 Hello, everyone. I am DeSoto Brown. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Human-Humane Architecture. And I am joined today by this program host, Martin, who's speaking to us from Germany. And let's put Martin on the screen and say hello to him. Hello, Martin. There you are. Hello, my friend. How's it going? It's going very well. And Martin is speaking to us in the early morning in Germany and afternoon. So he had to get up early to do this. And we thank you for doing that, Martin. My pleasure. Let's get started. Let's do that. And we promised in the last show, which was about the Princess Kailani Hotel, who shed a light on a couple of other hotels who might need some help, right? Correct. So let's bring up the first picture here. This is the reference that there is a hotel, which used to be the Waikiki Park Hotel. And that's the project we're going to talk about. Let's go quickly to slide two already here. And that gives us the context of the architect of this project, which was Edward Killingsworth. And he is mostly known for the Kahala Hilton Hotel that you see our tropical tourist expert, Suzanne, standing in at the very top left. And on the right, you see Killingsworth with his client, Conrad Hilton. And so this was, we're talking 1960s, very classy times and as classy as our previous guests, Mayumi and John Hara. And John's car was the Pagoda Mercedes from that era. So one thing was very typical, sort of a signature style by Edward Killingsworth, which our friend and previous host in a lot of shows you have been doing with him and will be doing with him with Don Hivert and in his legendary book, Designing Paradise. He refers to some elements in his architecture as the concrete trellises. And so these you can see at the very bottom left. So let's go to this project here, which is the next slide number three. And here you can see these bones or concrete trellises sticking out of the project. Let's put it into a context of something else next slide please, which we like to compare architecture and vehicles and use automobiles as vehicles for thought. So the next generation after John's car was this model here of the Mercedes-Benz SL as it shows here. And I pulled this from the Mercedes-Benz classic website. So they made this one from 71 to 89. And with that it's one of the longest made models of modern car history where they didn't basically change the model of the body style, just the very sort of subtle revisions. So what does it have to do with architecture? Next slide. These time era from the mid-70s to the mid-80s was also the time of the longest period of a governor running at the state of Hawaii. And that was Mr. Ariyoshi, we can see here at the very bottom right. And what's the relationship to? We've seen that blue car a couple of times before because it happens to be mine. And I snap that, I call it a donation from some locals who gave it to me for rather little money. And they told me it was originally Ariyoshi's wife's car. And so here we are and we're in this time period. We threw in another picture here I snapped from another classic, which is the varsity building. We see another model of these, you know, classic modern classics or young timers, I guess we could say. And we're talking about the same year of build of my car, which is 87. And that's also the year when the White Park Hotel was built back then. And let's go to the next picture. This is how it looked until most recently, which, you know, looks fine to me. But as we learned from tropical tourism experts, Suzanne, every so like seven to 10 years, the tourist industry things they need to remodel hotels to keep them up to date and fresh and basically rentable to hotel guests. And so let's look at the project next page here, how it looked like until most recently, I took these pictures here shortly more for our left at the end of the semester heading out to my sympatical year in Germany. And this is how it looked right now. It's much progressed. But let's look at the next slide, which is from the website of the Holly Kalani, who is the sister hotel and has always been. And this is their imagination or their promise, what they try to make out of it. Maybe you want to comment a little bit about what you see. Well, two things here. Well, one thing we discussed when we were discussing this earlier was that the Waikiki Park Hotel, first of all, it's being re-branded as the Holly Puna. And the Holly Puna is a new Hawaiian name. But you'll notice also that the local type that they're using is identical to the one that the Holly Kalani Hotel currently uses, which it entered or prospered into use in the early 1960s. So they're very clearly putting these hotels together as a unit and showing there's a connection. But the photograph looking out over the blue ocean is perhaps misleading because the Waikiki Park or Holly Puna is not located right on the beach. So you're never going to be having this unimpeded view of the ocean that you see in this photograph. So fire beware. Yeah. And Nora, what do you have the one at the very bottom right at this sort of ancient, unobstructed view of Diamond Head and that one palm tree? That's long gone, right? Yes, very long gone. And that's maybe okay. That's maybe okay. Next picture, because we're talking about Waikiki, a very dense urban fabric with one of the highest high rise densities in the United States. I think we're scoring position number six or so of the number of high rises in the United States. So this is one here. And this is what is going on. Their renovation isn't just interior, but it's