 Hello everyone and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Human-Humane Architecture. I am this program's co-host, DeSoto Brown, and today we've got two guests in the studio with me. We have John Hara, and we have Mayumi Hara-Dau, and they are both of Hara... What is the name of your architectural firm? John Hara Associates. John Hara Associates. And we are being joined today, through the modern miracle of technology, by our program's host, Martin Despang from Germany. And there he is. He's magically appeared in the West Oahu College campus. Hello there, Martin. Welcome from cold Germany, where it's three o'clock in the morning. Thank you. Thank you guys for warming up my feelings. It's good to have you, Mayumi, and John back on the show. That's terrific. And why don't we get to the first slide here, because this is how DeSoto and I, we went through the most recent architecture on the UH Manoa campus, and there are just four screenshots here. And I think in all of them, you, DeSoto, look pretty desperate, I could say, you know. Your facial expression tells me that you didn't like any of the recent stuff on the UHM Manoa campus here. Is that right? I won't be so, I won't be 100% negative, but there were things that were better. Some were better than others. Yeah, I mean, I still say, you know, it's not worth even having a critical discourse on architecture. But let's go to the next page. We found pieces, good exceptions to the rule, from the 70s to the 80s, and which would have been the 90s, my workplace, the School of Architecture, and all of them by John. And so at the end of the last show, which we see at the very bottom right, we introduced to do another show, and this is this show, because if an architect has been proven himself so well, he might be chosen to be hired again by the same client, and so it happens. So if we go to the third slide here, we see, and we want to also reference our friend activist journalist, Kurt Sandburne, who has written a pretty nice piece about your guys' work, and he also touched on the UH West Oahu campus that we're going to talk about today. And as he's on our true modernist, and not a postmodernist, you don't have a single inspiration for your project. But one of the ones that the journalist, Kurt, pointed out was the previous architecture in this era, which was not urbanized yet. It was basically farmland, but it was cash crops and it was sugar cane. So here is one of the images that you provided from many other historic pictures, where you can see the huge, very utilitarian shelters that became an inspiration. But good architect you are, you didn't get inspired by an image again, but by searching and fields walking the side. As we go to the next page, and please tell us a little bit what you found on this slide when we look at that picture. Well, basically what this is, it's part of what is known as Kaloi Gauch. It was a very important part of the site as it defined the dividing line between the university campus and what was at that time a planned subdivision. And our intent was always to preserve it as a very important fragment of what was there before. And would it also be fair to say, too, that you wanted to keep an existing drainage system going so that you could deal with that too? Yeah, that's what it was, but it no longer is a drainage system. We still wanted to keep it. OK, all right. And if we go to the next page, here we see a sketch that you wanted to be included, and also referring to a dear colleague of yours who was involved, and understand as a project architect in the very early phase, and very fascinating sketch, which is about sort of almost calligraphy and regulating lines and trying to find the nature of the specificity of the site, right? I was a student of Romaldo Jurgler 60 years ago, and he still continued, or he still continued to be my mentor for all these years until he passed fairly recently, I think two or three years ago. But every time he came here, we talked about architecture, and I showed him what I was doing, and he'd offer his own kind of criticism. Now, what we developed together on this particular image is the fact that we wanted to define certain planes of the entire site. And I think from top to bottom, it's about a 15 foot difference. So what we did is establish platforms and to define these platforms where we use these very long, large rock walls. And I think that's one of the next images. Yeah, correct. Right, right. So we probably can go to our next picture. There we go. Yeah, these are one of the walls. And the walls vary in height, they vary in width, they vary in size, all specifically to what they do and where they are. And John, we were talking before the show. And I asked if these were also potential platforms or sites for buildings of the future. And so that there had been some level of grading and straightening of that. So this is where you can build. Right. This is part of the original master plan, which was, well, like many other things, totally ignored in the future, whereas it is right now. Yeah, well, And let's move on to the next slide here, which we see another one. And fascinating thing, it's sort of like, this is architecture with the absence of build, environment buildings, right? This is pretty much land art. And we waited to show this photo about volcanic volumes and looked at, we drove out further west and went to Makaha and found some of these sort of remainders of the resort. So it's a very sort of a fancy theme on the island that just sort of interpreted and modernized here. And if we go to the next one, we have one more picture of them. We can see where they slowly and surely become more architectural and here serve as framing a staircase that is sort of, you know, making you go from one level to the other one. Well, let's go to the next case. Relative to the material of the rock walls, we spent a lot of time working with the mason, and we went to many, many sites to pick the rocks specifically for these walls. Now what this site shows is an extension of what the rock walls do as part of a master plan for the entire campus. Right. And of course, very little bit, very little, none of it has been adapted except for phase one. Correct. You could see the colloid gulch on the right side, which is a very important