>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight, an encore presentation of my conversations with the architect of two world trade center, bjarke ingels, and the architect and director of the new whitney museum of american art, renzo piano and adam weinberg. >> we try to design buildings that look different truly because they perform differently. fo>> for me, america is about a wide attitude. so for me making the new house of american art was an incredible challenge, bringing together my sense with freedom,

which is an absolute necessity. >> rose: all about architecture when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: bjarke ingels is here. at just 40 years old, he established himself as one of the world's most inventive and sought out architects. his projects include a pyramid on the west slide, a ski slope

and going also new headquarters. he will design the fourth tower at the world trade center. two world trade center will be 80 stories and appear as seven separate boxes stacked together. i am pleased to have him at this table for the first time. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: give me a sense of the vision that you had against the skyline of new york city and with the world trade center -- one world trade center over to the right. how was it that you began to think about what ought to be there? >> i mean, i think this is, obviously, a daunting challenge for any architect to get to complete the skyline of manhattan and build the final tower of the world trade center. what's interesting about the tower and the location, i live on franklin and church, if i walk toward the world trade center down church, i will be walking in the streets of tribeca with the city scale

neighborhood until i reach the site of tower two. so basically, on one side, it's facing the streets of tribeca with the human scale. on the other side, it is the final tower that will complete this colone colonade of towers. also, it will be the home where you can say, 15 years ago it was the financial district. after 9/11 and sort of accelerated after the sort of financial collapse at the end of 2008. a lot of the financial institutions have moved to mi midtown. so now you have a whole new sort of influx of more creative companies, even design companies. we recently moved our office to the intersection of wall street and broadway. i love the idea it's the street of commerce and creativity where

they intersect. so it's very new kind of tenants. that's why it's almost going to be a lot of different buildings within the building. so we got this idea to conceive of the tower as seven different buildings, each tailored to different functions, new studios in the lower floors, news rooms and creative floor plates in the middle and maybe more classic towers, or like floor plates at the top, and that basically means we stack these seven different boxes on top of each other so they actually create giant terraces where even if you're living on the 50t 50th floor, working on the 50th floor, you extend your day out into huge hanging gardens. so it's going to be a completely different way of inhabiting. when you put a project like this forward, we have thought all kinds of things with the project, but once you put it out there, it becomes part of the city and it becomes open for

people's interpretations. like one of my best friends, her little son instantly saw it a as a stairway to heaven. >> rose: wow, look at that. i got an email from a man whose brother was one of the first responders and gave his life on 9/11 and he started invoking the stair climb that the firefighters took up through the towers. >> rose: did all of that inform your thinking when you were designing this or something else? >> i think basically we focused on this idea to say that the 9/11 memorial is where we -- it's like eight acres of sanctuary in the middle of the densest part of the city. this is where we remember the people who died on 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 essentially, it's really almost like tin side out. >> rose: you created for a new community? >> exactly like that. with this tower, i really have a feeling that there is a potential for sort of a renaissance for downtown to become a lively neighborhood again. because it really had a slow decade and a half. >> rose: and the neighborhood needs more than office towers. >> and i think even for office there's maybe office and work was very formulaic, maybe 20 years ago. i think today you see so many different kinds of work environments that the mold that created the skyscraper primarily for finance won't fit the bill anymore and you need many different kinds of spaces both inside and outside the building for a creative work environment.

>> rose: you replaced and/or succeeded sir norman foster. what happened? >> i think it is very much you can say norman foster designed his tower a decade ago back when they were financial institutions so it was tailored to become a financial headquarter. in the last decade the character of the neighborhood has changed. the kind of tenants who are looking to go there have radically different needs and it simply didn't fit the new type of tenant. i think you can see it really as a sign of the changing character of downtown manhattan. >> rose: news corp, 20t 20th century fox of murdoch companies are the basically tenant. >> news corp occupies the bottom half. the top will be leased out. we have the hopes that on the very top floor there can be a screening room. so you can imagine once you've seen the premiere of the film,

