 to have you back to this, our 267th episode of this, our show, Think Tech-A-Wise, Human, Humane Architecture, and thank you for being our 14,400 accumulated viewer and your host, DeSoto Brown in his Bishop Museum and me, Martin de Spang, in the Waikiki Grand. We are happy to have our guest back, Danish architect, Boston's branch leader, Met Noblet. Hi, Met. Hi, good morning. This time, we're all in the morning. This time, we are all, because we're holding on to you and not letting you go back to Boston. And again, we get the first slide up because then we can better explain where you are, actually, which we were talking about some shows ago, DeSoto here with Ron. And this is on Kaimana Beach, or San Soci, or there's multiple names for the same thing, right? Yes. And you are in that hotel where we actually put you up as the school because we had you give your talk. Thank you for that on Monday. And since we, unfortunately, stupidly didn't record it, we are making up for that in multiple episodes here. So reflect a little bit on where we put you up, except that we see you sweating out there in the sun for the sacrifice of demonstrating tropical, exotic, easy breeziness, which you DeSoto and I, I'm worse than you because you're honestly in your having to be conditioned easy. And while I pretend to be somewhere in the jungle and having stolen one of your images with Met, and I'm sitting in my bathroom, which is, by the way, doesn't have AC either. But I'm sweating for hermetic reasons and you're sweating for easy breezy out in the sun. So reflect a little bit about the building you're in, Met. Yeah. So I mean, I don't exactly know when the building was built, but it is actually quite an interesting little hotel with a very lovely sort of lobby restaurant situation at the ground that goes right out to the beach and the monk seals come up in the morning. And occasionally there's some human seal interaction, which I think is not supposed to happen. But with sometimes less fortunate results and sometimes, yeah. But no. And it's really actually has a kind of a completely outdoor interior atrium that allows you, if I could figure out a way to prop the door open without leaving it sort of unlocked and unsecure all night, I'd have perfect cross ventilation through my room with this big lanai door that's right here in front of me. But yeah. And with Ron Lindgren, who we see here. And by the way, DeSoto, did you see his email? He survived his four teeth extraction. So we're so happy, Ron. Yes, we are. And so Ron was with us thinking about a recent remodel that had been doing. And bottom right is a sign on the beach, some few feet away in my direction, Matt, because we're actually pretty close to each other now here geographically, by ironically through technology kind of separated. And then there is a stand when the shape of a surfboard that talks about the friendship of Princess Kaewolani and Mr. Stevenson, who rode Treasure Island. And it reminds me of the recent styles and interior of hotels. It's kind of the Treasure Island style with like Ratan, which they don't do too much these days anymore and ropes. Or in this case, they're kind of mimicking the color of the ocean with a turquoise upholstery color, right? Which is not bad, but a little pomo, which we're you and I met our allergic to, because that's when we had our education at the peak or at the demise of it, right? Because as you said, shouldn't one do the real deal and actually capitalized on the easy breeziness and natural ventilation that you have the best condition for being sort of a single loaded corridor wrapped around a courtyard, right? And talking about your topic, one of your topics of technology integration, we're always told it's a fire rating issue. You can have the door open and the tragic Marco Polo disaster happens. But come on, if there's a will, there's a way. I'm thinking of Dr. Haas, who's in Germany, the most prolific, you know, fire rating engineer that saved my solid timber 40,000 square foot disabled school with only having, you know, two smoke detectors and no sprinklers in there, thanks to the, you know, property of solid timber, as you know it so well through one of your projects that we're gonna have a glimpse of. So anyways, thanks for being, you know, happy where we put you, except you said the jackhammer. So we said, hopefully we got a good discount. Count on that on your expense. As long as you can't hear them this morning, I think it's okay. Yeah, we don't hear them. I wanna just toss in one little historical part of the site of the hotel. And Matt, as you've seen and Martin, as you know, there is this original wooden balustrade along the beach side of the hotel, where the dining room is, the Haotri Lanai, and that harkens back to a house, which was formerly located on this same site. This hotel was built in I think 1964, 65, whereas Waikiki was growing very abruptly due to the jet age, but it does have some elements of the 19th century, and they do talk about how it is a historic site of formerly a private home. Okay, so after this Matt, I'm gonna pick you up and drive you to the airport. And already in the airplane, you have to dress differently, and you can probably then just keep that on in where you're going back to Boston. And to give the audience an idea of how your workplace there looks and the other ones around the world, we can get the next slide up, and which is actually a video. So thanks for playing that, Eric, here we go. It already started. Yeah, so this is a sort of spliced together run through three of our offices at the time that we made it. We were three offices, Boston, Stuttgart, and Munich, but we kind of really prized sort of being agile in our workplace, being able to kind of reconfigure teams and groups and have all of the activities centered around project work and models and tactile, tangible things that samples of materials and so