 Welcome back to the human-humane architecture with the help of Martin de Spang here in Honolulu, Hawaii. We're sitting here in our hermetic high-rise. This is a follow-up show to a show from the good old urban transcendence show days way back where we had Mr. Les Campers and it was called Cool Concrete. Here's the show. That's how it was. And it was pretty much about sort of the means and methods of how we could build buildings meaningful and that surprise, surprise, maybe concrete which isn't normally considered to be the most appropriate and sustainable building material it might in fact be. And today our guest is Les' son, Adam Campers. Thank you for being with us here. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. And both work for Gray-specific Rocky Mountain Priestress. Can you say that in the short version, please? That's GPR in Priestress. All right. Thank you very much. And so today we want to talk about how we can apply these magic means and methods to a building. We want to share a case study with the audience here. And before we do, we want to once again sort of get the scope of the bigger picture or the bigger problem we have here, which is number two. On a global scale, we're in the middle of nowhere slash everywhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And on a regional scale, it's the next slide, number two. We're basically squeezed in two mountain ranges here. Number three, if we want to develop in the good old days, we've done it, which you see on the top of the picture. And at the bottom you see how we do it today. And maybe not so much anymore because this is out in Kapolei. This is sprawl. This is what some call termite food as the building material. You like to hear that, right? Because yours is not tasty for the termites. No. Right? And when we build, then number, the next picture, number four is, we built mostly port in place and we mostly then glaze it. So I call these microwaves and they overheat and we've got a pump oil in it or some renewable energy, which is a little better. Or the next picture is, this is a copyright term by our last guest in our show, Tom Miller. He calls it warehousing people. So we're building these projects and then we close them and just put tiny holes in there. So you don't really feel any more here in Hawaii. And they're still too expensive, by the way, at the same time. True. And we want to point out these are all made in cast in place. That's right. Whereas you guys are doing precast. Right. And you want to maybe explain a little bit. There might be some people who are not familiar what precast actually means. So maybe bring this back to the memory of the audience. Well, for simplest terms, precast is concrete products that are done outside of the site. So we make all of our concrete members products, take them to the job site and erect them there. It's much less invasive and it works well. It's quite efficient. Better quality control, right? Oh, yeah. Because you got it all figured out. We were a PCI certified plant and basically that means we police ourselves. So two times a year, we'll have someone come down and basically go over everything. And if we don't hit an 85%, we have to make it up. Yeah. And that's really hard to do outside if you're poor in place. You got to have the inspectors. They got to look how many air bubbles are in there. You know, it's really hard to assess. You're going to be up there in the sky on scaffoldings and you name it, right? Right. So the next picture is like every now and then sort of we almost get it. This is a Start the Tizer article here from I think probably a year ago. And it had two articles. One was condos, which is this one here. And then there was another one right below it that was called carbon. Talking about and the title page at the bottom right, you see as well the globe heating up. So we got close to it to maybe having had the chance to see there is a relationship, but we didn't quite get close enough. So that's what we want to talk about. And maybe even more a little polemic way and humorous way. The next couple of pictures is a little sort of cartoon book or cartoon series about what happens that the links go up. And this is a building that went up recently that is basically using technology that you both do. The precast for the structure as well as precast for the enclosure. And we agreed to disagree on how meaningful is that enclosure. And you guys are sometimes commissioned to do that. And of course you do that. You do it in the best possible way as quality product you deliver. But what we're going to talk about here is not so much to say this is not the way to go, but we're saying is there another way to go? Right. And so on the previous picture I allow myself to call this the mummization of architecture. So put these big skirts on, right? That are basically too hot. And you basically cover up your beautiful bodies that you have by nature. And I'm talking metaphorically obviously the building has your precast bones and structure is beautiful because you explained before it's all done in the plant with top quality. Right. And you can do all precast systems and all structural system of precast instead of just doing a facade just covers. So that's true. Exactly. And the next picture will be the number eight was the, which I call the royalization of architecture then because the building got these little crowns there. So we thought the building maybe wants to be the queen and this is actually my friend and collaborator, David Rockwood said that and we all had a good laugh about it. And the next picture is maybe a little less. It is funny but actually not because this is, I took these pictures one on my daily run and this is homeless on the beach and that's not a funny thing. And that's actually what we want to address with the building we're suggesting here. So maybe this is not a queen. Maybe this is Uncle Sam running it because it's all about capital. It's all about money. It's all about profit. So finally the next picture