when the screen lifts up, you will have an even more epic view of the city you're in. >> rose: how many restaurants? i think this will be detailed further, but we're looking to create the amenities so they're always adjacent to the terraces. we're also working on the topography of the terraces so they dip down or lift up so multiple floors have direct access to the hanging gardens. >> rose: you once said this is like playing twister with a 1300-foot high rise. >> it's true because one of the complexities of working on this site, it's not just the heritage and significance of the site, it's actually the fact that the building is sitting on top eleven public transportation lines, a service road, a power station that serves the whole neighborhood so that the fit print of the core and columns have already been placed sort of 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 the way to the top, we've placed the columns so they fit with the floor plans. basically the lobby, we have to connect the dots, because what might fall down might not actually land in the same place so you get columns that go in all kind of angles. you see the core changing shape as it comes down. when you come in, it looks like an expressive, architectural sculpture in the lobby, but in fact it is almost like an architectural translation of bringing the forces from where they arrive to the top to where they may need to go on the bottom. >> rose: second slide, the view of the terraces. three is the lobby image we just talked about. number four is the fox news studio. >> basically you can see these huge open floor plates where everybody can see each other and where there are views all the way around. >> rose: which the symbol of

new office buildings seem to be more open than closed offices. >> and i think james murdoch was inspired by our architectural offices. we occupied, at the time, a former wearhouse. we had a huge open floor space and everyone was within visual or shouting distance. 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 we have cascades that stretch, like 13 floors you have lines of sight. >> rose: one to 13. you can see five floors above around below you so you can see them and undo the vertical segregation that normally comes from working on multiple floors. >> rose: this is what the

terraces look like from above. >> and almost trying to extend the floor tiles from within to the outside so that the feeling of inside/outside continuity is as seamless as possible. >> rose: when you look at your buildings, would most people know that they came from the same architect in the same way they might know that all buildings created by frank gary, most of them have some designing similar later? richard myers, some defining similar later. but it's not true with you, is it? >> in a way, i see having a style is almost often like having certain things you have to do all 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, truly because they perform differently, in a way you can say, in the beginning of

each project, we tried to educate ourselves in what are the key criteria here, what is the biggest problem we need to solve or what is the greatest potential we can create. then we try to seek expertise, find people who 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 that every design decision is not ruled by a style, but it's governed by -- it's informed by the information we have about the project. >> rose: did you have to sell this to larry silverstein? >> i think he totally liked and appreciated is careful effort to make it the building that would work for him and for the tenants and for the site, but he did also find it disturbingly different. >> rose: disturbingly? i think so. he needed some digestion time. we got the idea that, since all the other towers on the site

have been designed at the same time with a group of architects, we basically suggested what if we actually sit down with david childs, the architect of one world trade, go through our thinking -- >> rose: and i'm told he was enthusiastic. >> it was probably one of the most exciting meetings in my career so far. we were on the top floor of seven world trade. mr. childs comes in. he's a majestic gentleman. he comes in, i explain the thinking. he gets up, looks at the tower, makes a comment about all the hard work and says shall i just be completely honest? and mr. silverstein said, yes, david, that's why you're here. and you could hear a pin drop in the room. and he's, like, i love it. and then the conversation flowed from there. so that was a definitely a

turning point in this process. >> rose: when will it be finished? >> it should be finished in 2020. >> rose: how much of your time will this occupy in 2020? when will you turn it over to the builder? >> in the next two years we will be incredibly busy doing this and we'll oversee the sight where i work and live. we have a beautiful view of the sites. we really have to get this one right. >> rose: what influence did rem coolhouse have? >> when i started studying architecture in 1993, the book mxl came out. >> rose: you talk about it here. >> i discovered rem coolhouse before i did covered any of the

modern masters. so i would say my generation, rem coolhouse is definitely sort of part of the discipline. >> rose: but you fell in love with his work. >> i think one of the things i saw in coolhouse is each project, rather than being driven by sort of like a style, like richard meyer likes white tiles and certain shapes. in coolhouse, each project was injected into a specific situation in a society or in a country or for a particular type of program, so almost the way a journalist would approach a project by having a certain angle on a story, i somehow saw that rather architecture being an autonomous art form independent of society, it was always intricately linked to the

forces of our surrounding environment. so i suddenly saw this idea, the architecture was not just something happening in the studio. it was really how a city comes to life, how a society wants to be shaped. >> rose: some come from europe and some in europe say you were the first to come here. >> i think when i moved here five years ago. the european arrogance, the u.s. had suffered the collapse and someone said you should go to asia because this is where the boom was happening. but i really wanted to live in new york. one of the things i think the europeans can learn from america is that, with the european union, europe has been incredibly good at breaking down trade warriors, opening up the borders, free movement of workforce, et cetera, where,

