japanese interior design elements

so first thing, i thankyou all for coming, for being here with ustoday because it's really-- we're very awareit's a very tricky, a very busy timein the semester. so thank you so muchfor choosing to be here. i really think it's avery special occasion and definitely think it'sworth the choice of being here. so i know it's-- wealways say the same. but it's difficult,it's almost impossible.

rick sennett doesn'tneed an introduction. but it would be really almostverging on the ridiculous to go through a listof his publications, to go through a list ofhis academic positions, of his awards andprizes received. but it would be alsoequally unnecessary to introduce him in themore literal or even phenomenological sense ofthe word "introduction." so we don't need to bringhim in with a introduction,

to bring him into thegsd because he's already part of the gsd. so in a sense, i would say thathe's already part of many of us through his writings,through his books. on the other hand, richardis an old friend of the gsd and a part of the [inaudible]. richard, he wrote hisphd here at harvard in the history ofamerican civilization. and then he stayed for a whileas a fellow of the joint center

for urban studies,at harvard-mit for a number of years. and then later on,he came back as-- i don't know exactly thetitle, but something like the senior researcher,senior visitor, senior fellow, senior something. definitely senior, sorry aboutthat-- of the loeb fellowship program, just four yearsago, something like that. and then i had also thepleasure and the privilege

to teach with himfor a couple of years in the elements of urbandesign studio here at harvard, at the gsd. so that's what ineed to start with. when we werediscussing about how to address thesesymposium together with the whole committee, thissymposium on inside matters that keil moe has sointelligently and really carefully put together,one of the first names

that came to our minds toreally open the conversation and definitely framethe possible questions was that of richard sennett. richard sennett hasdefinitely spent most of his intellectuallife addressing issues of inside and outside,inner and the subjective, as well as the outerand the more physical, the self and thecity, the belief city and the physicalcity, living and dwelling,

all of those. and he's trying to basicallyanalyze, understand, inhabit, and bridge those divides. and i think that's somethingwhich is absolutely relevant and very important. on a final, morepersonal note, i would say that i firstencountered richard sennett through his writings,through his books, through a very special book forme, which was flesh and stone.

it was a book thatchanged the way i saw a lot ofthings, that really opened lots of doors for me. and then i tried to readas much as he had written. and at that time, i neverreally imagined, it never crossed my mind thati would be meeting the man behind the books. so when i finally metthe man behind the books, i was surprised-- really,not surprised at all,

actually, becausein the end, that's one of the few things thatgives you a little bit of faith in mankind, that thegreat people happen to be great people sometimes. so really, i enjoyed the factthat the mind behind the books was even more or atleast equally interesting as the books themselves. and that was a real pleasure. so we enjoyed, really,being with him.

he was disproportionatelygenerous with our students and with ourselves. and i have to say that. and he always shared somany insights with us. so lastly, i'd like to saythat-- i had a few notes, but i really didn't read them,so-- to try to define richard, it'd be, once again,really difficult. he's a social analyst, a socialintellectual, a thinker, an educator, definitely.

and borrowing from his owndefinition of craftsmanship as the skill ofdoing things well, i would say that he's acraftsman of thinking, a craftsman of teaching,and a craftsman of living. and actually, what's reallynice is that he continuously reminds us that craftsmanshipor being a craftsman is not a professionalskill, but a life skills. so definitely, interior matters. keil will talk aboutthat in the afternoon.

and richard sennett matters. so really, join me inwelcoming richard sennett back to the gsd. [applause] thanks, richard. thank you so much. [laughter] i'll see you later. wow, well, after thatwonderful introduction,

i'm really going todisappoint you because i've been thinking about something. and the thoughts i haveabout this are-- i'm just trying to thinkout with you now. and the backgroundto this is that i had a big shift in my ownlife as an urbanist when, three years ago, i becameinvolved in a project that the un puts on every 20years, called habitat iii. and this is somethingsponsored by un-habitat,

which is based innairobi, kenya, which does not have a great airport. and it's an assessment of thestate of the built environment. and this year, it'sfocused on cities. and i and my team arereadying a manifesto for it with its director, joan cos. has he ever spoken here? joan clos? he's the formermayor of barcelona.

you have to get him here. so this was, as you'll see,something unexpected to me about thinking abouta theme that i've thought about a lot inmy life in other ways. and i guess you haveto tell me what's wrong with the accounti'm going to give you. i'll talk for about 50 minutes. it may seem that whati'm talking about has nothing to dowith urban design.

