 warmly welcoming you back to this think-tok-wise show human-humane architecture. This happening to be our 322nd episode you're watching. Hopefully, you're watching them all. Today, me, your host Martin Despain is not with my co-host is Soto Brown. He's coming back soon, which we'll tell you in a bit, and we have two guests who are actually more than guests. There have been guests and they're close to being co-hosts, but then you would have three hosts and only no guest, I guess so that doesn't make sense. So we have Richard Lobeck with us and Bandit Kanistakhan. Hi, guys. Hi, Martin. Hi, so it's so good to have you back. So it's been too many years, Rich, when we had you on the show, it seems like four or five years. So we want to catch up and we want to do this with a framework of what we have all learned, especially in the very recent two weeks. And this, Bandit, you decided to kick off and to frame it literally and figuratively, the best would be this picture. So you guys tell us about, what are we looking at? Where are we sitting in this picture here, which is not where you are at the moment anymore. Yeah, Rich, you want to say that? Well, if we're looking at the upper left picture, I know what that was and what we were looking at. We're looking, oddly enough, straight at the capital building, which forced me to come to Hawaii in the first place. When was that, Rich? Oh, I don't know. 19, something, 50. 19 something. So, and at this photo, Rich was at the Queen Hospital. That's more like a lounge that we hang out. Yeah, Rich, forest is kind of a funny way, as you are a way to call it. I would say more it lured you out to Hawaii than forced you because what you shared with us in several shows in the past felt very less forced, but more natural kind of flowing. And when actually the two of us, you and I were at this moment when I took the picture. And when you were at Queens, it wasn't your favorite place because it was very deprived of what we see here. And when we were moving to this place here, actually to waiting for getting you going, moving on where you are currently, this was a space that you liked a lot for several reasons. And why is that? Why did you prefer that over your room where you were before we went there? Well, I like the background, all the greenery sort of overlapping the roof. And then the building itself is nice and simple. And supported by columns and all sort of fitting together. Now I see myself with some kind of a, looks as though I'm shooting an arrow to your right. But I don't think I was shooting an arrow. So that probably a little bit. Yeah. And the picture also and the story about this area, which is the government area, the civic center that you were very engaged with professionally as a planner, is also DeSoto says hi to you guys. And he wants to be back with you guys as well, starting in spring break, because when I told him about Richard, when I tried to ask someone, if they know where the Frank Fawzi government building is, you were faster than anyone else giving the explanation. You remember that or you wanna paraphrase how you explained where that Frank Fawzi building is positioned? I'd be happy to do that. If you take Papiilani Boulevard and go in a northerly direction, I hope that's correct, northerly, you come to an intersection that's very critical in knowing about where the Frank Fawzi building is. So you cross that street and then to your right is the Frank Fawzi building. And one of the things that was unique in terms of getting things done was that we showed that to a number of people who said, why don't we enlarge upon the situation by cutting off Papiilani Boulevard and just moving straight through into the sort of park-like setting around the city building. And so I think it was one of the mayors at that time who thought of the Frank Fawzi building at that time who thought it was a good idea to do that. And they did that. And then from then on, we could easily, we could go straight into the sort of the guts of the park-like setting of all the federal and state and city buildings. And so that's where we suddenly were at. Does that- Exactly, and that makes total sense. And in fact, the harvest from that sort of seeds you were growing there is what you are looking at in this picture here, because otherwise when you would see, Bandit, you said that in the discussion we had before, you would see the same sort of density of urbanism of downtown, the commercial downtown would have basically spread over, right? And would have made kind of suffocated the capital within the kind of predator capitalism of the commercial urbanism, right? Right. And now it's become like a park-like, like Richard said. I think that's wonderful. Exactly. And so this is what the soda things too. So I'm telling you now on air, because it gives you less time for Mr. Lowe saying no, as if you would ever do, that the soda wants to talk with you about that. And when I mentioned the word, the name Kevin Lynch, that will get you going, but we save that for later, because that's for these shows. So let's move on to the next slide. And basically, showing it the same, but differently. We see Waikiki and it's sort of commercial congestion, we can say, and tourism is our main income and economy. That's why it's commercial as well. And we see Rich, you always say humble as you are, that you were not a team of the architecture of the capital, but the planning part around it. But please elaborate a little bit on the atmosphere and the notion of the architecture of the capital itself, where we are standing in the top picture of what we're looking at. Well, exactly. The top picture that we're looking at with the shiny floor is of course the state capital building interior. And that, I'm not sure how to put this, but it put a shine as it were on the capital building itself. So the people could visit the capital building and kind of enjoy the feel of it being one of our most important building. Just by being there and looking up and around at it. Yeah, it's very public, you know, that's one thing I see. It opens for everyone, very democratic. Yeah, so it's as they say here in Hawaii, it's sort of hang loose, right? And hang loose gets us to the next slide, which is all