really like even numbers, and I like heav- transformation she's leading may be the least tangible. Ya- ily divisible numbers. Twelve is my lucky hoo, a brand of early adopters before it became one for tech number- Ijust love how divisible it is. I codgers, is returning to its role as a company that matters in don't like odd numbers, and I really don't - able to compete for top engineering talent and like primes. When I turned 37, I put on acquire start-up companies without smothering them. "She is a strong face, but I was not looking for- really talented. She is really aggressive," says Henry Blodget, ward to 37. But 37 turned out to be a pretty whose Business Insider site is a partner with Yahoo Finance. amazing year. Especially considering that "She is extremely driven, and that inspires people. Develop- 36 is divisible by twelve!" ers are excited about working for a leader like her, someone A few things may strike you while lis- who says, 'I'm in; who's with me?' And they're excited about tening to deliver this riff, working for an underdog." prompted by a question about how her life has changed since her son, Macallister, It's a midsummer evening in Mayer's backyard in Palo Alto. was born last fall. The first is that she's not A green lawn large enough to accommodate a skating rink kidding about being a geek. Mayer talks about numbers as if for holiday parties is framed by an irregularly shaped flower they were people, refers casually to x- andy-axes, and drops border and shaded by a spectacular live oak tree. To one side terms like stochastic factor (it means a random distribution) stands a work of sculpture: a three-foot -tall bronze frog. From in conversation. On business issues, she speaks awkwardly, the house comes a tinkle of Mozart, playing on a computer- piling as many likes into a sentence as Alicia Silverstone in driven baby-grand piano. Clueless. But when she gets on to technology, she turns ef- Mayer is hosting a cocktail party for entrepreneurs in- fortlessly articulate. vited to Silicon Valley by the World Economic Forum's The next is that she is an unusually stylish geek. The day Technology Pioneers program. The guests are already sip- we had that conversation in her white, glossy, minimally ap- ping strawberry margaritas when she makes her entrance pointed office in Sunnyvale, California, she was with a sleepy nine-month-old baby over her wearing a red Michael Kors dress with a gold shoulder. As Macallister, who has inherited belt and a brown Oscar de Ia Renta cardigan. "I didn't set out his mother's pale-blue eyes and flaxen hair, This cashmere bolero is her work uniform- she to be at the top yawns and nuzzles her neck, Mayer calls him has the same one in ivory, navy, black, hot pink, an "easy baby." At the end of a week of late- teal, red, and royal blue, and adds new colors of techn?loe;Y night preparations for a board-of-directors every season. She was hoarse from a cold she meeting and an annual shareholders' meeting, picked up flying to New York and back, and companies, the 38-year-old Mayer might be the one ready it was eight-thirty in the evening, with hours' to be tucked into bed. more work ahead. But she burbled with excite- Mayer insists. Instead she finds a central spot on the patio ment as she talked about her job. "I'm having and graciously fields comments on the com- the time of my life," she told me. ''I'm just geeky pany, about which everyone has an opinion. It might also strike you that the paradox and shy and Esther Dyson, a well-known Internet pioneer of being both glamorous and a geek explains and investor, comes over to praise Mayer's most Mayer's rapid progress in reviving what only a I like to code" controversial decision to date: a ban on the year ago looked like a moribund giant. Before practice of employees' working at home. The her arrival in July of last year, Yahoo was being written off ban prompted a national debate and some angry criticism by the tech industry, investors, even its own staff. A series of that Mayer lacks empathy for women who can't afford the failed CEOs- non-techies from Hollywood, advertising, and resources she herself enjoys: a private nursery in her office, a finance- had gotten little purchase on the fading technol- personal staff, and all the child care she needs. ogy brand. It was far from clear that a six-months-pregnant, Mayer elaborates, a little defensively, on her reasons for 37-year-old engineer and first-time CEO could re- the change. She never meant it as any kind of larger state· move the air of irony that had attached itself to Yahoo's ment about society, but simply as the right decision for Ya- purple exclamation point. hoo, where by various accounts working from home often