 Welcome back to another episode of human-humane architecture from our cosmopolitan coastal city of Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm here with Bishop Museum's historic DeSoto Brown, again, by DeSoto. Hello, Martin. And can we get the first picture up? Because for the longest time we've been excited about each other's cultures and this sort of compilation of images here shows that the colors of Leys is always different on the other sides of the world. Yes, and we might point out that the Leys that's in the center of the picture does bear the three colors of the German flag, but black, yellow, and red were also important colors for Hawaiian culture, for featherwork, too. There we go. And to the left is me. Whenever I'm away and representing both cultures, I was sort of humorously wearing that in Iowa, where these pictures are from. When I gave a lay to my mentor down there at the bottom left, Calduas, I used the cuckoo in that lay as the more authentic. And then this one is again is sort of in a humorous way, saying that we're in between these worlds, sort of literally and figuratively speaking and spiritually when we're talking about it. So let's go to the next slide, which we want to encourage our audience to think about them and their relationship between climate and culture. And we both haven't had a taste of the cold originally, which is shown at the very on the top is you and at the bottom is me. And then we're now in the warm in the endless summer, referring to that legendary movies title. But today we want to actually remind us and the audience, please, about the time we were excited to enter the beginning of the adult world, which was beginning of high school. And that's us at the very right. And I said this before you look like JFK there. Well, I wasn't very excited at this at the time that this photograph was taken, because I was being sent from here back to Connecticut to go to boarding school, which meant that I was going back to the cold weather. And you're accustomed to cold weather. I'm not accustomed to cold weather. So even though I was smiling in this picture, I wasn't very happy. And I also had to wear a coat and tie, which I really did not like. Yeah, and I wasn't happy because you and then Suzanne said the same that the background actually isn't concrete what I wished, but it sort of made it look like concrete would. But I'm standing in front of a wooden fence. And this is again, the days before the preparation for the real world and that typology we want to look into. And next slide is that while we've been talking about Germany for the longest time, I want to get you there to Soto and supposedly a bunch of other people going with us. And we would shoot for maybe the spring next spring. And this one here is going to be a short tour in February, including again, another holiday. So it would only be four days we would be gone and we're visiting a high school and a special school. And so first slide is we next slide, please, we're going to look into things that we're not going to tell you here because otherwise you won't come, but we will talk about how local resources of materials could inform or should inform how you build. We, for example, this is a concrete plant that's on the way to the construction site. And we have out West Gray specific Rocky Mountain precast here, the prime manufacturer of precast concrete that we believe is the future for the island. Next slide. Yeah. And I think we can also just say too that we talked beforehand about the necessity for using materials that come from the area where you are building and that those will be more appropriate and that they can also be used in a variety of different ways. So we saw in the previous slide, all the different things that could be done with those. And that's type, that's the type of thing you and I discuss a great deal. And next slide, we want to talk about maybe clear out a misconception of many that architecture is this for boy and big genius idea thing. And you just taught me a term before the show how this could be very different in many cases. What is that term? Well, what you talked about the neighbors of this particular building not wanting it to be built. And I said that in English in the United States, we use an expression NIMBY, which means not in my backyard. And that's something that people complain about when something is going to be built near them that they don't want. And so it turns into I don't I understand why we need to build that but just don't build it right next to me. That's what exactly we will tell you about how that was in this case. And who did we going to take along maybe our new landscape program people because you see landscape. And by the way, what we should do here the rainwater of the roof gets shed off through the downspouts and then feeds that garden. But maybe also people from the Department of Tropical Plans and soil science from Thomas Lim and Nicholas, because then maybe coming back, they would appreciate more what vegetation we have here versus the one that has to make it through tough winters over there, right? Yes. So next slide. What else we're going to see? This is greetings to one of our biggest friends and our dear colleague and friend Ron Lindgren was killings worth it. We've been talking a lot about classicism. And along the lines of the case study houses, probably an homage of us or family business to that that the building is almost non existing, or very austere from the outside and only gradually as you see at the very bottom then sort of opens up once you get closer or you come around. And you know, the other thing I was going to say too, we can remind people what we talked about last week was your family firm in Germany. Once you had done one school got hired to do a series of schools. Yeah. And so that became something that you learned about because you had clients having done one that sought you out for other similar types of buildings called that serial killer right now serial work that killer slide. So that is something that for the longest time I've just been looking at mostly mainly culturally. The left ones are from Scandinavian legend of auto who always said, you know, the door handles are basically the handshake with a building. But in these days, we don't want to hide we're, we're going to say this is in a year. So the Chinese