The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 160: A Groundbreaking Structure of Staggering Possibility

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

This architect enjoyed a good challenge.  But this one nearly broke him...

This is the way I heard it. Back in 1974, long before he became a household name, the legendary architect was struggling to make ends meet. He was a professor in those days teaching architectural design at the College of Applied Arts in Budapest and wondering what it might be like to be rich. Well, he was about to find out, thanks to a groundbreaking structure that he was about to design,

a structure that would transform an industry and make him the wealthiest architect who ever lived. Long after his revolutionary designs began to appear in every major city, this wealthiest of architects sat down with CNN and revealed the secret of his enormous success. Space, he said, has always intrigued me, Specifically, the alteration of space by architectural objects and the repercussions of that alteration on man, space, time, and the object itself. Of course, CNN didn't exist back in 1974, and the press wasn't terribly interested with the teaching methods of a non-traditional architect who liked to experiment in his classroom. Thus, no one reported on the strange evolution of his initial prototype, a meticulously fabricated model consisting of 26 individual units, each perfectly symmetrical with the other,

each capable of moving within the structure itself. At a glance, the blueprints proposed a design that appeared to be both uninhabitable and beyond the limits of modern construction. At base, it was a modular structure that offered endless possibilities. Possibilities the greatest minds and architecture had never even contemplated. Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei. Frank Geary, Buckminster Fuller, Zaha, Hadid, none of them could have undertaken a project of this magnitude. Even the geniuses who gave us the Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, the pyramids of Giza,

they'd have all been bewildered by this groundbreaking structure that challenged man's relationship with space and time. The fabrication began modestly. The architect took his students to the wood shop where he had them carve out the individual units he needed to construct the prototype. He used wood because it was simpler to work with than the material he proposed for the actual construction. To save time, he didn't bother. to hollow out the units. He simply instructed his students to carve out 26 identical blocks of wood, bore a hole through the center of each,

and carry them back to the classroom, where the real work began. Prototypes and models are tricky things. In this case, the architect relied upon paint, tape, glue, adhesive, elastic bands, and all the accoutrements of a vacation Bible school project. on steroids. He was, after all, constructing a model upon which the efficacy of his entire thesis would be judged. In other words, the prototype is crucial if you want to see your structure

built in the real world. Working from the blueprint and keeping his students engaged in every phase, the architect connected the wooden blocks in a way that allowed them to move around after construction was complete. This was the heart of his great architectural breakthrough. Imagine a structure with individual units of identical size that could be physically rearranged within the confines of the framework. It was simply unheard of, ingenious, and very nearly impossible to replicate. In fact, it took a month for the architect to unlock the seat.

of his own blueprint. But when he finally did, his students saw the many possibilities his design afforded. It was their enthusiasm that convinced him to mass produce his prototype. And that is when this soft-spoken professor who taught architectural design behind the iron curtain realized his true purpose. the purpose he described to CNN 40 years later as the alteration of space by architectural objects and the repercussions of that alteration on man, space, time, and the object itself. In other words, the wealthiest architect in the world made his fortune by building a structure that no one could live in, a diabolical contrivance that began as it. teaching aid meticulously designed to illustrate the importance of three-dimensional thinking and

alternative possibilities, possibilities that number no less than 43 quintillion, a staggering number of alternatives that turned his teaching aid into the best-selling toy in the world. A toy that invites children of all ages to drive themselves insane by compulsively arranging and rearranging those 26 brightly colored three-dimensional squares in the futile hope of segregating all six colors, thereby solving a frustrating puzzle invented by an architect who needed a month to figure out the damn thing for himself. An architect called Erno, now remembered and blamed, for the infernal squares that bear his name. The three-dimensional squares of a groundbreaking structure of staggering possibility.

The Rubik's Cube. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. So did I sound a little frustrated there at the end? If so, it's only because I was. This is the way I talked about the way I heard it, the only spontaneous analysis of the only podcast for the curious mind with a short attention span wherein I attempt to explain the circumstances

that compelled me to write the story you just heard. In this case, those circumstances are fairly straightforward. That's not always the case. Sometimes, with this little bit of real estate after the story, I take the opportunity to dive deeper into the larger themes that might resonate from the piece, maybe splash about a bit in the sociological implications, or the headlines currently defining our country. But here, no, it's really simple. I was lying in bed last Monday, about 11 o'clock, and I was about to knot off, and for some reason I opened up the drawer in the bedside table at the Airbnb where I was staying. And in that drawer were several odds and ends, a few books, some lotion of some kind,

and a Rubik's Cube. So I removed the Rubik's Cube and began twisting and turning it, thinking perhaps that the twisting and turning would lull me into a slumber. Well, it didn't. The twisting and turning compelled me to do more twisting and turning. It compelled me to do more twisting and turning and more fiddling, and next thing I knew it was three o'clock in the morning, and I had thrown the Rubik's cube across the room, only to see it bounce off of the wall and not shatter into many little plastic shards, as I wished, but skidded back across the floor and landed right there next to me. And so I took it with me the next morning in the RV and twisted and fiddled some more. And that evening, back in bed, more twisting, more fiddling.

Next day in the RV I kept it with me. By Friday, it became obvious. I was not going to figure out the Rubik's Cube, which was frustrating. But on the positive side, I googled Erno Rubik to see if perhaps there was something about this devil I could learn. This man who had tortured me with his device for the last few days, that's where I learned he'd been an architect. And that's when it occurred to me that this might be a fun story, a fun little misdirect. That's also where I learned that there were several quintillion solutions to the Rubik's Cube, making me feel all the more foolish for not being able to find even one of them.

Anyway, that's how the story came out. I wrote it on the ride back home a couple days ago and shared it with you just now. I suppose if I wanted to ruminate, search for some larger theme, I might juxtapose the fact that the Rubik's Cube provides us with, trillions of possible solutions, whereas the greatest matters of the day seem to limit us to just two, this or that, pro or con, black or white. We're living in this time of incredible cookie-cutter advice where everyone is being told essentially to do the same thing and think the same way and behave the same way. We're all being weighed and measured, it feels like, by a

by a lot of people who are demanding answers. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but on social media anyway, when you have five or six million people on a Facebook page, as I'm fortunate to have, in times like this, people want to know where you stand. And it's not unreasonable, I suppose. My personal feelings around the issues of the day, the pandemic, the racial issues, all of that.

Of course I have opinions, but I typically don't share them readily because I like to stay in my lane. Now, I have opinions about workforce and education. I open my big mouth on that all the time. But on these other issues, I'm typically a bit more circumspect. I like to wait for a bit. I like to form an opinion that I can at least defend before I share it. But we seem to have lost our patience. with silence. Silence, I'm told now, is violence. I know that because the meme says so. So it must be

true, right? So maybe when I opened up the drawer of the bedside table and saw the Rubik's cube, maybe on subconscious level, it reminded me of the box we've put ourselves into, this binary box, this prison of two ideas, where you must either before or against the thing. And maybe on some subliminal level I was attracted to the myriad of possibilities, the plethora of solutions afforded to us by the Rubik's Cube. On the other hand, maybe I was just trying to do something to help me sleep, which ultimately made me frustrated and led me to throw the cube across the room, pointlessly. Who knows?

Sometimes a cube is just a cube, I reckon. Back next week with another story and some more. free association. Till then, stay safe, be well. Adi. The ocean delights us. Some marvel at the colorful world below the surface. The ocean feeds us. Others find nourishment in its bounty. The ocean teaches us how our everyday choices impact even the deepest places. The ocean moves us, whether we're riding a wave or soaking in its breathtaking beauty. The ocean connects us. Find your connection at Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects.

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