Highlights - MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO - Exec. Director of Pritzker Architecture Prize - Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept.

Interviewed by Mia Funk

Manuela Lucá-Dazio is the newly appointed Executive Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In this capacity, she works closely with the jury, however, she does not vote in the proceedings. She is the former Executive Director, Department of Visual Arts and Architecture of La Biennale di Venezia, where she managed exhibitions with distinguished curators, architects, artists, and critics to realize the International Art Exhibition and the International Architecture Exhibition, each edition since 2009. Preceding that, she was responsible for the technical organization and production of both Exhibitions, beginning in 1999. She holds a PhD in History of Architecture from the University of Roma-Chieti, Italy and lives in Paris, France.

Photo credit: Anselm Kiefer

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You grew up in Naples. Tell me about your childhood and how that influenced your imagination. Before you began working with museums and classical art. Tell us about that journey.

MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO

So for me being born in a place like Naples helped me absorb and to be constantly open and curious about other cultures, simply because they were part of my own culture. So it's a challenging city, I must say. And it's incredible how you more easily communicate with other people when you are in a place that you feel is a public place, but it belongs to you. It belongs to everyone. It's a space for the community. So this was the first lesson that I learned studying architecture because then you start to read the places in a more organized, scientific way. And I think maybe this dimension passed into my DNA.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

I know education is very important to you. So how do you transmit this knowledge? Architecture is skill, a trade, and an art that has certain rules that need to be learned. As a society, we need to have essential design tools so that we might design a better future, even if we're not ourselves architects or designers. So how do you think we might evolve some of our educational systems to really impart this essential design thinking for the betterment of society?

LUCÁ-DAZIO

I think we have become quite disconnected. We should become more connected to rethink how to communicate and how to learn from the past. And how to use this incredible cultural heritage that we have and how to make it alive and how to translate it into our own times. We want to expand the tools. So maybe to become a little bit more open and imaginative in creating bridges between different fields of knowledge, different methods of teaching and learning, and different ways to transmit knowledge.

We need to invest a lot in education. Education of the future practitioners, but also the education of future clients. And by client, I don't mean only governments or investors. I mean each one of us, we should become responsible for our demands to architects and to whoever is involved in the building process. And this is why I see so much that education is the main tool to get there because we have to educate ourselves, first of all, and prepare the future generations. And the extent to which, as you say, it's not just beauty, but bringing people together in spaces that are inspiring because it can be a radical thing. It could create societies that are more equal in terms of public spaces. And right now that's being unequally distributed.

We are living in a world that is extremely complex and complicated. So our lives have been halted, regardless of any geography, as a result of growing inequality (political, social, economical), and so on. We live now in a moment of deep shift. And I think that decolonization, decarbonization, social and environmental injustice, and gender equity, these are all terms that belong to daily vocabulary now. So we have to face and address these issues from both a personal and professional point of view, whatever our profession is.

We should all learn to be sustainable in our daily life and find the beauty in what proves to be sustainable. And we really need to start shifting our way of looking at things because sometimes sustainability, which is a priority right now, doesn't really coincide with let's say the cheapest solution or the best economical solution. But we have to decide our priorities. So the priority now is sustainability. We have to start to think about that. If I think back to the most recent winners of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, I can see a lot of really groundbreaking innovative practices being brought to the forefront.

I think the Pritzker Architecture Prize has the power to foster and enhance the discussion on the one end. And on the other end, it has also the power to involve a more global discussion. So it's not just limited to architects because ultimately architecture is what we live in and we use every day of our lives. So all of us should be involved in this discussion. It's really a common responsibility where the architect, who from my point of view is the translator and the interpreter and the catalyst of all this. So we should rethink what sustainability is and combine the art of architecture and the benefits to humanity and the built environment. This, I think, is a lesson for every single architect from all over the world.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

There is natural intelligence or the things that have been passed on from generation to generation. So there is this deep cultural memory. And that's what architecture imparts, that sense of continuity that bridges the generations, that brings us in touch with the past as much as it brings us into the future.

