Transcript of Singapore Architecture Forum (1:12:30) Speakers: LS: Tai Lee Siang MT: Milton Tan TI: Toyo

Ito ZH: Zaha Hadid RH: Richard Hassell RS: Rita Soh LS: Good morning everyone. Indeed a very warm welcome to the Singapore Pavilion on behalf of the Design Council, Singapore as well as the Singapore Institute of Architects, we welcome you to this forum. Before we start let me just invite the commissioner of the Singapore Pavilion, Dr Milton Tan, to say a few words. MT: I extend my welcome to all of you, wont take too much timeBut to say welcome() Id like now to hand the program back to Lee Siang. LS: Thank you Dr Milton. Id like to just introduce the panel members this morning; I think youre all very familiar with Mr Toyo Ito.. Hes a very innovative architect.. as you all know his famous works include Sendai Mediatheque, and many many more. And next, we have someone that needs no introduction- Zaha Hadid, 2004 Pritzker prize laureate, her works are certainly very influential. On my left I have Richard Hassell, hes a partner and founder of WOHA Architects in Singapore and up-and-coming design firm thats doing great works. Some of their projects are exhibited at this pavilion. Next, we have Ms Rita Soh, President of Singapore Institute of Architects, a very influential person in changing and moulding the profession in the last 3 years during her term as the president. Now, Id like to take on the forum, but let me just start by first setting the theme. As you know we have the pavilion theme as Singapore Built and Unbuilt. We have also looked at the forum theme as Singapore: the Unbuilt City. Now as you know, looking through the pavilion, there are many projects here exhibited that are not built. They are results of competitions and in all competitions there is one winner and many unbuilt ideas. What do we do with them? How do we learn from them? Process. Now Singapore, perhaps little known to many, was actually built on unbuilt ideas. Now how is that so? As we all know, in the 1920s, the great modernist Le Corbusier came out with this idea of The City of Tomorrow. Now in that idea there are many planning principles that were actually heavily criticized, questioned by many till today. And, the real implementation of those ideas are scarce. Are they? Well we have seen some examples in Brasilia, weve seen some in Chandigarh, but do we know that in Singapore, our government actually embarked on new town planning with ideas based on that? And in our early new towns like Queenstown, Toa Payoh, if you have a chance to look at the plans, they bear an uncanny similarity to some of the ideas that Corbusier mooted. Today 86 percent of our population lives in those new towns and it is greatly successful. But are they really successful? These are questions that we ask. But more important, for Singapore to step forward into the next lap, can we base our growth on old ideas? What are the unbuilt ideas that we can build on? Thats where our panelists are here to contribute to our discussion. Before that, let me just run through a very quick one-minute video to the background of this opening theme. (4:35) LS: Alright, Id like to start the questions to Ito-san first. As a special adviser to the Singapore Pavilion I recall that you mooted the idea of Unbuilt projects, which we immediately took on and thats what we have now. You felt that thats one way that we can learn invaluable knowledge. Now, Singapore did extract valuable knowledge from Corbusier and built new towns to solve our housing problem. I read with interest in Beyond Modernism, Beyond Sendai by Juan Antonio Cortez, you believe that in our time there is a fictitious imaginary urban space shaped like a collage of fragments that coexist with the real space, that Tokyo is a simulated city with simulated life. In some ways, Singapore is like the simulated city as well, and your continued exploration led you from Sendai to Vivocity to Sukegawa. The search for freeform seems to be on your agenda and the concept of form and counter-form appears to lead you to a total fluidity of space. Now from Singapores planning point of view since you were involved in Vivo city, you had a chance to look

at context, would you like to share with us what are the possible visions and ideas that are suitable for Singapore city, perhaps be a Corbusier in this case for Singapore, what would you say, what would you suggest? (6:15) TI: First of all, Im sorry my English is not so good, so please forgive me, I speak Japanese and she will translate to English. (translator) So I propose, the Unbuilt Singapore this time because I didnt win in Singapore competition in the past. The first time that I joined in a Singapore competition it was the area of Buona Vista and it was about making the masterplan for the Buona Vista area but the lady next to me, Zaha Hadid won and I couldnt I think all the architects agree with me, that the works I present to the competition is not built, they are I believe, they are my best works. What means you cant win in a competition, you fail in a competition, means that your work is maybe too conceptual, that means the work is very avant-garde, is going ahead of the real time. Before I came to the idea of Unbuilt Singapore, I remember that about twenty years ago, English magazine, there was a special feature, which is called Unbuilt England. The background to this project, this special feature, I think there was very problematic meaning to it. Means that not winning is very significant and very challenging. Maybe even Ms Zaha Hadid couldnt win some competition in that time. But