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Today I'm going to speak to you

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about the last 30 years
of architectural history.

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That's a lot to pack into 18 minutes.

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It's a complex topic,

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so we're just going to dive right in
at a complex place:

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New Jersey.

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Because 30 years ago, I'm from Jersey,

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and I was six, and I lived there
in my parents' house

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in a town called Livingston,

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and this was my childhood bedroom.

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Around the corner from my bedroom

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was the bathroom
that I used to share with my sister.

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And in between my bedroom and the bathroom

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was a balcony that overlooked
the family room.

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And that's where everyone
would hang out and watch TV,

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so that every time that I walked
from my bedroom to the bathroom,

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everyone would see me,

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and every time I took a shower
and would come back in a towel,

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everyone would see me.

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And I looked like this.

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I was awkward,

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insecure, and I hated it.

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I hated that walk, I hated that balcony,

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I hated that room, and I hated that house.

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And that's architecture.

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(Laughter)

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Done.

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That feeling, those emotions that I felt,

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that's the power of architecture,

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because architecture is not about math
and it's not about zoning,

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it's about those visceral,
emotional connections

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that we feel to the places that we occupy.

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And it's no surprise
that we feel that way,

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because according to the EPA,

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Americans spend 90 percent
of their time indoors.

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That's 90 percent of our time
surrounded by architecture.

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That's huge.

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That means that architecture is shaping us
in ways that we didn't even realize.

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That makes us a little bit gullible
and very, very predictable.

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It means that when I show you
a building like this,

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I know what you think:

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You think "power"
and "stability" and "democracy."

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And I know you think that
because it's based on a building

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that was build 2,500 years ago
by the Greeks.

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This is a trick.

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This is a trigger that architects use

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to get you to create
an emotional connection

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to the forms that we build
our buildings out of.

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It's a predictable emotional connection,

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and we've been using this trick
for a long, long time.

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We used it [200] years ago to build banks.

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We used it in the 19th century
to build art museums.

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And in the 20th century in America,

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we used it to build houses.

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And look at these solid,
stable little soldiers

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facing the ocean
and keeping away the elements.

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This is really, really useful,

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because building things is terrifying.

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It's expensive, it takes a long time,
and it's very complicated.

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And the people that build things --

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developers and governments --

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they're naturally afraid of innovation,

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and they'd rather just use those forms
that they know you'll respond to.

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That's how we end up
with buildings like this.

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This is a nice building.

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This is the Livingston Public Library

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that was completed in 2004 in my hometown,

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and, you know, it's got a dome

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and it's got this round thing 
and columns, red brick,

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and you can kind of guess what Livingston
is trying to say with this building:

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children, property values and history.

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But it doesn't have much to do
with what a library actually does today.

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That same year, in 2004,
on the other side of the country,

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another library was completed,

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and it looks like this.

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It's in Seattle.

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This library is about how
we consume media in a digital age.

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It's about a new kind
of public amenity for the city,

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a place to gather and read and share.

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So how is it possible

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that in the same year,
in the same country,

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two buildings, both called libraries,

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look so completely different?

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And the answer is that architecture works
on the principle of a pendulum.

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On the one side is innovation,

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and architects are constantly pushing,
pushing for new technologies,

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new typologies, new solutions
for the way that we live today.

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And we push and we push and we push

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until we completely alienate all of you.

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We wear all black, we get very depressed,

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you think we're adorable,

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we're dead inside because
we've got no choice.

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We have to go to the other side

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and reengage those symbols
that we know you love.

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So we do that, and you're happy,

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we feel like sellouts,

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so we start experimenting again

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and we push the pendulum back
and back and forth and back and forth

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we've gone for the last 300 years,

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and certainly for the last 30 years.

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Okay, 30 years ago
we were coming out of the '70s.

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Architects had been busy experimenting
with something called brutalism.

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It's about concrete.

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(Laughter)

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You can guess this.

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Small windows, dehumanizing scale.

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This is really tough stuff.

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So as we get closer to the '80s,

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we start to reengage those symbols.

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We push the pendulum
back into the other direction.

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We take these forms that we know you love

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and we update them.

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We add neon

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and we add pastels

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and we use new materials.

