iris van herpen 3d printed dress

good evening. thank you all verymuch for being here. it's really a special personalpleasure for me tonight to be able to welcomeross lovegrove. i feel lucky to countross as a friend,

iris van herpen 3d printed dress, and have really admired hiswork for a very long time. he is someone who, i think,if you live in london and you are involvedwith what is happening in the field of design,it's impossible for you

to miss followingwhat ross is doing. because from thevery beginning, he's been really involved ininnovations in the whole design sphere. and not really-- i mean, you seea lot of furniture and objects, but i think what's excitingabout ross's work is that he thinks in a much broader sense. he really thinksin a kind of way in which design is much moreintegrated with architecture,

with the kind of broader field. but also, i think hisfocus and emphasis on the interrelationshipbetween design and the way in which hisproducts are realized is a key part of his work. it's like being anarchitect who really thinks in a very integrated fashionabout the consequences of their designs,their realizations. it would be the same withplanning and landscape

architecture. so i think in that sense,it's really wonderful for us to have the opportunityto hear from him. also, i think you know thatwe have been experimenting, especially in thelast few years, bringing a few ofross' colleagues in the field to really speakto us about industrial design more broadly. and this, i think,now connects very well

to the establishment of the newmaster's in design engineering that is happening, and ways inwhich we want to work together at the intersection of design,engineering, the [inaudible] program, and the variousdepartments structures, and how this question ofthe shortening of time between ideas andimplementation should or is becoming a morecritical component of the way in which we think. i think this is happeningwith the work of many of you

in the school, where you arebeginning to realize things outside of the gsdmore and more-- sooner than waiting untilyou are actually in practice. and i think there'sa lot that we can learn from fashion,and from industrial design, in terms of the wholetime of prototyping. the lecture tonightis also happening under the rubric of themargaret mccurry lecture series, and also the rousevisiting artist program,

because the rouse isalso being interpreted in a much broaderway to incorporate designers of all typesunder the rubric of rouse. margaret mccurry is a wonderfulsupporter of the school. she's a former loeb fellow. she lives in chicago. she's an architect, and verymuch committed to the arts and so we're also happythat ross's lecture has both of theseaspects of the rouse

and also the margaretmccarthy lecture. so i'm really looking forwardto ross's presentation. he has an enormous body of work. i'm sure we're only goingto see a tiny, tiny portion of the work. but please join me inwelcoming ross lovegrove. [applause] he's a lovely man, isn't he? part of the white head club.

thank you mohsen. and it's taken me a while tocome here-- not literally, but i know i've beendue in the past. and i have alwayshad a poor excuse. so no more excuses. ok i put somethingtogether for you tonight that i think is meaningful. and it's something whichi think about a lot. and it comes from the fact thatit's funny-- just time passes.

when time passes, youdon't really notice, and that's why you accumulatequite a body of work. so it's age and commitmentwill deliver that. but i'm of a generation-- and iknow this new kind of agamemnon beard that i have makesme look much older-- but i'm of a generation whichwas brought up with a compass, making base geometries, aseverybody was before, actually, including my father,my grandfather. even adolf hitler made verybeautiful, compass-based

drawings, just to lookat base geometries. and then you go to school. and you buy awonderful geometry set. and you study sort ofengineering at school. and you are taught to developisometric and axonometric drawings so you understandthree dimensions. and then on youwould jolly well go. and in my case, i've gonethrough all of those processes. so i've gone from usinga compass to using really

state-of-the-artcomputer programs. and the reason is, if youwant to do something new, you have to use a new process. so it is a disservice toyourself as a creative, but it's also a disservice tocreative humanity, if you like, not to stay relevant by workingwith the tools of your time, even though that'squite difficult. and so roughlyabout 17 years ago now, i got rid of my workshop,which was pretty much hands-on.

i gave a lot of thosetools to jasper morrison, as a matter of fact. he still owes me. i think he thinks thatwas sabotage, because they were pretty primitive. anyway, and i bought myselfone of the first dimension 3d printers. i made that commitment. it was very expensivein those days,

without reallyknowing how to use it. although i was oneof the first studios, if you like, to experimentwith computer-aided design. the first thing we ever did--which i won't show you-- was a pen for louis vuitton. i have the originalimages somewhere. and that must have been--well, i know when that was. it was 1990. that's a long time ago now.

so what i'm going toshare with you today is that transitionfrom analog to digital. but there will be somesurprises along the way. because the analog remainsincredibly relevant-- i mean, to me personallyin my process. i was just up at aston martin,and invited up for a meeting. and they said incredible thingsabout me that i didn't know. i mean, really, i actuallyhad tears in my eyes. i thought that was incredible.

and they said that my drawingswere a sort of premonition for the computer age, thecomplexity of the computer age-- which i love, by the way. because i could drawincredibly three dimensionally. but in those days, youcouldn't really make it-- really couldn't. inspired-- don't like the word,but embedded with an interest in natural principles. that doesn't really mean nature.

it means natural principles. and i had a bit of timetoday, and i went up to the natural history museum. it's only me, normally,and people that big in these wonderful places. and they have incredible things. and i was looking at bones. and i suddenly realizedhow scalable bones are. that's, after all, just theidea how the bones are scalable.

go and look at the skull ofthe kangaroo and the hips-- incredible. and it's not because i'minterested in some kind of weird, prehistoric thing. but when things havehad so long to evolve, they are really,really purposeful. so what i practice is aform of evolution of design, but accelerated-- acceleratedthrough the human mind-- a, b, c, d, e-- a, b, c, d,e, f-- you run sequences.

you can do that in your mind. so i've got a lotto show you today. i mean, my studiowas even complaining helping me to put it together. it's kind of badweather out there, so i'm prepared to go on abit, if you enjoy what you see. i really don't want to goback to the hotel room. by the way, thepicture on my wall is hysterical, because it's abig black-and-white drawing,

actually, printed onto canvas. and there's a pictureof a professor. and they're all asleepin the audience. and it says, "professor zackalways loved his own lectures." and i wanted to senda picture to somebody. so the guy, the professor,didn't have much of a beard. so i took toothpaste, actually,and i put toothpaste on. and i'm hoping thecleaner doesn't notice. but there's a hell of a smellof toothpaste in my room

right now. anyway, ok, let's have a go. there we go. ok, these are just someshots in my studio. this is how it is. that's my [inaudible]. that's a scale model. and then underneath that,you have villa matoso, which is actually apiece of architecture.

and my son who'sstudying at the aa-- what i used to do for himis on his birthday, i would produce a modelfor him of his design. so that's an evolutionof my design by my son when he was 15. and it's reallybeautiful, actually-- really intelligentpiece of work. so luigi colani saw it, andtried to make some adjustments. but he was wrong.

anyway, these arejust different views. that's where i sit, near thoseorange things which i made. and i like beingimmersed in my world. because you do need tobe self-referential. otherwise you drift. and if you ever have the chanceto be in paris at the center pompidou, and look atthe brancusi museum, which has been rebuiltby renzo piano. it's incredible.

you could sit there allday, it's so beautiful. and in fact, i learned thatin his original studio, if anything got sold,he would make a replica, and put it back in his studio. because that was it. it was the compositionof him and his work. i think that's areally amazing idea. so that's why we allhave models and so on. if you ever go toanybody's studio that

doesn't have thingslike that, then they're generally called banana design,or tangerine, or anything that's not particularly human. so being immersed in one'sworld is very important. and you can see it. i mean, this is not a set up. it's just the way it is. and there's all sortsof incredible things there, actually.

that is a pieceof fossilized wood from the desert near libya. it was eight hours drive, andthen two hours into the desert. and my driver got outand started to pray. and it was because it was apetrified forest in the desert. and i asked himwith all of my heart if i could have a piece, becausethat's like taking something from a cemetery. and he let me take that piece.

it's very important to me. this is an incrediblepiece of carbon made by the militaryfor me in australia. there was a show called"latent utopias" in graz some years ago. that was with all thearchitects you know of. and i was invited by patrickschumacher to participate. i'm usually the onlyindustrial designer that participates inarchitectural investigative

exhibitions. there's a new editionof ad magazine, which has just being released. it's on parametricism, whichwe joke is para-patrick-ism, or however they say that. and again, i'm theonly designer in that. because i think there'ssomething in parametricism which we really need to embrace. and i can talk about that later.

but this is from bali. it's a cow jawbone. but honestly, it looks likea 3-d print in reality. these are swimming goggles idesigned about 25 years ago. this is a carbon fiberchair that never got made. this is the packaging formy issey miyake watch. this is interesting. this is a dialoguebetween henry moore, his drawings, and an idea ofmaking a host for a chair where

you could probably take20 different chairs off the same host. it's interesting-- modelsfor bicycles, and so on. and then downstairs, these arestudies for my water bottle, which i talk about in a moment. and these are original drawingsfor my books from my camera, which i never show, which i didat the royal college in 1982. and that's a box camera,which is from about 1928, which i actually gave todennis hopper before he died.

and this is solar seedi did that in about '94. i experimented with the ideaof inflatable architecture, with solar canopies andso on, and my staircase. and the idea of just 3-dprinting your own models regularly. right, that's oneof my sketchbooks. and i have them made. and i don't know whati'm going to get. and they're real leavesunder the real leather.

