 Good afternoon and our Central Pacific boom town of Honolulu in a March of 1975. And what happened then? We were actually looked a little different because we were, I hate to say, we were teens and twins at that time. Yes, we were young people then. But others were too and the first picture shows one of them. This is our local boy bra barrack. The prepping to become our best president. Right. Who in the 1970s was right here in Honolulu and he graduated from Honolulu in 1979. So during the time period we're talking about he was right here watching it all. I was too. These were his coming out days. He was on his way up. And beyond that there was someone at the peak of his career. That's right and that was Elvis Presley. And Elvis in 1973 did this amazing technological feat. He broadcast a live concert from the Honolulu International Center, today's Blaisdell Center throughout the entire world and it was called Elvis Aloha from Hawaii via satellite. Put us on the world map. Put us on the world map. Well we already kind of were but that didn't even work. And since this so is also about the build environment. This show is not about the build environment. We picked a piece that might be the most representative at least for some part of 1970s architecture and that's the Ward Warehouse. That's where we look like we're sitting and there's the Ward Warehouse on the right. And a picture of a modern part of Honolulu on the left and Ward Warehouse is very much as you said an iconic structure of the 1970s. It doesn't have a lot of applied decoration but it does have some of these circular forms that reappear in a number of different places. But let's go back and start from the very beginning. All that piece of land looked and was used much differently here. Well this is a photograph from 1940 and in the center on the left you can see there's a Theo H. Davies Warehouse. That today is the site of Ward Plaza and on the right hand side the Soranaka store that has fishing supplies that strip. That's where Ward Warehouse is today. In the foreground you see those men doing something. They are working on fishing nets because K. Wallow Basin was the center of where all the fishing boats came and went from Honolulu. These guys are at work. They're doing actual work. It's not a tourist thing. And the buildings that you see here are industrial. They're light industrial. There was nothing touristy about it. There was nothing upscale about it. It was a living working neighborhood at the time. And the industrialization increased, right? You see the same side here. There's one new iconic building in the middle IBM building. But everything else is really, really ruggedly industrial. That's true. Very 60ish. And also too along Alamoana you see there are a bunch of used car lots. And by the time where Warehouse was constructed in the early 1970s it replaced a lot of used car lots and that was a use of large open pieces of land before they were developed. But then we saw something interesting happen and let's go to our next picture. And that is the building of the Ward Warehouse. And here are two brochures, one from the 1970s when it first opened and another one on the right from the 1980s. And Ward Warehouse was constructed to be, and we're going to be talking about that, a collection of different types of not just tourist things but things for local people. And it was built intentionally not to be a long lasting building. It was meant to be like a warehouse. This logo type is very appropriate from the 1970s, it opened in 1975. Just like the building itself it's made of wood. And so they were playing up the natural wood surfaces which at that point was very trendy and it was supposedly very honest and so forth. And in the next photograph this was the only picture we could find. And that's why we apologize for the low resolution and being a little blurry. But literally, and we also think the architect Steve Owl, his wife Irene for allowing us to do this here and speak about their project on behalf because also on their side there's very little left. And Steve respectfully said I'm enjoying retirement, I trust you guys doing this well. So we went out and did our research. And as you can see in that 1975 picture, again it's a very woody surface, it's a natural surface. The only decorations on it were what were called super graphics which were large geometric patterns that were painted on the side. In 2005 the exterior of the building was completely painted beige color. The roofs were made a teal color to match the rest of the ward stuff and it doesn't look the same as it did in 1975. And that weird beige is until now that weird color that people pour over buildings for developers. That's right. Going back to that picture from the 70s, the dark brown was really like, there were these corduroy paints, right? Yes. They were dark brown. Yes. This car paint is dark brown. So is the building. I had brown corduroy flared paints. I figured. I want to see you wearing them next time. They're long gone. Okay. And the thing that was really influential on the appearance in the architecture of Ward Warehouse was in our next photograph and that was a development that was called Sea Ranch that was built in Northern California. It was actually the development of a local Hawaiian company, Castle and Cook. This Sea Ranch was built as an upscale, exclusive, not overly expensive, but trendy and particularly lifestyle-y development and it is still in existence today. And the architecture that was used in the early buildings, like the public buildings that they built, I just looked this all up after we started talking about it, was very influential on things like the Ward Warehouse. In other words, natural weathered wood, some super graphic paintings and so forth. And then it became Ward Warehouse here. And architect Charles Moore, by the way, to complete the story about it. Who was Sea Ranch? And we go to the next picture. Also the 70s and there is actually a tipping point because there was the first economically reason oil crisis and resource-based, which would fill a whole nother show. But it was right in the middle of it. But as one can see here, this is a picture. You thought you had some from the 80s, but this is from the early 2000s. This is 2000. And Martin pointed out it's a very car-friendly situation, as would be for anything that has to be successful today, and even back in the 1970s. There's car access all along both three sides of this layout. And if we go to the next picture, we'll see the original layout of here's what it looked like in 1975, the top story, the second story on the top part of this diagram. And below that, you see that there's buildings A, B, C, and D, and a parking garage. And there's access all along that, as we just said. We can call this clustered, so it's very sort of small elements. It's not a big chunky. No, it's not. Because the typology, we could say, here we go and talking introducing shopping malls, which we also are going to address with a couple of other shows to it. So this is actually by its original true nature is a mall. