 Good to have you back for what happens to be our 184th episode of Think Take Hawaii's Human-Humane Architecture that is looking above and beyond our horizon of our islands of Hawaii to other parts of the world where we can learn something from. And we do this once again, me, your host Martin Despeng from Tempered Germany. And our guest is once again in hot arid and at this time of the year also cool in the nights, Larry Medlin in Tucson, Arizona. Welcome back, Larry. Thank you, Martin. Good to have you back. And we want to, again, in Honolulu recently, it looks like buildings are like elephants and, you know, stumbling around with their big legs being high rises. And we want to look at a more spidery way potentially of making buildings. And you're a perfect expert for that. So we have great feedback from the audience as well. One of your students, Christopher Wilkinson, has been reaching out to us and saying hi and appreciating what we're doing. And he also gave us great, you know, viewer audience feedback. And one of them was to go back because last time we've been saying, you know, this, which I call the Berlin Bauhausian box, which you see at the top right there, which was Fry Otto's self initiated studio. But you actually met him and thanks to Christopher reminding us of saying that sharing you met him earlier. And that was where and when Larry. I met him when he was a guest professor at the University of California and Berkeley in 1962. It was myself and a class of fellow students about 12 or 13 other students. And as part of that, he had just built in Germany a wooden continuation of his work with the lattice grid shell. And we built one with steel rebar in Berkeley in the courtyard of the architecture building, a beautiful old historic building with a courtyard. And we built it out of steel. And we built the suspended model and a wire mesh model and measured that and built the structure. But as we went through the process, we had some problems because it was a little bit too large in scale. So we had to sort of collaborate as a team and discussions with Fry Otto. What we decided to do was make it one one sort of bay or smaller and then put a reinforcing member around the edge. And so that's all of us got to know Fry, but he was also very pleased at how we sort of understood his process and contributed and made some a major resolve and working about that part of the process of solving that. He was really happy with what we were able to accomplish there collaboratively. And he sort of extended a general invitation to all of us to come visit Berlin if we were ever over in Europe. And I accepted that. And so I ended up going there. And that's where what we had talked about in one of the last shows, we started working on things together in Berlin. And that's where I built the slide you can see on the image on the right, which is the first iLoop model. That was the stuff that I started working on. We had discovered you could do a simple iLoop. And then the question was how you could develop that on an actual structure. And when we got that built in this slide that you see on the right, we wanted to know exactly sort of how it performed, how it related to the skin. So what you see here is a model that if you look very carefully at the left side of that model, you see the frame, the bottom of a frame. And that frame had horizontal chord lines about physically about an inch and a quarter apart. So when the sun was shining from the left of that image, you see it cast a shadow on the model. And so those shadow lines, when you had it aligned perfectly and perfectly parallel to the base and so forth, which took some doing, you received the contours that you see on the left side where it's coming. And then it actually shines through. And you see in the transition zone, it's a little bit dark, but you also begin to get a suggestion of the contour lines on the right side of the backside. And what we were interested in was looking at how those worked. And if you look very carefully, you can see that there's more lines on the upper part because that's the upper part of the eye loop. And they start out flat and they get to be a stronger curvature as you progress down. And one of the interesting things we learned was that there's a little bit of a flattening out as it went in the edge arcs going around the perimeter and so forth. And so that was just to allow us to explore and have some more specific information about that form and what we could think and use it for in our later work on the project. Yeah, and you were, then you made these models and then you spent some considerable time to document them, photodocument them. And we picked this here from the ZKM in Karlsruhe, that picture here, which illustrates perfectly when you had said he was almost like an acrobat on some sort of apparatuses up there. And this is portraying that pretty perfectly here, how that kind of worked. You also felt a little bad that you have been talking a lot about what you've been doing in the Berlin-Bahazian box, but we also wanted to say at least give a little bit of a hint what he was doing in there. And that's going to be of extreme importance more towards the end of the show. And that's what we therefore see Seymannas very small and too small, but explain a little bit as an appetizer what that is, Larry, what Frey was working on very early in his career. He set up his development center for lightweight structures in Berlin under his own effort and initially his own expense before he got some brat money and so forth later. And he did a series of publications. This is actually the one in the little strip in the bottom is actually publication number eight that he did in that series. And it's where he talked about the three-dimensional space nets and the whole theory and development of that, that will be a foundation and basis for the project that you and your students will be doing later as you proceed with your project to explore that thing. So more about that later. So go to the next slide and recap a little bit from top left to bottom right. You started out with the soap films, then you did what we just saw, the single eye loop, then we see at the top right, the multiple eye loops. Then we see the research demonstration building