On the Steps of 36
Episode 28: Mike Tonkin

Ryan Dillon:
Join us on the steps of 36, a question-and-answer conversation that crosses the thresholds into the histories, lives, influences and stories of the person and figure behind their work. A podcast by AirAA at the Architectural Association (AA).

I'd like to welcome Mike Tonkin today for another episode of On the Steps of 36, an AirAA podcast. Thank you, Mike, for joining us.

Mike Tonkin:
Thank you. Nice to be here.

RD:
So, we're going to jump right into it. We have a series of questions under certain themes, and we'll just go for it, question number one: what is your full name and what generation would you say you belong to?

MT:
I'm Michael Anthony Tonkin and I'm a child of 1960. I'm a born optimist.

RD:
Born optimist. Good. That's a good start. Question number two. What is something about you that you won't usually include in your bio?

MT:
I wouldn't include it, but it might show through the spelling errors. I'm dyslexic.

RD:
Okay. All right, so we'll shift to questions about your childhood. Question number three. Where did you grow up?

MT:
I grew up in a village outside of Bath. I grew up on a hammerhead because my mum wanted to see what was going on. It's a sort of cul de sac and a lot of people move through the village. So, it's a sort of detached 1960s house that my mum still lives in.

RD:
Right.

MT:
And the neighbours, which is the next question, were kind of admirals, priests, chief police and that kind of thing. We knew them all, as well as all the kids in the street and in front of our house.

RD:
Right. Did you go to Bath often and did that impact your interest in architecture?

MT:
Definitely, yeah.

RD:
You talked a bit about the house that you grew up in. Can you talk a bit more about the building itself and how that maybe impacted you?

MT:
It was a sort of very discreet, standalone modern house of 1960. My dad was an engineer, and he was constantly extending it.

When I grew up the house was always a building site. One extension after another as the family grew, but it still worked really well, very functional and had a lot of good things about it. I grew up in the attic room, which looked out over a beautiful landscape where you see one of the hills outside of Bath called Kelston Tump, a primoRD:ial hill.

RD:
Right. And did you go up that hill?

MT:
I love that hill.

RD:
How far is it? From the house.

MT:
From the house you could walk up in like, I don't know, an hour or 45 minutes.

RD:
Oh, very nice.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
As you said, the next question is about your neighbours. You already described what they did, were there any that were always around, or any children you played with?

MT:
There were so many children in those days. People had fewer cars, but everybody had lots of children, so the street was a kind of a playground.

There was one friend, a chap called Alan Harris, who became my best friend. I still see him a fair bit. And we basically didn't play in the street. We went into the fields that were very close by and we grew up playing in the fields.

RD:
Does he live in the area still? And when you go back there to visit your mum, I assume you still see a lot of the same neighbours?

MT:
I go back into Bath and see all my friends in Bath and I see, yeah, I see the neighbours. Well, most of them have passed away now because mum's 95 next week, so she's the longest standing, I think.

RD:
Right. Question number six. Growing up in this environment, was there anyone that you were particularly close to or that inspired you?

MT:
I had all sorts of jobs when I was a child. When I was 14, I started doing a paper round and there was a big house with huge gates and I'd never been there before. I opened the gate and walked in and these three Salukis came running up to me quite excited. But I carried on and posted the newspaper through the door. I did that for a few days and one day the owner came out and said, how on earth did you get the paper to the door? You know, these guaRD: dogs don't let anybody in, and then they said, would you like to babysit? Because the dogs had never trusted anybody before.

They had the most amazing house. It had double volumes and triple volumes and they had a Jensen Interceptor Mark 3, a white one. We had a beach buggy and a customised transit van. So as a 14-year-old in 1974, it was paradise, a super modern house in quite an old village.

RD:
Right.

MT:
And they were fashion people.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
And they owned a series of shops. They really took me under their wing and I used to stay there, and they used to drive me home in the Jensen Interceptor in the morning. So, yeah. It inspired me to be an architect, I think.

RD:
Okay. And did they open you up to a design World?

MT:
They did, yeah. And I did consider going into fashion at one point, but I always liked to build.

RD:
Okay. It's quite interesting. I had a paper round as well and my father is also an engineer. So, yeah, the paper round is quite an important thing.

MT:
All the jobs. I worked in a haRD:ware store that was… I worked at a petrol station, I cleaned cars, I did everything. They were all important. Education.

RD:
Yeah, same. I did the paper round, I also worked as a dishwasher at a country club, which made me feel quite – yeah – not to the level of a country club.

MT:
And.

RD:
Yeah, I packed boxes for exit signs, all sorts of things. But it definitely influences you. Next question: what is a belief you held as a child that now seems strange or ridiculous?

MT:
Oh, that is a tricky one. I mean, I guess I was always very socially minded and when I was a student, I got sponsored, so I had quite a lot of money. I bought a campervan and I decided I wanted to see all the buildings of great architects: Mies, Korb, Kahn and Aalto. I went to see an Aalto building in Russia in the campervan in 1988.

RD:
Wow.

MT:
When I was in Russia, that completely disillusioned me with a kind of socialism because you just saw a country on its knees falling apart, and people were just asleep in fields and on the roads, and you just saw the kind of wreck of society. So, that came as a kind of, oof, there's a bubble birth.

RD:
That must have been quite difficult.

MT:
Yeah, I mean, it was. Even visiting that library in Vipuri. It's a beautiful building, but I saw it as a ruin. A man came up to me with a Luger gun and told me I had to leave very quickly for my own safety. I had to get back in the campervan and I headed off to Leningrad.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
That journey from Finland into Russia, going through the fields and driving for eight hours and seeing nobody, no other car, getting to a fork in the road where there was no sign to get out of a van and decide which way should I go. I would look at the tracks and see where, you know, the gravel had been disturbed.

RD:
Right.

MT:
And then just go, I think it's this one.

RD:
Right.

MT:
Follow that route.

RD:
Was it the right one?

MT:
It was the right one, yeah.

RD:
The similarities continue because I also bought a camper van after I graduated from university. But, unlike you in Europe, I travelled to the US. Because at the age of about 20, I'd seen more of Europe than I had seen of my own birth country.

So, I did the tour. I saw Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies, and the farm and Khan. I grew up in New England, so I had seen Khan before that. But then I saw…

MT:
You've seen Exeter Library.

