 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Human Humane Architecture here on ThinkTech Hawaii. I am the co-host of this program, DeSoto Brown, and Floating Above Me is the host of the program, Martin Despang, who is joining us from Germany. So, Martin, take it away. Good afternoon, DeSoto and everyone. Hello. Good to be back. I hear it looks like we're there together, but I'm 12,000 kilometers or miles or whatever away. So, good to be back on the island. We promised in the last show with Mayumi and John Hara that we're going to do sort of an architectural critique of what is going on on the UH West Manoa campus. West Oahu. West Oahu, thank you very much. I'm still in Manoa. Always and forever. So, slide number one, that's what we were talking about and showing John and Mayumi's very classy architecture out there as sort of these utilitarian objects in the plains of the Kapolei Valley, I guess we can say. And let's jump into the next slide here, which is something that Kurt Sandburne was pointing out when he interviewed John that he was inspired by what was there before, prior, which was sugarcane production and these very sort of large utilitarian iconic structures. And so, I just wanted to reflect on that a little more and through in these two pictures, the bottom one is one of these structures in Kauai actually when I was walking to the Kauai Inn and the top one is in Maui and you have something to say about the top one, right? Yeah, so that's a helicopter shot that you were able to go fly over Maui and take a picture of. This is the HCNS sugar mill which is located in the central valley of Maui and we think maybe this was the very last day that that mill was functioning because by now it has shut down. We have no sugar production in the Hawaiian Islands anymore, but as we have said, the area where the West Oahu College campus is located formerly was sugarcane, was sugar fields and the mill was one of the major iconic structures in the area. Exactly, and thanks to Jay Mormon who took me on a helicopter ride, hi Jay, and thank you. I was able to take that picture and he told me this was the last day, literally the last day of production. So, ever since then there is no smoke coming out of the smokestacks anymore, right? Right. And I threw in the little pictures here which are about a show we did about the sort of Corbu brise soleil, so the influence of the Corbusiers who many call a father of brutalism amongst modernism as well. And he was doing these brise soleil and at some point he was very informed and inspired by these iconic Midwestern mainland grain elevators, concrete grain elevators that we see in the middle of the three images here. And I did a little bit of research and catching up with my architectural history education, continuing education and I found out that he was inspired by the German architect Walter Gropius who then immigrated to America as many of his colleagues and was one of the founders of the Bauhaus that you're very interested by the way as well. But why are we saying this because obviously as you can see in the picture that we choose in the show for the brise soleil, the Corbusier was not using this inspiration literally, right? He abstracted that quite a bit. And so did John and Mayumi, right? They're not in a postmodern way mimicking some kind of form that they just throw on it but they very sensitively interpret that. John said in the show that we did with him, the smokestack of the mill building, the sugar mill building was what inspired him to create the tall central kind of pylon or steeple that he did within the quad of this new campus. Absolutely. But then if we go to the next slide, something sort of at least surprising happened from John and Mayumi's point sort of tragic that they weren't, they pulled the job to design what they call the administration building. And these are pictures we took over there. And in fact, you were there. He just came from there. I was just there earlier today. Yeah, I was. And I drove past this. So this is looking, standing in John and Mayumi's sort of quadrant here. There's the classroom building and the lab building. And what we're looking at, we're going to talk about today. And the next slide is introducing us to the designers. This is their beginning. This is the Crow Island School north of Chicago. I checked this out about, at the beginning of my full-time academic career in America, so around 2006-ish. Gentleman you see in there is my best college buddy, buddy since college, Dan Kubrick. Hi, Dan. Dan is working for the German architect Hamoud Yan and with him in Chicago. So hopefully he's safe because they got like frigid minds. If you think it's cold here, they got 20 or 30 or 40 below and it doesn't matter if it's Celsius or far and high, it's cold enough. So hopefully you, buddy, you stay safe. Not here in Honolulu, however. No, no. And so this school was built in 1940, so very early and it became a very sort of iconic raw model for architecture and for educational typology. And the architects were, at that point, were Perkins and Will who had just started to be a firm in 35 and they didn't feel confident enough to get such a big job. So they got some more established architects on board and they were the father and son, Seren and Ariel and Aero Seren and Aero is the architect of the TWA building that you visited not that long ago and we featured in a couple of shows. So here you can see sort of how they started and then let's go to the next slide. This is sort of many years after that they are now a very large firm with 2,000 employees, headquartered still in Chicago but they got offices all around the United States and I guess the world. So let's look at this sort of combination of images here and let's quote the principle of the firm who was the lead designer and his name is Mark Takaba and was online and was reading that he's not only a native of Hawaii but also a graduate from the University of Hawaii Manoa School of Architecture. And I said, did he get taught by that man above me, him? Yeah and I said, well I think we just missed each other but Mark is saying here in the design explanation I guess he says the design of this building through its siding, its form and its engagement with a land was influenced by the ecology and