Im not quite satisfied, totally satisfied with the title, this Built and Unbuilt so making the comparison between the built and unbuilt, maybe the importance of the unbuilt is a little bit weakened. Maybe this explains, it reflects the fact that Singapore as a nation, it has very good control, so maybe thats why. So I can say that Singapore, in certain sense, is a country where Corbusiers dream is realized, where Mies dream is realized. (12.00) However, the dreams that Corbusier had for the twentieth century life and our life in the contemporary era, maybe it doesnt match anymore, there is a difference. When Im talking with the young architects in Singapore, I realize very often that Singapore is a very wellorganized country but we are maybe looking for something else. In the beginning, seems like putting some greens among the high buildings, based on the concept of Corbusier, seems like the dreams of the architects but at the same time seems a little bit boring. So the twentieth century concept philosophy was to divide everything in a very clear position, positioning everything in a very clear way. Nowadays our life in the avant-garde urban city is more chaotic, our needs are very diverse from one to another. So how to coexist this diversity in an urban area and how to create an urban space from this point of view, I think it may be a challenge for the architects. So there is another new speed, a new anxiety or something, doesnt even have form, like the communications, informations, we got these elements in urban living, in this context, what can architect do? And its not a matter of only Singapore but a global, world wide question and I think if we can discuss this today Id be very happy. (16:35) LS: Thank you Ito. In fact I find it interesting that you criticized the title of the pavilion. Now, I recall that you started off with unbuilt and we added on built. This is a very Singaporean kind of response to a call from you. Now I also find it interesting that you talk about the twentieth century being clear

positioning and it has changed now and were looking at chaos and needs are diverse, coexist... now when you talk about chaos, who else can you think of except Zaha (17:30) Im going to turn the question over to you Zaha. Before that let me just read something from Beyond 89 degrees by Aaron Betsky. It says that One might say that Zaha Hadid is a modernist, designing lofts tied to technological cores, a celebration of the new. Hadid has no truct with typologies, applied orders, assumptions of gravity, she believes that we could actually build a better world, one marked by freedom, above all else, be liberated from the past, from the constraints of social conventions,( now Singapore is full of that), from physical laws, which there are plenty, and free of our bodies. Architecture for modernists such as Hadid is the always fragmentary construction of such a world. Now Zaha Id like to invite your response both to what Ito has said and also I think if you can make in passing mention, the Biopolis project that you so famously created, is that close to this new paradigm of the new urban setting, or a new direction for Singapore city? (18:30) ZH: I really cantI cant focus once shes translating next to meI really cantIm sorryI apologize. Sowhat am I supposed to respond to? I think one starts at the I wish I spoke Japanese, I could. (gestures at Ito).. But you speak very good English, I know that. I think that, I think there was a real departure at the end of the twentieth century from certain dogmas, whether historicist dogmas or modernist dogma. I went to school at a time when these two isms were kind of like, were operating, and there was a kind of a social project. But such a project had no comment on any form of repertoire in architecture and in a way, this years biennale is actually a side of this project, and I do not myself am concerned about it because I think it doesnt serve architecture that well, at the end, because I think that whenever theres a gap of not knowing what the future will be, my concern is always the reverse, to history, as an easy kind of, as an easy way to think of the future, and I found that very problematic. In a way, I mean, if I base myself in that period, I think that in a way, slowly, one began to relook at typology, but to also I mean there were two kinds of operating rationales, one is that, the idea of mass production, and which was about repetition, that one has found the optimum project, and the other was about return to the past, where the habitat module was already established, and there was no change. So whatever you do, you rely on typology, there was a typology, you could not depart from the typology or housing or offices or whatever. In a way when I kind of eliminated every research on the twentieth century, and I think it was seen as a kind of challenge, that theres some ideas which have not been tested, should be tested, and that would have brought the idea of geometry, distortion, deformation because of the relative position of new buildings to existing cities, and also you work within the grid, how much can you create if each block has its own entity, has its own kind of urbanism that is different from the next block, which is New York. And so I think that what occurred, I think, over the years is that the idea of fragmentation, lets say, and Ill explain, you know, chaos theory is not really simply chaotic but it was a way of finding a different order, and the order which was on the table was not the only order. The way of presentation was not the only way of presentation. We