 to have you back to this our second time, looking at an exciting proposal for the rebuilding of Lahaina. So this is Think Tech for Wise Human Humane Architecture, the 307th episode, and you are the accumulated viewer which you see down there. Us is you, DeSoto Brown, in your Oskar Poff's designed diamond head home, and you are otherwise the Bishop Museum Historian, hi DeSoto. Good day to everyone. Myself Martin Despang, and we have the other Martin, I'm Celini Garcia-Rais with us, here back in Honolulu, hi Martin. Hello. Great, so last time we were throwing out an appetizer of your great proposal for what one could and should do as we think in Lahaina, and it's the process and the product of only a few weeks into the semester where you are with us in your D-ARC degree coming up to my team. So, and maybe this time while the slides are walking through, again, DeSoto, you made a comment about viewership. You wanna, we should open this up to everyone, to you, our viewers. Yeah, so I wanted to point out that many times on Human Humane Architecture, we do multi-part shows, or we do shows that have one, two, or three or more sequences in the entire story. So there are previous shows. We've done one previous show on this particular subject. So if this is something you're interested in and the reconstruction of Lahaina and the various proposals and the particular proposals we're gonna be talking about, then I urge you to, we all urge you, to look for the previous shows and keep in mind that there will be shows after this one too for you to check out. So it isn't just one isolated show. Be aware that there are other ones that you'll wanna look for if you wanna pursue this subject and be informed about it, which I think a lot of people do because the Lahaina story is still very relevant, is gonna be ongoing for a number of years into the future. So as the discussion continues as to how Lahaina can and should be rebuilt, this is something to keep in mind. There are a lot of different proposals and this is one that has particularly unique aspects to it that it's good to be informed about. So we urge you to look for the other shows we're gonna be doing on this as well as the one we've already previously done. And we say this because if we look at the viewers that you were in the past, rightly so, your very first one, the soda when you went there and looked for us and shared that, that had 2,000 viewers, then you did a second half of that that only had 300. And last week, we had only 50. And we're not worried about things to you, Jay. We don't have to worry about how many watch us as far as the existence, but it is kind of sad because there's a certain sensationalist aspect to what we are watching these days when things are really sad and mad, we watch them. And then once there are things who can prove that sadness, there's actually less attention and it should actually be the reverse. So keep listening to us brainstorming here. The responses we had, Martin, do your proposal were good? And I would summarize them by saying, well, this is fantastic versus the other end of that was when people were saying, well, this is just fantasy. So it's somewhere in between. And once we have shown everything here, once this has been running through, we go back to specific ones and up in the range of slide 20 and ongoing, it's actually about credentials and where we come from literally and figuratively. And we specifically and intentionally didn't want to start that way. As we usually do, we say, well, this is you, Martin, and this is where you come from. This is your previous experience and expertise and these are your degrees and they qualify you because we think it's not about that. It's actually about the proposal, the suggestion itself. But then when people are getting excited as they do in saying, this is fantastic, then the second reaction or the other end of it, the fantasy is then saying, well, wait a minute, is this even possible? So we should talk a little bit more about that you are not just a student, we're actually all students, in best case of life, all lives, we should be continuing to learn. But you have been, which we in the academe, a little bit of an odd terminology or label is non-traditional student because you've been around and explain and share a little bit with us since when and what you've been doing and then when we've been had this running through the slide 23 and 24 is explaining where I've been and just the last couple of days where you were broadcasting from in New Orleans and in Detroit. But again, say where you come from and I want to chip in already that you just didn't start, you have significant building not just sort of imagining but actually executing experience. Yeah, thank you again. Thank you again for inviting me here. I don't want to stop thanking for that because it's great to be able to share some thoughts. I am kind of on the crossroads between academia where I have worked in several aspects in Colombia with applied research. I am more into applied research. I was teaching in Colombia, I was teaching in India, I was directing the School of Architecture of the University in Borotá. Then I have my studio that's still the project of our hours like 23, our project that I've developed with the studio is a small practice, a very hands-on. We don't do too much profit out of it but it's a very beautiful platform to explore and to provide like arguments for the things that we talk about. And then I have been working with