 and humane architecture. And we're broadcasting in times of post-pandemic productions until we here representing the built environment have been thinking about us and that indoor spaces aren't that easy anymore. No outdoors unless we behave, but we never know about other people. So we got excited about indoor open spaces and they're traditionally called courtyard or atriums and we're on a total volume eight show series of that one and this is year number seven. And I'm happy to say we have our dream team together, our triumvirate here broadcasting from three different locations in the world. Me near Brooksport, Germany, my co-host, to sort of round back in Hawaii, to solo. Good day, everybody. Call by now more than a guest than our additional co-host. That is at the feeling towards a long-term friend and business partner, Ron Lindgren, back in your Long Beach, California. Hi, Ron. Hello, good to have you back. So let's go to the first slide and I have to say if our show is good for anything, it's pretty much to reflect on. So if you watch them, mostly we think about what we haven't said and what we forgot. And that's a good thing. So here that week, our guest was tropical David Watwood. And he was sharing his visions for Hawaii, as well as for his fellow tropical paradise in Vietnam. And shame on me, sorry for that. I listed up to now, which is probably even better for you, Ron, to share your very obvious connection to that paradise as well. And that's what we see there in large in you, Ron, back then. So tell us about your time in Vietnam and also your architectural experience. Yes, that photograph of me is when I was an impossibly young 27-year-old naval ensign in a CB battalion, based in Denand, Vietnam, where David Rockwood has been doing some homes. Of course, my work with the CB, in terms of architecture, was pretty much limited to light wood framing, some plywood, some insect screen, and sandbags. And even though I was bragging about having a master's degree from MIT before being drafted into the military, that sort of school experience might not go so far in terms of the little story at the belt. Our CB base was at the base of a mountain. On the other side of the mountain, there was a tremendous amount of enemy activity, hundreds and hundreds of people passing through at night. So I was asked to design a fortress up in a notch in the mountains with two machine guns looking out on that group of enemy. We were out of sandbags. But of course, we had all the sand in the world at the coast of Vietnam. So this being said, well, why can't we just hide plywood panels together with wires, hold the panels apart and sell them with sand? That'll make a massive rejection. Well, thank God when the enemy actually did some charging up the mountain during the dead offensive, the four guys that were in there got out of there before a rocket propelled grenade hit it. Those wires were already under such tension that when the RPG explosion occurred, the fortress completely disappeared and we scattered around for hundreds of yards. Thank God nobody would hurt because of my stupid idea about how to replace sandbags with sand. So we learned and you learned in real world experience rather than just being taught in MIT. And I think that goes to show how real world experience makes a very big difference. And the other thing that we can say about the slide that we're looking at right now, one of the, on the bottom right, is a reference to presidents. And presidents, we did a show a long time ago, Martin and I, about presidents who had been here in Hawaii, most of whom had just visited. But we know that President Carter and his wife actually lived here when he was in the Navy in late 40s in early 1950s. And he is an admirable person for continuing to pursue his work in Habitat for Humanity, even as a very elderly man and with various physical ailments. He still participates in constructing homes for people who need homes. And that's kind of what the Rockwood structure is trying to do in Vietnam too, is to use different materials, but also make homes for people. So with that presidential connection, we're gonna be referencing some other significant people in Maine and Martin, do you wanna get us to with our next slide? Yeah, but before we do, I have to say, Ron, you and Jimmy really for me represent the best of America and the reason why I'm happy to have become American as well. You guys aged well in grades, and that's true for your architecture and as well for you as people. So my highest appreciation for that. And yes, to Soto, we have another reference that gets us a little bit back to the island, that's right, we did a show about Megaman PI and its relationship to island architecture. And so Megaman obviously, you told me to Soto that they just continued the original Wi-Fi O to kind of repurpose the studio in your portrayals of Diamond Head to basically install Megaman PI, right? Tom Selleck was depicting basically that sort of social health challenge of you guys Ron having been coming back, but different than in the past where they were just shown as broken people and having a lot of attention deficit to the order from which for sure they have, they tried a different angle. That was very interesting. And I told you guys and it made you laugh, but sort of the laugh got stuck in your throat as well because German TV when it was first broadcasting then and translating it, they censored it because they thought there was too much for Germans, the whole heavy kind of background so they kind of shortcutted it. And only when they kind of re-showed it in private TV they showed the whole thing. So that's very interesting. So Tom Selleck in Megaman PI let's go to the next slide. Different than the current reboot which the Soto and you and I were analyzing it sort of the virtual and fictitious setting that doesn't exist, the house he's living