 Welcome back to human humane architecture here on Think Tech Hawaii. We're broadcasting live from our cosmopolitan capital city of Honolulu, Hawaii. And whereas until now we have always brought in and casted people who have a most constructively critical, most critically constructive approach who are from or on our islands. Ever since we got contacted here, however, a lot of things have come to us that we were, you know, had second thoughts about. But it also provides the excellent opportunity to bring in the best stuff, the good stuff from somewhere else. So this is a premiere to the and the debut of broadcasting from beyond our front yard, or I should say our 360 degree front pond. And we start off with one of our immediate neighbors across the Pacific Ocean. And I could not think of anyone better to start this new phase in the show as to bring someone in as a guest without whom I wouldn't sit here today. We've known each other for more than a decade, and I consider him to be my coach. So let's welcome Professor Chris Ford to the show. Hi, Chris. Hello, Martin. Thank you for the invitation and always great to reconnect with you. Please tell us where exactly you are right now and where you come from. Oh, yeah, sure. So so my background is as an architect. And I've had good fortune to work in some distinguished design practices of others. I was able to work in the New York office of Richard Myron partners for four years in New York. And then Tucson, Arizona was there for about three years, working for a couple of different guys. And it was during that time that I actually started teaching in the evenings. And so that two years of being an adjunct lecturer at the University of Arizona, it reinforced a kind of long term desire to become an architectural educator. And so it was at that point that I applied to interviewed with and became your colleague at the University of Nebraska. And so there was something interesting that happened to me when I turned 40 years old. And that was that I decided to have a pretty productive midlife crisis. And that was that even though my background was from architectural practice, I was curious what my path would have looked like had I gotten a PhD. And so to the more direct answer to your question, Martin, is that I'm in Palo Alto, California, which is in Silicon Valley. And so I have a slide here that the first one that's up that I just want to share with you the types of companies that have some either headquarters or have offices here in this region. And it's because of Silicon Valley that either our software or hardware or even combinations of software and hardware are coming from, at least those elements that we use. And with that, Martin, I can just tell you that I'm learning about design from the angle of approach from engineering, and it's absolutely invigorating. So you're currently more specifically at what prestigious institution you're talking from? Well, I am a PhD candidate at Stanford University. And Stanford is one of the three engines that has historically really driven Silicon Valley. And so in slide two here, I can share with you that the reason why I was attracted to engineering at Stanford is that it looks and feels differently from engineering practice at most other universities. And one reason for that is because this is ground zero for design thinking. Design thinking is there's a lot of different versions of it depending upon where you go. And what I would share with you, Martin, is that there are two key characteristics of it as practiced here. First is that it's user centered. And that's quite refreshing from the kind of pedigree that you and I come from in the value system. The second thing as this picture suggests is that there's a very high emphasis on physical prototyping and also testing as a pathway towards innovation. More specifically, I'm with a group called the Stanford Center for Design Research. I find myself right now as really the only one with an explicit interest in the built environment. That's okay. I've been working on building a platform, if you will, and starting to attract some other colleagues, not necessarily in architecture, but in other allied fields. And we're both, many things we share, but one is that we're both urbanites. You talked about you went through many cities and on both coasts, on both ends, so to speak. And we're reporting, broadcasting from a city here. You want to talk about the next slide, number four? Yeah, sure. So slide four, I can confirm that I have a general interest in the built environment, but I have a specific interest in global urbanization. And particularly the special needs, I'll say, of urban dwellers. This slide is a graphic from the Rockefeller Foundation. And I'd like to call attention to the middle image, if you will. It was about 2012 or 2013 that we crossed an important threshold. And that is that for the first time in human history, now more than 50% of our world's population now lives in cities. And interestingly enough, cities only occupy about 3% of the Earth's landmass. Looking forward to 2050, our urban populations are expected to grow exponentially due to migration, but then also for increased birth rates. And Martin, I have to share with you, I'm nervous actually about our respective universities, Stanford and the University of Hawaii included, that our universities and institutions might not be able to keep up with this proportional amount of research required to not only keep up with this growth, but also to get far enough ahead to provide leadership during this future trajectory of uncertainty. But you're definitely on the right track, my friend, with regards to your human or human architecture series. Because ultimately I think that we share an emphasis on prioritizing end users in these urban settings. Thanks for caring for us. This is mutual. We're nervous and worried about ourselves. And when I'm saying here we're in a cosmopolitan capital city, I'm bragging a little bit, because compared to other cities, which the next slide, number five will show, it's a wishful thinking. We would like to be more of