 Good to have you all back for another episode of Think Tech-A-Wise Human Humane Architecture, which happens to be our 228th one. And we're broadcasting live again from three different parts of the world with you, DeSoto, and your Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. Welcome back. How do you do? Nice to be here. Good to have you back. We got you back from your little town last week, exactly. And from his Long Beach, California, we have Ron Lindgren back. Hi, Ron. Hello. And I'm grateful to see DeSoto back. His affability and knowledge is the glue that holds this program together. That's nice to see you. Absolutely. And me, wouldn't you wish so, still back in Munich, Germany, near Munich, Germany? And so if we can get the first slide up, please. We're still operating under various scenarios that Jay reminds us with multiple talks and presentations that are intertwined, which is first and foremost COVID and climate change. But we also have civility on the rise, which we will talk about. And this is the last volume of our sequence of happenings for reasons that are actually wet happenings for reasons. And one very recent one happens to be a wave. We're not only having the Omicron COVID wave ahead of us, but we also had a more natural wave. That was a tsunami. That was from an underground volcano near Tonga that had some pretty serious impact there. And also we thought would have a serious impact up to us in Hawaii, which luckily didn't happen to that degree. And DeSoto went back to the place we've been talking about quite a bit, which is your Halikolani, Ron, and something we already sort of assessed. You were able to take a picture and impression from inside because you took a couple of friends to the Halikolani a couple of days ago. And maybe, again, we commented on that, but maybe one last strike on what we see here. Well, let me just also just say to this, since I took the picture, this is the Halikolani has always been situated on a seawall. It never had a beach in front of it or not for very many years. But unfortunately now with increased water levels in the sea, we now see that the ocean is encroaching onto the hotels of Waikiki. So this is their stopgap measure to try to keep out high waves at the Halikolani in which they've put up a plywood wall. They've banked sandbags against it. They've put a strip of astroturf across the top and then they've planted Napaqa and a small beach vine which is called Pa'u'ohi'iaka to hopefully grow over that mound, make it less unattractive looking for everybody inside the Halikolani and also provide this very stopgap measure that looks like they're trying to keep the Mississippi from overflowing in the middle of the North American continent. Since you're just sharing with us Hawaiian terms, please help us out with, because we also have an underground volcano in Hawaii. Which the name is? Lohi'i, and Lohi'i fortunately is not gonna blow up the way the volcano near in the nation of Tonga did for a variety of reasons. First of all, it's way farther deeper in the ocean still. But the amazing thing, as you said, Martin, is that this eruption and the resulting underwater landslide created as a tsunami that went all around the Pacific and it killed two people on the coast of Peru. It affected Japan, it affected Australia, it affected California, which Ron will tell us about. And the sound of the explosion of the volcano was heard all the way in Alaska, which is astonishing. And as we said, there was some damage here, but in California, in some of the harbors and marinas, there was really noticeable wave action and it's astonishing to think how far that wave traveled. Yeah, and all these events would take this sort of pretty desperate thing away in no time, right? But they're building up. Unfortunately, yes. On the west coast, the 50 foot tsunami waves that the Tongan islands themselves experienced became three foot waves along the California coast. There was some minor flooding damage, but the biggest danger was the fact that the oceans were so royal, even from thousands of miles away on the Pacific coast, that there were strange currents and cross currents made that made it very dangerous to swim or to surf off the beaches in California because the water was moving around in waves that was very unfamiliar to those who play in the water every day. Yeah, and why events like that, you could maybe call moods of nature and everyone is moody at times, so nature can be. But moving to the next slide, we also make nature angry. And why we make nature angry is because we aren't as smart as nature is. And that shows where the systems we invent because nature systems are as smart as you can get it. This symbolizes that what we create as systems isn't nearly as smart. And this is my prestigious bathtub and I apologize for that little black mold that you see there that I wasn't able to get off ever since I took over the place. I was scrubbing it like crazy, but it's so deeply into the silicone there that it's an interior bathroom. But what else you see that filthy water isn't how I usually take a bath. This is water that magically or miraculously was rising up my bathtub. And so this is a bad water happening for reason in systems that we create in buildings where we get the