Rhythms of Matter - Sesioni 6 - Bisedë e hapur me Winy Maas

Thank you very much for inviting me here on this place, a place which wants to be energetic and wants to be reflective at the same moment. So you are the one, I think your country is one of the youngest thinkers within Europe, and most say experimental, maybe even if you don't see that sometimes, and that I would like to stress tonight as a kind of virtue that I see in it. You call it 'Rhythms of Matter Theories', rhythms that try to find out the motives behind architecture, to find out the time schedule that we need to make a building, to go beyond it, to make a next step in it. But I think my small Albania story is a kind of expression of time. It is a story that I want to share with you. I shared it with some of you in the last festival, but I deepened it tonight. I made it sharper, and I extended it in order to reflect on what we are doing here and why we are here. Why sometimes not we are here, and why this helps with all the nuances that we somehow have to engage with. Yes, I'm criticized a lot. I work here with you because there is bribery. There is, according to many people, there is washing laundry, and especially the diaspora is like saying that to us endlessly. But the shades are more gray than that, and are more nuanced in this 20 years that I would like to share with you and that we can discuss also in it. How can we make that even more transparent? How can we, and can you make that also more conflicting, is I think the core of today's discussion in this 'Rhythms of Matter' that you would like to pursue. So it's about me and about can be about Albania and me, of course, and what can I do is first to look back a little bit about Albania 1.0. You were doing it in the time of 1.0, you were the poorest country of Europe and had the lowest GDP per capita that we could see on this map. So whenever I show this in any planet, that moment the GDP was the same as Zimbabwe, and so okay, that's what is 20 years ago. So what is next is this present state of this 2.0, as you painted together and you fight for and fought for like a direction, and made it with all your energy possible. I mean, it was like this a little bit somewhere in your countryside, in between goats and on non-tarmac roads, to be after our dinner to be here with investors that had no clue what investment was and that was like thinking about 'Oh, I have to pay something, revenues' but no, there was no job, not a kind of profession that we could. And then Edi tried to clean up the mess as a minister, from the dirt into some kind of water that you could drink maybe in the future, to paint houses into some kind of destination. So then he was asking me if I look to these blocks, what could you add to that? So this is my first building in Tirana in 2004, where I could say 'paint this' and to give every building, every owner an address. This somehow becomes symbolic because every operation that all of you do, you have 20 owners, 30 owners, 40 owners that have to be grouped in order to direct that. That is part of the discussion that was happening at that moment. What do you do if nothing is owned and you give space for ownership? Then I think you did somehow, as far I'm an architect, I'm not a theoretical person, but you did a smart job by inviting people to own in a way so different than other countries, say like Czechia or like Romania, which came from that period and did a kind of struggle for doing that. With your intuition, this multi-ownership was now what we are most of us are facing to deal with and to be an agent of that transformation, which I think is an interesting element to research in the future. And that's symbolized I think in that painting action that we did.

Our building was doing it, we won a competition with this. The jury thought at that moment that Zaha was participating and that they wanted to give the competition, the end result to Zaha. So, okay, it was not Zaha, it was this kind of clumsy people from Rotterdam that were coming in, and then the contractor said they never can build it. No, no, no, this is impossible. I have no more concrete than D15 in those days. You know what they can do? That's fat, this kind of concrete with bars going into it and how to do that. No, no, no, I cannot make more than 2 meters of cantilever was under the discussion. Okay. So we translated that a year later into this. So, and then it was doable. So from Zaha to 2 meters, this was from B80 to B5, what this building was stressing. And how we could imagine then at the moment a shopping center like a market hall where you can go in, where there's a crossing of people would be imagined, and where you stack simply shops and offices, that where you can walk over the places to the roof, and then it's there. The interior would be done completely by recycled car glass. So because there was no money for real glass at that moment. So there was this kind of jobs out in the north part between the port and the city where you could get all this secondhand car glass. So that was done as the project to get it in. So four years later I went back to then, I saw this well, they're building it. So I mean how does it work when you start, and I want to remember that because you come from somewhere and you took in 20 years, you have a fabulous energy to direct it. So no MVRDV on this. It was, I know maybe the architect is in it and I don't blame him or her because it was all in it, and oh it's done in a way a little bit different because now they closed up, but that's not like the design, but somehow vaguely it is us. What you can see here in this case is that bad or how to accept? I didn't go for lawyers at the moment. I said this is how it is. This kind of development is already quite good if you compare to what's before. So then Edi took another direction in his career and that became also a next step in it.

