 Good to see you back for what happens to be our 180th think-taker-wide human-humane architecture show once again Broadcasting life from the opposite ends of the worlds from two Significantly different climates and therefore cultures and for that we bring up the first slide and you the solo back in Honolulu Tell me what do you see? well, we have two very strange Pairings of surfers the first picture of course being right in front of where you live in Waikiki Even though you're not there now two surfers wearing COVID masks And then on the right hand side two surfers in Germany in the snow And they're going to a river that has a small what's called a standing wave, which is like a type of rapids Meaning there's always a little bit of a wave as the river flows and people take turns They line up and take turns to jump onto that wave and surf for a little bit Even though it's bone-chilling frigid cold in the snow Yeah, that just tells you how much we crave for the tropical exotic and Exotic is capism expert Suzanne had once explained this to us as you greatly recall It's called the ice buff so the ice river and that's what it where it happens So it couldn't be you know more different, but then again, there is that's where it always talk about in the shows There's a lot of differences couldn't be more but there's also a lot of similarities that we increasingly find So we want to talk about that talking a vaccine You have some good personal news to share in that experience, right? I do because two days ago I got my first COVID-19 vaccination shot along with my mother who is 100 years old and as her Caregiver accompanying her to get the shot. I was also able to get one Because the vaccine is not in abundant enough supply. However, they are stopping that practice today So I was very lucky to get in when I did to be able to get my shot and I'm very grateful Very good. So let's go to the next slide and Reconnect to where we had left last time because this is talking about our mothers here This is my mother who always nicely as I know many mothers do Suzanne's mother's does that too Cuts out the most important news out of the newspapers, you know, and this is dating back. This looks a little Crumbled here. This is dates back to 2012 that was a very important year for us because we moved all over the place I moved from the desert to the tropics and We moved our office and my parents Professionally and privately from Hanover, Germany to Dresden. So that was a big year And this is probably one of the last newspapers my mother read before she basically moved away and it shows a piece of architecture at the title page there and This is your weekly German lesson again the solo so The little zoom in there on the on the bottom right. It says nicht mehr Zeit gemäß and what does that mean? Well, it means not timely or not appropriate for the time or Outloaded or obsolete And I didn't I didn't I wasn't able to figure that out on my own you had to explain that although I didn't understand the Just a little bit still gives you a B plus the cell. Okay. Thank you for worries And this is what the reporter or fellow reporter was basically, you know, judging and trying to speak people's mind That he thought what we see at the bottom right, which is the original condition of that particular building Wasn't timely wasn't contemporary wasn't up to date anymore. So let's look into that further next slide So being many similarities today, we have to say audience watch out this you can't Uncritically adopt what we're talking about which is the construction method of steel on the islands because steel doesn't grow On any trees or nor are there steel trees and nor are there construction workers that have been traditionally skilled So whenever someone decides to build with steel, they do it mostly out of monetary Capitalist reasons and they ship it all in and not just the material but also the labor So by that time, you know, we can really say truly it's it's fairly invasive Also, we have some humidity Corrosion problem on the islands that also we know from some of our cars who are Basically on the North Shore in particular So we should be careful, but we're doing a global show anywhere else in the world On other continents steel construction is a big thing So is it in Germany or at least used to be as well as in America It's pretty much all gone and Chinese have taken over in producing the steel But we want to now here open another page that While we have traditionally associated because the show is called father brown's brutalism We have usually we're associating brutalism with a material of concrete and at the very top left Our last show I was back in Hanover with my son Lenny. We drove by this nice courtyard late addition to our courtyard series a little single-family residence nice brutalist piece for owned by the Just passed away illustrator cartoonist Oli Stein And then the other pictures there is reminding us that some of our work in Hanover has also basically used the material of steel and the bottom Pictures are basically the covers of textbooks that we would like to recommend if anyone is getting excited about Steel here's your literature both in German and in English Let's go to the next slide And let's open that book and I basically if I would be prepared which I'm always sort of Here is the book I'm an okay student So if we open that book and let's go back to the slide we were we just were let's go through some of the icons of of taller steel buildings and started the very top left Any of them you recognize the soda? Well, I know that the one in the top left you we just went through this I know that is a building from Chicago. I don't remember which Uh, what building that is that's the reliance building and that basically