 ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome back to us, the Soto Brown and Martin de Speng, relentlessly believing that we can reintroduce humanity and humility into our architecture here on our island of Oahu, Honolulu, Hawaii. Is that right? Well, we do pursue that. That is true. That is true. That's our dream. And sometimes in order to do so, we've got to point our finger into some wounds and talking paradise. Let's bring up the first picture. This is probably the most iconic symbol of our paradise here. And that's what we, in our hood, you look from that to me and I look up to you. That's right. Literally and figuratively. And so this is our hood. And in the foothills of Diamond Head, so this is paradise. Now we see pearl. And pearl is the next picture because the foothills, as we can see, and we get the next picture. This I was taking a picture of some many years ago now. And this is a lot at the corner of Kohio Avenue and Kapahulu Avenue. And I was shocked to see in this sort of prime piece of land facing the zoo where one should go multi-story. I was shocked to see that one-story little thing there. And I was very happy because that sign disappeared and didn't show up for many years. And I was hopeful until next picture we could see some activities going on recently. And so the next, like, 10 pictures or so is basically me portraying that on my daily bicycle commute to work. And here, here we go back to the last picture. It was just like some, you know, CMU walls going up. So I still had the hopes. I thought, like, maybe there's some innovative construction that would go higher. But then the next picture clearly showed this is it. The bond beam came on. But it still had, especially the lower picture, had some very utilitarian, almost mezy in. There comes my nationalist, you know, dreaming. But I see what you're saying, and I can see that that is a nice, plain structure that looks like it's got some promise. But then above there you see some other material being introduced. And we can already jump to the next picture, because then all of a sudden the roof occurred. And the roof, I've always been obsessed with raw construction, because it in many cases looks so more elegant than when it's finished and it gets achieved. And it has a lot to do, actually. This is the case anywhere in the world, but particularly here where there was climatically not that need to wrap everything. The traditional architecture was raw and tectonics, right? Correct. So once again, you could give it a benefit of balancing, oh, you know, this is very filigree, so maybe this is sort of alluding to something nice and open. Maybe it lies in open. And even if you think about the materiality, this is what you call a light gauge steel. So it's like the cheapest way, it's just almost like paper, thin, cut steel or metal plates or strips that just like, you know, you put something up. And the next picture, and this is the roof. And so this is the roof here where you can see the shape of the roof wants to be that very sort of known to us Dickey double hip roof, which is tradition. Right. Well, it's almost a cliche. It's a cliche. It's become a cliche of architecture in Hawaii, although it is an indigenous form, not Hawaiian necessarily, but introduced by Westerners. But it was something developed here, and it was therefore something traditional from the 19th and 20th centuries. And then it turned, it has turned into kind of this marker of saying, look, we're building a Hawaiian building. And even though we're not doing it, we're doing it less and less because this here is hiding a dirty secret. And the dirtiness is oil that we burn. And that's what happens behind that white box. And this is where the AC is going to be camouflaged and hidden. So it's going to, you know, as you perfectly point out, saying I'm Hawaiian. Right. But actually I'm invasive, you know, mainlandish. When you look behind. When you look behind. The facade. The facade, exactly. And that next picture I was zooming in, that sort of almost orgy of this sort of light gauge steel continues to be the same on the inside. So everything is like metal. And metal, again, doesn't grow on any tree here. No, it does not. I have not. I mean, we talk about ironwood later, but that's not the same thing, right? So we don't, and you know, let me also just point out too, you are an architect and an experienced builder and I am a layperson who has not done this. So your take on these things is different than what mine would be as a layperson looking at it. You are explaining to me what's behind these things, which I wouldn't be aware of. But as you pointed out, this is probably just going to get sheathed with drywall. Exactly. And drywall is this really easy to use stuff. You can cut it easily. You can mount it easily. You can cover it up. But it has some detriments. It is so flimsy that holes get poked in it. And as you have pointed out, it gets moldy. If it gets wet, it will warp and it will mold. So it might be a drywall in the desert, but here it's a wetwall. So even the term that the industry gave it is ironic here for us on the island. So next picture, then the roof gets put on. And it's thin plywood. And so next picture is when I hear these most gruesome diesel engines that I'm believing they ship here because they probably don't get any permit anymore. And I've never heard engines that are like so dinosaur like here. So these trucks come. And they truck in this stuff, the plywood. So it comes in best case from the Pacific Northwest, which is quite some miles down the ocean. It certainly is. It's by the way where the term trade winds come from. Correct. But they weren't diesel. They were using sails and due to the wind direction, sailed straight down. This gets diesel in. And then