 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Welcome to Human Humane Architecture. Normally Martin de Spang is sitting here as host, but this summer, while he's away, we're going to have various people from the Hawaiian chapter of Doko Momo do various presentations about mid-century modern architecture in Hawaii. And first, I'm John Williams, and let me introduce Graham Hart with WCIT and Brandon Lard with WATG Honolulu. And today is a continuation of the last program that we did, and that was about the career arc of the architect Edwin L. Bauer. At this time, Brandon and Graham are both going to talk about two of Bauer's buildings, residential buildings, that he completed in the 1950s. First I'd like to do a short history on Bauer. First slide, next slide. Mr. Bauer was born in San Francisco in 1905. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1928, and we don't know much about what he did during the 1930s, but we can be pretty confident that there weren't many opportunities for a young architect once the Great Depression started. But then we do know that Mr. Bauer arrived in Pearl Harbor early in the 1940s and joined a large group of architects that were assembled to take care of the immense amount of construction that was required for the war effort. As soon as the war was over, as soon as Edwin Bauer could do it, in 1945 he opened his own firm, Edward L. Bauer Architect. And this is an image of St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church on North King Street. It's one of his early projects, and he completed it in 1952. That's only seven years into the span of his career. And let me go to the next slide, excuse me. One of the things that we can see early on with Bauer is even with a traditional form like a church, he brought in his great aesthetics, sensibilities for modern design, and carefully did the details, the motifs, and chose even in a building like this. Let me go to the next. This is the Breakers, it was one of the early hotels. It's on Beachwalk in Waikiki, and the client had come to Bauer and asked him to do a reasonably priced hotel with more of a Hawaiian atmosphere about it. And what Bauer decided to do is to create a series of one and two-story buildings and arrange them around a courtyard that had a swimming pool and very lush landscaping. This is a photograph of the building when it was completed in 1954. The next image, this is a more current image of the Breakers, and you can see it's still intact. And some of the features you see in this photograph, the shoji screens on the second level, the lattice and jealousy screens on the first level, you'll see these things coming up on a lot of his designs as he goes forward. Next image. This is the Hawaii Ana Hotel, and it's also on Beachwalk, and it's right next door to the Breakers Hotel. It was completed one year later in 1955. This time, this is an early rendering of the building, and Bauer has taken the Hawaiian atmosphere and made a more modern composition out of it. But at the same time, it's still around a central courtyard with a swimming pool and very lush landscaping. Next image, please. This is a more current photograph of the Hawaii Ana, and you can see it's still intact. The lava rock feature walls, the rooms that opened to the center courtyard, and the jealousy windows for ventilation. So these were just three of the buildings that Bauer had created in the first ten years of his firm, and they show the range of the kind of projects that he was able to do. Now, I would like to turn this over to Brandon Large, who's going to talk about the next image and the project that he's going to present. So this is the Awagwin, and I live here. My girlfriend and I purchased about a year ago, because we just fell in love with the lush landscape and the way the buildings were laid out and the sense of community that we felt there. This is an image of the sign at the entry off of Nehoe Street, and, well, I love the sign sitting right in front of the... Great graphics. Great graphics popped off the lava rock. It's a 48-unit two-story walk-up oriented around a courtyard, and it was built in 1956 and has remained pretty intact due to the efforts of a lot of people, including board members over the years that have really fallen in love with the property and chosen to keep it what it was. Next slide. So I'm just going to start with kind of the smallest bit, which is the module. This is something that Bauer had started earlier on with the Hawai'i Ana and probably a few other developments that he had worked on, and it's pretty straightforward. You have a living space, you have your wet areas, your kitchen, your bathroom in the middle, and then bedrooms off the back. This is on the first level, the ground floor, and you enter in from the front. You can see at the bottom of the screen, that's a photo of the windows in the front, the redwood jealousy. So when you close it, it's pitch black, but when you open it, it really lets the light in and also provides a nice amount of privacy, and then the back windows kind of translucent glass jealousies that let the light in also