but at the end, iwant to make clear that it has everythingto do with it. i'm interested inthe relationship between the interior andinteriority, that is, between the enclosureof physical space and the notion of subjectivity. oh, and i shouldsay, i'm not going to show a single slide, not one. i'm interested inthis relationship.

and there is an account whichsays that the two are deeply linked, that the articulationof interior space was part of what enabled thedevelopment of a certain kind of bourgeois--initially, bourgeois-- european sense ofthe subjective life, something shelteredand enclosed. and what i wanted to do isgive you an alternative account of that, whereinteriority is actually linked to the exteriorrather than the interior.

ok? that's the themei want to pursue, that this standardaccount leaves out a different way ofthinking about interiority as subjective experience andbehavior in exterior spaces. and as i say, what hasjogged my own thinking about this isexperiences that i'm going to describe to you,particularly in cairo. let me first give you abrief account or a summary

of this standard account of therelation between the interior and interiority. the standard account beginswith the fact that in the past-- it's so wonderful. i think that means the15th and 16th centuries-- that interior spacewas not differentiated. people slept in thesame rooms they ate in. bedding was broughtinto the room. they slept there.

it was taken awayin the morning. they ate. they did their businessthere, and so on. the interior was aspace in which there was no concept of privacy. and this is a standardaccount that historians give, including things that,for instance, what we think of as veryprivate acts like sex were things that happened inthe presence of other people.

this is lawrence stone, who wasa great historian of sexuality, argued this, thatbasically, sex was not a private experience, thatpeople-- well, they didn't tell other people whereto sleep, or they drew the curtains around the bedif they could afford curtains, and so on. but the people-- there was nota private room in which people had that kind of intimate life. and stone argues fromthat, as have many others,

that the notion of privacyand the interior, there was no real correlationbetween them. the next stage inthis standard account is that a new idealof domesticity that appears in themiddle of the 18th century among the europeanbourgeoisie dictates a kind of new interiorspace, one in which separate rooms perform separatefunctions, particularly sleeping, which is segregatedfrom other activities,

and that the spaceof domesticity is not the space in whichthe public is received inside, that is, visitors. and you can see this inthe development of housing in the 18th century inlondon, for instance, in the 1740's, whereyou have differentiated rooms for different functions. and the idea about thiswas-- and it's initially an idea of rousseau's,which is that

in the shelter of privatedomestic space, that subjectivity is set free. he argues this in julie,the famous novel and also la nouvelle eloise, that adifferent kind of subjectivity, one which guards theself, is something to be protectedagainst the outside, is enabled by the developmentof the division of labor in interior space. i should say that this isnot merely the interior.

this story about the interioris not merely architecture. it's also somethingabout the clothing that people wore becauseit's certainly true that in the 1830's and 1840's,the idea for ordinary people is that they woulddress differently when they were in thefamily than when they were in the realm of strangers. amazing to us that it shouldever be thought otherwise. but a lot of the iconographyof people's clothing

shows that it's somethingthat before the 18th century, that clothing is clothing. you wear it wherever. and that thisdifferentiation begins. it's further articulatedas houses got warmer in the 18th century bythe adoption of women, of negligee clothing, thewearing of muslin dresses, for instance, very thin. women even sometimeswetted them down

to show off their breastsand things like that. this became intimatebehavior, so that when we talkabout the interior, we're also talking about akind of bodily comportment and bodily dress, as wellas an architectural space. what's deduced from this is thatthis private realm, according to this story, creates a kind ofzone of openness and frankness and sharing that constituteswhat we think about as interiority, that it's aspace in which people feel

free to show themselves as theyreally are, either physically or in terms of their behavior. it's a story toldby people like stone or by, in a differentway, phillippe aries. have any of you read this book? is it still-- i don'tknow if it's still read, centuries of childhood,fabulous book which tries to detail all of this fromthe worlds of children, what it meant to be in an increasinglyinteriorized, privatized space,

that the nursery,for instance, becomes an aspiration formiddle class people to segregate childrenin the nursery. it is something you can read,this subjective aspect of it, in 19th century novels likebalzac's le pere goriot, where the interior becomes a space ofrevelation, a revelation that doesn't occur in the street. and in my domain,in social theory, it is behind ideas like gastonbachelard's notions of shelter

in the poetics of space. another book people read? it's a great book. and the idea isthis mythical hut that he has-- theinterior space, is a space of opening up. in his famous statement,[speaking german]. that is, being issomething rounded. it's enclosed.