and when they're new,they are incredible. they are so beautifulwhen they're brand new in the wooden box. and they're made by a very,very old man in veneto, and they have beautiful paper. and because thebooks are beautiful i try and draw andwrite beautifully in respect for the book. so i train myself to do that.

and i feel so disappointed ifi ever have to draw anything that i don't believein in those books. so if i'm workingon a project, and i have to draw a reallybanal, straight-line radius, straight-linedetail-- and i have to do it because that'sall the paper i've got-- i'm on a plane-- icould rip that piece of paper out in disgust. because i find noinvestment in it.

so i don't tellanybody that, but it's a little bit like francisbacon burning paintings that he didn't like in orderto reinforce the core residue of a life's work. so in these books-- and i'mgoing a bit blind these days-- but i can see ifi can read this, because this is interesting. it's easier up here. that's why i wrotethat, thank you.

thank you, yeah, 1, 1, 2, 2. that's my father's birth date. so that's always kindof important for me. so tony cragg, whose worki think is incredible-- even his previous work, not thecommercial work that he's known for now-- who looks likehe embraced the digital, but didn't. it was analog. this is a very interestinglittle thing here from a book

called in and outof material, which is a bit of a bible for me. and the interview says, "doesa more anarchic diversity in a sculptor's oeuvre worryyou or make you anxious?" and tony craggreplies, "not at all. on the contrary. if an oeuvre does not have acertain degree of complexity, or is even slightlyout of control, i suspect some kind ofcoldhearted strategy.

perhaps they should becomea designer instead." and i'm not a designer at all. i'm faking it. that's just got a title. i believe what cragg wrote,because in design, design is often a coldheartedstrategy to sell, with no real truth towho you really are. i'm different, because ifight with every client on every projectto find something

that's embedded with sculpture,philosophy, art-- something more. i've got more of these. that's ok. i'll use this oneinstead, thank you. this one's great. by the way, i was asked to dothe launch of the iq in japan. and the iq takes fourpeople and all their luggage quite adequately.

and what i wanted to do wasbuild a huge polystyrene model of the big suv--anyone-- chrysler, ford-- and put that one insideit, and talk about the fact that in that, you can carry asmuch as you need as in that. it's talking about the economicsof how we build things. you have to think aboutresources, resource draw-downs. so the idea was,you would see that. and then that wouldbe lifted off, and it would reveal the car.

but more importantly here,this again is tony cragg. and i think it's great. "industrial rationalism tendsto censor the possibilities of form by lowest commondenominator-- decision-making, formality, formattingmaterials, and using cheaply producible geometries. any other way of making thingslooks relatively organic. unfortunately, this ignores thefact that darwinian evolution assumes a multitude ormultiplicity of biological

niches in which a multiplicityof species can develop. " so i'm really talking aboutdiversity-- biodiversity-- how we augment the form pool,how we open the whole thing up. and the problem you've gotin industrial design products is that we are obliged to makethat as perfectly as possible, and replicate it asperfectly as possible. there is no differentiationat all in those. if there is, it means a fault. well, i think inthe future, there

will be embedded glitches. there will be mutationalway of thinking. and the way the architectstalk about these things, which is what interestsme-- the work of greg lynn and so on-- the way they talkabout different strategies in how to make things, which iseasy as a model in the college. but in reality, it'sreally difficult. and i'm dedicatingmy life to going from what you see here nowto being able to build things

which look like they are 3-dprinted when they're not, because we're not there yet. so this is how idraw in my books. and i do that for me. i don't do thatfor anybody else. this is just my ownlevel of exploration. meaningless abstractforms quite often, just to get my mind sortof oiled and moving. if i can't think, i just move.

i just went down tosee the frank auerbach show at the tate britain, whichis a museum i really love. and i can do that. i can just go out of my studio,go down, look at these things. and there was a videoon frank auerbach. and my god, peoplelike auerbach, bacon, freud-- some of the greatestminds, the most articulate men you could ever imagine. why?

because their act of creationleaves their mind free. the problem that we allhave right now is our minds is so consumed withproblem solving that our mind is not free tospeculate philosophically. so that's why you're studying. you're studying in orderto have that freedom to be able to speculate, butthen keep that speculation when you get out of here in orderto push the boundaries. because that's what people likepatrick and [inaudible] blah,

blah, blah-- that is whatthey do, at whichever level they can, whichever project. and this is interesting,because i was in bali again. and i made that drawing. but this is interesting forme, because this is written, obviously, horizontaland vertical. 8, 8, 16, 88-- my birthday. and i can read that, of course. whatever.

so i experimented with that. and the reason iexperimented with that is because when darwinwas on the beagle, he ran out of paper. so he turned his notebookaround and he did that. that's where that comes from. and i saw that from a show inchicago and it blew my mind, absolutely blew my mind. and i thought, well,wouldn't it be interesting

if you pushed that further, likethat-- horizontal, vertical, oblique, twice. but if you change thefont, change the colors, change the thicknessof your pen, you can go layer uponlayer upon layer. i do that for myself. i don't have a clientthat asked me to do that. i'm exploringlayered information. because my work is academic.

people don't knowthat, but it is. i like process. i like the research and thedevelopment of something. i'm not paid for it,because we're not. and the world ofdesign has become very superficial-- veryquick, very sketchy, very make it, just godo it, bang, bang, bang. and that's fine, butthat's not where i am. and if you lookback historically

at the importanceof drawing, this, for me-- if i ever hadthe money and it was ever possible to buy that, iwould buy that drawing. it's a set of drawings. they're only small. and when leonardo davinci made this drawing, he set the experiment up. but for me it'sthe greatest image of an abstraction there is,because when the water was

running, he had tolook at the paper and draw, and then lookback at the water, which meant what he saw was notwhat he saw every time. it was impressionism. so i like that ideaof impressionism. i think design is impressionism. i think you feed the mind,and then out comes whatever. and in my case, this is adrawing for a water bottle that i designed, where theshape of a bottle or the volume

of a bottle meets one'sabstract impression of water. this was done on a wakomtablet-- one of the first. and in those days, whenthey first came out, it was like me, ron[? howard-- ?] only a few experimented with it. you had to lookhere, and draw there. and it was weird, becauseyou weren't looking at what you were drawing. so it was even moreof an impression.

i mean, of course thatseems ridiculous now. but in those days-- that wasthe year 2000, 2001-- but that's the impression of whati wanted to create, which was a containerfor water itself. this is the geometry. these are the [? nerbs ?]. of course, the further youextend these, which we do, and then by the time-- if youget this surface beautifully perfect, by the timeyou shrink it back in,

you get utter perfection. and that's what i practice. so all the designs that you see,i'm pushing the boundaries way out to an architectural scale,so when i pull them back in to a product scale,they're perfect. and all this is digitalinformation for manufacture. but i really enjoy these images. and when we were doing thesein 2001, that was sort of very self-- how can i say-- itcreated a level of optimism

in the studio, becausewe were enjoying the images we were making. but actually, theseare images which work. they're not just random images. and then what you do is youkeep the data that you require. and then you skinit, which of course, for you guys thesedays is pretty normal. but in those days,this was very exciting, because you could localizethat image, and blow it up.

and you would have frankgehry's disney hall or the side of a car. i mean, that's exciting,because it's self-referential. and you don't forget,and you feed that back into other things that you do. and then this is howa product like that is generated theoretically. it's called single-surfacedeformation, where you take a base geometryand then you deform it.

and it deforms into the object. so a lot of my work lookslike it has energy or motion. and it's because almost my mindis working more like a video than it is-- it's not static. in life in motion,everything's got movement. and then this is thesolid model which is milled from thatdata, which proves out the optical qualities i wishto achieve-- in fact, even the weight.

and then this is the moldmilled out of aluminum. and then that'sthe final product. so if you go back now-- let's goback-- ok, so you go from that, or let's go that, that,that, that-- no difference. and that's themanufactured product. and that costs about one pound. what's interestingfor me, again, is that i reach my kind ofeureka moment with this design. because i was looking to unifya lot of values that i thought

were important. one is using a thinner polymerto reduce material, of course, from an environmentalstandpoint. to do that, you use thissurface tessellation. the surface tessellationgives you strength. everybody should know that. you should know that from birth. that's embedded in you. you don't need to read that.

the optical qualitieswhich i talk about, which is interestingin itself, but more so is the fact that every level,any angle on that bottle-- that surface here that you see, thatshape-- is always different. and so every timeyou use it, you get the experience of what is amass-produced object producing a singularity. yes. all right, it's a bit slow.

ok. it's a pleasure. we could be here till midnight,but i don't have a problem. i've got some buckyfuller in my veins. when i did have a workshop--oh, this is such a nice story-- i mean, for those of you whoare interested in furniture. i don't design muchfurniture, because i have to have a reason to design. so i'll do it if there'sa new technology shift,

or there's a typologyi'd like to try. but i generally don'tdesign furniture. but bernhardt, whichis an american company, i got a call from their directorof design, jerry helling. and i'd never heard of him. and i worked for prettymuch all my life-- 28, 29 years for knoll off and on. my first jobs weretracing over the drawings of the great masters frommies van der rohe to breuer.

