Okay. Good afternoon everyone, including our special guest. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a very special opportunity today. We have two special guests. Patrick Schumacher, all the students here are very familiar with him, who is the principal of ZHA office. And I heard he just led a special team of ZHA office from all over the world coming to China. I think it's a super trip, right?
420 people. Office trip. It's a grand, grand tour. 15 projects. So he just finished his trip from Hong Kong and Shenzhen and just arrived in Shanghai. And we're talking because Patrick Schumacher is our guest professor here. He is also the PhD advisor, and Snow is his student who just took the PhD degree two months ago. I think it's a really great opportunity to work with Patrick over the years. Actually, he makes a lot of lectures every year, one lecture probably over the past 10 years, right? So we are familiar with Patrick. But I think something new, he also invited one of his friends, Peter. Peter is a professor of philosophy. His main area of research includes political philosophy, particularly the theory of institutions and collective action, as well as the violence and ethics of war, Jewish political tradition, and the philosophy of architecture. He also works on the concept of the project and projective acts. He is co-editor of Peter Eisenman in Dialogue with Architects and Philosophers and of the journal Corin. He is currently a fellow at the Tsinghua University, and he's working on the project Victory in the Global Governance for us in this architecture community. He is a vital bridge between our two disciplines, and so we are very fortunate to have him with us today and to offer the philosophical perspective on our built environment. So please join me to welcome Peter. So I think the whole afternoon we have around totally three hours, and I would like to first invite Peter to make the lecture and then followed by Patrick. So I'm looking forward to having a discussion after the two lectures. Okay.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Philip. Thank you, Wending. Thank you, Jian, and your team. And of course, Patrick. I'm here because of him. Yeah, because he is, we can say, the last architect at the end of architecture. Well, I will... there is no picture here, and unfortunately I don't like this, but anyway. This is something between English and Chinese. I'm not here to sell you something which you already knew, but try with you to help me to understand how these words function in Chinese. This is my task. Well, why I'm here? Because what kind of legitimation, except I'm a friend of Patrick? I'm editor with Snitch of this journal. This is the copy, and where Patrick wrote the text about the end of architecture. And this is fulfilling. Secondly, we published in the same library the book, Patrick's PhD. Because you know, it's... how to say... you will see this is ideal architect or the ideal philosopher, and that's why I'm trying to understand him and trying to understand architecture and this end between architecture and philosophy. That's why I'm here. And we published his PhD, which was published in German, and I hope you will enjoy, you will understand first of all Patrick's engagement in architecture. And I will explain what does it mean for me, ideal architect and ideal fellow architect or philosopher, we can say like this. I'm in Tsinghua University fellow, one month. I'm working on victory, victory project. What does it mean? Victory, win, how to understand Trump, etc. And I propose that the opposition to be in front of this. If I'm happy to follow your president here. This is projective mind could be opposite to victorious mind. And well, that's why I'm working on project. I'm repeating what does it mean project. I think that architectural project and project and such is the same thing. And well, I will talk here first of all on this. Second, you know, you see that this is the names. I don't care for the names. I like acts. What is behind of these acts? That means I like verbs. I think the acts, verbs are more important than names. Names are complicated and totally problematic. Well, if we can see something behind, and I'd like to propose you, and you will see probably because I have here Chinese. You will see behind of your concepts, notions. Well, then I'm all the time, you know, I'm in negotiations, in discrete negotiations with Patrick. We are not the same on the same area. But I hope we can try to understand each other today. For example, autonomy. I don't know. I'm not for autonomy of architecture, but I think that one of the functions of architect is to produce terminology. Okay, let's see probably during the next three hours what we have about this. Then, well, it's important for me, difference between philosophy and theory, because this is philosophy, not theory. I think the theory is, how to say, opium for architects. Philosophy has capability to invent something, innovation. This is also president's word, very important. Innovation or new, we can connect easily with philosophy, but I'm not sure with theory. In AI, in robot, we have theory in him or in her, in it, but we have not still, or we have not yet maybe, this capability for the new. I think that's why philosophy. I'm not sure that this is a good explanation, but well, I'm trying. Then, okay, I said autonomy, I will say more about this. Epistemology. I think that the architecture field of architecture produces something, some kind of knowledge. That means I hope that exists some kind of architectural act, that it means projective act is eminently architectural. And what does it mean, epistemology of architecture? Well, that could be also one important question. And well, yes, this is maybe this is the end of architecture, but let's understand the one architect, one, I think, ideal architect who remains. Well, how we can understand this end? You know, we have so many ends. In philosophy, we have Adorno mentioned, but Christian Wolff in 18th century he mentioned also the end of philosophy. Means end is practically something new, some new beginning or new different beginning of something other. Well, here, well, first, I don't know how to situate. We had a problem in a journal. Wow, you see, this is we accepted this and two fields and importance of this. And not philosophy of architecture, because for example, when I'm teaching, I'm teaching this end. I am analyzing the text of architects and philosophers. I don't care for picture. I don't know nothing about architecture, but I think that I'm the best one about this end. And I'm trying to understand architecture well and to push them to understand themselves. Okay, it's impossible to push Patrick because Patrick is the best to understand, to thematize his work and works of the others. Well, but well, we have this possibilities. And well, you see, second, why I'm here? Not well, I'm here first of all, I think that it's necessary to find philosopher in architect. Why? Because I think that he or she must thematize work. It worked. And this is the first. And to understand, to learn how to work with the others. Well, I think it's for me it's very easy with Patrick, with Peter Eisenman, Koolhaas, but there are some architects who don't care to produce thinker. Second, well, this is probably a problem with me and Patrick. I think that this is the mission architect to produce some kind of terminology or eminently architectural language or terminology. Well, I think that conject, totally architectural terms. Okay, you can say no, concept is a philosophical term. I think if we transform concept in the acts what we have behind the concept, we will say that this is totally architectural, how to say, architectural protocol, let's say like this. And finally, yes, autonomy, terminology, and then autonomy. Okay, then, well, you see, you can read, well, conjunction is important. That's why conjunction, conjunction, non-disjunction. For me, it's important this junction and the origin of this junction. I try to see how it functions in Chinese. It's different, and that's why this is here. It will be your job to understand how these three words function in your language. Because we are here, you know, we are trying to... well, you see, at the beginning, we have only two geometrical protocols or strategies in our life. This is conceptio or begriff, that means to catch something, to take something in, to eat something. This is one, you know, take a look, kid, baby, you see, this is the first idea is to take something from the world. We have a physical world and we have this, how to say, this operation, this mechanism to take something in, to put something in ourself. This is conceptio, concipere, the same generally in all Latin or Slav or Indo-German, Indo-European language is the same strategy. And we have on the other side, second strategy is this