do not, I do not take for granted that everything which was set out was the only way to do things, I did not really believe that. And so, I think, lets look at really kind of fluid ideas, and you know, maybe its fluid ideas and plys and degree of flexibility and the domain of organization. Because I think in terms of planning and also the planning an interior of a project or a plan, which I think is very important, is to relook at organization, which I think is the most critical part. And one can say that, one could invent, new fluid organization, which has certain implications, which even hierarchy, or no hierarchy, or you know the idea of adjacency becomes very important, so this, I think, all that, led to the idea of fluid space. (23:20) And I think that our project, which I think was very important, was the ground project, which was abandoned in a way, by the modernists. I think part of the failure of, many of the modernist project was, until I think in Brazil, I think, they adopted the idea of the ground, but there was still a dichotomy between what was above and what was on the ground. So I think the ground project, in the last twenty years, had been very important and very well researched. And I think it could add, if one was to rescue, I think some of these Corbusian projects, you could rescue them only through a ground intervention.

RS: Im just trying to take the point that you mentioned, your philosophy, talking about fluid space, that concept drives you to provide the scheme that you have done for the Biopolis. Singapore being a multi-racial society, multi-cultural, and taking specific reference to history or its typology may be difficult. ZH: I would separate the masterplan project for Buona Vista One North, and that for the Biopolis. There are two projects. Biopolis we did only the outline.. I cant say itsI mean its partly our outline project Now I think the reason we didnt use the idea of typology and fluidity on that site is because it was a park, the site is a park, and the idea was to occupy the park by another park, so as a second layer of kind of parkland, and that allows you, over twenty-five years, or twenty years, to have very small low buildings directly with quite tall buildings. And that, the idea of the fluidity on the ground, also meant that, you create, because it was also a technology hub, you can create a kind of campus, within the masterplan, which allows one company of one area of research, occupy maybe six buildings or five buildings. And then if one of them, over time they shrink, they could be taken over by other things. Youre not limited to the existing typology in Singapore, which was a podium and tower, or a podium and a slab. And we thought this area, you know, and this area as a masterplan, one could test this idea of different adjacency. I mean, I know the weather doesnt always permit you to wander down the streets as its hot and humid, but they are quite close enough so you could have bigger streets and smaller streets, which allow, the idea was to allow all the people who are from different, lets say, research groups to walk out and meet, maybe not in the biomedicine or biomedical industry but maybe other technology or cultural events and that adjacency adds to the vision of the overlap of research, not only of architecture, and so you can have that, these buildings where, our plan which we had done, you could connect these buildings through bridges and you could also move on the ground. (26:57) LS: Now Zaha, its interesting to note that youre not just well known for your architectural exploits, in fact you made statements about how cities should be like in your earlier years. For example, in The World,1983, Grand buildings, Metropolis 88, Berlin 2000, A New Barcelona, London 2066, Vision for Madrid. If you were asked by Singapore government to make a proposal, entitled A New Singapore, what would that be? ZH: I mean, you know, unless I go and research I cant really say precisely where it would be, I just think that one could only show an example of some areas. But I think what is interesting in Singapore, is that how apart from dealing with very large, mad mass, but also how to create a kind of tissue.. I think what differentiates the old parts, from the new parts is that there are, a kind of filigree of smaller cultural or event spaces, which actually occur on the level of the street. And the areas which are more, how shall I put it, airconditioned controlled worlds, you are very isolated and it think itd be very interesting to find all these, these two things. I mean Im just seeing on the wall is that, and were just doing in Turkey, in Istanbul which is based on the similar idea of the Singapore product but is quite different this time, its like a net, and the net could be translated in a variety of ways. You could also, out of a very small plot or large plot, you could also occupy the streetscape, so you can haveSo that is always, the net is always recognized because it is also over twenty years of development so you can have very different interpretations of this..and the idea was kind of to bridge two areas of the city. One other things which was nice about One-North was that is that how, you could actually, you dont impose a megastructure, and how you begin to connect the streets of the two sides, so that the idea of the sort of grid, begins to emerge. And some grids combine with topography and different typologies and has very different variety of building kind of substance. So you can have literally the scale of a house, or small houses to very large building. So