my name is, uh robert Oliver. I've sometimes known as bob Oliver and I was
a professor at a issue in the college of Architecture. It was known then
And it was there for 25 years. Born in a little town in Anaconda Montana.
Where the Anaconda Copper was smelted date was 1919, November 10. It's
probably just when they established veterans day after that. It is Because
for all these some 88 years I've been going under the birth date of
November the 11th because I was born at midnight And my mother and dad had
a daughter, a daughter, my oldest sister who was born on four July. So
they figured that's kind of patriotic. We'll just put November the 11th
Until the government caught up with me here a couple of years ago and said
you were born on the 11th. You were born on the 10th. We got prove it. So
can you remember any of your early life when you were young? They're in
Montana. Well, it was a typical small town kids playground, you might say
. I went to small grade school and outside the grade school across the
street was a big city block that the company froze over every winter into
a skating rink. So my winters were spent skating on the rink and the
summers were spent swimming in beaver ponds up in the creek, up north of
town. And
I did everything little kids did growing up played the street had bonfires
of autumn leaves in the street, played baseball in the street until our
folks called us in at night. Yeah the company town. So we had we had a
streetcar that ran from the east end of the west end of town to the east
end of town and ended up with the smelter. So every day you hear the
trolley car go down with all the workers and come back with all the
workers on each shift.
It wasn't, it was a copper, It was mined in Butte Montana and refined
Anaconda which was 25 miles. So you had the big smokestack there? Yeah, I
was still there too still working. No, no the smell is all gone. It's just
empty, empty field. He knows more about than I do. But we had three
schools, one on the east end, one of the west end and one in the middle
and one in high school, one Junior High School and the town was full of
Austrian workers from Austria. And so they were all in one end of the town
and then there was this the office workers seemed to congregate in the
middle part of the town. On the other end of the town of the executive and
the executives were upwind and the blue collar was down. Oh schooling.
Tell us about your school what favorite subject. What stands out,
indicated you had some talent or? Well I didn't really realize I had any
talent or propensity to do anything. I did the usual thing that kids do. I
had electric train and we built cities for the train and and I had a big,
big, tremendous sandbox. Then we used to build cities and do things in
sandbox. So my early interest must have come drawing ideas for that, but I
never realized I had the, the talent to draw or the paint they ultimately
had, I was just another kid on the street, did you
circumstances dictated to be moved to san Francisco because my dad was at
that time with another company and he was on the road and his headquarters
were out of san Francisco. So we moved to san Francisco, a nice family
four years and well, you know, for years to high school in San Francisco,
a very nice high school called Lowell High School, some of their graduates
for alexander calder and rube Goldberg and a few other very famous people.
Then I went from there to Berkeley UC Berkeley and started out an
electrical engineer and I didn't like it too well. And I was sitting in a
physics class one day and looked over the shoulder of some guys in front
of me and they were drawing house plans and I said what kind of classes?
That, that's one of our architectural courses? I said well you do that and
you can go to college and do that. I said, yeah, take me to your
colleagues. So after class I went over and changed my major,
it was an architect ever since high school, I didn't I didn't pick up on
art at all. I I didn't like the art teacher and I didn't really get in
contact with art actually in architecture, we had to render our projects
as the old boss art school did. And that's where we were introduced to
watercolor, but no formal training, just what the professors didn't know.
We learned. They weren't very good here, but we picked it up mostly at
that out of books and things and just taught ourselves. And as a matter of
fact, I did take a course and uh art from the art teacher and she was
trying to make an abstract artist out of me, which I didn't understand,
look at me now,
but she kicked me out of the class. And you know, I never did have any
formal art education
because while I was there or just no, just after I left, they they had
been in the old shingle building, that used to be the offices of May, he
may beck used to be his offices in all single building. And it's kind of
what put me off because it had a lot of plaster casts on the outside the
building or from greek greek buildings and I didn't like that old stuff.
