Original subtitles

Hello. Lovely to see you.

Yes, you.

I don't mean the house technician there stomping over my roof, but you.

I am this building here.

The Berlin Philharmonic.

What you see in the back, Potsdamer Platz.

There was next to nothing for miles when I was born in 1963.

That's right.

I'm 50 years old now.

Thanks for the flowers, but I'm most pleased by a little serenade.

The city of Berlin has certainly shaped me as I in turn have shaped the city.

A bit, I hope.

As buildings, we have more influence on the world than you let yourself think.

Back then it was quite a provocation, or at least a gamble, to set me into the

middle of a no-man's land on the extreme periphery of West Berlin.

The cultural center that was planned here was supposed to affect the eastern

part of the city as well.

And so I am standing here ever since like a large circus tent, a

metaphor for an idea of lightness, both...

ephemeral and festive.

I have many visitors day after day, young and old, new as well as old

acquaintances, some of whom have grown very dear to my heart.

Helmut Stern and I were old friends.

He was a member of the orchestra when I was inaugurated 50 years ago and later

first violinist and chairman of the orchestra board.

My shell may appear mysterious to you.

But just imagine that the complexity of my interior space was simply turned

inside out.

From the outside, I might not strike you as being so large, but inside I am

wide open.

The idea, or the utopia, of an open society is reflected in me, like in a

huge ship that also enhances a collective principle in one space.

For years, Mrs. Warnecke has been taking care of the tessellated floor.

of my large log.

More than anything, it's the lady's high heels that are knocking

out the little stones.

And since I've become a protected landmark, deservedly so, the mosaic must

always be meticulously repaired.

I finally see the reason for my existence.

The Berliner Philharmoniker.

The Berlin Philharmonic.

Today, under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, they are rehearsing one of my

favorite pieces, Jeu, by Claude Debussy.

What Diego is so excited about is the digital concert hall.

A high-tech facility that allows the Berliner Philharmoniker to be recorded

live and sent out into the entire world with the help of modern microphone

technology and HD cameras that are remote controlled by joysticks.

Of course Diego is only allowed to play with it during the rehearsals.

Now I can finally introduce you to my spiritual father, my architect, the

great Hans Scharoun.

I am something like his crowning achievement.

Again, plus violin, violins. We also have drums

and harpsichord.

One, two, three.

Strings, 67.

I feel the spirit of Hans Scharoun still stirring within me.

So forgive me for presenting him to you so vividly, with that inevitable cigar

of his, and as grumpy as he always was.

During the Nazi regime, Mr. Scharoun was counted among the degenerate artists, so

he was not allowed to build anything.

As a result, Lots of ideas piled up in his barren time and he dreamt of an

organic architecture, which then found its exemplary shape in me.

My architect was from Bremen, a Hanseatic city, and grew up in the

neighborhood of shipyards.

Sometimes I feel he thought of me as an ocean liner, and that's why he inserted

portholes into my shell or let a large ship's bow expand into the space.

I am the unsinkable Titanic of concert halls.

I have two roofs, an exterior one that shapes my tent-like appearance

and an inner one that serves the acoustics and the sound distribution and

also carries the wood paneling that coats the inside of my resonating body.

The conductor is the focal point.

Such a concert venue did not exist before me.

A hall in which the orchestra stands in the center and where the listeners can

look down at the musicians like from ascending vineyard slopes.

I can confirm that the orchestra's chief conductor at that time was not wholly

innocent in this concept.

That wish came true.

What was impossible then remains difficult even today.

to calculate the acoustics of a hall in advance.

My concave roofs and the shape of a circus tent have certainly contributed

to my sounding so good.

You are now in the Holy of Holies, the conductor's room.

Ich liebe meine Berliner Philharmoniker.

I love my Berlin Philharmonic.

Many musicians I saw come and go, and several conductors, of course.

I've come to know three directors so far, and all of them resided in this

room here, which looks just as it did on the first day when Herbert von Karajan

moved in.

His successes weren't as possessive as he was.

He liked to speak of his Philharmonica.

After Claudio Abaddo, My boss is now Sir Simon Rattle, considerably more

reserved, Englishman that he is, but not any less passionate or devoted.

Not that I would presume to rate or assess anyone, or to favour one over the

other. As a public building, I'm not entitled to that.

