 Fantastic to have you back for what happens to be our 232nd episode of Think Tech Hawaii's Human-Humane Architecture and we're broadcasting once again with our Transcontinental Triumvirate Triangle back to Honolulu, Hawaii with DeSoto Brown in his Bishop Museum. Hi DeSoto. Good day to everybody. And we have back our mid-century and concluding that century mid-century modern master Ron Lindgren in his Long Beach, California. Hi Ron. Hello everyone. And would you wish so me, Martin, this bang back near Munich, Germany. So we're going to continue to look at recent trends of high-rise dwelling back in Hawaii, in Honolulu, on our island of Oahu. And we bring up the first slide for that, which is just reminding us of last week concluding with the newest, what prides itself to be the first residential, as they call it, mixed-use development in Waikiki in 20 years, the Liliya. And we just want to remind us the framing of what we're talking about in the middle there, the three main challenges of man and woman kind in these days are a virus, which we have the COVID coronavirus, we have climate change, and we have civility in a multitude of ways. And one of them is the struggle for social equity. And while this project here is a rental project, which is good, there's also the issue of home ownership, which if I remember correctly is one of the things that Americans once promised everyone of their people and saying, you know, the right of shelter, the right of owning a home. And Ron, you want to give us a little update on that one where we are regarding that in these days? Yeah, I find it fascinating to see what's being built across the United States and in the program in Hawaii in response to the very critical lack of affordable housing in the United States. It's almost all just because of the simple supply and demand problem. Right at the moment in the entire country, there are only 790,000 single-family homes. That means both those on the ground in separate buildings and those in high-rises that are even available. That's the lowest supply count in modern American realty history. And obviously, that makes the price skyrocket. And worst of all, it cuts off people from first-home ownership. It almost makes it impossible for them, despite the low mortgage rates. Right now, for example, in the United States, the average median home price is $417,000. That's an astonishing 25% increase over the last year. In one year's time, 25% increase in cost in buying a house. For you in Hawaii, the average median price is $920,000 per single-family home. In my home county of Los Angeles, it's $570,000. And in San Francisco, which can only be visited, but never lived there anymore, it's a really remarkable $1,542,000 average median home price value. And what that means is that half of the houses cost more than that in San Francisco. The other half cost less. Obviously, the answer to this problem is building a lot of new housing, which is much needed. But the problem is that we've got the same increase in costs in land, labor, and lumber, which makes it very unlikely that the stockpile of affordable housing is going to improve at all in the near future. For example, even last year, what little new housing was built, only one in five of those homes cost less than $300,000 to build. And so amongst the social inequities that we experience in our country, housing insufficiency and living in a dignified manner in one's own home is part of that inequity. Yeah, and I'm sorry to report, and that gets us to the next slide that half around the world, and this makes it a global problem, we're facing the same, especially in the large cities and our metropolises of not just our capital city, but the other largest cities as Munich, for example, where I'm reporting from. And the other half that gets us to America, which is Frankfurt that we will talk about, we have the same issues. We're talking about a million euros and the exchange rate isn't significantly more to mention between the euro and the dollar right now. We're talking about the same thing. So this makes us feel unsafe, right, pretty much. And to secure us again, we're getting together, we're actually here in Munich having over the weekend, the world's largest security conference that gets a lot of the leaders in the world together. We have the power of women, Camilla Harris, Vice President of the United States, attending on behalf of the United States of America. And shown at the bottom right here in the show quote, we have the President of the European Commission, Miss Fundaline, attending. And we had been talking about how both relate to architecture in many shows, some of them as you see show quoted here. So this pretty much will lock down downtown Munich over the weekend. We have 3,500 police officers basically securing us, securing the security conference. So talking about the other metropolis, because you put probably not considered Munich a metropolis because it doesn't have that high rise skyline, that we have next slide please. And the other city that the other hub is you want to get out of Germany to America, it's not Berlin yet. We built a new airport, but that has to still do some little more training of working. It's open now, but that's a whole different other story that we don't want to get to here. But this slide here basically shows us revisiting that high rise, that main high rise metropolis in Germany that we have. And we've been referencing to that when we're first looking into the project that we look at revisit today, which