 to think-take-wise human-humane architectures, this is going to be our 178th show and we're the second show into the new year and we're broadcasting live once again from three continents of the world, me being on the European side in Germany and then we have Iran on the mainland continent of the United States and we have Yuda Soto back on the Hawaiian Ark-P-Kalago, right? Archipelago. Oh sorry, yeah thanks for continuing to teach me English. So glad to be reunited here with us and this is recapping here what we've been doing in the last show, the first show, which is talking about a lot of things but if we try to summarize it was pretty much about democracy and hopefully and wishfully renaissance of integrity and authenticity and things are changing on a fast pace on a daily basis in all the areas that we're confronted with. Also we have to do a little update unfortunately on the good news that we had to spread last time that the university's approach of the Indian Institute of Management to tear down Lukan's most legendary dorms through a massive outcry of scholars and professionals us amongst to prevent that. There was Nathaniel Kahn and his sisters who had to pour a little bit of water into that sweet wine and having to say the university was putting that on hold but it's not off the table. So once again when we say we the people have the power there's also some other people out there that we have to continue to convince and that's on big politics and small stages as well, right? So let's please again Nathaniel once told me that making the movie amongst many things has also brought the family back together. Now him and his sisters were writing this letter and we're also hoping Ron that Eric Bricker who's going to do a movie about your guys work is going to stick to that because once again in these days of being locked down you're a big fan and a big consumer of Netflix. We need these media to spread the good word of as we call this show cultivated versus cynical classicism and if you go to the next slide talking also another media is pretty much books right and you just made us aware of this one here and what are we looking at Ron? Yeah I found when I went up to my local design bookstore that Tassian publishers have provided a fine small pocket-sized book about the case study houses and I've got to take just a moment to give a shout out to Tassian. They make really the most beautiful and sometimes the largest books you can imagine on all of the arts. Some of them are so large that weak people can't even lift them and hold them in their lap but Tassian isn't elitist because at the same time they will put out small very inexpensive books for art lovers and students and this is an example because this little six inch by eight inch book is the small version of the case study house book whereas the large version costs four times as much and is one foot wide by one foot four inches long and even though this is a pocket book of sorts it has a massive 576 pages inside so I could not help but buy two extra copies for my co-hosts and thanks for the opportunity to be working with them again. And we will see that in a minute in thanking you Ron. As of now we're seeing another book that we see of four pieces of pomo fossil and formalist buildings right? Yeah we're talking about sort of inauthentic classes or inauthentic use of styles that aren't modern and what we're seeing is some buildings by Philip Johnson all done in 1984-1985 high rises 700-800 feet tall that are definitely not modern because he had fallen for what is a strange postmodernist fad and at the lower right you can see the most famous of these pomo office buildings which were just glazed hermetic boxes again with no response to nature. The most famous one is that AT&T building which turned a high rise building into an enormous Chippendale cabinet with a Chippendale top and then at the lower left you see Pittsburgh plate glasses headquarters and this is really something here's another high rise but at the top there are little finials and towers placed so it looks something like the houses of parliament in London that was built in Pittsburgh in 1984 at the upper left is what was called the NCNB center and here you see in my mind the wildest example here are three step gables that resemble guild halls and town halls of late medieval Holland and Germany which you probably recognize yourself Martin that was built in Houston, Texas and then finally at the upper right you see what was called the Fransco tower in Houston again in Houston this time it's a 1930s art modern design later we're going to talk about Trump's desire to have all federal architecture be enough and this is what high rises might look like if that ever came true. Absolutely and so we're you know we've been talking this has been going on for a while and as we're referencing at the very top right once movie star Ronnie Togover we're talking 80s and we're talking about surface versus substance before and it's dragging along until as we pointed out in the last show until architects of these days who are getting up in age but not getting off the stage which they should as Wolf Pricks who is doing the same kind of different style but the same attitude just fossil formalism and we can say this is probably not this wasn't basically federally mandated classicism but it was capitalistically fostered classicism again as a symbol of power and a symbol of chauvinism we can say right it was chauvinist capitalism but let's turn on two better things go to the next slide please and we see pretty much here