>> from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. charlie: we begin tonight with iraq. president obama authorized up to 450 noncombat troops to be sent on wednesday. it will include training the local iraqi security forces against isis. the troops will be a in anbar province, where isis has made territorial gains recently. president obama admitted the u.s. did not have a complete strategy to beat the group. joining me michael gordon here in new york. and dexter filkins of the new yorker magazine. michael gordon, tell me what is happening right now with respect

to -- i mean, the administration seems to fear being pulled into will iraq, and on the other hand they have a growing sense that things are going so badly they may have to do something different. where are we? michael: the american strategy has been to degrade and defeat the islamic state, but it has been under resourced all along. they do not have a strategy that outlines -- aligns with their objectives. after the fall of ramadi, they have made some course correction by sending american personnel to a new base in an bar -- anbar.

it is an attempt to reach out to the tribes and work more effectively with the military units in anbar that at some point will have to retake ramadi. charlie: does it sound like too little too late to you? dexter: all of this is a sign of the president ambivalence. charlie: this is in ambivalence? dexter: he wants to do something, but he doesn't want to be there. what he doesn't want to be you responsible completely for the collapse of the iraqi state. you will you michael: because foreign fighters flocked there and there are a host of region -- reasons that this is said to be in american interest. apart from whatever happen in iraq, we are getting there incrementally. whereare charlie: how much does this

depend on how well the iraqi army works? michael: the reason they are sending trainers and advisers to anbar is not purely to work with the iraqi army. half will be for training engagement and half with the iraqi army. they will have to work at the local level. really to wait and see how it works out. charlie: what is at risk for the u.s.? dexter: i think it is from the churches in obama administration won't have some success in iraq. it hasn't had much success so far, but i think it is too early to say they cannot have success. it's possible to do that. will and i also think it's possible without the enormous

investment of money and troops and energy that marked the bush administration. nobody is talking about sending back american divisions and reoccupy the country and doing anything on the scale. once these troops are in, we will have all about 3500 american forces there, almost all of them behind the wire in bases. this is not a strategy of risk for the united states. you can adjust the strategy at make it more effective, but it will be different entirely from what happened in the iraqi war. dexter: when i was there, it has been a year since most will sell to isis. -- since mosul fell to isis.

the iraqi army we trained at unbelievable expense over many years, and it just disintegrated overnight. isis, they took whole towns with just taxicabs and a guy with a bullhorn. they all ran away. that is not a problem you can fix by just adjusting your policy in washington. that goes to the heart of what these countries are. michael: all of the exertions being made in iraq do not get at the problem in syria where again, they are gaining ground. the coalition has come together and pretty much agrees on what needs to be done in iraq. but they have wildly divergent views on what needs to happen in syria. the saudi's and turks think

thought has to go. the iraqis, who are -- think assad has to go. the iraqis, who are heavily dependent on assad, don't think that. the problem has been managed primarily by deferring the syria problem, but it cannot be deferred for ever if the strategy is to destroy the islamic state. charlie: thank you. we will be right back. stay with us. ♪

charlie: more than 11 million people worldwide were uprooted from their homes last year. millions in syria and iraq have fled the country's as the conflict rages on. the united nations has called it the worst migration crisis since world war ii. european leaders are seeking to address the flow of immigrants on their shores. thousands of muslims are stranded at sea seeking refuge in neighboring countries. matt dillon recently visited one of those camps. matt: we have the smaller ships that were used to help the people that sit out there for weeks. they filled them up. this it up there for weeks, these people and deplorable conditions. they were held for ransom.

people were finally able to break through to the community leaders to get them to negotiate a release. many of these people suffered. charlie: michelle is president of refugees international and kenneth is director of human rights watch, and david miliband is a former foreign minister of britain. i'm pleased to have each of them here. let me begin with you, matt. tell me how you got involved. matt: i've been on the board of refugees for several years and obviously, the rohingya are a group of people that we are very interested in and concerned about. it was about six weeks ago at an event when an activist, a human rights activist and advocate for the rohingya spoke.