the city government and with Borotá, who's an NGO that is in aspects related to basically to territorial planning and management of urban projects mainly in the city of Borotá where I was born. So I have been managing a very beautiful project. This is the project that I feel more proud about is the first funicular line of Borotá on which, apart from the funicular line as a public transportation line, there were many, many projects along it like cultural centers, public facilities, parks, libraries, a museum of the informal settlements and some others. So I have been working in those projects. Now I am arriving to Hawaii and this happened. The day that I was flying, arriving to Hawaii and I was on top of Maui, the fires were taking place. I knew them. I got the news from people writing me from Colombia. What happened? What is happening? Are you okay? Yes, it was in another night and no problem for my case but yes, it is a drama. In Colombia we're very used to dramas, every kind of drama, flooding, fires, earthquakes, violence, poverty, blah, blah, blah. So we are creative in that sense. I have been developing projects and probably and just getting into our discussion. Today's discussion is we have to think about creative way of resettling, of rebuilding. The past growing cities of the developing world are probably our biggest challenge in terms of planning in the future. And here we have a very dramatic situation compared to other problems such as tsunamis and there is a lot of knowledge. There is a lot of actors. There will be probably economical resources compared to other cases. So here we can be creative. We should be creative and just to finish here I think the first thing that we have to or the first thing that we have to think about is first. We have to care about the people that is living there. Le Haine is not a museum. Le Haine is a city, a settlement where people live. And it is these people that will rebuild Le Haine on a, let's say, bottom up way. And so we have to think about this vibe, this vibe that has to be rebuilt the only way of rebuilding it is from the everyday life of the people that is living there. And the other aspect is we can't be creative. We should be creative. We cannot think about rebuilding even if vernacular architecture probably could be our inspiration. We should not try to recreate vernacular elements from Le Haine. We should not build an ultra corporate contemporary, artificial, Disney-ficated city. But we have to, of course, to be active, to invest and to do it fast, of course. But taking care about ideas and how people is really living there about digital nomads, about tourists, and of course about the settlers that still live there. Yeah, if we can get slide, because we're almost through here at 31, then back when we're through, which we're almost. And I want to pick up on your not for profit attitude, which is, of course, important because everyone is afraid. People are taking advantage of the misery of other ones. But we have been saying again that, and we read that architectural offices are donating their service. And I have been almost by accident invited over to beach property houses of principles of large firms here. And we have been virtually the Soto in Ron Lindgren's house, which is very modest and moderate. So along these lines, I think, again, it's important to say there is empathy and there is an altruist approach and attitude. But then you can mean well and still, what you do is not helpful. And that's how I feel. And I use the analogy of skins that we're on or address code, addressing code that I believe what's been done right now with these emergency shelters. And we have Stanley Chang's newsletter that comes in at the right time. It came in a little earlier here, so a little bit more time looking at it. But it feels like I'm donated winter clothes that people give that you actually don't need here. All you need is umbrella to metaphorically speaking and maybe more than metaphorically speaking, right? So now they were saying, well, there's a lady here who has been helping the homeless. And she was saying, her name is Cummings. I think the remote Cummings. And again, meaning well and just great empathy and saying, I want to do more semi-permanent ones with square footages between 250 and 600, which is more than the tiny house, which is also only 100. For that matter, we have been throwing out a long time ago the cargo cork at Cabana's, right? Having medicine come back from where they moved to, they came from transportation, as you said, you came also from. And then they moved to housing for the Royal Hawaiian Museum for people coming here and visiting hospitality housing, so to speak. And then they went basically away from that and they went back to where they came from with shipping but shipping containers. So we can ask them to come back to where they went to, which is the housing. And you will have the 320 inside, 320 outside. You use as many as you have and you have a little community that basically has that. So, and they are way more human and humane as the nature of the show because you're not in a winter clothes. You're actually under an umbrella in a more sort of traditional, still tectonical way. But your proposal is moving above and beyond. It's still rooted. It's still literally and figuratively rooted and it's growing out of the ground. But then it's making itself free and in a more, which Bachman Stofolo called it, tensegrity way. So using tensile systems while