 the 188th episode of Think Tech Hawaii's Human-Humane Architecture. And we're broadcasting live from the opposite ends of the world. Your one host, me, Martin Despang, in Munich, Germany, and you, DeSoto, back in Honolulu, Hawaii. Hello, everyone. And we're continuing to look for better ways to build in Hawaii. And we know very good ways from way back mid-century. But whenever we bring this up, people say, oh, that was then. And now is now. So now we're going to show up around in the world of contemporary buildings that might fit just as well or even better in Hawaii, right? Yeah, absolutely. And we're going back to the same campus that we looked at last week, which is the, I can't remember what it's called. Do you have to explain? I know its initials are TUM, but I don't remember what that stands for. Technical University of Munich. There we are. And we took our new PI mobile, this strange 2U Audi A2 that was made from 2000 to 2005 and never made it to the US. And so here it is. And so let's go to the next slide and keep driving. Now we're basically, we just scratched the surface of that. There is also some housing on this campus. And here there's a similarity between we've been showing the audience and the students another housing project, a very vintage one. That's the Olympic Village back from the Olympics in 72. And from the north that's been hidden behind the berm. And similarly, that's the situation here. And now we're going to the next slide and go behind the berm. And here is something very innovative, right? No, it's not innovative at all. This is just standard German row housing. Now, to me, this looks exotic. To me, this looks different because we don't have any buildings that look exactly like this. But there's nothing innovative about this. We're going to have to turn from the view that we're looking at here, which is the outside world outside the university campus, and look behind us because that's where we're going to see something really remarkable. Let's do that next slide. So what in the world is that? Well, it doesn't even look like a building. It looks like a textured wall. And if you look more closely, you can see that that's actually vegetation. That's actually a plant that's growing on the exterior of a building, but not in the way that you might imagine it is growing. And why don't we go to the next slide. And this is the plant in question. This is called Virginia Creeper. And it is a plant native. It's a vine that's native to North America. But it's been introduced, obviously, to Europe and grows very well there in a temperate climate, just as it does in New England. This is what is used on the exteriors of many buildings in the Northeast in New England in the United States. And in fact, the colleges, which are known as the Ivy League because the buildings are supposedly covered with ivy, actually they are covered with this plant, the Virginia Creeper, which can grow very high. And it can just cling to solid surfaces like brick, which normally is what happens. However, in the case of this building, it's got an entire structure that it is growing on that we're going to examine as we continue to go forward. So you're telling us they should be called Creeper schools, right? They should be called the Virginia Creeper League. Yes, they should. All right. So next slide, we're also going to have your weekly German lessons. So here you go. You're on your own. Well, I'm going to say that this is for the first of all, at the top of this metal plate is the address. And it's on Enzienstraße, that's the street. And there are three buildings, I presume, one through three, numbered one through three. But the lower words mean student housing Munich. Yeah, exactly. And Enzien, by the way, is that most typical alpine flower that is so iconic and associated with alpine life. They only grow in very high altitude and they're very precious and pretty. Yes. That's what the name is. Name is talking plants. Let's go to the next slide. Because we see something on the ground here. We see some vegetation growing up. And we see some leaves having been falling off. And we see an irrigation hose. And what that does, we see on the next slide. But we also see what it's for, right? Well, first of all, if you look carefully at the sort of on the right hand side, you can look through all this vegetation, which at this point, because it's fall, it's just consisted of sticks with no leaves on them anymore, because these are deciduous plants that have lost their leaves. But beyond that, we can look into a room of the student housing. And as you pointed out, right in the center, there's a person sitting down. But the bottom part of this large plate glass window is a dark area. And you pointed out that that's where a student has applied a foil or some sort of baffle to cover up the window for more privacy. Unfortunately, there was a system in place to deal with that, which is extremely innovative. But, well, let's just keep going and see what we're going to uncover. But here also, you see the exterior vine covering that shrouds this building in a very interesting way. And I knocked on the window of this guy, and he came out and told me that what we see on the next slide that the maintenance people just basically took out what the architects has very cleverly designed. This mechanism here, you see the top part of some roll-down screen, and then the upper tube is also operating a pulling-up system that we see on the next slide. So this is the lower part. So you had a very sort of flexible way of when you wanted basically protection from below, you brought the bottom one up to any kind of level. And you had clearance above for light and sun. But if that one was glaring you, you brought the top one down. And if you wanted the light to pour in from below, so you could adjust according to your need and desire. And again, we think all the maintenance people should have talked to the architects and sit down and