A Deeper View: A Conversation with Architect, Chris Moller

Discover the secrets behind the harmonious marriage of digital and analog design with acclaimed architect and Grand Designs New Zealand host, Chris Moller. Chris shares his unique perspective on the vital importance of tactile, sensory engagement in the creative process, reflecting on how traditional tools like pencils and legos can foster innovation. He also revisits a historical chat between Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno, uncovering the essence of good architecture through the lens of Marshall McLuhan's theories.

Unlock the power of juxtaposition and shock tactics in the world of design, as we draw parallels between media, art, and architecture. Chris discusses how master architects like Bjarke Ingels and Rem Koolhaas use these techniques to provoke new ways of thinking, and we contemplate the calming effect of physical creation in a digitized world. This episode also takes a deep dive into extreme sports, revealing the parallels between the intense focus required in sports like whitewater kayaking and the craft of architectural design.

Connect with the cosmos and nature through architecture with Chris's insights on projects like the Mount Pleasant Community Centre and the Porirua Community Market, Kai Tahi. We explore how learning from natural forms and historical principles can lead to more sustainable and efficient designs. The episode wraps up with an inspiring highlight of the Ruamahanga River conservation project, showcasing the powerful impact of grassroots activism and community involvement in environmental restoration. Join us for a journey that bridges the past, present, and future of design, offering a rich tapestry of insights and inspiration.

Episode artwork by Anna Briggs

0:00 - Digital vs Analog in Design
10:43 - Juxtaposition and Shock in Design
17:34 - Craft, Creation, and Architecture
35:13 - Connecting Architecture to Nature and Cosmos
46:50 - Architectural Design and Cosmic Inspiration
1:03:20 - Revisiting Ancient Architecture Principles
1:13:15 - Ruamahanga River Conservation Project

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Transcript

Ben Sutherland: 0:00

Welcome back to the Design Principles Podcast, episode 10. Today we have yet another amazing guest, probably best known for his many years of hosting Grand Designs New Zealand, but he's also an exceptional architect, urban designer and someone who has been a great mentor and friend over the years architect Chris Moller from CMA Plus you. Chris is a very passionate architect, so it's not difficult to get him talking about anything design related, as you'll soon find out but he always brings an interesting and unique perspective that I really enjoy. Today we discussed digital versus analog, Chris's design principles, and he fills us in on some interesting up and coming projects he's been working on. Hope you enjoy our discussion and if you have any questions for chris, feel free to dm us on design principles on the gram. Enjoy the pod, go analog. Go in a log.

Sam Brown: 1:10

We could have done that. We could have taken notes like proper journalists. It's pretty official around these parts.

Chris Moller: 1:19

Yeah, why would you do that? I mean, that would just really mess with existence and everything else that implies. That's true. Oh right, go. Analog is really, really important. I mean, digital is all very well, and I'm the first one to kind of say, hey, um, there is a role for computers, but I think they're out of control and everybody is being controlled by them, whereas when you actually think this is a really interesting pencil, what can we do with it and how can you jam with it? You know, like, how can you have a series of instruments that you then kind of weave in strange, different, funky, creative ways?

Gerard Dombroski: 2:07

Yeah.

Chris Moller: 2:08

That's good architecture, you know like. Think of the Russians and their high-tech space pen. It's called.

Sam Brown: 2:17

I love that. That's one of the best stories in like technological advancement.

Gerard Dombroski: 2:23

Yeah, we're just saying Sam couldn't figure out what to do without internet. Oh shit, what do we do? Well, the computer's turned off. Y2k. I thought, you were sharpening those model-making skills anyway, Sam.

Sam Brown: 2:42

Yeah, absolutely. We've got lots of models in our studio. Post that chat that's good.

Ben Sutherland: 2:47

I'd still yet to make even one. It's shameful.

Chris Moller: 2:53

I did all that master planning the other day with legos, which was awesome that worked really well I mean it's interesting because, if I think backwards, and it's interesting that somebody like ben, for example, who's very digitally savvy as well as being multidisciplinary and that's good to embrace, because there aren't so many architects or designers who really have that capability and Ben does, and it's really, really interesting does and, and it's really, really interesting. And I'm just kind of thinking of a really fantastic interview back in the early 90s, um, the at the time the editor of wired magazine. So this is 93 94, right at the very beginning of wired, uh, emerging as as um, probably the first serious online magazine or zine or whatever you want to call it these days. Wired was fundamentally back then not printed but digital and they did printed versions of it. In fact, they did two. One was European-based I think it was based in Amsterdam, and the other was American based, california probably. But in any case, they had different manifestations of the digital realm and the conversation was between Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno and yeah, look, it just hit all of these issues that we're kind of stumbling into right now, which has a lot to do with, you know, the phenomena of the digital realm and what you could say even back then was really obvious. And in the discussion between Kelly and Eno that kind of came out. And as a little bit of background, before I reveal what Brian Eno says, it was really interesting because, of course, they had also embraced Marshall McLuhan as their kind of patron saint.

Chris Moller: 4:58

And Marshall McLuhan, who's infamous for, you know, coining phrases like the global village, you know, this kind of slamming together of completely different scales, of things that don't necessarily, you know, it's a juxtaposition, in other words a shock which then is creating a, you know, a strange tension. I mean, that's what I think of as good architecture. And he wrote that amazing book called the Medium is the Message, which of course, is an aphorism, and he's talking about it like, if you translate it he said it several different ways really fast Like the medium is the message, you know, as in the way that you perceive the word medium, it's the context within which we operate, and mccluhan was talking about us as a species being electronic. As in you know, most of our interactions are via electrons, as a kind of extension of your nervous system, and we're really in it now. I mean, you can't bloody escape it, especially social media. And so this conversation, that um, oh, translations of the medium is the message, so the medium is the mass age or you know yeah bingo yeah but the

Chris Moller: 6:22

other one that he said which was really brilliant was the medium is the mess age and I just think that totally sums it up.