about the architecture of the capital building. So the next slide, which is also what I put behind me and talk about hanging loose, Rich. Yeah. At least I wasn't being hung, hanging. Enjoy not. This was just a country where I found this kind of, looks like a steel rope that allowed me to swing back and forth over the park like setting we were in. And it sort of loosened up my attitude toward the whole idea of government. Yeah, and it might have been bundling along your lines of your current research, might have been a rope out of something from the coconuts. Might have not been steel, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what we're trying to say is that, probably to make something like architecturally the capital and urbanistically the area around it more as nature than architecture might need an attitude like we were demonstrating here. And this was actually not that many years ago, I would say like these four or five years ago. So you were at your young age of the beginning 90s at that point, Rich, just to remind you and everyone else about it. I've got what can I do but agree with that. It's just very nice. You know, and you really get us going and thinking about as the show is called Aging Along Agility. Let's go, Mr. Lo and Ko. And Ko is the next slide because I'm bringing into the discussion here from where I'm from and where our exotic escapism, Zuzana is most of the time, unfortunately without me. And this is around the area of Munich and also Mauka that we have there, the Elbs and share a little bit your memories of when you were there, Rich, around Munich. Oh, that's kind of jumping a few thousand miles. But yeah, I found Munich to be a cousins of mine had spent some time as they were sort of maturing into the real world in Munich. And so somehow rather the very name Munich has a feel to it that I kind of like. Yeah, and put it into the context of climate and culture. You see that white stuff there on the mountains. This is what we at times have only on the big island on Mauna Kea where we get snow but we have it quite a bit almost for half of the year up there high in the mountains there. So this means everything that makes us be, you know Shaka, which is also related to Frank Fawzi, by the way because he used that for his campaigning as a logo. So Shaka and Hang Luz that we can do all year round. We can only do for few months in the year back in the temperate where I'm from. And up there at the top left is a dear friend of ours and for Suzanne, he's sort of her bonus dad because her dad passed away from a heart attack to a young age. So not that he could ever be replaced but this gentleman here, his name is Stefan Rik or Rich as your first name is his last name depending on how you pronounce it. He's originally from Hungary and he's our last urban farmer in Suzanne's hometown. And he is doing, you know, being out there out and about in nature as you were doing in the previous picture. And it basically he's plowing his, you know, land there and then it needs to be a lot of nurtured which we don't have to do here because things just grow naturally all the time. You know, a growing cycle of 12 months and 24 seven, we don't have that here. As you see Suzanne here, she has to irrigate it and you have to put a lot more effort in but next slide it pays off because Stefan was able to do what the almost impossible because this is not a wine region but he was able to grow and cultivate wine and he makes his own wine out of it here. Cheers Stefan here where, you know he's our urban farmer that provides us with the most awesome grown vegetables and wine and Bandit you're very much into food as actually and also metaphorically as for architecture. So both you guys that makes you your buddies although you don't know each other in person yet that way we introduce you share a lot as far as far as these out and about nature guys who then sort of create things, you know from this background. But sometimes, you know, not necessarily just age related which Suzanne said, example of her dad having passed away from a heart attack. So the heart is your is our pumps and that gets us to the next slides and shows up what can sometimes happen to our pumps. So do you recognize yourself there rich and when that was? I do and I'm terribly impressed by the sheer good looks of that guy crumpled up in bed. That's a couple of weeks of humor. Yeah, it was about two weeks ago where Simon and it happened to Stefan Rich over the last summer the same situation where you both ended up having to go to a system that then tries to take care of your pump and you were both in hospital and needed to rest and needed care and that your pump gets back to which we as we see you now it has worked out. So maybe it wouldn't have worked out gets us to the next slide if your next location would have been this let's talk about this guys. Well, I don't know the building and I keep asking somebody near me, what is that building? And I need to, I have this urge to know more about it. It's sort of glassed in lanais on that one on this end closest to us. And then it's hard for me to see what some of the detailing of the other other parts of the building are, but it's a part of Honolulu growing into the city that it seems to be becoming. Yeah, and you know, you remind us of our deficiencies because now we're all educators and like to be educated. So you taught us we should have actually applied the sort of inside out versus outside in methodology. So if we would have shown and shared and this is probably gonna be good for many more shows. So we're gonna work this into one of the next shows to make up for that we didn't have it here. But if we would have shown you how this looks from inside there's actually right now on the realtors because I have to look for a new place. So I was looking for the advertisers that there are. There's actually a unit in there available. And it looks like very much like the ones that you had in the previous slide at Queens. Do you remember how that was? Were you able to see anything outside any tree or any nature or anything when you were in the hospital at Queens in your room? I doubt it. I think one is completely trapped when he or she or they are, I don't want to use the