Well, I'm incredibly happy to welcome you, to be joined and to welcome Bijoy Jain to deliver the 2024 John Forrester 64-fund lecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. We're really honored to have you here, and to have you here coming from Mumbai. And I would like everyone to, so I don't have to say something. And the John Forrester lecture is very important for us. It's this annual moment that we meet here to celebrate the work of a very singular and successful architect that has done amazing contributions to the world we live in. John Forrester graduated from G-SAP in 1964, and one of his enduring memories was how the school allowed him to engage with those who were shaping the future of architecture around the world. G-SAP is founded as a node that gives a home to those with the ambition and the energy to contribute to make the world more intelligent, more fair, and we're very honored that the family of John Forrester is here with us tonight. And on behalf of G-SAP, I extend my gratitude to Claire Forrester and to Dan Bernstein, who are here with us here. And thank you so much for making this possible. And for your continued support that enables this special program to be possible. In 1995, B. Joy Jane founded the office B. Joy Jane and Associates after graduating from Washington University in San Luis, Missouri, and working in L.A. and London for a while. In 2005, he renamed the studio Mumbai, and its head office in Alibag, the coastal, and placed its head office in Alibag, the coastal city in the range of district of Maharashtra, India. At this point, the studio Mumbai was not only the name of the firm, it rapidly stacked the world as a physical laboratory or kind of a snow that exchange in the way that you were explaining it right now, that actually was making possible that you could work in close proximity to artisans, to stone nations, to carpenters, to bricks moving around the city bicycles. And international photographers and filmmakers were actually expanding that and making that something that the whole world will see and would be surprised and amazed by. In 2010, actually, this kind of a sample sort of the glimpse to this node of distributed office that's Venice, in the Venice Biennial, where your installation workplace intervened the collective notion of what architecture can be. But much closer in India, as a result of this office, these exchanges, these care that you place in making things happen, there were things happening like these one-to-one models. They were made of paper, right? These paper models that you were setting in space as a way to actually think and expand your thinking and your sensitivity and share it with others, making it something that others could also be part of. And I love the way that you explain now that your work is very much about immersion, about being part of things and how these models have evolved now into the possibility of identifying what surrounds you and mobilized it as part of your thinking and your experience. But it's also important that these models were making your work, your drawings, travel to win and to other means and to other energies that now are part of your very, very intensively part of your work. In an interview to PINAP Magazine in 2012, in 2020, you said, my interest lies primarily in doing what I do with care. As an architect, the way you imagine opening a door, developing a chair, designing the texture of a wall or a floor is very important. It's about quality, about the consideration you apply to the making of something. And it's about being attentive to the environment, the materials, the inhabitants. It has to be inclusive. And I think that this inclusiveness is not only a desire in your work, not a political claim also, but also a form of practice, a way of being, a way of being part of the world and serve that being with others. Today, Studio Mumbai is constructing buildings around the world. You have done that in the Alps, in the Dolomites you were mentioning, now in New York, in Wellensburg. And it's a way, but keeps being something that is built on this uniqueness, in this very unique way of working, in this studio of two people, this office of two people that exchange with many others. The list of works is endless. We would need the entire time of the lecture to go through the names of the different projects that you've been working on and the furniture and the installations and many, many things. And so is the list of awards and recognitions that you've received. In 2009, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture from the City and Architecture at the Patrimon. In 2009, also the Design for Asia Award from the Hong Kong Design Center. In 2009, you were finalist of the 11th cycle of the Agakana Award for Architecture. In 2012, the Swiss Architectural Award. In 2012, the Spirit of Nature Award, Architectural Award in Finland. 2014, you were the winner of the Grand Medell d'Or from the Academy of Architecture in Paris, France. In 2015, honorary doctorate from Hasselt University in Belgium. In 2017, Riva International Fellowship in London. In 2020, the Albert Alto Medal. 2021, the Dean's Medal at Washington University in St. Louis. And your work has been exhibited at the Canadian Center for Architecture, the Ark and Reef at Bordeaux, the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen, the Victorian Albert Museum in London. The Melbourne, you did the Melbourne Pavilion in 2016. You participated in the architecture of Biennales in 2010 and 16, Chicago Architecture of Biennales in 17. We could go on and on. And very recently, Bejoy opened the exhibition, Breath of an Architect, which is still on view until April 21st in Paris with the Foundation Cartier. And we have here Dorothea Charles, part of the Foundation Cartier team, the kind of ambassador also here in New York, right? Your furniture is part of the collections of Pompidou, SF MoMA, San Francisco, LACMA, MSAS, Sydney, many, many other places. This to say that this unique practice has been celebrated, it's been recognized, it's been also moving people and understood by many, by many. This format is a format that is intended to be a conversation also. So your lecture will be followed by, you will be joined then by Barjan Polman, director of GISA public programs and exhibitions and director of the and curator of the Art of Rose Gallery and by Ratchaporn Tchutwe, that is also GISA faculty and that will be in conversation with you. Ratchaporn is actually a design director of Alson, a design practice in Bangkok, which has been published and a design practice in Bangkok, which has been commissioned to design the Melbourne Pavilion as well, in 2022, Ratchaporn received her VR in Tula Langkorn University in Bangkok and also was graduated in the MSA AAD program here at GISA and the PhD in architecture history from the University of Tokyo. So this promise to be a very intense and beautiful moment to connect with your work more intensively and please join me in welcoming we join here to GISA for the next time. Thank you. Andre, that was very generous of you. Thank you. It's a privilege to be here at the University, a privilege to have the opportunity to share this lecture. Thank you Claire, thank you Dan for making this possible and it's a pleasure to be speaking to all of you here and for you to take the time. So I'm going to share very quickly four projects quite different from each other and it's more what I want to share with you is a sense of what we're doing at the studio. Architecture for me is actually a part of something much bigger, something much more complex and so maybe what I want to share with you is this idea of something that I've come upon through my practice over the years of questioning what I've been doing or questioning the ways of the things that I've been doing and something that comes to me more recently is this sense of intuition in movement. This notion of intuition is really a sort of a honing device, something that we all have and so drawing a sense of intimacy to that intuition in the process of when things are in a state of movement as opposed to a state of status quo. Civilization is built on an activist footing a world in constant flux cultures continually in an ebb and flow air, water, light is our essential construct humankind in nature, nature in humankind is indivisible. So for me personally air, water, light is really for me the building materials, not break not steel, not glass not aluminium but this is really the key component of what we do. So often times in my studios back in Switzerland I talk about architecture is not about making buildings it's about making space when you think about that's what we do we make space and so this is what is the key components that allow us to make space that allows us to breathe that allows us to move that allows us to be intimate to an environment. As you can see this is a hand cut quarry three materials a crowbar, chisel and hammer it's been harvested over 500 years the original Palawa dynasty was what emerged from this particular quarry we were able to hone on to this quarry over a period of a few years but again what I want to demonstrate is this idea of economy of means an ease of means of doing things and so here to actually use gravity gravity is equanimous available to all of us it's applied universally across continents and we all experience it in exactly the same way so this notion of gravity as a material in the way to make things to build things the force that attracts the body towards the center of the earth or towards any other physical body having mass so this is a project we're doing in Chennai it's a house for a client but one that can be n number of things it could be at a later point an office, a studio a gallery, a museum he's an art collector and so what I'm demonstrating here is that this is just using compression force just the force of stone stacked one on top of the other there's no shoring, there's no propping and it also has to be conceived in a season if you do this in the monsoons it's very difficult to meet the water table and you can see this is just the self-weight where you see this body of stone immersing into the water that's them excavating the sand below and I'll go into the next slide which demonstrates how this is done there's no mortar there's no scaffolding except for the scaffolding that is used to build the stones so here you can see the key component is actually right there this particular piece which is what you see there so one is to one drawing on the side, excavation made goes around a meter the stones begin to get stacked as you can see and they keep excavating from this portion here and they keep stacking so as you excavate the sand here this body of mass slowly using gravity just immerses itself into the ground so it's a very simple device this was a device again electricity, there's no mechanism there's no machinery this is again also this notion of in this particular project I made a sort of fictitious claim that we found something from an unknown time an unknown doesn't necessarily mean past it could also be a potential