Antoine Predock Interview 2

Okay. Great. You ready? Okay. You're about to serve. What was it about the Corvassier, they would get beans. I mean, he's always, his, his, his, his are of sophistication, right? Yeah. With his Corvassier and his wifey, uh, wacky afro or whatever it was. Anyway, that aura, the same, you know, as the ladies' man, the same thing about Mexico, the, uh, aura of place. What is an aura? An aura is, uh, what grabs you. It's an emanation. It's, uh, you can't quite put your finger on sometimes. Poets deal with aura a lot. I think the greatest poets evoke aura through, you know, sentence. A haiku poem, this aura encapsulated very economically. And you can, I can talk about the aura of Mexico in the ways I have begun to, but it, it's just kind of there.

You know, and it's, it's so, it's, it's, um, it's funny how people will come out. People come to Albuquerque. I love Albuquerque because it's a wild west city. You know, it's like anything can happen here. It's a, it's developed real. And all these people, you know, talk about this authenticity and things they want to preserve. They're fighting such a losing battle because, you know, what's it going to be? Two million pretty soon or whatever. They're not too long. And, uh, it'll be all these people coming from everywhere else, spring their trees that they want. They like back home, give everybody allergies here now, they never had, and they're going to be coming out here re-inventing this landscape. But as they're doing that, and I, and I'm one of them, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a transplant. Um, as they're doing it, New Mexico's entering their system. It's like an alien. It's entering their system.

And it's beginning to redefine them. And I don't know exactly what ways that happens. You've got, you've observed that. I mean, if people get changed, they come out, they hate it. What the hell am I doing here? They're in a dust storm in the spring, you know? They're doing here. But then they, and then they may go away and they come back again. They're drawn back. It's, um, that's happened to me. I mean, I mean, it's just, it's, um, an intangible set of forces that work on you being here. And I can rattle off the things that, as a professional, the things that are here that are fantastic, like the, the alchemists and the cropilists. I'd probably rather go there than to the, to the, to the Parthenon and ask them. I've been to the Parthenon Athens and the St. Cropolis too. Akama, you know, and the way that it's in a sustainable diagram occupies this, um,

a cropilist-like rock form. And you get, then you go to San Francisco, a linear plaza with iconic kivas, defining clearly diagramming a spiritual life that parallels their secular life. And you go to probably Winito and Chaco Canyon. And you see this radical condo from the 11th century that, that embodied, um, sociability, common areas, the embedded kivas, dwelling. There's a theory about that that none of this is true that wasn't ever occupied. That it was a symbolic, perfect city. I might have been on, I probably saw it on K, K and E. Um, I won't buy that because it's just, it's just who worked out the orientation to, uh, the son, uh, the way it's perfectly in South, the way that it's main, that if it's a D, so the vertical leg of the D is on the, uh,

the, uh, equinox alignments in the sky. You've got all that to learn from. The church is as trapless as I mentioned, the church at Isleta. Islet is great. I meant to say, uh, Laguna. It's a great space, great glowing interior space. You've got all of the, uh, the tradition of Adobe architecture accumulating into some very special houses. And then you have the onslaught of, uh, people coming across the street from where I live. It's really nice, kind of modern. I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to call it Pueblo, but it's, you know, evokes Santa Fe thing. And the first thing that they put on it were some ladders, you know, like Pueblo ladders to connect the levels, you know. People don't get it, get it, with first they really don't get it. Later on, they think they start getting it and may not know they're getting it.

It's, it's working. It's like in New Mexico and Mojo. It's, it's the aura, the spiritual in Atlanta is a closer to the surface in New Mexico than the places. It's, it's floating around, you know, it's right in here. It's fucked up building. You said before that when you learned in New Mexico, what informs your architecture here is portable, explain that. Oh, that was, that was, uh, yeah. I, I became, I became known as a regionalist in the, uh, naturally in the 70s, 60s and 70s. I was doing regional work that embodied qualities of this place that we talked about, and then I wanted to express in projects like La Luz. So it was a New Mexico regionalist. There's a, there's a, you know, journalese, in journalese, you want to pigeonhole things.