RD:
I have, yeah.

MT:
I love Exeter Library.

RD:
It's a beautiful place. Yeah, I grew up not far from New Haven.

MT:
Oh, I love the SOM building there.

RD:
Yes. The next question – you mentioned the hill that you would walk up – maybe you could select another special place for you growing up or expand on that one.

MT:
Okay. Well, as I said, I kind of grew up in the fields.

If you followed the fields to the top of a hill through a wood called Longwood, you could stand on the top of the hill and see Stantonbury camp, a Neolithic fort, and look over to Kelston Tump, which is another Neolithic fort. I called it my kingdom.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
And you're right in between the two.

RD:
Wow.

MT:
And I'd quite like to buy the field on the top of that hill.

RD:
Right.

MT:
And then I'd like to build a cathedral of trees and then give it back to the farmer.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
But keep the trees growing. So that's my plan.

RD:
You think it's possible?

MT:
I think so. Because it probably has no value. It's never really had much in it.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
You know, it's a beautiful field. I mean, it'd probably be amazing in 100 years’ time.

RD:
You should go for it, I think. Yeah. All right. We're going to shift from childhood more to what you do and your work. Question number nine, how would you describe what you do?

MT:
I'd say I'm a storyteller who is kind of slightly obsessed by nature. We do architecture, landscape, art and structure.

RD:
Do projects start with a story or does a story develop through them?

MT:
Projects always begin with a story.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
We have a very specific process that is called asking, looking, playing, making and that's the book we just brought out.

RD:
Okay, very nice. Question number 10: did you always know that you wanted to be a storyteller architect when you were young?

MT:
As my childhood was all about building dens and making things, I think I was always going to work in the building industry even if I hadn't gone through architecture school, I think I would have ended up being a developer.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
I definitely would have ended up as a builder in one way or another.

RD:
Are you happy with that now?

MT:
Of course.

RD:
Good. Next question: if you could change your field of work, so if you weren't an architect, what would you like to be doing?

MT:
I'd like to be a structural sculptor.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
I really like the kind of structural poets, Nervi Diester, Otto Gaudi. And I really enjoy making structures and making things with my hands and that's what I would quite like to do.

RD:
Right. Have you been to Hook Park?

MT:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was great. I love it.

RD:
Yeah, absolutely. I take my students there every year.

MT:
We used to take ours, too. Yeah.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
It has a good west country feel, which I like too.

RD:
Exactly. It's not the same, but it feels slightly like where I grew up. So, it always feels like I'm going home a bit.

MT:
Yeah, for me too. I like going into the woods with the stream and…

RD:
Exactly.

MT:
And a lot of the kids haven’t ever experienced that but, for me, that was normal.

RD:
Right. Well, yeah, that's what I find as well. Most of the students I teach grew up in urban environments.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
So when you bring them to Hook, it's magical for them.

MT:
Exactly. Yeah. And it's really nice to see them enjoy it.

RD:
Exactly.

MT:
And show them how to appreciate it and what you can learn from it.

RD:
Yeah, definitely.

MT:
Yeah. Yeah.

RD:
Question number 12: as you in your practice or at home, what's the space that you like to work in or prefer to work in?

MT:
The studio is a kind of piano noble in a Georgian building and it looks out over Green Square, but on the floor above is a library and during the day, I work in the studio, but in the evening, I quite like to be in the library.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
They've both got quite good sound systems.

RD:
Oh, that's good.

MT:
And I like to have the music quite loud.

RD:
All right. So, yeah, we're going to talk about music in a little bit. but. Do you work alone in these spaces?

MT:
I'm usually on my own.

RD:
Right. This is a bit of a tricky question, but question number 13: is there a particular book that has had a significant impact on the way you approach what you do?

MT:
I like Architecture Without Architects (1964), but preceding that, my dad bought Wonders of a World (1912), volumes one and two – they've got all the things in them that are in architecture without architects and lots more. These books became a kind of travel plan for me.

I've spent about seven years of my life traveling around the world and taking an awful lot of photographs. But, recently, I went back through these books and was surprised how many I'd actually seen.

RD:
Right.

MT:
It wasn't my objective, but it's ended up being quite interesting because it's full of wonders of nature as well as architecture. I think those two books are really important to me.

RD:
And you said you recently went back to them. Do you do that on a regular basis?

MT:
Well, I was looking for something for a talk we were doing. There was a particular tree in it. Said it was in Ceylon, but it's in Kandy. It was the biggest tree in the world and when you approach that tree, you see it through a clearing. I could hear this music. It's like, whoa, you know, a magical kind of feeling.

The closer you get towaRD:s the tree; the singing gets louder. Under the tree, there's a whole school singing and they're all dressed in white and it's just unbelievable. I've got a couple of slides of that before I knew what it was and then when you're inside the tree it was a magical experience. Wow. Wow.

RD:
Could something like that influence your storytelling?

MT:
Exactly, yeah. Because I think the storytelling is all about making an experience.

RD:
Right.

MT:
I'm not interested in stories that are references to architecture. I'm interested in stories that are about connections between people or about connections with nature.

RD:
Okay, so we'll go on to the next one. 14: this is the last question for work. If there's one device you could invent that would aid your work and the world around you, what would it be?

MT:
Once when I was working with Ed Clark from Arup, we invented this technique called shell lace structure, which are quite complicated single surface structures.

It was getting so complicated that even in the Plasticine, you couldn't see through the Plasticine. I wanted to see through the Plasticine so I could see what was on the other side of the triangular structure we were making. When I was thinking about it, what I would really like is a glove out of which the Plasticine came out of the fingers, so you could kind of sculpt with the Plasticine.

Then if you made it see through, you could turn it on and off depending on whether you wanted to see through it or see the outer shell. When you're making structures, it's all about the feeling of forces moving inside structures.

RD:
Have you ever tried to work with anyone to invent that see through Plasticine?

MT:
Yeah, I did buy some gel from the shop on Warren Street, you know, Tarantes.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
There's a gel you can make up, but it's too mushy. I tried, but it didn't work.

RD:
Yeah, sometimes that can lead to something else.

MT:
Well, yeah, maybe I'll give it another go.

RD:
The next section is on architecture and the built environment. Where do you live now?

MT:
We live in Wilmington Square, which is in WC1.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
Not far away. It's a Georgian townhouse. We built the sun and rain rooms, and this was the only thing I'd ever built for ourselves in the back gaRD:en. This was an important project for us.

