 Aloha, and welcome back to the Creative Life from the American Creativity Association on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Phyllis Bleece, and our co-host today is Darlene Boyd. On the show, we will be discussing how to live where you love and how to love where you live with our guest architect, David Appelbaum. We are also dedicating today's show to David's Professor of Architectural Design at Texas A&M and who is now his longtime mentor and friend, Rodney Hill. Rodney has been an active member of the American Creativity Association for its over 30 years in existence and he is now an active member of our board. So this is to you, Rodney. You can send questions by email to questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. So my great pleasure to welcome you today, David. Let me start with you. Can you tell us what led you into a career path as an architect leading straight to the stars? Aloha, and thank you for having me. This is a very arduous question because when I was younger, there was not a lot I couldn't feel like I could be successful at, but I knew I didn't like reading long, voluminous types of things. Now that later on, I had something called ADD, and I needed something that was going to have a lot of different tentacles to it and took an aptitude test and said I was really good at math and art and three-dimensional thinking and dealing with people and become an artist wasn't quite enough of a job for me as much as I thought that would be great. There was no such thing though, I asked, is there such a thing as a vice president in terms of creativity? I think now there are plenty of jobs like that, but at that time, the guy said the counselor who happened to be a gentleman said I don't know and more importantly, I don't know what kind of degree we get. So we put our heads together and thought that architecture was a pretty good profession to handle all of those things at once. That's so interesting that you shared with the audience about this ADD, Attention to Deficit Disorder diagnosis. So freely, Darling and I are both very involved with gifted and talented students, and there's a high correlation between that population and the ADD and dysgraphia and dyslexia. That makes a lot of sense. I think being left-handed creates so much opportunity because the world is right-handed and for you to be able to ascertain and maneuver your way through a right-handed world takes an amazing amount of depth perception and creative thinking and visualization because you have to visualize it in both ways. I believe that everything is a double-edged sword. Whatever you think is good, there's always something that's not so good. The chocolate is delicious, but it makes you fat and might give you diabetes. On the other hand, being stuck in a desert might be a terrible thing to happen, but you might have revelations that you never would have if you were on a city street. So everything, there's an opportunity in everything. There's a chance for the flower to grow through the crack of every sidewalk that there is. Right. So tell us how you got on this pathway. How early in your life were you able to translate your skills, math, and art and socializing into architecture? It's funny because so many family friends said, I remember wherever we went, you built some kind of a tree house or a fort, and I guess I've been manipulating things like that ever since. I would rearrange furniture in a lot of places that it didn't make sense to me, even if it was a relative or a friend's house. I even though I did this more as a joke, but in high school, I called a contractor into the library to redesign the way it was laid out. I was mostly just being a rebellious teenager, but because I knew nothing was going to come of it, but I didn't like the library. I thought it was very uninviting. So it's just always been something that I've done. And it's funny. I know that you have an image, but I recently did a house for a Hollywood star who is very much into gaming and Game of Thrones and the Hobbit series. And so I believe you have a picture of a Hobbit window that we put into the bathroom of the house. This house also has Indiana Jones rope bridge to take you from the house to the guest house and a lot of other really fun things that you don't have to lose your childlike innocence and wonder and joy. And I mean, every client's different. You know, you have that one. I think you also have one of a staircase in a house that I did, which was it was interesting on several levels because it's the other end of the spectrum. This is a client who's got a house that most of the pieces of art are worth more than the house. And the house is a very expensive house. Is this the high slide, David? Yes, it's the perfect, absolutely perfect slide. And this is a this is a staircase that actually this was a job. This was the thing about this job that I love more than anything else is I was in my 20s. And this particular staircase, the clients didn't understand why I had the staircase in the middle of the house. They thought the staircase needed to be on an outside wall. And they said, move into the outside wall where the clients were paying you. You must do it. And I put my foot down and I said, if you move this staircase, they quit and they looked at each other with with eyes the size of saucers and then looked at me and said, OK, we'll let you try. And when it was framed up, they understood because this was a very it was a hilly lot. And if you have a first floor and a second floor and about 30 feet of wall and it's all