 You're on Think Tech Hawaii, human-humane architecture, and we're broadcasting live from our mid-century modern iconic city of Honolulu. And if you have the question now who says that, if we can bring the first picture in, it's basically us saying that, and us meaning the two of us. Well, more than the two of us. Exactly. Right here we're representing a whole bunch more. And we have Yutanya here being with us, and you are the president, our elected president for DoCo Momo Hawaii. So thanks for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Martin. And this very funny word, DoCo Momo, if we can get that first slide again, what does that mean? Well, contrary to what a lot of people think, it is not a Japanese telephone company. It stands for, it's actually started in, it's an international chapter. U.S. is part of the international, we're part of the U.S. chapter. But what it stands for is the documentation and conservation of buildings, sites, neighborhoods. And in Hawaii we kind of look at artwork also from things from the modern movement, which would be things that are generally constructed, built in the 30s to the 70s. And our second picture is also the permanent background that we choose for the show. And this is something that looks like it might not be in Hawaii and it actually isn't. So this is a postcard we get from our national mother, so to speak, right? Right, right, right. And this is one, this is Aero, Sarin and Miller's house, by the way, and obviously some deciduous trees here that get rid of their blossoms and their leaves. I mean, you know, trees get rid of their blossoms here too, but not to the deciduous degree that there is. So it's an international organization principally, but we're more tied to the national chapter, right, or the roof organization. If you become a member, you become a member of the national organization, and then you just belong to the Hawaii chapter and we do some pretty cool things in Hawaii. I think we're considered one of the most active chapters in the United States. Awesome. We're pretty proud of that. Awesome, you can be. And the next picture, still the question, who says that and are we legitimized to basically say that. This year's something that recently came out. It's a new travel guide series, as it says. It's by the Gustalten publisher, that sounds German, and it is, but they bring out books from places all over the world and cities they consider to be worthy of showing. And since this is a critical format, it has a chapter about architecture, but there's none of the current architecture on the island being featured. It's not considered to be cool enough. Not like mid-century modern stuff. No, exactly. So that is. So there's a whole chapter that features, for example, this building here. Can you describe what building that is? Well, now that I can see it, it's the NBC Arena building, and we've been kind of working with the city. Well, the city has been broadly trying to reach public viewpoint, which is good. And I think Doku Momo has come out strongly praising that, especially the kind of the spaceship arena, which is very mid-century modern and something people really can see immediately and really like. I think everybody has fond memories of it, as well as the concert hall, too. So it's the Belazel Arena complex. I think we just identified a potential topic for another show which is worth to do about that building, because it's rather controversially discussed if it needs to be updated or even replaced, which we said no. Because you can't build something these days anymore. The culture of developers isn't of that kind anymore that you would be able to do something like way back. That's our position, right? Right. And then it's not just the overall shape of that building or any modern building. I think they say the devil's in the details, but it's the details of those buildings that you've got. Absolutely. And if you guys go on this link to this monocle, we don't have the link to the website, but you can easily Google that and you find a little trailer, a YouTube trailer, and it shows that detail of these crazy little glass pieces. They're glued into this screen. Right. So this is speaking of which shrine. So the next picture is the beginning of us. What is that? And when was that? That was in 2012, right? Exactly. Yeah, 2012. Well, the chapter started out. We had done a modernism kind of context study for Historic Hawaii Foundation, and then that kind of brought together all these people who are interested in modernism because it wasn't quite historic yet, though everybody knew it was going to be. So anyway, and then somebody said, hey, we should do a Tokomomo chapter, and it just grew and grew. So we've been an all-volunteer group from day one. And there's a picture of the founding board members, us in front of which building? Of course. Everybody knows the IBM building, right? But of course, things to... That was basically before the board got founded, we have to say, but there were some thoughts from Howard Hughes to also say we can build higher and better on this lot. Right. And in the sense of Tokomomo, Howard Hughes was convinced to not do that. Right. I think that building was kind of created a little bit of a public outcry, but it helped Tokomomo form, too, because more people were interested now in modern buildings. And so, yeah, so they... Actually, that was going to be like a park. And then now I've talked to someone from Howard Hughes, and they said they were so happy that they saved the building, and they've been using it in their marketing because it's got such cool details and great motifs that they can use for their graphics. They learned something. Definitely. We should also say that this article of the Honolulu Weekly here was written by one of our first guests, and I consider him