 We're thrilled to have you back to this, our show, Human Humane Architecture on Think Tech, Hawaii. And this is our 251st show, and you're about to be our 13,370th viewer. We're broadcasting live, once again, drilling straight through the middle of our planet. And we're on the opposite ends, with you, DeSoto Brown and your Bishop Museum, hi DeSoto. Hello everyone. And me, back in Germany, at its most southern end, even more southern than Munich, where I'm usually I am, here in Wolfratshausen. That sounds very exotic to you, DeSoto, right? Yes, it does. Yes, it does. And Wolfratshausen is very close to an event that was basically holding our attention when we were raiding the news for the last couple days. And for that reason, get the first slide up. And you please share what excited you about what we're talking about before the show, DeSoto. Well, in the first place, you sent me this photograph of the big fire with people sitting around it. And I conjectured and you confirmed that this is a summer solstice celebration, which I knew they also had in Scandinavia, but obviously they do in Germany as well. And here are people celebrating that the longest day of the year, which in northern climates is something that everybody is excited and happy about. Unfortunately, it means that every day from that on is going to get shorter, leading you back to the cold days of dark days of winter. But while you were indulging in this summer solstice event, you saw a whole fleet of helicopters flying over. All of them were illuminated except just one, which was dark. And you realized that that was carrying President Biden over you overhead to join in the G7 conference, which was just held. And what we see in the lower left corner is an older photo from seven years ago of a similar conference that was being held between Angela Merkel, who was the head of Germany at the time, and Barack Obama, who was the president of the United States at the time. And you just pointed out to me that after this initial meeting, they have remained friends. And just yesterday, she and her husband visited Washington DC and President Obama, and I presume his wife, Michelle, met up with them at the Smithsonian African-American Museum in Washington DC. So that is a nice continuation, I think. And then the G7 meeting, which just occurred at which President Biden was a participant, they were careful to take a photograph of the participants in front of that same wooden bench in that same location with the Alps behind them. And in the lower right corner, we see a picture of President Biden arriving in Germany. And you said that he's being greeted by the governor of this part of Germany. And when he arrived, he was greeted by people dressed up in their various ethnic costume to greet him at the airport. And also, this reminded you that there was a time when people got off airplanes here in Honolulu back in the 1950s, where not only did they walk on the actual pavement of the runway to get from the airplane, but they were greeted by Hula dancers and Hawaiian musicians, and one of them being Kent Gerard and his Hula Nani girls. And that was one of their regular gigs to greet people as they got off of airplanes. So that was something that the Germans and other outsiders who might come to Hawaii want to see, they want to see that ethnicity. And when people from the United States and other countries go to Germany, they want to see the same kind of clichéd depictions of ethnicity, such as Oktoberfest. So people want to go to Germany and say, oh, look how typically German this is, with all these women wearing dirtals carrying around mugs of beer. Well, same thing goes in other countries and other locations as well. You're saying the costumes are always more colorful on the other side of the world. That's exactly right. It's the exoticism. Exactly. It goes both ways, right? And another thing that we share a lot, and this is the native country of our consultant, our exotic escapism expert, Susanne. And this is her native town. And she took me to her festival that she went to ever since she was a kid. And you see there are people dressed in different ways, but very few actually. There are some who are proud to wear their traditional dirtals and their leather hoses, the guys, but usually not as people in Hawaii. When you go to work, you don't wear your loincloth. I assume. No, no, I don't. Otherwise, you can stand up and show it. No, no, no, it's too cold in here for one thing. Yeah. Exactly. So it's, again, as you said, what the people want to see who visit, it's a big tourist thing. We were quoting one of the professors of architecture here at the Technical University of Munich who during the pandemic was getting up his hopes up higher for the discipline. And it's critical side. And he said, as long as Oktoberfest is in place, we will never be thinking about doing things differently because we're all happy. So I guess Oktoberfest everyone is hoping, although we're waiting for another wave to come for the BA variant, but hopefully Oktoberfest, as of now, it's not canceled. So hopefully it has been canceled two years in a row. Hopefully everyone hopes it will be there again. And talking again, women power, again, we talked about Angela already, but the picture at the bottom in the middle is a very clear visualization of once again, the domination of the male in politics. We talked about same in architecture. We will continue to talk about that issue. And the only women in there is our Ursula von der Leyen, who's on our show quite a bit, because she is the commission president of the European Union and has some ties to architecture, as we keep talking about. And otherwise, it's the seven guys from the seven countries. And on the very right is another of your colleagues from the European Union. And top right, that was me, my spontaneous