 to this or a show, Human-Human-Architecture on Think Tech Hawaii. This is our 269th show, and since last week, we don't know any more which accumulated viewer number you are, but we luckily know someone who knows that, and that's the one who runs us, our producer, Eric. Let us know, Eric. Hey, Martin, we currently have 14,500 views totaling up to over a thousand viewing hours on YouTube. All right, thanks, Eric, and not that numbers matter as much for us as they matter in these moments as we speak in the United States of America. We're still counting some ballots for the midterms, and we are back here as the Drei Glatzköpfe von der Tankstelle, which means this is your weekly German lesson, the Soto. You figured it. You already said it, so it's the three bald guys from the gas station. Oh, the three bald guys from the gas station. So besides me, Martin, the Spang and the Waikiki Grand, it's you, the Soto Brown and your Bishop Museum. Unfortunately, not back in your easy, breezy Osipov childhood, and you met no blood back in your office in Boston, Massachusetts. Good to have you guys back on board. So let's cover a little bit what's going on here. Again, we are all electing our governor, so most of us. How is that going for you, Matt? Can you briefly give us an update? Marahili was successful last night, which I think we're all very happy about. So good news on the from the East Coast. Indeed. And similar here, if we put it even in here, we have Mr. Green as a new governor, starting in December. Not that was a great surprise, but as you said, the Soto is still good to know, and still it's good to be confirmed. Yes. And when I was walking, I mean, obviously, that's a name that everyone, us including, will use abuse for making cross-references. The star advertiser, our journalist professionals, when I was out on my to my run this morning, I see a laying on the floor delivered to some neighbor and it basically said green lights. And we obviously want to see a lot of green in the green here, because in the in the red states that were my stepstones, I have to say, you know, ashamed, both in the prairie and in the desert, where the cities I taught in I coached were the capitals and therefore the intellectuals and therefore they were like blue islands in the red seas of the states. And in Arizona, it's still going on. And let's not go there. Let's stay here. But again, there's one thing that Josh Green has been, you know, part of his campaigning was actually something that has to do with us a lot is affordable housing and even more specifically, some were the most in need, which is homelessness. A little ironic to Soto, we had four builds to supposedly pass and vote on four amendments. The one that looks like it didn't make it is actually the affordable housing one. So go figure that right, we are starting out with a stretch with hiring or, you know, appointing a governor who says, I want to do that. And then we the people don't have the majority for that. How odd is that? That's the way elections go. That is just all you could say. I guess so. So as we started and dragged you mad into always starting out looking at the proposed beauties on the island here, which are the ones to come. So there's a new one here. And I know you guys will say, don't judge a book by the cover. That is very fair. And we know I'm going to be the one to say, well, how much more do we need to know to judge this? So this is Soto, you want to brief us where that will be? Actually, this one, I am not a hundred percent sure where this is. I've looked at this picture. Okay. Under the green, under the green name. Yeah. Green as a green space. Green space. That's a park. And that's Mother Waldron's Park. Oh, yes. That's right next to that. Right. Yes. And this is I have been, I've been trying to figure out exactly where this is going to be. I think this is where Fisher is. I'm pretty sure it's the small building where Fisher Hawaii is. And then the park will be to the right. This is an area that's growing a lot. This is an area that is currently gentrifying and getting high rises put into it. It's also somewhat hip in how it's been developed because the salt at Kakaako shopping area is across the street from this or very near this. So it's not a hundred percent a surprise, but at the same time, it is going to be yet another building that's going to change the character of that area quite a bit. And we said, we compared it, met to Hamburg quite a bit that you know well because of the projects that you did there, the Marco Polo Tower and the Union Lever Building. And we pointed out the big difference is that in Hamburg, the state was king again, making sure it got the land when it was at the lowest point cost-wise. And then they were in charge and they played this as an argument. I have to say this one here is unfortunately state land too. And it's not unfortunate that there's state land we use for housing. That's very fortunate. But I start out in saying it's unfortunate to see what's been dumped on there again because there's a tradition in Germany, Matt, which you know so well because your company, the founders come from it, it's called Sozial la Wohnung Spa. And maybe we want to talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean basically social housing, if you want to just call it that, doesn't have anywhere near the kind of stigma I think that it doesn't in the state. It's really actually you know very often solidly middle-class housing of a very high quality actually. But typically rather dense and you know not what you would consider the American dream kind of housing, right? Your own land and your picket fence and all of that, but very well accepted and respected as a mode of living in Germany. Yeah, and we know this here from who feeds us with his newsletter just timing wise perfect just before the show. This is Senator Stanley Chang and he did again. And I already sent you but I think he didn't give us time or I didn't give you time. The last article he wants to share with us talks about that one has to go vertical and one can't stay. And this is why Sozial la