Charlie how was it that you were going to think about what was going to be there . Bjarke what is interesting about the tower and its location is that i live on franklin street and church. If i walk towards the World Trade Center from church, i would be walking in the streets of tribeca with the sort of city scale neighborhood until i reach the side of tower two, so basically on one side, it is facing the lively side of tribeca, and on the other side, it is the final tower that will come in eight the towers, framing it. So we need to be equally at home among the side scrapers as among among the skyscrapers as among the city blocks of tribeca. Also, it will be the home, what we said 15 years ago. It was the financial district. After 9 11, and it accelerated after the sort of financial collapse at the end of 2008, and a lot of the Financial Institutions have moved to midtown, so now you have kind of an influx of more creative companies, and we moved our office to the intersection of wall street and broadway. I love this idea that it is the street of commerce and creativity, where they intersect, so it is very new. It is a lot of different buildings within the buildings, so we got this idea to conceive of the tower as seven different buildings, each tailored to different functions. The new studios in the lower floors, and then maybe more classic towers, and that basically means that we stack me seven different boxes on top of each other so they actually create giant terraces, where even if you are living or working on the 50th floor, you can extend your day out into huge hanging gardens, so it is going to be a completely different way of inhabiting it. It is quite funny, because when you put a project like this forward, like, of course, we have thought all kinds of things about the project, and then once you put it out there, it becomes part of the city, and it open for peoples interpretations. Like one of my best friends, her little son, he instantly saw it as the stairway to heaven. Charlie wow. I can imagine. Bjarke i got an email from someone whose brother was one of the First Responders who gave his life, and sort of evoking the stair climb that the firefighters took up through the towers. Charlie did all of that inform your thinking when you designed this or Something Else . Bjarke we were focusing on the idea that the 9 11 memorial is like eight acres of sanctuary in the densest parts of the city. This is where we remember the people who died in 9 11. The towers are basically for the city today, so they frame the memorial. They create a graceful backdrop for the memorial, but we really designed the tower as much as possible to create the most lively and active city around the memorial. So it is really all must like the inside out. Charlie created for a new community. Bjarke exactly. And with this tower, i have a sense there is a chance for a renaissance for downtown to become a lively neighborhood again, because it has had a slow decade and a half. Charlie and the neighborhood needs more than office towers. Bjarke and maybe office and work was very formulaic, maybe 20 years ago, but i think today, you see so many different kinds of work environments that the mold that created the skyscrapers, primarily for finance, now will not fit the bill anymore, and we need many different kinds of spaces, both inside and outside the building for a Creative Work environment. Charlie you replaced or succeeded sir Norman Foster. What happened . Bjarke you can say that sir Norman Foster designed his tower a decade ago, back when the thinking was still Financial Institutions, so in a way, it is tailored to be a financial headquarters, and since over the last decade, the character of the neighborhood has really changed, and the kind of tenants who are looking to go there, they have radically different needs, so did not fit that kind of tenant, and it is also a side of the changing character of downtown manhattan. Charlie Rupert Murdoch and fox are principal tenants, and what will be on the top floor . Bjarke basically, news corp and fox occupy the bottom. In the top will be leased, and we still have hopes that on the very top floor, there can be a screening room, so you can imagine that once you have seen the premiere of the film where the screen lit up, you will have maybe even an even more epic view of the city you are in. Charlie how many restaurants . Bjarke i think all of this will be sort of detailed further, but we will place the amenities so that they are always adjacent to the terraces. Also, we are working on the terraces so they dipped down or lift up so that multiple floors have direct access to these hanging gardens. Charlie you once said this was like playing twister with a 1300 foot high rise. Bjarke it is true, because like one of the complexities of working on this site, it is not just the heritage of the site and the significance of the site. It is also that it is sitting on top of 11 Public Transportation lines, a service road, a power station that serves the whole neighborhood, so the footprint and columns have already been placed, so trying to guess where they would go, but now that we know what the building above is looking like, of course, from the second floor and all of the way to the top, we have placed the columns so they fit with the plan, and then basically the lobby, we have to sort of connect the dots, because what falls down might not actually land in the same place, so you get columns in all kinds of angles. You see it changing shape as it comes down, so when you come in, it looks like an expressive architectural sculpture in