Interview with Patrik Schumacher

Zaha was this kind of engine of mutation. She just kept sketching, aren't related to projects, new graphic structures, new ideas. And then when it came in project we looked at what can we use, what could be applied like self-organizations, interpenetration, you know, fluid making, fluid and break, flattening hierarchies and making connections and the concept of networks and the blurring of boundaries, the discipline integration and working on the frontier of architectural capacities, ingenuity, technology. Eventually these works will be not only generate more benefit but also have lower cost. But often times what we feel is and we see that some of these approaches are not, they scare clients still a little bit.

So, so all of our colleagues architecture have of that kind of degree of simplicity and like an earthworm. And we what we do have all kind of, you know, intricately articulated and, you know, evolved organisms if you like. I'm on the right side of history but 90% of the world are on the wrong side of history. It's no longer architecture. It's the end of architecture. It's a bleak outlook. But, um, that's what we are facing. It's very depressing.

If I look around in London and when I see what's go, what's being built, it's very conservative. It's very much what could have been designed easily 80 years ago, 100 years ago even. What would be the St. Peters of of today? Uh, so they have these dreams of projects, uh, which are surpassing everything which has ever been seen and I think with with the with with with the sufficient challenge of brief sight and budget we could deliver something which outshines St. Peter by a mile.

I remember us sitting in the Royalton with, you know, our usual hotel and we came to New York. I don't remember the particular client and or the project you're mentioning. It certainly hasn't materialized. So maybe that's why I kind of...

Okay, the Google time.

Yeah, this rising...

I mean let's say, uh, from 2004 to 2008 we went from 40 to 450, well from 25 to 450. I mean it was an amazing boom period slightly unsustainable because we hit the 2008 crash. We had all these projects in Dubai and UAE and all over the Middle East but also across Europe and, you know, which was a year later European debt crisis closed that down. We had project nearly in every city of Spain and in some other European countries. So yeah, it was amazing for us and we had it was amazing to see that we could fill the whole Guggenheim Museum with our works, models, drawings, paintings, installations, the whole ram, all the rams and all the site extension big rooms.

It was a pleasure. Yeah. So good good moment for us and, uh, at that point the deal of parametricism has been spreading by that time it has been spreading for over 10 years. I founded the design research lab at the AA 10 years earlier and we shifted to computational design and had more and more explored these new tools and new methodologies and also formal repertoire, organizational repertoire on all scales from urbanism to interior and everything in between. So it was exciting exciting moment.

Uh, and, um, this dynamic kind of got halted post 2008. Wasn't immediately obvious but in 2008 innocently we published the manifesto on parametricism at the bonal in 2008. Let us start talking about it a year earlier. Of course, the phenomenon was going on for 10 years already by that time or more and that we had no idea that it would relatively soon unravel not as a core group kept going and developing it. But the kind of surge of more and more people joining in and in particular the schools of architecture being more and more following and, uh, building that trend and becoming hegemonic that didn't take place, uh, because of I think 2008 a lot of the opportunities were no longer there. You had occupy wall street you had back to basics anti-capitalism spreading.

Uh, so that was the, um, beginning of the end unfortunately of that, um, what I now call the end of architecture where it should have been the beginning of the massive take over and take off of parametism and tectonism at the time already existed as well because a lot of schools of architecture and young firms had, you know, had been exploring the organizational diagrams and new forms, forms of continuity and interarticulation.

Uh, and then discover that you have to kind of how do we structure this? How do we, uh, realize it technologically through cladding tessillations through space frames? How do you bring aperture into these openings connections and then how do you fabricate this? So that all had happened the late 90s early 2000s. So we had a high point. It took me a few years nearly another 10 years to then articulate that tectonism. So it always takes longer when to summarize in retrospect a movement. But the the tectonism movement which kicked off for seriously in that period was a smaller movement because it was the core people of parametricism kept going, uh, kept deepening kept investing and of course you have that wonderful world of Grasshopper and Grasshopper plugins and all this machine building and robotics introduction in the schools of architecture. So that was still interesting, but it was a it was a no longer the whole of the field. It was a slice, an increasingly slightly shrinking but maturing slice.

