 Hello, you have tuned in to Think Tech Hawaii's human-humane architecture and we're broadcasting live and after that forever YouTubeed from our tropical rainforest jungle mountain island of Oahu, Hawaii and the next picture shows us that there's a challenge to that because increasingly our foothills of our forested mountains look like that. So the inherent sort of dilemma and related potential we're going to bring in a very special guest today all the way across the neighboring continent and that's number three please. It's Pat Donahue. Welcome Pat, great to have you on the show and Pat is actually from the place where our producer Zuri is a native from and that is from where Pat, where are you broadcasting from? We're broadcasting from Duluth, Minnesota. Awesome. For the visual it's at the head of the lakes, we're at the head of the Great Lakes where the most western ocean going port in the continent of the United States. All right and as the audience can read under your name just a second ago I call you more casually the master of wood cook but more officially you're a director of what institution and what capacity Pat. I work at the University of Minnesota, Duluth our organization has been recently updated our name we're currently the wood products and bioeconomy initiative and I'm a program manager of wood products within that initiative and yes I've been exploring and developing and trying to perfect the art of wood cooking for the last 15 years. Awesome and just walk through a little bit number four a little bit of the history of the islands here which originally were heavily wooded until early in the 1800s the Chinese got really interested in the specific wood which is sandalwood and they got crazy about it and Hawaiians got interested in making a deal and they sold it all at least the Chinese made beautiful shrines out of it but sandalwood is gone and so is the next picture koa wood is an indigenous wood species there's very little left maybe enough and even that's questionable for little accessories like this one here. So number six is us having a crazy increase in population here to be continued we're short on 60,000 housing units and that's the predominant way we're building this is our students checking out one of the builders building up their track homes a stick framed and basically then sheathed all coming shipped in from the Pacific Northwest all termite treated there so there's no locality there's no specificity of our culture and in fact business anymore here. So we go to number seven there's two shows we're back in the old urban transcendence days that we refer to and one of them is here with one of the leading scientists in Germany at the Institute of Wood Technology with whom I've been working ever since and that would be picture eight one and a half decades ago where our family business was in a very exclusive way case studying in this field of thermally modified timber the abbreviation we're going to using from now is TMT and that's explosive because that's also to be understood here as the telescope up on Mauna Kea so this is not it this is different here and we've been case studying that and our producer will walk us through here through 10 images where we've been testing it through different typologies starting with education like school in this case here coming up kindergartens coming up transit oriented multi-story dwellings down to single-family residences down to coffee shops and bakery stores and these projects have been you know test stood with the test of time especially the very first project the El Mazie school is now 15 years young or old and in these pictures you see it's in its original condition but more importantly how it's been holding up over over the over the times which is very important you have a very great project coming up which is a museum in Minnesota and they have honored you in basically doing the rain screen with a thermally modified pine as our red pads so the El Mazie school is a great post occupancy evaluation evidence-based design case study to look at and to see how that stuff is actually holding up right but while we're walking through the images please in a short summary tell us when you first got in touch with TMT once you got hooked and ever since you got addicted by it and tell us a little bit about that your background at great thank you very much back in 2001 I was approached by the Finnish government they had been developing this technology since 1994 and they wanted to export not only their wood products but they also wanted to export their technology and so they contracted with me to help them for several years go on and ten trade shows and basically just be the early adopter storyteller and I and I did that for several years and in that I really gained a lot of knowledge but I also gained a lot of contacts in a great network of producers around the world and that that in itself led me to believe that this was a the technology one of the biggest advantages of a technology is it renders the wood hydrophobic it's what wood loves water after cooking wood you make you render it so it doesn't love water and if you don't have a water as part of the formula all of a sudden you find a much more durable product it's much more dimensionally stable the care-resistant and and it does add a nice umber brown color to it yeah and you do that that's what we already previewed a number of three which we could bring this back you do this in a kiln where the oxygen is sort of taken out so there's not you know oxygen is going to fire up the wood and it's going to be you know of combustible nature so you make sure you can cook it you can you can burn it to a point just before it catches fire and goes away is that correct right there's a there's a couple of ways that you there's a couple of technologies in fact I think there's about eight technologies worldwide in general you you cook the wood up to a combustion level but you do it in an oxygen-starved environment so it doesn't ignite and the my preferred method is using the autoclave method I often tell people a simply simple analogy is simple analogy is to convection oven is a more standard method where we use a pressure cooker method and again they both are starved the oxygen and it allows to achieve that that cooked wood effect in a relatively short period of time yeah and maybe a short historic preview because you know many most things in you know in life have been around for a while so we can say that many indigenous cultures have sort of more by trial and error found out once they invented fire they were holding wood into fire and at some point you know they took it out before it caught fire and they experienced that so the northern European countries the Vikings have sort of charts which is slightly different but somehow similar the the extras of their wood with boats with that the Europeans like like our ancestors have treated their oak pile foundations for buildings coming closer to us and actually you being in Native American talking about a producer and you know a country is that the errors of the peaks of you know their their weapons the Native Americans have done that to harden and and improve the peak of their error of their bows