LUCÁ-DAZIO

I think history and tradition are super important, and this is the point because each generation is sort of translating to the next one. There is almost never a gap. So each generation is in a way interpreting and hopefully also adding something to what is transmitted and continued. And so this is why I think the younger generations now have tools that we didn't have at their age. They are probably able to interpret. And now we go back to the whole discussion about the necessity for sustainability and attention to social and environmental injustice. They probably have a vision or perspectives that we don't have. So in a way, in this transmission, we should be able to learn from them too.

So from my point of view, a prize is not just to establish the most beautiful building, the most expensive building, or the tallest building in the world. It's rather to foster the discussion to bring forward critical points to be discussed. To bring forward contradictions, to really enhance the discussion about what is relevant for our society or for society in a specific moment.

So this, for me, is the role of a prize, to highlight critical issues and to foster the discussion, to face them, and to find solutions, to find new paths. So in the case of the Pritzker Prize, the mission has been very clear since the very beginning. So it's to acknowledge a living architect or architects for a body of built work that has produced a consistent and significant contribution to humanity and to the built environment through the art of architecture.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

We're seeing more leaders who are women. There have always been strong women, however, when you started out, it was rarer to find women in the roles you took on. So who were some of your role models or early teachers?

LUCÁ-DAZIO

There are a lot of women who influenced my life, starting with my mother. My mother is of those women who managed the house, our lives, our family. And she's still there with incredible intelligence, curiosity...She reads, and sometimes I have conversations with her about themes that relate to the Biennale, to art, to architecture, and I'm always surprised. How can she know all this? And sometimes there are even things that maybe I, I knew quite confidentially in my job, and I said, "How did you get to know that? This is not public?" She said, "Well, I read this in this newspaper, this in the other, and then I put the things together. It's quite clear." You know, women have this power to analyze, to observe, then to elaborate, and act.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you think about the future, education, the challenges we face, and the importance of the arts, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?

LUCÁ-DAZIO

Well, this has a lot to do with this chain of transmission of history and knowledge. So all this is a very important heritage that we receive from our parents and we transmit to our children, grandchildren, and future generations. So I think we should be able to transmit them to be a bit more critical about what we transmit and try not to teach in a sort of dogmatic way and let them be free to interpret and understand and add to the history without the burden of stereotypes or predefined concepts.

So they should definitely look at us, not necessarily learn or imitate us, at least not a hundred percent, to use the incredible heritage that they receive, but with some degree of freedom and without borders.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Yanhan He.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).

Interviews - FEATURED

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Vice President · Head of the Paris Office
UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network

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Oscar & Emmy-winning Director
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INGRID NEWKIRK

Founder & President of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

I think things do change because of agitation. So agitation is vital. I mean, nobody who is in a cause should be there to win a popularity contest, whether you're working for children or the elderly or working for peace animals, it's all against nonviolence, aggression, domination, and needless cruelty and suffering. It's all for respect. So you have to be vigorous. You have to use your voice. You can use it politely, but if people don't listen, at PETA, we escalate. So we always start off with a polite letter, a polite entreaty. We always try to, as I say, do the homework. So we have the options that we put out on the table to say, look, instead of doing this, you could do that, and we will help you transition to that.

DANIEL GOLEMAN

Psychologist
Author of Emotional Intelligence · Optimal · Ecological Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is how you manage yourself and how you handle your relationships. Are you aware of what you're feeling? Can you use that awareness to handle emotions, to be positive, to be sure your upsetting emotions don't overwhelm you? This then helps you to tune into other people's emotions, to be empathic, and to put that all together to manage relationships well. It turns out that's what makes an engineer highly effective. I think it's what makes anyone highly effective.

DUSTIN O'HALLORAN

Emmy Award-winning · Oscar-nominated Composer · Musician
1 0 0 1 · Silfur · Transparent · Lion

The album 1 0 0 1 is really like a journey from our connection with nature to where we are now, in this moment where we're playing with technology. We're almost in this hybrid space, not fully understanding where it's going. And it's very deep in our subconscious and probably much greater than we realize. And it sort of ends in this space where the consciousness of what we're creating, it's going to be very separate from us. And I believe that's kind of where it's heading – the idea of losing humanity, losing touch with nature and becoming outside of something that we have created.