so i can draw proportionsof chairs in my sleep from those greatarchitects, which was a very good grounding. so they calledme, and they said, we'd like a lightweight,stacking chair. never heard of them. never visited them. never looked themup online, only met jerry, who cameto my studio once,

which was under a motorwaynext to a railway line. so it was a terriblestudio, but it seemed to do some goodthings at that time. but he came to see me. i liked him. and out of thatbecame the world's first injection-moldedmagnesium chair. and when we finished, i did findout what they did at that time. and they did wooden casegoods and beds-- wood.

so if i'd haveknown what they did, i wouldn't have done that chair. i just don't need to know. that's all. i think it's good tojust jump in sometimes. so when i engaged withthis, i had the workshop. and i made the model myself. and when you have aproduct like this-- i'll show you thecomponents-- when

you make a product like this--i called peter schreyer, who's the head of design for audi. i said, peter, where cani have magnesium injection molding done? he said nurnberg. i said right. we go in to nurnberg. and i did this allthrough nurnberg. and the first wireframedrawings that were done then

were beautiful. i've got one somewhere,which of course, nothing was kept on disk. i've just got somedrawings somewhere. but they'll take your model. and what they dois they split it down the middle conceptually. and they take the best half,and then they mirror it. and when they did that withmy chair, if i remember well,

it was plus or minusabout 3 millimeters. and i made it byhand without a ruler. i just made it. and i can do that anytime,because that's in me. and i like that. i don't do that enough. when i spent timewith luigi colani, he said, hey, ross, justget rid of the computers. make it all by hand.

everything you see-- goonline-- luigi colani, his name dot--everything made by hand. i've been to his workshop. he's incredible. that's a special skill. that's a balance ofsymmetry in your eye, remembering we're notsymmetrical anyway. so you can get awaywith that idea. so this is a celebrationof its construction.

when they design a car,they design a car whole, and then they decidehow they'll split it up. i think that's beautiful. you could do thatwith architecture now. you couldn't before, but ithink you can do that now. and then the details--the celebration of the split line, howcomponents are fitted together like bones. go and look at theskull of the kangaroo.

but that hole is therenot for decoration at all. it's there because ineed to cantilever. i need more structure a littlebit further back on the seat. so i have to pullthat back to get that. and so let's go back. this needs to be pushed backso that it's supported here. so the hole appears verynaturally as an evolution. but actually, whenyou sit on that chair, that's where your hand goesto pull the chair forward very

naturally. and what's lovely, on a hotday, it's a little bit chilly. and you see people who come tomy studio cooling their hands on the chair-- nice,little touches, which only come about later afteryou've made the product. i called it alloy,and the marketing team thought that wouldn't sell. so they called it [? go, ?]which means nothing to me. most of my productsare like that.

they mean nothing,just like having a baby that somebody callsbob when in fact their name is roman. that's what happens. it's called alloy. and if you look atany of my books, i always correct,because i think it's important to becompletely true to yourself in a issey miyake way.

and where does that lead? that leads ontothings like this. i work experimentally. so occasionally i willbuild pieces, collections, which i pay for. so i take the risk. and i make things whichclients would never make and by definition, thatmakes them a limited edition. it takes them outof the commercial

and into the realmof the true self. so these are milled from solidblocks of aluminum, which are aircraft grade from germany. and one of my guys wasjust so good-- tim. we did all thestaircase together, the water bottle, all thosethings-- to try and produce perfect form looking atthe evolution of sculpting. so if you go backgreco-roman, roman, working with a hard material,sculpting-- by the way,

bernini developedspecial drills in order to make his work so lightweightand thin-- so developing new tools in order toproduce new things. and then right up throughto rodin sculpting with clay and then casting, henrymoore working directly with materials,but also casting. so what are the toolsof sculpting today? so i thought computationaltools are the way to sculpt for today to getperfect form-- according

to my own values, of course. it's not prescriptive. but you make pieceswhere the legs feel as if they are absolutelymelted out of that surface. it relates back tosingle-surface deformation, which i learned when idesigned my water bottle. and i produce pieces like this. they're incrediblyexpensive to make. and they're incredibly expensiveto buy if you want one.

but that's not the intent. the intent is to explorethings which i could never do in my position as a service. and so you end upproducing things like this, where i can grow legswherever i want to grow them. i can do whatever i want. i actually like allof the caustic effects that these generate, too. and then what doi learn from that?

i put that back into industry. these are speakers forkef, a british company. they spent 12 years tryingto develop perfect sound. kef are kent engineeringfoundry down in maidstone. and they have great engineers--incredible engineers. but they try to workon perfect sound. and they couldn't achieve it. so they asked me if i couldtry to make a speaker that would deliver a perfect sound.

and through pure instinct--because i'm not an engineer. i know nothing. it took eight weeksafter their 12 year. this is absolutely true. so we built these. and they're called muon. and i even came upwith the name muon. and then i looked upthe word muon on after, and you should knowwhat muon means.

it's a cosmic particle. and in japanese, itmeans nothingness, which is incredible. so that instinct that relatesto every aspect of what you do is very important. we are losing our instinct. we are being told what toeat, what to do, how to walk, fitness bands, sitdown, stand up. it's the wrong way.

you have to engage. and you have todevelop your instinct. we have an urban existence, andthat doesn't deliver instinct. so these are two meters high. and they're made by a super-formprocess of expanding aluminum by a car company. and they have afront and a back. and these are all theacoustic dynamics. this is my studio's work,looking at the sound chamber.

and it's very simple, becausewhen sound is emitted, it must not beinterrupted in any way. it must not glitchthat sound expulsion. and when i was a kid, you'dsave your money to buy a hi-fi. that was the first thingyou got, the hi-fi. and you'd love the speakersif what they call the drive units are moving-- thosepaper cones moving. well, if they move, it'sdoing the worst thing. they should not move, otherwisethe energy is being used up.

so they have to becompletely still so the sound energyis fully projected. but that's easy tounderstand, isn't it? i mean that's notdifficult. so this is the data, the studio data,with all the sound chambers and so on. and the speakercabinet are filled with a specialfoam carbon, which gives you an incredible sound.

they should be 6 metershigh to deliver the sound that they give. they are a third of thesize because of the foam pallets of carbon inside. and we launched them in salacenacolo at the museum della scienza technico in milanowhere i go and look. i thought it wasa forgotten place. and what i liked was seeinghow a mirrored object would reflect its environment.

so if you put that in a tadaoando building-- at the benesse, for example, in awashima, itwould assume its environment. you put it in afresco-ed room like this, it assumes its environment. and we developed thisdigital floor that would react to the sound waves. so i think there's a video here. [video playback] [music playing]

[end playback] when the sound comes out ofthose, it's like the air. you don't know where thesound comes from at all. and this is so still and human. and the reaction was--one of the reasons i enjoyed doing them was becausei got really tired of people having these littlebuds in their ear, and being completely detachedfrom society and individual. and i think soundis a great thing

to experience collectively. so that endorsed and reinforcedthe making of that product. so what did i learn from that? i was invited to designan alpine capsule in alta badia in the dolomiti. and when i talkedto the client, he didn't want me to build a logcabin or anything near that. so we talked about seasons. and we talked about howyou dematerialize an object

into seasons. so it started to go into thisreflective object-- again the idea of a ufo landing. he was an extraordinaryman, because he used to fly a light aircraftto venice for coffee. and he kept this light aircrafton the top of the mountain. and his wife didn'tknow about it. and they lived on the top. i don't know how his wifedidn't know about the existence

of the aircraft. he probably justdisappeared for a few hours just to go to venicefor a cup of coffee. but he was an incredible man. and so we talked aboutthe idea of seasons. and at that time,andrea morgante, who was senior atfuture systems-- he worked directly with jankaplicky, who was a friend-- and we thought about thisidea, this idea of a capsule,

like a space capsulebut on earth, but with all creature comforts. so everything is the mostcomfort that you could ever give anybody. so you could putthis object anywhere in remote places-- completelyautonomous and off grid. and to do that, welooked at developing what was called a solar plant. so you have wind generation,which of course works at night,

and then solar deployment. and the capsuleitself was made out of a very, very thickacrylic, which was mirrored with a one-way mirror. one-way or two-way, dependingon how you look at it. but when you're inside,you can see outside, but people can't see inside. so you have incredibleprivacy, but you could be in the mountains withbeautiful climate-control,

beautiful air, beautifuleverything-- perfect, and have this incredible view. and you could go there withsomebody you love, make love. or you could go there withyour children and read books. you could go there to meditate. and i think that's a wholenew idea of getting out of urban environmentsand back into nature, but completely upholdingand maintaining the technocracy ofthat experience.

but then you could putit anywhere, for example. all those rooftopsaround the world. yeah. and then we move on to backto some digital data here-- so working on limited editions,things that test my own ideas. this is called ginkgo carbon. it's a carbon fiber table. and you never seethings like this, because both sides are perfect.

normally when you see anythingfrom carbon in formula 1 or in aviation,there's one good side and then there's one bad side. because they used it inan engineering-- carbon is often used in anengineering fashion. but here, used in anaesthetics fashion, it's something ilearned from greg lynn. greg always used to talk aboutcreasing strategies, which is what that is in the middle,and how the creasing-- which

is a natural phenomenon--would translate and create this cantileverinto the material and outward to createthe tri-lobal structure. and you can see that theleg itself is also embedded. so i don't thinkyou could probably make an organic table for less. this is a veryimportant object for me. it's just being entered intothe permanent collection of the centre pompidou.