so that's a standard account. the contrary account--a contrary account is given by georg simmel. and that's in an essay calledmetropolis and mental life. and it starts in atotally different place. it starts actually inpotsdamer platz in berlin. and simmel wasthe first theorist to think, what is thetheory of the street as embodied by potsdamerplatz, which

was a huge shoppingstreet filled with a diversity of people. most people in berlin tried toget as far away from the lower classes as possible. we're talking about people. but for shopping, theywere brought together. and it was a verydynamic street. and simmel said, what canwe make theoretically of it? very, very sympatheticto my way of thinking.

and his answer wasthis, that in a street, what you get is a kind ofoverstimulation physically, and that the response to thatis what he calls blase behavior, on the one hand, that is,wearing a mask so that you show nothing to people. you're not really there. you're blase. and on the other hand,behind that mask, there is thefeelings that you're

having by being in the street. and these feelings,these sensations, are your subjectivity. that is what urbansubjectivity is about. it's a reaction to being exposedto difference and complexity, which divides perceptionso that on the one hand, there is very much indifferenceor seeming indifference. simmel takes this afurther step in saying it articulates rationalbehavior, which

is very instrumental. and on the other,behind the mask, you're stillfeeling all of this. in other words, you are divided. you know what he's talkingabout in terms of eye contact, how important it is onthe street to manage it so that it's not challenging. right? you can feel dissed if youstare too much at somebody else

or complimented. but we won't go there. that's the experienceof old age. but the notion is that you'remanaging your comportment so that you're veryneutral on the outside. but you're stillstimulated by that. you're aware of this otherperson coming towards you. is he of another raceor something like that? the importance aboutthis is that this

is an urban accountof interiority, that is, of subjectivefeeling, linked to an exterior condition, thatis, of exposure to others. you try to showthat you're cool, but you aren't cool inside. there's an inside-outsidedivide, simmel says. but it's one that'smade by the street rather than removedfrom the street. and furthermore, he saysthat your subjective feelings

are actually heightened by theexterior stimuli of the street. rather than tryingto neutralize them, as in the standard account,to get away from them in order to open up andshelter, the notion is you're feeling more themore you're on the street, on that exterior. so these are twocontrary accounts, one which links theinterior with interiority and the other whichlinks interiority

in the sense ofsubjective feeling to living exteriorlyin the street. now, this is a hugelong prologue to what i want to talk to you about. i have been a partof this un work. i have been spending a lotof time in islamic cities. and particularly, i'vespending time in cairo. and through a variety ofcircumstances, i, as a man, have been able to talkto various women in cairo

about wearing the burka,this full covering. and 'm interested in clothingand appearance on the street. and somehow, there were manymale minders in the room the times that i have done this. but so i was interestedin women and the street. and someone said to me, in fullburka said to me, you know, what this going intothe street allows me to do as long as i'mdressed is become free of my mother and my children.

and if i could putwords in her mouth, that there is a kind of relieffrom the tyranny of intimacy in a more anonymous realm. and we began hearing a lotabout that because we we're interested for this un projectin the relation between gender, interior and exterior. the bourgeoisconstruction of that is that gendered spaceis interior space, right? that's part of thestandard account.

but we were findingsomething else made complicatedby the fact that, in this religiousculture, being exposed didn't actually meanbeing protected. you could imagine the burkaas a kind of mask in a way. but it's not really accuratebecause wearing of it made people feel free to gointo public with this tinge, as our researchersare now finding, that it's a relief from thedomestic realm in which they

become the prisoner ofchildren, even more than men on the inside. i and the researchersworking for me were hearing this storyin a variety of contexts. and we decided-- and thisis not an islamic story-- that freedom from gemeinschaft,from something warm, opening up to other people,is something that is inflected by young peoplemaking voluntary moves from country to city.

the idea of being free from theintimate knowledge of others is something-- now, thisis a restricted thing-- of people whocould move that was added onto theeconomic imperatives for wanting to move. so this was an account whichwas not simmel's account. and it wasn't eurocentric. it seemed to us thatthis relationship of the exterior tosomething, to the self,

was something that had muchmore modern overtones to it. but what is a kindof interiority, of subjectivity, thatpeople gain by getting away from interior spaces? come back to europe. is it degas whopainted "the absinthe"? [inaudible] d'absinthe? antoine. was it degas or was it--was it toulouse-lautrec?