RD:
How long have you lived in central London?

MT:
I lived in a bedsit in Marylebone for 17 years and then I moved to Clerkenwell, I lived there for 27 years. But in between I spent seven years of my life traveling around the world. ButI've always been here. I always wanted to be in the middle.

RD:
Right.

MT:
And I quite like going in the opposite direction to everybody else. When you must travel anywhere.

RD:
It's quite lucky to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MT:
I don't mind living in a small place, but it was important to be in the centre.

RD:
Yeah, yeah. I moved out of London about seven years ago to the southeast.

MT:
But you get some nature.

RD:
I do. Which is nice. I have a nice view of Crystal Palace.

MT:
Oh, great.

RD:
I have urge to come back in a bit.

MT:
Crystal palace is beautiful. We did the swing bridge in Dinosaur Island there.

RD:
Oh, very nice. Yeah, it's a beautiful park to go to and the high street is quite nice. And yeah, there's a lot of good places.

MT:
A good vibe.

RD:
It is.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
In London, is there one sort of hidden building or space that you would recommend to our listeners that they should visit?

MT:
Oh, in London.

RD:
Or it could be anywhere.

MT:
I was going to suggest something. Ahmedabad in Gujarat is my favourite city. It's got so many architectural wonders in it.

And the ones that are hidden are the stepwells that go down into the ground. There's quite a lot of them. A few of them in the city and a few of them around the city. The stepwells were built by the queens, the princes built the temples and the queens built the stepwells because they controlled the water.

RD:
That's right.

MT:
They're incredibly cool and they're about the monsoon and the seasons. Even now when you go, we were there last year, there's still lots of women in Nasaris descending into the water.

They're such a place of celebration and the fact they're hidden when you approach them, you can't even see them.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
I mean, all of a sudden, all these people appear out of nowhere. They're really beautiful.

RD:
Yeah, they're very serene.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
Even the form of them, how the steps crisscross.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
It sort of instigates conversation and people crossing each other, it's a beautiful piece of engineering.

MT:
As its infrastructure, it's about deluge and drought. I think we might need step wells everywhere quite soon.

RD:
Yeah, that's very true.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
It'd be nice to have them. Question number 17: if you could live in any building in the world, which would you choose to inhabit?

MT:
I think my favourite building is the Mill Owners Association building in the same city, Ahmedabad. I think I wouldn't mind hanging out there. I could turn that into a school or into a great building, I think.

I mean, it's a bit of a shame it's underused because it's such an amazing space. Everything Le Corbusier did is in that building and the way it works with the climate is pretty successful. I haven't been there in the monsoon, but it does work well, I'd say.

RD:
Why would you turn it into a school?

MT:
I suppose we've always enjoyed teaching and that building's full of lessons.

RD:
Right. So, an architectural school then. Have you been to see Le Corbusier’s work in Punjab? In Chandigarh?

MT:
Yeah and we're going back in November.

RD:
Okay. I lived in Chandigarh for two years and the client I was working for was the Punjabi government. I would have meetings in the Secretariat building. And yeah, I got tours of all the other buildings. It was quite fantastic.

MT:
Oh, amazing. I'm doing a talk about Corb in a couple of weeks at Docomoco.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
I'm going to show some of the sites I took in 1990. From Chandigarh and the Mill Owners Association building, when they were both set in semi ruin.

RD:
Right.

MT:
Yeah, yeah.

RD:
I mean, the Secretariat is a kind of ruin.

MT:
Yeah, so full of paper. I'm looking forwaRD: to seeing how they're dealing with the paper now, but everything's on the computer, but I'm sure that's equally archaic.

RD:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'll enjoy that trip. Next question. We talked about an existing piece of architecture in the last one. If there's one piece of architecture that no longer exists that you could visit, what would that be?

MT:
Well, it half exists.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
Gaudi's crypt at the Gorel community.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
It didn't get built.

RD:
Right.

MT:
But I think if it did, it would be one of the most beautiful buildings, if not the most beautiful building in the world.

RD:
Okay. Have you ever modelled it or tried to?

MT:
I've been there a couple of times and I'll be going back in September. There's a whole Institute of Lightweight Structures issue on it.

RD:
Right.

MT:
Yeah, it's fantastic.

RD:
I'm not so familiar with that one. I'll have to check it out.

MT:
Yeah, it's a gem.

RD:
Okay, question number 19, it goes back maybe to the hill, but is there a particular landscape or outdoor place that's meaningful to you?

MT:
Yeah, I think to be in woods.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
Just generically, you know, some people are mountain people and some people are beach people. I like to be in the shade and I like to be surrounded by wood.

RD:
Right.

MT:
It doesn't really matter where the forest is. In Hong Kong there was a trail we used to do called the Dragon's Back.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
And you used to walk up and down around streams, and up and down the hill, always in a forest. When you came out at the end, there was a tunnel of green, and you appeared out of this tunnel on the top of a mountain. Then the mountain rushed towaRD:s you because you'd been walking through the bushes for so long, and because you'd been inside green, the green just calms you down.

All the stress of a hectic city life like Hong Kong is gone and you're on top of a mountain and you're kind of cleansed. I think forests cleanse you.

RD:
Okay, do you go to Epping Forest or anything?

MT:
We like Epping Forest. I go there on the motorbike sometimes.

RD:
Okay. Yeah. It's one of the most. I don't know, I think the only place in London I feel like you can detach from the city.

MT:
Yeah. And it's really quick to get to. I think I can get there in 45 minutes or something.

RD:
Yeah, exactly.

So, the final question for the architectural section, is: if you could remove a popular building from its pedestal, what would you choose to replace it with?

MT:
That was the one I had trouble with because, as I said, I'm an optimist, but I only thought of it on cycling here that I would take away Venturi's extension to the National Gallery.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
It's a falsitude.

RD:
Right.

MT:
And I would replace it with something of integrity, but something that is still about classicism. But about the elegance of the spaces and the integrity of the construction, rather than referential postmodernism.

RD:
Right. Do you feel that way for all of their work or just specifically for that context?

MT:
I liked the first house, but the one house they did the frame of a house for, was it for Jefferson? I've forgotten.

