[RV] There’s one other architect, American, who worked there a lot, French… American French… French American. Who was that?
[DSB] Antonin Raymond.
[RV] Antonin Raymond, to what extent… they were really American even though they were French, or not?
[DSB] I think so, I’m not sure.
[RV] Well, I’m a little mixed up on that, but there was that couple partnership. Otherwise, all of the modern buildings were tremendously international and therefore very American, in many ways. So, you kind of feel at home. It’s an extremely exotic place but it’s also extremely familiar in other ways. It’s just a wonderful juxtaposition of the now and the then – the modern and the traditional.
[DSB] And this experience made us…
[RV] We loved it.
[DSB] Come to another conclusion. Like, we work here weekends and weekdays, and all the time and people say, ‘Can’t you stop to smell the roses’, and we’ve always said, ‘Well, the roses better be right there on the drawing board or else we’ve got no time for them’. But in actual fact, through our work look what’s happened to us. We go to a country and in no time at all, we’re on whispering terms with people who we’ve never met before about things greatly important to them, like a building they’re going to construct. And we get to see the country from a point of view that no tourist ever would. Why would we need to be doing something different than that, when we get all these excitements through the work we do?
[RV] It was also near the end… fun to go… go there when the… the hotel was open… open for business and so, it was wonderful to stay in a room that we had designed. The architecture and the furniture – we had at least designated what kind of furniture was there. It was thrilling, yeah.
