Welcome everyone to the last lecture of the semester. Although I will note that Columbia World Project has invited Renzo Piano to speak on December 11th, so stay tuned about the event. It'll be up at the forum in Manhattanville. It's really amazing to realize that we're already in the final stretch of the year and it's wonderful pleasure to have Emanuel Christ with us this evening to present the work of his practice, Christ and Gontenbein, to conclude the series this semester. As I reflected on this sense of time passing, it occurred to me that one could say that the principal question Christ and Gontenbein explore through their body of work is in fact, maybe, architecture's fundamental engagement with the question of time. At a moment in which we are confronted with endless images, floods of snippet content, and seemingly unstoppable news tornadoes and when it comes to architecture and the built environment, an acceleration of everything, from the time it's taking to urbanize the planet, to the time it takes to build a building, or even to the increasingly sped up and relentless space we are experiencing in practice. To imagine entering a Christ and Gontenbein building is to imagine entering a different time. A slower and maybe historical time of stability, care and thoughtfulness, care for the city fabric, buildings are inserted into thoughtfulness about their insertion and the new urban conditions they create. The sense of powerful, confident presences are articulated through the sheer monumentality of the practice's bold forms, often entirely made of concrete, which sit firmly in their context as iconic presence without spectacle. But upon closer look, the concrete's abstraction is suddenly undermined by the extreme attention to and breakdown of the material scale of their building surfaces. Whether playing with brick courses, inserting textured marble finishes, exclusively turning corners, accentuating thresholds, expanding seams, or even inserting flickering lights, the work gains its realism and its engagement with contemporary time through the practice's exploration of materiality in all its details, textures, rhythms, and scales. It is in this sense that the work stands out today, uninterested by the techie gadgets and the green bells and whistles, as well as seemingly unbothered by our uncomfortable and yet prevalent sense that architecture should today constantly apologize for itself. Christ and Gontenbein's body of work reminds us that the ultimate sustainability for buildings should be their durability, as well as the contribution they could make to the preservation and expansion of the public realm of cities. This relation between architecture and the cities that give it rise is very much at the core of Christ's work, but also his research and teaching. At the Itaha in Zurich, where he and his partner have led research and design studios for almost 10 years and are now full professors, but also at other schools such as the Academia di Architektura in Madridio, the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, and more recently the Harvard GSD. Faced with the questions of rapid urbanization and unprecedented growth, Christ asks how a new concept for an architecture of the city can in fact, if not resist, then at least contribute to the contemporary city through the reassertion of questions of scale, temporality, and form, as well as typological explorations, opening up new possibilities to think through questions of sustainability, density, and shared cultural and public spaces of exchange for the future. Founded in 1998, Christian Gantembein is today a team of 50 architects. They have won too many awards to list here, in particular for their Swiss National Museum in Zurich and the Kunstmuseum Basel. Current projects include a new housing development in Paris, a flexible office building in Germany, the Lint and Sprungli, home of chocolate near Zurich, and the competition for the extension of the University Hospital in Zurich. In brief, their body of work is astonishingly expansive and mature for what is still a relatively young practice. We're excited to hear more. Please join me in welcoming Emmanuel Christ. Thank you, Emal, for this beautiful introduction. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me and for sharing this moment with me. Actually, this introduction was so complete, probably I just showed the images and you just remember the text. But nevertheless, I try to give my own version of what I think is relevant to our practice and to our teaching and research. Actually, recently I had a discussion with some of our students at ETH in Zurich and it was a discussion about the role of the architect today and about the future of the profession, something that, I mean, a question that we all share. It's not so easy to answer, but the question is evident. And strangely, this made me think of a photograph I came across a while ago, the role of the architect. It is a wonderful picture of Lady Bird Johnson talking to an Nathaniel Owings, the far right, the man with the stick. So one of the partners of SOM explaining and showing the Washington Mall master plan in 1966. It is a historic picture. Today we live in different times and we all think, luckily, we live in different times. Although thinking of Washington DC, I'm not even that sure whether luckily times are different but that's another story and I'm a Swiss citizen, I'm not allowed to maybe comment on that. But I'm an architect as well and yes, the role of the architect has changed too. The architect is not the powerful ruler with the sticks or the stick in his hands anymore, I guess. And I think this is right so. So but what is the role of the architect today? Or more generally speaking and asking what is the impact of the discipline? What we all know and we read it in the newspapers and we learn it here at university and elsewhere. The impact of building is huge in terms and very relevant in terms of numbers, energy consumption, use of resources. We all share that concern and this awareness that the building sector has a major impact on what's happening with our planet. And there's a lot of construction going on even in the old world as the US or in Europe. But under the pressure of commercial real estate development the influence and the importance of the architect is fading. That's at least how I experience it in my rather European context. And we could say the influence of the academic architect and designers is minimal, is marginal. So then, still referring to the discussions with our students and I would like to share it with you. We came to the conclusion we have to find new ideas for the profession and for the discipline of architecture. And I think that's what we all do. We work on these big challenges of our times. You doing this here at Columbia as much as we do it at ETH and of course all our colleagues in so many other schools in the world, of course. Trying to address the challenges of the profession means we come up, we develop new ideas on program, sociological programs, but of course also on technical, sustainable solutions. Architecture has always been and I think should continue to be a technical discipline as well. To a certain extent we have to be able to still understand and profoundly influence what we're doing with our technical means and possibilities. But there is probably more to achieve. We also have to reconquer or redefine the field of form per se. Since architectural expression is a cultural and political project as well. So considering the impact of architecture, our discipline is to be understood as a discipline that's had a huge potential to affect not only the environment and the economy, but also the psychology and the behavior of a whole community. In other words it has to do ultimately with democracy for instance. Architecture can make a big difference to society by building something even relatively small. Because architecture not only has a practical but also a symbolic and hence a political value. To still look at that beautiful strange picture, that's why I'm interested in more than in the architect himself in what he's Dick is pointing at the monument. The monument. All of quote, I tell you who said it. It's a quote, all of us are perfectly aware of the fact that monumentality is a dangerous affair in a time when most of the people do not even grasp the elementary requirements for a functional building. But we cannot close our eyes whether we want it or not. The problem of monumentality is lying ahead in the immediate future. All that can be done within the limits of our humble efforts is to point out dangerous and possibilities. This was Siegfried Gideon in 1944. The need for a new monumentality. Let's see what we do with that. It was an interesting moment sort of towards maybe the beginning of the second half of modernism where first doubts and questions arose about the question of form you could say and its meaning and its symbolic value. Why is that? Because I think monuments raise the question of values. And this is interesting on a level of architectural theory because monuments relate the idea, the depiction of value to the problem of architectural form. Here we see it again, the Washington Monument and the Mall. This was the March in Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. It was the date that marked the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. And what is interesting in that picture is that the monument that stands for itself is becoming a place of reference. So the monument is creating or is becoming a social and political space itself, meaning that its value as a symbol is changing with time and history that it witnesses. The monument that was erected for a specific reason becomes through accumulation, through experience and witnesses, a place of collective memory. That's its cultural political value in very short, forgive me this slightly, simple definitions. But what matters on that picture is the people as much as the architectural object, obviously. As we've heard already, the monument is also an architectural problem, so we can relate it to the question of form itself. And I am daring to say the monument is maybe the secret dream of almost every architect. And here, Other Flows makes it very explicit in this famous drawing and famous design, competition entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower. Even an ordinary office building can aspire for higher honors. And what does it stand for? I'm tempted to say it's a monument to the classical order of architecture itself. So the monumental form is the building and the building is a monument to architecture. The problem of architectural form is monumentalized. Whereas there are other examples, Barnett Newman goes back behind laws to the archaic motives of the pyramid anti-obelisk of the Washington Monument, but this time it is broken and put upside down. You probably all know that famous sculpture. Here it is depicted I think in the 1960s in front of the Seagram building here in New York City. There is another famous version of it in Houston in front of the Rothkoch Apple. That was then the moment where the reproduction and the reinterpretation of classical forms was done in a very critical and at the same time very original