in was she in this point because she's a woman now. Sorry, Megaman is a guy still, but Higgins is a woman. But anyway, where they live, I think where we, she Higgins lived is the fictional house, the computer rendered house. While way back the house was real, they were shooting it and that was on the way to Waimanado at the beginning of Waimanado and you see the side here. And you've been keeping me up on pace and sharing with me that we've been already PIing and we're spreading the rumors that Obama talking president. And by the way, people vote, right? I mean, all the people we've talked about now are examples of what to reconnect to. So in the last few weeks, people go and vote. We need to go back to these reconnect to these glorious times we keep talking about, right? Yes, correct. And Obama obviously, you know, being less dramatic for us but also gets some pretty critical press now and it's predict for the bottom picture. You will update us on that one. Well, yeah, this is the site of, this was the original house that was used as the site of the Higgins home and where Thomas Magnum supposedly lived in the original series of Magnum PI and it was originally a private home and they did a great deal of location filming there. And it has now been purchased. The original 1920s or 30s house has been demolished. It's being entirely rebuilt. And unfortunately, it's on the coastline. Obviously, as you can see in the aerial photograph, we are having problems with our rising sea levels, the lack of sand and particularly the construction of retaining walls that prevent the normal migration of sand. And unfortunately, that's a situation here that Barack Obama is being criticized for for the construction of the new structures on this site where one of his houses is going to be a retaining wall that's there. And we also see in the upper corner, in the upper left corner, what was the original guest house on this site reportedly where Thomas Magnum, the character, lived. And that is still standing or still was at the time this picture was taken. And so Martin was pointing out, we wonder what's going to happen to it and wouldn't it be nice if it was used for housing homeless people, of which there are unfortunately a great many in this neighborhood, in this part of the world? Yeah, so dear President, please listen to us. And we refer to the top rise as pretty as shows where we were sharing how he grew up. A lot of modest and with his grandma in a very nice, mid-century modern apartment building. So, Cipriano House School. So hopefully he remembers that, how it is to live humble and rather simple. And so hopefully he then shares with this, which gets us to the next slide, which were the increasingly critical population on the islands because this is just a couple of feet down the road from where he will reside. These are the suburban nomads, how we like to call them preferring it over homeless who have this street linear tent camp there. So we were thinking what could we do for these people which gets us to the next slide. And we've been shedding a light on that here and there in the past couple of shows that we want to dig a little deeper and give you a little bit more comprehensive view of that. The project is called the Cargo Corgias Cabanas. They've been using shipping containers, lining them up in the row in a very sort of militaristic marching order way to review and always kindly call for a humanist and humane commission in spreading them out by their width, which is eight feet. So you automatically very much along the lines of the All-American sales pitch of buying one and got one free, you get it's basically 320 because the container is 40 by eight, which is a mass 320 indoor space plus that's for free outdoor space of the same kind. Well, let's go to the next slide and look at the project a little closer and I invite you guys to chip in because I'm obviously familiar because I've been developing it with the emerging generation but this is a chance to have respect with peers, judges and look at it is. So you guys please chip in and tell us how you feel about it. Yeah, I'd like to say it shows the courtyard. Yes, Ron. Yeah, I'd like to say that I've had a chance to study these seven or eight or nine slides of this concept and it just struck me when I looked at it that yes, this would be wonderful options for the homeless and the dispossessed at one end of the social and economic scale but someone ought to build this on an outer island for those maybe the 1% who love to go glamping. This kind of project would make an amazing glamping experience and then it could be a model for how that in turn could be turned into something for our dispossessed and homeless. Great, we will very much consider that. Let's go to the next slide here. Which is again, you see me, I've been taking that hopefully it's just the cold and not the other big thing here but you see me bundled up here in my sweater and shirt and another shirt underneath. So I have a cold, hopefully only because of the cold. So I know why I always say, you should have your outdoor shower. So you see that next to me here. The outdoor shower is just a must for me and then also creating privacy. We're cutting like an opening three fifth into the container side and because the cold yard is already supported by a family of the neighboring container and the tourists. All you need is a rocking shower curtain that's water resistance that you can pull closed to keep the rain out a little bit more but you don't need much more. So we're talking again, very low budget, low key as what we're proposing. We polemically call this the 3,000 mother home because that's what the cost of the huge shipping container is and again, you buy one, you get one free and that's the raw cost construction that sounds very attractive and then you need to obviously add and customize it more. But again, if you're