 Welcome to America's Top 40 in 1979 and our Casey Kasem is this gentleman here. His name is DeSoto. Welcome back DeSoto. Thank you for having me. Yes, that's DeSoto Brown in the late 1970s, actually on a visit to San Francisco of all things, in a BART train. There we go. And there he looks the way he does today. He doesn't look the same as he did back then. Just as awesome. Just like last time, we were actually linking our research investigation to objects outside of our discipline of architecture, which this show is about. We were looking at vehicles. So we were thinking, okay, now we're in the late 70s, because we're mid-70s last time, the ASU Pacer. So we thought, what's the most iconic car from that era? And it is... There it is. There it is. And that is the... What the heck is that thing? That's the DeLorean. That heck it is. Because the Pacer and that threw me off. The DeLorean was a car that flared up in interest in the late 1970s. It had a stainless steel body. And you are most familiar with it because it appeared in the Back to the Future movies when it was already kind of iconic. It had the gull wing doors. As you pointed out, it wasn't necessarily a great car. It wasn't necessarily a sensible car, but it's an iconic symbolic car of the 1970s. And there's a Hot Wheels version on the oil. And I was going to say, me, the little Americano, the German guy, was crazy about that and was dreaming about it with my little Gorky toy. You had a little toy? You had a little toy, DeLorean? The Gorky toys. But go back to the picture coming full circle. I was driving with my friend Stefan, hi, Stefan, on the Autobahn last year. So look at the license plate. I know. I was going to say that. You saw that. This is Bollholm, which is close to the city where my son Joey goes to school. Hi, Joey. They're still cool. They're still iconic, and they will always be, right? So you took that picture. Those two pictures. I took that picture. I wasn't DeLorean just for the one. You saw DeLorean on the road in Germany. On the Autobahn. Yeah, okay. So what does it tell us? It's still iconic. Yes, it will never be out of style. True. So that applies to the architecture as well that we're going to show. And on picture three, we will see that it's in a really sort of challenging condition position here, location. This is basically out west, right? Yes. This is a highway. Yes. And then there is the harbor in the back, and that's actually Pearl Harbor. Correct. So this is Buzz's Steakhouse. There are a number of Buzz's Steakhouses, and this one happens to be in an area, which is relevant to our discussion, that grew up in the 1970s, and the Pearl Ridge area became intensively developed at that time. And it is very car oriented. It's very much an area that was dependent upon people traveling by car. And so that ties in with all the things we're talking about. So in one sense, this is a beautiful scenic view, but then of course we've got some big high tension wires in the foreground. We also have the YL power plant there too, as well as the industrial aspect of, the military aspect of Pearl Harbor. So it's not. So if people go there, they go for the view, and that's why the background picture is already the next picture, number four, that we see all this time. The building really capitalizes on the view. Correct. And that's something that by the way, in an unfortunate way, buildings these days, all these towers in Kakaako, they do that too. And since they're all, everyone wants the view, that's why they're all glass. That's right. And then the glass is not so good in the tropics, because it gets hot, and then you're in trouble, right? Correct. But Steve Owl, and we should say this, Casey Kasem's version is called Steve Owl's top three from the 70s. That's right. That's exactly right, because we've been talking about, talked about Ward Warehouse, we talked about his personal home, we're talking about Buzz's Steakhouse, and we will be talking about Ward Plaza. So when you look at the detailing, it's really interesting that the very top, the iconic we get to next is Rectilinear. And on the sort of window eye level, it actually converts to something that's very typical for the 70s. What is that? Well, we talked about beforehand, you and I, the diagonal 45 degree angle windows, which not only are an interesting visual statement and appearance, but they also have a function, a utilitarian function, of reducing reflection and anglare. And so there is a purpose to that in addition to it being something that looks cool. Yeah. And this picture here, so when we talk about 45 degree angle, I was talking in the previous picture about in a plan. So when you draw a plan of a building, so it has a sort of 45 degree. But then also in section, it is 45 degree, which is what you were talking about. So these two things in combination gets us again to this picture here, where you can see in addition to this sort of angling. And if you position this towards the south, and I took these pictures about two weeks ago, it was midday, it was damn hot. I was dripping. And the building is not dripping. It's not sweating. It's staying cool. Different to me. Correct. Because it's basically almost the windows take the exact in section, the angle of the sun, the sun angle. So that's another advantage position, right? It only works to the south to the