actually, to my surprise, the 50 states of america are probably more sort of separated by legal issues than europe is today. however, the culture of the americans -- like i had this strange episode. a month after moving to new york, i went to vancouver and canada on the west coast to give a talk about something called the urban land institute which is a foundation both if the united states and in canada. i met a developer in vancouver, we had a great conversation, and i said, by the way, we just opened an office in new york. his response was, so you're here. i had just gotten off a six-hour flight in new york, from another country three time zones away. but the feeling was, ah, you're here in north america and we can do something together. it was pretty eye opening. >> rose: this is west 57t 57th street. >> basically what you're looking at here is what we call a court

scraper. it's what happens when you marry the communal space of copenhagen courtyard with the density of a new york skyscraper and, essentially, what you're seeing is, from the westside waterfront of manhattan, the building kneels down toward the water, opens up the courtyard so that the sunlight and the views of the water can enter deep into the courtyard itself. basically, on the northeast corner, we lifted up to almost 500 feet so that you actually have an abundance of daylight and sunshine in the courtyard and, at the same time, all the people living there have views from their balconies and terraces overlooking water. >> rose: the next one is the dry line. >> the dry line or the big u. as we also called it, we called it learning from the high line. the high line is a piece of decommissioned infrastructure

from the rail yards that have now turned into one of the most popular -- >> rose: popular attractions known around the world. >> exactly. we were thinking what if you don't have to wait till a piece of infrastructure gets decommissioned. what if you can design the infrastructure for the coastal resilience of manhattan, all of the architecture necessary top resist the next sandy -- >> rose: for that to happen, a lot of things have to be attorney down do, they not? >> on the east side, we have to weave in between some of the existing pa vile yans and as an idea we tried t to conceive of e dry line as a love child of robert moses and jane jacobs.

as a public servant with almost totalitarian influence, we i had a lot of the very necessary public works in new york, the highways on the waterfronts, the public housing, often with -- >> rose: often with everything in his way, moving people wherever they were. >> a devastating impact on the surroundings. at some point, he wanted to run a highway through greenwich village and encounterresistance from jane jacobs who managed to defeat the plans and save the village. we thought what if they actually worked together? because to resist an incoming flood you have to create 12 miles of incoming waterfront, a holistic overview, but to make it successful for the community it needs to has been in a closed conversation with the people who will inhabit it. so instead of making a seawall that separates the life of the city from the wall around it to

make it a landscape of hills, pa godas that brings the life of the city to the water. >> rose: this is the mountain in copenhagen. here it is. >> the mountain is an example of what we like to call architectural alchemy. the fact that by taking different traditional ingredients, in this case a big parking structure for the neighborhood, the facade that you say looks like a mountain, it's actually perforated aluminum plates that allows the parking to breathe and bring light in, but the holes are made in different sizes so that they create the sort of illusion of a photographic image. then on top, we placed a layer of apartments. so instead of having just, like, a traditional stack of apartments, one placed on top of each other, they're cascading so that on this side they cover the parking, but on the sunny side it becomes a manmade mountain of

houses with gardens, almost like having a suburban lifestyle, a howls with a garden, but with a penthouse view and in the middle of the city. >> rose: thank you for coming. pleasure to meet you. >> , please.pleasure. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: the whitney museum of american art opened in new york's greenwich village in 1931. its mandate was to focus exclusively on the art and artists of this country. the museum moved to the marcel design building on madison avenue in 1966. now the whitney returns to its roots. its new building designed by renzo piano will open may 1 a few blocks from its original location. michael kemline of the "new york times" calls it a depth serious achievement, a serious contribution to downtown and the city's changing landscape. joining me renzo piano, architect, and museum director adam weinberg. pleased to have both of them here.

so it's complete. after some dozen years of planning and building, how do you characterize this moment for you? >> well, the whitney has been trying to expand for 30 years. we tried to expand next to our building uptown four directors ago. the collection when we first moved in was only 2,000 works and today it's 22,000 works. the idea of being able to see not just what we have but to offer possibilities and aspirational spaces for artists to do things. >> rose: the great irony is you're going back to your roots? >>t feels comfortable. the greatest compliment we've received in the last weeks habit feels like the whitney. even though it's a very different kind of space. >> rose: hasn't there been some effort to design a new whitney building for a while? >> yes, it's been going on for decades. michael graves many years ago made an attempt. and rem coolhouse did later on.