one wall, it's very inhuman. And this particular house had a first floor and it had a patio outside that first floor and a trellis above it. And then the wall of the first floor became the railing of the second floor patio and the second floor stepped back and the staircase needed to go even further in, which is why the staircase was in the middle of the house. And just looking at the floor plan and just looking at the edifice, it didn't make sense to them because they've never seen anything like that. But by having it in the middle of the house, it gave the exterior chance to allow human beings to feel that there was a human scale around them that the house was welcoming. There's a what you don't get is there's a lot of glass and there's this interior exterior connection with materials that are both outside the house and inside the house that tie it all together so it feels larger and it also feels human and properly scaled at the same time. How long did it take for them to come over to your side? Well, the meeting basically did it. But I remember it wasn't until we started to get a permit. So it was about eight months later when the house was framed that the wife came up to me and said, now I spent this whole time thinking this pertinent young man is really getting under my skin. But now today, I understand why you did what you did. Now that it's all formed and you can see the masses to the point where I also gave you a couple of pictures of models. I'm doing a house in Houston right now that's on a floodplain. And most architects have what I call an edifice complex. They just look at what the form is supposed to look like. But we don't live in the solids, we live in the spaces. And this is in particular as a house that the best way to put it is the floodplain and FEMA requires that the living level be two feet above the floodplain, which in this case was nine and a half feet. Well, most architects just follow the rigid follow the box. I've always done a house. It looks like a monopoly token. So they just took the monopoly token and put it on top of the thimble. But you've got the front door 10 feet above the ground. And I always joke that it's like Monty Python and the Holy Grail when they stormed the French castle and the the nights up in the French nights are up top going we get tossing cows and hot oil on them and saying, you cannot come in here, we cannot thank you. And it just that's the great thing for a castle. But it's a terrible thing for a home. You want your neighbors to feel like they can borrow a cup of sugar. So I need a model in order to get all of the three dimensions to work sculpturally and and have the flow spatially work in a way that celebrates the lifestyle of the client. So that particular house I was able to figure out a way and it took a while, a long while to get it so that I had a door on the ground that was well made. Hold that thought, David. We're going to run up. You've got two slides of the model of the Houston house. And Eric is showing one right now. We don't know whether that door is here. This is the door is there. Actually, the door, this is a whole another story because this is dealing with with building permits and how difficult they make things. I had a glass bottom floor and I have a staircase. I have a slightly older couple with some knee issues and hip issues. So I have a cylindrical elevator shaft with a staircase that winds its way all the way up to this upper level. And I wanted to showcase that. But the city and the community associate association wouldn't allow that because they were afraid since this is a service floor, it's not an actual living space. But I created a foyer because that was legal. And and it works and still gets all the it meets all the female requirements so that the the flood insurance would be four hundred dollars a year instead of three thousand dollars a year. And but the city was afraid that everybody else would then put glass on their service level and then put in air conditioning ducts and things like that, which is the silliest thing I've ever heard in my life. But yes, the front door is right there at the front. And it's a it's a four foot wide glass pivot door. And I'm using lighting techniques to make that top floor look like it's floating over the solid wall that the city made me put in the front. So if I could, I want to kind of see where we are on today. We're trying to learn the creative process from you, an architect who is accessing what we said in our blurb, his his inner disruptor. And you have already just shortly ago, you said that with one of your clients, they wanted to go X, you wanted Y, you were a bit of a disruptor there. Disruption had to play itself out. And I guess your social skills played into your being getting them to agree with you. And then you built this interior staircase. And when I wish you would talk a little bit about how you were telling me, stairs aren't really stairs. They're not what you think. You have to stop and watch where you're going and pay attention when you're when you're moving through them, that they are rhythms in the house. And I think he said, doorknobs are not doorknobs. They're handshakes and handshakes that welcome you into the next space. This is something to go back to our our grand visionary, Rodney Hill, who we spoke with before. When I had him my very first semester of my freshman year of college, he did something that changed my life and I have used it ever since. And it has later been refined into ask why or why not in everything that you get, not to be a jerk, just