and and coming to us here closer is where we're dominated by Asian culture and informed in the best way the Japanese have done that and are still doing that to their tea cups and and so it's a technology that's been indigenously invented and then somewhere in the 1930s if I'm not mistaken you guys and me Americans and Germans have picked up on it and try to develop in an industrial commercial scale but the war killed that and the chemical industry and plastic took over and and then you connected the dots earlier where the Scandinavians basically picked it up again and store and so and still like wood as some of the largest paper and wood manufacturers have brought it to a Roger rather large scale and in fact the very first two projects first was a still like wood application and the second one was store and so if we can go to a picture number 16 and and talk about sort of this analogy of we can say cooking wood this was baking wood so we were consulting national organization of bakery stores how to innovate their tradition and so we use thermally modified pine here as to create these these showcases and shelves in the back and number 17 is a coffee shop where so we made the analogy of roasting beans and roasting wood and the next picture number 18 gets us too closer to us in Hawaii because we actually have a small but exclusive coffee culture here and and business so there's another analogy and number 19 basically is the point where we met pet right at some point we were doing things on our own not even knowing about each other but here's someone that we had on the show a couple shows ago met the bore who was one of the first ones and now so when you guys look close to the screen I always credit the manufacturer the product of the wood this was cambia wood so he was one of the first ones who exemplified demonstrated it in a high architectural excellence way and somewhere at that point we met pet and you very soon after that initiated the very first American North American TMT forum in Princeton West Virginia right right and Charlie after that was that was a really a pivot because shortly after that we were we were contacted by others who had similar interest in from the US and the Canadian side and we were able to execute a project that ended in 1914 with a national standard performance standard a guidance standard written and published in the American Wood Protection Association book of standards so yeah when that was real that's really a pivot because now we have a we have a place we have we have a architectural standard that we can refer designers to exactly great and if we can maybe I hold this piece here a little bit into the camera here this is a part of a branch which you gave me many years ago and it demonstrates a pretty a cool and an obvious how this works that actually different to a previous more chemical pressure treatment systems were based upon the sort of you know system you only get into the wood to a certain depth whereas this one here if you cook it long enough just like another analogy is obviously your bread or is your cake right if you bake it all the way through which you better do with a cake you get it all the way through which dough has to get to be delicious and so the wood is so you can do this either with even a piece of a you know slice of a trunk or a slice of a branch so you can process the wood before you cut it into boards and lumber or you can already cut it into pieces and we should also mention that one you talked about decay resistance against most insects and and chemical biological attacks but also another advantage is that it makes the wood much more stable and and sort of is resistant to bending right yeah it really it does affect mechanical properties to a certain degree and it depends on the species but one of the points that you you touched on is it's it's usefulness it's the the technology not only can be used to treat wood throughout the cross sections it's really important that it it's species independent any species could work where in a many of the chemical treating processes a very limited number of species work and the chemicals themselves really only penetrate the sapwood areas where this is throughout the cross section so it really is a is a much more robust deep penetration all right we're going to take a quick one minute commercial break here and then we're going to be back with our master cook pet Donahue and his outlook on you who I would see in a minute I've got the Beagle sisters here with a healthy tip we encourage you to enjoy the food you eat this holiday season and keep it local and healthy yeah eat the rainbow and if you need any produce come to the red barn on the North Shore Aloha my name is John why hey and I actually had a small part to do with what's happening today served actually in public office but if you don't already know that here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for a talk story with John why hey every other Monday thank you and I look forward to your seeing us in the future Aloha and happy new year it's 2017 please keep up with me on power up Hawaii where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future please join me on Tuesdays at one o'clock Mahalo welcome back to our master cook pet Donahue talking about the new Hawaii wood which we're actually doing now and we can bring in number 20 as as an image here and so with the huge demand in housing here this is a project we showed a couple of shows ago this is called stratosphere it's trying to make something meaning dwelling housing from scratch so something out of nothing because we're very limited in resources which we already talked about so this is using an abundant sort of more contemporary building material which is cargo steel slash shipping containers but shipping containers get really really hot being exposed to the sun and so we need to put a sunscreen on and the sunscreen here is a TMT family modified timber but then the audience might say well wait a minute didn't we just talk about there is no wood left on the island and to the going to the next picture that is true certainly but there is actually certain woods at the very bottom right that we have imported and they take over the invasive and this is how BC has one species it's very it's very brittle so when storms come they come down and block the roads and they take over and and and and suppress native species so we want to get rid of them and we can reuse them and as a as a sunscreen where there's no structural integrity demanded we can we can very well work with that so that would be one application I would think that sunscreen it's great application great because it's already pre-cooked so it's like you know it's it's pre-aged so we'll do a good job the next picture is another project that we keep promoting which is Primitiva which is our proletarian people power tower on this number 22 here an inside view where this time not on the outside but on the inside these which we call slices of paradise are going to be basically master carpenter out of a native species there's also monkey pot is another invasive species here that we can certainly repurpose for that matter number 23 is exciting that's that was our start we've