 Good to have you all back for another episode of Think Tech Hawaii's Human-Humane Architecture that we are broadcasting live once again from the opposite ends of the world. And if you could get to the first slide and see us both, it's me and you're in Würzburg, Germany. And it's you, De Soto, back in Honolulu, Hawaii. Hi De Soto. Yes, yes. And it's very cold for you and it's very warm and humid for me. As our dresses show and are at least your fenestration behind you and talking fenestration. This show is a good example of what we hope it would inspire the audience to do. And when the show is over to have it been resonating in your mind and looking at things out there differently. And that's what we did because you got overly excited, which we do show at the quote on the top right about some more temperate fenestrations here. And that made you thinking about your past and elaborate on the picture at the top left, please. That's exciting. Well, the picture on the top left is an apartment building in San Francisco. The address is 2006 Washington Street and that is a building built in 1924. And it's where my mother grew up. My grandparents and my great-grandfather lived with my mother and her two siblings. In this building, which was it's very distinctive because it's pink and it's very easy to see. But what really struck my mind was I discovered when you sent me information after we had talked about small balconies and lawn eyes and our last show that this building, which looks somewhat European in its style, has what are called French balconies, which essentially aren't really a balcony. It's just doors that will open onto essentially just a railing and you can't really go out on it and do very much. Well, as soon as I saw that, I remember, yeah, this building, the mother building that my grandparents lived in, my mother lived in. When I visited it as a child, I was perplexed by these French balconies, which didn't seem to do anything because they were so small. And they're kind of a decorative element. They do allow you fuller access to the outside. They allow you more air circulation, but they do not allow you to go out and really live outdoors on alumni as we see people in Germany do and we should see more of here in the Hawaiian Islands on our high prices. So that was something that I learned and stirred memories for me after we did our previous show. And let's move on to the next because you just asked to maybe learn more from here for there. And this is another memory of a show we did way back at the very beginning that we called Bad Breathing. And that was about bad times of the Second World War, both at your place as in my place. And at this place here where I'm right now, it looked like this. And it's a little hard to tell probably, but it gets more clear when we go to the next slide, please. Because that's where it is all in pieces and bombed out. We're talking about the show about my father that he had his second birthday on the main train station in Dresden, which was all bombed, thanks to his mom's intuition that he had to go up there versus into a bunker where they were all killed. So Wordsburg was equally basically erased and bombed. And you did some historic research on that one, Brian. Yeah, and Wordsburg is a small city. It was bombed towards the end of the war and I believe April 1945 and within just a very short time, like less than a half hour, there were hundreds of bombers from Britain and they destroyed 80 to 90% of this historic city. And not too long after that the Americans were fighting on the ground and the Nazis destroyed the, they blew up the historic bridges to the city over the river as well. So it ended the war in absolute destruction, but as you are about to show us, it's come back. It took a very long time for that and I read that it also took until 1964 for the final rubble from World War II to be cleaned from this particular location. But before that, not to miss out why we got bombed, which gets us to the next slide, which is because we got a little bit too full of ourselves. And this is a photograph I took in a bookstore of a, which I should have bought the book, but shame on me, I quickly took that picture of a historic postcard. It basically shows the depiction of the Nazis and their specific letter type about glorifying that. And this is also encompassing your weekly German lesson, Brian. It's the beautiful city. That's what that that's what doesn't German, although you said that the way it's phrased is a little bit strange, particularly the way you say it today. But what they're doing is glorifying a typically German outlook, a typically German landscape, a typically German city because that was what the Nazis did. They were glorifying themselves as superior beings and German culture as being superior to everything else. And unfortunately, if you see the what amit to the city, it went from being glorious and beautiful to being ruins. Yeah. And thanks to you Americans and French and British and Russian. Next slide. We got their glorious glow back, but luckily in a peaceful way. But you see here, this is the core of the city. This is us here some few days ago. And you see in the distance, the historic buildings, facades back. You also see the Baroque basically in dialogue with a Gothic here. It's very interesting and compelling and give the next slide. We had the first snow. So these are more mid range pying mobile that we're going to tell you more in the next shows in front of where we're currently staying. And you've been asking the legitimate question what this picture and the previous one is implying has the entire historic city being basically being reconstructed. And the answer is no, only in some parts in some cases. This street front obviously reminds me also a little bit of the strange you were once pointing out to that they were making this Berlin movie in downtown. Hello, Lulu and making artificial snow. And there was more or less historic facades. The few ones there are still right. Right on Merchant Street, exactly. But move on to the next slide. Another large parts of the city look like that where the historic facades have