A year later, the punctuation no longer looks so absurd. meant hardly working. Teams are happier now that absent Adam Cahan, Yahoo's head of mobile and another ex- participants don't teleconference in for meetings. Messages on Googler, told me, "Yahoo has released more products in the Yahoo's "devel-random" e-mail list, the company's informal last six months than probably in the last five years." But it is forum, have lately turned positive. And in perhaps the clearest the products themselves that represent what he describes as "a sign of support, employees have, she tells Dyson, "stopped dramatic cultural shift." These include a gorgeous new weather leaking my e-mails" to the press. app for mobile phones, a relaunch of the photo-sharing site As entrepreneurs from Japan, , and upstate New York , and an update of Yahoo Mail, all of which are draw- approach to introduce themselves, Mayer quietly inquires ing the first positive reviews the company has seen in ages. By about their companies with the discerning focus of someone acquiring , the hippest of the social-media sites, Mayer who might one day write a check to buy them. Usually, she finds solved the problem of Yahoo's aging demographics and lack some point of personal connection- an engineer they both of cool with a single billion-dollar stroke. worked with at Google, or a tech lab they both know overseas. If Yahoo's bottom-line growth is still modest, inves- She suffers from shyness, she says, and has had to discipline tors are optimistic: The stock price is up almost 60 percent herself to deal with it. For the first fifteen minutes she wants to since Mayer joined. But the most important aspect of the leave any party, including one in her own home. "I will literally

821 look at my watch and say, 'You can't leave until timex,'" she At Stanford, she majored in Symbolic Systems, which says." 'And if you're still having a terrible time at tin1e x, you combines philosophy, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and can leave.' "She has learned that if she makes herself stay for computer science. Once, reading The Stanford Daily, she was a fixed period, she often gets over her social awkwardness and laughing over a column about campus icons- the local man ends up having fun. who abuses passersby, the guy in the sandwich shop who That seems to be the case tonight. Mayer turns more gre- always gets your order wrong. "And there was literally a line garious as she explains the presence at one edge of the garden in there that said 'the blonde woman in the upper-division of a two-story, miniaturized model of Palo Alto's Peninsula computer-science classes.' And I was, like, I'm a woman in Creamery, a local diner where Stanford students go for milk the upper-division computer-science classes- I should know shakes (the pineapple malts are Mayer's favorite). She and this person! I really had just been very blind to gender. And her husband, Zachary Bogue, a venture capitalist who invests I still am." in start-ups focused on "big data," bought the fifteen-foot, This insensitivity can sound retrograde, especially when red-and-white playhouse at a benefit auction and had a paired with stereotypes of feminists as "militant," "nega- forklift deposit it over their redwood fence the previous week. tive," and having "the chip on the shoulder," which Mayer Macallister won't be old enough repeated in a PBS documentary to play in the structure for a while, about the women's movement that but Mayer seems to have bought it aired in February. Of course, in the just as much for herself. Her taste male-dominated culture of Silicon runs to the brightly colored and Valley, gender blindness, willed or lighthearted- "happy art," she otherwise, is one way of fitting in. calls it- like the plate-mounted At Google, Mayer's approach was Jeff Koons balloon dogs in her the opposite of her friend Sheryl airy kitchen and the Roy Lich- Sandberg's. As employee number tenstein print in the front hall of 20, she was often asked how it felt her cheerful, comfortable, but not to be the only woman on engineer- especially grand Craftsman-style ing teams. She'd answer truthfully: house. In the dining room, an en- She hadn't noticed. tire wall is covered with purple- Mayer describes herself as and-gold marquees that Mayer naive- which only fuels the fasci- and Bogue had made for the table- nation surrounding her fourteen- tops at their wedding, printed with year rise. Did she pile up a reported words representing their favorite $300 million in wealth and become things. These include on her side . a CEO of one of the world's top PEPPERMINT, COLORS, PARIS, and digital brands by accident? "I didn't ETRO. Tonight she is wearing an set out to be