it gets diesel on our island. And I just love that sort of fetishization of the exhaust ties. How they're chromed. And they're so proud of what they're doing. But what they put out actually ends up on my lanai, which I have to sweep like at least once a week. And this is a view that you see from your apartment looking down. This is these are literally what's going by to the construction site right near where you live. So you see it and hear it. Exactly. And since you're kindly still teaching me my second language, how is that disease called that young babies pick up shortly or can pick up shortly after they're born and they turn yellow? That is called jaundice. OK. Jaundice is a condition that I think is like some chemical imbalance. And you can get rid of it very quickly. But babies do sometimes turn yellow. And they've got to be dosed with something to get them OK. So the next picture, this is what our building then became. Jaundice, it's a newborn. That little newborn all of a sudden got that disease. And when we look closer next picture, it's basically painting this over. And we see another yellow introduced. And that's the labeling is cut off, but it says dense glass. And you guys have seen this all over the place. It's basically the water membrane that tries to keep the water out of the building, which, again, indigenous cultures have been done more cleverly because they just made that roof so huge and overhanging that that kept the water out. And so here, besides, one can argue about the aesthetics of that, which is a term Jay just gave us on the way before we sneaked in here. But let's think about the building also in a thermal way where the traditional hollies had been easy breezy and keeping it cool. Here you see that sort of value engineered thin CMU. That's so thin that, as you can see here, the sun is hitting that. It's going to transfer right through. But then that AC is blasting in there. And the hidden machine is going to do the job. So who cares? And so energy is being expended to counteract the sun, which is beating on the side of the building. Exactly. So the next picture is another rule for the indigenous ancestors was not create any cavities where humidity can trap, where critters can hide. Yes. So this is what we're doing here. Someone had opened that again. You can see all these nice dwelling spaces for things like that, which makes you wonder, do you want to do that? Right. So the next picture is the roof membrane got on. And this is pretty much the condition. It was a few days ago, but just this morning I drove by. It looks pretty much the same, except they had started to put the windows in. And at this point, we were curious and saying, well, let's go online in Google as the way of getting information these days. And we found information about what's behind. And so this is the next picture. And there we are. And that's going to be a Denny's restaurant. And that was just fairly recently revealed. There's been controversy in your neighborhood about the Denny's restaurant getting a liquor license, which it has not gotten. But what we also discovered was that this is actually a building built on spec by a former Bank of Hawaii CEO, and a million, $1.8 million was spent. Then Denny's came in. So the building got started, or the building was under proposal. Denny's came in then as kind of the occupant. Yeah, exactly. Now, this is a relevant thing to bring up in this entire discussion, because Denny's as a corporate restaurant might also normally be required to have a specific appearance that the corporation demands that all of the restaurants have. And as to whether that is being fulfilled here to their degree or not, to the degree that they do want, I couldn't say right this second. Before we go to that point, let's just look at what's right there. Exactly. And the windows. The windows. The windows. And they're put in as of today, by the way. Right. And so the windows do look like this, you're saying? They do. They do. And as you just pointed out, we no longer have to make windows that have individual panes of glass that look like this. Because that's from a time when the technology only allowed. That was the medieval churches. Medieval churches. And afterwards, even into the 19th century, glass was so expensive that making it, you didn't make huge pieces of it. And you put small panes of glass together with a framework. And we just pointed out in a previous show that we were critical about the architects who would do a tower in Kakaako for hard use and not doing a very exotic job. But they have done a great job in New York City building the Apple Store pavilions. And they're all out of glass. And they're huge. So you can make glass pretty big if you want. So there's, once again, there's this sort of skewed, nostalgic sentimentality in the good old American diner. Exactly. You want to sit behind these moldy windows. And we feel cozy. Never mind we're in Hawaii. Exactly. Never mind. And there's some awnings here. But the lot is so small that there is probably they're going to put seating along that facade, which is straight to where all the cars go. But in the back where there's a nice little potentially park, this is where the cars park. Yeah, that's going to be the parking lot. So it's not a park, but parking. Parking. And there's a tin car parking lot there. Exactly. So but again, perfect what you point out because we're thinking, OK, was this denny's here with a corporate? Or did they get sort of encouraged or forced to adjust their design, but not the case because we retrieved the old sort of realtor sign from years ago, which you showed at the very beginning. Here was a private local investor who basically intentionally said, OK, I want this to look this way. So it is local, even though it