So I didn't, that's why I didn't go to our condition until they took me
over there and I went inside and it was all redwood inside and it was on
levels going up the hill and beautiful big drafting rooms where the kids
all had their radios, hung their clothes, They lived there as you know in
architecture, you live there and and a big gallery where they would jury
that that works. I think I went over there and
38 to the war, I got out in 40, 38,
when I went in the service john I think you finished it after you left and
then I came back and finished in 48 something like so
students were reading magazines so they could do their projects. What kind
of magazine? What was the current in vogue style? Who are the architects
of note? Nitra Nitra, Very big influence on me. Uh my architecture would
show they look about like Albita locally same kind of architecture, right
? Nobody there really gotten to write very much. We had a few houses but
by right graduates
but they didn't cotton to him very much. I got my bachelor's and went to
war for three years and came back and got my masters.
Okay. So did they have a B. Ark or they had a four year and then a five
year program? Master's degree manufacturers back B. A. And M. A. So you
come back for a year? Uh Yeah. Yeah. Any notable professors that you had
there that change your life is a big hero. Oh I know eric Mendelssohn.
He was very well known came from Germany and he was my professor in
graduate school. I forgot all about that. Yeah. And an interesting
anecdote about him, he had a practice in san Francisco but he couldn't
drive because he couldn't see but the damn either. And we would allow to
take turns going over across the bridge, picking him up, bring him over to
the studio, go across the street to the local drugstore and get him an ice
cream soda and then they need to hold forth with this ice cream soda and
give us critiques all afternoon and he couldn't see but he had these big
glasses and he'd go all over your drawing like this Mm and he just study
the whole thing for about 15 minutes when he got through he said let's
talk about it. And that was an interesting experience. And I then
subsequent to that, it's bragging a little bit. I was looking for a job
because I graduated and I got one with an architect in san Francisco who
was a very run of the mill ordinary but offered me a pretty good job as a
designer because he had just lost his designer and good faith. And then
shortly after that I get a call from ERic Mendelssohn. He says you've
graduated now, when are you coming to work?
And I said, well I don't know, I just took a job but I suppose I could
come to work. It was first while I said how much in those days. Well I can
pay for your very boat fare.
I said I can't live on that. Well that was the end of it. I subsequently
did regret it but I don't know how long it would have made. Amends meat.
Do what I finally did get a little apartment in san Francisco in the
basement. Tell him the anecdote about since Mendelssohn was so blind. His
beautiful sketches rational. Oh well yeah that history books are full of
erich Mendelsohn's little drawings because he couldn't see. So the biggest
he can draw would be about that thing. Mhm. So all all those buildings the
genesis for all his buildings came from a sketch like that. Fabulous That
was one. So he came from the well I don't know whether he was the house or
not.
Yeah he was jewish
hospital san Francisco that was his big claim to fame here in the states.
And he's a real interesting person.
Okay so let's go to your military, you graduated from Berkeley and then
you were you you weren't drafted I guess
university universities all over the country ROTC. And you had to do two
years of R. G. C. Your first two years in college then you were screened
and let's go on to upper division ROTC and if you were in opera division
or you didn't get to go you have to go in the service but I didn't make
the cut. So I had to spend semester in the shipyard reading blueprints
because that's the only thing I could claim any knowledge of. And I spent
a year doing that I guess. And then I got back in the program after that I
put my two years in and then qualified to go to officer's candidate school.
