Richard Meier - The pleasure of creating public spaces (22_36)

No matter what I say, the Getty probably will always be considered one of the most important projects that I've been involved with. And my sense of why it's important is that it creates a place, a place that didn't exist in Los Angeles, a public place, a place where people can come, they can experience the entire city in terms of the way in which they view it from that site. They can take part in the cultural activities which go on there, or they can just come to it, not as an amusement park, but as a special environment in which to have lunch, to have dinner, to be with their kids, to sit in the gardens. But it's a creation of a place, and it's a creation of a public place. And for me, the public spaces are really the spaces which are important at the Getty. People who work there wouldn't agree, of course, but it's that aspect of the work that is the most important to me. And then when I think about other projects, the Stadthaus in Ulm, you know, it's a very nice building, but it's really the creation of that public square in the heart of the city, which the Stadthaus, in a sense, gives activity to, to the restaurant, to the exhibitions, and encloses the square. It's important. So it's really the public, and in Barcelona, you know, we cleared out that whole area. The plaza in the front of the building never, since it wasn't part of a building, you know, we never really got to do much there, but it's become a mecca. Every teenage kid in Barcelona with a skateboard comes to that place, and on the little ramps that lead up to the building becomes a place for all the skateboarders, and all the older people come to sit there and watch the skateboarders. So it has a life that goes far beyond the life of the building, and it's really the creation of those public spaces that are important to me. More important than the objects are the spaces that they make as a result of their being there. And so when I think of, you know, the various buildings, they're all great, but what gives me pleasure about the Perry Street and Charles Street buildings is that three buildings in one place makes a statement about that place far greater than any one big building could do. It becomes a gateway from the Greenwich Village to the park, and people say, you know, I'd like to walk along Charles Street or like Perry Street, because you really feel you're coming to something special. And for the skateboarders and the bicyclists along the park, they stop and they say, hey, look at this, you know. It becomes a kind of landmark, and they're moving up and down the Hudson River. And it's those things that I think are really what makes architecture so exciting, is that, you know, you're dealing with things outside of what you're making, but that you can change other things as a result. And I always like to think that our project for the World Trade Center, which I did with Stephen Hall and Charles Gwathmey and Peter Eisman, you know, is not just, it's not about making a building, it's not about making a monument, it's about making a place. And that Memorial Square that we created by the way in which the buildings hug two sides of the squares and the way in which the square was like arms reaching out into the water as shadows of the fallen towers, you know, that was making a place and making a statement about a place. It wasn't about putting up an iconic building. So when I think of, you know, lots of things that are happening, you know, the things which seem to get attention in the newspaper are, oh, you know, the funny shapes that people make. The computer, you know, enables us to do things much more differently than when we sat and just drew them. And with a computer, you can manipulate forms much more quickly and much more easily. It doesn't mean it's any better, it just means it's different and, you know, but it's about making the place is what it's all about.