anyhow, but you know the image. i should have shown this image. this is one image ishould have shown. it's a woman sitting alone at atable with a glass of absinthe. and we can think of that sceneof being alone in public, even more by the table itself--because one of the things that happened in the 19thcentury was long common tables the peoplesat at in bars-- well, they didn't havebars, but pubs, cafes,

were replaced byever smaller tables so that the space,the exterior space became more of a space thatwas hospitable to single people alone, whereas inthe 18th century, there were only long tables. and if you sat at them,anybody could talk to you. and you could intervenein anybody else's affairs. so there is somethingabout privacy forming in public whichis counter to, i think,

the standard story. but it asks a question. what's happening here? or consider again thefact that 30% to 35% of adults who live in bigcities now are single. this is a phenomenon researchedby my friend, eric klinenberg. it's incrediblyimportant for us. and they're singlein the proper sense. the number ofpeople who co-habit

or are married to otherpeople is constantly shrinking in big cities. all of these conditions, isthis a sign of urban loneliness? are they looking for[? baslov's ?] design? are they deprivedof the opportunity of having a rich emotionallife because they are alone? i would say not necessarily. and here's my own argument. i believe that being alonein impersonal conditions

enables a certain kind ofinterior work, a certain kind of subjective activity. first of all, it's reflexive,that the opportunity of being alone is a chanceto ask, what's it all about, without the intrusion of others. that is, you don'thave a stimulation from-- this is somethingi think against simmel. that kind of just being alone,detached from other people, is not a state of being blaseor being defensive against them.

it's a state in whichreflection is possible because you are releasedfrom gemeinschaft, and from the physicalstimulation of other people. the second aspectof this interiority could be calledobservational cruising. and not just gay people do it. most psychogeographies arenot about people engaging the outside, but observing it. a great example ofthis is in sinclair,

the british-- do you know him? yeah, this is probably thegreatest psychogeographer at work today. and it's alwayssomething in which the eye is engaged visually. but it doesn't become imprecatedwith actual engagements with other people. that's quite aninteresting thing to me. the model for this in one way ischristopher isherwood's berlin

stories, whose firstline is, "i am a camera." it's a brilliantpiece of writing. but i would say more than thatwe develop an interior insight, not through interaction,but through the freedom of being able to observewithout interacting. and when i say this,this is something-- you can find traces ofwhat i'm arguing, too, in walter benjamin'stravel writings, for instance, his travelwritings in russia, in which he

says, "i'm free here becausei can't speak the language. and i'm seeing more than peoplewho actually speak russian." and just little tracesof that in benjamin. see you later. he's a dean. he has to work. i mean, you know? let's not get lost on that. so the importance ofthis is that interiority

is something thatis more complicated than simple withdrawal. do you understandwhat i'm saying? what's wrong withthe standard account is that interiority is nota detachment from the world. it's a particularkind of relationship with the world, onewhich is reflexive, which is what i think of asan observational cruising. and finally, and i thinkthis is the most important,

that this conditionthat i'm describing is one which allows thework of memory to go on. and the reason it does isbecause under these conditions in public, thework of memory can be floating and intermittent. think about thedifference between-- i'm sure it's degas-- betweenthe absinthe, the [inaudible] d'absinthe, that womansitting at the table and somebody lyingon a shrink's couch.

expensive. you have 45 minutes. you have to put things together. of course, you havefree association. but what you're paying for issomething that ultimately makes an interpretation, a story. i think the work of memoryin the suspended space of the experienceis more floating. you're not yanked to thenotion of making explanations.

you are in adifferent kind of time when you're in thatexterior space. and bachelard, not inthe poetics of space, but it is more-- beforehe wrote these books, he was a historian andtheorist of science. and he is the authorof basically the theory of epistemic break. and basically, what being inthis kind of floating space, i think, enablesin the exterior is

the experience ofepistemic breaks, of things coming andbroken down and then going. when we talk about daydreaming,in the freudian sense, there's always the revelationof some inner gravamen, of some inner logic. but in an epistemic break,you're not linked to that. you're into somethingthat is more open. and i think in sumwhat i'm trying to say was said by senecaa very long time ago

when he wrote that "neverwas he less lonely than when he was alone in the midst of thecrowd," that solitude in public is a way to know oneself. now, i do have a practical side. i'm trying to do someresearch about this into two domains, howthis kind of subjectivity, this freedom from gemeinschaft,works among groups of african immigrants tolondon and among groups of countryside chinesewho have come to shanghai.

