 Welcome back to another human-humane architecture show here in downtown Honolulu, our urban fabric. We have the fourth largest skyline in the United States of America, 462 high-rises. This show I've been thinking about might actually be my most challenging one but also maybe my most relevant one. And I'm sitting here by myself, usually I have a guest, and I have a guest with me as well today but I have him in my mind. And if Zurich could show picture number one we see today's guest who is sort of virtually and spiritually with us. And his name as in the announcement his name is Jeff. And he would say well what's his last name and I have to say I don't know. And my excuse would be I don't have to know because sometimes people close to you in an urban fabric are neighbors and so is Jeff. And you don't necessarily need to know their names, their last names, you know their first names and that's enough to communicate with them. So Jeff is a neighbor, I'm a resident of Waikiki which is our tourist epicenter in our metropolis of Honolulu. And I got to know Jeff a while ago when I was going to the beach and taking a shower. And because the shower was clocked you know frequently with with sand he put himself to work and cleaned the shower for us. And we all knew Jeff doing that and whenever he wasn't working he just you know relaxed and recharged for his other shift. And at some point Jeff was gone and we were all worried. And at some point I saw him again and I approached him and he said well city people came and asked him to go away because he wasn't authorized to clean the shower. So I guess that was that. And made me think already you know if some you know informed and engaged citizens volunteer their their time and their their work why wouldn't we want to accept that because actually the city people aren't cleaning the showers often enough which was the reason to begin with to have Jeff basically volunteer. I met Jeff again a while later where he talked more about himself and his life which really touched me and I'm really hoping at some point we can get Jeff on the show and he can talk about that himself and so I want I want to steal the show today. I was very touching Jeff then found another job and this here is maybe even next picture series as well shows it even more activated. This is this is Jeff at work. His work place is at the corner of Kapahulu and Kalakaua. Maybe setbacks in the pavement and Jeff thought this is a good place to start some business. Soon after he did that some people from the business behind which you can you already saw in the back it's an ABC store basically came and approached him to go away once again he was not the rise to have a business there. And so I started to have a discussion with the building manager of Park Shore hotels usually very interesting and he was saying he was happy to talk to me because usually he only has discussions with people who only see one side. The tourist he holds only want to see they don't want to see Jeff they only want to see the ABC store and he thinks are they you know that's that's the approach of the management and so or the the people who do businesses like that you know don't want to hear about anything else so this is conflict and and so we were talking and saying we understand both sides so we tried to to mitigate at that time I'd started to ask Jeff if he would be okay to be on a show and he was getting very excited about it and it was around Mother's Day he started to you saw the if you can bring the picture back he saw the planters and he started to plant additional plans once again ABC employees probably not on their own initiative but you know being told to came out and asked him once again to stop doing that it happened to be Mother's Day so I happen to come around he was happy to see me he basically said you know this is the guy I'm doing this for because I want to look good here my business because it's going to be shown on TV and at that point it dawned to me there was a little absurd that there is someone trying to plant a plant in a planter and once again is told he's not supposed to and I exchange the thoughts with the ABC people and later on with the Park Shore manager and so these are I think you know things that we you know he he does he blends in right he he tries to fit in he tries to integrate himself all these terms into into our life but it's given a hard time I like to make a cut here and switch over to a project and that starts with picture number three and this is a collaboration between myself as a critical practitioner as an architect and teaming up with the emerging generation of architectural students this is a product of a class I'm teaching every spring I'm privileged to teach up at UH and you see at the very bottom the names of the team and you see this picture tries to capture you know this show is really about principally to say this is the most beautiful place on earth we're blessed and nature is stunning and that that's what that top row of a slice of a bamboo grove illustrates and you know the point of the show is why isn't there a built environment equally beautiful and we want to investigate that and it's actually in all honesty that's how Jay our boss here approached me says Martin your your projects need to be more exposed they they need to get out there and we potentially even need them to become reality so this particular project here tries to say why can't we create dwellings places where we can live in