 to have you all back for what happens to be our 212th episode of think-taker-wise human humane architecture. We're broadcasting live still in the midst of unprecedented intertwined crises of coronavirus, COVID, climate, and out of control capitalism. And we all have to reconsider the things we do, or at least we should. And what you do here on the island is primarily inviting people over to then ripping them off. So anyways, we have the utmost specialist panel for that matter here with one of the finest hospitality designers, Ronald Lydgren, being with us from his Long Beach, California. Hi, Ron. Hello. And we have you, DeSoto Brown, Bishop Museum historian, who just told me and someone else that from early childhood you were interested in preserving things, and you grew up in the heydays of way more innocent hospitality on the island. But gradually growing into a major industry, too, I might add. Exactly. And don't get us wrong. As far as I understand, DeSoto, and you live that on a daily basis, and your ancestors did, too. You were very open to welcoming people. There's nothing wrong about that. It's actually really great. But then America came, or the Western civilization, and basically commodified that and cashed it in. And that's where it becomes a problem. There's dependency, there's greediness, and there are all these things that are potentially problematic. So we have at least spiritually with us someone who's even more qualified because she has a master's degree in these things in business and tourism. And it's our exotic escapism expert, Susanne, how she is pronounced in Germany and Susanne here. And let's get us next to the next slide. And you guys share how she was with us. Well, she is now Mrs. Disbang, as of this year. And she was lucky enough to come out here for a continuation of her honeymoon. But unfortunately, she was confined with her new husband through quarantine to their not particularly lavish hotel room, non-hotel room, but apartment. And I wanted to be able to get together with her, and we fortunately were able to do that on her last day. And we had a brunch at the nearby Denny's restaurant. Now, I chose this because Martin and I watched this Denny's being built near our homes, respectively. And as a non-engineer and non-architect, I marveled at how so much of this is artifice because the finished product looks as though it's made of stone and looks as though it's made of concrete and looks as though it's made of all these different materials. But in fact, a lot of it underneath is just a steel skeleton with plywood over it and then veneers over that. Nonetheless, we did have an enjoyable time there. We were conscious, however, that this is still the time of COVID. And while we were waiting, because the restaurant is only operating at half capacity and half of it has to remain empty, we had to wait outdoors to be able to get in. We wanted to sit in their outdoor seating area, which is nice that they have it, along Cuyillo Avenue. But we were told, we're not allowed to do that. That's closed. So we had to sit in the front. And ironically, when you're outdoors, where you've got a lot of air circulation, you still have to wear your mask. When you come indoors, when you're in an air conditioned environment, you take your mask off so you can eat. So it's actually the opposite of what would be the respectable or the reasonable thing to do. However, that is the reality of the upside down world in which we live today. And I was really grateful that I was able to spend time with Suzanne. We had a really fun talk. We had a really enjoyable feel. So that was nice. But of course, we couldn't help but think about all these other things that we're concerned with, even as our enjoyable brunch was going on. As we all are, yeah, and a little bit of rehabilitation, but I have to say, the older you grow, speaking about myself, the more maybe in peace you are with certain things. So revisiting the show that we did about it that you referred to at the top right and looking at these pictures, I have to say, it is a sort of a weird kind of species of like a skeletal steroid topics because the main pilasters are actually out of CMU. So maybe not. And what I, you know, after having seen so much sort of Hawaiianized in the term of cashing in stuff, this at least doesn't even try. It just, you know, is American. The American diner, it says that the client is a former banker for YCEO. So given all that, but again, as you pointed out, it's all American, it's all air conditioned, although it doesn't really have to its location. That there's still what remains the worst loss of opportunity is typologically you should have built and we're obviously biased like a primitive on there on that side really makes it out, making, you know, one story building is really a waste of land. But other than that, maybe not quite as bad as we started out with, but still, as you said, absurd sort of upside down or inside out the whole, you know, COVID prevention compliance kind of thing, different than a place we're going to go next, at least virtually on the next slide. And that's your turn, Ron. And this is on a very bitter sweet now. Yes, the day after Suzanne and Martin met a de Soto for a meal at Denny's, I was going to have the pleasure of meeting her for the very first time. And I thought with the hours that we'd spend before she got on the plane and headed off for Munich, Germany, that I take her to downtown Los Angeles up until, well, 10 years ago, downtown Los Angeles closed at five o'clock. It was just a dead city. But in the last 10 years, all the old banks and office buildings that historically used to be the West Coast's financial center, and then it all went to San Francisco, all of those buildings have all