 Welcome you all back to another episode of Human Humane Architecture with your discussion board, DeSoto Brown and Martin Despang. How do you do? I'm great. And we're broadcasting live from Honolulu, Hawaii, which there is no doubt this week we are the metropolis, the epicenter of mid-century modern architecture because the national organization of Doko Momo has selected us to have their national symposium here with us. That's right. That's right. And that's going to happen this week. Should we go to our next slide? Yeah, go to the first slide. First slide up here, and this shows a couple of events at the bottom left is basically the main event postcard. It has chosen the Kahala Apartments by Killingsworth and Partner as the main project in here. John Lindgren, who is a partner of Killingsworth is giving a talk with Don Hibbert, Graham Hart as the current president is orchestrating everything, and we did a show where he announced the whole program. His partner Denali has done just a great exhibit about one of the exotic entrepreneurs on the island, Pete Wimbley, that you have done a show about a while ago. And I see a picture in the upper right left corner of the hyperbolic paraboloid of the Waikiki and Lobby. You can say that tongue-break are well, exactly. That's at Fishcake. It's an awesome exhibit, thanks to Denali for doing that, and then the thanks to Bandit Kanista Khan on the right is an exhibit up at the School of Architecture in the gallery that's pointing out the treasures of mid-century of the University of Hawaii and East West Center, as you can see, where we also dedicated a couple of shows. Right. And parts of some of the symposium will be held there, in fact. Exactly, exactly. We'll go there, participate. We thought we need to contribute to that, so our donation, we were thinking, what can we add to the program that isn't already covered. And in the program postcard, it says a multicultural context. So if we go to the next slide, you, being Hawaiian and me, German, can get more multicultural now. Exactly. The opposite sides of the earth. Exactly. So we want to go back to the end of my sabbatical here, where our cross-cultural culinary connoisseurs Clara and Joey, on their voyage to Shaved Ice, taking a little detour to the little different corporate side of that culture where it originally comes from, which is Japanese. Yes, correct. And they will be, for a little while, in the capital of Germany and Berlin, and then on their way there, they took this sort of, they got their rented Fiat 500, which we have here now. And I was about to say, did we ever have them here? And you proved yes. I proved yes. And I have shame on me. I didn't forget to put that picture on there. That's right, because I sent you a photograph of some new Fiat's being delivered to new owners in Honolulu in 1960 or 61. So they were here. I will provide that next time, I promise. This red one was for sale, it was 10,000 euros. So what does it have to do with mid-century architecture? These are gems. And even from an economical point of view, it makes sense to keep them, because they become collectibles and they're keepers for that regard. Hopefully our little investigating frog, our twingo, our 96 twingo as well. So and the project we know, because that's the office home, and that wasn't a character, an actor character in one of the prime crime architecture shows in Germany there. And so, you know, Joey and Clara being good cooks, we spent a night there and they fixed some nice meal for me, some pasta, talking Fiat, fix it again, Tony, they fixed some meal. And so then what? And then what? We thought we watched something. And did you think we were watching German TV? Apparently not. Apparently not. They want to eventually come and join us here, so that's what they love. And so let's go to the next slide. Thanks to this gentleman who is the best dentist on the island in the world that I know, Aaron Colby. And I'm not having any business relationship to that. So that's not where I'm coming from. You're just being nice to him, because he was nice to you. Because he fixed me up, as you can see there. And in order to... He pulled up that nasty tooth with a big hole in it. Exactly. Again, I brushed my teeth well, but this was a wisdom tooth tucked so back, so I didn't have a chance, which he covered me. And Aaron, we're always talking about coming from our historic perspective from a historian as an architect. What about the users? Are they with us? As easy breezy, right? And he is. Because I got to know him when he had his dental office, as your dentist was, as you told me. As I think 20% of the island dentist population were in our favorite Alamona building. We're back. And he said again, I am not an open heart surgeon. So I can basically practice in easy breezy conditions. What he has now is this most stunning view here. This is in his patient room. And that's you sit on the chair and he takes care of you. And you look at that. Can't be more stunning. And what he points out to is the project we want to talk about. And that gets us to the next slide. And we've been sort of tiptoeing around that person in a couple of shows about having been the initiator of the Kaiser Hawaiian village at that time. Yes. Having been the client of the Kaiser dome. You wanted to bring these cars to the island. And we did a show with Rick Prahla, who owns one of his early homes that he did out in Hawaii Kai for the middle class people, which is an absolutely