think how they could basically perfect that or improve it. As it reminded us tragically of our favorite Alamoana building, which had the sun-retractable louvers that for the same excuse of maintenance issues, they threw them out. And then all of a sudden the building lost its major performance mechanism, which is bad. Talking performance and non-traditional unconventional, let's go to the next slide. This is an interesting detail that fascinated us. Yeah, and that little black sort of rounded dome that's sticking out is a light fixture. And it is located close to the ground. It's located down where you need to see when you're walking. So this just illuminates the path, in this case, or what would on the upper floors be kind of the lanai or the hallway, an exterior hallway. So that little fixture just serves to light where you need to walk rather than throwing light all over the place and wasting it if you don't need to see the upper parts of where you're walking. I do wonder at night how much illumination that little fixture provides and how far out it extends, because it doesn't look like it can reach very far. But we don't know, because neither of us has been there at night. Well, I was going to say the best way to find out is go there at night. There we go. Well, maybe not soon, because Angela just issued another curfew for us over the Easter holidays. So that's going to cost some $25,000 then as a fine to violate that. So let's do it after that. So let's go to the next slide, which is showing us why that light is there, because this is the entrance, a door to the unit. And you were saying, hey, wait a minute. This is temperate climate. It gets cold. So this door needs to accommodate for that. But it also needs to accommodate for the warm summers, because that's what temperate climate is about. It has both extremes. And the next slide is basically showing that we were able, and I took the students there remotely with my camera, and we had this resident who happened to be from China to let us in. And he basically was residing in the corner units of each of the two bars, which is four people sharing a central communal space that has the kitchen in there. And the top right picture illustrated to you the cleverness of that door system, right, DeSoto? Right, because the door is solid metal, as we just saw. It has an exterior opening with the small holes that have been cut into an inner pattern. But then on the inside of that, not only is there screening, which we'll just see in a second, but there's also a panel that you can open up so that you have full air circulation through that upper panel at the top of the door. And that's what you would do during the summer when it's warm. But again, to emphasize, that door is exposed to the elements outside, because as we'll see, this building is completely open all on the entire exterior. So you have to have that insulated so that when it's in the frigid cold of a German winter, the air is not cold, wind is not blowing in from your front door. That's why that's so solid. But it also has the capacity to allow air circulation when it's not so cold. Which we call easy breeziness in Hawaii. And then we do. And since we got the plan there, there's also different varieties of room. There's one in the middle of each of the bars that is basically cutting all the way through. So you can actually get cross ventilation and the other ones are single units. They're only one side of the corridor. Let's go to the next slide because this is giving us an up close view of that perforation in the door that you said is close enough. It's perfectly calibrated that it allows you privacy. And since I was getting very close and shooting this picture, you can also see a bug screen behind. But there's an even more fascinating meshing netting that we're gonna get to in this slide here. And this looks rather unconventional, right? Because you're starting to be high up there. And this doesn't look like anything we know, right? That's right. Have we gone to the next slide or are we... Oh, we should now, 15, sorry, yeah. Yeah, there we go. There we go. Yeah, so we're up on an upper floor and we're standing on the exterior corridor on the outside of this building, which is where how you access those doors we just looked at. But there's no railing. It looks like it's completely open almost. And I was just thinking that if somebody was afraid of heights, this might be kind of a scary building. Although, in fact, you're very well protected. And that's because this metal mesh, this metal screening, extends all the way around the building. And that's also what the vine is growing on. And we're gonna see that this mesh is not identical everywhere on the exterior. But this is an incredibly innovative way for this building to look. Yeah. And to that extent, it's actually more safe because again, there is like the three to four feet guardrail. And then above that, you're on your own. Here again, you can let your kids go wild and free and basically always be protected. Next slide shows us sort of the philosophy of the building is essentialist. There is nothing to the building that is not needed. So it tries to do once again, the most with the least. Here are the ends of the slabs. There is this bolt with a hole cut through and a cable. And then the nettings being stitched to that. And the next slide shows us something interesting. We're looking up and we're seeing the nature of plants. They thrive the most where the soil is. And then the more they have to work their way up, the more effort it is for them and the longer it takes. But you basically told me that you've been living in buildings like that and you know they will make their way up. The Virginia creeper, yeah, the Virginia creeper is a very vigorous plant and it will get to the top of this building at some point. So it may not be there yet, but give it time. And of course it only has a growing season of a short part of the year, unlike