♪ narrator: the contemporary art world is vibrant and booming as never before. it's a 21st century phenomenon, a global industry in its own right. "brilliant ideas" looks at the artists at the heart of this, artists with a unique power to astonish, challenge, and surprise. in this program, american painter -- spanish sculptor jaume plensa.

♪ jaume: it is a destiny. >> he isn't simply a sculpture. he is creating situations where conversations take place. he is ambitious but he works on a scale that demands a public presence. thee is playing with conventions of traditional sculptor. you know, they are not like heroes on horseback, but they are like, the giant heads of children. narrator: jaume plensa is one of the world's most celebrated public artists. best known for his monumental

figurative sculptures, his iconic public works have sited around the world, from rio to calgary, new york to tokyo. whether made out of steel, glass, bronze, light, water, or sound, his work aims to transform people's experience of the spaces they occupy. jaume: i was born in barcelona. it is a beautiful town, in my opinion, because it keeps a human scale, but at the same time, i was born in a city with a sea. it is probably one of the most beautiful elements of the town. it was great to live in a city where you have the most beautiful museum. i loved it when i was a child. and of course, architects. my father was always playing

piano, and my mother was singing. my father had an upright piano with dual sliding doors, and many times when i was really tiny, i was hiding myself inside the piano, and he was playing without his knowledge that i was in. and i really discovered the beauty of the vibration of material. that vibration was completely the vibration of life. everything was vibrating around me. and i guess i could understand today how influential has been that experience in my work. many times, i am thinking, all of my life, all of my wish to be an artist has come from the interior of my father's piano. clare: that is what he is engaged with. he is taking immaterial, extraordinary ideas and pulling

them into kind of a material form, and he uses in that process, many different materials, from glass to steel to paper, but actually what he is doing is he is capturing light, he is taking light and molding light in a very unique way. and through that kind of process, a kind of enlightenment happens with people who engage with his work. narrator: one stunning work by jaume in the north of england captivated a whole community. gary: where we stand now used to be the old coal pit at sutton manor. and it was a bleak and it was a desolate and dirty place with 400 years of mining here. we entered a competition in 2003 called the big art project. what it was looking for was to

put something back into a community that had had the heart and soul ripped out of it by political or economic measures. this was just a perfect place. jaume: he explained to me about the mines, the people, the colors, about things i never listened to before, honestly. one of the things that they told me was, "jaume, when you are in the pit 300 meters under, the darkness is so deep that light becomes a dream." i said, "wow." because i am from the mediterranean area, and for me light is so normal. so i never thought about light honestly. thanks to them, light for me changed completely, the concept. gary: we spoke to him about what we would like on the side, and he unveiled a giant miner's lamp. [laughs] gary: which put us in a very funny position with him. we had to go back to him and said, "you kept us in the past." he said, "well, this was my

original idea, which i scrapped because i thought you may not like it," and then he unveiled "dream" for us. and we all went, "wow, this is it, this is what we like." jaume: the dream with those guys was really to stop with the past and to really look into the future. i gave that title to my piece, "dream," because finally it is the portrait of a girl is dreaming with her eyes closed, she is not really interested about the landscape, but she is really interested about the interior of the earth, really about the soul of the people. gary: when they put the final piece on top, we had six burly miners who had been with it from day one, and me included, we all wanted to cry, you know? because you can never envisage how horrible this place was to see. he is bringing up something of a quality of whiteness and that is just fantastic.

jaume: the day of the opening, 2000 people came. all of the village came. it was really probably one of the most unforgettable days of my life. >> today is international yoga day, and i thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to bring the communities and towns together and do a yoga celebration in front of the "dream." >> i do yoga often. i just love it. and then seeing that here, i thought that is going to be a perfect place for yoga. >> it feels euphoric. it feels slightly levitational, if you can say that. it is just a wonderful atmosphere. you just feel at peace. you feel very wonderful and grounded and rooted with the earth. >> it is a massive change from 20, 30 years.