manner. And of course it shows a very ambiguous relationship with the idea of a monument, breaking the monumentality. And through doing that or by doing that, breaking the representation of traditional power. And this in a time of civil unrest, the deminil installed it then in Houston as a dedication to Martha Luther King, for instance. And now the big question, what is a monument today? Are monuments still being built? And if so, what meaning, program and form would they take on? This is a fair question, it's not so easy to answer, but that was the problem that we gave to our students actually not last year, the year before, two years ago at the GSD. And I just saw at least one of the students, so I've never shown that before, so let's see. But it was a very interesting experiment. The monument, the semester was called the monument, the task, a contemporary monument for Washington DC. So the aim of the studio was to design a contemporary version of a monument in a time where the collective, the expression of the public sphere or more politically speaking, the value of democracy are called into question. I show you now some projects rather quickly. The assignment was simple, the students were invited, and this is the most interesting part because that's addressing your generation, our generation, but also the younger generation of the students. What do we, what do you consider relevant to be commemorated in form of an architectural or type of architectural object that we would call a monument? And so the students were invited to find or come up with a headline from the then latest, I think two to six months, and to identify an event or an occurrence that they considered relevant to become or to be commemorated. I show you just some slides. Here is, we're back with Lowe's on the left and we see 1251 Avenue of the Americans here in New York, so Emory Roth and Son building the, I wouldn't say the generic, but the office, the high-performing office tower as we know it from the post-war modern period. Here it's the 1970s. So this student was referring more generally to the economical crisis that happened actually a bit earlier and then to a headline that I don't remember, but it was the attempt, and that's why it's the opening example here, it was the attempt to very directly relate or combine these elements of Lowe's proposal. So a functional building that at the same time acts as a monument. How could we do that? And it starts with a huge foundation. You see sort of the base of a building for big entrances, 32 lifts, elevators in the center. So this is a plan of a building above this ground floor. A huge obelisk is rising to the sky. You see the elevation and the section. And it's in the first place, a building, but its form is a clear symbol. You recognize it, it's an obelisk, so it is not the column of Lowe's and the celebration of classical order. It's going back to the Egyptian obelisk that is sort of reproduced in a bigger scale in Washington, in the mall. And the program here is an office tower, so that's boring. But at the same time, it is understood as a monument to capitalism, as the real value to the American society. That's the statement. So the criticism of a global economy that always aims for taller, bigger, and faster production. And we see here, there is also, here is the new obelisk. I think this is New York, World Trade Center. We have another New York tower, but I'm sorry, it's not so much New York anymore. This is a project for MECA, this is Dubai, and so on. So a pretty tall tower. I think it is like 2,000 something feet, or 620 meters or so. And the idea was to put this huge object, this obelisk tower into perspective. And this means into a relation, in a precise relation to the traditional institution and the representation of power. And that's what we see on the right-hand side. So this is the capital, here is the mall, and the new tower stands outside the city center because there's also regulation. You cannot go tall in Washington DC. So it's actually in the outskirts of the city, but the idea is simple, that the distance measured from the capital is, I think, roughly four times bigger than the distance to the Washington Monument. So in order to keep the relationship or the relation, the height of the tower slash monument was also four times bigger. And that's how then the proportion was created. So it is dependent on the distance to the capital. It's further away, but it's taller, so it's sort of, that's the hypothesis, the same presence as the Washington Monument. And then this tower, I don't remember on what floor, had an observation deck like a slit in an armor. So it's a slightly scary piece of architecture. And that's now this view from the capital on the mall. On the horizon, you see this appearance. There is the monument standing scary and menacing. The dark power, the shadow, the counter image to the idealistic sign of an open democratic society. So this is what the monument is about. It's the dark power of capitalism. It's a simple story, forgive me, but I liked it a lot that the actual obelisk is becoming an office tower of, let's say, a global scale. And as I told you, it has to do with a political system that is based on a neoliberal political agenda. And that's what the student was referring to. It was not the only project I was trying to understand what are the values of today's society. And that's not actually not only for the US, but of course for Europe and many other countries too, whether it's in the East or in the West, North or the South. Another consequence of this neoliberal agenda, political agenda, was the whole housing market that, as we know, ended as the subprime story. And the second project was referring to that. It was actually using, and that's very close to our design method, even as a practice, and in our design studio as well, it was literally using a series of typological references. And what you can see on this slide, in axon and in plan is a sort of short development of the American house. The brownstone and then freestanding suburban house, different types, it develops up to the, or down to the Mac Mansion, that is then a version of a commercial prefab building. As you probably know, it's forming this huge mass of buildings and constructions in the US. The object that is created is a composition of these different types. So this is the lowest, that's at the bottom, and then you would have a first, second, and so on floor, and at the very top, we see the Mac Mansion. It's a sort of a mausoleum of Halicarnassos, but not for a king or something, but it's rather a piece of architecture that is trying to maybe remind us of the fragility of the real estate market, the beautiful construction actually, that is using the tectonics of the balloon frame, building up a fantastic ghost house that takes a proper monumental position in the urban plan of Washington DC. I think this is Pennsylvania Avenue, and on this square in front of the World Bank stands this object, this architecture, this uninhabited big house that is a collection of many houses. Architectural form is carrying a meaning, it stands for a symbolic value, a memento mori to the existence of the house, not necessarily because it's fragile construction in timber, but rather because the financing system behind or underneath is not stable. So the fragility expressed through form of architecture is visible in that beautiful object. How long will it last? We don't know. Perhaps it will even burn one day. So what then remains will be the ashes of the memory of the subprime crisis, a very simple and at the same time, I think very rich and accomplished project. The studio was actually very much related to a current moment, probably you remember two years ago, more or less. There was a big debate about a planned removal of a General Lee statue in Charlottesville in Virginia. It is a equestrial statue of that General Robert E. Lee. He was the Confederacy's top general, and then in August 2017, there was a violent rally because white nationalists came to Charlottesville to protest. The cities planned to remove that statue, and at the same time there was a counter demonstration which were there to oppose these protestors. So that was a very violent moment, you probably remember that. And this is the fund, and it was very interesting to see that, in that sense, a classical statue, so it's not so much architecture, but that the monument is still of political relevance. What do we do? It's not a simple question to answer. And in this confrontation between white nationalists and their opponents, which basically were representatives of different minorities and also people who fought for a liberal understanding of society, this brought back the memory of Kisha Thomas. This is, as you probably can read, taken from a newspaper in the 1990s, 96. This lady, Kisha Thomas, in another confrontation between a rally or people of Kuklu's clan, they were opposed, aggressed, stopped by a counter group, so there was a fight. And this guy is, I think he could probably kind of read it, I don't remember, he's one of these nationalist racists, and he was attacked by these men around him. And there was Kisha Thomas, and he was almost about to get killed by the angry men around him. And Kisha was with her body protecting the enemy, the person that was addressing her or putting into question her existence amongst others in American society. So a heroic, beautiful gesture that is very touching. And our student, Philip, who is here, made this discovery or had this idea to go back to that moment in recent American history and decided to propose a monument to Kisha Thomas in Washington. And you can see, or probably a little bit, there is a sockle, a plinth, and there is a horse. And the architecture, that's what we actually talk about. Its form, its expression is the message. It's a big roof protecting this statue. So the project is actually that the proud general on his horse from Charlottesville is taken to Washington, but it is protected slash hidden, transformed just by that gesture of the roof that is commemorating this beautiful gesture of this lady. And you see it in plan. And this is architecture. It's a structure. It's actually a very beautiful structure. And here you see the statue. Here it's visible, but it's also invisible at the same time. It's a structure made out of leaves and branches that is covering it. It's a sort of a vernacular architecture. And it's very prominently placed in the park in front of the White House. I show you another project sort of next door, still being in Washington. It's an intervention on the mall itself. The idea was we can debate, well, this is a monument, but that's ultimately what we will do anyway. So we will debate what is a monument. It's architecture. This is new homes for new people to the US. Sort of the ultimate alternative project to the Great Border Wall to Mexico, for instance. So an idea of offering houses in the inner circle of the symbolic buildings that form something like the core of the American capital, the buildings along the mall. It's an urban, beautiful urban plan. I mean, the original plan. And then you see now the dark buildings. This is sort of an urban intervention, creating courtyards and buildings that are connecting