at the top of technolo- Oscar de Ia Renta dress, with gy companies," she insists. "I'm just daubs of yellow, blue, and green geeky and shy and I like to code," on a white field, reminiscent of her she says. "Once, [then most famous product: the Google Google's CEO] pointed out to me home page. At some point, the that at Google, when you want to guests notice that she's vanished. have an impact that's bigger than She calls this her "CEO exit," dis- HAUTE TECH just you, you move from being an In March 2012. while still at Google. Mayer makes an appearing upstairs without good- entrance in Marchesa at a San Francisco gala. individual contributor to manag- byes while the party carries on. ing a team .... And I was like, Oh, Mayer's bright-color and bold-pattern aesthetic comes right, it would be nice to have an impact that's bigger than just from her Finnish mother, an art teacher who surrounded her me. It's not like I had a grand plan where I weighed aJJ the pros with Marimekko prints she can still cite by name. The love and cons of what I wanted to do--it just sort of happened." of science comes from her father, an environmental engineer That is subject to debate. At Google, Mayer drove the rigor- who worked for water companies. "They're definitely in the ous testing and analytics that perfected search and other offer- camp of allies, not adorers," she says. "They'll tell me when ings- and she helped invent the matching algorithm that has they think I did something amazing, but they'll tell me when made Google Ad Words arguably the most successful product they think I could do better. I think like my dad, but I have a in the history of advertising. Some at the company saw her as huge kinship with my mom." relentless in her ambition and publicity-seeking, and sniped Growing up with a younger brother in Wausau, Wisconsin, that she'd been effectively demoted shortly before her exit to she never had fewer than one after-school activity per day: bal- Yahoo. Other colleagues, who remain ardent supporters, point let, ice-skating, piano, swimming, debate team, Brownies. She out that she's earned every success by working unbelievably still talks to her best friend from junior high every few weeks. hard. Among the roles that helped her develop her reach "It was a very well-rounded childhood, with lots of different beyond Google was running the Associate Product Manager opportunities," she says. "My mom will say she set out to program, a two-year course that grooms future tech leaders. overstimulate me- surround me with way too many things Its more than 300 graduates have gone on to lead some of and let me pick. As a result, I've always been a multitasker; the Valley's most closely watched start-ups and constitute an I've always liked a lot of variety." informal network of proteges. (continued on page 895)

825 Punk. "That's one of the reasons Dior the house's heart to the Left Bank and in South Mrica, in which he, the actress Homme was so popular," Courtney revive its couture operation. Slimane Denise Black, and a South African Love says. " First the power lesbians loves the building, but he hates the way friend were carjacked at gunpoint by a were wearing it. Then chicks like me that it was renovated. For one thing, gang of six men. "I went through every started collecting it really fiendishly, there are weird floors: modern tile in beat of the emotional response you'd almost like Prada cigarette pants. I'll the main salon, brand-new hardwood expect in that situation," he says. "Pan- never forget Michael Stipe pulling out everywhere else. For another, the de- ic, fight-or-flight, sickness, utter terror, this Dior Homme suit when R .E.M . tailing is lousy: There's embarrassing adrenaline rush, and then--calm, ac- was still together, and he's like, 'I just faux-marbling on the molding, and the ceptance." He managed to talk their way indulged- you have to see this.' I put it doorknobs are all contemporary. Then out of it, but after production wrapped, on, and it was so beautiful." there are the fireplaces, nineteenth- he stayed in Mrica to go swimming with When Slimane left Dior, in 2007, century models unsuited to the rest of sharks, then went skydiving out of a rni- and moved to L.A., he assumed he was the room. Slimane wants to replace crolight plane, in order to tame the whole leaving fashion permanently. "L.A., it's them with period-appropriate hearths, experience and get the adrenaline out of much more his world," Alt says. "Free- but because the updated fireplaces are his system. "That was a turning point for dom, skateboarders, the beach. If you're considered nineteenth-century artifacts, him," says Alice Eve, his Star Trek into that interested in music, Paris