 Welcome back to the think-tok-wise human-humane architecture, this happens to be our 209th episode and we're broadcasting live from actually two different locations. Well, I mean, to be perfectly correct, three different locations, but two locations are pretty close to each other. So our most remote place from Hawaii is in Long Beach, California with hospitality design legend Ron Lindgren. Good to have you back, Ron. Hello. And we have my buddy, Distoto Brown over at the foothills of Diamond Head at your childhood's home, Osipoff Design. Hi, Distoto. Hello, everybody, and welcome back, Martin, because now you are just a stone's throw from me back in Waikiki, albeit confined by quarantine for COVID, but we don't want to get into that discussion because it's too traumatic. Yeah, and I'm a lot to wave at you from my lanai if you take out your magnifying glasses. That's right. That's uncontagious, by the way, don't have to. Yeah, don't get me going. So how can I now not share my trauma with you? But so anyways, we're broadcasting within one of the most challenges of at least our generation is not mankind. The most critical one is climate change and the second one is the ongoing coronavirus COVID situation. So that being said, I think we can only solve that if we are thinking of ourselves being one world and all being from that one world and not trying to blame others or block ourselves off. My fellow Europeans, by the way, aren't even supposed to be here and they aren't because even the Biden administration hasn't been undoing the blocking the Europeans from coming. And only because I'm also American and I teach here, I was allowed to come back and bring my recently married wife, who I now spoil with quarantining in the Waikiki Grand Hotel that never had a kitchen. So that sounds rather good. That's what you wanted me to talk about, right? No, no, no. Anyways, so getting our spirit back up, cutting the curve back to our discipline and effectively profession is that we're also back here with hospitality. And that doesn't get us back because I'm thinking about everyone who gets let in there, you know, all the countries, you need like an anti-gene test or whatever. And then you're running around here with if you have a mask, you have some kind of self-made cotton mask or whatever. In Europe, I have to say where I came from, PCR tests are the only proven who particularly keep away the tragic Delta variants. So then, you know, people sneaking in there and just like behaving irresponsibly and us having done the suspender and belt, PCR tests, negative proof and vaccination from the World Health Organization being locked down here is pretty rather ironic. So again, I'm thinking, you know, we should, you know, really, you know, get together more globally and figure things out altogether. That's basically our message. And also, as we said, you know, the tourism as our number one income, which also feeds me, by the way, in all respect, I have to be fair to that, is back to business, but it's also back to normal. So have we learned anything from it? How vulnerable we are? If that breaks away, the next thing could be climate crisis related the next hurricane, right? We do make nature so angry. So shouldn't we give back to self-sufficiency where your ancestors to Soda have been pretty fast to be not as vulnerable? And that's our point. And so us being the panel comprised of one of the most excellent hospitality architects, me, the practicator of architecture and you, the Soda historian, let's look first further into the past to project out in the future, what can we do better? And this is also a part of the last four volumes of comparing Europe's Hawaii Madera to our Hawaii here, the Polynesian Hawaii. And we promise that we're going to compare pieces of architecture. And we're going to do four more shows, two compares hotels from the turn of the century, which is the Mauna South Rider and the Royal Hawaiian here and the Reed Hotel over there. But mid-century gets, which gets some of us even as adokamomo us as, you know, that's how we all met each other in person at the National Symposium. What is it two years ago? Even more is mid-century. And there is the Pistana Park Hotel by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and Madeira. And the equivalent Zeitgeist device in year of build is the project we want to talk about today. So that gets us to the first slide, please. And this is the Zeitgeist content of that one because we're talking about the early 60s where, you know, America for me was the Holy Land because you guys did everything we only dreamed of, for example, shooting people to the moon, as you can see here. And this time is still sort of visible here through what I also got obsessed with in my childhood driving within the sandbox with my little schnazzenkreuz. They're still here. And there's a little preview of our future continuation of our automobile architecture comparison shows, which we will share with you pretty soon again. And there is a 1966 built car, a Fury, on that one. Thanks, Michael, for zooming in on just next door, basically here, Alawai Breed. And then below that, we really like the color match between that gold thing of the Apollo 1 to the left and then in the middle on the right, the Alamoana building, when we see that. Alamoana building was built also in the early 60s as one of the first beacons of just new statehood. And not that it is about us, but we want you, the audience, immerse yourself into this time, particularly the year 1966, where you were and using us as examples. So the gentleman in the green, white, Alawai Sherd, please explain who he is and where he was at that point in 66. Well, that's a picture of me. And Michael, you go down to the bottom there. You can see the three pictures in the lower right. There are the people who are on the screen with you right now. And that's me, 11 years old, 1965. And I'm at the location where we are going to be later on as we continue our discussion. But I was just a 11 year old and, Ron, you were a grown-up and you were doing something far more significant than what I was