Pierre de Meuron Keynote at Moscow Urban Forum

Very dispersed the presentation. Can you please make it a little louder? A little bit. Too bright. Okay, don't worry. Okay, so good evening. It is for me of course a great pleasure and a great honor to have the opportunity to speak to you all. I hope there are many architects, there are also many developers, there are also many politicians, as I think the topic of how our cities will develop on this planet is a topic for everyone. I prepared a short presentation, and there are two parts of it: a first one is more general, and a second one where I will, by means of three concrete projects, show you how we think about and how we develop urban projects. So the first thing is, I think we should make really a differentiation between, or try to define, what we are facing in talking about urban phenomenon or urban planning. I think that one thing, if you know, you have to kind of questions, we have two kinds of problems. On the left we call them the tame problems. Those are problems and questions with a solution which is right or wrong. Let's say a mathematic was one plus one, and I think everyone in this auditorium will say two. Also a chess game or a puzzle, you have a piece of a puzzle and that fits exactly where it has to fit. So those are the tame problems which have an algorithm for a solution. We face, when we speak of urban questions, of urban phenomenon, or architectural questions, or architectural phenomenon, we call them wicked problems, because there is no solution for right or wrong. It's more to say it is better or less good. So there is not the right solution or the only solution. I think this is very important, because often people expect, now you come here from Switzerland or wherever, and you know how to do it. One of the main questions we also always try to ask ourselves and give a kind of an answer: who plans the planning? Because I'm sure that there has been no other era or time in our history on this planet where so much has been built or so much is being planned. It's almost like covering like a big crust the whole surface of the planet. I think knowing that this is the quantity, the sheer quantity, the billions of square meters or whatever square cubic meters which are planned and built, I think this obliges us or makes us responsible to think about it, to make a proposal, to show how we think things can happen. We call this the planner's triangle. So we have three systems. One system is the society, us all, the people who live on this planet, who live in cities, in metropolitan areas, in rural areas. This is the social system. Then they live on a territory, so we have an environmental system. And the third one are the actors, or you could call them stakeholders. This is a political system or this is an economic system. And the planning is all dealing or trading between those vectors. Of course the environment shapes our behavior. On the contrary, we as a society shape the environment. And of course the stakeholders are the actors, whether they are on the political system or on the economical system. They also have a big influence on what is happening or what is not happening. I think this is pretty much working for everywhere on the planet, where you have also different ways of thinking a society or where you have also different political systems. Then we go further and we have a question, we have a problem, or we have an area what to do there, for instance in the examples I will show later. So again we have the three systems: the society on top, which I think is the most important, with all its activities that are taking place in urban areas, like living, housing, etc., as you see shopping, recreating, learning, etc. This is us, what are we doing in the cities. And then the territory on the base, where we stand on this ground, has infrastructure, has settlements, and the landscape of course. And from the left you have the actors. And we see ourselves our job to, as actions and measures, to propose things that can be then discussed within this triangle. We often work also, and I will show this in options. There is not only the one solution. So often you have different options which are better, have advantages and disadvantages, and other solutions have advantages and disadvantages in another way. So we screen those, we show how a decision could be made, we make it comprehensible, we make it understandable for as many people as possible. And we have been so far quite successful with this method, as we could bring people together and to believe in something that would be the right solution for this particular question or this particular area. Knowing this, I think a society has some values, and those values you can call them organizing principles. Certainly one of them, and for all the people who are engaged, are active in thinking and doing architecture, in building or financing, there is responsibility towards the people who will use those buildings, whether it's housing, whether it's an office, whether it's a concert hall, a park, or whatever. So our job is to maintain or even enhance the quality of life of the people. Saying this, I think as a second, and certainly now it has never been as important to think and to talk about this, is to maintain and enhance the quality of the environment on this planet. So this is like really a first big