is not the one of his architects explains, the local Darkness costar and a friend since they right city for you. " government has placed red tape around appeared together in 2004's Hawking. "The first election" -of Obama, in their removal. Slimane shakes his head. "That's when he realized his own pow- 2008- "was a big part of me moving," The stately three-story building with ers of persuasion and physical control." Slimane says over breakfast one morn- large windows will house the receiving The only other place he gets the same ing at the Polo Lounge of the Beverly studio and tailoring room. (Across the release is acting, he says. Mter playing Hills Hotel. " I thought it was a very street, on the Rue de l'Universite, is a Assange and appearing in August, he promising time fo r America- I've al- Sciences Po campus- the irony is not has roles in Steve McQueen's 12 Years ways been more interested in politics in lost on Slimane.) When I arrive, he has a Slave; Peter Jackson's Hobbit sequel, the U.S. than in France." just had chandeliers hung in the receiv- in which he gives voice to Smaug the When Slimane returned to Yves Saint ing room, which has an arcing balcony dragon; and The Imitation Game, in Laurent last year, it wasn't because he above the large stone courtyard. The which he plays mathematician Alan wanted to rejoin the fashion world. chandeliers are dummies- he does not Turing. "If I were lucky enough to be (He didn't.) It was because he wanted yet have the right period antiques- but in the 4 percent of our population that's to rejoin YSL. But he would do it, he he wants to see how they look as visitors working, that's the first blessing. Second decided, not as a Parisian fashion guy enter. As with the chassis of his Rolls- blessing is if you get any decent work; but as a California artist. Because he Royce or the shoulder width of a suit, the third blessing is if you get variety of moves increasingly with L.A. rockers, it is crucial to get the proportions right. work.... " There's a fourth blessing and he has a sense of the new vanguard of When Slimane is at work like this- a fifth blessing as well (" the fifth being style. ("Many of the cult figures in men's on the trail of the real thing- his de- that it's going my way"). More than like- fashion were musicians," he observes.) meanor changes. He is no longer shy, ly, there is a sixth and a seventh blessing And because he has one foot in the art deferential, and gentle; he's confident, I never even get to hear about. He keeps world, he's able to approach style in its unwavering, wry. "Are there any ques- talking right up to the second he says purest form: not as a thing to be sold in tions?" he asks his architects. After goodbye- "OK, great, bye''- turns, department stores but as an original art, pausing to wince at an electrical-outlet and marches off down Sullivan Street, a process of experimentation with color panel that someone planted in the beneath a sweltering New York sun. o and materials, focused through his own middle of the floor ("They must have camera lens. Traditionally, designers are been drinking or something"), Slimane HAIL TO THE CHIEF not supposed to look directly at a model steps gingerly out onto the balcony and (continued from page 825) or client during a fitting; they study the proudly surveys his work in progress. If One of the program's alumnae, Jess clothes only in the mirror, a method of he does everything right, he explains, Lee, the CEO of the fashion site Poly- stepping away from the material- the this atelier will have a sense of the old vore, describes Mayer as a perfectionist. way a playwright might watch rehears- Parisian "ritual," a line of continuity "She'll spot a lot of little details other als from the back row. (Christian Dior back to the past. people might not notice," she says. "But famously used a long wand to gesture "There is that balance I want to find when you add them up in aggregate, it's during fittings, the better to get farther between the contemporary world- my the difference between a beautiful, pol- away still.) Slimane says he thinks of his studio in Los Angeles- and Paris- the ished product and one that feels more camera today as a couturier's mirror. church, pure tradition," he explains. awkward." Lee notes that when Mayer His hope is, ultimately, not so much to "The fashion is about both influences." recently hosted an APM reunion at her invent fashion as to capture life. He pauses. "It's the moment juxtaposed house, she took time to write a personal with tradition. That's the house." o note in each of the 200 commemorative The morning after the men's runway photo books. show, I meet Slimane at the eighteenth- PERFECT STORM Mayer has a taste for the comfortable century building where he's constructing (continued from page 820) and familiar as well as gloss and glam- a new Paris studio and atelier for Saint happened while he was filming the Brit- our. Most days she drives herself back Laurent- part of his plan to return ish miniseries To the Ends of the Earth and forth to (continued on page 896)