having a rainwater catchment and a tank on your roof and you can feed your shower with it, that's what we're suggesting. Let's go to the next slide. And yeah, you may, I think Ford is still there here than kind of the bird's-eye view on the chair, the observation. Solo might have been kicked out here so I guess it's just wrong. You and me. So this is showing the bird's-eye view here of the containers, showing again that the space in between is as important as the space inside because in Hawaii, you could be outside all the time if you would want to, watch when I visit myself and my self-experiment and the like if you grant having the geology and the sliding doors open all the time and you spend some significant time on the island as well, Ron and I know you're an outdoor fan and you can share with us your bicycling from the heart of Waikiki out there to the Kahala when you were renovating it, right? So us, how is it? Maybe it's the outdoors and the beauty of Hawaii more as you would see if you would be more there, right? When I see this aerial shot of the eight steel containers, I can see two where a portion of the top of the containers could be a sun deck and it could just be an ordinary wooden ladder that creates the access because the courtyards themselves will be wonderfully cool and shady for most of the day, but around noon, one could climb up at one end of the top of a container and suddenly have a broader view over the property and catch some rays. Well, that's great. I'll give a recommendation from you. We are referring to your show about your own house because that's what you guys have been doing, the garage, you know, you've been utilizing the top of your garage to make an additional outdoor open to the sky, open courtyard, right? So then, here's your recommendation. And that's how it stops basically here. You need to stay cool in the containers. So we're staying here. We pass out some roof membranes and then we encourage the dwellers to build own green roofs, shove up some dirt there and growth stuff and they would do, which you see in my background picture, you see that green stuff to my right. It's also the neighboring container that's gonna be a green wall that you have to cultivate and you gotta keep it green because it's gonna make you stay cool. And that's kind of the key. I mean, people are sort of engaged and it's kind of a participatory process. Let's go to the next slide, which shares with us another aspect. We need private indoor space. We need private outdoor space as we were doing a pitch and a series of shows here. But we also need compelling collectives and public outdoor gathering spaces. And so here, you can see that the front of basically the container and what you will get is kind of an irritation. It's a little bit like new cons, but it's a little bit of an eschewing power to where what you see is not exactly what you get or what you would expect it to be. So here where the container doors are is actually the courtyard because the container doors are swing open to enclose the courtyard. And what you see there where they're sitting is the opening on the end of the container and we entered it, it wouldn't let us at the bench. So people wouldn't basically sit outside in their architecture. And if you go to the next slide, we're having potentially the situation of a little community where you have that street and you got this sequence of solids and voids and then the voice, you can basically sit. So this is where grandma and chaps, where kids can play. You would have to add some additional shading and trees just like you guys have been demonstrating so well on the Long Beach University campus ride where foliage is a real key. So you would have to add that as well. But overall a very kind of a playful and pleasant situation. And go to the next slide. Us talking politicians, we really would have hoped that Dwayne de Rock Johnty would have, you know, keeping his nomination up for president and must be featuring an encouragement to the next time. And then there is another guy up there who's real name is Patrick and on this that we know him more as Bruno Mars and he actually grew up in out on the streets with his father just like Dwayne de Rock was with a single mom and they were living on two dollars. So they know what it means to try to make it on the island with little. And so I think your suggestion to maybe, you know, knock on their doors and saying, you know, let's be something along the lines that you were saying and once it's established, maybe they could become advocates and mentors for a program to have these, you know, move out onto the islands and create little communities. So let's go to the next slide. Ron, you have been on campus briefly around the National of the Gomomo Symposium and you basically walked from the architecture school to Eastwood Center by IMPAY, which I know you appreciated a lot. And I wish, you know, I could have presented you my school the way we see it here because that's how it would have been if, for instance, Oda campus architect at that time wouldn't have made John R do what we currently find. And that would have been this one here, pushing actually the building out of the central essence of the Quad so the Quad was open to the streets given an entrance. And the building itself being comprised of a multitude of courtyard single-loaded corridor, orientation fine facing south at the bottom of the rendering. And doesn't that sound very much like it reminds me of what you guys have been doing on your campus in Long Beach, Ron? Yes, my boss had the opportunity of being the master planner at a campus that's now 35,000 students. And because he was there for over 40 some years, which was a record in educational history, he was able to design and build buildings or direct other architects to design and build buildings through a master plan that involved, to a