JEFFREY ROSEN

President & CEO of the National Constitution Center
Author of The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America

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BERTRAND PICCARD

Explorer & Aviator of the First Round-the-World Solar-powered Flight
Founder of Solar Impulse Foundation & Climate Impulse

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ED ZWICK

Academy Award-winning Writer, Director & Producer
Glory · The Last Samurai · Shakespeare in Love · Thirtysomething
Author of NYTimes Bestseller Hits, Flops & Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood

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ALAN POUL

Emmy & Golden Globe-winning Executive Producer · Director
Tokyo Vice · Six Feet Under · Tales of the City · My So-Called Life

I think all great work comes from the need to say something. And so this is the challenge for young artists and also maybe one of the essential elements that can never be completely taken over by AI because there has to be something you feel has not been said, and you feel an urgent need to say it. In fact, you can't not say it. That need to express is what gives birth to unique expression, which is where all of our visual, performance, and creative arts come from.

Featured

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What Do the June 2024 Elections in India Mean?

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MICHAEL CRONIN

Author of Eco-Travel: Journeying in the Age of the Anthropocene
Snr. Researcher · Trinity Centre for Literary & Cultural Translation

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CAMILLA HAWTHORNE

Co-Editor of The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity
Author of Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean

A Black geographic perspective for me was really helpful in trying to clarify how we can simultaneously understand Blackness as a global project, that is anti-national, that transcends borders, but that also takes on really specific meanings and practices in different places, engagements with Black geographies that are looking just beyond the framework of North America.

ITA O'BRIEN

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Author of Intimacy On Set Guidelines

For years, people spoke about how awkward or embarrassing it was to perform the intimate content. And what they're speaking about is feeling horrible. If something's awkward, that squirm, that ring in the body, it feels embarrassing. That's actually an emotion that is not professional. That is not allowing the actor to stay feeling listened to, heard, empowered, autonomous. And so that they can just get on without any of those concerns and do their job to their best ability. And that's the awareness that we brought. So, we're saying, it is not suitable in our workplace for anybody to feel harassed or abused.

SY MONTGOMERY & MATT PATTERSON

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House of Sand and Fog · The Garden of Last Days · Ghost Dogs · Townie

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LUDOVIC SLIMAK

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PAOLA SPINOZZI

Coordinator, Phd Programme, Environmental Sustainability & Wellbeing · University of Ferrara
Co-editor of Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories and Policies

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According to Her · Solfatara · Segratario

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Climate Change, Education, Mental Health & Advocacy for Nature

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Songs of Nature

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BRYCE COON

Director of Education · EarthDay.ORG

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KATHLEEN ROGERS

President of EarthDay.ORG

The world recognizes that plastics have imperiled our future. Many environmentalists, myself included, view plastics as on par with, if not worse than, climate change because we do see a little light at the end of the tunnel on climate change. Babies vs. Plastics is a collection of studies, and we particularly focused on children and babies because their bodies and brains are more impacted than adults by the 30, 000 chemicals that assault us every day.

The Unseen Invasion of Microplastics in Our Lives

Interview with KATHLEEN ROGERS
President of EarthDay·org

Microplastics and nanoplastic pollution are currently blanketing the planet. They are in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink, infiltrating our bodies and even brains and human embryos. Coca-Cola alone sells 100 billion+ single-use plastic bottles each year, ending up in landfills and the ocean. Earth’s population will reach 9.8 billion people by 2050. Two-thirds of humans will become city dwellers. Our waste will drive a mounting worldwide crisis.

POORVA JOSHIPURA

PETA U.K. · Senior Vice President
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SASHA LUCCIONI

Founding Member of Climate Change AI
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DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR

Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition · Sciences Po
Development Clinician focused on Cities & Nation States

How do you have economic growth that is socially equitable and environmentally sustainable? It's not just that you have ecological sustainability; hence, that is sustainable development. Because lots of examples of economic, ecological, and ecologically sensitive growth need not be socially equitable. That's why this whole emphasis on just transition is not just about climate, but it's also about justice. It's about social equity in economic growth. Unlike in Europe, where there is now the call for degrowth or a circular economy, most parts of the world would look at you blankly if you talked about degrowth because they are hungry for growth. And so sustainable development is about managing these trade-offs.