yat, this to throw away, to put something outside. To, you know, this is in, out. That's it. And all the magic of our life is this tension between in and out. Where is the problem? Because the most important philosophical concept or most important philosophical strategy is always with this yat, with this yakum. There are so many words like this. That means we put something outside of us and try to be in front of it. That means we are in process of antagonism all the time. That's why subiectum, objectum, project is different story because when we put something outside, we don't know where is the, what is the goal. We don't have strictly objects in front of us. In project there is no antagonism, and this is probably thesis today. We go together somewhere because project is social, concept is individual. Concept is always individual. That means if you, when you are saying, when you say my concept of this pen, immediately started to be social, but generally concepts are not transparent. Well, projective mind, you see what does it mean? Projective mind means to, how to say, contrary to victorious mind. Projective mind means to produce something with the others. That's why project is social, to open future, because project opens the future and to move forward together. Well, this is three ideas. Begriff, notion, conception. In German, we have not second words. We have only begriff. And now, before, it's difficult to translate notion and concept because in Roman languages you have notion and concept differently. But now in German, you have begriff and concepts. Begriff functions as a notion. Christian Wolff. Okay, this is in this book you have definition of concept. Why I'm doing this? Because this is principal architectural words in concept and project. After we have platform, plan, etc., diagram, monogram, etc. For example, I didn't know that Kant, I knew several months ago that Kant used the word monogram, not diagram. And it's very interesting, you know, monogram, how he found monogram and not diagram. Well, here Christian Wolff, what does it mean concept for him? When, what you see here? He was 21. He said, my concept in 21. This is the letter to his mentor. He mentioned three times the concept, concept. I have my concept. He said two times my conception, my conception. But he first invented the word mon concept, my concept. And this is very familiar to architects. My concept. Well, the philosophy, concept, the goal of philosophy is to produce the concept. This is only, well, okay, what we have in Christian Wolff? He said we have a physical object, for example, sun, and the representation of the sun, representation of the sun in my gedank, he said, this is in my mind, is the begriff, is concept. And immediately, because he was very clever, he said it's very easy with sun, with physical object. But he said marriage, how to have representation of marriage in ourself. That means the principal game is here in ourself. The game between different concept and the game to produce your position. Well, here we can see the maestro to produce the position. I think, well, why? Because you have to produce if you have not your position, I don't know why you are here. This is the same I found in Schelling. Schelling was very young, he said, which philosopher has no system? And 21 is nothing. Well, that means you have to produce your position. And why? That's why you need this philosophical call, push, let's say like this. Well, now project, this word, if you say yer, it means to lie, that I lie, not lie, but probably li, not lying, but lame, you know. And the other one is yatere, to throw away, to throw forward. Well, completely different conception. Conception protocol, stupid word. Conception, what does it mean? Conceptio. Conceptio means Mary. I hope you heard Mary and Jesus Christ. This story, Mary is in conceptio. Conceptio is pregnancy. Gestio. Gestio is to be pregnant, to hold the baby, gesture, to hold the baby. Project is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is immediately moment of project, something. Well, okay. Generally, we can say all this differently. I mentioned this geometry between conception, catch, and the project, throw. We can say that the second conception, you have this in, well, I have to mention this in Talmud, idea that we have hit and miss. This is only two strategy. Hit and miss. Not third. Conject. Conject. Because concept and very good verb to destroy our... because city is not the project. City is conject. Why? Because in the city we have many, many concepts, many, many projections. When you are, for example, when you are building something, when you see immediately in Shanghai, in part of Shanghai, many conject, many concepts, many projects, and you put something in. Okay. This is now you will start here. Well, I don't know what is the problem is how to... because this is your job. This is not my job. Now, it's very good for me to try to criticize, thematize western origin of words, of... I don't know, because I'm in between many languages, but here I have friends here, they try to help me. But okay, this is verified with several people, philosophers. Well, I can give you, of course, or you will have this presentation and you will check this. No, it's interesting, you know, connection between Japanese, it's connection with heart, not mind. This is different. Immediately we can, you know, if we accept the position of architect to compare with the position of philosopher, well, okay, my position is in between, between the languages. I'm not hide. I don't want to be in one language or in two, eventually in Greek and this one. But well, okay, that's... Where is the problem here? This knife or this arm, you Chinese, you can see the arm and knife in this word. How to differentiate aggression of project? Because generally project is aggressive. Because project aggressive, but which kind of aggressiveness? I read in last several months, I read in English and then tried to understand with other people, many military strategic texts, and I tried to understand how, you know, you are manipulating with attributes, you are manipulating with quantity. Well, I found that quantity is much more important than quality. And when in concept, in concept you have quantity. I can say that Philip is very ambitious guy and Patrick also, but this is not enough. Well, you in your language, I think you are manipulating with quantity, and that's why we sometimes can't understand, and it's very difficult to, how to say, I can understand but I can't repeat or something like this. I can't use it. What you... Well, the problem here is how, which kind of aggressiveness we have in project to exclude the others and why project could be important for us. Okay, this is maybe good, maybe not. Well, what does it mean architectural act? Architectural act, how to differentiate, for example, how to differentiate platform, program, plan, and project? We have a mess in architects' texts. It's very, you know, in continental philosophy we have also mess because each philosopher invents his terminology, etc., etc. You have Deleuze terminology, Derrida terminology, etc. But if, let's say, in analytic philosophy, it's much more simple. For us, I think we need somebody from... it will not be philosopher but architect who will try to describe what does it mean, what does it mean architectural act? Where is the place of platform, where is the plan, where is the project, where is the gesture, where is the design, where is the design, which difference between design and design, draw, etc. This is I think the task. And well, at the end, when I said conject, well, where is the position of conject in this imaginary ideal architectural act? Well, how to... that's it. How to reconstruct all the steps in the work of, in Patrick's work, because he tried all the time, that's why he wrote, he tried all the time to understand Zaha's act. Well, this is now we have, and now we have one at the end of architecture. Now we have one guy who has capability to understand himself, and that's the new, you know, if you follow Eisenman's lecture, still, you know, he's still active, his idea is to check on, to, how to say, to mention to the presidents the origin of each architectural moment, material moment. Well, that is archaeology of architectural materialization. It's this is Eisenman. Here we have, I think this is thematization of epistemological act. This is well, problem of architects why they are not reading architects, forget philosophers, but architects. And well, I think this is the, that could be task. Well, I tried to, how to say, to argue for this word. I think it's that conject is, and generally conjunction is, and I think that and is much more important than or. And I think that and is strictly in architectural, how to say, engagement or commitment. And I think that this end is strict in China, in Chinese.