And we, in an internal competition between this developer who is now doing quite a lot of stuff in the south, is asking us for what we call the Albi. Albi is on that corner. This was still empty at that moment next to it and wanted to have a tower of 100 meters. We shifted it so to turn it into Scanderbeg Square and say hello to your gravity point. We had to make a smaller plot because there were too many constraints on the side and papered it to give more view and nuanced it in one direction and in two directions is what it was. That was our, and you have to plan country you know, when you go to the airport you see this kind of things that you can fly is what basically is then established actually. Wow, this is a, can you make it here? No, to be honest. You see what happened then after it's like many calculations with the engineers that there was an earthquake at that moment. So to how to bring that knowledge in, with both people from outside as a ruby from inside, we try to set up a kind of rule system on earthquake management for high-rise buildings. They didn't exist at that moment here. So this was not so possible in a way. So what is next for to get Albania 2.0? This is the plots. This is the building movement. How we generate the tubes. And then we push out, push in. And this map of the country as an advertisement refers a little bit, I must say, to the iconography of country that emerges and that was there over a while, that discusses the fact that Europe is like many countries and it wants to say that also that the diversity is actually cute. This is not about nationalism but actually about how Europe can be together and that is then erected on this site. You see that these images here how then these plans were like discussed with the engineer so that in a way every house that comes and pops in pops out is orchestrated and made possible and creates this kind of homes where in the outside you can talk with each other and give a kind of glass of wine to the neighbor and together you form this emerging country over the building. So what is next? Red marble was too soft in this country. Let me buy it somewhere in China. No, no, no, no, no. Too complicated to get it from China. So it would be local stone which is nice. I mean it's very ecological to do that. And then currently we are talking about that fantasy in Europe. So okay, so let's do it like this. So there was a kind of stone that he found in a quarry next to, in the south, to use it and that is then used further in the development of the building. So the stone was like carved out of the mountain and there was a huge pile on the side that came in to do it. But then one year later, when we were unstaffolding it, we found out that the stones were in the cellar and not on the building, and that the client transformed ordered stones. No, no, no, no. Pictures of the same stone from Japan from Mitsubishi to show the stones. And he said, 'It's the same.' No, no, no, no. Why do you do that? Because the stone is too soft. And anyway it's impossible to organize in a short term. So that is what happens when you grow very quickly, that you sometimes want to be more than you actually can do. So here you see the stones. This is what we negotiated. The first 30 meters are stone because if they fall they're soft then it's not a problem. Of course you have a headache afterwards but not so much. And then from the blue zone on it's this aluminum from Japan that we are now flooding on top of it. So it becomes like this but the spaces start to communicate. If you are in the houses, you have your privacy and your collectivity in this neighborhood, vertical neighborhood on this place with this aluminum production as you can see. So what is next? So here you see how it's now. It takes a long time before it's finished. They're almost there and how this in and out in every home you see the name of the village or of the place on your door. So to identify yourself with this, and in Christmas last time you saw that it was advertising itself. So this is without light designer, this is simply 200 like things from IKEA to put in and then to do it. So working as an architect here needs some flexibility, needs also some relativization and some kind of irony even. So it's the opposite of Germany I would say, what you do where everything is serious, organized, strict in a way, but Germans never smile. Here I can smile even, or I learn to smile. So what is the next in this?

And this is because it is, and this is I have to warn you for shocking images. Now that's like it's how you always should do. So here I walk half a year ago after a meeting I had, and what is happening to my place? So you see buildings I didn't design were there, like that we were discussing that before, and I was enthusiastically seeing this that things that were illegal were powerfully by your government overnight turned down. This could never happen in the Netherlands. And I do think that of course in an emerging country you have to make laws and you have to control them, and that goes in shocks. You don't have enough people to do that, and that is now at certain this evening it comes together here with this beautiful action of making a plaza that is there. Am I cynical? No. If you are, I think this was a kind of action that was very strong. So then like eight hours later at 8:00 in the morning, this is what's left of our and turns it again into a plaza. So this is also part of the journey that I would like to express and of the nuances of greyness that we are going through it. The pyramid needs also to be explained now because how did that come together? I'm blamed that I worked on it in a way. Some people say to me it should have been renovated purely to see how that epoch was like. But then two weeks later I get an email and they say people no no it should have been erased. Well, this is a monster that you kept it in a way. The discussion I had at that moment with your radio station in the place and with the politicians that were there was actually between those two extremes and to say okay no no no we accept it but we overcome it and overcoming is then done already by you by climbing it and by sliding it down and by like a sketch that we made on the place during the negotiation and competition to see why not make everything a stair and inhabit again then this pyramid and give it to the people somehow. That sketch that stupid sketch is now there and what is there that indeed that you can climb, you can take your people up, you can celebrate, you can have a meeting on the top. My dream is still to have the parliament sitting on top of it on the benches and look to a collective enterprise of a school TUMO that wants to teach kids after school, after public school, into ecology and technology, and that is then like squatted, one could say, with climatized boxes and the rest is outside open and you can go through it. So that this squatting act was with all the boxes was an invitation also to people to rent the box. So for me, I talked endlessly with my queen to get that orange box to turn it into an Airbnb so that you can sleep on top of the pyramid. So in the blue case, I mean Macron took it. So he puts then the French C in it in the same meeting in the evening that we have. So it became a little bit symbolic by that. So you and this is for me also symbol of Albania alimero as we call it. It's like you are small but you want to be a little bit bigger. So a small box can take the Netherlands or a small box can take France, is what you do on your per and facilitate that.