what you were talking about Ron and we can also see here that nice little we're the second show into the new year so happy holidays to have had and here's the Santa Claus competition that you guys have going on at that point your beard Ron was only half the one that we are happy to see now and again your Santa Claus gift to us was that wonderful book that again representative for you the Soto also this is our copy that we got from you and let's go to the next slide and see what's in the book and here's one example and what are we looking at Ron that is very familiar to you well as a nice surprise to me I'm seeing a drawing I've never seen before but that I do know that it was Ed Killingsworth's original drawing at the lower right but what we're looking at is the triad case study houses two pages of the coverage in that book about it and here's an example where a very modern architecture who provided these beautiful modern glass pavilions of exposed structure in filled with invisible glazing used classicism to really create an importance to a gathering of buildings in other words he used symmetry and he had central axes both in the site plans and the symmetry in the houses themselves and this was an attempt to create some community mindedness through architecture and planning among the disparate people who would buy and live in those homes yeah and coming full circle to the beginning of Lukan what is the piece of architecture that we mostly associate with this place in La Jolla near San Diego that was actually built and this is sort of surprising us because this was built at the late 50s in the early in the early 60s and in the mid 60s next slide what do we all associate with that place you guys help us out well I've never been there but Ron knows what it is I have to confess when I saw it for the first time I happen to have been sent down from my military base to La Jolla to take a course in military justice so I'd know something about how to handle court cases in the military and so I took the time to visit the Salk Institute when it was barely open so it was fresh and crisp and new I walked into a courtyard a central courtyard completely empty no no vegetation just an incredibly spare architecture a completely baseless courtyard with a single slim runnel of water running to the ocean and often the distance the sky and the sound of the surf pounding in La Jolla below and for the first time in my life I suddenly found myself with tears in my eyes the architecture was incredibly spare and beautiful there were only three materials that could be seen but it was all light and space the architecture was almost secondary light and space but when I looked at the architecture it was only concrete framing within which were placed some wooden panels some large wood panels but the panels themselves contained very small residential windows so that these studies where the scientists went to sort of regroup and think could look out into the courtyard or off to the ocean and invent polio vaccine and I just might point out too that that is very relevant for us living through the plague of COVID-19 very right now because during the 1950s there was a crash program to develop vaccinations against polio which Dr. Salk was one of the creators of and we just are going through the the crash creation of the COVID-19 vaccine as well so again we're we're trying to provide from our own eyewitnessing and this picture is from a trip during my my desert days this is sort of a Bonnie and Clyde trip with this lovely young emerging talent here we were both at the first time in this moment seeing this this masterpiece here we started out the trip out in Palm Springs which we see at the very top this is a house by another case study house participant Craig Elwood who actually that wasn't his real name his name was Johnny Burkey and also different than you guys Ron who Ed has always been crediting you guys to a point in having make you partners later on Craig Elwood slash John Burkey didn't really do that so we want to pay tribute to this gentleman who we quote up there Alvaro who was supposedly the chief designer on this project which was for Max Pulaski who we later knew through the company Intel this is a late addition to our courtyard series by the way they called it like a house between two walls and a courtyard spanning in between but it's also a prime example of axial symmetric symmetry so we can call this classicist as we see with the floor plan basically of of the sock institute here as well right so why don't we move on to the next slide and basically here just reiterating Ron what you had said when you had your first teardrops about architecture when you saw the sock as I shared with you that I was in tears when I saw the the my architect movie and you still are as you said and this is a contemporary picture of you in your beautiful cabana courtyard house and in your meesey and lounge chair there and once again illustrating what you had shared with us around what time you had seen that when you were looking just as long as young as you still do let's go on to the next slide because we want to share another one of Lucan's works and this one here is in different climate as you can tell the white stuff in the foreground is what I'm having here in my front yard at this time of the year this is snow this is extra the library this is north of Boston and and this is again during my prairie days when the University of Nebraska Lincoln was generous enough to send us out to conferences and I had the chance to see that and speaking about