responsibility we all have. Then talking of where it is, there is not an ambiguous solution for everything. We believe that place matters. That means that specificity, each place, each city, if I take a city, has its own characteristics, has its own specificity. Moscow is not Los Angeles, Moscow is not Bern, Zurich is not Niobe, is not Beijing, it's not Sydney. All these cities, they are like us individuals, with their own strengths, opportunities, needs, but also threats, difficulties. So to take advantage of this, understand what makes the characteristics of each city or each area, we are thinking about. Then we believe also that design matters. Design is important as architecture, but also cities in general, they are perceived by us as individuals in two ways, I would say. One is by using the thing. You sit here in this auditorium, I stand here, Natalia sitting in an armchair. That's using a building or using a furniture or using a city. But we also perceive our environment with all our five senses: visually, acoustically, etc. This makes a difference to visual art for instance. Visual art has no use. The use of visual art for instance is being useless. And having this uselessness, it makes this open for many, many things. We can't be as open as architects, because we have also the use factor in our work. Then also we think we want that people be visionary, think of a big picture, not just "Oh yes, I may do this or this." No, you need a bigger picture when you are thinking the city. And then what we call really sustainability in the broadest way is to have a long term plan. That's for our sense, sensibility. Then how to proceed, we propose five possible strategies. First is build on the built: don't waste land more and more, but build where there are already buildings or infrastructure. This was an interesting topic yesterday when we were talking about industrial areas that are being redeveloped. Then densify towards the center. I think most of the cities, the younger generation, they come back to the city, to the center of the city. There is not anymore this endless sprawl into the landscape. What we will see also is, we think and we believe that we should stack different typologies or different functions one over the other. This is what we call mixed use, of course a very common goal for many people, for many cities, and many architects and urban planners. And then last but not least, preserve the cultural heritage. Also this will be in one of the projects key for this project and for the success of the project. As we believe that cultural heritage is important for our societies, even more today where things are happening so fast, where many people have a sum of a disagreement or discomfort with this world which is changing so fast. So you need to have some grip on things that you know, that have already proved that they are something that people can like, that people are attracted to. Yesterday, for those who were not there in a panel discussion, I got together with Alexei. Alexei had a keynote and I presented three projects, and we rapidly showed them: Tate Modern, Elbphilharmonie, and Butikski. You see, one is in London, one in Hamburg, and one in Moscow. They are all three on a site that was industrial. In the case of London, the power station; in the case of Hamburg, a warehouse; and in the case of Moscow, a brewery. I will come back to this, to Butikski, of course more in detail. But just to show that the industrial era, the industrial building, is changing into a multifunctional landmark. It's becoming a landmark also because it is a heritage piece. And certainly for the two already built projects, Tate Modern and Elbphilharmonie, highly visited public buildings. Tate Modern as you see, and Elbphilharmonie. And Butikski, again, hope that this will also be the case. So it's an evolving transition within a city from mono-functional industrial building to a cultural institution, whether it's museum for contemporary art or music hall, to a highly visited landmark. And with this building, which is a building within the city, you create or you upgrade the whole neighborhood. And we call this like an urban acupuncture, where with a needle, which is the building, which is Tate or which is Elbphilharmonie, you create, you generate a lot of energy into the urban body, similar to the Chinese acupuncture, who just finds the right spot to have as much positive energy into the human body. And this you see here, like Southwark, which was a very unknown area and almost criminal area in London, has become now a most popular area along the river. Same for HafenCity in Hamburg. And I'm sure this will be the case for Butikski. Now I come to the three examples. I will show you this one in LA, one in Basel where we are based, our office is based, and of course Butikski in Moscow. So the Arts District in LA. As for all the projects, we first also try to understand where it is located within the city. On the left you have the Pacific Ocean and this huge sprawl. This is exactly the contrary of concentrating something in a center like most European cities do. But here in LA, it's an endless sprawl. Those who have been in LA, it's almost not understandable what kind of city this is. And we understand that we are here. If you see in dark is downtown LA, which is on Bunker Hill, slightly elevated. And our site is in the so-called