west and the east. It doesn't work to the south is work. But in addition, these sort of iconic overhangs here, you know, right. And you were you were pointing out beforehand to that we've got a combination of the angle on the lower level. And then at the top, we've got a rectilinear or more square appearance. So we've got that exterior square framework that's sticking out that is presumably somewhat structural, but also a statement. And as as decorative. And it's a contrast of the angles and the squares. We see that even better in the next picture. And again, we use cars as vehicles for thought. And I donated my this is my car and car. Excellent. That's this fits in right was a very nice squared off car. Exactly. What was built from the beginning of the 70s till the end. And you can see this sort of again, this sort of very iconic sort of projecting out protruding out and we saw this in what warehouse. Somehow, we saw it in Steve's own house a little bit, but he was really sort of massaging that and almost like over emphasizing this in this case here, right. And it leads to when we get to the next picture to this the most dramatic when you're like at the bottom of this hill and you look up. This is like a spaceship, right? Yes. I mean, it's really like flying, floating or jumping at you, right? Yeah. And it's and it's really in a way that's almost looks like World's Fair architecture. Yeah, because it is very much a statement. And it is dramatic. And it's supposed to be dramatic. And you're supposed to look up the hill and see it. And there it is. And it really looks cool. And we have another architect that we associate with that sort of, sort of methodology that you have some very spectacular memories. And that's the next picture. And this gentleman's name is John Lautner. And he I would say he's Mr. Ken Leaver. And you have some very sort of existential memories of him. Well, also going back to sort of the moderator of the show, who is Casey Casey. The thing about this, this Lautner is a guy who worked in Los Angeles. He's very well known, as you pointed out for these structures that protrude out from hillside, and that are sort of floating there as rectangles. He's famous for the chemosphere or chemosphere, which is this kooky structure that is supported on a single central pillar that's kind of rounded, it's kind of like Le Ronde, on a pillar. And this this is why also the windows are angled. And the windows are angled. And the chemosphere is owned by a fellow German of your country, many of yours, who is the head of Benedict Toschan, who's the head of a famous publishing company. And I had hoped to be I had been told that I might be able to go and visit that house sometime, which I hope I will know. Okay, someday. But we go to the next picture. So the building is iconic. Also, when you go a little further back picture 10. And it is still iconic if you give it even more further back, because this is crazy highway here, number 11. And and the building is still jumping out and basically says, Hey, look at me. Hey, yeah. But this is the point you're hiding. I asked you to tell us another story. That's the story of Casey Casey. Absolutely. This area has to with another car that you were in close touch with. That's exactly right. And it's appropriate because in 1978, I went to the cam drive and swap meat one Saturday Sunday morning. And on my way home, the cam drive in is located not far from the photo that we just saw in my Volkswagen Beetle on the H1 freeway. I had a car crash and flip the car and destroyed the car. But at the time that the car flipped over, I was listening to Abba singing, take a chance on me, number seven that week on American Top 40. The Beetle and Abba and DeSoto around Casey can't get it better right now. Anyway, I survived that. And we should basically say at this point, when people are saying, Why the heck are they telling us their crazy stories? It's actually not because of us. It's because we want to have the audience, if they're old enough, and if they're not asked their parents to think about their most sort of clues from certain situations of the time, because then you can really infuse your memory in the zeitgeist, which is so important about good architecture, as we talked about. And and two, you use the word zeitgeist, which maybe not a lot of people are familiar with is a German word, but it's used in English. And it refers to the spirit of a time, meaning what are the pervasive thoughts? What are people thinking about? What do people perceive? Yeah, and we're talking about Steve Howe's architecture, which is very much of the zeitgeist of the 70s, in a lot of different ways. And that's really appropriate. So it is to share personal stories from the time. Again, we hope people are also thinking about the time period, what they think about it, and what they may have heard about it, what they know about it. Well, we might say, because the architect was probably so infused in its time was able to do such a characteristic expressive architecture. Exactly. And the next build in the next picture is that, you know, this nature of sort of mercantile or, you know, architecture is really sort of the location is very industrial. We saw on the very left here, we saw a rugged corrugated metal shack, right? You were talking about this big sort of post structure there. So