you know Trump's claim in in this mandate of classicism for federal buildings he says well people don't like modernism they like to see Greek temples so this is playing probably into his hands because people these days would probably not find this particularly appealing right it's rather austere it's a chunk of a method method read a brick and the door is rather non-descriptive and you have to go through this little mousehole in there to let yourself be compressed only then to have next slide the wow effect to be released into this and you've witnessed that run as well and share your feelings and experiences once you were drawn up into this sort of pantheon like and lou khan basically had visited all the monuments the historic monuments in in europe and got inspired by them but didn't mimic them or copy them it basically took them to another proud heroic american level right what i liked about the library when i visited was that on approach it's a sort of brooding monumental but classically symmetrical brick mass uh and in walking inside the classicism of a central atrium skylit multi-story is there but he was a humanist at heart as well and so he really rejected that idea of a sort of conventional large reading hall because he felt that reading was a private act and so what he did uh was he put the people in small study areas and study carols pieces of furniture all around the perimeter of the building so that there was light where people were were reading privately and that's one of the next slide that shows us perfectly wrong surely and that part of the building was sort of the outer donut of the building which was all brick construction but this be there's an inner donut as well where the books are and that had to be concrete because books are massive they're incredibly heavy and they need to be kept away from light so here's the humanist as you're seeing something in the next slide providing a very residentially scaled handsome comfortable place to read quietly and in private and to take over the place and make it your very own and not be huddled in the middle of an enormous reading hall yeah this this young couple here when I took this picture that I found it weird and I wanted to capture them when they were dating and I explained why and they bought it so and again we think as as you say Ron he was a people's guy he was less about himself but about the building of the people in there so he would have loved that and let's go to the next slide he would have loved the same as well as we think and while traditionally you would think he don't you know kick a lukewarm building with your feet we believe he would have loved that because he wanted the people to be comfortable and again use the perimeter of the building as you said Ron as to read and he would have loved these booths to have tape these things on and have the empty you know beef jerky back there and and the soda pop because that's like people really use it the way and and next slide is like I was able to take that picture of a drawing that's that's pinned up at the at the lobby of the building and you can see this is this is less about architecture this is more about the people and their human event and activity and the architecture is basically a stage for that so it's it's you know that that drawing really sort of you know became a reality in in the build example and and the next slide let's return to basically that that trumpian classes mandate and have you Ron reflect on that a little further you know Joe Biden in the first hundred days has so many edicts and presidential proclamations and laws to overturn in that first hundred days he's going to be busy there's not a single bit about living a life in the united states it isn't affected by these presidential ideas including architecture unfortunately his executive order which is in place now is that federal architecture and pardon the pun he put together a sort of trumped up group that calls itself the national civic art society god knows who's on the society the society is convinced that the president should ensure that federal buildings feature beautiful architecture with a preference for classical architecture over what they call the elite preference for classical architecture over elite modernist design fads now trump and his society assert that we modern architects and x modern architects who control government architecture have been forcing ugly designs on their fellow americans they were deriding the very idea of what beauty consists of and creating countless buildings that were so bad that no one wanted to look at them or even work in them now acceptable styles had to be derived quote from the form's principle and vocabulary of the architecture of greek and roman antiquity but however the executive order named several preferred and default styles that are also deemed to be sufficiently and classical so that included neoclassical georgian federal greek revival bozar and art decode trump has also stated that he approves of gothic romanesque spanish colonial and other Mediterranean styles such as his mara lago home in florida found in florida and the american southwests the process would be that architects would have to present their designs to a presidential beautification commission for their determination as to whether the building was appropriately and sufficiently classical and style but it's the white house that would make the final determination thus trump would be given broad power which is all he ever wants to make aesthetic appraisal something he knows nothing about now state