not been reconstructed. They've been basically rebuilding or building them on the previous footprints, but in a more post war modernist, clean, purified style. But, you know, walking through and this is, you know, the snow hasn't been sticking around and melted away, but you can clearly see what the people are wearing there. This is now in the middle of winter temperatures close to the freezing point. And there's some strange something strange happening in the middle, right? Yeah, that relates to our topic of the Nile Luring. And so what are the next slides and we both you and I were saying that this obviously these are prefabricated or pre built metal structures being added to the facade of this building. They are two of our knives. And it's odd, as you said, that they're doing this in the middle of the day that they're doing this in the middle of winter when it's cold. And these are structures being added for the benefit of the people inside. Now, they don't have their floors yet. They are still just a metal framework. You said that probably they're going to have a wooden floor. Also, I'm presuming they also look like I pointed out they look like fire escapes that are on American buildings in various American cities. We don't have them very much here in Honolulu. But you said no, they are purely for people to use during the warm months to go outside. They're just being installed in front of windows. So I'm not sure if they're going to knock out part of the window and make a door so that people can actually open a door and go out there. Or if you're just going to go in and out through the windows because that does sometimes happen as well. But we not want to forget that we're still in the claws of COVID. So the nice are still the best place to be out. So they might actually be preparing for the winter being over and trying to spend as much time outdoors. And again, that's something, you know, we have plenty of buildings in Honolulu that don't have one eyes and they should have one eyes. So if they're doing this in the middle of winter, in the middle of the pandemic and temperate climate, why are we doing this more? Why don't we make this a mandate in Honolulu, you know, add more nice to your building, right? That's our message. Absolutely. And next slide. You are the license plate nerd amongst other nerdynesses that come with your profession and passion. So you clearly identified this is not in Würzburg anymore, right? No, because the license plates on the parked vehicles have the letter H. And so you told me that this is in Hanover. And Hanover was also bombed as was Würzburg as we saw earlier. So a lot of it has been rebuilt. And as you said to these are newer buildings. These are not old buildings. But the building we're interested in is the one on the left. And I think we want to go to the next slide to look at that because that's got a structure that's been added to the outside. And that is a three level sort of a prefab lani that's been added to the building. I wondered if this was just for the use of individual apartments or if those doors on the we can see in the facade are actually for a hallway so that they are common uses. We don't know for that for a fact, but that's just something I speculated about. And we can go to the next picture to look more closely at it and see that it's not as it's not as attractive as it might be. I guess you could say it's a little bit blah, but you can tell us. Yeah, and it's it's and that being said, functionally, it's an improvement for the building. But aesthetically, you're kind of wondering right and it's pretty much a prefabricated pre standard set that you can basically buy off a catalog or pushing a button these days and then you buy it and then you have a metal contractor basically putting it together. But as you like to call things that are functionally unnecessary ornamental these X bracing here are not necessary. They're just again for the looks. And so again, while we, you know, we improve buildings. This is called human humane architecture. So where's the human humane at it? We're kind of missing that a little bit. And hopefully we'll see this in the end when we go down the street and let's go the next slide because there's one building that has been pretty much you asked if this is historic and it is. This is a fine example of what we call and it's around the same time of your your grandmas San Francisco tower from the mid 20s. This might be a little later, but not much just pre war. And we call this brick expressionism, which is very popular. The more you come to the northern of Germany and it's it's a combination between very sort of ornated brick ornated the late brick and and and stucco salmon colored stucco infill. And when we go to the next slide, we look at the building from because it's a corner building. This is looking at the building from the corner into the other street. We're also seeing its historic fenestration and once again, what you just got yourself recently overly excited about you see these windows again at the very top that can flip in like an awning. And we were debating in this sort of energy efficiency paranoia that we Germans got ourselves into. They're actually questionable for the winter because you don't get a lot of air exchange through them because they open just a little bit. You would have to turn them the other way like a conventional door horizontally to get what they recommend in covert. For example, for schools, they say every two hours, you need to have 20 minutes of total air exchange. And you would never get that if you just open the window there a little bit. The more for the summer weather temperature of inside and outside isn't too much fluctuating. And that reminds us of where you are, right? That's the case all the time. The thing that I find astounding is and this is really a very basic simple thing that Germans have invented. And I presume this is found in a lot of other European buildings. These windows simply can do two things. They can either open at the top at an angle or they can open from the side like a door. It's incredibly useful. It's incredibly intuitive. And yet