 Welcome you all back to Human-Human Architecture, the show that looks into humility and humanity in the built environment. And this show here, I'm referring to another genre of the arts, which is music. And if you watch Axis TV, that movie show on TV, I'm thinking of sort of a journalist approach, sort of an angle to things. And I'm thinking of Dan Rather and his shows, The Big Interview. There's actually two other shows that are referred to more because that's like Brian Johnson's, so the ex or still ACDC frontman, his show is called A Life on the Road, or Paul Schaefer, who is the music opening act of Letterman's night shows and his show is called Plus One. And staying in that realm, I actually have the privilege to have a Plus Two show. If we can go to the first slide here, I also want to share some background, how I could sort of position myself to the subject matter. This is a project we've been doing some years ago about bringing back sort of nurturing and daily food supply to a neighborhood that has grown old and so have its inhabitants, as you can see on the top left. You can also see a musician there. So this relates to one of our guests today, Richard Lowe, is a gifted musician. The project is out of a prefab concrete, which reminds me of our fellow guest, Bunnit Kanisterkon. One thing at the bottom right that I wasn't able to accomplish, and I'm sad about it, that we're unable to keep the original building, the original structure. And so this ended up being a new construction, and so our two gentlemen are able to shoot for that and able to tackle that issue. And so let's go to the next slide. Here we are. We already know them from previous shows. To the left here is Bunnit and Janice, they're experts in urban infill, in prefab concrete, in ecology. And on the right we have Sir Richard Lowe, who's an expert in music, as we already said, in master's planning. And the two of them come up with fascinating polemic propositions, as in the bottom right, where they were suggesting for Waikiki, in fact, a very light rail, and so light that it can float. So again, they've been in the Molowili neighborhood, where the lofts are. They've been in Kakaakau, rich a while ago, and they went to Waikiki. So you guys, welcome back to the show. And thank you. Thank you, Martin. And I wouldn't bring up one slide that you just sent to me, and you wouldn't have known, you wouldn't think I would bring it up, but I like to do so. So Rich, this subject matter is very close to you. And please tell us why and what does it have to do with this image here? I'd have to put on my glasses to see it. That's OK. This is to give you a hint. This is to end the hospital where you wrote me a note. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, yeah. Thanking you, I guess, for the opportunity to appear on your show, and that I'd like to do it again. Yeah, it was more actually than thanking me. I think it was promising us to be back on the show recovering from the little work you had to be done. And now you're up and running again, and you guys were actually running together. And again, as you've been in Molo-Ili before in Waikiki and in Kakaakau, where did you guys walk and run now? And let's bring up your first slide here and tell us about that. Well, this is sort of a double district. Makiki, this is above the freeway, Malka of the freeway in both Munoa and Makiki, but not all the way back into the valleys or into the mountains behind. So we selected that area because it interested us. Yeah. We live close to that area as well, and during his time after hospitalization, he liked to walk around, and that's the area that we venture out into to keep his heart rate going. Well, and in fact, if you go to the next slide here, you tell us about the history of the place. That's of course important. I'll just do a quick key on that. You can see that the method of transportation for people in the very old days was to get up to many of the people, old families in the city, obtain properties up in Tantalus, which is exactly behind this picture. And they would go up on horse and carriages. And I used to work with a person who was within a family that did that. And let's go to the next slide and see obviously how the place, well, where the place is, where it's located here on this map. Obviously, we're on the island of Oahu, and it's in this very sort of central part at the bottom on the south shore. But let's go to the sort of early of Oahu and tell us more how it's sided in its context between the Maoka and the Makai, meaning the mountains and the ocean. You can see the hills and their valleys and so forth on the upper right side of the picture. And then you can look down and find it kind of in the middle, off the middle, the Honlu Airport. And then to the right of that, between the tidal airport and Makiki and lower Manoa, you can see Sand Island and then below the word Makiki, you can see Alamoana and Waikiki. Yeah. And let's go to the next slide. Again, this shows it sort of it vastness as you had explained, and it's sort of covering two discrets. It's touching our workplace hood Manoa as well. And go to the next slide here. You started, this is where it gets really interesting because you started to basically sort of start to map sort of the diagram and look at certain aspects of the community. And again, we should reiterate and say recap. When you were out of the hospital, you weren't quite mobile as you used to be, and you needed to work on that, and you discovered that actually