in the studies for the Istanbul project, how the grid occurs, how it becomes distorted and becomes very different scales, even taking the idea of the, a simple idea of the primitive block, the courtyard building, then interpret it as a kind of calligraphy, actually allows you on a city scale to interpret things in such a variety of ways. You know, low and high, and stuff like that. (30:15) LS: Thank you. Now, were going to turn to Richard next. Now Richard, your firm WOHA came into recognition in the last five years, you won a number of major architectural competitions, the Museum station, thats exhibited here, the Arts school. I read with interest your design philosophy, that each project is unique and should evolve particular characteristics embracing the diverse and unforeseen factors that come together in a project. Im not too sure what are those unforeseen factors. But Im very impressed with your

projects that you did not win, that is the University of New South Wales and there seems to be a confidence and a strong character and an identity thats almost Singaporean, I would say. The same for the Duxton Plain housing. Now, share with us how your ideas, you think , you can expand into a bold vision for Singapore. RH: Thanks Lee Siang. Can we bring up the PowerPoint? Ive actually tried to do a bit of a provocative exercise on Singapore; I think working there every day, the control tends to get a little difficult sometimes.. so I just did a little quick exercise, Im sorry its a bit text heavy, we went through it quite quickly, but I thought I knew Singapore. Its now a rational city in search of a heart. Next. Just something from the Wizard of OzAs for you my galvanized friend, do you want a heart? You dont know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical and till they can be breakable. And the tin man says, But I still want one. I think Singapore really wants this x-factor heart. Next. So I think at the moment, I think, this is many of the things people say about Singapore, its a sort of transparent city, its a centrally planned city, its a top-down city, a prescriptive city, its hygienicI think it can be fully understood because its so centralized and planned by one, sort of entity.. its defined by absences rather than positives, its got no crime, no rubbish, no congestion, no racial tensionso in a way its like SimCity, its this sort of centrally controlled city where theyre tweaking the parameters to get certain results. And its think its the eighty year old dream of a deceased Swiss man obsessed with hygiene, thats Le Corbusier. Next. Theyre actually quotes from Corb: To create architecture is to put in order, put what in order, function and objects, I think Singapores done that very well, but also a bit of doubt from Corb: :Hundred times thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times its a beautiful catastrophe. And think that also Singapore is lacking a beautiful catastrophe. So we thought this exercise, maybe lets reload a new Singapore. Next. A quote from Walt Whitman, Do I contradict myself very well then? I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. That might be a new attitude for Singapore. So this is the new Singapore I foresee, Singapore contradicts itself, its an unknowable city, its surprising, its bottom-up, its a poetic city, a shocking city, and maybe its defined by positives, instead of having diverse, exciting, dynamic, unusual So looking through it I thought theres another Swiss eighty years ago , Hans Richter, who had a sort of an alternative view on how you could go about things. Next. So Hans Richter was actually one of the Dada artists, but what was interesting is I think Dada is often associated with a lot of sort of anti-art, but his view of it was that it wasnt sort of.. nihilisticbut you need to counter the rationality of modernists, and restore the lost harmony that used to exist. So two quotes from him: We were forced to look for something which could re-establish our humanity, what we needed to find was a balance between heaven and hell, a new unity combining chance and design. And realization that reason and anti-reason, design and chance, conscious and unconscious, civilized and uncivilized belong together as necessary parts of a whole. Its central to the message of Dada. Next. So I thought of this new entity maybe in Singapore that could be within the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the Department of the X-factor, I think Singapores always saying, we need this x-factor, think its an X because its unknown, and its very hard to discover the unknown through known means; and so this department would try and create this synthesis of the rational and the irrational, and maybe use Dada to do it. So what would happen is that all the community vote on which areas of the city are successful, should be kept, and the rest is released to the House of Dada. Next. So the brief is development of dada art techniques into planning, for some of the automatism, decalcomania and grattage; and to combine creative irrational techniques with rational evaluation strategies, they have to ensure transparency and audibility, audibility in Singapore; and to create planning as a spectacle. So, first one , decalcomania, is the technique of actually pressing paint-covered paper onto another sheet of paper and you get this unplanned image on the page; this could actually be applied to Singapore where different colored ink is pressed onto the map of Singapore and each one, each color corresponds to different planning techniques, and I think this would create the kind of adjacencies that Zaha was talking about at the scale of one-north but across the whole island. Next. Automatism. So in this, Automatism is sort of automatic writing or painting without conscious control; and the idea here is that the planners are hung from a sling above the city model with box-cutters and cans of paint