future so it sort of describes itself as an archeology it's more like an archeological project for me also what's interesting here is the methods the movement of the people the gesture of the people language, communication all of that is actually embedded and we were talking a little earlier of how do we transmit things I think the goal or you know when we make drawings, we make models they're all means of transmission the only purpose is to be able to transmit very different from an instruction very precise and can oftentimes be seen as absolute so for me this whole idea of making of building of collaboration is about this notion of how do we transmit next slide so this is a drawing it's a drawing and I call it a one-to-one drawing because it takes this portion here this line that you see is at the water table that's where you meet clay and where you see clay you have water so it's a very sort of integral part of where you would find water you require clay because that's what holds water so that's a drawing of the well can be seen as and I call it a one-to-one drawing because it holds the DNA the material DNA is embedded in the drawing so it might not necessarily be in the physical dimension but it's what's embodied in the drawing that is one-to-one now we were talking about movement so this is the construction site and this is what it pretty much looks like every day that's so we made a claim that a well a rock and a tree was discovered in the excavation on this site completely fictitious but somehow to ratify this claim we had to find a method that would in some way embody this idea of a fictional claim of an archaeology of an unknown time displacement the action of moving something from its place or position a displacement may be identified with the translation that maps the initial position to the final position this is the same quarry here you see an outline of this open space the courtyard which are shown in the next slide so what's interesting is there's a cut and fill right there's architecture in two places not just in one because as we so it's quite interesting actually very quickly they make these holes they're about six inches deep they can be defined by the thickness that you want of the slab and so they drive those chisels in and it's a tectonic plate that basically is released from the ground again with stone it's not on site but it's on sound it's when you tap the stone that they're able to understand what's beneath it's the fictitious they lay beneath it's the water that travels beneath that creates this sort of gap in the stone so this is really a full-scale drawing we were talking about a mock-up but here's now it kind of goes beyond the mock-up right where it is the action of something that is influenced here as also an influence in another location so that two projects actually being built at the same time cut and fill that's the idea of a tree of an old 400 tree and this is something that we have now finally you know over a period of time been able because trees are being cut for highways that are being built for lands that are being divided you know there are trees that normally are planted on boundary lines and this happens across continents you know you you'll see you know way before they would plant trees or stack stones to define or delineate boundaries of inhabitation or ownership so oftentimes you know trees are being felt and we go in and we actually to resuscitate the tree and that's how this will enable this idea of a rock a tree and a well that's just a quick photograph this is how they used to split stone you know these and I was I'd taken this photograph just out of curiosity at a certain point of course way before this project and these are holes made to drive wooden wedges into these holes and then waters poured on the wedges and that's what expands and then splits the stone very simple device again this whole idea of economy of means like if you have very little can I still make things can I still do things so the tree still has to appear but we also have a Friday the dog who's also a rescue but he's very much part of the entire collaboration and it's interesting I mean it's interesting that again the notion of building it's not a construction site it's a site that is inhabited every day the plan the section the space the scent the touch is inhabited every day so you do it in repetition again and again and again and again till it becomes part of your being right and this part of your being is actually transmitted to the others that are participant in the making of this project so you can see no this is not taken for the photograph there are several photographs that I have to actually go through so in this particular site there was you know the first scheme that was proposed by the engineers was to do these concrete pile foundations that were driven into the ground and I think correct me if I'm wrong Srija 30 meters or something to that close to that more she says and so he we came up with this idea of what is called a soil strengthening exercise where because it's a low me lose soil sandy soil and that's why we had to drive these very deep pile foundations and again this whole idea of this notion of building which is archaeological so in some ways every storm has been considered every every it's also this other idea of what would the building be like or what can a space be like if your eyelashes you used your eyelashes to sweep every surface using your eyelashes to think about it as an idea you know that is that a possibility and what could that present itself as so this is soil strengthening so you'll see it in the next one this is the diagram of the soil strengthening holes were small holes were bored into the ground and then we we poured this lime slurry and then over a three month period basically takes about three months for the lime slurry to activate and what that does basically starts strengthening the ground it was after three months we could begin excavation of the ground again these projects are in a rhythm of time right I know that several questions will be asked much later I'm happy to respond to them but this notion of being time bound I think it's only if you if you allow time to bind you I think that's another way to look at it as opposed to use time as a way to free you from it being bound in the same way that gravity can bind us right and here's an opportunity to use these as materials to actually provide a kind of freedom of expression of freedom of making things so this is a lime slurry foundation drawing these are holes built into the ground I'm just going to quickly go back so it sort of strengthens all this earth and then we then make these excavations that are here this here is to these are holes that capture the rainwater to recharge the well so you keep watering the plant in a way you keep watering the belly button the source which is the source for all life on this on this site or this environment so you can see now we've started the excavation and every stone I mean every stone is calibrated and there these layers of stone and I'm interested in foundations not because of just because oftentimes it's not what you see right it's not what you see that is possibly an expression of what you experience otherwise right it's what's below right it's not something that was below the ground because that's what's holding you up much in the way that you know we're not we're not designed to stand right this is not really the design that's not how we're built but there's something that enables us to be upright center of gravity our spine so it's this notion of the ground providing us kind of support right that allows for an expression above the ground and inversion in a sense these are the plinth beam this a drawing of the plinth beam and you can see it's a paper joint it's cut like wood now for me it's interesting because we can still do this there are many things you can do in New York that we cannot do back in India but there are many things we can do in India that necessarily cannot be done here just because of the way things are and how evolution has made things move in particular ways so it's joinery and the plinth beam basically damp rising that's coming from below the ground because it's a place that's tropical it rains a lot and what was interesting here was that there was a drought two years ago and this site had actually had water because often times when we reach out for water we dig bore wells that is tapping into the deep aquifer your fixed deposit so to speak as opposed to tapping into the water table and of course this then goes through a process of cleansing that by bringing it or oxygenation so you take this water so while you see this well or the stone sinking down there's water coming up so there's an equal and opposite response to that action this is the staff and our site office that we inhabited while we were on the construction site very simple it's a it's a space or a building in compression a brick with lime mortar again there's no concrete it's not that one is averse to concrete but it's interesting in this kind of construction the trajectory of this building is only moving upwards as it ages as it ages over time it strengthens and it only gets better over time what happens with concrete and not to give judgment over the material of course we do use that material but what it does is basically the day it's formed it's going in the opposite direction it's decreasing in strength in structure of course that's now changing with new kinds of methods that we're developing that's already out there now but that's really and so this is these are all the sort of kit of parts if you want to call them door frames in this particular case granite again it's very common in this region to have these materials and often times this particular stone where it's quarried they actually quarried for septic tanks and boundary walls so again there's an economy at the moment in time they were built for civilizations but not so much anymore again these columns are in granite I'm not nostalgic about the material I'm not sentimental but there's a sentiment and there's a difference between sentiment and sentimentality and what I want to share with you is this being true to this notion of this idea of making a claim that this was a site of an archaeology and these are fragments of that archaeology so that's a cross-section that's the water this water goes up to the roof terrace then comes down for the house for the garden and then whatever extras it goes back and recharges so it's this continuous sort of cycle or sick cycle that is continuously recharging and this is really the source this is the source of the energy for this entire place so it's a transact it's a landscape that had got subdivided over time and in some ways it's a reconstruction of a subdivided landscape that could be spread over a distance of a few hundred kilometers this slab on top here is a hollow core concrete slab that was developed especially for this project and you can see that it spans over just very simply over the two walls you can see the brick walls the spans are quite simple