I perform my duty.

My old friend Helmut is a Berliner.

He was ten when his family had to flee after the infamous Kristallnacht.

In 1961 he returned to Berlin.

It was largely thanks to him that my Berliner Philharmoniker appeared in

Israel in 1990, conducted by Daniel Barrenbohm.

Sharon designed me based on an underlying idea of three interconnected

pentagrams. Nobody knows exactly how this idea came about. At any rate,

that's how I became both. A huge musical instrument myself and an

exceptional spatial structure.

Hans Scharoun did not live to see my sumptuous exterior panelling.

He had planned it, in fact, but when I was built, the gold anodized aluminum

sheets were deemed too expensive and were only added in the 80s.

When my foundations were laid in 1960, my site was just a wasteland.

From the heavily bombed center of the city around Potsdamer Platz, only a

couple of scattered ruins remained, along with Sankt Matei Church here.

Only one year later, in 1961, in the midst of my construction, a grim rival

structure was started right in front of my door, just 100 meters away.

The Berlin Wall.

You can see how it extended all the way to the close of Brandenburg Gate.

Suddenly, I stood in no man's land and had to hold my ground alone until five

years later, the magnificent National Gallery by Mies van der Rohe rose in my

neighborhood. And one decade later, the Staatsbibliothek was built, also

designed by Hans Scharoun.

I was barely finished in time for the opening ceremony.

The works were still going on all over.

Maybe it was only possible to create such an open public space as a

resounding body for the young federal republic at that time in the 60s, under

the social democracy of the governing mayor, Willy Brandt.

Pick up.

Pick up.

Hello, would you like my ticket?

Yeah, how much is it?

20

Giving up the central viewer's perspective was nothing less than a

revolution.

My seating blocks, staggered against one another, lead the eyes of the audience

in different directions. The individual sections each have as many seats as the

big orchestra has members.

Even the musicians feel the difference.

They no longer play at the end of the room, but rather in the very center.

and can actually sense the attention of the audience.

Sharon didn't want to treat all listeners alike.

Putting the undifferentiated mass, he thought, into the old shoebox concert

halls would also lead to undifferentiated individuals.

Instead, he tried to create a space in which each listener could develop

a distinct sense of self.

One can reach every seat in the entire hall without leaving the room.

Everything is organically connected and accessible to each and every one.

In the light of all this, I am the utopian image of a society composed from

all walks of life.

Amen.

Thank you.

Although I've now been here for half a century, many people still perceive me

as tremendously modern and are deeply struck when they enter me for the first

time. I am proud of that.

Also of the fact that since I was built, many concert halls throughout the world

have emerged, which are all inspired by Sharon's revolutionary idea of putting

the orchestra into the center.

became his eminent legacy.

And so I stand now in what has become a new city, in a new country, if you want,

the jewel of that cultural center I was once planned to be. As it's very hard, I

have now been beating for 50 years.

People degenerate because they aren't able to connect the beginning with the

end.

And then our friends started talking.

There is nothing better than Nevsky Prospekt.

At least in Petersburg.

For which it is everything.

I know for a fact.

that not one of its pale office clerks would exchange Nevsky Prospekt for all

the tea in China.

Not just the 25-year-old with the dashing mustache and the beautifully

tailored frock coat, but even the fellow with white whiskers sprouting from his

chin and the head as smooth as a silver platter.

He too is enraptured.

by Nevsky Prospect.

And last we forget, the ladies.

Nevsky Prospect finds even more favor with the ladies.

Their reading tastes were very Catholic, with my mother preferring Russian

classics.

Neither she nor my father held definite opinions about literature, music,

art. Although in their youth they knew personally a number of Leningrad

writers, composers, painters.

They were just readers, evening readers, to be more precise, and they were always

careful to renew their library cards.

Returning from work, my mother would invariably have in her string bag full

of potatoes or cabbage a library book, wrapped in a newspaper cover, to prevent

it from getting soiled.

... ...

...

... ...

It was in this last month that I learned to talk, lying in a corner for a whole

day and thinking about the king of peas.

But why am I going now?

Am I capable of this?

Is this serious?

Not at all serious.

So, for the sake of fantasy, I am enjoying myself.

All six tiny rooms were heated by steam central

heating, which meant that in the little flat you were suffocated by a humid

hothouse heat.