Arts District, where you have warehouses. I will show some images of it. And if you see here again, also a historical plan that was of course agricultural and it was close to LA River, which was sometimes flooded, sometimes it was dry as a highway. And how this area developed. And we understand that this is an urban crossing like in a Roman city with the cardo and the decumanus of three main roads: a north-south road which is Alameda, and the east-west road which is Wilshire Boulevard. Certainly many people know Hollywood Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, and Wilshire Boulevard also, that are the main east-west boulevards in LA. So if you see the urban fabric with the warehouses, and we believe that with this project we have three achievements. One is that we have different building typology, then again the mixtures and the stacking. Looking at the area of LA Arts District, you see those warehouses or facilities for light industries. And so we did very intense, in-depth analysis of the existing, knowing that there is a very active community there which cares about its neighborhood. And so we needed to talk with them, we need to integrate them. So you couldn't just import something alien into this neighborhood, but you had to take into consideration what is there, not only architecturally, not only in building structure, but also in social activities which are there. So it's the integration. So understanding how this part of the city is very much transforming itself. So there were the small building, small scale, mid-rise with mid-rise, and then also the in-between spaces. So it's not just only a piece of architecture, but to understand the city as a social system that needs here to continue its life and not to bring in something which is completely alien to it. Again, different activities, so that you live, you work, you go to school, you shop, you have all the different activities I mentioned in one of my previous slides. They are here in LA. So we created a very simple concept which is an infrastructure. I could compare to a table. Under the table you have functions that are related to the street life, and above the table you have functions that are living and also office. A few images. This project is now in entitlement process, a very long process. And California is highly democratic, so almost everyone can oppose. We have public hearings and public hearings and public hearings, and up to if everyone is somehow satisfied about this. So that's certainly very important procedures. And that we as architects play a sort of a catalyst and make things understandable, comprehensible, as I told you or I showed you with the decision tree. And here we integrate some given elements of the LA Art District, working with graffiti artists and so to give them also the possibility to have their expression also in this new structure. So this is like under the table, I may say. And again also the stacking. So above do you have the table, under the table, and above the table. Where along the main street Alameda, the north-south street, we concentrate high-rise buildings which are on top of this table. On the other side of the block we have a hotel. Also the buildings that are above with the stores, with the hotel, and also above this table those are the housing projects, the housing buildings too, also with wooden doors, and that have sort of their own world above the commercial and all the more urban life which is happening under it. That's how it looks like from the air. And you see in the middle this large warehouse. And we did also several tests with what kind of high-rise. You see in the far you see downtown LA, which has a cluster of concentration of high-rise. You have also Koreatown, so you have other places in LA where you have the concentration of high-rise buildings. And we think that also there we can have this concentration, but having many, many slim towers and not a slab like on the left, because that would block too much the views. And we see this building, this is an example, another Herzog & de Meuron building in Beirut, the Bayview Terrace. It's something very open, something very for this climate, under stairs, no winter somehow there. So also living facilities that give also the people who live there an outside space on the terrace. Or you may know this building also, very slim tower, which expresses also what is in the building itself. It's not just an extrusion of the same form from the bottom up to the top, but the form changes according to what is happening in the inside. Having in the lower side the smaller apartment, in the middle mid-sized apartment, at the top you have really large units that can show as units themselves. So that's the same image now with the project hopefully starting next year. Now in Basel, Basel is a very small city state, we are very small inland, so we are obliged to think about how to use the city ground in its best way. We call this "rock pizza". And again the image, how it is now and how it was also industrial logistics. And going back, you understand also that that was before the 19th century, before industrialization. And understanding what is the topography, where is it, and to understand also the place where it is. And here it is between the main valley of the Rhine River and an effluent of a side river. And where the two come together, this is where