here in the tropics. So it can only grow during the spring and the summer and taper off in the fall. So it doesn't have a full 12 month growing season. So it'll take it a little bit longer. But also what I noticed when I looked at this picture earlier when we were talking is that the edges of these slabs that are the exterior corridors are not just straight. They are in fact zigzagging. And you pointed out that that requires two different, these are pre-made slabs. They have to be cast in two different forms to make them look like this because the bottom and the top texture will not be identical based on how concrete forms. But this gives a little added sort of texture and difference to what would otherwise be a fairly straightforward as you said, just really stripped down building. It's not just parallel lines, it's got a little difference to it. Yeah, and so with that, it's a little luxury, but as you just pointed out through the technology of Prefab, it's an affordable luxury. And it's certainly alluding to the sort of organic appearance of the building, unless in the Baroque where they were cutting plants into strict geometric forms, but usually in nature it doesn't do that. So this is certainly alluding to the organic nature of the fenestration in a very clever way. Next slide is basically, this is the Southern facade. So since the creepers haven't been creeping all the way up, the students got creative and attached these kind of temporary shading screens there that still allow some light through, but block the sun. But at that time the sun actually would have been, if it would be out there, it would have been beneficial because the sun is low in the winter and this is south. So they would have gotten solar gain. And the next slide is showing, gives you an indication of how cold it was because that was the end of the, well, the summer was over obviously and fall started to kick in and winter was announcing itself. That's why it was bundling up. But you also learned something from what we see here that you'd never been thinking about in the tropics where it takes like a short amount of time of your clothes to dry, if you let them dry in the trade winds, which we should because electric dryers are the biggest energy hogs. But what did you learn from this picture? What kind of physics? You pointed out something that I had never thought about that even when it's very cold, you can hang clothes outside or wet fabric outside and it will still dry partly because the humidity goes down so much in the winter. So the wet clothing will give off or exude the moisture into the drier air and they'll still dry even if it's cold. And that's what these people are doing there. They're putting up what looks like towels or blankets on a drying rack outside and that's, as you said they don't have to use a dryer for that. Exactly. So the next slide is a very crucial and critical one because it shows us the plan and North is up in the plan. So it shows you that the building basically it's long sides are either facing North which you can see on the large picture to the right side where you can never get any overheating also never any passive solar gain but you do get that on the South side and the lanai circulation is then shading it while to the most critical sides to the East and the West where the sun is low. And all we're saying is although we're at the ends of the on the opposite ends of the world this applies to Hawaii as in Germany these basic principles. You keep the East and West facades closed which they have been doing here. The two doors you pointed out are actually the front doors to the units with a shared space in the middle that we were able to walk in. So you can also see here two things. One we're looking from another building. So again that emphasizes this is a cluster of buildings. It's not just a single building by itself. You can also see here if you look carefully that the size of the metal mesh is different or the configuration of the mesh is different. It at the bottom those holes are smaller. It's closer together. At the top they're stretched out and that serves in the same way as a balustrade does. You pointed out for code it's stronger at the bottom and unless it doesn't need as much strength towards the top. Yeah and talking codes, right? I think we also figured out why the building is broken up into two parts because when you enclose everything the way the question is how do you get out of the building in case of a fire? And we figured that the allowed distances from any point in the building are within that code requirement in each of the individual ones. So you're getting out of the egress staircases fast enough to evacuate the building. Right and I'm sure there are also how those interior spaces are broken up is also serves as fire breaks or firewalls to refine fire into smaller areas. So it can't spread as easily. Yeah so as innovative of that undoubtedly is we're getting overly excited about that. Don't you think this would have been an incubator for the neighborhood? And that inspires further developments that gets to the next slide which is also your second German learning lesson of the week. Right and I figured this out before I even asked you. I was able to figure out that word even without being told. It means free spirit and I looked it up online to confirm that that's what it actually does mean. But despite the name of free spirit, this is not a very free spirited looking building. It's a very common place group of solid blocks and not innovative like the vine covered buildings that we've just been looking at which are just right next to it or right close to it. Yeah and it's particularly cynical because this is we're in a break of a series of episodes with Larry Medlin collaborator of Fry Auto, the masters of tensile systems and to use the word fry is in a multitude of ways. It's just very ironic here and cynical. And so let's get us to the next slide and we're