renzo did a plan for uptown which was quite a good one but, in the end, we both agreed it wasn't the kind of space you needed for contemporary art. >> rose: leonard is a great friend of mine, the program and yours. he calls you up and says what? >> he called me -- i was on the site of the morgan library that day. >> rose: that you designed. yes. i was actually inside the big hall. he called me and said why you don't come for coffee? and, of course, he was lying. because i said, of course i come for the coffee. >> rose: tell me the truth. did you have any notion that what he really wanted to talk to you about was design ago new building -- >> no, i didn't foe at all because i -- no, i didn't know at all. i didn't know anything. also, i'm like children, i'm

fooled. i stay in the sand in the beach and you play and somebody come up and i have to play. so i have to do that. so i we want up, and i came in the board room, and it was full of people. it was the design committee, the selection committee. great people. > learned, melba, bob hurst -- >> rose: but you're sitting there with the board, not just with leonard. >> no, with the entire board. >> rose: yes. then they started to think it wasn't coffee (laughter) >> rose: it wasn't about coffee. >> so we started to talk and that's all. >> rose: no, that's not all. there was a bit of behind the scenes, charlie, in that we were interviewing a number of architects and leonard said we

should ask one or two questions of every architect as a constant. we asked every single architect -- there were about a dozen architects -- what is your favorite museum building in the world? and every architect named one of renzo's buildings. at the end of the process, leonard said we have 12 architects, everybody loves renzo's buildings, why aren't we talking to renzo? >> rose: exactly. which one did they love? >> the byler, the manil and the pompadi museum. those three came up over and over again. >> rose: but you said to them, i'm not prepared to request -- i'm not prepared to compete. if you want me to do it, offer me the job and i'll do it. >> yes, and i hope you don't understand, it's not by

arrogance. in a certain age you don't want to fall in love with jobs like that, and then the bride goes away with somebody else. you know, it's just too much. >> rose: don't want to fall in love with the idea of building this museum because you have to tell them your vision, and have them say, oh, we decided on somebody else? >> but it's not arrogance. it's just passion. you cannot do this profession without passion. you have to put yourself into it. also, this was really incredible because, you know, i am european, i am italian. i grew up in my country, knowing freedom came with this country. anytime you grow up with great rules, great culture, but, at the same time, you need the freedom, you need rebellion and purpose. and for me american art is about purpose and a wide attitude.

so for me making the nuance of american art was an incredible challenge, bringing together my sense with something that is called freedom that is a absolute necessity. >> rose: here's what you said -- you hope to incorporate the following elements into the museum's design: social life, urbanity, invention, construction, technology, poetry and light. that's hugely ambitious. (laughter) >> but, you know, this is true. architecture is about all those things coming together. it's about social life, it's about urbanity, a sense of community, it's about art, it's about poetry, it's about trying to create something that is playing with light and that's

part of it. but then you have invention. the building downtown, the new whitney, weighs 28,000 tons. i love the feel and everything else. but you need invention to do that. also, this sort of building must last for thousands and thousands of years. last the logic. >> rose: in a unique place. how did you find the place, adam? >> well, it's a place the city reserved at the south end of the highline. they wanted a cultural anchor for the highline. the dia foundation planned to build something there and when they didn't we approached the city about the possible site and the cultural affairs said this is a site that would be available for us. we were thrilled because it's very hard to find horizontal property in manhattan.

there just can't much space probably in a favorable price. i was thinking about what renzo said was that we love the kind of wild character of the neighborhood. i mean the kind of roughness of it, a word we use which renzo hadn't heard at the time with ferro. we wanted a little wildness to it. it's such a refined building, but the roughness of the floors and the concrete, it's not all about finesse or elegance, it's a little wilder and connected. >> rose: how would you describe the look of the outside? >> a bid wild, maybe. you know, you can make the building about american art, it's about freedom. it's about freedom, light, purpose. you must express that idea when

you make a building like this. this building is designed to talk to the city on one side, on the east. it's enjoying time, meandering, loitering, taking your time. but on the other side, it talks to the rest of the world. on the other side to the west, it talks to the highway and then new jersey and then the far west. if you look careful -- >> rose: you can see across america. (laughter) >> this is part of the idea. >> rose: did it in your mind have anything to do with the building on 76, the marcel brewer building? >> there are many, many things coming from that building. the flexibility of the space,