his speech was very powerful. he started off by saying "i don't exist." it stayed with me. i met with him the following day and told him if we got an opportunity to help on the issue, i will. i found myself in the region doing some press in japan. and i called michelle and i said, i would like to go down, and what do you think? i would like to go down to myanmar and check out the camps. at that time, while i was in japan, there were more news articles coming out of ships being pushed out to sea, discovering mass graves, deplorable pictures of people jammed into the hulls of these ships. i wanted to get a sense of why

this was going on and a remembered that speech. that is what brought me there. i went down with a couple of journalist friends who are more familiar with the crisis than i am. charlie: do we know about what is happening in burma? guest: i think we know more than we did a few years ago. we started working on it a few years ago. that was before the violence in 2012. that happened at a time when there was more international presence and allow the nation to be better known. i was very grateful when matt foley he was going to burma, because it had given the impression that the government had made an international crisis. i was very happy when matt went to the camp and he said it is not an international crisis. it has its roots in burma.

charlie: what do we need to do here? give me the politics of it. guest: step one is to deal with what is driving them away. roughly 10% fled last year. it's as if 30 phil -- it is as if 30 minus americans just up and flood because of persecution. there's a reason for this. ron has 135 ethnic groups and is -- does not recognize rodriguez as legitimate. they have no citizenship. it's a combination of racism -- they are darker skinned, and the fact that they are muslim in a largely buddhist country. they are seen falsely as immigrants. what we are seeing now is that because there is a gradual democratization process in burma, the military is terrified of losing democracy.

and there is a movement behind buddhism resulting in a split vote and forcing her to choose on human rights policy. and sadly, she has been largely silent. she has said that it is a mistake to view me a human rights activist and that she's a politician. it is poison for her to embrace them. it's ultimately not her fault. the fault lies in the burmese government, but she's making it easier for them to persecute by failing to speak up for the rohingya. charlie: if she spoke of, what would be the consequence? or is she so large that she could speak up without consequence? kenneth: the fear is that she would lose both in the election. but it would force the burmese government to stop the violence in the camps and to give them the voting rights that they deserve.

guest: there are fires in burma. there is economic interests, but unless they get the humanitarian situation properly dealt with, the economics and politics will not work. it's very striking. we worked in myanmar in the last 25 years in the state where the rohingya are, both in camps and in villages. and we've also resettled rohingya into the united states since 2007. on both sides, the consistent message is, until all the parts of burmese myanmar society are treated properly, we will never have the political stability to allow for the economic resources of that country to be to properly deployed.

charley: discrimination increase as democracy increased? kenneth: in a sense, yes. the voting rights issue became real as elections were on the horizon. the issue became more intense. there is since the gradual opening of burma as a buddhist extremism, which is two words you don't tend to put together. military has used these extremists to try to split the pro-democracy vote. we have seen an intensification of violence against rohingya. it's a good way to change the subject from military malpractice and misrule to this very unpopular minority. charlie: what do you hope to accomplish? matt: for one thing, the u.s. government and other governments should put more pressure on the myanmar government to give these

people -- they are stateless, they don't have rights to citizenship. and they should work toward that. in the meantime, they have to have their human rights net -- met and that is something that is not really happening. i think that's the goal right there. right now, the government of myanmar doesn't want the world to believe that these people exist. they don't even acknowledge the word rohingya. kenneth: it has gotten so bad that diplomats will not use the term for fear of offending the burmese government. in my private meeting with the president i got him to say the word rohingya, which was a victory. officially, they don't exist. you see most of the diplomats not using the term, which is a real abdication of responsibility.

the burmese went back to 1988 when there was an outpouring and it was crushed. and burma live through 30 years of awful dictatorship. charlie: did they change the government? kenneth: they put in a civilian figurehead with a general. but burma under severe economic sanctions is looking around and seeing countries like thailand and others booming and recognizing that it had to open up politically in order to open up economically, but they have been doing it begrudgingly. they're are trying to split the opposition. it is an effort at a controls transition, and so far, the west seems more interested in applauding it's great victory toward some progress rather than pushing toward more. charlie: what is there to lose by pushing a toward more? kenneth: if you talk to hillary clinton, this is one of her big victories.