history of its location which is very eloquently said but we were talking before this show what does it really mean, right? I mean, what in specific? And we said, you know, many people who are not architects what do you think they would see when they look at the silhouette of the building? Right and we both agreed that we thought that the potential influence was the jagged outline of the mountains the Koh Olao Mountains and the Waianae Mountains that are visible from that location but we're also not sure that that's exactly what his statement meant and maybe that's too literal an interpretation. Yeah and let's go a little bit more to the specifics and analyze the building and let's go to the next slide so the building in plan is a sort of an L and the shorter bar of the L is what we're looking at here now and this orientation is very important if we remember the previous slide we were looking at the southern elevation so then this thing is sticking out to the north and we're looking at it from the east so we've been talking about thermal performance something that has always been very important for any culture in the world and the winds have dealt with that fairly well with their holly-pilly hollies, you know and so this one here has an opaque facade with basically punctuations in there we can wonder, you know, how much glass that is to keep the building cool and we get a clue about it in the next slide here where I took that picture while I was sort of scavenger hunting the building just before it was finished and I was, you know, peeking through the window and taking this picture and you can see the shades being rolled down on the right and that gives you an indication that there might be too much sun coming in from that side so that makes you wonder how climatically responsible the building actually is So next slide is Jon and Mayumi introduced the all Hawaiian theme of the lanai very successfully to the building and the next slide so that these architects almost exactly very generous, very deep lanais as sort of buffer spaces from the interior to the exterior I recognize when we talked yesterday that Jon and Mayumi had put these sort of structural slap columns in direction of view while they were sort of doing it the other direction so that it's more like blocking the view actually Correct Point Right The next picture is me peeking into a classroom that I'm obviously able to look through I think there's cross ventilation because it looks like a fixed window and I see they sort of telling a sea outlet in the drop ceiling but at least I was able to look through so there's daylight being transferred through from one side of the facade to the other one but there's also other rooms next slide like this one here which reminded us of what was the hall called on Manawa Building Gartley Hall Gartley Hall which is just renovated in this very sort of a standard corporate classroom manner as you can see them anywhere in the world or in America these drop ceiling acoustic panels and floor tiles and this sort of furniture so this doesn't come across as being very tropical to me I don't know about you I can't agree with that, yes So let's get outside again this is that one night that also happens on the second floor here which is probably really the nicest space and next slide here shows how much attention they basically pay if we can move on to the next slide you can see they spend have these wood slabs which is sort of this sort of dropped I guess sky ceiling mountain undulation thing and they got these sort of vertical bar guardrails so nice finishes, nice architectural integrity one has to say so the next slide we see wherever that you know you deviate away from that sort of frontal facade which is made out of CMUs which we get to in a second you can see another material being introduced and that's plaster or stucco and here it's painted white and as you already can see in that picture but even more in the next picture that doesn't age that well especially where you got kids and you know their backpacks and smashing each other around in the hallways you know this is getting wear wear and tear you also had we'd also pointed out before as you aptly said this is situated on red dirt and in the situation of the earlier buildings by the Harras we saw that there was a staining of the red dirt against the the concrete which actually was kind of aesthetically interesting the red dirt on this white plaster this white textured surface is not going to look as good and that is a that's going to be a maintenance thing exactly and that was actually sort of a deja vu for me to say hey wait a minute this sort of reminds me of myself some many years ago if we go to the next slide there's a project we did about more than a decade ago for the federal German government and for the army for the military this was a similarly sort of untouched land where we had to make something out of nothing and you can see the study model out there that were sort of undulating the landscape and so we came up with this sort of design and you can we use this is a proof of evidence that sometimes we bring in cars as sort of vehicles for thought but we do this also in our design so this one here was inspired in an abstract way by the VW 181 which you call the thing and I think we're going to do a show about V-dubs and why we are doing this although we certainly are so let's go to the next slide here which shows sort of the the result has sort of a similar sort of escaping of roof lines here in a sort of extracurve again sort of a way but moving on to the next slide more important for us is to design from inside out so we wanted to sort of the universal space this panoramic roof and in order to achieve that that was built which is shown on the a second from left top picture as a steel construction while the other parts of the building are built with something that we introduced in a actually Howard Wigan a show with a Tropic here Rockwood and to builders this is autoclave aerated concrete as you can see in that sample piece here and that's a concrete that's micro a porosity engineered with air cavity so it's structurally sound but also thermally sound for you know hotter and colder climate so that might be something to consider for our island so let's move on to the next