 I'm very delighted to have you back to this art show. Think the Kauai's human-humane architecture, and we're broadcasting live from this art place in the middle, the center of the earth, most remote from all other landmasses in Honolulu, Hawaii. And usually we have our co-host to Soto Brown with us here at the foothills of Diamond Hill, Diamond Head, sorry, the Hill of Diamond Head. That's where he grew up, and that's where he is right now and not in his Bishop Museum at work because his way past 100 years, young mother is not feeling too well. She has some cough. He said it's not too serious, but he is kindly watching her. So it's just gonna be you and me, me further down that foothills of the most iconic postcard scenery of a volcano, of an urban volcano. That's not active anymore. So if we can get the first slide up, we wanna think above and beyond our very wide horizon that somehow limits us. And for that reason, we get us out into other places. And in this volume of shows, it is the city of Chicago, which for some reasons we seem to mimic or imitate recently as far as the built environment is concerned. And this moment I captured here from a few days ago gave me a chance to think about that a little bit more because I had two hours here to wait for the towing truck that you see at the top right coming. And this is all thanks to our magic mechanic, Larry, who takes so great care of us. And us is in this case that we have our consultant, our exotic escapism expert, Zanna with us this time for some while and our teenage boys. And Larry set us up with his mobile, which is we borrow this from R to be continued shows about cars and architecture, mobile and immobile. And this is the new mobile, which we had to get because they live out on the other side over the Kulau Mountains in Kailua. And in order to get around, we should use the bus, but are we better than anyone else? Larry set us up with a car that he had been sitting for a while. And so he made it all nice again, but just like with people as a German saying is ver rastet der Rastet, which I usually give to Soto the German lesson of the week. That means as you can figure, if you're sitting around you're rusting and so it was with a car. And so here it basically quit when we were at the entrance of Kuala Basin. And in that entrance of that paid parking lots and it was busy morning workday. So all the towing trucks were around. So we had to wait for two hours only, thanks to AAA and the towing company again, well taken care of us, but we had some time to think about it. So this mobile is not easy breezy as you can tell but he can roll down the windows, which we did. And it always surprises me, do that to yourself. If you drive to work, watch out how many people or few people have to say how the windows roll down here in paradise, where we have heat waves everywhere. Ron Lindgren, hi Ron. We just talked about California is gonna be hit 125 predict that Lake Meads water level is the lowest ever. We had and still have heat waves and drought in Europe all across Europe. They're predicting that to be the standard over the years in Germany back home where we're facing the winter with Putin's gas not available anymore to heat us trying to find alternatives scratching our heads. It's not gonna happen on the river as the means of transportation anymore because the Rhine River is almost dried up just like the Colorado River is that feeds you Ron. So we're in big trouble everywhere in the world. So we have to work on that sustainability wise is kind of the keyword, the buzzword for that one. So obviously we shouldn't even drive cars anymore. And again, we are driving too much. We is us included. We're not any better, but at least we're thinking about it. So by the two hours that we were waiting there I was watching and looking around and on the bottom right, this was behind us. This is in the park. You see what we call urban nomads. Usually people call them homeless. And they are really the ones who are the most sustainable. We have the options and we don't use them. They don't have the options or they choose to not have the options. Many don't choose they get chosen for them. And so this is the condition they live in. And I just got the weekly newsletter by Senator Stanley Chang who's tackling that greatly. And so don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to romanticize homelessness. Never would I do that because what do I know about it? But if we look at it in sort of an observatory way they are living on the smallest carbon footprint. They're not having the fossil fuel consumption that we're having. They're living outdoors. They're not having AC. They're recycling. You see them here recycling all the water bottles here. So they're actually, and that's what we call the urban nomads. And we're thinking in our research how can we cultivate that urban nomadism that people are not being looked down upon but being looked up at because that's what they deserve because they save the world for us. If we would all live like that we would have a better world. But the way we live is what we see on the picture on the left. And this is in the front once again how it uses most recently finished tower by here's the connection to the other winded city Chicago by its currently most famous and productive architect Jeannie Gang with her firm Studio Gang. And in the distance we have Howard uses so far our