 to have you back for what happens to be our 220th show on human-humane architecture on Fink Tech, Kauai. And you might be close to be our 12,000s viewer. Isn't that exciting? So we are also in our, this is our Veterans Day Week edition. So couldn't be more appropriately that one of our panel members here from Live With Us from Long Beach, California, Ron Lindgren, hi Ron. Hello. So we celebrate you because you went to Vietnam for us back then and so thanks for that and we honoring you and all your comrades. But you wearing multiple hats because we have you with us here just as much as the leisure leg and legacy of having designed the most intriguing hospitality design projects in Hawaii and beyond all over the world. And we also have from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu his employment place, the Soto Brown, hi to Soto. Hello everybody. And we have me, your host, Martin Despeng. Would you wish being close to Munich and Germany half around the world? So let's get up the first slide because we are in the volume two of our show in looking how your fine project, the Holly Kalani Ron has turned out and in fact survived after its remodeling which has been going on for the past year. But we wanna frame this with the all German but adopted by you guys a term of zeitgeist and I've been using the model of the Holly Kalani a management who said the remodeling was under the sort of guidance or model of shades of white. So that somehow when I started to give different shades of white to that slogan there it kind of seemed zombie to me and this is something I wanna point out as kind of the point of discussion about the zeitgeist. We agree that you can only identify a zeitgeist after the fact but let's try the almost impossible to being in a time and imagine how one would look at us when you look back. And we wanna do this because in many shows or the recent past and ongoing we identify the phenomenon of basically well you can depends on how you wanna call it but we call it the pandemic of guest room remodeling intervals that as our exotic escapism expert Susanne keeps telling us that every seven to 10 years all the hotels seem to swap out all the interior throw it all away and make it all new so it looks novel and people would look in. So let's contemplate about this guest room here that we have in front of us Ron and you gave it a lot of thoughts so jump at it. Yeah, the first time I saw this particular image which is an advertising image that very first quick impression was I would say a tastefully designed and comfortable space within what is a rather ordinary standard size guest room module. Now that sort of sounds like damning with faint praise and it is for me because when I looked closely at the photograph and studied it it appeared that the room is so genetic in appearance that the design gives absolutely no indication of where this might be located. And I mean in the world either physically or culturally or climatically I couldn't find any hint of where I might be in the world. Now this design follows along a sort of unhappy temporary tendency that I've observed in hotels in the last decade or so where guest rooms no matter where they're located their interior designs have become sort of homogenized and you might also say gentrified and the sameness is bothersome to me. I guess if that throw that's shown on the end of the bed was like an American Indian blanket I might have guessed that it was in the American Southwest. Martin with all the wood that appears in the room you had some thoughts on where this room could have been located. That might be in the Pacific Northwest where we have abundance of like light colored woods bruiser pine but I'm also assuming along with a blanket there is carpet on the floor so it must be a really cold place might be in the Rockies somewhere, right? Who knows? Maybe we find out later down the lines of the show. Should I interject something here or should we just keep going? Well, I was gonna say we do have to let people know that this photograph has been altered. The original picture has had something taken out of it by Photoshop. So that thing that was removed is what really shows you where this hotel room is but I also wanted to add that I always find hotel rooms very cold wherever I am I mean physically cold in temperature and I will try to adjust the temperature to make it less cold and it usually doesn't work. So regardless of where I am in the world I usually have to use those nice thick comforters on my bed to stay warm at night and it's possible that this place is like that too. It might be. And I think in sort of respect of when you have there's lots of generic places I mean no offense any place in the world is things that's unique and it probably has some uniqueness of course every place is different, right? But as far as what you look at from your hotel room there's probably many places where you're just looking at interstates and freeways or whatever, right? So you want to basically distract from that and you want to overload the hotel room which was one of your criticisms wrong, right? There's so much, there's too much there's just an over celebration of the TVs and we're just saying, you know, Rockefeller when he was doing