doing. Tell us what that was. And that's the most handsome gentleman to the right of you, this photo, just so the audience knows with your uniform. So where and when was that? This is Ron. Yeah, 1966 was certainly a year for me. I had gotten my graduate degree from MIT. I was 25 years old. And in the very last month of the Vietnam draft, I got the call to serve the military. And so that picture is of myself at the Naval Officers' Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, where I spent 16 weeks becoming a military officer. And I must say that even I don't look too bad in Naval whites because almost anyone does. Well, and that gets us to the third one last but least. And I leave it up talking, looking good. I leave this up to you to explain who that is because you've got that great laugh out of it. I did. I did. So, Michael, let's go back to that picture just a minute. Let me make sure my telephone has turned off. Let's go back to that picture in there. In the bottom picture, you see it doesn't look like there's anybody in that picture, but there's a little white thing right in the center. That is little baby Martin Despang in Germany in a baby carriage being seen through a window. He is outside on a covered lanai, as we would say here. He's got a fuzzy white hood on and he has a pacifier in his mouth. And when I finally realized who that was yesterday, when I was looking at the pictures, I laughed for minutes because it is such a kooky picture of a very little baby. So, Ron was a grown up. I was a kid and Martin was just a newborn. All right. So, audience, where were you at that time if you were already around? And now we're going to take you to the place. And also, I mean, all the three pictures tell you about which we're going to address in the longest in the making and probably most relevant show, Pistoto, which is about skins, our human skin, and then the additional clothing skin we throw over. And then the facades we wrap around us and their relationships. And we call it address code, address code. That's at least the plan. So you can see, Ron, you're in the temperate east and you're dressed appropriately. Obviously, minus temperate two. Again, at least we have a lanai. That's probably where my sympathy and enthusiasm about lanai has been given to me with a mother milk, although I have a sweet sucking sucker, Maggie there in my mouth at that point. But it's also not that warm at that time when they took the picture. That's why they put this to the wig on me, which I probably should put where now these days again, right? So again, there's climate and culture and architecture. So it gets us to the next slide and you tell us which climate and culture that is we're looking at. Well, now we're going to the big island, Hawaii Island. And there is a whole history, which maybe people are not aware of, of cowboy culture here in the Hawaiian Islands. And it is similar to but not identical to the cowboy culture of North America, because of course, that extends not only from the United States, but it's part of it's part of Canada as well. So moving cattle around in great open spaces where they are grazing is a technique that was developed in North America and Mexico. And it's spread here to the Hawaiian Islands. And the site that you're looking at is part of, you can see the ocean in the background in a very rocky lava landscape with a hollow tree, but there are Hawaiian cowboys with cattle. And Ron, you wanted to talk about that whole syndrome as well. Tell us about that. Yeah, when we talk about Hawaiian cowboys, we're talking about going back to the 1700s. And in fact, the reign of King Kamehameha. The famous British captain, George Vancouver brought five cows over across the ocean to Hawaii in 1788. And now on the big island and near the project we're going to talk about is the Parker Ranch on the big island, 130,000 acres. First time I visited Parker Ranch, I was just floored by the beauty of the place. And then the distressing news lately of the largest pastureland fire that the islands of Hawaii have ever suffered, which occurred very recently, burned 64 square miles and killed 100 animals there. But cowboy culture of the panayolos is from hundreds of years ago. Yeah, let's go to the next slide. And we see the particular location as it looked like. As our management has told us, we should be careful about copyright violations and not committing these crimes. This is the first show that acquired a lot more work because we, in this case here, went to the Anakea beach. And now I already said what I stole the show of the show, but we get to that soon anyway. So this is the archive collection from the building from the hotel we're going to talk about that donated this image to you. And so this is one of the rare pictures and you probably would have something similar to Soto, but this time we got it from their source. This is the situation where it looks like almost untouched land, right? And you guys tell us more where and why that was. Well, the name of this place in Hawaiian is Kauna Hoa Beach. And as you can see, it is on a, it's a very arid area. It's very dry. It's very sunny, which is nice for a resort hotel and be quite hot. Beautiful, wide, white sand beach. And a lot of scrub trees around it, kiavi trees, which are thorny and not particularly wonderful to be around. Very little in the infrastructure that was already there. This was a coastline that there are roads. There were roads to this site, but they were not massive paved roads. It was very underutilized. There were not a lot of people who went there. My family used to visit by going there by boat in the 50s and 60s before the hotel was built. That's how we got there. So it is remote, but it had a tremendous amount of promise as a location for a resort hotel. Yeah. There was barely any, any info. There's only these tiny little dirt roads, right? There wasn't really any infrastructure in place. And I think if I remember correctly and Don Hibbert, with whom you have worked extensively, Ron, that's how you got to know each other about his book, Designing Paradise. He points