we have our site. This is an old analysis almost 30 years old what we did about Basel. And I show this because I truly believe that also in Moscow you will have, sooner or later, it's already starting with the park and with Butikski, to have important venues, to have important public spaces along the river, making the river much more attractive. There also that the city along the train tracks. And what the challenge is, is a very successful shopping mall called Negroe retailer. And this is one of their cash cows, and they can't accept to have like one day of lost revenues. So this whole thing, this whole shopping mall needs to be continuous and have its revenue. The concentration also in Basel again to propose or to advocate for concentration of high-rise building. This is a Roche headquarters which we are currently building with the office for Roche in Basel. The shopping mall as I said has to be kept. Parking is of course very important. I'd rather show now some images how now this neighborhood, which was mono-functionally used just for shopping, cars coming and getting out etc., and trucks, but now it is part of the city, becoming much more lively, much more urban, with many more activities than just mere shopping in the shopping mall. And the three towers for housing. We choose the cylindrical, we choose the round form in plan because there they almost have no orientation. They need to relate to all around themselves. If you would have taken rectangular or a square floor plan, then you would have four sides. But with this you have all around, you have almost part of the same surface. And having inside a rectangular layout that is certainly more advisable and more agreeable for the people to live and to make, to have their furniture in it. So the round form and inside the rectangular structure. A project that is almost finished in London with a similar approach: Canary Wharf, which was business, business, business, you know that. And this is the first housing tower in Canary Wharf. And we see on the water, so this has a high quality for those people who will live there, and hopefully not commute too much, so that they can go by foot or by bicycle to work. And this has a similar build-up: having on the lowest side the largest units, which are some kind of loft-type apartments, then in the middle mid-sized apartments, at the top the larger apartments. Paris, I show this also because of stacking and to have multifunctional building, not building with just offices or just housing. And this was from the beginning what we have been advocating for. The client first was a little bit unhappy about this, he wanted just office tower. We said if you are there in Paris, the Boulevard Périphérique, and you cannot build any high-rises in Paris. In Paris you cannot build high-rise within the Boulevard Périphérique. And this is on the Boulevard Périphérique. And the project was like sleeping, was on hold. And why I show this also is because you have now a project which is different from every other commercial or developer's project that are happening all over. This project was unique because it has exactly this multifunctional aspect and has also a public aspect, access to the top. And then what is quite strange is Paris hosts the Olympics in 24. For a Western city mainly, it is always a big challenge to have new infrastructures, a new main stadium, new swimming hall, etc. And like in London, now in Paris they reuse the existing infrastructure. So they didn't have a landmark building for the Olympics. And then suddenly they discovered this piece, this triangular piece in the southeast, southwest of Paris, and they said we want to have this for the Olympics. So that was quite interesting how psychologically this went through different moods within Paris. And also I think like in Moscow, Paris likes beauty, simplicity. It's just a very simple form, a triangle. And I think they will very well fit with the Eiffel Tower you see in the background. So what I see about this multifunction, it's like the two upper images. The black and white is just if you built by 90 degrees a neighborhood of Paris. Exactly this: you take the ground what is on Paris with all the shops with everything, you tilt it up and you have it in a high-rise. That's the simple concept of this building. And from one side, from Paris, it is very slim. So from the east to the west is very large, you see the full triangle. And from the north to the south you see just a very thin needle. Green is very important. I make it short. I think now the green we can have more than 70% of green space in this neighborhood, which is very poor on parks or green spaces. So one of the main aspects of the project is that we have on top of the shopping mall, of the retail, we have green. Similar to this building here. I was very surprised to understand that the top of the Great Hall you have a green space. I think this is very successful, very convincing, and very surprising. And we have to deal with a concept like this more and more in the future. And this is the top of the shopping mall where we have housing. Or now currently we are discussing to have a school there. Now I come to Butikski. You know much better than I do all about Moscow, but still we need to find in our own words where we are and understand what kind of potential or what kind of opportunity this project brings