 to the think-take-wise human-humane architecture. This is our 179th show. We're doing this on a very special day, which is getting a new political and cultural leadership in our United States of America. Yeah. Yeah. And we're doing this embodied by the 49th Vice President, Kamala Harris, who is the first woman of multiple colors, as they said. And that's awesome enough. And it's going to be the 46th President, Joseph Biden, together with her. And we can't wait. And he gave already, he twittered out much better things than the previous guy. Not the one we remember that. And he basically said, there is no time to waste. So let's go rushing. But he also tweeted another thing that basically was, well, first of all, he was, this gets us to the bottom right, I have to say, two weeks ago, when there was the Electoral College vote, we were very worried about the riots, which then actually happened. We can safely say that today was all safe ceremonies. And that's thanks to a representative for all the other ones basically protecting us is your grand-nephew up there at the very top, Ron, who is part of the National Guard and protecting us. And so I needless to say, I almost forgot we're broadcasting life again from three different countries and climates, representing three different cultures. I'm in Germany, Iran, are in Long Beach, California, and Yudhisoto are back in Honolulu, Hawaii. And so, you know, it seems we must have sensed because when Biden at the beginning of a speech was basically thanking all of his predecessors in attendance, he didn't mention them by name, the one that he mentioned. And he said he called him last night and he wanted to salute to his lifetime achievements. Guess who that is? Well, I know because his picture is up there. It is Jimmy Carter, former president who was renowned for, at least for our, for some of us as an innovator in technology, an innovator, a supporter of scientific knowledge, and really an all-around good guy. And that's good that he was acknowledged. And that seems like we're coming full circle, and Joe really wants to pick up where Jimmy had left. And he said, he twittered something else really, and it is great to have twitterers that encourage you, right? Yeah. He said, this is time for testing. And that gets us to the prime time of America, mid-century, where it was all about testing. And in our field of architecture, what better way of basically testing prototyping is case-studying, right? And that gets us back to your kind Christmas gift, Ron, that we see at the very bottom right. But I have to say that the gift also gave us a couple of the goodies of your office's work, of Ed's pioneering work, but also featured other case-study architect work. And in fact, one of them basically made it on the title page of the book. And let's go to the second slide and you tell us, Ron, who that was. Yes. There was an architect named Craig Elwood in California, who his office created, again, some of the most elegant homes of Southern California mid-century modernism. And at the same time, he was given the opportunity by John and Tenza to design three case-study houses in a row, 16, 17, and 18, all in Los Angeles. On the cover of the book is Case House Number 17, which was actually built in Beverly Hills. Now, critics called him the California Mies van der Rohe, because most of the famous buildings of his houses, at least, were steel-framed, very pristine, minimalist pavilions. In fact, he was the only one of the younger generation modernists who Mies van der Rohe took seriously. And he often spoke highly of Elwood as a disciple. In the center, a larger photograph is a home called the Rosen House, which in my mind is one of the most nearly Miesian homes that he built. Now, when we talk about architects, we often don't get too much about their interesting personalities. And there's no architect probably with a more interesting personal history than Craig Elwood. Because even though he got this kind words from Mies van der Rohe, there's no question that he was an outsider as far as the architectural profession was concerned. He completely bypassed university. He had no architectural training. He did work for a contractor for a while doing cost estimating and job supervision. And interestingly enough, he did that on several case study houses before he did his own. Those were done by Raphael Soriano. And he just had no formal education. Not only that, he had no apprenticeship with an architect as a mentor to lead him. The genius Frank Lloyd Wright, of course, is famous for having no college education. But he had a long involved and deep mentorship with Louis Sullivan in Chicago. Here's where we get into the personality. This gentleman could not draw. He certainly was not an architect. But what he was was incredible showman. And he could market himself. And his office, which produced wonderful buildings, very, very beautiful, mid-century modern buildings. He came to California from Texas as Johnny Burke. And he felt that just wasn't he needed a new life in the Golden State. So there was a liquor store in his neighborhood near Beverly Hills called Elwood's. So he took his last name as Elwood. He took Craig because it sounded cool. It sounded like that's a name that an astronaut would have. But he was such a personality. He married a very popular television entertainer. DeSoto might remember this. She played the mother on a long lasting series called Dennis the Menace. And in fact, he and his wife became sort of an it couple in Beverly Hills. But in fact, he was called the Cary Grant of architecture on the West Coast. Very handsome gentleman, very gregarious. And he could sell ice to the Eskimos. But