provide privacy. It's a pretty comfortable unit. It's concrete construction, the walls partitioning the different units are CMU, and all the infill walls are redwood tongue and groove. You can see also the kitchen there was they would close it off, and I think it's just kind of typical of the era to hide some of those things away, keep it nice and clean. Next slide. So on top of that, you have studios, and whereas the bottom level units, you would enter from the courtyard in the center in the middle. On these, you'll walk around the back and enter from the back. The thing that these have that the one bedrooms don't have are these kind of expansive lanais and these stackable shoji screen doors. You can see actually the first two images here of the Hwayana, and they're very, very similar if not identical to the ones at the Oahu and it's really nice. So you have the courtyard right off of the balcony, and it's kind of just a real lush, nice tropical experience, and he did a good job of bringing the outdoors indoor. You have that opportunity there. Next slide. So this is kind of the relation in section, so you can see and it has a butterfly roof, which is amazing. Pretty nice mid-century kind of typical form there, a lot of buildings of the modern era. The redwood jealousies kind of help to keep a lot of the sun out because the facade is pressed right up against the building's face. But then on the studio's upstairs you have kind of a nice overhang that helps to block the sun out, but also both units have great cross ventilation. And then the photo at the bottom there is just kind of the front facade of one of the buildings. It's interesting to note too how close this building's facade is to the Hwayana and those other projects that John had gone through previously. Yeah, yeah, very similar. In fact, the Hwayana is almost identical. I think some of the buildings seemed to, you know, on the second level, maybe the unit layout was a little bit different, but they also had the redwood jealousies, kind of Florida ceiling, even on the second level, I think on some of them, and then some had the balcony similar to this. Right. It seems like, yeah. Next slide. Kind of the more interesting thing to me and the reason why Rachel and I fell in love with this place, well, first off, it's very private and Makiki, you don't get a lot of that, typically. So there's a giant monkey prod tree right up in the front, and it serves not only as kind of a privacy screen from the road, but also a sound buffer. So it's not very loud. It's actually pretty quiet as far as the outside neighbors are concerned. There's four main buildings that are oriented around the pool, and it kind of encourages community and encourages interaction with their neighbors, which isn't typical of most condo or residential developments that you see nowadays, I don't think. And living there, it is like that. You get to know your neighbors pretty quickly, for better or for worse, but it's what it is. So the photos up on the screen, the top one is just me and some of my buddies hanging out at the pool. It's awesome. Nothing else to say about that. The center photo, you can kind of see how lush the landscape is. It's extremely tropical, and it feels like you're in Hawaii, it doesn't feel like you're anywhere else in the world. And the photo at the bottom is actually the Hwayana, and you can see the similarities in the layout, even just from that photo. And also the sense of community that even back then, I think Bower was really aiming for and hit the nail on the head. Next photo. So quick diagram just to illustrate some things that happen when you have a courtyard layout like this. One is that, so there's a sense of community, but you can also hear your neighbors. It's the place is meant to be open and to allow the wind to blow through and all of these things, but because of that you do end up hearing a lot of your neighbors, which isn't a bad thing if you have great neighbors, especially. But one thing that's really great about it is, especially in a place like Makiki, there's like constant surveillance on this courtyard, so you have really good passive security, which is kind of an added benefit that you don't really think about. So theft is actually really low here in comparison probably to some other areas. And then of course the cross ventilation, the just things you get from having a courtyard and not having these double loaded units right next to each other. You can get the air flowing right through no matter where you are on the property. Next slide. So just a little bit on sense of place, and Bauer really knocked it out with the Huayana, and I think he did it here too. And you can see how lush the gardens are and how tropical they are, but also just the textures on the buildings, the lava rock wall, the matchstick blinds, which are not only encouraged but mandated at the Oahu Inn. You can have any other type of blind because they want to make sure that this stays very tropical and true to the original intent of Edwin Bauer. And the texture of the redwood screens. Also he did things like, for instance, he specced