at the bottom left and then we see the competition model at the bottom right. This is what we're talking about. And now let's go to the next slide and move on from here because there's a DD, a design development model of Larry Ryan. Yes, that was after we had won the competition and we knew that we're able to sort of proceed with the study and the process. I worked and again, we should mention that Herman Kendall in Rolf Goodbert's office was also working on the planning and the layout and the adaptable exhibit system and so forth. So we are working of course with the logical structural geometries and the forms for the cable net structure, but also we were doing that interactively with how it would relate to what was Rolf Goodbert for turn as the terrestrial landscape or the exhibition landscape that would come later. And so this is the final model, the final I would say design development model, and that was taken from Rolf Goodbert's office. And the reason I know it's Rolf Goodbert's office was that he was near the center of Stuttgart where he was up in the foothills a little bit. So we found this wonderful site where we could photograph that across the valley of Stuttgart, which is a valley town and see the ridge of the other side of the valley there. So that's how it looks. And this begins to be much more precise in terms of the final dimensions and so forth. And it really established the geometry from what we already talked about in the lower left there, the wire measuring model that was built based upon the forms and that final model that was the next step was developing that and becoming much more precise in the forms and the shapes and detailing and so forth. Yeah, but also I think this is something that Christopher Wilkinson was pointing out too that in this year specific lightway way different than in more sturdy stony as someone calls it later, which we will get to conventional architecture where the architectural models each stage, you know, then it's going to differ quite a bit and sort of the thing my professor in school, by the way, Professor Schweger always said, I don't trust this model, it lies. But these models here don't seem to lie, right? They're pretty honest because they're basically simulating the real deal, right? And that's why we have this amazing. It doesn't work structurally, you're in big trouble. I mean, it will physically look awkward and you can see it's not stressed. There'll be areas where the membrane is not stressed and that's the whole part, it's getting it equally stressed throughout and last oriented properly and so forth. Yeah, that's why you have this amazing sort of synchronicity between the different scales and although they develop and they become more refined, you can see that the idea stays consistent all the way through and let's go back to the construction side to the next slide and look more into that Larry. Well, that's when we were actually in the construction process. That's actually when we were raising up that cable network, actually hoisting it up and beginning to pull it out around the perimeter. And if you look through that, you can see one of the themed pavilions in the background and it actually, that curving line is the monorail that actually came fairly close around the perimeter of the outside of the German pavilion when it was finished. And talking spiders versus elephants, you said that you strategically chose the density of the cables so that you could basically save on scaffolding and basically have the netting as a scaffolding and people like spiders crawling up on it and doing the construction, right? Well, yeah, that network is literally, it would work like a ladder as you see those people climbing right up to, but at a half a meter there's no really imminent danger that you fall right to. I mean, you theoretically could if you tried, but it allows you to walk up and if you slip, you'll have something to grab on to and so forth. So that resulted in half inch cables and the other benefit of the half inch cables was that you could take the segments of the cable network which are joined together in various strip pieces and roll them up like a carpet and put them in crates and shift them over to the Montreal site and lay them out on them and connect them and get them all prepped to raise it up the one that's time to do that. And on the right side is a glimpse of the finished pavilion which we will get to more into what else we see there, but we just want to say it looks very much like once again almost like a model, right? And you have an artificial sky up there which maybe we'll go to the next slide and we see this under construction here, Larry, right? The canvas being installed. That's underneath. You can see the whole sort of process there. You can see the steel cable network is there. That's after we've done the pre-stressing and pulled it taught. You can see that the eye loop looks like it's being pulled by the cables around the perimeter equally. And then you see the membrane being assembled in the first segments of that being raised up. And then we had like a universal joint that could slide across the grid of the net or up and down and left and right. So you could bring the, there were, if you look carefully in the canvas, you'll see there's these spring-like loop things and that's what distributes the load. And so the connector piece was brought from the cable network and oriented to exactly to meet that point so that you could make that connection. We also see in the background which, you know, you guys did the landscaping as well and you see this kind of cascading downstairs there and this was actually then later all filled with water and became a pond ride and people were just sitting there and relaxing. And also you wanted to talk about how many entrances pavilions have and how many years had, right? Well that was the thing about the German pavilion and we'll see that later when we look at some of the plan drawings. You could enter it all along the main walkway which went across one side of the pavilion. There were a couple of points where you could enter there and you could also go out alongside and walk out a sort of a ramp and an edge that came there. So there are three or four different points which you could enter