its foundation is still based on more a gravity system, right? So people might, so in this discussion of the mindset, people might say, well, where in the world is our bedroom? Where is our free bedroom house that we have lost? We don't see this here. This is not for us at all. This is not for us to live in. So I think we have to go back to the, I was, you know, on my way to the Hale Kalani and later I want us to talk about these here, which is my finding of the day. Hi to Ron Lindgren, our mid-century modern master and a sign of hope what happens in your Hale Kalani as of this morning. But I also saw in the Outrigger Reef next door, I saw a staff hauling in a couch that came from somewhere else. And let us go to slide 20 for that provocation because the system you used here, and if we go to slide 20, we see what's going on, this one here, because we had a very, very heated discussion based upon your reporting to Soto, actually where you said, well, wood burned away and steel and concrete stayed. So the logic way would say, oh, then we go to steel and concrete. So why maybe not, guys? Let's discuss this. Yeah, I was going to say that there are so many considerations in this entire procedure of rebuilding. And there are just, it's endless in terms of the infrastructure, in terms of the individual housing units, et cetera. Parteen, I would enjoy it if you could give a very quick overview of what your proposal is, because I know it is related to trees, and I know that trees are integral to it, but I also don't know a lot of the specifics. And you're not talking about using concrete and steel, you're talking about emulating how trees grow, and using that as sort of the foundation for the entire thing. And I would appreciate knowing more about what you specifically are proposing. And I'd ship in, as already said, we were debating steel and concrete. And this is in flux. This is not set in stone anyways, not. Although using lava as a building material is part of this here too, of the tensegrity part. So let's, I'm just saying, this is not saying this is, this is continuing to debate what should it be. Yes. My pain. Yes. No, again, to the same argument of things will stand if they are well built and appropriated by communities. So it doesn't matter if we build out of wood, if the building is working properly, it will be well maintained, well kept. One of the things that Martin made me realize is that here in the U.S., we have a very strong culture of wood construction that we should keep. And also many buildings that were built out of concrete and brick were destroyed. And we will have to rebuild them again. So wood is a good material that could be cultivated here. So less carbon to produce it, local economies thriving. And then the three structure shape, maybe if we go to the previous slide, 19 and then 18, first 19, the basic idea is simple, it's to recreate the structure of a tree in terms of structure, the form of the structural form, let's say, that have proved to be very successful. In terms of how it is kept. So building trees as a macro structure that provides shelter, resiliency, and the main services, including fire resistance and fire treatments, sprinklers and so on. Then we can inhabit those spaces in a more, let's say, let's call it organic way. We have to remember that the threat of Leaina and in general the entire world is not just fires. Also earthquakes and also in the case of Leaina, the whole Hawaii is flooding. We have a big menace with flooding. So we have to think about these structures that provide resiliency for people and then let the people inhabit it as they want and get appropriated for that. Just to finish, the proposal, and here we can see it good, is to generate a second ground floor. So in the case of a flood, just the vernacular houses in Colombia, in Cambodia, in floodable areas, have two floors. The first floor is let's call it the summer floor and then in the flooding season, the ground floor floods and then people goes up. So here we can think about that and we can think about having this second floor, which is a new ground floor, where people can cultivate, generate their food and live in the moment of whenever they want. They can do a barbecue, they can, I mean, you have a garden on top of your head. And then we also, in the case of a flood or whatever, we can go up. Of course, this mass of trees, soil and roots, we also generate thermal resistance for heat when you are living downstairs. Yeah. And if we go to 21, and this gets me back to the exciting news of the Halicolani here. So this is plastic and you just said, keep me one for my archiving and I will. This is plastic and I was always worried about the people coming, grabbing a coffee, grabbing one of these, stirring it once or twice and throwing it away. And I said, don't you guys get it? I thought it, I should have said it. Right out there, a few feet further the ocean as of this morning, we have high tide and it's really angrily aggressively pounding against the silly attempts to keep it away. This is ending up in that and this is causing everything. So that's the problem with steel. Steel is very highly carbon embodied and it has been mined out of the earth and other parts not here because we don't do this. It's on the mainland or in China predominantly. A concrete industry we have, but as of now, at least for commercial use, we have not substituted the cement. So these are high carbon materials that we might think they might save us, but