>> rose: welcome to the program. as summer comes to an end, we're looking at some of our favorite guests from this past year. tonight my conversation with it's an amazing life because it really enables me to be places in the world where things are really radically changing. >> rose: yes. or when there is a need to articulate a particular ambition. >> rose: yes. or whether, for other reasons, there is a need to intervene in a kind of situation which is more or less urgent. so it's really a great sequence of opportunity. it was a huge challenge and, therefore, i basically tried to accept every part of the challenge. >> rose: so, therefore -- so, therefore, it is a building that has not only one

dimension, it's not only a shape or an organization, it's a feat of engineering. >> rose: it is a feat of engineering. >> it's also an identity that is not stable. it's also the kind of building that looks completely different from every side. so it's a very complex entity and perhaps people would recognize that complexity as a characteristic, in the end. >> rose: is there a reason you became an architect? >> i came to moscow for the first time in '67. >> rose: yeah. and i was aware of soviet architecture. i was aware of th avanguard of e '20s. i became aware of the radical interpretation of architecture, constructionism, that really reinvented daily life from

scratch. also from the beginning, i was less interested in form but the role of architecture in helping to define daily life that really triggered me. and at the time i was also a script writer, so it was a discovery that architecture is actually almost former script writing that made it possible -- >> rose: a form of script writing? >> a form of script writing. because for an architect, this is the living room and here is the staircase and the kitchen. so implicitly, you actually describe a scene or you describe a relationship. >> rose: yeah, yeah. so that made it a very easy switch. what you're seeing here, that's really quite original on the part of prada, the opening exhibition was an exhibition about roman sculpture that insisted what is interesting about roman sculpture is that they all cop idea greek

examples, and greek examples and originals are gone, so the roman sculpture art is the art of copying. so here they were able to assemble many copies of the same building, of the same kind of sculpture. >> rose: rem koolhaas for the hour, next. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> 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: rem koolhaas is here. he is one of the most influential architects at work today. of course, you knew that.

he is also an author, theorist and professor at harvard. he was awarded the pritzker architecture prize in 2000, 16 years ago. some of his most notable projects include the cctv headquarters in beijing, the seattle central library and casa da musica in porto, portugal. the two major buildings that have been opened in the last year are the garage museum of contemporary art in moscow and the prada in milan. i am pleased to have rem koolhaas back at this table. welcome. >> all right. >> rose: we missed out on doing this two years ago or a year and a half ago, when you were in venice. it continues to be a great life for you. >> a great life, yes. >> rose: a great life. it's an amazing life because it really enables me to be at places in the world when things are really radically changing. >> rose: yes. or when there is a need to articulate a particular ambition. >> rose: yes.

or whether, for other reasons, there is a need to intervene in a kind of situation which is more or less urgent. so, it's really a great sequence of opportunity. >> rose: and, i mean, because what you do and -- i mean, you help define the time we're in, or what we're missing, even. >> rose: yes, but i see my -- >> yes, but i see my role, to some extent, more as a kind of reporter who is simply alert and who is describing changes and kind of basically, as you describe the change, you also find the opportunities where to intervene. so, in that sense, i don't have the kind of sense of forming the time but really being part of it and being part of that moment in time when things are changing from one condition to another. >> rose: in fact, you began life as a writer, didn't you? >> as a journalist, yes, as an

interviewer. >> rose: you mean, i have pope as an architect, maybe? >> you could. it's never too late. >> rose: but at 71, you're going strong. i just mentioned the big projects you had this year, prada and the garage. >> well, maybe i go strong, but for some part of a large organization or office, and i think i could never do what i do, or we could never what we do without our foreign collaborators, the average age at the office is maybe 32. so maybe i am getting older, but there is this really -- >> rose: but, at the same time, like children, you have people who come to work with you and then go off and do great things on their own. >> i've enabled many people to emancipate themselves from our environment.