forth. So these are all people who we've worked with for many, many years. This last year that we've just stepped into Munich, it's like being able to teleport, basically, but Munich at night, but yeah, and this is sort of like how we work is this kind of very non hierarchical kind of organization where everybody's there. The partners and everybody who kind of operates the office sit in exactly the same kind of space that you see here together with all the architects and it's really just an attempt to kind of democratize the whole operation in a very horizontal way. Absolutely, and going to the next slide, you are actually the tropical extension of the whole enterprise because for personal reasons, you have been on our islands for 30 years with your wife and her family and your daughters having grown up here in parts. That's right. So the office is really lucky to have you with that because otherwise all three locations are in temperate climate zones. So no surprise, and it gets us to the next slide that you have been traditionally been operating in temperate climate zones, but you guys are moving on and along and we have been selecting two projects, exemplary as to have you go through more in detail. And that is one of the very early ones and one of the very latest ones, but walk us through principally here through the timeline and also touch on the other ones that we're gonna not have the time to go deep into. Yeah, I know. I mean, this is kind of an endeavor that started about almost 30 years ago. My partner Stefan sort of was always interested in figuring out how to work outside of Germany and kind of export some of the, you know, I think relatively progressive thinking that it's gone on there for maybe a lot of programmatic reasons. It's not like, it's not as if Germans are just better people or more altruistic than all their humans. It's just that the government is... I can confirm that, yeah. Yeah. Historically, we have seen that. Oh, yeah. It's just, it's, you know, energy prices and limited, you know, land opportunities and things sort of have an impact on the way that development happens. And so I think there's just been a little bit more progressive thinking in terms of how you can operate in these climates. But we did back in 1991, the so-called IBM Institute for Forestry Research at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, which was at the time a kind of European pilot project for sustainability and was kind of the first foray into both international experience and also a really highly sustainable building for a very progressive client there. Sort of fast forward to the early 2000s at the Gensheim Building in Cambridge. That was our first North American project and was also one of the first lead platinum buildings of its size in the US and became quite well known both for its kind of sustainable attributes but also for the kind of way that Gensheim used that as its own brand in a sense, right? As they moved through subsequent years of development that really became a synonymous with their brand, this kind of approach to sustainable building. And I think generally a lot of these projects they all kind of represent kind of milestones in our, the evolution of our thinking in the top, the very top most photograph there is at the World and Electrical Property Headquarters and Geneva, which is a building for the United Nations. That was one of the largest all timber structures in Europe at the time, mass timber construction. The Portland State University, Carl Miller Center was an all-passively ventilated building that we did in Portland, Oregon back in, it opened in 2018. And then the most recent building, the Science and Engineering Complex at Harvard was, it was also a lead platinum building but also one of the first living building challenge, metal certified buildings in the world. Okay, well, go to the next slide, which I will hold up as another confirmation of the points. This is the daily Think Tech, Hawaiian newsletter sort of. And so this is another German guy, our current president, Bundeskanzler. And the subtitle is Germany is upsetting its allies in Europe. So that's, we continue to upset people. And this is just a slide quickly, personal on my side that as we, I've been talking on my own about the kind of the cross paths that we had met over the years. And top left is that we ended up representing my hometown of Hanover in the fate and 21st century of architecture world atlas. And it's like we're on the same side on the opposite ends why the Nord LB, your guys project is high tech and high end and ours is low tech and low end, but they both fight for the same thing, right? And I was, I think it's fantastic that that city of like, you know, half a million people and the fate and decided to choose projects representing it that are looking at things in a biochromatic performative way and not just in a formal way. And so that was really nice. And so was Stefan when he basically stepped up and fought for us fiercely when we scandalously won what you had been winning before the lower Saxony States award of architecture which is the highest award on a state level with that iconic building. And the next year it went to the neighbor of that kindergarten which is a community grocery stores where you can buy underwear in the six pack which many didn't get. And for that reason wanted to tell us that and they pulled us out on a panel discussion that was called Fiat Streiten. So usually I prepare you the soda for your weekly German lesson. Can you figure by me not having prepared you what that means Fiat Streiten. No I can't. Fiat is for and Streiten is argue. So for people arguing and two of the people arguing you see at the very bottom left which is Stefan and the next to him is who we now know better than in the past because back then she was the state minister secretary of family and cultural affairs. She has moved