this is one of the big things shake, status secretary of state. it does not serve her to highlight what -- big things she accomplished as secretary of state. the obama administration has done better about that. they do speak about the problems. many of the european interlocutors do not want to push too hard for democracy. there is a laissez-faire attitude, which is not serving the burmese people well. charlie: when you turn to syria and all the refugees, are we desensitized to what is happening in these camps? david: it is not just refugees, but there are people in these urban areas. turkey, 2 million refugees. his stumble 1000 kilometers

from the syrian border, you will find syria refugees. it has become an iraq crisis, you're right. let's give it our attention from syria to iraq, where in truth, you cannot address iraq without addressing syria as well. but there is a deeper revolution. we are down to one envoy trying to get a temporary cease-fire in one syrian city. that is the extent of the diplomatic push at the moment. and meanwhile, the options get worse. they were a bad options a year or two ago. they are even worse now. they are two countries and it is a splintered opposition. in a sense, there is an insoluble crisis that is blocking it. charlie: and only thing will follow it is a political solution. david: and those like him -- and those only come through

effort on the ground. and at the moment, neither side has anything to gain. charlie: my impression is recently that assad has begun to lose more than he is winning. david: there is a lot of talk about him struggling to get soldiers, but he is backed up i -- by russia and iran and he's in a better position that he was in 2012, 2013. the major challenges to shore up the neighbors, some of whom like jordan are close allies, and they need help coping with the burden they have. and there are civilians in the middle of syria that are being bombarded by their own government. some accountability needs to be established for grotesque breaches of the laws of war. this is a war without law, as well as a war without end. and you are right to say that there has to be political muscle

behind us because it will not be brought to a close. and the only beneficiaries from the vacuum are obviously isis. kenneth: we are so far away from a political solution in syria. we cannot afford to wait for that. while we negotiate, people are being slaughtered. and as david points out, there are the barrel bombs, which are huge explosives filled with shrapnel that assad drops from helicopters. they are just being dumped into areas of aleppo. the way to stop that is to put pressure on assad through russia and iran, his two main backers. charlie: what pressure could you put on russia to make them change their policy with respect to syria? kenneth: i would start talking about it publicly to begin with. u.s. policy toward these two countries is very one-dimensional right now. with russia, it is all about ukraine and with iran it's all about the nuclear deal.

if there was a serious effort to try to raise the issue of the barrel bombs, you might see the same progress in moscow that got us a year ago to open the borders for humanitarian aid. the only thing is to force them to pay a public reputational price for continuing to back a regime that slaughters civilians. it may not be the panacea, but it is not being tried. when it has been tried with other issues like humanitarian aid, it has worked. there has not been a serious effort to use those tools to stop the barrel bombing. david: since the passing of the u.n. resolutions, the humanitarian situation has gotten worse, not better. there is not the flow of aid going into syria. in a document each month how the

syrian government is taking medical supplies off of trucks as they go across the border. the first thing that all members of the security council need to uphold our their own votes. they've already voted for a solution, but it's not being implemented. and we are in a situation where the main beneficiary is not russia or iran, not the u.s. but isis. that is the new factor in the game. anyone who looks at it will see that at least according to the publicly stated position, there are common elements in the positions of countries that are currently on different sides and there needs to be a fundamental reset in policy with respect to the syrian crisis, or it will be worse in a years time. even looking again at how the geneva agreement, which was from intensive diplomacy, is brought into effect. charlie: i thought would be that

unless assad starts losing badly, then you may have iranians and russians change in their attitude about what to do. kenneth: let me respond to david's point. isis, the one hand is a horrible force, but the u.s. and the west tend to look at assad and the last defense against isis, even though that is a huge recruiting tool for isis because of the barrel bombs. i think we need to look to distinguishing between legitimate defense and shooting at combatants, and his tendency to simply bomb civilians in oppositional areas. that is what causes so much death. even though i take david's point that humanitarian aid is not what it should be, the russians were willing to sign off on his