the lobby, but, in fact, it is almost like bringing the forces from where they arrive from the top to where they may need to go on the bottom. Charlie the second slide, the view of the terraces, and number three, we just talked about. Number four is the fox news studio. Bjarke there are huge, open workplaces, where everyone can see each other. And around. Charlie and it is a symbol of almost all new office but, where they see more open than close. Bjarke and inspired by our offices at the time. We occupied a former warehouse, so we had a huge open floor place, where everyone was within visual or even shouting distance, and i think the more you facilitate the meeting between people, the more exchange of ideas happens. Were also working on punching holes between the floors, so you have cascades that stretch. You actually have lines of sight. So you will be able to see colleagues that are maybe five floors above you or below you, so you will be able to get to them physically, and you will be able to see them visually again. Undo the vertical segregation that normally comes from working on multiple floors. Charlie take a look at this. This is what the terraces look like from above. Bjarke we are all must to extend the floor tiles from the inside though the theme of inside outside continuity is as seamless as possible. Charlie when you look at your buildings, would most people know they came from the same architect in the same way they would know that all buildings created by frank gehry have some defining similarity. Richard myers, some defining similarities, that it is not true with you, is it . Bjarke in a way, i see having a style is often like having certain things you have to do all of the time or certain things you would never allow yourself to do. In a way, a style is almost like the sum of all your inhibitions, and i think what we try to do is to design buildings that look different, particularly because they perform differently, and you can say in the beginning of each project, we try to educate ourselves and what are the key criteria here, what is the biggest problem we need to solve, or what is the greatest potential we can create, and then we try to seek expertise, find people that really know about these issues and interview them and learn about these issues and then try to turn those issues into the driving force of the design. You can almost call it like informationdriven design, like every design decision is not ruled by a style, but it is governed by it is informed by the information we have about the project and the problem. Charlie did you have to sell this . Bjarke we did. He found it disturbingly different. He needed some digestion time. And we got the idea that since all the other towers on the sites had been decide ofigned with a group architects. We decided, what if we sit down with the architect of one world trade. We go to our thinking and we hear what charlie i hear he was enthusiastic. We were on the top floor of seven world trade. He comes in. He is a very majestic gentleman. Six feet and some. I explained all the thinking. He gets up and looks at the tower. Makes a comment about all the hard work. Then he says, should i be completely honest . And mr. Silverstein says, yes, david, that is why you are here, and then all of a sudden, you can hear like a pin drop in the room, and he said, i love it. And then the conversation flowed from then. It was definitely a turning point in this process. Charlie when will this be finished . Bjarke it should be finished in 2020. Charlie and how much of this time occupy of yours . Or does your time end, and you turn it over to the builder . Bjarke i think the next two years, we will be incredibly busy doing this, and we will oversee the site, both where i work and where i live. We have a beautiful view of the site. We really have to get this one right. Charlie what influence . Bjarke when i started studying architecture in 1993, a book came out. And so anyway, i discovered him. My generation he is part of the canon of the discipline. Charlie you fell in love with his work. Bjarke each project, rather than being driven by style, like Richard Meyer likes white tile and certain shapes, with him, each project was injected into a specific situation in a society or in a country, so almost the way a journalist would approach a project by having a certain angle on a story. And rather than having it be independent of society, he was always intricately linked to the forces of the environment. I saw this idea that architecture was not something happening in the studio. It is really how a city comes to life, how a society wants to be shaped. Charlie some have suggested that the u. S. Is dead, and you were the first to come here to say, no, it is not. That is not true. Bjarke america had suffered. Everyone said you should be going to asia, because this is where the boom is happening, but i really wanted to live in new york, and i really think one of the things that the europeans can learn from america is that with the european union, europe has been incredibly good at breaking down trade barriers and opening up the borders and the Free Movement of workforces, where actually to my surprise, the 50 states of america are probably more sort of separated by legal issues than europe is. However, the culture of the american side, i had this strange episode. A month after moving to new york, i went to vancouver in canada on the west coast to give a talk at something called the urban land institute, which is a foundation both in the United States and in canada. I met a developer in vancouver. We had a great