and it's collected as a majorstatement on new materials and their employment. and this is how somethinglike this is conceived. it's conceived in moreof an animated way, almost like running anevolutionary sequence in nature, in leafformation, if you like. but when you go in deep--when the camera goes in deep-- it really feels likea cityscape to me. so you've got thisambiguity of scale,

which i find self-enriching. i get excited when isee something like that, because the scale moves out. but i think it would be great tobe able to work with materials at a nano level, whereyou could maybe even print that object with multipledimensional materials and densities. so you couldactually see, almost, that polarization into theproduct, which is a little bit

how we are, i suppose. i mean, that's a very old video. that's about 15 years ago. but it's still relevant to whati do, so i'll just move on, because i think we don'thave too much time. so that's the final object. and then what do i learnfrom that, because that's my private research? i'm asked to design a suitcasefor globetrotter, which

is a company that innovated100 and probably 116, 117 years ago now with fiber--vulcanized fiber-- where they would impregnatefiber with rubber, and you get this waterproof. they do these waterproof cases. so they asked me if i coulddo the globetrotter 110. and i thought, well,they have the provenance to work with fiber. so i worked with carbon fiber.

and this material herewas developed for me by toray, which is thebiggest producer of carbon in the world, in japan. and it's tri-axial carbon. it's very special material. and from that, i built this. it took me two years. and the form is derivedfrom pressurization. so it's almost asif you built a box,

and then you blewair into that box, and just slightlypushed the surfaces out. if you engage with theobject, you really feel that. it's the world'slightest suitcase. it's 1.35 kilos. it's nothing--absolutely nothing. and if you look atthe handle here, you think, what's going on? but actually, childrendraw handles like that.

but they crush your fingers. they squeeze yourfingers together. so this works like a spring. and it sort of bounces. the more the more weight you putinto it, the more it expands. if the averageweight of a carry-on is around 7.5, 8kilos, this gives you 6 plus kilos for your clothes. most cases weigh,if you're lucky,

3 kilos, if you'reunlucky, 5 kilos. so you've only got 2, 2.5kilos worth of content. that doesn't make sense to me. and if you know how manypeople fly around the world, including myself every year,the numbers are staggering. so lightness anddematerialization for me is everything. and i've worked onaviation and so on. and when i did japanairlines' first class,

it was so difficult for me. because the first classseat-- the mechanism alone that i inherited-- becauseyou can't change anything-- is 240 kilos. well, try flying 240 kilosfrom boston to sydney. it doesn't make sense. that's without the passenger. that's withouteverything else on it. there's some madness.

and every time i fly--i was lucky enough to come here first class,and thank you very much. i didn't expect that. yeah, anyway, i was in economy,but i sneaked into first class. they brought the trolley aroundtrying to sell me something. and i just think it's madness. it's madness trying to sellyou a cheap bottle of something on an aircraft. i mean, that has to stop.

so this is more of asort of act of humanity rather than a suitcase. and if you look inside, thisis the tri-axial carbon, which has that lovelymilitary quality. military is oftenassociated with authority and authoritative use ofmaterials for a reason. so when you seeit on a product-- konstantin grcicdid a great show in the serpentinecalled "design now".

and he exhibitedthis, which is great. but you see there's nolining at all in it, because i worked out thatlining would weigh 400 grams. and i thought across theproduction run, why don't you just put your phonein your socks, or your laptop in your sweater? you don't need liningin a suit case. it's just a box. so these are the things thati get engaged with, because

of this flip-floppingbetween my investment in research and understanding,as a primer for when i'm asked to design. so when i'm off, when i'mnot designing, i'm designing. i'm never off. you can't be. you've got such a short,silly, little life. it's nothing. your life is nothing.

you have to absolutely invest. you have to be totallyembedded in what you do. and it's fast moving these days. so these are just some details. ok, and then wheredo i go from that? this is calledridon, which is back to my exploration ofcontemporary sculpture. it's a man-machinestudy, and it's called ridon becauseit's an anagram of rodin.

and you can pick thatup with one hand. that's a computer image. there's one man alive in francewho can make these things. that's made from carbon, andby hand, like a seamstress-- all with the cutting. i mean, it's incredible. but this man now worksfor frank stella. so this will neverbe made again. he's completely bookedup for the rest of time,

because frank is asuccessful artist, and probably payinghim a lot of money. so those days are over. but when you pick thisup, and you invert it-- you put it on its end--it looks like it's something from the baleen,like a whale family. it doesn't really feel--it's sort of a motorbike. it's not a motorbike. it's inspired by[? baconi's ?] "running man,"

which for me, if i ever had themoney, that's another thing i could live with. but then, i haven'thad the chance yet, but my aim-- i have a show atthe pompidou next february. and i would like tobe able to make these as a triptych, wherei progressively dematerialize the object. so i remove anything stepby step that's extraneous. there's a number of steps to gethere from that one to this one.

i have to find somebody to buildit, as well as that first one. but there's three. like that. and this was a commission. we were talking earlierabout private commissions. this is a commission in thelebanon for a table-- a dining space, actually. and as ever, i'mtotally ambitious. and i lost so muchmoney doing this.

it's untrue, but he was happy. so this is the table. that's the client. and this light here, ifyou turned it upside down-- it would fit inside the table. so it's born out of the table. i like that idea. and then there's a littlevideo here to show you. i don't employ designers at all.

i employ automotivedesigners and architects, and i take them from[? bangavanta ?], aa, eth, bartlett. that's who i work with,because i train architects to work in industrialdesign, because they have great process. when they go throughschools like this, they come out the end the otherend with a good academic mind-- a process-led mind.

and i like to takethat process-led mind, and then teach themhow to make things. because i thinkthat's the only way to make progress inindustrial design. and that's why, if youlook at the broader field-- the broader field isfull of banal objects. it's too easy-- easyprocess, easy product. no time, no product. you have to invest.

you have to go deep. and it's not easy,i have to say, because it's gettingever more complex. and i can't find theclients-- that's the problem. i can't find thepeople who understand or who are preparedto go the distance for that level of investment. the work i'm doing now,which i can't show, is incredibly complex.

and i have to do everything. i have to do thetooling, the whole thing. otherwise, my clientdoesn't understand. but i don't get paid for it. but if i don't do it,nothing gets made. so this voidillusion, i did that with christoph hermann, who wasa graduate of the angewandte-- great guy. i mean, i have employedpeople like julia koerner,

for example. she does all the dressesfor iris van herpen. there's about fiveor six people who lead the field in 3-dprinted technologies, who have come through my studio. [inaudible] employa great bandwidth of digital architects,not industrial designers. and this is the chairthat goes with that. and it's very, verysophisticated form.

i'm interested in these glitchesof strangeness that you get. these took months to make each. i mean, there's thisidea of a single entity. i was saying earlier idon't have one often. often it's the case--i do these things. i don't even own one myself. if you ever get a giftfor me, i probably had to buy it at duty-free,because i don't get anything for free.

i'll try to move alittle bit quicker now. this is a project idid for swarovski. it's swarovski crystalaerospace-- very unusual project. this is all the data. this is the making of this. it's a solar-powered caron a hand-repoussed base from a milled[? ureal ?] form, so it's all digitally generated,but then handmade.

so this analog-digitalflip-flop starts to kick in. the layout of allthe solar cells-- that's a singlerhomboidal shape, but it fits the full form. and the laying up ofall of the solar tiles-- i mean, what a job. i mean, i did this. i had to go all theway to switzerland to cut the solar panels by hand,because they're wafer-thin.

and you have to hand-set themon a machine with a laser. it's the only place ineurope that can cut them. but the solar panelscome from north wales. then something else comesfrom somewhere else. i had to buy extraseats on the plane, because they're so delicate. i had to keep them nextto me on the plane. the whole project-- allof this, even developing-- there's 1,000 tiles.

and these are allhand-selected colors. and here, you have a crystalcell on a 3-d printed base. and i have a worldpatent on these crystals, because what happens isthe light hits the crystal, and disseminates all thelight equally onto the tile. so that was theidea-- crystal, and polycrystalline photovoltaicpanels-- so the dialogue between crystal, siliconcrystal, and crystal as in what was asalt-based crystal.

and it's like a burial shroud. but to do thingslike this, you need an artistic, aesthetic eye. it's not design. you're looking forsomething beyond that-- the power of something thatmoves you, like looking at a burial shroud from china. and then you arrive atsomething like this. and this object, roughlyfour meters, it's

the bridge product, bridgeobject, between worlds. because it's been shown here at"the history of the automobile" in torino as the key exhibit. it's been shown atart basel, miami. it's been shown at thedesign salone in milan. and it's been shown atthe freiburg solar fair. so it transcends boundariesbetween technology, art, and design, and automotive. and julia koerner didthis video for me.

i'm sure she doesn'twant you to know that, because it seems so primitive. but i still like it. i think i did this about15 or 16 years ago as well. but what this shows ishow a single-seat object, through morphology, canbecome a four-seater object-- the same object. this is what evolution is about. this is how fish evolved.

this is how horses evolve,how everything evolves. you have three pointsof stability moving into four points of stability. so it's as i alwaysdemonstrated-- it's like that. that's what happens--something grows in order to compensate for somethingthat's evolving or missing, as that species is evolving. and then this is thestaircase in my studio. it's called dna.