first. secondly -- i could go on forever. secondly, when you open the door of the elevator, you find it in the gallery. that's another important thing. you know it didn't get a place to be in connection with the city. he got madison avenue. he got beach there. but we build the space by making the building above ground. that's what the building does, it comes up. when you make a public building like this for culture, you have to be accessible, easy to reach. >> the interesting thing when you talk about the wildness of the building, i think it's one of the things the critics that started the struggle with. i realized most museum have a frontal brand image that's the front of the met, the front of the guggenheim. this building is a 360-degree

building. you see it from all sides. renzo composed it from all sides. i think a lot of critics have a hard time because they don't know what is the image of the bit any and it's the multiplicity, the wildness, the sense that it was designed from the inside out rather than the outside in. >> rose: i mentioned at the beginning there is a moment about. this michael kemleman in the "new york times" says the new location for the museum confirmed a definitive shift in the city's social geography. >> absolutely, and big part of that as you know is the highline. the highline -- >> rose: amazing what the highline's done for the city. >> over 500 million people a year on the highline. until the whitney, there was a wonderful walkway without an anchor on either end. it looked like a place without destination. now the culture shed on the north end and the whole development of the west side. it was so ever willty, the lower west side, in many ways, in terms of just public traffic.

>> rose: christopher wright said in two short generations the whitney has gone from being art's tern but caring homeless shelter to its chic and eager tourist destination. >> well, i think that, you know, we're very -- >> rose: you're happy with tourists coming there. >> we love tourists coming there. the more the merrier. but the whitney's always championed the artists of our time. whitney was one of the only founders of a major museum, she was an artist herself and she wanted to support the artists of the generation. >> rose: wasn't it her dream to do this and turned down by other museums? >> she offered to give her art to the metropolitan museum and they said we have enough of that not very interesting stuff in the basement. it was out of a curious refusal the whitney was born. she was as interested in the artists as much as creating a museum. >> rose: so she said i'll

create my own museum? >> exactly. and it was out of a desire not to just show off what she had. >> rose: you said you were forced to consider the symbolic value it would have. part of your driving mission in your own head was to consider the symbolic value? >> yeah. yes, of course. >> rose: what was it vol idea on, a play for american artists? is that what it was? >> i think probably, but the other thing is the sense of freedom. you don't desine a building by watching the level of the opposition. you do a building trying to tell the truth, and the truth about this building is it will house forever the greek collection. it is the expression of freedom. and that's again something for me that makes a lot of sense. and, of course, what you get is something that, you know, it's

not something that you immediately appreciate. it's something that goes -- like the forest, like mountains, like cities do, you know, it's something that stays there forever and sometimes based on time, this thing of the tourists, i know very well the story, but when 40 years ago i decided with my friend about this, everybody came out by saying, oh, sac, it's sacriligi. art is for everybody. art is a special light in the eyes of everybody. so we have to make a place for everybody. >> rose: just to suggest what you obviously know, both of you know that art and museums are one of the powerful magnets for tourists to visit cities.

>> absolutely. but for us it is about changes lives. not just the lives of the artists working there, but exposing people to the art of this moment. people look back at history and can accept they love edward hopper and jasper johns. but how about the artists of this generation? the josh kleins, mark bradfords and the rachel harrisons and they come in and are so puzzled because we're so close in time it's hard to grapple with it and it's our job to challenge as much as celebrate and to test ideas and put things out there and not just reconfirm what we already know. >> rose: you said it's important to let the city and let the street encroach. >> mm-hmm. i think that's the reason why i called that place on the ground floor not the lobby but a

piazza, and this is the place where we experience. this is where people meet people. they get together. it's about not something intimidating. it's about being accessible. so this is the beginning. then, of course, from there, then you go up and you take your shoes off, metaphorically, of course, and go up and enter a different world, but the ground floor is public space. >> and we have a free gallery in the public space. the idea is to make whatever art in the lobby level completely free and open to the public because it's all our cultural heritage. and culture is a right, not a privilege. >> it's something that's probably not very physical. we are having many, many

