 exciting to have you back for another episode, which happens to be the 266 for our show, Human Humane Architecture here on ThinkPick Hawaii. And you are about to be our 14,320th accumulated viewer. So thank you for that. So we jump right in and get the first picture up because last week we sent me to the big island, check on there and see how the balance between the beautiful natural and the men and hopefully in the future, increasing the women made a built environment is. And we went to Hawaii that was having fun and spouting out magma. And we went to the project that is the closest to that, which is the Mauna Kea Beach Resort Hotel and also the Mauna Lani down the coast and they get pretty close to that. Then this slide, when I flew back to our island and it's not very visible, but the top slender piece up there is our panoramic out of the airplane where you see that in addition to the green natural mountains, there is in this case predominantly white or beige as the preferred color here for some odd reasons. There is a built mountain line here. These are high rises. And this project here, we just can't hide because the picture at the bottom right has been floating around for quite some while. That is supposed to be the most, the newest Kamehameha school high rise in Kaka'ako. And it was now in this, you know, the Hawaiian Airlines magazine, the Hana Ho with the rendering to the left. And the Soto and Matt who are with us today, the Soto from his Bishop Museum here in Honolulu, Hawaii, as always. And Matt Noblette in Boston, Massachusetts, with us today, hi Matt. Hello. So Matt, you've been visiting us quite a bit over the last couple of years and decades. And as we will find out soon, you're an expert in many things and also come from all buildings as an experience. How does this one here look to you guys? I mean, it's always difficult to judge without, you know, judging a book by its cover is probably an unfair thing. But, you know, I mean, I think this definitely raises, I mean, always the question is, what distinguishes this from, you know, a tower of a similar type here in downtown Boston or, you know, downtown Houston or anywhere else? I mean, really, you know, it seems like it could, you could make something of those dimensions work potentially, but does it really work like that? I find myself a bit skeptical, but I, you know, certainly would welcome more information. That's fair to say. And the Soto, you and I have been, you know, a bit more trained and a little less patient, I guess over the years, but I think Matthew point is right on, I think this looks like could be a Boston high rise because it is, it has a glass envelope. So if that's triple pain, which you need these days, it would probably keep you warm in the wintertime to come soon. And in recognition of these, you know, few summer months where it's also very nice outside, you could go outside on these, we probably can call them balconies and not yet lanai's the Soto, right? Yeah, and I think, again, I just, I agree with what Matt said, it's hard to judge in this particular case, but basically it comes down to the thing that you, Martin and I are always talking about and the livability of high rises in Honolulu really depends upon one, being able to open the windows or open sliding doors and two, having a lanai. And the whole point is, as Matt knows very well, you live in a very hostile environment for much of the year and we live in a very loving environment for most of the year. And so what we need to take advantage of our environment to not only make our lives better in these buildings, but also to save energy. And that's a really basic thing that everybody needs to do all over the world. Yeah. I'm always, when I think about, I mean, 25 years of being in Hawaii at all different times of the year, the only times I've ever been uncomfortable have been inside of man-made interventions of one sort or another. I mean, and then you think to yourself, what are we doing here, right? When the least comfortable place is something that we inflicted upon ourselves. And it's right over, it's either, it's an over conditioned office building or it's a house or some building that doesn't have the right dimensions to ventilate properly. I mean, why would you even think about doing stuff like this in a place like Hawaii that's effectively like a parent, it's literally built for human inhabitation, right? Right, right. Well, and I could just add too, Matt, I work in Bishop Museum, so it's always cold inside and that's why I have on a jacket. But it has to be cold inside because we're taking care of objects that need to be kept in certain climatic conditions. So I have to adapt myself to what's best for the things that are being cared for. But in a home, you don't need to do that in an apartment, you don't need to do that. Exactly. And I really, with respect for you guys saying, unless we have more information, we don't wanna get more critical, but I go ahead and say, okay, sorry. We probably, there's little doubt that when we see the plan, we see confirmed that this is a double loaded corridor building, right? From its width, it's very likely. And that is wrong to begin with, right? Mid-century modernism that we all appreciate had a single loaded corridor. That's basically the one to do. And then glass as very likely fixed glazing, especially the front end, that is facing the ocean for the views. That is where the sun sets. That is baking you unless you have that AC behind. So I have to say, sorry already, I think this is, they put this kind of texture sprinkle on as we talked before the show, texture I think is very inherent for the tropics because in the tropics, everything needs to spread out as architecture should do. And in the temperate, both in Boston and in Munich, where by the way you are going right after the show, jumping into the airplane and going there, you need to basically, you know, tuck yourself down and decrease your surface relative to your volume. That's the way to do it. Nature does it, even our cells do it, animals do it, birds do it, and architecture need to do this too. So it's very likely sort of a nicely kind of