And what is the next? I think I'm happy that we have a park now, that it's a forest that what the Belgian start started on Scanderbeg Square, that continues that the botanists are taking over and that you throw some of the boxes in it that you can walk to the pyramid that continues with a squatting act and that you can hang out like that. I must say it's not easy to maintain this. You can go walk around and yes your mayor is temporarily away. So that makes it difficult to find out who is the ownership in this moment, and you see that people taking over your fundamental ceiling of anarchy comes back I think in this park, by how the entrepreneurs take over, how it's not maintained, and how they don't know how to accept the rules in this case. So also today I hope that we can find that better. So it became not bad, no, it helped to get more people here, more Transavia flights than ever before in this country. So that helped a lot. So it leads to this kind of observations that can help to support you to get into the European Union, and can architects do that? If I say that most of you say no, you cannot work on that. Come on, this is like you are architect, you are only about beauty and that's it. That's not the case honestly. I remember still that I was speeching in AIA in London. You see here one of the quotes that I gave to that UK out Albania in was 2018. No. So what's then next? There are some became into the into he wants to internationalize. I mean today he's in Washington to talk to Trump about like what he should do. But it's like here you see the first gathering in the pyramid transformed into a stage act, and the current NATO director at the moment was like a jolly fool playing around. He always thought that I was a woman, he never so where is it this lady Winy that he was saying, that was revealed that evening in this place. So how a small country like the Netherlands can also be not professional is what is so. What's next? So Scanderbeg is an exercise and that has been criticized and some of you love it and others hate it. Seems it works. Let me try. So, it's a kind of two group of developers that wanted to make a small tower, not a real big tower, just 80 meters on this plot and was next to this character that was like considered as one of your founders. So what we do something on that corner of the Scanderbeg Square and to say okay we have this tower, what kind of shape should we take? Balconies, that's a good idea. Balconies that sells, every balcony you get extra budget for doing that. So we've tried to find push out, not bad. What does it look like? So it's this animation you see, vintage now you can do it much better, how to make all of a character that bends its head towards you and helps you to relate to history but somehow yeah you can say you cannot do this in the Netherlands because it's completely criticized. Why can you do it here? Does that make sense? Does it connect with a kind of history or figurative architecture in an abstract way? Does it then make like an element skewed as it because my colleagues are much bigger around me and somehow you forget that the neighbor is there with this character. So it is somehow working and I think the balconies are great to live. I mean like the Guardian afterward said wants to live in the nose, but that's actually the project. The apartment that was sold the best, the price was double for the nose, and the ear is also quite okay. So there is a so what to do that? So I think with a community million people, how do you do this? What is modesty and what not? How you speak out and in which way? What kind of collection are you going to offer is what this is going to show.

And the territorial you were like this was the main picture on the Republica and on the newspapers. Okay, is it already done? The confirmation can we accept it because of this picture? Time Square, this is an introduction I think of what the project center is about. I mean, if you see what happened in this 10 years, you see this picture of it and I still remember this cute strange architect that made this plan who we only make four towers like you know like around the ground be four corner points. How did he not understand your culture? Culture which is based on surprise and on negotiation and on like opportunities that come across. So I think the beauty of this plan is a kind of wild urbanism in combination with the fact that you give the every architect the awareness that he cannot copy the neighbor. So you make what I could say that the Tirana collection, you behave like a museum director that somehow collects people and we are facing that all the respect but also it turns I guess into one of the tools that makes your city at the moment visitable. So this plaza acts as an overview of all this and now when if you fly in you see that emerging catalog or collection emerging coming up in this landscape. So what is next? Again there were elections and then the majority was substantial. We don't know yet how it will continue in the future. So there's a kind of important period now to talk with each other. What do you want to do in this four years with this majority? And to see, so it is the ambition is somehow to use Europe as a destination. I remember in my discussion with EP in Rotterdam a couple of weeks ago, she said no no no keep on postponing that entrance to Europe because already the idea that you're going to enter stimulates developers to be better. So the longer you prolong it, you have more quality before you enter because after they go down. I find it not uninteresting. The concept of this transformation I think is super useful not only for architecture but also for your circumstances. I mean I discussing participation today. I mean participation is super important to develop that quickly as possible, especially in a place where anarchy and also polarization is happening a lot as you, but then you need a lot of lawyers who somehow who is right in a way. So I need how many lawyers do I need to do that? You can complain and that you get an answer in two weeks. So this calculation is part of urbanism or city making that it combines. So the collection might be nice, the democratic version of it is a kind of element of development over these years. To give you an example what it is, so we are entering I would say Albania 2.1 because 2.1 is I think the next phase of becoming more mature in all its ways. I can do my stuff and you will do probably your legal if you could do it. And there are a couple of themes that are happening in 2.1. One is that intensification becomes more important even than ever before because you don't want this sprawl that's going over your countryside. It's terrible. It's honestly it's ugly with what has been produced over the last 50 years in it. So you'll find that even in between the towers, in between the catalog of things space is I think super beautiful to do. So the hallow project that we're doing is about this.