first attempt and there's another one coming up. It's a new project, a new tower proposed that's trying to be affordable. That tower there in the back and we can get to the second slide for that because we see an early rendering of that at the bottom right in that show quote. This is that affordable tower Kea Keelohana or something it's called workforce tower warehousing the workforce, a rather cynical approach. The Soto and I came to the conclusion where we did the show that we show quote here because you basically box people locked them away in these generic rooms with one window and a massive giant fossil fuel wall unit AC machine in front of it to then if they get claustrophobic they can go up to these what they call common areas and that's what we see down there. If we look at the top right show quote please Eric that's something that we're operating under the framework and circumstances off. This is a war going on at too many places in the world and this is the Ukraine war. And that last thing we ended on in the in the previous show volume three was the blow through floor of Virginia gangs newest tower, the Vista tower or St. Regis tower in Chicago that we're gonna return to soon. And there was one feature in there that's called the blow through. This one at the top right is the tragic blown through floor because this is where missiles and rockets basically get sent into people's dwellings and kill them as unfortunately the little people who no one knows you hardly ever have any connection but if it's someone famous like that German news up there who's a movie star when she dies then that unfortunately gets more attention and more awareness. So that's what we find in the Ukraine and the only really blow through floor that can be inhabited, show quote top left. Eric if you can zoom into that is the Atlantis condominium that plays. We talked about Hawaii 5.0 where the original series the pioneering heyday mid-century architecture plays a role. It's almost a character. That building is in the opening scene of Miami Vice from the 80s and that building is from 1982. And actually has a performative blow through floor or because there's a spiral staircase in there and a jacuzzi and a palm tree. On these only scratching the surface common lanais on the Kei Kilo Hana, we don't, we're not so sure how often people spend time there. It's very windy, there's no wind protection and we made the polemic proposition to say they should have inverted that and make the whole thing basically be blow through and then when there's a storm coming you have a safe room almost like you retract into a coconut on a palm tree because a palm tree is the tree that the Soto in the recent discussion we had pointed out is the tree that is the most perfectly adjusted to survive and sustain the winds and are sometimes very windy city tropics. Next slide please. That is the San Regis Tower formerly called Vista Tower by Gini Gang in Chicago. And there is this blow through floor that caught a lot of attention in the news and in the public because it's what the engineers basically found out, not after the fact but pretty late in the design process they need some additional measures to have the building be not just save but also be not swing and swinging in the wind up there. There's a building in Waikiki close to Holbron Street by Joe Paul Rongstead that only has one unit per floor that's currently being in the press because the eclectic elevator on its backside constantly breaks so people have no way to get up into the building and so that gets the building in trouble. And that building I heard of someone who knows someone who knows someone who lives in the top floor and at a very windy day you can feel the building moving. Again, is that a problem? A palm tree works like that actually, it's not a problem so maybe it's our humankind to think things need to be sturdy and there shouldn't be sway and we need to sort of fight the swinging and sway. To the right side, you see show quotes from once again, the Koula De Soto. Let's, you guys know that it is named after sugar cane. We know that, but it's a red sugar cane. He made a comment that we don't see any red on the building. Maybe that would have been too postmodern which he at least on the surface doesn't want to be but we encourage the firm of Genie Gang to be more performative. At least we have to say and this is what Ron always gives it, the credit. It has the nice, although when we were sitting there or around our, we call it also our just legal turned legal age mobile because it is a 2001 and De Soto just before the show when he told me about his mother. He told me that a special license plate we have is one that everyone can have. You just order a license place that has some space on the left that you can put a sticker on. You can buy one from his museum, the Bishop Museum or in that year, very appropriate. You have the America United sticker that was commemorating the attack on the World Trade Center is the tragic terrorist attack. So this is a 2001. So that sticker was fairly current at that time. And that was again getting out of the car because different than our other more easy breezy convertible as L, which gives you more breeze. And here it got too hot for me because rolling down the windows isn't enough. There's too much surface to be basically hit by the sun and the wind can't get through. And it's similar to the building