part. Right, which we saw in the first photograph of it. Right, right. Martin, did you want to tell us more about, are we just discussing that this, this is the master plan? And as John has said, it is not being used, unfortunately. But some of the buildings, as you said, for phase one are in, are in place. Yeah, I know it. And again, it shows even on the little picture on the top right, it shows even the larger, the even larger scale and zoning and really thinking about, you know, building pretty much from scratch here out in the desert, which is mentioned, this is very hot areas part of the island here, and really creating a community for learning from from scratch in a very sort of sensitive and sensible way. And then if we go to the next slide here, we see that sort of first and up to now only phase or initial phase, we should say here sort of collage into the arrow, sort of Google view. And if we go to the next slide here, we zoom in and we can see, you know, the buildings that's comprised of and maybe you guys can tell us a little bit more about that very specific composition that's very intriguing. Well, the intent of the colloid Gauss here is very clear, I think it provides a connection between the subdivision and the lower from the lower edge of the picture up to the top. And the so called entry plaza at the very beginning was a connection to the proposed at that time subdivision, we should create an entry to the university. The other buildings were scheduled to be to the left and to the right and to the bottom. Again, the idea here was to maintain a great law on for specific functions of the university, and yet all the other open spaces were to be defined by open space, yet peely grass, which is native to the area, which is a very important part of the vegetation, right? And peely grass, which is extremely also important in Hawaiian culture is what was used to thatch grass houses, Holly Peely, that's why they're called Holly Peely, their houses made with peely grass. So there's a cultural significance in addition to the natural use of a plant that's native. One thing I was also going to say to pardon me for Martin, this is, as Martin said, this is not within an existing campus. So you're starting from scratch. I'm like, you know, absolutely. But it's also an area under development in, in general, as you have just been pointing out, and the aspect of the train is really important here, because the train is a short distance away. It's really just kind of across the highway. Yeah, initially, the plan for the train was to come along color gulch. Oh, interesting. That was a total disaster. And we fought like hell against it. Right. And they moved it. Right. But we still expect that people will be coming and going from the site via the train. Right. And if you extend the road up from the entry plaza, that's where the station is now. Yeah, okay. This is the entry was truly an entry plaza. Right, right. And while this now looks like a very traditional sort of a master planning approach of imposing, you know, program, let's move to the next page here, which actually shows that your design approach was sort of in reciprocity of from the outside to the inside, but also from the inside to the outside, you made these great sort of study models that were simulating, you know, frame views and how the light comes in and how it plays, you know, becomes an element in the in the project. And you can describe it a little further. You guys, no mind. Yeah, the light, there were the direction of where the light came from in this particular project was very important. For example, the library, main, main windows of the library face direct north. So you don't get direct sunlight. And most of the buildings are similarly sided. And when when they do face other, we've made certain consideration for that. All of the buildings, we've introduced daylight into the center core of the building. And this model shows one of the early studies for how the light could do. And as an archivist, I just want to say as an archivist and somebody who takes care of museums collections, I am very grateful that you took natural light into account in protecting the interiors from direct sunlight. Absolutely. It's very important. It's extremely important. But not everybody knows that. Thank you. They should, but thank goodness you do. Yes, that's so guess our next slide. Here in the next slide, and here we see how these sort of studies then basically led to the sort of amassing of the actual buildings here. And again, we refer to our my visit in your office at the very bottom right, which we featured in the in the last show about Manoa. And you guys are very sort of high on physical model making in various scales. In the next scale, we see in the next slide here, which is a large architectural study model. Again, that is not a representation model. That's not your final model to show up. This is really a design process model, right? Yeah, and it's important to do these models out of cardboard because you can feel you can touch. And you can study them as difficult to do this computer images these days. And unfortunately, I think that's, that's what the profession is towards now. It is. And that was a great segueing to the next slide because you guys are multimedia savvy. And this is a computer rendering, which I like to call them suggestive illustrations. This is a very delicate one. And it pretty much shows you very ambitious goal of basically providing wealth of space, I would call it and generosity of volume. I'm impressed as a practicing architect, how you were able to convince a public client of such richness and generosity. So kudos to that. And if we move on to the next page, this is a, you told me that David Frenzen has been working with you through all your career in photographs, all your projects. And this is a David Frenzen final documentation. And I have to say, it's almost hard to make a difference between the rendering and the final product. Yeah. So my biggest compliment, again, to having been resisting, resistant to that value engineering thing that, you know, public clients like to do these days, and you pretty much fought through all your very ambitious strategies here. Very impressive. Yeah. And before the show, we were talking and the rendering or the, as