Chris Moller: 6:30

it's just like, oh my god. And so Kevin Kelly's kind of basically asking Brian, you know. So where do you think the realm of art has gone, you know, and the realm of music, you know, which is again Marshall McLuhan, as well as Brian Eno. But especially Brian Eno is very much a renaissance thinker, so multidisciplinary. That's the link with Ben being both a builder and an architect, and it's really interesting to kind of think about this tension across very different disciplines.

Chris Moller: 7:03

Mcluhan couldn't give a toss about these so-called definitions at all and Eno's response was well, you know, what's really pissing me off about computers is that there's not enough Africa in them, and really what he was saying is that you know, like that whole visceral thing of being able to touch, to feel to, you know the sensory engagement that you really miss with a computer, and that's where I think you know the pencil or the model, physical model. This is where architecture gets really interesting, because when you're using different media in different mediums, then you're getting different feedback loops and different perceptions or different jamming potentials, different kinds of music, different kinds of sounds, different kinds of interactions and certainly different kinds of information that can help you make, hopefully, a more relevant and a more awake architecture, something that is, you know, like slamming and rubbing up against something that isn't.

Chris Moller: 8:21

And on that note, this is classic for what is traditionally an audio medium we'll be right back after the break kids show and tell it's always, you better be making it it's always interesting you know, like I'm the one that constantly runs around with real books, real library, this is Wired and they develop their own lexicon for the digital age. Nice, mcluhan. You know there are gems here, but here's the medium, is the message oh, nice, and in it, which is wicked, and this is a really good example of the kind of shock tactics McLuhan uses. You know like, oh, both of these are kind of cool, I should show both of these.

Chris Moller: 9:29

So maybe read them, chris given it's worth talking about and even just listening to the nervous laughter because it tells you a lot about what, um, and how we perceive. So, looking, looking at a book that is more eloquent than digital technology now, so you can literally so this photograph of a big toe that goes across both pages. This is a book. And you turn the page and you literally go from that idea and it says the next page is an image of a wheel, a car wheel, and it says in the top left-hand corner or I should go back to the previous one it says the wheel, even though you're looking at the picture of a foot. So you're looking at a picture of a foot and it says the wheel, and you turn over the page and you see the wheel is an extension of the foot.

Chris Moller: 10:29

What book? Turn the next page, turn the next page, the book, oh nice. And you're looking at a white page with two thumbs, you know, as if you're holding the book. And then you turn the next page and you have a photo of an eye and says is an extension of what does that say? Ben Of the eye? Yep, and then you turn the next page and what are you looking at?

Ben Sutherland: 11:01

Clothing? No, you're not.

Chris Moller: 11:02

An extension of the sky Naked lady.

Sam Brown: 11:03

Explain what you're looking at Naked lady. Yeah, clothing an extension of the sky, naked lady explain what you mean naked lady yeah, a naked woman with arms outstretched, breasts exposed and what does it say?

Ben Sutherland: 11:15

clothing, an extension of the sky, the skin oh, sorry my browser was blocking

Chris Moller: 11:25

it in the last moment, yeah right. I can't believe it's been a minute.

Ben Sutherland: 11:31

Nice.

Chris Moller: 11:32

Whatever. But you know, the interesting thing about all of this is that he's using shock tactics on purpose and juxtaposition of different media across pages so that you can kind of get a shift, a shift in context or a shift in scale, and that can be both space and time, like you know, looking at this, where you're flying into the future, but you're looking through a rear view mirror in a car the past and what can you see in the mirror? Awesome care, a carriage. Yes, exactly so. In other words, we're running around flat out in yesterday's news. And then here's the next page, which, which is what when information.

Ben Sutherland: 12:25

Oh, I need to hold it back again.

Sam Brown: 12:28

Some ladies' legs.

Ben Sutherland: 12:29

Some ladies' legs.

Gerard Dombroski: 12:32

Come here man Stockings.

Sam Brown: 12:36

But with what? Some nice lacy stockings, yeah with lots of skin exposed.

Chris Moller: 12:43

And then what does it say next to it?

Sam Brown: 12:47

When information is brushed against information.

Chris Moller: 12:50

Yeah, there you go. So this is McLuhan, and Eno is very similar in the sense of embracing juxtaposition as a way of thinking and as a way of working. I would say Eno is a great architect. I'd say McLuhan is also a great architect. The people who are really interested in concepts and how you bring completely fresh ideas around, composition and juxtaposition, which then shock people awake. Well, that's part of the role of architecture, is it not?

Gerard Dombroski: 13:30

Yeah, it's quite a common thing in the design process. It's like a trick. They're ramming things up against each other, like the simple ones, like Bjarke Ingalls putting a ski slope on top of a power plant or soft, yes, yes.

Chris Moller: 13:47

well, that's kind of interesting because what you're raising is the Dutch way of thinking. I mean, bjarke Engels went through the office of Metropolitan Architecture, so his architecture is very much influenced by OMA and you know that bundle of really interesting people. Rem Koolhaas was just one of them. Zaha Hadid was also an original partner in OMA, as were Ilya Zengalis and his partner, so that you know those guys and what they were doing was really exploring crazy, strange, different kinds of concepts about urban life and different materials, and what does that really mean in the modern age? I guess you know. The thing that is really strange in terms of our time is trying to be calm and trying to be normal in a situation which is completely nuts. I mean, how do we do that? Easier said than done.

Gerard Dombroski: 15:05

What is calm, what is normal?

Chris Moller: 15:06

Well, yeah, good question.

Sam Brown: 15:12

I feel like I don't know what calm is anymore. Well, it's not even that. It's just the nature of the world, right? There's so little space for calm anymore. I mean you have to really seek it out. It doesn't come to you, I find, but maybe that's just me.

Ben Sutherland: 15:29

Throw away your phone very good point yeah, now there's only two places when you're exercising or when you're in the car by yourself.