Wohnung Spa social housing is predominantly vertical, which we call stacked lanai here. And it tries its best under the circumstances to be affordable. Yes, but it also tries to be people friendly, not just planet friendly, which you guys try very well as we will continue to talk about and explain in details how. Let me interject a question here, which I want to ask both of you because I am not clear on this. One of the problems in the United States is that low income or social housing undergoes very little maintenance. And so it gets built, but then it gets trashed in a lot of cases. What's the situation with that in Germany? What is the upkeep on this housing? Who of us wants to mad? I mean, go ahead and start. I mean, of course, it's probably there is no clean answer across the board. But I mean, go ahead. Yeah, you remember the first kindergarten we did the Soto we looked at that and the second one are actually in social housing areas. And there is a stick mine, even our Republic German clients who built the kindergartens were saying, Oh, we got to make this, we got to secure this, we got to fence it in, we got to have anti graffiti, you know, facades and all that stuff. But as we know from the two projects, and as you know, you know, Matt, as you do it all the time, if you make the people integral to your gestalt and not keep them out, then they will not be, you know, mad at what you create. They will like it and they will. And so I in both cases, you know, I know from these neighborhoods very well, there is, there is tension. Yes, because sometimes you create ghettos and wherever you make a ghetto, if it's a ghetto of just poor people or even rich people in the kakaako you're talking about, we're creating a ghetto here, but a ghetto of rich people, it never works. So the if there is one problem is the mono structure of it, that you throw only the same people in it. But that's about it. Otherwise, you know, and, and, and sometimes the people then, you know, feel like they're ousted and not integrated. And then they, they express that but that's the most you get. Otherwise, you know, it's I hear you the solo because who is next to this one here is Stanford car. And we were looking into what you actually see show quoted at the bottom right, at this building that wears the car may I may I helmet on that the rules to cover up the AC. There's like, he was saying, you know, I can't make social housing. That is easy, breezy and we're like, give us a break. We're, we're who says that and why do you say that. And so there's a lot of these excuses, right? And social housing is one all it's going to be high maintenance. No, from our experience, where not necessarily where it comes from, but where it's, you know, done a lot. This is not a reason for, for excusing yourself and saying, sorry, we can't do this. I think, you know, I'm just going to say, I think, I mean, I think also, you know, there's this argument that, that, you know, if you, if you build, if you build environments for people that make them feel like they're inmates or they're animals, they'll probably behave that way as well, right? And kind of like, it's a kind of a sort of a, what do you call that a vicious circle, right? A feedback, right? Whereas if you actually create some amenities and some things that people feel valued and kind of nourished in the, in the place, they actually begin to take, I mean, what you notice in, at least what I've noticed in the kind of developments I've visited in Germany is that they're quite well cared for by the residents, right? They put plants in front of their doors and they hang things outside their doors on the walls and they take, you know, they take a lot of pride in the public parts of the building and you know. And they do this here as well. Our most favorite social senior housing, we talked about it, not the one that you looked in for you in law, which scared the shit out of us, but is the senior social housing at the beginning of Kapilani Boulevard by Frank Slavsky. That's exactly, you know, the single loaded corridor or easy breezy and they're deep enough so they can make their little front yards. But in the sibling of this one, I'm already sort of prejudging it at the bottom right and not only is it adjacent to, but it also looks like we got pretty depressed when we toured it down there. There's the trapped, you know, artificial daily lowest ceiling you can think of that hose allowed, you know, acoustical ceiling crap and carpet and then Stanford carpets these plaques to almost sarcastically have everyone know how this place looked like before he they trashed it and then, you know, look at the size of that single wall unit AC that Kili who was then going on and proposing the alternative of his coconut solid timber for housing because it freaked them out. So the young generation gets increasingly really shocked by the stuff and I was quizzing our youngest semi and I said, you know, how does this sort of look to you? We started to talk about styles and hair styles and something that continues to be on vogue is the undercut, which none of the three of us can wear but the young ones can, you know, all we can say all we have is undercut. But here we identified this in our ongoing show. This is the second from top right show quote in Chicago here where these Misi and glass high rises that he would turn around in his grave because they don't have the elegance and delicacy that his have and all of a sudden they start to like carve out something and that's like the undercut part of that which this one here seems to like wanting to mimic as well as another fashion but come on we're not Halloween is over right we're not putting costumes on anymore why don't you design this from inside out and rather than throwing the green on which we might still hope this might be vegetated but probably not because talking maintenance the way it looks how would this work and it's edible green no design this from the inside out and you met and we get to the next slide soon but you said, you know, if we're making the reference to Obama we should talk about his