 ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome back to our imaginative, exotic island of Oahu, Hawaii here, and to the show that is relentlessly looking into how we can create a built environment that's as comprehensively and substantially beautiful as our nature undoubtedly is. And this time, I still have our tropical tourism expert, Suzanne, on the island, so I was asking her of her choice, and she said, please bring me back to about 20 years ago. And that is to a place that, if you can get the first picture, that is that place where she was at the turn of the millennium. And we want to go back even more in time and go to the next picture. And I want to use that occasion to introduce our guest today, which is Rick Prahla. And I like to pronounce you Prahla, the more the German way, you know, that you have in your ancestry. And yeah, thank you, Rick, for being here. And I always wanted to bring you on a show, but you're resisted for a while. I wanted to bring you on in your different capacities you are as an architect by training, who has worked as an architect in numerous capacities, but also someone who's working for the government right now and tries to make sure that we stay an inclusive island here. And but today we bring you in, and we say this explicitly, not in any of these capacities, but we bring you in as Rick, who is a native of Hawaii. Thank you. And so welcome. And before you were a native, we're looking at something that DeSoto has graciously given us here, because when he's not in the show, he has to charge for the picture. So we're thanking for this and the next picture, which has given to us for free. And if we go back, please, to this picture you hear, what are we looking at, Rick? Well, this is Kuapa Pond before large-scale development. And you can see that strip of land by the ocean is a start of a portlock road. And there were fee-simple houses along that. And then the road that comes across the bottom of the screen is what is now Lululu Home Road. And so, other than the Lululu Old Folks Home, which I think is the big house in that picture, most of that was Leasehold land owned by Kamehameha Schools' Bishop of State. So this is what it was prior to the early 60s and development by Kaiser Development. And even before that, it was basically one of the largest native Hawaiian fish ponds, right, on the island. I believe so. Again, I only go back to Hawaii in 1962, so when I arrived, the development was getting underway. Yeah. And next picture is the one who developed. So this is Henry J. Kaiser, and he's quite a remarkable guy. For those who don't know, he built Liberty Ships during World War II and did a phenomenal job with that, and he was also earlier than that part of a consortium of contractors who built Hoover Dam. And Mr. Kaiser also created the Kaiser Medical System, and he did that for his workers on his various large construction projects. And we were running two shows. This is the right row of pictures here. The top two ones with the soda was called Kaiser's Exotic Hawaii, which he built the Kaiser Dome, and these kind of funky cars that never really went into production. And then we did another show that we called Kaiser's More Mainstream Hawaii, which was his Kaiser Cars for the people and also the Hawaiian Village. But we saved his probably largest project that he did for today's show, and that is your neighborhood. And the next picture is a picture that I wanted to get from the Sony, said, well, that one I couldn't give you for free. So I stole it from TV because I saw a documentary here, and as you can see, it's still courtesy of British Museum. And what are we looking at here? Well, Kaiser, when he started Hawaii Kai, one of his goals was to try and build with local materials. And so he came to Hawaii, he got involved with the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel, and then he started developing Hawaii Kai. And actually, I think this is in the triangle area of Portlock, because that was one of the first communities in Hawaii Kai that was open. And he did a lot of the early homes, were simply made with concrete block, some interior, either stud walls or single wall. And he really had sort of, you know, the houses looked like they belonged in Hawaii. And today we have a very special opportunity to go and look at one of these closer. And next picture, explain us what we see. Well, this is actually my house. My wife and I bought a terrace lanai town home. We bought in 1985, but this building was actually built in 1964. And along Kauai High Street, which is actually the very first street in Hawaii Kai coming from town, Kaiser built a series of condo projects. I think a lot of realtors know them as the Hawaii Kai condo projects. And the two-story units that were split level were called terrace lanais. And the one-story units that were generally duplexes, but I think the largest building has either four or six units strung together, those were called garden lanais. And so in this picture, the trellis work is alongside the garage. And so, you know, we do have a garage sticking straight out in front, emptying straight into the street. When you drive by, it's a series of either carports or