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. But it is not the Victor Grun introduction to America, the enclosed hermetic wall. This is an open. So this is actually sort of, this is interpreted, this is not an invasive. It's an exotic version of. It is, it is. I think let's go to our next picture and see some of the other elements. The ward warehouse, as you pointed out earlier, is different from just a plain strip mall in that it's got a second story. I'd like to point out that there are these other elements that are a little bit out of the ordinary for what you would consider part of just a rectangular box building of a warehouse like this curved stairway. There are some other curved forms in the ward warehouse. And if you ask developers these days, they would never do that. No, expensive. There's a second story is a no-go. Yeah. And you see this here. There's some vacancies, more vacancies on the floor. Absolutely. But it was the idea of we can go to the next picture to not make that one story box to make it an experience having these iconic elements popping out, right? Right. And it is not just a box, as you said. It's got these other elements that create a little more of an interesting, makes you want to sort of go and see what's on the other side, rather than I can see the whole darn thing. And in the next picture, I think we're going to be looking at, yeah, there again is our open space for cars. And I like how the roof on the left and the right has got, for example, on the right. You see these trees are protruding through the holes in the roof. So it's a little more interesting than it would just be if it was a regular warehouse. And you can see it as an interpretation of the good old American pioneering main street. Absolutely. Shops and the saloons and the awnings. Left and right and the awnings. And in our next photograph. There is criticism, though, I was just talking before the show that there was criticism about that it's sort of blocking itself off from the ocean, from Alamoana Boulevard, which again, this is a heavily frequented route. If you open this up, you're all going to invite the emissions and the noise. I was just going to say exactly that. I was just going to say that it's not that, the other side is the ocean. Yeah, but you've got six lanes. Which you can see the harbor a little bit peeking through. And here's just another of these iconics. Steve Owes, body of work, we're going to dedicate another show that's going to have two of his projects. One is his own house. That's very much in the sense of a warehouse. And in fact, it's originated in there, which you will point out. And the other one is Buzz's Steakhouse in Pearl Ridge. And there are similarities. Which is also very powerfully, iconically hovering over. So it's, as you said, it's not the generic. This is true passion or architecture in a commercial typology, which is rather rare these days for sure. So we want to look a little bit more into the fine grain, into the details, right? So number, yeah. Yeah, and here's one thing that's very typical of Ward Warehouse. The exposed systems. You've got the conduits for electricity. You've got the pipes. You've got the air conditioning ducts. All of this was left exposed. And I think there are two reasons for that. The first was, as I said, this building was only supposed to last for 10 to 15 years before it was replaced. So there was no purpose in covering all that up and then having to demolish it. But secondly, in keeping with the 70s zeitgeist, as is a fabulous German word. You're welcome. No, no, no. Thank you, German people. It is more honest. It comes across as more honest. We're not dressing it up. We're showing you all the guts. But talking commercial typology, it's always about the money. It's always about the profit and getting it done the cheapest way so people will still like it. So in the years after, in the 80s and in the 90s, everything was hidden. You had to make dropped ceilings and soffits and all this stuff. And all this stuff was hidden in there. Now, actually, things seem to come full circle. If you go to the Nordstrom REC, for example, on Calacala Avenue, they expose it again. So it's chic again. And on the side, it saves the developer a lot of money. That's right. That's exactly right. So everybody wins. And even systems-wise, we get on the next picture, we subtitle this exhibitionist. There was really this sort of obsessive, almost, celebration of systems as fire raiding here. Right. And actually, that's interesting to look at. I mean, I still like to look at that thing. And it's sort of artistic. And it's part of the experience. And it's part of the experience of Ward Warehouse. And there we are. We were also digging out a historic precedent for that. That's the next picture. And this is Saint-Trois-Pompidou in Paris, built around the same time. And so we might say that this building is sort of a hybridization between C-Range, as you pointed out before, and Saint-Trois-Pompidou. And in this case, I've never seen this. But I'm aware that the whole point of this architecturally was that all of the systems were on the outside. And that was a big step at the time, which made the building very iconic and different from everything else. And talking about our twins, that's when I saw this. There you go. And we take this as a situation to take a little break here, a one-minute commercial break. And then back then with DeSoto and Martin and Ward Warehousing. I'm Carol Mon-Lee. And I want to welcome you to our newest series called Education