Richard Meier - Building in context

Earlier, we talked about, you know, why am I so popular in Germany, for instance. Well, I'm not popular in Germany, but in any event, in any event, because I think that starting with the Frankfurt Museum and with other projects that are there as well, Ohm, Weisshoff, Siemens, gone on. What people have reacted to was, in working in these historical centers, the new building is not a pastiche. It doesn't try to replicate, you know, what was there or what is there. It talks about our time. It talks about what can be, but it deals with human scale. And it's really that human scale experience of the building, the surroundings, the relationship between the building and what's around it that makes it what's important. And it shows you that, you know, modern architecture, you know, is not alienating. It's as inviting as historical buildings, if the human scale of the quality of the experience of moving through the building is what people can relate to. And I think that's what it's about. And also the sense of public space, which is so much a part of the experience of most European cities. Public space is where people come together in different ways, whether it's in the cafes, around the squares. But there's a sense of public space in European villages and towns and cities that we don't have here. We have no recognition of it. And that's why some of the emerging areas of New York City are so extraordinary. Even if you go down to the Lower East Side, you see the number of people out on the street in cafes and the life on the street where people come together. It's always on the street, but nevertheless, it's a creation of a place, even though it's a street light. But we have no small squares or public spaces. Our public space are Central Park and Rockefeller Center. That's it. Sometimes you also do contextual relationship, proportions, alignments. Well, where it's appropriate, I think that you can find elements within the context that you can incorporate in the design. Because it's a cornice line, you don't have to express it as a cornice, but it may be a way of a plane stopping in relation to that line that seems to run around it. In Ohm, the skylights don't replicate the hip grooves, but they make reference to it and yet are fresh and abstract.