 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Bingo, we're back. I told you we'd come back and we did come back, and it's our flagship energy show at 4 p.m. every Wednesday. So exciting. Maria Tomei, co-host with Maria. Hi, Maria. Hi there. She's a big part of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, which makes this show happen. And she arranged for Lester Ng to be here. Hi, Lester. Hello, Gain. Hello, Maria. I knew you'd say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he is the Director of Sustainability at AHL, which is Architects Hawaii, and limited one of my favorite, actually favorite architecture firms, which is in what you call it, Guardian, Pacific Guardian Center down on the Makai side there. And every month they put on the Harvard Club, Harvard Club, you've been to Harvard Club speeches and all that stuff, programs, and we go down and retake that. So we really like AHL. We'll welcome other groups that David Miller brings in. Yeah, okay, right. Yeah, David Miller, he brings them in. Anyway, so Maria, can you get, that's not a proper introduction at all. Beat me with a wet noodle. Okay. But why don't you make a proper introduction over here for Lester? All right. So this summer we're focusing on sustainability, climate change, adaptation, mitigation. And when we were looking for what we ought to talk about, we got a recommendation from folks in the climate change area saying, hey, you got to do buildings. You know, you got to talk about sustainable design. You got to call Architects Hawaii. So we did. And so that's how we got Lester to come on the show. So I want to thank you very much. You're on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let me ask you a question that occurs to me. The title of the show is Design of Sustainable Buildings. And yet here we are on Hawaii, the state of clean energy. So in your view, can you explain the connection? In terms of the building being sustainable? Well, this is an energy show, Lester. I mean, this is like you get on the wrong plane. What? Yeah. So energy is a huge issue for us. Design professional, especially in Hawaii, because we know that that cost is so much higher than the mainland. So throughout the years, we always got a sense about, you know, how we design the building to make sure that we use less energy so that our clients, our occupants of our building do not have to pay a fortune for their monthly bills in terms of energy usage. So like in the past, we do a lot more site and using a lot of site to provide a lot of that. But now since the codes are written so that we have to do that anyway, so we're starting to get towards a point where we're going to meet and exceed all of those sustainable coal requirements. Architecture is changing. Exactly. And sustainability is now at a capital S. Well, sustainability, the way that we see it, is inseparable from architecture. It's become one and the same, and it becomes what good design is in terms of for the building environment. You're in the right time and place, aren't you? You've lived your whole life for this moment. Yes. And now you can talk about it. Exactly. It comes out of the closet. Okay. So that means, Maria, go down the questions. Okay. Lester, we're going to go down your slides. There's going to be ChakaBlock starting right now. Yeah. So Lester has some beautiful buildings to show us. And so I wanted to invite him to talk about what Architects Hawaii does. Yeah. So Architects Hawaii, we're now known as AHL. So Architects Hawaii Limited previously, that's what we've known. We are a multi-disciplinary design firm. We specialize in large and complex projects. Our expertise include hospitality, commercial retail, government, and civic work. We also do high-density residential, as well as transit-oriented design development. And we are a local firm. The company was founded in a garage in Waikiki. Perfect. 72 years ago. 72? Yeah. Having been in business continuously for the last 72 years, a lot of what you see out there are AHL projects. So we're getting a little showing of these projects now. Yeah. So these are some of the projects that we select in different decades showing what we're... That's the Moana Hotel. Yes. That's beautiful. So different than in the medical school. Yes. So one of our biggest core is medical clinic designs. So we did the Japson School of Medicine there. It's a very nice design in that one. And these are an example of some of the military work that we did throughout, not just in Hawaii, but also in Guam and Japan. This is up in... Camp Smith, sorry. This is the Windward Community College. That's very nice. And this is Windward Community College? This is the interish of the Windward Community College that we just finished maybe about three years ago. And this is... You can stop here a little bit. So this is one of our latest lead project. This is a beautiful, absolutely beautiful project. It is the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific up in Punchbowl. So if you have a chance, just drive up there and just look through the building. This is what the essence of design and sustainability is all about. So here we... It is the Picadas Elite Server Certification. That is the middle certification undergo. But what we did there was