What are your most recent works?
One of the most recent SITE works is an interior office space for a stockbroker in New York. It was designed as an “information immersion environment” for Xerion Capital Company - completed in 2003. Throughout the space, glass walls are covered with a flood of semi-transparent digital icons, numeric images, and holographic video projections. The purpose is to create a feeling of kinetic activity in an environment of invisible technology - consistent with the flow of digital communications in the stock market.
The second project, entitled “Shake Shack,” is a restaurant/kiosk in the historic Madison Square Park in New York City. Completed in May of 2004, this small structure was sponsored by the Madison Square Park Conservancy and operated by Danny Meyer, one of Manhattan’s most famous restaurateurs. The kiosk is a garden building, with an ivy-covered roof and extended canopy. It is also a celebration of the nearby Flatiron Building by Daniel Burnham. As an innovative construction feature, it was built completely off site and installed by crane.
SITE is also working on two projects in Mumbai – a residential tower for one of India’s leading industrialists (name withheld by request) and a corporate headquarters for the Reliance Energy Corporation. The tower has been created in response to the client’s request for a structure inspired by the ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon, with multiple tiers of landscape and integrated living spaces. The industrial offices incorporate an existing building as part of a fan-shaped composite of offices, gardens, executive apartments, shopping areas, entertainment facilities, and a conference center.
The SITE office is still working (since 1999) on the Fondazione Rossini sculpture garden and pavilion, as well as a master plan for the entire property in Briosco, Italy. The pavilion is under construction, as are many fragments of the project – including special installations for various sculptures. The main purpose of this plan is to provide a suitable environment for an extensive art collection in a park-like setting.

Do you think the “star system” is now in a creative crisis?
If I judge from the majority of critical views that I have heard from a wide range of young architects and students during the past few years, I would have to agree – there is evidence of more style than substance today. While there is a lot sculptural and material-based innovation, the crisis of creativity seems to be a failure to search for new sources of content that are more in touch with what I call the “ambient sensibility” of the 21at Century. Unfortunately, like commercial products, architecture has become obsessed with “brand recognition.”
From the perspective of personal history, I rejected an early career as a constructivist-influenced sculptor because I felt that my formalist preoccupations were already derivative and old-fashioned in the early 1960’s. Also, at that time, only a very regressive artist would continue to use the kind of organic form identified with sculptors like Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi, Hans Arp, and Max Bill. For this reason, I find it appallingly conservative – in fact, evidence of conceptual stagnation – that most architects in the new millennium are still so heavily indebted to the stylistic baggage associated with Modernism and Constructivism. These movements were obviously at their most potent and inspired in the 1920’s. The only reason to revisit them now is because computer drawing facilitates the delineation of convoluted sculptural form. But why use new technology to create old shapes? The prevalence of seventy-year old influences from the early industrial era is pretty clear evidence of creative inertia.
When I abandoned the form-making, shape-making commitments of my early sculpture and moved toward architecture, the entire reason for this rejection of the past was to explore environmental issues, as opposed to remaining locked in the traditions of object making. I believe that any truly new architectural direction will focus on the absorption of ideas from context, find ways to become less damaging to the environment, and work toward the discovery of a design language that is less dependant on the past and more reflective of the integrative models found in both nature and communications systems.

Please make some remarks about your recent book on “Green Architecture”
I am happy to report that “Green Architecture” has become one of the best-selling books on this subject internationally – currently in its third printing in three languages. Most likely, the reason for its success is the appropriate timing. It appeared during a period when the green movement was associated (as least in the mainstream architectural world) with finger-wagging moralists, who chided the profession for its lack of responsibility. The most zealous advocates of the 1990’s demonstrated sustainability with structures that were green, but totally boring as design. My goal in Green Architecture was to examine the movement from a broader social, psychological, and aesthetic perspective. In 2000, when my book first appeared, the architectural world was flooded with green technology manuals and diatribes against wasteful design practices. While my publication includes these urgent issues, the main objective was to expand the definition of “green” to become a more inclusive mission.
I have been asked to write a new book, with the same purpose; but I am hoping someone else will take over the job. It is just too much work, when one is also trying to run a practice and teach as well. Certainly there is now a lot more aesthetically interesting and environmentally responsible work than when I wrote my text five years ago.

Who do you think are the most innovative architects now?
This is a difficult question because I so often like work that is not representative of my own philosophy and sometimes for reasons I can’t explain. Referring to colleague with whom I have a philosophical accord, I like the urban design focus of Michael Sorkin enormously – both in terms of his work as an architect and as a writer. I like Francois Roche’s innovative skins for buildings and the way he uses them to create a visual counterpoint with layers of sub-structure. I have great appreciation for some of the work of Herzog and Meuron - especially their austere and minimal buildings - but not some of their more recent structures, with overly articulated geometry (which seem as though they might be cribbing from Daniel Libeskind). I am also impressed by the collage-like work and adaptive re-use of industrial sites in the work of Thomas Spiegelhalter.
This past summer, while visiting Russia, I saw some exceptional interventionist work by a very young firm called Ludi Architects, who transformed a series of commonplace building drainpipes into spectacular lighting environments. I have always loved the work of Vito Acconci, who seems to be rapidly becoming more of an architect than a creator of interventions and environmental art. Since I am not working on a “search for new talent” type of book these days, I am not as aware of emerging architects as usual. Still, I frequently see buildings that impress me in magazines and exhibitions. I tend to be less interested in work that merely prolongs the familiar mainstream of organic form or neo-constructivist derivations. I much prefer architecture that is based on social, ecological, conceptual, and contextual premises. The global design scene has had enough bombastic shape making over the past decade. I am also bored by the “gee whiz technology” preoccupation with computers. The images created by this technology are often too facile and lacking in content to be taken seriously.