water deeply into the building and then the water gets us into trouble. And in late entry to your trouble, you had one you thought you were done with troubles, Ron, is when that smart car drove into your front yard, it wasn't just damaging the plants, but also your irrigation. So there was another water incident, right, in that your project. Next slide to quickly share with you how this ended. And so when I will be back in Honolulu, this is our prestigious studio that we're broadcasting from because the Waikiki Grant is easy breezy and the price of that is that the only place where we just got our daily or weekly advice that we should retract to a place where it's quiet. So my only quiet place is this one here and don't get too excited that I'm sitting on the toilet bowl when I'm doing the show, but I'm sitting in front of the green screen that you see to the very left. And so it looks way less flamboyant than the bathrooms in Yorahali Kalani, Ron, that you were sharing with us show courting at the top right. So next slide, trying to find the cause for what was making the filthy water rise up was that the array of all trades who you see at the very left was trying to have his power drill and his snake and to get it out of there. He wasn't successful, it wasn't his fault but his equipment wasn't strong enough. The guy on the right is the third plumber that was finally able to get it out. But in that process, next slide, the house plumber was the second one in the attempt broke a pipe. And so all of a sudden the hula people, which is almost prestigious famous bar at the second or first floor was coming up and saying it's raining down there. So that was the next event. So here are the guys cutting into the drywall and trying to fix the problem. Next slide. And it looks messy and it looks old, but in fact, one of our owners of several units in the building was once been persuaded by someone on the board that I'm a renter, so I'm not part of the board, but the owners are but he told me who wanted to take them over into a very opportunistic job to replace all the water pipes, but they are out of solid copper. And so there is no need to do that. That's the best you can get. So they were trying to fix the problem here and you also see how much wasted space. I mean, I could basically hide in there and no one ever finds me because it's that big. Next slide. And the final step was that this gentleman was sent and that was at the time where we're doing a comparisons with both Portugal and related Brazil. And this is Andre, who I met, who was from there and had some very interesting discussions about similarities and differences between there and our culture. But back to materiality, Ron, this to the right sheetrock is one of the monopolist basically products in the field of the material of drywall. And excuse my words, I always tell the emerging generation, I think it's more shiprock than sheet rocks because there's nothing that rocks about gypsum what drywall is and you more than me experienced how dangerous it can be for your health because it's gypsum and when gypsum gets wet, it basically molds and mold is bad for you. So there's no doubt that it doesn't have the elegance of what your Halicvalani hotel rooms used to be and it will never have, but also given your express feelings, Ron, about how they look these days, I would say you better take me up on my offer without expiration dates to come and take a break from your disasters and relax for a couple of weeks or however long you wanna stay, again, no expiration on duration either and crash with me in my humble abode of the Waikiki grant either when I'm not there or when I'm there on the second mattress that's available because I say a next slide. Okay, why do I talk about the best of both worlds? You're staying in my place and what do you do over the day, Ron? You know, $750 a night for a typical Halicvalani room went by a lot of meals at the Halicvalani. I know DeSoto and his friends really enjoyed their recent visit there and the meal and the service, I would hope that they're still upholding the quality of that. Yes, they are. Yeah, it is much to be sought for to use a dispelling bed and a Halicvalani restaurant. It's the best of both worlds. Thanks for the opportunity. Well, because you could then walk through the comments area that we complimented the management of Halicvalani that it stayed majorly unchanged although thanks to your two additional pictures at the bottom, which, you know, we don't have the too cool situation on the left which is so adage in its best way as we keep calling you and Bill Chapman calls you the best postmodern architect that he knows and that we know and we know someone had really been sidetracked to the dark side as Mr. Ricardo Bofill who passed away these days. But also we wanna keep the management encouraged to stay in keeping everything authentic because what we talked about last time that you just saw something where it didn't happen which is switching out this, you know original painting that we talked about quite a bit. So here's the image to the talk from last week and I think we dwelled enough on that so I think we could probably move on. So yes, Ron, you will at night you will crash in the YTT grant. At days you will enjoy