these different existing monumental buildings. Bringing these people to the very core is a problematic operation. So to a certain extent, we could be critical and say this is almost like taking them to the circus. Or we could ask, isn't the mall and that place of these institutional sort of a circus? But we could have a more noble idea and think of a campus of a university where originally in Jefferson's plan, it was this idea of the collective that is grouping people's houses where people live. So I think beautiful and simple gesture. And then when we go closer and we see these beautiful buildings, the museums and then the center between the two institutions of knowledge, education and culture, we would have a big housing block that is maybe reminding us of collective housing at the beginning of the 20th century. So what you see is that I think it's always possible. We shouldn't limit ourselves to that, but it's always interesting and very productive to go back to ancestors and precedents in architecture history. That's what we're doing with our students. That's also how we work as it has been said in the introduction. Mostly then also the given build fabric actually of a city. And that's what they are doing here too with this red buildings between the white classicist buildings on the Washington Mall. There's another one that I briefly show you. So that's very much to the brief of the studio. I was in the spring of the same year Google's AlphaGo defeats world number one Go player. So the victory of artificial intelligence over the human brain. That is what was by the way mentioned several times by the students as a very decisive moment that we shouldn't forget about. The project is a big object over one of the big highways entering the center of Washington from the West. A triumphal arch to commemorate the victory of AI over the human brain and to remind us of the power and the danger of technology. So a very simple statement and also in a way quite a simple architectural construction.  Everybody has to pass as long as there are still cars driving and it's actually a big data center. So it is a monument that takes on a very clear function. And finally that's the last student project I want to show you today. There's another intervention close to the White House. This is the White House. It's actually the White House being turned into a variation of the Falon Stair. Probably you know the famous utopian social architecture from the early 19th century in France. So a place, a building, a huge building that is able to incorporate a whole society conceptually speaking. So open to host and accommodate the weakest members of society as well. That's the idea of the student to transform the current president's home into a larger home for other people. It was actually proposed as a monument to the dreamers. So the DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program. As you know, I just read yesterday in the newspaper that this is actually expected that the Supreme Court might call it off, which is another discussion. So it's still a very actual and important thing. Anyway, so in the end, it is an attempt to use architecture to say more than just function and let's say space. It is about the meaning. And this is one wing of this new extended White House. So what does all this now mean for our own or for my own work? It's a pretty, let's say, steep entry into a project presentation. And I ask, obviously, with these projects, can we, shall we build monuments? And my answer is yes. Let's build monuments. Every project, every building, whether it is a house, an office tower, or a public building, must be a monument, at least a symbol for something, a gesture that speaks to the people. And therefore, it has to use a language that is understandable. It is therefore not, and I consider that important, it's not the individual gesture of the egocentric architect, but it's rather the opposite, or it should try to be the opposite. Our, when I speak of this idea of a monumental project in all modesty, our project must take on a form that belongs to everyone. And this, without using a style. So this statement is not a hidden neoclassicist manifesto. It is much more a manifesto for a common language in architecture, a common language that doesn't exist, really. I'm dreaming of architecture that is intuitively understood and telling something that is speaking to everyone. So I would then relate it to the idea of architecture that is belonging to a place. Architecture, this project that we are imagining must incorporate a notion of time, memory and longevity. It must be appropriable by future generations in practical and symbolic terms. It must take a stand, a position to a society. It must be sustainable in material and in a sense, and in material terms. And to put that to the extreme, I would argue it must last more than 100 years. And this is a statement we made in Venice, as you probably can or you can't really see. And this is a brick wall that is actually much older than 100 years. And there we were presenting a big book, a monumental book, and just this light projection, more than 100 years. There's also a small version of the book, and I flip through the book very quickly with you. It's actually a book about the project. So we are finally entering the projects that we've done so far. So not just my strange dreams about monuments of the future, but it's a book about the project. But it's also a book about how the problem of architectural form is behaving, or how architectural form is behaving over time. There is a very short text. There are pictures by Stefano Graziani, who is a friend, an architect and artist, a photographer from Italy, and their drawings. It's about the Kunstmuseum in Basel. The text, that's all. Well, this is a typical Swiss architect of my generation. It's not much time for writing. But still, you see that there is, in a nutshell, this statement of what I would call the sustainability of form, and the strive for long-lasting, to try to create long-lasting buildings. And this is a physical, a material issue, but not only, it is also, to be understood, in immaterial terms. However, then the book takes that very literally. This is the interpretation of the artist, who goes then to Rome, looks at the ruins of the pantheon from the back, typically here, and is looking just at a brick wall. So form is created through remembering form, you could say. Meaning that we are producing our images, somehow always, in relation to something we know. This is not a new story. It's also a series of images that probably speak about the magnetic appeal of the ruin. There is other versions of that. And we are, of course, in a tradition where images of these ruins are part of the cultural propaganda. So it goes beyond just your physical experience. It has to do with the fact that to all of us, I think, typically also in architectural schools, this knowledge, this romantic view on the ruin has been handed down from generation to generation. And then we probably see here the column. We see a different version of it by Borromini, in San Carlo Alicato Fontane. So we could say it speaks about the continuity of form and the problem of language. And a question that I find very interesting, that I was trying to refer not to classicism, but there's still a bit of classicism. Do buildings of different times speak different languages? It's an interesting question. The question is simple, the answer is not that easy. So it goes on. I won't explain every picture. That's a crate of an artwork of a photograph by Günter Ferg that is also in the museum we've built. So far we don't see the museum, we just see Italy, you see brick walls, you see kind of everlasting architecture through its sheer mass and massivity, and then the first image of our building. Probably would say this is now our reaction to the Roman wall, but I mean it was Stefano who created the order of the images. What is interesting, I was saying form is created by remembering form, but there is of course a certain abstraction, and then there is more of these details, and there's a second image on the right, beautiful work by Algiero Boetti, this is the artwork, and this is just a detail of a room in the museum building we did. I was speaking about the representation of that knowledge, another Piranesi, and then you see a bit more of the building and you see the urban context, and I was speaking about the monument that belongs to a place that is trying to belong to the place in the sense that people understand. It is not about the creator, but rather about the circumstances. You could call it the context, here we see the back of the building. It's an extension to a pre-existing museum, so here in the back you see a little bit of this museum, that's from the 1930s, and this is our building, and this is part of a concourse in our building. And here we see, we're looking out of the new building, that's the entrance and loading bay area across the street, so actually the two buildings are separate, that is connected with an underground connection. And it is a lot about the dialogue between two buildings, and speaking of symbolic value, I think in that project, this dialogue, a coexistence, a cohabitation of two generations or several generations that are forming something like a community is at the core of the project. I call this project, and you can little bit guess how it looks, it has solid walls, Amal was mentioning the threshold, so the care for the detail, and I would call it the contemporary version of a classical museum, and this is meaning that there is an idea and an intention of appropriation or reinterpretation of something that's already there, so trying to use the potential of inventing something out of a given, so it is not a completely new type of museum, it's rather the opposite, it's something that exists already, now we could question that and say, shouldn't we come up with totally new ideas of museum? And I think nowadays the museum doesn't exist as such anymore, there are only very many different versions of a museum, I usually say after Centre Pompidou, there is that sort of the end point of the classical museum, and from then on you have different versions of a museum, and this one is dedicated to painting collections in that traditional form. Solidity of the material is celebrating galvanized steel and marble, the brick wall, meeting with a sort of a rather casual and informal context on the back, I was speaking about this ambition of overcoming the gesture of the egocentric architect, I said it should be rather the opposite, our project must take on a form that belongs to everyone, that's probably, I hope, one version of how you could achieve that with its physical relation to the human body on the left and to the surrounding city on the right. And here finally we see a little bit of the entrance, it's just the door, it's quite big actually, and this is a, it's bricks, like in ancient Rome, but it's a bit different, this here is a freeze that is running all around the building, and in this freeze that is between the layers of brick, there are LED lights that you don't see directly, but only indirectly, and then with a sensor that is measuring the intensity of daylight on the facade, you would compensate