Thank you. That's it. Thank you. A little bit short but very deep understanding of some key words here. He's putting forward the concept, project, and goes to the conject. I think it's three words from the very conceptual, the individual and the subjectivity. Where is the concept coming from? And also the concept is a kind of autonomous ways to define the individual. Where is your mind coming from? He mentioned also the heart and mind. In Chinese, heart and mind is different. It's already different. The mind is more about the mindness, is about the thinking, and also the autonomous mind is maybe not from heart but from your mind. So it's a... I think from my... maybe I should invite Patrick to analyze this conject, to conjecture, because conjecture is more about the predict and from some like collective intelligence to predict or to say something in the future. It's conjecture, but the conject is something like throw together, is maybe from different individuals, put them together and throw some different decision of mind to the forward, maybe something together. So that is conjecture coming from. So it's very philosophy addressed. So maybe next I would like Patrick to analyze this very fundamental keywords. What is and what is conjecture? What is the difference between the concept, project, and conject? So, welcome Patrick.
Some feedback. Of course. Yeah, not this is not my lecture yet, although I could bring out a lecture which relates closely to this. Um, yeah, it's fascinating, Peter. Very, thank you for your provocations and reflections. So I do find it quite original, and I think that's the role of philosophy to challenge us with new concepts. The creation of concept, like the... reflected what philosophy is, and it was very productive for architecture, particularly in phases of transition where one form of architecture ends. For instance, modernism in the 70s, and something else has to be born. That's when the philosophers join the field, um, and to help us brainstorm and go to the first principles, to start again, the new beginning after the end. And that's where we need philosophers. And so that's what when I was a student, I was in the 80s. That's precisely what happened when architecture absorbed the work of the post-structuralists. Uh, there's also a revolution in thinking, and someone like Peter Eisenman brought Jacques Derrida into architecture to collaborate, Bernard Tschumi also with Derrida, and then a very strong connection with Deleuze. Um, so I think that's very important. And I like the triad of, I think it's interesting, concept, project, where you project forward, where you sometimes project into the unknown, and then the idea of conjecture. It's interesting where you say that the city, when projects intersect and come together, this is something maybe nobody has conceived or projected. It's a kind of collective outcome. And um, but I would say on that one, um, the throwing together, I can feel the reminiscences of the period of deconstructivism, where we had actually in modernism the idea was the city is also just a plan, is just a project. You have the locus design drawing up the city, uh, you know, for one million inhabitants, or and Hilberseimer drawing up the city, but they actually went so far as to draw up the whole built environment of Europe. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this project. It's basically these kind of linear cities banding across Europe. So this was broken, this vision, this was broken when modernism and the idea of planning a whole society was broken, and you had the revolutions, the counter-revolution if you like, against the planned society, and you actually also had it in China, you had it in Russia, you had it in Europe. And that was the period of deconstruction, where the idea was the city is just many projects coming together. Like, and I think there is a thesis: the city is a project. The antithesis: the city is just a conjecturation. But I want to do the synthesis. So we have thesis, antithesis, my synthesis. Yes, I do have a position, which is this stage where we can think of the city of just being thrown together is... we have to overcome that and have a new way of bottom-up, intelligent inter-articulation and self-organization, but through intelligent individual interventions which are super sensitive to their context. They do something novel but not random, not arbitrary. That's, we have the capacity to do that now with parametricism and tectonism. So that's my synthesis for a new stage of architecture. Um, but I think it's very healthy to go back to first principles at a moment of crisis, and go into the etymology of words. It's very interesting to watch how, what are the origins of certain notions we are familiar with, uh, the deep kind of anthropological origin. That's Heidegger started this into philosophy, and I think that's very fruitful. And also to then realize, then you translate a set of concepts into another language to see the roots of the translated words. There's another depth and another set of principles, because as a philosopher, we've understood all concepts, the way language grows through analogy, metaphor, analogy, you expand meanings. And these are not arbitrary, which word you... you're confronted with something new, which of your repertoire words are you using to describe this? Which of the words is now expanding to absorb and inject the new phenomena? If you had used a different word, you would make it come with different connections. You see different things. So choosing words means you see things, but you also are blind to others who use another word. So I think that's very deep and very important, and I think that's the difference between architectural theory and architectural philosophy. And I think I have to think about it. I don't have my answer. Is my work more architectural philosophy or my architectural theory? But there is a stage when you make the fundamental choices of how to absorb new phenomena, how to react, how to reposition. After the philosophical moment, after the brainstorming, there is the elaboration, the cumulative making it work. And that's when it's more theory, science, theor-practice. So you cannot do a new philosophy every 10 years. There's moments of philosophy. The 1920s was a moment of philosophy. The 1980s was a moment in philosophy. I don't know when the next moment of philosophy is. Um, but I think we'll probably... that's something we can't predict. That's my comment.
I think it's interesting also to discuss about the subjective of the concept, because it's coming from individual and then project to the city as a scenario, or the urban or rural area could be project to some project, right? To some project that is like the projection of the mind to some like physical forward from the concept. But a little bit difficult to understand the conjecture, because if the concept and project in process is not a linear process, also it's not a very structured system to project to some projects. For example, when ZHA office they have a concept, they can project to different countries which have the similar style. If you figure out this is a ZHA project, that is not so... it's a kind of projective process that could present the concept. You can see behind the project is there the concept there. But what is a conjecture for this kind of project? Can this kind of intelligence be conjecture to the whole city, the whole city in one style? I don't think it's possible because they have different concepts actually, they combine together, to mix together, and to integrate together in the city as a kind of diversity solution. Or maybe something should be the project, the project could be project back to the concept. The concept need have some difference, right? I think this kind of conjecture process is not an individual concept, it's kind of collective intelligence. So I think it's kind of like structuralism or post-structuralism. I think including the maybe they mention such kind of every object have a kind of intelligence. You can see the back some process how to make it, a little things could be revealed, but actually when you're tracing back it's not a linear process. So maybe the question goes from the concept, project to conject. Conject is a way to present, but how to present it from the other direction? If we're talking about artificial intelligence, can simulate this kind of individual concept, project process, we can generate a city or project by some like concept, right? To simulate this kind of individual subjective process could project to some project, right? But AI can do very fast, super fast, can simultaneously generate different options, predict or simulate this kind of scenarios in the city. So my question goes to how to analyze this concept from, if the computer can replace this kind of human-centric concept. It's kind of subjective process, the subject is replaced by a computer. How to analyze your theory here? Maybe a question from... if possible.