harmony and taking advantage of the beauty of our very special place here in Hawaii so this picture here is a suggestion you know it's just like my question is wouldn't you like to be in there and hopefully some of you would say oh that looks good it's just what we need we obviously see nature we're blended with nature we see human activity and we see some shelter you know but we just see a roof pretty much we don't other everything else is pretty open and the next picture number five is is showing once again this human activity an event so this building if it even can be called building isn't worried about how it looks like it's it cares about how it how it works and this is like you know we live we're dominated by Asian culture here I should say influenced and informed inspired and this you know basically is inspired by that dwells upon that literally and figuratively so you have to tell me Mets and builds in and you integrate things into the floor and you know at the at the boundaries of the periphery you have some more enclosed space which could accommodate for human activities in the van that are more temporary as bathroom a bedroom but mainly you live once again outside we call this the ideal Ohana type we know that we're very family based here and with a high cost of living being a challenge you know the more people can live together the more we can share resources and and also real estate space so the next picture looks at it from the outside and you know you really see you're kind of curious what you see and that's it's it looks more like texture and that's one of the phrases we use that we take maybe here in Hawaii could be architecture versus architecture architecture is hard and static and it's really had to put in the term easy breezy architecture so maybe a bamboo grove landscape plants are dynamic their life they're beautiful to look at but they're also beautiful to be in and under so that's what this sort of human shelter here tries to be inspired by our next picture is about is about community that it's maybe you know the most important part that if we live here and we don't have to be trapped inside we can take advantage off the outdoors and we should be out and about and maybe we shouldn't be afraid of each other to see each other if I learned once at a building called City Council meeting that how it wig who is a co-host of mine with this great show called green and we had him a guest on this show just very recently had had once one of the members of the committee talked to me and saying you know Martin she the problem with we have with invasive architecture that's hermetic might be a social problem because we stopped accepting that we can hear each other at certain times and so we build it up walls and when we were building up walls we couldn't breathe anymore so we brought in the machine which we traditionally call air conditioning to help with that so he made the point that it's a more than a mechanical problem or more than a human comfort problem it initially is a social problem so this project thinks about getting back to the roots of living outdoors of using you know maybe lowering our voice when you know we don't want to have anyone hearing us but also using vegetation as a mitigator that's the way we used to live how it always puts that out and we might be worth look looking back into that and this picture illustrates even more that the architecture wouldn't even be in your face it would be in the background would be background architecture maybe it's not even architecture it's just texture as said before it's it's blending in something that has structure and so as nature as you see you know here illustrated by by the team here this was Philippa who's from Chile so this was a very intercultural team so it wasn't only comprised of you know people our school our classes are very diverse so so Philippa very masterly everyone else as well illustrated the sort of very gentle blending in smooth way of dwelling there that the architecture has structure it has texture so as nature has but they're kind of in line with each other they're kind of learned from each other but none of the two you know wants to be like the other one or look like the other one this picture here is for me the best situation to talk about maybe the most provocative project and very had subtitled you know this year as nomadic dwelling before and here we go again thank you so nomadic means that we the the western civilization say the relation thinks about I need to be permanent I need to own I need to occupy I need to occupy a land but maybe not Hawaiian culture to my understanding the concept of ownership didn't exist to begin with everything was shared it was inclusive which is another term we show as a title here here we go and so maybe going back to that and you know if not everything is permanent but more dynamic maybe buildings don't have to be either once you set them in stone you brought them in concrete I have to last and it's hard for them to go away in the concept of capitalism that's very kind of problematic so this project here is is suggested to be like a flash mob concept that these buildings can basically pop up they pop up unexpectedly at a corner at a free lot that we actually have plenty which for ever reasons haven't been sort of used to densify the city so we can maybe use these lots temporarily and just built these structures you can come you can come and and put them up and how are we gonna do that I'm gonna