The panes of the windows sweated.

And Sofia Petrovna's visitor sweated.

Both maid and husband eternally sweated.

Sofia Petrovna Likhutina was herself covered in perspiration like a Japanese

chrysanthemum in warm dew.

Well, so how could any perspective be established in such a hothouse?

And there was no perspective.

Due to my husband's position, I am often

obliged to go out in society, to receive guests and return their

visits, to attend evening parties and dinners.

But I have no friends, male or female.

I have nothing in common with the local ladies, and I don't believe in

friendship between men and women.

That's enough about me. If you reply, tell me at least something about

yourself. What are you like?

Where do you make your home?

Do you prefer Shakespeare or Shelley?

Goethe or Dante?

Balzac? or Flaubert.

Do you like music? And what kind?

Are you married?

Are you bound up in some dreary alliance?

Or perhaps you and your bride are in that tender and beautiful phase when

everything is new and joyous, when there still are no memories, which are only

wearisome. which give you the illusion of some form of happiness, and

inscrutable ones taken for granted.

She is only a little girl, and there has never once been a sign

of even a maiden in her.

With her hearty nature and her simple, almost earthy upbringing, she certainly

did not promise to remain a virgin.

But all the same, she is approaching womanhood.

What kind of a woman will she be?

What kind of a woman should she be?

One day, while strolling about the schoolyard during the midday recess,

Olya Mishcherskaya had been speaking in a quick rapid patter to her favorite

classmate, The Tall Plump Subbotina Girl.

Once I was reading one of Papa's books, he has cats of curious old books, and I

read what a woman must have to be truly beautiful.

It said, black eyes, smoldering like peach.

Really and truly, that's what it said, smoldering like peach.

Then, eyelashes, black as the night.

a gentle blush about the cheeks, a slender form, hands somewhat longer than

the usual , a bit longer than ordinary, a small foot,

a moderately large bosom, a calf that is rounded just so, a knee the

color of seashells, sloping shoulders.

I learned a lot of it almost by heart.

It's also perfectly right.

But the main thing, you know what the main thing is?

Light breathing.

And I've got it, you know.

Just you listen how I can sigh.

It's true, I've got it, don't I?

Now that light breathing has dissolved you in the vapors of the world.

In the cloud-strewn skies, the cold spring wind.

is the realm of completeness to be found here is a copy of any book ever printed

in this part of the world and a second copy too a book behind the book

there is something disconcerting even frivolous about such abundance

in which the extraordinary resides alongside the merely remarkable flanked

by the middling and sometimes that's right many a book inside these walls

was the occasion of bloodshed in the world outside wars have been

sparked by the slightest alteration in the text of the bible now the

books have found their peace and come to rest alongside each other

but there were times in which they had to be hidden disowned struck off the

list.

Any book stripped of its call number no longer existed and was safe from being

sold off, given away or even destroyed.

There can be beauty in compliance with a system.

Numberless books were deprived of existence and could therefore continue

to live.

Others moved to a secret collection.

They were there, but equally, They were not.

Inquiries met with blank stares.

When the winds of fate turned, the books would stir and begin

their return to the front row.

Now visitors request them again.

Now. It is always now.

At some point someone always said that now was now.

And the problem no longer exists.

Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it.

To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone

else's.

In the first case, you are a man.

In the second, you're no better than a bird.

Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped.

The low sun shone yellow on the empty fields.

The horses splashed steadily through the puddles.

He gazed at the fleetingly glimpsed horseshoes, his black brows knitted, and

thought.

Yes, you've only yourself to blame.

Yes, of course, they were the best moments.

and not merely the best, but truly magical.

All round the scarlet dog rose, rose bloomed, the avenues of

dark limes stood.

But, my God, what would have happened later on?

What if I hadn't abandoned her?

What nonsense!

This Nadezhda, not the keeper of a lodging house, But my wife, the

mistress of my house in St. Petersburg, the mother of my children...

And closing his eyes, he shook

his head.

But let one thing...

be known to you by dears one day before the lord is like a

thousand years and a thousand years like one day

we

always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception something vast

vast but Why must it be vast?

Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bathhouse in the

country, black and grimy, and spiders in every corner?

And that's all?

Eternities?