i remember this area being a slag heap, so this is a great monument for those miners who worked here. >> it is kind of industrial but because it is white, it also looks really clean and pure and because it is spiritual, and also because she is asleep. it is really beautiful. gary: it's like great art should be, you either love it or you hate it. jaume: obviously, this is one of the most important pieces in my career. because of the beauty of the site, i did nothing. i just tried to open it, you know? the paper, it was like a gift. but it was still wrapped. everything was done by them. i just opened it and gave it back. i love art in public spaces very much because i love people, and

for me it is easy to talk and talk and talk about my project with politicians, social groups, people who are using the everyday space. clare: i've seen his work in places around the world, and i haven't failed to be amazed at how people respond to them, people who have no notion of who this man is, this artist. and one of the things that jaume is really intent on doing is taking that situation where people who don't normally engage with art find themselves falling into this art and becoming absorbed by it. jaume: when i am doing a show in a museum or a gallery, of course, it is art because it is in a gallery or it is in a museum. but when it is in the public space, who knows? public space has specific rules

in the way that people are always disappointed because whatever you do, it's wrong, ok? but i guess that is part of the game, and i like that, honestly, because you really are playing completely without any context. teresa: he is an artist who has always said that one of his goals was to look for beauty, and to take beauty to the people, and nowadays, that is always subversive. it makes him a counterculture artist. jaume: we are talking about dreams, we are not talking about benches or about, you know, streetlamps or things like that. you must dream about, i don't know, elements that could return beauty to your everyday life. you must dream about something that becomes a beacon. it is something where people see a reference to the landscape. ♪

narrator: here on an industrial

estate in barcelona's suburbs, artist jaume plensa works with his team in his studio creating incredible sculptures from steel, iron, bronze, alabaster, wood, and even from light itself. jaume: i am combining many different alphabets -- japanese, chinese, hebrew, arabic, cyrillic, greek, hindi, and latin. benjamin: i think what he is doing there is using information to construct a sense of identity or a sense of person, and how he uses that information exactly to convey the identity changes from work to work, and that is what keeps each sculpture interesting. jaume: we have, like, you know, a library of floating letters

that we are bending, following the shape of the human body. it is a way to create the second kind of scheme. teresa: jaume is an artist who is totally not into conceptualism. his world is that of ideas, but at the same time, it is incredibly important to him how to bring ideas into being. jaume: this piece will travel in three segments. we have already fixed the head on top of the shoulders, and that was the second element. ♪ jaume: we just have to verify that every connector is in the right place, that the bolts are fine, and then we separate again all of the piece, and then it gets some sandblasting and painting. teresa: he also has a romantic attitude. he is one of those artists for whom bringing art into being

doesn't stop him dreaming. it is more like he dreams something and then looks at the technical solutions to make it real. even though when you see his work, you wonder at its complexity. jaume: that is one of these kinds of works that i am doing that people are invited to come in. that is for seattle. and that will be a piece called "twins," which is one in front of another. you have the concept of a mirror, when you are in front of a mirror and your image has been reflected in the mirror, and you have a dialogue with yourself finally. and you can understand the evolution of time, who you are, or what is your -- what your dreams are, and sometimes the person which are looking to you is not exactly the same as you imagined to be. clare: jaume has spoken about the potential poetry of

diversity, and that is a really key part of his work. though we consider ourselves as humanity without division, dissolving boundries, and that is his vision, and the works become extraordinarily concentrated places of awareness and understanding. jaume: it is a very romantic piece, actually, because when people are inside, they really could see the wall completely through the text. it is an homage to humanity and also about the mix of the different alphabets is a celebration of life and how well we can be when we are together. that i think for me is a very important as a concept. and i also adapted my branch of alphabets into music, and it is a kind of silent conversation because they are talking about sound. i love this idea because thanks to something physical, you are dreaming about something invisible.