been turned into lofts. And all of a sudden there are 50 to 60,000 new residents in downtown LA. So I was going to take you to the Grand Central Market, which has been there for well over 100 years, an emporium for food and all restaurants and also some rather interesting gourmet restaurants. I wanted her to go to not Denny's, but Egg Slug. You can believe that's the name of the restaurant. They're famous for egg sandwiches and their breakfast. And I've stood in line trying to be hit there in the past of 100 people waiting to get my my egg sandwich. And you'll notice on the picture on the left that the entire front of the street of the Grand Central Market, which is right downtown in the heart of LA, is all given over to outdoor seating. And it's used, and it's very busy. And cars are just banished to wherever they need to be. And to the right, you can also see inside the market, because most of the space is in an old building, some guests sitting beneath a wonderful neon art installation. And several of those having to be located on the walls of this wonderful place. The Grand Central Market is sort of the heartbeat in the center of this new area of downtown, where these new 60,000 people have come and enlivened the city for the first time. Unfortunately, Suzanne did not get to see all of that. And Martin will be explaining what happened. Well, there would have been other goodies to add to the to the bitterness of it. That would have been Bunker Hill, Lawrence Halpern, that would have been your container community center where you would have had, you know, lunch. And yeah, let's not even go any further. And by the way, to the left again is like comparing locations. You got pretty nice weather too. But we got the nicer ones. So again, we're hermeticize ourselves as in the Denny's. And as you know, I don't know if we were clear enough to Soto, but they, although there was a pure capitalist is the client, the bank of Y former CEO, but he didn't do zero lot line construction. He left, you know, space interstitial space between the sidewalk and the building for outdoor seating, but it's not allowed to use. And here they do it, right? They even steal, you know, the parking from the street and dedicated to the people. That's what we want to see any ways in temperate and moderate climates and temper climates in the summer. This is beating both basically climate change and COVID. So that's the way to go. Yeah, next slide. Also, when she was still here, she was looking online for the best spots to eat. And one is called heavenly. And it's in a killing's worth, which was formerly the seaside hotel now rebranded as the shoreline. You see this easy breezy gentleman and the PI mobile in front of it. When you were here, Ron, we didn't get a chance to go to that one. And that building was basically the one and only as you told us in that respective show that at killings worth and Alfred Yee did as a spec project, as an investment, very cultivated capitalism, by the way, you know, usually when you do something for monetary reasons, you do it the fast and the cheapest way, not in that case, not in these days, not for these gentlemen. And they basically sold it to United Airlines. United Airlines is our trusted air carrier for all these years. And unfortunately, in this case, and that's the reason why you couldn't meet up and you had her met her, you know her well, but just remotely, but you wanted to see her meet her the first time in real. And that didn't happen because the plan that goes forth and back from LAX and Honolulu broke down and obviously we're lucky they found this out early enough. So she was safe. But unfortunately, you know, she missed out on the best to meet you, Ron. We throw in Jays and my hat there from this respective show when we were as we thought for no good reason, not enough good reason and quarantine. And now that little stamp there, which is upside down, which says if you turn your head around says okay, is the recognition of the United Airlines personnel ground person personnel around checking in, recognizing her fully vaccination proof of evidence that gets her all the way through to where she got that vaccination from, which is Germany, and she has safely arrived just a few hours ago. But going to the next slide, this is trying to make up to for, you know, that she wasn't able to be with you, Ron. And these are the things we desperately tried to do to make up for that because we went to your hotel, the Lalo, which is where we as the commomos put you up when you were here, visiting us for the National Symposium, and you guys were both keynote speakers there. The Lalo is on Kohio, and by the way, is an autograph collection hotel. And what that means we do later down when we get back to the Mauna Kea. And she also took the picture at the very bottom right, especially you for you, Ron, because she's a big fan of the Halle Kalani, in fact, introduced me to the Halle Kalani before we even got to know each other. So on our morning walks, she was doing the supervision, the auditing of the construction work, and we were worried because they were working on the edge of the pool, and they had been re basically doing it and re casting it and painting it. And we were worried it's going to stay that way. But then they luckily basically re tiled it with this beautiful tile that you were telling us about in your respective of Halle Kalani shows. And now we're now a third through the September, and if they hold true to their announced reopening on October 1st, I think the good news is what you can see from outside, there isn't enough time left to screw it up if they would ever do that. And we certainly count on that they're not doing that. So this is all again us desperately trying to have her time with Ron