But they're, at the same time, there were strong regional languages in architecture in this country, the Pacific Northwest from there to the, to the Gulf to, uh, uh, Eastman Seaboard, New Mexico, Arizona. So I was, uh, I was a regionalist. And I, that's nothing but a limitation for me, you know, a regionalist. I could be working in, uh, Iceland. It feel very, really comfortable. But you got to get through that. So I described how I learned from New Mexico, how you can't ignore the sun, you can't ignore the wind, you can't ignore, all these things that are impacting your, um, sensibilities as just as a resident, a partist or not. You can't ignore that stuff. Um,

um, any Alzheimer's or take that one, you can't ignore it, but it, uh, it gave me a methodology, where I think about all these things, if I'm working in Saratoga Springs, New York, it's good more college. I mean, I think about all these things. I know up there, I mean, it's harsh winter, well, not that much harsher than we have actually. Um, but it's very temperate the rest of the time of the year. So you don't have to worry quite so much about the sun. You solve all the sun. You know, the defensive things that in New Mexico, you have to worry about. If you're doing an authentic architecture for this, for the place. So I'm when I say, so then I say, well, my regionalist, I'm a regionalist, but it's portable. Because when I've learned here,

those lessons would cover just about any place. I'm going to figure out the tropics. I mean, I think about a lot of the things I've grown up thinking about feeling here. And, um, you know, not feel like I'm lost. So if I'd grown up somewhere else, I'd say in a temperate climate, an architecture 52 years, I don't know, in Nashville or something. I wouldn't have the equipment to deal with extremes, where I'm middle extremes. Cultural extremes, too. You know, I go to, if I go to upstate New York, I say, well, gee, what about, you haven't been talking about Native American, Native people. And you're telling me about the site. Well, you know, they're near here. They're not here anymore. You might have some weird casino, you know, band of people that claim to that heritage, that's fine. You know, about the Hudson someplace.

You know, it's gone. Well, do you ever try to imagine what it was like? Well, you don't think about that too much. Generally, the history starts with, you know, it's quite, it's a Columbus kind of version of the world. It starts there. Columbus version of the New World. It doesn't go any deeper than that. Well, here, how can you get away with that, right? Because you're, you're working with is a, is from the Navajo Nation. And they're alive and well. He's alive and well and he's been through hell, but here he is. You go somewhere else, you don't have that. But so because I've had that experience here, when I go somewhere else, I'm going to ask that question. I'm going to say, well, let's just find somebody. Let's find an old time to talk to. And let's don't start history with, let's don't let it be gringo history. Because that's like a film in John McVee, writing he call that a few millimeters on a meter stick,

you know, of geologic time, deeper cultural time, compared to the, just this thin layer of, of gringo time. I want to read a quote that you had given on a previous interview. I mean, kind of, we're working for us a little bit. The discussion of divinity is a slippery one, because it's totally personal. These entangibles we may all see differently. I see the creative process as one that seeks an unself-conscious response that is the polar opposite to a highly rational methodology. I think you've sort of touched on that, but could you know a little bit more about where those are? That was pretty good. Yeah. Read the last two sentences. Well, I see the creative process as one that seeks an unself-conscious response that is the polar opposite to a highly rational methodology.

Yeah, OK. Living in your head or living in your whole body. Yeah. I agree with that. OK. Did you want to expand on that any more? Where did it? I mean, obviously, you have to have a, there's got to be a very practical sign to what you did. It can't all just be imagination and fantasy and whatever. At some point, those have to meet. Where, you know, where is that place? A highly rational methodology would be, would dwell in a cerebral realm, compared to your entire being, where you would have that cerebral realm. You would prioritize it very highly, but it would be balanced by, in a life, the body, the kinesthetic potentials of the body. So I see the bigger picture, including all those

latter things, and don't want to limit myself by having, and it's not any intellectual. You need to be, you need to aspire to an intellectual life and architecture. There's no question. But it doesn't want to be top heavy. And I could name colleagues who were top heavy, and I'm not going to name them right now, but, you know, people in life, at UNM, you know, they're top heavy, right? They fall down all the time because they were living up here. You see them walking down the street, and they just fall down. Am I right? Amen. When I did another interview talking about on the subject of building, you said the best of them are documentary and healing. Healing, who, what?

Say that again. The best of my buildings, or the best of buildings, are documentary and healing. What did you mean by that exactly? Well, if they're a documentary of place, of site specificity of place, that's a documentary. It's kind of, I'm making a documentary about this site. And if they have, if they bring, if they carry, carry, and I don't want to overuse the word aura, maybe I'll think of another one. But if they carry an aura, or an essence, a piece of, they might cause introspection, like the woman, and they keep approaching me after that dedication. They might cause you to look around. Wow.