a city. Sure. Well, it's a quote Peter Williams here at Stanford Civil Engineering. Cities present concentrated risk, but they also present concentrated opportunity. And so what this slide is pointing out, several things actually. But what I would call your attention to is that on the far right with the blue cities, here in the United States we only have nine cities with populations that exceed five million people. And we could probably name those pretty quickly, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Dallas, and then a couple of others as well. Sorry, I can't recall those. But by proportion in China, they have 80 cities currently that have populations of five million or more. And it's interesting to me how, through the combination of both their federal government type, but then also their funding mechanism, that they actually do have a proportionate amount of funding to their universities and institutions to provide research leadership on this front. And there is a specific part of the city that is of particular interest for you. And this is why the audience has a little glimpse, because they saw the show's name, which is called the infrastructural problem and the architect. So if we can get the next slide and you talk a bit about infrastructural and especially conditions, right? Yeah, sure. So slide six, right? I think that out of everything about cities, I'm particularly interested in infrastructure. And I think that this is because we have an enormous opportunity as architects to engage infrastructural design problems. And so Martin, if you allow me to simplify, if architecture is the appropriation of material to create habitable space, whether that be my office or your studio, then what I find in infrastructure is that it is also the appropriation of material, but it's towards the end of transferring important resource units for consumption, for human consumption, whether that be in a city environment or suburban environment or even a rural environment. The thing that's interesting to me, though, is that for urban dwellers, they're absolutely dependent upon the persistent performance of these resource systems for resources. It's critical for not just urban lifestyles, but actually life itself. And your next slide is illustrating that very well and analyzing four primary problematic conditions you see, right? Right. I'm still admittedly in earnest on the first half of my PhD research and I've canvassed about 30 different failure events. And what I'm finding is that there are four categories of failure modes that are emerging. The first type are natural catastrophes. So in the top left corner, this is a photograph of 1906 in San Francisco. It was an earthquake, but then that triggered a fire that raged for about three days. What's interesting to me is the inside of the first seven days, two-thirds of the population was evacuated off the peninsula. In the top right, we have another category and that is mechanical faults. And this in particular is from 2007, the I-35 breach collapse outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The bottom left, this is typical of what I'm calling animal in human intervention. In particular here, this is actually a high-powered sniper rifle attack that was for an electrical substation immediately south of San Jose. This occurred in 2013. And then in the bottom right, Martin, this is actually the scariest of the four. And by that, what I mean is that it's resource unit depletion. The infrastructure system itself could perform exactly as designed and as specified. But if there's not enough stock in the system for transmission and distribution, then the system fails. And all of these types of failures definitely create inconveniences. And again, they could in fact cause loss of human life. But I can confirm that this is a very rewarding research topic because it directly serves the public welfare. Before we go into our little promotional break, let's jump over the next two very doomy, dark, black pictures which problematize even more, right? The subject matter of infrastructural problems. Yeah, sure. So let's go to slide number eight, please. Yeah, what is the infrastructural problem? Well, Martin, what I find is that it's actually a compelling design problem. In the context of this design problem is informed by four quick things. First is that it is dealing with increased internal loads due to this increasing urban population. It's also dealing with increased external loads due to the threats that are of increasing strength and frequency. In the U.S., we're actually finding our end of useful mechanical life of our first generation of infrastructure. And finally, the second generation system that is to come online, it will likely require incredibly long gestation periods for development. And in particular, the San Francisco Bay eastern span of the new bridge from idea to open for use actually required 24 years. Let me ask you a very critical devil's advocacy question, which is slide number 10. Everything you talk about, isn't that traditionally something for civil engineers more than architects? It is. And interestingly, civil engineers, despite their decades if not centuries of leadership and engagement with these types of problems, they themselves are retooling. And so they have historically put a strong emphasis on robustness. And that is making sure that the capacity of their forthcoming solution would exceed any type of static or dynamic future load. And what we're finding is that they're retooling themselves to become more familiar to resilience, designing for resilience, which to some degree admits failure. And in that case, loads will exceed capacity. But there will be embedded qualities within that design solution so that it has a quicker reboot time, if you will, from say computer hardware, but then also recovery to ultimately advantage the populations that they serve. Fabulous. That's a good point to take a little promotional break to after the break return and introduce Chris, the infrastructural architect more. See you soon. Sure. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, meeting people we may have not otherwise met, helping us understand and appreciate the good things about Hawaii. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel, host of Life After Statehood. And I do this with a regular contributor, Ray Tsuchiyama. And we tried to make sense of all that has happened in Hawaii, all that is happening and all that should happen. Ray, what do you think of that show? I feel delighted to be part of Life After Statehood. Since after 59, so many things happened to the state of Hawaii, yet things could have gone in other directions. And that's what I'm fascinated about, that Hawaii has had a great history, but could have an even greater future. There you go. I believe that. I'm with you all the way. Ray Tsuchiyama and me, Jay Fidel, we do it as much as we can on Life After Statehood. Come around and see what we have to say. Thanks. Welcome back to today's show and our infrastructural architect, Chris Ford. If we can get the next picture, number 11, that's one that pleases me because we see Dieter Rams here, a fellow German. So what does he have to do with all that? Yeah, sure. Absolutely, Martin. First, for architects to properly engage in structural design problems, we need to first alter our value set. And so I want to go through three slides that start to help us with tools to do that. And I appreciate this capture from the 2009 film Objectified of Dieter Rams. He's got it absolutely correct, and that is that we, as architects, we're designers, and we're not the fine artists that we're often confused with. This is important, an important distinction to make moving forward, because designers engage problems that are outside of themselves, whereas artists engage problems of their own making. That's one important difference. The other difference is that all design solutions, and this includes all design disciplines and the work that they produce, there's a certain obligation to usability. So you're saying, and that's next slide, there are adjustments to be made, and maybe in the area of aesthetics, right? That's where you're going? Yeah. Yeah, so slide number 12. I think that another step that we can take towards changing our values is that we can clarify what is the contest that we want our design solutions to enter. By that, what I mean is, are we mindful of or perhaps even distracted by the photogenic attributes of our solutions so as to win beauty contests? Or are we mindful of the performative qualities that our design solutions have so that instead they could win races? Now, with that, I just find that there's a lot more creative territory that lies ahead of us if we were to explore for ourselves this issue of performance. And I use performance there as a measure of function. But fortunately, Martin, we actually don't have to choose between the two. And that's because Vitruvius has laid out some principles for us about 2,000 years ago in which we can actually have both. And to that extent, let's bring the next picture, which also brings someone back who we have been talking about a couple of shows ago. Yeah, so I think I'm using an image here of Buckminster Fuller. And Martin, it's my understanding a couple of weeks ago you had a guest, DeSoto Brown, who walked through perhaps the portfolio of Buckminster Fuller, particularly the work that is on your set of islands. I'm appreciating this quote because what it does is that it prompts us as architects to rethink the organizational relationships between the Vitruvian principles. For those in your audience that might not be familiar with Vitruvius, let me share with you that he was a Roman. He was also a master builder. He was an architect, an engineer, a planner, a strategist, a problem solver, and also an author. He actually authored Architectura, which also translates and it's known by the 10 books on architecture. It's the oldest surviving architectural text that we have today. And again, it's about 2,000 years old. And a translation of those principles comes into three words, firmness, commodity, and delight. And Martin, I think that historically in schools of architecture we think about the relationship between these three Vitruvian principles as being some type of Venn diagram and the shared overlap of the three is where compelling work emerges. And instead, I'm curious about a new hierarchy of actually thinking about it as a stacked pyramid, with firmness being the base, with commodity being the middle section, and with delight being the pinnacle. And I think Buckminster Fuller would actually agree. And you now in your PhD investigations at the beginning, you said something rather intriguing to me. I want to return to that's what you call the user-centric process, right? And you have a couple of very compelling images that illustrate that. Could we have the next one? Yeah. Sure. Sure. So what does it mean to actually design from a user-centered perspective? What it means for me, in my particular interest, is that to design infrastructure for the city of San Francisco, then I'm not starting with a satellite photograph, and I'm not starting with a measured site drone. Instead, I'm converging to the one variable in this problem that I want to put the highest importance on. And then from there, I want to work outwards. And so in this case, slide number 14 is showing the urban dwellers of San Francisco. The next slide, slide 15, actually takes a snapshot of some of the numbers that come out of San Francisco. Relative to other cities in terms of its population, it's actually low in overall number. In terms of land area, it's also quite small. As a peninsula, it's landlocked. But it actually has the highest, sorry, the second highest population density of cities in the United States. It's second only to New York City, with Boston being number three. Slide 16. I actually want to take a little bit of a pause, so I don't know, maybe 30 seconds or so, and ask your audience to actually brainstorm on what are the resource units. That we consume, but we are dependent upon centralized systems to provide us and to deliver us. But you help us out a