 about coffee. Okay, this is a human-humane architecture, and our principal guest is our principal host, Martin Desbang. He's an architect in Germany, with multiple offices in Germany, and he's a professor of architecture here at UH Manoa. It's great to have him on his show. Welcome to your show, Martin. Thanks, Jay. Thanks for switching things here. We're going to call this Coffee Counter-Culture Communication, CCCC, here on human-humane architecture. I want to talk about coffee shop design in the smaller context and in the larger context. So the first thing is, and I'm going to use the word gestalt instead of design, so what is good coffee shop gestalt, Mr. Architect? Well, first of all, maybe we should give the audience a little bit of a background where we are. So we're in Thanksgiving week here in Honolulu, and it's a little cold, for us, cold week, right? So it's a little breezy, little showers here and there. It gets as cold as it can. So what better can one do what we're doing here right now? Having a good warm coffee, a coffee table, some coffee table books, and communicating culture over coffee. Communicating culture over coffee. Yes. Coffee counter-culture communication over coffee. Yeah, counter might mean because we recently had an election, and ever since I'm thinking about when societies are in trouble, they need to talk more than ever before. And I remember my own culture, that other half of us Germans, that used to be in communist hands, and that was brought down peacefully by no blood spilled, and it actually happened because people were talking over coffee and other beverages too. It wasn't limited to. And so... Coffee is important. Coffee is important. Culturally important, and it's part of the human experience. But first, I mean, taking all that together, and I want to go to your book also, give me a definition of good coffee shop design or gestalt. Let's have picture number one to make that case. And we have pictures to make the case. Because this is something you remember actually, and it even says on top, Hawaii's most beautiful coffee house. So that's a statement, right? And having done some research, both of us, this is by one of my favorite Hawaii architects, Pete Wimbley. He was a Hawley guy who came here and was just like amazed by everything here, how different it is. And rather than super imposing where he came from, or uncritically sort of mimicking what he found, he was blending the two. Blending is a good term we know from the coffee business as well, a good blend. And from the human experience in general. So he was doing that. And if we show the other pictures, maybe number two as well, from Pete's coffee shop, there was a place that was iconic. Not only because of coffee being served there, but because of all that iconic design. This sort of blend of cultures, this kind of, here's a picture, must have been from the original days. It was built in the 60s. And it was unfortunate. It is not anymore, which is by the way the nature of, not necessarily if you make a building, then you should be more careful about tearing it down. But usually the kind of the duration, how long sort of, you know, interior design lasts is usually unfortunately only six years, then it gets torn down. Thinking about the waste that goes with that. But this place here, you know, used to be, sorry for being so blurry here. That was shortly before I think it got torn down. But there was something embodied. So the architect basically made an event and materialized and spatialized the event of, which is a pretty profane. I mean, drinking coffee is, you know, by itself, you know, it's just something basically keeping us basically hydrated. So you could say this is one of the basic needs of human beings, but but he cultivated that through architecture. And obviously, some people must have thought or maybe it was just branding. This is the most beautiful coffee house in Hawaii. How do you remember that? It was near where I lived at the time. And I'll tell you a little about it. And when you walked in, you could see, you know, the you could see the soaring lines of that of that capula there, whatever you call it. But basically, it was a it was a big counter and some tables, but mostly people went to the counter. And it was the Hawaiian style of all night, you know, open all night all day all night. They came there from everywhere. It was in the intersection between the community in general and the burgeoning Waikiki that was being developed at the time. And it had a parking lot, you know, Oh, for the good old days when restaurants had real parking lots. And people were there all the time. And they met there, you know, certain coffee houses have the power of magnetism. They draw politicians, they draw businessmen, they draw people who need to meet other people. It was a meeting place, Coco's. The food was, you know, it was okay. But all these could when this was not the only one, it was not called called tops. A few weeks, a few, a few miles away, a few blocks away. But but I think Coco's was the was the king of them all because of its size, its design, and its location. But it was a popular place. And it's too bad it was was lost. And I put to you the question