who had started the corona virus are now the best in getting it under control. So we're optimistic this will have sort of gotten back into control. But so what's the current debate, other debate about these architectural details, and we should probably have Department of Health people coming with us. Well, we also talked about to just beforehand, how corona virus can live on different surfaces for different amounts of time, depending on the climate and what the surface is. And you told me that the metal that you used for these handles on the right, was specifically with the idea that various viruses would be less likely to live on them. But it depends not only on the surface, but the, but the climate as well. So there's not this course of discussions. Yeah, we don't really know it's it's copper base. So this is brass. And again, we don't tell you more otherwise you don't come with us. That's right. Next slide. What else we're going to talk about is something ironically now the Arabs gonna dump the oil price. And it makes us environment list really, you know, mad because then, you know, oil is cheap again. But we don't give up in saying architecture needs to address the environment in a post fossil way. So we will talk about how buildings can address that. This gives you some clue and more when we're there. Yeah, and let me just point out to oil may be cheap right now, but it won't be in the future. So oil always comes up and down and building long term, you don't want to depend on the idea of cheap fossil fuel being around forever. Yeah. And next slide. And, and you basically said this you asked me you said is what kind of client is that and the nature is public, right? This is society as a client. And that one should be ahead of the game and should demonstrate excellence. This is a condition we will experience you guys have to buy some winter clothes because it's going to be cold in February there, but not in the building. And it's mainly been heated by the sun as you can see here at the top page that sort of, you know, light on the floor is actually the sun coming in through the very southern glass wall. While next slide. You know, you want to touch on classicism? I mean, you before the show you said something you should repeat. Well, one of the things that struck me is that this building really just show does show a classical and we'll see more pictures of it. It does have a very classical type of feeling to it. But we debated discussing the idea of classic architecture as a mandate from the state. In other words, just recently, Donald Trump stated that he thought that there should be classical buildings or that there should be a law that buildings built by the federal government have to follow a classical style. And one of the things that really is offensive about that is that Hitler during his reign also did the same thing of declaring that there had to be an official German government style, which was based on classicism, which was done obviously in a different manner than what this building shows. But in that way, that is an extremely offensive type of statement. And it bothered me a great deal that the federal government of the United States was trying to impose that. And so did a J Fidel. And that's why we did a show together. And thank you. Next slide, this building here hopefully shows that this is cultivated classicism versus cynical classicism, how we called his mandate. This is something we we should. And at the very beginning, we had a little quote picture of a show that I did with Mr. Code Green showmaster that I called Mr. Easy Breezy. And we choose this building as the background because it's the most that we could take home and learn from it actually literally, because this is an exoskeleton. And this is a summer condition that we want to experience when we're over there. But we know how it is all the time here. So here you can see that the exoskeleton. So what holds up the building is also keeping the building cool. And next slide will show that it not only does it by shading and keeping the windows cool, but also the lanai. So you can actually be on the line and I and be comfortable. Next slide. And we will experience and there is a tongue breaker. You want to go ahead and say how do you pronounce it? I'm not even I'm not even going to try that word. You say it. I say in Germany, it's equally challenging. It's fen name non logic. So it's about the phenomenon. And this is a research area in architecture that such things you can only experience in real. You cannot get this across. Although you might say this looks appealing, but the question is how does it feel comfortably? I mean, you know, thermal comfort wise, how does it smell? How does it sound acoustics is a big thing? This is a school building. There's even cold. So all these things we have to experience on the side because you can't do virtually. Right, right. And by visiting it in person. The other thing that I've also pointed out is that the buildings vary in terms of how they're illuminated. So a building illuminated from the outside during the day differs from a building illuminated from the inside during the night. And we've just seen two views of this building day and night to show how it looks under both of those situations, which comes back to the phenomenological or whatever that is very well, experience. Next slide. And, you know, last but not at all least buildings, especially as Jay likes to talk about civic buildings should be engaging and obviously people engage here in and around the building in a very literal way. These are the so excited high school students, they're excited about something else about discovering the opposite gender, right? So that should be built into the mandate of classicism as well, right here in the United States. Absolutely. Next slide. Talking to human factor. This is the other project we want to discover. And that's the most challenging project we've ever done as a firm. We were asked, as you kindly said, based upon track records of these other projects to build a 40,000 square foot school for mentally disabled children. I had never met for unfortunate circumstances, any disabled people whatsoever. So I had to have this steep learning curve. And while you just like keep it with a symbol and saying American Disability Act and you just do everything off the book and checkmarks, I