Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20240621

Evening with the global refugee crisis and talk to matt dillon, Michel Gabaudan, kenneth roth and david david miliband. I was grateful, because its a migrant crisis. I was glad when they said im going to the champ to see whats happening. It is a crisis that has the roots in the treatment of people in burma. Rose we conclude with Bjarke Ingels, the danish architect, designing the fourth and final tower at the world strayedworldtrade center. Its the center of your inhibitions. We try to design buildings that look different because they perform differently in a way that you can s in the beginning of each project, we try to educate ourselves in what are the key criteria here, what is the biggest problem we need to solve, what is the greatest potential we can create . And then we try to seek expertise, find people that really know about this issues and interview them and learn about these issues, and then try to turn those issues into the driving force of the design. Rose iraq refugees and a stunning new building in the neyork landscape when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by rose communicas from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose we begin tonight with iraq. President obama authorized the pentagon to send up to 450 noncome bat groups wednesday to train local Iraqi Security force based in Anbar Province where i. S. I. S. Made recent territorial gains. Speaking at the g7 summit earlier this week, president obama acknowledged the u. S. Did not have a complete strategy to beat the group joining me is Michael Gordon and dexter filkins. Michael gordon, tell me whats happening right now with respect to i mean the administration seems to have lots of reasons to fear being pulled into iraq. On the other hand, they have a growing sense that things are going so badly they may have to do something different. Where are we . Well, the american declaratory straterom the start has been to degrade and defeat the Islamic State but its been under resource all along, and they havent committed the personnel and really dont have a strategy that alliance with their objectives. So after the fall of ramadi, thats concentrated minds in washington, and this they basically made some course correction by sending american personnel to a new base in anbar, its an iraqi base, but americans hadnt been there before. So its an attempt to reach out the tribes and work more effectively with the Iraqi Military units in anbar that are going to have to at some point retake ramadi. Rose does it sound like too little, too late . Everything were seeing is a measure of how ambivalent the president is. Rose he doesnt do more because of his ambivalence . No, i think he wants to do something more but he doesnt really want to be there but he doesnt want to be responsible for the complete collapse to have the iraqi state. I mean, lets recall that the white house has said its in the unitedUnited States interest that Islamic State should be degraded and defeated, because there are foreign fighters that flock there, because they could become a base of operations, elsewhere in the region there are a whole host of reasons this is said to be in northwestern interest. So apart from whatever may happen in iraq, we have a stake in having at least a credible military strategy for iraq and syria, and were getting there but very incrementally, i would say. Rose how much do the iraqi army work. The reason theyre sending trainers to anbar is not purely for the iraqi army. Half is to work with tribal engagement and half with the iraqi army. The thought surbed work not merely with the iraqi army but with security elements at the local level. Thats the big strategic thought here. I think it may evolve yet into an important element in the strategy. I think we need to wait and see how it works out. Rose whats the risk for snus. First of all, im not prepared i think its premature to say that the Obama Administration wont have success in iraq. It hasnt had much success so far, but i think its too early to say they cant have success. I think its possible to do that and i also think its possible to do that without the enormous investment of money and troops and energy that mark the bush administration. Nobody is talking about sending back, you know american divisions or and reoccupying the country and doing anything on that scale. I mean, once these troops are in, were going to have all of about 3500 american forces. Almost all of them really behind the wire in bases so this is not a strategy thats been carried out at great strain or risk to the United States. I think that you can make adjustments to this strategy and make it more effective, but its going to be a different strategy entirely from what happened in the iraq war. I keep cominba to when i was there. Its been a year since mosul fell to i. S. I. S. You go into the iraqi army barracks, and the iraqi army that we trained and built, you know, at unbelievable expense over many, many years it just disintegrated in, like one night. I. S. I. S. , they took whole towns with just taxicabs and a guy with a bullhorn, you know, and they all ran away. Thats not a problem you can fix by just adjusting your policy in washington, you know. That goes to the heart of, like, what these countries are. Well, this is an organization thats headed toward Syria Organization is headquartered in syria. The