to span so you can see the cantilever so this is about 22 feet long if I'm correct and again the idea here was that without turning any electricity on the idea is to shunt the temperature, do you know the word shunt it's to drop the temperature down by a good five degrees so this notion that a building can look after itself even if we have been gone you know it can take care of itself even if it's abandoned and it's not so much in an abandoned that it becomes a living organism it's a living physical entity that is living and breathing much like how we are so it becomes really an extension of who we are this is an idea of the notion of what if the eyelashes were able to sweep the entire surface of the building and again it's not so much that can you do it in New York or not do it in New York or can I do it in France the good thing is that it can be done where we are and it there's an economy to it also this is during the construction phase of the project this is Diwali which was a festival that we have comes in October you can see this idea of immersion of inhabitation that we are occupying the space and we are living the space as it is right now so complete in its incompleteness incomplete in its completeness so it's always in that space all the time so this allows the space to be ventilated and tropical is quite hot in this region it's very humid so it allows the breeze it allows the air to pass through continually we have these we have these ventilation systems that are passive there's no mechanism to it and again it's based on the use of how you interact with the space with the building much in the way that we wear our clothes so the intention and I think this is the next stage in May and early May this year we're going to actually do the planting and then of course through the process of time the house will grow and continue to grow and be an evolving sort of entity this is a water tank again it's like a floating vessel very quickly built with granite notched in so it's a floating foundation it's like a boat in the sea in the same way that it's a boat that floats in sand or in earth very easy and so it's a knocked down water tank knocked down pool for that matter and it's interesting because the cost to do this in what I'm calling the traditional way now which is concrete and brick it's exactly or if anything this is less expensive than doing it in that way and there's a certain economy to it so you know this whole thing of the notion of what is tradition and what is not that's Friday again you know he's got the notes there he's you know belting out the work to be done that's the rock again this idea of a counter balance right this idea of a weight this compressive force in this space that pushes down to enable the water to rise up this is building this is the site every day and so I'm interested in the idea of building as in the same way in the way that we dance in the same way that we move that it can have an elegance we can have the ability of grace built into that so the transmission is how do you transmit this notion of grace right and that is then experienced back and forth it's not just one way so it's not about giving an instruction but it's more about a process of giving and receiving that is really that's what occurs on a building site affection it is the ability this is the next project this is for a Japanese lady who spends a fair amount of time in India once of the year and she came to us and said I'd like you to build my studio my weaving complex much in the way that I make my textile and so we said yes affection is the ability to observe and to identify with another situation or condition and then to care for it and protect it and hope to provide it with what it needs to be itself so this is one is two one mock up or an outline of the space that has to be inhabited the clients are part of this construction one of them is here there's somebody there and they were all sort of involved in outlining the physical dimension of what that space may be and again this whole idea of drawing everyone into this construction that's the diagram it's basically the notion of the full moon that falls on the chest on the rising moon behind the hills and that's the kind of diagram it basically draws the idea of the diagram is based on capturing the moon that falls on your chest the moonlight so that's the sort of darkened pencil drawing in the middle it's this little water tank which is used to now make indigo because they grow indigo here she basically makes everything the thread, sericulture grows the plants, grows the indigo makes the indigo so it's everything is done without leaving so for food, clothing and shelter she doesn't need to leave her land it's a complete total ecosystem where she can sustain herself so again this notion of sustainability for me is what do we want to sustain you know how do we want to sustain it's not about you know monitoring the electricity, the fuel that we have it's all about being in a certain cadence to what's around us a cadence to the environment that's around us so here it's quite interesting that you can see the full moon rise twice when you see it come off from behind the hill and then when it's reflected back two minutes later when it's reflected back into this little pool of water so the question I ask is is the light being transmitted from the sky to the ground or maybe it's from the ground to the sky right it's not necessarily one way that what if this possibility of light being emitted from here you know the stars that we see up in the sky are a mirror reflection of us often to see ourselves we require distance if anything and everything was up close and this close we would not be able to see ourselves right and so what if and I'm asking this question what if the stars are a mirror reflection of what's out here you know around us so this is the first day you know we've already started they've already started plowing the field what's interesting is the land was bought from the gentleman who's plowing the field with the bullocks they were the same bullocks that looked after and cared for this land before it was bought by the person that now is going to occupy the lady here in the blue and it was the same day that we started moving the rocks it's very rudimentary there are guys like throwing the rocks there's always a better way to do that but this was day one opposition to gravity but not opposition in opposing but opposition in movement in synergy with this notion of gravity so these are our drawings all these things that we do at the studio and it's more like a construction of the studios more used as a place to sort of construct an imaginary environment and those are tools these are just tools of communication tools of transmission so I look at these as notations like a musician would look at a music sheet it's notation diagram right if you put a written sheet music when a musician reads it there's a sense of sound there's a sense of rhythm right it's the same thing that we do drawings that we do in the studio drawings that you guys do for me those are only notations the notation diagrams of a space of a quality of a space and that's what really is this whole endeavor in the studio to construct this environment which is spatial and experienced as a haptic resource when I say haptic means all our senses including our intuitive resource so what's interesting in all these projects in most of these in this one it's all in a few square kilometers everything that you find everything including manpower to a certain degree is all found within a few square kilometer radius of the construction of where this construction has to occur again it's not so much to be in natural materials but more that it's it allows for a certain freedom of movement a freedom of manpower or human power a freedom of availability of you know a resource of materials that are easily available and also building methods that are already present in and around the site so you continually have to adapt you know it's not something that's repetitive again I come from a place of a billion 400 million people and I would say very conservatively we have at least 200 million bricklayers even now because most people know how to build their own homes because they're self-reliant so there's a certain quality of a self-reliance that's built into this into this notion of notation diagram and transmission I'm not going to go through these plans I mean there and so since it's you know all of you here the architecture school can read it in seconds I guess these are just you know gestures this is a gesture to the left which is the breaking into the land it's called it's a it's a ceremony that that involves entering into the depth of the land right and so Bhoomi means of place of that location but for me what's interesting is we're now going to enter into displacing the status quo of a piece of earth that has been compressed over a millennia with rain with gravity so on and so forth so it's an homage like an homage given to the ground of entering it in the gentlest way as much as we can really paying that tribute to the land in receiving and giving again so again this gesture is very much an embodied aspect of the notion of building manner from the French mania subsidized use of the objective meaning done with one's hands a notion which reveals a method of execution or way of doing especially with regards to the outward manifestation of an embodied process you know I have a friend and neighbor here and she's a potter a ceramicist and it's that same notion of you know what you embody in raising clay up and then shaping it and giving it a volume that there's a there's it's not intimacy I think that's the other word that I want to share with you is about how do we transmit this notion of intimacy between ourselves in the things that we do and the things that we make so this is all practice this is all the stuff that we made before we actually got to the site so we fired bricks here you can see the little bricks and so on and so forth because I had young students and interns at that time and no one they not really knew how to build a brick wall so we made little bricks just in the same way that you make big bricks we made little bricks and then they had to make these walls with these little bricks so they could understand how bricks turned the corner how they met a threshold how they meet a door frame so it's just like when we're kids you know you put the triangle in the hole that has a triangle and so on and so forth simple building tools as mechanisms to enable all parties involved to participate with a certain integrity and intimacy I show this slide because again for me it's not about the architecture it's not about the building but if I ask the question that what if four acres of land and surface was touched by the hand more than once what would that be what would that notion carry with itself and so this is just an image of the intimacy of every aspect in the in the notion of building from the threshold to the door to the plaster you can see the proximity you know there's a certain proximity in the way that