And so death, the worst of all evils, means nothing to us.

As long as we are here, he is not.

And if he is, we are not.

O Lord, make me know my end, and what is the measure of my days.

Let me know how fleeting I am.

Behold, you have made my days a few hand breaths, and my lifetime

is as nothing before you.

it is

God bless

you.

So, what is time?

If no one asks me, I know.

If I'm asked and should answer, I do not know.

What doesn't sparkle on the street?

you

I'm huge.

I'm tall and I'm long.

I'm massive.

I'm the one who makes this a high security prison.

Inside of me there's a whole community of its own.

Everything. Cells and kitchen and schools and workplace, forest, gardens.

You have everything. Even a little shop where you can buy things.

It's like a little village And

I'm the one who separates this village

from the rest of the world

You

are not allowed to pass me At any point, at any time.

You have to go through the gate.

The only opening I have.

Before you pass through me, you can be...

whoever you want to be.

But once you have passed through me you become a prisoner

or a prison officer.

I'm the one who defines who you are.

I'm the difference between being a prisoner and being you.

I have a thousand eyes I

can see everything that goes on

And

you don't know that I can see you

I can't see inside the cells.

But I can see everywhere else.

I can see who you talk to.

I see you when you're at school.

when you're at work when you eat

I

know

all about you I know everything about everybody

That's quite a lot actually.

I know about the rules inside of me.

But I'm also curious about you outside, what the rules are like there.

I guess the rules are different because when new people arrive, they don't

always understand our rules either.

So I know they are used to another set of rules.

I only know the rules within me.

Most of the rules are very strict and they're absolute.

There are no exceptions.

On the other hand, it is very difficult for people to follow the rules all

the time.

It's not an easy thing to do.

If someone violates the rules, we have rules for that too.

What will happen then?

in one way that feels good or else this little society would collapse.

It would be very very difficult for it to function at all.

People in here are not welcome in the outside world I

have all kinds of people in me

I

see troubled

people I see people growing I see sick people

And I see sick people getting well again.

The complexity of human nature is very obvious in here.

The strange thing is that even people who have done terrible things

also have a lot of good in them.

As a cell, I see things that no one else sees.

I see you when you're all alone.

I can see if you're happy to be with me or if you hate

being with me.

And you really shouldn't hate being with me because I'm the one who takes care of

you almost.

half the time I'm the one place where you can try to be

a little bit of yourself you can cry if you want to you can laugh if you want to

you can talk to yourself you can have imaginary talks

with your friends and family and you can use your imagination to

escape me for a little bit.

I'm probably the calmest place in the prison.

Those who come to me they come to me because they want to.

I provide a link to something else.

I'm an isolation cell.

So when prisoners come in here, they're not happy at all.

This is what happens with people who have chaos and frustration inside of

them, in their heads and in their hearts.

But that's what I'm here for.

That's my job.

And I think my job is needed.

This is quite special.

A little house within the walls.

Prisoners can receive visits, overnight visits from their families.

I know it is inside the prison, but the house and the garden...

is almost like an ordinary little house.

I bring a lot of joy.

But tears as well

Well,

I am a prison and I am a high-security prison

I don't know much about the outside world.

What I know is what happens around my walls.

I know there's things behind the trees, and I know the cars are going somewhere,

and I know that people have a life outside.

I don't know what it's like.

I am kind of a small village, isolated from the rest of the world.

So I'm thinking that maybe there are other villages out there where

people also live and have their own lives.

Is it the same?

As the years goes by, I also see that things change outside.

I see the landscape changing, cars are changing, the way people dress are

changing.

So I know there's a lot of change out there, but here with

me, everything remains the same.

In reverence for the work that has been done by architects of the past, what was

has always been, what is has always been, and what will be has always been.

What we're doing now is trying to think like nature.

We are aware that species that have gone before us have disappeared

from the face of the earth.

We'd like to use our intelligence and our creative capacity to prolong our

presence on the face of the earth as long as possible.

It was apparent from my first conversation with Lou Kahn, the

architect whom I went to see to ask how one chooses an architect.

I wanted to show you some sketches I made when I was in Rome.

I was thinking more deeply about the Institute's nature and purpose.

It instantly became clear that architecture had been used in the past

by man.

to express ideas.