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And you love it.

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And we can't give you enough of it.

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We take Chippendale armoires

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and we turned those into skyscrapers,

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and skyscrapers can be
medieval castles made out of glass.

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Forms got big,

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forms got bold and colorful.

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Dwarves became columns.

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(Laughter)

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Swans grew to the size of buildings.

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It was crazy.

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But it's the '80s, it's cool.

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(Laughter)

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We're all hanging out in malls

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and we're all moving to the suburbs,

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and out there, out in the suburbs,

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we can create our own
architectural fantasies.

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And those fantasies,

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they can be Mediterranean

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or French

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or Italian.

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(Laughter)

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Possibly with endless breadsticks.

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This is the thing about postmodernism.

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This is the thing about symbols.

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They're easy, they're cheap,

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because instead of making places,

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we're making memories of places.

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Because I know, 
and I know all of you know,

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this isn't Tuscany.

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This is Ohio.

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(Laughter)

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So architects get frustrated,

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and we start pushing the pendulum
back into the other direction.

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In the late '80s and early '90s,

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we start experimenting with something
called deconstructivism.

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We throw out historical symbols,

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we rely on new, computer-aided
design techniques,

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and we come up with new compositions,

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forms crashing into forms.

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This is academic and heady stuff,

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it's super unpopular,

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we totally alienate you.

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Ordinarily, the pendulum would just
swing back into the other direction.

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And then, something amazing happened.

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In 1997, this building opened.

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This is the Guggenheim Bilbao,
by Frank Gehry.

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And this building

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fundamentally changes
the world's relationship to architecture.

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Paul Goldberger said that Bilbao
was one of those rare moments

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when critics, academics,
and the general public

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were completely united around a building.

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The New York Times
called this building a miracle.

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Tourism in Bilbao increased 2,500 percent

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after this building was completed.

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So all of a sudden, everybody
wants one of these buildings:

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L.A.,

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Seattle,

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Chicago,

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New York,

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Cleveland,

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Springfield.

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(Laughter)

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Everybody wants one,
and Gehry is everywhere.

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He is our very first starchitect.

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Now, how is it possible
that these forms --

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they're wild and radical --

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how is it possible that they become
so ubiquitous throughout the world?

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And it happened because media
so successfully galvanized around them

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that they quickly taught us
that these forms mean culture and tourism.

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We created an emotional
reaction to these forms.

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So did every mayor in the world.

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So every mayor knew
that if they had these forms,

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they had culture and tourism.

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This phenomenon
at the turn of the new millennium

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happened to a few other starchitects.

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It happened to Zaha

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and it happened to Libeskind,

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and what happened
to these elite few architects

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at the turn of the new millennium

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could actually start to happen
to the entire field of architecture,

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as digital media starts
to increase the speed

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with which we consume information.

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Because think about
how you consume architecture.

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A thousand years ago,

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you would have had to have walked to
the village next door to see a building.

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Transportation speeds up:

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You can take a boat, you can take a plane,
you can be a tourist.

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Technology speeds up:
You can see it in a newspaper, on TV,

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until finally, we are all
architectural photographers,

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and the building has become
disembodied from the site.

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Architecture is everywhere now,

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and that means that
the speed of communication

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has finally caught up
to the speed of architecture.

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Because architecture
actually moves quite quickly.

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It doesn't take long
to think about a building.

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It takes a long time to build a building,

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three or four years,

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and in the interim, an architect
will design two or eight

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or a hundred other buildings

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before they know if that building
that they designed four years ago

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was a success or not.

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That's because there's never been
a good feedback loop in architecture.

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That's how we end up
with buildings like this.

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Brutalism wasn't a two-year movement,

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it was a 20-year movement.

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For 20 years, we were producing
buildings like this

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because we had no idea
how much you hated it.

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It's never going to happen again,

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I think,

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because we are living on the verge
of the greatest revolution in architecture

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since the invention of concrete,

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of steel, or of the elevator,

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and it's a media revolution.

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So my theory is that when
you apply media to this pendulum,

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it starts swinging faster and faster,

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until it's at both extremes
nearly simultaneously,

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and that effectively blurs the difference
between innovation and symbol,

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between us, the architects,
and you, the public.