Sam Brown: 15:39

That's about it that's true, take a nice long drive, nice long run. Two, yeah, very true, it's been that those. To be fair though, those are two of the best thinking times them, and when you're asleep, that's ultimate classic shower. Amount of design work you can do through dream is pretty impressive.

Gerard Dombroski: 15:59

I'd argue that my somewhere I find calm is like in the process stages, like making things. I find some of my calmer moments.

Chris Moller: 16:13

Yeah, depends how many phones you use and why is that Because you've got a physical workshop, so you got rid of your digital and you're actually physically making things and probably learning more by you, know what the material is demanding of you. You know, like, if you're welding or if you're shaving wood or whatever it is Just being hands-on. Yeah, would that? I mean, is that part of it that you're literally in the realm of the material as against in the digital realm?

Gerard Dombroski: 16:43

Yeah, I think so and like just the quiet satisfaction of making, I think, is the rewarding aspect, is quite calming. There's definitely times where you're stressed on a deadline, where it's incredibly not calm and frustrating, but when you continue, something doesn't go right and things keep breaking for some reason. Or trying to tig weld in a rush is not a good idea. You have to be like really calm for that. I find so like you don't even bother if you're a little impatient or trying to do something before you leave.

Chris Moller: 17:19

It's like being an.

Gerard Dombroski: 17:21

Olympic.

Chris Moller: 17:22

Then you're using it as a gas cutter and you probably go through the wall it's like being an Olympic biathlete.

Sam Brown: 17:28

Right, it's like sprinting, but then being able to calm yourself to perform at the right time.

Gerard Dombroski: 17:34

I think the sports analogy is good because in sports most people kind of go blank, especially in an extreme sport. When I kayaked quite a lot when I was younger sort of whitewater kayaking your mind would kind of go blank and you would just do, you'd kind of become a robot.

Sam Brown: 17:54

So weirdly, in like a very stressful scenario, you're quite calm, I'm like that when I'm mountaineering, Just like laser focus focused, there is no outside noise because there's no space for it.

Gerard Dombroski: 18:08

you can't afford so you're in trouble? Yeah, is it that, or is it?

Chris Moller: 18:16

something deeper. You know, like, if I think of um, the way that, say, louis Kahn talks about architecture and he's talking about the difference often, you know like, say, for example, between silence and light, between the immaterial, the realm of forms before material, so the let's call it, the meta realm, beyond sensory perception, beyond materials, and then translating that into the material world in order to express or to reflect those ideas or those forms. So it's almost like I mean you think of freud's um archetypes, like go back to not just the realm of dreams, or you know which of your parents was influential on your sexual drives, or whatever, but even say, for example, in the sense of what is chair? You know, all of us have an idea of what chair is, a kind of proto-idea of chair, what is chairness and how would you make a chair? And for Gerard, for example, who does this quite often, that you know every chair is different, yet what would be always the same chair?

Gerard Dombroski: 19:47

Well, hopefully it supports your bum, gets you to take a load off the old feet.

Chris Moller: 19:57

So this is good, because when we shift out of that cosmic realm of ideas into no, no, hang on a minute, because this is where the kayak, the mountaineer and, I would argue, the smithy, as in you're working with fire.

Chris Moller: 20:14

Because in each case we're dealing with this intense moment of transformation, right yeah, where Radical things can happen in a split second. And so, if we use this in terms of the sense of craft and the sense of the smithy, for example, where you're dealing with fire, which is this ultimate kind of primeval realm, where you're taking something almost in liquid form and turning it into something solid, something permanent, and let's also kind of bring that back to architecture in the sense of what that does. So this transformational craft, that is literally very much based on physics and I don't mean abstract mathematical physics, even though that informs what we're talking about. Like if you're talking to a top footballer, you don't ask him if he was using a sign curve, you know, in order to get the ball in the back of the net. You know there's, there's a sensibility, just like if you asked it and center how the hell he managed to get around monte carlo in the wet and nobody else could, you know.

Chris Moller: 21:48

know, like the moment of a great sportsman or a great craftsman to bring that realm of the unknown and the very visceral but utterly transformational material into a very specific expression which, at its highest level, is really art. You know, it's really reaching another kind of level, yeah.

Gerard Dombroski: 22:28

It is the extreme sport, again the action, and then there's the act, I guess.

Sam Brown: 22:36

Are we classifying architecture as an extreme sport now? Because I like that?

Chris Moller: 22:40

Yeah, absolutely, and it is, and I would say each one of those, whether it's Ayrton Senna, oranta or you know, you on the mountains or kayaking or whatever it is it that's really great architecture at that level, because it's about in-tuneness. It's you know, and to get to that in-tuneness state, just like you know when, when you're holding um, uh, the welding, uh torch, that it comes to a point which I like to to call isn'tness. So it isn't this and it isn't that it, it's the un thing before the thing. And often what we tend to talk about in architecture way too much, and I would say in all of these realms that happens is you're focused on the thing, the object. In actual fact, that doesn't matter. You know.

Chris Moller: 23:46

What matters is not the cup, but what the cup does, and you know what it enables. So the space or the un-thing. You know the fact that you can put water or you know whatever liquid you want to into the cup, you want to into the cup. So it's about the water and the experience. Or is it wine or is it coffee? In which case, what is the nature of the material, what is the experience of how you drink it and the shape of the lip or the shape of the vessel in terms of how it holds that aroma or that particular flavour. So then we're kind of getting closer to it. So there's this dance between the material and the immaterial. That's really what I meant when I referred to Khan.

Ben Sutherland: 24:44

I remember at university when you were tutoring us talking about the unspaces, the, the spaces in between the building. I always thought that was very interesting actually. Good perspective, Good point of view, All right.

Chris Moller: 25:00

I also said build or die.

Ben Sutherland: 25:03

And I've been building ever since?

Chris Moller: 25:05

No, it's been both Took it literally.