It's so marvelous to think of beginning when something which we're all familiar

with now never was present.

Architecture is the thoughtful making of spaces.

Spaces have character, and that character has a tendency to evoke a

sense of wanting to live there, work there, study there.

is reputed to have said that we shape our buildings and our buildings shape

us.

The way nature works seems to be quite magical.

How did that come into existence in this remarkably complex state that

allows us to sit here and reflect upon the cosmos of which we are a product and

ask such long-range, profound questions as how can we influence the future?

When I conducted an experiment, I tried to make the invisible visible.

There's something there.

I can understand it by the effects that are produced.

But how did that come to be?

You wonder how one person can change the world.

But here was this man who did exactly that.

And then he built an institute that would inspire others to change the world

as well.

In the case of polio, the virus prevails.

then we will lose.

But solutions come through evolution.

It comes through asking the right question, because the answer pre-exists,

but it's the question that we have to define and discover.

You don't invent the answer, you reveal the answer.

My lab uses viruses to understand and treat cancer.

In the back of my mind is always the patient's phase.

to spark that new thought. It could be from my lab or it could be from the labs

down the hall and all of those around me because it's together that we can

actually think outside of the box.

Today, a great profession made a giant step forward.

And the news that came out of this room lifted a sense of fear from the homes of

millions of Americans.

The man who made the vaccine, Jonas Salk. Who owns the patent on this

vaccine? The people, I would say, there is no patent.

Could you patent the sun?

When I had an opportunity to try to create a place that would bring out the

best in people, I took advantage of that.

Try to create an environment that is like a work of art.

Bring out the best in the most creative minds.

I've been here for now 26 years as a member of the faculty.

I run a lab here for that entire time.

It's typically the case that people come here and they never leave, so I know

most of the people at the Institute.

I know them well.

This building affects the person who I am and the work that I do.

I'm a neuroscientist, and I study the brain basis of visual perception.

Architects often refer to a concept known as genius loci.

It's a Latin term from ancient Rome. It means spirit of place, the subjective

existential quality of a space.

It's the quality that gives a space meaning and sensuality.

fuels the human spirit.

I see life as an art form and a necessity to house

creative work in a creative ambience so as to bring out the best in people who

need that kind of an atmosphere.

This is Fish Need Water.

Jonas' idea was that this would be a place where some of the most important

science in biology was done in the world.

You have that kind of ambition for the institute you're going to build. The

architecture that you come up with has to reflect that.

This is a photograph of a model of the Salk project.

It's conceived around the idea of the clean air architecture, which is the

architecture of the laboratory.

I went out of sight alone and it was twilight.

I tried to imagine how the buildings would look and I must say I suddenly

became terribly unhappy.

That night I didn't sleep very well and the next morning I told Lou I thought

that we have to start over again.

The architect must listen to the requirements of a certain program, but

he must realize that the client is not an architect.

The architect, realizing that he must begin all over again, disregard the

program given to him and discover the nature of the rooms where it is good to

lie.

In the process of making, you must be very close to a sense of order.

But in the end, the object you make, the building you make, must be unmeasurable.

When you want to give something presence, you have to consult nature.

There is where design comes in.

To dealing with concrete, you must know the order of concrete.

You must know its nature.

Concrete wants to be granite, but can't quite manage.

And the reinforcing rods in it are a secret worker that makes this

marvelously capable.

Molten stone is a wonderful product of the mine.

I really feel blessed being part of this institute, helping people that could

help us in the future. It's a big honor for me.

The very first hour is my favorite time because when I hear those noises, when I

pass through the basement, it's alive again, and I'm also alive.

The plant is something that one must define.

It defines itself.

It defines itself in the way in which it's expressed.

He exhibited as much respect for me as I have for him. Because of this, the two

of us struggled through many hard battles to arrive at a far deeper

insight.

He was able then to come up with the kind of design that produced the effect

that you see.

And I saw a sweep, a single sweep, going from building to building.

And you inspired me to do what I did. Well, then I had to come back and

suggest we make a court rather than a closet out of it. Yeah. With the

benches. With the benches. But then somebody...

The building has been designed as one would design a living organism.

We didn't set out to design a living organism, but we tried to learn from the

way living organisms are constructed.

I can compare the cooling system of the building to a live person.