-- humanitarian aid under public pressure. they have not faced that kind of public pressure to stop the sick -- the barrel bombing of civilians. there is now talk of a new effort. the security council has talked about barrel bombs but has not attached it to anything for just the cutoff of arms. we need to change that dynamic if we are going to save syrian lives. michel: we have a problem, which is how to avoid establishing nation -- establishing of neighboring countries. it is very difficult to get out, not just because people want to flee, but because it is difficult to enter these countries and they are exerting pressure on their own populations. i think humanitarian aid has to be maintained but that is not sufficient. the ministry needs to be supportive, public works need to be supported.

it is a devastating crisis for this country and if we do not move in a different direction, we will have a serious problem. we have seen manifestations in lebanon and in turkey. charlie: i want to make sure i understand what you are recommending we do. michael: development makers etc., should make major contributions to these countries to help them with the structural needs for the government to address the population. it is not humanitarian aid, but development aid. it is happening at a very limited level because we are talking about middle income countries that do not qualify for development aid. that is something that needs to be changed if we want to preserve the sanity of these countries. we are seeing a number who are fleeing from turkey to lebanon to egypt and then taking votes -- boats all of their economies because all of their economies have dried up and they do not

have worked and they don't know what to do. david: he makes a very important point, because organizations like the world bank work in cases like jordan and lebanon. but in this case, 350,000 syrian kids are not getting an education at the moment. charlie: are they getting shelter? david: they are getting some shelter and some food. the irc and other fantastic ngos are working night and day to try to help people. for protection for women and kids and for family reunification. it has been overrun. it was 18% funded this year. it will be hard to bring the war to a grant -- to an end, but to make a difference on the ground is not that hard. charlie: what is the solution beyond the countries and refugees themselves to stop the flow of refugees?

you're arguing in syria you need is real pressure on the supporters. i'm not sure where the best example of that has happened in recent history that has led to that kind of results. kenneth: the two big victories we have had in a disastrous situation is, one, getting assad to turn over chemical weapons, which was done under threat of military action. david: if the course in nigeria was not the way it was, we would have the same levels of refugee flows that we are seeing elsewhere and i'm going to niger, a small country bordering nigeria and there is a sick the biggest number of people flowing across the sahara.

it shows the potential to go upstream and block off some of these. charlie: are you the least optimistic? kenneth: this would eventually go down, and my fear is if we do not keep the pressure, the government will win. and my view would get inhibited access for humanitarians, even in their camps, even when they all have better treatment, with proper food, etc. they will then have to fight for -- the absence of freedom is terrible. they are terribly scared to

move, because they feel they will be attacked by mobs. and the majority in the states are themselves an ethnic minority. there are long-held complaints about the way they were treated by the central government, and if they are not part of the solution, it will never have a solution, and so far, we tend to see them as all good or all bad, in this is the scheme we have to break in our minds in the way we approach the situation if we want some sort of reconciliation to happen. what is clearly lacking right now is the burmese voice to promote that reconciliation, and i would be pretty pessimistic for the time being is that without national voices, there is very little the international community can do.

they can put pressure. charlie: the change would be huge. thank you, ken. thank you, david. thank you, michel. back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

charlie: at just 40 years old bjarke ingels has established himself as one of the world's most inventive and sought-after architects.

his current projects include a pyramid-shaped tower on the west side, a danish power plant, and working with another architect on the google headquarters. early this week, it was announced he will design the fourth tower at the world trade center. 2 world trade center will be seven separate boxes stacked together, and i am pleased to have him at the table for this first time. welcome. bjarke: thank you. charlie: how was it that you were going to think about what was going to be there? bjarke: what is interesting about the tower and its location is that i live on franklin street and church.