No, I can say just something simple how we can... this is studio conject. This is studio work. All of us we have concept or some kind of concept or draft of some concept. I'm talking about studio. We are working together, and okay, we are working on project. No, we are working on conject, because we invested all of our conceptions, of our individual hidden ideas. And then we are transparent, we are public, because project is project, because it's public. Concept is not public. Then we have many, how do I say, this is magic of how to work together, magic of work together. We are producing something which is conjectural. Where we put something on the table, which is we put our concept, we put our, well, put something ours individuals, and correct and make something new. This new is conjecture. This is the scene of act, well, or acting together. We are acting together. Well, this is, you know, if you check the word, for example, very closed word, generally it was very difficult to differentiate design from project. Design is sometimes they are synonymous. You have, what does mean design? Design is that, you know, origin is design, you have something on your head and you, by gesture, by hand, put on a table, put on a paper, try to draw. Well, this is originally the Zeno, and this first trace is the trace of the concept, and we are not happy because we are in this game between what we have in our heads and what we have on a paper, and we are, this is draft. We are trying to make this, bête à cornes in head, and to harmonize what we have in our head. When we are together, when we are in studio, the process is different. We are all, and that's a little bit stupid to say that the author, you know, author is always co-author, author is always editor, author or chief of the studio. You know, Patrick is behind, Patrick is many, many people. And well, that's the... this is structuralism, but maybe anti-structuralism because I'm accepting the existence of many authors who are working together. Well, if my problem is, I'm not sure that this is my problem. This is I think your problem. How to separate, how to arrange these acts in... because it's better to say architectural acts, not architectural act. Well, you are, when I worked, when I'm working on victory, in victory, we have Trump, for Trump, victory or not, just for Trump, is always in singular. Here victory is always in plural. Plural, you, this is in Mao Zedong, in president, but always in plural, means it's not enough one victory. And this is the same, many acts are here, and that's why I'm using conjecture to a little bit stabilize this magic of architect, well, as a projector.
I think the... of your introductory speech, you mentioned a couple of Chinese equivalents or apparently equivalents to the European terms. And I was just wondering what the Chinese in this room were thinking about these equivalents and if they have any additional ideas about certain translations in this respect. Is there any...
This is, yeah, this is most important. Why? Because how to say, you have to learn from your language and not to transfer our, you know, our mechanism, our protocols, our syntaxes in your head. That's why it's important, not translation, but to push us to change something in our, well, in our structures, in our... well, that's why can you, how to say, can you make something through your language, through your structures, not through ours. Because this is, you see, the game, game is always to born, to pregnancy, you know, to born, to in, out. Freud, Freud, huh, in, out. Practically nothing, very simple, very not enough complicated to be felt. Well, if you want... well, that's... would you be so kind?
Maybe, maybe. Yes. So just respond to this professor. Actually, I'm not familiar with the term the conjecture. I'm not quite familiar with them. And so I'd like to use the invasion to replace this word, because in my... because my background is from architecture and engineering. So in my mind, if we have a concept, and this concept is not mutual, I mean, not... we cannot turn it to the physical environment or to... we cannot turn into the very good project. It is an invasion. It means we just have to... we just made some assumption. And this assumption maybe not very solid. So could you elaborate more about this word?
My question is not this question. Is what when you are thinking, when you are talking now, you are trying to be in English. The question is, is it possible for you to be in your language and say something different and work differently? It's possible. This is the question, not to... you know, you understood how these words function in your mind. This Chinese word... maybe I translated in Chinese. Conjecture. Conject. Conjecture.
So I have a question because the conjecture is very AI language, is a lot increment conjecture, because the conjecture and conjunction, conjunction is actually could be simulated, replaced by not just the human concept, human individualism, it's kind of a human-machine collaborative conceptual generative process.
Yes. I mean, yes, could be. Yeah.
Yeah. So that's the question to you in your theory, in your philosophy. So how to analyze this kind of conjecture, conjecture, conjecture future is not human-centric. It's kind of human and machine together.
Yeah. But we are doing this all the time. When we are thinking, we are trying to conject and we are trying to separate. This is the process. I think that this is the machine in ourselves. Human is machine.
Yes. I think this is the same. Yeah. This is the same problem is that what we put... problem is when we reject from machine, when we are thinking that we are better or on different side, in that case we are not in position to think. I think, well, this is... we can say easy... is a fundamental skill of human thinking, skill is a skill from the machine. Steal from human.
Yeah. Machine is a part of the studio, you know, with some kind of concept in plural, concepts. The problem is how to produce with today with one new friend or several friends something new together. I know, you know, there is no... or this is really end. I think, or you saw for example the moment when Melania Trump arrives with robots. Well, and the idea is that robot will replace, transform, etc. But robot for example is more human in that situation than all the others in the room. It's better to be with robots than... why? Because all humanities is already in robot, and if we are rejecting from our humanities, that means robot will solve us, save us.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Very interesting discussion. Okay, let's welcome Patrick coming, because a lot of new news coming out recently from ZHA office. Maybe the name of ZHA will change, some Patrick Schumacher probably. So we are looking forward to see what will happen in the future based on the authorship of the office and authorship from the design and all the way to collective practice or living by Patrick over the years. I think is super successful, and not just about practice, it's more about the concepts. So I think Patrick last time mentioned a lot about the tectonism, because we always argue and criticize many years, for many years, the ZHA practice a little bit like stylistic. As the co-poises he mentioned, I think it was around 10 years ago the lecture here, which is mob style, and also this kind of style was spreading all over the world by ZHA's office practice, which is totally based on, I think it's kind of transformation from the infinity curvature, which control not only the surface of building, also including the function, including the connections, including this kind of style which reorganized the buildings from not only the spatial perspective but also from the constructive process. So recent years Patrick focused more a lot to relate this kind of style to the social process, and also the including the construction process, including how to generate this kind of forms, how to experience this form, how to like from the phenomenological perspective to experience this kind of readings. So we're looking forward some new ideas coming out today based on discussion of this concept, what is the project, because it's a lot scenarios which ZHA office have achieved over the years, and also which will be very interesting to this is a maybe it's a post-ZHA Schumacher how to announce his ideas. He's talking about the death of architecture, which is a big transformation right now in China, maybe in the whole world, the same, the industry is under big transformation. So I'm looking forward to...