it's a composite--jeweled composite module with carbon and fiberglass. and it's a repeatmodule, like that. and it has this innerhandrail, which gives it its incredible strength,which you use when you use the-- that's my studio. so i'm using that every day. and then a virtuallyunsupported carbon handrail, because it's carbon,and you can do that.

it's a little petsubject of mine. that's the stereolithography,the first stereolithography of it. and i linked that to this,which is a staircase that i did for david chipperfieldfor his project for novartis in switzerland. and you can see it's sortof grown like a ginger root in the way it's constructed. it's all in kevlar, whichis an incredible material.

so it's anatural-color material. i very rarely artificiallypigment anything i do. i like natural materials. even isamu noguchi usedto look at plastics and say they look--he couldn't lick them, because they weretoo toxic for him. so the naturalness ofmaterials is very important. and we need to start doingthat with cars and so on. we shouldn't paint objects,because paint ruins

all of our water table. so i like compositesand those alternatives, because you don'tneed to paint them. there's enough color inthe natural world for me. so it's aneight-story staircase. and what you can't appreciate,but if you walk on it, it has the slightest,imperceptible curve on the heel. you can't really see it.

but when you walk, whenyour heel goes down, it gently pushes you forward. i mean it's so comfortableto walk on, that staircase. and because it'skevlar, it's stiff, but you know it's lightweight. and it's bizarre to walkon something that you know is incrediblystrong, but you know it's lightweight,without being able to know it's lightweight.

it's about intuition. and you see they're moldedthis way in order to amplify the lightness of the stair. so they're where sortof bioengineering meets normal engineering. and of course, in there are alli-beams and all pretty boring stuff. and then quickly,this is a project for lasvit, acompany in bohemia.

i developed a wholenew-- they asked me for some hanging glass lights. and i said no. so i said i'll do this instead. and this is a wholearchitectural glazing system-- took about two years-- wherewe have automated molds which can be shifted to give you verydifferent optical densities. again, i did this withmy architectural people. and what's interesting,if you glaze a building,

it means that if youhave places where you need a higher density ofprivacy, you can densify that. and then even ifyou sit down, you could probably havemore transparency. so you can look out when you'reworking, and when you stand up, maybe it becomes denser,the bathrooms, or whatever. and you can do incrediblethings with glass. again, what i learned isall about the caustic energy that you get throughlight penetration.

and i did all of this withalisa andrasek of biothing. she developed all thisprojection for me. which is like sort of beingunder the sea, really. it's got a bit of thesort of [? farnsworth ?] house or barcelonapaviilan quality, but done in a very simpleway-- very simple construction, with this tension parasolroof, with our projection. we developeddouble-skin versions. there are versions withsolar skinning on them.

there are versions where wefilled it with glass pellets. and some of them aregas-filled, so that they have complete thermal insulation. as an architectonic product. this is calledcellular automata. i took a scan through a livinghuman being, through the spine. and then this is astereolithography effect of that, amplifiedit a million times, and then subjected it tobase engineering forces.

and i made it a seriesof six elements, which were shown in an exhibitionwith tokujin yoshioka in 21 21 in japan, called"second nature." and when you'rewith these objects-- and they're quite big objects--when you're with them, they have a human dimension. i can't explain it,because they come from deep inside the human physiognomy. but they have very architectonicelements sometimes.

so if you change theamplification of the cell, you get very different things. good night. so this is the scale. they were the largeststereolithographies at that time in japan. they are very delicate. i've got them in the studio. i'm just hoping the polishcleaner never knocks them.

they seem to survive. and then we go backto the sketchbook. after all theseyears of working, we go right back to that. and where are we know? this is something i'mdeveloping for the pompidou. and i'm trying to describe theinfinity of the human mind, the creative mind. and when i went downto the judd foundation

in marfa, texas-- anna,we were talking about that today-- i was blownaway by those two sheds which have these elementswhich are supposedly built from the same geometry. but they go on forever. i think there are 52 ofthese sculptural elements. they're linear,they're not organic. but they could goon ad infinitum. and i'm curious of that.

so i'm proposing,if i can-- they're very expensive to build-- ihave to kind of align myself with some institution-- is iwant to build 100 chairs based on carlo mollino-esquebase geometries, organic. and then see how far ican mutate and push these. and i've built a few sofar at my own expense. this is how they start. they start like this. i'm talking aboutinversion, blah, blah, blah.

and then this is the data. that's the rendering. and that's the real thing. and they're incredible whenyou're with these, because we call them coralizations. so when they passthrough the program, the program eliminates anymaterial that it decides. and i don't interfere,even if some of the results are ridiculous--legs that are so thin

they could break--i mean, weird. they're all asymmetric. but they reduce. they're really takingwhat carlo mollino did and passing it through themodern age of what we know now through the digital realm. and they are printedin alumide, which is part aluminum, part resin. so they're strong.

and they have to be assembled,because they can't print those much bigger than that. but what you have is you've gota single spine going up-- you don't need more than that--and then a tri-pedal base. and then i'm justgetting to the end now. this is the work i dowith artemide in milan-- completely transformtheir industry. because i introduced themto milling and 3-d printing. so i've done that overthe last 10 years.

and it's transformedthe way that they work. that, by the way,looks very expensive. i mean, it's quitea large object. it's called "cosmic angel,"with these special lights, which, of course,that's a reflector. but that's made just the sameway as a piece of plastic in your box of chocolates. it's super thin, becauseyou'd never touch it. it's a millimeter thick.

you could do this with it. and then it's coated. so it's super cheap to make. but the perceived valueof it is incredible. and that's what designis meant to do-- it's meant to seduceby drawing you in, your emotions in, toyour value system. and that's wherethe profit lies-- not that i wantto talk that way,

but that's often the way it is. so these are meetingsin the workshop. i mean, when youdesign, and you fly in, and you go to thefactory, and you see a thing likethat-- because it just looks like a computerrendering-- you're blown away. and i only have a small studio. i have, at the moment,five active assistants. and what i'm showing you tonightis probably 2% of anything

i've ever done. the solar car, by the way--12 weeks just me and one assistant. and it wasn't my main job. it was an extra. so i'm telling you asstudents-- you've got to work. you really have to work,otherwise you're nobody. you're going to come out ofhere-- ok, harvard, great. you can wear the t-shirt.

i've just boughtsome for my family today so they couldall say they went to harvard instead ofa cheap state school somewhere in wales. they can cheat, andpretend they did. but it means nothing unlessyou come out of here, and become somebody, andpush some boundaries. i'm in the field ofindustrial design. and there are veryfew-- and we're

all friends, all the peoplewho do all the good stuff-- like in architecture. it's the same. and i get so excited when isee great things by friends, like konstantin or jasper. i love it even though idon't do what they do. and they go oh, ross, what youdo is just too complicated. forget it. but you've got to stick with it.

because we'reliving in an age now where a lot of the models thatyou see on display outside are alluding to that. i mean, if gaudihad ever listened to anybody in his time,nothing would have happened. i mean, you've just got to gofor it in a kind of blind way, and then be very assertive. you deliver a very strong case. if you deliver a verystrong case-- in this case,

this is light. so this is reflective surfaces,so you can't argue with that. but the reason ishow it, because i tried to put this talktogether so that there was some kind of continuity. so just hold thissurface in your mind. that's a diatom. and this is some of theoriginal data for a chair that i just finished formoroso which is called diatom.

that's the computer image. and you can seethis surface here. and it's only withpeople who understand computational design,algorithms, and parametricism that you can dothings like this. because that's notjust a pattern. it's a structural pattern, whichmeans that you can actually use a thinner gauge of aluminum. so like my waterbottle 20 years before,

you don't lose anythingthat traces your lineage of your thought process. this lightens the material. and what it does is, itlifts you slightly away from the chair soyou're comfortable. so there's air circulationaround the chair. so when it's outside, it's cool. but the main idea isthis-- you see these holes? when i was thinking how i coulddesign a new stacking chair,

i was thinking how thelegs could go like this. the legs could go like that. and i thought, oh, stuff it. i said, let's just gostraight through the thing. and that's what happened. and when this waslaunched, which is 2013, when that was launched, igot four messages on my phone from the greats-- albertomeda, konstantin, jasper, nauta-- saying amazingthings about that chair.

that was enough for me. i didn't expect toget any royalties. i just got fantasticmessages from people who i think do incredible work. so that's enough, at that level. and these are allthe first pressings. you go to the factory. you work with everybody. you do your job.

and then you arrive ata product like that. i mean, it's areal breakthrough. and i've never wona compasso d'oro, but i'm up for onethis year with this. so fingers crossed,because i would like to. but in the old days, they'dgive you a golden campus. today, they just giveyou a certificate with a drawing on it. so it's a pity.

i'll have to fake it,have to make one myself. so super light, superstrong. i work with ecology a lot. and when i was 16, idesigned a windmill, which i guarantee to youwas not very trendy when i was 16, to tell your friendsyou were designing a windmill. but we have to encourage designstudents all over the world to embrace environmentalconcerns as part of their social andsocioeconomic endeavor.

it's a mandate. it should be embeddedin everything you do. just because somethinguses less material or looks a littlebit strange does not mean to say it's less in valuethan something else that's shouting at you. so it might develop awhole new aesthetic. it can develop a whole neweconomy, which, as you know, relates to ourcollective consciousness.