( laughter ) >> rose: your early collaborator and now old friend peter eisenman said of you recently, "i love rem. i think it's very important to have lived in the time of rem, like to have lived in the time of corbusier." how do you -- i mean -- you're a legend -- >> basically, i am dutch, and that means that i'm incapable of dealing with those questions, and i seem -- >> rose: the dutch can't handle praise? >> they cannot handle praise, and they cannot perceive celebrity and, therefore, they are kind of a safe haven for that kind of speculation. >> rose: so, in part, you keep your base in rotterdam because it keeps your feet on the ground. >> which is a city that's completely immune to who we are and completely indifferent to who we are, so we live in kind of a luxurious life of

indifference. >> rose: of indifference? in different environment and, therefore, we're totally free. >> rose: someone else said, i think it was an architecture critic said, you remain a first-rate provocateur. and you do. i mean, you have been that all your life. >> i don't know whether it's an issue of a star sign or something more. >> rose: a star sign? no, i don't think so. nor do you. >> i think it's not really provocation -- >> rose: i think it's dna. it's partly dna, but it's also intellectual interest to formulate in the sharpest possible way what the issues are, and that enables me, you know, to constantly kind of see where issues are occurring, what the issues are and to name them, and i think that that particular ability to name them is, of course, going to be perceived as

provocation because it may not always be that the world is ready to draw the same conclusions. >> rose: and when some people suggest at the you work -- suggest that you work more like a theorist or conceptual artist than an architect, do you say, yes, that's right? >> i would say we operate in a very wide range of things. >> rose: the world of ideas is where you start. >> yes, but at the same time, i think you see in the world around us kind of fewer and fewer professions retain their previous identity and that many streams are getting blurred, and i'm benefiting from that blur and being able to -- >> rose: i'm benefiting from the blur? >> i'm benefiting from the fact that, currently, people are willing not only to consider a pre-defined profession or a pre-defined territory or a

pre-defined role, but are willing to experiment and see how things can be combined or redefined and reinvented. >> rose: yeah, but that's what you've done all your life -- how can i redefine the way we think of space, how can i redefine we think of old and now, how do i think about redefining the relationship between urban and rural. >> but i'm kind of really lucky to live that at this time because it's not me who's redefining but it's the time it'sself that's redefining all these things constantly. >> rose: but you've always resisted the idea of a singular aesthetic. >> i true to. >> rose: some would say they have a single aesthetic. you resist that, even allowing anybody to even think that. >> partly, we love camouflage, and we are not always interested

to kind of assert our own identity in every condition, and we think that the architecture is kind of a very interesting combination of imposition and yielding. >> rose: imposition and -- and yielding. you yield to an environment. you yield to a context. you impose but you also absorb givens from it, or you absorb certain needs that exist. so for this reason i think there is maybe kind of a subtlety that means we need to be different in every ace case because every case is different. >> rose: if i went to beijing with a group of architects who know the history of architecture who know the identification of artists and i showed them cctv, would they say that's koolhaas, i promise you that's koolhaas?

>> well, probably -- >> rose: of course they'd. but i mean before anybody knew it was such a popular and identifiable building that it was yours. >> you would have to try. >> rose: what do you think? do you think there is something in that building other than the fact it's so different would define it? >> i think maybe it was a huge challenge and, therefore, i basically try to accept every part of the challenge. so, therefore, it is a kind of building that has not only one dimension, it's not only a shape but it's also an organization, it's also a feat of engineering. >> rose: it is a feat of engineering. >> it's also an identity that is not stable. it's also the kind of building that looks completely different from every side. so it's a very complex entity and perhaps people would recognize that complexity at a characteristic in the end. >> rose: how did you win that

commission? >> it was very interesting. the competition was run by a very young chinese lady who studied international law in o oxford, 35 years old. she called me one day and said we are going to do a competition and we invite five foreigners, five chinese people, two europeans and one japanese. she was very specific. and we wanted to be -- and we want it to be a completely honest process. and speaking to her, there was a confidence, there was an intelligence there. so the jury selected us. and it was an interesting period when tissue became how to

convince the government and the different parties in government that this was the right step and that it was kind of also orchestrated by her in terms of meeting cheese politicians, kind of showing the project, talking to them personally in their holy day address. slowly but surely we were able to convince people. >> rose: what's interesting, too, is, recently, xi jinping said "we have too many weird buildings." ( laughter ) >> in a way, it's rare a politician talking about architecture in that sense. i found it encouraging. francois was the previous one. we became associated with the weird building kind of syndrome. >> rose: the weird building

