WEBVTT

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Imagine that when you walked
in here this evening,

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you discovered that everybody in the room
looked almost exactly the same:

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ageless, raceless,

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generically good-looking.

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That person sitting right next to you

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might have the most
idiosyncratic inner life,

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but you don't have a clue

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because we're all wearing
the same blank expression all the time.

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That is the kind of creepy transformation
that is taking over cities,

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only it applies to buildings, not people.

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Cities are full of roughness and shadow,

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texture and color.

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You can still find architectural surfaces
of great individuality and character

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in apartment buildings in Riga

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and Yemen,

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social housing in Vienna,

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Hopi villages in Arizona,

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brownstones in New York,

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wooden houses in San Francisco.

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These aren't palaces or cathedrals.

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These are just ordinary residences

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expressing the ordinary
splendor of cities.

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And the reason they're like that
is that the need for shelter

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is so bound up with
the human desire for beauty.

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Their rough surfaces
give us a touchable city.

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Right? Streets that you can read

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by running your fingers
over brick and stone.

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But that's getting harder to do,

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because cities are becoming smooth.

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New downtowns sprout towers

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that are almost always
made of concrete and steel

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and covered in glass.

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You can look at skylines
all over the world --

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Houston,

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Guangzhou,

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Frankfurt --

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and you see the same army
of high-gloss robots

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marching over the horizon.

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Now, just think of everything we lose

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when architects stop using
the full range of available materials.

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When we reject granite
and limestone and sandstone

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and wood and copper
and terra-cotta and brick

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and wattle and plaster,

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we simplify architecture

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and we impoverish cities.

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It's as if you reduced
all of the world's cuisines

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down to airline food.

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(Laughter)

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Chicken or pasta?

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But worse still,

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assemblies of glass towers
like this one in Moscow

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suggest a disdain for the civic
and communal aspects of urban living.

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Right? Buildings like these are intended
to enrich their owners and tenants,

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but not necessarily
the lives of the rest of us,

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those of us who navigate
the spaces between the buildings.

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And we expect to do so for free.

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Shiny towers are an invasive species

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and they are choking our cities
and killing off public space.

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We tend to think of a facade
as being like makeup,

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a decorative layer applied at the end
to a building that's effectively complete.

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But just because a facade is superficial

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doesn't mean it's not also deep.

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Let me give you an example

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of how a city's surfaces
affect the way we live in it.

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When I visited Salamanca in Spain,

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I gravitated to the Plaza Mayor

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at all hours of the day.

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Early in the morning,
sunlight rakes the facades,

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sharpening shadows,

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and at night, lamplight
segments the buildings

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into hundreds of distinct areas,

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balconies and windows and arcades,

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each one a separate pocket
of visual activity.

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That detail and depth, that glamour

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gives the plaza a theatrical quality.

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It becomes a stage
where the generations can meet.

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You have teenagers
sprawling on the pavers,

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seniors monopolizing the benches,

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and real life starts to look
like an opera set.

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The curtain goes up on Salamanca.

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So just because I'm talking
about the exteriors of buildings,

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not form, not function, not structure,

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even so those surfaces
give texture to our lives,

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because buildings
create the spaces around them,

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and those spaces can draw people in

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or push them away.

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And the difference often has to do
with the quality of those exteriors.

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So one contemporary equivalent
of the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca

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is the Place de la Défense in Paris,

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a windswept, glass-walled open space

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that office workers hurry through

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on the way from the metro
to their cubicles

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but otherwise spend
as little time in as possible.

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In the early 1980s,
the architect Philip Johnson

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tried to recreate a gracious
European plaza in Pittsburgh.

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This is PPG Place,

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a half acre of open space
encircled by commercial buildings

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made of mirrored glass.

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And he ornamented those buildings
with metal trim and bays

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and Gothic turrets

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which really pop on the skyline.

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But at ground level,

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the plaza feels like a black glass cage.

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I mean, sure, in summertime

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kids are running back and forth
through the fountain

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and there's ice-skating in the winter,

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but it lacks the informality
of a leisurely hangout.

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It's just not the sort of place
you really want to just hang out and chat.

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Public spaces thrive or fail
for many different reasons.

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Architecture is only one,

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but it's an important one.

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Some recent plazas

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like Federation Square in Melbourne

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or Superkilen in Copenhagen

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succeed because they combine old and new,

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rough and smooth,

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neutral and bright colors,

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and because they don't rely
excessively on glass.