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Now we can make nearly instantaneous,
emotionally charged symbols

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out of something that's brand new.

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Let me show you how this plays out

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in a project that my firm
recently completed.

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We were hired to replace this building,
which burned down.

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This is the center of a town
called the Pines

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in Fire Island in New York State.

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It's a vacation community.

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We proposed a building that was audacious,

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that was different than any of the forms
that the community was used to,

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and we were scared
and our client was scared

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and the community was scared,

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so we created a series
of photorealistic renderings

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that we put onto Facebook

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and we put onto Instagram,

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and we let people start
to do what they do:

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share it, comment, like it, hate it.

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But that meant that two years
before the building was complete,

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it was already a part of the community,

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so that when the renderings
looked exactly like the finished product,

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there were no surprises.

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This building was already a part
of this community,

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and then that first summer,

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when people started arriving
and sharing the building on social media,

259
00:12:44,375 --> 00:12:49,862
the building ceased to be just an edifice
and it became media,

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because these, these are not
just pictures of a building,

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they're your pictures of a building.

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And as you use them to tell your story,

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they become part
of your personal narrative,

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and what you're doing
is you're short-circuiting

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all of our collective memory,

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and you're making these charged symbols
for us to understand.

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00:13:13,187 --> 00:13:15,476
That means we don't need
the Greeks anymore

268
00:13:15,500 --> 00:13:18,118
to tell us what to think
about architecture.

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00:13:18,142 --> 00:13:22,167
We can tell each other
what we think about architecture,

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00:13:22,191 --> 00:13:27,962
because digital media hasn't just changed
the relationship between all of us,

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it's changed the relationship
between us and buildings.

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00:13:32,614 --> 00:13:35,732
Think for a second about
those librarians back in Livingston.

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If that building was going
to be built today,

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the first thing they would do is go online
and search "new libraries."

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They would be bombarded by examples
of experimentation, of innovation,

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of pushing at the envelope
of what a library can be.

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That's ammunition.

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00:13:54,846 --> 00:13:57,181
That's ammunition
that they can take with them

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00:13:57,205 --> 00:14:00,330
to the mayor of Livingston,
to the people of Livingston,

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00:14:00,354 --> 00:14:04,313
and say, there's no one answer
to what a library is today.

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00:14:04,337 --> 00:14:05,822
Let's be a part of this.

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00:14:06,287 --> 00:14:09,153
This abundance of experimentation

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00:14:09,177 --> 00:14:12,236
gives them the freedom
to run their own experiment.

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00:14:14,452 --> 00:14:16,664
Everything is different now.

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00:14:16,664 --> 00:14:20,019
Architects are no longer
these mysterious creatures

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00:14:20,043 --> 00:14:22,538
that use big words
and complicated drawings,

287
00:14:22,562 --> 00:14:25,522
and you aren't the hapless public,

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00:14:25,546 --> 00:14:29,081
the consumer that won't accept
anything that they haven't seen anymore.

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00:14:30,980 --> 00:14:32,713
Architects can hear you,

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00:14:32,737 --> 00:14:34,841
and you're not intimidated
by architecture.

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00:14:35,770 --> 00:14:39,152
That means that that pendulum
swinging back and forth

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00:14:39,176 --> 00:14:42,154
from style to style,
from movement to movement,

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00:14:42,178 --> 00:14:43,459
is irrelevant.

294
00:14:43,680 --> 00:14:46,280
We can actually move forward

295
00:14:46,304 --> 00:14:50,670
and find relevant solutions
to the problems that our society faces.

296
00:14:51,757 --> 00:14:55,199
This is the end of architectural history,

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00:14:55,223 --> 00:14:58,091
and it means that
the buildings of tomorrow

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00:14:58,115 --> 00:15:01,278
are going to look a lot different
than the buildings of today.

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00:15:02,389 --> 00:15:06,797
It means that a public space
in the ancient city of Seville

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00:15:06,821 --> 00:15:11,005
can be unique and tailored
to the way that a modern city works.

301
00:15:11,992 --> 00:15:16,411
It means that a stadium in Brooklyn
can be a stadium in Brooklyn,

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00:15:16,435 --> 00:15:19,197
not some red-brick historical pastiche

303
00:15:19,221 --> 00:15:21,701
of what we think a stadium ought to be.