is the Coula of Howard Hughes in Kakaako. When we looked at that the first time about two and a half years ago, when it was in the planning stage, we were also reporting from above and beyond the horizon of the Pacific Ocean here half around the world. And we're seeing that the Germany's largest residential tower was under construction that you see at the very top right. And when we recently went to Frankfurt again two and a half years later, which you see at the very bottom right, the one in the middle there just above the head of the train is basically that tower. And that one is completed. And as much as what most of us remember to be the most innovative high rise in the mid 90s was Norman Foster's Commerce Bank that we were shocked when we were doing our research that it's been recently renamed the Samsung tower. So it's been bought by Samsung. But never mind, we still remember it as a beacon of the attempt of biochlametics and sustainability in high rise construction. And in some way this high rise here is living up to this legacy because it's not just adding a dwelling to a city that's otherwise dominated by working, but it's also having something that you just sort of we said every building in a wise should have. And what is that? It's a Lanai and that's something that we're going to be seeing a little bit more of and a Lanai as we have defined it. And Ron, as you've pointed out, the word should truly be applied to an outdoor room, meaning like a living room, a big space. A Lanai as we now know it attached to a high rise building in many cases does not fulfill the real meaning of the word. And we're going to see that as you Ron have pointed out, it's actually something like a Romeo and Juliet balcony, meaning it's just a prop for someone to stand on and, you know, call to her boyfriend down below because there's no space to do anything else. Yeah, and a little bit on the on the sad side here. The architect of this innovative building who is of my generation had been passing away around the time we were first reporting about it two and a half years ago. He also some parallels he's from the town of Bremen that I did my first teaching gigs. And then he worked after graduating for who used to be my professor in school and who I also worked for in his Hanover office. And who also passed away is you see it's building it's most iconic building in Frankfurt, you see that at the very bottom right just the fairground tower, the Mesa Tower by Helmut Jan, German born architect who made his career in America and particularly in Chicago, who also passed away too early at your generation's age, Ron, and he was run over by two cars when he was on his bicycle. So both unfortunately passed recently, and equally sort of typologically on a sad note, you see the buildings left and right of this innovative residential and I arise, not having one eyes. So unfortunately, not so much continuing that picking up the traditional foster and carrying that on. And next slide. More said use on that side to the bottom left is looking at the commerce bank that we insist to still call it versus Samsung. And that one is from the Mind Tower. The Mind Tower is by the who used to be my professor in school, Peter Schweger, that he basically built the next to the commerce bank. And the very recent developments we see going on around the commerce tower is at the very top left, which is by B. I. G. Bjarke Ingels, our Scandinavian colleague. And how did how did that come across to you guys that project? Well, it looks to me, you pointed out before we were on the show that it looks like kind of a nasty reference to 9 11 and a building being struck by an airplane. To me, it looks like a stack of something like dominoes in which you are going to hit the center part out and you hope that when the next one falls, it will stay straight, but it did not. So it looks like it's about to fall down. Obviously, it's not going to fall down. Things like this to me are interesting and quirky, how utilitarian they are and how functionally are is a different subject. But as you pointed out, this does designate a residential section of the building versus offices which are above and below it. So it is a visual reference to how the building has a mixed use. Yeah. And it seems a little bit pregnant to me. Oh, well, yeah. So yeah, Bjarke being a clever disciple of his master Ramkoas again justifies this not just formally, but by the sort of buzzword of mixed use and again, adding dwelling to working. But again, did that really need this sort of immense structural gymnastics here? We leave this up for you guys to further reflect on and discuss. And the other Scandinavian colleague here from up north from here, Ben van Berkel, with his UN studio, he develops, this is just off the grounds, the foundation words are four towers and then very inspirationally, the project is called four four. And it also uses the buzzword of mixed use and saying it contains of, you know, it's comprised of dwelling units and offices and somehow daylight has played a role in there. But in all honesty, again, given what fostered it in the mid 90s, guys give us a break, right? You should have been way more post fossil at this point. So I'm afraid to say it's probably more in the tradition of at the second from bottom right, which we have reported on that will pricks from co-op hillbillow had built the European Central Bank, which we basically have to careful analysis called fossil formalism. Also, we shed a light on ethics and architects and Putin