They just built a frame of the empty shell of a house. I thought that was clever. When I was a first year student, I read Complexity and Contradiction 12 times. On the twelth time I thought, I'm not gonna look at that book again. And in a way, I felt like I moved on from it. I think there is so many things wrong with the National Gallery.

RD:
Right.

MT:
I didn't want to answer that question.

RD:
Yeah. It's a tricky one.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
We're going to shift to what we call cultural questions. Question number 21: what do you consider to be your perfect meal? And that could be food related or company related or space related.

MT:
Well, it's funny you mention Chandigarh, because on the way to Chandigarh, on a train from Delhi, I went through Ambula. And on the train, I was in a carriage with an army family and the lady got out a chicken curry and shared it with us.

I think that's the best meal I've ever had in my life. Maybe I was really hungry, but it was just so divine, just with chapatis. I think chicken curry is my meal of choice.

RD:
When I was in Punjab, a colleague invited me to his mother's house and it was during saag season and she made sag aloo. It was the best meal I've ever had in my life. I couldn't stop eating it.

MT:
If you like saag, there's a new restaurant on Roseberry Avenue.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
It's called Tyree. He used to work at Bernares and Dishoom, and his paneer is to die for.

RD:
Yeah, I'll have to go. I have a friend who comes to London twice a year from the States and we always go to Indian.

MT:
He makes his own paneer. So that's what's so good about it. Yeah. With full fat milk.

RD:
Right. Perfect.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
All right. Question number 22: if you had to recommend a non-architectural book to architects, what would it be?

MT:
On Growth and Form.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
Darcy Thompson.

RD:
Yes. That still influences you?

MT:
The idea that form is force or form is a force in nature for me is so important. I mean, I'm really interested in that relationship between strength, form and economy.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
And yeah, I think that's where delight lies.

RD:
Right. Did you say you draw plants?

MT:
We have a massive collection of shells and seeds, and other peculiarities from nature. Mostly things that fit in your pocket.

RD:
Okay.

RD:
Because we pick them up on the travels, you know.

RD:
That's a nice constraint.

MT:
Yeah, yeah. We don't really. We don't like things.

RD:
Right.

MT:
Anna and I had an idea of it. We wouldn't own anything.

But of course, we've got an awful lot of books and an awful lot of cooking equipment. We also have a collection of seeds and shells. Now I'm going to start photographing them. We've got a photo from a friend, one of our clients, a photograph of a water tower. He's a sort of close-up photographer. I've been getting some advice from him and we're going to start photographing these things close and then blow them up huge.

Then I want to draw them, but draw them massive. Make very big drawings of very small things.

RD:
Sounds like an exhibit waiting to happen.

MT:
Well, I don't know, but yeah.

RD:
I’d like to see those. Question number 23: what was the last cultural event that you attended? A Film or cinema or concert?

MT:
Well, actually, I was at Wimbledon yesteRD:ay.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
I mean, that's a cultural event. When you arrive, you feel like, oh, boy, this is such and such. I've been a lot before.

But you think it is such a middle-class event and so English.

I mean, you stay there a little bit longer and you watch people and you hear people and you realise it's so international and it's also not really middle class. Everybody's there and the atmosphere is fantastic.

What's really beautiful is, I really like the way the crowd cheers for the undeRD:og.

RD:
Right.

MT:
That’s really nice. It's not all about winning. I think that's what makes the atmosphere so good. So, I think it is a kind of cultural event.

In Hong Kong, Anna and I used to like going to any mass event because there are always ways of observing people. You know, mass religious events, mass cultural gatherings. But in India, you know, they're always fascinating. Yeah.

I don't think culture is necessarily something you find in a cinema or a theatre or an exhibition space.

RD:
I think that's an important point to make.

MT:
I did go to the Craft of Wood exhibition on a weekend at the Japan House for the second time.

RD:
All right, so worth the trip then.

MT:
I needed to see it one more time. I took our nephew.

RD:
Okay. It's closing soon.

MT:
It's closed now. It was brilliant.

RD:
All right.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
I have to find out where it goes next. I think that cultural aspect of sport and sort of priority within what people go for.

I went to the Olympics when they were in London. I went to a women's football match; it was Japan and France. There weren't many fans from either side.

As an optimist, I think you would like this. Anything good that happened, people cheered. It didn't matter who did it or what was happening, it was that everyone cheered. It was an amazing kind of feeling. You can see the positivity in the stadium.

MT:
Yeah, I know. I like the idea that I just support the winner, you know, that way you’re never disappointed. Exactly.

RD:
Yeah. It's the easy way out.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
Next one. If you could inhabit one film or artwork, which would it be?

MT:
I'd be in Seven Samurai.

RD:
Okay, right. Very nice. 25: what TV show have you most rewatched?

MT:
We don't have a television, but every night Anna and I watch David Attenborough, and it's a way of closing the day. It's almost like a belief system.

We just watch David Attenborough over and over and over again. We've been doing it for maybe, you know… we've been together for 30 years, so I don't know how many times we've rewatched them. Life on Earth is unbelievably good. The book that goes with it is good too.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
You know, there are new ones that come out, and the new ones aren't as good as the old ones. Because in the old ones, he describes things much more.

RD:
Right.

MT:
Unfortunately, the newer ones sometimes are just more pictorial or they're about the beauty of it. But I want to know how things work. Why things are the way they are. The one last night was fantastic, it talked about zebras. The reason the zebra has its stripes is because it  confuses the lions and cheetahs that are attacking it with dazzle.

RD:
Oh, right.

MT:
The stripes stop flies landing on them because the flies can't see between the white and black stripes. Far less flies land on zebras than any other creature on the plains.

RD:
Wow.

MT:
Yeah, every night I learn something.

RD:
You've seen this one before?

MT:
That one I'd never seen before.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
Does it make you want to get a zebra jacket?

MT:
Well, it kind of did. Yeah.

RD:
But no flies!

MT:
I thought about, you know, with zebra skins. But I wouldn't want a dead animal in the house.

RD:
Yeah. Wow, that's fascinating. I used to watch him quite a bit, and then I stopped.

MT:
Well, one I would recommend is the GaRD:en of Eden because it's also about architecture and the story of the Mediterranean, and how the Mediterranean was actually a Dead Sea. Five million years ago, that Dead Sea was just a massive crater.

Then where Gibraltar is, a gap opened in the straits and a waterfall started, and that waterfall fell for 100,000 years as the ocean filled the Mediterranean.