The fan blows air from the outside to cool and to heat the environment, like

the nervous system.

There are practical aspects to designing a building for science designing a

building full of laboratories The space has to serve the needs of science in a

very practical way

My laboratory is technically in the basement, but there are enormous light

wells outside the lab, and all the walls are glass.

It's possible to enter at one door, to walk all the way through the floor

without ever opening or closing a door.

There are no structural walls in the interior.

The beauty of that is that you can have an open floor plan.

the conversation of the various rooms and their nature. They supplement each

other to make the environment rich with the feeling that it's a good place to

learn.

Interstitial floors between the main floors, Kahn referred to as servant

spaces.

Those servant spaces have things you don't want to have in the laboratory,

like vacuum pumps, freezers.

microscope rooms, darkened rooms, lasers.

And move the pipes around, air conditioning and heating ducts.

Lines for gases that we need to use in the lab can be routed down into the

laboratory floor below.

To have that extraordinary flexibility that's given by the design of the space

gives us a powerful advantage.

This has to be a two-way flow.

as any other living organism related to its environment can survive.

Only if it serves the environment, so to speak, and if the environment serves it.

The doctor gets their own style of stethoscope.

I have the same type of stethoscope, but it's only for differentiating the sound.

It's like a heartbeat, but this one is continuous breathing.

Eventually, Lou Kahn became quite a biologist, and I began to appreciate the

importance of aesthetics and the creation of environment, creation of

spaces, so as to bring out the spirit and soul of man.

the feeling of total harmony, as though you were meeting your maker, the maker

being nature.

Jonas truly understood the importance of creating an environment that nurtured

the science.

This building is a manifestation of that desire to impact the world.

Salk and Khan, a scientist and artist who collaborated, could see what the

rest of us couldn't perceive.

And their great gift is this building.

Science enables me to explore the very nature of our existence.

The answers are in nature, and it tells you where to look.

The answers that we need to find.

Science that's on the cutting edge is formed when two existing fields connect

and there's a spark that comes out of that.

It's where we're going to make new discoveries, find out new things about

the world. And the building itself facilitates that spark.

It's a strange paradox.

Kahn built an open space that focuses the mind.

Our work deals with the recesses of the mind from what yet is not said and yet

not made comes from.

This building has a soul.

It explores three-dimensional space like a living thing.

Form gives rise to function only in the third dimension.

And that's what this building does. It gives rise to discovery. It forms a

three-dimensional structure that enables it.

The sun somehow doesn't realize how wonderful it is until after a room is

made. So somehow man's creation, the making of a room, is nothing short of a

miracle.

Light is essential for our well-being It's that light that tunes us to the

universe to learn to explore to understand nature

Discover the order of water the order of

wind the order of light Being a scientist is

almost a monastic existence you're devoted to a cause a belief in something

powerful In the same sense the great cathedrals of Europe provide a home for

worship, the Salk Institute provides a home for the worship of sciences, the

worship of nature.

All material is light that has become exhausted.

And this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow

belongs to light.

All of us at the Salk Institute have the sense that this building is ours.

It's a space that's given to us to accomplish a set of goals.

And at the same time, it belongs to us. It's our home.

It's the place where our community thrives.

The building is a symbol in the same sense that the cathedrals of Europe are

symbols of devotion to a cause.

This building is a symbol of devotion to nature.

Our senses are overwhelmed these days. We're assaulted on every side by

information. We're driven to distraction.

We forget what the question is, or even why we are here.

And then you come out here.

And there is nothing.

You're not thinking about anything else. You're just... Thinking about what the

question is, what you can do, how you can help to solve the problem.

And you look at this building and say, is it worth your dream?

Does it evoke the measurable and the unmeasurable sense of all?

Is it beautiful?

I think that what's the most important thing of all is for people to express

themselves in whatever metaphor is natural for them.

And the time may come when it will be possible to put all these different

things side by side.

and discover what they have in common.

That's what interests me. To find the communality in the different forms of

expression to discover their origin and therefore to understand their evolution.

Yes.

As human beings, Salk and Kahn are both gone.

For decades now what they created is alive and working today

And

the movement of silence to light light to silence is the

aura of the inspirations

We are gathered to pay homage and respect to a man whose imagination and

his work will have marked the time in which we live.

