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>> My name is Larry Speck.
I'm the W.L Moody Centennial Professor of Architecture in the School of Architecture in the University of Texas at Austin.
And I am also a Principal at Page Southerland Page architects here in Austin.
>> I am a complete architecture junkie.
I just love to look at it, love to read about it, love to think about it, love to talk about it, love to design it, love to build it, love to live in it, love to visit it.
Just everything.
And a long time ago I realized that I went from being a junkie to being a pusher.
And I am now trying to addict as many people as I can to this thing that I think is just amazing.
So it's just kind of a mission with me to let people understand more of how cool this architecture stuff is.
I think unfortunately, in the media and just in the world in general our culture has been sold the fact that architecture is these *** *** cool things.
And that there's this perception somehow great architects make a funny little sketch on a napkin and voila.
It turns into the Disney Concert Hall or something like that.
And I think we've got to re-educate the public, that's not what great architecture is.
That's an exotic kind of thing that should happen occasionally but the real thing is what they lived in.
What their kids go to school in, where they work.
These are important places and we need to be paying attention to those, we need to care about those and when you do demand more of those environments.
This room where we're sitting, it's a perfect example of how architecture just has an enormous impact on people's lives.
Thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of UT college students have come to this room to study, it didn't matter whether they were engineering students
or they were fine art students, they come to this room and they look around and they say, this just feels like I can study here.
And I've heard generations of students say exactly the same thing.
I just feel great studying here.
In my practice I think I really like to do buildings that maybe you would consider work horse buildings.
Not glamorous particularly, but they have a really important job to do.
And I think health care facilities are very much like that.
And we got an opportunity to do this big medical center for the Chickasaw Nation several years ago and the Chickasaw Native Americans, they were part of the Trail
of Tears that came from the Deep South to Oklahoma.
They had this beautiful 240 acre site on Chickasaw land that they were going to provide for the medical center and we tried to find things we could weave into the building.
That would make them look at that and say, this is us, this is about us.
It has places for families and friends and people like that to be there, bigger rooms so more people can be in the room, to be there with their loved one.
Lots of hangout spaces near the room.
So the family has alternative places to go.
Just, it's thought through the whole process of support system for healing.
And then just beautiful views everywhere up to these natural environments.
Every single patient room, not only a view like a normal window, but really thinking of people who are in beds, kind of horizontal people and so we put windows up high so even
when you're lying down you can still see out and see the sky and see what the weather is like.
And even when you're really sick all of those little things add up, I think to make it what it is, both are meaningful
to the Chickasaw people and also a really good place to get better.
I think the primary take away I always want people to have, talking about architecture is this is important in your life.
This is something you should be concerned about, interested in.
Because I think, I honestly believe this is the difference between being happy and being depressed is the physical environment you inhabit.
So the difference between being productive or being a little inefficient can be the physical environment you're a part of.
The difference between living in a community where you feel enthusiastic and excited and really alive and being in a community where you feel alienated and uncomfortable.
All of these things can be the physical environment, it's about design, and it's about architecture.
That's the take-away for me.