And that's also what I talk about the end of architecture. It's not, you know, a total wash out because we have that we kept progressing capacities and we had a kind of suck discourse niche discourse through some of these conferences like Arcadia and smart geometry and and we have, you know, the whole world of grasshopper etc. We have the Philip block research group we have ETH and etc. we have this, you know, aiming at stut design research lab Mtech at the AA etc. So there's something kept going but it the the broad majority of the field was no longer we kind of severed off.

Well that decision I mean was clear that which one you choose but it was also, you know, the excitement of getting admitted into Zaha's studio which was very small. I hadn't noticed her work at Stutka because I was just beginning my studies and I saw this global architecture publication. So the Japanese publication of some of her works, the peaks, the paintings, the fantastic drawings. There was also a small publication from the AA this kind of box set, uh, planetary architecture. So I was quite aware and when I came to London in '87, I joined the South Bank with many other German students and was a mixed class in terms of British and German.

And Kevin Robert was a teacher and we we learned quickly about deconstructivism. Um, not that this name was to begin with familiar but, uh, the protagonists, Zaha, Eisenman etc. we looked at their works and, uh, Kevin Robin was also contributing to something which was first called the new spirit in architecture. There was an architectural review issue coming out which collected some of the same protagonists under the heading new spirit in architecture. So there was wasn't yet deconstructivism. So, but then we we, uh, I I saw the announcement for this conference and I was lucky to go and witness Zaha and she was very charming and very genuine whereas the guys were showing off and were seemed less genuine and she just showed how what she was trying to do, how what she was working on and, uh, you know, the works were more sophisticated, thought more complex, more resolved and powerful than of all the other let's say deconstructivists.

Although so and I had been hanging around at the AA where she was still teaching but she never came so she had one or two students she was teaching at the office or at home and, uh, but I was hanging out at the AA so seeing what's going on and learning about, uh, the co-structure I mean the theoretical kind of wrapper around this deconstructism thing, um, the works of etc and learned about the collaboration between Zaha and Derrida. So I was quite familiar with deconstructivism and, um, yeah I was was nice to be admitted it was super small studio there was only three or four employees, um, but the studio could grow when there was a competition that wasn't continuous. Uh, there were a lot of her ex students and she had a great unit at the for several years. Uh, you could also look that up. I looked that up in the in the library. The project reviews of the early 80s into the 85 86 I think her last studio with the protagonist then coming and working with her and with us on competitions.

That's the way this the studio was and she had just opened that space which was an old school building in '86. So two years before I came and before that she was working from home or from sometimes maybe using a abusing AA spaces I guess to do these competitions. So it was really at the very beginning and and it was very comp, um, exciting and stimulating to work because we had no real work but we did these competitions and we had outlets like exhibitions. So we had a show at the ICA, there was a show at the ICA actually I think in '88 or '87 and then we had a show in the Adis gallery in Berlin where we contributed. So there was and publications. So we we we we felt we what we're doing was in the public eye in the was noticed in the in the in the discipline. So that was also stimulating and we thought we breaking new grounds and so I was it was an exciting time. So there's no way that I would have just kind of went go back to I did have to go back to finish my project. I only had left a diploma to do. I did this two years later. Uh, fully toled up and and and, uh, let's say idea wise geared up to do a good a good project, uh, uh, quickly and to return immediately.

Well, the curves I mean, uh, have been there for quite a while and that was also which made it different from some of the other deconstructivists and there were there also other themes of deconstructivism superimposition she had in her early work. She picked that up, uh, even in her student work. And it also came partly out of the observing the Russian constructivists or suprematists these kind of layered graphics Mohol notch for instance or El Lissitzky etc. So so that was one element but the curve came early in her work. Um, uh, she was a kind of collections of French curves and ship curves and we had specially made ship curves. This was before we used computers. So that was there but maybe there was also a lot of sharp angles and distortions. What I think where I would put it there. Yes, there could have been many ways and there was a tendency to potentially to be more like an retro 50s thing kidney shapes and a little bit in too much influenced by cartoons.