you said, the suggestive illustration and the real picture, as you said, are so close together, you wouldn't necessarily know the difference, except that the previous one is from a vantage point that you couldn't actually be in, in person. That's the only way you can tell it's not a real picture. Well, what this particularly shows, I think, is the value of natural light from both the left and the right. And it also shows the value of artificial lighting, which is this is important, because you don't get daylight at night, obviously. That's right. Artificial light is very important. And you don't get daylight into every part of a building either. Right. Yeah. Right. So it's a combination of these things. And successful too. Let's go to the next slide here, where we see how that then looks from the outside. And this is, if I'm not mistaken, it's the classroom building part, and it's the southern elevation. So I want to point out sort of like the biochromatic aspect of design that the big glazing on the on the top floor basically has a huge even overhang that shaped it sufficiently and also shed the water off it. And then the bottom part is relatively opaque, has few openings, and the glass is being pushed back in. So that way it's a very climate conducive design that works well in again that very sort of harsh sort of hot air climate of that specific area of the island. And to go further with that, we selected unfinished concrete block as the material of choice. The reason for that is that it's a very ordinary material, entirely compatible with the plantation architecture. However, what we did was crafted to 12 inch by 12 inch squares, 16 inches deep, weighing approximately, I guess 60 pounds and driving the mason's crazy. What the idea here was to sort of replicate the character of the old plantation or the old plantations in a contemporary material. Yeah, if we move on to the next slide, we see a close up, there's a picture I took when I was out there and I was intrigued exactly what you said. And I would call it like a post contact, you know, indigenous material because we have, you know, Campbell Industrial Park and we have many TMU and concrete manufacturers out there. So this is where, you know, and three of the four ingredients of concrete are potentially from the island, which is water, aggregates and basically sand. And the cement is the only imported material. So it's a very sort of a clever choice that is, it is not nostalgic about, about things, right? This is not a hula approach, right? No, I'm trying to pretend to be something that, you know, you found inappropriate. You know, as part of the process, mason involved, we did many studies of this. And they suggested things like adding aggregate, making it look better than ordinary concrete block. And we always went back to the concept of make it regular concrete block. And it's interesting to see that other buildings on the UH campus, as a matter of fact, are doing the samples that we rejected. And we're specific about that. I will be and these and these you had manufactured to your specs for that particular size, which is not a standard size, right? And it's not a standard size. And it was driving everybody nuts. But but it's a done deal now, whether they were not right, right? Yes, I wanted to, can I just add, we also decided to show that the buildings were very crafted. So we lined up all of the joints on the flooring. And we spent a lot of time, you know, trying to line everything up so it would look very put together and on purpose. Yeah. Well, next time I go, I'm going to look at that specifically. Okay, next picture. Next picture. And this is I like that when I was in there, this is a Lanai. So another very sort of local theme that you introduced. And this is the laboratory building part. And this is facing the classroom building that we just looked at. And so I like that. You know, the the soil is pretty much right there. It's like red desert and and through the choice of plans and also just leaving the dirt, it just crawls up the dirt crawls up the building and gives it a texture. So it's, you know, it's invited to pick up the Tina. So it's not a clean sterile, but a very sort of organic approach. I think what this image shows is also the spacing between buildings and the spaces between buildings were as carefully designed as spaces within the building. Yeah. And that was very important, especially where the openings were where the connections between the buildings were and especially can see that location of the rock walls. And that is something very much lacking in the UH Manoa campus, which has grown in a very piecemeal manner with many different architects and many different layouts over the years. Yeah. And we also want to add maybe the, you know, the theme of your project in Manoa, especially the Soto's favorite Sherman lab project is working with the Soto's favorite theme of courtyards, which we can see reinterpreted here as well as the big outdoor spaces are like functioning like big, big courtyards. And as you said, the big lawn, I think I remember you guys, you said whenever there are like big ceremonies or big gatherings, this becomes an outdoor classroom or gathering space. Right. That's Bishop Museum functions the same way. We have a big lawn and it's used for concerts. It's used for all different things. Same situation there. So let's go to the next slide. That is an arrow, an airplane photograph of when the project was just finished, I believe here, and you can still see how red-dirtish the surrounding is and the landscaping is starting. And we also there's a little sort of teardrop here that one of the phase one buildings is missing. And I know this is sort of as much of a little bit of a wound as the architecture school building is at your age. So maybe sort of a sort of a tragic tradition. But let's move to the next slide here that I took when I was out there. And basically, this building was just almost finished. And I stood in it. And I basically, we don't want to talk about it here today, because we want to celebrate and honor your great work. But I think if you don't mind, if we guys maybe go ahead and with the inspiration of today's show, just, you know, continue to be architectural critics and look at what the client had decided to do, which I