the shadow that is created. So what we see in dark is the shadow just in the relief of the brickwork, and here where we read something, it's the LED that is just kind of compensating the shadowing effect, so it's the attempt of creating a sophisticated presence of the digital age within that rather archaic brickwork. And on the right, that's the old building actually, so you see, I was speaking about the dialogue, this is the new building in a series of these heavy, heavy, traditional palazzi along that street in Basel, where I actually live and work. And it goes on with these rather cryptic series of Stefano's photographs, you see the gallery space, you see a part of the wardrobe, and so on, you see the building as a cornerstone. If you look carefully, you see a bit of art here. This is a stainless steel box by Donald Judd. And in the center is a stair, so that's the typological idea of the museum that we took over, it's the grand stair. And it's the isolation of the wall, another shot of the stairs, and then finally we arrive to the third part of the book after the text and the photographs, we have the drawings. And the drawings show not only a series of different spaces, but they also show that they are, this is the underground connection to the old building, that's the actual footprint of the new museum. You see the geometry of the site, there is a street, and here is a street, and what you see here, or maybe the projection is not that good, you can see that the construction, different from the ideas of a timeless architecture that stands in a tradition, construction is by definition anchored in the present, and it's all about the contemporary condition. So it's technical, it's economical, and what these drawings show in a certain contrast to the photographs is that it's not about nostalgia. I see even a certain intended tension between the very specific condition of the here and the now, so expressed, for instance, in these mechanical drawings, and the idea of a piece of architecture that sort of stands there forever, that is trying to hide its contemporaneity. And then of course, every project finds its form not only through the context, but also through its typological inner order, and here you see it very clearly, it's two wings, this box is one wing with gallery buildings, and this one gallery, and the other one is a compartment with four other galleries, and the stairs in the middle, and all the services in the remaining corners, to be simple. In section you see celebrating the form of the tectonics, it's a prefabricated building, as you could see before, four public floors. You even then see in this little book all the details of these prefabricated elements, so we spoke about that. We shouldn't give away the control over the building technology itself, even though we're speaking of symbolic value and a form and its meaning, I think in the end it is related to the expression of construction. The skylights, the door, the windows, elements of the central stair, even the pre-stressed and not-stressed cables in the load bearing walls. And last but not least, the brickwork, and all the cables that are connecting the LED light sources in that facade, all the corners of the brick that are creating this sort of mantle for the whole building, and that's the LED sitting on the brick. So that's how the book ends with the legend and the list of all the elements that you saw. So I try to tell a story, a slightly cryptic story, perhaps, of a building, and I wanted to tell you by using this format that the form of that building is engaging with the idea of time or probably more precisely with the idea of continuity over time. So now I show you another project, totally different project. It's in Germany on a modern campus from the 1950s with our production plans for pharmaceutical industry, but also some office and other buildings of that site. And what you see is this building, it's an office building. Is it a monument to be discussed? It exposes structure and order, the principle of tectonics in a very blunt and let's say almost schematic manner. What we see is a very fragile columns and then the juxtaposition of these massive and monolithic concrete slab and white concrete. We could say it is probably a monument to architecture itself or to a happy modernism to the principles of modernisms. The plan, there's one feature that is special, you have course, you have columns, that's the glass, the windows, and here it turns the corner and this little part here remains empty. So part of the building is an outside space and that's where it becomes specific. The most generic principle of architecture, just the piling up of slabs is put into question here. The slab is actually becoming a ramp and it's a little bit of empty space. That's the face to that site, to that campus. So the monumentality of structure and space is celebrated in that very moment. What you see is in white, that's the structure and the decorative system of the floor, of the floor is just celebrating the open plan of a modern building so it is animating the movement within that clearly defined space that you see in these pictures. So that's actually, it's not a recent project, we are building actually a new building next to this one and then next time I come I will show you what type of monument this will be. I said we should strive to build monuments and I also said it doesn't depend on the function and the size of the building whether we manage to achieve that. And this is a very small project, this is just a box in a garden and of course it will be easy for Anna to maybe question the monumentality of such a small building. But at least it's a symmetrical drawing and it is celebrating the tools of our profession. It's just the plan or, generally speaking, the drawing and when you look at the plan it's actually a guest house. It's a very modest program, there is an entrance with a small kitchenette and there is a room to the left and one to the right, they have the same size. There is a wall containing some of the piping and the mechanical technical installations and there is a small bathroom on the back but then you start to understand that most of these walls would move so within this very clear, probably boring floor plan you see that there is a potential movement so clarity versus unclarity or ambiguity within the clear order of the plan and the only thing that is not symmetrical is the entrance door. So yes, I think it is a monument because through its form it strives to give dignity to this very modest program of a guest house or a small housing unit in a garden. It's a freestanding building so you could say it's not a typical building which you would use to build a whole city at least not in my understanding, it's a suburban program but even the suburban house can speak about this presence of the architectural form. It's a composition of architectural elements it's about the scale, this is the entrance door that's the shutters so actually it is a house and an abstract box at the same time it's covered with roof fell and that's like a garment it's like a tail made around the house and here you see it in the context of these plants I was speaking about the dialogue and the question of formal continuity creating forms by remembering form this is in the same garden another 150 year old pavilion so somehow the box is not only a box it's also a pavilion it is also something like a piece of traditional architecture if there is such a thing and it is a series of spaces even though you remember the plan since the panels would open you create the continuity of spaces and this is from one room through the bathroom into the other room it was actually used for all gentlemen who would then give up his home on the other side of the garden and just take a little bit of his furniture and to live here in this small but I think at the same time generous house and what you see with this photograph architecture is an accumulation of different layers and of course this is a metaphor for culture in general and also for life when you see all these different objects that are collected within that box the box that is maybe the small monument to just the human life and the home in the end it's about this what you see inside I show you a last project another box probably another monument I'm not sure it's a project for a chocolate factory so this is quite an ideal depiction of the Lindt und Sprüngli chocolate factory on the lake of Zurich so again in Switzerland this factory still exists there are some more buildings nowadays for the factory itself it's not new over time but also the village the town around of course developed as well here we see the site this is a typical competition model as we use it in Switzerland it's a plaster model scale 1 to 500 so it's sort of the urban scale that is more of a volumetric scale it's the physical environment for a project here we see the old factory that we saw before it's been added here there is a warehouse from the 1950s this is a main office building so that's sort of the new face of that whole institution that's called Lindt und Sprüngli it's a global chocolate manufacturer or producer and this is a new building so actually in the back it's not a very spectacular site what you see is it's a box these are all boxes it's a box there is one element that is different this is the sort of circular cutout that is creating something like a space here so it's an urbanistic intervention in a small scale for that factory compound and here is the entrance to that new building that is a public building or sort of a public building within the factory and for chocolate it's a shop it's a demonstration plant so they are producing chocolate there and people could visit and they could make chocolate and taste chocolate and buy chocolate but it's also the place where they would research and develop new types of chocolate don't ask me why this is needed but that's back to capitalism I think the old Lindt und Sprüngli chocolate is fantastic but they are surprising us all the time with new types of chocolate so they have a bit the same problem as we architects have why do we and what do we produce every day and how do we come up with something that's even better than the previous one anyhow this is more an anecdotic remark this is the plan so this is the box I said it's a museum in that sense it's a very contemporary version of a museum totally different from Basel what I call the contemporary version of a classical museum sort of a box or a building a palace almost containing very precious goods rather an introverted building is Basel also this one because it is a museum nowadays doesn't necessarily need light for instance daylight that's the paradoxical thing so I'm tempted to say a public building nowadays is a building that has no windows because when you work and when you live there you would eventually use daylight and all cinemas don't exist really anymore but theatres probably concert halls, museums they don't have windows so strangely a closed building is a public building there is some other university we could call it a public place they don't have windows yes educational buildings they do have but there is the problem of the public building that has no windows and in the old days and