So the way in cartoons a lot of lines get curved and things are elastic and so there was and this kind of facility of sketching and cartoon like sketching was was a lot of his students did that. So I think I was, um, trying to tie it in more with, um, have more strangeness, complexity, elegance as well and move away from cartoon like, uh, projects. Um, but mostly I think what was what was really important for me, um, which emerged in the early '90s where we I was, you know, where we had communication with somebody like Jeff Kipnes, um, when he was at the AA he came in '91 '92 and he came to the office and we communicating was then looking at the work of Greg Lynn and then we went Colombia '93 and meeting him and Jesse Reiser there was this kind of and the work of Eisenman folding the Frankfurt project. So, so there was something going on which was different from the deconstructivist idea of collage, something more coherent, something more continuous and there were certain notions and concepts, um, uh, put forward which made sense and we were early on connecting with this.

So I was saying was the youngest deconstructor and the became, you know, one of the most mature, let's say, teams joining that younger group which was running soon under the headline of folding in architecture. Um, [Music] so that I was helping that along and Zaha also liked it and she was very friendly with Jeff Kipnes and Greg. We became friends and then the we what we saw happening at Columbia University that year from '93 into '94 '95 that many other young architects emerging architect vision architects they converged onto this paradigm. So Hani Rashid and Asymptote or, um, Bill McDonald, Koolhaas, McDonald, Ben van Berkel was actually Zaha's student as well as Farshid and Alejandro with front of becoming front office architects. So you had people from, you know, office, Ben etc. So they all converged to this paradigm and I kind of helped that along that we are fully embedded in that and then with the founding of DRL in '96 taking over from Kipnes studio and making it bigger and more mature that's I think there I see my contract contribution of directing the company in this Zaha, uh, into this way she was always resistance of being part of a movement. She never said I'm a deconstructivist. She was always a bit skeptical. Of course, was proud to be part of that illustrious show, but didn't didn't kind of, you know, you never hear talk about Derrida for instance.

And, uh, equally when it came to when this kind of shifted to Deleuze and this new group she didn't she was slightly hesitant and resistant and didn't want to talk about the, uh, so but she allowed it to happen because it's also with the absorption of whole all these computational tools which started to be developed and we started to introduce them in the office as well. So, so that's where my influence is. It could have been going going elsewhere as I said with the kind of neo 50s thing or which were even OMA was I mean which was in a sense a kind of version of postmodernism if you look at the Dutch dance theater, uh, with OMA project. Um, it's kind of a neo-50s thing. It of course connects with this whole punk, let's say, new wave and neo-50s aesthetics, fashion aesthetics of the of the of the 80s.

Did you remember that? So there was a potential there of going going in this direction or staying more with the deconstructivists although most of them eventually came through as well whether even, you know, even him Blau and and and the Eisenman office they developed more into what came folding and later I call it parametricism. So, so that's that's where I think I was, uh, also co-steering let's say the direction.

So I think what what is important, um, we have on the one hand we have this kind of repertoire expansion which Zaha is always interested in already. Um, but through computational tools and looking at computer graphics and also looking at certain analogies or nature and organic nature and inorganic nature and landscape analogies we get a lot of new concepts or morphologies which could be relevant for architectural design and then with the tools could be promoted. So that's just natural. If you had more repertoire, more options, more a larger solution space, you can adapt your project better to, uh, functional requirements, social requirements, and also because we're going into complex urban settings. This idea of multiple affiliation is another phrase. And and making having the form plastic so it can fit in and modulate itself to attach itself and make connections and fit itself into, you know, odd shaped environments and mediate levels. All of that these are of course, um, degrees of freedom which help to make the solution better fitted and more high performance.

There is another there is another word, uh, embeddedness right, embeddedness. Embeddedness as well because if you come into an existing urban context the client wants seeks out a site he wants to be close to various other facilities and institutions and then you want to kind of maybe connect to them gesture to them make symbiotic relations with them from a functional level that should be formally expressed and these are these ideas been also kind of be picking up from somebody like Eisenman and and Greg Lynn. And so it was very kind of conceptually fertile and a lot of that was coming out of Deleuze's thousand plateaus a lot of these kind of ideas and that was the very productive period and that's really was establishing the new paradigm now and but my role was to, um, see the performative potency and functional rationality of all of that because when it comes to Peter Eisenman, Greg Lynn, Jesse Reiser, all this these Americans, they are formalists and Eisenman himself, in particular, Jeff Kipnes aggressively so refusing to see these as functionally driven and this is kind of postfunctionalism.

