 Welcome to a particularly cosmopolitan edition of Human Human Architecture today here and the title is Prototropic Hawaii or Honolulu Hawaii. And we have found the most perfect guest for that who just like your host Martin is from many places and is at many places. And our guest today and we can bring number three is is Dimitri Kim who is born and raised in Hawaii is currently far away teaching and educating and practicing in New York City. And but he's broadcasting broadcasted to us from one of his genetic homes in Korea. So hello Dimitri. Hello. How are you? Thanks for tuning in especially after all this traveling and you are 19 hours away and time zone is all mixed up. You also at a specific part in Korea with something very specific happens right now, right? Right. So I don't know if people are sort of familiar with what's going on in Korea. So they ousted the last president due to some the discontroversy and they just had an election of a new president just yesterday. So they I haven't heard yet because I haven't turned on the TV but they will be announcing the winner and there will be a big sort of a ceremony in Seoul today. And there's also another controversy about I think there's a lot of remaining supporters of the last president. They don't like the fact that she's she's currently being ousted. So really interesting period that I sort of chose to pick and to sort of come back and of course it was a bit of a family emergency. So I'm here. But yeah, it is an interesting place and and and yet here again and well good luck with all of that and still finding the time to tune in. So let's jump in that we want to talk a project of yours one of your many projects. But this is a publication project and it takes advantage of you know you again being from Hawaii but stepping away and traveling the world and looking at similar scenarios of urban coastlines my my new boss my VCAA just called it Ocean Cities right. So one of them if we can get number three is obviously sort of the the synonym of that is is New York City. So yeah just brief us in Dimitri where where are you coming from when you talk about this research topic. So so right from the get go I started this journal obviously from you know the love of the island and the fact that I you know I'm sort of have to work away from it as much as I want to be home. I sort of you know it was kind of a moral kind of a natural tendency for me to just want to work on something that I that made me feel at home. So that was the beginning but but but that was the juxtaposition of this journal came because as you can see from the image three there's two there's a sharp contrast on the left you see the the old sort of 650s image of the old Manhattan skyline with the Chrysler building on the right you see the brand new high rise it's the Shanghai stock exchange building by OMA architects. What you see in these two images are are are difference between the old what I called the epitome district that basically the city that epitomizes what you typified as a urban center of the world but on the right is where a new epitome district is it's a new city it's a new epitome district where the new central position within the global settings and this sort of steps off into the fact that there are many rising epitome cities like this and more importantly these cities are are are focused on the fact that they are resource rich and of course places like Hawaii and Rio there are there are tons of resource resources that that these you know big cities are normally covered and of course in the past these big cities would would exploit the the cities of their colonial like say colonial or ruling cities but now because these these you know cities like you know Rio and other emergencies are free they are free to explore and expand their their own economy and and and explore their own their you know next phase with their with their with their agenda so and that's what the sort of kind of whole conversation of the intro of this journal is about how that there's a new rising cities and the first journal first issue of this journal talks about the real the genera which at a time when I was writing this the Olympic was happening the the bricks bank was was initiated they they found a huge sums of oiled finding in in in Brazil so there was a lot of exciting things were happening in Rio and of course from Lulu in the past you know five seven you know ten years that matter there has been a economic and and and building development likes of which never seen before so I thought the statistics right about that's what the issue is about and and we just to remind the audience that statistically we just reached a point where more people live in urban areas meaning in cities than the rural areas and this is going to increase but let's spend some time and go to the number four and talk about your city the city you grow up in and around and there's an interesting thing you taught me just before the show and warming up that you said the Romans as an empire have never produced food for their own people they brought in from Egypt right and this is interesting in relationship to Hawaii which haven't been so remote had been totally self-sustained and we now reached a point what where the Romans were where we like ship in like in eighty ninety percent but we still and you want to start off with a sort of perception of Hawaii right which these this picture pairs about sure I I mean I mean everybody's familiar with this picture and you don't have to live in Hawaii to be familiar with this picture it's the hula skirt girls the Palm Beach the surfer you know the hosher back and and believe it or not even to this day even the fact after the fact that you know our recent president has come from Hawaii this is still the image of where everybody elsewhere has image this is the image of Hawaii they have yeah and and and I really want to point this out because you know we both know as somebody who was from Hawaii Hawaii has much more to offer and you know innovative people entrepreneurship and and of course there's tons of you know exciting things are happening but yet we're still back in this kind of fifties this kind of homogeneous image of the Hawaii so I want this is the first article I talk about is the fact that this is the both the sort of cursory glance image of most people have about Hawaii but we but there's much more underneath the surface yeah and and and in fact this is our cane right this image