talk about that after the short break so see you back soon to human humane architecture and Jeff's show Aloha everyone I hope you've been watching think that how I but I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you mahalo Aloha my name is Danelia D A N E L I A and I'm the other half of the duo John Newman we are the co-host of keys to success which is live on think tech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha Aloha Aloha my name is Richard Emory and I host condo and cider we talk about issues facing the condo association throughout Hawaii and talk about solutions when you think about it about one-third of our population lives in some form of common interest real estate we broadcast every Thursday at 3 p.m. please to end tune in and thank you Aloha welcome back to think tech wise human humane architecture today speaking on behalf of Jeff and myself we talk about a project here that before the break I called the flash mob approach and so these buildings would pop up they they're structured in a way that a crane can assemble them very easily in a couple of hours or a few days it can deassemble then it can reassemble them so that is something that is maybe of potential and that's how they would look like so I hope you agree that maybe the owner of the project wouldn't have to be opposed to that because this is not a I for this is maybe something pleasant and maybe could bring attention to the lot and maybe that way we're living in a capitalized society can raise the property values so when the owner decides to permanently been on the building or he decides which he decides to keep that they could move on so that's the approach and once again we see we see enlightened outdoor space that is framed by and then hold up by some semi enclosed space the next picture then shows that you know this this and it looks it even looks you know fancy it's glowing it's attractive there's something compelling about it but at the at daytime if you go to Zurich to pitch 12 to picture 12 we can see that they look very nondescript and and then blend in very much they almost look like trees artificial trees you you could say so very very different approach to architecture maybe even a non architectural approach yet they're very tectonic and yeah so is very if you can go to page 12 again try that there we go so they even look like trees and if if you have an abstract perception of it by the way that class is called tree detectors so we try to think about how can we design with how nature thinks and since we're human beings they won't look like trees because trees are trees and architectures architecture but the principle of nature as being self-sufficient and the synthesis of performance and form we try to take inspiration from so here you see our artificial trees behind natural trees this is a suggestion for school street very far out there where the neighborhood is kind of challenge so this gives an indication that these could be occupied could be occupied by people who are otherwise cut out by society and dwellings but they look very desirable at least we think in nature as you can see in the little sprinkling green is integrated is infused so there's like gardening there's agriculture that's that's self-performed integrated into the building if you can move on to the next picture Zuri that is that is showing yet it's it's a very compact and dense environment so it's capitalizing on on density just like nature does and the next page Zuri that's sort of the overview the bird's eye view of it that yet you have a lot of building you have you can you can put a lot of people in there but the fuzzy stuff in the middle is the greenery so we use vegetation which we have plenty and nowhere in the world the places I have been lived in Nebraska I lived in Arizona nothing other stuff that we have here the green stuff grows here around so this is something this is the capital that we should capitalize on so so this is this is that and the next page is me finally revealing sort of what is this made of because we live here in Hawaii with a scarcity of resources for the for the demand we have which you know is housing shortage big times we don't have anything on the island that we can provide housing so usually we build houses out of concrete here a lot of concrete that makes buildings feel hot or we ship material in from the Pacific Northwest of the mainland which is wood gets termite treated it comes here by the time the wood comes here there's nothing sustainable a very little sustainable about it and then we got to put a tarp over it every 10 years and blow poison into it to keep the termites out so and then it costs tremendously too much money so this is approaching here to say maybe we take stuff we have and I started the very bottom you know this is the picture illustrates we have one wood species that's invasive albecia trees we all know them from here they come down when the wind picks up and storms and they block the roads and take down power lines so we all say we need to replace them with native plants but then we should take advantage and use that kind of wood and here it's supposed to implement a wood enhancement process that is called from the modified wood so we process the wood and we use the wood we don't use the wood for structural things so whenever in the pictures before everything looks very soft and glowing and warm that's the part of the wood it's not structural so even then when the termite gets to it it