also exterior. You can see the original enclosure of the glass facade at the top and then at the bottom them ripping them out. So you can see that clearly here. And so what is, let's look at the original one. You have lanais sticking out and you of course have an access to the lanai, which is a sliding door, which is a sliding glass panel. But next to that, you also have a piece of glass and the guardrail continues. And that gives you an indication that might be some functional reason for that. And there is, because the glass part behind that also has a sliding part. While this is a double loaded corridor, so you don't get the cross ventilation, but you might get some side ventilation, if you want to call that. So let's see what's going on and go to the next picture here. You can see at the very bottom right, they're putting in or they put in what you call a mock up. So before they install the entire windows, they test it. They put a sample in there, a mock up. And let's look at that closer in the next picture where you can see the construction worker cleaning out the original at the top and at the bottom. And for me, shockingly, you see something here that what used to be our system with a sliding door is now one fixed piece, which is shocking and unfortunate because we used to say easy breezy. And we get to the, you always credit me as the author of that. But in fact, there's another person that we refer to later in the show who owns that copyright for that saying originally and not just quoting her. So here, we're turning from easy breezy to her medicizing. And that's something we don't like. No. Right. But what we like is to say what if, so let's go to the next picture and just imagine, you know, you rip it all out and let's dream about the potential. And that's the next slide here. This is a Tropicure David Rockwood with the emerging generation testing alternative ways of mitigation of wind and sun and privacy. And I wanted to ask you, does each one of those horizontal louvers move independently? Is that the intention? Well, they can move independently as you see at the very bottom right, you can turn them individually. But more importantly and fascinating, you can basically move them all down. So you have a balustrade that you're from falling off the building, but you have a totally unobstructed clear view and then you can move them up. So it's, you know, it's very multifunctional and great. And you can only do this in Hawaii. Never in here. And that is, that's a very innovative way of dealing with louvers. I mean, we've had, you know, Don Hiverton, I did a show just about jealousy windows. We don't have that with glass jealousies. Then this is really quite breaking. Yeah. Let's turn the discussion to a slightly different, but somehow connected level here and go to the next slide. This is looking at the sister hotel, the big sister, the Hale Kalani here. And there's a big piece of artwork that you can see in the background. And while I, this is from the 80s and sort of looks like that is a little too literal for me. But what I like is the plaque at the bottom right, explain the artwork, and it basically points something out that, you know, usually you want to, the tourist industry is not welling on so much because they want to, you know, paint this picture of peaceful tropical paradise, hula, dancing, you know, like that. Exactly. But they don't talk about what the sculpture, the intention of the background of the sculpture is that the Hawaiian islands people have been fighting a lot and making war against each other. And this is addressing that. And you were the one when I was actually happened to be on the road and actually servicing my car at Jiffy Loop when we were in touch. And he said, Martin, have you watched the news? What's going on in France? There's revolution, there's riots going on. And I want to make very clear if you see at the bottom left, I'm not a Fox News watcher for obvious reason, but Jiffy Loop is so never mind. But you can see what's going on. I mean, this was going and they were fighting over fuel tax as it says here. And it's gone crazy. So let's go to the next slide because what does that have to do with us on the island? When this is the project is on my daily or was on my daily jogging route. And so I experienced something going on, which was people on strike. And these were the hotel service workers basically fighting for getting more money and fighting reminded you of something surreal and I think it's it's somehow directly related. But if you think about it, it is. And let's go to the next slide and please explain what was striking you. Well, the photographs that we see here are taken in Beirut, Lebanon. And in 1975, there was that was a site of a civil war that erupted in the country. And ironically enough, in the midst of this city of urban high rises and particularly in an area where all the hotels were, one of the major hotels at the time, which was the American chain Holiday Inn, became a central part of this civil war because it was so it's such an important position and it was so tall. Anybody who was in the Holiday Inn, which of course at that point had been devastated by gunfire and fire, etc. could control the area around it by shooting at people in the streets. So we saw this very bizarre juxtaposition of a Holiday Inn hotel becoming a symbol of war. And next picture, because you might people might think they're crazy. Now, what in the world does this have to do with us? Why are peaceful paradise? And let's go to the next picture. History has shown if you don't take care