sorry Magnum PI we should talk about his red Ferrari which we will that made me think about okay this is referring to our ongoing show disorder about mobile and immobilia which is the car that I can think of and I I want to quiz everyone and you please pay attention about the invasion of Toyota Camry's or the other day I was I was walking you know at the park close to school because I was short on time and I and then paid attention to the cars park and they were like I swear you 80 percent Corollas and Camry's that are never basically pictured because they are so nondescript and I did my homework I found the first this to the top left is the first ever from the 80s Camry and you know everything was designed more essentialist and cleaner in the in the 80s although that might be our age met and got becoming nostalgic but it certainly even then was not a car that was made to like okay I wow you you know potential buyer it was like okay I'm going to make you feel safe right because I'm going to be a car that doesn't break down so I think what do you guys think isn't this like the Camry architecture but it's sort of false because the Camry's might actually make people feel safe and actually make them safe and don't burden them of high maintenance costs but we hear these buildings do like the second from bottom uh show quote here this K Kali whatever you know people had to move out again it's like you buy a a Camry or a Corolla then all of a sudden you have to drive go to the shop and get it fixed every day that's like cheating right you then not ever build although in all fairness that's precisely what you have to do with your Ferrari so yeah yeah but I think I get to the next slide because we might be done with this one here until we know more so here we are with the Ferrari but you know you know Matt right if you buy a Ferrari and you even fetishize maybe it's you know that your that your mechanic needs to see it so often like you when you like to see the hairdresser I mean I've known people who get crazy about and fetishize and maybe this is just jealousy and you know because we don't have this anymore but actually not because I need to see the hairdresser myself which is me every morning but let's talk about again this reference between and maybe it's not about the exclusive in here because I want to point out that just to remind everyone uh Magnum was not the rich guy who owned that Ferrari but he basically almost like stole it every now and then from Robin Master who was the owner of that estate who lived in the big mansion and he was the sort of bum that was really interesting depicted by the first time on TV what I heard that Vietnam veterans were not depicted as the post traumatic sort of bums victims but as someone who is constantly struggling with that but is trying to process that and ironically they when they me as a kid I saw this up I watched it on TV but not that hardcore stuff because they're censored and there wasn't any on any dictatorship at government anymore that we had been before and you know this was supposedly democracy but they thought we Germans aren't smart enough to or not tough enough to handle that and they censored out some of that part and not until it came back on private TV they basically did the whole did the whole story so he was uh and then where he lived this is interesting too he lived in the guest house that Obama for whatever reason kept which is the gate house next to the fence the wooden fence we showed last week and for the longest time we had suggested you know I think the only way he can still sort of look into the neighbor's faces is when he lets some of the suburban nomads live in there which then comes full circle to the script of the TV show but recently we've been thinking further and thinking about something else where he might want to move right so that is within a Ted poll studio which is bundes and Genesis office into their how holy lofts which is not far away from where he grew up in which we show court at the at the top right so that's where we are now so you know I don't know if obama listen hears us but if he listens to us he probably thinks we're crazy he should you know leave his paradistle idyllic single-family residence out there in the countryside to move back in the city but that's actually what people should do yes sorry to say or I'm happy to say I'm actually not sorry well the the downside of that is if you move back into the city you have to have a place for your car and that is actually a very important point of new developments some of which are intentionally not including places to park cars with the idea that the inhabitants will either walk or use public transportation or maybe use a two-wheeled vehicle so your Ferrari is not going to be easily accommodated necessarily in some of the new buildings that are intentionally leaving cars out yeah that's a very big development in any American development of any kind yeah and our mid-century modern master run was sending us an article to that regards that yes yes one little nitpicky thing but actually important while our RPIing mobile is convertible by nature and you made made another suggestion because you are a very responsible owner of electric cars only right yes correct and you said you know if not in Hawaii where would we want that right because we got the sun out all the time and we don't drive much so why don't we have more electric cars and I'm biased from our easy breezy mobile mobile I basically we have to say that the Ferraris and I you know it's hard to get the graphics right and the information right at the same time but you see the one the three or eight the original one from the 80s is a teatop so it has target tops so you can easy breezy it and in all fairness I have to correct I thought the one of the reboot is not but it actually is different than the pictures so they stayed in that tradition and because we haven't said it but we have to say it why is Bundit and Jen is building in there because actually that show quote from last week guys go back and watch it they were filming an episode of Magnum PI the