a top of panel in each room. One of the few things he specced because it was pretty bare bones. Right. The interior were left fairly blank. I mean it was just a hotel room and everything, and then I think different people have outfitted them differently over the years, but what was left in there that he specified is it's pretty awesome. So that's actually, again, a photo of the Huayana, but it's pretty much exactly how he specced in his drawings, and it looks exactly the same. Couldn't tell the difference myself. Next slide. So this is our unit, and Rachel and I renovated it. We bought it a year ago, and we're actually still working on it. It's kind of probably never going to be over, but... Forever project. Yeah. But one thing that we felt was really important when we picked up the unit, one thing we fell in love with was that they still had the original bleach redwood walls as infill. So we wanted to change the layout a little bit, and it had been modified a bit. So we kind of took all the walls apart, and created a kit of parts, and then rebuilt it with the same materials because that was the thing that was so charming about the unit to us. And then, you know, exposed maybe some of the materials that he wasn't intending on exposing, like the concrete and whatnot, but, yeah, we really tried to push on that. And luckily I have a, Rachel's a great designer, and also an amazing ceramicist, so she made this sink here for us, and probably making a few others. We'll see how well this one works. What's great about what you guys have done with your unit is that, like you said, I've kind of taken it apart and put it back together, and left the integrity of what Bauer had done with the interiors of these spaces, and really tried to like celebrate and lean into that. I mean, these buildings are 60 years old, and so many people have, you know, painted over the bleach redwood, or just, you know, torn out all the old cabinetry and put in some, you know, millwork that just doesn't really work with the space. But, yeah, you guys definitely tried to lean into that. And it was important to us, we didn't want to change the layout, you know, that essentially it's the same. We wanted to, if not, just keep what Bauer had had originally. We wanted to maybe just adapt it a little bit for our personal needs, but still keeping the integrity of the space. So that was it, and that's it for this guy. Next slide then. Next. So this is kind of interesting, right? So the Guahuin was built in, was it 56? Yep. 56. And then the Makiki Inn, which is kind of down the street a little bit in Makiki still, built in 56, 57-ish area there. And then the Guahuin Tower, which is on the right there on the slide, was then built in 57. And so I kind of can't tell from these images, but the Guahuin Tower is sitting right next to the Guahuin. It's the one actually right on Makiki, and it has the Makiki Street address. Clever renderings. Clever renderings, yeah. You kind of don't see that. Everything looks like it's isolated in its own little lush garden. But the Makiki Inn, or rather, sorry, the Guahuin Tower, was kind of in this evolution of the same unit types for Bauer of the Guahuin and the Huayana and the breakers. And kind of an evolution of those, right? And at the same time, pointing out that the elevations of the tower are something that he used in some of his other buildings, particularly in the commercial building of the Continental Insurance Company on South King Street. So one of the things you can almost imagine people not realizing, he wasn't just doing these wonderful garden things. He was doing mid-rise buildings at the same time. So with that, this is a great lead-in to your project. Great. So this is actually, this is an advertisement for the Clea, which is the building that I live at. And it's great that you can kind of see the Guahuin was our first, the Makiki Inn was our second, and the Guahuin Tower was our third. And now the Clea, this is our fourth project together. And come see a developer's unit, see a model apartment, and check it out. So this is kind of a great evolution from Brandon's building, the Guahuin, down towards the Clea, which is a 1958 building. So next slide. So on the left of the image is the Guahuin plan. And you can see that it had the living room and the bedroom. And this is actually the first floor units. On the right is the Clea units. And so what Bauer has done here is he's taken some of the lessons that he learned on the Guahuin, and some of the lessons he's learned on the Guahuin Tower and kind of combined them. So there's the Breezeway Walkway, which you see on the bottom right of the slide here, with the louvered doors and everything. And that's kind of how you enter the unit. And then on the back, he actually added this lanai off the back, which is kind of what he did on the studios and the second floor units of the Guahuin. And so he's kind of added two kind of new spaces to the outside of this first floor unit. And it kind of increased that living space and increased the kind of privacy and kind of breathability of that unit. The interior layout is more