functions that it's not possible in the old building. >> we have an indoor-outdoor black box space, like basically it's a theater where you can be inside looking out or outside looking in. we have 14,000 square feet of outdoor galleries on four levels. so the art can be seen from above, below. it's set up so performance can be done out there. you can have sculpture out there, installation, projections. so the idea is the building -- and the big black box. it's is idea the building is material for the artist, not just a site for the artwork. renzo called the big gallery the testing platform. >> because of course we have been working a lot with artists. one thing not to forget. the building was lobbied by

artists. it was simple and not competing. artists loved it. we always talked with artists about the terrace, but we called it the testing floor. >> rose: but you've spoken of the idea before which is don't create architecture that exeats with the art. >> absolutely. it's not just art. >> rose: it's not just function. >> it's about society but is, of course, art. but is a different kind of art. it's the art of the arts. it's the art of making place for all the arts. when you make it, you make a space in a concert hall that makes a wonderful sound for music. that's the same thing we do.

it's not diminishing, it's even stronger because -- >> i agree and that's one of the reasons we wanted to work with renzo is we felt at the he put the art first, that it wasn't a competition, it was about supporting it and actually supporting it actually makes, i think, both the architecture and the art greater. >> rose: what did you mean when you said this building is a sort of poetic movement? >> you know, because i always thought that the building is four dimensions. and the number four is people. and that's the reason why again we designed the building and the people were enjoying the piazza, and the building is spectacular.

>> rose: that building put you and richard on the map, didn't it? >> yeah, of course. we never got a new job for ten years after that. (laughter) but movement is part of architecture, and this building, you know, especially because it is tall, we cannot find a horizontal place, so as soon as you get in the ground floor, you see three big elevators. you see a big, big elevator, a freight elevator. then you see the stair. everything is about moving. >> rose: was adam helpful or did he just get in your way? >> i havit was great. we're good accomplices. >> we're good accomplices. >> rose: you're complicit in the conspiracy to create something great. he was what? but you would meet once a week, wouldn't you? whenever he was there? >> we met every time he was in

new york. >> more than my wife. exactly. (laughter) we met every eight weeks. in talking about the movement, charlie, renzo, when we decided we wanted the elevators front and center which is an echo of the brier building, we came up with the idea of commissioning to turn each elevator into an inns haitian sith not only the movement which we love, and renzo responded to this, he didn't likely know richard's work, and richard designed environment -- (laughter) >> i love it you push a button and art comes to you! >> rose: ah! exactly. >> rose: so what new elements of this are you most excited about? >> well, we have our fifth-floor special exhibition gallery is an 18,000 square-foot column-free gallery which is enormous, probably-at-largest in new york, which means we can make exhibitions to the size we want.

instead of saying you have a certain size and have to fit it in, if you need to do a bigger show, we can, or a smaller show. >> rose: can you do sculpture? we can, of great scale. the outdoor sculptures are truly extraordinary. when you were in the broier building, you could have been in london or rome. when you're in this building you know you're in new york. the whitney's always been new york's museum. it's very new york-based. this was really the home for new york artists and american art. and we've always had a very international presence, but, it was, as you said, based in greenwich village and the connection to the artist, this was really the place the champions there work, not just the picassos.

>> rose: put together by a new york family. >> collectors, and mrs. whitney was an artist. >> this idea that the building comes back home is great. >> rose: before we look at this, you brought this building in on time, on budget. >> i have an extraordinary board and board leadership who just -- you know, we just said, look, we cannot make a building we can't afford to build and run and we built a very sizable endowment. >> rose: $450 million project? the project was 430- and we raised another 250- as endowment for part of it so we would have the funds, because many a museum has opened and not had the money to run it. we're really pleased because we finished our campaign.

we're still always raising money. you never stop when you're building a museum. but now the work really begins in a way. >> rose: it seems to me -- i mean, i was there the first night. everybody was happy about this. >> mm-hmm. >> rose: you get a sense that there was -- artists were there, members of the board were there, you were there. there was a sense of we created something we dreamed of doing, and it is what we wanted to do. >> this is exactly -- as an architect, this is what you want, to make a building that is loved by people. you know, because buildings need love. they need love, like people, and i also feel that it would be love. >> we wanted spaces that people would feel great in. i remember renzo saying i'm a humanist, and i love that idea that it is very much based on human scale, and you feel good when you walk on those wooden