and glue, and for two hours they blindly modify the city model, and its filmed for audit purposes and afterwards the blindfold is checked for holes to make sure they didnt cheat. Grattage is where you actually scrape the paint away to reveal again an unplanned image and the idea here is that the city model would be cast in a very uneven plaster that had soft and hard areas, and then they would protect the areas again of the city that werent to be changed with epoxy, and on national television they would water-jet the model, blasting away different areas of it; and people would see which parts were going to be subject to change and which would remain. So not entirely serious, but Im not entirely facetious either, because I think Singapore is such a rational place, and it has tended to scrape away traces of history and things that dont fit the plan, and I think its a real problem how to get back some of this chance and contingency, that other cities have. (38:00) LS: Ok, thanks Richard. Rita Im going to ask you a question on competition and Im going to come back this way to ask you more personal questions in response to built works of your own. Rita, now as you know, Singapore aims to be a great city and places its faith in competitions to procure great architecture. This exhibition, we witnessed, well I was going to say, the good, bad and the ugly, but since the bad and the ugly are taken out already.But the competition entries, theres only one winner, and all the rest almost forgotten. Now is that the best way to help Singapore create a great city, and what can we do with the losing entries, or more correctly said, unbuilt ideas? RS: Well, I dont think competition is the only way to get designs built, but competition, for that matter, design competition is definitely a very good platform for most cities to discover good design, young talents. In Singapores case, its actually quite predominant that the last ten years, for example, a lot of the major projects actually come by way of design competitions and some get built, like you said earlier,not necessarily, you know, the. You may have participated in many competitions you may not winfor all competitions theres always a winner, what is very important for the architectural fraternity in Singapore is to look at the submittals of the remaining submissions; thats where the local architects will learn from each other; or if for that matter learn from the various submissions done by international architects. Now I think in Singapore we do have very strong firms that were launched as a result of competitions. You see here, as a product of, Richard, actually shot to fame as the winner of the MarinaLine Design competition, it was an international competition, now as such the designs were selected by an international jury panel. Now for Singapore I think that is one phenomenon that I think we should really encourage. LS: Richard, as an up-and-coming architect as Rita pointed out, you have a fair share of unbuilt works, in fact many right? Which are those that are most likely to inspire you to greater heights? And do you have any frustrations with your unbuilt works that youd like to share with us? RH: Its never felt frustratingI mean its always frustrating when the results are announced I think, and you havent won againbut I think the ideas never are lost, and they tend to turn up later. Actually did a short presentation just on a few, two lost ideas we had that came backthis is a house in Penang, it was a very strange brief, it was a guy who had a monkey and twenty cars and a divorced wife with a kid and this big piece of land, and he said hed have to move around the site because some people wanted to kill him and he didnt want to get shotso he needed this kind of protected way of moving around the siteBut we put pavilions offered where he could enjoy himself, and his wife was in the corner so the kid could run around from the lawn but he didnt have to see the wife..and actually it was the only job where weve ever been given fifty thousand cash after presenting it and then we never heard from him again So we thought this was a nice way of structuring a big piece of land, this path that sort of wanders around it and then pavilions butone should leave it.so next, this idea appeared sort of ten years later in a resort were doing in Bali which is on a cliff on the southern part of Balinext.which just had the public areas which is down on the bottom..next..so this area was basically very much based around the same thing, a different brief but in a way similar about the way, about moving around the site undercover, and to various pleasure pavilions in the public areas. Next. So its under construction now. Next. So then that idea sort of also popped up again in the university project which you mentioned Lee Siang, but at a much different scale, but here there was these parts that wandered around that actually created these covered linkways that linked all the various buildings in the university. Next. So there was a series of sort of wandering parts that then combined with other short cuts and diagonal paths. Next. And then taking the place of the pavilions instead of large gathering areas or important institutional buildings around the campus. Next.

