Conversation with Terrence Curry — Architect | Maker | Educator | Priest: Life is Architecture — Desire, Discipline, and Craftsmanship Shape Beauty That Endures Through Authentic Living

In this episode, Terrence Curry reflects on a lifetime of making, teaching, and designing, exploring how hands-on craftsmanship, authentic living, and human connection shape both life and work. He shares insights on the pursuit of beauty, illustrating that true beauty is  forged through heartfelt desire, disciplined effort, and persistent dedication.

0:00–9.07 | Growing Up a Maker
Terrence reflects on childhood craftsmanship and lessons from his grandfather, sparking curiosity and a lifelong instinct to create. The challenge for him  was not discovering talent but understanding how one’s unique gifts could be meaningfully applied in the world.

9.07–18:50  | Finding One’s Place in the World
Terrence discusses translating personal aptitudes into purposeful contributions, bridging passion with vocation. Happiness, he suggests, comes from living authentically, fully aware of one’s strengths and engaging with the world on those terms. Terrence reflects: "When we know who we are and are being who we are, engaging with the world as we are… there’s a kind of symbiosis, a right relationship with ourselves and others, which can lead to happiness in a very profound sense."

18:50–29:18 | Inhabiting the World & Creative Instinct
True inhabitation comes from deep connection with surroundings. He states that the notion of being in the world is that you embrace your connectedness with all that's around you, that you're not a tourist in the world, but truly inhabiting the place.  This deep engagement with his surroundings also informs his creative process. Emotional intuition guides his creativity.

29:18–36:10 | Beauty and Connoisseurship
Terrence emphasizes that form follows feeling: design is meaningful when it induces a particular emotional experience. Recognizing beauty requires connoisseurship—the ability to perceive, evaluate, and cultivate aesthetic judgment beyond technical skill. He notes that AI may excel at structured tasks but cannot grasp the open-ended, iterative, and deeply human process of design. 

36:10–48:10 | Voice, Emotional Impact & Community Design
As an educator, he wants his students find their own voice and create work that they will take a pride. He observes: "The world is a better place because we need each other. We need each other’s voices." We further tapped into Terrence’s design work that focuses on community projects rooted in service.

48:10–53:35  | No Universal Aesthetic
Beauty exists on multiple levels: personal (subjective emotional response), cultural (shared norms and values), and broadly human (experiences that resonate across people). Terrence underscores the importance of cultivating the ability to recognize and appreciate diverse aesthetics, understanding why they resonate, and learning from different cultural expressions. 

53:35–1:18.30 | Making Beauty: Desire, Discipline & Craftsmanship
Creating beauty is an intentional and rigorous pursuit. Terrence explains that it requires intelligence, discipline, persistence, and desire—it is a fight against the forces that resist beauty. Craftsmanship emerges from repeated engagement, iteration, and dialogue with materials, whether wood, stone, or paper. He highlights the intimacy between maker and material, showing how physical interaction deepens perception and appreciation. Terrence concludes: "You really have to want to do something good, and then be willing to—not just have the desire, but also to have the discipline to do it." Through this, beauty becomes an enduring expressio

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to my podcast, Life Designer. So, in today's episode, I'm so deeply honored to work on Terris Curry, an actor, educator, maker, and priest. Come to my podcast. Terry's work sits in the intersection of faith, craft, and human experience. He reminds us that the architecture is so transcendent the mere aesthetic or function into serving the people, nurturing the dignity, and creating spaces and foster the hope, reflection, and community. As a priest, Terris brings a very deeply human and spiritual lens to his work, exploring how spaces can elevate the human spirit. As an educator, he has taught architecture globally from Qing Kong University in China to delve in the Netherlands, inspiring the next generation of the designer architects to blend craft theory and ethics. He weighed in theology with architecture, emphasizing that the design is moral, ethical, even spiritual, and goes beyond just aesthetic or utilitary practice. As a maker and founder of the St. Joseph's studio workshop in Brooklyn, he runs a long prophesy compared to building health, diverse, and sustainable communities, breaking the hands of craft with the social impact. His work spans architectural design, urban planning, customer furniture, interior design, and community approaches, reflecting a real integration of the technical expertise, human-centered innovation, and creative intuition. Today, we will explore Terry's philosophy of learning by making, the importance of the craft, and how architecture can serve as the vessel for care, culture, and grace. A testament to the power of the design when it is aligned with human value, ethical responsibility, and spiritual insight. From teaching and research to design build studio and community projects, his life and work are a wavy illustration of the architecture as a means to enrich life and connect people with beauty, meaning, and purpose. So, welcome to my podcast, Teresa.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

I'm very happy to uh to meet you and to have the chance to talk with you today.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

I'm doing a lot of the research over the couple of the days since we connected in our social media platform now, right? Welcome to Red Little book. Yeah. That's very much on the train. Yeah, um, in this podcast, we kind of always turn the clock back to the very beginning of the story. Yeah, I believe like the project has its relevance and the story has its genesis. Yeah, so look at your life and professional trajectory. It is nothing short of expensive and expressive. Yeah, it's you know the word expensive. Yeah, so you doing so much resolving around design, architecture, and you teach uh architecture globally, and you also are maker, you know, craft person. You know, rarely had I said anyone who is the epitome, the pedal of the design, you know, like you are not just the designer, but also the maker. Yeah, so we're going to tap into all these intricate layers. So let's really trace back to the orange of everything. How did you discover your calling in architecture or in beauty in a more overarching sense or kind of gradually unfold to take into the shapes, you know, architecture? And yeah, how did they start and when did you first discover your calling in that in architecture?

SPEAKER_01 3:51

I can't remember um any time where I didn't like to make things. So I remember um my mother gave me this picture recently of me playing with a piece of string. I was a little boy, maybe two years old. And my mother said, Oh yes, if I gave you a piece of string, you would just play with it for so many hours and just making little designs with it. And then when I was around uh I think six or seven years old, uh my mother bought me my first power saw. And uh my father thought she was crazy because he was afraid I'd cut my fingers. But my grandfather, who was uh from Poland, uh he thought it was a great idea and uh he taught me how to use it. So uh I've been my I've been making and thinking about designing things uh since um since I can remember, I think. So the problem for me was not trying to discover uh my vocation or my calling, it was trying to find a way to use it, try to find my place in the world. How how can I use my my interests and my abilities uh and my enthusiasms in a meaningful way in the world? That was the biggest challenge for me.

SPEAKER_04 4:52

Yeah, it sounds like you are just very literally connected to your calling or you know, so to speak, you know, like sometimes it may take people like the life to try and discover that, you know, like trying to just really find a word that speaks to me in lately. Like in my case, it's take a decade of search, but you almost like just very literally and two years old boy, it's already start-making stuff.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Yeah, I just have a fascination with how things work and things like that.

SPEAKER_04 5:20

Yeah, yeah, but then as I say, we all kind of face our own life tasks and the challenges. For you, it's about the applications of it, right? Yeah, so you know you are inheriting this. It's kind of the ability or aptitude. I think it's about the uh crafting, it's about making, but then how you can really translate it, you know, into like very tangible senses, right? So it's can make sense. So maybe we can building out upon that because you also, I think you are the missionary, right? You're doing all this something like that. Yeah, something like that. So, did you kind of like at a certain point of your life you found that there is kind of you know almost like intersections, you know, I can be being presshood, architecture, and the building and the education all together. So, yeah, how did that unfold? Because how can the people can carry on all this? But I think they're inherently linked in some way.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