So when we make Scanderbeg which is nice, the back side of Scanderbeg is not so nice when there's still some kind of electricity stuff and the street needs to do it, the place is in shadow. So what we now perform, we make a new tower. I don't know how you call this that is like the co-Scanderbeg. It carves out this tower and creates a plaza that is more sheltered and that helps to go into a kind of small-scale environment from one place to the other and it transforms gradually into something like that. This could be much more this kind of because what happens I hope in a way that you as an architect react on this mountain of this Danish guys in the nearby future or that you say something about that ugly hotel in the nearby future. You react on each other, and respect is even if you say it's no then you react in an always in a kind of way that is surprising. So we're coming into a phase which I think is super beautiful to do this 2.1 version. I'm happy that we could do then do now the Tirana Stadium, which I'm going to say on this axis, this entry of the which is also a part of intensification and which is dedicated to your sports and the sentiments of it. I mean I'm a volleyball player. I played in the Dutch team. I went to Atlanta. Yes. But I and but you did your own elements with this partisan theme and what a sentiment can be in it for some of you which is the beauty of it. But how can we then build that stadium and turn it into something else? So what was demanded was a stadium, cute box with that's it with some kind of IKEA colors on the outside and then two towers. So no, let's use then housing because intensification means also go into kind of more juxtaposition of program. So what we are trying to do at this moment, or well the contract is signed, is to make to use the housing and the hotel to make the stadium a little bit bigger so that when I am in my kitchen I can also look at the moment how good Partisan is playing and how to see that after all the stars something add on. Not copy any towers anymore. Many people get there's a fatigue of making towers. They don't have any more on their repertoire, so if you have other typologies, intensification can probably be more interesting. And then you can play basketball and watch the inhabitants. You can be on in your house and you can go to that game and from your terrace you can look to this viewing point is what we can try to offer the coming year. So it's a bit of funny fairy tale of a kind of full moon somewhere in the middle of the city to address your catalog. The ring road, the ring road is also a project on itself. It is like this your future Stonehenge because you have this what is it 35 kilometers street half ready in the northern part now nearly finished and you see that things are happening. So we're talking about it, don't show it, don't worry. And it's like so what can we add to that? So here project that is one of those Stonehenge formations that loves again the brutality of the architecture, the G5 quality, but turn it then into beauty and into a kind of reference of the rocks that surround it. And of course for me, the boulevard is a symbol of your church somehow, but it leads to nothing at the moment. We'll see what that can be. It looks like an airstrip in a very city, but somehow it means you go to this movie, the litect of the grand. It's a thing no with all the historical elements and to twist the cube a little bit in Paris to perform. So you have quite an ambition to beat Paris with it. So I like that you invented that to imagine it. So it's nice that there are projects coming up along the axis. So here the attempt to make the new town hall which we transformed into a kind of mountain of bureaucracy that forms a tribune to a plaza and a grotto to meet each other, to cover it with this paraglide for shading and to make these terraces as a waterfall from the top to the bottom that you could climb and then meet your bureaucracy in every spot. I still love it in a way, how simple and with a budget that could allow for it. You could make more than you were initially considering.

At the crossing of the boulevard and one of the ring roads, we make now on this plot. This is very Tirana-like: you get a leftover plot and then some constraints. Yeah, we cannot do everything from the constraints. So how to deal with that? This is the program. The client only could pay for like a small flint and small tower, not make a block. Oh, no slab. No, please not because there's no views. So this is only what we could do. So we added this sky bridge to and then maneuvered with the slabs so that they have enough sun and then turn it into kind of pantome in halfway. And that was our aim to combine the boulevard with the crossing of the ring road and to mark that and to give a fuel to that crossing. This was important. So in the end we end up with this with a slab with a hole where people come together as a community and where we explore now this millions of colors to the ties, the variety that I painted in the first slide that I showed to you, so that finally we make it final. So what is next? I think access becomes super important. So we discussed that also in the festival. This Tirana metro should come, this maybe a kind of corrupt group that tries to propose it. So we have to talk a bit how we can organize. I think your city has the best taxation system of the world with 8% of all the costs. I mean when compare that to Switzerland with one and a half percent, then you are doing very good of paying off. I would love to see the budget come your taxations, your real estate taxations to give that a place and to decide somehow by the leadership where to bring it to. So that you all make, I can pay off these two lines is what this calculation that we did could serve. This is the reason of course that you want to improve. 2.1 is not only densification but also making it liveable and accessible. I think at the same moment 2.1 means also that not only Tirana is the hero, the second tier cities will also appear in your country. The decision to make a kind of airport on a specific place, I keep it neutral, is said is an interesting one to also give that a chance. What is the profile of Vlora? I don't know. What is the profile of Tirana? There is no complete plan for that. Does it specialize in tourism or in making industry? I have no clue. So you internally compete which is not handy to think about these two cities. So we make one tower at the moment I love and then as you can read it, Vlora is like an advertisement basically to have this neighborhood stacked on top of each other with having this view. So what is next in that program of 2.1? Your pristine coast is under threat and you read it in the newspapers and you give it partly away. You have to build up the criteria. You have to build up this kind of selling act to do that. So we try with the gorgeous to make something out of this and to say to have not a hotel, the W on this coast, but to place it somehow as a small bridge over the canyon so that you can walk from one side to the other through that hotel, 200 rooms not much in that way. So we are cute as kind of comment to what's happening over there and to see how to treat the coast in a kind of way that gives it more and that makes this kind of excitement that coast has. It's about the Alps also. I mean this is a we went with a group European specialist on making national parks on what could we do with your national parks. They're growing. You have 12 of them. They're quite nice, but they're also not that nice. I mean, hiking is a disaster to go through it. No clue where you have to go to and your beauty is there. The resorts that pop up look worse than the resorts in Spain. So you have to really consider what that could be. So it's simply like an act that would say create a buffer of like maybe 10 kilometers around it would help you to make that. So there is an act needed to make these parks into something bigger and to get on the longer term your treasures in order is what I can see if I look to the listing of your national parks on the world then it is on number 33 is what you see is your position of the amount of national parks that will have in that. So here you can work on it to make that even bigger.