♪ i remember i was really fascinated about the origin of the world. why a mountain is like it is and i was dreaming about that, and i remember i visited a cast iron fountain, and i liked it because i thought it was pretty similar. the moment everything is liquid, and then one day, suddenly everything gets cold and it gets fixed into one shape, which was very difficult to correct, and cast iron was similar in that way, and slowly and slowly, you can work with this technique, and cast iron has made me quite well known throughout the world. lilly: oddly enough in some ways, he is a traditional sculptor, and he has taken it in

a direction that was rather risky, because to make the kind of work that he made and still be considered a contemporary artist but perhaps unusual. jaume: you can completely walk around, and you can feel that the volume is complete, but when you are working, the piece is disappearing and disappearing. and you get back and you get the same idea. lilly: there is something about the face. it seems as if it is on the verge of dissolving or coming into being. there is a kind of potential there. is it appearing or disappearing? jaume: i remember one day being in the foundry and looking at an item coming from the oven, and i said, look at this, it is so heavy as a material, but when it is liquid, it is so light. and i was told, "maybe the material is not important, maybe it is your attitude in front of the materials."

so i started worked with light on that day, and i loved it, and my work completely changed with light. i still remember an artist who visited my installation told me in the opening, "jaume, i love your installations. if tomorrow you come back to the gallery, and you miss one of your shadows, it is me who stole it." i think that is beautiful. ♪

narrator: in 2015, the venice biennale played host to contemporary sculptor jaume plensa's latest exhibition. called "together," it was installed within one of venice's most celebrated landmarks, the basilica of san giorgio maggiore. jaume: they asked me to do an installation because my work is always talking about spirituality and silence. it was a beautiful, beautiful

experience to be able to work within that basilica because it is a temple with a function and that means a lot of people are coming here for other reasons than art. i decided to do this portrait of this young girl, but in a very transparent way. this is mesh coming from my 3-d work in my computer. here is the brain of the studio, which is in there. with him, with all of the formations that we are doing with the 3-d system come to life. >> i help him in the technical aspects. when you go out there in the jungle of engineers, architects, city halls, and stuff like that, and they want know how much it is going to cost and how much will be built and how it will be transported. jaume, in the end, he follows that whole process in a more political way. jaume: the crazy part is to pass this into reality.

i have a fantastic team that helps me to do that. we have to create a lot of molds to follow exactly the position of the sculpture and then to try to give the human touch. every time that you bring a piece to a different place, especially here, well, you are very curious to know if your intuition was right. and it was a very exciting moment, the boats were arriving with the big crates, the big segments of the pieces. we started to bring all of the segments inside, and then we realized that the scale was perfect. this piece is about 92 cubic meters of air to emphasize the emptiness as one of the most beautiful parts of spirituality. we spent 10 days in the basilica working really hard to get this feeling of peace and life. every installation is specific

and special, but when it is in a historical place like that, it is probably a little bit more complex. teresa: the experience of plensa's work in venice is extraordinary. not only is the installation itself inside the church of san giorgio, which is a true miracle, but it is total light, total clarity through which you can see the city. you can see the person next to you. it is like a luminous presence. jaume: i had lunch with a friend, the abbot, and he said something of which i would completely agree. he said when the basilica needed a piece of art since the 16th century, that piece was always contemporary. why not today? it is hard for me to imagine this in the studio. it seems like it was here, always. narrator: if venice is about

working in historic setting, jaume's installation in chicago couldn't be more different. clare: probably one of his most important works, which in some ways defines him, is the crown fountain in chicago. it is an extraordinary work of two towers made of glass bricks. and out of those glass bricks emerges an ever-changing series of faces, and they are the faces of the people of chicago, and out of their mouth spouts water to form a shallow lake between the two towers, and of course, it becomes a place where people congregate, where they play, where they see themselves. it is an extraordinary point of self-identification. jaume: water for us is life. it means life because our bodies are probably 60% of water. fresh water is rare. i predict that probably the next war will be for water, not for petrol.