I um I'm smiling a lot because I'm so impressed by how much you have, uh how much research you have done and how much you know. And also the way you are using the words is also very accurate and very precise. So, yeah, I I can um I'm happy to answer the and answer your question. It's a very personal. I don't know if your audience will be interested, but I can say first, I yes, I love to make things. And um, so I did not do very well in school. A lot of people are surprised to hear this, but I was not such a great student in school. Part of it is because I wasn't that great at uh I love to read, but I read very slow. I love to learn, but I learn in a different way. So back then they um now they call it um dyslexia, now they call it attention deficit syndrome. They have all these words for it. But back then they just called you stupid. Uh so um my brothers, my brothers and my sisters were very good at at school. They had really great memories and they could memorize things and they didn't have to work very hard. But I did. I had to work very hard to learn my lessons uh in uh when I was a when I was a child. It really wasn't until I think that I went to um Pratt, when I went to college, that's when I discovered that uh I'm pretty good at what I do, and also when I uh my academics uh went from average to really, really high because I found my place. I found a place where I belonged and a place where uh I could find other people who understood how I thought and appreciated what I did. Now, as a child, of course, my mother would buy me art supplies, and my grandfather is a great maker, and I always loved to spend time with him. He was a mechanic, he was from Poland, his uh he used to work not far from where I am right now. So um he's a great, great man and taught me everything uh and is a great teacher, but he also knew how to teach, and the way he taught was he would give me a problem and then leave me alone and then see if I was solving it, and then maybe say, uh try this and then leave me alone. Uh, because he knew that I wanted to try to think about how it works. And so in this way, um, he taught me how to teach also. Um, it's always good for a student to have a problem that they're trying to solve, and then uh they can learn a lot very, very fast. But if you're just uh trying to teach somebody theory or abstract ideas, it's uh for my brain, it's a little bit hard to apply it immediately. But as I was as I was studying architecture, I was reading a lot and I always liked philosophy, and I started to run into these questions about meaningfulness and what do I want to do with my life. Um it was in the the late 70s, it was the end of the Vietnam War, it was a lot of idealism. I grew up in a family that was uh culturally Catholic. It was very normal for us to be Catholic. Uh we went to church every Sunday and we celebrated all the big holidays, and uh I was in the church group, um, but a lot of the cool kids were in the church group. So it wasn't like these days. Sometimes if you somebody says that somebody says, Oh, I'm very involved with the church, you think, oh, there's something wrong with this person. But um no, it's very normal where I grew up. Um and so uh the church was a place where um I knew a lot of people, my social life was there, and they challenged me to think they did very critically. I had some very good friends who were priests and uh sisters and other religious people who were very smart, uh, did not accept simple answers to anything. And I was very fascinated by this. So when I was uh studying at Pratt, I remember sometimes I was sitting in my car in the uh parking lot at Pratt thinking, oh, what am I going to do with my life? What am I going to do with my life? Um do I want to go be an architect? Do I want to go be a carpenter? Do I want to get married? Do I want to have a family? What do I want to do? So while I was while I was at Pratt, I also did some volunteering. Um I was working at a school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that was run by a group of priests called the Jesuits. And uh they're very cool guys. And they were like, Yeah, yeah, it would be great. We haven't had anybody to teach art in our school in so many years. Why don't you come? And so I went there and I got to know the students, and they had a summer camp, and I went up to the summer camp and they said, Hey, why don't you build us something? So I learned how to do design build uh with these students and raise some money. And little by little I felt like, wow, I really like these guys. They're very radical guys. These guys are very cool because like they have very high education, but they worked with the most poor people. And I was like, wow, it's so radical. Now, this guy's also like a Li Mao Do, very famous in China. Uh, in English, uh Italian, his name is by Teo Ricci. So he was uh very famous in China for working with what's his name? Guan Qi from uh Shanghai. Uh so Guangxi and Li Mao Do they work together to talk about science and they brought science to China. So this is also Jesuits, so I'm part of that same group. So it's a group that does a lot of um maybe things that you don't normally associate with church or with religious people. Uh so little by little I started to see that how I could find meaningful this in my life is to use my talent and my interest in a way that's going to help people and maybe help them to feel that they are special. So I start to have an idea, you know, if you accept that there's a God, I know a lot a lot of people don't accept that there's a God, and that's that's okay. It makes sense to me. But if it doesn't make sense to you, I'm not going to argue with you, please. I don't want to have an argument. So, but in my the from my understanding from the Old Testament, you know, that God, in the beginning, God creates the heavens and the earth. And there's an idea that God is, that humans are created in the image and likeness of God, that uh they call it in in um Greek, the Zelom and the Muth. So the image and the likeness. And so that means that there's characteristics of all humans that are similar to what is God. And one of that is that we are co-creator, that we help to create the earth and the ongoing uh creation of the earth, that creation doesn't stop once, but it continues to evolve. And we, as um being made in the image and likeness of God, have a special responsibility to be stewards of the earth, to help to make the earth more beautiful and to try to make the world a more just and safe uh place. So I began to understand myself as an architect and as a designer and as a guy who likes to make stuff, as this is my way to interact with the earth, uh, to interact with people and also to be who I feel um I am called to be. And and I do believe that when we when we try to follow the path, um, not the path that we love, but the path that leads us to truth or leads us to a sense of authentic self, this is where we will find the true happiness. Um, not happiness like ha ha ha ha ha ha, but happiness. Um Aristotle, the the Greek philosopher, he had this word uh called eudaimonia. And um what he means by the Greek word eudaimonia is full happiness, a sense of peacefulness in yourself, almost like a Buddhist, like a uh a mantra. So when we uh when we know who we are and we are being who we are, and we are engaging with the world as we are and see the world as it is, there's a kind of uh symbiosis, a kind of uh right relationship with you and around you. And this can lead to happiness in a very profound sense. This is how I wind up being an uh an architect, teacher, and priest, not because I want to be an architect, not because I want to be a priest, not because I want to be a teacher, but because this is who I am, and the world has some roles. So I think that you you are who you are, and then you try to find a way you can fit into the world that is going to allow you to be who you most genuinely are, and where uh you can bring joy to other people, and they can bring joy to you too. So I think that this is this is how I wind up. People think, oh, what are you first an architect or first a priest? I said, No, no, no, I'm first I'm Terence Curry. That's who I am, and I discovered my way in the world by finding these different roles, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:02

Wow, I feel like that's it. That's it. We all needed to hear. I didn't know for the interview. Yeah. Um I don't know where to begin, but I just wanted to say I kind of resolute with every single word you said. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

You know, I can see it. I can feel, I can we have a similar feeling.

SPEAKER_04 14:23

It's just a transcendent language, not be able to articulate as well as you did, but I think by the end of the day, it's like we are all the human beings, like with all the shared like characters. Yeah, like you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

I believe that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:36

Yeah, in some sense that we feel like so connected, you know, coming from all this vastly different background. Like I totally embrace all that kind of gelated or gelated influence in shaping who we are. But on the core of it, it's like you are just who you really are. Like architecture or any other outlet or the craft that we uh kind of carry, it's just the form, it's just the way yeah, we interact with the world. But the majority of us often is kind of fitted away or kind of just hidden, yeah, like to unravel, like to reveal that authenticity piece. Yeah, you mentioned it. But if we just keep pursuing and trying to collect like a deep connection, yeah, then I think that true self, that authenticity will reveal itself. Yeah, but it's like such a hard yet very profound journey. But I think your story, like thank you so much for sharing such an intimate story because it does offer a path. It's almost like a testament, you know, to this connecting to your your life tasks and how it then embedded the meaning into our life, right? Yeah. I always found like, you know, I think the this internal question about what is the meaning of the life, yeah. I mean, it can't go into that very fatalistic uh trap of the thinking, right? It can be just meaningless, but the moment you decide to apply the meaning to your life, we reclaim that power, yeah. Yeah, to have out this epic, unique, um apologetic life trajectory, which is just different for each individual. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Yeah. I, you know, there's a um you told everybody I'm a priest, so okay, so I I'm going to use some theological ideas, if you don't mind. So there's an idea, they call it the mystical body of Christ. So so the word Christ, so Jesus is a person, Christ is a title. And there's this notion that Christ is the absolute connection between creation and God together. So this is why we call the incarnation, the inca. So it's completely put together. So this idea that there's a mystical body of Christ, it means that everybody participates in being Christ in a very unique, special way. What I found very profound when I was, especially when I was uh at Pratt, I had some very, very cool friends who were very smart, uh, always like to talk about philosophy and things. And uh this idea of the mystical body of Christ, or sometimes they call it the kingdom uh of God. And that is where every insofar as everybody plays the role that they've been called to play, we have a peaceful whole world uh that it can work. Um but we all have to know who we are and identify what our gifts and talents are and make a contribution to building that world. It's not just like they say rose-colored glasses, it's not just uh idealism and naive. I know that's very difficult and there's a lot of evil in the world and there's a lot of problems, but the fundamental concept I love that um there is a kind of interconnectedness that we all yearn for, that we have to give ourselves to to experience. And the way we can do that first is by knowing who we are in the world. So this is idea in some of the more contemporary philosophy, they talk about to be in the world. So the notion of being in the world is that you embrace your connectedness with all that's around you. Um, that you're not sort of a tourist in the world, but you are inhabiting the place. This is why I love the word inhabitation. Me too. Inhabiting. Even better than dwelling. Dwelling, I think dwelling is a kind of way of staying in a place. I can dwell here, but to inhabit a place, I think means to put down roots, to really be there where you connect with the location. Like, for example, I know more and more now that I'm really from Brooklyn. There, I have a very strong identity with Brooklyn. Now, the more I learn about the place, so I'll tell you some, this is very interesting. Um, when I went to Pratt, I found some guys who wanted to be roommates with me. And um, we wanted to get an apartment. We didn't want to live on campus. And we found this apartment in Park Slope on President Street. And I called my mother to say, Hey mom, we uh I just got an apartment with some of my buddies. And she goes, Oh, what's the address? And I told her the address, and she goes, Oh my god, do you know where you are?