the pavilion. And ironically that made it one of the most popular pavilions simply because of that fact. All the other pavilions had only a main entrance and there were big huge long lines at the main entrance and because we had multiple lines, you know, it was easier to get in and there was nobody waiting at those lines and people could flow through easily. The only thing that happened you mentioned that what we're looking at here that's the low point and later water was introduced that was a pond area that ironically became one of the most popular places where people would come take off their shoes and sort of relax and cool off a little bit. And at first people sort of said oh I don't know about this you know but then they realized it you know it enabled people to sort of just relax and sit there and look at the pavilion and observe it and watch the people moving around. So there are two low major low points like that with the fountain areas inside the pavilion and those became very popular spots. Very Lauren's hope Renny it feels to me. And you were talking about wooden grid shells and don't we see one in the front here? That's that's the grid shell and in fact Christopher Wilkinson asked me the question, did you use any catenary lines like Gowdy used to use and what you did? And we actually did a catenary model to develop the shape and form for a grid shell or modern catenary line which was a fine it wasn't with weights hanging from a net but it was a fine jeweler's chain system that triado found and developed that we could make the suspended form and develop that. And so there was actually about an 80 foot by 50 foot area that was a main auditorium and then wrapping around sort of three edges three edge positions of that was another much smaller diameter grid shell that served as a foyer and there was a beam in between those with glass so it's like a big window you could come into the the foyer or the lobby area look through the glass and if you liked what was going on in the auditorium which was actually a slightly lower level below there was a stair off to the left where you could go in and go and then join the proceedings there or you could walk back out and not disturb the people so that was one of the reasons and the logic for that. And just before the show we were looking forward we said we wish there would be a maybe an even better picture of the grid shell and thanks to Dome publisher Natasha Moyza and her great book about your pavilion we found one and let's go to the next slide and what do we see and who is the married guy on the right side? The that's Friano sitting there and with his shoulders and looking at it with glasses on the left floor that's Eberhard Hauke who was the engineer that worked with us and you know we haven't mentioned him but he was really a critical member that did all the attention gauges and later went on to Berkeley and got a PhD under studying there under TY Lin and he developed the first set of analysis patterns for tensile membranes that later went on and were used for things like radial tires and then he finally added compression to them and was able to do automobile crash test analyses and even leading up to the point where they could mimic surgical procedures because working with human skin that's that's a tensile membrane so it's amazing the work that he was able to do based upon that start but to answer your question that's Friano and on the back rim that's Jochen Schoeling who was in charge of the shop at the institute and then of the character on the right that's a portrait of my posterior there of me standing over there Friano and I were talking about where at one point in this which was a mock-up in a lumber yard outside of in the suburbs of Stuttgart and it's a complete and exact mock-up of a concrete wall that's built in Montreal what was being built and was actually nearing completion in Montreal and it was fabricated to the same dimensions and if you look on the left of the slide you see a quarter-round piece of wood that's actually was the same wood that was then later taken to Montreal mounted on the top of that wall and in the because of the quarter-round the grid shell outches could come in and meet that at various angles and then it was screwed to that so that's that's what you see there and in the corner there there was one area where one of the things was at a very steep curve and a crack and we were just discussing about how you could take that and splice that splice that in the fair that so that's what we're all talking about there at that moment and the little picture we put up there that at the top left is that this was a precursor of his fantastic multi-hullet in Mannheim some years later in the early to mid-70s right and let's go to the next slide and we did a little show quotations from last time up there because you were talking about error and trial and trial and error and you were there drill not supposed to use a power drill and you ripped the whole netting apart and then when Frye and the Germans officials were there there was something happening that you saved the scene and this continued to the actual construction right so the sort of prototyping never ends right tell us that story that's actually true when we are erecting the steel cable network and there were concrete anchor blocks that had slots in them and the edge cables which were two inch diameter cables came down and they they ended in a cast shell that was down below that that you could screw into it one in and pull that to tension the structure and and those were dropped into those slots and the slots were straight up as they were supposed to come down into the low point or the ridge cable or whatever was coming into them and at one of the low points when we were erecting it it and the process of putting it up that one of those things got pulled really too hard far to the right and it actually broke that concrete fin off because it was you know what it was intended only to come straight down there and so what we had to do was overnight we fabricated a little steel plate and both of that anchorage back together so we could use it and everything was good but as you said it's an iterative process and we found things to check and refine as we went through the process