slide here which shows actually the southern elevation of that so an approach to basically carve out that mass bring daylight in actually bring solar gain in there is additional shade that rolled down from the top and then we smuggled in that people can also sit outside the few times it's kind of nice in Germany which is all the time like in Hawaii right right and I also want to say to let me let me just before we say before we leave I just want to say to that again let's emphasize this is an army mess hall as we would say in in English so this is not an elegant building I mean it wasn't intended to be an elegant building but it has a very elegant sharp appearance and I think they were darn lucky to get architects who do something as nice as this for a military facility we appreciate no thank you for that and now while we're sharing that next picture shows us the building we're looking at today so next slide please yeah so here you can see that sort of similarity of you know a sculptural form that's been sort of carved out but again I mean remember you almost see the same William system but again we're in temperate climate it gets damn hot and freaking cold as it is right now so I think that justifies more that design approach versus why we're in the tropics and we're in a very arid part so the question is what is that sort of fixed glazing system here Connie of 1500 or whatever you call that doing there that makes us sort of wonder and also what's not class is CMU let's go to the next slide right and so here John and Mayumi told us that they work with Tileco Tileco oh Tileco of course yeah I should have known so they work with them as sort of a local sort of a post-contact indigenous manufacturer of something that's very abundant in the sort of Campbell industrial park out there in the in the couple of planes and we feature a couple of models up there with Adam campers and left campers and she who have been innovators in the field of cementatious a tectonics so they're right in this tradition and they developed and custom made this 12 by 12 by 12 CMU block so let's check out what the new architect did on the next slide here and you got to help me out because we read in the project description or on the Zeeam this online platform that they were inspired by Kappa and you help me out with that a little bit okay well Kappa is an indigenous Hawaiian fabric it's made of bark that has been pounded repeatedly to make it into sheets of fabric and the several things that I pointed out Kappa does have an impressed design that's called a watermark based on how it's been hit by a device that has patterns in it but I personally do not see a lot of Kappa influence there and something else that also struck me is that fabric is a loose flowing substance if you will and this is concrete so I don't see a lot of analogy between this wall and Kappa however I'm not saying it's unattractive but I don't see a lot of connection between those two substances it's probably something that you like to call ornamental that's exactly right which we discussed the Hawaiian culture wasn't actually that much there are other Polynesian cultures who were way more symbolic and way more ornamental whereas the Hawaiian ones were way more practical and the pattern came out of sort of the side effect of practicality giving it some personality that was distinct to the author so we're sort of and when you talk about water marks or water stains I think this one is actually because all the dust which is predominant there the red dust is going to settle on these little horizontal ledges there and basically water is going to wash it down so we're not quite sure you know if this is the right direction there we're going and next slide is something that we have suggested together with less than Adam campus here some years ago where we're saying why don't you do a tropical text project here it's basically large like chimney block breeze delays that basically let the breeze through so this is the breathable building so we're thinking maybe this would be the direction to go that you do a way more climate responsive approach it basically then looks appealing too right now I think this plan that you show here is always looks very appealing to me I'd like to see this building constructed thank you and so next slide is basically the capacity I'm speaking is me as the next slide for that is me having done an even closer typology we need to go to the next slide please yeah we did one before one before we've already gone past it we're using a new technology that's called the mix I guess here so that's our apology we have to go to one slide before this one here please in order there you go maybe I'm a little delayed here yeah and this shows a project we've been doing for a similar client for university in fact one of Germany's oldest universities in Göttingen and it became a an innovative building it's off the grid so in hot summer equally hot summer but also equally cold winters as we have right now it's got to work without fossil fuels and so you know it was architecturally ambitious this has been recognized all these publications here but I want to say that and this is hurts as an architect you can make you know lots of architecture without architect which unfortunately actually happens a lot but you can never do it without a client and to do such ambitious architecture you need an educated client so I think what we need to do is encourage University of Hawaii as a client to basically be more pushy and basically say hey buildings have to be off the grid buildings have to live work with the environment versus against it and I think a little bit when we talk to a giant my unity that if the client would have allowed natural ventilation they probably would have when they would have gone for it don't you think I think that's what I yeah potentially and as I've said to you know in libraries in certain room certain types of buildings laboratories you have to have enclosed environments you have to have keeping the outside out but that's not universally true for everything and there are times when you can be more inclusive about doors absolutely like in an administration building where it's not a library you got people there and books and people are maybe more happy and healthy to enjoy