i remember in my childhood and walking with my mother in barcelona, the gargoyles, and the water spouts were like monsters and very strange animals. a little disgusting, some of them. but always with the smiles up and spitting water from their mouth, and when i was thinking about the crown fountain, i decided to do it. it was funny because my piece doesn't move, but technology today allowed me to make this from anonymous people living in town but not fix it in one position. it continues to be alive, and that was my intention. ♪ it is fantastic when you really can live from your work, and you have to keep always in that opinion. every day to say, mama mia, this is such a beautiful miracle that someone still wants to share that with me. you should cultivate intuition, and you must keep a certain

naive attitude. you must be very arrogant in the way to defend your art but very humble as a person. to be an artist, it is not a decision, it is a destiny. you could not do different. i prefer to try to be a person dreaming about how to grow up as a person. i guess being an artist is a consequence of that. it is not a job. it is not a profession. it is just a way to look at reality. for me, the most beautiful way to talk about this is as a way to breathe. you can not do different -- it is impossible. ♪ okay, ready?

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narrator: the challenges facing our world are growing all the time. how do we build stronger economies with equal opportunities for all? how do we build a sustainable world for generations to come? how do we protect our cities and harness the power of technology for our common benefit? series using the latest bloomberg research and analysis we will make sense of

the problems of tomorrow. inequality, sustainability, artificial intelligence, the gender gap, and the demographic time bomb. in this film, how we manage our megacities. millions every year swell the planet's cities. can we harnessed economic potential of these hubs or are we creating centers of poverty, inequality and violence? ♪ narrator: this is the age of the city. for the first time in human history more people live in urban than rural settlements. the world's urban population is growing by 70 million people each year. 301 cities account for 50% of global gdp.

this will rise to 66% by 2025. if we don't get things right in our cities the consequences for humanity are profound. >> cities are critically important to the global economy and to progress in the global economy. cities can be sources of chaos as well as development. narrator: this makes them so alluring and so vital. they can be dangerous places. but cities are where fortunes can be made. >> one of the primary actors driving urbanization is opportunity. you live on a farm and you are growing crops. you don't have a lot of opportunity. you see a bustling city, your friends are moving there, they are getting jobs and offices, any manufacturing center, there

are restaurants, culture, life. this is attractive, something you want to be a part of. everything is relative. greater access to schools, greater access to health care greater access to employment. and much less vulnerable economic life. ♪ narrator: in 1900 12 of the world's biggest cities were in north america or europe. 100 years later this fell to just 2. most of the biggest cities in the future will be in asia and africa. >> most of the growth will be in china, india and nigeria. those countries alone will account for 37% of the world's population. staggering numbers. lagos, the biggest city in nigeria. it is adding the equivalent of boston every year.

the urbanization rate in the u.s. is over 70%. in china it is 50%. china may have a lot megacities, but they are going to get bigger or there is going to be more of them. that is going to be a trend. a lot of emerging markets are going to experience trends like that in the next 50 years. narrator: this incredible rate of growth makes the challenges of managing a large city more difficult. >> the biggest risks are the same risks that challenge all of us, politically governing, climate change, economic inequality, productivity, education, transportation.

those issues that face cities are the same that face everyone except in a much more concentrated way. narrator: one city battling with these problems is rio de janeiro in brazil. alessandra believes the world's biggest cities are in danger of sinking under a tide of poverty, infrastructure and citizen apathy. unless we do something about it billions will suffer the consequences. >> the kind of urbanization we have today can only go so far. if we do not change the way we design our cities and make cities change with us we will have serious limits. they will be impossible to live in and manage and will be miserable places to be. if we change that process it changeimits could

dramatically and could be nonexistent. we can better build them together. ♪ >> let me go, i don't want to be your hero. a victim, i to be just want to fight with everyone else. ♪ secrets from our american dream. ♪ we need some .

narrator: managing megacities is one of the great challenges facing the world. this is rio de janeiro, brazil. nearly 12 million people crowd into its metro area. it is beautiful and vibrant. it also has its problems. crime, inequality, poverty. oropheno has worked with united nations on sustainable development goals and using data gathered from cities to raise campaigns and solve issues posed by the rapid growth of the cities.