RD:
Right.

MT:
And that's why the Mediterranean is so salty, because there's a mile of salt in the bottom of the Mediterranean.

RD:
Really?

MT:
All the creatures in the Mediterranean evolutionary have a very different background to everything else. Then it changed again when the Suez Canal came into the Mediterranean and it was connected to the Indian Ocean.

Then everything from the Indian Ocean came in, so it's a kind of, you know, a sort of living place. But now it's polluted and a problem. But it’s a fascinating story.

RD:
Is that why the Mediterranean is so blue and greenish? Because of this?

MT:
I'm not sure about that. I'll have to watch it again.

RD:
That's a good reason. All right, question number 26: what's the first piece of music that really impacted or resonated with you?

MT:
When I was 11, I bought David Bowie's Space Oddity.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
I think that was really important for me. But also in a village disco, I heaRD: Nutbush City Limits.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
When I heaRD: that, I was like, what is that?

RD:
You know?

MT:
I really got into funk music after that.

RD:
Do you still listen to funk?

MT:
I do, yeah. I mean, I'm a kind of west country boy, so I quite like Massive Attack.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
I like Arcade Fire. I've got quite a Catholic taste in music, I'd say.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
I am that sort of optimist. I want to hear new things and our son introduces us to great music. I like the classics, but I also like to be wooed by new stuff.

RD:
Right. I have a haRD: time finding new music.

MT:
The stuff that hits Spotify. It's good, you know, it knows what I like.

RD:
Yeah, it's helpful that way.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
Continuing with music and what we touched upon earlier in your library or your workspace, what kind of music do you listen to? Quite loudly, you said, while you work.

MT:
I have a series of different playlists. One's called Kind of My Jazz, and that tends to be reasonably funky or sort of abstract things going from the 1970s to now.

Frank Zappa might be in there, along with a bit of Massive Attack or, I don't know, other people.

Occasionally, I put an album on and I'll put on, you know, Dark side of the Moon's an amazing album if you want to listen to something from beginning to end. Because, in the office, we always have music on.

RD:
Right.

MT:
In Hong Kong, when we had the studio, we always had the music on loud.

RD:
Right.

MT:
New people say, why is the music so loud? And I say, well, you know, if a client phones up, I want them to know we're having a good time.

RD:
Right.

MT:
You know, we're doing it because we want to be doing it. (It feels different) when you go into those offices where there's silence or people have their headphones on. I don't want anyone to wear headphones.

RD:
Right.

MT:
I want everyone to hear every conversation and I want them to enjoy the music, and the music can be played by anybody.

RD:
Right.

MT:
It’s really nice because different people have different, persuasions.

RD:
That’s a really nice attitude and approach.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
It sounds like an office that would be really enjoyable to work in.

MT:
Well, it's good for us, too, because we get to hear new music.

RD:
Right, going back to Hooke Park, everyone's always so active and lively in those spaces. And Charlie –

MT:
Yeah, Charlie's great.

RD:
Charlie's amazing. He's always playing music and he allows his students to play music. I think it really sets a tone.

MT:
Yeah, definitely. It's an atmosphere that adds positivity.

RD:
Definitely. Yeah. I'll have to think about adding that to my studio. One last question for this section: what is the last post that you made on social media and on what platform?

MT:
We don't really do social media, but we do a newsletter.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
And in the newsletter, I showed a picture of an artwork that's as big as this table, which is my slide collection, which has 12,000 slides.

It's called 12,000 Stories 30 Years and it's in the RA Summer Exhibition. The slides are all on their end, so you can't see them, obviously.

RD:
Oh, right.

MT:
But they were taken out of the carousels accoRD:ing to what they were, you know, whether from Yemen or from India or from Korb or Caen or whatever it is.

RD:
Right.

MT:
They are always processed in different places.

RD:
Right.

MT:
So they're different slide mounts and they make a pattern that's surprisingly architectural.

RD:
Right.

MT:
But rather random.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
It's perverse that you can't see them.

RD:
Right.

MT:
We’ve been getting quite a lot of emails from people who are seeing it, liking it and didn't realise we did it.

RD:
Okay. By randomly placing them, does that create new stories?

MT:
I am going to be doing a book soon which is about putting two pictures together. It's about telling a story through two photographs, not one, because that sets up a dialogue.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
Yeah. The 12,000 may tell a lot of stories, I think.

RD:
Assuming you still use photography today, do you use film cameras or digital cameras?

MT:
Film. I stopped making film in 2004.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
I think our last student trip at the AA might be the last slides I took.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
Which was, I think in Sifnos, the island of Sifnos.

RD:
Ah, beautiful.

MT:
Yeah, from then on it's been digital. But the digital things changed the way you take photographs.

I always spend a lot of money traveling, but not much money on my cameras. I'm not one of those sorts of geeky photographers. It wasn't about the equipment; it was more about finding the place.

So the quality of them is not very good. The slides are covered in hairs and things like that, but it doesn't really bother me. It's more about the observation.

With the digital photography, what's interesting is you take the picture, you come back and you see the picture, and we have a big projector and you project the picture. Then in the picture, you see another picture because there's so much in it.

There's so much information there, you can re-edit it and crop it so you sort of see it twice. But I think it's a great way of revisiting the things you visited. And then all of a sudden they become part of your consciousness.

I think the whole thing of taking slides. When I used to take the slides, when I was going to press the button, I say, do I want to spend 50p?

RD:
Right.

MT:
Because that's how much it used to cost. Quite often I’d go, oh, I'm not spending 50p on that. Because I used to take pictures for information and after a while I realised, oh, I don't need that information.

RD:
Right.

MT:
You know, if it's not an interesting observation, it's not worth 50p.

RD:
I always think of the time between film and digital cameras because I would sit for quite a long time when I had a film camera just waiting for something like the shadow to move or a person to move.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
Because it was. I didn't think of 50p. But that, you know, you had 24 shots.

RD:
Yeah, 36.

MT:
Sometimes I would just wait, you know, because they were precious. Each one felt precious. Whereas now it's just click, click, click, click.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
And anyway, I guess it changes the way you look, but I think there are advantages and disadvantages to that.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
Yeah. It makes me revisit it more. It takes hours. It takes me longer editing the pictures than it does taking them.

RD:
Exactly.