the building basically has a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sort of ambivalence, the sort of the the entrance or where the service are, you know, is this side, which is much less spectacular. And the next picture is is also referring to how he treated it with with what warehouse, right? Exactly. And what we're seeing is the zeitgeist of that time of the seventies was in large part, an affinity for naturalness, affinity for natural substances, natural services, of course, is in tandem with a lot of artificial stuff in the seventies as well. But what you see here is the raw wood texture of this, this siding here, it's got paint on it, but it isn't adorned with anything else. It's supposed to look like wood. You can clearly see that those are pieces of wood. So it has just this plain painted sign against that wood. No neon, no shininess. It's supposed to just look like we built a natural wood structure here. And we will see in a little bit that that also has a very sort of inherent sort of typological reasoning or justification. But before we do that, we go to the next picture and we go a little further around. And then we see the circular windows that you were pointing out pointing out a word warehouse. Exactly. Or there are again. And we also when you look closely, you can see this weather entrance is one side is wedged into the wall. So we got this 45 degree angle anymore. And we should also say it's a little center. There's another little business in there. And this is why the staircase tower that's also sort of overemphasized and made iconic serves that purpose. And again, I really am seeing just the stuff that we've been talking about here. The wood structures, the wood framework, the circular windows. It's very cool for me to see these continuing motifs that show up in his work. Yeah. And so as we always do, we want to zoom closer and we want to look more into it. And so this one here, we look into the joinery and the materiality. And we always, when we prepare, you know, we give each other a hard time and saying, well, this is good, but it's not good enough. So you perfectly said, well, Martin, you know, compare this, pull out a picture we had shown at warehouse. And there's this, we put it at the top left. Right. So there, there we see the similarity of those two structures, the basic woods joined together with this very obvious steel frame with this steel, you know, material that's bolted on with these very large bolts that you can also clearly see too. And we were arguing last time, you say warehouse was over dimensioned and I had my doubts. And maybe this is the proof of evidence of my doubts because here it's less dimensioned and you can see the what kind of warping, right? Right. Nevertheless, you can see it sort of aging, you know, not that bad. I mean, this is almost half a century old and look at, look at, you know, sort of us no offense. And this is actually the point to now introduce a little break that we're going to have because after the break, you always want to see how Martin looked like. Yeah. So we'll see Martin in the 70s. So we will do that after the little break. And then we're going to be back with a buzzer steakhouse and juicy the solo. Aloha. Please join the Hawaii Farmer series every Thursday on Think Tech. We live stream from four p.m. to five p.m. And we are Matthew Johnson and just seeing spirits through as your host. And the purpose of the Hawaii Farmer series is to get to know our local agriculture community a lot more, get their backgrounds, get their history, find out why they love what they do as well as get some of their insights and insights into hearing about the future of agriculture in Hawaii. So we're going to bring the experts on, but we'd also like you to be a part of the conversation. So you can always join us by tweeting in your questions in comment at Think Tech High. So we hope to engage with you. So upon your request, here's Martin in the 70s. Next picture, late 70s. Late 70s. So we had we had a roof terrace. And this was us, my mother, my, my, my grandmother. Look at how mean I look at my little sis. Sorry, Cynthia. And you know, nothing changed. I'm still like that. You're still made your sister. And so you can see and see a lot of wood. And these are my memories. One of my most sort of clear memories of the 70s is me and my father who took the picture. So hi, dad. We're driving to a lumber yard. And we were getting these boards because it was all about doing yourself, which we talked about before that this architecture in the 70s is self made, not professional. Correct. But this sort of enthusiastically made from scratch. And as you can see as this fence. And we should also say we were sort of maybe a little bit too glorifying the 70s as far as being the pioneer of ecological aspirations, which it was. But at the same time, I remember here and that's maybe the reason I don't know why you lost your hair. But I lost mine maybe because we had to paint these boards with something that was called Xulamon and it was highly toxic. And so I guess society was sensing that and going, but the industries were like not necessarily on absolutely. And something else really prevalent in the 1970s polyester chemicals. Oh, yeah. So we would talk to the forehand about it would be very typical to say, here's a here's a product that