word condemned because that's kind of mean, but are required to spend time in a hospital. It's very confining and with luck one comes out of it better than when he went in. That's so well said, but then imagine you come out of it better than you came in and then you move on and continue. And to be, I love that condemned, you are condemned to actually then move in here into pretty much the same because you're lucky if you have that little hole in the wall that is as they like to call it a frame view, but you're most likely looking at this and then the neighboring high rise. So you're like you said, as in most cities you've got this scenario on your ignorant of where we actually are in the tropics and there's no hang loose and there's no shock out there. It's basically been, we can use an even more drastic term you're put in prison. So, and this is how many in your generation end up, they're shoved into these prison cells and maybe every now and then they're all gonna be taken down into a tour bus drives them out to the Polynesian Culture Center and then all the way back until the next trip. And until then you're pretty much locked up in your prison cell. How about that? Well, it's too true. Yeah, and it's not the only example is unfortunately more next slide and this is what was, who was your buddy from school back then, Bandit, Metlo Blatt, wanted this to be featured in his reflections on the place that is his home too because his wife, your friend is, Wendy is all, is from here. So he found this building very, very striking and what were our reflections on that one, Rich? Especially the detailing of it that you see in that corner up there. I don't know. I see on the right side of that upper picture, I see this very unusual sort of composition of things sloped every way here and there. And I'm not at all sure what I'm looking at. I can tell you, Rich, that's the building that instead of using the sun shading to protect the strong sunlight from coming in, they use it to protect the condensing unit instead of protecting human and the comfort of the human and the building temperature. Instead, they cover up the mechanical system instead. So that's something that we found, you know, kind of funny as an educator. And as practitioners as well. So you would, can you explain to us, because you've been here the longest of us, Rich? Can you explain the term Lanai to us and the audience, because people are watching this from all over the world. So what is a Lanai? Lanai is a space reachable through doors, generally speaking along the living room wall so that you can march out of the living room and you're in this new space. And on two sides of that space, there's nothing. I mean, it's just space. And generally speaking, as far as I pictured the Lanai, it's a it's a smallish dimension vertically. It's like a room inside an apartment. And I think it's a tremendously valuable tool to have simply to enjoy the outdoors, which comes wafting in depending on the weather at the time, as well as the interior, which is more cozy and a little safer. Well, what a perfect definition bundle, right? What can we add to that? And maybe from a temperate guy's perspective, I could add that this also applies in some ways to what we call balcony because you're also from California originally, you know, rich and you have lived in the in the mainland in Chicago. So we do balconies there for these few times in the year that we also want to be out and about. But a Lanai, I'm talked also by people from here is more, right? That's actually the space that you want to be on and in for actually most of the time of the year, right? And our dear friend Kurt Sandburne, if I'm not mistaken, Rich, you was your neighbor when you grew up, right? He calls it stacked Lanai is what actually buildings should primarily pretty much be. Well, I think the idea of a balcony is a good idea, except it is it's almost never big enough to do anything on. If you wish to sit out in open space for dinner. Lanai should be large enough to accommodate the table and any number of chairs, depending upon how many people are going to enjoy that being out of doors. So it's a little unique in how it functions being out of doors and indoors simultaneously. Yeah, and if we go to the next slide, although we have little time left, we're almost at the end of exciting 28 minutes, but this is another building that they do for people in your generation and it has none of these. I mean, the others were sort of cynically because we all had our, we were wondering they're so tiny, maybe a person could stand on them with one foot like a flamingo. That's sort of a joke. They weren't as bonded you explained, but this one here is not even trying at all to have any. So you would, why would you want to be in Hawaii if you end up, you know, unless bonded, which we will talk a lot more along in many other volumes as you guys take each other around and you want to be out and about and say, let's go Mr. Low. Here there is no such thing because you're mostly, you're not going anywhere. You're stuck in your hermetic hut, prison room, and so that's not what one wants, right? And not to end on a depressing, maybe go to the next slide and see if there's something Yeah, that's this lifts up the spirit and that's how we want to pick up from where we will have to leave now next week, but very quickly as an appetizer what are we looking at guys? Looking at a piece of Queen Emma Gardens, which is one of the one of the great residential buildings in the United States. So far as I, my limited awareness goes, but as you can see, we're sitting outdoors, absolutely outdoors and we're sitting and yet we're sitting on benches and looking at each other and the surrounding pools of water. That was to me one of the one of the wonders of Queen Emma Gardens and its designers. Wow, very very well put, most poetically rich as always. So hold that thought for another week because then we're going to be back picking up from there again. And until then keep watching us, you see the accumulated viewership down there and please support us by donating us hit the donating button down there because that's how we keep this here running speaking. Let's go Mr. Low and see you next week guys. Bye bye.