garage doors that you look at. But you walk along that and into the entry. And so the second picture is from the lower level, which is the living room, looking up the stairs to a mid-level landing, which is the front door. So let's go down into that living room and check that out. Next picture, please. So this is our living room. And we are on the canals in the Waikai Marina. These units are 22 feet wide with concrete block party walls. And the back of the house is, in our case, is strictly a wall of glass with two sliding glass doors that open up. There are 4x12 beams that span from party wall to party wall and 4x8 cross members. And we actually have actual two-inch thick tongue and groove decking that forms the second floor. And the structure is expressed on the interior. And if anybody is familiar with the work of developer Joe Eichler, this is very reminiscent of that. Very much. Very much. It's just down to the bones, right? And you pointed out previously, but we want to be more explicit that Kaiser could have easily, he was such a rich industrialist, he could have just basically retired somewhere at Kahala. But he was up for actually making something for the people and making what we call affordable housing to do. Right. Absolutely. I think his vision for Waikai was a place for all income groups of Hawaii to live. And so from the beginning, there was a mix of multi-family and single-family. I do think that the triangle area, which is the area clustered around Cocoa Head Elementary School. And I think that that was the first formal Hawaii-Kai neighborhood that was developed. And along with that came Hawaii-Kai Drive and Kauai High Street, where I live. And those areas had much more modest units that were built. For instance, our townhouse, we don't have a master bathroom. There's three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. And downstairs, out of the picture, is a galley kitchen. And we have a downstairs den with a half-bath and powder room. And we raised two children there, and we all survived without killing each other. So it was plenty of space. And I took these pictures when you generously and graciously had us over, the emerging generation for a fear trip. And this is you out there and them hanging out. And the next picture is sort of the, introduces the next room, which is actually the outdoor, the garden, Ryan. Right. And what's nice about these units are is that we have sort of everything a single family dwelling has, except that I am attached and I am an end unit. So as you look at that picture on the right side is a unit that is the mirror image of ours. But we have a yard that then goes out to the canal. And one of the reasons we bought this unit was when we moved in, my children were four and five years old. And we had a beagle that we had had since we got married. And so this was the perfect place to have a dog, kids. We had a rabbit for years that roamed around the backyard. And we've just gradually worked on the landscaping. And what's great is the house just flows into the lanai, into the garden. And so there's no curtains in the living room. So you're just, when you're downstairs, you're part of this whole thing. Yeah, awesome. House is a garden, garden is a house. And the next picture shows you at the edge of the property and looking into the canal because Kaiser was not just doing what they're doing out west and Ewa, which is pretty much like Phoenix, Arizona, or likewise. But he took advantage of the natural opportunity of having been fish ponds and obviously was sort of more domesticizing that and doing dredging and work. But he wanted to make sure that everyone had a waterfront property, right? Right. And most of the early development along the waterfront was, in fact, multifamily. Or the houses, as you look out that picture, we're actually looking at a weenie way, which is a little U-shaped island of single-family homes that were some of the original houses built in Hawaii. Now this picture is rather artfully taken because, in reality, we look straight across the canal at other townhomes, Conley Marina. And we see a wall of glass windows. And one of our neighbors 20 years ago got one of the first big-screen TVs, and literally you could sit on our watch TV across the canal. Well I admit the photographer being me is romantically exotic, so I admit that. The next picture is then us looking back from the water. And you know, you explained to me that you've done, you had some unfortunate things as a fire in the house and some other things. So you've been doing some upkeeping, but basically always pretty much went back to the original or improved it, right? Right. I've tried to keep that original structure going. And I really like sort of that trellis work. Our neighbor's unit had a major fire, and we sustained relatively minor damage. But we had to rebuild the trellis over the back lanai. And originally it had been one by twos with the plexiglass corrugated roofing material. And I just upsized it to two by two. But it's just a nice effect. And it really gives some nice screening. And if you look at the lanai floor on the left hand side, there's a vertical trellis that divides us from the in-yard. And again, it's