reboot in that building so come on yes that's why the picture of the interior is one man punching another man it's not that the people who live there are violent it's a fictional depiction going on in the building and he drives and then and then the reboot the reboot they drive the four the 480 or whatever that is on the yes yes yes that's it that's it yeah I wondered where that came from and it all comes from that and all comes from Magnum and the Ferraris and so again we're just telling Obama you know until he doesn't want to hear it anymore as if you wanted to begin with you know this is the tradition so your tradition out there isn't anymore you can just you know sell it or have your other buddies in there and you go back to the to the roots anyway so the yeah even better exactly so urban and again back to the first I mean not back but remembering the one that we're not excited about on the first which again we said before we have to say on you know as long as we see these they could although not should be with you in Boston or with me back in Germany because climatically they would work not that they would make people over there happier in there than these climatically they were so we will continue now to have you met as a great expert showing us how one should actually do it in the temper and that gets us back to your gensheim building next slide and not and not before also show quoting and reminding us what we were so close to but I guess none of us made the connection that where we use state recently in the Kaimana Beach Hotel is a typology typologically similar bees because it's a courtyard type I'll be at an outdoor courtyard which which actually works very very well when you open the doors and the ventilation happens here I mean at gensheim it actually is also a naturally ventilated environment you can open the flaps in the roof and in the interior windows from the offices so that you get some air movement through the atrium which then spins a kind of a prismatic chandelier that's inside of it which is reflecting light down from the top from the heliostats there in the roof and then the air movement from the bottom of the atrium up sort of makes that whole thing sort of move and animates the light inside the space so the whole idea here is that if you're going to build a building with such a broad floor plate you need to kind of find a way to introduce natural phenomena in there to make it livable for people and we see this very well in the next slide if you want to go there exactly although once again you explained to us who did the beautiful initial party sketches martin vanminghausen so again these were from martin as well the previous right right exactly but this really illustrates puts images to the words which you just explained and and i want to just point out something that's relevant for me and matt when you just visited recently bishop museum hawaiian hall which we went into and looked at is the exact same design as this which goes back to the 19th century and as i said at the time this was a design used for both museums and department stores at that time before there was electric lighting they'd lighted these interiors with skylights and windows on the side and that is how you were able to view the either the merchandise or the museum artifacts on the mezzanine floors that surrounded that open atrium so this is actually a very old design which you're using again and i'm happy that i'm able to see that uh making reference to a building that i know very well here at bishop museum we call that such thing an archetype right around forever right the big difference and you very you took your time to explain to us that you know bishop museum used to be open as well until you guys closed it but for a good reason because books and artifacts are different than people because they need to be kept away while you met here did all the efforts to uh basically people frankly this here this type which we know a lot from like john portman's hotels he's the like the inventor antagonist of the courtyard hotel right but very few of them are basically you know bring nature in in such an abundant way exactly and i think the other key element of that is um you know the sort of the portman examples and a lot of the kind of like like like commercial or bank examples of atria they're almost always completely conditioned right fully cooled and heated throughout the year and in in that sort of scenario they become extremely wasteful um this particular one is is only very lightly conditioned during the most extreme parts of the year most of the year the windows can be open you get natural ventilation in there and it's actually kind of a relief to come out of an office and into this larger volume of space that's sort of treated like a like an indoor outdoors yeah yeah and you get the stack effect the natural effect that arises up and you're right in the in the generic atrium hotel you've got that closed glass roof which is really counterproductive right so and energy intensive yeah absolutely so believe it or not we're already at the end and we want to know what these heliostats are so uh you will show us in detail next week that's how we will start out well we likely we already know and we're doing this intentionally you figured this out by now we drag you in for our architectural criticism on the island show then you know we squeeze out your project like you know the most you came but we really appreciate your you both uh you know internal and external um you know joining us on this because the Soto and I speaking for myself feel like we get so blind no glad to do it over almost three good good next week I'll have to be from I'll be in Detroit when we do this so all right even better report from there I'm sort of the field correspondent now right yeah yes you are yes you are yes you are whether you want it to be or not you are thanks for that okay see you then all for that next week and until then stay easy breezy breezy easy bye bye aloha 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 and linked in and donate to us at think.kawaii.com mahalo