 Delighted to have you back to think tech wise human human architecture. This happening to be the 277th episode and You are our accumulated viewer number. Thank you Eric for bringing this up the number here. You read it down there So welcome back To our Boston banish boost episodes. This is volume 14 and our guest and by this time co-host is leader of the Boston office of banish architect and and that is met no blitz Met Great to have you back and it is our dismal on in his bishop museum Back in Honolulu Hawaii and me Martin disband from near Munich, Germany And we'll continue to talk about how a building that is doing well in a biochromatic way both in the cold winter Which it has right now and also in the warm summer, which we have all the time back in Honolulu But before we do that, we will look a little bit at world politics and democracy texture and autocrat the texture When we come together in a minute All right guys, so here is our world architecture We're coming full circle because we started out these show sequences and my Sweetie Suzanne or exotic as pick escapism expert always says one can materialize things Hopefully I did not do this when we were talking about Bolsonaro Hopefully not being brazil's or fellow tropics president anymore Which I materialized that I guess because he didn't but Fortunately, we have to come back to that Related to architecture and I let you guys wonder what this is about and get some discussion going here Our divino That brazil just underwent a similar event politically as to what occurred in the united states in january 6 when the riots occurred in Washington DC brazil has its own Modern architecture capital, which is called brazilia. That is a city that they built from scratch intentionally to be a new capital and it was designed in the mid-century modern style and The mobs that attacked it caused a great deal of damage to the inside and the outside of some of these buildings and they destroyed Some of the historic pieces which were in there and me being a person of Somebody who works in a museum. That's something that upsets me a great deal when unique Pieces that can never be replicated are wrecked by mobs. And so that's something that we just saw happen and I'm not happy about it. And that's not just in addition to all the politics and the trauma that that caused Yeah, and also coming first circle met The inaugural project of your founding fathers legacy gunter banish in munich. We just talked about the olympics You just made me aware that there was a great 50 year anniversary exhibit about it and The year when brazilia was commissioned and built a solo that was pretty close to your childhood statehood late fifth actually early 60s 1960 the State capital in honolulu couldn't follow that fast It was just off the phone with our friend bunded who says hi to both of you And his son rich Young age of the 90s was instrumental with warner key on the state capital But that took you know granted an architectural competition. That's how you acquire most of your work Uh, very impressively met. Um, that was a competition too and it took until 1969 What impressed me the most met and maybe you can say a couple of things because you just said you have been there Even more recently than I was proud of myself because I took the picture on the Right row the two middle pictures the door handle the stairs is me almost exactly year year ago going Coming through our former capital again, which um Your guys firm Or the inaugural part of the firm had built our former capital in bun And that was in the 80s the 80s again We don't remember as the best time side guys wise and political leadership At all so to me while the olympics from the 70s is sort of, you know Swimming with a flow, I guess of progressiveness That pretty much was vanishing unfortunately quite fast In the 80s and still or maybe because Gunther and your and his crew was able to Manifest his philosophy of having been a submarine commander And had and had told himself if you ever get out of this mess, I will make sure that no one is ever trapped in space and he was able to as far as You know bps of architecture Where our elected politicians? Do you know make decisions for us and as I said in the inaugural there's actually a very similar attitude visible in both the Hawaii state capital in Honolulu and this one here that in the chambers the general public who elected the ones down there Can actually look down there they can press their nose against the glass And look the ones down there who do the job for them and that has always impressed me Yeah, I mean I think the other aspect of both of those projects that Always strikes me as just the kind of inherent optimism that they represent and the notion that You know architecture can manifest that sort of democratic spirit of government very profoundly in terms of its ability to communicate to people that Their elected officials are there to do their work that they're working on their behalf and they can see what's going on um, very, you know, openly behind glass walls and and not be sort of Squirreled away behind giant Sort of monumental facades and things of that nature. So At that I think both projects very much work at that level, which Is not something I mean, I think it also There's also something about the sort of the newness of a certain of certain democracies and their ability to have or their the opportunity to have to um It sort of redefine themselves architecturally Versus, you know, we've never had that we've never had to do that here in the states And so a lot of our