I don't think anybody in the United States installs these. Why not? Anyway, good point. I just I mean, it's still I find amazing to see. Yeah. And another similarity to the building of your grandmother is pretty much that it only had very few exemplary lanais and these kind of French balconies that kind of puzzles you, but otherwise didn't had much. So here we also saw both historically and then also from then the rebuilding of the 1950s. One didn't do many lanais at that time. That has changed this client or this owner of this building here became our client. And the task was as simple as to add lanais. He owns this building. He's a retired structural professor, professor of structures. And he thought his units would just rent out better with outdoor spaces as lanais. So that was the task and the approach we took is basically to not lick and stick them. In the way we saw in the previous more commercial enterprise, but in a more subtle way. And you can already see our intervention. But being the approach to make it subtle, they're hard to see, which was the intention. So let's look closer and go to the next slide and go to one more slide, which shows them more clearly. And how do these look to sell them? Well, these look very interesting to me. And you explain the entire structure, which we'll get to in the next few slides, but they are attractive. They clearly are not necessarily part of the original building, but they're not intrusive. And they are functional, but they also have a decorative attractive aspect to them. And what you can see is they kind of float because they've got a concrete base or a floor. But yet it is not resting directly upon the steel structure that supports it. There are just two little things that are sticking up that are holding that up. And you can explain more what the whole structure is, how it works, et cetera. Yeah, for that, let's go to the next slide, which is comprised of two images. And what you just described, you see clearly on the left. You can also see that they're anchored back to the building. So we had to drill a hole into the stereotomic facade and kind of bolt it in there. And on the right, you can see what you already assumed would happen. It will happen. And I will look for it and let you know where the Würzburg Lanai has just been having been craned in that you would take out the sill of a window and make it a basically shorter ceiling door to be able to get to the Lanai. And next slide is going to show us, again, the detail you just described. Also, we wanted to express the nature of the client being a structural guy. He's an expert. So by the choice of steel was intentional to make them, as you said, the least intrusive or even the least visible because with steel, you can design the most minimal way. But steel, we said never lick a steel sign pole here where I am at that time of the year basically because your tongue gets stuck on it. And that tells us that steel is a perfect conductor because it transfers the heat of your tongue directly into the sign hole and into the condensation there. So this means there's a large expansion quotient within steel that over the summer it basically expands. And then basically in the winter it shrinks back. And so we had to make these tubes, these vertical tube segmented. And it's hard to see, but you see a little seam. And that seam base is that one tube basically has an inner tube that's welded to it. That's basically going to have the other tube sit above it and been able to move without cracking or bending. And let's go to the next slide, which shows us these birds were an inspiration. I saw them in the Sonoran Desert Museum when I was interviewing there for my teaching position in the desert before I came to our tropics. And you don't have to feel pity because that bird was not losing one of its legs, but it actually intentionally decided that it works with one just as well as with two, what his buddy is doing on the left. And we thought, you know, let this lanai do the same and touch the earth lightly just with his one leg and then basically, you know, leaning on to not fall over for the lateral loads to the building. And go to the next slide. And again, why would we say that? This might be an opportunity for clients to enhance the rentability of their units in Hawaii. And it also obviously an opportunity for the emerging generation to take on small projects like that, that they can still have lots of fun with. But we're returning now from the north to the south back to Würzburg. And we're seeing the crane in action there in the distance. But I started to continue to walk and then turn back and look at something interesting right next to it, which let's get closer to that and check that out to show the next slide. Yeah, this is a very interesting structure. As you said, the bottom is not very substantial looking. It's just got a sort of a metal framework and mostly glass. But it's got attached to it on the facade that's on the left, a very large white structure. And let's go to the next picture and see what that looks like. And it's a giant breeze sole. And that is a type of shading device for the side of a building. And we've done shows about breeze sole, which make a lot of sense here in the tropics. And the picture in the upper right is the government building on Dillingham Boulevard, where you go to get your driver's license. But this one in Germany, I noticed that the vertical members are tilted at an angle. They're not just vertical, but I presume that that takes into account the position of the sun at the hottest time of year in Germany. And this structure, also like the one that we just looked at for the Lanheis, is canted out away from the facade of the building by just these small, look sort of insubstantial, but small horizontal pieces that keep it out there. So it's added in a kind of a delicate way. Yeah, and the delicacy reminds us of one of our finest pieces of breeze soles in Honolulu, which is hardwood's board of water supply, right? Very similar. He also angled the vertical fins in a similar way. And reminding us of things back home gets us to the next slide because