of, you know, how you said 60 years is the useful life of the design six years, six years. Oh, my goodness, six years. Okay. Well, clearly, it came to an end. And I think that's because Hawaii was changing. And this kind of use of space, the large parking lot was a large restaurant, although I don't think there's many seats in there. Things have changed. And it was not the highest and best use. And so then there was a, I forget what it's called, Peter Morton's place was a restaurant there for a while, failure. And see, I don't even know what's over there now. I know what's over there now. It's the Hard Rock Cafe. Hard Rock Cafe. That's Peter Morton's place. Hard Rock Cafe. It was to me, I was never inside that place. I never thought much of it. And the Hard Rock Cafe is one of the most corporate, you know, things that you can find they're all themed basically the same. Well, they're maybe customized a little bit. They got the thing, the VW 181 in front of it, which says we're in Hawaii, we're surfing, but pretty much it's a corporate design that more or less looks the same. Certainly applies to this here as well to this device here, which we can find in that nature everywhere around the world. The color, the design, that term that we tried, it's appropriate for this because this is design, right, is more or less the same. And if we can look at picture number 11, you told me there was a story for each one of these. So before we go to number 11, what about Kokos? What's the story? Well, Kokos, I think if we still can go to 11 because it's part of the story. I mean, Kokos was what you just described, perfect description. We should make you teach architectural theory in our school, by the way. I learned everything I know from you, Martin. Learn from each other. So this coffee mug here, I'm not absolutely sure if it is actually from Kokos, but it's from one of these stores. You can see that is Gestalt, whereas this coffee mug here where we have on the table is design. This is branded pretty much. But that other coffee mug is made from scratch as an idea. Someone really emerged in the idea, okay, we're going to serve coffee in Hawaii so that coffee mug has to look exotic or cake. And also Hawaii. Exactly. And that was you can also call this and I think this was America was about in general, allow myself and I wish I would have been here at that time and you can tell me. But to me and Hawaii in particular, through these architects, these exotic architects was a total piece of artwork. I mean, the design and the culture in general reflecting or being reflected in body through design and human behavior and event was consistent at that time, right? I mean, there was a certain level of sophistication. I'm thinking about the other picture about JFK cruising through his then a year after becoming tragic Lincoln convertible through Kawa Kawa Avenue, right? And you can see the architecture of the pioneering 60s architecture on steroids. You can look at the people war and you look at the cars and you can certainly look at someone like JFK with don't want to go there into depth, you know, but it certainly was someone that Germans at that time looked up and said, Oh, this is everyone. This is a president. He's cool. And he was in an open car. Yes. There was his strength and ultimately his fatal weakness. But I remember seeing him, you know, a tool around Manhattan in an open car and everybody loved it. They stood there. They could actually see a president only a few feet away. It turned out to be his downfall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so we're looking at the message now. And what's emerging here is that the coffee mug and the coffee house makes you, among other things, want to have coffee. Mm hmm. Right? That's one thing. That's certainly true. Yes. That's certainly true for Starbucks, who is has geniusly invented the culture of Americans actually coming together in public, right? I mean, that that's a phenomenon. So they do that too. But they don't, they don't necessarily narrate their coffee shops. They don't tell stories. They don't get you. We have this coffee mark, you know, the Coco's coffee mark, let's just call it like that. That's something that makes you dream, right? That's that's seducive, right? This is like, oh my God, I feel like I'm in the jungle. Where's Tarzan? Where's Jane? You know, where's the hula girl? Right? You know, in those days, there were a lot of objects in Hawaii like that. Yeah. And you don't if you go into Starbucks, you don't have these feelings anymore, right? No. No, you feel like you're in corporate coffee. Exactly. Exactly. That would be coffee, corporate coffee, counterculture. That's five communications. That's five C's. Yeah, it's not the same thing what we're talking about. No. So go to another one now. Well, the other ones that we're sitting in right now, and another one actually, to that, my family, Ohana architectural business had the privilege to design for my hometown. And we're pretty much approached it like architecture. For us, this is bonds are architecture. The only difference to sort of like exterior architecture, you don't have to deal with a roof that you have to make leak proof, right? But