 Good to have you all back to think that wise human human architecture and our 210th show and we're back with not as free from the filling station yet, but the free from the beach, I guess we can say we're broadcasting live from the west toes of the mainland of the United States of America with hospitality design legend Ron Lindgren hi Ron. Hello. And we have our co host fellow host the solo Brown Bishop museum historian here up the foothills of diamond has and we have me Martin this bang back a little further down these foothills and I'm broadcasting live from the bathroom of the Grand Hotel in white key key. Not confined anymore I'm out of my quarantine that we addressed last time. So, getting out more and makes us think more about where are we going and currently we're in surging cases of COVID. So the governor has just issued new mandates that we can do less outside. And we're all afraid we're going back to what actually you only witnessed as the only one of us to so do when we close down everything. And with that we also close down our main revenue of text money which comes from tourism. So we think we urgently have to reinvent ourselves as far as that and many other things, but you know informed citizens we are we don't want to reinvent the wheel when there was already a wheel that that that was running pretty well. So we're looking at one of the finest examples of tropical brutalist hospitality design again which is the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the big island and let's bring the first slide up because we're still close to the end of our investigating exercise of thinking why did Lawrence as Rockefeller designed the firm of SLM to commission the building and the sort of we have been running across another SLM building a while ago and that one we see here share with us which one that is. This is the engineering building is that correct. That's home. This is hearing building. We were just thinking that this has similarities to the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel and pardon me there is a airplane flying over be right at this very moment that's I'm trying to speak. The importance of tourism. Yes. This building has some similarities to the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel in that it is long low and horizontal, but it's perforated with a lot of open space including a long skinny courtyard right in the center. The first talking about this whenever that was you were saying that you've been told that there was there were rumors that they were thinking of roofing over the courtyard and enclosing it so that they have more space for the building interior, which is a terrible idea because it's a terrible idea. I've been talking good old days and you know how great was it of my employer the University of Hawaii and Noah to have witnessed and seen one of the greatest pieces of architecture going up on a neighboring island saying we want to snap that architect to and having designed something cool as well literally and figuratively speaking, and there is homes all and please yes don't not enclose the courtyard. And this is still part of the bigger picture looking beyond our horizon. And so this is part of a series that looks into the, you know, if tourists have the choice to go through all the hassles that I had to go through through quarantining, although I was fully vaccinated and PCR tested and going to what the flux magazine, which I was talking about and when Jay had me in global connections couple days ago. So we have, and this is how we concluded the fourth episode of basically the European Hawaii versus the Polynesian Hawaii right which is Madera. So at some point where it's so much pain in the butt to come here and you know people are going to say well now, you know if there's something gets pretty close that we do that and obviously we do not want that. So we have to really get creative and and that's again what this show is about. So we want to look at the best practices from the past so here we're still at the end of our investigation we're pretty close to that we think we figured out why Rockefeller went for SOM. So I brought my little Sears tower here and now will he start on my Lego one and I'd say hi to Suzanne's youngest Yoni who's a Lego expert and he's currently in what by the way governs Madera which is so hi Yoni fellow Lego enthusiast. So Sears tower and Holmes Hall are both from the 70s. They don't qualify as presidents that made Rockefeller basically go for SOM so let's go earlier in times. Next slide, which is following Jay's order of copyright violation prevention we're digging out all the old goodies from the past that we took ourselves. The top left is from when I moved from the prairie to the desert with my town car and a U-Haul trailer in the back, and I knocked on the gate of the Air Force Academy and the guard was, you know enjoying listening to my crazy story but then I wanted to take a look into my trailer and then was fine and let me let me in and I took a picture of what we see here and that is Walter Netsch young designer at SOM at that time who designed his masterpiece of the Cadet Chapel and that one we could say will might have been a precedent because it looks like what guys that looks like an a-frame kind of like an a-frame and an a-frame is a traditional form that's used in a number of different cultures but that includes traditional Hawaiian culture rather because it's so easy to do and it's a very rudimentary type of structure but it was so very, it was repopularized during this time period because it looked very dramatic and it looked very space age as well as being traditional. Exactly but in these days luckily we weren't postmodern yet that came unfortunately next and we think we're still in it, although it dresses differently but so that wasn't the reason either so we have to go further back and the one at the bottom left is probably what really perfectly manifests the beginning of SOM's work which is the 50s