VOGUE COM VOGUE SEPTEMBER 2013 895 - (continued from page 895) work in worried that we're making trade-otfs meeting and added new perks with an eighteen-year-old BMW, but she that are negative to users." symbolic importance: free food in the has also attracted attention for a high- What might otherwise look like a cafeterias, on par with the standard at profile social life, including parties she crazed level of micromanagement serves Google and elsewhere, instead and Bogue threw at their penthouse a purpose. In the past, Yahoo's CEOs of BlackBerrys, and the elimination of apartment atop the Four Seasons Ho- were routinely ignored by the engineer- turnstiles that were costing employees tel in San Francisco. The couple met ing staff. But Mayer speaks with a deci- an average of six minutes a day going in 2007, via a mutual friend. A former sive air of authority. "I'm not sold on in and out of buildings. While insisting football and rugby player at Harvard, this," she tells the team. ''I'm not ready that everyone show up for work, she also Bogue, who has a chiseled jaw, tousled to green-light it." began removing cubicle barriers and of- brown hair, and a big, athletic build, After running through three CEOs fice walls to foster a more collaborative shares his wife's taste for physical chal- in less than a year, Yahoo's revenue work environment. lenges. They run half-marathons togeth- was shrinking, and it was being valued Mayer has applied this democratic er and love hiking, skiing, travel, and at little more than the sum of its key thinking to her board presentations good restaurants. Asian assets: its stake in the Chinese as well. Every quarter, she offers high- These days, though, she's lucky to Internet giant Alibaba and Yahoo lights and lowlights as voted by the squeeze in a round of her favorite games, Japan. Its user base was more than employees. At the most recent board Bejeweled Blitz or Candy Crush Saga, 700 million, but unlike , meeting, the top vote-getters included on her . With less time, the Google, and Apple, Yahoo had no fun- the weather app, the Tumblr acquisi- couple is more focused on "walking to damental function- e-mail, search, tion, the Flickr relaunch, moving into our local park and pushing Macallister photo-sharing- that wasn't done better the old New York Times building near in the swing," Bogue tells me, seated on by others. In Silicon Valley, there was Times Square, as well as Yahoo's new a sofa in the living room as the party much residual loyalty to the company, family-leave policy, which went a long winds down. "It was clear sailing for where according to Mayer, half the in- way to assuage employees still stewing both of us when the baby was conceived. dustry's engineers have worked at some over the ban on working from home. All Let's just say it's been a lot busier since." point in their careers. But it had turned recent parents- male, female, adoptive, How do people misunderstand his into a place where no one wanted to go. or biological- get eight weeks anytime wife? I ask. "Marissa doesn't really like It was at that point that Daniel Loeb, during their first year with a new child. cupcakes," he says, referring to the leg- an activist investor now battling Sony's Biological mothers get an additional end that she once created a spreadsheet Japanese management, got control of eight weeks. of different cupcake and frosting reci- several board seats and pushed the idea Buying Tumblr represents Mayer's pes. "She just called the trend early." of hiring Mayer. She was, somewhat boldest step to position Yahoo for And what does Mayer misunder- inconveniently, newly pregnant, and growth again. She first met , stand about herself? "I think she's not much ink was spilled critiquing her plan Tumblr's 27-year-old founder, in De- as shy as she thinks she is," he says. to take a short maternity leave. Could cember. They met again in February to she nurture a new baby and a corporate pursue partnership ideas. "That's when I get a sense of Mayer's professional turnaround at the same time? I really started to use the site a lot more style in a product-review meeting where Thanks to Mayer's financial resourc- and try to understand it," she says. "We I am allowed to be a fly on the wall on es and physical capacity, this turned started meeting more intensely in April. the condition that I not