or can bring. So again here, green spaces which are also not very numerous in Moscow. We think that the green spaces and also mainly to connect the green spaces, if you think of joggers or if you think of bikers, so that you can go from one end of the city to another one with a safe and agreeable footpaths or bicycle roads. So green was very important for us of course. And this concentric concept of Moscow which is so clear, so radical: in the center you have the power, the religious, the political power, the Kremlin, and then the rings around it, and then all those vectors going whether to the north, to the east, to Minsk, or to the south, or wherever. So that's a very, very convincing, I think, plan of a city. And this is the character and one of the characteristics of Moscow urban area. And we are one of those vectors, and also along the river. It's very close to the Kremlin with New Arbat, so it's really central. And Kutuzovsky, you also all know that. Understanding what kind of existing elements are already there, because we want to work with them and not to work against them. And also here the Kutuzovsky Prospect, which I think is an interesting urban concept, a wide suite, and those buildings which are also quite repetitive but I think not boring. And of course the landmarks: the White House, the Hotel Ukraina, and Moscow City. So within those landmarks, we thought that we could also create a landmark which is not competing in height or competing in whatever. They have not compete with Moscow City or with the White House, but to compete in an hour, not to compete but to be supplementary, to have the synergy with all those landmarks that are around our site. Also we look far back in history and we understand that our site, the brewery, is on the former city walls. So this also would be interesting to show this in a very subtle way, but that too can say like, listen, 200 years ago this was inside the city and this was outside the city. And with our building, somehow we bridge over those two conditions of the city, where it was very clear dense inside and less dense and open outside. So this whole analysis of history and understanding that history is a transformation. The site has been transformed many, many times and will be transformed also from the brewery to the new condition of the Butikski project. So we think we have three achievements also here. Heritage building first and certainly most important one. Understanding that many, many people not only in Moscow but also in other cities in the world, like in Hong Kong where we do the police station, we understood that Hong Kong has been demolishing all its past and then they said that's enough, now we need to keep something of our past. And now the prison, the police station, is now a cultural center and heritage building. Here together with experts of Moscow, of architectural critics and historians, they've been analyzing the building structure itself of the brewery. And here you see the whole existing, and in darker color the ones who are really valuable, who are worth keeping. This is more than 30,000 square meters to keep the existing buildings. This you see, we define three buildings: one, three, and in the middle we have two. And even more than was listed or protected, we took the small piece you see between building one and three, and we added, we reconstructed a building that had been demolished, the brewhouse in the center. We could accumulate to that. So we create on the south with this red line, we create the front, the alignment of a boulevard with historical facades, which is this. And understanding also how now the Moscow center with the old buildings in the old streets, how public they are, the high quality of those spaces. I think you can also create some of that here in front of the Butikski brewery. So we have building one, which was a storage building, and we keep the structure. And this is also sustainable in its best way, as this structure is not just for storing, but it is also now adaptable to retail or to other new functions of today. So the existing structure, rejuvenating the city or the building itself, so we keep it and not make it a dead monument but to make it a building that is alive. Second, that's what I show you now. An old photograph of this old brewhouse that has been demolished in the 70s, and we think this should be reconstructed to create again what I showed here, this continuous boulevard of this brick facade architecture. So recreating this brewhouse and also having inside a small brewery, which is very popular. I'm sure that not only in Basel or Zurich in Switzerland you have now very small breweries that are very successful, and you could also have here this brewery and sell the beer here to the customers. Building three, I think it's important that for those who don't know the project, I can a little bit explain what the client Capital Group and the architect intend to develop there on the brewery. So this has a different typology. So there we will have some services like dance school or daycare. And in those silos we also will want to keep, to have a banya. So in those cylinders, to carve them out and to create here a very nice banya which will be open for everyone. Now for the housing, of course the client asked us, Capital Group, we have so many square meters of housing, and we developed as in every other