the you know 12 months yeah summer and spring or this little circumstance versus here where we have to hide not to get a frostbite so closing the show here with another vehicle here this is the Chrysler or Dodge Chrysler Corporation van and this makes us think about the evolution of innovation I took I found this the early one from the from the I guess from the 80s mid 80s in Chinatown the blue one there this is the original Chrysler Voyager and and this was Li Aya Kaka the success and you told me you know he saved Chrysler with that car pretty much right yes he did and we happen to have my sons will not like me for that I threw in this picture at the very top right when there were many years ago digging in and trying to fix our third generation Chrysler Voyager and the one that UH bought is the fourth generation and they sort of the evolved right they weren't the iconic original one anymore and I think I read recently they're not even Chrysler is anymore they're now lunchy voyages because Fiat bought the Chrysler Corporation and so what we're going to say is that little one that we dropped down there is a new concept that is called the Chrysler portal and it's an all self driving electric car with a lot of innovative features where you sort of try to reconnect to this sort of original innovativeness of that product so we would encourage you age to whatever they do as the next step you know pick up from where John Mayumi were and push it to the next even more ambitious level right but we don't want to close on fossil so we want to jump to the next picture and share a little bit of what I'm current where I'm currently this is the picture the big one is me on my daily commute with my bonus son to his wall of school and we take this commuter train and the guy on the right of that looks like me but it's not me but it's a guy who like in frequent frigid cold basically wants to be hang loose and wear shorts and t-shirts and so that's how we want to be even in the cold that's how we want to be so I know why we have that all the time so I threw in this little you know close from the show that Tim Apicella did with me about tropical transportation and while the rail thing is a done deal or at least in the era of Kapolei it's pretty much built it's a reality and we can't change it anymore but I hope that over time we can get more climate conducive train cars more easy for easy and not not so postmodernly a wave basically painted on as it is and you will have you know sub-zero temperatures in there as you have in the buses I mean that's not tropical that's not exotic that's not what we want right correct and you've also got a newspaper headline down in the corner too which is about the loss of or getting rid of cars in cities is that it thinks you're doing your German lessons so well no no no no I can see the word auto but you told me I can't I can't really read that no no that that's certainly correct you did your German lesson well and that gets us to the primitive again on the right side which we introduced as potentially housing lots of students which we will get in combination with housing lots of locals who don't have the means to live somewhere also you can consolidate that and put them all into one very small footprint that goes tall and that you won't see as a building because it's all green and vegetated but but one aspect we want to point out so with that it's basically you know avoid fossil transportation use public transportation which which the rail will do but let's look into primitive one more time on the last slide before we phase out and what do we see the photo well we see that first of all we've got a lot of airflow second of all we see we are as you said combining a lot of people into one small footprint and finally we hope that this is going to be a place where you don't necessarily have to leave so much because lots of things can come to you so markets can come there people can gather there in theory you could just stay on site and things could come to you and Martin just went away some for some reason upstairs at least the sound yeah yeah Martin is still with us in sound but not in picture anymore but I can picture the picture you can picture the picture that's right absolutely and you're right I mean it aims to be sort of an inclusive dwelling so you have old fogies and young fogies and they basically support each other so the supporting system it's not segregating people anymore it's bringing people together in a way that you have everything in the building that you need to make a comfortable living and you don't have to go out unless you want to and if you do you use public transportation I think that's again we urge obviously the client of UH West Manoa to West Oahu to reflect West Oahu I did it again I did it again so much of Manoa guy where I live you know I just don't bite the hand that feeds me but we want to urge that client to pretty much rethink its program and be a leader in research which we are tier one research university so please the next programs to really critically reflect and come up with buildings that really are cutting edge typologically socially ecologically and all these things and the thing that really strikes you when you go to the West Oahu college campus is how open it all still is and how undeveloped it is and over the decades that is going to become urbanized but right at the moment we're starting from scratch and we do have the option of building things differently then we don't have to fit them into an existing pattern or existing city alright I think are we out of time I think we're probably out of time and so thank you everybody for a great show and I will next time you let me go skiing right yes so Martin is going to go skiing he's going to go up in the mountains he's going down the snow covered slopes in Germany and so the week after next I'll be back next week for a doko momo show but the week after that I'll be doing a show on my own for human human architecture and Martin can just go do whatever he wants well so anyway watch that show from my mountain you shall you shall you be drinking hot chocolate and things like that so everybody thank you for joining us for human human architecture I will be seeing you again in the near future not so near future but until then aloha