of the little people at the lower end of the food chain, at some point, they will not put up with that anymore. And they will step up and they will fight for their rights. And that's the situation that's the biggest challenge we have on the islands. And it's different to mid century, which we glorify so much. We have these different circumstances where the cost of living is exponentially getting more and more extreme. And wages are not rising proportionally to that. So when I was jogging by, I saw this surreal situation of people spending the annual vacation and a lot of money in adjacent hotels. And all they were expecting and counting on was peaceful tropical greases, maybe some birds. But what they were hearing was aggressive noise coming from one the construction site and Jack hammering and stuff like that. And secondly, there were these people on strike and hammering on gas cans and kitchen pots and stuff like that. So there was this sort of really rebellious riot situation going on. And other things have been discriminated. I mean, Waikiki was basically landscape and flora and fauna. And maybe this Rooster in the front is a leader here as well. And me too. Here's me and my card that I picked up. One job is not enough, as it says. One job should be enough. See how it should be enough, exactly. And it is not. So again, going back to architecture, what does it have to do with architecture? And so let's go to the next picture here. Here's a potential because the project is being comprised of a tower and a plin as most hotels are in Waikiki and all across the Hawaiian islands. And so the next picture here shows a potential that we've been pointing out some shows ago, which we gave it a surreal title or even more surreal title, the People Power Parking Plins. And that means if we somehow manage to get the island back to something different than individual inefficient and effective traveling in little tin cans that are driven by fossil fuel, then maybe we open up the space that until now hosts these tin cans and we can open this up for people as this picture here shows. These are of course hotel workers and not the people in need who would need the space, but there is this potential. So let's go to the next slide. And this is taken in the picture of the hotel from the other side, from the Malca side. And you can see relating to Rockwood screens here, some screens were already in place. So it's almost ready to move in for, as we call them, the proletarian people. And that gave the name to the show, the proletarian power, powers potentially sounds weird, right? But maybe the soda and Martin were ahead of that time because I threw in this little article from a German online newsletter here at the very top right. And it says there's my daily German lesson in Parkhaus sind noch Zimmer frei. And you do your, you bravely do your German lessons. So what does that mean the soda? I can't remember now. You told me, and I don't remember. I apologize. So it means no problem. You're a patient student. So this means in the parking garage, there are rooms available. And you were surprised because this is a German article. Right. Right. And one of the things that we, you and I have talked about is when you're talking about people moving into spaces like this, it really requires a tropical climate in which you don't need to shut out the cold. And yet this is the thing that surprised me. They're talking about doing this in Germany, where it is cold, and you do need protection, unlike easy breezy living in Hawaii. Exactly. And that means if you can do this in Germany, and then we can do it here, you sure should be able to do that in Hawaii. Exactly. Okay, let's go to the next picture. Again, us dreamers and visionary people here, folks, how do we do that if we bring back the island to mass transportation? Which again, we used to have street cars and cable cars, electric cars, as we can see here. Let's go to the next picture and zoom into the micro pores of the architecture that we're analyzing here. And this picture at the top in the middle makes you laugh, give you a chuckle, right? It certainly did. Because I thought I was the only one who had long hair in the distant past, but that long-haired young man standing next to the Mercedes station wagon is Martin Beck, when he had hair with his father and their Mercedes station wagon, which we did not ever have in the United States in the States. Exactly. The first TE model was built from the mid-70s again. There we go again back to the beginning of the show to the mid-80s. And so as my car, at the very top left, you see me taking a picture of some things that were meant to be clipped on sort of the hinge gearware of the seats, which are on the metal, but these caps are basically out of plastic and chrome. And so they're falling off because they're getting old and plastic is not aging well. And what does it have to do with the architecture? Because at the bottom or at the top right, you can see this is a detail from the Kahala Hilton, where it's all concrete. And they went through the effort to put this additional batten at the corner and take it off with a foamwork. And it leaves this sort of negative, mesian corner. Again, that was mid-60s. And so here now, when they at the very bottom of this page here, you can see that the construction workers took off an awning that used to be attached to the trellis structure. And so here all of a sudden, you can see what's coming through, which is a steel structure. And it's been boarded up and plastered. And then somehow it reminded you of the way