here, and him working for Putin. And Putin is by the way, of course, our main concern as far as the world security. And that ironically made him excuse himself to not being participating in the world security conference that we're holding here in this town. Wolf had also left us with a rather, you know, silly attempt of responding to the great fry auto going to banish Olympics from now half a century ago built in 72. So we're going to have the 50th anniversary of that one with his BMW world, which you see at the second from bottom left. And we have back to Helmut Jan, the tallest and most recent high rise we indeed have in Munich is what you see at the bottom right that I took very early in the morning, driving the students out to show them the Olympics. And that one basically is part of an ongoing, which they call host the butter, so a debate about how tall, you know, Munich should grow. So next slide. I let you guys tell us what then maybe is the most innovative around phosphorus innovative beacon from the mid 90s. Well, this is yet another thing that fascinates me is that spread of Hawaiian culture internationally and hokey is international. This is there are pokey restaurants all over the world now. And here is one in Germany with your friend who you were celebrating his 60th birthday with. And from the standpoint of me and Ron, that 60th birthday sounds like a youthful person to us now. But again, it is a crazy thing to me as a Hawaiian to see Hawaiian influence in places that I never expected it. Yeah. And my buddy since my college days, Stefan Krenger relations again, we also know him as our tiki based expert. So this is a good segue in getting us back to Hawaii, getting us into one of our high rise thriving neighborhoods, kakaako. And here is the project that now half a decade ago, time flies by to settle, we have been reporting on it when it was under construction. That is the IO. And that is by the esteemed architects also from the east coast in that point at that point that is Bolin, Sivinski Jackson. And as we pointed out, they're very qualified architects. They were able to do this masterpiece of that entrance pavilion of the Apple Store in New York City that you see there, which is an all structural glass construction. So that means something. Talking Frankfurt, that logo there, that red rooster, rooster in German means Han. And so the company that holds that logo is called Glasbau Han. And they're one of the, if not the most traditional glass manufacturer in Germany. And they're a big fan of guess what the all Hawaiian glass jealousy. But according to our increasing energy efficiency paranoia and necessity, when we think about global warming and climate change, rightly so, they have been evolving that into be surprised a triple pane passive house product that is pretty cool. And that way, we think if they would have imported that as something tropical exotic, they could have lived up to that slogan that we thought we had to quote because it's so ridiculous and silly that you read down there that the facade on Honolulu's IO tower will make wind visible. And that leaves me speechless. And I let you take over from here. Okay, so this is a view of Kakaako in the early 1970s. And as you just pointed out, Martin, this is a multinational view when you look at the different number of cars that are there, because we see cars from the United States from Germany and from Japan. The car in the center is a Datsun, which is what was called Nissan now, although they've brought the Datsun name back in some countries in the world. But we also see that Kakaako started out as a residential neighborhood. So when this picture was taken, there was still houses, wooden houses from the early 1900s, as well as an abundance of shade. So it was really a more sort of a natural type of place. It was a lot more environmentally friendly and probably a lot nicer to live in. And this view has changed very dramatically in the ensuing 50 years. And I think if we go to the next slide, we might see what it looks like today. This is exactly the same view that you just saw. And the building under construction in this view is now completed, of course. This is the new Kakaako. And if you look on the left side of this picture, there's a little bit of a commercial building that you can just see the rounded corner of. That building was there at the time that the previous picture was taken. And it is still there today. That is an evidence of Kakaako's transition into an area of light industry. And that is going away as we see with the inclusion of these magnificent, if you might say, or certainly large and mammoth high rises, which are being constructed by the Howard Hughes Corporation. Yeah. And going to the next slide, we look at this building here a little bit up closer. We have our exotic escapism expert, Suzanne, wandering through the glazing midday sun here and using this device of a hybrid of rain and sun umbrella that has a ventilation flap top so the hot air can escape. And it's similar to the building that we see to the right, which is a mid-century building, a bank that you once caught a little brother of the capital. So rightly so, as we can tell. Yeah. That's right. And it's doing that, that the glass is recessed and tries to be in the shade. And so we can give it the benefit of doubt by looking at the new iris. At the distance, say one of the elevations seems to be shaded and the other one is not fully glazed, but it's sort of pixelated and perforated. And through that, and that gets