alessandra hopes it can be a model for other rapidly growing cities around the globe. >> we build on our rich tradition. we try to bring it to the 21st century in a way that makes sense to people. i was born in this city. my family has a mixed background. my father comes from a neighborhood that was quite dangerous in the 1990's, quite poor, lower middle class. my mom comes from a wealthy background. one of the best neighborhoods in rio. the top me that the city can be amazing but can be very rough and unequal. that is not just a characteristic of this city. it is something we're saying seeing increasingly in cities around the world. narrator: rio de janeiro is similar to many emerging cities. some neighborhoods are as wealthy as anywhere on the planet. others remain impoverished and cut off.

bridging this gap will have profound benefits for us all. alessandra cities bring people closer together. innovation the most will naturally happen. it's hard to innovate when you are always talking to the same people and hearing the same thoughts. cities are the contrary of that. they are natural hubs for innovation, economic growth and are the engines of growth in most countries. narrator: when the growth is rapid and unplanned the results are gridlocked streets, poisoned air and an infrastructure that cannot cope. >> i come from a city that expanded too rapidly for sure. how do you create sidewalks, schools, mobility systems to cater to a growing population?

if that is happening in environments where inequality is paramount, the challenges are even bigger. narrator: in a mega-city one of the biggest challenges can be getting from a to b. >> are mobility systems in general suck. when you have a poor mobility system you preclude entire segments of the city from from living in the city and accessing the opportunities and and the amazingness that cities have. it is hard for them to get around. you also preclude the rich people from getting to know other areas of the city which can be exciting and fulfilling experience in itself. where creating a city in which everyone is living in their own territory which is terrible. narrator: at the forefront of these infrastructure problems are the city's poor who can

become physically cut off from the economic opportunities living in a city provides. >> it includes rapid expansion of cities, the fact that in the developing world one third of the population is living in slums, something none of us should accept as we grow and think about a plan in which we want to live. narrator: slums are a result of unplanned expansion. an estimated 863 million people live in slums. if the slum dwellers in india were a separate nation they would be the 13th most populous country in the world. slums are not always hopeless places. >> they are not just sitting and waiting for the government to do

something for them. they are creating their own environment. the modes of the infrastructure were built by the city itself. there is a level of do-it-yourself that you see in more poor neighborhoods than neighborhoods because the government wasn't there. narrator: slums must be handled delicately by urban planners. >> what do we do with areas that were developed by communities but lack infrastructure? even if we are assuming goodwill in terms of how we handle them, to provide those areas with quality public services. there are choices that have to be made. which pieces do believe, which -- do we leave, which pieces do we change? if we don't handle that process in a way that is human and intelligent and aims at protecting the interest of the poorer communities we can end up with massive rates of dislocation and destroying an urban fabric and social fabric that is so vital.

>> we have a neighborhood with a tram. it is beautiful. most trams were destroyed in the early 20th century. the neighbors organized and cap their trams. it was a forgotten neighborhood for a while. in the past 5-6 years it has been gentrifying. the government decided to turn the tram into a tourist attraction. the only reason why the tram still exists is because we organized and cap did hear. they created the value. we see that all around the world. narrator: alessandra believes

cities often ignore creativity. the result is a democratic deficit which erodes faith in the city government and alienates vulnerable communities. alessandra believes cities must take citizens with them if they are to expand successfully. alessandra: the process we have the process bys which we involve citizens. i have not seen one case of a city that has used the collective intelligence of its citizens and distributed power to make it possible for people to influence the city. we solveet that right, a lot of the other issues we see. narrator: to harness the power of our cities we need to heal the divisions within them first. alessandra: if we keep building unequal cities, cities are not very good to live in for most of their population. i don't think we can hope to be happy in these urban spaces in the worst-case scenario would be cities that do not have a soul and become less and less

attractive to entrepreneurs, for people who want to create, and ultimately it would become less wealthy. narrator: across the ocean, another giant city is growing. lagos has growing pains that are excruciating. it is threatening the futures of 21 million people.

narrator: more people live in cities than ever before. but many of the world's biggest cities are struggling to cope. lagos is the largest city in the world without a real system. -- citywide rail system. everyone has to travel by road.