304
00:15:22,540 --> 00:15:25,373
It means that robots are going
to build our buildings,

305
00:15:25,397 --> 00:15:29,014
because we're finally ready for the forms
that they're going to produce.

306
00:15:29,842 --> 00:15:33,693
And it means that buildings
will twist to the whims of nature

307
00:15:33,717 --> 00:15:35,520
instead of the other way around.

308
00:15:36,676 --> 00:15:40,280
It means that a parking garage
in Miami Beach, Florida,

309
00:15:40,304 --> 00:15:42,788
can also be a place for sports

310
00:15:42,812 --> 00:15:44,191
and for yoga

311
00:15:44,215 --> 00:15:46,794
and you can even
get married there late at night.

312
00:15:46,818 --> 00:15:47,842
(Laughter)

313
00:15:47,866 --> 00:15:52,029
It means that three architects
can dream about swimming

314
00:15:52,053 --> 00:15:53,973
in the East River of New York,

315
00:15:53,997 --> 00:15:56,487
and then raise nearly
half a million dollars

316
00:15:56,511 --> 00:15:59,839
from a community
that gathered around their cause,

317
00:15:59,863 --> 00:16:01,593
no one client anymore.

318
00:16:02,765 --> 00:16:05,666
It means that no building
is too small for innovation,

319
00:16:05,690 --> 00:16:07,888
like this little reindeer pavilion

320
00:16:07,912 --> 00:16:13,003
that's as muscly and sinewy
as the animals it's designed to observe.

321
00:16:13,808 --> 00:16:16,546
And it means that a building
doesn't have to be beautiful

322
00:16:16,570 --> 00:16:17,863
to be lovable,

323
00:16:17,887 --> 00:16:20,902
like this ugly little building in Spain,

324
00:16:20,926 --> 00:16:23,407
where the architects dug a hole,

325
00:16:23,431 --> 00:16:24,813
packed it with hay,

326
00:16:24,837 --> 00:16:27,170
and then poured concrete around it,

327
00:16:27,194 --> 00:16:28,834
and when the concrete dried,

328
00:16:28,858 --> 00:16:32,418
they invited someone to come
and clean that hay out

329
00:16:32,442 --> 00:16:35,373
so that all that's left when it's done

330
00:16:35,397 --> 00:16:38,072
is this hideous little room

331
00:16:38,096 --> 00:16:44,050
that's filled with the imprints
and scratches of how that place was made,

332
00:16:44,074 --> 00:16:48,558
and that becomes the most sublime place
to watch a Spanish sunset.

333
00:16:49,658 --> 00:16:53,013
Because it doesn't matter
if a cow builds our buildings

334
00:16:53,037 --> 00:16:54,847
or a robot builds our buildings.

335
00:16:54,871 --> 00:16:58,219
It doesn't matter how we build,
it matters what we build.

336
00:16:58,899 --> 00:17:02,324
Architects already know how
to make buildings that are greener

337
00:17:02,348 --> 00:17:04,506
and smarter and friendlier.

338
00:17:04,530 --> 00:17:07,104
We've just been waiting
for all of you to want them.

339
00:17:08,022 --> 00:17:11,350
And finally, we're not
on opposite sides anymore.

340
00:17:11,957 --> 00:17:14,929
Find an architect, hire an architect,

341
00:17:14,953 --> 00:17:20,770
work with us to design better buildings,
better cities, and a better world,

342
00:17:20,794 --> 00:17:23,034
because the stakes are high.

343
00:17:23,635 --> 00:17:28,825
Buildings don't just reflect our society,
they shape our society

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00:17:28,849 --> 00:17:30,901
down to the smallest spaces:

345
00:17:30,925 --> 00:17:32,929
the local libraries,

346
00:17:32,953 --> 00:17:35,382
the homes where we raise our children,

347
00:17:35,406 --> 00:17:38,599
and the walk that they take
from the bedroom to the bathroom.

348
00:17:39,288 --> 00:17:40,388
Thank you.

349
00:17:40,412 --> 00:17:43,412
(Applause)