and around Ron's places and creations, and she's standing there posing for you in front of the Halle Koa and the very jungly landscape around it that makes up for the very jungly landscape at the top right and explain a little bit where that would have been and what you had as a task for her. Oh, I'm a little bit lost because that's your that's your front yard. It's a jungle front yard. Yeah, I really as of today, in fact, I finally renovated my jungly front yard after it's been trampled a bit by some of the construction people working on my renovated house. And I was going to introduce Suzanne to a bamboo grove and roses and clivia and ground ivy and you name it. And she has a strong urge to get back to gardening again. Unfortunately, I didn't get to tell or get to show her my attempts at being a green thumb. Yeah. And talking green thumb and blue tiles, that very beautiful tile pool that they kept gets us finally back to the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel that we're on. So next slide please. And we see a similar pool and that this that picture is from you to Soto you please tell us what's behind what we see. Well, as you said, we're back at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel and this is a photograph taken right pretty soon after the hotel opened. And this was the pool that was constructed at the time that the hotel was open in 1965. Now today, as we were talking about beforehand, a hotel of the caliber of Mauna Kea would probably have a huge pool with a lot of fountains, water features, lounging areas, etc. But at the time that wasn't considered necessary, particularly because in this particular setting, there's a huge beach to swim at as well. So this pool is just sort of an adjunct to the swimming that you could have in the ocean. Nonetheless, it does have a blue tile pattern on the bottom of the pool. Now, I don't know, none of us know if this pool is in fact still there today and what it looks like because the hotel has been through some really major renovations after the earthquake of 2013, I believe, caused damage to it. So, but there is a connection then the between what we just saw at the Hollywood Money and its famous orchid mosaic at the bottom pool, along with this one at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel of a similar pattern at the bottom of the pool. Yeah, and just as we said before, it speaks that, you know, in back in the 60s, and we're sort of on a break of our automobile architecture, many more shows to come. And while, you know, the Strassenkreuz are the big street cruiser boats that I associate so much with with America were big. But today's SUVs, some of them are even bigger. And that's certainly true in architecture and everything, you know, bigger, bigger, bigger microgreens movie like Super Size or whatever it's called. The houses were like 1200 square foot to begin with or even less. And then they were like 1800 and now they're like 23 or even 3000s. So things are bigger, bigger. So even though this is and you guys will talk about that even the guest rooms in this hotel were rather, you know, decently sized originally. And this, you know, ended up being the most expensive hotel in the world ever built at that time. But regardless, things that were still relatively modest and not grown out of scale, right, that's sort of our point. And again, since it's it's doubly if this is still existing, the hotel has been lucky to stay pretty original, but the landscaping and the outdoor areas, probably not. So again, kudos to Halle Kalani that they kept, you know, the the signature pool with the with the tiles that was so important and sort of smuggled into the project. And if you want to, you know, we make you curious about revisiting obviously Ron's four shows about his project. So please go back and rewatch them. Go back to the architecture. Go to the next slide. This is an exterior perspective donated by SOM. And there's a brochure and who's the master collector of brochures. I am a master collector. I'm the master collector of brochures and other tourists related ephemera related to Hawaii. And this is a brochure from right when the hotel opened. And you can tell if you look at the picture behind the couple that's on the beach, you can see that the palm trees are all newly planted. They haven't been growing there for very long. Now, the thing that I find interesting with the photograph on the left is from the side view, you can see that the hotel, while it appears to be a long low rectangle when you look at it from the front, actually has a stepped design that you can clearly see on the side. And what that does is gives you not only a view when you're looking towards in that direction, but it also protects the lanais below from the view from the people on the floor above. And that's because there's a lattice work or a set of louvers, if you will, made out of wood when this was originally built, that prevented you from being able to look down on the people literally on the floor below you. But it wasn't also just a big rectangular block. Now, as Martin just pointed out, however, this is not a totally unique structure because we see it in the housing that was constructed for the Munich 1972 Olympics in Germany. And that's the picture that was just added in the upper left. So there's a similarity between those two structures, the monarchy obviously being earlier from the 60s. Yeah, so we call this Terrassenhaus, which means Terrace House, doesn't take much of a weekly German lesson, that's a lame one. And so that was a very popular feature as Ron, you as the as that sightseuer, the time witness can recall, it was a very sort of fashionable thing back then, but it got very beautifully adapted to both locations, you know, in