Transcript: Well most states – I know New York state – requires three years after graduation from college . . . three years of practice before you’re able to take the license examination. And you take the license examination, you may not pass all seven parts or nine parts or whatever it is. So that’s another year. So that’s four years after architecture school before you’re licensed to practice architecture. And then you have to find some willing person who’s gonna ask you to do something for them, and that takes a little bit of time usually. So it’s a long haul. It’s a . . . It’s a 10, 12 year period before you’re really able to work on your own.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: Oh absolutely. There’s no question. There’s a lot of wonderful architects, as I said, all over the world that do really extraordinary things. I think that architecture is really enjoying a good moment at the present time.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: Probably the most important way of resolving issues is a face-to-face confrontation . . . is a personal interaction. And far too often, things are left to others to sort of . . . others to try to solve when the principles should be solving . . . these issues by direct interaction.

Oh I’m sure we’re doing lots of things right. You know one of the problems is, you know, we dwell on the things that aren’t right. Those are the things that we wanna change. Those are the things that we wanna correct, but there’s an awful lot that’s being done right. And I think in the last seven years in New York City, there’s a whole different attitude about living in this city; about working in this city; about how you interact with the people that you don’t know. And that has to do with just a change of how things are done from the public perspective as well as from a private perspective. As an architect, I can’t say there’s been a great deal of good architecture that’s arisen in this city; but there’s a different attitude about architecture in the city that not ever existed before . . . that has to do with the feeling, “This is our place. It should be great.” And I think that never existed before. You know, “How do we cope?” Now we’re beyond that.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: Probably somewhat like the 16th century, in which there were great things done, but it wasn’t the Renaissance.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: Well the United States has unfortunately just gone from being the number one country in the world to the bottom of the list in the last eight years. And it’s gonna take an awful lot to reestablish itself as a world leader of importance and distinction.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: Well the thing that I guess I respect most in the New York Times is that you don’t just get the news, but you get information on things that are happening in parts of the world that you don’t get anywhere else – that whether it’s . . . it’s what’s happening in Africa, or that it’s what’s happening in Iraq. Whether it’s . . . Wherever it is, that you learn about events that are affecting so many thousands and thousands of people you would never know about from any other source. And I was reading something the other day about Iceland. And I’m just amazed, you know, by an article in the paper. So for me, that’s very important – reading and knowing about those things.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: My mother’s mother, who lived in Newark, had a boyfriend who she was deeply in love with. And he decided in 1865, I believe it was, to go to California to seek his fortune by finding gold. He left and went to California, and some months later she got on a covered wagon and went to California to meet up with him. Well it didn’t work out for reasons that I don’t know. She got back on a covered wagon and came back across the country to Newark. That’s always been an inspiration to me – to be able to go across the country, through the wild, at that time being shot at or God knows what, and yet have that sense of adventure. Not adventure, but a sense of purpose that no matter what happens, it’s worth seeking that which you wish to have. I think that that feeling of going after something, doing something; the possibility that you can do it is very much an American ideal.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Question: What do you believe?

Transcript: Well I think if I have a personal philosophy, it would stem from people who were extremely important to me during my education; not only my early education, but the time that I spent at Cornell. My closest faculty advisor was a man in the government department, and I just learned from them sort of freedom with responsibility. That’s ____________. Architects are optimistic by nature. I don’t think you can be an architect without being an optimist. So I am always hopeful that no matter what’s happening, it can be better.

Question: What is the measure of a good life?

Transcript: I think the feeling of accomplishment; the feeling of giving something to society that is meaningful, hopefully lasting, and has quality and endurance that people will appreciate over the years.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: Well a lot of things do. Probably art more than photography or literature, more than any other arts. But painting and sculpture have always been of interest to me, and continue to be.

Oh there are a lot. ___________, contemporaries _________ the 20th century. ________, Kline, Rothko, Newman, _________. There’s so many that I can think of. And then, of course, look back at people like _____________ – great architects of 16th century. All of these in some way __________ floating around in your head.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Question: Do you have a creative process?