Matters. Well, we will explore education-related topics that touch everyone, not just formal programs in K-12 and higher education, but also broader issues and information that affect our community. Aloha. I'm State Senator Russell Ruderman. I represent the Poonit and Kau district on the Big Island, and the host of Ruderman Roundtable. We're here on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. You can join us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. You can find a link there to a page where you can see past episodes. And we talk here about good government, environmental issues, and issues of the day facing the state of Hawaii. I'm Russell Ruderman. Please join us for the Ruderman Roundtable. Mahalo. All right. We're back to DeSoto and Martin looking into the past to learn for the future. And we're talking about the bones of Ward Warehousing. The next picture is going to demonstrate that. Exactly. And there it is, exposed systems. We've got the wood that is holding the place up that's structural with these huge steel clamps with the bolts exposed to show you again the honesty and sort of the strength and the starkness of the building. I was thinking that the wood looks oversized and it really isn't structurally necessary. Martin, let me know that I'm probably misinterpreting that. But regardless, there's the joint right there and not covered up. Well, principally speaking, where wood is weak at these sort of really strategic points of connections, that's where steel is strong. So it's a great marriage of materials. And is it over dimensioned or not? I was just saying with the seismic zone we have here and a certain paranoia and dealing with things structurally, it's probably going to end up being the same if you want to build it. So the second part of the story is the more critical one because the next picture is going to point out something that the building is in a situation that it's going to go down. In August this year, it will be taken down and will be replaced by something that we're going to show soon. In this picture here, I put together by saying don't buy into if someone says it's basically going to deteriorate. This building needs to be taken down because in certain parts, yes. We would also say maybe to sort of lack of maintenance because if you have wood, once painted, always painted as I tell every client. By the way, client at the bottom right is a 300 year farmhouse that my family business basically remodeled. And we remodeled it in such a critical way that we had to do some really serious structural surgery. And we were able to bring it back to life. I wish I would have kept my 72 Plymouth Fury which had some rest spots which he could fix. These cars and these buildings are worth a lot. So that hopefully is not the real reason or certainly not the real reason. And the real reason we go to the next picture has to do with capitalism. But don't let's forget before we lose that building, it needs to be reused. And that wood needs to be put into something else. And so you saw some of that damaged wood, but there's good wood in there and that needs to be kept too. That's a perfect plan. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll talk about demolition. Perfectly. Don't just trash it. Wood is the material with the best potential for repurposing. Correct. So these pair is, thank you, Steve and Irene on the left who we're speaking on behalf of, architects of War Warehouse. And to the right is Mr. Richard Meyer, undoubtedly one of the most prolific American architects with his well-deserved position in 20th century architecture who's going to design what they call gateway towers. And the next picture is going to be how it's going to look like. So the same pairing to the right is the new building which is a high-rise tower which is fully glazed which is air conditioned and to the left is War Warehouse. And we agree to not prejudge the new to come because also as a practicing architect I would be stupid to be against evolution. If something that's good is going to be replaced by something even better, that is maybe something to be supported. Correct. The doka-momo part of me and you has to look at that a little differently. I agree. Somewhere there is in the middle of this reality. But what we want to do is sensitize the audience and ourselves for what War Warehouse really is and the benefits and the advantages, what it has. And this picture here is basically also gives me the chance to talk about an event that you see down there on April 29th at 10 a.m. Please all come and do with us doka-momo us a photo doko which is one of our things we do whenever things basically are not going to be around anymore particular we go and we document the heck out of it because that's the way to go. Well that's what you and I have been doing that on our own too. We do. And prep for this show but also because I want to document it as well. And the more the better. And but this picture again, number 22 shows something that really War Warehouse is pretty good at that's something that we call today complete streets. So you create a harmonious coexistence of different vehicular systems. Your car is right there. You can walk there. Birds are allowed to come in there. The merchants are right there. So it's a pretty good combination of all of that. If you think about Alamoana, you get to drive into this pretty heavy and at times pretty scary monster of parking garages and then go a long ways and you're finally there and it's just you and then you got to walk your stuff back. Correct. So this is an interesting thing. Right. Right. And this is a lot more human humane. It is. Let me just say human humane is right there. That's the perfect picture for it. For because it is very, the scale is nice. It's easy to walk. As you said, it's not overwhelming too. And it's always been like that was, I mean, even at the time that War Warehouse was built in 1975, Alamoana was there. It was huge. This was a little step in a different direction. And another term, another quality it has. I want to bring into the game. It's inclusive, right? It's not. And we did a show about the old and the new international marketplace. Correct. And we allowed ourselves to say the original was inclusive. The new one is exclusive. That's right. So we have the same thing here. These