i got spurred on to thisby these discussions we had with women in cairo. how is this constructed outside? i know how it's constructedin western context. but what does that feel like? what is "stadluft machtfrei" as a freedom from the local, theknown, look like to people outside that western context? now, as i said, this may seemvery far from urban design.

but it isn't. and this is the last thingi'd like to say to you. and then maybe wecan have some talk. almost all the designideologies that i think animate us are aboutmaking communities stronger, about bringing peopletogether, about creating convivial spaces,about a street which has got that warm james jacobs,feel good about your neighbor. i mean, i would say it'sthe great unspoken thing

that urban designers have. we should make more community. and if you take on boardwhat i have described to you, we are neglecting spaces inwhich people can dwell alone in safety, in public. we're neglecting to thinkabout what kinds of spaces would enable the young mothersthat i was talking to in cairo to get away from theirchildren and their families. we're not freeing them.

and i think for usas designers, we need to begin totry and translate-- this is my own view-- thatnotion of "stadluft macht frei," of being freed fromthe constraints of domesticity safely into something,our practices, you know. and it could besomething as seemingly trivial as what kind of parkbenches are you creating. do you have spaces inparks which are nothing like the spaces thatolmstead wanted,

which were all spacesof conviviality, but spaces where youcan actually be alone? this has also beenan issue for me in thinking about--i think i'm not going to talk aboutthat-- in thinking about the use ofsocial media in public, which i think is a very, verynarrow and constricted thing. somebody told me--and i was in bangkok. and i was having anotherone of these discussions.

and somebody told me-- itwas a young teenage girl who said, well, whenever i goout, i shut off my phone because my parentscan't know where i am. i thought so, so wonderful. but that's a whole otherissue about this, about what's the relationshipbetween social media, interiority and exteriority. as i read this, youcould make money off of the standardparadigm if you're

mark zuckerberg by destroyingas much-- by interiorizing the space of socialmedia, bringing people closer and closer together. but i don't wantto talk about that. what i want to talk about, orwhat i want to impress on you, is that the emphasison sociable space is something that we'vegot to rethink because for lots of people, that's notwhy they want to be in public. they want something.

they want an interior life,if you follow what i'm saying, a life where they can practicecruising, reflexivity, observational cruising,or cruising, reflexivity, in which the work of memorycan work because they're alone. and that's not somethingthat we, as designers, that's not in our heads. i mean, i think the issueis what kinds of spaces can we make so that somebodycan sit at a table in a cafe, drink a glass of absinthe,smoke a cigarette, and reflect.

you know? that's really the relationshipbetween interiority and the exterior. so that's what i wantedto say to you about this. i am not sure i have-- i am justbeginning to think about this. and as i say, it's thereflections that i've had, which have reallybeen changed by seeing outside westerncontext, the liberation that impersonalpublic space which

allows people to bealone, how valuable that is to many people. and how the freedomfrom gemeinschaft is something that is freedomfor lots of the people elsewhere in the world. so i'd love to getyour comments on this. i don't know how we do this. shall i take them? yeah.

maybe we have thelights up since you're all in gsd darkness. is that possible? yeah, but you have to shout. shout. i'll try. within your accountof liberation that happens in a publicspace, do you have any thoughts or could you reflect a littlebit about-- ok, i'll restart.

within your accountof the liberation that occurs in public space and thekind of individual freedoms, do you have anythoughts or can you reflect a little bit aboutthe indoor public space, the infrastructureof shops, cafes, what stan anderson's calledthe occupiable public space as a enabling infrastructurefor this sort of behavior. or where does itfit in your story? right, that's awonderful question.