us to the next slide, when you look at it in detail to the left, then you have like, let's say this is 50% open, 50% closed facade, then you mitigate logically the sun penetration by 50%. But now, Ron, I let you go back to your classification and basically categorization of Linnaeus and let you judge on these. Yeah, again, Linnaeus really should be something to live on. They should be large enough to furnish. You should be able to actually have your friends out there for hamburgers, as far as I'm concerned. And of course, in high-rise towers, those Linnaeus would be covered by the Linnaeus overhead. So you've got an outdoor protected shaded Linnaeus, which doesn't occur here. Yeah, you're speaking as an expert in many capacities, but there is a couple of shows that are pointing out your boss and friend and colleague at Killingsworth, a high-rise condominium harbor court, a harbor square. Sorry, I always confuse the two. In downtown, which isn't too far away, that dwells upon that. There is some very sexy curvy and sufficiently sized Linnaeus that you can do what you just explained, what by the nature of a Linnaeus should have. And is this Romeo or Juliet who we see standing on this Linnaeus? No, we do not see either. Who is it then? Well, we see the air conditioning unit. So the limited amount of space on this Linnaeus is partly occupied by the separate air conditioning unit. And this is what we see very frequently today is this box that is on the exterior of many buildings now to cool each individual larger box inside that people are living in. Yeah. And as we find out in the next slide, let's go to the next slide, because through research, we found out that this building is actually by the same architects who did the Lillia that we reported on in the last three shows, which is a Solomon Courtwell Buens out of Chicago. And in the Lillia, they were at least a little bit more ashamed because they tried to camouflage paint the AC unit in this sort of cream color that seems another kind of a Kurt Sandburn was once rightly so making fun of that about the timeshare towers at the Hilton Wine Village and saying, why do we have to cover everything with this cream color? And at the top row of the show quotes, back then, we had that building first on the radar when it was just announced and mainly in a plan. And we used it as an example for talking about postmodernism because it came across to us so postmodern as when they designed things not three-dimensionally in postmodernism, but one-dimensionally either in elevation and making them look pretty or in plan. And in plan, this building looks like a larger rectangle that a smaller, skinnier rectangle is shoved through diagonally. But I'm sorry to say, you know, different than from the very distance where you might still understand that by looking at it once you get up closer, you don't really get it. And in this image here that we took midday, we also see that too many parts of the facade where their flush, you know, fixed glazing are exposed to the sun. So again, this seems once again, fossil formalism, once again by a firm from a city that is certainly, as many call it, the cradle of not just architecture in general with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright having been residing there, but also high-rise construction with Ludwig Mies van der Roa basically inventing the steel skeleton high-rise. So this is a city that has the legitimation to have architects come from it with the expertise in high-rise construction. But Ron, you and I and you the solo have had parts of your youth and on the East Coast as well that you don't like to remember having been in the snow. But Ron, you and I, you know, you were born Midwestern and I am sort of a temporary one as I call Nebraska my home away from home. We have experienced these brutally cold wind shield, you know, canyon winds in the kind of built canyons of downtown high-rise Chicago, right? So you've got to reset your mindset when you come to Honolulu, which seems like Sullivan Corp and Dubuans are not doing even though they had their fourth attempt already and go to the next and certainly probably our last slide for today and you the solo give a judgment on how they named the project. Well, this is called the Ali and all of that not all, but most of the high-rises under construction in this area are given Hawaiian names. Ali is a type of small tree and I'm not quite sure how a small tree relates to this immense building. What we did decide before the show was that this downstairs, this ground floor does fulfill some of the requirements that we think are necessary for shading and because of the windows being recessed, we do have that effect. So you're not getting the full sun. There's also the benefit, minimal benefit of some of the trees that are in front of it. But for the rest of the building in the bulk of it, there is no such shading of any type and so we really are not not no shading, but minimal shading. So it's really not fulfilling anything like what we would hope and it certainly has nothing to do with the Ali as a tree. Yeah, and as you just pointed out, trees do that, right? Trees are an organism, trees are biochlametics. So if you call something after a tree, then you better live up to that. So not so much here. And if that will be the case with the other project about the ko'ula, which is sugarcane, that we will revisit next week. And until then, please stay increasingly stacked lanai. And secure. Yeah, secure. All right, see you next week. Bye-bye.