your majorly unchanged and hopefully continuously unchanged common grounds of your holy Kalani. Okay, that was then and now is now but what's next, next slide. And that's the one that Michael couldn't wait to show. So what in the world is that? Well, you tell us that's your baby, that's Primitiva. And that's something that's created by you and your students at the University of Hawaii in which we will see the dreamed of future of this Primitiva III and its spiral and how the water is used there because we just saw how water is potentially damaging if it's in pipes and other things like you just happened to have in your bathroom at the Waikiki Grant built in the 1960s. But Primitiva III is supposed to be an open space which water flows on the outside. There's a water curtain and then on the inside we've also got on the exterior this circulating circular sort of a sluice way or I can't remember the term I want but in any case and then there's also a place where you can shower because everybody in our fantasy world just lives openly and freely out in the outdoors even without clothes. Yeah, true paradise. And again, it's another way of zoning the elements why Genie Gang was trying to rebrand the Waikiki bathroom in her new Howard Youth Tower as the cool thing as the wet zone as we excessively talked when water just goes wild inside of a building there's nothing cool about it. It's nothing but trouble, right? So we keep the water where the water happens on the outside and then we have a green zone that likes water the excess water and they do together basically shelter and shed the dry zone which is the inhabitable zone and gets us to the next slide because this shows the systems how they all work together a little bit more here in this diagram going to the next slide which is again, we talked about the free threads for mankind and the third one is civility. So while the 10 most richest people in the world have become twice as rich through the pandemic and I'm not in any kind of follower of conspiracy theories but maybe they didn't mind this happen so I'm not accusing Mr. Bezos making us stay at home and sending and always ordering parcels and then making him happy, right? So who knows? But I'm not spreading conspiracy theories. This is not the time to do various, there is enough out there but at the same time, the people at the other end of the food chain got even worse off so that's where we need to start and that way we can't afford to build buildings in pretty expensive way we've been doing. So here is another approach you just build a mast that probably less campers from Great Pacific, Rocky Mountain precasts out there but from there on, Tarzan and Jane like as they're demonstrating here maybe you can build your building with more sweat equity. And next slide, using also local and regional materials and while the Great Fry Otto and Larry Medlin who we had on several shows were using steel which we need to import as Larry pointed out, it's still a lot less to import than heavy beams. It's just a couple of rolls with cables on but here we have a substitute for steel and what is that guys? You got excited about it. So that's basalt rebar and basalt rebar as you point out in the text that's on the screen has the advantage of, first of all it's made from basalt which is lava and we have an abundance of lava particularly on the island of Hawaii which is producing lava all the time but also basalt doesn't rust and rebar getting rusty inside concrete or inside cement block is a terrible problem once you have to deal with it not only to try to fix it but also potentially leading to catastrophic failure which is what happened to the Champlain Tower South condo in Florida last year which with the resulting significant death toll. So if you can eliminate that that's a major thing to consider and go for. Yeah and then next slide that's how it would look like and once again, this is not an elephant leg as we could call all the existing and current attempts to build tall on the island which come around as clumsy and as gravity-based while this one is inspired by the Great Fry Auto and Larry Midland and consultants as a predominantly tensile system only the mass is compression but everything else is basically tensile so a way more tropical system more Tarzan and Janie who swing at the rope through the jungle and don't trample with big elephant legs. So on the next slide we will see here how that would look like if all these primitives then start to thrive and to grow and we would get one just in between us to Soto you would look down at it from up the foothills of Diamond Head when you're home and I would look up at it from the Waikiki Grant which you see here at the very bottom right and unless you move into it unless you move into it I will of course, I will have to and I will want to and I know one who wants to also because he dreams about it which we'll hear at the very end of the show here and that person also doesn't have a primitiva in his yards of the Hali Kalani which we see at the very left because the common areas of there are paradisal enough already but you might need to get something in your front yard in your Hali Kalani front yard Ron and this is what we see on the next slide which the articles from the store