mandated design concepts such as those set forth in trump's executive order soon to be overthrown by joe biden hark back to the authoritarian dictates on the style of architecture by fascist italy and nazi germany hitler's favorite architect albert spear was inspired to create buildings and city plans of such an enormous and basically in human scale as to install awe and fear in its subjects that's what one would uh would first experience because there was very little later to nothing of real beauty in the sort of outsized titanic megalomaniacal designs and here we have a megalomaniac mind i can't even say it now of trump's executive order on what proper architecture should be for civic federal well that being said let's use a couple minutes left to go to that country of germany that you were referring to and let's take a look how that could look like and i'll let you guys judge that what are we looking at uh what are we looking at i we're looking at a classicist floor plan that's pretty much axiola symmetric right and i think it's a federal building that's for the are we looking government are are we looking at cafeteria are we looking at your uh design for the army building which is the joint dining hall and auditorium i believe so okay good next slide there we are there is the building that i recognize this is a building that you designed for the german government meaning specifically the military pardon me a doggiesbar background as i'm trying to speak um there was a mandate in this particular case that red brick had to be used which is harkens to the call of california college campus that ed killingsworth was the overseer of and for which ron were on which ron worked but the building that we're talking about here the german military building although it does have a classical uh it has classical lines to it and dimensions and proportions on one side on the other side faces outwards with this glass wall with the wooden louvers on it and in this particular case the glass wall in this temperate cold climate will be used to gather is used to gather solar energy at the time of the year when it's needed it also as you pointed out was to be giving the inhabitants inside the men in the army the chance to look out on a public road and see the civilian world outside from which they were cut off but it also as ron said before the show started puts the inhabitants of the people inside on display for anybody on the outside looking at them inhabiting it and using it indoors and i think we go to the next picture and look at what the inside looks like which is a very elegant looking building it's very upscale looking for a military facility and that's something that i hope the people who've used it really appreciate that it isn't institutional looking but it looks like a beautiful building and bravo to martin disband and disband architects for doing this i must say that i was so impressed with the theatricality of the building because the military people who are either meeting or having a meal or both inside are on display as if they were actors on some sort of a play and that south elevation is an enormous theatrical proscenium with a sloping wood theater roof handsome theatrical modern classical space thank you and thank you both for the nice words and go to the next slide ron also thanking you in two capacities obviously as the finest classicist architect in the tradition of your friend and boss ed but also as someone who can relate very well to the users because you're proud veteran so thank you very much means a lot to me and go to the last slide here me sharing three things about the building on the right side we're making quotations to the previous show about it that we say we as architects have the power and should use that power to inform political opinion here was ozela fundaline who was at that time the secretary of defense is now the leader of the european union that we had the chance to talk to each other and educate each other about the bow house and um classicism and other things also to get the into books this is paul's bookstore at the bottom where we saw it published in a book called telling lee the architecture of democracy and last but not at least when things are opening up more we want to take you out there at the very top on study abroad trips but the big thing we see at the left is a paper that when the university of nebraska lincoln had sent me out to present it on an acsa conference i was in competition with a guy next door who was talking about something you have been pointing out the architecture of auschwitz which put me in a interesting position and then there was the keynote speaker that was richard rogers who basically said i built for everyone except the military but i think our point here in in this show is like okay don't shy away from anything approach things and face things in in society not in a cynical way but in a cultivated way and um you know and let's go down to federal buildings and basically do the best to design them as as as post fossil buildings there are not formal anymore that are performative and and truly speak uh about the the times we're in when we're facing of again climate change uh and and social inequity and a pandemic that we have and architecture as we point out like not only can but basically has to address all that so without we're at the end of the show but there's going to be more from us reflecting on that and that's going to happen next week so see y'all back for that until until then stay obviously most importantly healthy and happy thank you guys bye