great extent, courtyard. But those courtyards had to be beautifully landscaped spaces that provided access from place to place in this very large campus. Thanks much, Ron. So let's move on to the next slide here, and which is getting to the end of the show but we're now basically sharing our experiences with courtyards in the next show. It's gonna be you to Soto and you work environment and this one here is me. Do you recall the project with Soto? Okay, so this is the preschool that you did in Germany. And as I remember, this was one of the first projects you worked on, is that correct? Yeah, that's right. Okay, and the thing that struck me here was, and you just explained this before the show, that when this was built, the client originally wanted there to be a big fence or wall around the property and you didn't want to agree to that and you didn't like that. And what you instead did was to set the school facade back from the street. You said it was a distance of about 15 feet. And then that allowed you to build this open entry courtyard that we see in the big picture. But it's got this very interesting gate which really struck me. The gate is mounted on a central vertical support and then it can pivot. Either it can be completely closed or it can pivot to be at a right angle. When it's at a right angle, it opens. So that courtyard becomes open. So during the school day, as you said, first person in in the morning opens the gate and then the school can welcome its children and or adults if they come in as well. But then at night or when the school is closed, it can be completely shut off with that gate but it still is a, it's a nice clean facade with the brick, mostly opaque facade. But it's got this open space that is, it's not a big fence and it's not off-putting. And as you said, if you install a fence or a big wall, people want to get over that because it's a visual barrier. If it isn't there, then people don't feel that they want to break in and get into something that they can't see. So that was your solution to opening up a courtyard and making this an entry court for the preschool. Absolutely. And with that way, also an homage, Ron, to your guys case study house thinking and philosophy of keeping the houses rather bluntly, you know, opaque towards the street and then opening them up fully towards, you know, the main yard in the back, which is the case with this project here as well. And yeah, as you said, this is a different kind of courtyard. It's kind of a more processional courtyard. It's not the destination, but it's like on the way to the building, you basically, slowly but surely basically, you know, get people in and out. And that gets us to the next slide, which is our final slide here, which gets us back to a project we've been mentioning here and there as well. That's the tropical textile is the working title for the project. It's for once again, for you age. As an alternative to the cargo courtyard cabanas to run, great suggestion would also be which we've been developing it for in Waimanado at the T-car location up the hill to be prototype. And then once they've proven to work, they could venture out down hill and provide the housing for the suburban nomads. This one here was another investigation in providing a sort of a demonstration building for C-tar itself on the backside of the Manoa marketplace here. And it's basically developed together with great specific working on precast with like less campers, a three-dimensional structural grid, three by three by three feet that makes sure that there's never any sun ever hitting the inside. So the horizontal parts of shading to the south, the vertical ones to the west and the east. And it also has a central courtyard in the middle that we see at the very top left. And what we see next to it in the middle top is that the whole structure is basically running over not just the vertical fenestrations but also the horizontal one and it's giving also a shading canopy just like trees do to everything above. An interesting feature is reconnecting back to the art student Dustin Chang is investigating evaporative cooling which only works in our miles and not so humid tropics. And water is, as we said, a traditional feature of all the ancient courtyards of the Greek and the Roman and the Chinese. Here the rainwater of the roof would be channeled through the courtyard and the staircase being part of and that way basically run the storm, runoff water through gabions which are these metal cages that you fill with lava rock and then you filter the water through and it comes out purified. Right. And we were making a funny comment towards the absurdity of things. You wanna share that on this photo? Yeah, you were talking about importing water from France which has been filtered through their volcanic stone in their volcanic region. And the absurd thing is of course that all of the water that we drink from the tap in the Hawaiian islands has already been filtered through volcanic stone even more wonderfully than in France. So why the heck are we bothering to bring it all the way in from Europe when we've got it just here is even better. Absolutely. So perfect closing note and that water we don't wanna buy anymore called Volvic so we have our own volcanic water to make on our island. Right, great. So we're at the end of the show guys looking forward to our conclusion next week where if you guys sharing your wrapping up thoughts about that very timely, you know, architectural typology of courtyards and you the sort of taking us to York and you run looking back and recapping again the project you and your business partner Larry together with your friend and boss at have been doing as far as more urban and more sort of high rise courtyards and atrium. And we look much forward to that one. Can't wait. And until then, as always, stay safe and sound and see you next week. Bye.