organizations in iraq doesnt get to the problem in syria where theyre gaining ground. The coalition thats coming together that the United States is leading it from much agrees about what needs to be done in iraq but verse ideas on what needs to happen in syria. The turks think assad has to go. The iraqis heavily dependent on iran which is heavily backing assad dont likely support that, so the coalition breaks down a bit in terms of its objectives when you get to syria. The problem has been managed primarily by deferrig the syria problem, but it cant be deferred forever if the strategy is to succeed in destroying the Islamic State. Thank you dexter. Thank you michael. Belle right back. Stay with us. More than 11 Million People worldwide were uprooted from their homes last year. Millions in syria and iraq have fled to neighboring countries as the conflict rages on. The United Nations has called it the worst migration crisis since world war ii. European leaders are under pressure to address the ong refugee flow on its shores. Meanwhile, thousands of rohingyaian muslims are stranded. We visited a camp. We use the smaller to ferry those who were fleeing after the bigger ships docked in the bay, sometimes weeks on end, we were able to fill these with these masses of human cargo. They set out there for weeks these people, in deplorable conditions. They were held for ransom. People finally were able to break through to the Community Leaders to negotiate the sort of release. Rose Michel Gabaudan is president of Refugees International, kenneth roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch andavid miliband is c. E. O. Of the International Rescue committee, former Prime Minister of britain. I am pleased to have them here. Matt, tell me how you got involved in this. Well, i have been on the board of Refugees International now for seven years and, you know, obviously the rohingya has been a group of people that our eyes have been very interested in and very concerned about and it was really about six weeks ago at an r. I. Event when an activist who is a human rights activist and an advocate for the rohingya spoke and his speech was very powerful, moving. He started off a speech by saying, i dont exist and so, it stayed with me. I met with him the following day and told him, if i get the opportunity to help beyond this iue, i will, and i found myself in the region doing some press, you know, in japan and i called michel and i said, michel, i would like to go down and what do you think . I would like to go down to sitway, to myanmar and check out the camps. At that time, more news articles were coming out of ships being pushed out to sea discovering mass graves, you know, deplorable pictures of people jammed into the hulls of these ships, and i kind of wanted to t a sense of why this was going on and i remember his speech, so thats what brought me there tun kens speech. I went down to a couple of journalists friends who are more familiar with the crisis than i am who lived in the region. Do we know about whats happening in burma . I think we know more now than we did a few years ago. We started working in burma the questions of the rohina before the violence in 2012. I think the violence in 2012 which happened at a time when there was more International Presence in burma allowed the issue to be better known. I was very grateful when matt told me he was going to burma because the boat crisis gave the impression that the myanmar government has recognized this as a migrant cris and i was glad when matt said im going to the camp to see whats happening and its a crisis that has its roots in burma. Rose what do we need to do here . Give me the politics of it. Step one is to address the persecution thats driving people away. If you just take the rohingya, roughly 10 fled in the last year. Its just asf 30 million americans up and fled because of persecution. At least reason. Burma has about 135 ethnic groups. It doesnt recognize rohingya as a legitimate ethnic group it doesnt grant them citizenship. Rose why not . A combination of racism, theyre darker skin, theyre muslim. Burma is seen as many are seen as immigrants. Because of a demockeryization process in burma, the military terrified of losing the democracy is using reason behind that to split the vote and force the choice between burmese nationalism and princebles. Shes largely silent. She says im a politician. The rohingya are so unpopular in burma its poison for her to embrace them and shes not. Its ultimately not her fault. The fault lies with the burmese government but shes making it easy to persecute by failing to speak up for the rohingya. Rose what would be the consequence of her speaking up or is she so large she could speak up without consequence . I think she fears she would lose votes when the Elections Come but would force the burmese government to protect the rohingya, to stop the violence against them in these horrible displacement camps, to give them citizenship and Voting Rights they deserve which are being taken away from them. Theres a point that there are signs of last few years of political liberalization in burma to be tested in myanmar. There is Economic Investment in myanmar. Unless they get the humanitarian situation properly dealt with the economics and politics wont work either. I think its very, very striking. Weve worked in myanmar over the last 20 years in a state where a lot of the rohingya