if i walk towards the world trade center from church, i would be walking in the streets of tribeca with the sort of city scale neighborhood until i reach the side of tower two, so basically on one side, it is facing the lively side of tribeca, and on the other side it is the final tower that will come in eight the towers framing it. so we need to be equally at home among the side scrapers as among the city blocks of tribeca. also, it will be the home, what we said 15 years ago. it was the financial district. after 9/11, and it accelerated after the sort of financial collapse at the end of 2008, and a lot of the financial institutions have moved to midtown, so now you have kind of an influx of more creative companies, and we moved our office to the intersection of

wall street and broadway. i love this idea that it is the street of commerce and creativity, where they intersect, so it is very new. it is a lot of different buildings within the buildings so we got this idea to conceive of the tower as seven different buildings, each tailored to different functions. the new studios in the lower floors, and then maybe more classic towers, and that basically means that we stack me seven different boxes on top of each other so they actually create giant terraces, where even if you are living or working on the 50th floor, you can extend your day out into huge hanging gardens, so it is going to be a completely different way of inhabiting it. it is quite funny, because when you put a project like this forward, like, of course, we

have thought all kinds of things about the project, and then once you put it out there, it becomes part of the city, and it open for people's interpretations. like one of my best friends, her little son, he instantly saw it as the stairway to heaven. charlie: wow. i can imagine. bjarke: i got an e-mail from someone whose brother was one of the first responders who gave his life, and sort of evoking the stair climb that the firefighters took up through the towers. charlie: did all of that inform your thinking when you designed this or something else? bjarke: we were focusing on the idea that the 9/11 memorial is like eight acres of sanctuary in the densest parts of the city. this is where we remember the people who died in 9/11. the towers are basically for the city today, so they frame the

memorial. they create a graceful backdrop for the memorial, but we really designed the tower as much as possible to create the most lively and active city around the memorial. so it is really all must like the inside out. charlie: created for a new community. bjarke: exactly. and with this tower, i have a sensor is a chance for a renaissance for downtown to become a lively neighborhood again, because it has had a slow decade and a half. charlie: and the neighborhood needs more than office towers. bjarke: and maybe office and work was very formulaic, maybe 20 years ago, but i think today, you see so many different kinds of work environments that the mold that created the skyscrapers, primarily for finance, now will not fit the bill anymore, and we need many different kinds of spaces, both inside and outside the building

for a creative work environment. charlie: you replaced or succeeded sir norman foster. what happened? bjarke: you can say that sir norman foster designed his tower a decade ago, back when the thinking was still financial institutions, so in a way, it is tailored to be a financial headquarters, and since over the last decade, the character of the neighborhood has really changed, and the kind of tenants who are looking to go there, they have radically different needs, so did not fit that kind of tenant, and it is also a side of the changing character of downtown manhattan. charlie: rupert murdoch and fox are principal tenants, and what will be on the top floor? bjarke: basically, news corp and fox occupy the bottom. in the top will be leased, and

we still have hopes that on the very top floor, there can be a screening room, so you can imagine that once you have seen the premiere of the film where the screen lit up, you will have maybe even an even more epic view of the city you are in. charlie: how many restaurants? bjarke: i think all of this will be sort of detailed further, but we will place the amenities so that they are always adjacent to the terraces. also, we are working on the terraces so they dipped down or lift up so that multiple floors have direct access to these hanging gardens. charlie: you once said this was like playing twister with a 1300 foot high rise. bjarke: it is true, because like one of the complexities of working on this site, it is not just the heritage of the site and the significance of the site. it is also that it is sitting on top of 11 public transportation lines, a service road, a power station that serves the whole neighborhood, so the footprint

and columns have already been placed, so trying to guess where they would go, but now that we know what the building above is looking like, of course, from the second floor and all of the way to the top, we have placed the columns so they fit with the plan, and then basically the lobby, we have to sort of connect the dots, because what falls down might not actually land in the same place, so you get columns in all kinds of angles. you see it changing shape as it comes down, so when you come in, it looks like an expressive architectural sculpture in the lobby, but, in fact, it is almost like bringing the forces from where they arrive from the top to where they may need to go on the bottom. charlie: the second slide, the view of the terraces, and number three, we just talked about. number four is the fox news studio. bjarke: there are huge, open workplaces, where everyone can

see each other. and around. charlie: and it is a symbol of almost all new office but, where they see more open than close. bjarke: and inspired by our offices at the time. we occupied a former warehouse so we had a huge open floor place, where everyone was within visual or even shouting distance, and i think the more you facilitate the meeting between people, the more exchange of ideas happens. we're also working on punching holes between the floors, so you have cascades that stretch. you actually have lines of sight. so you will be able to see colleagues that are maybe five floors above you or below you, so you will be able to get to them physically, and you will be able to see them visually again. undo the vertical segregation that normally comes from working on multiple floors.