certain things you weren't able to do because there was a lack of certain things that, and that very personal experience got you very sort of sensitive and sensitized about what you guys were starting to discover. And so let's go through the different sort of aspects of elements in the community. And this very first one, which is very sort of fundamental for what you're proposing. Right. These are, you know, the dots. The pink one are the one that we went to visit. And then the purple one is the other churches are temples that we haven't gone to visit. So this, just to show you how many churches that we have, you know, in that, in our neighborhood. So, Richard can talk a little bit more about it, about, you know, what is so important, you know, in our neighborhood. Well, the pink dots sort of to the left of the center of the photo you see right here are, we picked them because they were significant architecturally. And they had long history in the positions that they're shown there. And there are a few new ones. And then we thought it would be very interesting to explore into what the churches might do that would make them a little more functional as parts of the neighborhood and vice versa. What could the neighborhood do to make the churches more functional? And while you were walking them, you talked to the people running them, operating them, and you discovered some challenges they have these days, right? Right. Yeah. That's right. So yeah, a lot of it, you know, they're not doing so well. Because of the decline of the attendance of people who like to come to church in the decline. And a lot of people, you know, going to church now, we always make fun of each other that we going to church of Alamona shopping mall. So this is something that, you know, we found out that a lot of people spend their time at the shopping mall, that's their church, that's where they go buy stuff. We worship our God capitalism, Ryan. Let's go to the next slide here. And talk a little bit about the sort of the sectional quality of placing, you know. Well, the highest points that are in green, those are round top and tanneless areas which we, you saw when you saw that carriage in the woods kind of thing. And then it slopes down to toward the flatlands of both Makiki and Manoa, and that's that low, slung area. Right. Is that comfortable that we see right there? No, this is the Manoa elevation. The reason why we choose these two neighborhoods is because we feel very urbanized because when you are in Manoa or in Makiki, where a majority of people live, you don't see the ocean. You feel very like a part of their city. And we want to reemphasize that, you know, as the way that we can really make it more fun and memorable and, you know, meaningful for the people that live in this neighborhood. So that's why Richard and I start walking everywhere and start to look at it, you know, not only in the urban planning side, but sectional side as well, that we look at it closely. And that's like the total contrast or opposition to how our island is portrayed in the revamping of a Wi-Fi or a Magnum PI, where it's basically all around these little blue guys there, which is oceanfront, high-rise property, all hermetic, all invasive, could be anywhere in the world. That's where they're shooting the scenes, and that's what they're portraying is what the island is about. But we're questioning, is that actually real life, right, or is real life more where you're talking about? Let's get the other nice section up here to illustrate that more. I hear you see it even more, right? That's down there where we think, I mean, again, portrayed by the media where life is, but you're actually seeing, and to be further discovered, in the next sort of diagrams, you figured out real life might be actually up the hill more. So let's go to the next slide. And while you found out that sort of churches are sort of nurturing you spiritually, they're not so much nurturing you physically with nutrition. And this is what this map about, right? It's, yeah, originally, when I first started walking following one particular break, I was looking for a place to stop and call a friend and let's say, let's have a beer or a coffee or something. And there are very few opportunities at all, Malca of the Freeway, which is the thicker line going from the upper left corner to the lower right corner, except near the university, there are a number of such things. Not in Makiki. There's one old one that's very cherished by those of us who've been there. We see some sparse dots. Let's see what else you were digging out and what there is actually. Next slide. Bike routes, right? And I feel very close to that because I'm a suicidal bicyclist on a daily basis. So I know how hard it is that University Avenue or main route up to school doesn't even have a bike lane, but you also saw some positive signs and there are diagrams at the very upper right. Talk about these. Yeah. The upper right, you start to see some bike lane going through the university. In addition to that, you start to see these darker blue dots that represent the Bikki station. So those are the good seeds that the city planned and we love those. We wish that we have more of those and all those green paths connected to all the Bikki station. So this way the city is more walkable. And speaking of which, absolutely, let's go to the next slide because there's another mode of transportation that you were analyzing here. The bus system, which was sort of invented by Mayor Fawzi