are both in camps and in the sort of vidgeses you were describing with the boats. Weve also resettled rohingya into the United States about 2,700 rohingya have been brought to the u. S. By the International Rescue committee. On the both side the conn assistant message is until all parts of burmese and Rohingya Society are treated properly well never have the political stability to allow for the economics to be deployed. Rose does independence increase as democracy increased yes, the Voting Rights issues became real. The politicization of the rohingya issue became more intense. Since the gradual opening of burma, what emerged is a buddhist extremist movement, two words you dont tend to put together. A 969 movement, not officially a military movement that the military used the extremists to try to split the pro democracy and the National Wing of democracy vote. So weve seen intensification of the violence against rohingya. Theyre a good way to change the subjfrom military malpractice and misrule to an unpopular minority that they have a tough time defending. Rose matt. The u. S. Government and other governments should put more pressure on the myanmar government to gi vgovernment to ge these people these are stateless the rohingya are stateless. They dont have rights to citizenship, and they should work toward that. In the meantime, they have to have their human rights met and thats something thats not really happening, so i think that is the goal, i think right there. Right now, the government in myanmar doesnt want the world to, you know, to believe these people exist. They dont even acknowledge the word rohingya. Diplomats will not use the term for fear of offending the burmese government. Matt got the president a year ago to say the word rohingya in my presence which is a victory. You see most diplomats dealing with the burmese government not using the term which is an abdication of responsibility. Rose the catalyst for change is . The burmese people wanted democracy going to 19 8 when there was a massive outpouring. It was crushed. Burma lived through 30 years of awful dictatorship. They put in a civilian figurehead who had been a general. Under severe economic sanctions burma was looking at the nations seeing thailand and asia booming, realizing it was going nowhere and opened up. They are trying to split the opposition in the run for president , they are still limiting press freedoms. It is an effort at a controlled transition and so far theest seems more interested in applauding its great victory to get some progress rather than pushing for genuine democracy so emerge. Rose what does the west ve to lose by pushing for more . Part of it is i think that they you know if you talked to hillary clinton, this is one of her big victories. This is one of the big things she accomplishes as secretary of state. It doesnt serve her to high light what was wrong. The Obama Administrations been better about that. They do speak about the problems. Derek mitchell the u. S. Ambassador there is i think one of the most outspoken proponents of human rights and democracy, but many of the european interlocutors these days dont use the term rohingya. Theyre more interested in trade relations, pushing too hard on democracy. They have an attitude not serving the burmese people very well. Rose turning to the middle east a we desensitized to whats happening in the camps . Little lebanon, 1. 8 Million People. Jordan at least 600,000 turkey 200,000. Istanbul you will find syrian refugees. To yourpoint, i think that the syria crisis receded into is it background over the last year or two. Rose because of i. S. I. S. Its become an iraq crisis. There is an element that says lets pivot our attention in iraq where you cant address iraq unless youre willing to address syria asell. Theres no resolution. Were down to one u. N. Envoy trying to get a ceasefire in one city. Thats the extent of the diplomatic and political push at the moment. Meanwhile, most tragically, the options get worse. They were bad option as year ago or two years ago. Now even worse because its about two countries, a more splendid opposition and et cetera. Its a sense this is an insoluble crisis thats blocking the proper rose the other thing that will solve it is politic solutionings. Political solutions have to come not just by innovating and hoping but come by conditions on the ground. Neither side have enough to gain by compromise. Rose i have beenhere and several times to interview the head of state and at the same time talked to a lot of sirrians in opposition. My impression is assad is losing more than hes winning. There is certainly a lot of talk about him struggling to get soldiers burks hes very strongly backed by russia and iran and considers himself to be in a better position than two years ago. So i think the immediate challenge is to shore up the neighborhoods because the neighboring countries like jord are close allies, they need support to cope with the burden theyve got. Secondly the civilians in the middle of syria who are being barrel bombed by their own government, two in our program were killed two weeks ago going about your business, some accountability needs to be established for go desk breaches for grotesque breaches. The only beneficiaries from the vacuum are obviously i. S. I. S. I think i mean, we are so far away from a political solution to syria, we cant afford to wait for that because we have to