So great, thank you so much inviting me, and thanks everybody to join conversation. Thank you Peter for your comments and reflections. And um... oops, it's not... I can't address that one. It's not... okay. Okay. Now, this is not the lecture I will give. I just wanted to give you a few glimpses in I've been thinking about the relationship between architecture and philosophy, and why architect in particular also from the perspective of metaphor, analogy, and bringing terminology and tools of thinking into abstract thinking into philosophy. Actually originating out of terminology describing spatial relations and architectural relations. So I just want to... okay. Um, mention this because the moment of...
Deconstructivism was also this. Why was somebody like Derrida interested in architecture? Because when we're thinking very generally and abstractly about the world, about society, we're using metaphors. For instance, when we describe social order, we are using metaphors of the spatial order. And it makes sense because society is ordered spatially always already through the order of the city. And these became the diagrams of thinking society, the diagrams of thinking also other domains of abstract knowledge. And I want to show that just in response before I show you what the next stage might be.
So the deep-seated power of architectural tropes embedded in most general operations of logic and language poses a limiting frame or barrier to innovation. The transcendence of this frame is difficult because the very patterns of conception, clear and distinct thinking, are locked within that frame. So, for instance, the conceptualizations of the various institutions that call for architectural translation into buildings are themselves already dependent on ancient conceptual architectures that in turn were abstracted from the built architectures through and within which the original formation of these institutions unfolded in the first place: the family, the school, the hospital, the palace, the city.
So basically, every brief, if you receive a brief, it will have a list of spaces and diagrams. This is already spatialized. So it's a well-structured list of contents with a series of chapters and chapter headings. There is the composition of the brief into paragraphs and sub-paragraphs. These are architectural orders. A large container with sub-containers, singular headings, meaning doors into these, if you like, rooms. The schedule of accommodation is already a series of boxes within boxes and boxes next to boxes on the paper. You think this is just the content, but it already has a spatial order, a traditional architectural order in the very way we think.
And that is, so we have here relations of exclusion, inclusion, subsumption. One thing nests into another. One paragraph is a sub-paragraph of an overall chapter, etc. These logics are very simplistic and powerful architectures that come out of the built environment. So sequences also, you know, in space they become sequences in thinking, etc. They're then recycled back to us. This is old architecture giving us a brief to generate. The problem is then we are likely to regenerate this kind of architecture. We're then building these chapters as floors or rooms, and that's the problem.
So deconstructivism was about breaking this up. It was the vehicle by which philosophy returned to its root in architecture in an effort to break this vicious circle of repetition through direct action in space. So we have to, if we continuously live in an order which only knows nesting one within another, you come into the campus, the campus has a number of buildings, then you go into the building, it has different floors, it's only one order of logic of ordering nesting spaces within spaces or adjacencies. And deconstructivist architecture has totally new forms of ordering there for us. We can't use these categories. You can't describe, for instance, our buildings in these terms.
Anyway, so that's why we needed the philosophy. And okay, I want to show you, I mean, for instance, the most fundamental operation in any thinking and philosophy is distinction. You have to separate. A concept is a distinction. Inside versus outside, male versus female, animal versus plant, your tribe, my tribe. And the distinction is the most abstract move, the most generalized move of any thinking.
It actually comes from drawing a distinction, building a wall, sorting different animal types into different cages, different tribes into different villages, different status groups into different, you know, male here, female there. This is where you embody these distinctions and the concepts are built concepts. And then we are building out, they become analogies, metaphors. So that is the fundamental, profound, deep roots of all thinking: walls, fences, trenches, demarcating a social identity. How do you fix this? By putting different things into different places. And so there's basically you have an inside and an outside.
And then you also subdivide the inside further. And it's very deep, you know, these are logic diagrams, right? These are set-theoretical Venn diagrams. And what is set theory? It's the deepest representation of all logic and all mathematics can be founded on these operations: enclosure and subdivision. And this is, these were not invented. The form of the city, the bounding a realm, is not something you think first and then do. It's to make a separate, you stabilize something.
The circular form is the most efficient natural form. If you try to enclose something and make it super long and squiggly, it's difficult to defend. It's very expensive, vulnerable. So nobody invented this. The circle is fundamentally a material necessity. And how do you grow? Series of concentric circles. So the form of the city is a natural crystallization of ordering moves. But then this diagram of concentric circles, you in the Renaissance for the first time when you draw a city you draw that but much rigorized. And then this diagram becomes the thinking matrix of many other things as I will demonstrate to you.
So when science starts, the science of zoology, where you distinguish different plants, it starts like this. You just put them in different places. It's like the garden where you plant. Here you plant the tomatoes. Here you have the potatoes. Here you have the chickens, animals. And the classification is first of all a physical act and then it becomes a conceptual reference of that, then you can stick a label on this, then you can draw it. So the science of zoology is based on physical classification, physical fencing, then drawing this like the Renaissance drew the city later, and then you get more complicated nesting and these diagrams at the very heart of the science of biology or let's say zoology, and they are architectures, fundamentally and profoundly architectures.
So, and this is nearly the only move we had for thousands of years: bounding a realm and then subdividing it with basically that nesting logic. And that's also a classification system is nothing but a thinking system. And if you pick up any textbook, any science, the book is a representation of that. It's that bounded thing. And inside it has chapters and sub-chapters. That's the way you can order, the only way you order a whole science. You know, you have these different sub-disciplines and then the sub within this and then different theories within this. And the book content list is structured like this.
And that's the most general overview conceptualization. Your map of the science is a simple, like a very simple architecture. And it's like this. And so when you in the Renaissance, when science is starting, these ordering of the instruments of categories, it is like the tool cabinet of the handicraft person. This is a sorting matrix. If you go now to a museum, how do you build a collection? It's the archaeology museum. It's these shelves. They become diagrams. They become filing cabinets. They become libraries. That's the way we think. We think architecturally. There's no other way of thinking. Language itself is operating like this. And order is a place for everything and everything in its place.
So in the Renaissance when you have the first proper science and books about certain domains, for instance here an ethics, the system of virtues and vices. How do you think about it? You take the city plan because nothing else. You have no other thinking tool than the city map when you can then kind of segment it, a hierarchy of central and less central and segmentation, the system of virtues, the system of vices.
What is the image of the cosmos when you want to think? It's again the city, which nobody's invented. We generated the city gradually building out from a circle which is the necessary bounding, the most efficient material bounding, the extension, and then we draw it and then that's everything we want to understand. Understanding means fitting the domain of knowledge into the city diagram. There's no other way of thinking. That's my challenge here. Thinking the cosmos, center, periphery, upside down, also in three dimensions. So what is this, 1582? It's a memory system. It's a kind of map of all human knowledge and it's obsessive. There's only one way to systematize knowledge: it's drawing it into the city map and symmetry and proportion.