you see that here on the campus in Columbia and McKimit and White and so they knew exactly how to deal with the box they put columns and colonnades and colonnades and a whole system of decoration that would also speak about the content of the building eventually that's not the case anymore we deal with this sort of box anyway this is the museum it's basically an atrium it has a big atrium here that's the chocolate factory part so here you see there is chocolate produced and here this is the museum telling the history and the culture of chocolate and you can taste it and see and it's explained how this is a black box it's all an introverted kind of a virtual world almost with some examples of chocolate as well and here we have all the technical and logistical spaces that are related to the production of chocolate the floor above you would have restaurants or clubs and offices and in the ground floor there is a big shop and a cafe and so on and this is the square or the public space surrounded by the factory buildings so here we enter and then you enter this space it's a very multifunctional building it's a mall ultimately and this is interesting because it brings me back to the question of how do we conceive architecture in order to make it last because use changes over time so what stays there is ultimately the structure at least that's the argument here and what you see is a series of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 load bearing elements plus the contour the wall with its fire or back of house staircases that are part of the load bearing system and all the rest is actually open with the atrium as I said in the middle and this is quite an engineered building so the architectural form the idea of this structure that is solid that is lasting over time is expressed very strongly by the structure itself it's actually this is indicated here it's a huge mushroom structure so there's quite a bit of engineering the type is clear the order of the structural elements is not that clear though so again there is an attempt of creating a certain tension and through that an attempt of giving presence to the few architectural elements that belong to the building I like these drawings I don't know what they show they show I mean the calculations of the reinforcement steel and the deformation of the concrete slab actually so I was mentioning twice that architecture is a cultural and a political discipline but I was also mentioning twice that at the same time it's a technical technological discipline so that's the structural engineering engineers plan or a section of it and that's what we then built it's taken from the construction site as you can see that's the base build and I mean given all the effort and all the resources that we use we better make sure that the building can last and I'm saying that here proudly and nobody knows what's in 50 years you will find out me probably not but this is another monumental dimension to our profession that we are conceiving and producing things that are meant to last longer than we live I mean this is a very general thing to design you could also say in the arts or in many other disciplines as well but what I find again and again shocking and encouraging at the same time is that we are confronted with a problem or an assignment that is putting us into the position of creating something that is living longer than we do I mean that is that is remaining and this is this atrium you could call it an archaic type it could make us think of ancient Rome but also of the department stores of the beginning of the last century a robust a robust structure it could change, it could become a workshop a complete factory it could become the whole thing a museum the whole thing a shop a warehouse but you see, oops sorry in the end it is at least in this stage showing the elementary presence of the architectural order and in that sense as you saw the Piranesia ruin we could compare it to that and that is another long story how we learn about the ruin and its monumental value but what is interesting is when we speak about monuments we very often mean old buildings so a question that I have for the discussion to myself is is just the fact that a building lasts over time or just remains there because people forget about it does it make it a monument it's just the accumulation of time and through that the memories that are encapsulated in that time is this making a monument out of every building this is just a question aside so we see some more of these beautiful photographs of this impressive slightly dramatic space you see or we could imagine and this is of course not the case yet but how people would walk through that building and go up in the museum and then maybe see the production on the other side you see some more being lift up and brought down almost processed a little bit like chocolate you see the soft lines of movements of the concrete of the heavy concrete but it's a poor material in a way and they forgive me the simplicity of the comparison or maybe I don't have to say it did you think of the comparison between chocolate and concrete maybe not okay and this is the model so I was showing you the technical drawings I also show you the models how we work with the students models we build big models sometimes rather clumsy models where we try to understand the proportion and the spatial quality namely of our project and this is very recent photographs and it still takes another half a year until it's open so you have to imagine there will be a monumental monumental chocolate fountain built in the center and a lot of things will come and now it's very empty and it looks almost like SOM's architecture of the 1960s so I wasn't aware of that but it really reminds me a bit of the first photograph you saw an hour ago I mean that time but I think it's quite the beautiful that's the offices that's just very recent that's fresh I think I'm not even really allowed to show these pictures so please so here you can guess a little I'm standing here at the entrance of the museum part this is not lit yet but here there will be chocolate processed and a lot of people is expecting it to become the most visited building of Switzerland probably I find that a bit embarrassing and scary because we have some really good cultural buildings too but not as many people as we go to the mountains there's still something more important I'm glad here you see a freaky floor imagine the movement up and then you go along and you cross on a bridge and you walk along the process of chocolate production you eat chocolate and then you come back and then here is the chocolate fountain and then of course you can also buy chocolate wow from the outside I was describing the site so this is the second last picture it's a bit less spectacular it's a very mundane normal place these are these grown over time buildings here we can see actually this curved wall it's a brick box red brick and then there is this white screen this is the entrance is it a symbol that's a question but you see it's really a box and then we have these gilded letters that sit on the frieze they slightly disturb let's say the architectural order but it's an interesting question how do you brand a building do you give it a name and so the monumental gesture of the entrance screen is literally overwritten or overruled by the letters of the brand and I'm afraid I must admit the monument ultimately turns into a decorated shed and so most confusingly I end with this the monument as we learned from Bob Venturi is nothing else than a sign it's just words literally so it's all my all my attempt to give that much importance to architectural form sort of outruled I don't know it was Victor Hugo who said and that's where I end thank you very much for your attention thank you very much Emanuele has been a really impressive I really enjoy it basically because it's quite rare to attend to lectures that base their discourse on students' work and I think that that's extremely meaningful and I also really enjoyed the way that you end the lecture because it was actually one of my questions that I had tonight at least one of my references that I wanted to throw on the table because it's quite I've just talked about one of your books but you have published many of them somehow your work in academia as well as your little books that you published once in a while for you are tools to raise a discourse that able you to define your practice or in other words you define your position, your practice disciplines through those little exercises, studio work and little publishing books with short texts true but quite deep or at least strong and the first one for instance the one that you publish with photographs of your travel to Rome for me it was quite interesting to see the evolution of all those books that are talking about the ordinary his first book for those that you are not acquainted with it is just a collection of photographs that you pair really well known architectures with totally ordinary architectures and some of them you pair them with your own work already they're positioning yourself with both ordinary and extraordinary buildings and one of them you move on from the ordinary you move to typology and then today you're talking about monuments and in the meantime you talk about time so for me the evolution is quite interesting but today I wanted to talk about the ordinary and also because we have in the audience Enrico Walker so I'm going to actually quote you or use some of your ideas tonight because one of your books is actually titled typology, Hong Kong, Rome, New York, Buenos Aires somehow it could be linked with all these genealogy of architects that have looked to cities to raise a manifesto, I don't know if I could use this term here tonight but basically to understand the capacity of the act of looking to a city in particular to raise a particular personal project and you have done that and the question is always what do you respond to through that looking to the ordinary so for instance learning from Las Vegas and actually we had a fantastic reference as an end of this lecture so clearly responses to the design principles of modern movement so it's clearly a response to the established idea that form follows function claiming that form should also embrace ornament and decor and so the case of the duck and the shed they came up with a new building type that would offer a new kind of leads to functionalities so clearly we understand the position of Dennis Scott Brown and Bantry towards modern movement but then my question tonight to you is what do you respond to why do you think that today we should discuss who you're talking to who I'm talking to are you talking to me no you know probably in a lecture you always talk a little bit to yourself at least but let's just put that aside I'm talking to to not only my generation but I think probably rather to the generation of our students of part of the audience here and to our students also in Switzerland that I'm sort of responding to certain let's say to maybe a generation of architects who don't know anymore where the profession will lead them to and that's not just the young students as I said to a certain extent it's also my own generation it's me I mean we