syndrome. ( laughter ) >> and, of course, the building is an original building but also a very serious building. i can say in confidence that recently it was visited by one of the chinese ministers who came to the conclusion that it was a very sincere and serious contribution to china. >> rose: wow. so the "weird" stigma has been taken away. >> rose: and you have made a contribution to china. >> yes, and it's a good thing, i think. >> rose: we talked about this right before we started to turn the cameras on, it is you won that competition. >> mm-hmm. >> rose: five other people lost. they invested as much time as you did. >> yeah. >> rose: they cared deeply. they thought about it. they listened. they pushed and shoved and imagined and reimagined. >> some of them were or are my friends. >> rose: yeah. and some of the projects were

incredibly amazing and exciting, also. >> rose: so i'll tell you, what my dream is to put together and have an exhibition from the best architecture in the world all the projects that didn't get thought out. because it's not a perfect project that wins or loses, it has to do with a range of human emotions and experience and education and, you know, and politics, all that. so this didn't -- wouldn't it be great to see all the buildings we never saw? the only person who ever saw them was the architect? >> it's interesting to compete, per se, and i think that there is a compelling argument that, actually by competing, you get the best. but it is also certainly the case that some of our most imaginative buildings were not able to convince people at the right moment, and you certainly

see the things we did ten years ago might be accepted today. so there is also a sadness in the whole thing. so to thing by being a writer i was able to reduce that than siy building. actually building something is so rare that you actually develop forms of communication or forms of presentations, whether it's in exhibition, a book or other kind of media or even kind of film, to make sure that things don't simply disappear. >> rose: are you happiest writing or building? designing or teaching? >> it's two completely different

kind of forms of happiness. in the first case, it is the happiness over teamwork and collaboration and we get people together and have an amazing insight i would never have had on my own but simply through the construction of collaboration, you are pushed in a different direction so that it's real lay wonderful feeling -- it's really a wonderful feeling. at the same time, it's wonderful to be like a monk in a cell and have a feeling that you're actually capturing a reality or a new reality or an insight -- >> rose: in the world of ideas. >> -- in the world of ideas. in the world of ideas or in the world of observation, yeah. >> rose: but do you think of you more as an observational character or an innovative character?

>> well, i'm that and/or. i try to be both and i think it's also necessary to be both. basically, i'm an analytical person, but in our case or in my case, analysis is very often what triggers the innovation or the invention. so you cannot say i'm either this or that. it's kind of really -- analysis is the basis for new thinking. >> rose: here are some things that you have said. you admitted that you are somewhere between bored and irritated by the current course of architecture. irritated and bored. >> okay. maybe i take the last thing back. ( laughter ) but not the first one. >> rose: you're certainly irritated but not necessarily bored. fair enough? >> yeah. >> rose: you also said the

architecture today is forcing people to be extravagant even if they do not want to or need to. that's s -- that's to satisfy some -- the importance of the client is this. >> until the '60s or even part of the '70s, we were typically used and connected to a public client. so in a certain way, we were -- we could be complacent or we could be convinced that we were actually serving kind of the general cause. and i think, since the enormous escalation of the market economy, we are working more and more with the private individual. >> rose: rather than the state, and more and more people with a loft money. >> and for that reason alone, we will no longer were we're not playing the same role, and we're playing a totally different

role, and in that different and new role, we sometimes have to build icons, because that is important to a particular brand, or we have to build a building that nobody else has seen kind of before because that is the source of pride. so, basically, the ambitions have really radically changed kind of simply through the effective market economy. >> rose: you've also embraced the idea of preservation as somehow helping to find a new relationship with architecture. preservation is a new -- go ahead. >> in a way it's almost like a refuge. there is such an exploitation that we do extravagant things that actually it's forcing us to

