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