I.M. Pei on the Mesa Laboratory

Architect I.M. Pei discusses his design process and vision for NCAR's iconic Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

[@ErikPukinskis]

Here's a transcript for anyone else who found this tough to hear: PEI: To come out of wide open spaces is just a total contrast INTERVIEWER: You had been in Denver of course PEI: Yes but to do something there; to get architecture there that's what I mean. I never thought of that. I had been in Denver before yes but to do architecture [inaudible]. In Denver, in this case, to do architecture on the mesa, in the foothills, or the Rockies, you just can't think of a more total change from my professional experience to date. So it wasn't something I could jump into and say I know exactly what to do, and let's get on and do something about it or make a design for it. No, it took me a long time. Quite some time. A very intense period. Definitely seemed long. Maybe only questioning one or two months but those were a very intensive few months. I had to really... rinse my brains to stop, to make it as uncut as possible from past experiences and start from scratch. But that's what I did. I slept on the mesa I don't know how many times. I walked the mesa. I drank a lot of wine on that mesa. And it was a religious experience in the early part of it. It was almost one [battle?] to try to really get a feel of nature. The only way to do that is to be there. Not only a certain time-day and night, sunset, sunrise. Not winter. I don't think I camped there in winter. But I've been there in enough occasions to have a very good feeling of that [problem?] before I started to do something. And I very quickly came to the conclusion that to do the scale of a building... see we're always [inaudible] the scale of a building in architecture. Particularly urban architecture does not stand alone, as a single building. It always relates to other buildings. Or relates to the streets, paths, or squares. So scale is a very important orienting design starting point. We have to begin with that. And when you come to this particular situation you all of the sudden find that you [inaudible] have a scale in the [right field?]. The scales are such infinite sizes that it's almost impossible for a building to... at least I thought, to related well with it. The first thought came to me of course, that this had been been done before. The Air Force Academy was already half built. And obviously I went to see that. And I came away feeling that that's not the solution. It is a very viable approach to the problem, because by taking a position different from nature, you are less likely to be compared to nature. You are already saying, we're different. We're man made. INTERVIEWER: But that was not what you wanted to do... PEI: I didn't think so. I didn't think I could reach that spiritual dimension. By taking that approach. So the other one is very difficult. And it was amorphous in my mind a long long time.

[@user-yf1be4ri9i]

How kind of you! Thank you sir 🙏 🙏 My faith in humanity is fully restored 😊

[@goclick]

What a building