there's our dear friend, Ron Lindgren, who's one of the biggest fans of our show. So we assume you're on here with us again and watching us high. Hopefully you're staying safe and sound back in Long Beach, California. And him being an expert in what he calls structural expressionism and then also planner integrated troughs into architecture. This must have been a fan of yours at the other end of the world in the 70s. And let's go to the next slide and check that out further. So here we are here are the bones, the beams being being bones sticking out. And there's planners. They're not they don't have green in there for whatever reason. And they also want to keep the birds out while we love your birds in the background and singing and often your dogs are not there today. And I don't know if you have some birds in there every once in a while. No, they're never matter. It's I don't know why that it's probably the pigeon poop. They're working out here in town. So let's go to the next slide because there's more to come. This is another building here in the area that seems to be from mid-century and this outer kind of frame seems original. But then what they inserted in their next slide is interesting because they've been thinking at the next slide up for that is actually these these vertical steel cable suspended from the from the upper frame concrete frame. And then you got these prefab concrete planks basically suspended from the cables, which is very interesting. Once again, they don't seem too much just like the previous ones to basically go out and use them as long as but they seem to have the function. For example, you can service your facade. You can wash your windows from them. And if this would be a Southern facade, they seem to be sufficiently deep so they can help to keep the building cool, which is something that we would like to have every building doing back in Honolulu because it's hot all the time. And that being said, let's go to the next slide and get us back home. And you're kind of having this curious suspicious look at the newest piece of you age. This is the life science building. It's now completed. And what is the look on your face tell us if you look at the top right image of which we pulled from the web, which is the just completed building. You just pointed out to me and this is all very true that the exterior elements of this building really are not functional. First of all, the horizontal fins or the horizontal eyebrows, as you said, that extend across the facade are not deep enough to cause any significant shading. Therefore, they don't really give any climate control. There's also this platform on the far right that's got these two skinny little V shaped supports holding it up and they don't really do. I mean, it doesn't really do anything either. That's an opaque wall. So it's not really providing any shade for that. Whereas when the building was under construction and it had the scaffolding around it, it had these much deeper structures on it, which really would have caused a lot more shading and been a lot more sensible. They would have been functional. So leaving the construction facade, I mean, the construction scaffolding there actually would have made more sense than what the final building has on it in terms of being functional and doing something and being helpful for the people inside. Yeah. So in the relentless attempt of first and foremost our dear colleague and Code Green host Howard Wigg of Tropicizing the Invasive IBC, the International Building Code, which is the law we have to build to, maybe we're talking to the DPP, the Department of Permanent Planning in suggesting basically these kind of scaffolding structures to fenestrate our tropical buildings. Because then again, it would keep the buildings cool and will also look cool, but it comes from its performance and it's not an added just for the looks ornament, right? And that could go as far and as crazy as what we show next, which is pulled from a design award that is by this online magazine and they had 4,300 submissions. And this is one of the winners and tell me about your reaction to it. Well, when I first saw this picture when you sent it to me, I assumed this was a building in Germany. And when I looked more closely at the parked vehicle, I realized, no, that's a Japanese license plate. This is a building in Japan. And I also assume, well, it's under construction. That's why it's got this scaffolding around it. No, that is a permanent part of the building and it's got incorporated into it all this greenery. So there are shrubs and there's a tree in there as well. This serves two functions, apparently. First of all, you can go outside on it and live on it and enjoy it outside. And second of all, it's also going to be for shading, particularly incorporating the greenery into it, the vegetation. And I also noticed that those metal poles are attached to each other in a way that suggests bamboo poles because bamboo is used as construction scaffolding in Asia and it's tied together, slashed together in the same way. So I'm assuming that that's a reference to how buildings would have been built traditionally using traditional materials in Japan and also China. We see that in China too. So this is a very kooky looking building, but it's got some functionality to it as well. So it isn't just there to be weird. It is there to do things. Yeah, and this just points out, if you would just say, you know, what's mandatory and to be mandated is you have to provide an exterior shading functionality of the building that would basically then give a multitude of interpretations, right? So the couple of angles we saw even here in temperate climate are all very different, but all serve the same purpose. And if they are then even inhabitable, then even better in the pandemic and the post-pandemic practices that we say we will continue and to increase our unique selling proposition of being the place when you can be outdoors all year. Yeah, right. With that, good suggestions, more to come. We're at the end of the show. So see you all back for next week's episode of Human Humane Architecture. Bye-bye. Bye.