as the bus is considered one of the best bus systems in the country. And the most of the red lines you see here are for are the pathways of the city buses and they're very, they're reasonably thickly placed in the areas we're talking about. So for example, you can get from the university over to Punchball and other places very quickly. Yeah. And while it's typologically, I guess, progressive, but architecturally speaking, what could we maybe improve and also referring to history of that mode? Any thoughts on that? Yeah. You know, I kind of like to see it more like what Richard was showing, the old history of Makiki. I can start to see more like an easy breezy tram that can go up the hill in the old days up in Manoa that a lot of old houses are. So it would match in well with their context without having to get on the air con and catch the corona disease at the point. There you go. Very timely thing for reminding us. All right, let's go to the next slide. You were already in the sea level rise again is what's your your you're lucky, right? As far as that usually that's a problematic thing, but your might benefit from that even to what degree? Well, from a real estate point of view, I think you mentioned recently that people, the sea level rise of let's say I've heard that three and a half feet is in the near future. And that would inundate many of the blocks that are, you know, just not the side of the beach. And so, but the elevation of most of Makiki, even the flat areas is probably at least 50 feet, more or less, and higher, of course. So, yeah. So basically, we're going to be safe from the inundation and the water rises. Yeah, and it would give us a flow of increase of population, because they're going to be these immigrants, migrating up the hill and further populating the area you're talking about. And next slide is you already talked about the color green and green spaces. And this is really eye opening. Talk about that diagram. OK, so the next slide is the green space. You know, those are the diagram that I think it's very important to have, because when you study, start to think about the bus route and the by group and everything, and these are the places that you can really accommodate. All those activities that connect to each other, not only recreational, but also in the commercial side as well, that we can start to have more retail coffee shops and things that can connect to all this green space. And some belong to the schools and our university. So and it really makes it so obvious how sort of nature depreviation syndrome we are sort of Makai, meaning down from the big diagonal line is the our main interstate H1. And down there, we're really deprived of what we consider to be paradises green and lush, right? But it's all gray as you perfectly diagrammed. And up there is actually might be more paradissel than down there. So that's a potential as you. Exactly. And like within five minutes, you can go hiking. Yeah, absolutely. From your Makiki and Manoa. So next one. And this is again, where where you collapse all the layers. And this is how we, you know, before you start to dissect that and look at each individual one, it looks like that. And obviously, when put all the layers together and that's how you have to look at it after all that all these things, you know, have to work together and be synced and finding a synergy between them, which, but you kind of go back to the to the initial that you put the two things, the two first things together where you said there is sort of the churches have a problem and and and the people in the communities have a problem finding, you know, their daily nutrients, both as social interaction around, you know, food. And you are the our food Buddha. And because you've done so many, you know, projects with and around food. I mean, food is the thing to get together, right? And to come together around food. So let's go to the next slides here where you actually walk us through a couple of potential, you know, projects that that could could be discovered further along the lines you're suggesting, right? Well, this little church is a it's not so little, actually, but it's old. And it was just been repainted and re-roofed and things like that. So it's a prosperous enough to do those kinds of things. It ended pipe organ in it. So we have a music program that's that's I happen to sing with is part of the choir and there are a lot of activities like that that happen in this church and and and others as well. Yeah, and they also have like a farmers market every Thursday where we do our grocery shopping there as well. So there's a multi layer of usage in this church. So within the sort of seven minutes left, let's sort of quickly walk through these and maybe you, you know, briefly describe. And again, they're they're suggestive. Next slide, maybe already. So these are suggestive ones. And I I referred to previous shows. We've done the utmost scholar on hardwood, who is the architect of that one is obviously our friend Don Hibbert up there. So you can watch his show. It's a very beautiful church, obviously, that that you, Rich, pointed out, you know, they're they're off the times when things were really done with consideration and with craft and to last. So they're jewels as you bonded. And I found out the hard way in our critical practices. It's hard to do that these days, right? You buy it. Yeah, exactly. And your tongue when you try to do that church. Yeah. It's a beautiful, beautiful church with a lot of grounds