his work day was really interesting. He would arrive in his Lamborghini or his Ferrari at his own office that he had designed about mid afternoon. Then he'd sit with his designers in his office and talk for a while. And he would give his opinions, his perspective. And he did have a terrific talent in detailing, especially structural detailing, which on steel, steel buildings is so important. But then he'd launch in Beverly Hills. He'd come back, leave in the mid afternoon in his tennis whites, either to play tennis or to walk his pet big cat, which looks like a panther to me, through Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. This guy did not give any credit to the people that worked for him. He had no partners. But what he did do is that he did give direct responsibility to his designers for initiating the initial design concepts of everything. And we have to give him incredible credit for by himself, creating an office that produced such fine architecture, such as this very mesian Rosenhaus that we're seeing in that middle picture on the slide. And I'm not sure, Martin, if you had some comments about the pictures in the bottom. Yeah. Well, we probably at the top, we say he sort of was pushed out of his office and basically went to Italy, became a painter and died in a not too old age. And giving credits to his staff, there is Mr. Lomax up here, who's credited to be the designer. And I always think, you know, this is for Eric Bricker, who's doing the Killingworth movie, couldn't be any more different to see the personalities of Craig Ellwood, Elias, Johnny Burke, and Edward Killingworth. They couldn't be more Ying and Yang to the point that Ed was more than recognizing very best in his office to a point that he made his best people you being the living example. So I think that pretty much Ellwood, again, did it, as you said, only in America or only in California, one could say, right. But in all fairness, Mies van der Rohe also didn't study architecture. He was sort of a self trained. So maybe he alluded to that of his master. But at the bottom, it's that we pointed out in our courtyard show that Mies actually was doing courtyards, always with his students, but never in his practice. He left it up to his disciples as we were pointing out to that one project in Chicago. Getting to the next slide, which shows the Rosenhaus that you, Ron, choose as what's most representative best practices for Craig Ellwood's firm. And here we're pointing out to something else that is different for his interesting for historians to do our quick biochromatic check, because by the way, the Biden administration is going to return to the Paris climate agreement. Yeah. So environmentalism is back and Mies van der Rohe, until his very end, wasn't really known for that. When he finally worked on the Bacardi project and the other tropics and fight finally in its last masterpiece in Germany, the National Gallery, he was actually pushing the glass back and having, you know, glass be shaded. But that was relatively parallel to when the Ellwood office was doing this here. And so not only do we have the central courtyard as something to keep the building cool, but we also have the glass facade pushed back to the north where it's framing the kind of the entry. And then to the south more importantly, it's pushed back and there the whole glass facade gets shaded. So we can say, you know, Ellwood office was sort of environmentalizing the Miesian idea. And that's really rather interesting. Let's go to the next slide. Because this is again, thank you, your gift, Ron. And so this case study house that made it to the title page has this really weird thing that there's this really typical pretty closed and opaque austere facade, but then there is something sticking out of it. And when you look closer in the plan, you would think this is a really important part of the program. And actually might be but in what we like a proletarian way, because this is like the maids quarter with a with a with an old courtyard that he's kind of celebrating and sticking out of that. But again, even though, you know, we think now is a new era and it should be, but we still have to deal with things from the past. So here, for example, that project was hit by the early upcoming of reactionary in the runny Reagan talking California and showman era. Because this as we read in the book, the house basically is not recognizable as what it is, because it had been turned into a pseudo classical mansion. And that reminds us of the continuous talk of cynical classicism versus cultivated classicism. Let's move on to the next slide. This is reminding me back of my prairie days here, this is in Omaha, Nebraska, where my dear mentor bill who had just lost basically took me out to these big corporate firms. This one here is Leo a daily. And our great emerging talent met the bore at the top right amongst as many talents is that he was a gifted is still is a gifted photographer, was allowed to go in and there's this pavilion of Mr. Daily the first, it's his private little getaway, and it's full of Picasso's and jacometties that we get to later down in the show. So interesting and the next project next slide is what Matt moved on to, which is HDR, which is an even larger in revenue ranking firm had bought it in the in the heartland in the Midwest. And this is a very proud, sort of naive and innocent, because that was just before the big rain check of the first oil crisis. But until then, one was innocent about fossil fuel and representative for that, our methodologies of vehicles as of automobiles as vehicles for thought, there's my 72 Plymouth Fury that I proudly owned during my