are at the moment we had a conversation and a discussion Amal and I just also before we are this threshold generation we were brought up in the 20th century and our predecessors is the generation of star architects in all different manners and now we are in a certain crisis we know that there is huge challenges environmental societal digital and computation how does it affect we saw artificial intelligence how does it affect us as a profession as a discipline and more concretely speaking let's say assuming I'm a young student I'm investing all this time and this effort what will my role be and perhaps to come back to your question responding to this imagined and send uncertainty to address probably the most radical aspect of architecture what I'm making is something that happens it's not the reason to do architecture I don't want to limit it to the problem of form but to try to understand that there is as I try to say a social and political and cultural value in architecture and that our responsibility as educated people as citizens is something we can express through architecture and in my project it's very modest I mean it's by the way the first project is the museum in Basel it's just saying I'm a museum I'm not an iconic object that is there to be just promoted as an independent image I'm belonging to the city I'm part of that urban community so it is a statement it is a statement that says yes I'm addressing and accepting a certain context that I consider reinforced I'm belonging to a place as I try to say but this is something we have to be aware of this is something no computer no technology no let's say political short time defined political agenda would really tell you so the monument is in the end the ultimate problem of architecture I think and this is something we have to re-conquer and re-re-invent again and again I'm not sure I'm not sure whether this is an answer to your question but I'm trying to give confidence and also encouragement but not necessarily an easy indication to where we should go as a profession we should incorporate all that and what our discipline is defining the technological the economical and the social aspects and try to consolidate it under the problem of the form that's what I think thank you for making architects think I'm not sure whether it's about profession or about generation but it is certainly about architecture and do you interestingly enough use adult flows and piranesi as cornerstones of your talk and then you bring Venturi and then I thought why not Rossi and in this redefinition Rossi talked about the architecture of the city and try to do something that I hate or I like to say you're better at doing than he was and in other words trying to define a definition how can I say defining a definition but to define an architecture that becomes a different form of interiority what struck me in terms of what you showed us was that even the building on the world on the screen it's really turning like a glove inside out you talk about a new form of interiority which we haven't heard for a long long time and so I'd like to hear from you about that a form of interiority but I have to thank you for your comment and also for the question so I have to ask back when you speak about interiority you mean the interiority of the architectural artifact or of interiority of the person that sees I'm talking only about the architectural artifact I don't mind about your subjectivity purely the architectural artifact in other words the role of the wall and its references and again Piranesi and the images so there is a sort of defense mechanism almost like a military architecture of sorts and then inside it becomes incredibly sophisticated and even luscious and so this is something which in the sort of dialectical the opposition between this inside and the outside it's an architecture of discourse in itself and I thought that was quite fascinating yeah I mean I try to say especially when it comes to but not yeah in general isn't I mean I gave whole lectures about the wall you're totally right because I mean it's not the only but it's one of the fundamental gesture in architecture as we probably all know and it's true that in a context that is a loose collection of individual gesture of all sorts and I find with and I yes I speak briefly about the human beings using information and our tools and everything so that there is that I mean carefully and greatly described by all sorts of philosophers and sociologists and architects and theoreticians but I mean the tendency towards the sort of a certain I mean comes the same I'm very simple so the gesture of the limitation of creating the threshold and the notion of walking through a door under a big white wall or just opening the panel of that box and entering is probably one of the most immediate and strongest experiences that you can create in daily spatial experience if we try to understand when we move am I inside outside where am I this kind of to intensify that moment of transition of entering going in experiencing the lights going that's very fundamental but that's what our buildings are doing and it's true and all in different ways and sometimes they are very protective you could also say I mean I'm there by the way also doubts about these strong gestures are very open and sometimes you think it's maybe a bit too introverted should the building you know I mean it's a bit simple but especially in the post war modern discourse not in theory but more in practice and in politics you would say an open building is a glass building and glass is transparent we could argue about that maybe glass is not that transparent symbolically speaking and therefore it is democratic and then following this assumption a brick wall with no windows is bad it's maybe totalitarian so speaking of symbols and monuments it's a very interesting question so interiority and the threshold or the separation between two different conditions and having a very precise relationship which is maybe just a punched hole or a slit or a door or a gateway is of course a symbolic gesture as well and yes our projects they are in that sense maybe inclusive but not to the extent that they try to sort of overcome this idea of separation and by the way the box that you saw in the garden before I designed that I came to New York and saw the glass house by Philip Johnson so I don't know much more for an anecdotic part of that yes I'm going to close this talk by answering your question oh yes please because you actually ask is it the accumulation of time that defines a monument and of course I mean I think that you ask knowing that the answer is easy because it's a yes of course but not necessarily I was I thought that today of course we had to talk about the famous Riegel book from 1903 the monoculture of the monument clearly at the time already in 1903 so we're talking about a long time ago there was already this kind of interest towards the definition of the monument from the modern perspective and Riegel clearly stages three types of monuments the intentional monument so the monument that is built to commemorate a value probably most of the exercise that you have shown today then the intentional monument so that monument that is basically turned a monument through the people that provides a value to that architecture was not intentionally built as a monument then there's the age value monument that is clearly the one that answers to your question yes of course when we have an architecture that holds time physically speaking is therefore immediately has a value because it contains physically time for us as humans it has a value but I would say that your architecture or what you have proposed tonight is another type of monument that it's not that physically your materials contain time but rather they contain time metaphysically speaking through form so by linking formally the buildings architectures so the act of using references clearly form acts as a temporal symbol able to recall previous times and I think that that's why you're proposing you have proposed tonight this fourth type of monument that at the end what you do is through the transgression of those references you're talking about the now but at the same time about previous times I wanted to thank Emmanuel for this fantastic lecture as well and but the interest of the monument is the production of meaning right and I think meaning like program shifts I mean glass used to be signifier of transparency and now it has become the signifier of gated you know office buildings and I mean you just go up town to the new campus and you see the sign of openness which is actually completely about the opposite and so I wanted to maybe tie this question of meaning to the question of place because at some point you make the point that ultimately it is about place and continuity and I keep repeating myself it's been five years of lectures and every time I mean we had Liz Diller last week and there's a sense that the most still and I don't mean to be so kind of reductive but you know the most powerful architectural practices are very still embedded in place because that is where you can still produce meaning that you you know you're operating almost with a kind of intuitive sense or so what is and you yourself mentioned place and so I just wanted to maybe kind of end or on this note of you know in the end this star architect model of the global architect attempting to failing to produce meaning across the globe you know it's something that we also have to deal with somehow these were the two missing conclusions in my talk I'm very very very glad that I could stimulate this this discussion or this short notes and yes so thank you thank you very much or do you want me to know I mean everything is to be continue thank you thank you very much thank you