project, we develop different strategies, so different typology of housing. You can make towers, you can make slabs, you can make whatever. And we developed that, and we were not so much happy about that. If you look, this is like a little more of the same like everywhere, sorry to say that. And also masking the brewery that is behind. The brewery, this lot of land being between the brewery, the embankment, and the river. If you build between the brewery and the embankment, then you block the view on the brewery from the other side of Moscow River, which also will be very popular etc. So we lifted it. That was somehow, I think, a creative input: not to have it on the ground but to have it lifted. And with this, like on this image, you see through the oldest building, the house on top, you see the existing structure of the brewery. So this may endure like almost embracing the existing structure on the ground but lifted above. So the apartments are in the majority small, as we think and also the client that there will be a lot of customers, small apartments, people coming back into the center of the city, having the possibility to own or to rent an apartment there. And having a small surface, I guess that this will be a trend. Not for everyone, but many people will go back into the centers and have smaller surfaces to live in. That's one of the views of the apartments down to Moscow City. On this image you see almost all the elements of the project. You see in the back the red horizon or the silhouette of the brewery, the elevated housing facilities, and in-between, between top and bottom and between the front and the back, a public park. So that's the public park which is accessible for everyone, between the boulevard I showed you before which is on the south of the image, and between the embankment on the north of the site. So a few images how we think, and we have tried already to anticipate a little bit the atmosphere that we will have here on Butikski. To have it on our pavilion, not to show like the model in Plexiglas and in a banzai style architecture, which I think is often quite problematic, but to show real things, which is a real birch, which is a real plant. So that's how we see the space that will be in front of the existing buildings and of the embankment. Then you can go up with lifts. This has been, this is of course the particular thing or the unexpected thing of this building. And knowing that we have been very precise and very in-depth with Swiss engineers and also with the Russian engineers to make this feasible, payable, secure, safe, etc. So this is all highly in-depth engineered, and we are very ready now to have the building permit procedure. So all those activities that are brought together on this piece of the city, which is the retail, the living, the sport facility, etc., the working. Having there not what usually has been promoted by modernism both in the West and in Soviet time, is two separate things: you live there, you work there, you have the theater, and you have to move between all those activities. The interesting, I think, modern city connects or brings all those activities together, and this in a very small pocket, to have it in a very condensed way here on Butikski. The embankment, the embankment that it is not just the three achievements of the heritage, keeping heritage facilities, having housing at the best location, having a public park. So those three things, we think there is either a fourth one which is the river. And again showing and having examples that have proved this in real life in Hamburg and in London. Butikski will also be activating the river banks and the river. So the river becomes a very, very important feature within the city. And the cities are lucky who have a river, not all cities in the world have rivers, like Milano, Johannesburg, they have no water. And I think this is a very important element. Also understanding that we human beings, we like to be in a park, we have to green, to see flowers, to see trees, to smell flowers, to smell trees, but also to feel the water. The water as one of certainly the main elements of our lives. And this is an image from a movie, and we strongly believe that this will be soon the case. This is real, this was on Moscow River, has been demolished. So there is not only a de-industrialization of the sites but also of the river. And our last image, my last image will be also a proposal we make is to have a public bath in the river in front of the Butikski brewery, park, and housing. Thank you.

Okay, again I think there is no recipe. And I would advise that we should look carefully at every example of every facility that is at stake. The most famous example this year is Notre Dame. And my personal opinion would be to keep it as it is and to rebuild it as it was, and not to have a contemporary intervention, because I don't think architects would be able to do that. So I think I'd rather go for the safe solution and rebuild the cathedral exactly as it was. Of course you may say you don't have exactly the same stone, you don't have the same timber, but I think you can certainly with our technologies you can provide as well as it was in the 19th century. Certainly the spire, by Viollet-le-Duc, this is certainly the most difficult to rebuild, but I think our building industry and heritage architects are capable to do that.