really doesn't exist anymore and yeah yeah and and talking about Waikiki I mean has a history that and there's a reason why that is the case because we have two industries that run us right number one is the military and number two is the tourism industry and the tourism industry is creating this image for economic reasons why and number five they're suppressing real history because it doesn't seem to sell quite as well as the sort of tiki message right which is which is funny because all the other tourists you know cities like Rome for instance I mentioned this or for that matter if you if you go into more contemporary cities in San Francisco they sell their culture they sell their culture not a fake sort of you know superficial image like this image that we see here but they sell their culture and that's why people come in it's not the the sort of a cheesey when they come to those places like Rome they don't want to you know you know eat the the the the postcard image of the city you know they want to see the real city of culture they want to learn that and there and it's and not so surprisingly and we as we all know there is this amazing culture in Hawaii I I talk about this in article this article where this picture comes from which is called the don't speak Hawaiian to me by Lindsay Wilbur Lindsay Wilbur mm-hmm it talks about how in in Hawaii you know we had a you know amazing drama in history like there was a great naval battles there was a dynastic feud you know we had a we have a conquering you know king you know who you know who was raised from prop you know raised her prophecy and conquered the all five islands single-handedly made relationship with other monarchies all of the world the the the king of England a knowledge talking about my life amazing culture but we're not selling that we're selling this we're selling this we're a skirt and you know why kiki beach we're selling out we're selling out with that and diving into the the urban fabric that is fairly new I mean I was about to think about you know to start thinking about the show in New York City I mean from a European point of view and you also hold a diploma in junior architect and sort of background having been in my home culture quite a bit while I was here and so exactly so from a European point of view even the mainland America you know is new is brand new compared to Europe and to compare to Rome and Italy which you have said so even New York City and never mind we shouldn't forget how sort of the indigenous population has been suppressed and basically eliminated that's a bad thing but but that aside which cannot be forgiven but that aside offered some tremendous opportunity to to make a city and and and this city here number number six you brought in another author who is my dear colleague Kazi Ashwaf who has moved on to Bangladesh and I Kazi wish you all the best we miss you Bangladesh yes so I so this sort of segues into the Hawaii now where we stayed up now and of course I do not explain I think everybody knows what's exactly what's happening in Hawaii but the perspective of what's you know again that's why we're doing this article in this book and this journal is that Hawaii there's a development having a Hawaii that's unlike we have ever seen there's urbanization is happening in Hawaii at a pace that is almost I would say it equivocal to some you know much more faster rising cities like you know Dubai and Beijing and Shanghai because they're rapidly developing and I talked about the fact that Honolulu was or you know places like Honolulu and Waikiki is already a city but we're sort of rapidly developing into a place where we no longer sort of we're not we're not sure if we are this is the direction of where we we direction of we want to head towards because we're sort of losing the kind of the sort of a sort of a cultural epicenter of the city that that reminds us of this is a city that has amazing experience the article is called the Metrophilia and I'm sorry the articles actually called the level of Metrophilia and we talked about the fact that there's this experience of the city that we can all take for granted in a great cities like New York or Paris that it's about walking experience horizontal experience of the city but as you can see from the image that you see it were we're slowly going towards this the vertical experience of them or what the cause he calls Metrophilia which is love of all things erect and stand alone so so we're sort of losing that face and I'm we discuss in this interview article is what are we going and and and how it sort of kind of preserve some of the kind of a real a genuine culture urban culture that we can't lose as we rapidly shift towards the more towards the central urbanization in Kaka'a and elsewhere and at this point I would like to interject that we talk about publication I wish you guys would be here and could I have my very own complimentary copy with you that you said might be a prototypical version so so I hold this in my hand and and I wish you guys could be here and flip through with me because the the level of sophistication and and craft and and tactility is just amazing and you choose you took advantage of one of your educational expertise is being a UH Manoa a graduate and an expert in graphic design and you use this here in a brilliant way to craft this publication and to me being a howly not from here it is sort of in the tradition of you know you the people here in the past who have made things right which we basically have stopped doing I mean everything we sell here as being tiki in Hawaiian comes from somewhere else we ship it in right so you in a very non nostalgic way sort of reconnect to this tradition in in looking at craft you becoming a craftsman you know in addition to being a draftsman so this is and I showed this to a couple generations of students as as motivations and what also doesn't come across is the sort of pastel monochromatic sort of layout you use everything is toned down and again doesn't and maybe it's good you guys can see it because maybe so many in the audience want one now so you have to go in another production and produce more of these and I would say these are these are handcrafted right as email prototyping at gmail.com but but maybe this can be a segue to why the book has been so extremely finely crafted as you as you all know the print is really dying and industry itself is you know you know it's it's sort of concatenating