we built these days, right? And you were referring to our show of your Denny's in your front yard. Exactly. One of the things that it made me think of was when you look at pictures of buildings after natural disasters, after earthquakes, or sometimes hurricanes or tornadoes, you see when the facades are damaged or ripped off, what the inner parts of these buildings really are. And many times it's deceptive, many times there is a false front that looks like something, but it really wasn't made of that. And when you were taking pictures of the construction of the Denny's restaurant, right next to Compiola New Park and the zoo, that's what we were seeing. We were seeing structural steel and things like that, with decorative things put on the front to make it look like a different building, covering up what it really was. And as we're not afraid to be political, we talk about zeitgeist. And we say everything, prior to the 70s, that breaking point was authenticity of the Carta era. And everything after that, to be continued now, unfortunately, is sort of the fake front Reagan era, right? That's right. So if we go to the next picture on the other side, the Hale Kalani, however the Hale Kalani was built a little earlier, three years earlier in 84, they still were holding true to the Kahala Hilton tradition, even here more refined, not only did they break the corner in a 45 degree angle, but also in the center of each side, they put in some significant, even more significant effort to decorate, as we could say, the colors, right? So let's look at the next page about what they're going to do. This is a hard to pronounce name of an interior design firm, sounds rather French to me. And the design is sort of cream colored and beige and, you know, sort of tries to be in that sort of elegant, humble tradition of the Hale Kalani. And there's nothing bad about it, but as we were saying before, does this address the significant issues and challenges we're having socially on the island? And I think you said it doesn't. So where could be some hope? And let's go to the next picture. There is a little gallery in the Hale Kalani, just between the two restaurants. And I do a pit stop occasionally there and look at the artwork. And there were this four piece artwork in the back that was mesmerizing, because it's in the true tradition of modernism being very abstract, being patterned. But the closer you get, just like in modernism, you see something maybe more real, maybe more literal. And these are comprised of thousands of little fishes. And it's an artwork by, shouldn't have surprised me, our dear friend, Kaili Chun, the show we did with her is referenced here at the top right. And Kaili is indeed the one who crafted the term easy breezy. So let's go to the next slide and let's be a little bit patriotic here about because Kaili has a little German in her as well. And let's just say what if. Let's just say what if Hale Kalani would have gotten the whole job to Kaili, to a local girl who is Princeton educated by Michael Gray's and has ever since proven to be the most talented, sensitive of her culture, but as well also critical in a constructive, critical way in questioning her culture. We're getting fascinating you and Don with your screen show. I did a little addition to that a while ago on our show where we're saying there is a German product that offers glass jealousies that have been optimized to the temperate climate here. So they made a triple glaze. They formally optimized the frame. So you can withstand the cold winters and the hot summers here with that system. And so we were saying, well, I can see when Kaili would have been doing this, she would have equipped the whole facade maybe with that system. So you can do what they call a split system that when the sort of a little bit of a sissy tourist come in August, it's just too hot for them. They can shut them close and run their AC, but only to open it up in the fall and in the spring when we have perfect temperatures. And you know, you can nowadays technologically have the AC shut off automatically when the windows are open. It's a very simple thing to do. You're saving energy when you're doing that. And we could do that. Yeah, exactly. The next picture that gets us to the bigger scale to the macro scale is study we've been doing a while ago with the emerging generation here, sort of criticized and critiqued by our activist journalist, Kurt Sandburne, that you see in that picture and his text that, you know, if we would do that, we're just talking about these sort of innovative retrofitting probably coming full circle back to the roots to the beginning of Waikiki, where everything was easy breezy and not on the fossil hook yet. What would happen then? And it could look like that. Let's go to the next picture, zooming in and we have tropical tourist experts, Suzanne again saying, well, this is where tourism is going anyways, there is the catchy term, we don't like the term sustainability, but it's been used in the tourist industry where the where the tourists are not tourists anymore, there are short term occupants, their guests and they become involved and they get interested in and they care and they're not depleting, you know, a place, but they're they're engaging with it in a constructive way. And as we said, when, you know, there could be this synergy of in this building, the former park hotel, where the proletarian workforce people who take care of the guests, you know, live in its plinth and and the guests live upstairs and they can mix and mingle, you know, why isn't this