And I respect to some extent the formalist attitude allows you to be more freewheeling and explorative and you don't have to worry in inhibit your creativity at that point, uh, by functional constraints but it can't be of course the final story but you can generate formal research which I believe is important but then you need to look at as a problem solving repertoire formal repertoire are problem solving repertoire so if I would characterize my role in the overall let's say movement of what I later called parametricism, uh, which was as I said captured the imagination of a whole generation it was insisting on the programmatic functional advantages and rationalities because we also were firm already working on projects. So while using these repertoires they become problem solving repertoires. Why? Because we have to solve problems and we have to meet constraints and explain to clients the advantages of our science. So if you're more of an academic like Kipnes and even Greg or you don't have jobs, you can be a pure formalist and feel great about it and and then you kind of...

So so that was my role and I I was particularly interested in to tie what we're doing with this historical transformation of, um, capitalism and industrial societies from Fordism to post-Fordism, um, which had a number of features which we recognize in and somehow intuitively expressed in deconstructive unfolding. First of all, the moving back into urban concentrations and cities rather than spreading out onto the green fields with new towns and green field offices and factories spreading out and and sprawl. The, um, new economy is a economy of faster cycles of innovation of integration where where you have small outsourcing and small and network organizations and you pull together for innovative projects by project rather than running assembly line for for 30 years. You you you have this kind of, uh, knowledge economy emerging, synergy clusters emerging. That means you layer new into old and you make connections rather than being undisturbed. I make my territory and I don't need to communicate. So I was very clear that a lot of these features of deconstructivism and also the layering and superimposition and integration of multiple systems you find reflections of this in the way the dynamics of the economy work and also you find very much reflections in the world of management consulting and organization theory. The matrix organization the network organization they were talking about the blurring of boundaries between departments multiple affiliation we're talking about is, you know, multiply, uh, you you are part of many teams simultaneously simultaneity in a sense and and networking and self-organization of networks of competency instead of preconscribed hierarchies all of these phrases and interestingly, uh, Deleuze and Guattari language fits into this intuitively because the left resistance to, um, these new capitalist dynamics. They also were no longer the kind of hierarchical Stalinist Kada party. They were the autonomia movement, you know, free flow of current of networks of resistance, leadership, guerilla war, you know, fluid leadership, etc., etc. So there they this kind of new sociology from fitted into the left. That also came into business, uh, organizations and so so that I tie in the, uh, repertoire and rhetoric and formalisms of deconstructivism then folding into parametism with the kind of new post-Fordist network and knowledge economy dynamics and and that's my role, uh, one of my roles and I never I I didn't fully succeed in this I don't feel I have enough following ship in this and that leads to a lot of misunderstanding about this movement parametism itself.

Most protagonists went more technology oriented or formalist oriented and then they're more more technology oriented and not so much social socioeconomically oriented it's partly also to do with that fact as I said that it was still to a large percent academic and research based I mean the research institutes PhDs etc and they were not in the real world we were trying to win big master planning competitions where we also had to talk about, uh, these urban dynamics and so on so that's where I feel that, uh, intellectually that's been my role and I think these ex these kind of notions and teachings let's say have a lot of validity and I had for instance the a forever my my theory seminar I was pairing up always articles and, um, architectural theory articles with social economic or organi, you know, corporate organization or business organization articles and and show the interconnections because what I found fascinating that because on the one hand if you look at some of these deconstruct composition or later on particularly parametric kind complex compositions, they feel exuberant, they feel, uh, irrational, they feel, you know, don't get the rationality of them. And and often times there there aren't. But, uh, if I can demonstrate that the most, um, advanced and hard-nosed business organizations are talking using the same phrases like self-organizations, interpenetration, you know, fluid making fluid and break flattening hierarchies and making connections and the concept of networks and the blurring of boundaries. All of these slogans you find in the management literature and to show that then we did these kind of corporate fields business organization and this still an interesting topic for me we did later on we also did BMW central building and we pitched for various we had spare bank technology campus so we have some of those projects various headquarters where this makes a lot of sense so that was also I thought very important that we see the historical pertinence and power, uh, of these repertoires and this paradigm of architecture aligning with the most advanced business and socioeconomic prosperity engines. This is the build environment for the prosperity engine of the 21st century and as a kind of coming from a Marxist heritage where productivity gains and the development of the force of production is is really driving history that we are on the right side of history if the, you know, and that's why we pitched for Google and I would have loved to do Google campus and in the end when Bjarke and Thomas did the Google campus what did it look like it was exactly what I was pushing few years earlier at the GSD doing Google campus or DRL kind of style project huge kind of shell with open fluid multi-level, uh, playing field, uh, you know, that's that means but of course in the wrong place because they are still in power alto kind of suburban compos they should be embedded in urban conditions so I feel I'm still on the right side of history long term, uh, and and but then again, uh, the advanced societies are themselves kind of blocking themselves and paralyzing themselves. So that in Europe since the financial crisis we have 15 years of stagnation, architecture stagnating but economically stagnating despite this amazing takeoff of technology through robotics and soft software service, uh, proliferation of the internet as well as now AI none of this is coming through and that's the kind of indictment of in a Hey, uh, I'm on the right side of history, but 90% of the world are on the wrong side of history, including the architecture of the world.