isn't. Right? Correct, correct. It has the trappings of local, right? But OK, Dennis reminds us of an earlier show we did. Next picture, please. What was that? That was our kooky cantilever canopies show. And the denny's restaurant that's already in Waikiki at the end of Lewers Road at Kalia Road is in an early 60s building. And so it fits in nicely. It's got this zigzaggy roof line, the canopy over the street. It's got the nice holes through it for the palm trees to grow through. And it fits very nicely. I mean, that's kind of coffee shop architecture. And so for a denny's to be in that is a really appropriate thing. And you also said that Dennis wasn't in there originally. No, that wasn't there originally. They moved in there. So we have a similar case that Dennis is willing. You just have a good prime location. And then Dennis is willing to go in there, maybe sacrifice the own corporate identity. Correct. That's right. So Dennis is not to blame in this case? No, but that's a really important point. And I think that's probably what we're yeah, in our next photograph, what we're talking about is, and this is a picture I took from a book that I have, which is about chain restaurants, or just about restaurants in general in the United States. It was published in 1986. Here's a denny's restaurant, probably in California, in the 1980s, early 70s, excuse me. It's got the logo type that's very identifiable, the shape of the sign, and also the building itself. And this is a really important thing for lots of parts of the United States. When you build a freestanding commercial building, if you're part of a corporate organization, you make that building look the same so that everybody from a distance driving towards it can say, that's a denny's. That's a Home Depot. That's a whatever. And that's what they were doing in this particular case, however. But even though it was corporate, it still did the job. You see, it has a big hat. It's shading. That's important, as you can see, in this dry landscape there. So even though it is a corporate, so we can once again, in our terminology, of distinguishing between the invasive and the exotic, we can say it's an exotic. It was probably made for the more Western part of the United States. And it also is very 70s in that the color scheme is really 70s, that orange and the red. But it actually goes nicely with the background of the yellowy California dead grass hillside. Very zeitgeist. Yeah. It contributed one that's even more, or from another zeitgeist that we love even more, which is a decade earlier. Right. So the next picture is this is a different, and this is also from that same book, this is an alternative Denny's to the one that you just saw. This was called their in-towner restaurant meeting. It wasn't a freestanding one with a great big sign. It was supposed to look more subtle. It was supposed to look more solid, substantial, and fit in more with an urban area rather than a suburban or ex-urban area. But just like the cars of that era and everything that America made, this was done in style and with a heroic sort of attitude. Absolutely. You got these pillars, the anchor, and hold the roof, and everything is in material in between. And so this is. There's big glass. There's big glass. There's big glass. That was way back. They were able, and isn't it ironic, right? Yeah. The glass, the newer the buildings get, the smaller the glass gets in contradiction to the technological sort of opportunity. Right. So the next picture is us trying to understand why is that? And I took this pair of picture. To the left is like what we think our visitors want to see. They want to see little waterfalls. They want to see little fishponds. And in that fact, Waikiki was all of that. And you try to bring this back. But you can, because this is prime tourist. So detail on the right is the technology that's hidden in there. You get the point, the analogy to the roof, and hiding the AC. There's a pipe there. And in best case, this is a cut of banana or something. So that's on the right. But we don't know what it is. We don't have to worry about that. Let's move on and get our spirits up again, because I saw. And so in this sort of ocean of fakeness, sometimes we see these little islands of authenticity. So I saw this guy here who was having fun from the palm branches that the city workers cut off. He got a few. And he was making these little things, including these funny little pineapples. So this is like a palm leaf pineapple thing. And he was showcasing that with a winking eye. And probably would have been happy to get a couple of dollars, but wasn't asking for. So this brought up my hope to say, OK, this sort of partisan and sort of pirating authenticity sort of movement, we need more of that. And so I want to get one of those pineapples. Isn't that cool? And so it reminded me of he was basically making it as way back from scratch with the material, causing no harm to the environment, and having a lot of fun. And that reminds me of next picture of how the architecture has been here on the island. I mean, you're the expert in that. You have that in the museum and stuff. Correct. And so there were these, as you can see on the right, there were different types of structures that Hawaiians traditionally used for different types of uses. But while they all have slightly different attributes that you can see, you also see that they used the same basic stuff. Those are branches. Those are large trunks of trees, branches lashed together, and then a thatching of phelegraphs. So with a stone foundational base. And that's all the same stuff that you use in different ways. And as nice as that is, as we agreed or encouraged your audience to think about that cultures have to evolve, you can't stay there. Because the people