SPEAKER_02 19:08

And I was like, Yeah, Mom president, she goes, No, you're living right next to the hospital where you were born. Wow, did you across the street from where your gr from where your godmother lived for her whole whole her whole life and two blocks from where your grandmother was born?

SPEAKER_01 19:24

So, oh, I didn't know. I didn't know. The hospital was closed many years ago and they were turning it into condominiums. Okay, but I was living in a brownstone nearby. And then a few years later, I went to go uh to live back here in Brooklyn and I moved into a church on 21st Street and Fifth Avenue, and I told my mother, she goes, Oh my god, that's the church that me and your father got married in and your grandmother lives up the street. Now I have a a uh a studio here in Brooklyn in a place called Industry City, and an industry city used to be called the Bush Terminal. And when my girl when my grandfather, my father's father, came from Ireland when he was 19 or 20 years old, that's where he used to work to unload the ships.

SPEAKER_04 20:05

Wow. There was like the whole fair.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

You can't escape, there's something. There's something.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

Yeah, there's something there. So and I think that so is that like the wessary, you know, cessations put you in there, you know, like something, I don't know. Yeah. Because it's I think it's a coincidence.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Yeah, it's a good thing. But every time I come back to it, so it's a weird coincidence. There's something that I am connected to. But I I think this, if you're living in the world, I think it's also like when I was living in Beijing, I really tried to connect myself with the place. I really tried to be in Beijing. Uh, so I didn't live in the expat community. I lived on the campus at Qinhua. Uh, I tried to go to the local market. I did go to the local markets, I got to know the little the ladies, and they were always arguing, no, no, no, buy your food for me.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

No, no, no, buy me, buy for me.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

You know, I like uh Halloween very much. Uh and so I always like to have a small party for my students to carve the pumpkins to make like jack or lanterns. And so every Halloween I'd go there, and the ladies are arguing, no buy your pumpkins for me, no buy your pumpkins for me. Because I had to buy like 20 or 30 pumpkins, so I could buy them from some of them. But it was a very nice way to live there and then to walk over, to be with the students, and to try to learn how to cook some Chinese food. I tried very hard to learn Chinese and uh I feel very embarrassed uh while the Jong went the den the bu ho. Uh but I I took lessons every day, but I when I first went to China, I was already more than 50 years old. And so when you get older, it's harder to learn a new language. And uh so I can speak a little bit, but I'm really embarrassed because I really loved being in China. And the biggest problem I had in China is I could not have this kind of conversation with anybody in Chinese, and so it was difficult, you know, because my Chinese friends they want me to come visit them, and then they say, Oh no, he doesn't speak Chinese, and my friends don't speak English, and so then they have to be translated. Translator, and then it's very uncomfortable. It's not fun. So I know my podcast on uh Red Note, um, some of the some of the comments were very critical of me for not speaking Chinese.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

I know too caution, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

But um, you know, but I mean it's true. I mean, if you're going to live in China, you should speak Chinese. I know that that's true. I um I'll tell you something else very personal, is um I was sent to China. So you said like I'm a missionary, and in in many ways that's true, but not in the normal way of missionary. The Jesuits, our idea of being a missionary is to go and be with people. I'm not, I don't have any obligation to try to make anybody Christian or to make or even make you believe what I believe. No. My main job is to go and to teach and to be helpful, to do, to offer something. So my superior, the guy in charge of my community, he asked me if I would go to China. I was living in in Hungary at the time in Budapest, and uh I never went to China, and honestly, I never thought to go to China. Um, so when he asked me to go, I was really surprised. I was like, What? China? Me? Why? He goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you should go. Try, try, try, try, try, cool, go, cool. So he gave me one uh plane ticket, and uh I did not know anybody in China. I didn't have a job. Uh, and so I just went there and um I uh lived with uh a friend, another Jesuit for a while, and then some one friend introduced me to somebody else, and then I got a job teaching at Qinghua, and then I got to know so many great students. Oh my god, I love my students. I loved, I loved being in Beijing, but I never I never thought to go there. It was uh it was a big challenge for me uh personally uh to go to leave my friends and my my family here, but I found so many beautiful, wonderful people there, and uh we made so many cool things there too that um I think I'm a better person because I went to China.

SPEAKER_04 23:48

So wow, thank you for seeing that. Um, you know, Teres, like you share all this kind of anecdote and also very you know some of those personal stories with us. For me, I think I just see a human actually really living in the world, you know, like the way and he's constantly unlock different dimensions of his life, and also like always kind of with the heart open to the world. And you emphasize quite a lot about the connection. I think I love that word so much because it can be sometimes very philosophical or very historic, like conceptual. Theoretical. But then we also want to really have uh particularly your maker, is something that is tangible, it's like just something with the depth and substance has to be grounded and layered. So that is the storytelling and what we hear today, but that is actually the testament to you know that passion, that you know, benevolence to interact with every person come across your life. Yeah, you love your students and uh you know, and your families and your friends. So you are highly intelligent, you know, intellectual, you are on the kind of you know, the pinnacle of the academia. You know, like all these people just so easily today put someone or some idea on the pedestal. But I think what we really need to you know unpack here is like what is under list for, and what I say under them for, you know, just a beautiful human being, but it's down to the core of who you are. As you say, there is all this evil you're stuck in the world, but we uh kind of almost had that sense of the responsibility to counterbalance that darkness with our bright light. And so just in that I just extend my greatest thanks for all this light you bring to the world, you know. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. But but as you said, it's go ahead. No, this is let's just go into the flow, right? As I said, as yeah, just very much the conversation on the fly because you just inspire me constantly. Yeah, but I still have to do my you know due diligence, you know, do all this prep, you know, have some questions just on the back pocket. I didn't even share my question with you because I just want to like the most genuine what do you feel most compelled to share? I don't know. What do you share with me? We haven't even really got into it, the core question of it, but I feel just even now, yeah. I just feel like so so much hope, you know? Yeah. I mean, I'm like an inheritantly joyful person, but as you're getting older, you kind of like say all this different spectrum of the world. Yeah, but then I just kind of reminds me why we have to stay in that bright side because we have human beings like you.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Well, uh, you know, this maybe is not the direction you want to go with this interview, but but you know, it's not always bright. Um, I've suffered for a while for some very serious depression and sadness. And um living in I found sometimes uh a lot of loneliness living in China. Uh, but even here, you know, sometimes you ask questions of yourself, you know, did I make the right choice? Uh sometimes you get misunderstood or you can't communicate, and sometimes I can become very, you know, I'm a very passionate guy and uh very honest guy. Uh and if I feel that somebody is not treating me well or accepts my honesty, I can get very frustrated. And I can become white, actually, I can become quite angry sometimes uh with my students or with my friends. I'm not happy about that. Uh, but um I think part of it is again part of this question of being authentic and being uh being genuine. I'm not a I'm not a good politician. What you see is what you get, you know. Um and I think that part and and I struggle with this sometimes, honestly. And I think a lot of designers do, a lot of uh creative people have to struggle with this because I think one of the greatest sources of our creativity is our feelings. And so to be a good politician, you have to know how to put your you have to know how to take your feelings and put them to the side. I think I I think this is also great value in Chinese culture in general, is to hide your feelings and to manage your feelings, put them to put them to the side, put them to the side so you can always have a kind of very calm, almost uh neutral experience outside yourself. And I admire this ability. I have some friends here in the US who are really, really great uh at leadership um and administration because they don't get upset. It doesn't matter what anybody says to them, they never get upset. But I do get upset. I'm not sure of this, okay. So but I really trust my feelings, and I think that's part of what my creative energy. Uh so when I see something, I feel it. The only book I one book I did write, it's my doctorate thesis, and turned it into a book, is called Form Follows Feeling. And uh the reason I wrote this, um, and I wrote it when I was late, usually a professor does their PhD before they start teaching. But in architecture in the US, I could teach with my um bachelor of architecture. So for most of my career, my the degree that I was teaching with was a bachelor of architecture, and I didn't start my PhD until I was already in my 40s, uh 50s. And uh so I wrote it about beauty uh because a lot of my a lot of my friends are always arguing with me that uh beauty is an abstract idea, it doesn't exist. You say beauty, they say beauty. They they use the uh kind of uh I think a sophomore idea of uh beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that beauty is fundamentally uh relative. But that I this isn't true. There are things that are beautiful that we all know are beautiful. Now, okay, you can argue, you can play the devil's advocate, you know, blah blah blah. You can try to have an argument with me. But I do know that you know, that I know, that we know, that there are beautiful things that we all hold to be beautiful. There's a universal thing. And I wanted to explore that question because I've also been a teacher for a long time. Um, I wanted to be able to um say. So we we sometimes we know stuff before we can say it. All right, so or we know more than we can say, and then I think the job of the uh scholar is to do the very, very hard work of trying to say what we really know, but to say it in a way with that is uh substantiated. So I always make this argument with my students too is that I want to hear your opinion, but in the academic environment, you have to substantiate your opinion. And you could substantiate your opinion with legitimate authority, somebody who we know is an expert, with your own research, you can test it and show me it's true, or because it's common knowledge. Well, everybody knows this is true. Uh so but you have to be able to substantiate. So I keep on making this claim that beauty exists, and I need to substantiate it. But I also need to substantiate that I do believe that design also can be learned. Now, a lot of people will argue in the design world is that the job of the first and second year in design school is to get rid of those who are not natural designers. A lot of schools are very proud that they take in 100 students in the first year and they graduate 10. Oh, I see you're such great. But and maybe that's true, maybe it's true, but most people that I think many people think that there's a such thing as natural talent. I don't accept natural talent actually is almost an insult to people who are really great at something. They're just saying, oh, it's easy for you. No, no, to become great at anything is extremely difficult.