recognize that while we negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, people are being sliewrgtd by these barrel bombs which are basically huge oil drums filled with explosives and shrapnel dropped from helicopters. Theyre not used on the military front line just dumped into civilian areas of aleppo. The way to stop that is pushing pressure on assad by russia and iran, the two main backers but eyre not doing that. Rose what pressure could you put on russia to make them change their policy regarding syria . Id Start Talking publicly about it. With russia its all about ukraine. With iran its all about the nuclear deal. Its as if there is not room for agenda item two. If there was a serious effort with the Security Council to try to raise tissue of the barrel bombs as anticivilian weapons you might see the same progress in moscow that got us to open boders and cross boders and train aid. Its public diplomacy, forcing them to pay a price for backing aughter of civilian citizens and generating the refugee flow. It may not be the panacea but its not being tried. When it has been tried on other issues like humanitarian aid, its worked. There has not been a serious effort to use the tools to stop the barrel bombing. Since the passage of the three u. N. Resolutions going for humanitarian aid, the humanitarian situation has gotten worse not better. There is not flow of aid going into. The secretary general of the u. N. Is documenting how the Syrian Government is taking medical splits off the trucks as theyre going across the border. The first thing where all members of the Security Council need to uphold is the own votes they have passed. Theyve voted for a humanitarian solution but its not being implemented. There is another angle. Were in a situation where the main beneficiary is not russia or iran or the u. S. , it is i. S. I. S. That is the new factor in the game. So anyone who looks at it would see that at least according to the publicly stated position, there are Common Elements in the position toffs countries which are currently on different sides and i think there needs to be a very fundamental reset of policy in respect to the Syrian Crisis or it will be worse in a years time. We need to reset positions, even looking again at thousand tha geneva agreement which is the product of intensive diplomacy is brought into effect. Rose my assumption would be that unless assad starts losing badly then you may have the iranians and the russians changing their attitude about what to do. Well, i mean, i think one important thing first, let me respond to davids point. Islecies is doubleedged because, on the one hand i mean, its a horrible force but the u. S. And the west tend to look at assad as a last defense against i. S. I. S. , even though assads barrel bombs are a huge recruiting tool for i. S. I. S. I think that the need to change view of assad is simply whatever he wants to do to protect himself as sufficient to distinguishing between legitimate defense and shooting against combatants. And his tendency to bomb civilian opposition areas, you know, what is the cause of so much death, the cause of so much refugee flow, and the whether i mean, even though i take davids point that humanitarian aid is not what it should be, the russians were willing to sign off on humanitarian aid under public pressure. They have not faced that kind of public pressure to stop the barrel bombing of civilians. There is talk of the u. N. Security council about moving forward with the new effort. The Security Council in the past talked about barrel bombs but hasnt attached it to any consequences, whether the cutoff of arms or various sanctions because russia threatened the veto to block that and we need to change that dynamic if were going to save syrian lives. I think right now we have a problem which is how to avoid destabilization of neighboring countries jordan, turkey, lebanon have been generous. They are now managing borders because its more difficult to enter these countries and they do it because of the pressure the refugees are exerting on their own population. I think humanitarian aid has done all what it can. It has to be maintained but is not sufficient. I think its important that the agencies get into big support for these countries because ministries need to be supported, public works needso be supported. We are beyond the humanitarian crisis. Its becoming a major crisis for these countries and if we dont move into this direction, were going to have, i think i tnk serious abuses. Weve seen it starting in lebanon, manifestations in turkey. Rose let me understand what youre recommending we do. The bank should make major contributions to the countries to help them with the structural needs the governments have to address this increasing population. Its happening at a very limited level because were talking about middle Income Companies that do not qualify for the aid and that is something that must be changed if we want to preserve the sanity of these countries. We are seeing an increasing number of syri going from turkey, lebanon, egypt and then taking the boats of the mediterranean in because all the economies have dried up and dont have access to work. The response of europe has not been good. Michels making a really important point which is because countries like lebanon and jordan have middle income, organizations Like World Bank dont work in jordanian and lebanon. In these