Transcript: Well I think the creative process is, you know, trying to understand what it is about the particular project that you’re thinking about. What is its relationship, as I said, to the larger environment and context in which you’re working? It’s different thinking about a building in Barcelona than it is thinking about a building in Istanbul, for instance. The context is different. The culture is different. The relationship of the building to the place is different. So that is the first thing you start thinking about. Then you start drawing. You start drawing. You know what’s important? What’s the given? What is it about this place that sort of makes some impact on what you’re doing? And what is it you’re doing? And how does that come out from just being what it is to being something in this context?

Question: How do you balance creativity and discipline?

Transcript: Discipline is sort of the ability to focus. I have a very good discipline. I’m able to sit and work for three or four hours without moving – without getting up and walking around. Others sort of need, you know, to stop, chat and get back to work. I’m happiest when it’s sort of that linear process. And that’s the way I work best – when I sit down and I have a period of time to reflect and to work on something.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: If you go to the architecture schools, it’s at least 50 percent women . . . sometimes more in any architectural class. It’s a tough profession in terms of the hours that you have to put into it; in terms of the dedication and commitment. And I’m sure that there’s many women – maybe men as well –who feel that it just takes too much time away from their personal life and their family life. And ultimately the family becomes more important than architecture.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: Well architecture, as I said, through communication, through publication, through Internet, through web sites, is communicated, and is part of the globalization of . . . of what’s taking place in the world today. I saw the work of a young architect in Argentina – extraordinary work. Really amazing. Terrific. And I was just thrilled because . . . just to find it, to know about it. I don’t know this person, but I really respect this person’s work. And I think that kind of discovery and that kind of information perhaps wasn’t possible 10 or 15 years ago.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Question: What was your best design?

Transcript: You know I like them all, and I go back to places that I’ve worked on 10 or 20 years ago I haven’t been for the last 10 years, and I say, “This is really nice.” It’s like a long lost relative that you visit again. But I guess the place which, you know, stands out probably is the Getty Center, because I go up there and I can see how all the trees that I planted have grown; how the places that you’re . . . It feels like it’s been there for a long time, and yet people are walking around looking at everything as though it’s brand new. It’s an extraordinary place. It still gets huge numbers of visitors that come not only for the exhibitions, but for the amazing library that’s there, and for the environment of the gardens; the relationship of the interior spaces to exterior spaces ___________. People love it, going there, and I love going there myself.

Question: Is there a building you wish you hadn’t designed?

Transcript: Nothing comes to mind.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Question: How has technology changed architecture?

Transcript: A lot of things have changed with the advent of the computer in terms of the way in which we make drawings, the way in which we produce the documents for every project. So it used to be that I would sit and draw something . . . draw it up, and I would look over the drawings. Today I have to ask someone to print it out for me. They’re used to just looking at it on the screen. I want to see the printout so I can work over the paper.

Question: Is anything lost not doing it the old-fashioned way?

Transcript: I don’t think anything is lost, no. I don’t think that things have changed that much. One thing I do see on the part of many young people coming out of architecture schools – because the computer and the way in which they work on the computer, their sense of scale and their understanding of scale is not what it should be. Because computer drawing, in a sense, has no scale until you apply a scale to it. And that used to trouble me a great deal, but we spend a lot of time with young people so that they understand the importance of scale in the drawing and in the building. I would say that the computer has enabled certain kinds of drawings and certain kinds of forms to evolve which were not conceivable in terms of making of architecture when things were drawn. And so I think that it enables people to manipulate form in a . . . in a way that is changing architecture throughout the world.

Question: Have any of your designs been influenced by the computer?

Transcript: If so, not in ways that I would recognize. Oh that’s a tough question. I really leave that to other people. I would . . . I think that technology and communication today is such that there’s a much greater ability to communicate ideas throughout . . . through architecture. Ideas in architecture are even communicated in a way that they weren’t ever before. Earlier today, on a totally different subject, I asked people here to what degree our web site was being visited, because I wanted to update the web site if it hadn’t been updated in quite a long time. And I wanted to see, you know, not only how often it was being hit upon, or used, but where the interest came from. Guess how many hits we get per day? Nine-thousand. Last year, we’ve had 12 million hits. I was pretty impressed by that. ____________. But you know that shows us that there is an interest, and that there is a communication in ways that are far greater than we can ever imagine.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Question: Is architecture art?