discover a more modest terrain where we can intervene and if we add something, it's almost like furniture, a few new things. so for me it's become very interesting in that sense and, also, if you work on preservation, you discover, for instance, in terms of dimensions or in terms of scale or in the past things were possible that are no longer possible. so it's also kind of rational steps simply because, for instance, in the case of pradda foundation, we cut a huge hole that became a key part of the project but from scratch we could never have done. in the case of the garage, there is a generosity of soviet architecture that had to serve the people, so basically that generosity, we were able to

capture and to give it new face of life. >> rose: we'll talk about both of those buildings later. both those museums. but were you surprised as you delved into it at soviet architecture, soviet culture? >> the reason i became an architect, i came to moscow for the first time in '67, and, you know, i was unaware of soviet architecture and the avant-garde of the twentities and became aware of a radical interpretation of architecture, constructionivism related to daily life. so it was less form but the role of architecture in helping to define daily life that really

triggered me. at the time, i was also a script writer, so it was a discovery that architecture is actually also a form of script writing that made it possible -- >> rose: a form of script writing. >> script writing. because for an architect, this is the living room and here is the stair case and the kitchen. so implightsly, you describe a scene or relationship, so that made it very easy. >> rose: preservation and modernist architecture are intwined. >> sometimes more than this. the interesting thing to me about preservation, we had previously always thought the world was architecture and

preservation, i discovered, was part and parcel of the whole process of modernization. it was invented just after the french revolution. >> rose: preservation. preservation, and basically makes perfect sense because at the moment he would restore or change everything. you also have to decide what to keep. and, so, preservation is in a way kind of a form of selection, and actually you have to understand that this part of modernization is itself, and when we discovered that, it became really very creative territory. >> rose: what does conventional beauty mean to you? >> unfortunately, there also i am dutch. ( laughter ) it's very difficult to really talk about conventional kind of beauty, what we prefer or what

we're more comfortable with is to discover the beauty of organization, for instance, or the beauty of artificial landscape or the beauty of a system that has moved and turns lake into land. in all of those steps, there is really an aesthetic with -- aesthetic conventionality and modern. so there are moments we try to address piewty. in the pradda foundation, we with covered a tower in gold leaf as a form of recognition and explicit intention to create

beauty. beauty is imagination and rational organization. >> rose: do you have an ordered mind? >> i can be very ordered, but i can also be chaotic when i want to. >> rose: the reason i ask that is sometimes -- take musicians who will tell me that, in order for them to be -- they have to understand the order of music in order to be creative about music. but there has to be -- >> a discipline. >> rose: -- a discipline and a sense of order and the way things are in order to be able, and why, in order to be able to create something that's fresh. >> architecture has many

regimes. to begin with the regime of gravity. gravity is very strong and cannot be reversed or reinvented. so everything we do in that kind of regime. so also in at sense we have to live within the regime of acoustics. i think all architects have to be disciplined but also have to know the importance of escaping from the discipline. >> rose: are you ever satisfied with a building? or are you like a filmmaker who says to me, you know, i always see something else i could have done? >> actually, the moment your building engagement is deep and profound, but when things are over and open, i can let it go and almost enjoy it as an outsider. >> rose: really? yeah. >> rose: without almost knowing what might have been?

>> yeah, i'm not kind of constantly going, oh, my god, there could have been -- >> rose: it's not the time for that. >> no, not time. it's the mentality, as i was saying this morning, i'm a realist. i'm able to enjoy reality. so, therefore, sometimes, you know, in the best cases our buildings become a reality. >> rose: does that mean you're also efficient? >> i have to be in order to be inefficient when -- >> rose: when you want to be. ( laughter ) efficient when you have to be in order to be inefficient when you need to be. okay. take a look at this. show the prada building. describe this to me. what am i looking at? >> you're looking -- >> rose: it's an old space. you're looking at the industrial complex that kind of basically has a series of

confectory elements. inside the compound we are building two new things. one you can't see. the second one you can see emerging which is a tower which introduces vertical spaces in the otherwise completely horizontal entity. and in order to create both excitement, beauty and kind of an exceptional moment, we clad this small tower in gold, which actually turns out to be a really efficient decision because gold is so reflective that its aura permeates the entire space and if you're close to it, you look like a god because of the golden glow. >> rose: oh, you're going to give so many people ideas. ( laughter ) but you have said you really can't tell whether you're in an old building or a new one. >> it was very simple to make a contrast, but we created a kind