There are other diagrams, and I don't have that here, but Immanuel Kant is reflecting in the 18th century, a few hundred years later, on the, he's trying to make the map of our mental faculties, the fundamental categories by which we order our thinking. His drawing, I wish I had this here, but it's a classical architecture. It has four points. It has two symmetry axes. It's completely symmetrical. It has four headings. So, it's substance, causality, relation, and quantity, four. And each has three sub-categories. And that's the systematic system of all judgments, all types of thoughts fits into a Villa Rotonda plan. And that's his idea of how you know that this is systematic knowledge: simply he wants to have the symmetry axis and he wants to have under each heading three sub-categories.
It's obsessive. But since up to this time all architecture which wasn't thrown together like a crazy village was that, and this became the only diagram, and that's why it's interesting. You have, when architecture suddenly breaks through this, it's exciting for philosophers because we keep habituated into this logic of containment, of symmetry, of repetition through our architectures.
Ah, here it is. So, this is another of Kant's. Everything in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason looks like Villa Rotonda, let's say, the most ordered of all architectures, the classical architecture. And that's, I think, symmetry and completeness as qualities of thought. He wouldn't accept that if it was asymmetric then it can't be the truth. The truth must be like that. And of course looking back now it seems absurd. It's the formal priority coming out of architecture into all thinking anyway. But also, so we have this category of nesting classification. The other thing we have is network. Even to this day, if you look at any science diagram, any science diagram, it's boxes within boxes and maybe lines connecting boxes, these kind of relation diagrams, flow diagrams. Where do they come from? Pathways.
So we have boundaries and then we have pathways and we can draw them and rationalize them and architecturalize them and then we get nodes and connections. The whole science, network theory, graph theory, any diagram in science fits into this category or fits into the nesting category. Can you see the obsession? How much we depend on physical spatial logics which we then emerge. Nobody's designed that. Then we draw and design. This is a city plan. Cutting these pathways and then making a drawing and then using that drawing as a thinking tool. That's abstract thinking is totally dependent on architecture. But this architecture wasn't invented. It just emerges and then we kind of bring it into architecture finally.
Look at this. And what are these? They're just networks of pathways. We have nothing else up to recently. So now that's why I was so excited about, on the right hand side, these are the two topics: boundaries within boundaries within boundaries, and networks, usually kind of branching networks. That's Chris Alexander. The breakthrough is this. Nobody has used, very rarely and hardly ever you see these kind of diagrams. But it's extremely important. Some elements might be in more than one subset. Subsets could overlap. Overlap is a mental operation. And networks could be less ordered than grids or branching. They could be more complex and there could be multiple paths. So that was a breakthrough view.
These should be very common in science. But since all buildings are like cities, are like this, we didn't have that. And the revelation here is we have to go there with architecture. Social organization is more complex. We have overlap. You can be part of many circles, many competencies, many teams and disciplines. Overlap is a social reality. Let's build this and let's think it and let's diagram it. And so, but still again, space syntax is only based on this. Social network theory, this is sociology when it wants to clarify, summarize, what does it use? Path network. Have nothing else to go by anyway.
And I want to bring in, and the whole of mathematics can be founded on set theory. All mathematics can be brought back to set theory. What is set theory? It's this, it's architectures. But they have of course overlap and you know Boolean algebra. I feel like anyway, there's interesting things that systems of language, they all build their own architectures.
And there's French, okay, French, German, Danish, Italian. This means tree, wood, forest. There's no, you can't translate these because they have dissected the world differently. So when you, each language makes cuts. The world is infinitely complex. When you put a language, you're putting in distinction. You draw a cut here, but each language draws these cuts somewhere else. If they were drawing the same cut, then you can just swap out the label. Tree is Baum is, but they haven't cut it the same way. So that means literally you cannot translate. That's why it's interesting, how did the Chinese translate? They don't have the same concepts. They have set these distinctions which emerge out of practice, out of routine differently. That means absolute intranslatability, no matter what you try, because the geometry of the language system of distinction is different.
You know, you could classify the animal kingdom in various ways. Amphibian versus reptile versus this, you know. So if you do that in different ways, and languages have done that, you cannot translate anyway. So I just wanted to show that this, you know, the kind of architecture of modernism was already breaking the classical mold that you allow yourself to organize. If you would look at any social organization of the 19th century, obsessively symmetry, it's crazy. But asymmetric, they couldn't tolerate. That means the system isn't systematic. There's something wrong. It's out of balance. It's out of whack. We've, you know, modernity, we managed to have a social organization which is asymmetric, but it's still nested tree.
And we have these kind of, we tolerate these kind of architecture. We tolerate these kind of institutions. But by the way, in the 70s and 80s you wanted something else. They never have overlap. And that's where we, for instance, this is a typical modernist. You allow asymmetry, but you have each part is separate and internally repetitive. And here we said, okay, why we let them fuse? We have these zones of overlap and interpenetration and no longer repetition but gradients really. This is a very old project anyway. So, so this is, then you jump to something like this. Suddenly instead of set theory circles within circles or even just overlapping circles, you have now degrees of belonging, separation, fusion. How much do these two are in one group? How much are they separate? And so basically set theory becomes fuzzy logics. The boundaries are open. They're blurred.
They are, both you have here in these diagrams you have both overlap and fuzziness. You can be in many sets at the same time with different degrees depending on your centrality position. So there's a much more intricate and sophisticated representation of some logic, some order. And you should order complex social environments like this with more repertoire. But we still have an a priority. We don't do random things. That's not order. But now we're not only doing nesting with sharp boundaries. We're doing overlap, interpenetration, negative Booleans. And we're doing it not with sharp but with degrees of belonging. And as you know, fuzzy logic was required to deliver for something like pattern recognition. A lot of AI operations, logic used to be sharp Aristotelian logic, set theory. You're either an element or not. You're either a subset or not, complementary, etc.
And this logic, this mathematics was running against the wall when it came to certain capacities. And fuzzy logic, everybody understood, allowed us a huge leap forward in technology. All pattern recognition is fuzzy logic based. And just as an example, this means this logic is superior, is more sophisticated, and therefore I want to build, we should live in this logic. Architecture has to become fuzzy logic. That's the project, let's say. And also like this, this radical idea that you not have one pattern and another one next, that you inter, you have multiple reference systems operating on the same substrate, on the same logic, on the same audience, on the same space. That's a dramatic increase of information richness and power of ordering.