conversation, and i said finally we were opening our offices in new york, and he said, you are here, and i had just gotten off our flight from new york, in another country, three time zones away, but the idea was you are here in north america, we could do something together. It was pretty eyeopening. Charlie ok, lets look at couple of other buildings. This is west 57th street. Bjarke this is a court scraper. It is what happens when you marry the communal space with a courtyard in the middle with the density of a new york skyscraper, any sensually, what and essentially what youre seeing is from the westside waterfront from manhattan. The building like kneels down towards the water and opens up the courtyard so the sunlight and the views can enter deep into the courtyard itself. You have an abundance of daylight and sunshine and the court how. All the People Living there have views from their balconies and terraces. Charlie this is on 57th street, north of 11th . Charlie the next one is the dry line. Bjarke this is the high line. Former rail yards that have turn into the most popular prom and i. Were thinking, what if you do not have to wait until a piece of infrastructure gets decommissioned . What if you could design it in this case for the coastal resilience of manhattan, and essentially all of what is necessary to resist the next sandy . What if you could design it like Rolling Hills charlie for that to happen, a lot of things have to be touring down, it do they not . Bjarke we were trying to weave it in between some of the existing buildings, and we tried to conceive of the dry line as a love child of robert moses and jane jacobs, and for those who do not know, robert moses was also known as the powerbroker, a Public Servant with almost totalitarian influence. He made a lot of the very necessary public works in new york, the highways, the waterfronts, the public housing. Charlie often bulldozing everything out of the way, removing people were they were. Bjarke at some point, he wanted to run a highway through greenwich village, and he encountered resistance from jane jacobs, and it was sort of a davidgoliath moment to defeat the plans and save the village, but we thought what if they had worked together, because to resist an incoming flood, you need to create 12 miles of contiguous waterfront with a very sort of holistic overview, but to make it successful for the community, it needs to happen in a closed conversation with the people who are going to inhabit it, so instead of making a wall that separates the city from the water around it, to make it into an inviting landscape of undulating hills, furniture, pagodas, which actually brings the life of the city together. Charlie there is also a new this is the mountain in copenhagen. Bjarke i think this mountain is an example of what we like to call architectural alchemy, by taking traditional ingredients, like this, a big parking structure for the neighborhood. It is like an illusion of a photographic image, and then on top, we have placed a layer of apartments, so instead of having just like a traditional stack of apartments one placed on top of each other, they are actually cascading, so on this side, they cover the parking, but on the sunnyside, it becomes a manmade mountain of houses with gardens, almost like having a suburban lifestyle, a house with a garden, with a view in the middle of the city. Charlie thank you for joining us. Akin a moment. Stay with us. Charlie the Whitney Museum of american art opened in 1931. Its mandate was to focus exclusively on the art and artists of this country. It moved to madison avenue in 1966. The new building designed by renzo piano will open a few blocks from its original location. It is called a depth series achievement, and the citys changing cultural landscape. Joining me now, renzo piano, and adam weinberg. This is a remarkable story. So it is complete. How do you characterize this moment . Adam the whitney have been trying to expand for 30 years. We try to expand next to our building for the records four directors ago. The collection when we first moved in with 2000 works. Today it is 22,000 works. The idea of being able to see not just what we have, but to offer possibilities and aspirational spaces for artists to do things like we have never been able to do before. Charlie and youre going back to your roots. Adam it feels very comfortable. The greatest complement we have received in the last weeks has been it feels like the whitney. Even though it is a different kind of space. Charlie hasnt there been effort to design a new Whitney Building for a while . Adam for decades. Michael graves many years ago made an attempt. Renzo himself did a plan for uptown. In the end we both agreed there wasnt the kind of space you need to for contemporary art. Charlie leonard is a great friend of mine. Im am sure a friend of yours. He calls you up and says what . Renzo i was on the side of the library that day. Charlie which you were designing. Renzo yes. I was inside, and he called me and said why dont you come for a coffee . He was lying. [laughter] of course i will come for a coffee. Charlie tell me the truth. Did you have any notion that what he really wanted to talk to you about was designing a new building . Renzo i didnt know it all. I didnt know. Im like children. I am totally absorbed by what i am doing. It is like playing in the sand in the beach. I have to play. So i went up. I came in the room. It was full of people. It was the design committee. And great people. Adam was there. Adam leonard. Bob hurst. Charlie you are sitting there with the board. It is