of seamless situation that you're never quite sure where you are. >> rose: but at the same time you wanted to make this a single entity. >> a single complex, yeah. >> rose: a single complex. yeah. a single entity or complex where you are constantly changing in spaces sometimes very narrow, sometimes expanding, sometimes horizontal. so it's a sequence of spatial experiences. >> rose: but does this present new opportunities for displaying art? >> i think it does. kind of simply because it is not betting on only one or two special conditions, but what we were able to do is kind of vary the situation. for instance, one sequence of rooms deliberately starts with very small rooms and every next room is bigger. so -- and that sequence goes on

kind of for maybe seven or eight rooms. so although the nature of the building is the same, each painting or each sculpture looks completely different in each of the spaces. >> rose: this is the next slide. tell me what i'm seeing. >> what you're seeing here, this is really quite original on the part of prada that their opening exhibition was an exhibition about roman sculpture that insisted what was interesting about roman sculpture is they all cop idea greek examples, and the greek examples and greek originals are gone, so the roman sculpture art is an art of copying. so here they were able to assemble many copies of the same building, of the same kind of sculpture. so in a way, what they showed is strong qualities of lack of originality, of kind of a

generic approach. kind of basically a filter between you're inside a new building but you see your horizon is defined by existing buildings and it's part of this kind of relationship between old and new where you're never quite sure what you are and where you are. >> rose: let me see the next side quickly. >> and then, again, this is part of prada and her husband's mentality. they are not only about one thing but they are about the dversity of things and, so, what they did in the same set of the exhibition, when it was over, they did ballets in the same space. so it was an extremely moving moment, what was immobile and immutable became alive literally. >> rose: now we go to the garage in moscow.

how did this come about? this was a competition? >> this was not a competition. >> rose: not at all? no. dashan's marriage but kind of an independent person came to us and simply asked us to work with her on the replacement of the garage. the garage was kind of a building of soviet architecture of the 20s to be abandoned and with her we looked for this opportunity and found completely ruined restaurant of the 60s and converted it into the museum space. >> rose: it's in goo gorky park? it is within gorky park and

the gorky park was being renovated and it's part of moscow. >> rose: you described this projects as not restoring the building but preserving it's decay. >> the history of why a building is ruin is an interesting his historical question, so rather than making it new we plant the building in a skin of polycarbonate. >> rose: what is that? a form of plastic that actually has a beautiful effect. it's reflective but also translucent, and it's great and abstract of what you see outside. if you're outside you're aware you're in the park but you don't see the detail. so you can focus on what's inside but also you're aware of

the environment. >> rose: next slide. look at this. >> so this is what i meant or what we meant with kind of preserving decay in that kind of building there was a soviet mural that represented one of the seasons, and which, in general, conveyed a happy sense of communal life, and it was not entirely in tact anymore. you see the patches of brick. so tha rather than restore it is entirety, with we left it like that for all to see what the building had gone through. >> rose: remembering this is the place that inspired you to be an architect. >> and which still really remains a fascinating kind of city. >> rose: more so than st. peefortsburg? >> both. i feel really privileged to have

been able to have witnessed for a long time the changes. >> rose: how would you characterize it today in terms of its energy and in terms of its -- >> i think that -- >> rose: outlook. i think that if you look at the population -- first of all, there is the educational system has always been on a very high level. so russia in general, russians are very educated, very intelligent, very inclined to mathematics. so that already gives a kind of wonderful level of conventionality. >> rose: is it different than china? >> it's much -- i would say there is, of course, a much longer interrupted tradition of imagination and creativity. >> rose: in moscow.