countries 315,000 syrian kids are not getting an education at the moment. Thats a recipe for rose food and shelter . Some food and shelledder. You will see the World Food Program run out of funds. Other fantastic n. G. O. S are helping protection for women and kids, family reunification but its overrun, it was 18 funded so far this year. Its a very hard thing as ken says, to bring the war to them. But to actually make a difference on the ground is not that difficult and is not done and there is real culpability there. Rose i hear you saying there is not enough money and not enough effort to deal with the plight of the refugees and the plight of the country accepting them. Both have to do with aid and resources allied to help them deal with the problem. On the other hand, there is the problem that creates the refugees. If you look at whos crossing the mediterranean, slightly over half are from syri the biggest producer. Afghanistan, somalia. These are countries where there is war and persecution. Ayou have to change the way the government governs. Europe has not been terribly generous, not that the u. S. Has been a whole lot better, they havent been generous in the way david and michel are describing and theyre largely leaving lebanon and jordan around took where to defend for themselves despite the massive influx. But theyre panicking at increased numbers cross negd trainian but the mediterranean. 6,000 this calendar year, less than 1100th of europes population. Its compared to 3 to 4 of the u. S. Population undocumented. They should be able to handle this but theyre treating it as a crisis. Rose whats the solution beyond the immediacy of the countries and the refugees themselves to stop the flow of refugees in terms of these political crises . What you need is world pressure on the supporters of the Syrian Government, and im not sure what the best example ofhere that has happened in recent history that led to that kind of result. Look at syria the two big victories weve had in a disaster situation is, one getting assad to turn over chemical weapons, under threat of military action. A example of preemptive diplomacy, if the course of nigeria hasnt been as it is if they held on to power despite the election we would have conflict a the same levels of refugee flows were seeing elsewhere. Im going to niger next week a small country bordering nigeria. There are significant numbers of nigerian refugees flooding across the border. But after the election the government accepted the result and it made a difference and i think it shows the potential of serious political pressure to be applied and to go upstream and block off some of the flows that once they reach a torret are very, very hard for any country to deal with. Rose are you in the least optimistic . Right now the boat crisis has given a lot of visibility to the rohingya. I think the boat crisis will eventually go down and my fear is if we dont keep the pressure internationally on the rohingya, the government will weigh. I think we have to keep the pressure strongly. Its going to take long. The First Priority will be to get uninhibited access for humanitarianso make rohingya even in the camps get better treatment and basic medical health, proper food, et cetera. We will then have to fight for progressive reef of the inhibition to have to move. The absence of freedom of movement is terrible. Right now the rohingya are terribly scared to move because they feel hay will be attacked by mobs, et cetera. So that will take time. The third level will be to see what the government is prepared to review. One factor be crucial is the kind to live in the states and the majority in the states are themselves annetteic minority. They have long held complaints against the way they were treated by the central government, and if they are not part of the solution well never have a solution for the rohingya. We zero row as good and rakina all bad and this is the scheme we have to break in our mind in the way we approach if we want reconciliation. Clearly whats lacking is burmese voice to promote the reconciliation. Without national voices, there is Little International community can do. Rose thank you. Thank you. Rose back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose Bjarke Ingels is here. 40 years Old Established himself as one of the worlds most inventive and soughtout architects. Projects include pyramid shaped tower on man hasnt west side. A danish power plant feature ago ski slope and collaboration on googles new headquarters earlier this week. It was announced he will design the fourth tower at the World Trade Center. Two World Trade Center will be 80 stories and appears seven separate boxes stacked together. I am pleased to have him at the table for the first time. Welcome. Thank you. Rose give me a sense of the vision that you had against the skyline of new york city and with the World Trade Center, one World Trade Center over to the right, how was it you began to think about what ought to be there . I think this is, obviously, a counting challenge to complete the skyline of manhattan and build the final tower of the World Trade Center. Whats interesting about the tower and its location, i actually live on franklin street and church. If i walk down the street i will be walking in the streets of try becca until i reach the site of tower two. On one side its human scale and on the other side the final tower that will