attempt to snap the picture of Joe in his helicopter. But obviously, the camera was just getting that orange spot and that white line. But it is, that is him. So with that, we get to the second slide to you to the other end of the world. And I want to share what impressed me about your similar experience. When you were little, you had already been shaking hands with LBJ, Lyndon B. Johnson, at the intersection of Dole and University Avenue when he was visiting, if that's correct. That is correct. So recall that correctly. You do, you do. And we have this show quote up on the top right for that reason. But you had that exact similar experience that I had days ago with Joe Biden. You, at that time, with Lyndon B. Johnson, because he was flying over you, Diamond Head, your home when he was helicoptered to the Kahala Hilton, which was designed by our friend Ron Lindgren's partner in business and friend, Edward Killingsworth, that we also see there next to you on that show quote. And we also saw LBJ in a movie about E.P. as they called him a couple of times, which is the new movie about Elvis Presley by Baz Luhrmann. And Joni and I went there almost accidentally, I have to say. But it was it was worth it. And we were both, it was sort of a more a film club and not a movie theater in the basement of a town hall. And we were actually hoping to see another thing that's very closely related to Hawaii, which is Jurassic World. I have to do more research. I think this is actually playing. Well, I know it's playing on the mainland this time. So maybe we lost them to shoot on the island. This is also a boring little bit from our friends, Jay Fidel and George Payson, who have a movie show going on. So we're stealing a little bit of that from this review here. And we have to say, Baz is Australian, not that that matters. But maybe it apologizes to more that he took an angle that we think is rather isolated. And why is that the story? Well, you told me, I have not seen this film, but you told me that it really emphasizes Elvis being in Las Vegas. And the reality of his life was that he was very fond of Hawaii. He made three films here. He liked to vacation here. It was something that he felt very close to and really liked and something that really affected his life. And one of his most important concerts was right after he got out of the army, having been in Germany, your homeland, he gave a concert here in Honolulu to as a benefit to help raise money to build the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. And we have talked about the architect of the Arizona Memorial and the architect was from Austria, a German speaker. And so that Alfred Price has a connection to you, Martin de Spang, at least in the languages that you both, the language you both speak. Well, even genetically, because I'm half Austrian. That's true. That's right. That's right. So yeah, not that that matters. But we have to say his other appearance, even bigger, was captured very briefly. However, in the movie, that's at the bottom, second to bottom left, his show at the, which is now the Blaisdale Center, which was the first broadcasted around the world by a satellite conference, sorry, concert. And the picture below is some snapshots from that. But architecturally, the little show quotes there, the second to bottom right, as we were pointing out in that show about, we can call it, it's not officially, but from its sort of floor plan and its shape. It is a sibling hotel, which is the Illy Chi. That pretty much has the same configuration as the hotel that Elvis stayed in and played. A lot of shows, according to Baz's doorman's angle, too many shows, which wore him out and is part of the reason why he was so burned out and after that. But we're saying, I just happened to stumble over the many movies that they've been making about Elvis a dozen or more. So this is probably not the last one. Who do we know? Eric Bricker, we know, who wants to make a movie about Edward Killingsworth. Maybe he wants to do one about Elvis. And since he's now through basically, at Acquainted Well with Hawaii, maybe he wanted to do one about the angle of Elvis into Hawaii because there's a lot to find about that. As you said, Elvis said it's one of his favorite places, you know, sort of his second home. We're also borrowing from our own show to be continued, which is comparing automobiles and architecture at the very bottom right. That's the picture that I was the happiest that I was able to snap a picture of that shows our two cultures, the solo and the one that Elvis experienced because as you said, before the military service, he was in Germany. And I guess in reference to that nostalgia, he had a Mercedes 600 that we're gonna talk more about when we reconvene the automobile architecture show, which is the most luxury fleet model there was that Mercedes did. And the equivalent to that one in America is guess what and what do we see and what building is it parked in from? Well, we see a scene which is a depiction, you said of Elvis meeting up with his ex-wife, Priscilla, next to the airplane that he owned, the jet, which was called the Lisa Marie after their child. And Elvis comes to this meeting in the, as you said, the Mercedes 600. Priscilla is driven there in a Lincoln Continental limo and in the background, we see the iconic building of the centerpiece of the Los Angeles International Airport, or LAX as we often call it, which is currently sitting empty, but they're trying to figure out what to do with it to reuse it because it housed a restaurant originally and they're thinking maybe that can be possibly reused as the TWA terminal at JFK in New York City has been reused to be turned into a airport hotel. And both of those are iconic mid-century modern structures, which are very emblematic of the airports that they are located