government buildings I think look Of the vintage when they were last early when the when the government and its kind of visual apparatus was conceived We continue to sort of live under that that that regime in a sense Yeah, and I think that that is exactly applicable to the Hawaii state capital Which when it was completed in 1969 got a lot of publicity throughout the united states for being modern And not looking like a greek temple Because everything out most other states not all but most other states had Things that again looked like they had been built thousands of years ago by the greeks that everybody looked back to as This is the way a government building must look and the hawaii state capital is not without its comparable elements to greek architecture But at the same time it's completely different And the openness that we just discussed is manifested in the capital by being literally the center part 100 open to the wind the rain and all of the outside Saying that look we're in the tropics. We don't have to close this part off Be in this open space and feel it and see it and experience the weather that we're blessed with Yeah, absolutely and not to forgetting to mention the architects of not where that we're looking at our fellow tropics in Brazil which is a tropical climate as well These were luchio costa as more the urban city planner oscar nemeyer as the architect And then borla marx as the landscape architect working together And this sort of i've been showing with you are sort of substituted honeymoon island Which they call europe's hawaii, which is madera and the show court at the very top right is To a hotel that nemeyer has designed And you see here our exotic escapism experts chatting up Some staff so i can do my secret photo shooting there And going down into the main dining hall that is full of vintage nemeyer furniture Which alone is worth a fortune And just as this sort of built in a ram Slash seating area with this contrast and A nice complementation of concrete and wood and steel That again when i was pressing my nose against the The the capital in in bond the bundes That stair that is very vanishy And all you know together is that total piece of artwork That's the outside and the inside makes so that that picture to the left that irritates you as the archivist where these rioters are Carrying out a little perbizier chairs and some nice wood and upholstery vintage mid-century furniture And met and i were wondering before the show if these Basically beach chairs lounge chairs are theirs or whatever that was in any case kind of Kind of irritating on many levels You are always looking forward to soto to your weekly german lessons So for that not to disappoint you and the audience we go to the next slide And uh, we promise to help you always but This this news from a german ntv is actually preceding the other one That was all over the place when they basically were invading The which they called a presidential palace by the way But this one here was even before that a couple days on that very tragic January 6 that was very tragic a year ago in the united states um And here a year after they reported on basically the um the first lady um, you know lula da silva's wife was uh was Basically on camera and she walked the journalists through the palace and showed how balsam narrow has basically uh treated it pretty bad In cleaning it out and you got to wonder where all that furniture and we had a discussion before the show That we should echo and share with with the audience the soto And also trash stunts some things and through artwork on the ground and we're damaging it so Very obviously, uh, very disrespectful of when we say architecture is an expression of its zeitgeist Then uh, his very reactionary thinking mentality is basically opposing the very progressive Democratic that is embodied through architecture right as a representation of zeitgeist Well, the thing that comes to my mind is something we've discussed a great deal in this show in the past Which is sort of the balance and or the battle between traditional and modern and in some situations Which we've talked about there are situations where governments decree that you cannot have modern architecture that you must look to the past you must Reach sort of revive or revitalize this idealized past when everything was good and everything was under control And they didn't have all these tumultuous difficulties. Well, all of that is nonsense Everything was difficult in the past just like it is today and trying to harken back to that in the buildings that you make in the interiors You live in is pointless because it's a fantasy. It's not true. There was no idealized time So this is something I think that embodies that and it is simple for particularly right wing people to say get rid of the modern destroy the modern cover up the modern we want to go back to idealized past and Obviously, I don't want to destroy the past. But at the same time, I know that the past was not a golden age Yeah, and how Architecture can be also shows which is a preview of a show to come about what we basically Working titled potentially Germany's most American architect Zeb Roof So the column on the very right met you want to Tell the audience what that is the whole building Behind the images the chancellor bungalow So to speak. Oh, yeah, so this was the this was a Well, I was going to say modest house. I mean by by some standards, it's modest, but it's a it's a rather Built to these standards Right, but a very very, uh, I mean from from I'd say our perspective. Lovely