and that's maybea beginning point for you in this as adesigner because going back to the 19th century,that's what an arcade was. it was an indoor public spaceprotected from the elements. and we're building lotsof versions on that. i think that there are a coupleof issues about it, which is that the logic of alot of shopping malls, for instance,interior public space, is for people to keepgoing, circulating

as much as possible. the whole notion is thatthey're movement systems, that they're footfalls. that's economicallyhow they work, so that a more complicated,multipurpose public space, multipurpose indoorspace like this, flies against a certain kindof logic, of economic logic. the other thingwe've been finding, because we've beendoing a study as part

of this thing of shoppingcenters in latin america, is that basically, theinteriors, they're guarded and that there's a lot ofsocial selection going on, economics selectionat the gates to these interior public spaces. if you don't looklike you have money, you're not going to get in. and what happensis that therefore, the parking lotsof shopping malls

become the true public spaces. they're usually not planted. that's where kids hang out. that's where a lot ofmusic gets made and so on. but it's all restricted. with those two caveats in mind,i think what i'm talking about could be built inside ifyou created a space that was multi-functional and inwhich economic motion was not the dominant programfor the space itself.

it's really interesting to me. i'm sure all of you haveseen the arcades project that susan buck-morss puttogether with benjamin, with all those photos. there's nowhere tosit in those arcades. and you're standingall the time. and the reasonfor that is simply that the notion about thearcade was that you are never in a space of reflection.

you're in a spaceof consumption. so in principle, ithink you could do it. francine houben is tryingto build something just like a more multi-functionalspace like this. is it in okinawa? no, it's in taipei. but it requires something otherthan capitalist logic, consumer logic, to make it work. i guess the last thingi'd say about this

is that the idea of exteriorthere is exterior to something which is [french]which is protected, something which is controllable. the exterior is something--it's not a [inaudible] space, which is the ultimate of this. and the one thought i had--i should just say this also. your question hasreally wound me up. people have said,well, isn't that what jane jacobs thinkswhen she talks about people

being in the street and so on. and it is and it isn't. i mean, you remembershe has this notion of eyes on the street asa means of protection? it's a question of the no crimeif you can see out your window. it's a question ofwhose eyes they are. if it's your mother's,she's not just looking to see whethersomebody is going to rob you. if she's an islamicmother, she's

looking to see that youdon't talk to any man. so it's the whole issueof the panoptic element is i think it's imprecatedin our ideas of privacy. it's about surveillance. and to make interioror exterior spaces, we'd also have to maybeshut off the cctv cameras. but it could be done. and francine is tryingto do it in okinawa. no, in taipei.

ask me another question. this was such a good question. [chatting in background] it's not actually. i'm curious to know ifyou've been thinking about spaces of the elderly. it strikes me that with agrowing awareness of dementia and alzheimer's, interms of triggering a kind of interiorspace of the imagination

and the idea of opening,creating a way in which one might activatememory, it seems to me like the aged or the typologyof these kinds of facilities, which also need to createphysical interiors-- hard boundary physical interiorsreally need some rethinking. and i think that this particularconstituency of the elderly, it seems to me to strike achord with many of the things that you've been describing. right.

other than the factthat i am very elderly, i hadn't thoughtmuch about this. and i think that's adefamation of-- you know, this is a big divide for us. most of the cities thatun-habitat is dealing with are cities predominantlyof the young. most european cities,and to some extent the japanese andchinese, are much older. but just thinking about what yousay, yeah, it resonates to me.

i mean, in my own case,i would commit suicide before going intoan old age home. i want to be on the street. i want to die on the street. but what i don't want is akind of happy, clappy community stuff that's always providedfor the elderly, which is kind of infantilization. but i really haven'tthought very much about this because our wholefocus on this project

is what to do about this massof young people, many of whom are fleeing from community. that's why they're going--when their parents say, you don't know anybody inshanghai, they go, right! that's a completelydifferent configuration. but would it mean-- well,i have to think about this. it would be very painful for me. then i have to think about it. i mean, this elderly issue, iunderstand, is a big one here.

but it's quite something-- thewhole meaning of exteriority is quite different in mostof the places we've been. ask me a final question. and then we'll have-- do it. or final two questions. i just have a questionconcerning the existing conditions of domesticinteriors because this is still a reality in some ways. and there is also theconcept of family,

something that is persisting. so what about these spaces? i think that there aremany architects that are trying to think of it. but what is yourposition on that? well, i'm not surei have a position. i've lived all my life inlofts, in basically one room. so that's a personalthing about this. but do you think-- i askyou this as architects--

that by creating more fluidinteriors while separating the interior fromthe exterior, having less porosity betweeninside and outside, but more purelyinternal porosity, exacerbates a problem ofoppressive gemeinschaft or solves it? i would think it exacerbates it. i don't know. i really don't know.

