Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Architect and cultural critic who declared modernism dead and co-founded Maggie's centres, pioneering landscapes inspired by DNA and cosmic forms.
On the island
Eight records
It's Harley Simon's You're So Vain. I've chosen it because, of course, as architects are so vain, and male architects particularly, it symbolizes that me generation of the 60s, where I come from, and the architectural profession. And it's sung beautifully by Carly.
Renée Fleming and Frank Lopardo
It's a duet from Cosy von Tutti, which has the female and the male voice in Antiphon. It's a wonderful dialogue, if you like, of a passionate man and a resisting, virtuous woman. And his passion slowly breaks down her virtue. And it's so moving. I heard it a lot with Maggie and today with Louisia, my wife.
Sonata No. 2 for Piano (third movement)
This is uh a work of my father's composed during the war, Second World War, when one of his friends had been killed. ... It's a very sombre piece, but it shows his uh kind of music. It's piano music and it's uh atonal, it's modernist, he was a very strong modernist.
The Great Gate of Kiev (from Pictures at an Exhibition)
This is a piece that my father played to me after he could see that I wasn't loving modern his atonal music. So he used to play me various things, but this one, The Great Gates of Kiev, by Muzorski, he would play with great brio, and it's very dramatic, very pictorial. And martial music. So it it moved me. And he always would play it when when I was in a bad mood. So he would use music for the emotions.
For me the voice is very musical and poetry. So I can think of nothing more poetic and musical than Hamlet. When I came to Britain I saw Richard Burton perform in it, and Burton's Hamlet is incredible. His voice was so strong and dramatic. It's really a little bit over the top, but I think it's pure music.
Soliton Waves (from The Garden of Cosmic Speculation)
Well here this composition done by an American, named after our Garden of Cosmic Speculation. It's a piece which does in music what I'm trying to do in landscape, which is to take ideas and translate them into another form. So it's very pictorial. A soliton wave is what I've chosen. And the waves that go through the garden are picked out by the the music.
When I am Laid in Earth (Dido's Lament, from Dido and Aeneas)
It's a wonderful lament in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. It's Dido's Lament. I sang this when I was at school. I didn't sing, of course, her role, but I sang a rather ridiculous part of this opera. And it's a very poignant one of Remember Me, it's Dido's asking to be remembered.
The Rite of SpringFavourite
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam
Well, it's my favorite piece of music, Stravinsky's Rites of Spring, which I think is really important. Change music. I think you've got to turn up the amplifier when you listen to it. It is it's about it's a cosmic piece for me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:25You say that architecture is the ultimate public art. Explain that to me.
Well, you have to see architecture all the time if you're in the city. Most people look at their feet, but actually it's forced on you. And architects have to decide what they're going to symbolize and bring to the consciousness. Therefore, they have to figure out what's important, what to express. And for me, it's not only nature, but the larger picture of the universe.
Presenter asks
1:47Do you actually think it really is that important, the sort of buildings we find ourselves in? What effect do you think [bad buildings] have upon us if they are badly designed?
Bad buildings do have a negative effect on cultures that are impoverished, prisoners, for instance, or hospitals. So the negative case is easy to prove for certain kinds of building types. The positive case is much more difficult. It's a framer. It's like a picture frame, the building. And if it's not working well, then it has a depressive effect.
Presenter asks
2:16What do you think of that sort of competitive architecture – people who are driven to build the tallest and the biggest?
The keepsakes
The book
Arthur Koestler
Yes, I would take um something that I read and it had an influence on me in 1964, Arthur Kessler's Act of Creation, the Act of Creation. And I met Kessler in London just about that time, and I was very impressed by the way he describes creation as a mixture, as a hybrid, pulling together different frames of reference. I would well like to read it again to see how much is still true and important.
The luxury
a recent invention, a three D printer, which can print anything. You you may have heard of them like the regular printers, but they spit out resin or plastic or whatever it is, whatever material that you can put in the printer. ... You can print anything from it, internal organs or even a little plane, an airplane, so I could escape.
Well, you're quite right that today particularly architects are competing over the iconic building. I prefer the Gherkin as a building. I mean, it's a skyscraper. It's really world class. The Schard is the biggest in Europe, but not as great.
Presenter asks
3:39Does [the arms race with tall buildings] tell us something about the human race – that there is always this need to somehow state [our] case, to reach further, to be seen, to achieve something?
I think there is an arms race. And architects are in this double bind. They're forced to perform and to compete to perform. And therefore, they go out way out on the limb and come up with ridiculous one liners that people hate. So they're more failures as tall buildings than they're successes.
Presenter asks
18:13You wrote 'The Language of Postmodern Architecture' and in it you put a date on the death of modernism – July 15th, 1972 at 3:32. How on earth did you come to that conclusion?
That was the shot heard round the world or seen on television. It was the blowing up of a modernist housing estate in St. Louis called Pruitt Argo. … Photographs and movies of it blowing up were seen around the world, and I saw this as the death of modernism, which happened in architecture in a way that didn't happen, let's say, in the other arts, let's say music. … I think architecture has to be popular.
Presenter asks
28:09Your late wife said, 'Above all, what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying.' Was she able to engage that strategy herself in those last two years of her fight?
Yes, she was. Um but when she first had uh the diagnosis of death, she did curl up to die. … She had to overcome that. … And then once she was in a fighting mode, Her personality really changed, and the idea of setting up these centres really became the leading thing in her last year of life.
“My my view is that the best architects are hermaphrodites. They have female and male characteristics.”
“Symbolism stops at my door.”
“Fighting is a very bad metaphor because when you have cancer, you know, there's many things which you have to do aside from the struggle. And above all, as Maggie said, not to l lose the joy of living. So the best attitude toward it is both to care a great deal and to not care at all.”
“I think she [Maggie] would love the architecture, and I think what she did, she said a very surprising thing, that the riskiest thing in her battle was deciding to try to live. … Well, if we're going to go down, let's go down fighting it.”