itself. Can we get picture two to illustrate your words Dimitri? Sure so well let's go to the slide number let's go to slide number number one. Okay let's go to one even better there we go mm-hmm we see it. So because print is dying as much as I think something that all architects do have a finish for is we love print we love books but after all it's still dying and I because by the way this book is entirely self-published and independently produced mm-hmm so when I made this I know I needed to make something that's so special that it's not something that people can simply discard it's something that people want to keep there had to be a novelty value to this book so if you look through this entire thing and again and you've already mentioned that how profoundly crafted but they're very strategically crafted and they're meant to sort of a completely the design part of the is that they're meant to completely wash away the sort of pastel image of a typical Hawaii really show the Hawaii as it is that's why you see black and white images on these photos because I want to show Hawaii the way it's supposed to be not the sort of the kind of Photoshop calls we see in this yeah hundreds of for sure free borscht you see in the white key beaches it is something that people should be able to some hold on to put on there to you know coffee table and be able to you know constantly having their you know their you know reading it look less yeah talking authenticity in the real city with real activity let's jump to number seven here as a picture which is in Rio right so number so number seven don't be confused I was falling you that's actually Honolulu that's Kakako and Chinatown there's a Kakako image of the the mural doing the power Hawaii and right below is is is a Chinatown during the China walk but that's a good segue for first discuss about how these two epitome district cities I'm talking about the first article Rio and Honolulu how these two cities are alike so if you look at the the actual real image of the slide number 18 if you look at slide 18 they look almost identical so what you're looking at is a there's this there's a very popular and attracted area called Lapa in Rio de Janeiro where just like Chinatown in art walk where all these different individuals are youth and music and culture they collide and they gather together yeah yeah which is important to illustrate if you understand about the real oh go ahead now the audience has now mm-hmm see what you're talking about if you understand about the dynamics of Rio there's always that there's this image of this rampant violence and poverty but what you see in this you know image of this lap again these all these are my photos by the way I took them myself mm-hmm what you see is a vibrant community and it's it's astounding how you know we always talk about the sort of a negative side of the these the cities that we never discussed like Rio and Honolulu we always discuss this you know this palm trees as hula girls and Rio we always discuss about you know violence and crime and drugs yeah we don't see this image there's a real culture yeah real contemporary there's a real people living in the city by the way and there's a real culture there's a real people living in it and making it vibrant and shrunk and you know and and and and that's what I wanted to show that the fact that so we can learn from each other right so we should I might like whenever I think about the two cities as a comparison I think about like that things closed down in 9 p.m. here in Honolulu Hawaii and that's the time when they open in Rio right so they're run on a different clock socially speaking right before we get too excited about that and let's quickly bring picture two back because this is like ingrained and laser cut into the back of it all the cities you kind of looked at but let's also jump to the architectural scale so let's jump to number eight which one is one of the mid-century innovative icons of our town here right photo collage so so number eight is the hold on let me say number eight that's a pop IBM so that's number eight to the awesome pop IBM so so when we I sort of I say I sort of end the causes article with fantastic picture of the awesome pops building you know shooting into the skyline and again and I think if any you know any lover of architecture would see that what this is fantastic this is beautiful building and if you ask by the way this is from Hawaii I don't think anybody would believe it I think if when they see this it's a powerful image of what I would like to represent Hawaii and that's what this art I did this book because this is the way I want to represent Hawaii sophisticated beautiful multicultural diverse and strong cultural diverse population and I think as a building this this you know this building sort of epitomizes that it's looking into the future at same time really respecting the past exactly may we jump over nine and bring ten really really quick which is a dicky project that is just in my neighborhood around the corner that another colleague of ours took as as an inspiration to to to to start off from and sort of reinterpret the the tropical easy breezy nature of dwelling in Hawaii right so it's funny I don't actually went to the architecture school for a couple years in new age but nobody has ever talked about this ever I I discovered when I was in research for the article this is a Boschette house by Aussie pop it was built in about you know 40s you know yeah this house is a case study house is the case study house for Hawaii there's a reason why all Hawaii track homes look like this because of this house and I was shame on me I was mistaking it for a dicky and that's what our aussie pop worked for dicky in his first years and that's why it's highly inspired by it right and and and I would like to mention the fact that you know it's incredibly iconic and I think because Aussie pop was still working from the sort of a modern cannon they didn't quite get the fact that this is a home for Hawaii and that's why it segues into David's project by tropical case study house how home should really be built yeah for tropical places like number 13 probably represents it best so if we look at that this image again and as I said and this is something that we David and I discussed it for a while Hawaii really needs only two things for a beautiful home a roof and a floor that's it yeah you don't need anything else we have a you know 365 days of you