imported that little excerpt from a current article where he was basically when he was interviewing here, he heard that you guys have designed that building and you got paid for your work. And then the the client decided to hold the project and commissioned another architect and design it from all over and pay this guy again or pay this firm again, which then we might ask ourselves how, you know, responsible is that with taxpayers money? Well, we not only had the building design, we had a contract on board. We knew what the construction costs for and we had a building permit. And for whatever reason, they didn't think that we could resolve the functional problems of whatever they put in the new building. I don't know. Okay. Beyond my capacity. Let's look at what we see here in the distance, which is the most iconic part. And to go to the next picture here, the most iconic part of what you have so masterfully completed here. And this is the icon tower and beacon of the library building. Well, what this does is it does does many things. But we go back to the old idea of the plantations. And the plantations had chimneys for a very good reason. Well, it didn't make sense to put a chimney in a library building. But, you know, as part of our philosophy of incorporating art with architecture, we decided to do this tower, which is a work of art. And the artist spent days at the site thinking about what this thing should look like. Her name was Carol Bennett from the island of Kauai. And she still talks about the experience of doing this thing. Originally, members of the art committee wanted something like a, you know, a top up pattern. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We said we didn't think that was such a good idea. Right. And we made this as part of the art master plan, which we did and completed. Unfortunately, it's not going very far. No, but this is a major part of the project, I think. And I think it's fascinating. You were inspired by the smokestack of the mill because you're absolutely right. That was how you saw the sugar mill. And you knew the plantation around town was around it. That's correct. Right. And the great photographer that David Franson is he knows how to celebrate that even more. So if we go to the next slide here, we see how that thing comes alive when it gets dark outside. So it's like hopping out and it's like a light house. We're afraid of the FAA that they're going to complain about the airplanes flying by. It wasn't tall enough fortunately. Yeah, that never happened. Thank God. Yeah. I think we're getting close to the end of the show. Yes, we are. You just sort of don't mind taking over and walking us through our tradition of concluding with some polemic propositions here to the next slide. Right. Talking Beacon. Yeah. So this is Martin's classes have at UH Monoa architectural classes have worked on a number of projects. And this is one of them. This is Primitiva. Primitiva is a tower. It is a housing tower. And we're considering what it would look like if it was placed in a similar location to where we've just been talking about the West Oahu College campus. So at night, because Primitiva is primarily an open building, you'd see it more perhaps than you would during the day. So here we see in the nighttime with the starry sky and the guy with the bicycle with the light on it. There is the glowing tower. If we go to the next picture, we see that as the light is coming up, we are transitioning from the lit cylindrical building to the way it would look in daylight. And in our next picture, we see that in a in a wonderful world of our hopes, because the proud because the tower is primarily open and because it has a lot of vegetation growing in it, in theory, it might even blend into the background so that people are living in it, but you don't necessarily even see it. And it isn't that prominent in the landscape. And so that's the hope in any case. And that's again, this is not something that's actually built, but the West Oahu College campus is actually built and being built. And as time passes, we are going to see urbanization come to that area very strongly. And we're going to be looking back. And I'm grateful that you looked back and said, you were acknowledging what was there before, as this turns into a city, which it will. Really, nothing wrong with urbanization. It's just a matter of how you do it. Absolutely. No, you're absolutely right. Well, Martin, do you have anything else to add? Well, you guys see that, please, as a great homage to your, to your absolutely fantastic work out there. I thank you very much. And I want to conclude with the last slide here. Ah, yes. We have used we have used automobile for a while as vehicles for thought. And getting to know each other closer, we started to talk about how we get around when, you know, we're Sunday drivers, and you're the owner of this fantastic pagoda that we then found out we have to have the same genius mechanic who allows us to keep these fantastic cars. And at the very top left is Larry. So I want to say hi to Larry. Thanks for taking care of us. And for me, you know, your car is sort of symbolic or representative of who you are and what your work is, John and my Umi, very classy, very timeless, very elegant, very low key, you know, opposite to what architecture wants to be today loud and bling, very, very subtle and very appropriate. So yeah, with that, I want to want to thank you again. And talking sort of mid 60s, young timers or old timers. I want to say tomorrow, there's a mid 60s, young time, old timer, and that's the solo. And since I won't see you before tomorrow, when it's your 65th birthday, I want to want to win you all the best for that one. Oh my God, I'm getting old. You see how gray and white my beard is. That's because I'm an old man. Well, thank you, Martin for bringing that up. That's perfectly nice. So but thank you, guests for being here. Very, very wonderful program. Thank you, Martin, for helping doing getting this all together. And next time I'll be on with somebody from Doko Momo talking about something architectural. That's next week. But in the meantime, week after that, Martin and I will be back with another human humane architecture program. Thank you everybody for watching. See you again next time. Bye.