Chris Moller: 25:09

I mean it's funny, I mean Buckminster fuller talks about this a lot make mistakes, because mistakes are the best opportunity for learning, and through making mistakes. So in other words, build or die is kind of like just roll your sleeves up and um, you know, get busy, and gradually you learn by. And this is where the analog, the physical realm, in other words getting out of your computer, or as Eno talked about it, you know, I need more Africa in my computer. That's where that's so important and one that it gives calm. In other words, you're reaching back into the cosmic realm way beyond, um, what a computer can generate, because the most powerful computer anyway is actually in your head. You can have a what-if computer and it can do computational processing way beyond any computer ever will be able to, ever. Amen.

Sam Brown: 26:15

Chris, do you find I mean you've got a pretty well-documented and broad experience with a lot of ranges of architecture. Do you find that exactly what you've just talked about, this maybe more modern-day shift to the reliance on digital or the computer has had a real and visual impact on current architectural outcomes and styles?

Chris Moller: 26:33

Totally. Yes, it has, you know. To go back to McLuhan, he saw all this early, but he realised that the shift away from the written word, in other words, a slowness of interaction that was scholarly and considered and you know, reflective, that that that gave it generated a public. You know that, even the idea of the press, that you could then make something which you then replicated and created a public with that, whereas, as he referred to the different stages of, let's say, different kinds of humans or different kinds of mediums that humans operated within. I mean, the thing about McLuhan that's really interesting is that he wasn't a futurist, he was a linguist and he knew very deeply about the history of human interaction. So he talks about pre-alphabetic man, Before the alphabet, that we interacted in a radically different way, not just before the book but before the alphabet. So this idea that you sit around the bonfire and communicate it more through images. So he talked about the idea that that's where the term the global village is coming from, this collapse of time and space. That because of visual media and the immediateness of it, specifically social media, which is really fast that the culture and communication becomes very reactive and it needs to be more extreme, like extreme sports, in order to just get attention. So you know which you just get for a split second anyway, but you know you need to scream in order to even be heard. That's kind of what it's coming to, whereas in the age of you know, of the written word in the book, these things were much calmer and more considered and more propositional perhaps, rather than reactive. So it's a fundamentally different way of operating. So the very mechanism of operating even if we produce a bunch of really beautiful um environments, they'll just be there for a moment and maybe not even seen or registered relative to social media. So then the question is if they're not on the latest blog from the latest competitions, whether that is Dazeen or some other phenomena that's out there the latest awards, whatever they might be, whether they're local or international, it's just there for a split second and then what it's gone. It's just there for a split second and then what it's gone. It's just. You know what was that actually? So the panic of the now has overtaken actually what's important. Things that are important are being pushed off the table because of the panic of the now. So that has a fundamentally different impact on what architecture is.

Chris Moller: 30:36

If we all walked into today's not such a good day, but if it was late evening, sun, winter sun coming down streaming into Fortuna Chapel. So John Scott's wonderful masterpiece, and we're literally in the space. You cannot replicate that experience that you feel in a photograph, not even close. You can't do it, even though you might be engaging people's imagination through description, either verbally, like we are right now, or with words. But actually to experience it and and feel the light literally coming into that space and the darkness and how the light penetrates the darkness that john has created in that space is extraordinary.

Chris Moller: 31:26

And on top of that the geometry is amazing. I mean it's utterly amazing and incredibly powerful and very unexpected if you've going on in other places, like Le Corbusier's or Matisse's chapel in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, but neither of them have had this extraordinary quality that Fortuna has. It's almost as if you're underwater. You know you're in this encapsulating space of two wings, which are where people sit, that are opposite each other Very unusual for a church because it's in the round and it's like a cloak on either side and the walls are really low and solid and dark. And then the exact opposite on the other two corners, where you have these butterfly roofs that open up and bring light from the different horizons into the space. And it's just extraordinary, so as the light moves around, you know, different at different times of the day, you, I mean it's utterly beguiling.

Sam Brown: 32:49

That's the power of architecture, that's interesting because that's something that you'd never like you've already mentioned that's something you'd never be able to achieve or understand or replicate digitally, that can only be understood now physically and it could only have ever been designed physically. Yeah, there's such like a necessity for us to peer back right to have that like more human engagement. Like we didn't evolve to work in this digital realm. Maybe we're evolving there now, who knows? You know many years down the track, but like engagement with everything around us is actually physical and so we need to probably design with that in mind.

Chris Moller: 33:36

I would just say we need to fight back. You know I think I mean all three of you know this that that moment of quiet, therefore reflection away from the digital realm, is one thing, whether it's in the gym, whether it is literally with a gas torch in your hand, or whether it's up in the mountains, um, or in a kayak, you know. Literally not so much, that's the only thing, because I I think it's bigger than that. I think what you do is you go through what, in mathematics, you call a point of contraflecture, which is, you know, that's where the sine curve comes in, especially when you push them past one another. That point of contraflecture is a twist, and and it's a twist into the cosmic, and I would say that the cosmic which deeply informs Kahn's work as much as Scott's, john Scott. So when you experience something like Fortuna, what you're experiencing is that vortex. You're experiencing the cosmic realm being brought in and twisted and manifested in in all of its dimensions and, and it's both pre so proto form, so it's before idea as well as post idea, as in it has materialized itself, and that's exactly what khan's talking about, I mean in khan's greatest works, that's what's going on.

Chris Moller: 35:13

I would argue the same with any great architect. I mean alto, right, you know these, these um, uh, extraordinary, and they were absolutely extraordinary architects who were touching on the edge of the cosmic realm. And, like you know, if you think of Bach, bach, as in his music, is like that. There's this direct sense of the cosmic realm informing the work rather than the personality of the individual. You know so there's something bigger, way bigger, and I think that's why spiritual architecture often, regardless of what it is is it a church, is it a mosque, is it just a beautiful building or not even a building in a natural setting that you're deeply connected to the cosmic. And you know the metaforms of architecture at landscape scale are part of that too. I mean, that's what the Greeks often refer to, and you know the idea that the temple makes manifest the architecture of the land. So we're talking about the architecture of the planet and even the architecture of the land. So we're talking about the architecture of the planet and even the architecture of the solar system, because all of those cosmic dimensions inform how we experience where we are, although ironically, often, uh, completely incorrectly.