to make sure that we minimize the footprint of the building so that we don't disturb the land as much as possible. We make sure that the building is in a scale where it's appropriate to the neighborhood. And if you drive up there, you see that... It's a very quiet neighborhood. Yes. If you know that neighborhood, this is outside of Punchbowl. And within Punchbowl, that's even quieter. Can we look back at that picture? Because I want to ask you about that picture. So what makes... So the lead, if you familiar with lead checklist, there's a whole series of points where you can get points for energy consumption, water usage, daylighting, views, et cetera, et cetera. Here we sort of apply all of that. So one of the biggest things was when we have windows or opportunity for windows, we make sure that all the rooms, over 90% of the rooms have daylight. And by doing that, we're not using any energy, any more energy than we need to during the day. And they don't operate too much at night. Is it air-conditioned? Yes. Solar cells on the roof? Yes, we have on-site renewable energy. So that's always a basic requirement. We do normally on our project is flying ways to go above and beyond what's required so that it helps offset the energy used for the building, the occupants, so that it saves them on energy consumption. Is it net zero? It's not quite net zero. No batteries in there? No. So it's connected to the grid? Yes. You have to, because of the operation that is required for the functionality of the project. So, I mean, is that... Sorry, I... No, no, you're good. No, this is good. This is good. They're on topic. The university has got some buildings already. I mean, it's got an initiative to do net zero, and it's already got some buildings that are net zero. I'm impressed with that. But how do you achieve that? And do you think that net zero buildings will be, you know, the course in the future, that clientele will come to you or you will suggest to clientele, let's do a net zero building and achieve it? Is it within marketable pricing, you know? It's not yet on two fronts. I was hoping when LEED comes online, maybe some years ago, I was hoping that that go-to-route of accessibility becomes the required normal of a design standard. It hasn't reached that quite yet. And then the cost of sustainability has gotten down dramatically, but it's not at a point where everybody can do it. So we're there, but we still have a way to go. And it's a market process for an architect. I mean, I suppose I could come into you and say, Lester, look, I really care about net zero. I want to tell my customers, my clients, my students, my faculty, you know, my public that this is net zero. I want to be able to tell them that. And I don't care if it costs more, but how much more? That's difficult to gauge. We have data from the U.S. mainland anywhere from three to maybe eight, nine percent of construction costs attributed to the cost of making the project sustainable. In Hawaii, as you know, land costs a lot, and labor sort of, you know, fluctuates quite dramatically depending on the cycle of the construction movement. So we have been gathering data, but we don't have a pinpoint in terms of its overall cost in terms of the projects. Okay, but I'm sure this issue is going to come up more. Yeah, so typically if the maintenance is around three to eight percent, we're a little bit slightly higher than that. That's not that much. You know, even if it was 10 percent, it's really not that much. Yeah. I mean, for the joy, the pride, the sense of achievement, the sense of harmony. Not only can you talk about it being net zeros or sustainable, it's good for the environment. It's good for your bottom line because it helps you save money and it helps you use less resources. So you're helping the environment by being sustainable. Yeah. Okay, let's go with more pictures, right? You want to have 200 pictures? No. Yeah. So this is some more shots of the National Memorial Cemetery. So this one, if we can stay here, the way that you drive up to the central memorial on the opposite side of the hill, there's residential area that sort of slopes up the hill and we want to be a very good neighbor in terms of designing the buildings so that it doesn't block any of their views. So in the front here, you only see a single story and then we make sure that the roof is low enough so that everybody on the backside has view and then on the other side of our building where it starts to slope down, that's where we have and one more additional floor to accommodate all the functionality of the space. Yeah, there you see. So here on this side, we maximize the southern exposures where we have a lot of daylight, really good daylight, and that's when you see a lot of the windows there and then to mitigate the sun exposure or the heat gain into the building, we attribute a lot of the sun shading device such as spin so that it blocks a lot of the sun, the heat gain. So in one? Yes. A dramatic roof line there. Yeah, so these are the spins that I was talking about. When the sun is low in the horizon, it would block a lot of those heat that can penetrate the building, that makes the building hotter, makes you use a lot more energy, so we're trying to mitigate that at the skin. So aside