so i talked artemideinto doing this. it's called "solar tree." this is in milan. and there's awonderful compatibility between led technology-- leds,bless you-- and solar-- very, very efficient relationship. so this is developed here. and it's an off-gridproduct, which means you don't needany planning permission.

you can just putthat where you want. and there are 10 heads, whichcollect energy, feed them into batteries in thebase, which stabilize the tree through weight. and then you've gotfour heads which deliver high lumens at night. and i watched this program yearsago about an old lady in africa who-- i don't knowwhere-- a grandmother who spent all her savingsto buy a solar panel

for her grandchildren, becausethey couldn't read at night. and here, i justthink it'd be great if people can read anewspaper or a book at night. i mean, this is anacademic-- you're at harvard. so ok, it's too cold atthe moment, but that idea that you have points where youcan meet people, maybe plug-in your phone, recharge yourphone, or get some free energy. nothing's free these days. i think it'd begreat if there was

some free energy in society. and then later it's beendesigned to maybe recharge electric vehicles and so on. and that's what it is. and i was thinking whatcould you do in the future? because i work with what iknow and what i don't know, so i work on totalspeculation most of the time. and so amazingif, in the future, through bio-mimetictechnologies,

you could have a street lightthat actually followed the sun, so it optimized the solargain as nature does. i don't know howto do that, but i'd love to work with, i don'tknow, biologists and materials scientists, and developthese instinctive, sort of reactive newspecies of products-- intelligent products, thatare sort of self-fulfilling. ok, i'll just move on becausei know we're getting late. i've been working on thisfor about 18 years now.

this is my answer to autonomoustransportation for cities. and it's called"car on a stick." and i'll show you in aminute what that means. but when you workwith rotational form, everything gets simpler. and i think itwould be incredible if you could put your kidsin a bubble in the morning, send them to school. there's all projections insideon the screens, on the windows,

so it's educational. and it gives thembeautiful air, perfect air. and it's super secure. so you just drop them off. it's just a deliverysystem for humans. so the idea of adriverless car, which is sort of ubiquitousright now-- it never was, and i'vebeen pushing hard. we tried to develop thisfor the city of lille,

but that didn't work one timeit needs-- i'm working, dealing with elon musk right now. so maybe that's somethingthat could come out of that relationship. but it has a solarcanopy, the lights, and the simplelightweight netting seats. and what i like aboutthe key idea of this is, when you live ina place like london, it's infested with cars.

nobody questionsthis, by the way. i mean, they're everywhere. and you have tonegotiate these vehicles. and by the way, we have terribleair pollution in london. it's really badbecause of our buses, and our lovely black cabs. the diesel is slowly killing us. when i walk to mystudio in the mornings, i mean, i'm going tohave to wear a mask.

it's starting to get really bad. so cars, for me, are takingup all the terrestrial plane. and the terrestrial planeshould be for human beings. so i'm saying that thisis it during the day. and then you park iton a proboscis here. of course you get out. and then this lifts up, andat night, it's a street light. these are street lights,based on my work for artemide. and the doors all openeasily, and so on.

and i've lectured all overthe world and shown this. and these ideas-- theidea of proximity sensors and satellite navigation--existed for a long time. so what doesn't sound newtoday, standing here in harvard, was very new back then. it's a flockingstrategy as we see in nature, in fish or in birds. they just don'ttouch each other. well, we can harness thatkind of level of biomimicry

so they will never crash. when you speak to cardesigners, car designers are just waitingfor the day when embedded ai within vehiclesdenies them crashing. that means they can makea material for probably a third of the material. most of the material nowgoes into the safety aspects of cars, which is alsonot good for the planet, because it's using too manyresources to build things,

as my sketch in the sketch book. they're too big. they're too heavy. we're developing superlightweight glass now. there's all sortsof things going on which allow ideas likethis to really become reality. it's funny, because [inaudible]asked me to give a talk down at his studio in san francisco. and i was showing this.

and i said, this is the future. he said, it can't be the future. i said, why not? he said, because copyscan will not exist. sorry, i find that funny. but wouldn't it be greatif mothers with babies can walk really effortlesslybetween these vehicles? and what's great is thatdoesn't exist anymore. so it means the same surfacewould become the sidewalk.

and we have materialson earth which we consider veryvaluable, but which are incredibly abundant--like marble, for example. there's a lot of marble around. imagine going to acity with white marble. i walked twice todayacross this harvard yard. and when i got outthe gate, where they have somebenches and the vans, they have a white granite floor.

and it was a cold day. and you know what? i felt so much betterwalking on that light floor than i did walking through theyard-- just that simple thing. or when you drive, and yougo in a lighter asphalt, it feels so modern. that psychology of space,integration, light, physical light in cities,security, how we-- we've got great advancesin architecture.

but we don't have greatadvances in the system. this was one of the firstrenderings i did years ago. and it shone outsidesendai media tech, designed by toyo ito. and by the way, i designedthe top floor of that. incredible-- i went to venice,to the biennale one year. and he was showing the project. it was a little acryliccube with some holes drilled through it.

and i was so emotional. i thought was incredible. i actually had tears. it was in a brick room, wherethey showed the competition entry with all the dates and thephotographs-- very easy, very student-y. and then literallyabout six months later, i got a call fromhis office saying would i design the top floor?

so you know that'show my life is. i don't dictate anything. i don't call anybody. i don't ask anybodyto design anything. what you show is where you go. we're coming to the end. but what i wantedto show you here is context, becausethere's that old idea that when you saw villa savoyby corbusier with a car outside,

the car looks so old. well, modernarchitecture is starting to be so progressive thatwhat's the exchange now between automotivetransportation system, buses, movement, people,and architecture? why can't you parkyour car in your house? why can't you park your caron the front of your house? stick it on thefront of your house? why can't it bean extra room half

in the house, half the house? because it's a hugeinvestment in the car. it's a much higher investmentper square millimeter than a house would ever be. so why can't it be consideredas a part of a house? or as a generatorsystem-- an energy generated system--for the house? so that synergy between,or the coexistence between, your mode of transport andyour mode of living, i think,

should be explored. a vision of the future. just imagine inassociation with ericsson. my name is ross lovegrove. i'm a designer who believesin organic essentialism, which means using nothing more andnothing less than is needed. a symbol of 21st centuryconsumerism is the car. and as emergingcultures embrace it, that number is set to explode.

these are issues whichneed to be addressed. car on a stick is a superlightweight bubble that is directed by state-of-the-artsatellite navigation technology. it is clean, and hashigh availability so the passengerscan enjoy the city, and the city canenjoy the passenger. the car has a solar canopywhich recharges during the day. it's parked on a hydraulicstick which lifts into the air.

and in the evening,it miraculously becomes a streetlamp. in the future,we're going to have to get used to ideas thattransform our lives-- more organic, more dynamic, andsignificantly different than what we know today. just imagine, inassociation with ericsson. [inaudible] if you converge allthat way of thinking,

so that you understandwhat i said, you when i firststood up here tonight, talking about analogto digital over-- i designed my firstthing when i was 16. and i'm coming up to 58,so i've been doing this. but i want to getbetter, because now we're living in an age wherethere's great things going. we're living througha renaissance. it's incredible what'sbeing developed.

you can look onflipboard every day, and there are things beingdeveloped every day in biotech. i mean, it isincredible what you see. it's the most amazing timeto be living, because we've got problems to work against. that's why art, great art,seems to have a problem to work against. that's why chineseart came to the fore, because it had comments.

so design, if youlook at medicine, you look at everything--transportation, aviation, how we move, how we eat, how we3-d print food, how we replace meat with something else,how we feed everybody-- a post-hydrocarbon economy--we should be really aiming towards that. how do you putall that together? and that's only partof what i'm really trying to talk about tonight.

that should be embedded. that should be unquestionable. and you're only as goodas your client, really. because i don't make things. i mean, i have to convinceclients to do things. so i've always had areally strong relationship with france, with thefrench, with paris. and i've worked on a numberof iconographic projects. and so a while back,renault came to me.

and they said, oh,we'd like to develop a new, small, electric car. would you be interested? and the thing is, i likerenault, because they're a democratic brand. they're not a big,snobby-- it's quite easy, actually, i think, to developa lamborghini or a ferrari. because it's just form. but if you got to work with thedemocratic brand for people--

and i don't likepopular culture at all. i really don't. but i do like universalconsciousness. that's a very niceway of putting it, i think, in way ofthinking about how like-minded people aspireto those same things, instead of being fed hamburgersand all the things which are bad for you. so i don't like popular culture.

but i think if we're goingto go into mass anything, it should be mass individualism. so thoughts on 3-dprinting, which i'm going to just end within a second, will help us. but in the short term,i'm going to show you this, which is my car. it's called the twin'z. and as i said, it's for renault.and it's a very small car. and the brief ireceived over the phone

was, it has to be blue. that was it. that was my brief. i do know the director ofdesign, so that kind of helped. but my objective was to makeit pilot centric, so everything comes from thedriver, and to do away with any instrumentation, anynoticeable instrumentation. so in fact, you'llsee here these also let ventilation through, sound.