,or workers like abraham cole his daily commute takes over his life. >> what time did you wake up? >> like 3:00, 3:00, 3:30. i usually don't do breakfast, so it can slow me down. narrator: in three years the population has nearly doubled from 11 million to 21 million. this staggering expansion is overwhelmed the city's in impoverished infrastructure. >> it should take me 4-5 minutes to get to the office. >> in full rush-hour how long does it take? >> 6, 7 hours in traffic. three hours going, three hours coming back. it is much worse coming back. coming back is something else. i don't think i want to waste

seven hours of my every day time for the rest of my life. narrator: lagos is ranked in the top five least livable cities in the world. although the city's economy is bigger then kenya's, simply getting to their desks is a daily ordeal for millions of workers. >> when do you see your children? >> weekends only. sometimes i see them during the week if they really want to see me. sometimes they miss me that much. >> it must be quite difficult. >> yes, it is. it is that we have to do. for now.

narrator: like millions of workers abraham's first acts getting to work in the morning is to take a nap. >> welcome to my office. >> what are you going to do now? have, it is 7:10 a.m., i will take a nap for 30 minutes. and get ready for work. narrator: 2000 people migrate permanently to lagos every day. straining the infrastructure and expanding the city from the land to the sea. the result is slums like macoco. it is a floating settlement on the city's lagoon.

>> infrastructure has not kept pace with the population growth. basic measures to access clean water, for example, access to electricity are limited. before you get to issues related to growth and development, they have to sort out basic issues of infrastructure. narrator: 80,000 people live here in building sitting on stilts connected by a complex system of canals. >> successful cities find ways to deliver services to even the most deprived. that is the challenge in the developing world where resources are at a premium. narrator: residents have developed their own infrastructure including freshwater and electricity.

this three-story floating school which doubles as a community center is the latest addition to this unique environment. the school was completed in 2013. it is cheap and easy to build. its designers hope it will be a template for future buildings. >> it raises interesting questions of government control. it has been long ignored area. the local residents took charge and tried to improve their own lots with schools. with their own locally initiated development products. the central government also has decided it wants that area for its own development reasons. narrator: only a few kilometers away, an alternative vision of how lagos may develop. a grand project of incredible scale. echo atlantic.

>> we are in the alignment of the financial district. echo boulevard. some people call it to our this fifth avenue. is where the major financial institutions will establish headquarters and offices. narrator: it is a multibillion-dollar residential and business district built on 10 square kilometers of reclaimed land. it is a new city or it will be soon. backers hope a quarter of a million people will one day live here with 150,000 workers commuting across the water. initially started, we looked at canary wharf in london, dubai, and the heart of london, heart of paris, heart of

new york. the vast majority are wealthy people. i could not afford to live in the heart of london. but in creating the residence for these people, you are also creating job opportunities. it is the norm in nigeria, if you create residential apartments, you also create quarters for the domestic staff working for that family. you have to take into context , it is a is the city business center primarily. this is the future. the first commercial development of lagos. narrator: david hopes the first residential units will be opened by the end of 2016 with the infrastructure of the whole site in place by 2022.

>> projects like this raise as many questions as they answer. especially from where local residents are aware. they may be getting the short end of the stick. they do lend themselves to starting from scratch and being able to build structures where there are schools, hospitals, offices, transportation facilities. they give gigantic cities like lagos to create a model and plan to be executed correctly. narrator: the future paths of megacities like lagos remain uncertain. organic growth or large-scale planned developments like echo atlantic. what's clear is that growth could destroy city immense potential.

>> i am an optimist when it comes to cities. i grew up in new york when the city went to the edge of bankruptcy and here we are in the 21st century, new york is booming and thriving. it is a tremendous place. you can see with proper planning and a diverse and vibrant population what is possible. globaldra: i hope those cities will be interconnected in a sense they will have solidarity and citizens will , feel like they're cities where they want to be, is the project they want to build and they can move, visit each other, learn from each other. at the global stage. ♪

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>> one of the basic truths of the human condition is that people love to float. there is no better place to float than here at the dead sea , where, without any effort at all, large mammals can achieve buoyancy. there is some ritual involved to doing this place the right way.