camouflaged as textured building that is more or less a invasive hermetic. And we also read exclusive building once again, right? The first, their first basically sales pitch is a sustainably, and that one we questioned all the things we just basically said and then designed luxury high rise. So the question is the Soto, you being from here and this being your culture and Kamehameha school representing your culture, is that what you guys need more of luxury? Well, no, not truly no. I can understand the idea of having a sort of a portfolio, if you will, of different buildings for different levels of your economy so that because and Kamehameha schools does need to produce income to keep the school going. So there is a place for all kinds of development within its holdings, but at the same time for the Hawaiian people, no luxury developments are not needed as much as affordable developments are needed. And so we do see that of course, different districts of Honolulu have different levels of economic development and economic clout. So yes, there are luxury areas and there are low income areas as well. But basically, yeah, we don't need necessarily more luxury condos for Hoy's presidents. We need more affordable ones. Whenever I see something like this, I always find myself asking if I didn't do anything else to alter the architecture, but I just didn't make that central corridor that you're sure exists. And I think you're right. What if that, why does that have to be interior space in Hawaii, right? Only because the expectation of somebody who's can pay for the top floor here is that from the place where they parked their car till their front door, they're in an interior environment, but that in and of itself would be such a huge improvement, right? There's a great hotel in Austin that I stayed in a couple of weeks ago called the Carpenter Hotel. And it's essentially a kind of standard hotel plan if you can imagine that, but there's no enclosure to the hallways anywhere. So like right away you've created a very, you've embraced the kind of the local environment and you've reduced the volume that you have to condition because they still condition the rooms obviously, nobody would stand for that probably in Austin, but it seems to me like such a simple thing that makes a huge difference. So you get to your rooms on the exterior, there's an exterior walkway, like a short, a small walk up? No, it's actually like in that building we're looking at, it's not that tall, nearly that tall, but imagine that there just wasn't any glass at the end of the corridor. You just looked down the corridor and it was open, right? And breezes through there and the humidity is in there and you actually feel like you've gone outside when you step outside your front door rather than hermetically sealed. As it is the way in where we are broadcasting from my end here, which is the Grand Hotel in Waikiki, the Grand Waikiki Grand Hotel that is by Ernest. Not all that grand to be honest. Well, it's very inclusive and diverse and lots of things and it was designed by Ernest Hara, who then is the father of John Hara, who is the father of Mayumi Hara and their great intergenerational team, as is the office met that you joined and are representing here on the show Banish as with Günther and Stefan. And here the grandfather designed it in exactly the same way. There's two wings and one wing is single loaded corridor where the developers then say, okay, that's less economical and there is some truth to that, right? But the other wing that I'm on is exactly as you described it. It's open to the single loaded corridor and then open very open to the other side. So again, fire rating quite problematic, as we know, from the Marco Polo building and the fire here, but I often have a piece of wood in my door as to get that cross breeze through, right? And I think this is a great transition to the next slide, please. Because as you just said, Matt, little tweaks could make a big difference. And that's what I thought when I put this here together which is a compilation of show quotes from last week, my little intro to the Banish legacy here, where I was just picking on two things. If you would use the easel shirk and you wanna quickly explain in your words, Matt, what that is. I mean, it's basically a piece of, the impolite way would be to say if you took like a beer cooler and stuck rebar through it to break the thermal bridge on a concrete slab from inside to outside so that there's no transmission of thermal energy from inside to outside or loss of heat. That's essentially what it is. And it's used everywhere in Germany to build exterior balconies on, particularly on housing projects. But basically, we use it all over the place to eliminate the thermal bridge. Exactly. And while these two dots on top of the OR are suspicious of, again, being from Germany but if you Google for that, there is a American representative, there is a, you can get it here. That's what I'm trying to say. And while, again, it's not quite as bad as it would be in Boston. And we've been analyzing Gini Gang's recent high rise for Howard Hughes quite a bit. And we're really hoping but I happen to be on my way in and out to Germany, what you're doing in an hour at that time when I was still in the prairie and in the desert, Chicago was my hub in and out. So I saw the thing going up and I wish I would have seen that double line that indicates that thermal break and it wasn't. And some years later, we toured the office with the students and I pulled another German worked in the office aside because I didn't want to embarrass him in front of everyone and I said, please have I just not seen it? And he said, no, you're right, we have not used it. And imagine in Chicago, that's a radiator reverse, right? It's just really bad. So here in the tropics, the heat creeping and isn't quite as bad, isn't it cold, quite as detrimental but still bad enough, right? So that using your idea with opening the corridor, using the easel checks and then one more thing that I've been remembering in the last show that is very banishy that has to do with banish and here, what building component product