Of course look that you need to marry new form with new program new new functionality with new form and you have to dissociate you can't do it in one go so, um, basically so the formalists I mean the Dutch Rem and MVRDV and these guys they think they can only work with program and they but they have a formal apparatus which is more or less boxes within boxes or, you know, they have some kind of highly constrained formal repertoire and they think they can only think they can advance program just on the basis of thinking of new program relationships but they always fit them into grids and so on. So that's highly problematic. You can't do it. You can't derive, um, new form from new program or program. So you need to independently match them and explore them separately. So and the same the way nature nature evolves its endless forms of nature. All the forms of nature they have been they continuously repurposed. They evolve for one purpose and then discover capacities which then kind of trigger the next iteration and maybe refinement. So what we've we I believe in formal research. So but of course it's difficult to do that for every job in particular if you only have four weeks to finish a completely or six weeks photorealistically developed competition. So you need to have separate arenas for formal research and that means, um, inside the office Zaha was this kind of engine of mutation. Just kept sketching aren't related to projects new graphic structures new ideas and then when it came a project we looked at what can we use what could be applied similarly when we did teaching the teaching arenas was these kind of explorations of repertoire and AA we've always done.

Not form to program so we're starting with systems computational techniques what do they generate generative systems, formal systems, um, you know, whether it's continuous surfaces in the early days or blobs and metabol compositions or swarms and swarm formations, various magnetic field kind of interference pattern, formal structures, uh, not knowing yet, you know, exploring them, developing the tools, the algorithms a lot of physical form finding like fyoto and then hunting for what could these things be useful for. So you just build up the repertoire and then see bring program in later and and and let these structures and repertoire expansions find purposes be alert of course what could this ever be used for what scale should we use this idea etc and that is the way we've done these projects there was they're starting with systems then we doing these workshops etc and then later on we developing a program based on what could this be used for. So that's for to form the program heuristics. Now you have to do many of those. When you when you get a brief of course you have the program given but because you have this background that that search that huge space of examples then you can ah this could be used here or we have three four and then we test them out. But we couldn't have started looking at that brief if we hadn't for years accumulated a repertoire and solutions and ideas and projects which always start with form and then find program. Then we have already examples of program. Oh, this here's an urban condition. Here's a here's an opera house. Here's a museum. Here's an an infill a mixed use. So we had examples to draw from as well as reusing formal systems. So that's the way we work and you can say the way we work cannot be isolated to project by project. The way we work is a whole kind of group large group of people extended into multiple university studios and peer groups and that's all of that comes to bear. All of that is kind of allowing us to make these innovations and realizations. So also then later on all this material research, this fabrication research, these tectonic researches knowing what we can kind of later on also build and realize. So that's really the way we work. Uh, and it's it's it's really this kind of extended search space and then on every project then we iter we have many simultaneous studies drawing from that big catalog, um, and then testing out somebody's preparing the brief and threedimensionalizing that. So we're starting from two Ms and then we see how they match and how this works and that's my involvement is at this point telling you know suggesting what else can be drawn in or then making selections. Um, that's the process but it really is an extended, uh, network of explorations which are then kind of coming brought to bear on project.

