Stunning buildings made from raw, imperfect materials | Débora Mesa Molina

115,670 views ・ 2019-01-25

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00:12
Architecture is a profession with many rules,
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some written, some not,
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some relevant and others not.
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As architects, we're constantly gravitating
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between following these rules by the book
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or making a space for imagination --
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for experimentation.
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This is a difficult balance.
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Especially through architecture,
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you're trying to challenge preconceptions and push boundaries and innovate,
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even if just using what we have around and we overlook all the time.
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And this is what I've been doing along with my team,
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Ensamble Studio,
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and from our very early works
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that happened in strict historic contexts,
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like the city of Santiago de Compostela.
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Here we built the General Society of Authors and Editors,
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a cultural building.
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And on top of all the regulations,
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we had to use stone by code
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and our experience was limited,
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but we had incredible references to learn from,
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some coming from the city itself
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or from nearby landscapes
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or other remote places
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that had impacted our education as architects,
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and maybe you recognize here.
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But somehow the finished products that industry made available
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for us as architects to use in our buildings
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seemed to have lost their soul.
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And so we decided to go to the nearby quarries
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to better understand the process that transforms a mountain
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into a perfectly square tile that you buy from a supplier.
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And we were taken by the monumental scale of the material
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and the actions to extract it.
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And looking carefully,
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we noticed hundreds of irregular blocks piling up everywhere.
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They are the leftovers of an extraction sequence:
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the ugly parts that nobody wants.
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But we wanted them.
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We were inspired.
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And it was a win-win situation
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where we could get this residual material of great quality,
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doomed to be crushed,
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at a very low cost.
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Now, we had to convince our clients that this was a good idea;
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but foremost, we had to come up with a design process
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to reuse these randomly shaped rocks,
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and we had not done this before.
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Today everything would be much easier
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because we would go to the quarry
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with our smartphones equipped with 3-D scanners
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and we would document each rock,
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turn that into a digital model --
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highly engineer the whole process.
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But more than a decade ago,
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we had to embrace uncertainty
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and put on our boots, roll up our sleeves
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and move to the quarry for a hands-on experience.
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And we also had to become the contractors
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because we failed at finding somebody willing to share the risk with us.
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Now, luckily, we convinced the quarry team to help us build a few prototypes
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to resolve some of the technical details.
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And we agreed on a few mock-ups,
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but we got excited,
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and one stone led to another
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until we succeeded to build
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an 18-meter-long by eight-meter-high structure
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that recycled all the amorphous material of the quarry,
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just supported by gravity --
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no mortar and no ties.
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And once built and tested,
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moving it to the final site in the city center
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to unite it with the rest of the building
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was a piece of cake,
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because by having isolated uncertainty
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and managed risk in the controlled environment of the quarry,
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we were able to complete the whole building in time
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and on budget,
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even if using nonconventional means and methods.
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And I still get goosebumps
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when I see this big chunk of the industrial landscape
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in the city,
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in a building,
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experienced by the visitors and the neighbors.
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This building gave us quite a few headaches,
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and so it could have well been an exception in our work,
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but instead it started to inform a modus operandi
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where every project becomes this opportunity
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to test the limits of a discipline we believe has to be urgently reimagined.
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So what you see here are four homes
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that we have designed, built and inhabited.
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Four manifestos where we are using the small scale
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to ask ourselves big questions.
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And we are trying to discover the architectures
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that result from unconventional applications of pretty mundane materials
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and technologies,
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like concrete in different forms in the top row,
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or steel and foam in the bottom row.
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Take, for instance, these precast concrete beams.
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You have probably seen them
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building bridges, highways, water channels --
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we found them on one of our visits to a precast concrete factory.
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And they might not seem especially homey or beautiful,
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but we decided to use them to build our first house.
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And this was an incredible moment
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because we got to be architects as always,
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builders once more
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and, for the first time, we could be our own clients.
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So, here we are trying to figure out how we can take these huge catalogue beams
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of about 20 tons each
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and stack them progressively around a courtyard space ...
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the heart of the house.
