Technology and Hand Skills Are Not Contradictory

What we would say as we stand in a space like this is that just about every single intellectual

element that was going to be modernism in the 20th century was invented here in the late 19th.

Here it is. We have all of the arts brought together. We have beautiful open-plan spaces.

We have a recognition that technology and hand skills are not contradictory. They work together.

At the end of the 19th century, perhaps the most influential thinker of all was Richard

Wagner, the musician, who put forward the idea of Gestaltungswerk, total work of art,

where all of the arts are brought together to create this giant, beautiful harmony.

And as we look around this building, we can see masterworks in wood, in metal,