all the way through and just as a reference at the very center and middle in the front is that little blob of the of the auditorium that we were just talking about before right yeah that's basically it was it was covered with the quarter inch sheet supply wood that were nailed to the grid lattices they were quarter inch because we could we actually cut them and out of four by eight sheets and we had two foot by eight foot sheets and then they were flexible enough that we could sort of warp them and make them fit the curvature for those small pieces of course offset them and then then we put an insulation layer over that which also had thermal value but also acoustically isolated isolated the auditorium and then we covered that with the son of what was a grayish green membrane on the outside to enclose that space so what we're actually looking at is the the auditorium part in the the lobby part would be to the left of that slide absolutely and on the on the top right we see again a study model of the membrane and once again isn't the sort of parallel to the to the finished product absolutely amazing unlike in conventional architecture where as we said you don't have that to that degree and let's go to the next slide we have a couple minutes left left and look at the sort of the other effect so while the daylight was able to come through the the translucent membrane and make it feel almost like you're you're outside right when in one trail there's a lot of overcast skies and it feels like it's a cloudy day and you're outside and that reverse effect when there's light on from inside these are glowing and become these kind of you know glowing e-glues because there's actually some snow down there on the ground because the expo started and went through the summer but then in Montreal gets cold fast in the towards the end of the year so you were hitting snow right if i can add that the actually the provision was winter rise but in the foreground of this pillion you see a wall that went all the way around the perimeter and on the top of that wall there was place to connect a little strip of membrane so that connected to a flap on the underside of a pavilion so the pavilion was fully enclosed so you actually the passive solar gain sort of heated it up in the winter and the heat was kept in the pavilion it wasn't allowed to ventilate out in the top which would it did in the summer of course in the summer which was the time of expo those little filler flaps were taken out and the air could come up through that and went up and was exhausted out the top of the mass and that allowed the hot air to pass out through the top and so the cool air stratified down below in the exhibit area that was occupied by the exhibit visitors or going to the restaurants or the various or the auditorium or the various other facilities that were located in the pavilion at that level and as we were quoting previous our previous shows at the top right this all you were basically already prototyping and testing at the il research prototype project right that's that's correct and that's what we also mentioned in the last show that that after the expo was over we came back and got some grant funding and developed that with a wooden lattice system for a permanent roof recloser with a shingles on the outside before we have to head out because we got two minutes left let's go to the next next slide and very quickly look look at the plan and I I want you to I quote up there from this website Otto began building lightly as a counterpoint to the stony grandiosity of Nazi architecture this largest picture there is an oddity to that regard right and we probably cannot finish that funny little detail but let's get started on that Larry well people somebody magazines are around the world said that the german pavilion was designed to represent the height of the nazi arc like the tallest mass was Berlin and the second tallest mass was Munich and so forth and that was summarized in time magazine those series of articles and and actually the basis for the design was me a non-german an american making the final sort of decision and the logic of the pavilion of the pavilion is there's a large square in the foreground that you can see that has four mast and ridge cables running diagonally through the middle of that and then a smaller square on the right and that's the one that leads up to the auditorium area and then we also wanted it to those were it you know the like on the left on the other looked out over with the western areas and the monorail going past in the back and so forth but we also wanted to pull out and go to allow people to experience this in the garden area so we stretched that out across over to what later the water is not there now but this would become an island that was over there and you could go out and see that relationship into the garden well people flew over and helicopters and photographed it you know from all directions they even said the garden island was represented the the danish peninsula in europe and so forth that was one of those kind of things that was ironic that that you know american working on that and making those sort of final decisions as to the exact collaboration of course in collaboration with discussions with raya on hermit kendo for the logic of that but the structural logic was that i mentioned the two sort of rectangles that were offset and then an extension out to the garden area lucky he was to have had you on the team for multiple reasons i wrote her a bottle into i i think it was time magazine and they printed that and they printed that story which was very nice mm-hmm well again how ironic we will later point out the motivation the kind of humanist you know motivation fry hat and and to that regards this is a very sort of ironic well we're at the end of our 28 minutes again larry and we look forward to have you back next week for more so thank you again for these exciting insider stories thank you martin it's really enjoyable that we visit these days and think about them and brings back a lot of interesting and a lot of very happy memories yeah pleasure and honor on our side larry okay so until then you all stay healthy and happy and be increasingly spidery just as larry and fry see you next week bye bye