but i mean, thenotion, it doesn't just come with a notion offreeing up interior space. it's also a kind ofdivorce from being outside. in that regard, i wanted tojust say one other thing. one of the thingswe're documenting is the trouble that plannersin both beijing and shanghai are having finding a sociablealternative for-- both cities had these vast fabricof courtyard buildings, the lilong and hutong had thesecourtyards in both shanghai--

all destroyed very quickly. and what's happenedin both places have been replaced by much morehygienic, better structures, physical structures. so our chinesecolleagues tell us, it's a sociologicalcrisis because there's no outside anymore. in upmarket parts ofshanghai, for instance, there are beautiful exteriorgardens that are planted.

and there's nobody in them. they are surround. so i think part of this issuefor very rapidly urbanizing places like that is when youdestroy one kind of fabric which has an outside--the courtyards in shanghai were shikumen. they were based-- well,i don't go into it. but basically,people lived outside. they cooked there.

when it was hot,they slept out there. they had a sociablelife in the courtyard. and the destruction ofthat kind of housing has provoked-- inthe case of shanghai, it's now having ratesof juvenile delinquency which are goingthrough the roof. there is a socialbreakdown that's occurring. one reference for this, if youwant to get a local one here-- there's an old article bysomebody name mark freid,

f-r-e-i-d, calledgrieving for a lost home, which is about what happenedwhen the west end in boston was destroyed. and it's the same thing we'reseeing today, although this is on a giant scale. i mean, mile after mile of this. so what is the answer to that? is simply making theinterior more intense but sealing it offfrom the exterior?

is that an answer? i guess the architectural issueabout this would be porosity. does it make sense? but then you'd really-- maybewe should do studio on this. maybe it's a questionof how to work it out so that theporous exterior is one that's also withfreedom from the interior rather than bring it in. i see what we'll dothe year after next.

you'll have to enduremy musings for that. but that's to mewhat this is about. it's not a simple thingabout just taking down walls. there's a much morecomplicated phenomena. let's have a last question. and then i'll sit. how about you? you've defined interiority asa psychological subjectivity. but i think we usethe word "interiority"

in other ways, too, suchas the inherent qualities of interior thingsthat can be defined, the kinds of things that markinterior space inherently. and i was wonderingif you could address one of the breakdowns betweenthe interior and the exterior by talking about formalinteriority in exterior spaces. so for example, thosecourtyard houses in china have a great deal of interiorityin their exterior spaces, where the streets of cairo wherepeople are playing dominoes,

et cetera, bringing the domesticworld into the exterior spaces. so the idea of interiorityin exterior spaces as a formal idea. this is a really good notonly comment, but criticism. and what you make me thinkis that what-- i wouldn't say it's just a psychologicaldefinition of interiority. i mean, i would think ofit as cognitive, certainly, and emotional. but it also supposes a certainkind of social relationship

to other people. but i think you're absolutelyspot on about the idea that there are formal elementsto finding interiority. windows that open or don't open. i really have tothink more about that. i just don't know howyou would get there. and it's the kindof thing that i think we should doin urbanism, which is try to move from avision of the social whole

to actually beingspecific about what role the built environment playsor doesn't play in this. you could imaginethat the conditions, actual architecturalconditions of a house, don't matter to theexplanation i've given. the only architecturalelement that would matter would be the wall, the barrierbetween inside and outside. and i can understand myargument could be reduced to that primitive level.

i don't want to do that. but you're goingto have to tell me how not because it's aquestion about-- i mean, it's a designed question. how much and what kindsof things in design would mitigate against that? and i just don't know yet. i think we're going to dothis as our next studio. well, thank youvery much for this.

i'm sorry this isvery disorganized. i'm just startingto think about this. i am hoping, by theway, that somehow we'll be able to bring thework of habitat iii here in 2017 for a conferenceor something like that so you can see what we're doing. and i'll see you, iguess, in a year or so. thank you very much. and don't forgetyour watch, yes.

richard, thank you so muchfor all of those thoughts. i think i understand evenmore now why we gave you your own hour-long slot to speakto us individually in public about these notions ofinteriority and subjectivity. we were going to pick back upat 3:30 with a series of three conversations. so please join us then. there's also most, ifnot all, of an exhibit up about some projectswithin the school

related to interior matters. so please feel free tocirculate through there. but we'll start back up at 3:30. thank you very much, richard.

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