And then out of this there was another idea that ended up not happening, but transferred into another project. So the idea here was that the library was the heart of the campus and all the parts that went around the campus ended up wrapping around and intersecting at the library as it was the place where all the various domains of knowledge intersected. Next. So the building was like part of the masterplan that had come up and formed this box, screening the building. Next. So that idea again died but brought it back to life at Changi airport transit hotel which is a project underway at the moment, its started construction. So this projectwas sort of a stack of various thingsbut the rooms, because theyre actually facing the infrastructure, such as the loading of luggage and things, and so it was about securityso we had to screen the whole hotel and the idea came back as this sort of floating box of cages. In this case because we had to screen from surveillance cameras and things from inside we transformed the green vegetation punch pattern into peforated aluminiumand then the idea of the parts in transit and wrapping around the building came back in terms of sort of like flight paths and the way all the various structural elements wrap around the side as well The second lineage was from the Duxton Plain Housing competition which we were in second place but didnt win and this one to us was quite an exciting project and were very interested in some of the ideas we developed which were that in the tropics, where theres very little wind you can actually make spaces in between high-rise towers which are usable, because you dont get the strong winds or problems that you get in temperate climates. So this is the section..where we slung communitiy spaces between housing towers in the sky. This is the plan. And some of the spaces that you get up in the sky. We got offered a commission in Bangkok where we had a chance to do it..unfortunately it was private housing not public so we couldnt create these community spaces..what we did was still exploit this idea of having living spaces between towers in the sky. Elevation. The plan. So this is sort of the living spaces we could create where you could actually go from your living room to a swimming pool at the same level, at forty storeys in the air. (46:30) Then Arts school came along and we did win this competition but its actually very much the same ideas as the Duxton Plain, but rather than the towers being vertical towers, theyve lined them horizontally. So the towers are actually on plan and the spaces in between them are slung community areas and gathering spaces. And it happens above a very dynamic ground level which is more about flow of pedestrians and bringing the public through the site. Oh, this was related to another question (47:15) LS: Well Richard, must say that theres an air of a Corbusian flavour there RH: yes LS: As much as there is of chaoist.. RH: yes, its true. This is actually something where I think, just one more interesting thing about Singapore, I think its a city that although its tightly controlled, it really listens and this was one presentation we made to URA about a year and a half ago where they had a feedback session on how do you create the X-factor.. and were just comparing the central Marina bay of Singapore which was actually seen as the centerpiece of the city ..its actually quite small and did a comparison between Marina Bay and central parts and all those areas.. I think at the same scale you could see the width of the central area of Singapore was only equivalent to the breadth of the central part andactually when the central part was actually conceived, New York only had a quarter of a million people, and Singapore with four million people was doing something one-fourteenth of the size. So we actually presented slides saying maybe we should actually consider the whole Marina Bay and Kallang River and one year later theres a competition for Gardens by the Bay, which is in this roomand I think, Im not saying that were the only ones with the idea, but its an exciting city in that ideas can come forth and then theyre implemented very rapidly. (48:50)

LS: All right. Now I just want to use the remaining time to just ask a few more personal questions. Zaha, in a recent interview with The Straits Times Singapore, its says that once upon a time, Zaha Hadid was called the paper architect. In the 1970s and the 1980s her design soaring fantastically, bristling with energy, won critical acclaim and architecture prizes but they rarely got built. What motivates you to get past that unbuilt stage to where you are today? ZH: I mean, first of all, nothing was built, 30 years ago, I mean of any interest. And I think it took a long time to really understand a new language you can actually do something, because again they were stuck on the dogma. I didnt choose to be a so-called paper architect and that was never my intention; the projects were always done to be done, I mean even the Hong Kong peak where this word emerged through a very ignorant journalist, thats its unbuildable. Because I think what they meant, there isnt enough aspiration or ambition to make these things. And we deliberately really looked at whether how our engineering, structure.. because I think engineering was much more advanced at the time then architecture. So I think combining , you know, infrastructure engineering with also, I mean all that stuff.. and I think also we had a really good time doing these projects and I always believed that there would be a time they would be done. And its just a matter of time, of course its a good long time, but