a co-host whenever he comes back and takes a seat. So Kurt Sandberg, almost activist journalist on the island, was also helping to spread the word. So next picture is what do we actually do, right? So you already volunteered. We actually have other jobs. Yes. You have been on a show two years ago for Jay because you're a very great architect and very vocal about voicing, progressive and also critical issues on the island. So we do this sort of after work, right? Right. And now we decided to do it every third Tuesday. Third Tuesday, we meet the board meet. So yeah, we've come a long way, I think, from the 2000. I think we just all got together 2011 at somebody's shop and just started developing from there. And every year we're getting progressively more organized and more financially solvent also. And so as the audience minds sense, we do a little bit of shame, less self-promotion here. Yeah. Right? So that picture number five. So we also use iconic places to hold our board meetings. We try to. Number five, what place is that? That is La Mariana. Exactly. What many consider the last tiki place on the island. Yes. And she saved a lot of tiki places from other buildings. Yeah. So what we do there, we sit and brainstorm and think about who could we bring in and pick their brains. And the next picture is one of the first people we identified. Who is that? That's Dr. Alfred Yi. He was an engineer actually. So he was involved in many, many mid-century modern buildings in Hawaii. He was a brilliant engineer. He's still around. He came and talked to us one day. So the talk stories were kind of thought of as a way to pull in these people who actually practiced during that period and talked to them because before, and many of them in the course of us contacting them to talk to us, they've either gotten sick or actually a couple have passed away. It's kind of unfortunate. But it's the nature of this. We want to get them why we still can while they're still around. And we take them and then we hope to someday put it up on the library. So the talk stories next picture are kindly hosted by Spacewise, a next picture by WCIT for the longest time. And sometimes when the people who are sort of the focus of the talk aren't around anymore, as in this case here, some of their partners are. We had that quite often, right? With Sid Snyder, partner of Osipov, and we had it with gentlemen who was partner with Killingsworth as well. Right, greedy, yeah. And this is another case here if you want to talk about that a little bit. So that's Don Gu. He was with Wimberley, Allison Tong and Gu. And Wimberley was one of the foremost mid-century modern architecture. He did a lot of resort and very flat, kind of, he did a lot of flamboyant stuff and he did a lot of like very cool, quiet mid-century modern stuff too. And here's a picture of Don Gu describing the hyperbolic parabola roof in Waikikiyan, which is no longer here. I admire how you said that because always I stumble over my tongue when I try to say that thing. Compliment for that. Thank you. So next picture is if you might become a member every once in a while, you get some nice emails of that kind. This is a screenshot of my phone a couple days ago. And what is that about? So this is our upcoming talk story event that will be held at WCIT conference hall again next week, Tuesday. And I'll let you talk about the person because you actually know. It's Davina Jackson. She comes all the way from Sydney, Australia. She's a scholar and interested in many things and also in someone who had an impact here on the island here. You see that little footnote in the middle, cost-free. So once again, we're a pro bono non-profit organization. There's a member fee. We were joking before the show. It's in the range of two meals, right? It's the annual fee. It's not a big deal. And you get a lot of fun. That's right. You get a lot of fun. Those talk stories, like you said, are free and open to the public. And actually we usually have wine and poo-poo's for people. So it's really fun. And this one should be really good because we'll actually have slides. Sometimes we sit and we talk to someone. And we do... When we don't get people to come to us, we actually go to people and places. So the next picture is an illustration of one of these events. Yeah. So every year, and the national does this, they have a national tour day. So we follow the national, which is usually the first or second Saturday in October, like around October 10th this year. I think it's October 7th. And we try to find a neighborhood that people can walk through and see a good handful of mid-century modern gems. And a good example is the next picture. And in that case, we're lucky to have one of the masters around. Yeah. We did Kapiolani. And we had Frank Haynes, who is now about 98. He talked about his building, which is the Ken Rock building in the back. And that's been in the news recently, too, where I think they want to develop that little gem. Yeah. So that's what we call a magnificent mile. And they're these little marvelous buildings. They're designed so well that they withstand the test of time that we say, and that makes it so unique and outstanding. After this show, we're going to take this little one-minute promotional break. And then we're going to be back with our president, Tonya Moi. And we talk about doko mo-mo-ing Hawaii. See you in a minute. Hello. I'm Crystal from Quok Talk. I've got a new show here. You've got to tune in. Check out my topics on sensitive, provocative, female issues. So Tuesday mornings, 10 o'clock, don't miss it. It's going to be fun and dangerous. Aloha. My name is Richard Emory, host of Kondo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. And our show is all about educating board members and owners about the responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. each week. Aloha. Aloha, Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner, and I'm inviting you to navigate the journey. We are discussing the end-of-life options, and we would really love to have you every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m. right here. So we're back to Tanya Moy's Dokomomo Wing, Hawaii. And the next picture shows who we're saying, when we go out to places, it's the walking tours. But there's also a sort of more member, not limited, but pretty much, events where we go out to architects, especially in case when they might not be able to come to us as much anymore. Right. And which event was this one here? So this one was, we went to Stephen Owl's house. Stephen Owl is an architect that did Ward Warehouse, as well as across the Street Ward Plaza. Exactly. And his house kind of resembles Ward Warehouse. But it was a really small house on the side of a hill, and parking was bad. So we really ended up making it a member's only event. So if you want to go to these really special events where we have to have a small crowd, then you should join. And if we can get the next picture, we see Steve and Irene here in their house touring us. And we want to promote here too, because as we have just heard last week that finally Howard Hughes has decided to move on and tear Ward Warehouse down. As you mentioned, we also want to do a photo docus of it. So we also do events called doco photos where we kind of know something is maybe endangered or sometimes we'll actually go to some place where it's not necessarily endangered, but we worry about it that people don't appreciate it. So we try to get the owners to appreciate it a little more, maybe. But if it's endangered, then we try to photograph it as best as we can with a little detail that people don't pay attention to always. And then the idea is that someday we're going to have this really active digital library for scholars and for anybody to use. We're working on it. Yes, we are working on it. We're all volunteers. And also I want to say that we're going to make a think tech show about Steve where we wanted to get him in, but he's so shy and humble that he says, no, I just want to be retired and left alone, which we respect. But his work is just too important to not spread the word. So DeSoto has a volunteer to do a show together with me. So we try to get materials where we're getting there so soon to be shown and featured. So many people can actually still go and check it out on their own. And keyword attention to detail, this picture is showing details in what circumstance. So we had a scavenger hunt which was also a doko photo event where people had to go and photograph anything that was from the original Ala Moana. So it was fun because it was hard to find a lot of the original parts. So people just it started at Design Within Reach and everybody just ran all through the mall to find something. So we had a lot of loyal partners and supporters for a couple of years. And attention to detail again, we try to encourage people through that to really get out and see that high modern which we already said was from the macro to the micro really great. And what we did here today is like we all chipped in with images and pictures we had from our archives. So this is a collage here and this is dedicated by Don especially. He recommended this to have my former co-host from my previous show Urban Transcendence Alia Mashta having joined us for one event and she is there's a German word for what she does that doesn't quite translate literally into the English language it's called Begreif, but the closest you can get is grasping. So really by touching and feeling you really understand you comprehend in a better way. And so 15 explains or lifts the secret which building that was. So Tonya, which one is that? So that's Macy's in Kailua well, formerly as we all remember it to be Liberty House and you can see in the corner on the right hand side there's that railing that still had LH in it. And unfortunately now that big sign is off as well. Yeah, I haven't been by so I'm either I heard things that they try to keep it and give it a new use but that's what we're actually about that maybe we can jump over maybe to picture 17 already that whereas sometimes it's just about documenting as long as it's there but we're actually more interested to be proactive rather than reactive so we try to go out and actually educate clients about what they have and the jewels that they have what they might not necessarily always know which was the case in this project here. I think this is our first doko photo event in fact so the bank I don't know if you can tell but there's all those incredibly beautiful ceramic tile work that was like a screen and the people in there were like oh it's so tired, oh it's so old so dated and of course all of us doko momos were like oh god it's so beautiful so they had already had their plan set so that's the unfortunate thing about when we find things out a little late we can't get them to change their minds but you know through that we were able to get those tiles and I have one we made them a little Christmas gift from members and they came in a big box and it's sitting in my office as a prime piece for craft and culture of mid-century modern which is like you can't do this or we don't do this anymore, you could you should, that's our motivation we don't want to just conserve, we want our mission but we want to actually encourage as they learn from the past for the future and so we also lift the secret which building that is so that's number 18 is the exterior and probably most people know that building but unless you bank there that interior existed I'm sure and I just drove by there and I took a peak inside because I haven't because I don't want