just a very pleasant, tropical kind of feeling. It is. It is. And you know, it's just a bare painted concrete. Yeah. I mean, it's nothing fancy, but it works. And it's a fairly dry area as well. It's not super wet like in Manoa. It's probably not as dry as out in the Everplains, but still. And through the architecture, we have to say this is majorly easy breezy, naturally ventilated. It is. And the other great thing about these units are that the party wall extends out four feet beyond the back and front wall. And what that does is it really helps capture breeze and funnel them into the houses. And also you get privacy. So in the front and the back, the bedroom level, you know, you're not right next to your neighbor's window. There is a four-foot block wall that separates you, four-foot in-depth block wall that separates you. And it really helps with noise transmission. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Very, very tranquil, very sort of contemplating atmosphere. But you were also nice to take us on a little tour, so you want to do that here. Now go to the next picture and you took us here and gave us an overview. This is pretty much where Suzanne was standing as well way back. You see that high rise in the left corner, which is close to where you are. Right. The high rise is Mount Terrace and it has sort of an orange-red roof. And so when our children were growing up, we always would point out the high rise and tell them, look, you live by that high rise, if you ever anything ever happens and you don't know how to get home, you can tell people to go for the high rise. Absolutely. So what I do want to say here, though, is that the first time I went to Hawaii was about 1963 or so. And we lived at Hickam at the time and we were on our way to Bellows. And my mom's car was in the shop, so we were in my dad's old 52 Plymouth and it wouldn't go over the poly. So we went around the island and it was the first time I came out to the east side. And what absolutely astounded me is that, you know, you take this and this is pre-freeway. So you pretty much got there from Hickam by going on Nimitz Highway, crossing over to Cam Highway. All of that is obliterated by the airport viaduct now and through town on King Street to Wailai Avenue to Kalanian Only Highway and out to Waikai. And once you passed Kulio O, this big valley and pond system opened up. And Kaiser's house was on the slope of Cocoa Head right on the water. And my memory is that it was painted pink and apparently his wife was not quite as enamored with Hawaii as he was. And so he started painting everything pink. And at the time we did this, they were building the Waikai Drive Bridge. And so here were these barges, cranes, bulldozers. All of that equipment was painted pink. And it just cracked you up as you drove by. Here's all this construction going on and all these guys working in pink equipment. And for years afterwards, there would be these abandoned construction equipment all over Waikai with this rusting pink paint. So that's my first engagement with Waikai. So this is the lookout. If you come down from Huala Bay, this is the lookout over Waikai. The big ridge going up is Mariners Ridge. And you get some glimpses of Marina, but it's really quite a scenic area. Now it is. Very nice. So let's go on the next picture. The next couple of pictures were just me basically pretty much out of the passenger side window of your car. If we can get the next picture like here. The next one's where you just showed me some of the still kept original homes. So this house is actually in sort of the triangle area backing up to Kalanianole Highway. And again, this is the vintage of my townhouse. And this is one of the original concrete block homes, open beam ceiling, very simple. And the one thing that I've always heard is that everybody made money in Waikai except for Henry J. Kaiser. And so one of the things I read was that when they started building the houses, particularly along Waikai Drive, somebody decided that they should sell for $28,000. And somebody figured, well, somebody had done the math. And it turns out they were taking a loss on every house that they sold. But again, it's a little about 1,200 square foot rectangle. Just a very nice tropical home. And the concrete block does a good job of kind of some heat shielding because it delays transmission. So that's one of the original Hawai'i homes. And so is the next one. I subtitled that along the same lines I called it. Middle, classy, they're all very eichlery, as you say. And so this is up near the Cocoa Head District Park. And this is, I think, one of the single wall houses. So Kaiser started development. I think the first closings occurred in about 1962. And those were houses in the triangle area. And then the areas alongside Lululu Home Road were developed. And so from the sort of mid-60s to late-60s, there were probably a couple thousand single wall homes constructed. And again, there's sort of a mix of Asian influence and very honest structure. And again, single wall in a climate that harbors lots of bugs, single wall construction is wonderful. Next picture, another one of these here, kept original, exposed beams, eichler. Right. And