makes the wood look just natural, look like it's got nothing on it. And yet it protects better living through chemistry. It seals it. So yeah, on one hand we have this, oh, we're all natural here. And on the other hand, but and that's the perfect introduction to the next picture here, which looks like almost like the building inspector is looking like how is it holding up. Right. And although my people still might say, oh, that's not how I would want it, you know, at my house. I, you know, being the sort of expert, I have to say, you know, half a century old or young, you know, not that bad. There was something bolted to it that they took off and there's even paint on there. And usually, you know, stuff like that rots away. But I tribute to the to the position, the condition, it's up on the hill. Very windy there. It's very breezy there. It's very sunny there, too. So whenever the wood gets wet, it also gets immediately dried out again. So I have to say kudos. I mean, this is holding up fairly well. And wood is always temporary material. You know, it's organic. So it's not eternal, just like we as human beings. Correct. We have this sort of association with that's right. And also, I might point out, it's not just termites, but there are carpenter bees like to eat that. Oh, yeah, I know them very well. And talking eating, which is the typology of the building, right? We get so the carpenter bees and the termites are reading the word and the human beings are reading the meat. But the word is involved in the meat, too. Exactly. Next picture shows that. So when I was there, they were close to open. They were these nice guys and they were taking out, there's this little shack part of the building and they were taking out this pieces, which when we go to the next picture, we can see. And that's that's Kiawi wood. There it is. And I said, was that for? And I said, well, that's how we make our steaks. It's we basically roast them or growl them. Yeah, on real wood. Yeah. So there we go. Wood isn't just a superficial stylish material here that you say, oh, my building wants to be wood because it looks cool, right? You can say there's this inherent sort of relationship between what they do and how the building looks like. Exactly. I agree with that. And we can only commend or recommend this to the young generation and think about that. And I think that that that is a really good point that that's a steakhouse that uses wood. And it is a wood structure. And that that synergy is actually really very smart. And that, you know, now that we talk about think about it, maybe this and we can already go to the next picture because usually the nature of mercantile typology is very sort of short term, you say, like there's a six year turnover in design every six years, everything gets basically like renewed. Correct. Because Zeitgeist, thank you for explaining it previously moves on. And so people, you know, only pay money if it's still cool. Right. So the owners feel like pressured. And maybe the when we go to 21, maybe the the interior probably doesn't really look that original to me to be honest. But but I'm not absolutely sure. Well, you know, those wicker chairs look like they could be from that time period. Well, then then they go along with the picture you were digging out, which we show just before number 20, which is that menu. Yeah, there we got the name, the same kind of funny stylized kind of palm trees. Yes. Yes. So maybe it is. It's a good it's a good point. So yeah, if we go back to number 21, it's really about, you know, the interior is is pleasant. There's enough sort of light in there. There's enough. There's obviously character. Once again, we can see how the structure is exposed. Yes, we had it with the last two projects celebrated. Yes. And but but also due to the nature, it's you'd have to have a kitchen. So the kitchen is in the middle, you know, so the space actually, you could almost expect more when you come in. Correct. I see what you're saying, because a lot of the space seems to be used by the utilitarian purpose of the food preparation. And so whereas that might seem like a criticism, if you think about it, you know, maybe not because in his house, it was almost the total opposite. Yes. That, you know, Rob sitting here next to us, you know, is basically like last time said from my childhood, there was always this sort of ghosty spooky house that I had like no clue. That's right. What is that about? But once he was the audience and listening to us and we walking through, he said, Well, actually now understand it and I appreciate it. And I was going to say to the photograph that we saw earlier of the interior, not only do you see the those those beams exposed, correct me if I'm wrong, those horizontal beams go out extend out to the outside. Do they not? And they form part of that exterior framework that we saw. And it also goes up. Is that a is that an angle ceiling or or I'm just seeing those of those. Okay, so again, we've got the continuation of the angles and we've got the continuation of the framework that's going from the inside to the outside. And you have a higher space above you at an angle that's going along with the angled windows down there. Absolutely. So it's not happenstance that all these things got put together that way. Yeah. And along these lines, I have to say that