is why don't we almost stop at the moment when the crane comes, this picture nine, and wants to put up the Moo Moo. Why don't we just stop that and think about how can we make a building that is so primitive in a way that just gets by with the lease. It just, you know, does the necessary and that we can bring the cost down and we end up with something that's maybe more culturally and climatically appropriate. And looking back at things you can really find many techniques that are so efficient in cooling a building just through shade, just through air, water, you know, using a product like we have like Holocore having water run through that can be an example of cooling a building. That's an awesome product and you have been, for years also a great supporter for the school, our school and the students and there's actually this project due today and the final review we'll be able to tomorrow and they will basically use Holocore there. So I'm amazed by it. Can't argue with that. And I'm inspired by that. And the next picture, number 11, maybe you want to talk about this a little bit because that's an example from the past for what you just been explaining, right? And that was a project by Dr. Yee, he's a very influential member of the engineering community and he did this project in a way that it's so efficient that it could pass platinum lead standards. But this was so long ago that they weren't even thinking about it and you could probably embellish on that. Yeah, yeah. And the architect that says down there made it even on the title page of the Time magazine and good luck the new buildings that go up if they want to achieve that, right? We're saying maybe they got to try harder, quite harder, right? Right. And so the architect was Yamazaki. He was also the architect of the then tragic Twin Towers in New York City. And the next picture is actually taken in the hallway of the office of Dr. Yee and this is the scope of the projects you're saying he was doing right. This is all the goodies, all the top notch here in Honolulu. So he's the man. And next picture here is the man. So here he is when we were visiting him. And bouncing off our project that we were working on together. And do you remember what his first response was? He loved it. He was really excited to be a part of it. And the next picture, you know, what I remember was I was expecting, of course, he's a structural engineer, so I was expecting, you know, wish we'd talk about it in a minute. And I think that's really sort of frivolous and almost like no-go-ish. And so I was like really sort of anxious and afraid. And before he even got there, he basically said something that relates to this picture here. He said the building is alive. So he was, and then he was pointing out to Queen Emma Gardens. And we probably should do an own show alone about Queen Emma Gardens and I'm still hoping to bring Dr. Yee. Of course, then we probably have so much more other important things to talk about, right? And just on a side note, bringing things alive is a big thing to me when it comes to architectural precast. When we try to mimic a building that's been painted, you know, we match colors, but when you have architectural precast and what's the difference between the two, there's structural gray and architectural precast. Architectural starts off with a white base. Whereas structural just starts with gray. If you add these colors into the actual concrete itself, it brings it so much more to life than you could just painting it. And you can see this on many of the buildings we've done. And it also ages more in grays. And actually the building we're currently in, 904th Street Mall, is an example like that in the Financial Plaza on the other side, is an example of that where you use also as many, which I know you guys are fighting for, bravely fighting for. I remember in the Nordstrom building you were fighting for saying, please make this local, use as many aggregates as you can do, and couldn't win that one fight, but you will win the next one, because you're just not giving up on that, right? So basically use local aggregates. You prefer the basalt. And then you also grind down the basalt and use it as same, right? Yep, we use basalt, basalt and basalt. That's pretty much it. And that is all local. Right. And so the next picture here is, we talked in the picture before that, you know, socially the circle seems to be the most conducive form to communicate. And the same is for structure. And actually the circle or three-dimensionally the tube is the most structurally integral form. And at that point I should actually point out to your shirt, which you want to talk about your alma mater a little bit, and where you went to school. I went to Iowa State. It was for a fair amount of time, it was good. I studied some engineering, psychology, and criminal justice. And I basically planned on going into construction law, but right now just focusing on the industry. I've been in the industry for a long time. I interned for Benwoo Architects, for RIM Architects. I went to just worked on so many projects. And with my dad being a VP at GPR in pre-stress, my mom being a purist engineer, basically I got to see so many projects come to life. So it's been fun to gain a lot of experience. Great. So we take a very short break and after that we come back and we finally disclose the provocative project, and the provocative technology that we're suggesting could be the solution for the islands. So see you back for that. Hi, this is Jane Sugimura. I'm the co-host for Condo Insider. And we're on Think Tech Hawaii every Thursday at 3 o'clock. And we're here to talk about condominium living and issues that affect condominium residents and owners. And I hope you'll join us every week on Thursday. Aloha. Aloha. My name is John Wahey. And I used to be a part of all the things that you might be angry at. I served in government here and may have made decisions that affects you. So I want to invite you in. I want to invite you in to Talk