wanted to know how these people really are and the icons at the top are the program. The school is actually called Integrated Learning with All Censors spelled ilmazi in Germany. And unlike we where we can't suppress other essential senses and and be happy when things just look good. These kids can't. So I after I've gotten to know them for this project, I believe they're actually more normal than us considered to be normal people. Yeah, and you and you were saying that because in this particular situation, as you said, we can cover up if there are deficiencies or things that bother us or make us angry or whatever. And those kids can't. So you have to take all of those things into consideration in terms of not only educating them, but the surroundings in which you do it. And that's what you said you did. Yeah. And this architectural model basically shows how nature, the elements, light and air and views are infused into the building. Everything that glows is basically open space. Because it's essential for these kids. They basically go nuts if you don't provide them. And we go nuts as well. But we don't show as you say, you know, immediately we suppress this, we cover it up. And it shows up somehow and later. But with these, you know, kids immediately next slide. So we will basically talk about I will share my learning curve. These are just three pictures that, you know, again, I listened to the future director of the school. And it was this big learning curve. Again, and to what did it lead? We had to make a decision. The next slide, we came to the conclusion we cannot build conventionally. We're doing something that Tropicare Walkwood calls prototyping, architecture prototyping, when we were telling the client that we think we can only build in timber, solid timber with no interior finishing, there is no shitrock, as I call it, no gypsum, no nothing, no covering up. It's all real and authentic, the real deal. The client basically said, I think you guys need more treatment than my kids. And we asked him before he fired, before he might have fired us to give us 3000 euros. And we built this full scale mockup had it is in this hallway for three weeks. And these client guys called me every morning with another reason why it wouldn't work. And I was resisting that. And at three weeks, he said, Damn it, do it. But then I also said get it on my hallway because it's a fire hazard. And we said, Well, thank you very much for identifying that. And maybe you signed as a very qualified fire rating engineer consultant, which I did. And we get to that at the very end. So we'll talk about that. Amongst other things, which are next slide. Well, wait, before we do that, though, yeah, here's a section Oh, yeah, of that that you brought with you. And as you can see, these are vertical members with a sort of a space in between them. Yeah. And this is what it looked like. And you said that you left this unfinished. So this is just natural wood inside, correct? Yeah. And this is actually what you hold up is something that that has to be added on because while here we could do there's a term single wall construction, you cannot do that in Germany, under the extreme climates and also the really extreme way more extreme than here. Energy sufficiency, standards, which again, we should have basically mechanical engineers, and sustainability people join us that they can experience how a government is basically mandating and encouraging to build really off the grid. So what you were holding up next slide is actually something so this is the structure. So we will hopefully have some mechanical engineers with us structural engineers, who, you know, are getting excited about the nature of prefabricating next slide. And did you say also that this is the exterior? Yeah, it's like that. So that that will be very interesting to see how this has weather. Yeah, and we will see in a minute, we give a little appetizer not too much because otherwise you won't go with us. But next slide. And we will see other innovative materials. So I will share the story about what tricky beast sustainability is here that a plastic foil, there's a roof material that's called ETFE et alan tetra fluid et alan. And the most flamboyant project is the one that's above there that in a year will be back to public business. But right now they're going to have a ghost game here. This is the major soccer stadium in Munich in Germany. And it's comprised of the same facade of that material. And how I learned that this is more sustainable than glass. So a plastic bag over a courtyard that can be more sustainable and basically melt it. Same which glasses we will share with you when we're there. Because it doesn't seem obvious to begin with. But all things considered, we will learn that and you pointed out to in that in this picture that we're looking at, that is actually the sunshine coming through that's not artificial light. And you said to that the admitting UV rays is part of the requirement for the students in this school. Well, yeah, thank you for reminding me because they do to their, you know, impacted health both physically and and psychologically and mentally. They the problem is they they should go outside all the time, but it's very cold. So they catch a cold and that's bad. So they can't stay inside because then they're lacking the healthy rays, the UV rays and this particular material different than glass, let's get to them. So there's, you know, this health aspect, so probably have Department of Health people come with us how buildings can make people keep people healthy and make them happier through that, which buildings have the chance to do. Next slide. And obviously, human inhabitation, this again, you see Christmas trees on the window. So that picture was taken around a similar time of that we will go there. Maybe there's snow, maybe there isn't. We can't really predict. And again, this is the finished project with a solid timber tectonics, no extra makeup added. It's the real deal, which again, we thought these kids need. Next slide. And we're going to have a couple of reading assignments, there are a couple publications that some most in English, so don't worry, some in German you can learn that will deliver and provide before and so you can come prepared and then do what we call these all American terms, post occupancy evaluation