Uh, well yes well I mean the balance let's say there's these cycles of innovation but the paradigm development Of course, at the beginning in the Naku the '90s and 2000, there was more repertoire expansion and more, you know, going spreading and then later on more selecting, funneling, realizing and more technical translation and having examples already. So this was the balance is shifting right to rational towards from exploration to rationalization application maturing. We also we we have more we now brought in on projects which have are burdened with a lot of parameters and performance criteria time cost big massive infrastructure project airports or mix. But you you know it's different from doing a an installation or doing a museum an art art institute. So that's one thing. So the the balance shifts but we have research teams. So we developing capacity we have I'm teaching PhDs we have still doing design research that where this exploration is still going on inside the I think the overall balance is shifting away from more repertoire expansion to more application and rationalization. But it's not shut down and we, uh, and particular with AI we opened up again, um, let's say, you know, repertoire exploration, uh, more extensively, uh, but also when we use AI we also quite often times quite focused in training up these Laura models for every project and also we're training now tectonism which which isn't the capacity of any AI system at this point we we're training, um, tectonism fit networks. So then we have we are more preconceived at least, uh, more strategic, um, and not so wide open and I think that makes sense, uh, with respect to overarching cycle of innovation of what I call let's say the post the build environment for the post-Fordist network and knowledge economy society, uh, the the the the broad criteria and agendas performance criteria and success criteria are relatively clearer now.

So that's why also let's say if you had modernism in the in the 20s there was much more exploration you had the Bauhaus all the artists you had to weed out expressionism and the excesses of suprematism and so on and then you kind of home in so similarly dynamic let's say and this was a paradigm of Fordism and when it comes to the paradigm of post-Fordism in the architectural so we had this kind of massive revolutionary explorative period, you know, from postmodernism to deconstructivism into early folding and then a kind of maturing and reading and and in application mode. The tragedy is that there's only few who are in that application mode. So, so the exploration continues but but it's, um, the the the relative, uh, focus and proportions of ex wild experimentation versus focused research and development that has shifted towards focused research and development.

Yeah. I mean, well, nature, but again, it's it's it's it's helpful to set up systematic searches. So the studios we've done on looking at landscape formations and letting students go around and look at ice formations and mountain formations and organic or or organismic let's say this whole thing of bio mimicry or bio mimetic research also could work into architecture vernacular mimetics you like for adapting to local material with local materials, passive systems, uh, uh, environ local environmental. So, so I'm not kind of art sometimes. Yes, Anish Kapoor I mean definitely going to the some of his amazing spaces and structures has has has influence and you can see it in some of our let's say if you compare that we've done at the Serpentine cycl the north gallery and what what Anish Kapoor put up in, uh, in the turban hall great turban hold you know there are these connections as well of course so it could be from anywhere it could be, um, and also computer graphics and, uh, you know, process tools like processing and what you can do and looking at early develop, you know, the developer of processing an artist and how he's what he's generating, um, and in DRL we have, you know, we have multiple studios and there's been kind of a great kind of fair auto style material research, uh, exploration ations are kind of merely like a physics experiments and material form finding experiment. These are still kind of unexplored I mean, uh, unexhausted let's say they're inexhaustible perhaps so these will be inspirations I look for but of course I'm looking at what other architects are doing and so on so forth as well and but, you know, it's the work of auto remains a source of inspiration.

Yeah, there always been your families of projects and yeah, it's more kind of populations of projects if you like.

We're continuing an investigation and and that's the advantage. Every Monday morning we get new kind of we always have at any time at least five master plans and then there's new coming in. There's going to be always some cultural buildings, some urban conditions, some mixed use. We have whole kind of family of towers evolving in these populations of projects and, uh, the individual project is always one of a series one, you know, and we have now this internal huge internal repertoire and reservoir of references but it keeps being augmented by it also has its own dangers that we kind of repeat too many things but if they haven't been done yet we've losing a competition or we have studies which remain on back of my mind hey it's a shame it didn't happen. Let's do this idea here. This time it might work out and then you can. So that's also important that makes it very kind of agile and resourceful that we have all this things to draw on as well as continuously having a number of students. It's not only me teaching, it's it's it's about 50 60 people teaching different studios around the world and some of that will come through. For examples go to juries on this stuff, uh, on some of these studies and so on. So there's always this staying staying kind of, uh, exposed or remaining you I've exposed myself to a lot of, uh, let's say on architectural exploration.