not just leonard. Renzo the entire board. I started to think that wasnt a coffee. We started to talk. Thats all. Charlie thats not all. Adam there was a bit of behind the scenes. We were interviewing a number of architects. Leonard said we should ask one or two questions to every architect is a constant. We asked every architect what is your Favorite Museum building in the world . Every architect named one of renzos buildings. Everybody loves his buildings. Why are we talking to renzo . Charlie which do they love . Adam the byler museum, the manila museum. It was those that came up over and over again. Charlie you said im not just here, im not prepared to compete. I dont do that. If you want me to do it, offer me the job and i will do it. Renzo i hope you understand, at a certain age you dont want to fall in love with jobs like that. You dont want to fall in love and then it goes away with somebody else. Its too much. Charlie you dont want to fall in love with the idea of building this museum because you have to tell them what it is and have them say we will decide on someone else. Renzo its just that passion. You cannot do this profession without passion. You have to put yourself entirely fair. This was incredible. Im european, italian. I grew up with the idea that freedom comes from this country. You know. We grow with this great idea, great roots, great culture. At the same time you need. Freedom. America was and is about that attitude. Making a house for american art, an incredible challenge. Bringing together my sense of things, and this core freedom that is an absolute necessity. Charlie you hope to incorporate social life, or vanity, urbanity, invention, construction, technology, poetry, and light. That is hugely ambitious. [laughter] renzo this is true. Architecture is about those things coming together. Social life, urbanity, poetry, it is about fighting against gravity and try to create something that is playing with the light. Then we have invention. That building downtown, 28,000 tons. Charlie made of steel. Renzo and everything else. You need invention for that. It has to last for a thousand, thousand years. Charlie it is in a unique place. How did you find it . Adam the city had reserved it. They wanted a cultural anchor for the high line. Originally they were planning to build something there, and when they didnt we approached the city about a possible site. Kate levin felt to affairs and the commissioner of Cultural Affairs said that this is a site that would be available to us. We were thrilled because it is hard to find horizontal property in manhattan. There is not much space. I was thinking about what he said. We love the wild character of the neighborhood. The roughness of it. Feral, a wildness to it. Even though it is a refined building, there is the roughness of the floors, the concrete, a sense of it is not just all about finesse, elegance. It is about something rougher and wilder. Charlie how would you describe the look of the outside . Renzo a bit wild. Charlie you would . Renzo you make a building that is the house of american art. It is about freedom. This sense of freedom. When you make a building, it must express that idea. It must express the brave attitude to the city. This building is designed to talk to the city on one side, on the east, [indiscernible] taking your time. On the other side it talks to the rest of the world, on the west it talks to the traffic on the highway. Then the west. You can look and see across america. You have a dialogue with the rest of the world. This is part of the idea. Charlie did it have to have anything to do with the building on 76 . Renzo many things coming from that building. Many things. The flexibility of the space. I can go on forever. When you open the door you find yourself in the gallery. Thats another important thing. [indiscernible] it pays to be in connection with the city because he got madison avenue. But we have a space there. We built the making the building above ground. This is what the building does. It comes up. This is what you have to do when you make a public building. You have to be accessible, easy to reach. Adam when you talk of the wildness of the building it is of the critics have struggled with. Most museums have a front brand image, the front of the net. This is a 360 degree building. You see it from all sides. I think a lot of critics have a hard time because they dont know what is the image. It is the multiplicity, the wildness, the sense that it was designed from the inside out. Charlie i mention there was a moment about this, the new location for the museum confirmed a definitive shift in the city social geography. Adam absolutely. The high line. Charlie amazing what it is done for the city. The high line. Until the whitney there was a wonderful walkway without an anchor on either end. Now with a culture shed on the north end, and the development of the westside, it was so empty in many ways in terms of public traffic. Charlie into short generations, the whitney has gone from being part stern but carrying homeless shelter to its chic and eager tourist destination. Adam i think that charlie you are happy with tourists. Adam the more the merrier. The whitney has always championed the artists of our time. Mrs. Whitney is an artist. Shes one of the only founders of a major museum who was also an artist. Charlie did she try to do this . Was it her dream turned down by other museums . Adam she offered to give her collection to the metropolitan museum. They said we have a not of that we have enough of that not very interesting stuff in the basement. It