complete the colonel made of towers framing the memorial. So it needed to be equally at home among the skyscrapers as among the city blocks of tribeca. Also it will be the home where you can say, 15 years ago, it was the financial district. After 9 11 and accelerated after the financial collapse at the end of 2008. A lot of the final institutions moved to midtown. So now you have a whole new sort of influx of more creative companies, even design companies. We recently moved our office to the intersection of wall street and broadway. I love this idea its the street of commerce and the street of creativity where they intersect. So its very new kinds of tenants. Thats why its almost going to be a lot of different buildings within the building so we got the idea to conceive of the tower as seven different buildings, each tailored to different functions, the new studios in the lower floors news rooms and created floor plates in the middle and maybe more classic towers or like floor plates at the top and that basically means we stack the seven different boxes on top of each other so they aually create giant terraces, even where if youre living or working on the 50th floor you can extend your day out into a haj hanging gardens. So it will be a completely different way of inhabiting. Its quite fun. Its like when you put a project like this forward, like, of course, we have thought all kinds of things with the project, but once you put it out there, it becomes part of the city and it becomes open for peoples interpretations, like one of my best friends her little son he instantly saw it as a stairway to heaven. Rose wow look at that. You can imagine. I got an email from a man whose brother was one of the First Responders who gave his life on 9 11 and he started invoking the stair climb that the firefighters took up through towers. Rose did all that inform your thinking when you were designing this or Something Else . I think basically, we focused on this idea to say that the 9 11 memorial is where we its, like eight acres of sanctuary in the middle of the densest part of the city. This is where we remember the peop that died on 9 11. The towers is basically for the city today. So they framed the memorial. They created a graceful sort of backdrop for the memorial, but we designed to tower as much as possible to create the most lively and active city around the memorial. So its really almost like the inside out. Rose youre creating for a new community. Exactly like that. And with this tower, i really have a feeng there is a potential forel renaissance for downtown to become a lively neighborhood again because its really had a slow decade and a half. Rose and the neighborhood needs more than office towers. Exactly, and i think even for office theres maybe office and work was very formulaic. Today i think you see so many different kinds of work environments, the mold that created the skyscraper primarily for finance now wont fit the bill anymore and you need many different kinds of space inside and outside the building for a Creative Work environment. Rose you replaced and or succeeded sir Norman Foster. What happened . I think it is very much that you can say Norman Foster designed his tower a decade ago back when the thinking was still financial institutions. Its in a way tailored to be a financial headquarter and since over the last decade the character of the neighborhood has changed, the kind of tenants looking to go there, they have radically different needs and it didnt fit the new tenant. You can see it as a sign of the changing of downtown manhattan. Rose Rupert Murdoch is the principal tenant. Yes. Rose top floor . News corp and fox occupy the bottom half. The top will be leased out. We have hopes on the top floor there can be a Screening Room so you can imagine once youve seen the premiere of the film, when the screen lifts, you will have a more epicw of the city youre in. Rose how many restaurants . I think all of this is going to be a detailed further but were looking to place the amenities so that theyre always adjacent to the terraces. Also were working on the topography of the terraces so they dig down or lift up so that multiple floors have direct access to these hanging gardens. Rose you once said this is like playing twist were a 1300foot high rise. Its true because, like, one of the complexities of working on this side, its not just the heritage and significance of the site, its actually the fact the building is sitting on top 11 Public Transportation lines, a service road, a power station that serves the whole neighborhood so that the footprint of the core and columns have already been placed trying to guess where they would go but now that we look at where the buildinging above is looking like, from the second floor and to the top we place the colonel where they fit with the floor plan. The lobby, we have to connect thes, because what actually falls down might not land in the same place so you have columns that go in all kind of angles. You see the core changing shape as it comes down. So when you come in it looks like an expressive architectural structure in the lobby but it is almost a architectural transformation of bringing the forces from where they arrive on the top to where they need to go on the bottom. Rose second slide view of the terraces. Number three the lobby image we talked about. Four is the fox news studio. You can see the huge open floor