charlie: take a look at this. this is what the terraces look like from above. bjarke: we are all must to extend the floor tiles from the inside though the theme of inside/outside continuity is as seamless as possible. charlie: when you look at your buildings, would most people know they came from the same architect in the same way they would know that all buildings created by frank gehry have some defining similarity? richard myers, some defining similarities, that it is not true with you, is it? bjarke: in a way, i see having a style is often like having certain things you have to do all of the time or certain things you would never allow yourself to do. in a way, a style is almost like the sum of all your inhibitions, and i think what we try to do is to design buildings that look different, particularly because they perform differently, and

you can say in the beginning of each project, we try to educate ourselves and what are the key criteria here, what is the biggest problem we need to solve, or what is the greatest potential we can create, and then we try to seek expertise, find people that really know about these issues and interview them and learn about these issues and then try to turn those issues into the driving force of the design. you can almost call it like information-driven design, like every design decision is not ruled by a style, but it is governed by -- it is informed by the information we have about the project and the problem. charlie: did you have to sell this? bjarke: we did. silverstein has been working on this for like 14 years. of course, we needed to make larry want to build this building. charlie: and how did you do that? bjarke: first, we worked with

the fox news corp. people and the silverstein group to see if it fit their needs, and then we presented the idea to mr. silverstein, and i think he totally liked and appreciated that the careful effort to make it a building that would work for him and for the tenants and the site, but he did also find it like disturbingly different. charlie: disturbingly. bjarke: i think so. he needed some digestion time, and we thought that since all the other towers on the site had been designed at the same time with a group of architects, he basically suggested what if we actually sit down with david childs, the architect of one world trade, and we go through our thinking, and we hear -- charlie: and i was told he was enthusiastic. bjarke: it was probably one of the most exciting meetings of my career so far. we were on the top floor of

seven world trade, and mr. childs comes in. he is sort of a majestic gentleman, and he comes in, and i explain all of the thinking. he gets up, looks at the tower makes a comment about all of the hard work, and then he says, "should i just be completely honest?," and mr. silverstein says, "yes, david, that is why you are here," and then all of a sudden, you can hear like a pin drop in the room, and he said, "i love it." and then the conversation flowed from then. it was definitely a turning point in this process. charlie: when will this be finished? bjarke: it should be finished in 2020. charlie: and how much of this time occupy of yours? or does your time and, and you turn it over to the builder? bjarke: i think the next two years, we will be incredibly busy doing this, and we will

oversee the site, both where i work and where i live. we have a beautiful view of the site. we really have to get this one right. charlie: what influence? bjarke: when i started studying architecture in 1993, a book came out. and so anyway, i discovered him. charlie: you fell in love with his work. bjarke: each project, rather than being driven by style, like

richard meyer likes white tile and certain shapes, with him each project was injected into a specific situation in a society or in a country, so almost the way a journalist would approach a project by having a certain angle on a story. and rather than having it be independent of society, he was always intricately linked to the forces of the environment. i saw this idea that architecture was not something happening in the studio. it is really how a city comes to life, how a society wants to be shaped. charlie: some have suggested that the u.s. is dead, and you were the first to come here to

say, no, it is not. that is not true. bjarke: america had suffered. everyone said you should be going to asia, because this is where the boom is happening, but i really wanted to live in new york, and i really think one of the things that the europeans can learn from america is that with the european union, europe has been incredibly good at breaking down trade barriers and opening up the borders and the free movement of workforces, where actually to my surprise, the 50 states of america are probably more sort of separated by legal issues than europe is. however, the culture of the american side, i had this strange episode. a month after moving to new york, i went to vancouver in canada on the west coast to give