by Netlida Bloch one of the first female architects to come to fame together with the legendary Gordon Bunchef and that's the Leverhaus but when we go to the very right we might have caught SOM now because this is the one Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City from 61 so early enough years before the Mauna Kea and there was a consortium of clients behind it but a major one was guess who Lawrence S. Rockefeller so he probably must have been already comfortable with his architect and didn't go for which we pointed out who would have probably been qualified more precedent wise because he had just built one of the best utmost easy breezy tropical exotic pieces of architecture around the same time who was Warner Key who built the state capital but this is most likely the reason we can't prove it we just put this out for speculation, but there's as far as we can think of. Right. And let's go to the next slide and have Ron introduced to us what we see here but we want to introduce you know we are so familiar with each other by now, but we just want to remind the audience and this is my day my weekly German word lesson for you guys. Do you recall what I taught you and can you say it with a sharp S. Okay I do it once for you and repeat. It's tight. So you go. site. So you go. Yeah. And that's what you are run you are a type so you go and a zeitgeist at times witness, because the guy who was became the lead designer for this project was not Gordon Bansheft, it was not Natalie. It was not Fazlur Khan it was not Walter Netsch. Who was it who is a peer of yours. Yeah, yeah, the designer was Charles Bassett, who was a fairly young architect who eventually took over SOM's office in San Francisco. And I've always dreamt that maybe Charles himself might have drawn this wonderful section. And we should look at that section drawing closely because we're seeing easy breezy resort architecture. In some respects, for almost the very first time in a building that is anything. I mean it is modern to an extreme that's modern building, but the incredible sensitivity of the designers to bring the outdoors in to create courtyard spaces that both ventilated a cross from my market and Mackay, but upwards to do openings to the sky. The experience of going to your guest room in the Monicaia hotel was wonderful. You're in a garden with water coursing through it palm trees high enough to be sticking up above the roof, and a beautiful natural ventilation. In fact, the architects had intended that that ventilation in this hot dry site on the Kohala coast on the big island that they wouldn't really need air conditioning. If you open that door to your room, and you had your sliding door open, you could take advantage of what the architects were trying to do for you. But first, when you advertise a hotel to people back in New York, or Stuttgart or wherever, they expect to see air conditioning somewhere mentioned. Yeah. And DeSoto, you wanted to point and that melody as well, which breaks with a traditional way of approaching hotels, right. Yeah, but we're seeing a cross section of the hotel, and we are seeing what is the, as Ron just said, a courtyard with full size trees in it. But this is on a sloping site. So the slope goes from the left down to the right. And when you enter, you come in actually on the second level. Now that's breaking a lot of traditions because everything up until then, you come into a lobby that's on the ground floor. And this was breaking that tradition. What also you can see here, and we're going to talk about it more, on the right side, you've got columns that are on the ocean side. When you're in that space, you're in a two-story, hardly open space, but with these massive columns that we're going to see later on that are adding to the whole grandeur of where you are. And this is an area where lunch was served, I think breakfast as well. So you actually sat in those places and sort of absorbed the whole feeling while you were looking out onto the vista of the bay on which this hotel is situated. Yeah, and we will see all that in the following in the shows and just analyzing what you just said, this sort of breaking with a sort of Victorian tradition of hotels that we were just at the, you know, virtually, of course, not physically, but physically next at the Moana Surf Rider, which has a lot of goodies from your personal collection up on the wall as much as from your employer. And that's an example of turn of the century colonialism, right? It has the big porco chair as the porticus that impresses you, and then it actually gets less exciting the more you go inside. But with the modernism that Ron, you guys embody so well and the case study houses, which is the beginning of Ed's career, right? It's like almost like where's the door? Where's the facade? This is just the wall, right? And once you basically pass through that threshold, it all opens up and it wows you, right? So it's like the, it's the reverse of the old sort of imported invasive colonial and that's rather impressive. I would say, again, the coach in me, I would say, hey, emerging generation, go back to a hand drawing because we want to remind the audience, computers, as you said, the Soto, they were at IBM and a big corporate office is these super big monstrous machines, but they didn't have any graphic abilities at that time. So this was all hand drawn. And as you were speculating, you know, Ron, that your, that your colleague Charles did this basically by himself, I would say what blows me away from this drawing is that it's basically the presence of nature and what nature does and how nature, you know, protects us as a foundation, you know, keeps us cool and shaded. So the architecture does, and you almost see no architectures like the presence of nature, and the absence of architecture which you couldn't get it better tropical exotic easy breezy as as you said that so with that let's go to the next slide and look how that then became reality and you