nobody has can really interpret them in a kind of very precise way and so nice going to sympathy to say ok since the early 20th century the typical expert. That when you see something you immediately understand it and you know it is for you understand how it works is no longer valid and so it is no longer valid because of certain reasons and those reasons are mostly to do with new technologies that enable buildings to be kind of to. And so its not that i take a position but i try to give the most precise explanation so that. A certain. In happiness can be avoided but this thing simply through understanding things. But you know how before an artist any artist including an architect could just. Do whatever he wanted to do without really thinking i mean thats. Thats thats the feeling we got that idea of architecture is that no architect every do what they want it and no architecture ever be able to. If you look at the history of michelangelo you see that the popes told him that he had to come and defend himself that he had to kind of change. His does. 5 different times because somebody didnt like it architecture is the incredible profession its like you want something or somebody wants something you can do it but then a dialogue going to begins. And in a way to better the architecture do more intense the dialogue and its about. Responding to what you need to do what you have to do what you its about exploring the theme the lack of freedom. The freedom stew or oh you must be experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance here. Maybe the departed type of called native dissonance a perfect term but i mean with all due respect its good that you say this because like if you are a writer and you write a movie that i dont like and i can play if you build something i mean im stuck with it at least my lifetime i have to look at it every day so im not actually even that is not to do is a number of buildings that are terrible how do you feel about that. Its a situation. You know you on the right she is like one of my favorite serbian writers he says that an artist dies twice 1st physically and then 2nd one when hes. Is no more do you feel the same way like if youre building a stereo thinking going at. The time being. The 1st this is thinking about the 2nd. But the theres something that i keep thinking about all the time because we have so many problems now along with Global Warming and overpopulation 1st of all so its only a worry is that in the future were going to have to build more buildings more compact buildings we need to tear down more buildings one need to house this people somewhere do you feel like were going to have this problem of heritage versus. Putting your people in buildings. Absolutely. 2 things i think the. Issue of Global Warming is very important in our show we actually have a kind of very detailed look at somebody looking at. How people survive there and we we have can focus on and seeing all kinds of incredible phenomenon happening you know in terms of how you survive and how you can flourish in. Extremely difficult conditions. Also in order to deal with Global Warming. Thats a revaluing of the country is extremely important you know because its clear that you know maybe we saw technologies will help us but simply nature itself also has to help us we have to come to the store in nature to a much more Important Role then a terror cell and a much more demanding. Client in a similar way so that is you know another crucial message of this exhibition. What were doing now almost like lemmings who can walk into the city it became simply. If survival to to abandon the country is so its not exactly what youre saying but could it be also that if we take the countryside and start living there we wont have to tear down the field in order to i dont know built high rise so that people can be housed i think that. If you look at. Statistics if you look at. You know quantities i think one of the difficulties is that so many of these questions being. Asked become extremely emotional and basically based on slogans but if you look statistically its actually numerous the 3 or accommodating no. We can kind of really handle them. Dont need to kind of break the story half of the city the only kind of reason would be to replace dysfunctional entities Research Things the kind of work which better and more discreetly. I think theres no can approach there will never be a situation that anyone is forced to eliminate the beautiful things of the earth thank god hes saying that but still like a job of an architect no matter how great he is is to transform space to create new space new things right so its only inevitable that your buildings will pop up next to 18th century and i think i think. I thought so too but maybe 15 years ago we can kind of be really interested in prison gratian for diversity reasons and thats why difficult for us and its more im currently working were going to very basically you know without any ambition to take to do story with the admission simply to improve but also to maintain what was good about those buildings and i think that you know both in the garage and detention there are theres an incredible generosity of scale. Normas going to spaces that would be very expensive to today and so i think even the mortal of the architect is somebody whos only doing new things and therefore competing with voters there is a bit of stress and what is the future of the form because were talking about transforming the countryside but look were like on this on her you know cocoa break with this Artificial Intelligence robot. Certainly going to join. Us here so what is it going to look like. I dont think it will necessarily look. Once you get used to things maybe they dont. Think that anymore i