things are done how am I doing on time faster so again this is a warp and weft this is indigo that is grown she harvests it then she makes ferments it makes the dyes and this is a space so these blue rocks are actually used to sink the leaves into water and so that's why these rocks come out blue they're not and I collect these these rocks when I get the time to go there and if there are some still around but there's something very interesting for me again you can see every surface has been touched by the hand and again it's not the notion of the hand but what it transmits like when we're caressed when you caress a baby when you're caressed by your lover or your mother or your friend or you're touched in a certain way it embodies a certain transmission and that's really the same gesture that is being given to this notion of making things this is the room where they ferment the indigo it has a skylight in there that draws the moonlight because it is known that when you die indigo on the moonlight it has a certain translucence to it it's very different the day before or the day after so there was a moment in February of 2018 full moon or a super moon the sun and the earth were all in one line this phenomenon happens every 144 years it was 2 in the morning she had this beautiful white silk that actually was originally from India went to Japan now not found in India and she brings it back and at 2 in the morning we were there we had the moonlight in there and she died this thread how do you give this thread a value now you have to wait 144 years just that notion of the notion of value and time again this whole building is constructed outside of concrete or cement there are lime slaking lime manufacturing setups not so far away so we had a Swiss man who was here for 2 months living on the site as a master linemaker he's a sort of specialist with lime who learned this method over 40 years and he taught 30 young boys from the eastern part of the country who did not know how to build this way and now that has proliferated and has grown so again it's not necessarily just about you can develop a hardware and a software for a system you know no different from what you see instead you know the technological savvy San Francisco boys and girls we have the same capacity in what we do it's the same so all this what you see the color the cloth, the ground, the earth all of that is part of the same space of the same environment it's all grown and has harvested from the same ground again what's important I'm very quickly and I'm going a bit slow here it's to use gravity we're up in the base of the Himalayan range there's a water flow that comes from there and how this becomes an interface of drawing from that energy which is already present it's already there to be harvested all and how much of it and how to do that in the gentlest way that one can so this is a marble roof that you see above here it's translucent so I built this in plywood it would cost the same and that's just the way it is in my country in India this particular and you find it pretty much in the length and breadth of the country they didn't go to the shop everything is harvested all what you see here whether it's a textile it's all made from the land that's the Indigo so once in a blue moon we've heard this saying and this is the same tank sorry this is the same tank where you see the full moon rise so we also have this notion of once in a blue moon sericulture all the instruments for weaving are made locally so these intricate looms which I still don't understand it's a kind of complex mathematical algorithm that I mean weaving is a very complex but it's interesting how the hands are used to make a textile this is in the full moon so this is without any light this is actually in the night these pictures so that's why the shadow this is the shadow of the moon cast at night so all the illumination here is from the moon so what if a building could emit its own light this notion of building emitting its own light and that goes back to that first video that I showed and this cycle continues season after season year after year terroir terroir is often understood to mean the soil and the micro-climate that determine the qualities of wine however concentration can be given to human endeavour, socio-economical cultural, political as well as geological conditions as primary components of terroir the soil biodiversity micro- and macro-organisms terrain, topography, climate, latitude temperature, humidity, rainfall, sunshine wind at all influence the ecosystem and quality of terroir so this is a winery that we're building in the south of France very close to Avignon, the province Côte-Duron region this is a competition that we wanted it was an open competition and we presented this idea that we will build in the way that you make wine this notion of building much in the same way that wine is made in that same gesture in the same notion of making this is a video and it's like a cut in fill diagram, a cut in fill so 100% of the earth that has been displaced or excavated all 100% of that has been put back so no truck came in with materials and no truck left it's really of course you have trucks here moving the earth and you have all of that but here now you can see another kind of mechanism at play it's not necessarily the hand and again what if these machines are an extension of the hand and are much you know and moved in the same ethos or in the same etiquette so that's the cut been made it goes down 12 meters down into the ground all the earth is excavated from here and the wine cellars so this is an extension existing winery that's been around for five generations the same family that's held it and you can see that the transition that is taking place and I show this video because I think this is at the core of the project and the rest is very easy to understand of what is actually occurring on this particular project 200 hectare Chattanoff Deepak it's the wine growing region of this particular red wine and you can see how the earth that is being displaced is now being sorted in different granular capacities so it is really in a sense sifting the soil down to its micron and how the different soil capacities depending on the clay the loamy soil the sandy soil the rocks so on and so forth and how they are then used to reconstruct so all we are doing is basically reshaping the ground or reshaping the land by just in its displacement so 100% came out 100% goes back but to give us volume of water, air and light from opacity to transparency or translucency so this is a site which is barely not even a kilometer away and you can see there is maybe we just passed it and maybe we will see it on the right but it's not so far away so you see the highway there and the site is on the other side so this is a piece that the clients have and so we were able to bring the soil here and sort it out in different batches and then it goes back that's what this photo was taken a couple of days ago so I'm just sharing something this is actually a work in progress again for this project all the mechanism to facilitate the making of this project all is in a 20 kilometer radius from the human power to the materials so on and so forth the technology so to speak something that's been embedded over the years so it's not this notion of contemporary of modernity and modernism I want to bring this you know put this out is that it's not so much in its shape it's not so much in its character but more in its integrity to how we make something so it's quite interesting the engineers the clients ourselves all of us are making this for the first time it's the first time we're doing it and I was very nervous at the time there's no machinery here 87% of the machinery is taken out no insulation, no plastics no form none of that all the ducts are actually built in to the architecture it's all in the same material the hot mistral air of this region is drawn in is drawn in through these vents and goes down and at the base of this is basically a water system and that was the reason why we actually so we're able to collect water because for one bottle of wine they use two bottles of water so from rain water water used for making the wine so on and so forth all that is basically collected and is the crucible or the foundation now this entire project is built on so this air is taken deep down and it's like a centrifuge and I will show you the plan it's a kind of plan and a donut and this air then moves and then it's dissipated to all the different spaces so you can get heating and cooling and we have a very small mechanical room and that's basically a heat exchange unit where you basically transfer heat energy or cold energy by just changing that energy depending on the season but we're able to maintain a steady 12 degree temperature without turning any switches on no machinery and it's interesting because one of the things that I was really nervous because you know we hear of wind tunnel tests and all of that and it's like kind of being a mall like you know those guys who kind of dig in the ground you know make these sort of intricate channels and networks and you know and then they're able to navigate through this sort of subterrain subterranean landscape it's much like that this was a sort of conceptual diagram on the top which was at the beginning and shows how by just excavating the earth and casting the slabs we were actually able to get the space and so from an opaque space you then get a volume of space but anyway this was sort of in the beginning and this is a drawing using the same earth so the idea was to be in that discipline of making the drawing from the same and using a thread you know a line that we do because that's how we would draw today we use lasers but you can draw this so I can make a room in 5 minutes 3 or 4 of us and we can make a 1 is to 1 drawing so again this idea of a 1 is to 1 drawing but what is the meaning of 1 is to 1 not necessarily in the DNA not necessarily in the physical structure it can also be embedded in the notion of the integrity of the DNA angle of repose the angle of maximum slope at which a heap of mass or any loose solid material will remain in place without sliding state of rest that it's the it's a position right you know when we take a certain position and it's that point where center of gravity from your cranium is being transferred all the way down into the ground and that's that moment when there's a sense of weightlessness or a sense of weight and that's the notion of this transfer of center of gravity so the foundations the base the water system is built in concrete I think we were trying to do it in line but I think the clients were a bit nervous so we said okay we allowed for that possibility rather than being so absolute that no it can only be done in this way so the sort of subframe the bottom frame is built in the water system is made from concrete and it also holds water because that's what is a good material to keep water in or water ingress or the same way going out so that's the mud that you saw that was being sifted it comes back in the trucks it