SPEAKER_05 31:23

Extremely difficult.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

I think it's it's we can go back to the beginning of the conversation to say that there are certain kinds of aptitudes that I have, and I'm trying to find a way to use my aptitudes in a way that is meaningful in the world and also in a way that I can have fine happiness and success. So I think that there are certain aptitudes somebody who wants to be a designer must have, but then they have to learn how to develop them. So the idea of form follows feeling is that when we try to design something, we're trying to create an experience for somebody else. Uh the word that I like to use is the phrase is we're trying to induce a particular type of experience in someone else. And the expert designer, like the expert chef, knows the chef knows what kind of taste to put together to induce a particular flavor. The architect, the expert designer, should know what it is that he or she is trying to achieve. I don't think this is taught. I think people think, oh, it's just lucky, or oh, it looks cool. But look, it's only one seeing is only one sense. We experience space with our bodies. It's a haptic sensibility. So just because it looks cool doesn't mean it feels cool. Uh so what we're trying to do is create a feeling experience. So what I would argue, and this is what I argue in my book, is using a mostly cognitive neuroscience, is the way our brains are wired is uh they're wired to seek experiences. So as a designer, yes, I have to do the scientific analysis, and yes, I have to do the math, yes, I have to understand the laws and I have to understand the requirements, but fundamentally, how do I know when I have a good design?

SPEAKER_04 32:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

I know I have a good design because it feels right. Now, how do you know that your feeling is of a high quality? And this is what we call connoisseurship. So part of the design education is not only learning how to draw and how to calculate and how to figure out what how a structure can stand and what the volume is and how to keep the water out and the heat in. It's also learning how to recognize what beauty is and learning how to to go to places that induce a particular experience that you can identify and then look around and say, how did they do that? It's like when you go to that dinner and you have that really delicious soup. Is that tarragon? I think it's tarragon. I think they put tarragon in here. There's a flavor that you're looking for, and this is kind of connoisseurship. And I think that this is part of what we uh what is missing explicitly in architecture education, and it is certainly what is going to be required uh for to be a successful designer, an architect or graphic designer or anything in the world of AI. Uh, because AI is able to do a lot of the stuff that engineers can do, you know. So design, uh AI will never be really great at design because design is uh an open-ended design problem, design solving, problem-solving process. AI is only good at problems that have a clear answer, like scientific answers. Design doesn't have a good answer. You studied architecture for a while, design for a while. Nobody in the design class, even though they get the same design brief, comes up with the same solution. Why? Because they frame it differently, because there's so many possible solutions. And I think that the thing that will guide you through your solution and what will guide me through my solution is not just the critical analysis, but is also going to be the feeling. Gaudi, Antonio Gaudi, uh creates this amazing sculptural form. And how did he know it was right? Uh Michelangelo, the famous uh Italian sculptor, was asked when he looks at the how you know, how did you do it? And he says, Well, I take away everything that doesn't belong.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

How do you know what doesn't belong? You go to the uh Imperial Palace in Beijing, and it's awesome. How did they induce that sense of awe like repetition scale? And we can we can talk about it, but we can't repeat it. Just think of the how many terrible government buildings are. So I think that this being aware of our feelings and being attentive uh to our feelings um is uh a very important part of being a designer. Or maybe it's just my excuse for why maybe sometimes I lose my temper or I can- But I want to also let you know, just to be honest, is that right now I'm in a very good place. I'm very happy, I'm very happy to talk to you. But sometimes if I'm working, I can get uh a little frustrated and focused. So I'm not always subject. You can ask my students. I think most of my students will say he's a very good teacher, uh, he loves the students very much, but he's very hard. But I do, I really do love them. And what I love is because my my idea with the students is I want them to find their own voice. I want them to be able to make something that they are going to be proud of. I don't want them to make something that I like. I know what I like. I can make what I like. Don't worry about me. I want you to make something that is an expression of who you are. Because the world needs your voice. See, this goes back to this idea of the mystical body of Christ, right? The world needs your voice. It's not that it's nice if we have it, it's that the world is hungry for your voice. But if you don't know how to express your voice, then we then we lose. We are a richer person. Um, so when my students learn how to write well, or they learn how to draw well, or they learn, or they're really, or they follow their vocation, they follow who they really want. The world is a better place because we need uh we need each other. We need each other's voices.

SPEAKER_04 36:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

I believe that. I really do believe that.

SPEAKER_04 36:42

Me too. So that's kind of prompt me to reach out to you. You know, I think it takes a little bit of like courage, right, to reach out to the industry expert. Well, I'm not the industry professional or expert there, so what did I get to say, you know, that may resonate with you on the personal level. Yeah. We're having a nice conversation. But now, yeah, that's the truth. Yeah, now it's proof, right? There's just a lot of the resonance. So that's why I mean, when I teach to you, I kind of share my connection with architecture. It's on the broader lens. I'm kind of the one who is on the other end of this, other end of this whole process, which I'm the one who experienced architecture, right? You probably most of the time kind of less around with all the industry experts, you know, like all the like architect students, friends, but really, you know, like people like me completely just like outsiders, but then we hear talking about architecture. Yeah, I mean, because of course you are grounded and you are kind and you are you know so open to share all this uh the you know your knowledge and the wisdom with us, but also then we kind of see like the full circle of it, and you put such a heavy pin on that quality experience. And I can tell you exactly that's how I connect to the architectures through that quality experience. I'm not part of the making it, but coming out of that, I can tell you, yes, it does uh you know spark different emotional experience. I mean, it can spark a curiosity or like hope, and also can be you know on the other end of the spectrum. So it's mixed baby as an artist working so hard for what? You want to induce the quality of the experience, right? You want to enhance the humanity. I do. Yes, you do for sure, and the students you can get better. Yeah, but even yeah, just just really kind of like peppermint is like exactly you know what the part we can play in the world. Like, say you are amazing, architect and you build up this the masterpiece, only make it really meaningful when there's people in there. So for all these, you know, legendary architect like you, you know, other architect in the world, they the reason they can make some pieces that stands the taste of the toy is that they always care about the humanity and the humanity. As you say, it's sometimes it's just like I just feel it's right. The minute I step into that space, it's just kind of elevating my entire uh being. Yeah, like emotionally, uh physically.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Yeah, it's amazing, it's a great experience.