plates where everybody can see each other and there are actually views all the way around. Rose which is almost a kind of symbol of all new Office Buildings seem to be much more open than closed offices. And i think very much James Murdoch was inspired by our architectural offices we occupied at the time a former warehouse so that we had huge open floor space everybody was within visual or even shouting distance and i think this idea of the more you facilitate the meet tweeng people, the more exchange of ideas happens. Were also working on punching holes between the floor so we have cascades that stretch like 13 floors, you actually have lines of sight. Rose from 1 to 13. You will be able to see five or four floors above or below you and see them visually to undo the vertical segregation that comes from working on multiple floors. Rose this is what the terraces look like from above. Trying to extend the floor tiles to the outside so that the feeling of inside outside continuity is as seamless as possible. Rose when you look at your buildings, would most people know they came from the same architect in the same way they might know all buildings created by frank gary has some defining similarities, Richard Myers some defining similar later but its not true with you, is it . In a way, having a style is almost like having certain things you have to do all the time or certain things you would never allow yourself to do. A style is almost like the sum of all your inhibitions. What we try to do is to design buildings that look different beautiful because they perform differently, the way you can say in the beginning of each project we try to educate ourselves in 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, finpeople that really know about these issues and interview them and learn about these issues and try to turn those issues into the driving force of the design. You can almost call it, like, informationdriven design and every design decision is not ruled by a style but is governed by is informed by information we have about the project and the problem. Rose did you have to sell this to Larry Silverstein . We did have tt get, you know, silverstein has been working on this for 14 years. Of course we needed to make larry want to build this building. Rose and how did you do that . Well, basically we worked with first, with the people from fox news corp. And the silverstein people to make sure the building fits with all of their needs. Then we presented the thinking so mr. Fillstein. He told me he liked and appreciated the careful effort to make it a building that would work for him and tenants and the site, but he did also find it disturbingly different. Rose disturbingly. I think so. Hi needed digestion time. We got the idea since all the other towers on the site have been designed at the same time by a group of architects, we suggested what if we sit down with david childs the architect of one world trade and go through the thinking. Rose im told he was enthusiastic. Probably one of the most excitig meetings my career so far. We were on the top floor of seven world trade. Mr. Childs comes in. Hes a very sort of ma justic gentleman, like, i dont know six feet and some. He comes in i explain all the thinking. He gets up, looks at the tower, makes a comment about all the hard wor and then he says, should i just be completely honest . And mr. Silverstein says, yes david, thats why youre here. And you could hear a pin drop in the room. And then it was like, i love it. And then the conversation went forward from then. That was a definitelurning point in the process. Rose when will it be finished . Finished in 2020. Rose how much of your time will this occupy between now and 2020 . Is your work primarily when everything is set and then turn it over to the builder . Yeah, i think the next two years we will be incredibly busy doing this and, of course, we will oversee the site. Both where i work and live, we have a beautiful view of the site. So this is like, we really have to get this one right. Rose what influence did recommend coolhouse have . When i started studying architecture in 1993, the book xmsl came out. In a way i discovered rem coolhouse before i discovered any of the modern masters. My generation is part of the discne. Rose you fell in love with his work. One thing i really saw in coolhouse was each project rather than being driven by sort of like a style like Richard Meyer likes white tiles and certain shapes and then coolhouse, each project was somehow injected into a specific situation in a society or in a country or for a particular type of program so almost the way a journallest would approach a project by having a certain angle on a story i somehow saw that rather than being an autonomous art form independent of society he was always intricately linked to the forces of our surrounding environment. I suddenly saw this idea. The architecture was not just something happening in the studio. It was really how a c comes to life, how a society wants to be shaped. Rose some come from europe and some in europe suggest the u. S. Is dead and you were e first to come here and say no, its not thats a fiction. When i moved here five years ago, i think the sort of european arrogance was somehow that america had also suffered like europe in the financial collapse. Everybody 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 think one of the things that i think 