And the rest is military. So where did you go to O. C. S. Mhm. Was it
navy was no it was an artillery school back east. And the aircraft
artillery in the old days when they had had floodlights. You know they'd
spot airplanes in the air or the searchlights and shoot them down. Which
he never did because then radio radar came in at that time. But that's
where they sent me and they didn't need me anymore. So they took they sent
me to the military fort Benning Georgia to make a foot soldier Alami. So I
became a foot soldier and were sent to a training school where I taught
military tactics as an infantryman. And then I subsequently was sent
overseas to Manila. And that's when the war ended oriented. I was in Pearl
harbor when the war ended and I arrived in Manila and no place to send us
because they were gonna send us to Japan. So I was just cooling my heels
and one day I was in downtown manila and I saw this building which is the
general engineering district and I went in to see it and found out they
had an architectural department, Electrical and mechanical. The whole nine
yards there. So he captains and lieutenants spotted me and showed me all
around. And in the meantime I had applied to be an air courier to carry
documents from Manila to Australia and back. And one day I was going out
to the airport to get on a plane to go and the sheep comes flying through
the air strip where you and some papers. And I said, what do you guys want
? He says you're not going. I said why? He said no you're the chief
architect
engineering district. That's where I stayed for the next three years. I
didn't know beans about architecture. I just got a degree that's all. But
I fortunately had a graduate from Harvard who was my chief draftsman and
he ran the whole show. I like to think he was a native filipino. Oh he
wasn't in the military,
the staff we had were not military. They're all Filipinos
one or 2 will I had military and the higher the electrical engineering and
mechanical and all that. But the drafting department was all generated by
Filipinos and they did all the design work at our guidance and but all we
did was designed officers clubs and and
hi Joanne things of that nature. Did you by any paintings? No, but if you
go to the Monica room. They have refreshments on your way out. Punch and
strawberries and chocolate little sandwiches and his dad wasn't another
offshoot of the story that the plane you were gonna get on before your
orders were changed. Yeah, well, really crazy. The plane I was to get on
and I was on it and they took me off it and brought a new courier to take
my place and that plane took off and went down in the late takeoff,
crashed in the water and this guy floated out on mail sacks. You tell like
recovered them.
Okay,
that was a close call. Those
okay, so you were in the Army is the head architect in Manila for three
years. And what year did you get out? 48, I think something like that. I
was married in 50, so it must be 40,
So 48 you went back and got your master's degree. That's when Mendelssohn
was there to Mendelssohn job, you didn't take it. So you were working in
san Francisco with this run of the mill firm Then what I got married oh
1950 where where did you meet Joanne met her as a boy. I was, I went for
an uninvited
they in san Francisco at that time, they had places for young distance
people to live. It was coed, they all lived in set up on pacific Heights
and she lived in this place, they had a dance one night and I went with
some other girl spotted her. The rest is history. I
just told her we would go down to Van ness avenue afterwards and have a
jug of beer and I'm sitting there when I says my name is Sasha sister, I'm
gonna be calling you after you got married. What? Well then we lived in
Marine County which is just north of san Francisco across the Golden Gate
Bridge and had no Children and we decided we better do something about
that. And coming home one day I passed a steamship line called holland
american line. They had a boat called the Rain Damn, which is still not
the same boats, same name still operating. I went home, told her about it.
And so we said okay, she was selling real estate at the time, sold our
house, moved into a house boat on Sausalito on the harbor for about six
months, sold bonds, carl the house, everything took off for europe to be
gone for the winter
for the summer and hopefully get a job for the winter and then finish off
the next summer. Well I had a contact in Rome is the name of style Berg,
he was an engineer that taught in the college of architecture
and any, I uh we were traveling all over europe and found out that tell me
christmas time she was pregnant. So either I had to go home or sticking
through the winter somehow and finished our trip in the summer and
they said well we were all going home for christmas leave so come back
after christmas. So I went to Austria for a month. I lived in an attic of
an old hotel and I got a telegram fly romar expense which I did when I got
there. There was no drafting job, but there was a two year contract
two in the drafting of the architecture department as a designer. So we
spent two years in europe, one of them in Rome and one of them uh in
Holland and I have two Children, dollar in Rome and a son in holland. What
kinds of firms were they? Well Rome was Arabian american oil company.
I used to fly out to Arabia
develop the project and bring it back and the Italians have dried up and
Holland the same way they just transferred their office the same company
and the company. And so my first two years of architecture deep embedment
of it was in roman in holland.
So I came home to open my office. No, we didn't come back to marin County
if it came back to northern California and I set up an office in a little
town called Marysville yuba city twin cities. And I was there for eight
years. Why did you go there? Well I took my car and drove around
California up and down, tried to find a place where there were no
architects
and where the community looked like it in the future and the people were
nice mm hmm that one kind of fill the bill. So they made it very easy for
me, made me join the rotary club. The Elks and almost everything you need
to do to get a practice going. So we had a good practice for eight years.
What kind of projects did you do in maryville? Mary jo well
in that house,
I didn't even know who Albita was.
I was asked by the ai a san Francisco chapter to go to san Francisco to
the airport and meet with some professors from cal poly and uh discuss
student architecture and kind of an interview like this. And I talked to
these guys and I got more out of them. They got out of me because I
figured gee that sounds like a pretty good deal teaching and architecture.