SPEAKER_04 39:14

Yeah, it's divine, right? Yeah, it's divine, the surprise versus can't be. Yeah, it's because I'm still like on the very surface level, okay. But I did kind of touch on that feeling, like that very ideal uh status of the being. Yeah, but I just become so almost uh intoxicating pursuing that. Yeah, I just wanted to always like living in that status, in that emotional abundance and also like almost spiritual readings. Yeah, I'm not even gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

And and why not? Why not? So let me tell you uh another small small story, but first I want to uh I am not a I I I am not a famous designer. I I I think you know, in the first part of my career, my I worked only with uh committed design. Yeah, I I I did get a lot of uh design awards for some small and medium-sized projects. Some of my students, even before they graduated, make taller buildings than I ever designed. So uh what happened for me uh is part because of uh because of my uh my vocation and because of the way I choose to live my life, I became a little bit more of a teacher and uh a lot more of a teacher. Uh I don't have my own children, so you know, and I like to make stuff and I like to make furniture. So there's a level of complexity in large big buildings that um I just I've never been interested in really. So I I'm aware now that I'm I'm in my mid-60s. I'm probably not going to make any great big buildings, and um, but it's okay for me. Uh I just want to be clear of that. I I don't think I'm I'm I'm not a I'm I'm not a famous guy, you know. I'm I just try to do good work. Um but but this is also where I want to go with this is um I think the emphasis there's too much emphasis on the big famous projects. People don't live in big famous projects, they live in housing projects. Uh they live in villages, they we treat people too much like warehouses. Uh so there's I where I would like to make the biggest impact is this question of affordability and and scale of housing and how we live each other. With do we house each other or do we just store each other? How do we live together with each other, you know, in a parking in an apartment space? Better to know your neighbors or not. Um, where do you find your sense of community? They talk about the third spaces in your life, right? There's the your worst, there's your home space, and then where are those third spaces? And then people talk about fourth spaces and fifth spaces. Okay, lots and lots of spaces. Um there's a lot written about these questions. But uh, I think this is a big uh question for us is to try to solve this question. I get up, I leave my house, and I go to work. What are the spaces I'm passing through on my way to work? It's something that I became aware of living on Lone Island and uh going to the shopping mall. We leave the house, we get in the car, and we put our blinders on, we get into the parking lot and we pretend not to be there, and then we wake up again when we get inside the mall. There's all this time and all these spaces we've traveled through that we try to ignore. When I I I one of my first jobs, my first teaching position was at the University of Detroit. And uh I started a design center there that's still going on, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center. I founded that in 1994. And what we used to do is I used to we go through the neighborhoods and talk with community organizations, do a neighborhood assessment, and then do like a SWOT analysis, you know. What's a SWAT is uh what is what stands for? Sometimes it's threats, opportunities, and threats, right, right, right, right. Anyway, we do do one of one of those uh analyses things. Uh so then um there was this one street that we were looking at, and on the side of the street was a dead dog, like a German shepherd. It was dead, but it was dead for a few months already. You know, there's flies around anything. And we worked in that neighborhood for four months, and at the end of the semester, we um showed them pictures of their neighborhood. And many of the people said that dog was not there, but it was, it was still there. Wow, the the sanitation people did not move it, it was rotting on the side of the street, but nobody saw it. And it was near bus stop. It was it was not often the grow part, it was on a main street, it was just decaying on the road, but nobody saw it. So one of the things we did always there's a lot of the cognitive neuroscience, is that we we have filters, right? So you and I can have this conversation now and we see each other, but you know, there's a lot of stuff behind me. Yeah, but you're filtering it so you can look at me. Um, and maybe there's sounds around you, uh, but you're not listening to those you listen to. So our brains act as a filter, and it's how magic works too, right? You so they create a distraction. Wow, so there is a possibility that you really don't see things, really don't. It could be there forever. I never noticed that. You have to learn a skill when you live in difficult urban environments to not to see. Because if you saw all of the ugliness, you couldn't live there. You'd feel threatened all the time. It would be too terrible to see the dead dog every day. Or you would have to do something about it. But if you f don't if you feel powerless to do something, then you can't see it. Now a month after that I went to um Vincenza in um in Italy. And I was like, it was so beautiful. Everything. Oh, the the city of Palladio and the streets were gorgeous. And I was like, oh or I wrote this article recently about the renovation of Notre Dame. So my argument was, and the question I was exploring was the space, a liturgical space, a space where you go to pray, should induce a sense of the sacred. And then the question is, well, what happens when you become when a feeling of the sacred becomes normal? Because novelty is an important part of design, right? What happens when you become used to this feeling? And I say that's when you become more human.

SPEAKER_04 44:59

You should.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

When the feeling of the we should become more uh we should the experience of the divine or the experience of the extraordinary or the experience of the beauty should not be something that is unusual. I mean, we love to go for a walk in the in the forest, but the people live in the forest. Do the people who live in the forest love walking in the forest? Well, yes, they're used to it. We go there, oh yeah, yeah. But imagine if that you're used to with that quality of experience of beauty around you. Uh we go to the beach. The people who live on the beach is normal, right? But what happens when beauty becomes normal? And this is what I this is the experiment I would like to try is let's see if we could design a beautiful city and see what happens when people are only surrounded by beauty. I don't know, I don't think it would be a bad thing. I told I used to like to tell students, you're gonna design a school. It's a very big responsibility because these children are going to be looking at those walls and that shape of that room for how many hours? And do you think that doesn't affect them?

unknown 46:03

Come on.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

The school I went to, the walls were just concrete blocks and the tiles were ugly and the nasty ceiling and terrible lights. No, that wasn't a beautiful place. So anyway, um maybe I'm going too far.

SPEAKER_04 46:16

No, no, no. I'm fascinating by the experiment that if we build this very beautiful school and the you know people with experiences like all these odd emotions become in like a norm abnormal. I personally I think I will adapt to it. I think I won't mind experience that like constantly. But I don't know, maybe for some people that would come mutate into sort of the fatigue, like a beauty fatigue. Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Say if you go to Florence, you can become overwhelmed by too much beauty. They do say that's possible. Yeah, yeah. Maybe it's possible.

SPEAKER_04 46:48

Be some neutral and but I mean But it's not overwhelmed, but it's become like a bit of norm. Because you know, like, oh, this is so beautiful, you know, I'll get it so used to it's now it just becomes a norm.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

I think we should do an experiment and see if you probably should do the you know experiment.

SPEAKER_04 47:03

But for people like us, I think we have such a strong sensibility around building, like I will never get tired of it, right? I will never get bored of it. Please put me in a beautiful. Maybe it's worse for you.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

Maybe it's worse for you because you're more sensitive to it.

SPEAKER_04 47:17

Yeah, but but I think it's just, I don't know, utopia doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

So uh what's his name? Uh I I I quote a lot of philosophers, I'm sorry. But uh uh Sartre, Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous um what was he, existentialist. Um he said that the beginning of every revolution begins when somebody can see that it could be different, it could be otherwise. Yeah, and I think that this is part of this is why I'm also saying that an important part of the design education has to be connoisseurship, is we need to learn how to appreciate and recognize uh beautiful things. Yeah, I think it's the same thing with food, right? So um a lot of Americans think that American Chinese food is a normal Chinese food. I have to tell them no, no, it's like American Italian food is not real Italian food, American German food is not really German food because in America you have all these different cultures coming together, so everybody changes everybody else's food to make it acceptable to more people. Uh but I was shocked when I first went to China to even know that the the food in the north is different than the food in the south and uh the different flavors and different ethnic. Ah, I missed it. Uh so but I think this is also true with design and with architecture and spatial experience is to be able to go to different places and to feel it and to be able to identify why and how do they achieve it. So, why do people appreciate it and how do they achieve it? Because there's different aesthetics in different places, right? So I don't believe that there's one universal aesthetic. Uh so for example, in um in the theory of beauty in cognitive neuroscience, they talk about that the aesthetic experience can be understood at three levels. It can be understood at the first person's level, uh, which is subjective. So I like what I like. So, for example, um, let's say my my niece, well actually, but my my nephew just sent me a drawing. I hope he doesn't hear this uh podcast, but um, it's not so great. I love it, I think it's beautiful. But if I'm taught if I look at it as a professor, I was like, it's not so great. Even for a 10-year-old, it's not so great. But but he but I love this boy and his and his mother is my godchild. I mean, just no. I love it, it makes me feel warm all over it. That's my subjective experience. But I know it's my subject. I do not expect that when you look at that picture, you're going to have the same feeling. I don't. Then there's a second level. There's the level of uh there's a level of um of a community or a uh a basic group that that we all when when you look at the you you look at my coffee cup and you say, Oh, that's a very beautiful coffee cup. And I know you will think it's a beautiful coffee cup because, well, we we like black coffee cups and where we come from. And so this is this is a normative thing. And maybe it's a cultural issue too. So maybe um, you know, there's a certain kind of proportion system, like, oh, I have this beautiful uh sculpture designed made by a very famous uh Eurobuck uh sculptor, and you can see the proportion is one, two, three, and then one, two, three, four. Three this way, four this way. Very normal for West Africa for their uh sculptures and proportions, and it's a gives you a kind of feeling to it, right? So we can really appreciate that. But then there's also beauty that ex that exists at the universal level, at the human level. So, for example, we can expect that there's certain kinds of experiences that all humans will appreciate, but we don't expect that a dog would appreciate it because a dog's a different species, and a dog experienced the world from with hair all over his body and four feet on the ground. And uh so I think when we when we try to talk about aesthetic experience, we we have to come from that starting point. Yes, there's there's different levels uh that we expect the other to experience.