has this thing and it's being poured back it's a little moist it has a 10% cement white cement integrated into this mud and then it's compressed and it's interesting no rebars everything above the ground there's no rebars and the walls aren't that thick you'll see two or three story sign there's no rebars in the building it's all on just gravitational force the engineers were especially really very precise and really good at what they what they did you can see that's the different kinds of soil that are separated and then it's put back in a way so it mimics what was there in some way this is the water system at the base of the where the water is collected you can see the layers of so this is the base that's the water system and above that is the Malaysian the wine cellars and then the next level which is the working courtyard which is that courtyard this was the old existing wine and then these are all the all the different new buildings that are added for all the different processes of wine making you can see the plan so that's the water system so it's based here and then from here it sort of travels so I think there's an interesting notion so the air space now let's say 500 meters away from where we are we're connected to the same air space we're 12 meters below the ground and if it's raining up there you can hear the water drops being collected in the water system so it's very haptic so for me this project is more about the notion of sound again this notion of the year more than the notion of the eyes architecture and the way that we understand it is all about giving hierarchy to the eyes but what if you were able to distribute this hierarchy in different ways in the way that we navigate through spaces in the way that we make things between touch, sound, scent all the different aspects of the senses so that's just a very simple cross-section and it's interesting because the air space is connected it's this idea of something burrowing itself through the ground and so that's really the mechanism and how this whole thing functions this is a sort of central space and you can see where the wine when it's first made comes and sits here for two years before it is then distributed into the different cellars and this is water that is in the slabs that run through the same water tank and again quite similar to that notion of water in the first project that I showed you where it's in constant motion so this idea of civilization is built on an aqueous footing so these walls there's no reinforcement it's a 50 cent you can see there's no reinforcement but it's very precise in the way that it's constructed and the people that we are building again all from there all south of France, French not so easy when you're dealing with a French person from the south of France it's then completely different but interesting I think interesting they're very very sort of emotional and they're very much invested what I want to share with you and this is that for me from the time we started the project the project gets better every day every week the drawing is better every passing weekend as we are now we're about five months from handing over the project so even yesterday or fourth matter this morning you can see that there's a shift you know it has just gotten better every day not because you know not because necessarily for me and so the way I want to say it is this hierarchy of a dance like when we move in a circle and how one person would go into the middle and then you come back out and the health takes over so it's about kind of taking ownership of that space and that's really this notion of how do you develop an logarithm that is a shared commonality there's a construction of an logarithm a mathematical formula that allows for this endeavour to occur and that's really what this notion of transmission in this idea of this circle of free jazz right you get six musicians to play and they sense a certain sense of rhythm and it was wonderful because it was this was done in the lockdown and they didn't even know who I was which is wonderful it's like anonymity which is fabulous and it's interesting because I've been able to do this whole construction and follow it on my iPhone no drawings printed nothing it's all in my iPhone and I can say this because if you do this every day and you move through this every day then you don't need drawings you don't need I know the space I know the threshold I know the door handle I know the frequency of every micron of the place but that frequency has to resonate within you and I think how do you cultivate that frequency to resonate within you and in the same way to be able to exchange and share with the people that are involved so that that frequency is then fed back so it's about this notion of resonance and frequency so this was the earth that we had which had a clay constituency to it a component and that's what we were able to do and again I'm not fast that it all has to be the same so there's a kind of freedom and a tolerance that you allow for things to enable themselves to expose themselves as you are in the process of making something so you use time and energy as much as part of the whole process of making these are this recent photograph so I want to share something with you which is very important for me at least I had the clients visit me this early January so it's in my view it's easy to make buildings it's very easy to make buildings and we see that across the landscape of the surface of this planet I mean this building everywhere but to make a building influence the quality of the wine I think that for me is my commitment and that was my commitment to the clients I'm not interested in the design of the building I want to know after 2 years because they'll be the only ones who will know that their wine has shifted something about it has shifted so it's like holding a baby right it's cradle when you cradle it in a particular way wine is bacteria it's alive right and the space that surrounds it right that's what is influencing that the air around it right and so the whole action of the whole purpose of going through this entire process is only one and the single that can this influence and effect and change the status quo of that wine that you know so well into something which is a discovery and that's really for me the whole undertaking behind making this kind of building this is the last project I want to show it's a project in Onomichi in southwest Japan in Lensi Japan this was something that I had to present to my clients because they wanted me to communicate my experience on the project was done at the lockdown if I'm correct so my first encounter onomichi was in 2005 through the film Tokyo stories beautiful film by Ozu I think one of the 10 best films ever made in my view it left an indelible mark in me and so when the clients came to me the function or the whole idea behind the project was to bring back the younger generation back to these smaller parts and towns of Japan to bring back these people that have now migrated to the bigger cities like Tokyo and Osaka and to bring them back to their home and so this film is about a family that the children move to Tokyo and leave the parents behind and hope so that's a beautiful story and it's interesting that's really the site that's the part of the site so Onomichi resides within me as a place where the notion of palimpsest is experienced from Shigano Oya's seminal book A Dark Night Passing written in the 1920s during this time there through Ozu's 1950 film Tokyo Story which I just showed you a small clip of the scene amid the backdrop of Onomichi to my personal experience from my first visit in 2015 to survey the site for what is now Lantan Onomichi Garden so it's an existing post-war building built in the 1960s after World War II this was where the Hiroshima bomb it served was this Onomichi is about an hour away and the American prisoners of war lived were stationed on the other side of this small channel which was actually left behind so it's quite interesting when you go there you see this entire culture from pre-war to war to the Americans being there and then all the different layers to manga, comics and this whole sort of very complex layers of different times of Japan all interwoven into this particular town so it's quite an interesting place for me the nature of palimpsest is twofold it preserves the uniqueness of individual layers of time while exposing the contamination of one by the other in other words a palimpsest is a multi-layered record palimpsest presents a utopian possibility of eternal preservation that was Shiga Naoya's residence where he lived he was this author wrote the seminal book in Japan about this place and he talks about the sounds it was a ship industry that was there and so it's actually across this isle it's this part where you know that he and the sounds that came up onto the hillside so it was a very beautiful book that he wrote and quite well known in Japan to my surprise I received a phone call from Japan inquiring about a possible collaboration for a project in Onomichi and then the next week the Keiko-san and a few of her colleagues were at my studio on the countryside during the time I told them don't come you know I know several Japanese friends of mine who would be absolutely you don't need to travel that far next thing I know through the heaviest monsoon in the it was like really the hardest that week and they showed up at my door anyway there were my guests and stayed at my home and in the ensuing days many possibilities were exchanged for how Yamashiroya could be accommodated to host draw Japan back to places like Onomichi they had left behind and for people travelling through lands near and far my response to this premise was to imagine and create an interstitial space of the site land and building as an extension of the mountainous landscape where long log today is nestled in so it's a kind of regeneration project in a way it was a housing project the client said he runs a shipping company very old family of this region and he wanted to give back something he was in a Zen monastery for six years when he came back out this something that he's now actively doing as part of rebuilding this entire part of the Inland Sea of southwest Japan we spoke about a place, an open space that would be cared for in an intimate way every day engaging all our senses in a manner that is becoming ourselves ourselves in nature that's the site that's the existing building that used to be an old temple that was here on the site and this was a sort of post war construction where they had these rooms it was like a social housing project so again this is a cut and fill we gutted the insides kept the frame this was an old project that was part of the courtyard and all the materials were taken from here and actually used to make the floors and the rest of the sort of inside of the project so that's the frame and then I said to them that we need to start from here and they nodded their heads and in Japan you would not get an answer in one day they all will come back to you so it took a three months and then