Because when you put your finger in there, you could be, if I'm here, I'm in several places. I'm in the circle. I'm on that squiggly line. I'm on XY pavilion. I'm simultaneously placed multiple times and that's powerful rather than having to choose. I'm either here or there and have only one set of system. I'm only part of one system and I have to choose. No, you don't have to choose. Layer them in. That's also when you write a text, when you describe a society, when you describe a science, you can layer it in. It's not that you have to make a choice and have only, but also you can live like this. The city can be like this. The space shouldn't be like this. The architecture can be like this. So, and in the city it's like this. People living, this is a map. It's a certain territory. There are different populations living there. Some populations always go to the local village. They never go to the city. They only know they're close to here, here, here. There's another group of people, white collar professionals. They never go between here. They don't know. They only know where they are relative to this. So these two populations have different maps of reference, different connections, different relations, and they exist and overlap in the same space. So it's a social reality. But our diagrams, our architectures, they're asking us to choose. They're asking us to only impose one order. But we should have multiple simultaneous orders. So this idea of simultaneity anyway.
So these are the kind of things I wanted to bring in. I had another lecture prepared but because of the challenge of architecture and philosophy, architecture and the fundamental principle of thinking and of logic, and that we can expand logic from a simple Aristotelian logic to a kind of probabilistic and fuzzy logic, multi-reference logic, complex network logic etc. rather than just grids. And that is why, you know, and Derrida for instance was interested when he talks smoother versus striated space. Striated space is the hardline distinctions and he said no we don't want, we want smooth, we more or less in many places and we're shifting gradually from one to the other. That's like soft logic, that's fuzzy logic. And so these, the philosophers came in to help architecture to expand our thinking and then make it manifest in the world. But the philosophers were interested in architects because here they can basically help us break up old dysfunctional logics, old dysfunctional philosophical thinking and expand our mind because the mind is a collective mind which comes out of practice. It's not all here and then we do it. We're reflecting, we're absorbing, we're abstracting and learning and then reapplying.
That's why, you know, basically you could say yes there are these metaphors, behen, grabbing, conceiving, you know, grasping means understanding, these are etymological kind of roots, but I'm showing the kind of physical, spatial, architectural roots because we, the language evolves in the built environment we construct, which is always a constructed environment, never a wilderness. A constructed environment means it has already, always already classified, distinguished and connected the different domains and elements. Anyway, that's my pitch on that one. And this is the kind of, yeah, the opposite of this order is not chaos but sophisticated, multi-layered, fine-tuned simultaneity of many orders. That's the pitch. Thank you.
Very interesting. I think Patrik actually highlighted his speech from deconstructivism, which is actually to talk about, I think this concept, what is inside the concept. He's talking about what is the inclusive and exclusive of the concept. What is the concept coming from, which is a subdivision of the elements inside the extrusion which can generate different kind of and project to different kind of logic. This kind of logic could be diagrammatically represented in different ways. Actually this kind of representation he mentioned from zoology, maybe it's kind of diagram showing the logic of the animals how they put in the zoo and actually also including the others and including a place for everything and everything in its place which is maybe a mapping process. But the mapping or this kind of diagram represent a kind of logic and the logic is initial concept to tracing the concept in the ways to present it and maybe it's kind of abstract process. It's kind of abstract process, is a conceptual process because it's kind of abstract machine which could analyze a very complicated logic, right? And I think the difference between constructivism and deconstructivism he mentioned is including the symmetric, including the asymmetric and also he introduced the consciousness or the unconsciousness and this kind of logic. It could be make decision by different human mind. This kind of mind is guiding this kind of logical process to present into a project. I think that is interesting. This kind of diagrammatic thinking actually is some pre-digital I think including pre-Eisenstein research which is quite the starting point of modernism because this kind of abstractness is super important to highlight what is internal logic to be in architecture. Architecture here is kind of framework, right? It's kind of a framework of thinking, kind of framework of concept and how to project this kind of concept into the project. I think it's also mentioned the first lecture today which is super interesting and also Hatcher mentioned about this kind of the field. I think it's maybe the field is kind of a party. It's kind of a, it's not a porch, part is kind of address the subject into the space could be like different options, different result because you can put you in different system. Yeah, different system is different field, one field can include different system. So that is super interesting from this kind of abstract process can represent or he mentions articulate your concept into project making process. So that is I think we can achieve which is the highlight today. And Patrik is also I think a feedback to the first lecture about what is concept. I think from Patrik's conceptual making process which is ontological architecture is kind of abstract thinking, is kind of diagrammatic thinking and also this kind of thinking how to make a complicated design, how to design or physical making process or project making process coming out is based on different logic including the drawing as kind of logic, including maybe the economic investment is kind of logic, maybe the spatial experience is kind of logic. I think it's multi-layers, I mentioned it's multi-fields, multi-layers actually how to introduce a designer into this kind of conceptual projective to the project process. I think today in the context of these two lectures I think it's super. And I think we still have some time. I would like to, anyone put two chairs or three chairs here, two chairs, a dialogue between Patrik and Peter today and I think it would be interesting to talk about is a fundamental philosophy and architecture and maybe the philosophy and the design and how to make a design is kind of a process. It's kind of a...
Yeah, sit in the front please.
Yes, we have microphone.
So, I just wanted to add something to clarify further. So the philosophers were also at the same time realizing we keep falling back onto the old ordering patterns also ordering our thoughts. If you make, for instance, the list of contents for your book, sometimes they are very elaborate. If you look at the content list of Kant's work or Hegel's work, there's a very strong, super elaborate nesting hierarchy. I don't have that here, but it's literally seven levels deep with the bizarre obsession of having the sub-chapter numbers on each level symmetrical. That's, and but also it is in this sense it's hierarchical and it's not pure sequential. But when somebody like Derrida comes in, they also want to get rid of this order of the book. And so for instance, they're experimenting with text where you have a main text, then you run a kind of marginal column of text in parallel. So how do you read this? They don't, you shouldn't know there isn't that chapter and sub-chapter in that sequence, that hierarchy and first and beginning, middle, end. No, you could flip, there's relations but two separate stories and you should make connections. This was also when the internet came up, hypertext. And if you look at A Thousand Plateaus, the Deleuze and Guattari, of course in the end we can't reinvent the book physically so easily, you know, but what they should have done, they should have a box of loose sheets because they want you to jump around, reshuffle, jump as you like, read from the back and make any connections. And they also said use that book. It's not a complete story. You pick pieces and then you apply them to different things. The meaning is in the connection you make and everybody makes different connections. So you can see there this idea of overcoming in philosophy and the physical artifact is a limit. And similarly, Foucault was when he was looking at certain social institutions like the health system, he wrote The Birth of the Clinic, it's a building type when the hospital first emerges and when you draw a line and you separate healthy and sick and categorize different types of diseases and you know you have a clear distinction between patient, doctor, nurse. And he was looking at this similarly with the penal system and the let's say law and order system, the way buildings, their boundaries and the machinery of the building in also something like psychiatry is fundamental for the operation of the discourse. And when he coined this frame which I love and picked up, he said discursive formations, it's not only the terms and sub-terms, the terminology, the typical inferences, the ordering because you can write, you take a subject and you can make a classificatory system, try to map the system of terms. No, he said it's actually a discursive formation includes the buildings, includes the tables, the shelves, the system of drawers in which you come to how you're processed as a patient. You classify there these categories, you filled out, you put into this slot, then there is somebody else come. So the discourse is dependent on all these machinic operations, on these shelving systems, filing systems. We know it now. And what is happening in the computer? It is an analogical transference of all this stuff. What is Microsoft operating systems? It's a filing system. It's a bit like the Renaissance ideal city, the map from the physical city into a drawing of the city into a map of the system of virtues and vices. That's similarly from the language, the filing cabinets into Microsoft. And this is still, we're still shackled by these.