It is our good fortune to have known him, worked with him, loved him, our

paths crossed, allowing each to help the other, to say and to reveal what would

otherwise have been unknowable.

We will speak no more, but the dialogue will go on.

can be visualized as a wild dance of flame

which settles and spends itself into material, and

that the mountains, the earth, the streams, the air, and

we are a spent light.

I look upon my lifespan and I recognize the enormous opportunities that I've

had.

No one asked me to do the things that I've done.

I took the initiative myself.

And I believe that that's a universal trait and characteristic that exists

within us, which I think of as the evolutionary force

being expressed and attempting to improve the species, to improve life, to

improve the possibility.

or survive.

That's how nature thinks. That's how nature works.

I am a house.

They put me here, in this neighborhood of arrivals and departures.

Among the broken-hearted and the open-hearted.

They widened their circle and let me in.

They gave me a seat.

I am an immigrant.

An intruder.

But I'm here now, at the edge of your fjord.

I am a house.

But even so, you treat me as something more, like a cathedral,

your white cathedral.

I am a house.

That's all.

Until you step into me.

Until you step onto me.

Until your voice echoes in my corridors.

Until I feel the lightness of your feet.

Until then, I am a house.

One,

two,

three

Other side, guys.

So, ready?

Left side.

Seven, eight, and one.

Up, high passé.

One, out.

More out, out, out.

Keep up your body. Up.

And allongé.

And now keep clean up those.

give me your weightless moments your impossible moves

your aching muscles

imprint your steps into my marble memory I'll keep it

for that is what a house can do to stay when you go

how I wish I could travel with you

that my life like yours could be as brief as a breath that you

had created me to die like you

27 bones in every hand.

43 muscles in a face.

100,000 kilometers of blood vessels.

Three billion heartbeats before it stops.

And leaves me without you.

And then, another you.

Because you created me to outlive you.

Give me a part of you, whisper it to me, and listen as I whisper back.

Leave him before he leaves you.

One more step.

Just one.

Bye.

Thank you.

Give me your leaps, your hopes, your faults.

I'll keep them in my box of steel and oak and memories.

Give me your songs, your high notes.

For I am a house, and without you my echoes fall silent.

Thank you.

I will remember her, always dressed in pink.

Him, eyes full of longing, of winter.

Her, skin so soft, so soft.

Her. Leaning against me.

Waiting for someone.

Always waiting.

There were those who touched me and those who did not.

Those who talked to me and those who did not.

Those who needed the proof of a song, the beauty of a dance.

All different, all equal to me.

For I am a house and what I can offer in return is to remember

this one thing.

You.

Every day, I wake in the hour just before dawn.

It's precious time to myself, time for some solitude before the crowds come.

But even in darkness, empty of people, I'm still full of sound.

I breathe and swallow.

My heart keeps a steady, even beat.

When the sharp wind hits my bones they sing.

My metal sinews flex, but they do not crack.

As the horizon slowly brightens, birds begin to wake.

It's almost 6am.

When I was born, people said that I looked like an art refinery, a giant

climbing frame, or a gothic cathedral made out of steel.

I was not meant to be an isolated monument.

I am not just a museum or a library.

I am a living, breathing culture machine.

After so many years, I have become accustomed to the constant gaze of

countless millions of eyes.

The tourists and their quick glances from the piazza The flattering official

portrait on the postcards.

But once they come inside, they see another side of me.

All the cleaners and security guards, students and artists, they take what

they need of me and ignore the rest.

The tourists and performers, they make their own worlds out of me.

To the public, I present as bold a face as I can.

Behind the service doors, down the companionways, in the engine rooms, and

beyond the bulkheads, it's different.

crew that works here, I am so familiar that I am invisible to them.

For them, I am not a landmark.

Here in the performance space, time moves quickly.

It's almost empty now.

In a few hours, dancers will fill this stage with movement.

I am the solid ground they return to.

They bring life to the stillness.

foreign

The collection is not static.

Works of art come and go.

Silently I watch this one as it is packed away by gentle hands.

I confess to a jealous pan as I see it leave, bound for Japan and

freedom.

I am always here, rooted in the mud of Paris.

Each morning, I open at precisely eleven.

Each morning, except on Tuesday, there are impatient lines of jostling visitors

waiting to pour in.