chairs where we're sitting and these people are sitting in there, everyone can sit there no matter what you don't have to buy. No one is walking around and forcing you are asking you to leave if you don't consume anything, right? And also this is actually civic architecture, right? And you also were pointing out that the mix of tenants in War Warehouse is a lot more local. It's a lot more small scale. It's mom and pop. And it is not necessarily things that you can't survive without and yet it is a wonderful batch of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's very appealing. It's a very appealing place to walk around and have a good time. It absolutely is. So all these criterias, we put as checklists, as checkmarks to be then rechecked and revisited when the new one is coming up and we will see. And coming back to the point again that you did so well, let's talk about the nature of the beast, how I like to share that with my emerging talents and myself as well, that a piece of architecture should have a very specific tectonic and materiality strategy. So Steve is so kind to say, well, I'm actually not unhappy that it goes away because it was only what you already mentioned. It was only meant to be provisionary, temporary. But as we know in life, the temporary things mostly last the longest, right? In many other ways of life. And then they have proven to be worth more than you expected them to be. So this is a great compliment actually to work with as that it has more than doubled his lifespan two and a half times, you know? And this is a great quality. And then we come to your point that we promise to dig into deeper that if you make it out of steel, well, you can recycle steel, but you need a heavy industry to do that. You need a big oven and create thousands of degrees of temperature to melt that and reuse it. And very energy intensive. The same applies to concrete. You can and one does that. You grind it down, you powderize it, you can mix it into other, but it's a heavy process. But we all know what it takes wood. Wood, it just needs a sander. You take these multiple layers of paint off and you were pointing out that some of these beams who were protected, they look really good. They look fabulous. And I'm not even sure if you, you know, the availability of wood of that size 30, 40 years later, I don't know what it is. But again, as you said, you can either burn it for energy, you can let it decompose or reuse it. And you talked about how to reuse it too. Thank you for the sick weighing. Yeah, and there's, we have a tradition, a young tradition that we conclude every show with an optimistic view out. And this is like learning from the past for the future, emphasis on the future. And the next picture is looking one last time at the existing one that it has a certain notion of exotic and it hasn't just to do with the plants in there, there's a certain ambiguity and there's actually, I really feel sorry, we haven't, both of us, shame on us, bad dual. We haven't taken a picture of that awesome civic auditorium at the very, at the very end of it. Oh, I did, I did, but in synergy. Okay, okay. But I do, I do have something. Shame blame on you. I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. Yeah, yeah, I know. But people go there, people check this out. This is a powerful civic place where there are low-key events of little people, of, you know, everyone inclusive. And it's not stiff, it doesn't feel staged. You know, the one that the international market plays is like, well, this is all set up, right? But this is basically almost like Raspberry. People just pop up, it's a pop-up place. Yes, it is, that's very true. So these are these qualities it really has. And if we go to the next picture, that's our proposal. That's also that hopefully the tenants, well, the ones who haven't found a new place, and I'm thinking maybe some can't afford to be in the new one because of the high investment that needs to be returned, return of investment. And so they might not be able to afford it anymore. So by now, two dozen of generations of emerging talents and myself have thought about how we can scoop them up, the tenants. And this is our proposal for basically my favorite place to buy books and CDs. This is BookUp. Yes. And BookUp, last time I found a CD and I asked where they're going next so I can look forward to it. I said they might not know yet or they don't know yet. So they might not go anywhere. And this might actually apply to others too, which we're afraid of. So we're, the next one is another of our most favorite local places. This is Paena Cafe. So Paena Cafe needs to go somewhere and we would love to have Paena Cafe in our project, which is Primitiva. We have introduced her already a couple of times. She's a vertical development. But in her logic, she's very much like many of the projects from the good old days. And this is how she could look like from the distance. And if you go back to the picture before, you had that super genius idea that you needed to tell me, we see a lot of wood in there. Where does that come from? Let's recycle Ward Warehouse building. Let's recycle the wood from the Ward Warehouse as it's demolished. And it would be even more wonderful to recycle it into the new building on the site, into the place that would benefit from it very much. And the Paena Cafe wood environment would be beautiful. So we can almost call it a reincarnation. That's right, it's almost a reincarnation. In any case, whether that's gonna happen or not, we do need to document what's been in the past. We need to document Ward Warehouse, which is a really iconic structure. And it's in a very prominent location. It has been very visible ever since it opened. It was very trendy at the time. It was very kind of cutting edge. It was something that we could be proud of that Honolulu had that looked very different and looked cool and modern for the time. And obviously for somebody like me who was old enough, there are a lot of memories of it too. Thank you very much for that perfect closing keynote. And thank you also, Steve and Irene, for trusting in us. And once again, we're gonna be back with a show, two shows about your very, very important and relevant work for our islands here. So thank you very much. Thank you. And see you then. Bye bye.