the complexity is phenomenal of the building the geometric and tectonic complexity is amazing. And I have to say with as small as I mean wood is a is a is a material that every structural new engineer makes it like per say three times as big because they're afraid they said was weak and you know, it cracks and so we got to make it three times as big which we were sort of saying maybe was the case in war warehouse a little bit whereas in this thing here, everything is so tiny is so fragile. So I cannot imagine if I would have to read these or I design this here and now and I go to the structural engineers of these times and I say, hey, guys, let's go crazy. They probably say we don't know this is like probably wouldn't and couldn't replicate it today. In other words, yeah, no, no. And there is some you can see that in some parts either maybe the building wasn't getting a little tired or people were getting to paranoid, which I'm guessing the second. Yes. Because we know this from Alamoana and the guardrails failing and she will do cover Howard Wig next Monday. We're going to talk about that in parts and so it it's just this amazing I was pointing out, you know, to to last show I was showing my other experience from the mid seventies in building this crazy treehouse, which I have to correct myself was saying construction side, but it was a construction playground. There's a playground where they just left us alone with boards and nails and hammers. And I had like bloody, you know, you know, but it didn't kill me. And one could say maybe it made me. And that's why I wanted to be an architect. Of course. Of course. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I wouldn't just give a hammer and nails to a bunch of little kids, but no, but we're it worked way back. And it's just maybe we're just school hard knocks toughen you up, eh? It was just a paranoid. So the next picture number 22 is a detail of sort of my most crazy picture that can take and you can see some of these sticks there and after thought and then after that. But again, I mean, the building is so eloquently and elegantly composed and constructed is just like amazing. So that's a steel framework or are you seeing no, these these blue guys at all, they're like they put them in after the fact. All right. Have some kind of support. I see again, I would say, you know, take them away. I mean, you know, go back and sort of, you know, strengthen some of the original structure than adding something. So it's just like a lame, I guess, sort of whatever. Well, the other thing that this, this, you know, we just mentioned the changes in typography and everything that comes and goes out of fashion. This building is really cool looking to me right now. But at the same time, buildings like this that are very much of their time and look out of the ordinary can also date very quickly. And a new owner or a new management tend to want to destroy things like that and wipe them out. So we have to give them credits here that they didn't. And I'm grateful because a lot of the other buildings that were more in Honolulu that we've lost that people don't even remember, we're very much of their time as well. And they get wiped down. Yeah. No. We get to the end of the show. We always conclude traditionally with a little positive or motivation. So for the emerging generation, the project reminded me, I said, Steve is a big inspiration for me, although I didn't know him at that point. But this was a few years ago when we were doing a community grocery store. And we applied a similar strategy that there is a sort of scaffolding. There's a structure that projects out. In that case, is screened with a membrane to then the next picture and the final picture due to the nature of the fabric. When the building is backlit, you get the you get the bottom situation in the afternoon and in the morning, you get the top one. So a mercantile, you know, typology is always about showing off, like it or not, you know. Yes. And you can do this with simple means and we want to encourage the young generation and the colleagues here to once again, maybe be excited about the sort of heroic iconic, you called it, biochlametic structures. And where was that market? That's all in my hometown in Hanover, Germany. Yeah, because that yes. And I wanted to say that so somebody didn't try to drive around to look for it in Honolulu because it's not here. But it looks nice. Yeah, well, thank you. And again, our emerging generation will do even nicer stuff because that's the point we want to encourage. Learn from the past for the future. So that being said, thank you again. You're welcome. We're going to take a little break for the next two weeks. But then we're going to come back and basically go back in time of Steve and we're going to talk about which project we're going to talk about Ward Plaza and Ward Plaza is a brutalist structure. I think really intriguing, interesting to me and very attractive to see from the outside. So I think I'm going to enjoy talking about that. Potentially also in danger. That's why I urge him to talk about that. Yes, it is. And we also will present it at our Doko photo shooting. Yes, we will. Which is on the 29th Saturday, 10 o'clock. Please be there. Ward Warehouse. And until then, it's good having you guys. And thank you for listening. See you next week.