And so I thought, hmm, when I get back and I'll think this over. So when
I got back I started writing letters to the different universities and so
instead of going to the U. Of a, the letter went to Jim. But it was
addressed to the Dean of the U. S. A. So Elmore got in touch with me, he
asked me if I was interested in coming down and seeing what he had. So we
, we went out, came down here and took a look around and networks, Jim and
his wife and they just come back from europe. So we had a lot to talk
about. Maybe you want an interview down there in 63. But I think, yeah,
but I went to work there in 64.
No, I just stopped teaching would be a great, great ideas. But I didn't
know the the real pluses to it was the fact that I was enjoy
as the idea of teaching and of all people jim and said come down and have
us talk with all of us. We had a meeting at the pizza parlor over on
Apache and university and at the head of the table where the big manga
bear was cal strobe and then the rest of the faculty sitting around, I'm
down at the other end and that's how they interviewed me. And when I got
home, so Joanna says, I'll never be able to make it down there if they
asked me because they talked to words I don't understand, like
Ameliorating the interstices. That was one of the challenge big lines and
and I said I don't understand what they're talking about. And least of all
that guy is sitting at the end of the table, who are somebody. So we drop
the subject. And pretty soon I asked jim if there was anything on the part
for me on the stove. He said, well let me look into it and I'll call you
back, I said, well I've got to answer Oregon because they were asking me
about me that was to build a fire under him. So I heard that afternoon
there will be a wire sent to you in the telegram days with your salary and
what the terms of your contract will be will be back to take you on.
So we packed up everything we had sold the house, piled it into a trailer.
So we came. Dear mel moore said come on down. So the first thing it I
walked into Elmore's office, he said well we're gonna pair you up with one
of our faculty members to teach a joint studio. You will have one, he'll
have one cal strobe. I'll
never understand the guy but we we came came the best of friends over the
years. I'm getting horse and it's amazing.
I couldn't understand him at first but I sure got to know him pretty well.
Drove into town on a sunday afternoon over to Tempe to see what they had
to offer. Saw a house on Loma vista
and bought it that afternoon and then went up on Hayden Road where there
was a trailer park and that's where we spend a couple of nights. And then
we took off from Mexico because this is before school started and we
stayed in Mexico for I don't know how long until school started. And then
I came back and moved into our house and you brought four Children and
Joanne what was she doing raising Children well at that time. But shortly
thereafter she I went back to and got our masters degree and then took a
job teaching a retarded school in the West valley. And then from there she
took a job teaching at Country Dacian. Which she was there for some 20
years.
Where was the college When you came in in 64? Was it still in the a wing?
Okay. So everything was up there and you had the library in the middle of
the middle of the hallway. Of course it was entirely different for me
because I was coming out of a private practice of in the drafting room, in
my own office, my own secretary and and all of everything. I was in
control of everything. So I go up on the top floor and Kallstrom's control
of everything. And even though Elmore was there, his office is over by the
library on the main hall, the only guy that was nearest was oh Elinor Tony.