the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel he was saying no TV in there not to distract from the real gem which is the view, the beautiful view and that lasted supposedly for 30 years that mandate of no TV in there. While here not only is there this huge TV hung on the wall but they make this sort of huge wooden canvas to even overly celebrate and emphasize that, right? So again, if you wouldn't have given us a hint to sell it once again this seems to be in a really generic location because they did such an effort to not make you look at that sort of very boring context there because they want you to feel good in the hotel room when the hotel, so they, you know they want to keep you happy in the room because it's boring outside. And I have to say that again in looking at that image originally I felt that there was that sort of preponderant use of built-in fixed case goods gave a kind of institutional aura to the room in that the first thing I thought of when I saw this was that it was a very upscale college dorm room. There is such a thing as warmth and solidity and elements in the room that are there I think there's just too much there there. For example, when you've called out the slightly protruding wall that is a backstop for a TV and a dresser that is at least three times larger than it needs to be for someone coming to Hawaii as far as their clothing needs. And across the room was a very direct decision to use a platform style bed. Now, and inherently with that sort of bed it can't help but sit solidly and I think too heavily on the floor. And that's my comment about the dorm-like aspects that caught my attention. Exactly. So not to spend just one show on just one slide although this discussion would make it well worth it. Let's jump to the next slide and let's open it up and redirect it back to your project Ron. But once again frame the zeitgeist context. We're talking 80s. We threw in at the middle on the right Doco Momo posted of the 1970s turning 50 which has happened now but we're saying give it eight to nine years then we're gonna face this with the 80s and what's gonna be our attitude? And postmodernism which is the attribute of the time means different things to different people as for you DeSoto and that's what the show quote in the center the little one stands for you, it was Memphis. You Ron at the beginning of the year had been talking about Phillip Johnson's iconic postmodern high rises and in a show that we called Honolulu Miami Vice versa we've been looking at this most sort of schizophrenic and you might even call it bipolar example of architect Tonica who were doing a hermetic microwave international style glass high rise on another tropical beach in Florida and then basically pimping it or decorating it with these colorful little gimmicks there and the most dramatic is that shotgun hole that we're shooting through it, right? We see you Ron at the very, you can barely see but I wanna point out at the show quote picture at the bottom right at its bottom left corner is you sitting there looking at a building that reminded us of that architect Tonica building and you mind repeating what your comment was Ron? Well, I've started to admire a lot of the architect Tonica work because some of it is very zany in a good sense and I found that particular high rise with the hole in the middle and the hole actually is a pool terrace up in the sky to be a really good joke but the building we're looking at in Hawaii which was an attempt to be zany, I don't know I just found it to be a failed bad joke. Absolutely. And next slide, postmodernism is an iffy thing especially for the ones who had their prime era in it as far as their life, like me for example I went to school when postmodernism had just tanked but it was still lingering around so I have a really ambivalent attitude which could stay my problem but other people my age have the same problem and even the next generations Bill Chapman for example, who basically gave you I think one of the best compliments you can ever get Ron is that he called you if not one of the if not the best postmodern architect and that basically really means something and I think this picture we took recently is really a great because it shows to the left the lures house that you renovated in a really sort of a critical way not historically correct but interpretively and then on the right side we see that part of the hotel that is by its problematic nature introverted and hermetic which is all the conference room where you don't get natural daylight you don't get natural ventilation and you basically kept that very honestly just a blank wall didn't pimp it, didn't decorate it but then you put this performative lanai in front of it and that one I find once you are very collegially respectful with your postmodern peers which thank you for that but for me still postmodernism will always stay ironic or polemic or sarcastic in some way which you have never been but this is a detail that speaks for your attitude being humorous and eye-winking I find this a perfect the best collage of that I've ever seen in postmodernism but we also see at the very bottom right show quote there was something distinct along with it and these were draperies slash curtains and let's go to the next slide and