wonderful. And our exotic escapism expert Suzanne has been in Hawaii Kai some 20 years ago. So let's go to Hawaii Kai. Let's go to the next slide because the symposium is had to make a choice to be rather sort of urban soundtrack about Honolulu. And we get to you age and we get to downtown, but you know, that's pretty much it. And honestly speaking, if you go more West, you know, Makaha as we did a show isn't existing anymore. And then, you know, obviously Alani, we don't want count and there's Ihi Lani talking killings words. And we're going to do a couple of shows with Ron Lindgren, as we said. So if you go out on the other side, going out East, you of course have Kahala, but then you have Hawaii Kai. And Hawaii Kai isn't normally probably, you know, for, we're probably unfair, but it's not as known as a mid-century gem as the other locations. Yeah. And Hawaii Kai was developed in such over a long period of time. It's got so many different architectural styles. There's not a lot of the very original beginning of it. It's truly what we would consider archetypal mid-century material. And as is typical with a lot of the inexpensive homes of that time, many have been altered so they don't look the way they did in the sixties. And that was mainly around on the left, you know, googling snapshot here around these lagoons. Yes. But there is a more privileged part of that. Correct. And that's Port Locke, the neighborhood of Port Locke. And that's where the project is that we want to go to and check it out today. And next slide here is our P.I. in Mobile that drives along and you actually don't see, you see a rock wall and we did a couple of shows about the tradition and the potential evolution of that on the island. And next slide, luckily by the time we were driving by the gate opened, so we got a peak and you would usually say, wow, now I can see the house that's behind, but not so much. And we will explain later why that is. Why that is, right. Next slide here, there is a plaque there. So it's on the register and it's historic residence here. And it tells us the data of built in 59 by the architect George Wright, who has nothing to do with Frank Lartwright, who many consider to be the most famous American architect. And they give it some kind of classification and say it's international style and it's Mesian. And you know, we have been basically not doing what they suggest here being a viewing point in every second Saturday going, but we encourage the audience to basically do it. We try to do it as an appetizer all the way, which we will share with you. Correct. But our investigation got us to next slide to the institution that's sort of putting things on the register, right. And this is the description from the application here. And it traces, again, it says Mesian. So that's obviously Mies van der Rohe, the great American architect who basically made his career in America because he was kicked out by the Nazis. Yeah. And intrigued you that I choose the top right image on the left. I did not a typical Miesian building, like the Staatsgalerie in Berlin is my favorite, one of my all-time favorite, but I picked something else. This is an astonishing picture to me because I looked at that picture with this Mercedes automobile in front of it and looked at the house behind it and thought maybe that's in California. And you told me that, in fact, this is the bungalow and it's actually called a bungalow that is used by the West was used by the West German president. Yeah. So it doesn't look presidential to me. It looks like a middle-class home in the United States. And it's because in the time period in which this was built, Germany was anxious to divest itself of its past and not do things architecturally that looked either like the Nazis or the militaristic type of attitude that had been prevalent in Germany. They wanted to break with that. And what did they do? They built this spare, clean, austere home for the president. Exactly. And your weekly German language lesson is Kanzler bungalow. Kanzler. So Kanzler is the chancellor pretty much Kanzler bungalow did well. All right, thank you. Thank you, thank you. And the next slide here, there is another source, which is a previous show that John Williams and Denby Fawcett did. But as you can read down there, it says the works of Edwin Bauer. So they were featuring the building here. And what in the world does Edwin Bauer have to do with Mr. Wright and the Kaiser House? And the Kaiser House. And we get to the next slide. And they were telling the fascinating story that basically Bauer was involved in the Kaiser Hawaiian village. And that way became the sort of the local contact project architect that was assisting Mr. Wright, who was a mainland architect. So that was the relationship between them. And go to the next slide. Because other than that, and Denby basically, this is just an appetizer. We should do another show with Denby because she said she has childhood memories from the house. Then Don was recommending David Stringer, who was the one who brought Kaiser to the island. And he's still around. And then there is Lorraine Minatoche, who basically did remodeling of the house. So there are many people out there. And this is just an appetizer once again. And there was us using, again, that with Clara and Jolie fixing us nice pasta, and we turned on my computer, my laptop. And I had this box with me that traveled with me. Absolutely. So let's go back to the studio. And what do we got here? We've got the box set of all the episodes of the original Hawaii Five-O. It all means 278 from 12 seasons. And this is the first set here. And we stayed with the very first because we thought we might as well start at the beginning. So when we go back to the slide that we just had, as we can read on the website, the episode, the first one ever shot was in this house, but it wasn't aired as the first one, but as the fourth, which doesn't make a big difference. So it must have been very prominent. And we do the timeline in 57. 