floors and in the sense the sound, the light, the quality of the space. it's a place that you want to be in. >> maybe there is another thing to say. it's about unpretentiousness. i mean, the building made with the two super finishes. the floor is made out of recycled pine. and we found three factories, we cut the wood, and when you go around, you can see the trees in the good and this is simple because, understand, if they want to name something, they can. doesn't matter. we have so many names there, you can. so it's not something untouchable. >> rose: it's a working space. this idea that is open, it's flexible, but it's also -- you know, it doesn't inthe tim date. >date -- it doesn't intimidate. >> rose: we'll look at the images and talk about the art. the first image, the building

image here. it's looking from the west to the east. so just tell me what i'm seeing there. >> what you see is the west side. this big window you see there is the one overlooking the hudson, the west and the rest of the world. that floor is the fifth floor. this is where we have the big gallery. then you have the other gallery. of course the south side of the building is behind for the very simple reason that you don't need the light beside. but you can see on the top, it's light coming inside. of course, you know, when you're looking at this building, the building takes time to be part of the city. when you make a building, it's always new. but i think this building expresses the complexity. >> rose: let's look at another image. >> that's looking east.

you're looking down and on the right you have the highline, beautiful, and the highline is an awe-inspiring element. then above the highline. then you see the building that is stepping down. and you see those stairs. those stairs are made to enjoy life. to enjoy flying above the city. >> renzo kept noticing the fire escapes, and those are stairs that are public that people can actually walk over. >> rose: you mean at the top? yes, they're public, not just utilitarian. >> rose: the people all enjoy that. the idea came from looking at fire escapes? (laughter) >> maybe not. he was trying to convince me as a client -- >> no, because it's everything, like in music, like in everything, it's somewhere between memory and oblivion, of course. so you remember things, but, you

know, you don't likely know exactly what you remember, but, of course, there is kind of an illusion. >> rose: that part i really love. next image. >> this is actually looking out. this is the magic time that i call the margarita time. it's the end of the day when the natural light goes away and then the buildings start to have an artificial light. that's showing where all the conservation and all the -- you know, that's another big quality of this building, functionally speaking, is the people working on conservation and working on the idea in the same house, you know, sometimes you open the two-door elevator and you see through. so on the same floor you have art on the south side and you have people working. >> this is one of the things we said to renzo, we want the people who are working with the

art to always be next to the art, to be reminded at all times why they were there and that the art was the center of the building. >> rose: let me see the next image of the design plans. >> there it is. showing the overlapping of the different function. of course, it's very intense and dance. it's like a monolith, this building. the ground floor is public. we have gallery, you go on. you can see the left overlooking the hudson. continue on the fourth floor of the gallery. >> rose: tell me this, how do you think the architect renzo piano is different from the accuratarchitect of that time? >> you should ask somebody that, i guess. i don't know -- >> rose: what's the significant change in you? >> age. >> rose: i mean, have you changed your attitude about your work? have you changed some fundamental way you look at things? >> i still feel like a bad boy,

you know -- (laughter) i just know a better way how to do things and how to build. and also it's about learning. you know, i know it's easy to say, but an architect should have 50 years to learn. i know there are many, many other professions, but this one is especially difficult. >> rose: next slide the emphasis on hoist, elevators and staircases express the poetry of movement. is this the fifth floor? >> the fifth floor gallery looking south. this section is devoted to the art of the '80s and what you see in the foreground is the poster by the artist donald moffit and jeff koons.

>> rose: the last slide, i want everybody to go to this museum. the high light gallery. >> and, of course, we catch the light from the north. this is what i did. every time you catch the natural light, you catch the north light. because you don't have the sun. >> rose: all studios always want northern light? >> exactly. and you see the light. light is probably the most essential material for architecture. >> rose: most essential material. >> light. light is a material. but if you working with light, look at that, when you stand there you feel. and, you know, the secret about this piece that is a bit

metaphysical, it's out of time. that's what the museum does. the museum takes a piece of art out of time and puts the piece of art in a timeless dimension, a new dimension, that is metaphysical in a way, and this is what we tried to do here. >> rose: we've seen a lot and said a lot and this is a mag i have in september place -- and this is a magnificent place. adam's te tenacity has made it happen and the brilliance of renzo piano, responsible for something everybody is talking about. the book "the whitney museum of art" put together di-- by -- >> by my daughter. >> rose: gives youl sense of the building with photographs and a sense of what it means to create a building and what it means to make sure that it does all the things we have been talking about here, its connection to the city, its

connection to art, its connection to itself. all of that. thank you for joining us. see you next time. >> rose: for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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