or less the same closets and bathrooms and this tiny little kitchen and everything. So to go over the images, the image at the top right is the lanai off the back, jealousies or wood louvers and kind of a glass sliding door, so no soji panels on this one. The image in the middle is actually a vintage photo from the Kulia from back when it was being advertised. And then the image on the bottom is that breezeway. And so what's interesting here is that, and I think maybe this works almost better, and this was a learning lesson for Bauer, was that he only left that wood louvers on the bottom third of the elevation. And then the top two thirds is all glass. And so what that did was actually you can have blinds cover up the glass when you need your privacy, but you could also open up and let that light in all the time. And you can modulate the wind a bit more. So sometimes in the Oahu units, if you don't want the wind but you want the light, you're kind of stuck in this position where you maybe have half the wind and the louvers open and half them don't. And also it's great because 50, 60 years later of seeing people retrofit these units, you now see kind of a typical thing that people do is they'll actually only put the curtains in that middle third because that's really where people are walking by. And you don't want to have people looking directly in your units, but then you get that top third of light, that middle third of privacy and kind of diffused light. And then that bottom third, you still get the ventilation through. So it works really well and kind of a nice lesson that Bauer has learned. Next slide. So what that unit does now, because you have basically these two outdoor spaces on the front and the back of it, you now have a very symmetrical building where you can kind of stack all of these right next to each other and you have these long horizontal bands that wrap around each side of this kind of long apartment building. And it's great because they're really kind of sculptural in its form, right? There's rectangular mass that holds the actual living space, but then these long horizontal bands, which really just kind of add to the layers and the texture of the building and kind of make a very nice shadow line on everything. Well, it produces a great band of black and white, void, solid, it's a really an artist looking at what he can do with architecture. Definitely. Yeah, and it's something that you really see in 3D even the whole building is together, but in the plans, you kind of can't read that yet, quite yet, but so this is kind of the evolution of the Wallowen Tower and how he's turned it into a kind of a different model. So the next slide. But then Bauer was known for these two-story walk-ups that kind of centralized around a little center garden or a pool or kind of this communal living space. So these are a couple of different projects. So there's the Hawaii Anna that is on the top right, that kind of the older rendering there, which is something that John talked about earlier. That next image right below it in the black and white was the Oahu Inn. So again, these kind of units that centralized around a pool. And then the project on the bottom right is the White Sands Hotel in Waikiki. Yes, and it's in the news right now because it's been announced that a overall renovation is going to be done for the White Sands Hotel. It's one of Bauer's buildings again from the 1950s. And it was, without naming them, we think the new owners are very sensitive to what Bauer did. And I actually had a chance to walk through the White Sands property with the new owners and talk about what Bauer would have been doing in that period. And I think it's going to come off as another great tribute to Bauer. And so we hope so, yeah. Well, and so then the kind of the larger image on the left there is kind of a close-up rendering from the advertising renderings for the Kalia Hotel in Waikiki. And really it's kind of focusing on, again, you have this little courtyard space, this communal space centered around a pool and a garden. But now instead of a two-story or three-story walk-up, it's a 14-story tower. So pretty interesting that he tried to still kind of keep that cluster organization and all of its benefits that Brandon had talked about at the O'ahuam, but now in a tower format. So next slide. So here's a kind of a far away shot. And this is actually a postcard that they used to sell back at the Kalia when it was a apartment hotel back in 50, 58. You can see that this was an actual postcard. So someone crossed out the unit that they lived in there. That's what the little X is. But so instead of the O'ahuam Tower, where it's just the one tower, the Kalia has three towers. And they're all kind of on this triangular lot and kind of share either a pool space or a garden space. And he was able to pull the parking to the backside of the property and kind of really hide it from the street. So then it's got this great street funnage and really capitalizes on all the open space. But I mean, this is the corner of Anna and Hobron in Waikiki, and you don't get that open space