everything else better be not decoration, not being surfacial, not being by the way coffee beans sort of taking pictures of a coffee bean and printing out a poster. There's that shop number five basically uses real coffee beans, the laminated between two panes of glass, they seeded in a bed of silicon transparent silicon and that silicon gives the aura for backlit LEDs that basically transition in the range from orange to red, very subtly. So only only if you see that sit there like for a longer time, you see that it's a color and it's a definition of your environment. And again, it goes to suggest to you that coffee is good, have coffee. This is your in a special place, a temple of coffee, if you will, which is dedicated and different than any other kind of retail or restaurant situation. Yeah, because we're dedicated here to coffee and coffee has a symbolism. And and when we come back from this break, I want to explore with you what that symbolism has come to mean, you know, in the last what 100 200 years, because it's not simple. It's a symbolism that's not simple. Oh, we'll be right back. Alright, for a very healthy summer, watch Viva Hawaii. We're here live on Mondays at 3pm. And we bring us like our best health coach Elena Maganto eat well and follow her tips. Viva la comida saludable. I'm standing in a demand and I want you to be here every Friday. Noon think tech Hawaii calm. What's the show be a pitiful way? Aloha. My name is Reg Baker. And I'm the host of business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcast live every Thursday from two to 230. We highlight success stories in Hawaii, of both businesses and individuals. We learn their secrets to success, which is always valuable. I hope to see you on our next show. Aloha. It's Martin and me talking about coffee. Coffee can counter culture communication. Together, we're examining the gestalt of coffee shops and will also me ultimately and very quickly. We'll get to exactly what all that means in our society today. Okay, but let's go through some of the other coffee shop designs you've done Martin, which are identified in your book. This is Martin's book. Not kidding. Look at the book. Look at that. I'm showing you the side because I want you to see how thick the book is. It has lots of stuff about coffee shop and it is called best of coffee shop design, which I would say makes Martin an expert in coffee shop design. And we have him right here on Think Tech. Thank you, Mark. Yeah. And why don't we then only because you make me because I didn't want to show them, but you make me one and you're the host today. So you I better do. I'm the guest. Absolutely. So number five is is a close up of that coffee shop with with the beans. And there's also the beans we have to struggle with like, there should be tasting little things and they the way they have that before they look like urns, like someone got good to do that. Someone got got cremated, you know, and you don't want to you don't want to dig into that. So we that was a detail how we did that. And the next pictures number six is is a certain Cody coziness kind of caves creating caves that metal mesh is elusive to that beautiful sky in the areas where they grow in Costa Rica and in Africa where they grow coffee you got that glowing sky that gives the bean the aroma. So it's elusive to that. And this guy you can sit as you can see here. It also looks like you're inside the bean. Yeah. Yeah. That's like you could have named the shop inside the bean. Have a mind didn't have didn't have control over that was the client. So this is sort of the how it all comes together. The floor itself is one of my research areas. It's firmly modified wood. So you heat wood up. So you almost like roast wood. So this is a synonym to roasting a bean roasting the wood. Next picture. And this is in in a partly indoor area here. I hate to say it's a mall and I would have never thought I would ever design in the mall because I don't want to support it. That's what's happening though. It's happening but we still wanted to even though there is a roof there is a sky. We gave it additional skies and this is that metal mesh. It sort of cocoons you it gives you some kind of enclosure but it's still open enough so you feel the breeze. You can do this outside here in Hawaii. It's another element isn't it. It's it's tasting the coffee wanting the coffee a special place for the coffee but it's also it's it's cocooning you. Yes. It's giving you a little privacy a certain quality and intimacy. Very much. Perfect architectural criteria. So you get you get the job to be a theory teacher and history teacher. So this one is the predecessor of the other one. This is the first one we did. And later on I'm going to show a container for for coffee that I grew up with because where I where my parents rented a space at the ground for there was a coffee shop that went bankrupt. And so we acquired these containers that's on image 14. And so I grew up with these containers and had this ambivalent sort of to the right at this ambivalent relationship. What you see as beans is just a fake front it's empty behind or filled with coffee beans and I was throwing pennies in there and driving my