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After the war,
there was a foreigner in Prishtina,

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and he lost the way to his hotel

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he was in the main suite.

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He asked somebody, he said:

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"Please, can you tell me, 
where is the Grand Hotel?"

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The boy said: 
"Do you see the end of the street?"

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The building there?
He said: Yes, I see it!

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That's not the Grand Hotel,
it's the one on the right.

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(Laughs)

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So, my way of being an architect


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was also very irregular and round.

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I studied architecture in two universities

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for almost ten years and when I finished

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I was really not so sure about what to do

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and where to begin, so I thought

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I will take more time.

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And started to travel and I said,

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if i didn't understand architecture in school

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maybe I should go myself and see,

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and actually, what i discovered was that,

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when you are in the building,
when you're visiting the building,

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you spend time.

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You go there, sometimes in some places

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you spend a week there or three days

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and you arrive there 
you want to spend some more time.

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So what do you do? 
You look. You look, and after a while

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you try to see

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because you can't see in the very beginning.

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Actually is very important to see.

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If you draw and I used to draw a lot,

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it takes time. People tell

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You have a very good hand,

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Actually, it's not the hand who's drawing.

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It's the head, it's the eyes, it's the look.

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You can not draw if you can not look.

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So you have to learn to look.

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If you see, then you can learn to draw.

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It's very easy,
you don't have to think.


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(Applause)

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If you would ask me to say only one place,

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this is TED, we have to do it shortly,

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only one place where which I would choose
between all I have seen

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there is a city in India, Ahmedabad,

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which has four buildings of le Corbusier

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and one building of Louis Kahn,

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a school actually, a university.

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These two architects are the ones which

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are the modern architects

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which have influenced ...

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everything I have done

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By their way of building

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also by the way of thinking

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and particularly 
one of these four buildings

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of le Corbusier, this one

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is exactly in this building that I

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had a feeling that I had something
in my hand.

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A moment when you think

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like you holding something?

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I wouldn't call it a truth

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but something really very strong.

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And I said: "Well, OK, 
now I want to become an architect."

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and the next thing to do

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i said, I want to go home.

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And I went to Prizren first.

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This is 1913.

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Prizren was born out of two very simple rules.

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One, is the rule of "no harm"

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You don't do to your neigbors what

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you wouldn't like them to do to you.

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the second is "beauty without arrogance".

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(Applause)

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These two principles
could make a city like this.


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it's very simple.

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So what I found was this

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and this to me was ugliness with arrogance.

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(Applause)

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I have something worse than this!

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(Laughs)

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There is no limit in bad things 
also in good ones.

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In the very begining in Kosovo I realize

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that I wanted to change things

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I came there to change things.

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But you cannot change the otherss

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you can change only yourself.

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and i didn't want to change myself

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in a way of becoming like the others

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I wanted to stay with my beliefs

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but I wanted to change other things

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and i had to find a way

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so I could speak to the people

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to my people.

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So they would understand what I mean

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and I was sure they will understand.

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So I tried to find a language

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a common language

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that could speak to them

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and could be what I think

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So I concentrated on one thing

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that the architecture 
should improve people lives

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If you ask me

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What is a good architecture?

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There is one thing that 
all good architecture should have

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Architecture should improve your life

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should be something 
that makes your living better

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Cities could be a better place to live

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(Applause)

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A school should be a place

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where you can get inspired to learn

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a house should be a place

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where you have a well being

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A room should be a place

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which inspires happiness

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This is my daughter in the top of my house

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I don't have to tell you

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that she's happy there.

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One of the basic things

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in my work was that I was

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always limited financially.

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All my clients had very little means

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so I had to find a way

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to make things with very little

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and making things with very little,

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it's learning the simplicity.

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One of the elements that you'll see

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my buildings is concrete.

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And many people ask me,

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Why do you make concrete buildings?

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We didn't have a choice, actually,

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concrete is the only material

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we could afford.

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We couldn't afford stone

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We couldn't afford marble

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but concrete, yes.

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You could do good things with concrete

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if you respect it

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and if you find a way

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to make it real,

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to make it only once,

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You don't put a second layer

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if you don't have to.

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Buqalla Pools & Hotel,

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was my biggest commission

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and it took me five years

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to build everything.

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It was my biggest project,

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but actually it's the one which

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I had trouble to explain.

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There were two or three things which started,

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One was that, 
I wanted a place where the man

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can meet the nature.

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It sounds very theoretical

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but imagine, you come to this place

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to forget you everyday life,

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your problems and you want to feel well.

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So I wanted a place where you

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could feel well.

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Where you're not relaxed,

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but just feel good.

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Maybe get inspired to do things.

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The second thing was, I wanted architeture

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to be related to the nature.

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If you imagine architecture here

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and nature here and something in between.

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This thing in between is a sort of

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human landscape,

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it's not the nature

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and it's not the inside.

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It's sort of between
nature and architecture.

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So, these two elements

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made this complex, this architecture.

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(Applause)

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I realize during this five years

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that it was very difficult to practice

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architecture in Kosovo

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the way I was used to do it

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in Switzerland.

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I had to adapt.

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One of the really basic things that happen

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is that architecture I think in Albania

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and Kosovo is the same.

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We are in a process of changes.

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Building is still like in maybe
200 years ago

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where owners hires the builders,

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to build their houses

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and they don't need architects.

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Sometimes they buy papers from architects

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and they give it to the builders

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but they cannot replace us.

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So, I had only one choice

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to do something well

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that was to become a master builder

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by myself.

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(Applause)

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These are the real builders,

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the owner was not there.

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So they were relaxing.

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This is a very small house,

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the very smallest I have done.

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It's a family of four

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and they didn't have a lot of money

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So, they wanted a really little house

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which fulfills all their needs.