know beautiful you know 75 to 80 83 degrees weather you don't need anything else everything should be light everything should protect you from the sun everything should let the breeze in and that's exactly what this stripped-on version of what you know what I would call you know a case study house for Hawaii though you know by the way baby this is important for me to discuss right now so at the lab in New York we're in the process of organizing an event a competition for tropical case study house competition mm-hmm that will be released around the early fall of 2017 awesome so that we can start engaging really in the way it's the same way that original case study house program was which was collectivizing all these amazing ideas about housing and technology and architecture at the time and bring it into fruition so that everybody can share this idea and learn from it and I would be if we can get number nine which is the case study house number 22 by Koenig and this ish doll house and just for the audience when we hear David we're very familiar with him so we don't even mention his last name as David Rockwood our tropical here colleague who did the inaugural show of human humane architecture way back if you guys want to revisit that Dimitri as exciting as it always is with you but we're running out of time we're getting into the last five minutes and I think we should talk a little bit about the other city you mentioned that we can learn so much from and look at it sort of gritty nature maybe we bring number 14 for that 14 so I so so this is a sort of if this image I captured in Rio of it's a favela it's a favela in a little bit closer to the city of God it's interesting that favela is as you know it's a shanty town it's illegal slum homes and what's interesting is that everybody lives in these faces and what you're looking at is basically a electrician are connecting cables and electricity you know illegally free for all the homes in favelas yeah so yeah there's amazing pictures of people paying for this service of the sky to connect the home but yet none of them pays for their electricity and and and their and their cable home I I didn't show this picture so that you know everybody's sort of knocking the the power company but the fact that but that there's a genuine need for for housing in Rio just like as you know Hawaii has the greatest of homeless populations per capita in us we there's it as as as the city becomes more dense and more compact the situation will rise it's a problem of the in any urban cities now in Rio it was dealt organically it's basically people literally you know built these homes around open areas and and and and DIY cell built their homes around these and wired their homes but give it electricity I think Hawaii we don't have this kind of a you know organic you know pamphlet you know I think if anybody you know start plugging illegally in you know start building track homes you know they'll be raised which is kind of unfortunate I think is something though like maybe we can learn from the fellas and getting down a little and we were like we lose kakaako kakaako was a little like that it wasn't a dwelling neighborhood but it was a multi-functional gritty and but it gets gentrified so now we have Kali we have left right and we hopefully want it want to keep that to that nature and maybe we can get to jump over the next couple pictures really fast get 15 and 16 and 17 because we only have two minutes left on the show so I'll go back so as you can see so jumping from the art pictures of this you know electrical wires you can see the how amazing a plethora of you know people living in this area the city is in Rio it's in favelas it's not and it's not in these you know which expensive phone beyond gates if you look at number 17 image that's an image of a typical more upper-class homes they all live underneath the cage of walls cage of barrage of protection but it's the real cities in Rio really happens in these you know you know illegal and organically grown slums like the favelas you so this is where the real city looks sort of looks like it and Rio and I'm not saying there isn't a modern version of it and of course there is but I captured this image because again this is where all I would imagine this will be the equivalent of what would have what would see what we see in Kakako Boulevard it's getting about five years ago right when we we several industrial factories and car shops and and few artists living there but it and no big high-rise condos by Kamehameh Estates yeah yeah yeah so we're running out of time we want to attribute to the tradition of the show that we're always end with a positive outlook to things and we want to share some some talking case studies and one of your projects before we phase out so this is number 19 and 20 this is 19 number 19 and 20 basically highlights these sort of emerging architects part of the journal there there's a young architect named Steven Sanchez who I went to school with came out in terrific ways to come out with the office space for a tightly because in Rio there's a very a need for a high-valued office space for new businesses but there isn't any people can't afford it so so basically of Steven in his work it's called a triple A space for all he came out the way to sort of algorithmically find areas in which highly valued office space can be delineated and they can be spaced and organized so that strategically these spaces can come out without having the high price tag of law having a fancy office space in high-rise buildings so so it's very fascinating interesting project how to sort of maximize space in a place where everything is becoming more expensive and and and gentrified that's exactly what we need here and that's the end of the show so much more to talk that we are out of time so Dimitri please stay the cosmopolitan off on terrible and inspiration from all the places you are and come home every now and then and share them with us and shake this place up and until then have a good time back home in Korea one of your homes and thanks again for your critical and encouragement appreciate it thank you again for having me and Mahalo all right all right thank you and see all back for the summer the summer this Soto and I gonna do with me going back to where I just said Dimitri has been for the last couple years to my home in Germany and we look forward to see you for these shows they're gonna be a little bit different bye bye