I think this may be in Hawai'i, Hioni Valley, somewhere. And again, it's just, it's a nice effect. Yeah, yeah. And so next picture as well, concrete block, here's stack bond. We discussed quite a bit about if it makes sense to have the beam stick out because you had some rotted in your way and I always put in a word for them and say, but it looks so nice. And then you got this sort of flashing. So there's little things here and there. My garage had this detail where the beam actually stuck out further in the roof. Well, the problem is, of course, it creates a pocket that collects water and it rots. And when I did some work, I had to take off the beam ends because they had been rotted. This is actually cocoa aisle, which is quite a nice townhouse development. And those units all have private courtyard. So that gate that you're looking at, that actually opens into a private courtyard off the front of the unit. Very nice. And do some, next picture, so they don't call us totally romantic here, which I am, I admit. There are some things in Hawai'i, Kai, they're probably not as Kai's are had imagined, Ryan. Well, commercial infrastructure right here. So you have to remember that Hawai'i Kai was sort of envisioned in the late 50s and 60s. So I don't think everybody would agree that it was the best way to do it. One of our problems is that we have multiple shopping areas. So there's no sort of Hawai'i Kai town center, even though I think that's one of the shopping centers. It's called that. But you sort of can't hit all three by walking. You get in your car and go. This area where Costco is located and there's a big storage facility, I think this was always slated to be commercial development, but it just didn't happen. And so I think that, I think this was probably driven by Kamehameha schools at the time was probably the landowner. But this all makes sense. But at some point in time, that waterfront location may have a better use than something else. Let's hope so. In the next picture, we see a Costco truck here delivering, but we see something next to it that almost looks like the cargo box. It is. And let's jump to the next picture already and then please explain what that is. Well, this is a newer rental tower. The property is the corner of Hawai'i Kai Drive, and I'm not sure what that cross-street is. Or something. And they tried to develop the site for years. There were multiple different development plans. And so they finally went ahead and built this like 10-story tower. And there'll be rental units, but at probably at the end of the 30-year affordability period, they may possibly get converted to condos or something. My only problem with this building is that it's way out of context with everything around it. So you can see just to the right of the tall building, there are these three-story townhouse type buildings, and these buildings just march right up to them. So that's sort of unfortunate. And also, it's a double-loaded corridor. So you're pretty dependent on air conditioning to keep the temperature under control. I'm missing what your home features is, as we call it, exotic and tropical and easy-greasy. But then the question is, can you bring, you can't sprawl anymore because the valley is pretty much taken over by a single family, right? So the challenge is, how do you basically can keep that sort of quality of living and the development that's higher? And we agree on that. That's not the way. And where's the lanai? There's no lanai. There's basically pretty much mainland curtain wall, you know, and you live pretty inside indoors, and we think this is just not along the lines of Kaiser's imaginative way. And so we want to close every show with an optimistic look out and views. On the next picture, something I want to contribute that basically traces back to something that you have told me when you were driving me through the neighborhood actually before, the year before we did it with the students. We also drove by the few high-rises there are. There's the one next to you, but there is this sort of little cluster of other ones. And you said, this is actually the best way to put high-rises is actually tuck them right at the foothills of the mountains, where they can cause the least harm and they almost could blend in as being part of the mountain, and you're not staring at them all the time, right? Right. No, this series of high-rises, they're all different developers, and they're along Huai Kai Drive and then Hioni Street, and they are single loaded corridors, so they all have natural ventilation, although one of, at least one of the buildings is centrally air conditioned, but they are, you know, they're up against the hillside. They're not blocking anybody else's view, and they pretty much have guaranteed views in that they're overlooking single family-zoned areas. And you, when we're doing professional talk, and me as a professor, and you with your agency, I always bound self one of my visions, which is primitiva and buggy without one. And so I'm here pitching it again. It could be nestled in the foothills of Huai Kai as, again, we have the housing crisis. You deal with that every day in your business, and I'm trying to address