MT:
I mean, recently we just did a trip across middle England from HerefoRD: to Norfolk. Literally in a straight line.

RD:
Right.

MT:
Seeing some Vanbrugh Haddon Hall, HaRD:wick Hall, Leicester Engineering Building, Boots Factory. They're all roughly in a line.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
And Grimsfolk Castle.

RD:
Right.

MT:
As we're moving quite quickly, you know, you take quite a lot of pictures, but then the joy is then reseeing what you saw because you don't get the chance to go back, and you can't spend ages if you're traveling with a group of people, which we generally are, so your time's limited.

You can't wait for that one shot or for when those people are going to get out of a picture or when they are going to move into a picture.

RD:
Sounds like a good unit trip.

MT:
Yeah, actually, that was with Alex Duraiker and Anna, and some other architectural friends, Matthew Priestman and Sean Souter. Because the unit trips I used, I think that's something about teaching. You get so much out of unit trips.

RD:
Yeah, absolutely. I also find just having, you know, I used to theme them about something. Now I just feel like traveling to see architecture is enough, you know, and just indulging in seeing buildings and spaces and landscapes is enough. Then to talk about that, you know, rather than a unit trip where you go and they have to work.

MT:
Yeah, I agree. Just going to look. But then maybe getting them to go and observe things on the way, because quite often you'll be chasing some building in the middle of nowhere.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
When we took the students to Sifnos, we read somewhere in the guidebook there was a thing called the Crazy Festival.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
So, we thought, okay, we're going to the Crazy Festival. Then there's no transport, so we have to get everyone in the back of pickup trucks and go up to this mountain.

RD:
Right.

MT:
It’s in a churchyaRD: on the top of a mountain. When we get there, there's about 100 people singing and drinking.

It's a beautiful terrace and there's a marble column with a kind of hollow dish in the top. Next to it there's a sort of square on the floor with a hollow dish in it.

At some point, red wine gets poured in one and wine gets poured in the other, and a man drinks from one and a woman drinks from the other. It’s some kind of fertility festival that's been going on for two or three thousand, two thousand years or something.

Then the music stops and everybody claps, and then it goes back again. That Was it. But it was so worth it.

RD:
Right.

MT:
You know, we and all the students were drawing. You couldn't photograph, it was too dark.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
So sometimes it's like that, you have to get the pencils out.

RD:
Right.

MT:
Because the camera fails. But then you sort of soak it all up. That became a great experience because it's sort of about human rituals and behaviour.

RD:
Yeah. Which is what I like about the unit trip, you can balance buildings, museums and cultural events. I've been to Sifnos, but I miss that.

MT:
It's unfortunate. What's it called? I'll remember it later. The woRD: for Crazy Festival.

RD:
Crazy Festival, yeah.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
It sounds great. We're going to shift to a couple more serious questions. Obviously, there's a lot going on in the world. What would you like to talk about in terms of a political or social issue going on around us at the moment?

MT:
Well, maybe if I can recount a dream I had about three horses ploughing a field, and the two horses are all in a line, on the outside. The rope is long.

Two horses on the outside pull out to the left and the right, and the horse in the middle keeps going in the centre, and the rope gets longer and longer. In my dream, it's over a kind of brow of a hill, and the horses to the left and right are pulling in each direction that isn't particularly useful to the plough. But the one in the middle can either amble because the other two are doing the work, or it can pull further forwaRD:.

When I woke up, I was like, what is all that about? The horse at some point was eating, and then at some point started pulling.

I read the central path as the right way because we're in a world that's so divided by left and right. But what we're forgetting is the central path, which is about environmental awareness and what we should be doing with the planet.

It's completely being ignored by wars and politics, so we're completely missing the agenda. It's almost like everything is a distraction to the most important thing right now, which is actually, you know, care of the environment.

RD:
Right.

MT:
I think that dream was all about that. Well, that's what it seemed to me when I woke up. I always wake up thinking, what was that all about, you know.

RD:
That's quite a poignant way to explain the world around us at the moment and that pull and divide. I mean, I've never seen the world so divisive in this moment. Do you dream a lot?

MT:
I dream a lot and I'm lucky because I can remember my dreams. But I know another question is, am I a morning person. I'm a night owl, but Anna is a morning biRD:.

Anna wakes up at 6am. She wakes me up, so I wake up too. But then rather than get up, I like to stay in bed and I go back into a kind of waking sleep.

In that waking sleep, if I don't speak, I can go back into the dream I was in because I half remember it. Then when you're in waking sleep, you can sometimes control your dream.

Quite often I'll see things, you know, I'm designing or sometimes other people are designing. Why is he doing that? Oh, I quite like that, you know, that doesn't make any sense, you know, so very architectural, I suppose.

Sometimes they're about nature, but those are really, really important. Then after the waking sleep is finished, I start to think about the office in a creative way.

I only get up when I start to worry about things in the office. Then I go, oh, damn, I've got to deal with that, or I've got to deal with this.

That's what gets me out of bed. I've got to go and deal with the issue, or I've seen the solution to something, because when the day starts, there's no room for that kind of dwelling back to think on something on a kind of level. But you need to make those kinds of creative connections. I think creativity exists in the subconscious. Eureka.

Insight generally comes when you're not trying to solve the problem, but when you've gone to make the cup of tea or when you're walking the dog or something.

I think that learning to be able to get away from the rock face and come back from it, and I think as a teacher that somehow it's nice that it's not your problem, it's someone else's problem. You just need to be able to see that in a way more laterally.

I think dreams are really important and the subconscious is far more important in creativity than we really admit to.

RD:
Yeah, I think that's what made me a morning person. In architecture school, I would rack my brain for hours and stay up till 2am or 3am in the morning trying to figure something out.

Then I'd go to bed at 4am. When I woke up, I would have something. Whether in my dreams or just from the rest, the epiphany or whatever came into my mind. So, I just started to go to bed early, figuring the morning was a better moment to find…

MT:
Oh, to get the solution.

RD:
Well, not the solution, but the ideas, maybe.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
No, I really like the idea that when you wake up, it's like rebooting the computer.

RD:
Exactly.

MT:
Sometimes you just have to shut the computer down and when you wake up I'm so lucid, when I wake up, it's like, whoa.

You know, recently I've just started talking into the notes on my phone. I just start jabbering. Who are you talking to?