parents crazy. So I liked it as a child when I was in architecture school I started to not like it anymore because it was too nostalgic for me and I wanted to be a modernly trained architect only later to come back and revisit that and back to maybe we go to page 12 to then make this make this back sort of piece of furniture out of it where where these openings these alcoves these caves are clad with very simple off the shelf sheet metal brass sheet metal brass. And so I'm going to the what you see there this this this color that matches perfectly your the white in your shirt jay right the crema color the crema that lay that lay color is vinyl. This is probably one of the most sort of materials that no one would use if you have a choice right your landlords puts this in your bathroom if he wants to be on the cheap side right we say there is no bad material you can basically cultivate vinyl and that's what is we were we're operating on a very tight budget that counter you see there you know I had never designed a coffee shop before that and we like to take on things that we've never done because then we're young and fresh and open to things once I looked at that way Martin I try once I looked up what a counter costs a new counter that would have eaten all the budget. So I asked the client who inherited that coffee business shop business from his father and they said the old one is in storage and the old one was from the good old days. See all this sort of glass thing and we basically gutted that stripped it down to its bones and essence and we reclad it. So it's by repurposing. I get two things I want to stop you with one is it seems to me that there's there's two opposing forces in all of these designs. One is the pedestal of the coffee making experience where the staff is there the counter is there whatever form it is where the food and coffee is there where the signs are there the shelving behind all of that. That's on one side it's divided by the counter it always is. Starbucks. I think Starbucks is calling now. It could be they're calling for coffee. And and the other side is the seating side and the seating side often faces the production side. So you have this kind of dichotomy. That's one thing I think that's probably so in most of these designs. It is in this one for sure. The other thing is furniture. We haven't talked about furniture but you know you have got to be selecting the furniture shops and the furniture has to offer a certain quality of experience. What does it have to offer Martin? So I make this difference between these days you would select the furniture out of catalogs and buy it. In the old days that we look so much up to the Pete Wimbley days with these coffee mugs everything was custom designed by the architect. So all the furniture you basically most of the furniture you see in these coffee shops were designed by us and that goes back we could we should probably be inclusive when we talk about coffee there's some tea drinkers who we don't want to alienate. Fair is fair. So there's one of the most beautiful tea places tea shops I've ever seen is in Glasgow by the arts and crafts master Charles Rennie McIntosh. I mean the level of detail sophistication everything is custom designed because these people make talking total piece of artwork we include the culinary part so when you are proud serving a quality product you want to do that in a space that it lives up to that to that level right. Let's let's let's go there now let's go there now. So coffee shop is more than coffee and it's more than the Danish in the coffee shop and it's it's more than the furniture and it's more than the presentation it's more than the cocoon-like intimacy or anything like that. The coffee shop is a place to communicate to talk it is essentially a kind of public space you know and you have to achieve an environment that allows people to talk talk freely talk for a long period of time to exhaust their thoughts to talk frankly to take on it is part of the democratic process tell me about it. It is and if we can get pictured 17 which is a perfect illustration of that this comes from another country culture from France right where that's pretty much in most and you've just been in Portugal which is not that much different there and that's the culture of basically people sitting outside all the time sitting there a lot it's not about processing people through there's one conspiracy theory about the corporate coffee the ones which is called Starbucks that they they chill it so down to zero temperatures in there so people leave and new ones come in and buy again because otherwise people sit there all day which is great for communication and culture but bad for business but the people are smarter they actually go and buy winter clothes that you usually don't need in Hawaii but there they come in handy right of course so so it's about that but going back to that picture number 17 yeah it's really about what you say it's about cultivating communication and the space we're in is either supporting that or basically handicapping that so that's the platter you for good coffee shop design it is not contradictory to business because if it's designed well people identify