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I made a sort of strategic plan

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how to do it.

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I developed four points.

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Which can be a sort of generic

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to generate architecture 
in this situation.

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One of these was to make an efficient plan.

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An efficient plan is like you plan

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that the life in the house

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should be really very well organized

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and it works well

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not one centimeter lost.

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The second thing was, we wanted to use

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local labor and materials.

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People who built it, 
they lived in the same place

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and the materials were coming from near,

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so they were cheaper.

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We used the passive solar energy.

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It costs nothing.

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If you have a lot of windows in the south,

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you have sun in winter, 
and shade in summer

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because the sun is high.

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(Applause)

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The fourth element was

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to design and build everything.

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We designed lights

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we designed furniture,

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we designed many many things

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it was cheaper to design and build things

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than buy ready made

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which were ugly anyway.

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Dida house was much bigger

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maybe two three times bigger

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but it didn't cost two three times more.

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Dida house is a holiday house.

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They don't live there all the time.

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In Kosovo we have very extreme climate.

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The winter is very cold.

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The summer is very hot.

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So traditionally, we have to houses,

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those who can afford.

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A winter house and a summer house.

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So I thought, maybe I should do a house

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which has these two

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inside and outside.

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Then I related the inside and outside

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with continuous space

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so you have a space which does not stop inside

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it goes outside and comes inside

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and than it goes up and it goes down

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so everything is related to each other

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and when you relate everything to each other


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you gain a sort of harmony

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when things are at their place.

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When something happens 
there is some poetry there as well.

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(Applause)

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The Mother Theresa museum is in Prizren

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You know, Mother Theresa's parents
got married in a Catholic Church in Prizren

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and they had a little plot in the front
and wanted to build a museum.

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So, I imagined an old Prizren house, 
with three floors,

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and when you actually go inside

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is one space.

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I had this idea of making really a one space .

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Is like a child dream that you can walk around up and down

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because inside of the house is like someone has taken down all the floors

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and emptied everything that is inside.

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Turning it into an empty space.

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Because, you know, 
architecture is not the material

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is the emptiness.

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It is what actually is not there.

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It's the nothing.

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(Applause)

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I was doing a theater competition once,

275
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and I had a guy who was producing theatrical pieces help me

276
00:11:05,908 --> 00:11:08,479
make a better competition.

277
00:11:08,479 --> 00:11:09,749
We lost it!

278
00:11:09,749 --> 00:11:12,289
However, I understood one thing.

279
00:11:12,289 --> 00:11:16,041
The guy told me 
"I do not need my theater to be beautiful"

280
00:11:16,041 --> 00:11:18,860
"I needed to generate beauty"

281
00:11:18,860 --> 00:11:23,050
"I want a theater which can help me 
make beautiful pieces"

282
00:11:23,050 --> 00:11:25,292
I do not care if the theater itself is beautiful or not"

283
00:11:25,292 --> 00:11:27,957
So, I was thinking and I realized that

284
00:11:27,957 --> 00:11:30,671
(Applause)

285
00:11:30,671 --> 00:11:33,643
Architecture is not the beauty

286
00:11:33,643 --> 00:11:37,172
it is rather the capacity 
to generate beauty.

287
00:11:37,172 --> 00:11:41,082
let me finish with a little story 
from the Venice Biennale

288
00:11:41,082 --> 00:11:44,483
where I represented Kosovo.

289
00:11:44,483 --> 00:11:50,264
I did a tower with "shkami"
or stool in English

290
00:11:50,264 --> 00:11:52,124
which is an old piece of Albanian furniture

291
00:11:52,124 --> 00:11:59,916
meaning a stool and at the same time a rock.

292
00:11:59,916 --> 00:12:03,177
So it shows that it is a very old thing

293
00:12:03,177 --> 00:12:07,426
Probably people sat on the rock 
while making the stool long time ago

294
00:12:07,426 --> 00:12:12,556
So it relates strongly to our tradition

295
00:12:12,556 --> 00:12:15,748
but not to one specific one, 
but rather those of thousands of years.

296
00:12:15,748 --> 00:12:19,737
So I chose this old traditional element

297
00:12:19,737 --> 00:12:23,488
to make this modern instalation.

298
00:12:23,488 --> 00:12:29,748
This because I wanted to show the relation 
between tradition and modernity.

299
00:12:29,748 --> 00:12:34,050
But something happened 
that I did not expect.

300
00:12:34,050 --> 00:12:38,620
I realized that if you would stand in the middle of it

301
00:12:38,620 --> 00:12:40,151
and if you would speak

302
00:12:40,151 --> 00:12:43,001
you would hear an echo coming from all sides.

303
00:12:43,001 --> 00:12:44,651
And I watched the visitors who did it

304
00:12:44,651 --> 00:12:51,082
and once they did it they would start to laugh.

305
00:12:51,082 --> 00:12:54,991
It was so beautiful to hear your voice

306
00:12:54,991 --> 00:12:57,812
as you do not listen to your self very often.

307
00:12:57,812 --> 00:13:02,612
They were tired of seeing Biennale

308
00:13:02,612 --> 00:13:04,303
and they would come back from the tower

309
00:13:04,303 --> 00:13:05,554
with a smile.

310
00:13:05,554 --> 00:13:06,934
Suddenly the tower was loosing all

311
00:13:06,934 --> 00:13:11,024
its significance, all its wait

312
00:13:11,024 --> 00:13:12,264
and symbolic

313
00:13:12,264 --> 00:13:14,084
and became something which

314
00:13:14,084 --> 00:13:15,895
could transmit instant happiness.

315
00:13:15,895 --> 00:13:18,855
Thank You

316
00:13:18,855 --> 00:13:21,651
(Applause)