I think it's interesting in talking about those big fan facilities or institutions like Olympic Games or World Cup. And I mentioned this example of Paris where it was like the other way around, where it was not a sports facility that was the face or the landmark of the games. So that is like one possibility. And the other one in Beijing was like this: you had a first client, I would say, which is the IOC, because China organizing the Olympics for 2008, they needed a facility. So the IOC was the client, so the Olympic Committee. You have to provide the 400 meters, everything you know, the marathon gate, etc. So you have to check all those things that you can have the games that happen. So that's like the first client. The Chinese, they were quite smart, I think, as they understood that those facilities are just used for three weeks. This is pretty stupid to do a facility just for three weeks, maybe two months later you have the Paralympics. But then for athletics, it's not so obvious to fill it like a football stadium every week. You know, you have no champions, nothing. And then you have not the optimum relationship between the pitch and the tiers of spectators and the game. And that's the disadvantage of a track-and-field stadium like an Olympic stadium. So the Chinese, coming back to that, they said, okay, we are smarter, and we have a post-Olympic use of the stadium, which is to have a hotel in the booths, to have in the media center, they planned to have a shopping mall, etc., etc. So they have after the games they can use this stadium in a different way. And we attached, so can't don't home, we thought we have even a third client, because we think it's pretty stupid because normally it's for just politicians or whoever who think now it's important to have the games in their city or whatever. And for us it was very important, and you see that what we hope that will be for many, how many people have been visiting this stadium since it has been erected. And we just see that's the inauguration day. So that's what it is made for: 95,000 people or 93,000 people being broadcasted all over the world, but just the stage for that, you know, and how much effort this would be. And when Jacques and myself, when the first time to China, we wanted to understand what is Chinese culture, what is the Chinese way of using the public space. How we do the same here in Moscow, we try to understand how Moscow people, when they are there in the space, what makes a space attractive. And Chinese are very special, very radical in that: they use the public space all year through, in winter, in summer, doesn't matter. And they dance, they play Go, they make Tai Chi, they make everything, you know, they chat, they listen to music. They use the public space like Mediterranean. And what we wanted to do, you see they dance here, so what we wanted to create is a space for them. That's the concourse where people can hang around, they can sit around. And that's why we have now per year 3.5 million visitors. It's half of the Eiffel Tower, but still I think this is a pretty substantial matter. They also it's ticketed, so you pay, so this money is then there to maintain the facility. So it's self-sustaining in economic terms, very smart. And so you see it's becoming a postcard. Then they, yeah, it's in winter they have this. Now this is brilliant.

Yeah, I think it's pretty much different because of course the chair needs to be comfortable, you need to like it. Again we are in use and perception. You buy it because it's comfortable or you may like it or not, and if you don't like it you can put it away. But architecture is not this way. Architecture is immobile. It's not like a piece of furniture at your home you dislike, or a painting on the wall you dislike, you take it away. Architecture is fixed for a couple of years, you know, at least. Or centuries, the good ones mostly they remain for centuries, they are being kept heritage for instance. But there is so much ugliness now on this planet, and that's why I urge everyone, whether you are a politician, whether you are a developer, whether you are a planner, really to care about how our environment looks like. And of course they died therefore to plan a city or to make a master plan is certainly the bigger effort, I think, than to do a piece of furniture.

Yeah, I think it's multi-layered, many things to be done. But first of all, I think is to organize venues like this one, so that you have a public forum called forum, a forum in the best way like it was meant in the Greek times, where you exchange ideas. And I think that certainly healthcare is very important, all the big data discussion, but also the environment is key for us surviving on this planet. So we need to have the awareness of everyone what is at stake. And those forums, as those events, they are very, very important for that. The young architect is one thing, but if you are a young architect and you are talented and you have no job, then that doesn't help you so much. So the thing is much more to have sophisticated and educated clients. Because I think there is really often too much just of the benefit. So the benefit is not only money-wise, but the benefit is also social and is also environmental and esthetical, also mainly because I mentioned the ugliness. And I think we as human beings, we like to be challenged and are not challenged to be seduced by nice things. We all like that. So now whether it's good food, whether it's good architecture, good environment, and this we can do, I think, much better all of us. And educate, make schools. We have in our office more than 50 trainees from all over the world. Then they leave us, and we hope that we also can bring something of this thinking to all those young people who come to our office. Some leave also the office, have their own office. So it's a thing, a lot of many, many, many tasks, you know, and we have to undertake. So please continue, and I hope that Moscow will really have this relationship to, you have a source here, Strelka, you know, which is a really very interesting institution and which brings some people from abroad to come here and to teach or to exchange. So you, I think, are on the right way. And like for instance Latin countries like Spain for instance or Portugal, they really believe, France also, they believe in architecture, they believe in the city, and they care, they want to care about their cities. And I hope that also this will be the case for Moscow in the future.

The last word, you know, architecture you cannot do it all in five minutes or in ten minutes. No, but you have time. I know you have the beauty to finish the thing.