to and I saw these three form pattern things that put on the wall the cool thing of the recent one it was performative because it was ornamental and look good but it had a practical function that the employees who had the offices behind got natural daylight in the head of you but one couldn't look inside now it's all walled off and her metasized which is really like a shame so please people listen to us earlier and we have the next picture is our we want to advertise and promote our next walking tour which we venture to the next level to do some inter-island adventures it's an experiment and this is the little chicken there gives a hint about where that might be yes although there's chickens lots of places now but I think but I think the place most known for it is Kauai and so we're going to be actually doing a walking tour of modern buildings in Lihue so it's an experiment we've never done a neighbor island tour before but we just felt Lihue has an extraordinary collection of you know really beautiful and important done by really well-known mid-century modern architects right within a walking distance so it's an experiment and actually we said we're going to either us or one of our colleagues is going to make another promotional show about that specific event we decided just before it and we go more through particular buildings this one is here is First to Wine Bank again on it and the next picture is another project there we will read soon which one that is yes it's a really gorgeous library very unique done by the same architect who did Liliha Library if people are more familiar with Liliha Library so very influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright architect so yeah and many of these typologies are endangered because libraries are a burden to the public funding right and the question is can we afford libraries and then there's more digital going on so especially some typologies are more vulnerable to become abandoned right than others and library is certainly one of them so it's pretty much raising awareness public awareness as a matter of fact one of Stephen Oya Kawas libraries in IEA has already it was abandoned well they're using it for storage still there but they're using it for storage so we're keeping an eye on that one too to see what may happen definitely we might want to switch back to number 16 which we have intentionally skipped over but it's a good moment to basically bring it back which gets us back to the beginning of the name about documenting what piece is that so that's a building that probably no one really notices we went through Pawa'a which is the area we started at Pagoda restaurant right so it's that kind of that area around there where they have a lot of low rises and a lot of office building so this was a building that really I don't think anybody notices and I it's got these release signs which I'm terribly worried about but it's very unique I mean if you look at that building right and you saw it as a photograph you've got to say it's a cool building but when you pass by it on Kallakawa Avenue you probably don't even think twice about it and that's actually very typical for that era right and it was good background architecture as of us today where everything wants to be in the foreground and it's also true for people right up to the president here in the United States it's all about here I am and I'm the best whereas these times were more humble more subtle and it was about kind of supported what it was either with supporting their store or their office or like when we when we go through we did another members event at another house which was a mid-century modern house and the thing it was very not really I mean it was very nice but it was what we noticed was there was a lot of places featured art so you know like that the residences from the mid-century modern really showcased art a lot and that was a great segue into are we getting to the end of the show the last picture because you talked about not so publicly accessible architecture which you hardly can get to right this is sort of we want to conclude the show with an image of that which is also a reference to how we always conclude every year yes right our Christmas party one of our main events here exactly where was that there was last Christmas just recently just month ago yeah just this past we it was actually at the museum Honolulu Museum I guess there whoever their director gets to live in this house and it's an Asipoff house well even have Christmas lights around there very cool all is super sweet but I mean and you know like I must say like are this this organization it's what's really cool is it is an all volunteer organization and you know it was put together in a couple of months including the furniture we had to bring in the furniture because they were in transition between directors and which was fortunate for us because that's how we got to have the party there but you know on the other hand we had to decorate the whole place and everybody came together for it and it's how we are it's inclusive so this is not just for members only it's people are welcome they buy a ticket but they're welcome and we have a lot of fun and with that having a lot of fun I had a lot of fun with you my dear friend and colleague in the show thank you for being our president and running us and doing all this because Honolulu and Hawaii needs that this is something that's really important and to be treasured and there we go and if anyone is interested please join us and you can email us if you want to find out more about anything at Dokomomo, Hawaii all spelled out at gmail.org no.com gmail.com you'll also find it as a link on the website we'll show it to you thank you so much Tonya again much appreciated thank you and do it without all the volunteers thank you