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Now, I'm not against glass.

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It's an ancient and versatile material.

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It's easy to manufacture and transport

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and install and replace

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and clean.

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It comes in everything
from enormous, ultraclear sheets

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to translucent bricks.

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New coatings make it change mood

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in the shifting light.

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In expensive cities like New York,
it has the magical power

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of being able to multiply
real estate values by allowing views,

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which is really the only commodity
that developers have to offer

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to justify those surreal prices.

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In the middle of the 19th century,

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with the construction
of the Crystal Palace in London,

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glass leapt to the top of the list
of quintessentially modern substances.

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By the mid-20th century,

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it had come to dominate
the downtowns of some American cities,

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largely through some
really spectacular office buildings

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like Lever House in midtown Manhattan,
designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

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Eventually, the technology
advanced to the point

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where architects could design
structures so transparent

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they practically disappear.

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And along the way,

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glass became the default material
of the high-rise city,

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and there's a very
powerful reason for that.

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Because as the world's populations
converge on cities,

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the least fortunate pack
into jerry-built shantytowns.

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But hundreds of millions of people
need apartments and places to work

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in ever-larger buildings,

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so it makes economic sense
to put up towers

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and wrap them in cheap
and practical curtain walls.

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But glass has a limited ability

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to be expressive.

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This is a section of wall framing a plaza

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in the pre-Hispanic city of Mitla,
in southern Mexico.

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Those 2,000-year-old carvings

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make it clear that this was a place
of high ritual significance.

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Today we look at those and we can see
a historical and textural continuity

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between those carvings,
the mountains all around

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and that church which is built
on top of the ruins

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using stone plundered from the site.

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In nearby Oaxaca,
even ordinary plaster buildings

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become canvasses for
bright colors, political murals

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and sophisticated graphic arts.

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It's an intricate, communicative language

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that an epidemic of glass
would simply wipe out.

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The good news is
that architects and developers

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have begun to rediscover
the joys of texture

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without backing away from modernity.

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Some find innovative uses
for old materials like brick

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and terra-cotta.

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Others invent new products
like the molded panels that Snøhetta used

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to give the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art

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that crinkly, sculptural quality.

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The architect Stefano Boeri
even created living facades.

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This is his Vertical Forest,
a pair of apartment towers in Milan,

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whose most visible feature is greenery.

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And Boeri is designing a version of this
for Nanjing in China.

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And imagine if green facades
were as ubiquitous as glass ones

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how much cleaner the air
in Chinese cities would become.

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But the truth is
that these are mostly one-offs,

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boutique projects,

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not easily reproduced at a global scale.

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And that is the point.

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When you use materials
that have a local significance,

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you prevent cities
from all looking the same.

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Copper has a long history in New York --

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the Statue of Liberty,

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the crown of the Woolworth Building --

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but it fell out of fashion for a long time

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until shop architects used it
to cover the American Copper Building,

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a pair of twisting towers
on the East River.

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It's not even finished

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and you can see the way
sunset lights up that metallic facade,

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which will weather to green as it ages.

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Buildings can be like people.

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Their faces broadcast their experience.

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And that's an important point,

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because when glass ages,

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you just replace it,

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and the building looks
pretty much the same way it did before

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until eventually it's demolished.

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Almost all other materials
have the ability

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to absorb infusions of history and memory,

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and project it into the present.

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The firm Ennead

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clad the Utah Natural History Museum
in Salt Lake City in copper and zinc,

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ores that have been mined
in the area for 150 years

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and that also camouflage the building
against the ochre hills

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so that you have a natural history museum

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that reflects the region's
natural history.

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And when the Chinese
Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu

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was building a history museum in Ningbo,

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he didn't just create
a wrapper for the past,

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he built memory right into the walls

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by using brick and stones and shingles

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salvaged from villages
that had been demolished.

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Now, architects can use glass

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in equally lyrical and inventive ways.

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Here in New York, two buildings,

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one by Jean Nouvel
and this one by Frank Gehry

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face off across West 19th Street,

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and the play of reflections
that they toss back and forth

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is like a symphony in light.

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But when a city defaults to glass

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as it grows,

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it becomes a hall of mirrors,

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disquieting and cold.

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After all, cities are places
of concentrated variety

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where the world's cultures
and languages and lifestyles

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come together and mingle.

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So rather than encase all that variety

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and diversity in buildings
of crushing sameness,

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we should have an architecture that honors
the full range of the urban experience.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)