The other thing I think is important is to think about your agriculture. Your agriculture is vulnerable and is coming. There is more wine. You have not enough water to produce the wine and the products are good but can be more varied. So you for valley in Armenia, where we use say more plantation to keep the evaporation around the canals very restricted, and that leads to I think a beautiful landscape of this valley in Armenia. So at this moment I don't see any designs for your agricultural territory where I think that architects we should claim that and try to propose the beauty of your Tuscany and to these kind of examples. This could for me be a next biennale here in your country to predict basically what the future of your agriculture could be. So what is more? The water challenge is sufficient, so you have to work on your water industry. Show it. This is what we do in Paris to also use the facades of the buildings as a way of treating the water in a good way, cleaning as part of the cleaning process. Please experiment and take time for that. This becomes the architecture of the future. I would pour your water on your new developments like here in every cellar in Bordeaux that we are doing and how it's under construction to keep it longer and to pull your buildings. Then you can make narrow streets. Never anymore make wide streets in your country, and that created a kind of commodity in it and that continues. The energy challenge can also lead to buildings that love solar panels instead of this kind of hidden act. We can imagine that it goes on. I mean the wish list of 2.1 is huge and I invite you to make that list. The medical challenge is there with private hospitals and you want to have a kind of all the medical system and I dream about the kind of hospital which is embedded in nature in Tirana and uses a mixed way of treatment. So what is the next? The European connection, Minbal Connect was an initiative to imagine that the highspeed or bigger speed trains would go from Vienna to Athens and I still think you have to reserve place for that whatever is happening and you have to plan it in to integrate that with the rest. And finally my last observation, and that has much more to say, I do that in 2.1 you make also an attempt to make an education and a research facility that you do the research, the things that you need, and to make that more visible in a dream of a school where you talk about it, you start already with it private and public to make that doable, and then fantasize on the tools that you need of the future. So here indeed is an exhibition about carbon capture calculating as you do, how much carbon that solves or how much that costs while you are planning and designing that lead to this kind of evaluation. We are trying to showcase your solar aspects. Make a tool that every moment when you have this threat, this density is coming into the city but still you want to have some spots here and there and then you know that this should be carved out in a certain kind of direction. That kind of tools, please try to make it through your research to appropriate the quality of design on that level.

And then last but not least, think about the bigger scale. Here an example of the Netherlands, Netherlands 2, NL2. The Netherlands made its own country with this kind of stuff over it. They fought always in projects. These are the boulders done in almost 100 years in the middle ages. These are the delta works after the flooding. How that was a project. These are all the networks that have been made in 30 years time over the place. And this is the design of our agriculture. So you can make projects. 30 years is small. It's not long. What we have done 30 years ago and you compare it with now, then we have so much tools that we can do. So I anticipate in 2.1 for that. The Netherlands is a bit funny. It is a little bit more people than here. It's now 18 or 19 million people. It's quite if you compare it with cities like Tokyo or like Jakarta, it's highly populated as a city, but on the right side it's the lowest density of the cities. So NL is a city for sure. Albania is also it's two and a half million, you are cute. So you can with that cuteness you can think in projects like this plan is suggesting of work on the sea, work on the bottlenecks of the river, make them bigger and transform these landscapes into something like that to give more access. This is the Netherlands. I don't say because I don't have a plan for you tonight and I only want to invite that we do that in the next year to make that. If this is the dunes and then this could be the future coastline of the Netherlands with more islands before to protect ourselves against the flooding. And wow, what a landscape do we make if we do the sand motor to make this and that transforms it into something like this where we can place our housing. And if we look to the energy then we need of the windmills that we need, we need a wind park which is huge and that was so also that's plan and you have your space doing that. Don't put them next to that is what I would like to say. And if you have CD infrastructure ultimately you have to sort. Funny we first started in the 60s making more highways for sure. In the nearby future we're doing to concentrate on specific zones and that gives this kind of corridors in our environment. And then Netherlands has no nature. Well, yeah. This is the nature, natural parks, and when you go into a park and you run, you're in 5 minutes out. So it's so cute. Is it so small? So the desire to make composition of the CO2 leads to maybe also a design for the country or parts of the design to enlarge the national parks. Please try to visualize that for your country is what this is saying. Then you say maybe it's not happening. But what was funny to say this weeks when we have seen the elections in the Netherlands and we saw a young party coming up and what to do that and coming up with an idea I thought okay this is making comes again into the picture. So there is some kind of an energy now in this new government to think about positions where we should and make facilitate intensification. And at the party one as it's shown here how discussions in the formations are happening and how this is terrible for me always to see this journalists and then to behave nicely that is a kind of a but it's okay it's part of architecture that I wanted to show how to deal with it. By the way, that was I had my luggage for a flight to Tirana that day and I was blamed in the newspaper that that was not in the Netherlands. I end with research because inventing economies is not clear. Tourism is one, making industries is highly under desire. So this is what we do with wind vendors as a filmmaker but for the drone industry in the eastern part of Europe. Saw in Ukraine and to so the drone industry we need a lot. They look like this my client, this is the new client that already will also come here, and there's this client in Shenzhen that collaborates on it. So you can do more the civic side of this part that I want to put that. I think the ATR is also very much involved in that research and is one of the tools that we can imagine to think about another kind of urbanism.