Story with me and some very special guests every other Monday here at Talk Story with John Wahey. Come on in, join us, express your opinion, learn more about your state, and then do something about it. Aloha. So back to concrete cool today with Adam Campers. I'm going to raise a specific rock amount of pre-stress. And so now we're going to dive in. So when we want to make a building, we're talking about an urban building because we said we can't sprawl anymore. We're going to make an easy breezy building based on the energy costs. We're going to make an affordable building. So how do we do that? And so number 16 is sort of we want to revisit the archaic. And archaic or primitive, you know, has been looked down upon by civilized cultures and saying these are the people who don't really have invented, you know, everything we have. But we reached this point where we maybe, you know, realized we went too far or we kind of overdeveloped. So we're going to come and look back at what we've done in the past because they've used it for such a long time. You know, there's a reason behind it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we live in a highly capitalized society here with the cost of construction being through the roof, the highest anywhere, right? So we've got to be really, really strategic. So we've got to look at what we have and so what we did, this is the next picture. If you look at sheep, you know, you look at this company, right? Because it figured out, right? So usually you wouldn't think about being inspired by Walmart but we in fact did and please explain why and how. Well, we're inspired by Walmart because they can do things effectively, efficiently and a lot more cost effective. So like we did the Walmart parking structure, we were able to do a structure that was efficient that the cost was low by using double Ts, one of our main products. And basically a double T is a long plank with two stems, two legs. And you can achieve with the double T the same that you can achieve with a two inch double T you can achieve the same as a four inch plank and spanning 60 feet that would never work with a plank. I mean that shows picture 17 pretty good and in the top right you see a cut through. And so in the top right we see that and we see a picture. So that's a generic system. And then the next picture that we already saw for a glimpse of the moment, what did we do here? What was the sort of the radical sort of innovation here? We really remember. We flipped the T, right? Right, we flipped the T and basically utilizing it for storage space. It was a concept that I believe SOM was playing around with back in the 60s, 70s and it's actually a pretty innovative idea. And I learned that from your mom basically. I mean your dad told me that, you know, so it's all family tradition as well which is great. Which by the way in my case too we're both sort of the next generation. My father is my business partner and your father so this is a great sort of generational enterprise that we're here. So I would go to the 18, to the picture again by just sort of doing something that we take something that's already sort of absolutely optimized. I mean you can do that and you can span, you know, the best with the least material. We just flip them and then we use Obesia, reclaimed Obesia as wooden decking and flooring. And then you can use that. It's the Japanese tradition, right? The Asian tradition of the builds in. To use it as storage. Exactly. And for plumbing, for wiring, for multiple things. And picture 19 just shows what you get out of. This is one of the very early, very simple sort of party sort of sketches that we're aiming for. And everything we're showing here is a collaboration between us and it's also a very important collaboration between me and the emerging generation of architects. I throw out an idea that we had and they basically pick it up and we develop it together. So everything we show is actually the result of a class that I call Tree Texture which looks at how, why can't we build as smart as nature does, but nature is nature and architecture is architecture. So this was a great teamwork. We're actually continue to develop that a little further through the final touch ups in the next spring semester. Exploration on that with the next team. So number 20 is, call this like the social slice. So you get basically because the whole building is a circle and is a tube as a form. And we chop it up in little pieces. It's almost like little ahuboas, you know, if you want so. And you got a little bit of the outside and you got a little bit of the inside as an open core that's naturally ventilated allows it to be jungled with vegetation and bring birds back, bring water back. And very importantly you have this sort of little part of the street where people interact and people talk to each other. That's an inspiration from the last show about the building I live in with my neighbor which is the Waikigiri Grand where it works like that. You basically apply this to this project but everything is made possible because of the technology you guys basically provide. It is great to see plants in buildings again. And while at Iowa State I did get to see a lot of new projects where they use plants for a roof to keep it cool. Something similar like that. So number 21 shows that everything that's green is obviously vegetation, right? So the inner courtyard is aligned with green and the outer one. And you might say, well, bringing green into a building is quite a challenge because you got to make pots. You got to plant them somewhere. You have to calculate for weight. There's a lot of variables with that. But the beauty in ours is it's built in already because you got the web sticking up. So you can say so many bays could be dedicated to basically the planters. And just pointing to the structure being a circle with precast what's nice is a circle can be made with forms and we can make these forms and use them again and again. And the repeatability brings cost