I came back after three months and they agreed okay we're going to strip this whole thing and have it without anything in the project okay now we can start filling it back in so they said okay now we have to come back to you so this whole process went over a period of like three or four years and then we were able to really tune the project into what it could hold and how it could be inhabited so I saw this as an inverse of that film that I showed you Tokyo stories because you see it on the other side of this project that means if you look out this way you see the landscape that is embedded in this film and this is played here on the inside so it also has kind of a shape of a Shakespearean theatre this idea of the globe theatre that you have in London it has that sort of quality of this sort of patio that lends itself to performances and all kinds of gatherings and they do use this now in this particular way quite so this is it's called a doma floor and the house that was in the middle in the courtyard the earth from that was taken with a very particular and a special kind of earth that also has been fermented over a period of time so the floors that were laid on the concrete again how do you make a space inert how do you make a material inert and that was a whole exercise of making something inert these are drawings by that lady Takego-san my client so even the clients get involved in the drawing process and it's quite nice because they already have an insight and you can actually draw from that so in many ways the work is being everyone becomes a participant same thing with the winery same thing with the project with the Japanese textile lady so we actually gutted the building to make most of it a patio space a large part of it so I would say about a third of the building is an open space so it's a community centre on the ground and first level which they run as like a small nine room hotel where you can go and stay but effectively it's a piazza or a courtyard on the mountain and surrounded by these beautiful old cherry blossom trees that have been around for I don't know hundreds of years I think so it's really inhabited and embraced by these cherry blossoms the rooms are actually covered with paper the floors, the ceiling, the walls it's all covered in paper this was developed by this gentleman here Kitano-san who has this particular way of making this washi paper but it's got clay in it it's all made with this particular clay so the light coming through is coming through paper and clay again for me to learn the mathematics of the way that the Japanese have their own mathematics of division of space and so on is for like one tatami mat I intentionally sort of short circuited that and I did a quarter ratio to that just because there's a way to sort of cheat it in a way that you know you're able to and again by covering the surface all in paper somehow it's like an erasing you know that Rao Shamban drawing of an eraser of a diagram that's really what I attempted to do here in the making of this project again here it's interesting because it was based on miscommunication not communi- but how it was communicated was misunderstood right so everything there's an error but an error is intentionally inserted in to provide for something that is of discovery for all participants involved so I you know we've done this the surface of the building is covered in shikui which uses the earth and lime it's sprayed that the first rain and I got a phone call saying that Bejoisan it's rain and there's the plaster there's a thing but I didn't take the call that day I said wait for a week sure if I get a call the next week again and say Bejoisan what do we do we've got the plaster and there are stains as like this thing and you know being Japanese as part of very much part of their cultural heritage like everything's precise and perfect I said oh okay it's okay it's great that you know you can the building will you know east west north south ground in sky so he goes oh okay okay so if anyone asks us this we'll say we'll direct them to you Bejoisan has said that this is what it's going to be and that's how they were able to free themselves of this problem that they had that there were stains on the building now but it was intended this patination was intended in the whole project it's wonderful because now people come here to get married you know there's an influx of young people and I already saw it before I said I already see this happening in Onamichi so I don't know what you're talking about it's quite easy and it's quite wonderful to see this place now inhabited there's a whole influx of the younger generation returning back so this whole exercise is only done with one endeavor the commitment to remain true to what really is the program it's not the rooms it's not the courtyard it's not the plants but this entire regular endeavor to draw that generation of people that have left and to somehow draw them back and that is really the exercise this whole exercise is to facilitate that the log is a place responsive to change absorbing the sun the rain the moon and the embracing cherry blossom trees in the garden that was in the Tokyo story in the passing of time we experience a perception of loss in my view nothing is lost it is only stored in time and our senses in the resonance of our affection we can sustain life in abundance a gift we have all been given to action this spirit is wherein lies our choice ancient pond a frog leaps into water sound it's a haiku poem by Basho thank you thank you so much for sharing all this incredible work which is so intricate in many ways in terms of enrich I would say in terms of materiality ecology, temporality, labor tools from the chisel to the iPhone I would say what Ratchaporn and I did we had some conversations and we prepared a couple quick questions which we'll ask right now and then we'll open it up to you for questions as well Ratchaporn please thank you very much for your wonderful body of works very impressive I found that your works really much about making you will talk a lot about how you make all this project and as I understood you have a very special practice you have a workshop and craftmen working closely in your studio and which to work also closely with the materials that inform the design of your project as well moreover I assume from your lecture and our discussion before that you also have a team of craft people working for you in some project which the craftsmanship is really outstanding I can say they seem to be very important in the overall practice that you show us but at the same time I'm wondering because in a place like South Asia or Southeast Asia craftsmanship is actually diminishing because of the hardware because of the low wages also especially in the construction sectors the good one usually they move abroad because they get more paid we see a lot of South Asians craftmen working in a place like the Middle East I work with them quite some I'm just wondering how you manage to achieve such a group of craft people do you train them are they working closely within the studio how do you keep them do you really like pay them more than usual that's why they work just an incredible quality okay so maybe I so firstly for me material is not external of us right that I am material like you are material we're all here material and for me that's really the central premise of what is the meaning of material right that it's only when we as a material interact with the material that the material will express itself you know I had a stone mason I worked with he was 88 he would often say that how to look at stone how to observe stones in a landscape and he would often talk about you know the stone has something to offer itself and you say what do you have to offer a few to the stone so it's not a one way ticket right it's not a one way street number two is if they're going to Dubai or the Middle East pay them enough to bring them back it's not so difficult if you want something that is of value to what you would the world that you would like to live in so I think that's a premise that one has to consider but that being said I think it's not all about money at the end of the day right it's about what is exchanged in the heart too right so if you ask me where does your mind reside I would say here not here right and it's about again making that contact making that transmission and you know like for example I had this Swiss line specialist whose it's 1000 Swiss francs for a day he was on that site for two months with no pay at all I didn't even ask him to do it I just said we're doing this and he says I want to be there he was there for two months and he trained another 35 40 people and we still continue to build like that today right so it's all about a question of what is it that we want to exchange and what is it that we want to share right then that becomes a sort of core for example the winery right now that we're building it's being built the whole project is about 70,000 square feet it's 14 million it's the same cost as building it in India let's say and this is the south of France the people that were building it took a haircut because they wanted to be involved in the project the contractors they were doing it for the first time the engineers were doing it for this first time everyone was involved in for the first time so there's a learning curve in that so they say okay as long as we break even because now they can they have it trajectory so even the clients that we were talking about it when they were with me in January and I said this idea without a doubt if you had to do this today the project would be double today right now as we speak it would be double at least right so it's also putting building systems in that are not I would say unknown but are open for discovery right so there's a curiosity right and for me at the end of the day I think for me what we do just in what medicine does what doctors do we work for healing that's our work making space it's healing right so it's not just about economy alone it's not about just that aspect and so if you it's important in some ways that if that is carried as the resource who doesn't want to heal there's no one here that doesn't want to heal I have to think about it I mean I can ask this question to anyone here you know in some way or the other we all want to heal right because erosion is a natural process erosion right it's gravity based it's evolution based it's time based we're all in a process of some kind of erosion right there's some amount of giving way right so that it's very much an intricate process that has been built into the algorithm and for me that's why I am interested in doing what I do if I had to make buildings and just make building I have zero interest so you're saying that it's more in the term of exchange I have no interest in architecture in that way you know I have zero interest in that but I have interest where architecture can provide something that goes beyond its physicality I'm interested in that and I'm interested in working with people that possibly can be drawn into that and so