67. Why do I always do that? It's just like not getting into why. I get the 50s and the 60s confused. It's like one big thing. We're sure that's supposed to remind me of that one. Exactly. We're supposed to talk about that. So anyway, so in 67, Kaiser had died. And in 68 is when Hawaii Five-O started, and they did the first one. So you said they probably had the opportunity to get into the house because it was occupied at that point. That's right. So let's now, let's do movie time. Where's the pasta here? I don't know where the pasta and the wine is. Let's go through next slide. From here on, it's basically us screenshotting the moments that we found the most representative for what's going on. And here you can see the daughter of the main owner of the house in the movie scripted. It's basically getting out of a Rose Royce phantom here in a very 60-year stress. And in the back, you can see the original, actually, I think under construction, if you look closely, a Kaiser Hawaiian village, right? And then the next picture is next. Where is that the solo? Well, you pointed out that that is at the basis of, that's at the base of one of the Hawaiian Village Towers. The Lagoon Tower. Lagoon Tower. So we are tying in the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel and the Kaiser Estate, even though Henry J. Kaiser had died by the time this was being shot. And as we pointed out in previous shows, and Edwin Bauer is one of the favorite architects of many of my board members, as Graham Hart is, and as John Williams is, and as others are. And Lagoon Tower is one of the prime Edwin Bauer's buildings. So you can see that it was scripted once again into that episode, the kind of networking and background of architects very clearly. So next picture here is basically probably a helicopter flight approaching the lot. And as you can see here, you can see the main setup. It's actually, it was comprised of a couple of different buildings, but we want to point out just one building, but when we go to the next slide, we see something. Before I say it, before you go on, in the previous photograph, you could see, that's a big boathouse at the lower part on the right. It is painted pink. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's because pink was the favorite caller of Henry J. Kaiser and his second wife. So all of the heavy construction equipment that worked on Hawaii Kai was all painted pink. That's absolutely right. And that was a kooky thing at the time. And go to the next slide. Yeah, he tried to sell a hard sell, and the round buildings are actually for her poodles. And wasn't there something that her poodles were also painted? Are they pink poodles? They had pink Christmas trees, I can tell you. All right, all right. But there's something else remarkable that you see there. The whole other backside of the road isn't even developed yet. And this is, as you pointed out, is all suburbanized, all built, right? Now it is, yeah. Now it is, yeah. And so let's go to the next slide. While principally we have to say thanks to Lorraine and others having worked on the house, the house hasn't had the same fate, as we were saying many of the original houses in its century that were altered so drastically. So the house in general, that's why it's on the register, has not been, but in parts it has. So this very sort of kooky, space-agey, sort of Hwayana interpretive mid-century gate is unfortunately, as we saw when we drove, we were driving by not existing anymore. All right. So the next slide. So here is, again, McGarrett's Mercury. We call, you call them the boats here because they were so big, right? And you see, so is the architecture. There is this very sort of lowline, horizontal, kind of grandeur as language, both in the vehicular, so both in the mobile, and the immobile as we like to call it. And then you were pointing out the breeze blocks and that makes us jump to the next slide here because while McGarrett is always, we do the show about skins soon, we promise, right? And he's always dressed very inappropriately for the climate, always tied up, you know. And so this lady here is actually the daughter of the owner who are scripted to be Japanese, basically has a very sort of easy breezy dress on. Absolutely, right. And we get to that interesting sort of reference to some more architecture pretty soon. So let's go to the next slide here. And I was reading in the description of the application for the register that they said, the entrance is actually more like of a mid-sized hotel in its grandeur and it's just gestural, you know. But plain. But it is plain, yeah. And we pointed out it has familiarity because of that with another building of the other most rich person here and on the audit of, wow, and we get there in a little bit, right? Let's go to the next slide here. The, yeah, and we can already say it now. What's the other project we were thinking about that has the same kind of