the one in Hawaii, in a tropical condition where it's always hot, it's very much it doesn't look like a plant, which these days there's biomimicry and people make the architects make things look like plants. This looks truly man made, but it basically performs a lot like nature, because it's, you know, it's staying cool. And there, while in Munich, you have the temperate condition of basically the sun being your friend in the wintertime. And so you can even, you know, heat up your space in the wintertime. So both are conditions that are very in the best sense of true modernism being very performative, basically worked fairly well. And you could, if you're like in a postmodern mood, which none of us ever is, but we know people still are, you can even say the amount of chaos looks like a volcano, right? It was erupting out of the earth and was basically in the section taking this sort of pyramid shape and volcanoes are bigger at the base and smaller at the top. So there's all these different ways to basically look at it, which, which just makes it even better. So a very sort of multi readable architecture that that for its time was, was, was pretty, was pretty, you know, not unique, as we say, was sort of, you know, in the air amongst architects, but was, was really customized that sort of international style kind of, you know, typology of terrorist house was pretty, you know, uniquely customized to the very specific conditions of, of the big island in Hawaii by architect Besset. Let's go to the next slide and go back to the other project around it, which is the golf course. And here's another brochure by your disorder. Yeah, right. And this brings up the point which we've already brought up, but again, worth mentioning, which was that the hotel was contingent, the development of the hotel was entirely contingent upon the ability to build a golf course at the site. And if it hadn't been possible to construct a golf course, the hotel would have been in no go. They wouldn't have built it at all. Now, this is something which is a fairly recent development in certainly the history of hotels. When the Royal Hawaiian Hotel opened in Waikiki in 1927 as an ultra luxury hotel, there was no golf course. It wasn't possible to build a golf course in Waikiki. Even then, they did construct the Wailaik golf course some distance away, but it wasn't considered absolutely required by the sixties for a freestanding resort hotel. It was considered a requirement. And that's why we see pictures of these two pictures showing off the fact that there is a golf course there and a very famous golf course, too, built on this really rugged coastline with one pole where you've got to tee off and get your ball all the way across an ocean inlet to where the green is. And a lot of people never bet the ball all the way over there. And how important the golf course was and still is, we see on the next slide, which is a historic picture here, where we see it had been completed even before the hotel was completed because there are still the cranes. I mean, the hotel is pretty much in a final stage of construction, but still not completed. And the last of the two show quotes at the top right allude to two other architects who have been involved and one of them who is fellow viewers Ron, the other architect who has shaped hospitality design all over the world, also having started out in Hawaii that is Pete Wimberley, your great colleague. And Pete basically had very soon after the hotel was completed, it was given to him to add on to the hotel. And then it was John Hara, who we see and his beautiful 1965 Mercedes SL Pagodi. And when Larry had fixed us up with our PMIing mobile and leaking a gas line, basically, John Hara was in the schedule for the next morning. And so John basically did the necessary remodeling after the earthquake, which was in which year, Ganda Soto? I believe it was 2013. And there was a hotel mostly came through that pretty well, but there was some significant damage to at least one wing of it. So they took that opportunity to when they fixed up the earthquake damage to close the hotel and do a really major renovation, which we will talk about more in the future. But I also want to mention too, the black and white photograph that shows the golf course in use, this was a golf tournament that was staged even before the hotel opened, which was publicized or it was broadcast nationally on television in the USA. So that was a way of promoting the hotel via the golf course before it had even opened to the public. Yeah, and talking promoting and needing to close, we're at the end of the show, but we want before you Ron, please share with us as an AIA fellow how the hotel was perceived amongst its architectural community. And we make some reference to that at the very top left, but you have something to add above and beyond that. Yes, the AIA honored the Mauna Kea for its longevity of 25. They gave it the 25 year award. And every year they they selected a building that has survived, has been successful, and they considered to be a worthy addition to the canon of fine architecture. And the Mauna Kea received that award and rightly so. Yeah, and in addition, as you can read here, it was awarded already an honor award by the AIA right after it was completed in 67. And then in 2007, it had a top 150 of America's favorite architecture list and it made it on that one. And if you go on their website, they list many more also from the hospitality realm. So it's a highly honored veteran, we can say. And with that, we leave it for now and return one more time, wrapping this up and reflecting a little bit more above and beyond and for its future next week. And until then, please, you guys stay all brutalistically tropical exotic. Bye-bye.