ussians read, and they read the classics, and the classics are very vivid. so all of that, of course, gives the kind of density and the depth, regardless. i would say right now the younger generation is extremely imaginative and extremely creative. >> rose: yeah, there is a kind of excitement there. >> yeah. >> rose: in an interesting way, this again, you're taking in an existing structure and putting a new polycarbonate coat on it and that kind of thing. having something to work with, in some ways, alleviates the pressure to be so totally, spectacularly new. >> yeah. that is a wonderful discovery that we made by embracing preservation, by looking at preservation, and it also allows

you then to focus on what is essentially needs to be changed or what needs to be invented. >> rose: you noted decision-makers in china tend to be young and van appetite for risk. true in russia, too? >> it's difficult to say. i think there is a younger generation with an enormous appetite for risk, i would say. >> rose: yes. and a lot of money, too. >> this was not in the building. not. the prergs violation let us move out of luxury and ex trave gages financially. >> rose: let's go to the cctv.

every hotel you look at, there it is. tell us what went into the imagination that created that structure. and what dictated it? >> of course, nothing really dictated it, but it worked for -- but i worked for a media company there before. >> rose: a media company. that's what it is. it's a combination of -- >> rose: chinese media. -- the studios, almost the complete -- i think the program is most similar to, you could say, universal city hollywood. >> rose: yes, that's right. and when we worked for universal city, we discovered that in a creative company, there is a tendency of each part to isolate itself vis-a-vis the other parts and to not feel part of a kind of single hall. so what we wanted to do here is create a loop-like organization where each part and each member

of the organization was constantly aware and confronted with all the other ones. so that explains the loop. and the continuity of the building. it explains the continuity of the loop and the by-product of that is that the building looks completely different from every angle. >> rose: indeed. sometimes it looks like a circle. sometimes it looks like -- it's crucial in a city like beijing which is used to symmetrical and classic and stable buildings, a building that would change with your own movement. >> rose: where do you put this in the pantheon of things you have done? >> i think it's very amazing thing to be one of the authors

of. >> rose: yes, indeed. i was trying to push you into something beyond that. that's about as much as i'm going to get from you, isn't it? i'm pleased to be one of the authors. smart technology, take a look at this slide. technology has changed architecture, and you say, just to go right to it, it's invaded our privacy like we never would have imagined, and you're not happy about that. >> two things, basically we did beinnale in venice and chose one of the exhibitions called the elements of architecture and people were horrified in part that we would look at such simple things as doors, floors, windows, and we looked at each of these elements both in

different cultures, but also to time. and we realized, in many of those elements, digital culture and digital devices had really infiltrated those elements or merged with those elements and that, therefore, many of the elements of architecture changed their nature in a pretty drastic way and were becoming either interactive or were constantly monitoring users or inhabitants. >> rose: you said this was a potentially sinister dimension to smart technology. >> well, yes -- personally, you know, as a writer, you use rhetoric, and then sometimes it's a bit heavy to be confronted with your own

rhetoric. ( laughter ) i would say maybe lower the alert. maybe it's not the red or orange alert, but maybe it's simply an observation that this kind of lady is on a toilet and basically each event on the toilet is kind of recorded and memorialized. >> rose: let me read it. this is toto. intel jen toilet two features a urine sample catcher that can measure glucose levels useful for diabetics, urine temperature, hormone levels for women trying to conceive, watch that the gathers data and communicates with the user by wi-fi, compelling a health report. i'm okay with that. >> you're okay with that? >> rose: yeah. with the frequently that toilets imply? >> rose: i mean, i'm okay with anything -- >> three or four times a day?

>> rose: i'll tell you more why i'm okay with that. i mean, realize that i am saying all the dimensions of somehow people's medical information ought to be private, you know, and other people shouldn't have access to it because it violates their, you know, rights of privacy. i also believe so strongly, though, that we now have sensors and devices that can alert us to our health that's really significant and that would be much healthier if we had a greater sense of how our body was functioning. >> you're totally right in. that sense, i'm also in a difficult position, so it's definitely not that we want to warn against these technologies, per se, but that we want to alert the kind of world that, if you add all of them together, there is perhaps an overdose of or an element of surveillance,