has passed It fascinated me when I was there a lot during my prairie days and I always took the emerging generation there It's a building that really had you know Opened up so much. So that took advantage of that skeletal nature Of of steel and basically, um, you know maximize the glazing and the openings. It's a very It's it's terracotta clad together with glass Fine detailing really exquisite piece and and it's very old too. This is very early construction This is from I think it says down there 1893 or something like correct and that's that is what this is the pioneering days of steel skeletal High-rise construction. This is what enabled the world to build High-rises by the untold millions by now The next building I recognize that's in berlin and that is the shell oil company building the shell house built in 1937 and despite it being made of steel. It has a very wavy smooth contoured Exterior and that's something that we're going to be talking about when we do our show about automobiles Next we've got another chicago high-rise. I believe that's new york. That's actually a favorite Rockefeller center Which applies what you just said as well Buildings didn't have the guts or the courage to express themselves by their nature. They were so just like the shell house It's cladding its stone and so is Rockefeller center, but their anatomy their bones are are steel skeletal That's right. And so at the bottom left is another german example That's from the city of dusseldorf. This is translated the three slack tower by hentrich pechnick and partner and then we go back to america to Chicago again the famous island steel building by som Then we got the civic plaza also by som and then we got the largest one at the top right probably the most iconic Is the formerly court sears tower Before sears got in trouble and sold it to The willies company, so it's called willies tower right now and that was for a while. That was the tallest building in the world Absolutely So this is what the atlas basically the encyclopedia walks us through the history and let's go to the next slide There the top picture there is also included in the book. It's a it's the headquarters of the continental tire company from 1952 as well then clad with other materials, but mainly glazed And this the architect was was mr. Tsinsa who was also a professor at my alma mater Obviously generations before me and my father who also went there And we ran into him Not literally but figuratively because a client approached us who owned the house. You can see at the very bottom below there And the left part of that house on the bottom left picture was the foundations were so crumbled that It couldn't be saved. So we needed to rebuild that and we did it in a critical reconstruction However, as part of the our basic interpretation was to also deal with the existing house that you see at the To the right where It originally didn't had any shading devices So we added that but we did it out of there we go again steel post with these thermally modified Timber boards that basically provide the shading But it's not touching the master's work the master's piece that was at least for us important to do so So go to the next slide and you recap quickly because we've been talked been talking about that project before Well, if I can see correctly, we're talking about the um kindergarten. This is correct Yeah, that's the first kindergarten we did the kindergarten and uh, that also has a steel obviously a steel structure, although Uh, I apologize because the picture is so small. It's very difficult for me to remember what I'm supposed to say So it's probably it's also it's also clad with another material and you know, it looks back at the Mies van der Rohe is experimenting at the house longer and esters with a brick skin over a steels and we evolve that and but there's also a different interesting um relationship to the architect we're talking about today because This client here turned to us represented by this gentleman who Was a couple of semesters above my dad at the university the technical university of Hanover And basically had worked for the architect Father brown and they called him part of brown Because he his main color he worked with was brown and so um, he mainly worked in the in the late 60s heavily 70s and into the 80s and so uh, one of his employees when Father brown passed away at too young of an age Basically, and I think he only was turned mid 60 Mr. Zedler who was his name basically then When the young generation took over in the firm he didn't feel comfortable to stay there So he said for the last couple of years until retirement I'm going to go and work for the city and he approached us basically for this project And so probably again the the anatomy of the building is another sort of reference or homage to that Tradition of our hometown of steel construction, of course You know for different reasons that if you're interested in that go back to our show and refresh You're and obviously also our memories. So let's go to the next slide So this is father brown his real name is Heinz Willeke And this was truly in the 70s as you can tell from the color sweater and The their hairstyle which also the reference to my father at that time Heinz was about one and a half decades older than than my father And here's your other german lesson that you did pretty well. You didn't need my assistance in that in that situation Yeah, it's too protagonist of german post-war architecture if I can remember correctly And so I was very proud that I was able to read that without you telling me Yeah, you get an a for that. So here they are mentioned and listed Mr. Tsinsa and mr. Wilke. So let's look at mr. Wilke more and go to the next slide And look at his most