Chris Moller: 36:44

I mean what buckminster fuller often referred to. He said we need to throw away our silly lexicon. You know there is no up and down, it's in and out. The sun doesn't rise in the morning, it's still there. We're just spinning around and we experience it as we come whizzing by and then it seems to go down, but you know so, that's our feeble experience of it. So that's our feeble experience of it, but you know so.

Chris Moller: 37:20

There's this sense of connecting into these larger processes at fundamentally different scales, just like if you zoom in at nanoscale. That's extraordinary too, you know, like literally we should be able to, you know, put your finger through the material of a desk, because it's primarily, you know, that's under your hand, as we're kind of sitting here, because it's primarily space. It's just electrons whizzing around. That's stopping you from, you know, going straight through that piece of whatever it is wood or metal or whatever your table is made of. It is wood or metal or whatever your table is made of, and you know so-called concrete that we often refer to as something permanent so.

Ben Sutherland: 37:59

Isn't so one of your projects, chris, the, for example? A lot of your projects actually, um, but we'll take the mount pleasant Centre, for example. How it was directly influenced from you know, say, as a response to the neighbouring coastal environment. Is that kind of what you're talking about, in a way, how nature's starting to inform the architecture itself as well?

Chris Moller: 38:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. There is a purity about that response, and the reason that purity happens is twofold in a way on the one hand, us as a team putting that thing together, exploring its potential. So architecture is structure, structure is so, working together with Dunning Thornton, with Alistair Kastanak, that when the architecture and the structure are one and the same with services, that's going back to learning from Louis Kahn, who learned from others as well, including Frank Lloyd Wright's earlier work, and it's really, really interesting, because then they're deeply essential. You can't disassemble those things, so they're each informing one another.

Chris Moller: 39:16

And that's where, when you use material in a very mathematical way, just like you know when you're welding and metal has become liquid, it is following purely the laws of physics. So then it is following real physics in its forms, in its shapes. So you're getting closer to catenaries and hyperbolic paraboloids and these kinds of forms, because they're naturally liquid. And the same with when you look at other species, and that was the importance for Mount Pleasant is to learn from other species about how we should really build here, because I don't think humans really know. I mean, we haven't, as a species, been here long enough to really know it. We're not like the japanese who've, you know, lived with earthquakes and lived with volcanoes and all the rest of it for millennia to develop a way of doing things that is deeply informed like that, whereas as humans here we're just kind of messing around, trying stuff out, stumbling in the dark if you like.

Sam Brown: 40:33

When you say humans here, Chris, do you just mean New? Zealanders?

Chris Moller: 40:37

Yeah, yeah, just humans in this place. We're still working it out. And the thing is that there are other species who have adapted to this place, like crustaceans, bivalves and so on. And that's what I started to observe, because Mount Pleasant is on the edge of the estuary and you know where the sea kind of comes in towards Christchurch, just past Sumner, and the thing that was really fascinating is there were crabs, you know, these shell structures, but especially the bivalves, blew me away that, of course, these creatures were doing something that was incredibly efficient minimum amount of material, making shell structures, literally.

Chris Moller: 41:25

Think of the structural principle of making a shell and how lightweight it is. I mean, think of the structural principle of making a shell and how lightweight it is. I mean, think of a boat and you're keeping the water out, but you're also creating the sense of home, the sense of safety, the sense of shelter which for Christchurch at the time, because Mount Pleasant was a response to the earthquakes the previous community hall had been destroyed by the earthquakes and so we needed to create something that was both safe and calming but also efficient and inspiring. And so how to do something that was uplifting but economical in its use of materials, so using less materials. I mean, in principle, we only had three materials. There were the foundations, which were the concrete beams, then there was the engineered timber, which was the shells, and then there was the wrapper, if you like, over the top of that, which creates the wetted surface. So that's the insulation and the roof. You know you want to keep that as simple as possible, just like a boat, because you don't want it to leak.

Chris Moller: 42:54

But the rest of it was this folded geometry, which was informed by observing and analysing, to some degree, lessons from these bivalves and the pippies that I was picking up from the shore. They had these amazing triangular reinforcements in them and it was fascinating and it was just kind of like an aha moment. It reminded me of, you know, folded forms, just like the folded forms of waves, but also the folded forms of origami, and, and so when I I kind of played around with it a bit, and I think it was with a, uh, an airplane ticket, I folded up an airplane ticket and um handed it around to the committee, the client and they were like, what's this about? And I just talked about how light and simple and direct it was, and when I showed it to Alistair. He got it straight away. He said, yeah, we can do this.

Chris Moller: 44:06

So this idea of opening the shell, this bivalve, so this idea of opening the shell, this bivalve, where then the space that you come into is like the ligament in a bivalve. You know the hinge, but in this case it's not just the physical hinge, it's actually the social hinge. It's the place you arrive and it embraces you, and then you've got the hall on one side and you've got the studios and, um, all of the other stuff that you need on the other side. But but effectively it's all under this, um, very simple shell. So in plan form it's, it's extremely simple, but in cross-section, uh, quite complex. So, yeah, then then rationalizing all of that and creating an architecture out of that where we interwove the structure and the services and the architecture as a tightly integrated, extremely efficient form. That's where that came from. So it was really about learning from other species that have adapted brilliantly to that context.

Gerard Dombroski: 45:12

I think that tying architecture into structure is like pretty genius, really. Like that's, I guess, how you maintain your architecture through a project. I see that project we saw the other day and Potiphar has that as well. Like the structure, is the architecture right?