because if I look closer at it, the lanais maybe don't even deserve the term lanai. They're basically more logias. As we introduced the term, these are lanais who basically carved into the building mess and are not sticking out. What we're seeing now here, things Eric at the top ride is the aquataua that was genies coming out in Chicago in 2009. So both buildings basically have lanais but the aquataua has actually the most lanais. And here's the point, the one on the left and the newest, the Synderages doesn't have lanais at all. And that is somehow again questionable. For sure, Chicago has that climate of not just the heat which is at times hotter than we have it here in Honolulu. Whenever people say, oh, it's so hot we can increasingly say no, it is not because there are places and unfortunately things or not to climate change, increasingly more places in the world where it gets hotter and hotter and hotter and we still have the trades blowing although things change here too. And of course it feels hotter than it used to be in previous years, but the extent of increasing isn't just as bad as in other places. So Chicago has these heat waves with 120 something and then what do you do in this tower here? There is the question of basically the summer thermal comfort in a post-fossil way because it's pretty much as we will see further down when we look at the building more, it's fixed glazing. So how do you get yourself cooled down in the summertime other than using fossil fuel which is increasingly problematic on an economical sector of the Putin acts and then ecologically anyways. The winter condition might be not so problematic because that's when you have a really cold and when you have the sun out there that sun can basically help staying warm in the summertime. But again, right now we have the summer condition sorry in the winter time, not right now we have the summer condition and it's probably only bearable in that tower if you have the fossil fueled AC blasting. What can we maybe take from this as an example for our Honolulu here? Well, obviously not building like that for because we have that summer condition all year round the summer as that legendary movie pointed out to us. So what else do we do next slide? Our propositions are the primitivas. The primitivas are these buildings who are all open they're all blow through not just horizontally but vertically here. They work with carbon basalt and our carbon basalt lava rods and cables as a local material of an innovative kind that you can net structures and then put netting in between. So the building is breathable all the way around and this show quote at the top right points out the reference to the ones of us who are sailing because if there's a storm out there on the ocean what do you do? You are not netting another layer of tarp on your sail which is what code requires conventional buildings to do. They say, oh, we're gonna have category five hurricanes and worse so we gotta thicken the glass. Well, that is making nature more angry. We did a little bit more of our homework I used to say to my emerging generation in order to basically make sand into glass you gotta melt it which is basically what it is. And I said, you need a thousand degrees. I looked it up in Fahrenheit it's 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit you need S to make glass. And that is a huge carbon footprint. I mean, you're not using that mostly traditionally the power source to make that was fossil unless you make that with post-fossil off the grid energy, you have a big carbon footprint and not to speak about the shipping and the installing and the cleaning and then having to keep yourself cool behind with a fossil fueled AC. So fixed glazing has a huge carbon footprint and cold again then making nature more angry reacts in the most silly way and saying, well, we make the glass even stronger. Well, that's a vicious circle, right? Which primitivas wants to break that and this is all open. And then again, in the case of a hurricane you have a safe room in the shaft of the building. So this is our learning curve what we learned from blow through it just encourages and basically almost the Vista Tower St. Regis is basically endorsing this our proposition of blow through because that's what the engineers had just confirmed with and in that building. Next slide please. We are now looking at the base of the building that the St. Regis stands on. And as we made an indication some shows ago here the whole city of Chicago is basically bumped up jacked up on a massive sub structure and that you see here and this is where all the services go. And whenever we have traffic jams here in the morning in Waikiki all the delivery trucks come and they stall the other traffic here basically it's separated all the delivery all the bringing things to the buildings and taking things from the building as garbage and even moving trucks and everything happens below while the usual transportation of cars and buses happens above. And the material that this is accomplished with is a material that we don't have on the island we shouldn't have on the island because it's invasive it doesn't grow here there's no steel tree. Steel is a material that needs resources its ingredients that we don't have on the island here so just like glass it needs to be shipped in again these minerals need to be melted to be made into steel so it's