that in school. So just all we're trying to say is this project or something else, but try to understand sort of the imagination that Kaiser had that, as you said, was doing local materials, was doing affordable, was doing exotic, was doing easy breezy. That, I think, is the genetic code of Huai Kai that you should sort of continue as, you know, challenging as it is, as we see, because some investors and, you know, whoever is engaged have different sort of ambitions. Well, he started that way, and I still remember in about 68, the grant companies came in and built Mariners Cove, and we all went bananas because, you know, fancy models that one of the models had a pool with a table anchored in it and stools so that you could sit in the water and eat lunch, and it was quite a different thing from sort of what we started with. But, you know, Kaiser development only did a certain number of projects, and they ended up then selling off parcels for other developers to build. And the next picture is sort of along the same lines of the genetic code. This is one of these sort of island communities down there. Right. Well, this is the peninsula which ultimately Stanford Car developed and did a great mix of their group of single-family houses. There were the carriageways, which are two-story, long, thin, zero lot line. Those are along the interior, and then the rest of the exterior were cottages and townhouses. Again, a mix of styles, a mix of sizes, just again, a community that has a broad spectrum of types of units, and also they have the four-story product built on a concrete parking podium. And again, we're, as the little suggestion, it's the top row. We did a previous show with Peter Shi, who has done this building in Hawaii at the very top left, and he built it with tilled-up concrete panels. He also developed this, which he called the double-eye CMU, which is pretty much epoxy. So this is an island, you know, innovation that sort of, again, could be, and David Rockwood and I were very impressed by your townhouse, and we developed something that we call Volcrete Valley, and there's a very old show about that, where we do zero lot line construction. We use autoclave aerated concrete. So we're thinking, these could be all things that go beyond what the conventional developer does, a Stanford car, and the other ones, which is pretty much conventional construction, mostly stick frame, and, you know, it is in the water. So, you know, you got the termites and all the things. So why not sort of reconnecting again to the genetic code? And along the same lines, the next picture is something I was tempted to show before, but then I put it in here, because that's also one we drove by, and he said, Martin, that would be interesting for you. Look at that. Right. This is, there's a small street with, you know, maybe there's 20 or 30 houses. So somebody did this little subdivision behind the Hawaii Library, and the buildings have these concrete block walls, and the rest appears to be single wall construction, and there's a bit of an Asian flare. And again, it's the kind of house that you look at, and you sort of instantly think, you know, it's kind of tropical. Yeah. Well, it looks like Hawaii. Absolutely. And so the phasing out picture is the next one, because as if I would have known when we were developing with DHHL and the BIA and our school way back, the new Hawaiian home for DHHL, we were going along the same lines, you know, you see the similarities almost striking as if I would have been stealing, you know, but I always tell my emerging generation, there is no stealing in architecture. It's just long term borrowing. Right. So it's the same kind of notion that we developed that with great specific Rotary Mountain Precast as prefabricated and, and so all these things. So we're saying to the next generations of developers of architects, look at the genetic codes, go back to the original, and then that might inspire you, you know, what you want to do. So yeah, absolutely. And hopefully somebody can figure out how, you know, it's easy to have this very ecological residence when you're sitting on an acre of land, you can open your doors for breezes, etc. And hopefully there's sort of a midpoint where we can achieve density. Yeah. But at the same time, we can take advantage of this wonderful climate. Absolutely. Perfect closing. No, thank you, Rick, so much for having been with us and for the insight into your native hood. And we're probably going to do a couple of follow up shows. We actually have a doko Momo talk story planned about Hawaii Kai, and I'm probably inspired by you are probably going to do one with one with the Soto that we call Henry's Hawaii home, which will be his own home, which is a different standard. And but it's also worth looking at quite different from where it's quite. Exactly. So with that, keep tuned in next week to Soto and I again, we're going to talk about celebratory circulations, which is about how you get up in a building here. And there's some interesting history and how do we deal with this in the future. And so I hope you'll be with us for that again. And until that, please stay as imaginary tropical as Rick and Henry. Bye bye.