student days, because I wanted to live up the Americana. So here they both are. If you take these two projects together, you get something that we are very familiar and is one of our favorites. And that gets us to the next slide and you tell us to sort of what that is. Well, here's the Alamoana building here in Honolulu built in 1961. And it originally had a series of vertical louvers on the exterior, which moved according to the position of the sun during the day. And unfortunately, they have been removed from the building as they deteriorated. But this is what we're seeing here is pictures of a similar system on that building that you were discussing, except unlike the Alamoana building, they did not move automatically. This was actually cranked by a person who would change their positions during the day, according to where the sun was. Yeah. And this is Leo, a daily headquarters, the original one from the heydays. It still has these aluminum louvers in their cranked manually by the caretaker of the building. So again, bring the louvers back to our Alamoana building as, again, to recognize the tradition of innovation on the island as one of my favorite presentations of yours, the Soto. And let's go to the next slide. You guys recall this sort of memory of mine, please. Well, this was, this is possibly the most famous case study house. This is case study house number 22. And you visited Hollywood to, among other things, look at architecture. You took the picture at the bottom of the screen of the house seen from below. And while you were doing so, a woman who lived in that neighborhood stopped and asked you what you were doing, because she had no idea that this house that she paid no attention to was such an iconic and important piece of architecture. So she was living there heedless of it and not caring what it represented, because it's such a representative of the time period in which it was made of the 1959, 1960. Yeah. So hopefully now with a new era starting now, we have more recognition and realization of the best we have. And again, pick up from where that has left and basically evolve that, which gets us to the next slide, which is we stole this from basically the longest in the making show about skins of first, second and third skins and their relationship. We call it the working title is address code address code. And here is the just past president Trump retracting back to his, I think Ron, you last time when you were like summarizing the styles he was mandating, Mediterranean, I think was part of that. And you said that's sort of what the the Marjorie post to have built it originally was sort of modeling it after way back. And he's going back to that. And he's kind of overdressed for that. While our more properly be addressed for where he comes from in parts. President Barrack Obama is going back to Honolulu, excuse me, to to Wahoo in a little bit that we've been reporting on. But let's go to the next slide. In basically saying, you know, that's what he's facing at the bottom is two cars flipped on the side in front of his gate of his new house. And while we are pretty sure, you know, the architects he has chosen for his new house, they will be pretty decent, they will not be too McMansion the will be architecturally pretty much okay. But will it be which I think what Joe is talking about what it has to be which at tried as part of the case study houses up there, building also on an oceanfront so maybe questionable as far as its location but technologically really an innovator because we wanted to do these styrofoam concrete panels that you know, didn't happen, unfortunately, as you told us Ron, but but should have happened. Right. So next slide. So the last picture was just, you know, putting it in our face. One of the three main challenges we're facing one is of course, rising number of the COVID crisis. First and foremost, but then the climate crisis and certainly a civility crisis represented through social inequity. So how can we make shelter and that's the core of our profession and discipline for the many in need and certainly not through a single family housing that's just sprawling, you know, and to that degree, again, please pass presidents and future presidents think of that and once again, Joe's now publicly announced big idol is Jimmy is the only one who had lived in social housing and knows and that's why he's still out there and about for, you know, humanities and building houses like that. So in fact, going back to your Christmas gift for us, Ron, Ed once again was the closest to tackle the housing crisis, which was not single family, but as the multi dwelling. So tell us what we see here. Yeah, it was the only case study house architect who actually involved community planning and trying to have a multi family unit housing where people would feel neighborly to each other. And that actually could be something brought out through architecture and planning. And so we're just looking at several pages inside the small format caution book on case study houses of the 10 units which unfortunately weren't were unbuilt back in 1964 in Newport Beach, California. Yeah, and while you guys successfully and rightly so and thankfully basically became the masters in resort architecture. So we're retracting back from that typology. But there were actually two cases, two examples that we've been talking before, that were basically, basically optimizing that case studying and that gets us to the next page. And let's recall who these are. And one is actually very small in there. But it's actually what we see behind you because it's your house, Ron, that not your office itself, but a developer as we've been