 to have you all back for another episode of think-taker-wise human-humane architecture. Now into our 193rd show, it's not that we're running out of topics, it's actually the opposite. But we're increasingly feeling that an increasing number of viewers, slash audience, slash population are kind of losing touch with architecture for reasons that we will talk about. And so we will use something that we've been using for a while in the shows as vehicles for thought. And that starts with A, just as architecture is called automobiles. For that, we're having a panel together in three different climate zones and three different cultures on three different continents, although that's not entirely correct if we would subsidize Hawaii into Oceania, you know, and that would maybe work, but never mind. Let's not get into that. And so it's me, your host, Martin Despang near Munich, Germany, and it's you, Disoto, back in Honolulu, Hawaii, right? Hello, everyone. And it's you, Ron, back in your Long Beach, California. Yeah, I'm so pleased to be back with you two after watching about two months of these wonderful programs about thin-segrity with you and Larry Medlin. Thanks for having me back. Thank you for being our most loyal viewer and fan and collaborator because it's actually three hosts or three panelists this time for probably as many volumes as we did with Larry. And so how do we wrap our arms around this one here? With the first slide being up, you know, we probably shouldn't even talk about what we will talk about because while 60% of the world's energy consumption is consumed by architecture, the other biggest chunk is actually by transportation. And obviously we should move people with mass transportation and public transportation. And that's where, you know, what she slides show, you know, I'm coming from professionally. The island is going there with a rail, with a heavy rail, we're recommending to also introduce light rail back. And then for the last year we had the pandemic ride. And so while on the top right on slide two, Jay, about a year ago with a scholar from the East West Center, he did the very best to still rally for public transportation and tell people, you know, it's safer than you might think. But regardless, I guess of this great, you know, you know, female effort, and talking female, by the way, I want to dedicate this show to my dear mother whose birthday it is today, so dear mom, happy birthday. And so, you know, we're going to have, regardless of all this public transportation, people have been gravitating back to their personal bubble, right? To their cocoon of a tin can moving around. And in fact, here in Munich, as you see up there, we're going to host the biggest automotive show in the world that used to be in Frankfurt, well, Detroit, you might think, but that has changed. But now it's coming to Munich. The city of Munich is actually launching a counteract event, which is will focus more on the non automotive transportation system. So that all being said, let's go to the, let's go to the second slide, and be a little bit, you know, confess that, you know, this, we don't want to be misunderstood as chauvinist, right? But I'm quoting by a sweetheart, Suzanne, who basically in preparation of the show that we've been for months now, her most common is all you guys in your cars, right? And we will point out, you know, it's inclusive and women are involved. But in all honesty, probably statistically, it's fair to say it's a guy's thing, it's guys dominated. And the kind of the working title of the show, I called it after a German movie from the past that you're a fan of this total. And that's called the three von der Tankstelle, which is the three from the filling stage, right? And that's pretty much what we're about. And let's talk a little bit about the images we throw in there. What are your thoughts about these? How did they even have come into the show? Yeah, I should jump in and just to say that really for the next few weeks, this topic of automobiles and what it means to be living in an auto-centric culture, which is both positive and negative is obviously a really broad subject. But before we begin to discuss that subject, I think there's one aspect of automobiles that we three can sort of agree upon. And that's what you were just saying, Martin, that cars are a sort of a guy thing because they are so sexy. We love them. Even automobile parts can be sexy. And hopefully I'm not offending any of our women's beauties if we consider a whole new art form that grew up around the automobile. And that is the girly pin-up art. It was likely to be slid on the walls of auto repair shops. And we're going to be looking at, we're going to be looking at the two examples of 40 years on an Austin apart. At the bottom center of the slide is a 1924 advertisement for Michelin tires. And you can see obviously that there's a beautifully nude young French woman balanced upon a very spindly car tire typical of 1924. To the right top and bottom of the slide are two 1964 depictions of naked young American women hugging giant AC spark plugs in 1964. Disoto corrected my notion that this was advertising material because instead it turns out they were part of a series of paintings by a very famous pop artist in Los Angeles, Nobel Ramos. And he called the series the California Car Queens. And that's enough said. And I think the other thing we can add to is that the Michelin man whose name is Bebendum is also visible on this slide. And he is a happy guy whose body is composed of a stack of tires. So he's the opposite of sexy. He's cute and he looks like a cartoon figure. And he also is there to sell things that are related to cars. So there are different ways to appeal to people when you're trying to sell them cars or car accessories. You can go the sexy route or you