So there are reasons to fly because for instance here study for Prague, if it wants to be outstanding ecologically needs quite some space. So the traffic is horrendous in Prague. So how to solve that? What can we do? I mean it's funny of course you know this some of you airborne kingdom how you designed this floating drone city in your games which is a beautiful juxtaposition of downstairs and upstairs, what you don't need and what you want to do. We see that our automation is quite beautifully censored as in this film how you can see it and how it's tests already with this kind of tests in cities how automation what you need for it to streamline that traffic. I love this drone scooter that's done by a colleague of mine and so we were thinking about what to do. So with Sale Amsterdam where flocking is beautifully done, think knows everything about this part next to this building there and what to do with that. So we are working on an imagine to work with drones to see what they can do more and how that can be part of the cityscape. So of course there will be the effect of drones. So here we have one example of like one neighborhood in Prague where we concentrate that neighborhood about all the people and functions that are there, all the movements as they are now, and if we replace that by drones and drone traffic we would have a kind of optimized city. So when we extrapolate that over the whole one and a half million people, then you get something like that of like what is the new streets in the sky that could come across. So secondly, what can we do with drone technology? So with the factories, we suggest tests. So it's not only about explosions but also like working with capacities of these drones to make them smaller for instance because then you can do more geometries and then you can ask them to do more. So if this is the tree drone, you can stack them which is now happening by after the tests to have more capacity and to use the in between for that to stop the batteries is a program and then they can group is a test that is going, they can dock is a and the docking will lead even to suits. The proposal now for the suits that could be imagined that leads to quite okay the suit and objects. So here how many objects do I need to form temporarily a couch? Something like 28,000 movements or if I use this for a bed to sleep and this is how the flocking is organized and modeled. So we can also do that for spaces like this kitchen is showing the new IKEA and this how one moves to the other function. How this movements can be so it becomes endlessly adaptable. So for students this is I think intriguing because you normally you make cities with a street and here how does a group how do we formulate this? I mean this is the usage of a house because our houses are stupid, they use them only for 10% and over time we need other kind of functions to do that. So that means that we could do it differently. So the film this one was for the Olympic games to show this week there on the exhibition to show that we can make ski jumps by it and that you have beautiful temporal installations to make this skiing. So here another stadium also for the Olympic games that we try to address how far it can be formed and ultimately how urban spaces can be formed in the sky. So you hear plaza that could transform into another kind of plaza if we dream about that. This relativization looks insane and actually it's closer than we think and how to speculate on that and to use our research to imagine this movements with different users in that current sky city is what these models are trying to show. So with that I try to suggest a little bit to think about that future. Demands more than only extrapolation and it could lead into other kind of thoughts. I would hope that maybe one of your school would try to imagine more of this kind of hypothesis. So with that you might.

I wonder if it's happening. So here you see how in Paris drone zones are now designed and how the places where to land. We are working with that, and with that I give you an idea of what is going to happen in 2.1 and prepare as an end then for 2.2 to what I would like to say in this coming three years. With that, I open the floor for your discussions. Thank you very much.

What I never would change if that's possible in your planning system is that you allow for quite some liberty in design and that you also aim for variety or biodiversity of architecture that fits, I think, with the history. Even not everybody agrees to that, but it is an incredible tool to innovate and also to have place for variety, to invite to do that. So that was one of the most rewarding components that Albania is offering and which became now kind of popular not only in the app group but in the whole organization of engaged architects and architecture in it. I think there are many challenges. I spoke about some of them and they are hilarious, from the forbidden buildings to the earthquakes we forgot. So that's also part of the job, I would say, to... and I think it's also nice because it makes architecture somehow... we gave it to specialists in other countries and now it's on your shoulders also to solve that and to bring it back. I think it makes architects or even my architecture a little bit more conscious, and so even if that's a challenge, the consequence is you enlarge the consciousness of the operations. So it's good to communicate about that, and every project should show that it's not perfect but quite perfect and has scars because of that history. So between that, I mean that's one hand a challenge and the other hand say the thing that you should not change.