Chris Moller: 45:34

and the services too. So that you know, like to go back to khan and it's really interesting. I mean, khan has indirectly a huge influence on me, you know, like, if you look at what he did at various times, because he's very much a philosopher, architect. So, to go back to that term of isn'tness that I refer to, it's a little bit like some of his thinkings around, you know, going from the material to the immaterial, like where is that realm of isn'tness? So you know, again, to go back to the cup, where the cup isn't, that's what makes it useful, which is kind of ancient chinese philosophy. You know, dao, the the, the thing that isn't. You know, just like the hub of a wheel makes a wheel useful. So you know it's this, it's the thing that you need to use. Why are you creating this object? And and it's the dance between the two, the physical and the um, the spatial, let's say, but the thing and the un-thing.

Chris Moller: 46:50

And I think that that's where understanding all of those, let's call it the architecture of the services, which is the plumbing, the electrics, the lighting, which includes natural light as well as artificial light, and in the case of or kaitahi, it's, it's this cosmic realm again, where you're bringing light in the early light in the morning that is coming in on one side and the evening light in the evening coming in the other side, which of course in winter is extremely low and it gives you this almost euphoric kind of hovering quality in the space and the ground is concrete pavers so that you have this thermal mass, so you're getting light and warmth even though you're in the middle of winter and you've got this extremely light uh structure almost not there, the, you know the, the triangular, um timber, blue, lamb beans, that that kind of are holding up the etfeE roof, and then these light tubes which are kind of talking to the other cosmic bodies, whether that is the moon or the sun. And likewise, how does that experience translate across different moments in time, like different seasons? And summer, of course, is radically different to winter and you really feel it Roughly. From September onwards the light tubes will start to work again and the golden light that is coming down through the light tubes will land on the floor and move around the floor and up the wall. You didn't experience that the other day because we're in the depths of winter, so we have a very different kind of experience right now, and so from roughly end of September, beginning of October, so that's kind of equinox, you know.

Chris Moller: 49:01

So right through to roughly, you know, end of February, early March, that zone is suddenly the building wakes up and has a different personality, you know. So that's part of what's going on there too, but that's also informed by really ancient deep sea creatures coming out of the water. Like you know, if you think of where do we all come from? Life came out of the sea and it crawled up onto the land. And you know, we, even when we're evolving in the wombs of our mothers, are fish to start with. So we're kind of crawling into this existence and that's kind of what that building's talking to. So its architecture is also coming out of the deep, both metaphorical realm of the deep unknown, the subconscious, and literally that the ocean is our real home.

Ben Sutherland: 50:01

So that building is the just, so everyone's aware is the Porirua Community Market. Is that about right?

Chris Moller: 50:09

Well, it's a market hall and event space. So the idea I mean it's directly across the road from Pataka Art Museum and so the idea is that it can also be used by them for events and so on, as well as other activities. Who knows how that will be used, but the dimensions of the space which was the original service lane are nine metres wide by nine metres high, which is a classic dimension of a southern european slash, northern african, middle eastern um bazaar or marketplace. And you know, like, if, if you look at the bazaar in isfahan or in istanbul, they're that dimension nine meters high by nine meters wide, and and, and it gives you a sense of amazing space.

Chris Moller: 51:15

And then you've got Michael Tuffery's art wall, which is along the right-hand side as you arrive from the south, so from Partica, and that's telling a story about two things. One is the journey of the tuna, or the eels, as they go back to the islands, you know, to um, to spawn and so on. And he's, he's from, uh, you know pacifica. Culturally, he comes from a couple of different islands in the pacific, so he's very aware of that. And then he's also hanging a series of discs, like a kind of moon cycle, that hang along that wall, and the idea is that there is this arcade that then has a balcony which you walk up to and you can view the work and any events that happen from the balcony, which then connects you into a roof garden, which again is about getting into nature and connecting you to the hills, to the ocean, to the sky, to the sun and to the moon when it's doing its thing.

Sam Brown: 52:30

Chris, it's really interesting. From an architect's perspective, I think we understand the depth of thinking and like the process that goes behind our design and everything. But from a like, general public user interface and experience point of view, they're probably unlikely to understand or realize all this thought and these, these like really poetic movements and everything. But I think what you've sort of alluded to earlier is people that use these spaces, that have had this depth of thought and this level of sort of work put into them to make them feel right, the users of those spaces. They don't know why, but they move into them and they're like this is the correct space for me to be in. If you know what I mean, would you agree with that sort of statement?

Chris Moller: 53:19

It's interesting, I mean, I think there are a lot of really useful things in what you're suggesting, and one of them is that the experience of architecture is not front of mind, it's. It's much deeper, it's much more subliminal and and uh, that's a really important part of its role is as an extension of landscape, or at least a, a complementary condensing and articulation of the cosmic architecture at the scale of the universe the solar system, the planet, landscape, water. You go back to the primary things of earth fire, air, water. These things are inherently in the physicality that we were talking about earlier, because they're so, so visceral, and architecture, if it's good, speaks to these things very directly. And yet there are buildings which transcend just the background and there are architects who manage to do both, in other words, to be quiet in the background.

Chris Moller: 54:40

That you know, a great spiritual space, whether it's a cathedral or a mosque or whatever, like isafia in istanbul or constantinople, um, or Byzantium, as it was originally called, is that kind of space and it's extraordinary. You know this massive, massive dome, just huge. Sinan's later mosques are based on that and they're brilliant works too, but they're really different than what Hagia Sophia is about. Hagia Sophia is about a kind of interpretation of the universe the sky dome, literally. And at the beginning it was too shallow and it collapsed in earthquakes because you know just perhaps too literal, but the physics of the dome didn't quite work. So of course what we've got now is a more efficient structure. Let's say, and hey, turkey gets some serious kick-ass earthquakes and it's still there, so it's extraordinary. But compare that, say, for example, with the Pantheon, which is older in Rome, and a similar thing to the kind of stuff that I was just talking about in Pororoa, with these light tubes and also the experience of light coming in both in the different seasons winter versus summer, equinox, and how you can register what time of year it is, just by how the building's behaving and whether it's cool, which is what you want in summer, or whether it's warm, which is what you want in winter, especially in Pororoa, especially on the waterfront.