Yeah. I mean the paradigm has, you know, set up the heuristics let's say of the paradigm are set up that you if you had time on an individual project you could always do make iterations and ramp ratchet up the ambition and make them more sophisticated. So for instance when we talking about paradigm and heuristics of parametricism, um, so all elements are parametrically variable. So you could have a blob with a number of parameters or you have a repertoire of several. You you can always increase the number of parameters you can play in your elements and how many system how many families of elements you have. So you can increase there. And you can then it's about res building systems and fields and arrays of these elements somehow and you can increase the differentiation and basically the, um, range on on the parameter formation not only the number of parameters. And then when it comes to correlating the systems internally within the building or into the context you can always do more. You can have you're already responding and fitting and absorbing a number of influences but then you say but there's a river out here could also be reflected here or there's a tower here can we can we bring that in simultaneously so you can always do more and same then you then kind of articulate into the technologies you can optimize further and keep many simultaneous ambitions that play. So you can make something super refined. It's a bit like, you know, if you if you compare an earthworm to a snake, you can see the similarity. But you can also see that the one has evolved, you know, much longer. Anyway, has been more cumulatively evolving kind of differentiation, sophistication, which more makes this the snake way superior to an earth and can also scale up and is a serious bright and agile predator and the worm is just kind of, you know, undifferentiated thing you can, uh, so so so that's the way also see let's say a lot of our colleagues architecture of the kind of degree of simplicity and like an earthworm and we what we do have all kind of, you know, intricately articulated and, uh, you know, evolved organisms if you like which have also therefore much higher performance and and potency. So so that's where you can always do more another round of evolutionary optimization and that means with within each project but of course project to project. Now it's a tough call and you have to, you know, the problem is you have always new people and they have to be trained up.

And it's not easy if you have 500 people to kind of spread this to everybody so that there's a slight unevenness with some of the projects. That's why we put also our kind of top team on the more important projects and it's a kind of a struggle. It's not trivial but then of course the tools keep evolving and we have the code team evolving the tools to training up people disseminating the agendas so we're getting better. And I mean it's easier for a car company, they have these five models, but if you put them decade by decade you can see the trajectory of refinement, the way the headline is massaged into and more complex itself and continues with the surface and the interior, many more elements are integrated but better integrated surface continuity with different materials, the seaming, the kind of so that we can compare that to what we would love to do with our buildings.

And you can also look at sometimes that I would express my agenda like this, let's say look at kind of super articulated building like a Richard Rogers, even Lloyds or something like this, but it's an industrial paradigm and it's non-organic. Then you get glimpses where you can have that level of articulation and systems sub articulation but make organic, make parametric, rather than having a parametric which is only a tessellation of concrete tiles but maybe more that kind of that's why you know skeleton deep the details and they have glimpses of their kind of Rogers canopy where carbon fiber elegant, optimized, technically optimized kind of beam but it's only a small canopy, they can't deliver on a large building. We haven't delivered on the last building and we're trying let's say so there is certain vision, a certain agenda where I say is how do you move from the earthworm to the snake in terms of our projects.

And also the versatility, I mean the endless forms of nature also means if you put our repertoire out, if you spread that out, all the kind of morphological types and degrees of complexity, compact, network like all these families, there's a huge variety, morphological variety and also in terms of materials and so on and all of them should be sophisticated so it's a tall order but in terms of an, I mean I recently you said 2006 let's fill the Guggenheim museum, I would love to do that again and it could be a double size museum and we could show how much we've achieved and what we can do.

And you know if you compare, I once had this epiphany when I saw the Renzo Piano show in Rome few years ago and was stunning, I said my god okay this one office, this one guy, this one team has done more than the whole of the Italian Renaissance put together in terms of versatility and sophistication. On the other hand you can say well there's still you know Gothic cathedral, okay that took 150 years and there's repetitive elements but there's still something there or St. Peters where we could still say hey what would be the St. Peters of today. So they have these dreams of projects which are surpassing everything which has ever been seen and I think with the sufficient challenge of brief, site and budget we could deliver something which outshines St. Peter by a mile.

I mean you're quite right that there is some refinements but overall this paradigm doesn't lend itself to this kind of cumulative exponential refinement. There's just on different versions more of similarly good things and so it doesn't lend itself to this kind of progressive trajectory.