that's a short-minded, single-minded, kind of isolated view, right? Because in the bigger things, they fuel the problems. And if we debate what caused it, at least we can probably agree on that the high winds, you know, fueled it. So that is one of the problems. So to make you feel better on behalf of everyone else, because you were saying, right? So you were like the people's, you know, eye and voice and saying, well, wood is a problem, goddess and danger was about to kill us and the other ones maybe we could have survived, but not in the bigger thing and sin. So this is showing here too, when we have our Boston-Banish booster, met no blackback to the left is a project that Banish did out of solid timber to the right is the solid wood school we did for the disabled children here. So, and it says, don't be afraid of solid timber because it is almost the opposite. It has almost nothing to do with the wood that we know and that, you know, was so detrimental in Lahaina because this is like matches in a matchbox. But what we're talking about is a solid trunk of a tree and, you know, where you the Soto Auto identified and said, well, that actually has in part survived the trees, you know, and even the Banyan tree and other trees that we keep reporting good news on that side. So we are a solid timber at the top right. You see my dear mentor, Julius Natura, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago. He was at the ATH in Lausanne in Switzerland. And he is the pope of solid wood construction and especially side nail timber. And if we go back to 21 more time, I also want to say hi to Christian back. Hi, Christian. We propose, we promised you that we're going to propose hope with your system of the ligno lock, which is a wooden dowel, a system that through friction welding, which is basically doing this, you shoot a wooden dowel into wood and it mechanically fastens it. And I hopefully it's okay for your Christian to share that you come from something else that is that is less responsible with just being the monopolist and fastening with metal clamps and, you know, like staples, stapling things like pellets and stuff like that, the quickest fastest, you know, and you started to think about the ethics behind that, both from a materialist point of view, both from a management point of view, and you felt bad and you had basically your people and Stefan Siemers, your R&D director, developed something to make up to be good. And this is the dowel. So it's a little bit similar to what the Holly Kalani just did, you know, these days and thinking, well, we've been doing this for the longest time, but that we cannot continue to do this. We have to change and we have to do this. So I think this is a good comparison, Christian, and I like to have your opinion on that. We should have you on the show as well. So anyways, but this is again, sharing with you what you, Martin, have been and we're three minutes away from the end of this one here. So it's already clear we have to pick up from there. But again, in the remaining few minutes, I want to again keep the discussion going. So DeSoto, when you asked you, Martin, to explain, this is a different a different dwelling, right? And we should dwell on that for a little more for the remaining minutes. How is that? Why is there no where the where is the bedrooms? Why are they not there? And how do I sleep? And why is that different? Why does it have to be different, Martin? Basically, because every, let's call it the family unit or every group of people is different. I mean, the idea of the four or five people, family, mom, dad, two kids is completely vanished. Every group is different. Now we live and this will be more and more and more. Even tourists, I was talking about tourists, digital nomads, every household is different. There are people that will live their whole life there. There are people that will come for one week, for two days, for one month. This is good for the comfort to work in the summer. I mean, living is organic more and more. And even the more the more static houses are changing. So if we face that and we provide a structure that can be and receive different groups, as we see in the image, one single person, two people, three people, 20 people in a more communitarian way of living, we will be able to attend every different person. Because the number of three bedrooms, Stanley's newsletter was also reiterating what we have been throwing in last week into your required requested slide with the Ulu trees, the Soto, the $3,000 for a studio that some people offer as the profit from that one. So the three bedrooms and the three thousands, they are a problem. Do we want to return to that? And you say no. And so you're also thinking about the construction process, the construction management as a participatory process, that with steel, we actually not only import the material that is very carbon loaded, but we also import the labor, which puts our people out of labor. And with concrete, we also have an industry. So it's actually not us taking care of us, we have to outsource. So cutting out these middleman is another aspect of basically returning to actually something that many of the working class people never had, it's to a more free life. And on that note, we're at the end of these exciting 28 minutes to pick up from here again next week with the three of us. So please join us again. And until then, please stay very empathetically, fantastic, fantastically empathic. Bye-bye.