a talk at something called the urban land institute, which is a foundation both in the united states and in canada. i met a developer in vancouver. we had a great conversation, and i said finally we were opening our offices in new york, and he said, you are here, and i had just gotten off our flight from new york, in another country three time zones away, but the idea was you are here in north america, we could do something together. it was pretty eye-opening. charlie: ok, let's look at couple of other buildings. this is west 57th street. bjarke: this is a court scraper. it is what happens when you marry the communal space with a courtyard in the middle with the density of a new york skyscraper, any sensually, what you're seeing is from the westside waterfront from manhattan. the building like kneels down

towards the water and opens up the courtyard so the sunlight and the views can enter deep into the courtyard itself. charlie: this is on 57th street, north of 11th? bjarke: it is between 11th and 12th. it is up to five hundred feet, so you actually have an abundance of daylight and sunshine in the courtyard, and at the same time, all of the people living there have views from their balconies and terraces of the water. charlie: the next slide is the same building. wow. bjarke: the idea is this building looks the way it does not because of an up session with triangles or tetrahedrons or pyramid's but has by making it so asymmetrical, you can see the courtyard is literally the height of a hand rail, whereas in the other corner, it is the height of a high-rise, so we simply had had a simple

courtyard, it would be so dark that it would not get any daylight, and now i get an abundance of sun and views. charlie: so the dry line. bjarke: learning from the high line. a piece of decommissioned architecture from the rail yard now turned into one of the most popular promenades in new york. so we were thinking what if you do not have to wait until a piece of infrastructure gets decommissioned. what if you could design it in this case for the coastal resilience of manhattan, and essentially all of what is necessary to resist the next sandy? what if you could design it like rolling hills -- charlie: for that to happen, a lot of things have to be touring down, it do they not? bjarke: we were trying to weave it in between some of the existing buildings, and we tried

to conceive of the dry line as a love child of robert moses and jane jacobs, and for those who do not know, robert moses was also known as the powerbroker, a public servant with almost totalitarian influence. he made a lot of the very necessary public works in new york, the highways, the waterfronts, the public housing. charlie: often bulldozing everything out of the way, removing people were they were. bjarke: at some point, he wanted to run a highway through greenwich village, and he encountered resistance from jane jacobs, and it was sort of a david-goliath moment to defeat the plans and save the village but we thought what if they had worked together, because to resist an incoming flood, you

need to create 12 miles of contiguous waterfront with a very sort of holistic overview but to make it successful for the community, it needs to happen in a closed conversation with the people who are going to inhabit it, so instead of making a wall that separates the city from the water around it, to make it into an inviting landscape of undulating hills, furniture, pagodas, which actually brings the life of the city together. charlie: there is also a new book about robert moses and jane jacobs, and this is in copenhagen. bjarke: i think this mountain is an example of what we like to call architectural alchemy, by taking traditional ingredients like this, a big parking structure for the neighborhood. it is like an illusion of a photographic image, and then on top, we have placed a layer of

apartments, so instead of having just like a traditional stack of apartments one placed on top of each other, they are actually cascading, so on this side, they cover the parking, but on the sunnyside, it becomes a man-made mountain of houses with gardens, almost like having a suburban lifestyle, a house with a garden, with a view in the middle of the city. charlie: thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

>> good morning, i'm sherry and in this is trending business. ♪ shery: we will you live in singapore for part of this hour but here's what we are watching this morning. corona backtracks and the yen is falling after the bank of japan governor tells parliament he didn't mean to predict the future nominal foreign-exchange rates in comments made last week. back then, he couldn't see any reason for the yen to fall further. we will have the latest live. china's leading car handling

apps are seeking $1.5 billion from investors to fend off the numb -- uber. that would make it one of china's most valuable startups. plus, uniform response. social media gives its burn it on china airlines outfits. there are plenty of star trek comparisons. one user says "it is captain kirk." you can let us know what you think by following me at twitter and don't forget to include the hashtag #trendingbusiness. a decline in the yen after an admission to parliament this morning. we are joined for the details. what did he say? >>