SPEAKER_04 50:58

Yeah, I love how you break down into the beauty because I think for the very first time that someone has interpreted beauty through this kind of intricacy because people can say, oh, this is very superficial, it can be all very like subjective, but finally someone can really clearly yeah, just like distilled the layers of the beauty. Yeah, that's how it kind of like matches with uh you know which phases of your understanding for beauty, and you can like mapping out, oh, where is my understanding for beauty? If I say that that's a superficial, maybe that's still just within that your very personal beholder where you, yeah, it's just like you haven't really tapped into the deeper layer of the beauty, but when we kind of live in life to the point we further connect it to the second level, the third level with the community, with the universal. I mean, certainly the beauty can be like a lifelong mission to pursue. I often said beauty is the only imperishable investment and go beyond all the contingencies. I truly believe that, but I just couldn't really articulate it the way you just yeah, unpacked it.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

But now that's all about uh yeah, these are all about beauty.

SPEAKER_04 52:08

These are all about beauty stories. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

You have to read a lot about to be able to say things, uh, to say things clearly.

SPEAKER_04 52:15

Yeah, and also I think it took me like a decade to reach the very unequivocal narrative about my life uh vision, so to speak. Yeah, it's like I wanted to interpret this world intellectually and uh aesthetically. So you say, I don't know why that idea came into my mind, but it's just kind of gradually forming into that concept of the beauty. So today that we actually have this such in-depth conversation, like revolver around the beauty. I mean, just feel wow, this is so held in my core, not just aesthetic core. You know, it's like the core of the humanity. So when I say like we go beyond that level of the title, whatever, because I think when you touch on something in the core, this is like the real substance is there. So I think as you said, we are all meant for many different things. Like, so there is Arcte being rewarded with all this acclaim, and which is great, right? It's a little bit recognition. And but even the designer, they take upon different types of the project on the different scale. Yeah, that can be like we recognize Arcte doing like this larger projects or can be very more intimate, like residential, but you are heavily engaged with a community project. This is like what you are set up to do it, right? And I found that this is so meaningful because you know, like this world, just only these different types of the architecture, yeah. Like say this is the one fabric you will into the type street of the, you know, this world city. Yeah, so that's I'm not trying to like honorify or kind of you know put a certain type of the rewards or architecture, you know, onto them, but instead we just want you are all equally contributed to you know yeah, adding the beauty to the world.

SPEAKER_01 54:01

Well, just let me uh add just to add something to this, is that you know the the conversation we're having so far is uh really very philosophical and very theoretical and really interesting, very deep, right? Um but you know, in the end, um we can talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about beauty, but um making buildings and making uh making beautiful things is mostly hard work. And I think this is this is part of uh the conversation that nobody really wants to talk about is that to make a thing a beauty requires so much effort. Uh it looks so simple, but this beautiful thing that's made a high-quality thing made in China is very beautiful. And the craftsmanship is fantastic. This is Chinese craftsmanship, it's beautiful. Look how beautiful the edges are and the way the pieces come together. It's extraordinary, it's exquisite. But this is very difficult to make. Extremely and very expensive to make. To make the machines that can make this requires an extremely high level of intelligence and discipline and hard work and refinement. The same thing, even with this uh sculpture here, is the the amount of time it took for the sculptor to be able to develop such a beautiful uh design vocabulary and then to handle the uh the chisel in such a precise way. This took an incredible amount of time. When you design a building, and this is the part that uh I think a lot of uh recently I was teaching at uh at SIGs at the Qinghua uh Shenzhen International Graduate School, and um I was teaching graduate design students, and one of the things that I I love the students there very much, I I fought with them a lot. And I fought with them a lot mostly because I I wanted them to embrace the um the discipline of architecture or the discipline of design. It's very hard and it's very tedious, and it takes forever, and you have to do it over and over and over and over again to get it right. You never get it right the first time. Nobody gets it right the first time. They tell all these silly stories about Frank Lloyd Wright. He made this drawing of this beautiful building for the Kaufman family on his way on the train.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

That's not true. Isn't that true? We have all of the little sketches he did two years before. But that's the story they like to tell because they want him to sound like he's a genius.

SPEAKER_04 56:21

Yeah, I totally go into that. I totally bind it.

SPEAKER_01 56:24

No, it's ridiculous. That doesn't work like that. You know, the genius is not, the genius is not doing it, getting it right the first time. The genius is being able to stick to it and go over it until you get it right. Because I know what it's right, I just have to see it. And so I have to try it over and over. So when I draw it the first time, it it's okay, but then I have to figure out how to make it. Well, I can't make it if I if it's shipped like that, I can't make it. I have to make it like this, and then but then I want to use a different material. Oh crap, that material costs too much money. And then I have to change it, and then the client, remember, in the end, architects are meaningless. In the end, it's the client who pays for the building. You know, you can design whatever the heck you want, but if nobody will build it, then it's never going to get built. So in the end, it's the it's the taste of the owner that matters the most. But you know, if the client doesn't like it, then you have to change it also. So it's this ongoing process of refinement and changing and refinement and changing. But I think we we live in a world with this idea of immediate gratification that uh boom, it's done. I just bought a five-axis CNC. Uh, it's really cool. It's made in China, and I I love it, it's a great machine. All of my friends, when they look at it, they say, oh wow, so now you can just make anything. It's gonna be so easy.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

It's like, no, I have to design it and now I have to program it, and then I have to test it, and then it's it's not going to come out right the first time.

SPEAKER_01 57:48

Then I'm gonna have to retest it and then I have to do it, and then it's going to take a long time. The machine helps me to achieve the result that I want. But the machine doesn't do it, and it's this kind of commitment to refinement uh that is the discipline of the craft. So I do believe that there's there's a craft to this. So if you talk to any of the really famous architects, they also love to talk about the big picture. But they're the ones who are in their studio until late at night and they won't stop until they get it right. This, I think, if you want beauty, beauty is available, but it's not free.

SPEAKER_04 58:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:20

And beauty is expensive not because it costs a lot of money, but it takes a lot of heart, it takes a lot of effort.

SPEAKER_03 58:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:26

Because everything is pushing away from everything resists it. You know, you I want to make a beautiful thing, but the almost everything in the world doesn't want it to be beautiful. They want it to be average, uh, they want it to be disposable. They don't want so then there's also a desire for beauty, and there's this fight. And the only way you can achieve it is by committing to it and sticking to it and fighting for it. Don't stop until you get it right.

SPEAKER_03 58:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:49

I think you have a feeling for that with your podcast. I think that you, you know, like I've watched a few of them, and I can see you're very well prepared. So you're learning that it I think a lot of people will look and say, oh, she just calls somebody and la. No, you do a lot of uh you do a lot of preparation, you do a lot of reading, you try to set it in order to make it right. And I think this is true for everything.