won't be a significant problem is a minor problem and wood can be replaced and should be replaced you know in intervals and that could all be done pretty much with sweat equity by the people themselves the picture above that is that if you look at building components all the new high rises they go up they have invasive guard rails and guard rails are the things by a code three feet high making sure no one falls off it was actually a tragic incident just yesterday in Alamoana where some of the guard rates came down and unfortunately killed one person and hurt one other one so our default is a mainland approach it's an invasive approach to guard rails they have glass wise glass bad for that reason first of all needs to be shipped in high carbon footprint but the other maybe more important reason is one that we block the trades off because glass is not transparent it you know or it's not it's not permeable it is transparent correct myself that's not permeable so the wind cannot go through so when you remember the pictures before you hardly saw any guard rail inside and outside seemed to blur into each other so we're proposing to repurpose fission nets unfortunately fissures have or the industry has switched to a plastic material and that never goes away doesn't buy it a grade so lots of sea animals neighbors get stuck in there and die in a very tragic way if you haven't seen the movie plastic paradise please do so and you will be shocked and you will be sympathetic of this approach to actually make the fishing industry go back to buy degradable fissure net and give us the plastic ones and we use them as guard rail where the wind can go through and also you know our our kids because they're curious they don't stop at three feet they go on a stool and want to be curious and then they're endangered this one is going to covering the whole surface so you can just set your kids free and tell them to go crazy the last part the top picture is the main component and even here in the last picture on the on the previous slide I call it cargo steel because only here on this slide I finally reveal what it is and it's something that I didn't say before intentionally because it gets stigmatized because the projects that we have built with them so far I allow myself to say haven't been successful this is shipping containers so our structure is shipping containers I prefer to not say it that way or on the at the very end because we don't make anyone live in the container we live in the space that we create between the containers in open lanays only our bathrooms and restrooms are in the containers so the next page the next last five minutes I'm going to dedicate to what does this have to do with with Jeff and this is Jeff back to work and he's actually back to work today although he shouldn't be at work because he's seriously sick and I'm very worried about him but he couldn't come here and he said I have to work I have no money I need this so he can't even take time off he can't take sick time so he's out there again I'm speaking on behalf of him because at one point I have shown Jeff the project and I said you know Jeff whenever we talk about the underprivileged about the underdogs about the proletariat who have a challenge finding a home or I say a roof like him would you be willing to move in there it's different and I explained to him why different and he basically said count me in so I in this show I have hopefully done a good job to avoid a couple of terms that I think are overrated or inflated are sort of hijacked by certain industries and movements and one of the term is homeless homeless would be the traditional term what Jeff is but we wanted to make sure that we call this show differently significantly different we call it home full because Jeff has a home and his home is Waikiki and we're his neighbors and if we make sure he has to eat and he has to drink in a place to stay Jeff is fine and that is not the case but it should be the case so again Jeff as you can tell is an inspiration for me that if we're willing to do unconventional ways if we allow to think outside of the box and this sounds funny because you know the project might have come across as very boxy to you because it's a nature of a shipping container it's a box but if we put it together not to say we got a stuff and get homeless stuck in there but we think about these sort of unconventional contemporary abundant building materials and we put them together in a poetic composed way that is not thought sort of architecturally superficially surfacially but it's thought of substantially that we think from inside out rather than outside in so we don't care how the building looks like the building would look like the way it feels good and that's that's a play to ye and once again I hope we can have Jeff on the show and talk more about who he is and where he comes from it's fascinating again he couldn't come today I'm worried about him because he's he's not well but he gave me permission to speak on behalf of him and on behalf of us so once again appreciate your interest and your and your support for this different show that maybe I didn't smile as much as I usually do but this is a topic that's very close to me very tough for me at times and very hardening so thank you for that bear with us next time again on think take Hawaii human humane architecture on Tuesday early evenings 5 p.m. and our challenged but promising urban fabric of Honolulu Hawaii thank you very much