residents for the for the chancellor in bond for living and entertaining but that went through a Well, it went through a variety of of chancellors and chancellors ships to a great Variety of opinions as to its worth and qualities And also subsequent additions and subtractions based on sort of cycles of taste Yeah, and some more german Lessons for you to so though we help you So the the press while Ludwig Ehrhardt, which was our second president chancellor After out and out. I don't know was the first was this very old school also up in age hardcore conservative kind of guy Ludwig Ehrhardt was really Representing and embracing the younger generation of a more open a younger and more progressive germany and so he commissioned this by to this Architect from here from Munich the proof And as you said met it went through immediate its successor probably, you know for obvious reasons or understandable reasons a little bit. He Totally dismissed it. It went back. I don't know. I who went as extreme to say the architect should be imprisoned for what he did And then a certain ones. Hamilton Cole. Who is the uh zeitgeist counterpart of uh, ronnie reggen Representing the conservative or reactionary league conservative 80s Moved in for almost two decades, but always hated it and always voiced himself and like, you know, put in the easy light Ceiling thing their installation and he was such a clumsy big guy that he hit his knees and elbows It was always complaining and by the way, they had to pay for it They had to pay rent and he said the rent is too higher for what I get so he was constantly bragging But still living in which we give him and you know who we never really liked as And increasingly less who was shamefully from my hometown. Uh, gehard schroeder Putin's poser and buddy Although, you know, he could say well, it was reunification. It was time to move into berlin But yet some time that he could have gone there So even but even before the whole like love and hate, you know, whoever was it the general public during the uh, basically promotion of it under erhard In the zeitgeist they dismissed it as dismissed it as palet schaumbach. Do you have any idea what that could mean the solo? Uh, is that what we just talked about minutes ago? The bubble bath Yeah, exactly Matt, you want to help out what what that why they say that? Uh, well, I think it probably probably the comment works on two levels, right? One one is the the presence of the the installation of the the actual pool uh in the in the residence and another one is uh, I mean, I I guess I always interpreted it as having something to do with just the sort of the The uh Kind of luxurious nature of the place to the average person Yeah, and that means the other one was ludwig's lust so ludwig's first name of that chancellor But also the king ludwig said we all remember who had blessed us with the lovely um, uh, what's it called the castle? I will not even remember it Of course it was it was also called ludwig's lust yeah schloss ludwig's lust Exactly, which is basically, you know a reactionary thing at its time at that time lopius had built the fargo's barricade And it was just basically an ex cullibor vagus like, you know That's that's what again for a very Modest and moderate pavilion And the the pool did it yes palais chan borg is uh, you know and palais chan but bubble bath gets to the next slide Because pools to soto were very american almost no one was able to afford pool When you guys brought us back on our feet a pool was considered to be something highly, you know Luxurious to say the least are decadent Of course for americans as we see the show called we compared, uh, you know residences of presidents It was almost the standard you have to have And so here we went through uh, nancy and ronnie when they were visiting hawaii at the top left But when they were back in uh in california, they basically Were in this ranch house, which was also relatively modest, uh, and it had a relatively large pool And and you told me a whole lot about how the fossil fuel industry was teaming up And working with you want to iterate that? And we have to have a picture at the bottom left of that show called eric if you can bring this up Where they're sitting around the table the whole reagan family Well before ronnell reagan became the president and a very well known politician He had been an actor in hollywood. So of course he was very accustomed to living in hollywood style And in the 1950s he was the host of a variety of television shows before again his political career And he was the spokesperson at some points during that tv career for general electric So there was a series of ads tv ads in which ronnie and nancy showed you around their modern 1950s house in california Showing off all the wonderful things that were available through electricity and the different types of mood lighting and the different Wonderful appliances they had well, this is very typical of the time period in which The utility companies up until the energy crisis in the early 1970s used to actively advertise For consumers to use more gas and more electricity In living the modern american dream Yeah, and this gets us back for the seven minutes left to your project talking representing The zeitgeist of what the zeitgeist of these days should be bleeding progressively into the future reconnecting back to To whom ronnie is shaking hands to say unfortunately. Goodbye is to jimmy carter And hopefully you're shaking jimmy's hand again because he's still alive getting close to How old your mother became