you invite think this has always been the way and always has to be the way. Cultures have to evolve. And so next picture is a prime example of evolution and architecture from our hood. And this is me looking, the big picture is me looking out to Alfred Price's original entrance of the Honolulu Zoo. Picture at the top left is from a show we did with Jack Gilmer, who is the prime researcher on Alfred Price. And I was very sad. At the bottom you can see at one day I heard a saw and some grinding noise. And they were chopping off part of that cantilevering roof because they were scared that it would fall down because they had not done the maintenance they should have done. So the termites got in there. But instead of repairing that, this is a register. This is under the historic register. Instead of doing that, I'm sorry, my feeling is looking at that sad thing on a daily basis. It's basically demolition through denial. And just like throwing out, instead of building this sort of fake, cheesy thing few blocks away, what about the denies would have moved in here? And maybe it would have been a more sort of ticky denies, but you would have prime outdoor seating area. And you would have had to use for the building again. And probably through the income you make, you could keep the building up. Again, we're not advocating that a denies would be the best use for this. And in fact, there are restrictions as to how much commercial activity can happen in Copley Lonnie Park anyway. We could probably preclude that. But my motivation comes from the next picture from a project we did a few years ago where we were basically confronted with a 300-plus-year-old farmhouse that wouldn't go anywhere anymore. It was damp and rotting away. So the question was, bulldoze it or go with the time and do a critical reconstruction. Correct. And basically pass it on to the next generation who wanted a new house and were able to fulfill their dreams within the family heritage of the old house. And that's a residence. That's a residence. So a residence is the next picture which goes back to the last show we had with a chief sock about the fire rating. And this is Nick Civitano and his Dick Arc project and myself collaborating on potential. And this is the right to the point of the name of the show, which is tactical tropical tectonics. So instead of importing all this stuff that doesn't belong here, it doesn't really perform so well here, why don't you go from the stuff you have as the ancestors have done? But you can't do this in the way. You can't fetch anymore. There's no fetch left. Fire, cold, has been more strict. So you can't fill and you shouldn't. And you for sure shouldn't make it look like and pretend. So try to sort of distill a new aesthetics out of the same thinking of an innovative use of abundant local materials. And we want to now have the camera go back to the studio, please, here. And this is once again what we explained last time here. This is basically taking, can you hold up that other sample? What kind of wood is that? This is iron wood. And iron wood is an introduced tree from Asia that grows very quickly and is invasive. But as the name implies, it's nice and strong. So let's cut it down and use it. And we could do albicia and we could do other pieces. Eucalyptus. And their weakness exactly also on the big island they have, and that's what Nick did too with Eucalyptus, you can then cut it into boards and cross compose it. And different than here in that stage where we nailed it. But last time we had introduced this genius product here, a new product by the Austrian company back called Lignoloc, where you basically shoot these into and it friction wells the nail into the wood. But it's a wooden nail. It's a wooden nail. So it's just wood that goes back to the guy who does these cute little things you want, the pineapple and palm leaf. It is just palm leaves. There isn't any glue. There isn't anything. It's not made in China and designed in Hawaii like everything we sell to the tourists. And maybe you can find a more sort of organic water membrane. And this is basically just other boards. By the way, everything is heat treated, a process that I've been researching on for many years, which also enhances the longevity of wood. And then you could do the last step. We're researching on borating. We use the sea salt, are abundant, and basically treat the wood. And then also the termites potentially don't like it anymore. So you end up with this all local, all biochlamatic stuff, no cavity, everything we're talking about. We're just throwing this out and saying, this is evolution of tradition. And we're sure the guests will over the time understand that and appreciate that. We didn't stop at a time. This is innovation in time. This is technological innovation, didn't it? Exactly. And the next picture, why this is so familiar to me. I know this problem of Western civilizations, I had to say. The top row is 300-year-old farmhouses where our southern German offices that my sister and her partner runs. These are 300-year-old farmhouses. So this neighborhood has the toughest design guidelines in entire Germany. They tell you the proportions, the materiality, everything they prescribe. And they desperately think, just like here, that way you can basically keep tradition. But you can't. Because if you allow a different thinking, a different attitude, which is capitalism, it's going to hijack your culturally ambitious ideas. It's going to commercialize it. So the middle row is how these houses look like that developers built. And they say, we got the job done. You see there's wood, there's plaster, but it's not anywhere close to, and at the very right, the right column is the interior. So you see that old farmhouse out of solid timber blocks. This