Each morning before they arrive, I still struggle with a fleeting anxiety.

Is this the day that they lose interest?

Is this the day that they don't come?

but today crowds pour in across the open spaces of the forum into the great

departure hall as busy as an airport get their boarding cards at the ticket

counter and spread out in search of their destinations

i feel their devotion most in winter they shuffle and stamp trying to warm

their hands and feet braving the cold for the promise of what they will find

when they make their way inside the warmth and intense colour that defies a

pallid december

they

spill and foam up my ramps and walkways

like a crowd swarming up the gangways of a steam-powered liner tied on the quay

ready to cross the ocean each year five million come

visitors fill up the glass tubes and the walkways as if they were air-bridges

as they head for the museum of modern art

Forty years ago, two very young architects, Richard Rogers from London

and Renzo Piano from Genoa, worked hard to shock Paris out of its long sleep.

They designed me in the 1970s, the most startling structure that the city had

seen in the century since Eiffel built his tower.

Sometimes,

I wonder if I am the Nautilus, under the command of Jules Verne's Captain Nemo,

beached on the sandbanks of the old Paris, between the ruins of Baltard's

pavilions of Les Halles and the vanished brothels on the Rue Beaubourg.

Was I ever really young, or was I in fact born as a version of the future

that never came to pass?

i want to impress first-time visitors like these two i want to grab them by

the arm and show them my best pieces of course i have my favorites but i

play fair my lighting is even each gallery feels like the next i have to be

objective and impartial

I love it when I see that a work has moved a visitor and speaks directly to

something inside them.

They catch their breath.

They stop, fascinated for a moment.

They cannot know that I see each of them in the same way that they see the art on

the walls.

my temporary programme is always changing and shifting like a restless

sleeper tossing and turning stepping into these galleries the most devout of

my visitors lose themselves in a vivid waking dream and some just shrug and

move on

Paris had a museum of modern art even before I was built, but it didn't have a

public library that reflected the spirit of the modern city.

Putting the two together is what set me apart.

My book-lined spaces are a place both for the studious to work and the

dispossessed to get in out of the rain.

Even if few visitors flip through their pages now, I'm still drawn to some of

the more fantastical 19th century titles on the shelves.

Mysterious Islands, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, A Floating City,

The Green Ray, The Vanished Diamond, The Chase of the Golden

Meteor, The Danube.

pilot.

When I was new, people stopped in shock.

I was a web of steel bones and colorful veins.

I was a building that had no face.

That shock has faded.

Nobody is outraged by the way I look today.

Mesdames et messieurs, il est 20h30.

Je vous rappelle que le musée ainsi que les expositions seront fermées à 21h.

Dès 20h50, nous vous inviterons à bien vouloir regagner la sortie.

Merci.

During the day, visitors wander through me, aimlessly or full of purpose, in

groups or alone, each on their own individual search.

Later in the evening, people gather in the theatres and performance spaces.

The dancers bring a sense of urgency and movement.

I am their inert stage.

With every soft thud of their feet, as they land and lift off, I feel life.

Demain, le centre ainsi que la bibliothèque ouvriront à 11 heures.

Nous vous remercions de votre visite et espérons avoir le plaisir de vous

accueillir à nouveau très prochainement.

When the doors close, and I am alone again, I can breathe more easily.

Free from the human gaze, I can relax, think about what I saw today.

In a digital century, in a world of flickering pixels and anorexic flat

screens, the machine for culture that I am, which once seemed so violent,

So threatening has the nostalgic charm now of a steam engine.

In my head, I know that the world has moved on.

I face each day a little more battered and with a little more experience of the

lives of the millions who have marched across the wide open spaces of the

halls, queued for their tickets or taken up a place in the library.

I have been reshaped and remodeled almost since the day that the doors

first opened.

I am where France keeps its memories of the 20th century and where it imagines

its future.

I have been on record sleeves and posters.

I am a landmark.

I am a work of art.

I am an aircraft carrier moored in the midst of an ancient city.

At times I feel that Paris has accepted me, but rejected the vision that gave

birth to me.

You can call me naive, but I still have the optimism about the possibilities of

life that drives the artists whose work fills my galleries.

I have the same sense of certainty that gave my architects the confidence to

make their first sketches.

In my heart I am still their brave experiment.