was out of a curious refusal that the whitney was born. She was interested in the art as she was in creating some museum. Charlie so she said i will create my own museum. Adam it was out of a need, not just the desire to show off what she had. Both of you know that rd museums are one of the powerful magnets for tourists to visit cities. Us, it is about changing lives. Artists the lies of the working there, but exposing people to the art of this moment. People look back at history and they can accept that they love Edward Hopper and they loved jasper johns. But how about the artists of this generation . They are puzzled. Because when we are so close to it in time, it is hard to grapple with it. And part of our job is to challenge as much as it is to just celebrate. And to test ideas, to put things out there and not just reconfirm what we already know. You said it is important to let the city and the street encroach. Renzo i think that is the reason why i called the place the piazza. Im italian. I can do anything. The piazza is where in the city everything starts. This is the place where experience matters. They come together. This is where fear goes away. This is where people meet people. They get together. It is about not being intimidating. It is about being accessible. It is about not being intimidating. This is the beginning. Then, from there, you go up. You take your shoes off metaphorically of course. You enter a different world. The ground floor is public space. Adam and we have a free gallery in the public space. Make whatever law whatever art in that level completely open to the public. It is a right, not a privilege. Somethinge sums that is not very visible. Education, for example. Charlie like what . Adam education he we have an indoor, outdoor blackbox space, a theater where you can be inside, looking out more inside looking outside. We have four levels of galleries. The art be seen from above, below. Performance can be done out there. You can have sculpture, installation, projections. And the black box, the idea is the building is material for the artists, not just a site for the artwork. Renzo called it the testing platform. Renzo we have been working a lot with artists. One thing not to forget, the building was loved by artists. I know why. It was simple, unpretentious, not competing. It was a flexible space. Artists love that. And we always thought with artists [indiscernible] charlie you have spoken to this idea before which is dont create architecture that competes with the art. Renzo architecture is art. It is not just function. There is function. Construction, it is about society. But it is art. A different kind of art. It is the art of making place for other art. When you make a concert at home you dont make a concert. You make a chamber for sound. That is the same thing we do. It is not making more modest. It is Even Stronger because it becomes adam that is one of the reasons we wanted to work with renzo because he put the art first that it was in the competition. It was not a competition. It was about supporting it, and it makes the architecture and the art greater. Charlie im intrigued by this idea, a building like this cannot be indifferent to the city. What you think about it poetic as movement . The number four is movement, people. Wes the reason why , but thethe Building Movement of people going out and enjoying, watching down from the piazza. You see movement. Charlie that building put you and richard on the map . Renzo of course. We never got a new job for 10 years for that but movement as part of architecture. This building, we cannot find that sort of place. On the ground floor you see three big elevators. Then you see the stairs. Everything is about moving. Charlie was adam helpful, or did he get in your way . [laughter] renzo it was great. Adam we have been accomplices. Exactly. Charlie accomplices in a conspiracy to create something great. You would meet once a week . Adam we met every time he was in new york. Every eight weeks. For example, talking about the movement, only one wanted the elevators front and center, we came up with the idea of commissioning the artist richard to turn each elevator into an installation so that not only was the movement the movement, which we loved, and renzo responded to this, and he designed the environment. Renzo i love the idea that you dont go to our review push a button and then are comes to you. Art comes to you. [laughter] charlie what new elements are you most excited about . Adam we have our fifth for fifth floor special exhibition gallery. The largest in the city of new york. We can make exhibitions to the size that we want instead of just saying you have to fit in. We can do a bigger show. Charlie can you do sculpture . Adam we can do sculpture. The outdoor spaces are extraordinary. What i love is that when you were in the building you could have been in rome, in london, in the new building you always know that you are in new york. You get the views of the city, the river. The whitney has always been new yorks museum. It is a new yorkbased museum. Charlie more so than moma . Adam i think so because we have always had an International Presence but it was based in greenwich village, and the connection to the artist, whether it was hopper or calder or sloan. This was the place to champion their work, not just the picassos. Charlie moma was put together by a new york family. Collectors. Adam mrs. Whitney was an artist. Renzo this was for artists. This idea that the building comes back on is a great thing. Charlie you brought this building in, ontime, on budget. Adam i have