talk about un- out not to be much of an issue. In fact, That's when we said, 'My gosh, if we're released products. About 25 of Yahoo's the combination of the pregnancy and going to do all this, it makes sense to top designers and engineers crowd into the new job gave her even more energy merge.' I loved David's perspective on a darkened conference room on the than usual. "One night I looked up and the products, and I think he respected Sunnyvale campus to present updates was like, 'Oh, my God, it's midnight mine. We had a tremendous meeting of on a project code-named Grand Slam, and I have a husband and I'm, like, the in terms of what we wanted an effort to bring a more coherent look eight months pregnant. I need to leave!' to build and what we wanted to do. and identity to Yahoo's pages. For an I was just here working, having the best "I've done now between three and intense 80 minutes, Mayer does most possible time. When Zack and I were four dozen acquisitions in my career," of the talking, getting deep into the brushing our teeth in the morning, he she goes on, "and I've never seen this weeds about the size of navigation but- was like, 'Where were you last night?'" kind of lock-and-key fit between two tons, background colors, and spacing She set up a nursery next to her of- companies. Our demographic is older. between columns. Working through a fice, and for several months after Mac- Theirs is the youngest on the Web. peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and allister was born, he and his nanny We pride ourselves on publishing at a cup of pretzels from the cafeteria, she came to work with her. Business prob- scale- they have some of the best pub- disarms confrontation with an easy, lems were much more serious. She was lishing tools available. We're strong in whinnying laugh. shocked to learn how little interaction news and sports and finance. They are When one of the project manag- Yahoo executives had with their em- strong in all the different complemen- ers notes that a design change is likely ployees. In her first weeks on the job, tary pieces- fashion, food, and archi- to harm advertising revenue, Mayer Mayer sought to change that, respond- tecture. They need monetization. We makes it clear that the product comes ing to questions on "devel-random" have monetization that can be turnkey first. "I just want to make sure it's user- and taking her lunch in the cafeteria. for them and not very obtrusive." experience positive," she says. "I'm She also instituted a weekly all-hands For his part, Karp says he was won

896 VOGUE SEPTEMBER 20 13 VOGUE COM over not just by Mayer's commitment relation to whether they are celebrities went on some kind of journey together," to keep running Tumblr as an indepen- or not," and he won't be drawn as to says Apichatpong. " Cinema is about dent company but by what a happy and which stars of his acquaintance fall into that, about getting lost in a dream .. . optimistic person she is. "That's some- which category. The breakup, in 2012, you are transported to your childhood thing I've always valued, and I think it's of his five-year relationship with the memories." Appearing and disappear- kind of a unique sensibility in the tech film actress Maggie Cheung exposed ing in an evening, it was a theatrical ver- industry," he says. Karp points out that him to the ugliness of gossip magazines. sion of those escapes to other worlds in a rapidly changing tech landscape, "That's the horrible part of my life," he that Scheeren likes so much. many of the biggest players are now says. "There is nothing not stupid about Archipelago Cinema's fame spread, playing defense, looking for acquisi- those magazines, nothing right." It's one and requests have been coming in from tions that help protect their empires. reason he staunchly refuses to discuss Tahiti, Cape Town, Pittsburgh, and else- "Meanwhile, Yahoo, out of left field, his personal life now. where to replicate it. A reedition of the is in attack mode. There was nothing And for all the paparazzo interest that project at the 2012 Venice Architecture defensive about Yahoo buying Tumblr." came with his relationship with Cheung, Biennale can fairly be called Scheeren's Tumblr, of course, is far from profit- he is also someone who works eighteen biggest mistake to date, about which he able, and with a user base deeply resis- hours a day, obsesses about detail, and is palpably embarrassed. Here the film tant to commercial messages, there's no will spend weeks immersing himself in shown was a celebration of Scheeren clear path to take it there. While Mayer building codes to discover unexpected himself, as tedious and pompous as a and Karp figure out how to turn it into a opportunities in them. He would build feature-length car advert. It also gave business, it will be a burden on Yahoo's all the practice's architectural models little clue that works such as CCTV were bottom line. The company can afford hin1self if he had time- "Unfortunately, not Scheeren's single-handed creations. it- Yahoo is currently cash-rich- but I'm good at these things ... I want ev- This episode suggests an unexpected growth has so far been slow: a mere erything to be correct." insecurity. 