can go the cute group. Yeah. And you're showing next to Bebendum the fact that in the 60s especially girls in miniskirts were always used to present new cars at auto shows. That's exactly right. That's one of your favorite clips. Yes it is. That's a gas station. That's from Spanish movie. And it's a gas station that's staged as though it was a little discotheque with go-go dancers all around this Rolls Royce. And yeah Ronnie you're absolutely right. I mean that was a staple of car shows for many years. The new car on a rotating platform with one or two beautiful young women posed with it or sitting in it. Again that goes back to this whole appeal to the masculine people who are the ones who provide primarily like cars. It's a guy thing. And one thing we want you audience to do is like we're going to throw in some personal sort of connections some personal angles and why would you have to care for our crazy stories because we want you guys to think about your experiences, your dreams, your aspirations, your obsessions around the automobile and then think do you have similar ones about architecture. And to the very left this is my first angle here a funny one. When I first came to the U.S. the Holy Land I always wanted to get to and it took me until college. There was this Bose Arts Ball and there was this German guy who was on a scholarship so I didn't make much money so I couldn't like afford to rent costume. So I basically in the Midwest in the Prairie which is car centric because that's where you grew up Ron too so you can confirm that. These were the days when wheels, rubber, tires still had inner tube and I was shopping around and got a diversity of them from the largest ones went from a tractor down to a golf cart and basically had the shop guy basically help me assemble the Bebendum the Michelin Man so I went as the Michelin Man and I won the award of the best costume. It was basically based on automobiles. When I came back I think I only got hired back in Lincoln Nebraska for my teaching career some one and a half decades later because in my interview lecture they basically said oh here's the Michelin Man right so I had you know I had to do the Michelin Man again and 15 years had passed so what I was able to do very easily to have them bounce me around wasn't that easy anymore but I still I still tried so you know you guys think about your similar kind of crazy memories about about the mobile which gets us to the next slide and now we want to run yes go ahead no this is basically in the next slide is you in front now we want to talk about the cars share with the audience we want you the audience to think about what car and you currently driving and why are you driving that and how are you putting this into the context of the architecture around you so this is your turn now this is your hour that is about 15 years young right that's correct yeah and it's certainly not through the cars are just guy things what the automobile provided everyone is major in fact the mobility and speed provided were absolutely necessary for the modern age but here I am posted near my 80th birthday in front of my trusty 2006 Audi A4 sedan it looks it looks rather ordinary but with that Audi engine under the hood when I do drive overnight from Los Angeles, San Francisco to visit some friends I'll get on that flat great road in the Central Valley Agricultural Valley of California and this rather ordinary looking car gets up to 120 to 130 miles per hour which I can hold it at that speed for at least an hour before I'm leaving the valley and while doing that it's pretty energy efficiency it's pretty good on gas mileage right yes it is it's been a terrific car I've never had one for 16 years I don't consider it old or used it's just a device that has made the last 16 years an adventure yeah and if we look at the top pictures on that page we can see an affinity to your house that we did a show about which has similar properties right it's a simple house but efficient and effective it's pretty good on gas mileage meaning it doesn't need a lot of air conditioning and it's a house for the people right because by the way the Audi company belongs to Volkswagen which means the people's car company and your house is a people's house right very much so thank you okay now we also want you the audience to go back in time and think about your first encounterment with automobiles and this is your turn again next slide yes here I'm opposing 77 years earlier here's my three-year-old self posing in front of my first experience of a car it was my dad's 1937 Shelby coupé this would have been new about the time that the Lure's house was being built the Lure's house is up in the upper left-hand corner of the slide and DeSoto you reminded me that this particular car was very much a favorite of salesmen because it had such a huge capacious punk in the back right and it was it didn't have to carry a lot of people so if you were a salesman driving around trying to sell products to people you needed space to carry all your products but you didn't need a lot of space for people so this was in many cases these were called salesmen's cars they were marketed to salesmen and they were also inexpensive they were the cheapest type of passenger car you could get to and I might say that there's only a single seat in this car that's one reason the trunk is so large so there's a driver and a passenger and then there's three three-year-old self myself who's so short that they could stuff me into a kind of a shelf above and behind the seats where I'd lay out flat and look through the rear window of the car all right no such thing as a car seat for a child in those days yeah there's maybe we're looking at this nostalgically but the Lure's house is what you very carefully and masterfully remodeled into the Halekolani and