MD: When the LA 12 exhibit first opened and I went to it as a student, I remember a faculty member was sort of arguing about the collection of architects. Thereís some irony, because his argument was, basically - you had completed the Ron Davis project, and you had done some other work, but your work was up there with Cesar Pelli, Craig Ellwood, who at that time had built large projects. And they asked, why were you being included in the group? I remember distinctly Bernard Zimmerman defending your presence in the group. And the irony now, after twenty years, looking back and having just walked though your office and seen the enormous scale of the projects and the range from Japan to Germany - so much has happened in that twenty years. Certainly there must have been key moments along the way, in terms of the body of work. Do you see your house as one of those projects?

Yes.

JM: Did you expect it to get the kind of attention that it did?

No, I didn't expect any of that. I was taken by surprise.

JM: Are you comfortable with the position it's taken within your body of work?

Well, comfortable or uncomfortable, it doesn't matter. I never think about that. I think there are projects that aren't as good as others, but that has to do with many other factors. Clients - you know, it does take a good client, a good program, a good budget. People will have to be willing to play with you. You don't do this by yourself. I would say the best projects happen when the client and the architect and the intentions are in synch. It's difficult - I have a project even now, the people are wealthy, and it's a nice project - a great project. But it's not the same. I've had trouble with that one. It could be a much better project, if the clients would get involved.

And then there are projects where you start to go to far. I get out on a limb myself, where if you follow your nose like I do, sometimes you get out there where all of a sudden it's like the guy who walks out over the cliff and there's no cliff and he's out there - 'aaaugh!' (flails his arms) And occasionally - that happened in that little project in Bad Oeynhausen (EMR Communication of Technology Center), the clients kept egging me on. The way they spoke to me was, they'd come into the office and they'd say, 'Wow! Wow!' and then the guy'd say, 'Can you get me one more 'wow'?'?' So that eggs you on! This guy thinks this is great, and now he wants to push it further! We got out there much further, and realized that the client was caught in a thing that was going to hurt him. I looked at it all and pulled back from where the project was going to a safer haven for him. I wrote him a note, 'Sleep well tonight. It's OK. It's still wow, wow, wow,' but it's not wow, wow, wow, WOW, wow.' But this is our recommendation. We don't want you to get hurt.' I see the project it could have been. And that extra 'wow' would have killed the project for him because it would have meant a couple of extra months of work, and we would have been over schedule. It's a power station, and it had to be open by a certain day or he lost his franchise. So he kept the franchise, the building's built, it's not as good as it was going to be. But I learned a lot from it, and it was a stepping stone to Bilbao. And so the extra 'wow' which we learned on that project but that didn't get into it ended up finding its way into Bilbao. I got those German clients to go to Bilbao, and I explained that to them. 'This is partly your project - part of this is you.' And I got a nice letter from them saying how proud they were to participate. It's that kind of thing, working with clients, working with people, and I love the people.

Do you think that your experiments with cheap materials could be applied to low-cost housing?

We did low-cost housing in Frankfurt. With (?) and galvanized metal. It looks OK. It's not 'wow, wow.'

Did it have a big impact on the budget?

No. We were within budget, but I don't think that's the issue. Architecture, unfortunately, isn't the controlling factor in low- cost housing. In America we're not even asked to participate, so we're negligible. In Germany it's not that way. In Germany - it's strange, you've got to realize that Germany first embraced Picasso, before France did, and that's consistent with them. My first European buildings were in Germany. My best fans and clients are in Germany. It's funny, especially when you're a Jew, Germany doesn't have that cachet - you're kind of worried about it. Who are these guys that like me? But that kind of taste for art and architecture doesn't exist here in America. I've been exposed to British and Spanish royalty, the French government, the Japanese emperor. And I'm talking about having dinner with them, spending an evening with them, getting calls from Chirac and Mitterand, over the years. The American government won't even hire me to do anything. In fact we submit for courthouses every once in a while, and we get funny letters back, and people on the selection committee, the GSA (General Services Administration) guys, just guffaw to think of someone like me doing the project. We've got a long way to go. On the other hand, we build more buildings so there are more, better 'Architecture' buildings. But generally that's not a big value. It is Germany. It is in France. It is even in Britain, which is really conservative, there's more interest in architecture. In Germany the discussion about architecture is in the government. The political parties talk about it and when one party comes in an another goes out, a whole new architecture comes in with the party. It's disgusting on some level, and it's wonderful on others.

What changes have you seen in the profession of architecture in the past twenty years?

Well, I don't pay much attention to what everyone else is doing. It goes up and down. We went through Post-Modernism. Which Bernard and I hated. Because we're old Modernists, right? It seemed like an applique, it seemed irrelevant, it seemed like a pastiche. Yet there was something in it, something they were yearning for in scale, feeling, and emotion that the Modern glass boxes lacked. See, the Modern glass boxes played right into the developers' hands. It gave them a cheap way to move. The legacy of Mies persists. People are still building those buildings, with the residual Mies office. Because they are predictable, they know how much they cost, and there's an architectural cachet that goes with it that doesn't cost anything. But if you go to the Lake Shore apartments, there's a feeling, an emotion. If you go to the ersatz Mies, it doesn't do that. So there was some sense in his hand, in his head, that translated from all that to the materials. And 99% of the buildings made that are ripping that off are even further denigrated. In a gradual downslide to frigid, cold, impersonal. So the Post-Modern thing was inevitable, that there would be a backlash. But then again, the people that were doing it well, and I think Moore was doing it decent, I wouldn't say that it was great, but it was decent, some of those pieces. Bill Turnbull did it better. Graves was into a language that was unique with it, even though the first iterations were faceless, lifeless. But again, the developers and the culture grabbed it because it was easy; they bastardized it, chewed it up and spit it out and made it into crap, to the point that nobody likes it any more. They took it apart and screwed it up. So now the backlash is to the new simplicity. And it's more palatable to us old Modernists, because it smells like, looks like, what we came from. In actual fact it's more decorative than the Post-Modern stuff. It's as much a pastiche - it's a pastiche of Modernism that's not convincing. But it's more acceptable because it looks like Modernism. Intellectually, it's OK. But if people want to go back to that - if you read the recent essays about the Museum of Modern Art selection process, our own Fred Fisher was quoted as saying something like, thank god we're going back to the box.