This is a peaceful place, I mean. Well, for one thing, there's no environmental assault that's distracting, or some other kind of assault, like the little ones you guys have been dealing with in this session. So I think that's kind of what I meant about healing, that, that, it's like Tommy. He got healed. Roger Dulltree. Look what he had to go through to get it though. The terror of Anne Margaret is mom. I just saw that movie two days ago,

I was just surfing, that's the last movie I ever would ever, I mean right now, whatever got to go on demand and go look at. But it was really good. And so I thought about that, you know. That's the terror of that movie's a friend of mine. The terror of the movie's a friend of mine. No way. Yeah. Very brown, yeah. No way. That's an amazing movie. Motorcycles, skiing, you like fast things, you like motion and you, and again that's something else that, another influence perhaps on architecture. Where does it fit into the big picture with, scuba diving and art and dance? Where are the motorcycles and skiing fit into this? Motorcycles are so beautiful. And at the time I was in San Francisco in the 60s,

I wouldn't own a car. Weed bikers called cars, glass palaces. And we would not, sometimes we'd have to get in one and go somewhere. But we felt if you weren't there ready for the weather, ready for, you know, and it was not easy on you in the Bay Area, if you weren't ready for that, then you weren't all there. You weren't living life fully. So we wouldn't have any to do with cars. And if somebody asked you, we said, well, come on. The wind blows on you. You're going to go somewhere and you really know you're gone somewhere because the wind's blowing on you. And you can tell a happy biker because they've got bugs in their teeth. And you smell things.

I remember the smell of dung and appulia. On the way to catch the ferry from Brindy, Brindizi to Perreus on my motorcycle. And this donkey dung. And the air rushing by me, that's a great smell. You know, horseshit is a great smell when you're on the road. And you get wet, living in Spain with my only transportation, a bike. Every morning, I wasn't like a heavy drinker, but every morning I'd have to, in a winter in Spain, I'd have to start out with an espresso and a shot of Fundador and a brand-hint, you know, to get through the chill because I'm out there with some kind of little plastic raincoat in a nasty winter climate from parts of Spain.

So I think those are all things. And I don't want it to seem like, you know, a whole macho thing, well, maybe it is, I don't know, but I don't intend it that way of running marathons. Got me ready for something else. I mean, nothing scares me anymore. This kind of scared me this operation, but not really. Out in the end, running a marathon fast, you know, at a competitive level, making it through those 26 3.3 miles, out in the weather on a bike. Those are all things that, to me, were, I don't know, toughening or something. And that's why, that's why my bikers talk about why they love to ride motorcycles. And the sounds they make, you feel them, you feel the vibrations of motorcycles. And in the only time,

when I finally had a family, and I had to get a car, it's not that I didn't have cars in high school or something. It was a point where I just said, this is at no more TV and no car. And it was just motorcycle. And then I had kids, so my parents gave us a TV for a gift, and I was so, so sad and broken hearted. It was a little color TV, and I wanted to just throw it away. And we decided to keep it, and all the stuff on Channel 5 was very important to my kids, that they watched on that little TV. So, when I had to get a car, I saw this. I heard courses were pretty good. So on a lot here, and up on my null, there was a 356 B, little blue, the old series of coupes before the 911 came along. And I drove it, and I thought, damn, this feels like a motorcycle. It's so connected to the ground. The torsion bar suspension, and every little thing,

I thought, this is what a car can be. I knew what other cars were like, so I got it, and it's a sad story about that. Instead of an interesting story, you can come back to some time, you want to. But, um, getting blowing a timing gear out in Nevada, a desert, basically, and figuring that out, figuring that out. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Tell me about the story. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Let me look at San Francisco, trying to make the Albuquerque and time to eat those dungeonist crabs. Dung biz crabs are good! You know? They're really good. And, uh, blowing a timing gear, having to go back to Carson City finding some moonlight portion of mechanics who are willing to to do it mainly with the incentive that we get all the fresh crab we want. Hotel room with a fridge, nothing but crab for, you know, whatever, Hey, what were the timing gear four or five days in, or took, and then I mad dashed to Albuquerque with a few critical massive crabs to bring home and feeding them to the cat when I got there because of

Ali and Smell when I popped up, popped the deck on my little portion. This is getting kind of nostalgic. The question was, what was the last question I forgot? Well, it was basically about how your, what are some of the speed and motorcycles and skiing and how that, I think speed feels good. It feels good to be on the edge of a control, you know, and I don't go out and just do while the speed runs on a motorcycle, I have ones that would certainly do that. If I, you know, if I unleash them, I drive responsibly and ride responsibly. And skiing, I like to ski fast, yeah, for sure. What's the point? If you don't do that. I mean, there are, well, many people would go need to do that. So it's just my, this is just my opinion about it. People could ski slowly and stop and