you know, many lessons Ive learnt and actually, that period of research improved our, lets say, repertoire, makes it a bit easier for us now, because now we can deal with many projects at the same time with very different ideas, you know, not stuck on one idea that weve had and with many people, well, you know, sometimes.. and the strength of the architect, that they have one idea and they do it over and over again.. but thats not the case in the office and I think it is that period of research development that actually allows us to now, deal from very large projects to very small projects. LS: Thats a piece of advice for young aspiring architects ZH: They always ask me the same ..the young architects always ask me the same question, and I always say its hard workI mean, what do we do and its hard work and not just me but myself and the team which work with me, you know, maybe for ten years we never had a normal nights sleep and its true. And with me now, Im constantly on the run because of flights and presentations, but I think architecture is extremely difficult, and tiring and demanding, and it doesnt bear the same payback except in the pleasure of seeing a building and the belief that you could actually contribute something to society. Apart from that, you are a poor cousin of everybody else you know and went to school with and you know, because clients dont believe in paying architects, they think you should do it for love, and I always say now, you do it for love, Im not doing it for love. But you know, for many years, we did do it for love, because that was the name of the game. LS: And that keeps you going, isnt it? (52:50) ZH: Well I think, you know, I look at my personal career. If I had not, whether intelligently or naively, gone through that path, I would not have discovered so many things. So my personal discovery, it was extraordinary, and I hope that these discoveries shed a light to other people on many things. I would not have found out half of the stuff had I not done it. And so, its like if you decide not to open the door, you dont know whats beyond the door, you know, you stay in a small room and think its a very nice room, youre happy there. Its sort of like in prison. If you do open the door some good things come in, some bad things come in, but I think the good things are, you become strategic and learn how to find these things, its a very exciting experience. So I want to go back to Singapore. Another thing about Singapore is that ownership. You cannot do the masterplan unless its owned by one entity. Now its good and bad, I mean we did a masterplan, where the city and the owners join together, the same this time were trying to set that up, so I think you can actually do certain things in areas like Singapore which you cant do in another places, you cant add this amount of land mass. I think it was very interesting talking about Corbu and how it influenced certain areas of the East, I mean if you go to Hong Kong, of course, many of the towers are based on the Cartesian block, and it was very interesting for me. Im doing a project () in Marseilles, and I went to see the Unite of Corbuwhich they dont call the Unite in Marseilles, they call the (Ville pa deus), or Im not sure, they always call it that, of they changed the name. Weird, I mean I went round asking wheres the Unite d Habitation and everybody looked at me as though I was crazy. I went there one day, and it was till this day, very fresh and stunning. And its become part of the modernist dream, you know, a housing project with smaller units or bigger units, a hotel, a street in the air, you know

the kind of leisure facility on the top, but what is interesting, is when you go to the top, you look across the mountain and you know, Marseilles is a slab citylike in the Corbu Unitethere are many slabs.. but when you go to the top, you look across, and there are slabs and Cartesian blocks. And what I felt was really exciting is that suddenly, that hill across in Marseilles was very similar to Hong Kong. And what I felt was very interesting was that through architecture, and its not necessarily a bad thing, two extreme, across the globe places, interpreted in very different ways, had a connection, and I thought that was very interesting, because the French renewed housing, and of course theres lots of housing in Singapore, and it was very exciting for me to witness that moment, where the Corbusian dream was most implemented, in Asia, and in parts of France because of the ambition of building housing, and the topography of course, and if you go to the new territories in Hong Kong, with all these hills and endless Cartesian blocks, and the only difference you can detect between them, if its low cost or high cost, is the light. You know, the light, in one its more white than the other one which is more orange, and these things are reallyand of course one of them, the expensive ones, they occupy the whole floor, and the cheaper ones occupy four in one floor or eight.. But I think these connections between cities, and it means that, not that its globalization but it means that one can learn from other examples around the world, and that you are not alarmed and always trying to reinvent I mean in the early period we tried to reinvent everything, we tried to reinvent method of drawing, I had to reinvent.. i used to ban in my studio when I was teaching in my office, yellow trace which Im sure theres a whole generation which does not know what Im saying, but there was a time, you know, cause people want to do things like Michael Graves, everybody used yellow trace. They dont know what rapidograph is, they dont know