attitude, Shangri-La, right? Shangri-La, absolutely. The Doris-Ducôme has a very similar attitude in that there is a walled-off part. It's a private world. On the outside, you just see a wall and one entrance. When you go through that entrance, then you're in the grand private world, which isn't visible to the outside. And that's so different to today where we sort of re-adopted that sort of Victorian attitude of like showing off, exactly. And then you're disappointed once you go to that fake facade, it's like, okay. So here's the opposite way, exactly. And there are these, this opening is fairly, it doesn't really come across, but it's like a 10 by 10 opening. So these are huge doors. And I bet that that just is a grill that is completely open. Absolutely, it's easy breezy, right? Easy breezy. There's air movement through there. And you were saying most likely this was probably not air-conditioned way back. I think this was probably not air-conditioned. He probably could have afforded, but it was designed in a way to say, I take advantage of the natural breezes. Exactly, let's look at the floor. Let's go to the next slide here. And this is where the ring comes off and the ring plays a major role in the thing. While at the top, this is a detail of one of Mies van der Rohe's most prominent buildings, the Barcelona Pavilion. And it was using travertine a lot. And travertine is a very dominant material, but the entrance surface as well as we heard around the pool was this sort of epoxy resin pebble. Engrained kind of thing that as we read is not existing anymore. They have replaced it in the pool area with material that matches the marble of the pool. And you said this was very proponent to not being able to live up to the harsh. It fell off and so I'm sure that's why it was removed because eventually, particularly outdoors in full sun, this just came apart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So next picture here is another similarity to Mies, which is from the, this is a detail up there from the house Tugentat that was built in the 1930s in the, what's now the Czech Republic. And there's a travertine floor and also this is this cruciform column comprised of three angles. And this is exactly what this house here has. Next slide. Another similarity is here to America and Richard Neutra and the Kaufman house is basically Florida ceiling glass. And notice that the top mullion is not there. They tried to make it look as little as much as possible as a barrier. It's very dematerialized. It's very dematerialized. So inside and outside visually seem to all be the same thing because there's so little around those glass windows. And next slide here. While top right is basically Shangri-La and Doris Duke went a little further and we see what she was inspired of, which we just talked about. This is that phenomenal glass wall that can go all the way down and be moved down with a humongous sort of mechanism to do that, right? Elevator mechanism. Yeah. And they had more simple sliding doors, you know, but still very, I mean, they were huge, right? And I read that they make sense. Kaiser was the aluminum magnets. Absolutely. They were actually aluminum framed. So they weren't as heavy. No. But the sea salt got to them over the time. So they replaced it by bronze now, which makes sense. Which is fine, I guess. Next slide here is actually up there to the right is the Tugendhat house because the Tugendhat house had the same feature. So we could say Doris Duke, probably 10 years later in the 40s adopted that from the Mizian Tugendhat house. And here then a decade later, basically architect Wright and Edwin Bauer adopted that sort of awning feature, right? As a shading because otherwise, you know, given the orientation, you get baked, right? So this is a biochromatical device. And you can see probably as sort of architectural archeology here, you know, doing that. There are, they do look similar. These were the inspirations. Next slide, a very prominent feature, what was that, the Soto? Well, this is the spiral stairway and it's this remarkable, you said it's a 10 foot in diameter precast or pre-made concrete object. It has a railing only on one side, on the outside, not on the inside. And you said that this leads up to the roof where there was a helicopter pad. It actually still is. And still is that Henry J. Kaiser could get in to be taken to other places. The remarkable thing, and actually to the Hawaiian Village Hotel, which there's a helicopter landing space there as well. I find it remarkable that he was able to walk up that stairway because he was very overweight and elderly and that I would think would be kind of a tough climb for him. And it's, you can see there is no filling in there. There's no bellestrade. It's just that one thing that's continuous, that round thing that's pretty remarkable as architectural detailing. So let's go up on the roof and go to the next slide here. And one thing that's also not there anymore to the degree it used to be, and I put in the reference to one of the architects we're excited about and you will eventually, when you go to New York City next, and stay a night at the TWA terminal in the past and now converted to a hotel. So Aero Sarin and the architect in 57 did the Miller house here and he was using the sort of skylights in a very dramatic way. And we read that this house had that as well, but they're not there anymore the way they used to be. But again, this is us, the big picture is us peeking