What do you think of the result of the Ground Zero competition? Do you like the Libeskind/Childs project? Let me begin by answering with two pieces of personal background information related to the World Trade Center. First, I was part of an artists group in the early 1960’s that publicly protested against the construction of the Twin Towers. This organization believed (rightly) that the Port Authority development would destroy the neighborhood. Secondly, the SITE office was located only two blocks from Ground Zero at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, so our premises were closed down by the catastrophe. Fortunately, we only suffered some moderate physical damage to our interior space and roof. The people at SITE had been working on a design charrette the night before; so, fortunately for everyone’s wellbeing, they decided to arrive late that morning. We were very lucky to lose only a few months of work in the post attack cleanup.
I believe you know something about SITE’s proposal the Ground Zero area. It is based on the premise that the original construction of the World Trade Center segregated and/or decimated several vital neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan. We felt these areas should be resurrected. The 1960’s “urban renewal” program included tearing down hundreds of historic 19th Century buildings and eliminating the connections between Greenwich, Washington, Cortlandt, Fulton, and Dey Streets. It was a savage act of destruction, perpetrated during the Robert Moses “blast out a hole and build” era of city planning in New York. This devastation wiped out several areas the size of SoHo – each containing a legacy of historic architecture and thousands of small businesses. As a final irony, the World Trade Center was a disastrous investment that lost money, while SoHo contains some of Manhattan’s most valuable real estate.
SITE’s concept for Ground Zero was to restore the original street grid and create a matrix for the incremental growth of neighborhoods – similar to the plan that made the Downtown area so successful in the first place. It advocated a total opposite strategy from the kind of overly prescriptive planning that built the Twin Towers. The SITE proposal suggested a program of gradual development over a twenty-year period, with buildings designed by a wide variety of architects. The purpose was to encourage organic and economy-based growth for the region.
Needless-to-say, the SITE plan was totally rejected by the real estate investors and politicians, who wanted to wallow in a kind of post 9/11 orgy of “development in the name of patriotism.” Naturally, this referred to the construction of super high skyscrapers, sitting in vast concrete wastelands, surrounded by potted trees, and including a starkly minimal memorial.
The Libeskind master plan for the Ground Zero site was the best solution to come out of the official design competition. Unfortunately, it still derived from too many of the early 20th Century planning traditions – some of which had already proven to be unsuccessful in the original WTC development. The Libeskind concept, like the first WTC, has too many vast open spaces, out scaled towers, lollypop trees, and uninviting commercial and recreational facilities. Also, there were too few opportunities for expressions of cultural diversity and organic growth.
It is clear to everyone with architectural knowledge that Daniel Libeskind’s proposal was far superior to the watered down compromises and dreary Modernist clichés being offered by S.O.M. and David Childs, Sadly, the entire planning process now suffers from a Bush-era atmosphere of right wing belligerence, aesthetic blandness, and the coddling of billionaire interests.

Give me some word about your experience as an architecture department head and as a teacher. What do you think of the American system of architectural education? Is it working well?
This is a very complex question that would take a very long interview to answer.
When I was invited to Penn State University to head the architecture department, the main purpose was to help develop a more integrative vision for the building arts and landscape design. It was only after I had been at the school for about six months that I realized this mission was going to be impossible. There simply wasn’t enough interest in environmental issues among faculty, much less the desire for a program of interdisciplinary education. After a couple of years, I grew weary of the seemingly hopeless struggle to reform the direction of the department and change its curriculum, so I returned to my role as a professor, design professional, and traveling emissary for green design. I feel these activities are much more productive and satisfying.
With regard to your question about the American system of design education – and this is somewhat of a universal problem – I believe that the information imparted in most schools today has little relevance to what is needed for the future of architecture. Design is taught as though the world is still rooted in the early industrial age - as though its merits are still exclusively about form, space, structure, and materials. While these elements are always important, the need for a new post-industrial and contextually oriented direction is architecture is the most interesting and productive course for the future.
At the conclusion of a recent essay I ventured a criticism of regressive tendencies in design today. I also included a scenario for how I feel architecture should be taught in schools. In this text I observed: “The conceptual inhibitions of contemporary architecture are caused by an insufficient number of questions being asked and the misguided assumption that buildings are too burdened by function, budget, and gravity to explore any outside ideas. This attitude represents a myopic detachment from the legacy of breakthroughs in the other arts and an unwillingness to experiment with new frames of reference. It is also the product of a century of architects’ self-imposed limitations. There appears to be only one acceptable formula in the design process, drawn from that pivotal moment in history when the disdained 19th Century notion of sculpture as a form of surface decoration on a building (the Beaux Arts style) was exchanged for the concept of the whole edifice as a piece of sculpture in itself. In contrast, the visual arts have been convulsed by many revolutions over the past one-hundred years - Post-impressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Non-objectivism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Conceptualism, Minimalism, Earthworks, Performance Art, Video art, Trans-avant-garde, Hyper realism, and a plethora of lesser movements - while architecture has remained locked into to the same formalist commitments that were at the height of their relevance and creative fertility in the 1920s.
In summary, architectural education needs to move beyond its obsession with antiquated formalist principles and Modernist theory in order to open up education to a world where social and environmental issues are the priority concerns.

Give me three words that can be useful for a young architect now.
The three words are also a description of the mission of architecture in the New Millennium - when the old mantra of “form, space, and structure” is becoming baggage from the past.
Idea , Attitude, Context