what a figure-ground is, and I talked to Ricky out there and he said, no theres a whole section in the Arsenale about figure-ground, and when Im talking in the office about figure-ground, they look at me, and they dont know what Im saying. Its a very interesting moment for architecture because well, I know maybe Ito knows how to use a computer, but I certainly do not. Can you (looking at Ito), can you use a computer? TI: Yeah, I dont know. ZH: I dont, but now because the first generation of computers in my office and they see what Im saying. Now I make a sketch and give it to them, they have no idea what it is. They do not understand. They dont know if its a plan or a section orand they really dont understand. And these guys have all to be trained by us and ..so I have to go through and.. and they are too scared to say, we dont understand. They say, yes, So they say Im drawing a kitchen as if it were a bathtub. So I think, also part of the excitement is that one has to always readjust ones views in life also, and also I cant have a grant what Im saying to them.okay, my students Im teaching in Austria, and places like that, they do because Ive gone through this process, but they dont resort to any formal abstraction. On one hand its too abstract because its all digital, on the other hand, its in a way, quite real, there is no mistake, there is no distortion. So I think its exciting times. (59:45) LS: Absolutely. ZH: And people always think, you know, you have so much work now, to do.. well, you know Ive been working hard for 30 years, wanted to work, so you know we just have to adjust ourselves to do it. And I know people who when they have no work they complain and when they have work they complain, and I never complain about having too much work, because Ive always wanted it, I think theres a point when we cant do all of it, and certainly we cannot do all of it well, but I think one has to also adapt to that situation. (1:00:25) LS: Id love to continue this talk but I have to move on with Ito-san with the last question. Now, you may want to respond to Zahas comments about Corbusiers influence, but certainly Id like to hear from you, because when I had dinner with you, you mentioned that you only had a breakthrough perhaps ten years plus ago, in particular, I think with the Mediatheque, before that you had to be contented too with many unbuilt projects. Share with us your aspiration and how you pulled through that period of unbuilt works. TI: As Zaha, I had about ten years that even if I had idea, that it wasnt possible to create it in a complete way. And then in these ten years, the computer technology was advanced a lot and it can read the structure and also the technology to make it realize, thats really advanced, and so finally my concept can be realized now.

Recently in my work, the technical people can do the three-dimensional computer graphic and can be realized. For concrete works, making forms, steel bars. Before these technical people werent that much respected but nowadays these young people, young technical people, they got this technique that enables my work to be done in this way. So in actual fact the engineers and technical people theyre making their own drawing and I think in the new future these things become all united, I mean the designing and then making it, realizing that would be the same thing. I think you can say that geometry in the twentieth century is changing, definitely. By this fact of geometry is changing, I think its going to be possible to have an active job, united with the natural elements. I didnt bring my project but seeing Zahas project there is no angles, like ninety degree angles, but its all fluid formdistorting.. So if we observe the nature, there isnt 90 degree angles, or the very straight line and so looking at her project, we are getting very close to this natural existence, how the nature is. So this element is very important when we think about the Singapore city plan. When we talk about Singapore project, as you know the climate is very severe, so we have to make clear division in the inner space and outer space. But doesnt mean that we simply add the green terrace but as a philosophy, as a principle, we should try to fuse the architecture and the nature. I have to only talk about Singapore, but when you design, even if you think always, everyday, but in one moment, you can have that step-up all of a sudden. So its not continuous. So I think the same thing can be said as to the development of the city. Its not something that evolve gradually but in one moment. So I repeat in many competition lets say there are a hundred projects and only one might be built, but when this one building is built, all of a sudden the city can, evolve and so I think the city is evolving not all the time, gradually, but in this moment. But Singapore is a city, is a country always looking forward, and then, making a lot of competitions, so I think its the city which has more vision in this sense than Tokyo. LS: Thank you Ito. You know what, Id like to invite all of you back to Singapore, and give a talk to our planning authority as well as the real estate developers association. Now due to time constraints Id like to call the forum to a close; I know there are so many exciting things that we can continue to talk about all day. Now the return leg we will be announcing in due course, it will be in Singapore. Now lastly, allow me to thank Ito, Zaha, Richard and Rita for making time to attend this forum. We have a little token of appreciation Id like to invite our commissioner, Dr Milton Tan, to give away to you. (1:12:30) Applause. LS: Thank you very much.