Chris Moller: 56:25

Let's face it, the whole town has turned its back both to the sun ie not orientated north and to the water, which is its primary address. This is the first building to actually connect not the town to the water but the water to the town. It's connecting the ideas conceptually of the ocean as a species coming out of the ocean and connecting via partica back into the city and saying, hey, let's turn this around and let's have a fundamentally different kind of relationship with the landscape for the whole town, and the building is the catalyst for that. So it's very ambitious at that level. But another, but still, I think the experience, because of the fact that it's marketable, is primarily that it is providing this ambient background which people like Kahn another one brilliant architect, for the same reasons, jorn Ut utzon does that as well, and and so his architecture is is actually very much supporting what's going on. You know, like to come back to the vessel, the cup, you know, and maybe the exception, at least. Um, the first exception that probably comes to many people's minds is the sydney opera house, but actually it's not. Again, it's about an expression of what's going on inside and because it's so important. But actually Utzon was most interested in what was going on inside, which is why it was so tragic that we lost him. To finish the building, to do the interiors, but you know, even to shape the shells was extraordinary. But if you look at his Kinko housing, you know, even to shape the shells was extraordinary. But if you look at his Kinko housing, for example, which are primarily courtyard houses. Again, he's focused on the unthing, the court and the house you know holds two sides in each case, and so you know this sense of the building enabling and supporting and facilitating people's lives rather than demanding attention. It's not screaming for attention, it's actually quietly just sitting there, and his own house in Menorca is like that too. It's quietly sitting there and I think that's really, really important.

Chris Moller: 59:00

If we go back to the Pantheon, that's really interesting because that's slightly different. When you go into the Pantheon, you cannot go in there at any time of the year and not be confronted by the cosmic realm. You know this hole in in in the middle of the dome, which you know, the oculus, this single eye that is, you know, blasting light down onto the floor as it moves around. I mean, that is the most outrageous, extraordinary, incredibly. You know front architecture in your face, if you like. It's not an external experience. You know like the colonnade out the front is. You know classic, roman or even Greek, if you like, whether it's in tablature, and you know the orders, the columns, et cetera that we all know. You go through that, you go inside and bam, it's like you're confronted by this singular, incredibly powerful translation of the primary elements of what makes great architecture.

Sam Brown: 1:00:13

So you're saying that is an example of architecture that you can't help but know what it's doing to you? Yeah well, I would argue Fortuna is in the same realm.

Chris Moller: 1:00:23

Yeah, I'd agree, you know Fortuna and the Pantheon, you know kind of nudge up against one another.

Sam Brown: 1:00:31

And Sagrada Familia. For me, I think that's another building that I've been in, and it's you know, I've been to many buildings around the world and a lot of the time you're like, oh, this is really lovely. I understand what the architect's done here, blah, blah, blah blah, but very rarely has it like hit you in the face and been like holy shit, this is what it's all about, and I'd argue that that's another building that falls into that category.

Chris Moller: 1:00:54

Which is quite funny from that perspective, because, you know, of course, gaudí was also extremely ambitious. He was reinventing how he thought the next evolution of Gothic architecture should be. You know, do it properly, they only got to the pointed arch. You know, do it properly, um, they only got to the pointed arch. You know, the parabola is both more efficient and and in a more pure structural form. Oh, and, this is beautiful, actually, that we're talking about gaudi, because he brings the visceral realm back to the digital and actually shows how slow and pathetic, uh, let's say, computational algorithms are. It's taken 100 years, right? Well, get this. So the physical modeling technique that he developed, using catenaries is, is, uh, more efficient in terms of its immediate ability to translate and shift algorithms through shifting the weights. You know, changing the weights, you just add a little bit more weight and the entire structure, the whole system, updates itself immediately, and then you invert it, and that's through physical modeling. It's just utter genius, utter genius. It really makes computational power look pathetic. It's extraordinary, extraordinary.

Gerard Dombroski: 1:02:31

Do you think sometimes kind of touching on our first discussion of pencil versus computer that like it seems sometimes that the thousands of years that humans have been building buildings we've seemed to have like forgotten a lot of them we've learnt?

Chris Moller: 1:02:49

Oh for sure. I mean, okay, I'll give another example which is really accessible. I mean, there's a few versions of this which is quite funny, just to throw it out there. But you know this utterly stupid issue about housing affordability. It's a total nonsense. And the reason it's a total nonsense is we all know how to do it. It's not that hard, it's extremely economical and very efficient. You only need to look at a yurt or its translation in the Northern Hemisphere, an igloo or you know even a teepee, but a yurt is unbelievable because they're just so incredibly efficient, you know, and that you can pack it up in a day or so, put most of those materials on the back of one or two small horses and off you go to the next spot. So you know, this whole thing about affordability and housing per se is just a bunch of people who have agendas that want to control supply and demand. It's total bullshit.

Sam Brown: 1:04:00

I'd live in a yurt. Do you think it's a modern-day person's desire for permanence, though, as well?

Chris Moller: 1:04:07

That's a separate issue. What is permanence?

Sam Brown: 1:04:09

Yeah.

Chris Moller: 1:04:11

But to come back to this, the reason that I was talking about yurts and igloos, for example, is also because it's very, very close to what gaudi was doing, which is that it's following again. Structure services are one, not the Oculus in the roof of a yurt, it's a bicycle wheel. There's nothing there, you know. Incredibly efficient thermal insulation around a very adaptive timber, lightweight structure, which then is effectively holding up this ring beam and the ribs that come together and then the inner circle. So it's again genius, but that's evolved over millennia.

Gerard Dombroski: 1:05:11

The services chat. Louis louis khan. Like assuming like he uses like a lot of thermal masks, like stack effect, and like having a little lake outside, like um I think, thermally there's there's we discussed it the other day like passive houses.