I have some question. I think Patrik is very interesting describe this kind of machinic process which is very, to me, it's materialism because he mentioned about this logic from, is from elements, it's from the logical relation of these elements and how to project the logic into these elements. I think it's a very material, it's material, very materialism. And but I mentioned something...
You have scrolls, endless scrolls.
Different from having a shelf with books. And by the way, I'm just going to interrupt. A certain amount of certain philosophy with a certain level of complexity is only possible through writing and then through printing. So somebody like Hegel could not exist without the library with the works of Christian Wolff, the works of Kant, the works of Descartes, Leibniz. He has his brain together with his shelf, set of books, that machine, that human-machine cooperation. Kant can write because he can go there and pull this book and page and then quote and connect and list. So he's part of a discursive formation.
Very material, very architectural because you know how do you order that shelf. I want to challenge it a bit from this perspective because very material, right? You mentioned the elements of books, the knowledge from the library has knowledge already in the library, pick them, assemble them and to generate some new ideas. So that is very machine, very like AI, this AI doing data frameworks and also the algorithm. But my question goes to what is human? I think to analyze a human is kind of conceptual process. It's not a very physical or material logical making process. Some instinct with no reason, just something emerging from your mind with no logic.
But you know the point of this is this, every philosopher recognizes that for instance thinking, I mean Dennett had this wonderful phrase, we can't do much with our bare brains. You need to first upload a lot of apps into your laptop. And these apps are through language, through learning, through, and literally, you know, if you let a kid run wild, it's not going to be recognizably human without language, without thinking that, you know. So we have this huge sponge, this huge supercomputer but we need to, we function only with all these systems of order, architecture, language where you can hook something to something. And even when you think yourself you do language dependent. And therefore if the world was, if you know people with a very simple language in a very simple society, they have only a few words and the combinations of these words, that's what they can think. They can't think anything else. They can't think what we can think simply, they cannot. There's no chance to expect them to say something which isn't within their language system.
I want to challenge it a bit.
And so we are not independent, we are not isolated. We are functioning as we operate in this infrastructure of language, filing cabinets, now iPhones and reference systems. That's the way we function, we think, and we can kind of mirror some of that. But it's, we can do very little with our bare brains. The science of mathematics, you literally need pen, paper, pen, ruler, compass and writing to develop that competency. So that's a fundamental question. What is a concept? How to generate concept? What is a human concept? I think...
Cultural product of cultural evolution. I'm not 100% agree on because something missing, something missing, something missing because human is not machine because based on what AI is doing. But I think still something missing here is what is the concept. Because when the concept generate, we have some talented designers, although we're coming from the same school, the same building, we know the same language, we're in the same office, but still we have some talented concept. I want to analyze, can help us analyze what's the difference between the talented architects or talented designer and a very knowledgeable designer? Is there any difference between the knowledgeable designer can know anything, logic, diagrams, everything, all the elements, but is there anything missing in this kind of concept?
Are you materialist? First, I have several moments here and I will answer about this. I think you are talking about new concept. How new concept is possible? You can say like this. You mentioned, I hope it was one experiment, when we presented Chora journal in Harvard and Siting asked audience, does anybody know the book, the Chora work did? It was just one hand. Well, what we have in this book, if you remember, we have one pseudo-concept which is Chora. We have ideas in Plato. We have ideas and we have material copies of these ideas. We have an ideal architect and the drama or theater. And Plato was intuitive guy and he said that there is some kind of drama where this transformation of idea in material is possible and this place which is not a place, this space which is not this space is, for us today this is space and for Aristotle was he was material, not we copy our frame of this. That means that this is the new concept. Well, I don't know how well talented or genius, I don't know, but okay, what is, and worked. They wanted to show this space, show this Chora and project something visible which is impossible. How to produce, how to make space visible? That's the, this is the new, I think this is new operation. They found something new in Plato and they tried to do something well to, as Patrik said, to one abstraction materialized, to make it visible. I don't know how to do this. Probably I think that this is, I think something genial here in your presentation is this cut language and this distinction, this interactions which is not interactions between the languages. And you made it in practice one hour ago when you started to talk in Chinese. What does, what does mean the words? You are using the words. Words are projects. You started to talk in Chinese to provoke the conceptual theater in the heads of Chinese here. You too. That was the, that was the brilliant moment that English doesn't work. It's beautiful. Okay. Something more on ontology of architecture. This is brilliant. I hope it will be new book but ontology of architecture or architectural ontology. Okay, there are some problems here. What you want to do? I mentioned epistemology of architecture. You said ontology of architecture means what connects object or what connects architectural acts or what connects, ontology is some kind of connection, conjunction if you want anyway, okay, that's the just I'm mentioning you. Okay, I will check on your place now immediately for Chora because this is classification. We have already two huge classifications in last 50 years. This is Foucault and this is Lyotard. You have collections of objects etc. etc. You are doing something different but it's necessary to show what is this and I think this is the genius or talent who is trying to do something different, who is trying to make something different. That's it. This is the violence, aggressiveness to do something different. That's it. Plus here, I think this is new news which is not just generation, regeneration etc. There is something stupid in news you know sometimes. Wow. Okay, at the end, this synthesis. You mentioned this. I don't like this.
No, this is, this is a German moment in you. Okay. You...