the foot pedals are actuallyelasticated within the floor. there is no difference betweenthe floor pan and the walls. even the steering wheel growsout of the internal form. and this is all parametricallymodeled-- huge amount of work. and then this is thebuilding of the prototype. this is milled out of acetyl,which is a beautiful material. you can see how trying toget all the lines to converge on the driver. and this is how it'sdeveloped in paris.

and i'm back to my sketchbookafter all this time again. and i'll show you why. these are my drawingsfor the roof of the car, looking at chlorophyllicsolar panels. i wanted to develop a veryspecial solar panel system. so these are two ideas forthat, with an integrated light. and that's the roof. and what happensis, when you brake, there's an immediate sortof [makes noise] and then

everything migratesover the top of the car. and so this islooking at the wheel. because i likematerial transition. and what's beautifulabout cars-- or could be-- is that one material naturallyconverges into another. i love that. i love the fact thatmetal goes into the glass, and goes into the rubber. i think it's amazing.

as an entity like an insect--again, go to the museum, because they have incredibleinsects i was looking at today. and i couldn't do it. but i wanted to have abreathable steering wheel. so this was oxygenthat was pumped out to keep the driver fresh. that sponginess, ithought, would be good. but this is my main focus. so you see theevolutionary development

in terms of transference--structural transference from the hub to the rimacross this kind of bandwidth, which arrived at this,which is 3-d printed. it's this. and that's the final thing. and made working, all works. and then even the way that thesethen get cut into the tire, they're bi-caloric tiresmade for me especially by michelin in lechaud [inaudible],

not le chaud [inaudible],down in-- where is that? where they play rugby. anyway, i used to go downthere and develop these tires. the body, you'llsee, is super matte. my thinking wasthat most cars are kind of shiny on the outsideand matte on the inside. and i thought wouldn't it beinteresting if you reversed that? so i found the man who mixedthe pigment for yves klein--

french. and i tried to developthe driest ever pigment. i mean, most of thepaint fell off the car. but then we got it to stay on. because i just want the carto be as dead as possible on the outside. and then back to thesketchbook, looking at how it breathes through the floor. these are the seats, whichare like a tennis racket.

they're a single carbon fibermolding with a net bag over it. most car seats are made up ofabout 20 different materials. they're the things whichgive away the age of a car, because the foam degrades,and they get smelly. and there just seems tobe something very archaic about a car seat. and then on the right,these old studies for the light migrationfrom the rear brake lights through the roof.

and then this is thedevelopment of the interior. i mean, it's a small car,so to optimize space, you have to reallythin everything down. and then these are theseats-- all working. that's a drivable car. and the roof scape like that. the only point of decadencewas that the entry button is gold plated, because icould afford to do that. because i'd reduced thecosts in every case.

but i'm going to end on acouple of things, because that's a branded project-- veryfrench, very blue, very french. and cars shouldn'thave the brand in them. i mean, you should be thinkingabout projects without brands. because they kill it. a car is a car. it's not a branded object. i think this is the mistakethat all the car companies make, the car students,automotive design students.

so i did a project inkortrijk in belgium. greg lynn participatedin that one. and i developed something called"instinctive override," which is one of my last things isi want to tell you about. i wanted to producea mammalian-type car. i wanted to produce aperfect aerodynamic form, and to display it thatway, as conceptual art. and so what happened wasi ran a study in my studio into aerodynamics.

and i worked withthe people in turino that do all the studiesfor the space shuttle. they ran a study. and we compared the studies. and i was about 2% difference--my thinking than theirs. so i went for mine,because i can. and i call it"instinctive override," where you override all science. you come in, you say, mm,just doesn't feel right.

and it's like whensteve jobs was producing the next magnesium boxfor his computers called next. he had to adjust the geometry,because your eye sees a cube differently. so to see itperfectly as a cube, you have to adjust the geometrynot to produce a perfect cube. so i'm interested in that. and so this was the project. and again, i workedwith alisa at biothing

to develop theseflow studies in order to sort of describe howthe movement of the object through the air would be. could you turn thesound up for me, please? [inaudible] 20thcentury, for example, buckminster fuller, thegreat architect visionary. he invented the dymaxion. what really inspired me in thisbridge between design and art, art and design is the factthat his great friend,

isamu noguchi, thejapanese sculptor, made the plaster maquettes. that's why that shape isso beautifully succinct. it's been passed through theart mind of a great sculptor. that liaison betweenthe instincts that i talk about inthe hands of noguchi, and then the pioneeringscientific belief of a visionary likebuckminster fuller, that arrived at thisincredible car, which

was a total breakthroughin its time. the concept offuture primitives, because that, in itself, isa very interesting concept. and i'm sure ifyou're a designer, this is food for thought. it's taking the past andit's taking the future. do you take thebest of both worlds? how did you integrate it,this concept into your work? i look at the very,very deep past in order

to be the deep future. we work with aerodynamicistswho worked on the space shuttle aerodynamics. and what we realized was thatthey came up with a shape. and in parallel, wewere working on a shape. and when we arrived, it seemedthat their shape was perhaps more progressive, perhapshad a lower drag coefficient. but there's that lovely moment--this is crazy-- when you say, i think you're wrong.

i think the science is wrong. my instinct istelling me it's wrong. and i came up witha paradigm shift in my work, which is called"instinctive override," where you say it's wrong. and we're doing it like this. and as a designer,as i get older, i'm determined to actuallypreserve my instinct. that's the only design.

it's putting design at ahigher level intellectually. but there's a conceptualside to designs, which we don't get enough of aplatform to express ourselves. this is the lastthing, i really do. ok, back to the sketchbook. united nude, the shoe company,made a project last year with myself, ben van berkel,fernando romero, michael young, and zaha. and so we produced these.

these are sketches fora 3-d printer, too. looking at gravitationalgeometries, and then developing this. and i work with arturo tedeschi. and arturo is the number onein the world with grasshopper based in milan. so we scanned the foot. and we did it all the right way. we took it seriously,looking at how

a form could gravitationallydevelop from the foot, like this-- intelligentdesign that works-- so how you knit variousstructures together, and how you can 3-d print. what's the smallest diameterthat you can print and get enough resolution? and then you're getting closer. and then these arethe final shoes. thank you very much.

maybe if one or two peoplehave some thoughts to share, i don't know if-- i'll be around tomorrow, too. yeah, maybe thatwould be-- i don't know if, andrew, basedon your experience, it would be interesting ifyou have any observations or thoughts. i think it would be nice to hearfrom people some reflections. i don't want to take any time.

but i don't know,do you have any-- maybe you can start. and then we'll see ifthere's a student who can still be here with us. and then we can go. for me, one of themost revealing aspects of your method was the sortof like primacy of intuition in a certain way,which i thought was interesting workingthrough obviously very detailed

technical processes. and at the sametime, your interest in maintaining a certainvery strong connection with the currentstate of the art. and i was curious, insort of like the structure of your studio, how do youcraft a culture of that within the studio toensure that you have the people and the sort ofknowledge and that you have what you need tomake that happen?

it's difficult. it'sdifficult because we have a different method, meaningi know a number of architect friends who align themselveswith universities and teaching establishments. so they benefit from thatextra human resource. that's what they do. i mean, zaha, [? jan ?][? gavander ?], was actually growingtalent to join her studio. well, i don't do that.

i mean, i think i have tostart doing that in some way, because i can't havea studio that big. in industrial design, you don'thave big studios like that. i have a very small studio. so it's very hands on. and i drive everything. but i realize thatto go forward, that you-- i wastalking to frank gehry not so long ago about how hedid the project in the bois de

boulogne for vuitton. and he said, oh, wehad 400 people on that. i said, gosh. he said, yeah, they werefrom all over the world. and they coded in. and they shared information. and i'm just thinking that maybethe future is about obtaining a problem-- might be a client,but it might be a problem-- and then forming a globalnetwork of like-minded people.

so you don't have tohave a big studio. but then you canpush boundaries. everybody can getcredit, i don't care. but maybe the idea is moreimportant than the designer. you understand me? maybe that's the next step. i mean, but it's good to knowthat we're on the right track. because i actually builtthat system for frank to bring those 400 people in.

oh, you did. but anyway, theother thing that i thought was kindof interesting is that there is, imean, obviously, you have an interest innew technologies. but in fact, yourwork with carbon fiber spans maybe 10 or 15 years. and so it's somethingthat actually is a very craftsman-likeprocess of development.

and i was a littlebit curious when you work with those kinds ofmaterials, the extent to which that sort of testing goes onin the context of the studio, or in the contextof your relationship with other fabricators, orwhat the sort of division of labor of that is, in a way. well, you need an end game. so if a lot of thesematerials are quite rarified, because they take a longtime-- a lot of manual work

as you say, like companieslike carbo tech in salzburg and so on that builtthat staircase for me. but that staircase wasabout 3 million euros. well, it doesn't gointo everyday production very easily. so you only do put itin if it needs to be, because there's a cost penalty. so somebody can buy a suitcaseat $100 or $50 that works. why should they care?

it's more a philosophicalpoint of view where you've got to liftthe mindset of people to value lightness asopposed to an object. so i think that's what we shouldbe talking about right now. so i understand thequestion about composites, but you can compose anything. if you get downto the nano level, you can compose anything. so if you take it asthat-- not as a textile

that's got to be put into resin,so that those are early days. but the idea of usingfibers of different types-- mixing silk withcarbon or whatever-- those kind of dialogues,material dialogues, i think that's so exciting. i don't know whatwould result from that. maybe it would result innew species of objects, even the way we make vehicles. we can't make vehicles theway we used into make them.