out in there that, you know, the state and the developer flesh, the client made this deal that the state was chipping in and basically helping out with the infrastructure going there. And the way also the rumors say or the history is that basically the islands in whatever capacity of authorities basically lured the potential client to this place and let him vacation there. And as you, Ron, said, you know, you experience it yourself as one of the most beautiful places in Hawaii. So he must have thought and was to be convinced to build something there. And that gets us to the next slide, because this is the gentleman that got convinced to do that. And this is Lawrence S. Rockefeller. And we see him here. And on the bottom right picture, just for the show, you discovered someone talking about your family who got there by boat and you just spotted one of your family members there. That is correct. That is correct. And this brings us up to an interesting point about the hotel. Lawrence Rockefeller was obviously an entrepreneur, very wealthy, extremely wealthy Rockefeller family, which we'll talk about a little bit more. And he had already developed some boutique destination resort hotels and other warm places. This was another place that he was being enticed to come to. But one of the crucial aspects was, and he said, if he could not build a golf course along with the hotel, project would not go through. So the picture you're looking at here is a discussion about the golf course. And in the center is Robert Trent Jones, who was a very famous golf course designer, architect. He's looking at plans in this staged publicity picture. Lawrence Rockefeller on the right. And then on the left is my uncle, Kenny Brown. I'm not exactly sure why he was there. He was involved in the government. He was involved in development. He also was a golfer himself. So that must be the reason. And he was trained as an architect. And he had been, he was trained as an architect, although he very rarely practiced. So he's there discussing all the plans with the big wigs for this project as it was getting underway. Yeah. And looking at climate and culture, you are what you wear. There is three guys who are inappropriately dressed with long pants. And your uncle, of course, is one of the two who have the easy breezy shorts on, right? And Rockefeller in all respect on the left. And this is probably not in a way, but he is very formally dressed and not very much for the climate here. So let's start to wonder a little bit why, who he commissioned as the architect. And I have to say, semester starting, I always tell the emerging generation, yes, you need to be an architect, of course. That's why we do all this with you and for you. But we also should educate future clients because, you know, you can, you can build, you know, good architecture, never without a good client. So you need almost the client more desperately than the architect. And so here, who did he choose? And that gets us to the next slide. And who do we associate spontaneously architecturally with the name Rockefeller, guys? Well, we associate Rockefeller Center with the name Rockefeller. And Rockefeller Center is a shining, wonderful example of architecture located in New York City. And it was put on development, got started in developing right at the beginning of the Great Depression at the beginning of the 1930s. And it got a tremendous amount of publicity at the time for being such a beacon of hope of a business, a successful business endeavor getting started in the face of this terrible economic situation. And Rockefeller Center is incredibly significant, because one, it was an integrated, large development that was put together coherently on a large plot in the most dense city in the United States. Two, it was designed again coherently, but also with a lot of outdoor spaces for pedestrians with the addition of a lot of major pieces of art. So the Rockefellers didn't just build buildings, they commissioned art. And the art was a big part of the entire ambience of the entire development. And it is a masterful development for its time, also the way they integrated all of the infrastructure, underground parking, very, far sighted and very innovative, particularly for the time in which it was built. And Ron, share with us the architect. Yeah, it's no surprise that Rockefeller was such a patron of urbanity and of the arts, that it's no surprise that he created what is the most well designed, it's certainly the most lively, and it's the most well loved sort of urban complex in the U.S. Everybody knows of it, foreigners overseas recognize photographs of it, and talk about large 22 acres and 19 commercial buildings, every one of which was designed, was commissioned by the Rockefeller family. The most important buildings were designed in both modern and an art to co-architectural style by the famous Tussum of Raymond Hood and Wallace Harrison. And this is, this creates the very centerpiece of New York's Manhattan. Yeah, and further reminder of copyright obeying by our boss. We also digging out, if we, if any possible we have, I was digging up my own photographs. So these are by me about a decade ago, where the University of Sharjah was interested in me and sort of a little bit suspiciously didn't fly me out to Sharjah and we get to the Arab world in the next slide. But the dean visited me in halfway, we could say to, I guess, explain that in New York City. And that was too suspicious for me, so it didn't cut it for me. And luckily, I didn't go for it. So I'm here. But also we said the sort of pioneering aspect, maybe that's a similarity to, again, beginning of the 60s, just statehood, and the Hawaiian Islands pretty much, at least in today's terms, pretty much undeveloped, right? So what Rockefeller Center was for New York City became for New York City, certainly the amount of care in the typology of hospitality design became for the Hawaiian Islands. And as you pointed out, Ron, and we will prove later on, we have to add that to the show from something that you gave me a long time ago. I need to read it back in, even in