reporting on had been inspired by its work and and done houses that you now happily reside in one that's very much in the spirit of that one. And which is the other project that's built that's very close to us. And we're always worried about it that is exemplifying the best of tropical multi dwelling. You see that the top right. Yeah, of really one of the most successful condominium developments way back in 1967 was the Kahala Beach Apartments. And there, there were 196 units developed and quite a sense of community there. And we're all worried about the wonderful piece of planning and architecture. Because there might come that time when the owners of the land that have the lease of the land underneath it might consider replacing it with God knows what. Absolutely. And again, I just want to go back to again a kind of comparison between different architectural practices. What I always find most amazing about you guys work is that you were like uncorruptible uncorruptible true to yourself and to your mission of exquisite modernism in increasingly working in the tropics in the best tropical exotic easy breezy way. And you were doing these through these kind of really tempting times of as you've been talking about we reference at the bottom right of postmodernism where people like Philip Johnson and many more got seduced. And your Holly Kalani is the best example why and your prove that we you basically carry the the metal that we gave to you of the best postmodern architect because it's postmodern in the most human humane way and you carried that through all the way to even the early 90s which is that desperate time I had to go to school where we're pretty much lost but you guys weren't. As you see us here standing you it seems you standing in front of your friend and partner Larry Stricker is he Lonnie from the early 90s and at the point where you just thought okay now it's time to enjoy ourselves and you know retiring rightly so you just call it good so there's like half of a century of just staying true to your guys and to yourself and we along the discussion of you know you guys again being great raw models for us and to rather than reinvent the wheel being aware of how well the wheel was running we had another gentleman came to our mind recently that's along the same lines and let's go to the next slide and you Ron share with us who that is. Yeah there's an architect I've admired for a long time who created a architectural office with very early emphasis on environmental design it was called site and the architect was James Wines and the main focus of the design really were green issues and integrating buildings with their surrounding context of and I think I reminded you Martin that in Germany right now if if it were available unfortunately the pandemic has the museum closed but the world's only museum that only has architectural drawings which is called the Chauban Museum in Berlin right now has the current retrospective from 1970 to 2000 of James Wines work wonderful work. Absolutely and we threw in here the Jaco Matthew because in one of the recent interviews of James Wines he got a little upset because he felt like he was cornered in by you know his architecture is about ruins and he basically said it would be like if you say Jaco Matthew's you know sculptures were about starving people and of course there it's not and so it's the same as if you would you know not want to be reduced to classicism of course these are principles you guys have been obeying to but then there's a whole cosmos there's a whole world of humanity and humility that we're all now so eager to get back to that's that's behind all that one and the next slide and we got to make it fast because it's the end of the show but here is one of James's project here from again when Jimmy was phasing out and right before the surface cowboy Ronnie came on the stage here he was making this menu festo of the high rises of homes and the next slide once again as he was addressing diversity basically in density these are things that are very familiar to us these days that we're researching on and again here is the poster of the show going on that in my country here that you want to have pointed out on behalf of James and next slide is pretty much once again nature as revenge is one of the provocative slogans as another one was attacking architecture and he means the conventions of architecture I think that is what our new president means it's time for testing this is what the primitivas want to do and they want to jump the fence just like you know Joe's big hero Jimmy here who was literally jumping fences because he was fit enough just overcome these stereotypes these things that you take for granted and move on to stuff that you think you really need and last slide here is us basically reporting that primitiva three is in development we're going to meet tomorrow again with a team are we going to have Larry medland with us who we did a show that we call Einstein's architects because he had gotten to know and he was best friends with Conrad Waxman and with Fry Otto who's a mentor of this project here but I remember when Larry told me that when Reagan took office basically the day after that he got pulled his funds for his environmental studies and so things coming full circle and again Joe having officially said who inspires him Jimmy this you know makes up for that and let's go to full circle and and reconnect to these glorious heroic pioneering American days that we're all so fond of here being in our different cultures and climates so it was fun once again see you guys soon again and until then obviously most importantly stay healthy and increasingly happy