RD:
Have you listened to them yet, or no?

MT:
Well, it writes it down. Sometimes it's all right. Sometimes it's gibberish.

RD:
Sounds like another book. Question number 30: what lesson or belief was the haRD:est for you to unlearn?

MT:
Yeah, this one. I can't remember what I was thinking about.

RD:
I mean, I explained the disillusionment of seeing Russia. I suppose what do I believe in? I mean, maybe to answer it like that. I believe that architecture is a kind of practical art.

The woRD: practical comes before art.

Okay.

MT:
There was an exhibition by Rodin Vitate and it said: learn the craft before you learn the art. I think that's a real truism. When I was a kid, maybe I'd always wanted to be an artist.

And, you know, because I was dyslexic and the school said, you know, I could draw really well at five or something, right? And they just said, oh, it doesn't matter. He's going to be an artist. You don't need to teach him to read and write. It was almost just like.

It was a very liberal school, you know, so. So in a way, I never learned anything through books. I learned it through observation. And that's part of a world of being dyslexic. I think so.

But then at some point, I do enjoy taking in information, you know, through reading and through lectures. And that's still very much part of it. But I suppose I, you know, if you learn, if you believe in an empirical view of the world, then you believe that you learn through doing. I think we learn through our hands and I think a million years of history.

Our hands are such an amazing tool, and you can almost think with your hand. We think with a pencil, but you can think with Plasticine too and actually it's so interactive.

But I wish I could kind of pass that on to people. If you don't have curiosity to find things, you're never going to find anything, so I think. I think that would be.

My belief system is that I think architecture comes to those who kind of pursue it, but not in an intellectual way, because that's just a way of reading architecture, it's not a way of creating architecture. I think that the great architecture that touches our soul, you know, comes from the soul and doesn't come from the intellect.

It comes from emotion and it comes from a message that is in the art of architecture.

RD:
Yeah. I think, interestingly, a moment I have that was in Chandigarh when I walked into the court space and the big conical space in the middle –

MT:
The assembly chamber.

RD:
Yes and you walk through a forest of columns and there's that little wood box that you enter before you go into the chamber, and it's very small and dark, and then you walk in, it's just an explosion of space. The emotion that coursed through me was quite powerful and that was quite impactful. I had been practicing for a long time and I thought I need to go back and think about what I really want to be doing in architectural practice and thought.

This was a very big moment for me, I think, because I maybe lost sight of that for a while.

MT:
Yeah. No, I think you're lucky because a lot of people haven't experienced almost anything. Through Covid, and these days, people don't travel.

I think that is partly the problem. But if you haven't seen it, how can you know it? I don't believe in second-hand knowledge, I believe in the firsthand. Right.

RD:
And that's why you've travelled so much.

MT:
Exactly. Yeah.

RD:
You talked about working with your hands and your practice. Does the practice build models?

MT:
And I voted you build the models.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
I've never built a model. That's right.

RD:
Right.

MT:
Every model teaches you what's wrong.

RD:
Right.

MT:
So even when we build the best models for, you know, we've ever put into the Royal Academy.

RD:
Right.

MT:
They're all wrong.

RD:
Right.

MT:
Because when you think, oh, my goodness, what happened there?

RD:
Right.

MT:
You know how come a tower of light got. So where did all the perforation go? How come. So, you know, that was one example.

We finished the model, and only when we finished the model and asked Ed Clark, I said, well, you know, the perforations become, you know, the holes aren't big enough. It's lost its transparency.

And he said, well, Mike, you can make it thinner, but, you know, you can make the holes much bigger if you make the material a bit thicker. At that point, the whole tower was just 4mm thick. You know, it's 40m tall. And I said, well, what if we make it 6mm?

He said, if you make it 20% bigger, you can make the holes 20% bigger. So, we made it 6mm. The holes just got 20% bigger. And from that distance, you can't tell how thick it is because it looks like paper.

Anyway, so all of a sudden it just, you know. So, the model in the RA was the wrong one, the one we built. In planning, the planner said, oh, do you have to put in a new planning application?

I'm not going to put a new planning application in, you know, so we just told them it's slightly more perfect than it was before. It makes complete sense because more wind goes through it.

RD:
Yeah, that sounds like a good unit brief.
Make wrong models.

MT:
Yeah, yeah. Well, well, make. Make models and then learn. And then learn from them. Exactly. And we'll learn by failure, in a way.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
I tell a lot of people I learned about structures by falling out of trees.

RD:
Yes.

MT:
You know, because I used to climb from one tree to another.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
Occasionally I'd fall out. You know, when I just pushed it to the limits, where a branch would break or the one, I was hanging off would snap or something.

RD:
You know, that's what the engineer Le Richelet would always say, push things to failure, because at the moment of failure, you learn something.

MT:
Well, I was really proud at one moment where we were working with Chris Wise on Roof GaRD:en Apartment.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
And that structure wobbled. And we were working with Jane Vernick on the Singing Re-entry. That structure wobbled.

And we were doing a promenade of light with Atelier One on Old Street and that structure wobbled. It was really interesting how each of those engineers dealt with the wobble. Atelier One came out best.

RD:
All right.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
Did they leave a bit of wobble?

MT:
No, they just had a really simple solution. No panic. Oh, just do this. But I like the fact they were all on the edge because what, you know, I hate that idea.

We spend more money than we need to and elegance lies in a sort of brevity of material.

RD:
Right. A good transition to our next group of Ceasefire questions.

MT:
Okay.

RD:
All right, the first one you sort of already answered, but for our listeners, question 31: morning person or night owl?

MT:
A night owl. Everyone who knows me from the clubbing days will say I think, oh, yes, okay, he's a night owl.

RD:
And do you ever go to clubs now?

MT:
Occasionally. When I got my degree, remember I got a first class degree and I met someone and she said, I can't believe you got a first class. You were out every night.

RD:
Right. Maybe it helped though.

MT:
Well, I used to work till 6.30pm.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
Then we'd go to the pub and buy three pints that were 20p each. Drink three pints very quickly. That was all the money I had, a 63p. And then go to the club in Leeds for a warehouse and then dance till like three or four in the morning, you know, and then get up again in the morning and start all over again, you know.

RD:
But it helps, no, I think definitely getting that distance and doing something else.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
Allows you to observe and it impacts what you do, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Question number 32: what are you currently reading?