they will look different. so we have to accept the factthat they will look different. we're working at the momenton a composite module, an architectural module,which is pretty weird. but if it comes off, it's likea composite brick that could make quite large structures. but that's something thatwe're investigating ourselves. so i have connectionswith bartlett and all these different places.

and now with thispompidou opportunity, that might be theplace to prototype a lot of this way ofthinking how to collaborate, how to go for an idea. use the pompidouas a social space, because that's howit was developed. and it's its 40thanniversary next year. so i think that kind ofplatform is really hard to get. and i only havemonths to deliver.

so i'll have to go after acouple of really good ideas and make sure that they work. so you're going to be gettinga phone call, that's for sure. first of all, thank youfor a great lecture. towards the end, youtalked about instinct and how that overrides kindof the tools we have today. it's really refreshinghearing that, because we have very, veryprecise digital tools today. and bringing that designer'sinstinct back, i think,

but what advice would yougive to young designers going into the profession? because you talked abouthow that instinct is fostered in school but isusually lost when they leave. so what advice would you giveus to keep that instinct alive when we get out of here? well, i don't thinkit's as easy as going for a walk in the forest. i don't think it'sas easy as that.

but i think in anavatar sense, just getting your mind outside ofwhat specifically you're doing. i think you've got to lookat other disciplines, really other extreme--bionics, other things. i mean food. i always think that everybodyshould be two people. you should be anairline pilot but be an expert in keepinggoldfish, or a footballer and a great chef.

i think you've got to getfed up of what you're doing and do something else. but then that something elsewill always feed the other. you'd be shocked at theproximity of things. so that i would encourage youto do something else that you think is far, or astronomy. and my son studies at the aa. and he's incredibleat physics, i mean, absolutely 100% physics.

but he's studying architecture. and i found thatdisappointing, that he would study architecture. but i'd love him to design anobservatory somewhere in chile. wow, i mean, maybethere is a relationship between the architecture ofspace, the dimension of space, and pristine mathematics. i don't know-- theoryof 109, all that stuff. so i would just liketo-- i don't know

what it is that you will find. but that's theeasiest way in order to create a bridge betweenwhat you do and a perspective. otherwise you're too immersed. by the way, a littleanecdote-- just a little anecdote if that helps at all. i'm welsh. yes, don't start me off. but i'm welsh, and thething is, not many of us.

we've got tom jones and sheep. but richard burton, arguablyone of the greatest actors of all time, with one ofthe most beautiful speaking voices-- he learneda new word every day. you couldn't get around the man,because he was so articulate. but what made him a greatactor was first of all, he wanted to write literature. that's why he learneda new word every day. and he sort of fell into acting.

and the reason he's regardedas one of the top 10 greatest actors of all timeis he hated to act, because he thought itwas so pretentious to act that he didn't act. because he would go red. because he would beembarrassed to act. well, that's how i amwith design, because i'm embarrassed by design. i think best thing i coulddo is stop designing.

if you want to help theplanet, stop producing. so you've got towatch your mind, because your mind will talkyou out of every situation. anyway. his beard, now, he's growing-- yeah, yeah. it's covering, so youdon't have to worry with getting embarrassedand going red or whatever. it's completely covered now.

please maybe you. there's a couple ofcomments, and then we want to send you all home. well, thank you very much forthis fantastic and wonderful lecture. my wife has been sendingme text messages. i said, hold on, hold on. but it's certainly worth it. at some point, when we weretalking about the renault

twin'z, the wheels,right at the wheel, you said there was some kindof structural transference. is it really structuraltransference or is it cognitive transference? i suppose it's both, becausethe idea that you can-- i like things which are grownas opposed to mechanically constructed. and i think we're movinginto that era, a more biological era.

so all of that thoughtabout organic design, just as a kind of watchword,is actually coming to the fore and becoming a reality, becausewe can build what we want now. i think that's really exciting. and if you go to spacex,they 3-d print titanium him and make incredible things,which are half biological, half clear geometries. and i like that exchange. so if you look insidethe car, all of the brake

pads and all that-- that'sall becoming organic. and from that, you can growthe wheel, and come out. so it depends at which point dowe cut that off, biologically, like us? so the idea that youdevelop an engine which is biological, which then comesout and forms an entity, which is a power train in itself. so we get closer to naturalphenomena via memetics. it's really interestingwhat they do in automotive,

because they work so much with3-d. a fuel tank, because it's liquid, can be anyshape it wants. so that's where we're going. but of course, car companies,quickly, like renault have no power, becausethey don't sell enough. bmw, which produced the i3 andthe i8-- phenomenal vehicles which put everything i'mtalking to together-- they can do it because they'reso powerful that they can affect the supply chain.

whereas other companies-- ford--they cannot affect the supply chain. because they're notprofitable enough. a car is 6% profit. so i think there needs tobe a huge paradigm shift. that's why i thinktesla is great. they only sell23,000 cars a year. and yet they're profitable. so how come companies that sella million cars a year complain?

doesn't make sense to me. so if you want topush those boundaries, i think the startup mentalitywill push that big time. thank you. you have the last word. and then please. yeah, i was actuallyjust wondering-- can you take the mic behind you? my question is, what kindof music do you listen to?

and also how, andif so, that music plays a part in yourstudio production? do you listen to music whileyou work or things like that? i used to. but now everybody's gottheir bloody headphones on. it's like a morgue. i mean, it's like asunday in my studio. and it's because my top guy,andrea, he likes control freak. when he travels, the musicgoes on and gets pumped up.

so he's got to be awayfor that to happen. but it's an interestingpoint you make. because i think it'salso synergistic. a lot of the greatmusicians have come out of design schools. and it really moves you, music. they said, oh, what musicwould you like to play? so i went for a bit of--not because i'm old-- but stevie wonder,"superstition," and all that is

really funky, and david bowie. david bowie used to throw wordson the floor and then compose. interesting isn't it? i mean, that idea-- i'm going tosay it, but excuse me-- fucking around with it, so i come out ofpunk movement, manchester punk. the thing is that you disrupt. you don't take anythingfor what it is. so the music thatyou ingest, i think, can really determine yourmindset without drugs.

because you don't need togo anywhere near drugs. your endorphins come out whenyou believe in what you do, and you love what you do. when i was flying here,i work all the time. the plane-- i don't do anything. i don't. i work. because i never get that timewith my notebook to really be alone and think things through.

and you're in the clouds, man. i mean, that'sincredible, looking out, out there with a glass of water. i think that's amazing. and that's primitive comparedto what it will be like. it's funny. years ago, i always wantedto meet david bowie. and i didn't, sadly. but i was in tokyoin 2003, and there

was a magazine in thehotel, "v magazine--" big one from new york. and david bowie wasthe guest editor. and he was talkingabout ettore sottsass. and by the way, peoplelike me and [inaudible] and all the gang are herebecause of ettore sottsass because he used to hangout with hemingway. it sort of answers thatgentleman's question about having a dialoguewith another world.

he was a greatindustrial designer. because he hated it. he had his art. he had his other mind set. but he was a greatindustrial designer, because he was reallyforthright when he created. so david bowie writingabout ettore sottsass. i mean, it's a great articletalking about the valentine typewriter, the red typewriter,which you wouldn't use today,

but is a collectible,because it's incredible object, actuallydesigned with [? mary ?] king. anyway, i wasreading the article. and it was saying greatthings about sottsass. and i nearly gave up. and right at the end, it said,will the starks and lovegroves of this world pleasestand up and applaud? so i thought, wow,that's great-- reading aboutbowie, who's talking

about sottsass, who i loved,and being sort of in that camp. so where you want togo with your own work, you get into your own camp. it could be influenced by music,of course, or something else. i think there's a lotof other great things that could come in toformulate who you are. but designers desperately needthat other level of intellect. it's ridiculous what's going on. the design magazines, youcan't read those things.

you go and read "new scientist." go and read other things. go online. i mean, it's ridiculous. i think, withoutputting too much down, but if you reallywant to push some-- we are the poor relations. there's the kyotoprize in japan. they wouldn't leta designer near it,

because they thinkwe're commercial. artists are much morecommercial than we are. we're not regarded, ever. it's always architects, ora writer, or a filmmaker. but we're not considered ascultured, because they all died, actually. so we need somenew people coming through who can put on--ernst mayr next door. go and look at the work of ernstmayr-- evolutionary biologist.

incredible. you've got to havesome knowledge. and just don't be who you are. i don't even knowwhat i'm doing next. i haven't got a cluewhat's going on. got to make it upas you go along. but it's like food. you gotta put somethingin you to come out. but thanks for coming along.

thank you, ross. this was wonderful. thank you all for coming. i think it was a very specialevening, because i think just to witness thelevel of commitment that it takes tomake these projects, and just also toreally now understand the emotional, really genuinelysort of emotional attachment that you have tothe work-- i think

it's truly inspiring,i think, for us. and hopefully it will helpus along, too. [inaudible]. so if anybody wants to seeme, i mean through anna.

yes, let us know if youwant to have time, so we can set something up with ross. anyway, thank youagain, very much. thanks.

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