advertiser you send us to Soto so you guys both tell us about this what might be in the future for the front yard of the Hali Kalani well as we just mentioned at the very beginning of the show we have a situation where not only the ocean level is rising but sand is going away and this is a potential catastrophe for Waikiki so in a stop gap measure to attempt to slow that down there is this proposal to install all these groins in front of the hotels of Waikiki to hopefully build up sand where in some cases it has washed away almost completely and as we said earlier this is a stop gap measure this may or may not work and one of the terrible things about trying to control sand as we talked about trying to control water it doesn't always work so just putting up a wall and hoping that will stop sand from moving does not always work the way you want it to because the dynamics of sand motion is very complicated are very complicated and not easily controlled Yeah, when we just had the G20 summit and some of these island cultures basically are the first one to experience that you just can't hide from it see what a level rise is just getting at you it's just a question of when and not if and we know that there's a lot of research going on Mr. Fletcher, Chip Fletcher who was the keynote speaker on the on the holiday event of Fink Tech Kauai together with my colleague Wendy Maguro and a bunch of other ones are doing their very best to do the best they can and to prevent it but we want to throw out with Primitiva 3 another alternative which is based on the you know admitting that maybe you just can't stop nature that you made so angry so maybe you have to make up with nature and befriend nature and just you know also accept nature in its extended moods that we caused and that gets us to the next slide and what happens then? Well, if you're living in Primitiva 3 what happens is that if the air wants to blow through there at over 100 miles an hour you simply retreat into the central core of the building and let the wind blow through and that really is one of the only things you can do in the face of a very severe storm like a hurricane and so rather than trying to put up barriers to the wind to keep it out and failing as often happens as you can see after hurricanes and tornadoes you instead go with it and live with it and let it do what it needs to do without trying to keep it out or prevent it. Yeah and that you can't win this is what you see that little image in the center there is where the building all the glass got blown out and even if then cold says oh then we got to make glass stronger that means you got to produce more glass you got to put out more carbon you make nature even more angry so that's a vicious cycle that you can't win, right? And what you just perfectly described DeSoto we know from sailors at the very bottom right illustrating that if there's a storm coming it doesn't make sense to put another layer of tar on the sail, but the only thing that saves you is taking the sail down and that's what Primitiva does as it has horizontal and vertical porosity through its netting floors it doesn't give the hurricane a surface to hit right and that way, you know also it can be constructed in a much lighter way so that's what we want to throw out and with the last slide, please up if you want to know about this you got to visit something that a fellow tropic here Bundit Kinnistakan who we added to the poster I hope you don't mind, Bundit because again, you finally agreed to join and not just exhibit tropic here Rockwood and my humble doings in this area but also add you so looking much forward to that you want to be done and you have to be done one of these days and hopefully you will all join and some of us already, you know dreaming about this one, right? Yeah, I might say that recently of course I've joined with everyone else in sort of this lockdown lock off situation where you're pretty much stuck at home and then to have the home itself damaged by the water so badly I could start feeling sort of sorry for myself but at night my psyche somehow is self-protective and I so appreciate my REM sleep because I'm having dreams, quite happy dreams that help to take off some of the staying of how somehow someday just aren't so good to get through and last night I suddenly realized that I was outdoors in very dense greenery water was pouring on me I realized I was actually taking a shower I was in the nude outdoors there was a kind of a moat an arc of water to my left to my right people were walking up and down a ramp not looking at me I looked down at myself no, I was naked but I wasn't embarrassed and then it suddenly struck me aha, I'm actually living in primitiva and let me tell you viewers that would be a fine way to live awesome, let's all so now we just need to make that dream reality that would be equally easy, right? but it starts with dreaming okay, so let that be the perfect concluding comment and see you all back for a more human-jumain architecture we said we want to take a look at current practices on the island in the next couple of shows and assess them and share our thoughts about it so until then, please stay healthy first of all and happy and have equally wet tropical dreams that keep you dry, bye bye