I mean from my point of view who has only heard about these days and now sees the artifact there's some real elegance to that both in the in the mobile and the immobilia of both cases so with that that gets us to you DeSoto what are you driving these days next slide well this is my current car and just like Ron it's it's got a few years on it it's coming up on seven or eight years now it's 2013 Honda Fit and I am a big big believer in cars not necessarily being extremely fast but being utilitarian I want a car that can carry people it can carry things I insist on a hatchback that means it's easier to load things and unload things and I want a car that's small and easy to drive I don't need to drive long distances at high speed I live on the island of Oahu I don't I can't drive for overnight to get to some other place so this is my car and I happen to photograph it in front of the Kauai Hau Plaza building on King Street in downtown Honolulu and this is a building that's occupied in large part by Kamehameha schools and you like to say that that's dedicated to people and this car I believe is dedicated to people as well something that is very interesting to me is growing up in the United States versus you growing up in Europe how we viewed the cars of the respective other countries and that I was a big believer and still am in foreign cars as opposed to American cars and we'll talk more about that as we go along the metal is always more silver on the other side yes yes okay but how did this all start out your connections to the automotive next slide well here is a little youngster within the in the little picture you see you see me standing not the little picture but the picture on the lower left you see me standing in the snow well that was unusual because I didn't live in a snowy area but I did spend one year living in Boston Massachusetts when I was in first grade 1960 61 and behind us behind me is the car that my family had that year and it's a 1960 limit and then amazingly enough the exact same car showed up years later uh when your son uh Martin was shipping his shave ice truck from Germany to Malta and there is the same 1960 limit the same color even um when I was a little kid starting in the late 1950s when I started to notice cars the cars that I really liked were the Chrysler corporation what are called the new look cars they had big fins and that's what you see that delightful the lovely DeSoto that's a 1957 DeSoto that was that was my dream car as a very little kid it looked space age it looked like something out of the future um I thought the styling of these cars was amazing and I wished that we had a car like that and that's something that I still retain to this day I have a fondness for 1950s cars even though at the time I was still pretty clueless about what cars were etc I just thought these looked pretty wonderful they looked the lovely dynamic and dynamic I might say yeah so that much about DeSoto's DeSoto which leaves me get to the next slide and this is uh the car I'm currently driving we introduced it as our P.I. mobile when I'm back on the island that you're graciously hosting now at DeSoto and your um the house you grew up in and this is a car that's also familiar to you Ron because we've been using it when we're touring lots of the projects that your friend and partner business partner and and and and boss Edward Killingsworth was building um and your projects the Hullet Puna which is now the you know the Waikiki Park Hotel formerly and uh so this is one of the longest made car models in modern car history they made it for almost two decades unchanged and we see the similarity to the to this vintage architecture that you've done we've been producing that luckily and we're you know telling Talking Kamehameha School DeSoto who own the varsity building by by Pete Wimber Lee the great colleague and we said this is a keeper don't tear it down just like you wouldn't wreck one of these as elves because they're collectibles they're vintage right and so there is a similarity between the two and so just like Mercedes was pretty sure they're gonna they're gonna design a classic and it has been holding true and so I think uh Ron you elaborate a little bit more when you are designing your buildings you will always stay in true through a half a century to your to your modern goals right and weren't going jumping on some kind of flashy trips that then we're getting out of fashion soon you were just staying true and and time has proven you right is that correct to say yeah we uh the killings the firm especially was looking for designing something that had real staying power over the years you wouldn't be you couldn't look at it and say oh yeah in 1954 or whatever but then it was kind of a timeless architecture with timeless values to it that made it uh successful as uh as resorts and hotels no one must say that uh in the lower right corner that's me uh I've never felt more cool than when I was being driven around by you Martin in that gorgeous blue uh Mercedes convertible thanks again for getting me around everywhere for the DoCo Momo National Supposer well and needless to say it's a convertible we like to call things like that easy breezy right and that is also true for the architecture they're all basic thought staying away from air conditioning in most parts trying to be naturally ventilated and so once again these are you know exotic you guys are not from Hawaii you guys are from California or originally even you know both Ed and you are you know from the the heartland and and so you know you came to Hawaii with this very tropical exotic attitude right and and and we're contributing architecture that is very appropriate to Hawaii and still is obviously a convertible right because it's just taking advantage of the breeze and enjoying it so there's