is rustic, and it also feels good in there because it's basically solid timber that has a good thermal performance. The middle picture to the right is how that cheesy developer house looks. And then the bottom is us trying to evolve that tradition. But we didn't build with the old materials. We built with cutting edge, sandwich insulated concrete with cross-liminated timber, a thermally modified, basically popular wood facade as a rain screen. And then this is my sister Cynthia and in her office basically working there. And you see from a distance, the bottom row and the top row, you know, they're family members, but this is grandfather up there and this is the grandson down there, right? Correct, correct, and there's an integrity to the construction that isn't visible from the outside, but you know it's there. Exactly. And that's one of the things that the pictures in the middle show that that integrity isn't there. And when we finish up with the building we're talking about right now, that also is the same situation in that it's a facade too. And that's what we tried here. When I came, next picture is for DHL with BIA and our School of Architecture to do the new Hawaii home. And you can see what did this explosive axonometric to explain, it's a kit of parts just way back where there are sticks and they're thatching and they're latching. It's the same kind of philosophy, but top right we introduced a cutting edge new material that comes from Australia. It's aluminum wooden louverts. It's called EcoShade and you can sleep. We propose it for the central space there. You can sleep and see the stars and there's a little rain sensor and it closes it. I mean, how cool is that? And that's the evolution. I believe this is what the ancestors would have used if they would have had that. If they had it, right. Let's move on. Can cost ever be, you said 1.8 million isn't so much. We had $50 per square foot for this community grocery store here and we didn't let it be an excuse. And this is, it has a lot to do with here whereas here some people say it's about sticks. We say this was about bones. Just make an exoskeleton as they've done here and infill it. You've always been talking, this is where I threw in the next two pictures about the, you know, how long does these buildings even stay in. Right, correct. And next picture, please. This was us here. To the right is when it was completed. And you can see to the left is me last year doing post-occupancy evaluation, evidence-based design documentation and all the tenants have changed but the structure is robust enough to basically allow that. Next picture, we get close to the end of the show about evolution. If you Google for Hawaii Holly, which I did. Correct. And then I found the pictures we showed at the very, you know, the middle of the show. Good. I'm very happy to see this here popping up because this is our fellow tropic here. He did the inaugural show in this program here. David Rockwoods, who basically with his emerging talents participated in the national competition of the Solar Decathlon. And this is their proposition basically for the evolution of Hawaii Holly. And it doesn't look at all like the old because that was then, but now it's now. And this is wooden trusses, basically CNC milled. And the outer skin is basically strips of photovoltaics with openings in between so the traits can go through and the wind can go through and sun can go through but it shades the building at the same time it harvests our point again. Maybe the ancestors would have gone that way. That's right. Last picture before the very last picture is our main criticism is about you should have gone tall on that side. And I wished for a while we would have pushed our stratosphere lani growth that the very bottom picture left is from a show I did and it was introducing one of the potential residents. And this is Jeff who's another urban nomad who's making lays the actual way. He's getting them probably in your front yard around Diamond Head. He tells me and makes lays. And this would have been a flash mob project that is cargo steel containers that could have gone up on that side over a weekend. And whenever the client or the owner thinks he's gonna develop it, we could move on. But talking humanity and humility we would have made a contribution to the many who are basically cut out of culture here in society because we have too many. So we're getting outraged about a liquor license which in Germany the drinking age is down to 16. So I'm not the one to talk about that. But we get outraged about that. But we don't get outraged about the architecture, about tectonics, about typology, about zoning, about waste of land. We don't get outraged about that one. And that is sort of, but talking humility we're at the end of the show. We wanna close it with that one. And what day is tomorrow? Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. So there's a little happy group of Valentine cards from the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s from when they all, their kids gave out numbers of Valentine's back in those days. And card companies in the mainland printed a whole bunch of Hawaiian themed cards along with a lot of other different types of motifs. So here's our wish to everybody watching that they have a happy Valentine's Day Hawaiian style. Absolutely. So happy Valentine's to everyone, to my sweetheart Suzanne and all the other loved ones in the out there. Who are out there, yes, yes, yes. And I wanna say, stay tuned. We hope to see you next week for a show that we basically introduce the exotic entrepreneur, Peter Shee who is a great legendary iconic architect who's done a lot of innovative stuff. So we wanna look into that. So look forward to have you back for that. Happy Valentine's.