around it and so forth. And it's also a very stable church with the headquarters, which, of course, is in Boston. Yeah. And yeah. So it's that's a very interesting building. I've been all through it with the. Yeah. And we're not want to hide that there is a conflict of interest. We all are Doko Momo board members. So for the mission of Doko Momo, we want to keep things the way they are, not just as their substance, but also as their use. But if that is sometimes not possible, what do you do? And that's where we have to step aside. Sorry, fellow board members and come in as the practicators to educate the young generation coming from practice and saying, maybe you have to do adaptive reuse. And that's what you guys are talking about to actually save the projects. Right? Yeah, it could be. Yeah. And let's move to the next case study here that you're pointing out. Oh, this this church, this is quite new, actually, or fairly new. It's been there for maybe 10 years, perhaps. It was designed by Spencer Lineweber, a former late Spencer Lineweber, former professor of architecture at UH. And it's a it's a large and well-equipped church and church plant, and they have. Terrific attendance. So they're there every every morning at five a.m. There's a service except on Sunday and there about four or five services on Sunday. So it's really thriving. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, we're the younger crowd who let go. Yeah. Yeah, but as you point out, and we got to walk through more quickly. But next slide here again, you pointed out that by nature, a church is sort of a very, I mean, it's a monofunctional use, but it's also sort of not very efficient and effective as as as it's sort of timeshare. I mean, there's no timeshare. So timeshare is I mean, this comes from another realm from the resort right in the hotel area. But don't we why don't we apply that to these typologies and say we timeshare so we still keep the services. But for the many hours they're empty, we we put it we add another use, right? Yeah, but this church in particular, Martin, I'm just going to make it brief. They have a lot of good music programs that we attend and we found very educational for us and very impressive how they organize their music program. A lot of good concerts have been performed there and we love it. Yeah, good. And let's go to the next project here. And tell us what struck you on that one. This this is a church designed by Vladimir Asipov and it's the chapel within the Punahou school. So it's very much integrated with the school, although they do have public events and so forth. And it's a very beautiful site right in the pond. Yeah, and it's very poetic. Yeah, very poetic. Yeah, yeah. And move to the next one, the Sacred Heart Church. This is very interesting. Sacred Hearts Church is connected to the Mary Knoll schools and they have schools from the very youngest to the graduating high school seniors and to the right of that tower. There's a there's a beautiful square. Talk about urban design with a very nice fountain in it. It's hard to see from this point of view, but that that reinforces the concept of really trying to create beautiful spaces. Yeah, yeah. Partly outdoor. OK, we are moving on to the next. Yeah, I'll move to the next one. OK, only two minutes left. So I think we unfortunately have to skip over these again. These are just appetizers, food for thought, so to speak, within your realm bounded. But when we go to the next one, this one, yeah, move on to the next one. I'm sorry, we have to do this. But one more one more. Yeah, it's not only talk about. Yeah, exactly. And so there are like some of my go back to the previous one. And so this one here is by by Alfred Price that Don Hibbert and and Jack Gilmer and Laura McGuire are prime scholars in. So, you know, there is some potential synergy in the research. And why don't we go to the very end already? Because that's the one you actually choose amongst the many ones to actually tackle and address in your current studio and talk about that for the last half minute here, please, guys. OK, when the extreme last is right. It's our Redeemer, another Lutheran church on University Avenue right across the street from the Department of Music of the University of Hawaii. And in itself, it has very, very good musicians and they are on the verge of exploring. Alternative things to do with it, including improving what the best that they have, but but adding some other features that could be of interest to the university, to the neighborhood and so forth. Yeah. And as the quotes show, you know, there are previous investigations by John Williams by Graham Hart, by Brandon. This is an Edwin Bauer building. And as you guys taught me, it's one of the first and early Edwin Bauer project. So we're unfortunately out of time. And but I obviously we have to bring you back to to to continue where we have to stop now because you are working on this twice a week with the emerging generation. And we're looking forward to do a show about the outcomes of that. So thanks for having been on this show, doing the appetizer for that. And then the main course comes next time. Right. So thank you all for having watched and thank you guys. So I'll see you next week for another episode of Humane Architecture, back with the solo brown and Ronald Lindgren about Harvard Square Volume Three. And until then, please stay as essentially exotic, as exotically essential as these two gentlemen, rich and bonded. Thank you very much again.