From Ancient Wisdom to the Language of the Earth

Scientists, Artists, Psychologists & Spiritual Leaders Share their Stories and insights on the importance of connecting with nature, preserving the environment, embracing diversity, and finding harmony in the world.

JAY JORDAN & ISABELLE FRÉMEAUX

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DOUG LARSON

Award-winning Scientist · Ecologist · Professor Emeritus · University of Guelph
Author of Cliff Ecology · The Urban Cliff Revolution · The Dogma At My Homework

I think one thing I learned from looking at the ancient trees is that there is no great benefit to anything of growing quickly and accumulating vast resources. Growing slowly and patiently and with fewer demands on the environment in which you live is just as healthy and perhaps more healthy than the endless hunger for more and more and more, which we see as a characteristic of our species.

THOMAS CROWTHER

Ecologist · Founder of Restor
Co-chair of the Board for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

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PETER D. DITLEVSEN

Professor of Physics, Ice, Climate & Earth at the Niels Bohr Institute

What happens if we lose the Greenland ice sheet and pass the tipping points and Earth systems shut down?

If that shuts down, roughly speaking, the climate of Northern Europe would be like the climate of Alaska. So, climate models that actually simulate what happens when it's shut down, would say that England becomes like Northern Norway, which means that food security and things like that will be threatened because you cannot grow many crops in Northern Norway. And other models say precipitation changes, so places that are wet might become dry, and so on. So, these are of course severe consequences for Europe, but in some sense, this is going in the opposite direction of global warming. We're all talking about we're getting into a warmer world, but I'm talking about a cooling here. But the warm water that does not then flow from the tropics into the North Atlantic will stay in the tropics. And there, you're not contra-balancing global warming. There you will have the heating on top of the global warming. And that I see as maybe the largest problem we have is that the tropics become even warmer. And we have to realize if you live in a place where mean temperatures are maybe late thirties Celsius and or rise to the forties livelihood becomes very difficult.

DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ

Psychologist · Author of Why We Work
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In 2004, the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you can get information to help guide you through - well, yeah, but what information do you believe? What's trustworthy? What's being motivated by an opportunity to sell you something? So there is a haze, there is this fog that we're operating in. And I think we just sort of give up in resignation and look at recommendations and hope that they're legitimate because how else do you get through the day?

KOHEI SAITO

Author of Slow Down! How Degrowth Communism Can Save the World
Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

The Green New Deal presents itself as a kind of radical policy. If you look at the content, it's just simply the continuation of what capitalism wants to do. It's a massive investment in new, allegedly green industries, with the creation of more jobs with higher wages, but these are not the things that socialists or any environmentalists should be actually seeking because we recognize that capitalism is basically the root cause of the climate crisis and the misery of the workers. If so, I think it is high time to imagine something radically very different from business-as-usual capitalism.

The Long Tradition of American Jewish Critiques of Israel & Their Suppression

American Jews were interested and involved in Palestinian rights all the way back to 1948. There's this idea that it came about just now or in the 1970s, but actually as long as there's been a Nakba. As long as there's been Palestinian refugees, there’s been American Jews concerned with that, too. I would say that a lot of times these American Jews were very well informed and spent time in the region, and they came to these conclusions often not in the United States, but over there where they were talking to the Israeli left and meeting Palestinians and seeing a situation that they don't feel is ethical or sustainable.

BEN FRANTA

Founding Head of the Climate Litigation Lab
Senior Research Fellow at University of Oxford’s Sustainable Law Programme

For 40 years, the American Petroleum Institute has hired economists to argue it would be too expensive to try and control fossil fuels and that climate change wasn't that bad. The same go-to consultancy firm has been involved in every major climate policy fight from the very beginning and hired by the fossil fuel industry, but what are the courts going to do? It's not just the historical deception. It's an ongoing deception.

MICHAEL STICKA

President/CEO of the GRAMMY Museum

It's actually right in our mission statement that “we celebrate the music of yesterday and today to inspire the music of tomorrow.” And we do it through our exhibits. We have 35,000 square feet of galleries. We travel exhibits, really, all over the world over the world for the past 15 years. And through our education programs, we really focus on the next generation of music's creators and leaders. We do that through really specific curricula that is designed to educate particularly young people, K-12, about the business of music, especially for those who want to go into the industry.

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