at. Absolutely, this one is called the Theme Building. It's by William Pereira, who's also the architect of the Pan Am Pyramid High Rise because we were returning to high rises here very soon. But before we do that next page, which leaves us here in the area because I'm broadcasting from my sister's, not the office home that exists as well, but her home office. And that is very close. That was a few days ago when she was getting caught up in traffic jams caused by security. So you see a German police car and you see the sign that leads to Garmisch-Paltenkirchen, another town breaker name of a city similar as the Wolfgangshausen, which is the one here is. And that got crossed out because he couldn't get through there because this is where the summit was happening. The environmentalist leaders here are very snarky about the conference because again, the journalists were wrapping them up as I said at the beginning, it's about the Ukraine war, it's about fossil fuel related and it's about climate change. And I said, you shouldn't even put the word climate change or sustainability in your mouth by what you have done with the vast majority of very, fuel-intensive helicopters, police cars, thousands of them. So they found this rather contradictory here. And yeah, this picture is a reminder of that. The picture is also a reminder of that very... And another criticism was that they were at the castle. That was, the conference was held. Elmau, the castle Elmau is usually a resort. So they found this all to high class. But then again, that reminds us of your experience because the Kahala is a high end resort. So there's another similarity between our places. But our region here is also, as you can tell, very rural and they've got a lot of cattle here, a lot of dairy and a lot of farming still. And that is something gets us to, as if all the challenges weren't already enough but through the intertwining issues we have, there's another one on the horizon that is hitting us hard all around the world that has to do with security as well. But what kind of security disorder? It has to do with food security. And this is because the supply chain, first of all, as we all know, was disrupted by COVID. But we now also see the Ukraine war as being extremely significant in this because Ukraine was and should still be a major exporter of wheat. And it was supplying wheat to a number of other different countries. Well, with the war that Russia has started against Ukraine, that has been disrupted as well. So this is not something that's gonna go away very quickly. It's something that's gonna be concerning us for a while. And the more we are self-sufficient in food, the more we grow ourselves, the more we have homegrown food that does not need to be transported thousands of miles, the better off we are all going to be. Yeah, and an example for that showcase at the top right last week is the kindergarten we designed for gutting in the university. And that one has an intensive green roof where the teachers are supposed to grow vegetables and herbs and fruits. And then as you can see them there in the kitchen and the baskets to basically process them. So they learn how to cook and they learn how to grow. That's absolutely the way. And what's not the way is at the very top left, the show quote, this is how the developers of the Alamoana area want to make us believe that they're green, they're not, they're orange or red as an alert lamp with that color. Because this is all invasive hermetic nature and not the way. So can architecture solve that? Next slide. This is our counter-cultural proposition to that matter. And these are the primitivas three that are sprouting out of the fertile ground, very fertile ground of Hawaii. And to the top right here, we have our movie show pair, J5L and George Payson. But in that case, they were talking about the primitivas three. And primitiva three, George was a productive member of developing primitiva three. And he basically convinced us with his expertise of nutrition because he is a raw vegan. And after serious discussions, how to basically make a living in primitiva three, he said, guys, if you want to have, you know, while stuck in there, how are you going to deal with a slaughtering mess of blood and bones? How are you going to basically, that's not biodegradable and that's a sanitary issue. So he basically convinced us that for that semester, for that journey to join him. And we said, he looks in his, being in his mid-70s, he looks mighty good. He looks more like 50. He's looked better than some guys on the screen who have little hair left, you know, speaking about myself, of course. So he has, that was one of the funny questions of them, one of the things Jay addressed who joins us as far as the hairstyle is concerned. So this is turning back to serious. This is serious that buildings should be performative and they should address all these issues of again, of climate change, they should be off the grid. They should be self-sufficient. They should be like nature does. And we have to be able to make that work. And we're the team of permitting, all the permitivas and more basically tropic hearing as we call it, as we will share with you guys at the very end of the sequence here is very, very optimistic. But the question is the sort of, how do we promote this more? And that maybe gets us back to politics. We've been talking about in our state, Senator Chang has an ambitious goal to take a delegation to Vienna, to look at better or at all social housing practices and bring this back to the islands. That's very honorable of him. But maybe we also need, well, we need everyone but we need politicians and then get back to the, I'll get to the next slide. And with that one, we are revisiting someone you had just been recalling him on the first slide, right? Who's that again? Well, this