the soto? who you just lost last week And so, um, hopefully again, this is a coming full circle you shaking hands with uh with jimmy Because I remember that my dear mentor and buddy and collaborator on fry auto on the 67 Pavilion in montreal larry medlin told me when he was working at the university of arizona The day reagan took office His enmar and mental research lab funding was pulled So, um, obviously we need this back so um, and this is part of the avoid to say mission because that's what you guys are not at all About but the philosophy of the building here that you know while ronnie regans You know residents was embracing the file and general electric You guys are basically embracing Um the the post fossil But you're not doing this in a finger pointing way You're doing this in a very playful again in the in the tradition of vanishing. I just want us to And look at at the architecture how gracefully That staircase is first of all in its materialization. It's almost like a carpet, right that you roll out In woods versus I guess it's probably polished concrete if I can guess because the thermally activated surface which you guys are all about right which cools and heats the building and then look at the Gracefulness of the the cold necessary guard rail to hold on That is a separated element That is detached from the guard rail that we talked about last time So the two elements are clearly distinguished from each other Not just sort of in in their in their materiality one being steel. The other one is wound of wood and the steel is is sort of Regular and right angled and square profiled while the handrail is soft and round and tactile And I just I have to I have to ask something quickly Is that metal mesh that is forming the barrier of the wall slash guard rail It is That's one of our favorites. That's one of our favorites. That's why I specifically asked about it Yeah, I should if you had only known before we did this you could have invested in it Did you use a lot of it? Oh, yes And I just want to encourage the people to look at everything So the ceiling just like I think in some of the last shows which impressed me in the Bundestap was that in an all glass room How do you get Basically soundproofing and acoustics and then you know Gunther and team developed and invented This sort of plastic micro perforated stuff that the sound gets trapped in there And here this is now guessing you that the the linear striped portoroid texture must be baffled That probably has you know, acoustical function and then you see how playful The lighting as as the resin tubes is seated in there and then gets joined by the by the skylights So there's the real Compositional quality that is playful that makes you not think in a Technocratic way about okay. This is off the grid this Yes, it is but it does it in such a playful way That one can only say how what's not to like about Yeah, and I think that's I mean that's something that's really important to us. I think is the notion that Not only do you have to not necessarily sacrifice Well-being and anything kind of well feeling in a building that Attempts to use a minimal amount of fossil energy to to operate But in fact that can become a kind of an a point of inspiration or a way to celebrate and discover new forms of architecture in new opportunities Through solving some of these more let's say quantitative problems that typically sort of are focused around Energy and I think that's I think that that this kind of notion of an integrated approach to design It tries to You know not speed those Sort of the limitations or the desire to limit Expense and and energy as as hindrances, but really as opportunities to to discover a new Way to to to exist in a space and in a building That's really what what I think we that's what motivates us Absolutely what I what I like to call the art the high declimitation of Birken stocky texture or to be Right Alchitecture which is another German product, right? That you know when some say we Germans have been maybe for a little bit longer You know environmentally interested, but we also have been dismissed for just being too uptight about it Yes, it was the most healthy to but only nurses and tree hargass wore them And it's simple, you know Birken stock Asked themselves the same question What can we do to open ourselves to to a larger audience in their case? It is of course to sell more shoes But in your case it is to convince, you know such a Not necessarily very open-minded institution as Harvard is as you had pointed out to the place next door where your father DiSoto went to school School and you met had to present to some of the deans there and they weren't necessarily Automatically open. So it's certainly certainly almost smugglers tool to basically sneak these things in by saying Knowing that you feel good in and and all these things you don't even have to know about you don't even have to see I mean if you pay attention do you will but it's not you know in your faith Okay, but after all we're at the end of time, but after all it's still you know, it's it's a research building It has laboratories and you know things like that that might not be quite as sexy on the You know initially and automatically but how you dealt with these we will share with you Next week and following Look forward to have you back for that and until then stay democratically architectural and architect Thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo You can also follow us on facebook instagram and linked in and donate to us at think tech hawaii.com Mahalo