ورحمة الله وبركاته بسم الله و الحمد لله والصلاة والسلام على رسول الله و على آله و أصحابه أجمعين كل محب is indeed due to Allah سبحانه وتعالى بلسنس and salutations upon Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم we ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى to bless all his companions and to bless his entire household may Allah bless them all and may Allah bless every single one of us أمين my beloved brothers and sisters in Islam we have spoken about saving ourselves from shaitan and we have made mention of how important it is to protect ourselves and that Allah has revealed verses in the Qur'an that are so powerful that we would be protected from the devil Allah has revealed a verse which a lot of us would know of by heart it is verse number 255 of Surah Al-Baqara that is known as Ayatul-Kursi I am sure many of us would know it of by heart الله لا إله إلا هو الحي القيوم لا تأخذوا سنة ولا نوم that is how it starts it mentions the greatness of Allah the fact that he is in absolute control he is the protector he is the one who protects every single one he has knowledge of absolutely everything so this verse we are taught that if we were to repeat it we would be protected from shaitan there is a narration making mention of Abu Hurairah رضي الله عنه wherein he had actually caught the devil on one occasion and what happened is the devil then taught him something the third time that this happened which means when he caught the devil the third time the devil says I will teach you something that will protect you from myself and my progeny or the rest of the shayateen and so he taught him Ayatul-Kursi so Abu Hurairah released him he went to Muhammad ﷺ asking him or telling him what had happened and Muhammad ﷺ said صدقك وهو كذوب he has told you the truth on this occasion but remember he is a liar he tells a lot of lies so we ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى to grant us protection from shaitan my brothers and sisters read Ayatul-Kursi in the morning thrice read Ayatul-Kursi in the evening after Salatul-Maghrib thrice try to read it once after every Salat it is important because we would all like to be protected from the devil from the evil eye from shaitan from so many other things that affect mankind that we cannot see in fact to add to that the last two surahs of the Quran known as I am sure we would know that surah of by heart if we don't we should do something about it learn its meaning and read it and repeat it at least thrice in the morning thrice in the evening and reply to the next surah seeking protection from Allah سبحانه وتعالى from shaitan from the devil and from various other aspects of evil this is Allah سبحانه وتعالى guiding us he tells us my brothers and sisters its important for us to realize the gift of Allah in order to save yourself from calamity from disaster from that which the devil whispers into your ears from the evil eye from magic from so many other superstitious items read it's definitely a gift of Allah سبحانه وتعالى then we move on to something extremely interesting once again regarding spending many of us delay our acts of charity to the month of Ramadan we need to realize that charity should not be delayed to the month of Ramadan yes the calculation of zakah and the giving of zakah it is permissible to give it in the month of Ramadan or to calculate it in the month of Ramadan and indeed those acts of charity that are given in the month of Ramadan the reward is definitely multiplied without a doubt but remember where there is a need prior to Ramadan never ever say wait until the end of this month because when Ramadan starts that's when I'm going to give my charities no if there is a need that has arisen it is very important for us to give upon that moment and we will get a bigger reward than having spent in the month of Ramadan because indeed the need is what made us give Allah knows our intention Allah will give and Allah will multiply the goodness in fact if we look at verse number 261 of Surat Al-Baqara where Allah سبحانه وتعالى says مثل الذين ينفقون أموالهم في سبيل الله كمثل حبه كمثل حبة أنبتت سبع سناب في كل سنبلة مئة حبه والله يضاعف لمن يشاء والله باسعنع الأشياء من الذين ينفقون their wealth في الحقوق right في حقوق of Allah سبحانه وتعالى is similar to a seed which means the wealth you spent is like a seed the seed germinates seven spikes which means the reward is being multiplied it is growing and on each spike you find another 100 seeds 100 seeds again making it 700 this is why محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم says when a person spends Allah سبحانه وتعالى multiplies it 10 fold to 100 fold to 700 fold and beyond the 700 is from this verse verse number 261 of صورة البقرة my brothers and sisters when you spend it can never ever decrease your wealth nobody has become poor because they've been charitable because they've given in the right cause nobody has become poor when they've spent for the cause of Allah سبحانه وتعالى they've always received and achieved multiplication in their wealth in their sustenance and in fact lots of blessings what is the meaning of blessings the بركة بركة meaning when a person has say a thousand dollars that thousand dollars will last for longer than another person's 10,000 dollars because that one may not have the blessings this is what we say when we are referring to the blessings of Allah سبحانه وتعالى this is what we mean so this is why Allah سبحانه وتعالى says when you purify your wealth by giving it imagine purify why purify your heart becomes pure it is no longer clinging to materialism a lot of the problems that we face on earth today are connected to materialism the fact that we love that which is material when you can divorce yourself from that which is material or you understand the type of link you are supposed to be having with materialistic items then you will be able to achieve true success so Allah سبحانه وتعالى tells us about this when you have spent in the right course it actually cleanses you it makes your heart clean everyone loves money everyone loves wealth I'm sure all of us we would love to be wealthy but at the same time those who have spent in the right course are the truly wealthy they are the ones whom when they pass away the wealth will bear witness for them oh Allah this man earned so much of wealth but he gave it to those who are more desperately in need of it than himself may Allah سبحانه وتعالى protect us and grant us a deep understanding this is why Allah says he will multiply it seven times a hundred times seven hundred times multiplication imagine today people are ready to give their money to a bank where they are earning interest in a haram way in a prohibited way and they would say oh I'm getting 6% and 10% and 20% Allah says hang on that is haram it seems to you that the wealth is multiplied but no way save yourself from that which is haram Allah سبحانه وتعالى will never allow you to succeed through that which is prohibited no way that cannot happen you need to repent to Allah سبحانه وتعالى and spend that wealth in the right cause because Allah says when you invest it with me you will definitely see the greatest returns imagine here Allah is saying 700% returns 700% سبحان الله you put in one dollar you get 700 dollars instantly سبحانه رب العالى من الله سبحانه وتعالى make us from among those who can spend no matter what you have don't say I'm a poor person I cannot spend if you have 5 dollars spend 1 dollar spend 50 cents سبحان الله maybe through the barakah and the blessing of that spending you will be able to achieve greatness or goodness in so many different aspects of your life including your health including your children including perhaps bliss in your marriage all this connected to you spending many of us suffer because we are stingy we are miserly we are selfish when it comes to the property that Allah has bestowed upon us so this is something very interesting and Allah سبحانه وتعالى warns us to save ourselves from spoiling that the reward that we would be achieving after we have spent do you see some people have a habit what is this habit it's a bad habit they spend ما شاء الله they give but every little while they say you know I gave because of me that you are wealthy because of me you are rich because of me you are where you are today no way Allah says if you say that you have just spoiled the reward of the charity it's because of Allah that that person has achieved yes they are taught to be thankful and to show gratitude to those who have helped them indeed because without showing gratitude to the one who has helped you to Allah سبحانه وتعالى so that acknowledgement must not be in the form of a constant reminder from you who has given no you don't constantly remind a person or brag about it tell the whole world you know that person is rich because of me that person is you are rich because of Allah so that person if they got through you it was Allah سبحانه وتعالى who gave them in the first place may Allah bestow upon us wealth and may He not make us from among those who brag from among those who constantly remind those whom we've helped you know I helped you you know I gave listen to what Allah سبحانه وتعالى says verse number 262 of صورة البقرة where Allah is asking us to protect ourselves to save ourselves from what to save ourselves from nalifying the reward of the charity الذين ينفقون أموالهم في سبيل الله ثم لا يتبعون ما أنفقوا من أذى لهم أجرهم ولا خوف عليهم ولا هم يحزنون الذين ينفقون are those who spend in the path of Allah in the right cause that which Allah has instructed you to spend in and then they do not follow that spending with bragging or harm they don't brag about it and they don't harm the people sometimes we spend on someone or we've given them some wealth and we think that that makes us entitled to make their life a misery so I spent 10,000 on you for example or a thousand dollars on you for example then I call you at two in the morning I call you at five in the morning I call you at midnight and I said you know what brother I need you I need you for this and that without considering your circumstance your situation where you are and what is my excuse the excuse I have is but I gave you money but I helped you but I'm the one who helped you even if you're paying me a salary to work for you on a monthly basis the time stipulated is the time that you should stick to you do not abuse me because you are giving me a salary may Allah SWT grant us an understanding if that is regarding a salary remember a charity you will never be rewarded truly for that charity or the reward of that charity will be nullified if you happen to abuse the person whom you've been charitable towards just because of that giving that amount that you have given them never do that so Allah says those who spend their wealth in the true way and do not follow that spending with harm or with bragging about it Allah SWT says number one they will have a full reward with Allah SWT full reward why? because you spent it and on top of that you were humble you didn't make it known you didn't abuse you didn't brag number one you achieve a reward لهم أجروهم عند ربهم with Allah the reward is registered it's written it's recorded and then Allah SWT says ولا هم يحزنون لا يحتاجون لهم لا يحتاجون لهم لا يحتاجون لهم لا يحتاجون لهم الله is with them they have helped others الله will help them the Prophet Muhammad SAW كان الله في عون العبد ما كان العبد في عون أخيه الله continues to assist a worshiper for as long as that worshiper continues to assist another worshiper someone else you help fellow human beings الله will help you you help the creatures of Allah الله will help you I always say people saved themselves from Jahannam from the fire of hell by being compassionate towards a dog and a cat I'm sure you've heard of those narrations a woman who was saved from the punishment or a man who was forgiven because he was compassionate towards a dog for example if compassionate if being compassionate towards an animal got these people their freedom or saved them from the punishment of the fire or earned them forgiveness what do you think will be the reward of being compassionate to a human being a human being we're not talking here about Muslims we're talking about people who don't share your faith but they share humanity with you that's on a higher level than a dog and a cat and thereafter if the person happens to be a Muslim then you get an even greater reward may Allah SWT bestow upon us an understanding may Allah make us from those who can spend even if it means a small percentage of our own wealth so Allah SWT says those people who have spent properly and they don't brag about it and they don't harm thereafter there is no fear upon them and on top of that Allah says they will