the same thing and then we lack the labor the traditional trained labor for that so you need to fly in the labor as well and that cuts out labor on our islands so we don't think we should learn or get too excited about steel I threw in some show quotes up there from references to infrastructural work of our office this is the tradition here in Honolulu De Soto and Don Hebert once gave a great show that's archived under our Doka Momo playlist where they talked about that the development of Honolulu to the extent that we have it now was only able to be accomplished through the streetcars. Yeah this previous one was a project we did our inaugural project for my hometown the city of Hanover light rail and it is a steel structure it is a platform of similar kind and the top right was the canopy to a subway station that we also choose to build in steel but again this is actually in the you see all of us reconvening here around the turn of the year at the top left visiting our oldest sons Joey and Lenny and they happen to live there and this is the area that we call the Kolen Pot which is the coal pot this is where the heavy steel industry in Germany used to be and to some part still is although majorly you get outsourced to China as it is the same in the United States but we don't have any of that in Hawaii traditionally and so when we bring it here it's highly invasive so we should stay away from that and next slide so here this is surprising and I would love to have the Soto next week when he comes back recall this and get a chuckle out of that because this couldn't show any better how attractive we and we're still from Chicago we're like eight, nine hours flight time away right so it's far away but they dream of us this is on the Chicago river here a boat, a party boat that has some grassgird on and you can order in my tie and up there we have been zooming into the name of the boat and it's called Kona Illinois or Kona Chicago how funny is that and then you see our iconic panoramic of the turquoise specific ocean, the palm trees and you can feel the breeze when you look at that picture here that is on that wooden fence that's covering the not so tropical exotic steel structure behind it on which the buildings stand and next slide so this is a stretch here and I say this upfront please don't accuse us of macho or sexist it's not intended to be it's just trying to understand Jeanine's design idea here better which is basically having these frost tombs as we learned it in the last show being upside down and continuous so that gives this building exterior its exciting swooping curve and above the building there we quote from Jeanine's website here where she is basically confirming that it's sort of flowing experience it almost looks like it could dance and so that dancing we see at the very top right of the whole picture here when Joey and I walked by a T3 VW bus who are very famous here there was a dashboard hula girl on in that car and it made us think when we looked at the building again maybe the building wants to dance the hula but discussing this with the solo again who is from here versus me the hula is of course a very spiritual dance that has a cultural message to convey but it's also a biochromatic dance because the hula dancer or the loincloth because it's not just a female dance male hula dancers are also existing and they wear the loincloth is very easy breezy so it's a clothing that you don't sweat underneath and in these days of the tourist industry trying to keep that alive in their own commercial self-interest often it's made of synthetic plastic fibers they're made in China that was not the case indigenously of course pre-contact they were all made out of local material that's biodegradable and that is very easy breezy so that way again maybe just like our tourist industry wants to convey an image of something something flowing, something dancing but in the means of methods it's using it's not so much in line with the original intention of that activity so we're starting to think the same about the building here by Jeanne Gang as basically as positive I would say and as entertaining as free-flowing, as dancing as it looks like wouldn't it be nice me as an occupant in there could do it similarly and we will talk next time about many things more about the building of course I as many in my pay rate and I'm, don't get me wrong I'm in a pretty nice place and even coming back to the beginning of the show's full circle because we're closing now it's all a good problem to have whenever we are complaining about things in our daily lives we're just paying with our money but the people in the Ukraine are currently paying with their lives so us who are more privileged and more fortunate should again think about the ones who are not so privileged and not so fortunate and the building we're currently keep looking into is not about these people this is for high-end multi-millionaires who are able to live there but even them why would they want to live in something hermetic AC blowing couldn't also they dance with a flow of the wind in the summer in Chicago as their building does that's a question we put out there but we're at the end of exciting 28 minutes we hope to have you back for more with the Soto next week again and until then please stay tropical exotic exotically tropic bye bye thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com Mahalo