prominent work, which is right downtown and Hanover, Germany You see the classicist and this is not trumpian classicism. This is authentic classicism What is authentic as classicism can be by the Balmai star Lavas and in Germany and Hanover, Germany here So this is I grew up with this building. I I'm it's ingrained in my childhood memories and let's go to the next slide And and these are pictures we pulled from the web that show it's sort of very heroic Nature and let's put this in perspective to Soto because we're thinking about mid-century, right? We had just Thanks to you guys can't thank you enough lost the war and you got us back on the path of wisdom and and behaving behaving again So you guys had won the war So you just like felt like okay, we got a everything is possible. We shoot people to the moon. We We wash our laundry and these new machines, you know, we have cars all over the place We have you know refrigerators. We have microwaves And we you know more traumatized And usually as we keep reminding ourselves modernism in Germany has for that reason been more traumatized more stiff less enjoying itself But here's a good example for basically an exception to that rule Because this is pretty much also in the 70s So this looks like the little brother of the the sears tower, right? The sears tower had three by three squares in plan that then got extruded to different heights And here we got three times two of these So you can see a true homage off and that's what historians basically credit him and say he was a big fan of me's van der Rohe and here is My little americana piece of america in the middle of my hometown that I think the the interesting thing is that in plan Each one of those separate structures has the same footprint And yet they look quite different because they are different heights Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And let's check it out more and go to the next slide And this is a shocking one. Why is that? What is it at all? We're looking at well It's the same building, but it's had its exterior changed and I asked you when we were rehearsing What happened here and you pointed out that the building originally had An applied brown color now that is not necessarily what the material itself looked like but That's why father brown was called father brown because he favored this brown color And because that was then essentially considered to be out loaded and no longer timely The building's exterior was stripped and it was made into a shiny aluminum silver color Which is keeping the same building, but it is not keeping what the architect originally wanted And there's another change we're kind of detectively zooming into at the very top Because as we will see soon in very exquisite historic documentation This is an exoskeleton. So the main basically loads are distributed through the corner columns Which basically in contrast to the otherwise very rectilinear not to say square Shape were round But look at the very top right how the retrofitting Has been what what's that been doing all of a sudden it's is squared or it's sharp edged It's rectilinear So why in the world, you know, would you do that and let's go to the next slide? And reminders of previous discussions here Who we consider to be our informal mentor david chipperfield Who here the new york times quotes him about his renovation of me's funder row is national gallery Basically says I don't want to be seen You know my handwriting is inappropriate to be seen Because my role is basically to serve the master And to and basically to maintain and preserve his work While bringing it up to date there we go with up to date because we're living in climate change Times so obviously the thermal performance of building is increasingly important And probably certainly doesn't spare historic buildings So that's a great challenge, but also a great opportunity to use your skills to do the invisible and I think I said before I happened to be also And at me's funder row is other American masterpiece Of crown hall as the architecture school at the i it Campus in in chicago The day before it was shut down for renovation and the architects crooked sexton in that case that the renovation and I happened to be there the day it was reopening again and Besides that it looked, you know dusted off and fresh You couldn't see any difference and that's that's the point, right? I'm obviously it wasn't the point for the architects of remodeling for potter browns Which by the way is the headquarters? Of a local bank. It's the stutt spa kasse and that's like the people's bank. It's kind of a semi Public bank and and again, that's the local headquarters next slide so This is why we say, you know, it shouldn't have been Altered because it made it into this bible of steel construction architecture Different than the historic examples that they dedicated these very neat sketches to here is a two-page documentation of the building in in all its details and Also, I have to say which I forgot to tell you when we were doing our dry run I threw in the steel constructed Kindergarten again at the very top right because actually we were lucky to have had the same structural engineer A partner within the firm who did the structural engineering in this building. We have the same So there's a lot of similarities that only now actually by doing more research come really full to my mind. So next slide Observations about Contextuality right. Do you recall this project here that we threw in again? Yeah, so this was in the in the picture on the left We see this newly modernized high-rise and then the foreground is the main train station in henover And it was planned potentially to build another building on that right in that same situation with The train