guys explain I have to say shame on me I don't even qualify for this show because I never I have never seen it I yet have to see it so what am I doing here. I rely on you guys but you also said it's been a while I think you both separate from each other. The last time you start was in the 90 something but we have, you know there's hope from all the documentation we know it hasn't changed much and we will talk about that more, but share with us your memories and impressions and your feelings from when you were witnessing the situation. Well the thing that even as a kid, because the first time I saw this I was 11 years old. The thing that I found intriguing is that the so many levels are are in view when you walk into it, wherever you are you can look around in this open courtyard and see the different levels of the building and it's intriguing and kind of want to walk over to to look more at what you're seeing. But also, the thing that you can see in the picture on the left is the tile floors and this is really distinctive when you walk in, and then you're in this lobby level which is on the second level of the hotel. The floor underneath is blue tile. And as Ron said before we were doing the show, it gives you a sense of coolness, which is very appreciated because likely when you arrive it's going to be hot because that is a hot fry location. And yet, there's air movement, and when you walk inside there is green vegetation, all of which is very inviting and pleasing to be in in this otherwise hot fry location. So for this for this particular building said very specifically that a strong connection to natural landscape was the primary aim and they're designing this this hotel. And that in my experience was that yes, I could sense that myself, just by walking through it, these garden spaces that we're seeing in this photographs, they're protected from the heat of the sun. There was a wonderful diffuse light, partly because it was coming from overhead and from sides, and then that wonderful natural ventilation, what maybe doesn't is not all that clear is that you're also you're in a framework. That surround that surrounded the nature. And as you look through the framework and through the, the palm trees and the tropical landscaping, you could then look out and through all of that man made and landscaping and what was out there, the Pacific Ocean, the glorious monarchy of beach, and that wonderful surf lapping there all the time. It was, you were indoors and outdoors at the same time, in one of the most successful examples of doing that. And different to these days right where it's all about the bling and the masquerade and the decoration, there is no such thing right this is really reduced to the max to the elements of circulation. And there is almost the absence of detailing here everything is kept really really simple right, and that's almost an exact contradiction to today where you say the more the better, the more you throw at it, the more makeup you put on the more and here it's really kind of the, you know I always run you tell me but I always thought that while you know the great I am pay which, by the way there's a lot of, you know connotations and references night guys the has brought the, the philosophy to the masses, and in the my architect movie you know when Nathaniel, you know lose son, ask I am pay about that pay confirms that right and, and so I always thought, you know what what I am pay was for con is what basically SOM has been for me, and we get to the cruciform columns, which he did very early in the to get that house. You know, as we remember from architectural history is if we paid attention, we just want to refresh our memories. So in some ways, I think you know SOM was basically sort of mass popularizing that the museum agenda and in both cases, you know, Con had only built you know two handfuls of projects and so basically, you know, it's the same with with these right and and these, these American masters basically brought it, brought it to the mass, and obviously Mrs agenda was just that you know doing the most with Elise, right. So the other thing I wanted to add is that you can see in the picture on the left, the stripped down interior is a setting for these amazing pieces of art that Lawrence Rockefeller purchase or commissioned that are displayed throughout the public spaces of this hotel that in many cases are these amazing antiques or ethnic carvings etc. So the interior of the hotel is not full of blame it's not full of, of, you know, cake decorations, it's a space where you can look and appreciate you at these, these amazing pieces, which are part of the entire that would have added greatly to the sense of the tropics, everything you're basically there is growing out of the ground level and next to pools of moving water at the level that you walked in on. Yeah, this, this green thumb architect would love to have seen some of that cascading and even colorful vines softly in the concrete either more. Well, I think we can say you know he he left this to the killings work Lindgren stricker Wilson team to do that. But as we see at the very end of probably another volume at least. So basically you taught Mr best at that which we will see at another project. Ron so let's go to the next slide because this section as you guys said is where the courtyards are, but we have the other sectional situation, basically in this sort of transfers section here, which is where the hallways are and and this is almost like within a pyramid for a pyramid, where the floors are tapering up and they keep this sort of slice of, as Luke Khan was always saying what what slice of light does your building have right this is the slice of sky that s o m and best it's s o m basically here provided. So this is, this is really also getting closer to actually, while the whole thing is a stereotype, which we will talk about later and more. But, but there is a technical notion to that so that this actually looks more killings