so far down compared to just forming cast in place where you're just pouring concrete in this one place and you have to make a form for every single area. So that's the next picture illustrates perfectly that what you said. It's an extruded building that usually repetition is considered or a synonymous for monotony, right? People want it sort of pushed and pulled and give a little aspect here, give a little aspect there. But that also has a high price because it also changes, so you need to make different parts. So here the approach is differently. It's like nature does it. Nature is repetitive and basically has a system that is duplicated over and over again because that's just very efficient and never would say nature would then be boring, right? Because maybe of that repetitiveness and that efficiency. And one can see in that picture 22 to the left that you can see these little pokes sticking out and we discussed that quite a bit and that's actually the skeleton of the building is a post and beam system where we let the beams actually go out a little further and that gives the building this sort of spiky look, right? And it is for sure it has depth and which we didn't get to at this class but we will let the next one is that we somehow simulate and demonstrate the green in there because you actually wouldn't see a building. You actually almost see like a plant because every outer trough basically has the vegetation building. So that's the intention here of the building. You also can see the green core here. It's like the inner lung of the building. Also I have to say we play tribute. There's a lot of collaborative effort in here. Scott Wilson of past AIA president had a show here with J. Fiedel about green buildings and he almost charged us in the show and said, well Martin and his crew is going to do it. So thank you, Scott. This is finally doing the homework and delivering because you encouraged us to do that. Number 23 is a larger detail model that actually shows what we talk about how the structure basically pokes out. You just see the edge of the building is very crisp because you can actually see the thin line of the slab and then you can see pushed back. You can see the web sticking up and out of the web grows the green stuff. Then people might say, well who takes care of the green? This is going to put a lot of maintenance costs in the building but this building is a proletarian people power tower. So we're talking about people who can barely make it to afford a place and so the people also we would have no air conditioning but natural air conditioning through this venturi effect and stack effect and the green depending on the orientation which pie you get in the orientation would be essential to cool your place so you have a motivation, an existential motivation to basically cool your plant because your plant is going to shade yourself. Also your plant could supplement you with food so you also have an interest. Once you have an interest in something we found out you actually do it. So that would basically preserve or provide or guarantee that it will always be green. And the next picture 24 is that we're so this is almost a prototypical archetype of a new generation of towers, right? And do you want to talk a little bit about the locations maybe that we suggest? Well having towers in let's say a place like Kapolei we everywhere in Kapolei we have lots of you know low level housing but having towers means we have all this area around the towers to use and that's basically being more efficient with the use of our land which Hawaii we have to be because Hawaii is just so small you know we have to really use our land as efficient as possible. Well that's a very fascinating and provocative approach if we go back to 24. That's the one to the left that we see on the very bottom left and so it's like we usually would say you know out in the country you know keep the country country and you for sure don't make a huge building. But actually we have to because otherwise going back to the very beginning of the show we would sprawl and we cannot do that. So the working title of this tower is the volcano because it tapers get smaller to the top the more you get up but the core of the building is the opposite so it's actually like a volcano it lets more light in and it could be who do we have out there in Kapolei who could be the residents in there in that tower for example. Oh many people, laborers there's a lot of people in Kapolei it's a very emerging city. That's why we have the railway coming. That's true. I'm thinking of UH I'm thinking of West Oahu right we got a lot of students. I'm thinking about DHL that's how we actually got to know each other because we try to make an alternative for the sort of more suburban you know a single story which you might make a show about as well and bring that back to our memory. That's how I got to know your dad he was super supportive of that one. And the other ones on 24 actually the middle one is one that could be in Kakaako. This was based on one of our students in his studio Nohea who had you know her and I developed this idea of the architect tower originally and that was the site. And the one to the right is basically could be in Alamoana where you basically have the service people that work in the mall also live close to where they work. We're getting close to the end of the show Adam but with number 25 I want to thank you and your dad who we see here again having been a supporter of us for all these years always spending your time get the students out there let them see what you guys do. And obviously above and beyond that and we're going to work together we're going to finish up this tower and with the next class of tree texture we're actually going to develop one together from scratch so we're not giving up. And it's always great to just keep letting the community know about precast. It's always just a great thing. Alright thank you very much. Thank you for having me. And we work together. Thank you.