is that? The jealousies I guess. Exactly, exactly. So you guys tell us more about the jealousies from your point of view. Yeah, I mean, this is sort of a very, I mean, I actually am probably more familiar with it from Hawaii, right? Because even our family house in Kailua has, you know, jealousies pretty much in every window opening, but it is a really nice way to open up a huge amount of free area in a window opening using just glass lamella basically that pivoted either at the middle point or at one of the edges to kind of open the thing up and obviously gives it a nice texture, right? When they're closed, you see this kind of shingling effect of the glass and then they just all sort of flip open and you get, you know, good natural ventilation through the building. Yeah, great product. And it's funny as you, you know, being sort of a hybrid between the two cultures, the German and the American by now, I come from the other end here in remembering it from my early years as a teenager and then starting into architecture that Gunter Behnisch was a big fan of the jealousies and all the early projects that's in there and I revisited our former capital, which I wish it would be still ours because it's much better than the one that Foster redid the Reichstag, the one in Bonn and I went there, the picture is on the bottom left and the top right is for me revisiting it in the spring, the spring. And then the top right, you see at its, well, you can't see really entrance because that's the point, there isn't really one entrance but that one side facing actually the city and not the river, the whole front is glass jealousy. And the main manufacturer companies called Glassball Hahn, they got this red rooster as their logo because Hahn is rooster. They all know this sort of energy efficiency paranoia that the German culture went through, you would think they had to get rid of the thing, right? Because a single pane glass jealousy that works here does not work in freaking cold, especially not now without Putin's gas increasing the less, right? This winter, first time. And so they did not give up on it today. I was so thrilled to see that they basically stubbornly, basically made it into a triple pane, argon-filled version. And here is a version that has no frame around it. So it's all glazed, it's iram and lozer, the frameless version of it. And I just thought, okay, if you just keep the same design that we previously seen, we open the corridor, your suggestion, we give it the easel shucks and we all clad it with the tire mow as they call that project. And then it's a compromise because people here in the summers, when I remember here and people tell me it's a little bit too hot. And in these few times they run their AC, at least they keep that pressures and, you know, expensively generated cold inside and it's not leaking outside again. But at the other month, most months, as you disorder correctly remind us, of the year you just have them open. And, you know, talking, I think this is all technology, right? And technology is one thing, but I think we wanna switch to talking about philosophy and that get us to the next slide. But I'm thinking even that, you were talking about the aesthetics of it, right? And rightly so and the beauty of it because you have a building that's all of a sudden biodynamic, right? Once it's closed, it's just like the bird that we're talking about before. It tucks down its feathers and looks way more compact. And when it starts to aerate itself and spreads out its feathers, it looks more feathery and airy. And that's what the building that would do aesthetically, right, as a result of its performance and not the other way around. Right, right. Yeah, no, I mean, I think this is for me, it's a really interesting topic. It always struck me that if, you know, we talk about kind of big developments in architecture, whether that was in, you know, structure or steel framing or there was always a kind of a corresponding architectural response, right? A new language that developed. And it seems to me like if we're talking about sustainable buildings, they should look different than the ones that we're used to seeing that maybe aren't as sustainable. And I'm not sure I've seen, I mean, I'm not here to claim that we've found that language or that solution in ourselves yet, but it's something that really preoccupies us, which is, are we really deciding how the building should look based on pure formal criteria or are we allowing the kind of the inherent nature of the building and the way it wants to perform to, in a sense, kind of inform the architecture, right? What does this actually, what does sustain, what should sustainable architecture really look like in some ways? So, yeah, I mean, go ahead. And I think what you're saying and this, you know, the picture that you threw in there at the top left, well, actually, you know, from here on, all the pictures are from you. And I think what you're talking about is different than obviously in this image. Well, you're not talking gadgety to begin with, but you're also talking in a sort of inherently integrated way, right? And not in a sort of an add-on and thrown-on way. And we will, I think the sort of we should ask, Matt, which we do now, if we could use this here in our other ongoing show, whenever, and that happens quite frequently, we get so tired about architecture and, you know, the getting stuck in it, we need to get out and we get, we have a show going on that's called the Mobile and the Immobilia. So it's about cars and architecture. And it's the same there, right? That now, while it's great to have electric cars more and more, but they just throw that technology into the same body styles, right? Versus like the, and like Musk is doing that more or less. Well, he designed the new or had the Mazda guy design it new from scratch, but then there were the Abterra guys who were actually ahead of him technologically. And they said, no, we need to make this car that actually, if you cover it all with in-pilved PV, it never has to see a gas station, not even an electric recharging run one. And that made that car having to totally rethink itself in