MT:
I'm reading Kenneth Frampton's Le Corbusier because I'm doing this talk on Le Corbusier and actually all the Le Corbusier books from the library are on the table, but the Kenneth Frampton one is a new one and I'm really enjoying that. I've got a lot of insights and one of them was that Le Corbusier woke up every morning and what he said was the skin of a donkey.

So as a curious one, but I also, I mean, in a way I'm interested in Corb's own woRD:s. And I've got the complete works of Corb's Wood. I bought him a Triangle bookshop in the 1980s.

The essay, you know, Corb's essays in the end of that are a bit garbled, but they're really interesting insights into his, you know, later years.

RD:
Right.

MT:
The strange belief systems. But, you know, the idea of the skin of a donkey, you know, it's part. You can find that in that essay too, I think the sort of strangeness of his belief in a sort of slightly PrimoRD:ial existence.

RD:
I think that's what the talk will be about, but that kind of aspect of Le Corbusier has never been spoken about.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
You know, or his later life or even the plants and the drawings.

In the beginning, it's always the focus on Chandigarh, Villa Savoy or the Five Points towaRD:s a new architecture, I think. Yeah.

MT:
Well, I'm not going to focus on that too much. I'm going to focus on just me as an observer and how I read the building and the clues I see in it.

In a way, I don't want to give him a lecture on call. That's not my remit. I think my thing is to just say how to look and what do I see?

RD:
And do you think he did that?

MT:
I think he did that. That's why he travelled.

RD:
Right.

MT:
You know, and I think that's why Khan travelled. And if you look at Khan's early work, you know, Trenton Bathhouse and his drawings from Egypt.

RD:
Right.

MT:
You know, when he was 50, that last trip he did.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
Was obviously so important, you know, So I think for both of them, travel was immensely important. Also, for Aalto.

RD:
Yes.

MT:
You know, there's some of Aalto's buildings. You can just say, well, obviously that's Alto.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
You know, they're sort of gleaning things from, you know, so they weren't borrowing it from anyone else. It's there firsthand.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
Although we go to look at them. You go to them to read them.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
But they probably want you to go and read something else.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
The importance of observation is what you might see. I might see something completely different and that's the good thing.

MT:
That's the art of observation.

RD:
Exactly. Question number 33: do you have a guilty pleasure?

MT:
I think travel is the guilty pleasure. I also like cooking a lot, but travel is really important.

RD:
Right.

MT:
When we first met, we just went to deserts and we made a great trip to Yemen.

RD:
All right.

MT:
We spent a month there, went to Shabam and went across for different kinds of vernaculars and went up to Cider City and we had to have an armed escort to go over, actually, we had an armed escort everywhere we went. You had a man with a machine gun and a shot and a knife.

But when we went up there, they said, ‘oh, we're going to send some more people with you’, and another Toyota pickup truck came with one of those gasoline guns on the back, really, and followed us all the way to Sado City.

I mean, let us walk around the city. The marketplace was basically an adventure. Just a marketplace for ammunition in amongst the fruit, you know. Wow. Yeah. We didn't stay.

I wanted to see those buildings that have the tiles that stick out so that the sun never strikes the side of a building. But we saw one or two of them, but we were in the kind of never reaches of the city and they were saying, no, it's a bit too dangerous.

So, we had to retreat back to Sarna.

RD:
Right. Is there a place around the world that you haven't been, that you really have always wanted to go to?

MT:
My brother's just been to Machu Picchu. I'm a bit jealous of that. Yeah. Still on the list. All right. And I haven't been to Korea yet. I've always wanted to go to the beautiful temples in the mountains in Korea. We still have a huge list, you know.

RD:
Right. It's the world. The world's very.

MT:
And I've not been to Australia or New Zealand. I love the Sydney Opera House, so that’s high on the list, too.

RD:
I've always wanted to go to Australia.

MT:
Glenmook is getting quite old. I would quite like to meet him.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
So, he's 88. I know a friend who's a close friend of his, so I'd quite like to… anyway, we'll see.

RD:
Lots to do.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
Question number 34: you had mentioned that you don't have many possessions, but what was your most prized one?

MT:
Well, suddenly my motorbike sprung to mind, man. But that's not really. I think that won't. So, the slide collections important. The books put the seeds. But if I lost all the things. Yeah.

I mean, I'm not a materialist, so, yeah, friends.

RD:
Friends. That's a good response.

MT:
Yeah.

RD:
Yeah. Question 35: what was your first experience of the AA?

MT:
I came here in the 1980s when I was at Leeds Polytechnic.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
And it was kind of bewildering.

RD:
Right.

MT:
I would say it was really kind of revelling in being in architecture. You came here and you felt like you were slightly in a parallel universe.

Yeah, well, no one had opened the door to me before. But when you saw it, what an amazing array of disciplines and the work was so varied.

RD:
Yes.

MT:
I mean, I remember there was a Dalibor Vasily kind of exhibition on. It was so dark and broody. But then there were other things around it that were so optimistic and bright.

RD:
Right.

MT:
You know, so it was just full of everything.

RD:
Yeah.

MT:
Very inspiring to a, you know, first year architect.

RD:
Yeah. Did you come back often after that or was it…?

MT:
Yeah, when I lived in Marylebone, I was very close and I used to spend a lot of time in the RIBA library and a lot of time here and although I didn't come, I went to the RCA rather than the AA.

RD:
And our final question, number 36: can you describe the AA in one woRD:?

MT:
Cauldron.

RD:
Cauldron.

MT:
Yeah. I'd say it's a kind of curated cultural. It curates cultural curiosity.

RD:
Okay.

MT:
And I think a cauldron all the seas.

RD:
Right.

MT:
It's a good way of describing; it's like a kind of witch's potion.

RD:
Right.

MT:
You don't know what's going to come out of it.

RD:
Sounds like another dream. All right, well, thank you very much, Mike. It's been a very enjoyable conversation and wish you well on your next travel.

MT:
Thank you very much.

RD:
Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode. AirAA podcasts are developed, recorded, mixed and edited by the Architectural Association from our home on Bedford Square in Central London.

To find more episodes, view the show notes and explore other AirAA series, visit air.aaschool.ac.uk. The views and opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of the individuals involved in each episode. Opinions expressed by the host and guests can change at any time and are not representative of the AA.