SPEAKER_04 59:08

Wow. I just can't tell you how much I appreciate it, how you really value all the behind the scene efforts. You know, people often just say good notifying for some and but put the back of the curtain. We don't really, we don't even want to talk about the you know unseen efforts. And also you truly value how much effort then put into crafting the building. I think at some point, like we kind of get a little bit dismissive about it because maybe we live in a world where we are so bombarded by all the overloaded information and on the social media, there was like just one clip, there's millions of the mention in church design kind of presented to you. So, but almost like overlook or neglect in each piece. There is the the artist put hard on the sewing. Like this the coffee, yeah. I just bought it, it's not like something like uh very you know customized. Or I just bought it from the shopping move. Kind of people would yeah, but people, oh, this is manufacturing, you know, this is nothing like a bespoke pieces, you know, this is just one of those like you know, replica uh, you know, whatsoever. But I still, yeah, but I still have my hand over the respect on whoever was actually um molded into this shape of it because I there's still the elements of the community in there. I think that also helped to enhance my accessibility, you know, just to feel and touch the building because not everyone is able to afford all this luxury stuff. I mean, I love like uh customer furniture and you make it then. Um I love all this commission other work, but I also truly even more uh love you know my 10 years old niece work.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:47

What's what's that what's the um well I love Xiaomi uh design, I really do. Yeah in my apartment in Shenzhen, I have my Xiaomi stir, I have my Xiaomi coffee maker, I have my Xiaomi uh water boiler, everything. I love their design, so simple, so beautiful, so elegant. And what's what's a muumu uh what's the uh the Japanese um company?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:08

Muji. Muji. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

So simple, so elegant, so beautiful. So it doesn't have to be expensive, but it there's an attentiveness to the proportion, to the composition, to the beauty of the element. And you know, a lot of those things that are so beautiful and so simple, they took a long time to get it just right. Now it's so easy to make it, but it took a long time to get it right. And I think that you you so you're talking about connoisseurship, you're talking about the appreciation for craft, and also you're talking about uh your human experience of uh creative things. It's a beautiful thing. We live in a created world, we have bodies, uh, may as well enjoy it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:40

But sometimes I feel people feel like just kind of lost the touch with beauty, not just on its, you know, not just like the versory level, but I think it's more like you know, then intimate uh connection, like then very proactively literally in that connection with the object. So it's kind of you know the affection of the object. But what I truly appreciate is like you recognize, you know, that exorbitant amount of the effort put in, shaping in that refinement, perfecting that details. I think that's great segue into the next one with the profit machine. I do wanted to share a spotlight on that. I know you are a big advocate for it, you know, like the making is not just the act, but it's also the way of honoring, yeah, to the material, to the texture, everything. And you are maker. You just said you think everything is teachable, right? You think there's no such thing as sort of the inherent electrical talent, but I feel like we are kind of sometimes carry certain things, like in that kind of gilectic varying. Like myself, I just I'm not maker.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:42

Dude say that there is a question of um completely sort of um basic interest or um basic appearance.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:50

This is the thing. I am I'm not I'm like not basic. I'm like so per I was so.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:55

But you could learn. You could you could you could be taught.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:58

I could teach you to basically you truly, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's say I'm probably gonna build a house one day. Yeah, but that's really type into almost like the huge access in my life. It's like I can make things. I mean, it's not like I'm dismissive about it, it's very on the contrary. I told you like some broken record, I just such huge admirations on people professional like you, you can actually build. That's something real, grounded, and tangible. But I can't play basketball. You can't play basketball.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:28

Yeah, I tried, my brothers can. I don't have a basic aptitude for playing sports. I'm terrible at it. I learned after a while not to like it because I can't, I couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:37

Uh, something else can't do it, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:40

No, I tried, I tried it. You know what? I don't have that aptitude. Now, my brothers, here's a funny story. When I was a boy, I have three brothers, and um they you need to have four guys to play basketball, right? Two and two, right? So they're always like, okay, Terry, come on, play basketball. I was like, no, I don't want to play basketball. Because um I had a little workshop in the garage, and I was always making things and experimenting with things and taking the TV apart and taking things here and I was always that's what I like to do by myself. I was fine, very happy. But my brothers they want to play. So, uh, we need a fourth. We need a fourth guy. Come on, Terry, come on. And then I was like, no, I don't want to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:14

Mom, Terry won't play.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:16

Terry, go play with your brothers. And so I always had to go play. But this one day I was just tired of it. And I said to my mom, I said, okay, I will go play with them. But after that, they have to come and they have to come drawing and sit with me and draw for an hour, also.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:32

And my mother said, no way, they they hate drawing.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:38

And how do you think I feel about playing? Oh, I never thought of that. And then I didn't have to play anymore. Why do we always want somebody to learn how to do what they're not what they're not interested in? Why not just if that's what you're attracted to, be great at it.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:54

Go, go, go, go get them, Tiger. Go go uh go learn how to do it. But yes, I could learn to I can learn how to pay basketball, basically, yes. But I I don't enjoy it. I'll never be good at it. I will never be good at it.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:06

If we tie back to the craftship, because uh actually I try to illustrate the point and there's certain things I just I really actually aspire to achieve like a master, it's just unfortunately I didn't have that aptitude. Yeah, like the craftsmanship. I remember like you know, there was time I was um was kind of meandering the Oprah House, right? And yeah, with someone, so I told him, I said, you know, like how people will think, oh well, you know, if I have any regret on my deathbed, I I said I kind of really hustle in my life, I don't have much of a regret. But if there's one regret in my life on my deskback, I think probably would be like I never actually make anything, I never be part of making something, you know, like Oprah House, right? So because I was filled, I was touched, you know, the material, you know, like I was looking at this magnificent shapes of yeah, you know, a story behind it. So again, it's not about like, oh, this is such a uh legendary. Of the glory and sort of the building. I'm just saying I know, you know, then feeling of working with material, then process of the making, engaging with the you know, material, with the physical world. So I do wanted to kind of do a little bit digging into that, you know, about the craftsmanship, about the maker, because you also kind of, you know, I'm building on that, you raise up the concerns about the current architecturation, is kind of liking, you know, then craftsmanship, right? And drifting to that formally then, yes, driven by the novelty. Yeah, so I do wanted to your insights on them. Yeah, again, because you are expert in both design and also the making. Yeah, that's a golden opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:38

I think a lot about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:39

I don't know if I'm an expert, but I think a lot about it. I do. Um, so I would say probably the best story I can tell you is uh for a short time I was in Nigeria and I was when I was with these guys who carved this. So they took me for a uh trip to go cut down a tree, and um they told me that well, so what they do is they find the tree and then they um have a ceremony around the tree and they try to talk to the spirit of the tree, and they have some chanting and they try to familiarize themselves with the spirit of the tree, with the spirit of the tree, with the spirit of the tree, and then they chop it down. That's so cruel. And then, but when they take the piece of wood from that tree, they try to remember the spirit of the tree, and they try to let the spirit of the tree to move their hand as they are cutting through it.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:31

So that their hand will uh so that the tree will become what it wants to be, and that they can the spirit will move them and inspire them to cut it in this way instead of that way. I was so moved by this when I heard this because if you work, especially if you work with wood, wood has a beautiful smell to it sometimes, you know, and it also has a characteristic, you know, if you break, if you hold it this way, it breaks easy. If you hold it this way, it doesn't. It has uh every piece of wood is unique because it grew on its own, it's organic, right? Um so when you're cutting it, sometimes it will make the blade go this way because the the grain of the wood is pushing that way. So it's not homogenous, right? It has a feeling to it. There's a kind of dialogue that you have with the with the wood. So sometimes uh another example I can give is like if you're like paper, right? So it if you do calligraphy, right, with uh Chinese calligraphy, right? You you take the calligraphy pen and you hold it like this, and you go plop, and then you move it, and you you have this interaction between your hand, the brush, the tip of the brush, and the paper, and you're watching the water as it absorbs and you're lifting it up right, and there's this kind of beautiful dialogue you're having with the materiality of the experience. And you don't, you're not thinking about your hand. You're in fact you're feeling the tip of the brush as if the brush is your arm. And there's a kind of loss of yourself in the immersing yourself into the materiality and the action that is going on. And I think that this is this is a beautiful, beautiful way to also inhabit the world, but also to uh to think about craftsmanship.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:08