the world, as far as the ranking. So let's go to the next slide, continue our detective work to basically look at, oh, this is not the next, the previous slide, please. So number six, yeah, this one here. So thanks to Don Hibbert, who is the author of the book, How You Got to Know Each Other Ron, More Closely Designing Paradise, where he does excessive coverage, so about your guy's work. And he was also reporting on that project, of course, and was saying that originally, a Warnock he had been, you know, preselected to do the job and talking sort of what you guys, Ron, you know, once you did the Kahala, basically, and that was the precedent for the for the coming project, and so on, and so on, and so on. So if you have worked in a certain typology, that gives you credibility, and gives you more jobs. So Warnock he really, having created this beacon of easy, breezy, tropical exotic, the capital, which we see down there with Don Hibbert and Will Bruder, visiting that and up there, we see a chokework with Richard Lowe, who has been working with Warnock he would have been perfect, but oddly enough, they were not chosen. But the firm of Skidmore Owings, Merrill was chosen and that one is shown on the right side of this page here. And the bottom picture is something that my students and I dearly missed, which is doing quick trips to other important places, at least, you know, on the continental US, and from Lincoln, Nebraska to Chicago, Illinois, so heading your hometown direction, Ron is, you know, only, you know, short nine hours, and you can drive that in a car if you want, if you can't fly, which we have issues with these days, as I just found out, again, rubbing my wounds, licking my wounds, you know, being fully vaccinated and PCR tested and still being confined, you know, then you could drive, you know, with few people in the car, the windows open or whatever, right. So we drove to Chicago, visited the firm of Skidmore Owings, Merrill, you see their big model, reminds me of your model maker guy, Ron, your partner, Larry Stricker, who did the in-house model, they had made this model of their city of Chicago, because that's the Chicago branch. And the most prominent projects you see down there, one is in the foreground, which is the Sears Tower formerly now called Willys Tower, and you can see the Hancock building in the distance, which is this sort of tapered or battered building, building in the back. And that gets us to the show quote on the top ride, but before that, I have to say, I have to share a little bit this sort of intel when we were in the firm, they proudly showed us their current work on the table. And you guys promised me to stay seated for that, because it's rather kind of shocking story, because the most spectacular projects they thought they had on the table was one, the Borsch Califa, that tallest tower in the Arab desert, that they showed us all the big sucker of construction documents, and we said, well, what's the concept of the building? And they said, oh, it's a desert rose, and we got our sunset. Oh, explain, how does it perform biochlametically, of course, at its best like a desert flower? They said, no, no, it just looks like one. They're like, oh, my God, this is postmodernism at its worst, but it got worse than that, because the second project was the Trump Tower. That was supposed to block these ponderos, you know, IBM building, and we again didn't give up hope and said, what's the concept? And said, well, we go up so many floors, and then we step back because there's a neighboring building and so on and so on and so on. And we're like, oh, my God, this is like, you know, zoning 1930s. And so what's the concept? No, that's the concept. Oh, and then also to add on this, well, we had some really cool design, these are these glass fins, we clip on the millions of the of the of the facade, and that will look really cool. And then stupid Trump value engineer that away, we're like, oh, that's a big surprise, right? Because Trump is a very cultivated guy, right? Why would he do that? So anyways, to we're probably getting close to the end of the show. So we use it to rehabilitate s o m because next time I went to see them with during my desert day, and my Arizona job, we basically had a German guy tour the the office and I asked him sort of hold him aside and I said, Hey, why are you here? And he basically said, Oh, there's one project by this firm that really is one of my most favorite projects ever in the world. And it's in the desert to from the 80s. And that's why I'm here. So that was a sign of hope and ever since they've been doing better work. And we close the show with a little pre glimpse, Ron, because we don't have much time about what that project is in the desert in Jeddah by s o m. Yeah, it was actually a commercial bank building in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, incredible 27 story triangular block that had enormous openings in its otherwise blank sides and a 27 story atrium. And because of that air updrafts cooled off this building considerably, the section of it is really exciting. It was an easy breezy desert building. And we see that it's the second for the audience, the second column to the right, what we see zoomed in. Thanks to Michael now. Yeah. And what I should say is that there's no surprise that Rockefeller would select s o m back in the 60s and 70s. At that time, this very large corporate firm was turning out nothing but humane and handsome urbane buildings all over the world, one after the other. And when Rockefeller decided on s o m, he went to the San Francisco officer s o m and the designer Charles Bassett. And in the next slide, either now or next week, we'll finally see the Monica B. Chotel in its easy breezy section. Exactly. That's the perfect closing note, Ron. We will do a little bit more detective work until we get there. And until then, I can only stay stay very local, right? Act local while thinking global. Yeah, nowhere I'm coming from. I do and not going anywhere as I'm not going anywhere. All right, see you guys next week for that. Look forward to bye bye.