enough similarities between two so uh last but least um I we're going to wrap up the show with the next slide which is how my access to that and as you just sort of already said you know you were basically into these uh European cars and I was into these American cars so um you know in the sandbox I was playing with these strassenkreuzer with these big boats you see one of these in the middle there the the the box has Kojak's Buick in there and so the the other attributes around were like this was like 70s Star Wars basically then my uh banana seat bicycle that you can see there and then music big times there's earthman and fire and George Benson that at the very bottom right I had the chance to attend uh his two of his concerts and then it was his book signing at Barnes and Noble so there's George and I and I basically introduced myself to him I gave him my business card which his moment shows and he said oh this is interesting I think architecture is kind of cool and I said yeah and you're the reason talking cool why I'm here in America because you embody you know that's what which was you know impossible in Germany all these things you know only in America so basically this is sort of my angle where basically I come from so we all come from different angles but we all end up you know around automobile and so let's go the next slide I think we have time for for some more and let's talk about the very early beginnings of that and I let you guys because you contributed these crazy machines from the eight days of automotive right well at the beginning of the automobile if I can just start quickly is that steam power and steam power got started in the 19th century first to power things like steam locomotives to pull trains made a huge revolution in how people could travel over land and initially that's what people tried as the way to power automobiles and the automobile as we know it today a lot of people assume that it was an invention of the United States and it was not actually something that came from Europe primarily in the form that we know it although steam power did not last for a very long time what we now know as automobiles pretty much got invented and used for the first time in Europe yeah and if this is the slide with all of the black and white photos on it and I believe it is I can run through probably the quickest and the most abbreviated history of land vehicles you can imagine the the the fact is that the very first people to sort of consider what a self-propelled land vehicle were were artists and you're seeing a drawing there in the upper center by Leonardo da Vinci from as far back as 1478 this is a strange idea a wonderful idea of his to have a spring-driven car and it sort of operated just pretty much the same way that a large windup toy does but the importance of this is that the practice of art was joined to the practice of invention and design and as DeSoto was saying before we could talk about internal combustion gas powered self-propelled land vehicles there were designs created for these really bulky and unwieldy steam driven contraptions as shown in this sort of English patent application from from 1832 at the lower right and as again DeSoto was saying steam driven vehicles with huge boilers were in use even earlier than that in the late 18th century such as the example of the upper right of a French car of sorts it consisted of a huge boiler on a wooden frame and a single seat and no steering wheel but a stooping level and then at the upper right we sometimes ask ourselves and it's not really decided yet but who might have been truly the the inventor of the automobile as we know it now and many of the historians divide that honor and Martin should be proud of this of course between Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler and these inventors which were not in the picture have shown there at the end of the 19th century the very end of the 19th century pioneer this area of modern automobiles not as artists but as engineers and machines and what we're looking at is a Benz 1886 four stroke single cylinder gasoline powered motor installed on what looks like a pretty unstable three wheel vehicle that owed much to bicycle design and the two stately gentlemen are cruising along at a the top speed of 11 miles per hour and on only nine tenths of one horsepower absolutely if we go back before we have to wrap up here to the very you know top left picture the first picture number one you know this is as you'd said Ron you know early in the days this is talking about the sort of you know you see these sort of scandalous people there you know associated with thin and so the automobile was considered to be something sort of devilish right there were these kind of roaring you know machines that were loud and and polluting and rowdy right so once again you got this sort of masculine in there that there people were just not used to right yeah in fact the the the shock of the new in terms of what seems to be a sudden appearance of automobiles around the world everywhere was really a constant theme of a lot of early 20th century art what we're looking at at the upper left which again i hope not offensive to our female viewers is a kind of very whimsical example of a painting by a french artist named paules rivet in 1904 it was called fright and what is depicting is a very classical orgy of naked nymphs and satyrs when course satyrs were half man half horse but their party is being very rudely interrupted by the sudden appearance of a menacing automobile in a road all right and with that that's the closing note for today we just got started so we're looking forward to much more next week in our volume tool and until then thank you both for this exciting panel that we just started and until then please all stay equally mentally mobile bye bye