Shouts & Murmurs

I may gripe and complain about my job from time to time (read: mostly when it’s time to transcribe an interview), but I know I’m among the lucky few whose work doesn’t really feel like work. I actually enjoy what I’m doing—work, for me, is an extension of the things I love to do. I go to the office every Friday, and even when I’m there to close our pages, I don’t dread a minute of it.

Just recently I was quite lucky to have interviewed Burj al-Arab architect Carlos Ott for a real estate article, and it was one of the most interesting interviews I’ve had so far. I love writing about people who are genuinely passionate about what they do, and Mr. Ott is the perfect example. 

Some of my favorite soundbites…

“Time is the only critic.”

“Yes,” he says, “many of us are temporarily famous, but the good architecture will be known many years later. Good architecture will make the silly superficial architecture of today rapidly fade away. Who am I to say if this is right or wrong? All I know is that when Gauguin and Picasso painted buildings, people then thought they were crazy and wouldn’t pay a penny for their work. Today, people would pay a hundred million dollars for their work. Time will go through the woods and select the good-looking trees.”

On why he chose architecture as a profession: 

“Architecture is a fantastic profession; magical. A musician would probably say the same…a doctor, lawyer…but I can only speak for architecture.

“Architecture, in Greek, means the combination of all the arts. The number one of all arts because it integrates everything—paintings, furniture, sculpture, building, engineering…all that has to be there. You don’t design a building the way Coco Chanel would design clothes for the summer of 2012. You wouldn’t use the same Chanel dress 12 years from now, but my building you probably will. If I do a building, it has to still be there in the summer of 2212.

“The other thing is when you do a building, it’s not just what you want. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the user. And the user—there are many users. There’s the guy who bought the unit, the neighbor who looks at it, the guy who rides by who sees your building everyday on his way to work, and the tourist who comes once in his life, whom you want to take a photograph of your building to remember his trip by. All these people are also users of the building and you have to consider all that..It makes you very humble. 

“And the last word: architecture cannot be done by a person—architecture is done by teams. And the teams include engineers, landscape designers, interior designers, ladies who know the colors, people who know how to make the building cool with minimum cost, the guy who bought the land, the developer who risks his money to sell it, the marketing team that has to come up and think what the clientele wants, the bankers that have to finance this…it’s a huge thing. In architecture, you cannot be a soloist. If you think you are Michelangelo, you are lost. Humility is the number one condition.”