over the basalt rock wall. And once again, because there is a slope, it slopes down to the ocean. And since this is a one-story bungalow, you actually hardly ever see the building from that. But so, and in addition to going, exactly. In addition to going up to the helicopter, you can go up to something else. And this is another interesting historic architectural archeology finding and go to the next slide because when the daughter basically, and the Garrett basically go up on the roof, you can see in the back, the daughter hiding behind the sort of crescent convex, giving a concave space wall. And that one we remember from next slide. We remember from 1961 again. This is when Hawaii Kai got developed by Kaiser. And that is the year when Jean-Luc Godard did the, what was it called? The Maidrie was the movie's name that he made. And the star was the at that time very young Brigitte Bardot. And as the French have always been, and I guess will always be less crude. Yes. She was shown in the way nature made her so beautifully. So she's shown topless sunbathing there. Behind that wall. Behind that wall. And as you said, as I guess America in general, to be honest, right? Yeah. And then having Annex and Hijack to Hawaii, not any different here. We're not quite as naked as you concluded one of the last shows anymore. But she with her dienaphanous sort of top gets a little closer to that. And where is that Brigitte Bardot building? Okay, yeah, thank you. So this rock up there literally is on the island of Capri. That's right. Right. And then there was a recent, I think, Ralph Lauren shooting with the actress, Kate Moss, and excessively again sort of reshooting the house. So this is another sort of a drama. This is another, yeah, this is another marvel. So let's phase out here in the last three minutes here, last next couple slides here. So unfortunately we're saying, well, why would we, we always talk about the inclusive versus the exclusive. So why are we even doing a show about one of the, you know, most expensive homes? A private mansion. Because we want to point out that what was so great about Miss Century was that everything was in taste and everything was modern. Might it be super rich or moderate or modest in typology or in price or in budget? Well, today, if we drive back to town, this is going on Kahala Road, where this is how it looks like. These are super big mansions. They're all stuck out together. They're a termite food construction and they all make no sense in their air conditioned. But in all honesty, you know, as an educator and architect next slide, if I look at these, they make me even more angry because they want to come across as modern, you know, they're boxy, geometric, and supposedly, you know, cool materials as woods. I think they're backstabbing the mission of modernism even more because they want to come across as in this tradition, but they're doing it equally less at the other ones. These are hermetic. These are air conditioned. These shouldn't be here, right? And we got different challenges these days on the islands rather than way back because Kaiser is Hawaii was a neighborhood for the people which could fulfill the sort of the promise of the American dream that everyone can have a house, right? And everyone can afford, right? Where did that get us today? It's through the next slide here to there. And this is driving out, you know, even more. This is in Waimalano. You can see the housing of the suburban nomads here. And next slide is, this is what Obama will face who has bought, I think is no rumor anymore. We've been talking quite a bit, the old Magnum PI mansion. And me driving by, I was positively surprised that the actual sort of tiny home tradition of Thomas Magnum having lived in the guest house is not been torn down. So I'm saying maybe he wants to host some of these some urban nomads and that way, you know, do diligence to that pressing problem that he has. And next slide here is we are going up Maoka of Obama's side and with the Department of Tropical Plants and Soil Science test sort of a budget of a fraction of what all these homes cost. We're shooting for the $3,000 politically polemically because that's what a shipping container costs. And then we line them up in a row. You get one space for free. And that's what one is shoot for. And you might say, well, no, we've been talking about celebrity today and about the big and the fancy and the rich. What is sexy about that? And what could be pop culturally interested about that? And with that, when we phase out and go to the last slide here. Well, what you're saying, and I'm saying it, what's remarkable is we've got some extremely well to do now very popular, very powerful people who came from here, who came from very humble roots. We've got Dwayne Johnson, the rock and we've got Bruno Mars, who are now big deals. And do they want to come invest themselves and their money back where they came from for this type of purpose? And could they be convinced to do that we hope so. That's exactly what we're trying to say. So with that way at the end of the show and if you can get the camera back to studio here while you hold up the card, the promotional card for Docom for our symposium here, please attend the symposium as much as you can. I think we kind of reopen registration. So please go there and we see you guys next time for our new show, Human Human Architecture. And until then, please stay inclusively tropically, exotically modern. Bye-bye.