it doesn't matter where you are right it's limitless and it's outside of any boundaries of geography or economies or methods sometimes you have to invent them so much like we're doing here in New York my my friends in finance are here it's the same thing no we don't need to build in cinder block and steel we can do it in another way if it means it's a little bit trickier beginning okay but it's in the insistence that we have to find another way because that's the way of longevity we're looking for longevity and my interest lies in longevity you're from a family of doctors right is that correct yes but that has nothing to do because I wanted to I don't want to make any sort of connection no because my idea of being a medical practitioner is healers it's all about healing any profession gardening there's a beautiful film with Peter Sellers I think it's called friends if I'm correct it's a black and white I'm sitting here in New York you know it's the same thing being a gardener where you spend your entire life for a rose to blossom maybe 200 years later or maybe 100 years later much after you're gone but the scent of the rose can be experienced around the planet it's possible but you have to allow yourself that possibility right it's only in that but if you doubt that or you're skeptical of that there's no way that possibility can exist my my question was not my question was not about that my question was about well I understand the monsoon as in many ways informing your practice but correct me if I'm wrong I'm informed from the earlier locations of the workshop in the most more coastal zones where the work itself from time to time had to be protected or even you mentioned with the beautiful the incredible well project that was affected by the monsoon as well production temporarily stop having to stop stop with work because of the monsoon but also in terms of materiality in some earlier interviews your study of certain technologies that were meant to protect crops from the monsoon et cetera so there's this sort of let's say historical understanding in your work of the monsoon as shaping technology but at the same time right now as the sort of climate crisis teaches us that the monsoon itself is now also shaped by our technologies and I wonder sort of given that your work is often explained as a sort of brilliant combination between tradition and modernity and in a way I wonder how your work is affected by climate change and of course specifically the monsoon and the sort of unpredictability of it that seems to be increasingly unpredictable the strength that is increasingly increasingly unpredictable the seasons that are changing and becoming a sort of deadly force so this is not a question about sustainability because I understand your point about sustainability very well I would like to think so this is really not about that I'm just curious how is your work the wine crops might move actually I mean how do you make something that can sustain unpredictability that's built into a system that is now whatever it is man made so on and so forth A while there is a crisis one has to be resilient internally because if the external crisis becomes a crisis that is internalized then there's a crisis internally I'm not in a crisis internally first because I have to continue to do what I have to do irrespective of those fluctuations what I have to be observant of and what I have to be in view of is being in rhythm or developing rhythms that can make those fluctuations make those unpredictabilities very much a part of actually turning a crisis into a possibility right and so I'm interested in that because there will always be a crisis when has there not been a crisis right that's just part of our humanity that's why I express this notion of what gravity does right but to send a rocket into space you require gravity you need an oppositional you need something to have a trajectory like an opposing ground to have that so for me it's not like yes there are moments where war and all of these things that surround us all of that I think one has to be in tune with what's around us and to know that it could be possibly you and so to be immersive in the way that how do you participate where you are the gardener right every day every day and in that maybe there's a possibility because that's the only thing we could really do so to work from that possibility as opposed to one that you know there is no hope so if I'm able to respond to your question and that's what I mean that this is not a situation that oh I have and I'm not saying there's a little bit of weight in what I'm saying of course I care of course I care about you know and when we say sustain sustain what longevity how do we bring longevity and one way to bring longevity is to be one of those participants where you can possibly slow time down right the question of temporality I think I find fascinating in your work is this notion of so if we all danced in that way right to slow time down maybe there's a possibility in that like the Aborigines for example before going to sleep they so Laura said I mean it's in there writings or in there ways of inhabiting they drive a stake into the ground why to slow the rotational axis of the earth while they're asleep because their entire civilization their entire notion of time is actually based in the time when they're asleep which they talk about as dream time so what occurs in that that period of time is what is then expressed when they're awake so the time that they're asleep is more important than the time when they're awake and so this gesture of driving the stake is to slow time down and to protect them so thank you maybe it's a good moment to to open it up to questions right here and there's microphones coming here I'm right I just had a question have you ever had to explain yourself when you were starting in this field I personally experience that I have to sort of explain myself but I want to like let's say the community around me that what I'm doing is valuable for example like when I see your work you're touching this complete different realm like for example the story you said about let's say the cosmos and time and there's something where you have sort of escaped the need for let's say the structural like daring like you know where architects usually tend to like cantilever too much or like do these crazy things to sort of like legitimize that oh what I'm doing is of value and this is sort of stunning because of how much it can deliver or how grand this is or how expensive this is and I feel like you sort of like I want to say found a way to escape that where your projects even in the simplicity like the drawing there like the ripples in the pond the projects feel like that they're sort of these very subtle things that are equally powerful as powerful as let's say cantilevers in Nehemiah's projects you know there's the equivalency is there I just want to know how is it possible to sort of you know maybe I can see that you trust yourself I just want to know how can you tell others to trust themselves where how can I tell what how can you teach others how can you tell us that you know what you're doing how can one trust themselves where they don't have to explain when they're starting out their career that what I'm doing is valuable I don't have a career in your practice yeah so you answer the question be in practice every day every day you don't need to explain it's there, the evidence is there are you being in it every day every day it's not a career there's no success it's not about success so I think once you're that's if you want it that way right yeah it's just you know there's a moment in time when that's why I said intuition in movement was how I started the lecture was when do you begin to trust that notion about you right and it's it's honing into that every day every day every day practice of course I mean part of what you do it's not about explaining it's about how to make inclusive what's around you then you don't need an explanation because what makes you think that what you do is of value and what others do is not of value why is your value more than someone else's value right and so I think these are things that you have to figure out for your own self I can't teach this to anyone I think we have another question right there hi Vijay, thanks for the wonderful lecture at some point in your presentation while looking at the buildings or the environments that you've created it almost felt like these buildings start inhabiting themselves especially the temperature drop and the bacteria that you were talking about in the wine cellars so is there an instance in your practice I'm just curious about this when the buildings they're almost like beings to me and do they have a sense of intuition that you feel or you tune into when you you as a maker when you start inhabiting them do you also sense their sensorial spirit or their sixth sense and so on and so forth or their unknown yeah so I said something when I was speaking was there is this notion of giving and receiving and receiving and giving think about most often if someone has to give something to you you're already skeptical about that and I'm just saying that or how am I going to be generous to give this back that's the first thing that way or it's too much fine I think it's what we're talking about here is mutual generosity and that exchange because in that this discovery for me to experience this physical entity as a being that you talk about because I learn through that and make discoveries about myself because I'm as much part of that what has been there as that is part of me right so it's it's economist inversely and I think that's what at least I am looking for is a certain sense of an economy that is exchange and in that there is this whole notion of discovery like how little one actually knows you can start singing in that other way to map that I have a question from your projects you presented you worked with local artisans did you seek them out or did they find you and then the local artisans always seem to be consistent with the local project you have any interest in transferring local artisan from one geography to another to create tension to create tension and Indian artisan in the south of France sometimes it's not necessary to have that like I was mentioning that we had the Swiss master line maker in India right then the this kind of goes back and forth it's not necessarily one way but what I more importantly what I want to say is the transmission of an etiquette that's more my interest more than you know it's an etiquette of the way you move the etiquette in the way that you make something like someone who makes food right I mean and actually I can tell you quite an interesting story it's you know so I'm doing a project again short and maybe because it's still quite nice but we're doing something in the southern like the last island of Greece which is about a kilometer from Turkey it's a place called Castellorizo and there we're building so I had my friend who I'm building this house for there are a couple of other things that we're building