Well, what's new I think in the competition land here is that you ask also competitions with integrated teams. So financial and which has also sometimes advantages to do that. So in this case, I think it is one of the first to have an integrated team so that they could also build it and could also finance in a certain way. I think without that team I never could have made this shape. So sometimes you think that financers are like monsters that only say no. But in this case, the competition makes also that they will say maybe because they have to win, so they do more effort to find out a finance of innovation. So we started this already very early in this case with that team. So it's a Dutch Albanian investment group. So it's also foreign investment, very recent in the country, so it's also an aspect of that emerging country. So now it's time for foreign investment, I would say, and you need that step by step to get that positioned and integrated. So they, because the finances were like, 'Okay, what shall we do? We make a small stadium and then two towers.' Actually, no, we don't win. Everybody will do that. That's not... And come on, you're in the stadium. So first thing we put the towers on top of the box. They say, 'Oh, okay. Calculate, calculate, calculate.' Okay, but now you have to sit in your balcony and you have to watch. No. And so in I think in four steps, and then of course one of them was a basketball player. So then we came up, 'Okay, if you extend tribunes and turn it into housing,' then his eyes started to sparkle, and his eyes convinced the other investor to say yes. That step-by-step method was super helpful to do that, to indicate also, yeah, I don't know how you do it, but you have to convince each other and to take each other along. So the group was very coherent in the end. So the presentation we went through everything and we were like, 'This is it, take it or leave it.' And yeah, that is I think what we have to achieve in a competition: that take it or leave it feeling, because then you are convinced and also you gave it enough reasons to make it work. And so not about that specific... Does it work every competition? No, some competitions you make mistakes and others are better. I mean, I remember the beautiful stadium of this Belgium group in Durres. I mean, they were much better than us. And when they copied the stadium in Brazil in a kind of Albanian way, it was hilarious. So built it as quick as possible. So I think you were in it. So that was... you have to acknowledge that and say immediately that's also good, but to train each other. And I still remember working at OMA and sour, you know, when you competed to Zaha or to Frank Gehry, it was like this, you hated each other? No, it's good that you make many competitions, so you lose 70% and you get 30%, which is I think that is how it should be. You become, I think, nicer to your colleagues and have more respect on this. So the operation becomes more collective because of the amount of competitions that you have, and you see also it's a kind of school, almost, and it's nice that you make an exhibition now where you show all the competitions and you need a theoretical evaluation even stronger. I would advise to say, 'Okay, what did you learn and what is this process about and what does it give you back and how to not stop with it?' And that's one. And don't become German, because the German competitions are terrible. There you don't get any money, it costs you 120,000 euro to go through it. I never do it anymore because it's like a waste, and then you have a jury which is only like old people mumbling about order. And yeah, that's not the case. The juries are very important, should be fresh, and also you could see the jury in the end in the different competitions what they, who is winning and what kind of things are, it also helps for the collection. So some observations on your competition system.

I appreciate that colleagues are participating as a jury member and I appreciate especially people which have a huge knowledge that they are participating in the jury. So it's my duty almost also to do the same. It's not that I do 50/50, it's more like 25/75%, but yes, I think it's very good to do. It's an incredible tool also as a jury member to distill direction. I appreciate especially the competitions where the jury has an influence on the brief. So you start already in the beginning, you give extra criteria, and in the process you give more memorandums sometimes to steer the direction because it depends on the country. But some countries, architects are very, very afraid, especially like in Poland or in Czech Republic or in Slovakia, they only make looks, they have no clue to improvise, so they... and in Germany also. So that's not what you wish, so you have to specify more than a normal brief which is composed out of square meters, to think what you actually need and what you... so if you want something different, you have to also specify that. That is also helpful not only to get it but also that all the people know what you want. So it makes the breed less speculative. Which I mean sometimes it's good to have an ideal competition, but mostly it's terrible because the people that if you have an idea competition and actually you award only the ones that are conventional, then I miss the clue. So jury members can say that you can also stop it and also can say then I don't participate, and clients normally are afraid if jury members walk away because that becomes a scandal, public scandal. So there is a certain power in it. So yeah, that's what I mean. At the moment I'm a jury member of the slavery museum in Amsterdam, which I think is one of the most prestigious. Why did I accept it? Why didn't I want to do it? I don't believe that that museum should have a white 60-plus male architect working on it; the subject demands. So also in the brief we mention now that the relationship with people that went through slavery should be very, very strong, which is implicitly saying okay, architect should come from there. So that's what you can do. And I think personally, I think that kind of... and on that place it deserves something weird, something that's super free. And how to cultivate that freedom is what it's more about, not about guilt, not about compensation, it's about celebrating that. And so to formulate that and now in the memorandums that we send out, yeah, that sharpens I think the ambition of the competition, that can be sometimes stronger. I mean, I remember in Bissa it was not so clear if I look back for one of your competitions. So that would be helpful even in faith part was not that clear and led also to a quite a variety of incomparable proposals. So it's up to you in the end, but I think the system as such... but yes, I will join next time.