Elinor Elinor yeah. Well cal and Tony were in this office room, it was a
classroom, their officers were there the almost next to them. So Elmore
says we'll put a desk in there next Straub he couldn't be intimidating me
anymore. He tried to so anyhow I spent and the and the studio he had was
down the hallway somewhere but we just divided the studio up in half and I
took half the kids and he took half the kids and
then when they built that wing on the end of the engineering building I
guess it was just a wing that went out there and had drafting room and if
they ended had two offices, how long were you in that building? You moved
out to the pain training so I No, no, no. Oh yes, we did. Oh those were
hairy days. Yeah, yeah, we moved over there, That's when they were going
to build the new building. So it was about 67 or eight. Yeah. Yeah. And
now interesting there for one semester I had alby does assistant, he
couldn't stand it. He he just hated those kids because they were always
cutting holes in the ceiling, cutting holes in the wall because at one
time, you know, we're in the the engineering building, we were expanding
two studios downstairs in the classrooms because engineering has given up
on the building actually. And so we put one design studio downstairs and
one right next to him and went away for the weekend and came back and the
students had cut a hole in the wall to connect the two studios and went up
in the river bottoms and brought a whole bunch of driftwood and crap down
and made it difficult to get through there. But you could get through
there, the students could get through there but the faculty couldn't and
then of course things went from bad divorce, they started building little
drafting nests up in the air and remodeling the pain training school until
they finally kicked us out of there. But that that was fun. But l didn't
like those days. And I think by that time cal ah
he was tapering off because it seems to me I had I wouldn't I don't I
can't remember the later years where cal and I were together
all these guys. I had a practice on the side. Did you have a practice on
the side? I had intended to but I happened to run into some people who
were wanted color painters. And I said how come you're doing that? They
said we have a couple of good people have workshops here. So I thought
well it's the part of it. I'll check it out. Never got around to having a
practice. Never wanted to. I saw you already had that. I I had that. I
didn't need another one but everybody else was doing it. So I figured I
was gonna have to do it. But when I spotted this water clerk demonstration
by this two different watercolor painters, they were opposites. So I took
my choice and I give him all the credit in the world for making me a
watercolor artist because but I so I started to paint water colors and
been going at it ever since. And of course the the acrylic paintings we're
a product of by going down to Mexico every summer in the spring summer
school Of course when she was closed we'd spend our summer in Mexico and
that's when I took up painting on canvas. But all the watercolor painting
and everything was here in town
and I apparently had enough time on my hands. I could do it because we
didn't lecture every day Probably three days a week and had a studio five
days a week. So there were a little time in there to do my thing. You had
how many Children? five Children? four at home. We bundle them all up and
rent a house in Mexico. Where is that?
It's west east of you know what it is? It's up in the hills, very pleasant
climate. It's a wonderful town and we had a the ball there. But and those
paintings downstairs for a product of that. And we didn't start taking our
trips around the world until my sabbatical times came up then that's when
the first sabbatical was a year in europe. With the Children. The Camper
and the other two sabbaticals for a year around the world in camper was a
year in europe. But the other two years around the world were out of a
suitcase
bag.
Remember any notable people that came to speak or people you remember were
notable, How about Craig Ellwood or
Oh I know one very notable one that came to speak frank Gehry. Okay. He
was a student of cows at USC and cal brought him over a couple of times to
talk to our students. But this was before he we got hooked on the freeform
architecture, this is when he was in his sheet metal corrugated iron
speech. That's when he would come over. And so nobody was
Oh and then there was another architect whose would go, even a great
sketcher made wonderful sketches. I can't remember his name now, but I was
really impressed with all the sketching he did. And that's what got me
started when I would take trips.
All of that full of sketches. Mm hmm.
And the book that I learned how to paint from
was right, this is one of the artists
hold that up there. He collected his paintings and I they're not mine.
They're is that he had a studio over in Green lake in California and we
go over there in the summertime for two weeks or so and study with him.
Remember his name, robert. He would, he will never forget his name. And
then the
when I was looking for
Oh no, it had a Yeah, here it is. Mm, mm mm mm mm. This is the bible. This
is the bible that the UC Berkeley gang studied from. It's called rex
Brandt.
And he was out of
let's see, it's how to how to paint watercolor And of course he had a
tremendous influence on me, as you can see from some of the water costs
and his sketching.
Oh yeah, in his painting. So he
used my first contact with sketching and watercolor painting. There's an
autograph coffee right there john good excellent. But he's the one that's
all of us, you see. And and when I got down here, of course they didn't
teach you teach this because they didn't, I didn't teach him all the
renderings were black and white. And uh,
so I just happened to get a couple of local architects knew I did this and
so they'd come down at night
studio and paint at night. No, I can't think of some have died. Who are
they? one of them got to be very, very successful painter ended up and
architect graduated to end up in northern Idaho. Oh that's nelson Barton,
nelson Barton. He was a super painter. Country. Yeah. After I started him
painting,
you never quit. He said he could make more on a friday afternoon painting
then he could make with his architecture firm. I'm sure he could, I
couldn't, we could, I didn't try. Yeah, they had this stuff in the gallery
up in Scottsdale.
Tell us about your book, how it came to be. That's Marcus within history.