on over a couple of steps of being the minister of defense of Germany. She's now the commission president of the European Union Ursula von der Leyen and Stefan was kind enough to spend an afternoon with my clients and then having grabbed the microphone and having said that and he said I could have never worked for the guys because they were so cheap and the whole budget they were given for the whole project was what I had for the double facade for guys. And again, very collegial, right? He could have done something much better could have spent an afternoon. And by the way, you know, Hans Otto and Thomas I love you, these are my clients, you know? And so that just speaks for and for me it was an interesting point because we were kind of foreseeing the world which we're seeing right now recession coming up that was the one in 2008 and we were kind of foreseeing that and although Stefan tried so hard or maybe he was another reason why we then didn't get any commissions anymore not that I'm blaming him. And I'm feeling in a good way I'm feeling like Alfred Price who after the Arizona Memorial and the zoo entrance which they're kindly remodeling finally here in our front yard met and I he got no commissions and he went on to became a policy maker and probably without Stefan having fought for me I wouldn't be in Hawaii if you think about it. You know, everything happens for a reason. I think it's interesting. I mean, you know, you mentioned sort of like, you know, the higher end, high budget, lower end, lower budget kind of projects that have something in common. I mean, this is a really important thing that we have to emphasize when we talk about these things. You know, the projects we do tend to be, I mean, we've always been a little bit you might say kind of big game hunters over the years but, you know, these are the principles behind these projects apply at all scales and at all levels. And I think increasingly, you know, as architects we have to be much, much more vocal about what we need to be accomplishing for even the simplest tasks, right? I don't think that big fancy academic buildings for wealthy universities, you know, or what, you know, big development buildings downtown are the only avenue one has to sort of apply this kind of thinking. Certainly this hotel is a fairly basic building that has all the right sort of strategies in place. It's not that difficult and doesn't require a lot of money. And in fact, if it's done right, it should require less money. If not an outset and the initial costs in the running costs over time, right? In getting that right, I'm happy you remind me of that that I have to correct it a little bit because the initial connection we have with you guys is that both Gunters, my father and Stefan's father are from Saxony, they're both from Dresden and my father just recently was in the Zangbeno gymnasium at an open house and the director was all over the place and was so happy with it. And that is a public, that's just like our kindergarten, right? That is a public German project on a cap budget, on a low budget and you guys did just as well as with the more prestigious programs, right? And budgets there. So thank you for reminding us to say that. But I wanna, what is here the point? I then soon after that started to go to the US also and to coach here. And your Gensheim building was really an encouragement for me because it was like, okay, I'm going out into the world venturing out of my comfort zone. And by that time, you were doing that as well. So the building was once again, was a real sort of help for me as to say I'm not by myself out there in being sort of on a diplomatic mission. And because I guess I think we Germans as you point out the soda correctly, we get a little bit too full of ourselves at times and back then really worst way, right? But even recently again, where we thought, meaning well to get off the fossil, but then it didn't happen fast enough, right? And that's another thing. I mean, these projects met have been a while ago, the Nord LB and that kindergarten were at the beginning of this millennium that were now a fourth into that century. And we're still in that trouble because if everyone would have built that way since then we wouldn't be in trouble. So I guess this is probably just another wake up call for everyone to finally join us, right? Yeah, but you know, that's the way the world works. Things go along status quo until there's some catastrophic reason that you've got to change. And this is how for example, building codes change after an earthquake or after a natural disaster or after a fire. That's when we make changes that require people to rethink how to do things so that you don't kill people literally in certain situations. And so this is the same situation. And it's something I remember very well from the energy crisis of 1973 and 74 when I was already 20 years old and it was a sudden wake up call that scared everybody all over the world to suddenly make us bring us into the reality of where we were. Yeah, and then people didn't want to listen to our favorite president Jimmy Carter, right? That's right. And talking maybe Matt, you were telling us a story talking and Stefan was actually in this case educating Ursula quite a bit by having stepped up because after him, she grabbed the microphone and said, well, Stefan, if you have your coming out and telling me about the background stories I want to do this as well because I had to initially give the award and I didn't know what I was giving to because I didn't find it beautiful. And then she's the daughter of our governor and lower sex in these. So she knows how to, but let's just give it that Stefan taught her about democracy and about the substance of things versus the surface and talking presidents in our Island having a past president. Let's share that little story that you told us Matt about Barack Obama and his recent