anymore. And it feels so private too. It does. It's like your own private resort. It's wonderful actually. And before we leave that slide, we should point out that the painting of the building has started. Right, right. So over the course of its 60 year life, people have different times of maintaining the building. They have repainted and repainted this building. So more kind of a drab or less saturated color scheme. So actually we went back and because it's been 10 years since our last paint job, we were like, hey, let's try to return it back to these original colors. So we did our research and tried to figure out if they actually did these colors or not. And sure enough, if we go to the next slide, you can see here in the top photo, there they are, the blue elevator towers kind of create these nice bookends at the center in the middle of the cluster of the property. And then the kind of browner, grayer, kind of rectangular masses for the apartment buildings themselves and then these nice white horizontal bands with a nice kind of deep shadow line right behind them. So it kind of creates a really striking composition there. Break the Sea of Beige. Yeah, break the Sea of Beige, exactly. But thankfully Waikiki Special District was totally for returning things back to their original intent. And it's great that we were able to find these 59, 60s photos. On the bottom image, it's kind of awesome to see the context of Waikiki at the time. So again, this is across from what is now the Hilton Hawaiian Village. But in the photo at the bottom on the left side, you see this little parabolic roof, that's the Waikiki Inn by Pete Wimberley, which was believed done in 56. Then you also see the Kaiser Dome, an old Buckminster Fuller dome project that was built in a week or something like that was how it's publicized, which was built in 59. So that gives a date for when these photos were. And I mean, you think about it, right? This is right now a 14-story building. And it's one of the tallest buildings in Waikiki and this in these images. So really, Bauer was cutting edge, says 10 years into his career, he was trying to do something really, it's a huge endeavor to build three big buildings. Of course, now they're the shortest buildings in the area, so it's kind of ironic. And those two great other mid-century masterpieces are gone, but next slide. So like Brandon had talked about, and John had talked about that Bauer was really trying to bring in these kind of Hawaiian senses of places and kind of these motifs and these different details that really brought it back. These are very modern and very economic buildings that he built, but he still has these elements that bring things back and kind of let you know that you're in Hawaii. So not only did the lush tropical gardens and the pools and everything help you bring that kind of sense of place, but he found places to bring in rock walls. In the lobby, we've got this great shadow block that kind of looks like a diamond top of pattern. And in that center image there, there's actually some tiles in the lobby that have this great hand-painted top of pattern on it. And then throughout there's this great Hawaiian, almost like primitive artwork on the walls that's this great wood panels of people paddling and everything and fish in different areas and put in the public spaces. And then the units themselves still have that matchstick shoji screens on the interior closets and louvered doors and mahogany and redwood. So different ways to kind of bring in this Hawaiian sense of place. I need to point out that we're getting close to. Okay, next slide. Just talking too much. No, it's great. Here's the interior of the space again. And you can see that it's very similar to the other units that Bauer had done. We go to the next slide. So this is kind of what I've done since then. These units have been remodeled so many times that we're trying to bring our unit back to what was not only originally intended, but also kind of adding on to the Bauer vocabulary. And then next slide. So this is kind of where we're at now. We're talking about these two buildings and 50, 60 years later, we're both living them now and kind of the integrity of these have held up over 60 years. No, it's just a great chance to really look carefully at these incredible projects that he did. So it really helps expand what we're trying to do is let the world know that Bauer did an amazing set of projects in his relatively short time as an architect in Hawaii. And so great. I think one of the things I wanted to do is make sure that we let everybody know that Don Hibbert is going to be speaking in two weeks about Hartwood. And that's going to be the next of the mid-century modern program. All right. Great. Thank you. Yes. I think one of the things too, just to go back, we're still researching all of the buildings that we can find of what Bauer's been up to. So we keep finding more and more. He did so much in about a 25 to 30 year period and we're quite lucky to have a chance to also live in some of the buildings. Good. Well, thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here.