make you miss something, Ron. Yeah, of course I give great credit to hotel management and their design team in the sense that on the columns of these porticoes or porches wherever they appeared the custom lighting all in a beautiful bronze by a very fine designer Leslie Will they all remain and there wasn't some attempt to upgrade the lighting there was a recognition that there was a timelessness about these fixtures and the quality of light that they do provide but and then on the columns and you can see other little dribs and drabs of bronze items and they actually held some draperies against the columns these were a sort of specially treated canvas drapery that required no maintenance it's a legacy of wonderful interior designer Robert Egan and they didn't occur very often they occurred on this porch in front of the conference rooms and the ballroom above they occurred in the pedestrian entry pavilion which is shown behind your image Martin on that slide and they're not there and my hope of course is that because all of the the fittings that they are just to rehang them that they will be rehung because they were such a wonderful and again a kind of an eye-winking blurring of the distinction between indoors and outdoors and then they added the all important residential touch and scale to what is billed as for a hundred years the house befitting heaven, please restore them. Exactly, let's just get into the benefit of doubt and say they're only in the dry cleaning still, right? Or by now they're back. I hope that's the case and I want to say too that they add a little bit of warmth and a little bit of softness to an environment which is largely hard and concrete and terrazzo and elegant and nice but that little bit of movable fabric I think is a very important touch in an otherwise fairly austere setting which is one of the things I think it's very beautiful about the Holly Kulani is that it is so stripped down and it does becomes very elegant. Yeah, and that's setting. Let's go to the next slide and look at that courtyard space here. We surprised you in last week show Ron in telling you that you're a like-minded fellow soul from Daryl Hall and Joan Oates and I'm a proud owner of one of their live DVDs that was recorded in LA, which is your town, Ron. And so in the opening of a song, they basically say to each other, nothing has changed in here, man. And that is exactly how I feel about what we see here, Ron, right? And elaborate on that one as the creator of it. Yes, one of the things that can humanize any sort of space is when things are moving in it. DeSoto mentioned the fact that the canvas drapes did move slightly in the wind and that enlivens things, but here's a version of tropical elegance that I've always admired in terms of the Holly Kulani's president's choice that he did not follow up ideas that were pressed on him. Very, very, well, a number of landscape architects thought that spaces created in the Holly Kulani should be filled with this sort of jungle-like version of tropicality, which can, of course, be very beautiful and some of it is even sort of self-maintainable. But the opposite of that is what Chuhei Okuda, the president, loved so much. He went to other hotels around the islands, but he fell in love not with the hotel, but he fell in love with the Ihulani Palace and the lawns around it, but especially the moving, ever-moving shadows of palm trees on stretches of lawn. For a hotel, of course, those stretches of lawns or courtyards, as we've described them, are also outdoor rooms used functionally. The one we're looking at at the moment, facing back towards the pedestrian entry, is a wonderful setting for literally hundreds of Hawaiian weddings every year that have been held at the Holly Kulani. Yeah, and that being said, let's go to the next slide, because the wedding, the broom and the bride, they actually process up this element here, which is a staircase that's just in the corner of, the right corner of what we just wore before. And this way, we also return to Leslie Wheel and one of her chandeliers. That is, again, as you've been sharing with us, a beautiful, interpretive way of a mixture of tradition and modernity. And if we go to the next slide, which shows the similar, it's exactly the same architectural detail, but in the opposite corner, because this is opening up to the other courtyard here. And these are, Ron, our favorite spaces and places, at least in the public areas there. And we've been, I've been spending significant amount of time contemplating in these and just sitting on the stairs. And as the show quote on the previous slide on the top right was pointing out, we've been there together. And these always struck me as being so ambitious and being so playful. I mean, I've been seeing these being just suspended and hung from the ceiling. And when the winds pick up, they're like swing and swing in the wind like crazy. And I don't know if you want to push something like that in these days with all this paranoia of liability and lawsuits and safety and stuff like that. I'm not sure if you could do this as well as the light systems in there seems to be still light bulbs, right? And maybe they have been switched. There are ways to make LEDs look like light bulbs, but that would mean