to make sure that you know what is important. We were we had just turned in a project. A lot of people had pulled all nighters and Rodney walked in and just looked at everybody, dropped his shoulder and said, everybody looks so dispirited. Let's have some fun. I have a friend who's invented an energy drink. It's delicious, whether it's hot or whether it's cold, it's savory, it can be sweetened. It's got aromatics that are off the charts. But in order to really sell it, he wants there to be a decanter that you can enjoy this beverage with that really says something about how special this energy drink is. Go crazy, everybody. I want you to spend some time thinking about some way that you can enjoy this this new energy drink. And so we're all drawing all these things, feverishly put them on the wall. We talk about what's good and what's bad about them. And with constructive criticism, that's what architecture school is all about, constructive criticism. And then he holds on to them to give to his friend. About a month and a half later, he says, what's wrong with everybody? You're so like days ago. Let's have some fun. I want everybody to tell me who they are by designing a coffee mug that says I am this. And we all drew it. And as we're putting them on the wall, he stands up, he pulls out a folder and he takes all of our energy drink drawings. He puts them right next to our coffee mugs and says, will any of you tell me what the difference is between coffee and an energy drink that is delicious, hot or cold, aromatic, savory, can be sweet? He said, you have hopefully now learned a lesson that when we fit ourselves into boxes with titles and we say coffee mug, they're all cylindrical, sometimes square with a handle. But when you're asked to do to break it down and say, what is coffee? But those descriptors, your creativity opens up. The possibilities become endless. This is something that has stuck with me since then. And that was when I started realizing, OK, well, is this a doorknob? No, it's not just a doorknob. It's a handshake that welcomes you into the next space. Staircases make you stop, pay attention to where you are. And then with each step, you get closer and you get a different perspective. Columns, as you drive by or walk by them, they create a rhythm. And if they're close together or far apart, you get either. Or. Or. And that's all part of the total experience. And if we can break down our lives, not just architecture, not just coffee mugs, but our lives into what is it that really matters? The relationships that we get in, whether they're familial, whether they're romantic, whether they're friendship. There's an essence to them that if you really break it down, it's not just friendship. It's something deeper and something unique. And it's everything. If we break down and ask why or why not, it gives us an opportunity to find things that nobody else has seen before. So, you know, I love that story and what it reminds me of in the law, we talk about form driving substance. And what I feel like you've done for me is you have as an architect, architects often just focus on form, getting all the numbers and getting everything to match so the building won't fall down. And at the end of the day, getting the form right is that's 100 percent of a job done. You do a 200 percent of the job when you push through from seeing not just the form, but the substance. And then you're dealing with the energetics of the house and it comes alive through the substance. So if this feels to me like the breakthrough process in your life of manifesting a creative, very creative structure that ends up when people come into the people's of your client's homes, they look around and you said this to me, those I don't want people to come into someone's home and say, oh, this is a David Applebaum home. He said, my greatest compliment is that they come in and they look at the homeowner and say, oh, wow, this house is so new. Yes, that's your 200 percent job given. And I think that's that's one of your secret sources in helping people to live where they love and also love where they live. It's it's so important. I mean, I could get into it again and again, but then we can build stories around that as well. You have a drawing that I did, which was came into a building that had a bow shaped truss. It had originally been a bowling alley and then became a roller disco. We were turning it into a store. That's it. So you can see it's got a bow, but a bow is more interesting if it's got an arrow and that arrow is drawn. And so when you walk into the space or now that you've seen, this was the sketch that was given to the client. And I actually made it nicer than what I sent the client. But if you then look at the next one, which is the realization of that, you can see that we created an arrow by having the vertical metal shoe displays as the shaft. There's a pyramidal skylight, which is the arrowhead. And there's a pit around the the display of the shoes that acts as the hand that is grasping and drawing the bow. Now, when people walk in, they'll never say, oh, bow and arrow. But that doesn't matter for an architect. This is if you're a writer, if you're an architect, if you're anything creative and even quite honestly, if you're a street, if you're a janitor and you're sweeping the floor, how one attacks that task must be, in my opinion, broken down in a creative way. And so the bow and the arrow just gave me the ability to create how the design would work. If it was just designed something pretty, you could go in a million different