2 percent in 2012. As advertising rev- "He is a fantastic storyteller," says It is presumably one reason Rem enues continue to show declines, Mayer Tong, the businessman backing his Koolliaas is not keen to discuss his for- has tried to set expectations strategically, Kuala Lumpur tower, " but he tends to mer protege. A request to do so leads to telling investors that exceeding industry come up with quite practical solutions. this terse SMS: growth levels is going to be the work He solves problems."The Chinese archi- ROWAN, COMPLETE CONFIDENCE IN of years. tect Wang Xiao'an, who collaborated YOU AS PORTRAITIST . .. BEST, REM In reviving Yahoo, Mayer faces the with Scheeren on getting CCTV built, challenge of a diffuse set of products says "he has a dream of architecture" Scheeren's characteristic restlessness and a business model based on advertis- coupled with a vigorously functional means that he is now thinking of work- ing. Audiences are moving quickly from side. "He has his logic and knows what ing, and possibly living, in Europe desktops to small-screen mobile devices, he's doing." again- he has been invited to compete where marketers struggle to capture at- What interests Scheeren, beyond for a project in Berlin, and I later catch tention, and revenue per user is much the fascination with his craft, is the up with him on a scouting mission in less. Mayer's bet is that Yahoo will thrive crossover between different forms of London. But, for now, he is as much amid this transition by going back to culture. In March 2012 he created a at home in Beijing as anywhere, even if its roots as the "daily habits" company, project called Archipelago Cinema, "home" for him is never something cozy providing the best tools for what people which, pending the completion of the and settled. do digitally every day. artist's studio and those skyscrapers, is In his life and work so far, he encom- "Close your eyes and listen to this the principal completed work to date of passes both illusion and reality, dream list," she says. I close my eyes and hear Buro Ole Scheeren. Created for Tilda and fact, storytelling and substance. His her recite: "E-mail, maps, weather, news, Swinton and Joe Apichatpong's Film on career combines the unarguable pres- stock quotes, share photos, group com- the Rocks Yao Noi festival in Thailand, ence of CCTV on the skyline with the munication, sports scores, games. it is also the most ephemeral. An invited yet-to-be realized towers in Singapore, ''You're listening to what people do on audience of 120, among them Swinton, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur, and Ar- their mobile phones," she says. "And it Apichatpong, Chloe Sevigny, and the chipelago Cinema, which vanished al- sounds like a list of what Yahoo does." o MoMA curator Joshua Siegel, were most as soon as it appeared. By the high taken by boat, at night, to an unknown measure of his own ambitions, he still THE SKY'S THE LIMIT destination. has things to prove, but the will is most (continued from page 829) They disembarked onto a floating definitely there to do so. o perception of Scheeren is dusted with raft, furnished with beanbags, from a certain amount of rarefied style. His which they could watch projections of STAND AND DELIVER life has brought him into contact with a 1903 Alice in Wonderland and a 1924 (continuedfrom page 833) celebrities (the architecture-loving Brad Peter Pan. Only when the shows were · (she goes running in it most mornings), Pitt, for example, who visited OMA's over did floodlights switch on, to reveal wearing an American-flag scarf from offices and buildings in Rotterdam), that they were in a breathtaking cove, Urban Outfitters, a white tank top, blue- but he professes skepticism about flanked by 100-meter-high rock for- striped linen shorts, and red Toms slip- their world. "You find out that there mations. Ancient geology was made to ons. "Thank you!" can be heard. Also: are people who are decent," he says, look as hallucinatory and insubstantial "Our state loves you!" Occasionally a "and people who are not, and it has no as images flickering on a screen. "We hiss or a boo (continued on page 898)

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