an extraordinary board, and board leadership, who said we cannot make a building that we cant afford to build, and we cant afford to run, and we built a sizable endowment. Charlie 450 million . Adam we raised 250 million for endowment that we would have the funds. Many museums do not have the money to run. We are pleased. We finished our campaign. We are still always raising money. You never stop when you are building. The work really begins. Charlie i was there the first night. It seems everybody was happy about this. Do you get a sense that there was artists there, members of the board for their, you were there, a sense of we created something we dreamed of doing . And it is that we wanted to do. Renzo this is exactly what you hope. This is what you want preto build a building that is loved by people. Buildings need love. They need love like people. I also feel that it would be loved. Adam we wanted people would feel great. Renzo said im a humanist. I love the idea that it is based on human scale. You feel good when you walk in those wooden floors, and the sense of sound, the light, the quality of the space. It is a place you want to bill it is a place you want to be in. Renzo the Building Made with the super finish. The floor, by example. Is made out of recycled pine. We found factories. We cut the wood. You could see the trees. If they want to name something, they can. There are so many names. It is not something untouchable. This idea that is open and flexible. Charlie well talk a little bit about the art. Show me the first image. The building image. There it is. Looking from the west to the east. Tell me what im seeing here. Renzo what you see is the west side. The big window is overlooking the hudson river. That floor is the fifth floor. Then you have the other gallery. This other side of the building is blind for the simple reason you do not need a light. You could see from the top lights are coming inside. When you look at this building, when you make a new building, it is always new. I think this building expressed the complexity. Charlie lets look at another image. Renzo this is looking from east. Youre looking down. Beautiful. It is an awe inspiring element. You need to enjoy life. You see those stairs. Enjoy flying above the city. Adam renzo kept noticing the fire escape. Those stairs are public. Theyre not just utilitarian. Renzo they really enjoy that. Charlie the idea came from looking at fire escapes . [laughter] renzo maybe not. In architecture, and everything it is somewhere in between. You remember things. You dont really know exactly. There is a kind of illusion. Charlie lets see the next image of the design. There it is. Renzo it shows the overlapping of the different functions. That is showing the conservation. That is another big quality of this building. Conservation. On they are there. Sometimes you open the door, you open the two doors and you see through. You have art on the same side. Adam this is one of the things we said. We wanted the people working with the are to be next to the art and be reminded at all times why there were there. See the nextme image of the plans. There it is. Renzo showing the overlapping of the functions. It is very intense. The ground floor is public. The gallery. Then you go on. You can see on the left, the auditorium overlooking the hudson. Then you have the four floor of galleries. Charlie how do you think the of today renzo piano is different from the architect of that time . Renzo you should ask somebody. Charlie what is the most significant change in you . Renzo age, i guess. Charlie have you change your attitude about your work . Have you changed some fundamental way you look at things . Renzo i still feel like that boy. I just a bit better how to do things and how to build. And also, its about learning. It is about learning. I know it is easy to say. Architects under 50 the first 70 you learn. In architecture live 150 years. The first 70 you learn. This one is a special one. Charlie next slide. Hoist elevators and express staircases. Is that the fifth floor . Adam this is the fifth floor gallery looking south. This is a floor devoted to the art of the 80s. You see the poster by moffitt. It is about aids. Charlie last slide. I want everyone to go to this museum. Renzo we catch the light from the north. You have to catch the north light. So you dont have the sun. Charlie is that right . Nose always have Northern Light . Light is the most essential material. It is. Light is a material. Funny enough, if you work with light, look at that. When you stand there, you feel. The secret about this place its metaphysical. It is out of time. It is what the museum does. The museum is out of time. It puts a piece of art in a timeless dimension. It is metaphysical. This is what we try to do here. Charlie we have seen a lot and said a lot. This is a magnificent place. Adams tenacity has made it happen and the brilliance of renzo piano responsible for something everyone is talking about. There is a book on the Whitney Museum of art. Renzo by my daughter and the foundation. Charlie details and photographs and a sense of what it means to create . Its connection to the city and art. And to itself. All of that. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. Angie land of opportunity chinas president arrives in the u. S. Talking about market reforms and foreign investment. To face asure ceo ford showdown over the volkswagen showdown. We get handson with the new iphone model and give a verdict on whether it is worth upgrading. Welcome to first up. Im angie lau coming to you live from bloombergs asian