also working on a show with our friend Ron Lindgren. It's gonna be many shows about vehicles for thoughts, what all the motives are for us. And here in the slide, once again, there is an Audi which was too ahead of its time. And that seems to be the case for the building as well according to what the neighbors are now doing because they didn't get any of that. And ironically or coincidentally, both have been made so the Audi and the building in the same year of 2005. Behind that, the blue car is the next generation. That's the most sold electric car in Germany which is by the car maker that also makes our other vintage pying mobile or Twingo and that's Renault. And so if we go back five more years and that gets us to the next slide, we're basically in 2000 where my sleepy little hometown of Hanover basically took the world stage and we had the expo in 2000. And as we were covering, we were building these tram stations leading to the expo. And by that time, infrastructure has to go in first and the housing wasn't developed. This ended up being the largest housing development in the world, just like for the Olympics, the Olympic dwelling complex was at that time. You need to provide for all the workers and all the people there. So think in Yoha then who are the architects of both projects and you see them at the very top left to the left is Mr. Yoha and right is Mr. Fing. Basically Bill is this housing block here, which is basically good dwelling quality of floor to ceiling glass, these windows that you kind of find interesting and admire that you could ventilate in different ways. And they got these shutters you got excited about. But then next slide, again, five years later, they were turning the more static brick red into some way more organic dynamic vegetative red because this is how they turn when they shut down their nutrition in the fall before it gets winter and they turn into this beautiful intensive red that we see here, right? And the thing that's wonderful about this is for a temperate climate in the summer, when you want shade, it's covered with leaves. In the winter, when you want sun to be able to come in, the leaves have fallen and so you're exposed to the sun. So this deciduous nature of the Virginia creeper works really nicely as a covering for an entire building. And it isn't just decoration, the way it is in most places, it's just a little bit of exterior sort of decor. Here it's actually functional. Performative as well, yeah. And so next slide, it also works in sort of in the hot air in my two years in the desert in Arizona at the very bottom right where my school building was designed by Eddie Jones. And he's adjusted the same it to be crawled over by creepers in the summertime. It took a little longer because it's so hot there. But the two pictures above that is basically showing our other extreme situation here in Munich which is the winter that we're just trying to come out of. And this is the head of the maintenance department, this lady, and while she was appreciating the building, she said, oh, well, I'm looking not so much forward to shoving all the snow from the outer circulation and then trying to shove it through the netting when it's sort of wet snow is kind of, could be kind of a challenge. But then again, we're looking for ideas for Hawaii, right? And unless we're up on a field where we're not building any housing, we don't have that white stuff. So not a problem, right? I think your dog agrees a lot. So let's go to the next slide because we have that sort of metal mesh in our hands, you and your one hand and me and the other one because we have a little sample in my alchemist chamber back at you age. And we've been using this some three years before thinking Yoha have used it for the school for disabled children. And I threw these pictures in again because at the very bottom right where the sun is not hitting it, it's almost unnoticeable, right? So it's very dematerialized and not in your face at all. And that's why if you've followed our shows it has been inspiring us for many of the tree texture projects as the primitivas and the cargo cordial cabana clusters because it seems such an attractive tropical exotic fenestration device. And last but not at all least, we're working on it again basically for primitiva three which shows us on the right are working progress here. This is inspired by fry auto. So this primitiva's nature will be all tensile it will all be suspended. It will all be meshed, it will all be netting not just vertically but also horizontally. So let yourself be surprised, right? And if the show points out something there is interesting similarities and interesting things to learn from. And we should add that just like in the last show where the most exciting building actually on the research campus itself because the housing is a little off was designed by an architect who also is an educator at Tom, Mr. Kaufman. So it's applied research. So it is in this case because Mr. Fink is also a faculty at the department of architecture. They're merging now. So they're gonna be school of engineering and design soon. So once again, as we're saying last time tap into your resources and use the university to be innovative, right? Because if not us, who else will be innovative, right? Right, correct. And I was saying as we were talking right before the show I'm looking forward someday to seeing an actual structure built with this mesh exterior here in the Hawaiian islands. It can be done in Germany, it can certainly be done here and it would be innovative. It would be eye-catching. It would be a lot of different things. And I look forward to somebody someday, somebody doing. I think that's a perfect closing note to Soto. So with that, thank you guys for watching us and getting ideas for Hawaii above and beyond it. And so we look forward to see you soon for another show. And until then, stay increasingly tropically exotic. And healthy. Exactly and happy.