I was, I had gone on a sabbatical and made all these sketches and came
back and I thought gee I got a lot of sketchbooks,
we gotta do something with him. I will make a syllabus for the students
make it, you know, take it up with your opposite in those days. And I was
talking to Marcus Swift and I told him to take these all up and xerox them
and put in spiral finding this is all don't do that get a publisher I said
heck I don't know what published races right to several books I did I
wrote to Ryan hall publishing company and I sent them a mock up of what I
thought the book ought to be like and they had a representative coming to
to the gym show out of court site and he looked me up and it took me to
lunch I just I got a contract here for you.
So they took over publishing the original book and
of course it was hard cover
and
but it was all black and white and so after that had its stay in the sun.
They said well how about another book? Well I just took this book and
added a whole bunch of colored but colored plates and things in it and I
call it uh I sketch and color yeah yeah and that's I put a color face to
it and so you know that it's called component and then they want another
one. Well I said I don't know so I what we did is we compromised and we
had the where is that it that's what we did the same anyhow we call it the
complete sketch mhm which combined black and white and color this is all
color it's all black and white don't worry about it anyhow. So that that's
another book and then all of a sudden one day brian hold sold out to
another publisher. I can't think of the name. Very well known one. And
they sent me back. No no I just don't box. There's a box here somewhere
with all my drawings in it. They didn't want to publish it. That was the
end of it
to thank for this, Joanne gave me this one for one of my birthdays. But
this is the second of That is a 3rd generation. The first generations down
under there. Big macintosh printed on it. Round the first ones I ran
across a picture the other day. I wish I still knew where it was. I would
go over at night after I retired and tutor the kids into using a
perspective program with his old box. But as soon as I got through doing
that they came out with very sophisticated computers and programs and my
day was done. I wasn't gonna be any value anymore. I think that old box
had like 256 MB of hard drive. Yeah I saw a documentary and I got a whole
bunch of dr stuff stored on these things that I can't get off because they
can
zip drive. This is what I use this for now or catalog my paintings.
Oh yeah, no way up here.
So you've taken a digital photograph of every one of your paintings
pretty much for the record. So I go in here
I started out to catalog them as to who had them and all that. But that's
what I use this for mostly
to keep a record of. And now of course I'm not painting anymore. So I I
don't have so I use that for email. You have that backed up somewhere else.
Right. No. Well that's what we're gonna do this afternoon.
Yeah I'll put it on a thumb drive and burn a cd for you. Oh well you got
you got some stuff. Ah
I'll tell you I'm terribly disappointed that they don't teach rendering
and sketching anymore, particularly sketching because scott here can
attest to that.
You've gone into offices and show them your sketches and how you can
sketch. And they had a big influence on your getting a job mm particularly
being able to be in the front end of projects. Yeah. Which is a hard place
to get into. And Tony. Who's industrial design now in California. Not an
industrial designer. Store designer. But he tells the story of being in
paris designing a perfume stand for the store and they had this conference
all morning and had a lot of ideas which couldn't get them across. So when
they took a lunch break and they went across town he sat in the back of
the cab sketched up all these ideas and when they met that afternoon he
says this is what you want
just like that and what you can't do anymore. But you can sure show him
some sexy pictures. But it is incredible. It's off the subject how the
computer and the cell phone has the links everything together. Because
Tony and my other son, he'll come over here and set up shop right there.
He's got a cell phone, he's got his, he brings this thing over and he
goes at it all day long, comes in and has a cup of coffee and go back and
forth all day. He's on the phone conference call in Birmingham and he does
all his work right from there. And he's got a couple of guys sitting in
his house taking care of his dogs and they're working to.