its whole anatomy, right? And that's why for the general public, and that's why Musk playing it safe being the businessman said, no, I'm not going that extreme, right? That's gonna limit me in my economics, right? But they, and luckily these guys are back and you can now back on their feet, they went to do other things. So I think that's the same kind of thing. And the other comparison you make here between the gadgets and the Gestalt, right? Yeah, and I mean, obviously, you know, no matter how many green technologies you bolt onto a Hummer, the core problem still persists, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think the other image here kind of a, I provoke you with this about where you come from. So you're, the way we get you here is also, and not also, but mainly through Bundit that you went to school with and you both went to MIT and got your master's from there. And then you worked for several, you know, offices. And one of them was Rafael Vignoli here, right? And Vignoli, we've been with emerging generation always recently looking into skinny towers. But again, skinny towers in Honolulu for a different reason because the bamboo grove being an inspiration or a raw model, right? You see the bamboo plants growing just as close to each other as they need to be to shade each other, but they are as spaced out as they still get sun, rain and wind and stuff like that. And so that way, you know, a skinny tower in the tropics having a small footprint allows you to be aerated from all sides. So we came from a sort of a tropical performative angle to be interested in skinny towers while Vignoli came from a, if I'm not mistaken, a more formal approach, right? And then there's this TikTok lady out there a TikTok teenager who rants about it and she hates it and goes up against it. And of course, there's unfortunate things as lawsuits and, you know, liability issues in the buildings. And we don't want to, you know, I think he's already devastated enough as this picture I pulled from the web shows, right? But what I wanted to throw out is again, your own experience as a transition from probably the more formal to the more performative. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, as you and I spoke about before the show, you know, we are, certainly I was very much brought up in the kind of formal slash conceptual kind of school of architecture, which is very much a heritage of modernism, right? The notion that you could, the idea that we could build the same building or build anything anywhere and only use, you know, kind of theoretical, formal kind of criteria to make judgments. It's a very limiting frame with which to analyze architecture, but it was the dominant one at the time. And I think, you know, certainly, I mean, I worked at Raphael's office for almost nine years and I learned so much there, right? About so many things. But I think as I kind of came towards the end of my time there, there was something, you know, the time was changing too and the culture was changing and, you know, these issues of, you know, the ethics around what we're building and why we build a certain way, we're becoming much more prevalent. And so I think I was looking for a different way to think about architecture and these different, in a different filter through which to analyze it or critique it or in fact, design it. And that kind of, you know, it ultimately kind of led to where I am today and have been for the last 17 years, I guess, but that, you know, we're all products of where we came from and our experiences. And, you know, like I said, the problem is in a way, there's so much basic knowledge you have to accumulate as an architect, right? Just how you make anything stand up and work before you even can begin to refine it and think about it in kind of more progressive terms. Yeah, it's a challenge. Yeah, and although we only have two minutes left, let's get the next slide up there because that's, I think, perfectly fitting there. And before the show, I was like, I think overly exaggerating and saying, you know, you guys are trying the actions of ego and you said, well, one would wish there would be such a thing, but that's probably then, you know, the topic, the title of the show is human humane, that's probably against human nature. So you need to have certain amount of ego, but you need to keep it, I think, you know, confined within, you know. And so I, you know, when this is your firm, this is your colleagues. And as I was sharing last time, when I wanted to get Martin Haas to speak, when I was still in the prairie and I called the office, it was Utah picking up the telephone. And I found out, yeah, so I found out there is no such thing as a secretary because why would you want a secretary while everyone can be the secretary for a week? Right? And it's just like, reminds me of the American academia and the German academia where, you know, in Germany, there is no such thing as what an American dean is because everyone, and that really keeps the egos in place because if you're the dean for a year in Germany, you better watch out, you don't piss people off because it bites you back the next year, right? You know, we don't even have, we don't have personal emails in the office. There's only project emails. So, you know, if we're doing a project, say at, I don't know, Harvard University, it's like Harvard at banish.com and everybody's email software points to that address. So everybody sees every email that gets sent to the office or gets sent out. And the reasoning is very simple is that you can't have a non-hierarchical organization if everybody doesn't have the same information, right? Information as power is a dangerous thing. I think that now, I don't think it has, but it is the perfect closing note for today. And obviously, since we only made it through three slides and we have 50 degrees, so this makes for many more shows that we look much forward to, Matt. Thanks for kicking this off. Have a safe flight now in an hour. And have you back exactly in a week. And until then, you all stay very democratically with people and planet friendly. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.