and we are building this much in the way that they built the time that these buildings were made because you have to maintain the form the windows so it's in a sense a pastiche right and the only way for me to free myself in that pastiche is to go back all the way to that distance and bring it back now because now it's present it's not something of the past anymore and it has the same reason in fact our endeavor is to take it further than the way that they built it then right so anyway so the main contractors from the island he's Greek and he was asking me the question of how do you find these people and he takes great pride to demonstrate what he can really do as a way like it's he's from the place anyway cut a long story short so I was there a few months ago I got there and there were these two guys kind of much like me my skin color and all of that and so I you know they introduced themselves I'm Johnny and I'm Sula and I'm Sula's and I said you don't look like a Johnny and you're not a Johnny and you're not a Sula's and then I spoke to them in Hindi right because I could tell if one of them was I don't did quite know so he said oh I'm from Afghanistan but he spoke fluent Hindi but closer to the border of Pakistan and there was another and his friend his mate was Pakistani and so I said okay now come out with your real name so he said I'm Afzul and the other one said Asfahim they're like these two names and then we started speaking in Hindi now three or four days before that my Greek friend you know was in India and we were at one of my sites and I was speaking in Hindi and we were going through things and you know all of that and the next thing we know now we're in in Castellurizo and I start talking to the Hindi the next thing we start talking and we start speaking about what has to be done all of that so they become the translator to the main guy cleanness the contractor right who actually is the guy who is running the project and he's kind of standing there looking very curious like what am I saying to him and this is transforming to him the other way so and there is my friend of mine like this style you know he was cracking up because so for me it's interesting this idea of cross pollination right I don't look at it as craftsmanship it's more about stories that we carry within ourselves you know when we travel if you go to Machu Picchu or if you go to some other place that is not necessarily where you are from you carry stories about your place with it and how those stories get assimilated that moment that notion of palimps says no these are stories that are exchanged and it's in that stories that cross pollination occurs so that there's a vibrancy there's a richness you know we in my school when I was teaching this whole migration phenomena that is taking place from Africa and of course even the United States there's opportunity here there's opportunity of of new language of new possibilities new discoveries to be made because not everyone is coming with that idea of consumption of taking away of denuding a landscape if anything they want to make that landscape richer because where they're moving away from is exactly the opposite of what they are seeking so that is the cross of the exchange of the stories of the cross pollination that is there because you can invent anything from that you know it's not about a traditional method or it's not about a new method it's about the invention of a method and in the possibility of that for me I'm interested in that exchange it's absolutely wonderful to have this exchange because now it was really interesting in that moment where you know we had to laugh and it's the hierarchy of structure of who's the boss who's the client who's the blah the architect whatever blah blah blah all that gets dissipated into sort of a singular entity moving towards the same idea that's what you want to do that's what that's the logarithm you want to write is to move in a kind of seamless way towards an idea if I'm able to answer your question I think there was one more question there are there any other questions because in the interest of time I propose combining them as if Vell has a question so first you Dan Vell and then two questions here am I missing anyone so we're going to combine four questions Hi my name is Monavy I'm not an architecture student I stumbled into this accidentally so I really do apologize if this question is bad I grew up in New York for most of my life I grew up between New York and St. Petersburg, Russia and my qualm with architecture was always that it made me depressed because it felt so strange from nature it felt so cold but something about the way that you've used the materials of the land that you're working in everything you so contained in terms of where you're sourcing what the homes and structures are made of there's a life to it and I wonder are there ever times that you look at what you're creating and wonder if it's it's too cold or too unnatural given that you want to create something that breathes and lives within the space as its own organism Vell, thanks thank you again for lecture you changed the name of your office from your name to Studio Mumbai and you've spoken about how you treat your projects in terms of longevity and bringing in how the buildings can change over time how the spaces can evolve I'm curious what do you see as the next generation for your work and particularly at the level of the organization of your office two questions here okay thank you for your presentation my question is so you speak of these notions of care and reciprocity and giving back and respecting resources like land, air, water I think what I'm curious to know is how does this transfer to the labor for instance I think through your presentation it's extremely prominent that the labor is a huge part of the construction process and in a country like India having previously worked there labor is extremely exploited, overworked and underpaid so how do you just to ensure that your practice is a thorough practice labor exploited and underpaid number one I'll answer your question just so you should know that just to ensure that it's a thorough practice in terms of the concept of care and everything how does that and then the last question what if I said I do many projects for free how would that answer how would you answer that question I'm saying labor underpaid not paid now work no it's an important that's your understanding of exploitation are you willing to do that because then that notion of exploitation can be something completely different that's just the lens in which you want to see something that's a prejudice that you carry that I will only work if I get paid I said to you in this lecture there was a Swiss man who worked there for two months without pay he came on his own nobody asked him nobody said he should do that is that an exploitation I work for free on many projects is that an exploitation I'm happy to work on that let's move to the last question Hi Bijoy thanks for a great lecture and sharing all your projects so in depth my question was you work really closely to material and how humans as a material interact and produce a result you work really closely with these craftsmen but did you ever find that you personally wanted to work with these materials yourself you personally wanted to work with these materials yourself like you wanted to work the stone yourself or you wanted to ram that earth yourself to come to a better understanding of the material how did you feel as an architect how did you negotiate that agency of determining that material form with the craftsmen themselves so I'm going to go this way yeah whatever order basically the question you remember all of them okay let's go when I said that I'm immersed I lived that earth I don't have to physically map the earth it's physical within me I'm lifting that earth so I'm experiencing that I don't need to see a drawing I don't need to see what I said I can do it on my iPhone because I live it every day right so this notion of it being external to you and I've been trained as a carpenter for five years I worked here in America making huge models for the Getty Center that could cover the size of this room for a whole year so it's not about because I'm a carpenter I cannot do this or if I'm this I cannot do this right that's the beautiful part about technology transfer where technology and we can transfer this into whatever mediums we have to but again it's not about it's about being the earth not being not the earth being ram right it's about being the earth and what it has to offer like I said earlier this stone has something to offer of itself what do you have to offer if you serve to the stone it's in that same dynamic it's in that same dialogue so everything then is up and available to participate it's just how you want to participate with that how much do you want to invest yourself into that I said I'm not interested in architecture so I don't have to be an architect because I'm not interested in architecture not the notion of what architects are I don't want to be that kind of architect I have no interest right so I don't know if I've answered your question going to the St. Petersburg and of course I mean there are moments that you're concerned about not so much about buildings being called it's a way that you work that you use your body and your sense as a way to measure because we've been given the body because that's the way to measure and how true or how tuned you can be to that measure for a potter too much force to break that too little would not allow that so it's all about the movement of measure that's where the calibration of how you want to shape something be right so that's the potential of everything not just in building and the one last question about what the next generation if there is of your office my office is not an office number one it's not an office it's more a studio it's a place where I practice this is something I wanted to share was that you were at the studio upstairs so when I was in school at Washington St. Louis and for me the studio environment was the best place like it was I could be there all day and I was saying that I was there and the only commitment I made was I want to continue this practice outside of school and that's the only thing that I want to retain is to maintain a studio practice much in the way that you do it upstairs so that's the only thing how that evolves how that shapes how that moves that's all based on ecology evolution climate crisis all these things that we're talking about right but it remains as a studio practice and that's all it really is nothing else things will come and go this is version 4.2 and we're not that big a studio there's Sreejaya who's the boss of the studio actually she runs the studio and there are few people that we work with who make things and then the whole world is there to be part of your studio or you be part of that studio it's a completely open field that it's all doable even here in New York on that note please join me thank you


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