little bit with the next slide with some suggestions, right? I do. I do. If we had Jeopardy theme music, now would be a great time for that, but I don't think we have it. Don't make music. Yeah. So slide 17, please. I imagine that if we had more time, I bet that a lot of these would be similar. So starting the top left, megahertz is a way of indicating that we need access to communication systems. Top right, megawatt hours, we need access to electricity. We also need access to food and the unit that we can measure that would be kilocalories. At the very bottom, we generate waste, not that we consume waste, but we certainly generate it and we need to manage that. And that can be measured in tons. And perhaps of these five, the most important is water, which can be measured in gallons or from industry standards, we can use the unit of million gallon days. And then you tie these all together in the next slide, right? Yeah, so slide 18, working out from the urban dwellers to the types of resource units that they require. Then we can be mindful of the directionality of flows. And this is important because it starts to suggest and provide insight into how resource systems were generated to actually transmit and distribute these important resource units. So my PhD investigation is ultimately looking at the effectiveness of a next generation infrastructure type that would be hybridizing the delivery of these various units for urban dwellers in San Francisco. Let's get back to that nervousness that we share and bring up the next slide, right? You have a little bit of a more recent timeline here, and 2008 is the first, you know, snapshot of time. Yeah, something. Yeah, so slide 19. Martin, for the remaining time that you and I have together here in the next five minutes or so, I'm inviting us to consider the convergence to just the energy sector. And you're absolutely right. This slide number 19 was essentially a snapshot in 2008. And that was, I can share with you that electric utilities at that point were actually quite nervous. That was because we were becoming an increasingly plug-in society, each of us having more than one computer or computational device that required an electric charge. But also there was concern over the paradigm shift of moving away from petroleum to fuel our own automobiles, but actually the electricity as being a fuel type for our own transportation. With that, slide 20. I was going to say this might be still be like people would say, you know, this is for automotive engineers and managers. And at that point, I say hi to my son, Joey, who is a master's in that field. Hi, Joey. Still hang in there. But this one here is a year later where you actually get some very interesting research funding and transition that your investigations, your research into an architectural proposal, which we see now. Explain a little bit more what's behind that. Sure, absolutely. So in 2009, when Martin and I were both faculty at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska, I was fortunate to have a research grant that looked at feasibility. A feasibility study, if you will, for a microgrid. And so these are a couple of renderings that came out of that investigation of a not so micro microgrid. And what some of the design requirements for it were to intentionally position it within the urban fabric of downtown Lincoln, so that it could generate megawatt hours of electricity in the same environment where they would actually be consumed. And it was believed that there would be some savings, some performance efficiencies that would be found, as opposed to the transference of a kilowatt hour of electricity over 100 miles. And that's just because we're running out of time. Lincoln, Nebraska, we talk about in the middle of everywhere as far as land mass, we're in the middle of everywhere as far as water. So next slide is an interesting relationship to us here. Yeah, slide 21. Whereas slide 20, I was sharing some lab investigations. What is very exciting to me now in 2017 is that we have several companies that are actually producing and implementing microgrids for different populations. So this slide number 21 is showing a project from both Tesla and Solar City. They have stood up a microgrid in Tau, an American Samoa that has about 600 residents on the island. It had 100% of its electrical supply previously generated by diesel generators and there was interruption to their performance because of impacts to their supply chain. However, for within the past year, this new system has stood up. It has 1.4 megawatts of solar capability. And what's interesting is that you can tell in the top right where those white clusters are, those are actually power packs by Tesla, stationary battery storage. And as such, they act as capacitors. They actually have three days worth of electrical charge for the island's inhabitants. It only takes about seven hours of sunlight to completely recharge them. This is incredibly exciting technology that is being deployed, Martin, for actually shaping our built environment. That reminds me of one of our islands, Kauai. Yes. So Kauai is another site location for the next project out of this partnership between Tesla and Solar City. Kauai in 1992 was hit by Hurricane Niki. And what was interesting is that in the aftermath of that storm, there were about 7,000 homeless. And by that, what I mean is that there was also a proportional amount of infrastructure failure. They have a system that, working in collaboration with the KIUC, the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, they have a 12 kilowatt solar array and then a 52 megawatt hour supply of power packs. I'm doing something really mean cutting off. I don't have to because you stopped. Chris, we got to bring you back. I have to add, you had visited us some years ago. You will visit us a couple of months ahead. And at this point, I want to thank you for bringing this fresh breeze of innovation, blowing this in our face over from the valley. And thank you very much, Chris. Thank you, Martin. Great to see you again, buddy. All right. See you soon. Bye-bye.