For me, architecture is about taking the emotions you have and getting through a process of building. Hundreds of people, hundreds of hands on the tiller other than your own. Getting to the end of the day with a building that has some feeling, and emotion. I've just been to Liebeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin. Now he comes from a holocaust family, and he's very angry. I saw the building and I like it - it's got a lot of problematic things about it, architecturally, but there's so much detail in a building like that. It's huge. But what's impressive to me is that it's the angriest building I've ever seen. It denies public space. When I saw the big, giant thing I thought, well cute, but... But when you're there, it's a complete denial of public space. I mean it's relentlessly anti-public-space. That anger comes through. And why not, in a building about the holocaust. By the time I got through it, I was crying. I was very moved by it. And I was not expecting to feel anything. I don't know if he can do it again for a museum that's about Modern art, he brings the same anger to it, then he's one-note! But I think he's not, I think he's very bright. There's something going on there. For me that's it.

The other architect who could do that, who I never met, he died, is Scharoun. There's two Scharoun Buildings in Berlin, the Philharmonic and the library. And when I was starting work on Disney Hall I went to the Philharmonic because Ernest Fleishman liked the feeling of the Philharmonic, with the orchestra pulled forward and the seats around the back. I attended five concerts there over a period of two years. To three of those concerts I went completely alone, I didn't know anybody there. Every time I went, I met people. It was easy to talk to people. The building engenders that. I attend a lot of concerts at the Dorothy Chandler, and I never meet anybody. And I know everybody here. I don't know anybody in Berlin. I always meet somebody. I never meet anybody here. The building body language is such that it prevents that. And you go into the library and it does the same thing. And I don't even like the detailing of Scharoun, it's hokey for me, there's all kinds of stuff, I could go on endlessly, but the thing does have wonderful feeling. It's a wonderful place to listen to music, it's a nice human experience to go there. I always thought Aalto was that person, that could do that, but I went to his concert halls and I didn't find that. His smaller buildings did that, you felt good in them, you felt the Master. But in the concert hall in Helsinki, Finlandia Hall, it didn't have that. Scharoun did it twice, and then Scharoun's assistant built the chamber hall, in the style of Scharoun next door, and it doesn't have the feeling. You can go from one to the other and it's just - dishwater. So I think what happens is that people's feelings, their personalities, come through the work. If you follow your own instincts, it becomes yourself somehow. Our buildings look like us. It's a signature, your sensibilities. Like how I look, here it is, my stuff looks like this.

Are there changes you would like to see in the profession?

Yes. I would like the architect to be the master builder again. And I would challenge the AIA on this issue. For whatever reason the AIA has not assumed leadership in making the architect responsible. It's helped create a system that infantilizes the architect in the business world. And I think it's done a disservice to the profession of architecture. But most people in the AIA are into being a part of a business; they've abdicated their responsibilities as architects and confused it with a business venture, instead of an artistic venture. I think it's been a disaster. I think that the path to changing it is pretty clear, and we're starting to nip at the edges of it with the way we're practicing now. I would love to flip it over right now, but I can't because of the legal system makes it too precarious. But for instance, in Bilbao - there is no straight piece of steel in the entire project. It came in 18% under budget with six bidding contractors. And they were within one percent of each other. So it's a very tight bid spread on a very complicated building. The way we did it is we did very definitive drawings, and then through the use of the computer we were able to develop the representation of every bolt hole and every bolt, and measurements for every piece of steel so that instead of the steel contractor using the drawings, we gave him a disk, and he fabricated the steel from the disk and played back to us a shop drawing. So it was like ordering fruit at the grocery store. There was nothing to think about, and they loved it. Because it removed the risk. And responsibility. So in effect we were taking on more responsibility. We were demystifying the complexity of it, and all they had to do was manufacture these pieces, and assemble them on the site like an erector set. And in that big job with thousands and thousands of piece of steel, only two pieces of steel maybe six feet long had to be re-fabricated, because when it came time to put them together, they were less than four or five inches off. A tab had to be welded on to them to close the gap. But when you do that, the architect becomes the parent and the contractor becomes the child. In the normal relationship, the contractor is the parent and the architect is the child. And any practicing architect today understands that. The owner gravitates to the contractor, because they're in control of the purse strings. And the owner has added further insult to the equation in the last few years by adding the construction management people, who are parasitic. They get a percentage for being construction managers, but they have no responsibility. It's an idiocy that an owner hires somebody, puts them in the most responsible role in the equation, over the architect, over the contractor, and this person has no financial risk or responsibility in the equation. So there's no accountability - they can say anything, and they do. They're completely useless. One percent of the cost of construction goes to that idiocy. So it's not about money, it's not about fees, it's about a warped system that has been promoted, or prolonged, by the AIA and its contracting systems and its working with legal - at this point in my life, I don't feel like the AIA represents me. I'm from another planet. I can't relate to what they're doing.

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