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And due to the dimensions and their material quality,
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these big parts are the structure that carry the loads to the ground,
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but they are much more than that.
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They are the swimming pool;
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they are the walls that divide interior from exterior;
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they are the windows that frame the views;
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they are the finishes;
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they are the very spirit of this house.
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A house that is for us a laboratory
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where we are testing how we can use standard elements in nonstandard ways.
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And we are observing that the results are intriguing.
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And we are learning by doing
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that prefabrication can be much more than stacking boxes
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or that heavy parts can be airy and transparent.
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And on top of designing and building this house,
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we get invaluable feedback,
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sharing it with our family and our friends
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because this is our life
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and our work in progress.
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The lessons that we learn here get translated into other projects
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and other programs
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and other scales as well,
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and they inspire new work.
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Here again we are looking at very standard products:
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galvanized steel studs that can be easily cut and screwed,
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insulating foams, cement boards --
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all materials that you can find hidden in partition walls
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and that we are exposing;
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and we are using them to build a very lightweight construction system
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that can be built almost by anyone.
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And we are doing it ourselves with our hands in our shop,
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and we are architects. We're not professional builders
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but we want to make sure it's possible.
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And it's so nice that Antón can move it with his hands
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and Javier can put it in a container,
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and we can ship it
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like you would ship your belongings if you were moving abroad ...
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which is what we did five years ago.
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We moved our gravity center from Madrid
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and the house of the concrete beams to Brookline.
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And we found the ugly duckling of a very nice neighborhood:
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a one-story garage and the only thing we could afford.
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But it was OK because we wanted to transform it into a swan,
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installing on top our just-delivered kit of parts,
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once more becoming the scientists and the guinea pigs.
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So this is a house that uses some of the cheapest
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and most normal materials that you can find in the market
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that applies the ubiquitous four-by-eight modulation
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that governs the construction industry.
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And yet a different organization of the spaces
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and a different assembly of the parts
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is able to transform an economically built home
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into a luxurious space.
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And now, we're dreaming and we're actively working with developers,
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with builders,
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with communities
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to try to make this a reality for many more homes
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and many more families.
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And you see, the world around us is an infinite source of inspiration
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if we are curious enough to see beneath the surface of things.
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Now I'm going to take you to the other side of the moon:
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to the sublime landscape of Montana,
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where a few years ago we joined Cathy and Peter Halstead
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to imagine Tippet Rise Art Center on a 10,000-acre working ranch.
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And when we first visited the site,
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we realized that all we knew about what an art center is
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was absolutely pointless for that client,
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for that community, for that landscape.
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The kind of white-box museum type had no fit here.
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So we decided to explode the center into a constellation of fragments,
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of spaces spread across the vast territory
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that would immerse the visitors into the wilderness of this amazing place.
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So back in the office, we are thinking through making,
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using the land both as support and as material,
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learning from its geological processes of sedimentation, erosion,
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fragmentation, crystallization --
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explosion --
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to discover architectures that are born from the land,
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that are visceral extensions of the landscape,
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like this bridge that crosses Murphy Canyon.
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Or this fountain.
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Like this space topping a hill ...
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or this theatre that brings to us the space of the mountains
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and its sound.
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And in order to realize this idea,
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construction cannot be perfectly planned.
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We need to embrace the drastic weather and the local craft.
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We need to control just those aspects that are critical,
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like the structural, the thermal,
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the acoustical properties embedded in the form.
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But otherwise, improvisation is welcome and is provoked.
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And the moment of construction is still a moment of design
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and a moment of celebration
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where different hands, hearts, minds come together to perform a final dance.
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And the result then cannot be anticipated.
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It comes as a surprise.
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And we unwrap architecture like you would unwrap a birthday gift.
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Architecture isn't uncovered:
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it's discovered.
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It's extracted from the guts of the earth to build a shelter,
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one of the most basic human needs.
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Architecture, art, landscape,
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archaeology, geology -- all made one.
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And by using the resources at our disposal in radical ways,
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by making a space for experimentation,
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we are able to bring to light architectures that find the beauty latent
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in the raw and imperfect things that surround us,
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that elevate them
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and let them speak their own language.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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