never be sad Allah will protect them from sadness so if you want to save yourself from sadness wallahi my brothers and sisters you need to spend in the cause in the right cause and on top of that be humble Allah says you won't be sad many of us are suffering depression anxiety stress sadness a lot of us are not charitable did you know that your charities will be able to help you in your health in your wealth in your mind in your condition in your children in all aspects of your living and even in the hereafter here is Allah SWT telling us clearly that Allah SWT will bless these people with goodness Allah will bless them with removal of sadness may Allah SWT remove our sadness may Allah SWT grant us acceptance may He make us not from amongst those who are worried on the day of judgment may He make us from those who are given good news the day the angels come to take us away so then the next verse Allah is telling us about how a good word a good word قولم معروف ومغفرة and forgiveness if you are to say a good word to someone speak well speak with respect use good words when talking to others and if you are forgiving towards people is far better than an act of charity after which you are bragging or you are harming الله أكبر listen to what Allah says قولم معروف ومغفرة خير من صدقة يتبعها a statement of goodness a good word and forgiveness is better than a charity that is followed by harm may Allah SWT help us say good words so my brothers and sisters you want to save yourself from difficulty from spoiling relations you want to save yourself from people hating you just because you didn't know how to talk to them speak correctly speak with respect choose the best words choose the most beautiful way of coming across getting across how do you want to communicate with people think about it Allah says say a word that is beautiful it is actually it is actually very good for you it will benefit you in so many ways and Allah SWT also uses the term مغفرة مغفرة here meaning forgiveness and it would refer to forgiving others when you forgive people or when you seek the forgiveness of Allah that is known as إستغفار إستغفار meaning seeking the forgiveness of Allah that is a topic on its own but here forgiving people if I can forgive someone a mistake they've made something they've done against me some people don't like to forgive remember all that will be a burden on your shoulder it might crack your back one day because you have so much on your back you don't even know which way you are heading it's heavy it's a burden it's something too much for you to handle the reason is you're not forgiving learn to forgive it's okay I've forgiven you no Matt you've harmed me you've done wrong to me you've backbitten about me you have said bad words about me you have perhaps you've served something it is my right to seek justice but I want to save myself from the tension from the stress from the ill feeling from not only tension and stress but even becoming sick some people become physically ill just because they hold so much of grudge they hold so much in their heart against people learn to forgive when you forgive you have actually broken down the mountain that was burdening your shoulders may Allah SWT help us to be forgiving that having been said let people not take advantage of you because you are forgiving if people take advantage of you because you are forgiving sometimes you could be the cause of them committing the same harm against other human beings this is why be careful there is a limit for everything may Allah SWT protect us and this is why Allah SWT says in verse 264 of Surat Al-Baqarah يا أيها الذين آمنوا لا تضطلوا صدقاتكم بالمن والأذاء oh you who believe do not destroy the reward of your charities by bragging about it and by harming this is the second time the third time Allah is making mention of it in just a few verses it shows how important it is may we be humble may we be from among those who spend and at the same time who do not harm or brag about it later on then we move on to something extremely interesting known as wisdom many people have a lot of knowledge we know a lot we have information sometimes and we don't realize that to be able to pass that knowledge on you need to have some wisdom some tact you don't just go to people swear them shout them sometimes it's difficult to tell them directly because maybe they may not digest it you need to sometimes break down your statement in a way that they can follow it through they can understand they appreciate many times we show absolutely no concern when it comes to our fellow Muslims and then suddenly we start correcting them it would be better for us to show a concern for them so that when we correct them they will understand we are genuine people we are really trying our best to help them to uplift them and then they will listen to what we have to say for example if you are in a community you are serving the community you are helping them you are trying to uplift them in so many different ways one day when you tell them you know my brothers and sisters what we are doing here is wrong they will listen immediately because they've known you for years they've known you for a period of time and they've known you to be a decent person this is known as wisdom it's just a way of doing things and in the same way there are so many scenarios where if we apply wisdom we will be far more effective than if we don't this is why سورة البقرة verse number 269 الله speaks about the gift of wisdom الله سبحانه وتعالى says الله سبحانه وتعالى says he bestows wisdom upon whosoever he wishes and whoever has been granted that wisdom has been granted greatness goodness a great goodness خيرا كثيرا a lot of goodness if Allah has given you wisdom Allah has given you a lot if Allah has given you tact He has given you a lot He has favored you He speaks about the same favor that he has bestowed upon عليه الصلاة والسلام and the family or the other prophets of Allah سبحانه وتعالى He speaks about it great favor and Allah says but none will remember except those those with sound intellect they will know what wisdom is all about may Allah سبحانه وتعالى not make us from those who lack wisdom not make us from those who say things and spoil the situation rather than benefit and help and may Allah سبحانه وتعالى bless every single one of us then Allah سبحانه وتعالى speaks about another aspect of spending many of us when it comes to zakah we calculate the zakah and what happens when we calculate the zakah is we tend to look at the stock that is dead dead stock and we give that out to the charities and we say wow I want to come to you with what with you know these ions that I have where you put coal inside and you actually use them I've got 2,000 of those I'm going to give it to you and I'm going to deduct it from my zakah but that's dead stock no one wants it you try and go and give people those ions that have coal in them they won't even want them it's like a toy basically so Allah is warning us to say hang on when you want to give charities give something decent something you would accept yourself that's something that would make you from among those who deserve a reward what reward do I want when I'm only giving out that which is not even going to be used by myself remember yes there is zakah zakah is that which is compulsory we're talking about that here and also that which is voluntary that which is voluntary there are no restrictions but let it not be an insult to those whom you are giving it to for example you have clothing tattered and torn nobody would wear it you wouldn't even wear it yourself then you want to give it as a charity and say no do something with it I'm sure there will be people who will want to wear it hang on you give that which you wore before it becomes tatty and torn so that someone can make use of it open your wardrobe count the number of dresses you have count the number of robes or thobs you have or clothes you have and take out that which is good that's when you will get a reward not wait for it to become you know tatty or torn or unusable and then say don't worry I'm sure there's poor people in Afghanistan or here أستغفر الله how can you think that way الله سبحانه وتعالى tells us save yourselves save yourselves from accumulating sin rather than goodness we need to save our good deeds I want to be charitable I want to earn a reward how am I going to earn this reward when I'm giving that which I wouldn't accept myself الله says you would only accept it with a closed eyes you know if you're not looking at what you're getting and you just take it like a lucky dip الله سبحانه وتعالى not do that to us so Allah says يا أيها الذين آمنوا أنفقوا من طيبات ما كسبتم oh you who believe spend from the good that we have given you from the good that you have earned ومن أخرجنا لكم من الأول and from that which we have produced for you from the earth so the produce that you have spend from it and at the same time the goodness that Allah has bestowed upon you in terms of sustenance spend from it this is what Allah سبحانه وتعالى is saying spend from the good of it you know if you are giving produce for example you don't wait for the bananas to become rotten before you give them and say no ways I'm giving this out in charity let me deduct it from my zakah or you wait for the apples to be rotten the avocados to be rotten masha Allah they grew in your backyard and you waited for all these fruits or whatever else to become you know that which you cannot even consume and then you give it out as a charity don't do that Allah سبحانه وتعالى says and do not intend to give or do not incline towards or do not give that which is خبيث خبيث meaning not good at all that which is bad do not give that which is bad do not intend to give that which is bad unusable it's not edible and at the same time Allah سبحانه وتعالى says you yourself would not take that type of goods or that type of item that type of charities you wouldn't take it yourself unless your eyes were closed and you just had to take it which means under rare circumstances out of a mistake you might have taken it but you don't take things like those yet you want to give it to others so these verses are just showing us that when we spend in the cause of Allah give good items don't give dead stock don't give that which is going to be a burden upon people may Allah سبحانه وتعالى save goddess and may Allah سبحانه وتعالى grant us goodness and I want to end off by making mention of very interesting point regarding why people don't give you know you see nice things that you have you have a lot of wealth you have so much Masha Allah sometimes people don't give because they fear they are going to become poor Shaytan comes and makes them a promise and Allah makes them a promise but Shaytan's promise sometimes overtakes the people so Allah makes mention of it verse number 268 الله سبحانه وتعالى says Shaytan promises you poverty he makes you believe that you are going to become poor and he makes you commit immorality yet Allah is promising you that he will forgive your sins give give that which is good he will forgive your sins and he will grant you increase he will give you a lot of goodness may Allah سبحانه وتعالى grant us goodness in this world and the next and may Allah save us from the punishment and torment of this