talk at the AIA conference in Chicago. Yeah, well, of course, I mean, I'm sure all of us on the Island are not all of us but certainly the majority of the people here are big fans of the former president and it was an opportunity this summer for me to go hear him speak in Chicago at the AIA convention. So it was a room full of, I don't know 10 or 15,000 architects and he was probably the only non-architect there but the first question they asked him was, what was his favorite building in the world that he'd visited? And I didn't know quite what to expect but he started talking a little bit about the Sydney Opera House and maybe a few other kind of notable things but then he came back around and said but you know, the building that I love the most there's an architect in Hawaii from the mid century. And when he said that, my heart stopped because I thought, is he really gonna say, is he gonna give like the perfect answer to this question? Like, I mean, he's already up on a pedestal, right? And then is he gonna actually say it? And he said, and this guy's name was Latimer Oswald and there's a little house that he did up on the hill in Chandler's behind where I went to school and it's called the Lillestrand House and he said, I have to say I think that's my favorite building and I just thought this was, I mean, at that point he's a chief God status, I think that's all right. Yeah, just like along with Jimmy Carter who I think we shared in some shows ago I learned on the Big Island by an Uber driver that Jimmy was building a habitat for humanity houses there on the Big Island. So the two of them are up there. And I was wondering, I was actually shame on me it took me 10 years to get to Punahou first time they had an open house and obviously Obama did. And so maybe he knew that. And I did too. And you did too, yeah. And so maybe he knew the chapel to begin with, right? First. Oh yeah, definitely. But it's interesting. And we need to talk more to sort of from your experience if it has always been the way it's operated right now because I honestly was disappointed because it was full blown a seed and artificially lit. So I'm curious how that has been but that's for another show. So save that for later. But maybe we want to add because you, Matt if you run into Barack Obama on the east side of this island here because Kailua is too far away from where he built his new house which we can talk about it. However, in that case, controversially as well. Then you might ask him discreetly if talking about the other architect that he talked about, Utsun because we have some, so do you remember the background info we got from Magisaki Maka about UH and Utsun? You remember that by any say? No, I don't, no. So we just talked about it, Matt. You wanna recap it the way we just talked about it? Yeah, I mean, I didn't know this story myself but apparently as he was working through the early sort of design periods of the Sydney Opera House, he kind of, I mean, I guess you said he kind of had a bit of a breakdown or just needed to kind of like take a break and recharge and he came to Hawaii to teach here at the university at the school. And you said he stayed in Kailua even which is where my family's from but quite, I mean quite remarkable, right? And making doing the math about the timeline, it was not where we made you shiver on Monday in the ice chest of the auditorium of the Pomo Peace of K School of Architecture Building. It is now, but the predating it that we're very much in favor to sort of the portables that our university keeps saying, oh, we need to get rid of these because they're like outdated. No, no, these are actually the only good ones. You should get rid of a lot of stuff you've been building ever since and maybe you should tear down what you're currently building, a lot of that stuff. And bring the portables back. Now, I send you and you should all look back into, it's in one of our U8 shows, DeSoto, and we did so many, now we forget, I have the same problem that we threw this in because my former colleague, Maggie who's now teaching in Australia, she was digging out pictures of Utsun in these portables just there at the School of Architecture, the way it was and easy breezing. Yeah, and one of the ironies is that the so-called portables which were supposedly temporary are now old enough to be considered as historic structures because they're 50 years old or older. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're everything we talk about, they're single loaded corridor, they're naturally shaded. And never mind, some are a little sissy and they say, oh, it's a little hot in there and then they add single unit wall AC but principally they're still demonstrating. So we get the next slide up, which has to be the last because we're almost at the end of the show but it's just what you probably have to throw on as we already said soon, Matt, not quite as bad, right? Not quite, not quite. Not winter, but this is gonna be the appetizer sheet as you sharing with us the Gensheim building in detail next time, next week. And also you have structured your talk into three categories and the one up there at the top left is the first category that you sort of categorize the project under. So we're looking much forward to that, hearing about that. And yeah, until then, guess we will, the three of us will see each other very soon because once I will have you picked you up in about 20 minutes, Matt, we're gonna drive over to you to solo, not getting stuck in that same traffic jam that you got stuck in. And then we're gonna have a good time, the three of us finally getting to know, you guys getting to know each other also in person before we then reconvene remotely, have across the continents next week. All right, yeah, looking forward to all of that and see you all next week for that. Bye-bye. Take care. 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.