is the new home that's being built by President Barack Obama, former president I should say in Waimanalo and it's on the site of what had been a private home, a large estate. And many of you would have recognized it from its frequent appearances in the first edition of Magnum PI TV series. Well, it's been purchased, it's been that home has been demolished and this home is under construction. And that of course will be one of Barack Obama's vacation homes. But the irony of course is that while this new modern structure and obviously very comfortable structure goes up, there are people literally a stone's throw away who are homeless and living in tents. And it also is an ironic part of this that it's built right on the ocean. It's built right on the seashore and we confront the problem of rising sea levels due to climate change, which also affects our food supplies as well. So it is a beautiful home and there is the PI mobile parked in front of it, but there are other concerns that are raised by its construction and where it's located. Yeah. And our PI mobile that we know from many shows and also boring at the top right, this is a draft from it being addressed in that show the automobiles architecture to come, but we can have a little bit of a preview because it is the car of Magnum's friend, Orville Rick Wright who drives such an SL that we got donated from locals around your diamond head for around $5,000. So it's not quite as exclusive anymore as it used to be. It's more inclusive to us at least, but the building is again, we're paparazziing it a couple of weeks ago, the picture on the top left, although it's rather visible and it's not basically fenced off yet. So you don't need to peek too much. It's pretty clear there. Again, we wait until the very end to make our final report, but this one shows it's based on your criticism of being coastal, fronting the ocean. It's basically a stick frame construction. So we, one of the proposals we had been working on in our last semester, which were the Wolf Creek Valleys, they are working with autoclave aerated concrete, which is a cementation material that is not vulnerable to being eaten away by termites who love water and also not being so vulnerable to be washed away by storm. So, and then here you might say, well, that doesn't look like stick frame and that's maybe the first kind of a preview criticism glimpse here. There's some tiles glued on to it. So it pretends to be more of masonry, but it's in fact just a skin or some makeup. But again, the building, we will report on once they're finished. So hold your breath for that one until we move on to the next side because again, you know, barracks, also it's locationally rather rural, rather suburban. So that's not gonna solve the housing crisis and issue we have on the island. But this project here is, and you know this much better than I because you interviewed the architect a while ago and we made a show about it. That's absolutely right. And I was gonna say that this is one of the, and you're gonna have to remind me about this, but this we see in the top right, or at least pre-stressed concrete slabs being installed and being, excuse me, handled. And that's one of the important things that you just brought up because this is not only more durable, but it's also not as perhaps, not as energy requiring, but it also is easy to put up because once you build those slabs, once you create those slabs, you can put them together and assemble them. It's almost prefab. It's kind of bordering on prefab. So that's one of the things that really makes this a desirable type of construction. This was a, although in this particular case, as I remember, this building was not so much from scratch as it was a remodel or a renovation to turn it into loft environments or loft interiors from what was already there from a low, sort of a low-end building, concrete building, to make it a little more desirable, but also a lot more livable. Well, it's architect, our Bundetkanist.com and Janus, and it is actually a new building, but you're right because it's very inspired by the building they live in and it comes across as it's always been there and it is all prefab. It's all concrete. It's done with great specific working mountain precast. So for us, it's one of the best examples of practices, how to do things on the island to solve the housing crisis. This is also not so far away. We can get the next slide up, which will have to be our last one because we're getting to the end of the show, but using that last minute here, it's actually cutting close back to our area around Elamwana and going back to Barack Obama because the two show quotes at the top is where Obama grew up with his grandmother in this building, which was designed by Park Associates and we address if you want to know more about that, watch the show. It's probably fair to say that Barack was a little bit more privileged. He still lives with his grandma, but he went to Punehu, which others had the chance as well that you know very well. So and in the next week, in the next show, continuing this one, we want to talk about other people that are known who were even less fortunate, but also could be great advocates to lobby for a more social housing. And so we can already figure you get a glimpse of one of them at the very bottom, but we're at the end of showtime. So we have to leave this for next week. I can hear dogs barking in the background. So usually, I'm usually the one with the dogs, but this week you've got dogs. Exactly, yeah. That's Aaron and Gretchen. Gretchen is a sausage dog and Aaron is a Waimarana. Yes, I wanted to compete with you. So we want your dogs back next week. No, we'll see. All right, so until next week, stay all tropically exotic, exotically tropical. Bye-bye. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.