possible? Why do the workforce people have to live far out west, right, where the only place is where they can afford something and then they're stuck on H1 or they have to leave at 3am in the morning. No, let's integrate that, make that inclusive, right? Correct. That's right. And we were talking to you and I were discussing too, that as Porta Lulu is affected by the mass transit system, we will see more and more of this living close to your job thing or at least that's what I hope and you hope as well. Yeah. And I guess as to the next page, which is showing the attempt of the major landowners, we're seeing Howard Hughes at the top with a little ironic, we find, you know, they have their, their development model up there and they have it in front of the architect of your place, Vladimir Asipov's IBM building, where he some half of a century or more ago was recognizing a glass box doesn't do it. You need to shade that. So he did this very, very imaginative trellis shading work around it. And but today, you know, we don't look from that. You see at the bottom, these are the affordable, so-called affordable projects by at the bottom right commandment school. But all you see is basically a Chevron decorated elevator shaft or in the middle, you see that just almost completed workforce project by Howard Hughes, where they're using, you know, these sort of punched in shared gathering spaces. But that's a theme. It reminds us of, you know, as old fogies of Miami Vice and it's original from the, from the, from the 90s and, and architect Tonica having built this sort of Atlantis project. This, this isn't really new, right? I mean, we're basically recooking, warming up all things and our island deserves what Asipov has been doing, something that's really sort of novel and new and fresh and specific to our place. Exactly. And gets us to the next picture here, second to last, is showing what this photo? Well, we're seeing the, when you revealed your class reveal from one of their projects. And at the project were both me and former governor Neil Abercrombie. And Governor Abercrombie is holding up a booklet which is called wither Honolulu from 1938. And it was a publication by a city planner named Lewis Mumford. And he was advocating for some of the things that we're talking about right now for Honolulu. He was saying, you need to recognize your location. You need to take advantage of your weather. You need to work within these things to make your city more beautiful. And it's still applicable today. Exactly. And another thing he was proposing, and that was one of the reasons I think he is not our governor anymore because he was too brave and ahead of his time, he was proposing to not stick to this sort of 400 feet chopping off a skyline. But he's saying, let's allow certain prominent and dominant buildings and maybe proletarian people, power and towers could be such to rise higher. And so certain things need longer. And he was breaking the ground for that and broke his neck. But now we're back to that. He sent me the article at the middle row at the top that lawmakers are basically rethinking. And while we, you know, we're weirdos and we're proposing this stuff, but we need politicians like Neil with visions. So hopefully we get that lady at the very bottom as the next president. Or if not, maybe we get as we were promoting the Rock Dwayne Johnson as to renew his candidacy, which he was suggesting. And then maybe they can support projects like as you see on the right. And I think this is actually the faster tower that we're retrofitting and saying stripping naked, take off the facade. And then you see that green thing, which is just symbolic for again, screens could be vegetative as well, which gets us to the last page, which is our concluding note here, because many people, you know, know we're far out there. We're dreaming and people could say, well, keep on dreaming guys, but it's probably not going to happen. And so we learned that if we can point out some potential on the island, that things have been done that we just do again, that might be more convincing. So this one here comes full circle to Edward Killingsworth. And one of his last projects on the island built in 1994 is on the what we now know as the Coalina Resort. And the first project that was built there was the Ihi Lani, right? And it shows the same architectural language with the trellises and the full word concrete homework. But guess what, which we also saw at the very beginning, and people who were probably curious in the permanent background picture, you can see what we were talking about. We would constantly talk about keep the facade open, don't glaze it, use vegetation, use plants, use curtains. And here we are and have always been doing that. So let's do it again. How about that? Very good. Well, thank you very much, Martin, for joining us. And thank you all of you who've watched us today. We will be back or think Tech Hawaii in two weeks. I will be back, I assume, next week for Dokomomo Hawaii. And so until we all see each other again, thanks everybody for watching and see you next time. And we're gonna stick with hotels, right? And I think we said, let's take on, you know, in the last show, we showed this project and also the outrigger. So let's do an outrigger hotel. We're gonna be and I just sent you some really good outrigger stuff. Watch for those. You did. And your email. The picture I was waiting for for so long. I woke up with that. Make me very happy. Thank you very good. Thank you everybody. See you next time. Aloha. Bye bye guys. Bye bye.