Gerard Dombroski: 1:05:32

Thermally there's there's we discussed it the other day like passive houses, like these older technologies having an oculus in the roof, like using the, the physics of heat, etc. Blah, blah, um. The actual passive building, versus like lock your house up and plug it into machines and stuff, like a lot of that has been lost and like I don't know, like it's good that your building's, you know clawing some of that back. And I feel like architecture could really focus on bringing that extremely old, really passive cooling heating methods. There's a lot of history and knowledge that's been built up over the length that we've been humans.

Chris Moller: 1:06:27

It's interesting to reflect on that, a couple of different things that are worth kind of adding to. That, I think, is a really important thought, and that is, you know, a good example of that is, you know, the early architecture school that Khan did with that kind of crazy hybrid concrete, triangulated um space frame. It's not really a space frame but in any case it was a really interesting interpretation of those ideas. Again, khan exploring the interrelationship between structure services and architecture and also the stairwells in that building. Because the stairwells you know how often in institutional buildings, offices, but also a lot of university buildings you go into the stairwell and it's stagnant and and it's not very pleasant and certainly not inviting. And and in k Khan's case, right there, it's circular, the stairs are not against the walls, they're triangulated, so there's this gap between the outer brick walls and the stairs going up walls and and the stairs going up and then there is this kind of band of of light and ventilation at the top. So it's also using convection and so the way that it brings light, in the way that it turns over the air, it's actually, you know, it feels really fresh when you go in there, amazing and inviting, so you naturally kind of go up towards the light, up to where the architecture studios were, and it's really interesting how that younger generation of architects were hugely influenced, if not directly, by Kahn himself, by his buildings. So I'm talking about Foster, renzo Piano, richard Rogers, I mean there's a whole heap of them, moshi Safsi, there are a whole heap of them who directly experienced his buildings and were radically influenced by this way of thinking. By this way of thinking and if we go further and slightly sideways and think of what, say, brunelleschi did back in Florence, which was a similar thing to look back and to learn from what the Romans did in order to inform what he was doing in Florence, that was equally interesting.

Chris Moller: 1:09:17

And using these kinds of principles as well, and a parallel one is oh, what's his name? Very important Egyptian architects in the 20th century. Name escapes me just at the moment, but he did a series of really deep analysis around performance of ancient houses in the middle of Cairo and how they actually modify so both the structure and the set out and the dimensions of the streets and and the urban fabric, as well as the buildings themselves. So these things are complementary. You know, at different scales they're all helping to create cooling and shade and air movement. And in the house, these two courtyards one is dark and cool and full of plants and the other is hot and paved and has a little fountain in it and I think what also happens is one of the guys inside goes out early in the morning and his role is to throw water on the paving slabs and kickstart the airflow between these two courtyards. So it's really again a convection engine which is driven even on the stillest, hottest days as well as humidifying the air. So really extraordinary.

Chris Moller: 1:10:58

Hassan Fatih is his name and he then embraced that in his own architecture, which he then used in New Guana in Luxor, and you know, basically using local materials. And you know basically using local materials. So the other thing that we need to do is to use local materials much more directly. Again, direct processes. So we're harvesting stuff directly, literally.

Chris Moller: 1:11:28

How do we, you know, make the earth useful, not just as a vessel, as a cup, but to make our buildings, and you know whether it is trees which we grow specifically. Choose to grow good quality trees in order to make good quality buildings. Choose to grow good quality trees in order to make good quality buildings. Choose to harvest good quality earth to make good quality bricks. These are things that we should be doing directly in the location, because then that colour of that earth is talking to the building and the building is talking to the landscape. We should be doing that too.

Chris Moller: 1:12:21

So we need to get back to that as well, which, ironically, is heading in the opposite direction than, say, for example, prefabrication, but that's modern prefabrication, ancient prefabrication, which, of course, a brick is a prefab, prefabricated module, just like um. You know in the middle medieval era that most buildings were prefabricated, um. You know big timber structures which they then made barns or whatever kind of building that you needed, and you then had infill walls. So these buildings are easily then able to be repurposed or reused. So these, these are really ancient principles which we can easily use again.

Ben Sutherland: 1:13:03

Good, we might have to wrap it up there, though, chris. I think that's yeah good advice to finish on. Really Well, as a last thought.

Chris Moller: 1:13:15

That's what we're trying to do for the Ruamahanga River Theatre, which is a theatre between the trees on the edge of the Ruamahanga River and is part of an initiative by the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust, which is out there you can look that up, so they have a website, the Ruamahanga Restoration Trust and the idea of this is to both create a place where these kinds of discussions and debates can happen in amongst these ancient trees, these lowland forest giants which are somewhere between about 500 and 1,000 years old, and really to focus on cleaning the quality of the river and bringing again visceral stuff which is analogue science, so water testing kits for school kids to go and learn about water quality and then raise awareness by talking to their teachers, their parents and communities. So that's a really interesting project which we've been asked to be involved in as well, and very much about harvesting material directly from the land.

Sam Brown: 1:14:45

We have to share a link on our yeah, I've just searched them all up, so I'll put them in the show notes.

Ben Sutherland: 1:14:54

Well, thank you so much for coming. I think that was part one of many I feel we've only we didn't even get to any of the questions that I was going to ask too interesting oh

Sam Brown: 1:15:09

that was fantastic yeah, that was awesome, just getting started.

Chris Moller: 1:15:16

Thanks, thanks for um triggering my thoughts. I mean, the the things that you guys are doing are deeply inspiring and and I just kind of feel the future's in safe hands. We need more visceral hands on mad hat experimenters like you three, starting a revolution, re-revolution.

Ben Sutherland: 1:15:38

We hope so Build or die. Awesome.

Chris Moller: 1:15:43

Thanks, heaps Chris Into the realm of peasant-ness. I'm out.