Well, one thing to start and I hope that Albania is going to also do something like that is that master education is a key for that. So it's not PhD because that takes five years to get a result. It is not bachelor because kids are still gathering things. And it's the moment that you could do research. The moment that we in Europe with the Erasmus system you would have many master scholars and everyone does something different in a way or something weird, then we develop as a collectivity, I think, an enormous rich drum of deepening. And for students, I think it's for not everybody, but students love in a master's time to chop around. So they want to have half a year with a lunatic somewhere in Groningen and then they go to another lunatic in Tirana would be because he or she is doing... And I follow the belief that when you are a doctor, then you will go to a researcher if you want to study heart attacks, you have to be with a specialist on that. So it helps the deepening aspect. So for a certain group, I think for every student it is wise to have minimally one half year doing something that is what most of students now do. But in a way, I think there are also like 30-40% of the students who want to do it for the whole master research-like approach because then they become a little bit more specific, also specialist, and with depth. So for them it is also an asset to know what they want to do. And then of course you can design a house for Michael Jackson or whatever, but it's like that's not the case. You want to also connect yourself to a certain kind of depth. So that's key of it. I think Delft did a good job in making more master education in the last 10 years. They go down a little bit now to be honest because of financial reasons. So you can take over. So there is a to do that. And it's a... I think in Belgium it was always fantastic all these masters to be together and it's very international so that you have a bigger amount of people that you can choose from. So it's an automatic talent instrument to create a tool. So I think it's a treasure which you don't have in the US or in Asia that Europe has with this Erasmus program, but we have to sharpen it. So we have to talk with European Union a bit stronger on this. So that's one. So then last thing, I think I love specialists. I love a person that knows everything about wood or everything about sewage systems. And so it's also for professors interesting, where do you want to specialize in? I think for university it is good that if you have a professor that does X, I don't say that everybody should have to do it. I say for 50% of the education it will be good. But then you give him or her then also sufficient... I think in general you need less professors but more assistants to make more. There's a tendency especially in the western part to have too many professors and they have no assistants, so they cannot do anything, they have to teach. So in order to research, you have to have another kind of balance. That's what we try to show also in the Y factory: assistants, one lunatic, and then you can operate that. And then the subject, last thing I said already, specialism is nice but I only do about speculation of future cities, that was it still quite wide. I know you can blame me for that, but it was my choice to follow. And therefore, your hobby or your desire...

Well anyway, I would advise that for you to have a kind of speculative studio to explore Albania, how that could be, and you have to do that with many teachers and many students that have their own ideas through that. I don't think that you get what you want by asking only if people concentrate on Albania. Most of the professors are more general and they want to export to do that. But I could imagine I would love to script with your students how to make porous stones in 3D printing. So that would be... so that is also what you could facilitate. If you are the ones that give space for this kind of weird experimentation, that would also be beauty. So I would split it in two parts: one is the highly speculative scientific component, and the other is the highly speculative localness.

But I have to apologize that I didn't have any relationship with your universities. Once I gave a lecture maybe 15 years ago somewhere in Poland, very outside of the city, which was very nice. So I'm... but I have many colleagues that are teaching and that could be there. I also don't see the results of your universities very much. So I cannot judge at all what comes out of the schools, and showing it is super important. I know there is money needed to make this book or this kind of ways of presenting or these websites to do it, and there are beautiful examples. If it's the... they would to make that more visible and to make it more present. I also don't see any yet, but I'm of course stupid, that's why I didn't look at it very carefully. But any of your professors that are yelling to the European committee to say something? So also we have to go out, we have to say why certain researchers are good to do that. So this just explains a little bit my non-relationship probably with your university, which is a bit of a pity. I mean, it's point one: we have to organize that better. That is true, because then you have to beat as I said last time Harvard in your education. You want to show almost brutally what you want to say and how you scream out, you have to enlarge it. So helping that could be a subject to consider and to see what the subjects are. No, I don't know yet. Future of Albania is for sure a thing. But also an analysis of your agricultural system in spatial terms would be great, or how can your economy become sustainable, make sustainable environments, how much does that cost? And you can put the questions upfront because they help you to design your country and to make it. So I think the university has to help you for this agenda. By the way, I know a very good economist, a Dutch lady who was the director of ABN AMRO and is the best thinker in the economics of sustainability. So get her.

Well, first to say that also what Eddie said is that generation 2.2 is Albanian and not outsiders like me or like some of us here. So this is only a tool like the Japanese did in the 80s to team up and to get your generation to sharpen hopefully with that. And I think that will be great if there will be in the future the Albanian school of thinking that comes out of it. That is I hope the young generation is sufficiently stimulated to do that. So that because you say something, are you student or not?

What does it help? Everything.

Take over. Yeah. Dance together maybe. Why? Why take over? Ah, that's fair. That's true. So it's also that at a certain moment you are better in the competition to me than I am.