and it's like sitting in a corner and basically, if you want to drive without a safety belt, the car, in a way, sabotages the intention. so, in that sense, yes, it is a smart thing and, yes, it is a good thing and, yes, you're warned against the potential danger, but, on the other hand, maybe you want to run that potential danger. >> rose: it's also the fact that in a digital world, it's almost like nothing is sacred. >> nothing is sacred. i think we need to really be aware of what we are giving away. >> rose: oh, i agree. and that was basically the kind of reason for this rhetoric. actually, we are -- >> rose: this is one more case where you are being a provocateur. >> yes, but also maybe being a reporter because i'm fascinated

with this world and i'm trying desperately to work within that world and for that world to see whether there are also dimensions of using it that, in our view, are providing a more urgent or more comprehensive condition. this is a picture of the countryside 100 years ago. you see three women that are clearly in a very structured and ordered society where the norms are kind of shared and they live in an environment that they've always known all their lives. >> rose: here is what point? the point is kind of civility rules and a degree of community that is seemingly immutable. now you look 100 years later, here, in the same place, in switzerland, you see three thai ladies in jeans that are in

switzerland not because they want to but because they are cheap labor force that maintain the second homes of affluent people in switzerland. so previously you had authentic evidence of a village, now you have a kind of imported layer that changes radically and that's what we have been exploring. >> rose: part of what you are saying the mainstream architecture ignored tish shies and trends affecting less populated rural areas. >> everyone is moving to the city, so we focused on the city and looked at the nature of the city, but we never looked at the kind of territory that is abandoned by everybody moving to the city and, therefore, we never discovered that actually that countryside is also changing and may be changing more than cities.

cities have been more or less stable but the countryside is really changing and what is fascinating to me now is that for our digital culture, certain implements and certain processes and certain accommodation is needed that simply turns the countryside into a digital urban culture. >> rose: big data farm. farming has become in itself perhaps the most digitized activity that we know. >> rose: they can tell you about all kinds of things like climate. >> like climate. >> rose: like seeds and everything else. >> like seeds but it also can enable the farmer to have a position that never was possible and, in a way, more and more the computer screen has become the field itself. it's kind of complete territory. >> rose: okay, but it is also

becoming a catalyst for change for people in africa. >> absolutely. >> rose: in a significant way. they can do things that they could not do before, and including their own economic welfare. >> and, so, in that sense, the transformation, i would say, in africa, in case in point, is an absolutely positive transformation. so this is one area where we're actually kind of really exploring further. here you see in nevada near reno -- >> rose: a data farm. a data farm, and a complex of data farms, and, you know, that suggests the urban condition. but if you look at each of these entities, you realize that they are serving farms, they are

serving the digital culture, but without necessarily inhabitants. so what you see is eenormous complexes together with a space between them with barely a population -- >> rose: post-human civilization you say? >> post-human civilization or at least an inkling of what our world is going to generate. >> rose: an urbanization without people. >> exactly, an uninhabited urbanization, and that is incredibly exciting territory because you see it also the in e environment. for people we make space but you can exploit and even celebrate

the absence of people. >> rose: i want to see a clip from a document rimade by your -- documentary made by your son tomas. when will this be finished? >> this year. i think the point of the film is not to talk about me. it's really to convey the experience of the buildings. >> rose: okay. all right, role tape. here's a portion of this. ♪ >> i felt it was really crucial at least for me to find another way of being an architect. we are always challenged by

problems. i think it's much better to say we are challenged by people's needs. this is the ereworking center. >> rose: react to what you just said. >> to this? >> rose: yeah. you hope we come away from this. this is just simply a slight sliver of it. you hope we come away with a sense of a life in architecture, we come away with a sense of -- >> what i hope you come away with is a kind of sense of engagement, but not with power,

necessarily, not with spectacle, p but -- spectacle, but an engagement to really address needs in almost an old-fashioned way and to kind of address the interests of people who are enacting these things. so, in that sense, i think you will maybe come away, i hope you come away with the sense that it's not going to -- the huge egos that define architects and architecture but that it's going to remain sometimes efficient, sometimes exciting, and sometimes a deep way of engaging with the world. >> rose: thank you for coming. thank you. >> rose: a pleasure to see you as always. >> really, for me, too, charles. >> rose: rem koolhaas for the hour. thank you for joining us.

>> 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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