start and look at the, be there and it's fantastic. I'm going to be doing more and more of that nowadays. Well, tomorrow night of the quinoa, I'm going to show me skiing two buildings. One of them was 1986. It's a building I didn't house. I think I had this shot on our website. I'm jumping off a clear story. And then I've got one in 2006, just this winter, a house I just finished in an aspect, skiing that. And then on the same slide, it's going to be an x-ray of my titanium knees. This way we're all that stuff leads. The sense of motion that you get from that. Where does that, how's that manifested in your work? Architecture is a kinesthetic ride. A building is a physical encounter with your body. You move through the building. You need to know you're moving through the building with your body. It can't be challenging. It needs to be worked for all people of all

physical abilities or disabilities. But the notion of moving up and down and up and over and in terms of the disabled issue, I like to give people who are disabled, some of those experiences, except tucking it back in an elevator so they get rampways. And their bodies are involved. And they're on the way. Or it's a glass elevator. You're rising up through a space where other level changes are happening and you're getting a visceral feeling for it. So I think that's just the body figures into that. And sort of dance, choreography, motorcycle, skiing, scuba diving. It was a great revelation because now I'm in this 3D weightless realm. Moving through kind of architecture, incredible forms. Sharks in your

face. Realizing sharks are like puppies. I'm not going to hurt you when you love them and makes you aware of criminal activities like shark finning and global warming, how reefs are bleached and getting this other world and you're realizing that it's a diagram of all the bad stuff that's happening above the water. Is that awareness? But the body awareness of it, the kinesthetic awareness of it is, it's all tied together. It's all tied together. I have rollerblading too. That's my other thing. Because my knees wouldn't have the running anymore. Couldn't be a marathon or any more. Certainly not now, but rollerblading is gliding. It's a lot like skiing. So I see rollerblading and skiing as surrogates,

you know, the just different seasons. I love that. What disappointments have you experienced as an architect? There must have been some projects somewhere that you left unfulfilled and could make it. Well, I've done some bad buildings and you're never going to tell me what they are. That's some bad buildings in my time. Why are they bad? Just lazy. Lazy didn't go deep enough. I would say they're in my earlier work, earlier not to mention things, that they didn't, they weren't dialed up like they could have been. I'm disappointed to go back to a building and find that people have an honor to have made stupid interventions on it. And I'm mixed feeling about skateboarders because I'm kind of, I feel an affinity with

them at the same time. They really scar my buildings times and my buildings are particularly popular. One of them was a center for the Inline Skate magazine showing this guy getting an air off of one of my slopes in my buildings. So I got to mix feelings about that. But building people don't respect them. People don't realize what they are. Go see an interior that's especially that they say some institutional thing where they're different. Cast of characters are moved through university and you see different imprints on it. It seems to me that there should be spiritual shepherds for buildings that are that are buildings that are done with with care and with a belief system. And they shouldn't just be indiscriminately altered or messed with. But you said at the beginning of the interview that you don't expect people

necessarily experiencing building the way you did it. You don't care if they don't well. That's right. That's right. That's right. So they're building now with the hell. But it's still disappointing. Even though I acknowledge that you know, free country. Is that a function of a lack of literacy about architecture in general and your buildings in particular? Well, I think it's just a lot more to do. Obviously, there's some people that don't really know what they're saying or what they're experiencing. I don't want to ever say that people don't know enough to experience a building. I never say that because it's buildings are experienced at everyone's level based on their own potential and their own lives and how they want to experience it. I describe a very, very rarefied

view of experience of buildings. And I know that huge percentage of people don't even come. They're interested. They want the shelter. They want, you know, they want some visual delight and surprise. But I think that so I can register disappointment about some change. But I also accept the inevitability of that change. I talk about the Pantheon hole out in Rome where the Pantheon was a pagan temple conceived by Hadrian and a grip on that had so much such power moved through the ages, became a Christian church. Now, when the pagans that built it would really probably hate a lot, you know, that Baroque splatter all over it, when it was a church and was consecrated during that epoch. But still,

it persists, the bones persists in their power. And it doesn't, it kind of shrugs it off. And now it's a tour, you know, like a consecrated tourist stop. It's not a church anymore. Pagan temple church. Now it's just a Japanese tourist with an umbrella unfurled in my memory, standing under the great oculus of the Pantheon, rain falling down in Rome. And there's a slick spot on the floor. And here's the guy with his umbrella standing right in the center of the building, which of course you always want to do when you're there. That's, you know, that's what it is now. And that's fantastic. So it's been heavily, heavily messed with. So when I, when I, when I cavette you about my buildings being, you know, messed with, messed over, I also understand that they're strong enough to shrug a lot of that off. And I don't worry about it so much as I used to.