POE, EBD, evidence based design and LCA, life cycle assessment, because buildings only show over time if they actually work. And as you pointed out, because there's going to be a tour before that, as you said, you know, we will talk to the directors and the and the teachers and they will be blunt and say, you know, which things have worked. And but they also say which things haven't worked, which are actually more important because from these we learn only from these we learn, not from our successes, whatever, but from our failures we learn. Correct? Right, right. And that is also very basic things like how does the traffic flow go through a building? Is the corner too sharp? Is it is it wide enough? Is it too skinny? All of those things again, as you say, you don't know until you're actually especially thank you to soda in a school like that where the kids can't really maneuver, right? I mean, they can hardly walk in their wheelchair. So this pushes it to the edge, all these things, you know, considering exactly. Next slide is going to get to your closer to your sample because that was actually how it looked like to begin with and it looks rather similar to the sample you were holding up. And again, at the top right, I put in a recent news article because right after the show with with Jay about Trump's classicism, he sent me a link to and see what the French president is doing. He wants to mandate in a better way. He wants to mandate that public buildings have to use 50% of wood of timber, which potentially is the building material that can help saving the planet. This little German headline there is from a recent local newspaper where they're the politicians, the Green Party is basically promoting to build a new school entirely out of wood. And some clever journalists were saying, Hey, wait a minute, there was this pioneer that did that some almost two decades ago. So it's definitely worth looking back. And next slide. We will talk about the challenges, the roofs were a challenge. There's green roof on there. They were challenging. And next slide is going to be this is how it looks today. And as you said, it's interesting. How does this weather this special wood treatment is called thermally modifying timber. We did a show way back that we say it could be potentially of interest for the island. And you can hold up the two other examples you have. Right, right. So these are samples which Martin has brought in. This is the original ironwood. Now ironwood is an invasive species here. And it is something that grows very fast. And you can cut it down. It'll grow again. This is the natural of the way it looks naturally. This one in this hand has been treated. And so you can see not only does it look different. But I think it as as Martin said, it's actually less palatable termites, which is a very good thing here. And I'm sure it has other very positive properties as well. Yeah. And at the top right, you can see our sort of crash test dummies on their own choice, Chris Shigweta and Siraj Sharif, who were when they were doing the Copenhagen program, where the project as indicated with this sort of label the index design award got an award from the Danish Crown Prince, they were at the at that time, Stockholm exchange, and came over for a day. And that's where the idea started to say, Well, if someone would take more time, one could experience this in more detail. And again, you can take something home even literally the stuff you showed is from the mentee Nick Chivitano. And next slide. Very hot off the press or the oven we can say here is Kelly Keanu, who is doing his dog project with me. And he's looking into which I can show up here. This is actually Coco palm wood. So a local resource that gets basically friction welded with these wooden lignolock pens made by a on the edge of the Mauka of the Alps by a German company called back and actually Kelly did the same we want to do he flew there and visited with them and they advised him and here's his fire rating testing. This is his proposition to solve the housing crisis on the island that the transit oriented development four to five story building buildings to house the too many people on the island could be taken care of. Again, inspired by the project on the left, this was an article I wrote with this very fire rating engineer about the project we did. Next slide. And we will referring to a show here that we did on in the old show days, the previous show Urban Transcendence, we call this Germany's Kakaako Hamburg Harbor City. We plan to go there too. This is a fellow Makai city Hamburg, and it has a harbor, hopefully the cruise ship problematic of Corona has by then sort of softened itself. And this is a this is a neighborhood that again has a lot to do with Kakaako and how they, you know, basically dealt with education in an urban fabric on steroids is very, very interesting and worth to learn. And last slide here, the final assessment will be what the soda? Well, the final assessment after people return from their trip to Germany, and having seen these buildings and seen all the details that you just talked about, and we talked about, will be to create a think tech program about it. And so that that will be an exercise in creating a video, writing it, producing it and doing all that other stuff. So it won't just be the people who are architecturally oriented who will be involved, but there'll be people who know about production, video and so forth to do the final assessment of what this particular trip taught them when they went all the way over to the other side of the world to Germany, where it was cold, and they saw these interesting innovative buildings. Yeah. And of course, we as veterans, having done shows, we will train them. But again, as you said, it might be actually people from the College of Communication, journalism that want to join us that use it as a chance to report from the other side of the world about something innovative to take home to Hawaii, as you said. So hopefully we got you excited to join us next week is actually going to be spring break. And so we're going to try to get you excited about our next year spring break trip, which is touching on another very essential, especially these days in the corona very essential typology of nutrition. And until then, please stay educatedly elaborate, elaborately educated. Bye bye.