directions. But if you have a reason and I make stories up about everything that I do. And even if nobody when you walk in and say, hey, look, so when I was zoning, this is actually an arrow. You see to go with the they'll say, oh, I didn't see that. But this is how it works. I hope that made sense. No, it didn't make sense. And I know we have some more images for you to share. And I think that Darlene has some questions. Yeah, as I as I'm listening to you, David, and you too, Phyllis, it seems to me, David, that you have as much passion for people as you do for buildings. So with that in mind, let me ask this question. How do you think religion, economics and personal beliefs change how the people you work with and interact with? How do you think they interact with their environments as a result of that? And then that contributing to the development of the home or the building that you're working on? Well, those I've never been asked that before. So you asked how religion, which in my case, I would just say spirituality and a a connection to this is going to say, boy, this, I hope this doesn't get me in trouble. If you read the actual Hebrew of the Bible, it doesn't say in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It says in a beginning, God created the foundation on which we stand and the stars and the ephemeral that is up above us. That's a whole different thing. And that's that that changing the literal that everybody thinks is what it is, and then making it much more open and much more personal and much more grounded and aspirational. That's kind of what I'm always looking for. That's exactly where extra spark. Yeah, yeah. So it's funny because I've been called the architect to the stars because I've done some famous people's houses, but all of my clients are stars. And actually it's the buildings that allow each one of the clients to aspire to reach the stars, to reach that extra level. That's what I aspire to do. That's I hope what makes me better choice as an architect than certain other people that are just going to give you two bedrooms of bath and a car. I'm going to give you a flow. I'm going to choreograph your lifestyle. Everybody, we were, Phyllis we were talking before and you were saying, you know, and even Darlene you said I care about people and Phyllis, you were talking about that creative spark. Look, in the first hour of the day, everybody does something different depending on who they are. Some go for a run, some have to go to the bathroom, some need to read the news, some check on the kids, some have to cook meals for, I mean, it's different and unique for every person. And my job is to find what those things are and especially how they will grow. Because if you have four-year-old kids, you're going to have 14-year-old kids eventually. How do you create the kind of house that will make that lifestyle as special as it can be? Let me do a quick, let me please just in a quick one. Any comments that you have, we've talked about this before off camera, the relationship to building on the islands versus building on earthquake ground. Well, it's so funny, because when you think of the islands, what do you think of? You think of oceans, you think of breezes, you think of palms swaying, you think of bamboo everywhere. And that is a whole different flavor than rocks and earthquakes and cornfields and suburban tracts. And they're all different. I've spent a lot of time in Hawaii. My ex-wife was from there. And I still have some friends in Maui that I adore and visit. And there's a different kind of humidity. This is going to sound really weird, but the air because of the humidity, if they were to paint it, I might use going back to coffee. I might use coffee to paint that because there's something about the wash in that that seems to embody that flavorful air in Hawaii. Let's be honest, thank you on that. Before we wrap up, did you have a question, darling? I think I've, no. Well, at this point, I'm looking at the clock too. And yes, Daniel. Are we really close to our 28 minutes already? Yes, sir. We're down to nine. It seems like two. I'm glad you shared your relationship to the islands. And you were just saying for a moment, we do know that you have been the architect of the stars. And you had a slide for us today. I think people would love to see Diane Keaton's kitchen. You've worked with Frank Sinatra, Shari Lewis, Cuba Gooding, Seth Green. You said these are very compassionate and co-operative creators with you. Do you want to show us, Eric, real quick, this Diane Keaton kitchen? Anything you want to say about that? This was just, this was a remodeled kitchen. Yeah, we didn't have any space. So I had to go underneath the staircase. That curve is to give me an extra four feet in the kitchen that we would have not been able to put an island in. But you had to think beyond the outside four walls in order to make it work. Which kitchen is this, her Hollywood or Laguna? Diane Keaton. Well, that was her Beverly Hills house. Beverly Hills. That was a few houses ago. All right, we're gonna have to leave it there. You've been watching The Creative Life on Think Tech Hawaii. Today, darling boy and I have been discussing how to live where you love and love where you live with architect David Appelbaum. Thanks so much for participating Mahalo. I'm Phyllis Blyse. We will be back in two weeks with another edition of The Creative Life with a guest who is a professor and director of creative thinking at New York State's Buffalo State University. His name is Gerard Puccio. With that, aloha.