even more. They're really staying true and sticking to the original. And so really cool to Peter Shantlin and the management and really recognizing that and not saying, oh, there is this expanded metal. And by the way you told us it's brass, by the way, and that sort of expanded metal, maybe that's out of style, it's out of date. We need to refresh that. So let's go online, let's go to the newest catalog and see what most people like and do that. They resisted that temptation and that takes a lot, right? I was going to say that it was a wonderful opportunity for me to work with a lighting designer who looked at the context, the architectural context and made very architectonic light fixtures. And of course, the interior designer for the hotel was also an architect, not an interior designer. His interior design work, which was considerable, was secondary to his architectural work in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah. And I just want to add something about this. And let's go to the next slide. And how many of you have final slides? Okay, one more thing too, what you see in the background. Oh, you can stay on that one, keep going this photo. Okay, the thing that you see in the background of that picture, which we saw in the previous picture, which is really exceptional for the Holly Kulani and Ron is, to be thanked, is the open space, which is astonishing and unique for Waikiki Hotel right on the beach. And that the Holly Kulani has this space and that you can use this space and that you can go there for cocktails in the evening and look across the lawn is an amazing thing, which really sets the hotel apart. Ron, you resisted the temptation to fill the entire property with buildings. Thank you, because that's what makes this hotel so wonderful. Partly, I was really guided by the fact that I did see a scheme previous to mine of what the Holly Kulani might have been. And of course, in the simplest sort of way, that scheme, which was rather handsome, was another 30 story tower, which was a maximum height you can go, sitting next to the Sheraton. And yet that immediately guided me to the fact that let's tear that down, put it into pieces and emphasize space, precious space and public space and useful space, not only to have a wedding on, but just to look at for sheer beauty as the palm tree shadows play across the lawns. Yeah, what an opportunity I had and I could have blown it and I don't believe I did. You didn't. You did not, we agree. And let's do one more slide or final slide, next slide because if you proceed from the staircase and actually this is between the two staircases, this is rather, once again, like you said, it's sort of generous outdoor space for these gatherings, predominantly weddings. And we have this sort of roll of chalkboards up there that give us an idea about the tradition of this very sort of killings worthy Lindgren, Strickler, Wilson starting with Brady even at the very beginning, but you guys developed it actually to full fruition is that sort of architecture integrated landscape through these planter troughs and starting from the top left to the top right, we insist to still call it seaside hotel not rebranded to the shoreline, still has it. The Ihilani has it in this sort of where the gym is, but unfortunately the troughs on the exterior of the hotel are currently without of plants at least in the atrium, every other floor still has them. The Manalani in the recent $200 million renovation they threw it all out pretty much and de-jungleized it. And if that wouldn't be enough, your beautiful Kapalua Bay hotel is entirely gone. So given that kind of tragic background again, kudos and thank you, Halekolani, to having retained that. And once the plants just like in your front yard which we talk about in a couple of volumes ahead of us of this show here, once this green is back, it's actually camouflaging the guardrail. So it's the absence of architecture and the presence of nature. So how much, how more fitting could it be for the tropics? I must say too, then, so many hotels, not only are those that were designed in the Killingsworth office did provide some trough like features and it seems like management decides that they are too expensive to maintain. And yet I make the rejoinder that this hotel room you're staying at might cost $400, $500, $600, $700 a thousand dollars a night and you can't afford to maintain some tropical landscaping. I just find that completely bewildering and it cuts away from the tropical experience you're having and that you are expecting and is everywhere in Hawaii when it's allowed to happen and to be maintained. All right, so with that, we're at the end of how far we can go and get today but we will continue our flannuring through the recently remodeled Halekolani designed by Iran and we're increasingly optimistic that nothing has changed man as Darrell Hall, I think was saying it to John Oates. So with that, I'll see you back for that for our continued scavenger hunting in your hotel, Ron and until then, please stay as erotically, tropically exotic as you did with your design, Ron. Thank you and thank you, Peter Shantlin of Having Kept It. Have a good week, happy Veterans Day, Ron everyone else protecting us and see you next week. Bye bye.