Wow. I feel like I needed to go back, just reset everything you said because you know it's all this uh like the pool of sensations and the extension of presence. I couldn't really alkylate it, but today I feel like uh yeah, I you know the it's all unraveled. Yeah, exactly. That's the way I want to interact with the uh material materialism. Yeah, it's the feeling is attached, engaging you five senses, right? First, and then maybe elevate it to that spiritual status. Yeah, but you're gonna have to first of all kind of almost like lay your guard off so you can actually open to physical material existence. Because particularly in in this modern world, everything is can be digitalized, can be, you know, just everything is kind of as your fingertips. So we'll also touch. I mean, I was also the sucker of the material, particularly I love wood and also the stone. So I mean sometimes like in the sense like the beauty is also like omnipresent once you have an eye on it, because the minute you walk out of the door, there's all this natural material, you know, that shapes yeah, around. Maybe you don't have to go to African to uh experience that too. It's just like right now in the moment, right? Yeah, how you kind of decided to yeah, shape your experiences with it, you know, with that piece of the paper, as you said, yeah, carried by the you know, correctly or any kind of the craft. Yeah, that's truly wow compelling. So I guess maybe I want to, you know, additional question on that is like for us, like we are not like architect or designer, but we kind of, yeah, we try to apply a little bit of intentionality in there to further enhance our like registration with the beauty in the form of the architecture. Yeah, do you have any advice like how we can further enhance it? Like, you know, like collection, because I personally am naturally registered with it. Yeah, I kind of you know, just a little bit in laid affinity into it. But then I just wanted to say to what extent it can be enhanced, as you said, that quality of experience and also multiplied and joy the architecture can bring to me. Do you have any advice? Do I I mean a couple of things? I do, I do.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:14

I'm gonna, it's very simple, very simple. Touch, touch, touch it, touch it. Touch the building. So I'm sitting at my desk here and I design, I so I built this, I designed all the furniture in my apartment. The top of my desk is made out of leather. And when I'm talking to you, I'm touching it. And the the legs are made out of maple, so it's real wood. See, if your desk is made out of plastic and it's not nice to touch, then you don't want to touch it. So touch, you know, when you you say you like the stone. So the next time you go to the building, touch the stone on the wall.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:44

Touch it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:45

Touch it. Um when I tell the when I talk to the students about designing a house, I say, okay, the front door is a very important thing to design, but not just the front door, but the handle. Because the handle is the first thing you it's only the only thing for many people that they will ever touch on the building. So this is your first physical contact. So I'll give you a little bit of advice. You want to enhance your experience of the architecture, touch it. Touch the wall.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:09

Touch the wall. Touch it.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:11

Be there, be there, feel be there.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:13

Be there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:15

One one one uh simple. It's getting a little late now, so um I think that uh I want to give you a chance to kind of uh uh land this airplane and uh we can uh maybe we can have another conversation at oh well okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:29

I must just very right now feel like my jaw is dropping and my my mind's blowing, you know. I know like I think emotionally feel a bit overwhelming because it's just so much I would say like the need gravity, but I I think it's gold in our conversation today. Yeah, from your from you, from you, yeah. So I feel like this it's not just go beyond honor. Yeah, I think it's truly like serendipity and we kind of kind of you know connect to each other. Yeah, I mean, to pull out this conversation is absolutely one of the kind. I won't say it's once in a lifetime, but you know, in a sense once in a lifetime. But yeah, I just I already feel I'm kind of getting so much of the, you know, then just our emotions, yeah, the whole time. I truly truly believe once I send this conversation out, yeah. The audience, yeah, they they will connect it to it um different differently. But I think that is what I'm I mean to do it. I know I cannot build any building like any must building like that, but if I can be the like the messenger, you know, observer, just the keen listener in the world, yeah, to send a story like this, I'll I consider that's my mission is fulfilled. Yeah, I mean we're playing our part. Maybe my very last question coming full circle is like, do you believe our texture has the potential then connect to us to the greatness? You know, to something greater, bigger and larger.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:59

Well, you know what I think about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:03

Too easy. You're throwing me softball questions. Yes. Of course I do. Of course I do. I don't know if anything I uh I have done. I mean, I've certainly been in buildings that connect people to a sense of themselves, to a sense of the world. I think our architecture does have the possibility of bringing people together. Um architecture communicates values uh where we put our money. Uh if you think about this uh in Europe during the you know maybe for almost uh thousand years, uh the most important architecture was church buildings because that was the center of the community. But now the most important buildings for architects now are museums or office towers. Uh so it's a big shift in the value and where where do we put our money? Where do we put uh where where do we expect to see beauty? Uh where do we expect to experience uh architectural form? And uh yeah, so yes, absolutely architecture can influence um our experience and uh can influence the culture, certainly, certainly it can, certainly, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:02

Obviously, you know that you know that I know that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:05

Um thank you so much, Teresa. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:10

Yeah, that's such a it's really my pleasure to talk with you and spend uh spend an hour or so uh chit-chatting and exploring some ideas. It's easy to talk about the philosophy. Uh I mean you have to read about, you have to you really have to discipline your mind and learn the vocabulary. But in the end, I'd like to see.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:25

You submitted it, right? I kind of tried very hard to learn that learn speak the language over the society and the philosophy.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:32

In the end, it's really hard work. And um you really have to believe you really have to want, you really have to want to do something good, and then be willing to uh not just have the desire, but also to have the discipline. And I think these are two very, very important distinctions desire and discipline. I desire to do greatness and I do I have to develop the discipline to do it. And um I think that this is uh fundamental because in the end, what what the the payback is is when you look at something you made and you say, Oh or you make something for somebody else and they go, oh um for me that's that's the reinforcement, you know. That that that's the pleasure it is to see that what I've done um can bring joy to somebody else and maybe make a maybe make a small uh contribution to a better world.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:20

I kind of really thank you for the opportunity to talk today.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:23

Yeah, but I do want to say the last word, just take care of yourself. Yeah, and I mean I'm so glad to hear now you're in this right place, you know, like on all the levels. Yeah. Yeah, there was gonna be turmoil like emotionally, is that we slightly, you know, one devil sometimes to kind of control, but overall I think person like you and also me, I think we're pretty much the same species there. Yeah, we pursue it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:46

Absolutely, I'm certain with the same species.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:48

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We pursue beauty. We wanted to uh, you know, just add a meaning into our life and a value to the world. So I know persons like us are just bound to be, you know, live a good life. But end of the day is all about yeah, I I wish you the life of longevity and fraternity. I know you are living that. I just wish like you know, we are kind of cheerleaders to each other along the way because I know a journey sometimes can be lonely, can be, you know, growing. Yeah, debilitating. I always like just anticipated, oh my god, this you know, right now I feel so great, so good. I mean, who knows what is coming next. But not tomorrow morning.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:25

I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:26

Like I get you today, not the tomorrow morning.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:29

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:30

But I think we will be fine. We are definitely will be fine because we have you know, like in all the resources today, shine through entire conversations. Yeah, and also personally I already see you as my mentor. I never have any mentor, so it's very arbitrary and you know, relatively because the way you interpret beauty and the you know meaning and also just the humanity piece. That's to this point. I personally hold you know the highest. Just trump everything else, you know? Yeah, the external approval or internal whatever is all goes down the humanity. So I'm so glad there's a good person like you in the world, yeah. So we can run it counters. Yeah, because the world sometimes just can be uh too bloody. Yeah. So we have to be stay strong, you know. We are the light in the world. We have to strengthen.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:27

Well, I wish you a happy spring festival and um have a lovely, lovely time with your family and friends. Yes, and um, I hope that uh you invite me to come uh visit your podcast again.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:39

Yeah, also I wanted to invite you to come to China again. Would you ever personally maybe visit China? I was planning to go back to China.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:47

Um maybe I would be happy to come, but um I'm at a point in my life where I need a I I need uh somebody to uh invite me and to uh to have my uh I to pay for my airplane ticket. So yeah. I'm a retired man now. I I don't have any money, so I'm gonna have to uh oh that travel too far, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:05

Um because Brooklyn is your home. Yeah, I mean, you know that Brooklyn's my home. Yeah, that attachment.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:10

Yeah, I miss my friends in China. I would like to go back and visit them. I just have to find uh I have to find somebody to invite me to do a lecture proof.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:22

Yeah, yes, the seeds already be planted. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, the hope is there. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:28

Good evening, and uh thanks again.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:30

Thank you, Teris. Yeah, uh yeah, I will once I put it, I finished, I'll let you know. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:36

Yeah, we're talking basically soon. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:45

Yeah, the year of the horse. I didn't really pronounce correctly, very process me. Yeah, please have a good name. I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:56

No, no, no, I'm just but I'm getting very tired.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:58

Yes, yes, yes. Okay, bye-bye, Sajam, bye bye.