But all because the cell phone of the computer,
what you're talking about here is your Children, you've got four Children
, you've got scott's number three bob's number two. Yeah. And what's
before is # four is Tony. How did you influence their careers? Pass on
your abilities or talents to them? Did they just see it? And scott would
have to answer that question because
they never consulted me. I don't think you ever did. And we went on a
sabbatical and when I came back here, he was in the College of
Architecture
and for a while, nobody knew he belonged to me until he had a couple of
juries. And they finally asked who's that guy Oliver has he got some
relation to the faculty member and then Tony took up residence there in
industrial design and subsequently graduated from subsequent but I didn't
know anything about it. They just went off and did it. It seems that the
two youngest Children Tony and I had the graphic interest, the two olders
didn't. My older brother dabbled in some painting a little bit, but but
from an intuitive point of view or or maybe I think even the the creative
act of just making things up even when you're very young Children, you
make believe things that translated them to designing things. And I think
Tony and I had that kind of imagination and yeah, dad's modest about this
and he didn't pressure us to to learn or do anything but we absorbed what
was around us. And in my case particularly, you know, I was destroyed at
an early age because dad would get two or three architecture magazines in
the mail every month, Architecture plus magazine, that's long been defunct
, Architecture Record a journal, I'd see all these, you know, buildings
and renderings. And then of course dad was doing a lot of rendering work
for with Kallstrom and other his other colleagues for their practices and
famously for the paddock of freeway in those early days. So I'd watch him
draw. So I learned perspective and pen and ink work when I was, you know,
in early high school And when I was, I was, you know, when I was 13, I was
doing pending perspectives and things like that because I saw him in the
magazines and what dad did. And so I was, you know, because all that
influenced basically a real tragic, brutalist modernist at an early age
because that's all we saw. No, we sat down and discussed it. Well, we, you
would give me a few tips here and there, but it was not like, oh dad, show
me everything, you know, or are you saying son, you're going to be an
architect. It just, I absorbed it through osmosis. And as my father said,
when we took this trip around the world, there was no tv teaching was
correspondence courses a lot of time to kill. So for me, I learned how to
read well because it's not no distractions. And we always picked up the
blue hole books, drawing books in all these different towns and I would
draw whatever I was seeing if we took a ferry boat across the channel or
whatever. I decided I was interested in ships and I would draw designed
ships and become a naval and whatnot. And so that was how I kind of
recorded the trip and, and, and learned about documenting the physical
world, which is what architecture is about. And so then it became a
natural thing. But I could have grown up to be a naval architect,
industrial designer, sure I would have been happy and my little brother
did industrial design and migrated into branding, which is kind of
incorporating interior design, marketing and the whole image. So he's kind
of taken industrial design into a real spatial practices.
You know, we used to take the sketch class down to beats me, but on the
way we'd stop it to McCaw Khoury and also stopped at the mission
and make them sketch the mission and then go over and sketch it to a Capri
and then they'd wind up for beer at the hotel in
Mhm. Copper Queen, that's what I call it, you know, that's what it is. The
Copper Queen had a bar and
xem nay, I guess the first time we took them down there, they kind of
raised a little bit of hell.
So we next time we had monitors on interim to keep them quiet. But that
they had those trips for fun. And then when we got back they would put all
their drawings up on the wall in the hall downstairs gallery so that the
the one thing that will always remain a mystery but one of our trips
futures was with cal over the coast and then up to san Francisco and then
back down here. Well on the way over there where
Bruce is a fireball came in there with full of vinegar and english, you're
ready to roll and he could drop a storm and he's happy all the time and he
is calling dad because I was about the same age as his dad and and we just
established a friendship over the years but he always like, I respected
what he could do and he was, he was not only a good drawer but he was a
good entrepreneur to and
ah we just became very good friends off campus as well as on campus. But
he was always a cut up that I remember times when he would, yes, it was
proof dressed up as a sheriff.
He came dressed up as a sheriff and I was in with the dean and he walked
in the door, it was all set up and started reading the riot act. Yeah, he
had glasses on and everything started reading the riot act anymore and I
started to take offense to all and he said shut up, you you sit down.
He took me totally by surprise, I never forget. And then of course he came
back to show me right. He said put me in my place.
That was one thing he was always, well I know another time he Bruce would
, we took all of them over to the zoo. We're doing this design project for
the zoo and we were all over there and we've done our research and
everything and we're all stacked up along this wash and having a barbecue
and Bruce, they said now be careful there, there might be some wild
animals or something comes through. Well that's a bunch of Baloney. So we
went on ignoring it and then all of a sudden here comes this damn eight
and he came rushing down the wash and everybody started scattering. It was
Bruce, yes,
gorilla.