(Highlights) AZBY BROWN

(Highlights) AZBY BROWN

Author of Just Enough · Small Spaces · Lead Researcher for Safecast
Authority on Japanese Architecture, Design & Environmentalism

In Edo Japan, basically life was pretty good, and they recycled everything. Everything was reused, upcycled. Waste was considered taboo. A person who was wasting was considered an ugly person. So there’s a lot that we could talk about design, the layout, scale. Buildings were rarely taller than two storeys. Very good use of environmental features, microclimates, use of wind for cooling, passive solar heating. Good use of planting, gardens, etc. But regarding cities of the future, I think the main thing is it needs to be a place where people feel like they belong and want to take responsibility.


AZBY BROWN

AZBY BROWN

Author of Just Enough · Small Spaces · Lead Researcher for Safecast
Authority on Japanese Architecture, Design & Environmentalism

In Edo Japan, basically life was pretty good, and they recycled everything. Everything was reused, upcycled. Waste was considered taboo. A person who was wasting was considered an ugly person. So there’s a lot that we could talk about design, the layout, scale. Buildings were rarely taller than two storeys. Very good use of environmental features, microclimates, use of wind for cooling, passive solar heating. Good use of planting, gardens, etc. But regarding cities of the future, I think the main thing is it needs to be a place where people feel like they belong and want to take responsibility.


(Highlights) VOICES OF THE SHINNECOCK INDIAN NATION

(Highlights) VOICES OF THE SHINNECOCK INDIAN NATION

We're all part of a web like a dreamcatcher. Everybody knows a dreamcatcher and whatever you do that’s wrong will eventually come back and affect you because we’re all connected.

SHINNECOCK INDIAN NATION

SHINNECOCK INDIAN NATION

We're all part of a web like a dreamcatcher. Everybody knows a dreamcatcher and whatever you do that’s wrong will eventually come back and affect you because we’re all connected.

(Highlights) GEORGE ELLIS

(Highlights) GEORGE ELLIS

Cosmologist, Theoretical physicist & Star of South Africa Medal Recipient

Artistic creativity and it’s crucial to artistic creativity amongst many other things. In artistic creativity, from my viewpoint, is that you start off with an idea and you’re shaping and you’re totally in control and it doesn’t matter if it's music or sculpture or painting or a novel, eventually the thing sparks its own life, becomes itself, and at that point, the role of the artist is to stand back and let it become what its got to become. And that’s where you get the great art.

GEORGE ELLIS

GEORGE ELLIS

Cosmologist, Theoretical physicist & Star of South Africa Medal Recipient

Artistic creativity and it’s crucial to artistic creativity amongst many other things. In artistic creativity, from my viewpoint, is that you start off with an idea and you’re shaping and you’re totally in control and it doesn’t matter if it's music or sculpture or painting or a novel, eventually the thing sparks its own life, becomes itself, and at that point, the role of the artist is to stand back and let it become what its got to become. And that’s where you get the great art.

(Highlights) JACQUES FRANCK

(Highlights) JACQUES FRANCK

Painter and Art Historian for Louvre Museum & Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo Studies at UCLA
Interview Highlights

Well, I have always considered Leonardo as the perfect artist, and more or less like a father. The real master is a kind of a father figure. So, to help me understand better, improve myself, know more, make the proper efforts and listen to someone who is so knowledgeable that in listening to what he says you will make real progress. I was listening to Maria Callas some time ago, because when she came to Paris in 1968 she was in the Opéra Paris, and she was in a concert. Music was in her psychology. In Leonardo, art was in his psychology, as an expression of the mystery of life in him. The same in Callas. I'm always observing artists performing because it's very interesting to observe. She was living in another dimension. As if she were connected to an invisible source, and that invisible source suddenly gave her genius. On top of all she'd been learning technically, so she had the art, the architectural setting of the technique. So she couldn't fail, because of course what she was singing was very difficult, but also, suddenly, life came into it.

JACQUES FRANCK

JACQUES FRANCK

Painter and Art Historian for Louvre Museum & Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo Studies at UCLA

Da Vinci certainly must have been very well organized because you can't make so much work without a base in the organization of your life which is very strict. You can't go and penetrate such high intellectual spheres unless you're a man of good. Do you understand what I mean? To have some ideal of perfection, beauty, and humanity inside yourself…Art is art, and that's all. To me, art is the expression of beauty, and beauty is something like the sun, shall we say. An absolute.