station and rather than trying to mimic the brick construction of the train station the idea instead was to Make the similar color but not necessarily the same material and that was going to be a glass Sheave structures. I remember so it would have that same not only the same mass, but the same color to go with The train station unfortunately that did not come to pass You've got a cartoon of the emperor's new clothes In there, which was very applicable to our previous political situation in the united states of Saying that oh, yes, that looks beautiful. It's wonderful. It's perfect. And in fact, there's nothing there Yeah Because it's we want to return to it's a question. This is philosophical as you said before it's about authenticity, right? It's of authorship authenticity So leave the father browns brown Yes, no go and that's our our message to the many owners of These buildings because we're talking brutalism and so they're according to the the national doko momo call for 70s turning 50 These buildings as you often say Don't have the respect In the larger public yet. So people think of them as ugly or again as even a journalist on the title page of our Newspaper and handover said it's outdated. Well, who says that? Right. So look deeper into that. Do your homework? And all of a sudden you might find out, you know, it's in one of the bibles about Certain typology and materiality And now people, you know, who still have these old books, you know Use them as travel guides and they come and they say, where is the building? You know, it doesn't look like that anymore So I shouldn't do that. Let's go to the next slide We got only four minutes left But this we did more research once you get hungry. This is what we encourage you guys once you're on to something keep going And so here we looked up. What other work is there still out there? So this is another project here as you Said this might be turkish and in language who get interested in this building. It gets sort of in the next slide This is one of the images of how it has looked and let's go the following slide Because you had you said you had to look twice because you thought you know the building and we have done already a show about the building Right, and I thought it was the varsity building here in Waterloo, which looks very similar Although it is not you can see the varsity building in the upper left corner And unfortunately this original building in the big picture as you said has now been demolished And that makes us realize that we need to actively lobby the Kamehameha schools to not demolish and preep and preserve the varsity building here Absolutely because it's a keeper again and here where architects in the same era at the opposite ends of the worlds But thinking the same So in our Honolulu case, it was the great Pete Wimbledi and there aren't many of the great Wimbledi buildings around anymore too many have been torn down as the Waikiki in Or the Coco Palm Resort is sort of half torn down and so lots of them aren't anymore So this is a keeper. Please please next slide Is the building I knew from my childhood in my hood because this is the local Department of well local branch of the state's Department of Labor And you got excited about this building just from the images you saw right Yeah, and you and you pointed out that first of all this is modular construction Which these concrete panels were pre-made and then put together here at the site But I was particularly impressed that it has this wonderful typical brutalist sort of chipped vertical groove exterior And that's something that isn't done anymore and probably won't see So it is a unique thing from that particular type of architecture which of itself means it should be preserved as a relic of the time period in which was made And we have to be sorry to say it should have been because next and last slide That one got torn down as well And it got replaced by what you see at the bottom left. And what do you think about that? Well, you pointed out that this is using red brick Which is sort of typical for that type for that area of the city and it was turned into housing And um, there's nothing particularly significant about this red brick building And in fact it replaced something that was unique and what could have been done and should have been done in an ideal world Was the repurposing of that office building into housing if housing was what was needed So rather than destroy reuse and that is ecologically also the The most thoughtful way to do it because you're not using new materials. You're reusing something old Yeah, and that's a very timely task as we know because now COVID changing pretty much everything But certainly the typology of office space because home office will be around for much longer And so, you know, all these former office buildings fall vacant, right and talking brown And a little bit later from the from the 80s is that one I think, uh, you know stone clad high rise Pomal high rise in downtown Honolulu that I remember that even Before the pandemic hit They decided to basically Retrofit it and and make it turn it into housing from formerly offices So it's something that's happening And I as it seems we both could have seen ourselves with some little clever adjustment to To live in this beautiful brutalist building, right seems there's enough daylight in there And certainly, you know, there was enough pride and and and dedication to To architectural excellence Okay, with that we need to stop here So, uh, we move on In a volume two because there's more work of father brown To be seen with way more parallels, uh, some um So tear dropping and some promising for Our city of Honolulu in Hawaii so Until then the soto and everyone else stay healthy and happy alive