worthy to me I have to say, then, then, then other parts. And you guys just share again your, your first hand and own experiences of having been in these spaces please. Well, the thing that strikes me that's really quite wonderful is, like I said earlier, I like to see, I like to be in places where I want to walk further I want to see more because there are vistas that I think I can go look at the fact that they're connecting walkways between the building are staggered so they're not, they're not evenly spaced above each other. And also that love these kind of skeletal floating staircases, where the individual steps are just sort of attached to one diagonal member, but you can see the sort of function of what is there and what there is there. And I also love that it's contrasted with the water and the vegetation so that you've got the concrete, along with plants along with water so it isn't just all concrete. In the setting, plus you've got the sky up above you, and you've got all of the Pacific as Ron said, off to the side that you can look at. I have to remember that the Gala Hilton my my boss is sort of most magisterial hotel I think and what put us on the map as far as hotel and resort designers actually opened about a year and a half. Before the monarchy, and I had. So that meant that I didn't get a chance to see the, you know, the monarchy until really quite some years later after the Gala had finally broken through to the public and become successful. And it was just, again, as I said before, blown away by how they created this frame filled with nature, and is disorder touched on, very cleverly every now and then, and access, you'd see something off in the distance you had to go to it. It was just the 12th century Buddha, over five feet tall that they imported and put at the top of a stairway to nowhere, which was just gorgeous and unexpected and you can tell that this is right up there with my favorite hotels in the world. I'm not alone with that. I mean, above and beyond the three of us, and we will talk about that later but talking to surrounding like sort of the next slide, which is probably the last slide we're getting to the end of the show. But it really truly illustrates here how basically vacated, you know, dry as you guys pointed out this part of the big island here is, there is at the very bottom. So another building that looks like a, you know, like a checkerboard pattern. And this is interesting. Tell us quickly, you said it's a private residence and by whom it translates to hospitality pioneering as well as Soto. Yeah. So at the very bottom of the picture in the lower left is a home that is right on the coast. It doesn't look like home because it's a big complex but actually it was a private home built for and owned by Lerlene Roth, and she was the daughter of Captain Matson, who had started the Matson navigation company, which today is the major carrier mostly the sole carrier of cargo between, it comes to the Hawaiian Islands, but had been the major carrier of passengers to the Hawaiian Islands throughout the 20th century on these very palatial ships. So she was very well to do, she was able to afford this magnificent modern home, and she was able to build it when the Mauna Kea hotel was under construction because that the road that was built for the hotel allowed access to this site, which she was able to use for her own personal getaway on the big one. She parasite it so to speak. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Good. But the actual Mauna Kea you can see down there it's almost like it fell from the sky like this meteorite right there is this big mass. It's a chunk, yet it's perforated it's aerated right it's like cheesecake Swiss cheesecake. So that's a router, we will talk more about that in the, in the probably two more volumes here that it's a very sort of ambiguous kind of creature. That is many thing in one and run what did you want it to add to that. I was going to say that the black and white photograph we're looking at also indicates just how remote the hotel was from everywhere. Now, Rockefeller obviously was a very candy businessman, one of the most successful and thoughtful urbanists and love of art and love of hotels, but there had to be a tremendous amount of money spent, not probably by necessarily just Rockefeller but by the state of Hawaii to get utilities to this site. You've got to have sewer you got to have water you got to have power now you got who knows what else you have to have to operate something that remote, and that commitment and that money, commitment by the state or whomever in in in Alliance with Lawrence with the Rockefeller. So that hotel in this wonderfully remote place, which in turn put it on the map as one of the, the first destination modern resorts in the tropics in the entire world. Absolutely, and that's a great closing note Ron. We are at the end of our 28 minutes, obviously, hopefully gotten you hungry for more. So we will pick up from there next week. And until then, please stay safe. And that way, also, as we are on the tropics, we have the advantage over the temperate to stay easy breezy tropical exotic, you know, keep distancing and cover your mouth whenever you go to close to other ones, but otherwise take advantage of our unique selling proposition of the breeze. So stay easy breezy tropical exotic. Please keep on the morning. I will now now that I'm out of captivated, you know, captured inside in my wrong hotel. We will live it up as you recommend it. And you know, on that note, what what Suzanne is most excited about to go to a place that has some good local organic food. We figured out it always comes down to the goodies on full circle to the killings were with Lindgren's trick or Wilson, because it's the heavenly in the plinth of the what used to be the seaside hotel and got rebranded as the shoreline. So there we go we've got even a little culinary restaurant recommendation for you. Alrighty, see you next week. Bye bye.