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 borders, the Free Movement of workforce, et cetera where actually, to my surprise, the 50 states of america are probably more sort of separated by legal issues than europe. However, the culture of the americans, like i had this strange episode a month after moving to new york, i went to vancouver and canada on the west coast to give a talk at the urban land institute, which is a foundation both in the United States and canada. I met a developer in vancouver, we had a great conversation and i said, by the way, we just hopped an office in new york, and his response was youre here i had just gotten a sixhour flight from new york but the feeling is youre here in north america, we do something together. It was pretty eye openg. Rose this is west 57th 57th street. Basically youre looking at what we have called a court scraper. Its essentially what happens when you mry the communal space of the copenhagen courtyard, this idea of a perimeter with a courtyard in the middle with the density of a new york skyscraper and essentially what youre seeing is from the west side waterfront of manhattan the building, like, kneels down towards the water,pens up at the courtyard so the sunlight and the views of the water can enter deep into the courtyard itself. Rose between 11th and between 11th and 12th. Rose right. And basically on the Northeast Corner we lifted it up almost 500 feet so you h an abundance of daylight and sunshine in the courtyard and at the same time all the People Living there have views of balconies and terraces and the water. Rose the next slide is of the same building. Wow. Seen from the hudson river park. Again, its this idea that this building looks the way it does, not because of an obsession with triangles or at the tray tetrahedrons or pyramids, the courtyard corner is the height of a handrail and the other is the height of a highrise. If it was a typical courtyard it would be so dark but now it gets sunlight and use. Rose the d line . We call it learning from the high line. The high line is a piece of decommissioned infrastructure from a rail yard that have now turned into one of the most popular rose popular attractions in new york, in the world. So we were thinking what if you dont have to wait if a piece of infrastructure gets commissioned . What if you design it for the astal resilience of manhattan, all the architecture necessary to resist the next sandy what if we could design itreich rolling hills. Rose a lot of things have totorn down for that to happen, do they not . On the east side were trying to weave it in between some of the existing pa vile yans, as an idea, we tried to conceive of the dry line as a love child of robert moses and jane jacobs. Robert moses was also known as the power broker, a public ser vanity as Public Servant with almost totalitarian influence. He made a lot of the very necessary public works in new york the highways on the waterfronts, the public housing. Rose often bull dozing everything in his way. Exactly. A devastating impact on surroundings. At some point he wanted toun a highway through Greenwich Village and encounter resistance from jane jacobs and rallied the community and managed in a david and goliath moment to defeat the plans and save the village. We thought what if they worked together if because to resist an incoming flood you need create 12 miles of con tuggous waterfront, a wholestic overview, but to make it successful for community, it needs to happen in a close conversation with people who are going to inhabit it. So instead of making a seawall that separates the life of the city from the water around it to make it into an inviting landscape that brings the life of the city to the water. Rose theres a book at robert moses and jane jacobs too. Finally, this is the mountain in copenhagen. Basically the mountain is an example of what we like to call architectural alchemy. The fact that by taking different traditional ingredients like its a big parking structure for the neighborhood. The facade that looks like a mountain, its perforated aluminum plates that allows the parking to breathe and brings light in. But the holes are made in different sizes so they create the illusion of a photographic image. Then on top we placed a layer of parmts, so instead of having a traditional stack of apartments, one placed on top of each other theyre cascading so on tha,side they cover the parking but on the sunny side it becomes a manmade mountain of houses with gardens. Almost having a suburban lifestyle, a house with a garden and a penthouse view and in the middle of the city. Rose thank you for coming. A pleasure. Rose for more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose is provided by american express. Additional funding provided by p this is nightly business wh Tyler Mathisen and sue herera. Stunning setback. The house torpedos a key traderelated bill and a step to granting the preside negotiating power but the fight is far from over. Triple digit decline. Stocks end the week with a sharp slide and there are three things that could do that even more ne week. Drowning in debt a surprising number of homeowners still owe more on their mortgages tn their homes are worth, even as home values rise across the country. All that and more tonight on nightly busin for friday june 12th. Good evening, everyone. Im Sharon Epperson in for sue herera. And good evening from me,