better they feel better they get stimulated through design and then basically they're gonna you know if they not stay longer but they come back they come off because they can identify with a place you know but your point is well taken about say Starbucks or standard corporate American coffee shop they don't want you to be there a long time in the traditional in the kind you're designing and the kind in Paris they want you to be there as long as you want to be there you can spend an old day there for a cup of coffee it really doesn't matter you can leave your empty cup there for hours and hours the waiter will not trouble you about that this is a beautiful part of the coffee shop culture but the other thing is that while you're there and meeting people meeting people is a big part of it yeah and having this exchange you're actually engaging in a civic process you know it goes back to ancient Rome it goes back to what's his name Michael Kimmelman in public spaces he's an architecture critic for the New York Times which we should have one here we should have him here soon and you know the human condition especially in a large community requires the opportunity for you to enjoy your neighbor enjoy other people in the non non intimate space yes of a public space yes and too frequently in our time and we are evolving away from public spaces it takes a struggle that's what Michael Kimmelman was all about to come back to public spaces and build public spaces that are interesting and so forth and i suggest to you that a coffee shop is a public space it's an extension of a public space it is part of what old Rome ancient Rome was talking about in terms of developing real real interaction between its citizens it is i mean it certainly has the touchy part of the commercialization of communication right so you got it but i have to and i never thought i would get credits to the corporate but i have to say the the starbucks that was on and now it had moved because they're remodeling that on seaside and coheal that big financial center what's that calling and they're remodeling that there was a starbucks in there and that starbucks was the the neighborhood in the living room of many people who otherwise would be would be on the street and they were tolerated and sipping there on two iced teas which is the cheapest and they became part of the community and they were not alienated they were not told to leave to make place for you know more uh you know higher paying customers so i have to say maybe because our public civic responsibility is failing providing spaces like that maybe the corporate had to step in you know intentionally or accidentally i don't know i hope they see it the same way it's just an observation so well let me offer that you know in our time especially uh in in the new administration to follow on january 20th we have to have communication interaction between our citizens we have to return to the kind of democracy people talk to each other developed and expressed opinions and all that this has been you know all the world over a place you know food and drink and especially drink like coffee call it a convenience drink if you will but it can right rise to great quality um it's you know essential part of the of the human condition but i give you this and i'd like you to respond to it just as easily as we can have that positive roman experience of public spaces in coffee places oh there's a great name we can we can also we can also we can also plot and scheme and plan crime and conspiracy and and revolution and all manner of really bad things in coffee shops so how do you respond to that just as it can be a positive experience for the human condition it can be a negative one can it um certainly can but i'm putting we started with the c's and we're closing with the d's i put design slash gestalt and democracy i think i think talking is never a bad thing you can talk about bad things or you can have bad manners and talking but once you talk you already dissolve the problem because you said before you you share with me you don't believe in social media where you actually don't you might talk but you don't communicate so communication is key as they say and we can facilitate that architecturally and spatially and we want to just the show should i haven't brought anyone here who is actually you know has the best coffee shop on the on the island because we want to encourage and maybe not the corporate one but the little coffee shop owners to basically you know uh take take a risk and uh there are lots of talented not me that's what we need young architects here who can basically make this a great project great art form right and you know the great challenge and i leave you with this martin the great challenges architecture is uh it affects your your mood your environment it speaks to you um you interact with architecture and it creates perhaps an environment for you to think in and maybe if we can only do this maybe you can do this we can get the architecture and these coffee shops to help you think positively whoa there is a challenge i know you can do it thank you we will do it thank you j thanks for the excellent uh food for thought over this Thanksgiving coffee