worked together a pat for some years all my all you know you accompanied my journey from the Midwest fellow Midwestern and through the hot arid times in Arizona through here in Hawaii and that was the beginning in Hawaii where we both had with our student team developed and all these projects either showed our teamwork with the emerging generation here this was the age home very similar to research you doing on the side trying to find and that would be a show on his own which you probably should do about indigenous contemporary dwelling this is for Hawaiians here and the next picture is whereas the frame might be out of concrete but number 24 is going to show us something else at the very top and you started out with solid timber team team that but then you moved on to what which we see here pat well we we we were able to get a national science foundation grant to explore using TMT and engineered wood products and we definitely think in especially in the tropical areas you're going to need panel products and we believe this renders the a very unique panel product where you could have a boring treated um TMT treated piece of OSB so what's kind of a what we can take a commodity generic commodity and we can convert it into a especially durable material for the for the tropical areas I love how you said that I would say it more provocatively I said the most sort of bastardized and and uncultured piece of American engineering in wood which is oriented straight board where you take you don't trust wood anymore you chip it down to shavings and then you throw it into glue and so it becomes sort of wood in slavery right but you take that piece and I have a I have that actual piece here and I think it works pretty good in the light here you see that almost velvety glow so it looks very cheap and very sort of low low end through this magic process which by the way is using nothing but heat right so we're not there's no chemical there's nothing is just heat so it's an all natural process the basic process is just heating in a controlled environment and I acquired here precious piece of koa and so you know you can see this like you know this could be an evolution this is not around anymore it's done it's cut down it doesn't grow back that fast so we can basically substitute that with something that we create here right and if we go back to the picture 24 the most delicate thing is always that people say well okay you're you're talking you're all good you're all ecological you're all healthy but you got to basically use energy to make that so how good is that so what do we say about that as an answer pat yeah I mean it's the energy component is is a real part of this and in a production in a production scenario you you know wood products and that's the advantage of wood product industry has typically there's a lot of waste wood and typically people would use the waste wood for the base heat and we try and minimize the amount of intense heat that we use in in the process and that again that's why I like the closed system because the the the need for the intense heat is at a shorter duration and it's a less energy impact but it's it's it's something I think in the future we can find other alternatives for this but at this point you're you're still it is a process heat project so we are going to use some energy but we I think if you compare that versus the energy used to create and produce and ship chemicals I think we have a good story exactly and because of its compellingness the going back to the picture 24 the middle row is provocatively saying what if we you know talk to Pele who's the goddess of the volcano and we we're going to make a deal with her and saying why don't we use your heat and and this is like you know if there's some fundamentally originated you know resistance just like to the other TMT by the way the telescope then we could negotiate with the goddess and the gods of wind and the water and the ocean right so there's so many multiple multitude of of renewable energy sources on our islands here so there should be no problem we're going to show two more projects number 25 is is just sort of out of the creator's box these are our most recent emerging talents here this is Juhyeong park and a preview of his the art project here creating the forester's home potentially for the island and beyond also back in his native korea where he's from and number 26 is is what's also a permanent background picture here this is nick chivitano coming to say i want to build the most healthy and the most affordable home and he's pairing a TMT as as much as Juhyeong is with an innovative technology that's called cross nail timber which we can't cover in this show so we're going to have to make another show about that one but for these here i have and nick was building this out of actual what samples and i hold this here in my hand this here is also an abundant resource on the big island that's eucalyptus that someone had planted and thought make a big buck but it didn't work out because he didn't estimate the shipping cost correctly so that's how he sent it to you guys and that's how it came out so once again an absolutely cultivation of a personal and i know you like it'll be a different show but i i i really do believe combining these technologies TMT technologies with cross laminated timber technology for homes in Hawaii using plantation growing eucalyptus has a bright future perfect or we have another wood species we never ran out of ideas here this is iron wood also a very abundant not very liked wood species that's how it looks like in real that's how you make it look once you applied your master cook skills pet we're getting close to the end of the show but not before sharing your biggest dream and that has to do with the ocean and we got to squeeze in that one thing you know once TMT treated most insects and termites and most other things other than termites don't like the wood but termites are still uh attracted to it so we might have to apply one last step which is sea water curing as we say which is our experimentation with with uh with bore aiding a natural way of bore aiding and we get to the end of the show so we can't touch on that but i want to conclude with this last picture which is your ultimate dream here for us in Hawaii what is that and that's a certainly modified surfboard exactly exactly no it's a hydrophobic material that will just keep me afloat and it keeps you afloat and it keeps the board on float because once again in a nutshell we extract the the crystal water out of the cell right and that's an irreversible process that's the architect sort of dilettantly speaking and and that way it it will be lighter right and it will float better and so it's an ideal material for so many applications that we unfortunately don't have time to talk about anymore but this was a good introduction and more to come thank you mr a new hawaii wood master cook uh highly appreciated talking to us and giving us hope that this could be a potential material for our future demands all right thank you very much i i do appreciate it have a nice evening you too and thank you for staying up so late back in the beautiful heartland thank you thank you all right bye