Transcript: Architecture is art. Every work is a work of art. Architecture is the greatest of the arts, and it encompasses thinking that other arts don’t even deal with. Like relationship of the work to the individual human being – the person who uses it; the person who experiences it; the person who sees it; and how that person perceives that space. You know there’s an old adage that a sculptor can make a square wheel, and an architect has to make a round one. You have a certain responsibility not just to your client, not just to the people using the building, but to the public at large with what you do.

Question: When does a building become art?

Transcript: Well I don’t say all buildings are architecture, first of all. So there’s lots of buildings that have nothing to do with architecture. They have to do with economics. They have to do with an enclosure, but I wouldn’t consider them works of architecture. To be a work of architecture is creating a work of art.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: I’m an architect. I mean how else would you describe it? The joy is seeing it finished. The joy is seeing people using the building; seeing them enjoying being there; seeing their response to uniqueness of the place. And we have many projects here that are extraordinary drawings and beautiful models that are not realized. And for me that’s the saddest thing because the joy is the realization. The struggle is getting it realized. The struggle is dealing with a myriad of people that sometimes come and go during a building process. I’ve been involved in many, many projects where the only person who’s there from the beginning to the end is the architect. The other people who have prominent positions in the decisions that are made aren’t there to see what those decisions cause, and how they affect what is finally built.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Question: What are the recurring themes in your work?

Transcript: Well there are many. The relationship of the . . . of the building to its environment is critical. The context – where it is. What that context implies in terms of the work. How do you make public space in any work? What are you . . . What are you giving to the city? Not just to the building, but outside of the building – how is this contributing to life that’s all around us? And also whether there’s a sense of movement through the building – the sense of promenade, or sense of changes of small scale spaces to large scale spaces. Private spaces and public spaces – how are these expressed? Well all of these are my concerns in any building.

Question: Why white?

Transcript: Why white? You know how many times I’ve been asked that question? Thousands. And so I keep trying to think of a new answer, a different answer for the same question because I’ve been asked it so many times. Unfortunately I can’t think of it . . . of a different answer. So I have to give you what I’ve said before, and that is that first of all, white is all colors. It’s color all around us. There’s color in nature. There’s a color that . . . the changing color of the day; the colors of the seasons; the color of what people are wearing. Everything has color, and the whiteness reflects that color. It refracts that color, and you become even more highly sensitive to the color that’s all around you because of the whiteness of the environment. But also, and of equal importance to me, is that whiteness expresses the architectural ideas in the clearest way – the relationship of one plane to another; the relationship of linear elements to plainer elements; the way the space is modulated; the openness and closure, the transparency and opacity that exists in defining the space. All of these things become clear because of the whiteness of the buildings.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: The first things probably were publications which I saw in popular magazines of houses of Frank Lloyd Wright. I’m sure that was . . . that . . . that was the first thing that sort of caught my eye and made me interested in architecture.

Le Corbusier was probably one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. His work is extraordinary. And as a young architect, as a student of architecture, Le Corbusier was extremely important to me in understanding certain aspects about architecture. After I graduated from architecture school, I traveled and visited almost all of Le Corbusier’s work, except for maybe . . . except . . . no . . . except somewhere. At any rate, his influence was very important to me as a young person. ____________ life is probably ____________.

Recorded on: 9/17/07

Transcript: Well I was born in Newark, but I never lived in Newark. My parents lived in Maplewood, New Jersey which is a suburb. I think the population is somewhere . . . or it was at that time . . . somewhere around 12,000 people, maybe 8,000 . . . somewhere around 8,000 and 12,000. The houses were close together. All the neighborhoods were very nice, and it was a lot of open space. There was a lot of park space. There was a great ease of going inside and outside. Outside activities were very much a part of one’s life growing up there, something I always felt that my children growing up in New York didn’t have – that ease of going out to play, coming back inside, going out, meeting friends, freedom of movement. Just a sort of idyllic environment as far as I was concerned. At the age of 14, I remember friends of my parents coming for dinner, and they would say, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” – the typical thing you’d say to a young teenager. And I said, “I wanna be an architect.” I’m not sure I knew exactly what that meant at that time, but I decided that’s what I wanted to do. And later I worked in the summer as a carpenter’s assistant on construction jobs during the summer with a friend of mine. And then the following summer I worked in an architect’s office where I just swept the floors, and went out and got coffee, and did important things like that.

Recorded on: 9/17/07