from the sustainability aspects, can you comment on the aesthetics of this building? Yes. So aesthetic as my role title is called Design Directors and Sustainability, we felt that design aesthetics is one and the same as sustainable design. Sustainable is what makes good design happen. So sustainability is beautiful, is that what you're saying? Yes, yes. So in terms of the form is function kind of thing, so a lot of time when we actually build a lot of sustainable elements into the building, it naturally makes the building much more beautiful because you can talk about every aspect of the building being functional and has a purpose in terms of making the building perform much better. Serves as a common denominator, integrates all the elements. Not like a lot of decorations where we sort of stick on kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Nothing's stuck on. It's all part of a plan. Okay, more pictures. I'm really getting interested. So here, I think these are some examples of some recent projects that we did. This have been symphony. This is another high density residential development at the outskirt of Kakako, not within the main Kakako. Can you talk about the history of this building about switching it from facing this way to facing that way? What were the considerations there? Yeah, so a lot of time when we're giving a site, we do site analysis, which means that we have to study the sun angle, where the wind's coming from, where we can site the building so that it minimizes the heat gains and maximizes the wind penetration so that we have a positive ventilation. So for that particular site, there are two things. One, the city's always sort of suggests us to use a Malka Makai orientation. And it wants to preserve view channels. Yes, and that's important because we know that standing at Punchbowl, we want to be able to see the ocean. So that's sort of what drives it initially. And then we look at whether that's going to have a massive impact based on the sun as it travels across the sky because we don't want to have the work site of the building being facing east-west so that heat gains is all the time. And then that makes your unit the interior of the building much harder and so you have to use more energy to crank up your AC. So we want to eliminate that. So you wanted it north-south, Malka Makai. As much as possible. Did you get that from the city? Not a whole lot, but then we're able to creatively study the way that word, Apple News, lined up with Punchbowl and we're able to persuade the city to give us a little bit leeway. I think there's 13 degrees of rotation along the Malka Makai axis that we are able to convince them. You know, it's commentary on all of architecture that it's not just a matter of planning. It's not theoretical. It has to actually get down to the bedrock and be convertible into a tangible object. You have to deal with all the government agencies and the finance people and every single profession you can think of. And only then do you get an actual building. Yeah, and sometimes it works out. Maria, you want to try to wrap this into a break somehow? Sure. I think design is beautiful when it's sustainable and a lot of the function that you can put into the building is also aesthetically pleasing and it may cost more, but I'm interested in hearing more about the savings that you might get as you operate the building. Because sometimes you're building it and then you're done. Other times you're building it and you're going to continue being there and paying the operational costs and how happy are the occupants of the building. It's also an important part of how good it is over the long run. So I look forward to that when we come back. So do I. Lester too I can speak for him. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Ana all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Okay we're back. I told you to come back. This is the best part. Okay Maria, where are we? What are we focusing on this part of the show? Let's go. We're talking about the buildings or are they going to be miserable? Are they going to be happier? What do these sustainable buildings do for the occupants? So when you touch up last you mentioned what's the saving. There are codes in place where we have to follow in terms of all values. The roof has to be a certain thickness and our values so that it blocks the heat of the sun and it's similar with the walls. So by doing that we're minimizing the heat gain into the building. So that keeps the building cooler so you don't have to use as much energy to cool it down. So that gives you a level of comfort that you need to without spending a whole lot of money. The other aspect of sustainability is we make sure that we have enough daylight for the occupants. Like the example that we showed earlier 90% of the occupied space have daylight and views. So that makes you a lot more comfortable. I don't know about you guys but when I look out the window with good views it just makes me happy. And research has shown that by daylight productivity is higher and especially in school students will be able to learn much, much better. So the level of comfort and the comfortability factor in our other occupied space is much higher than a normal building. I remember a study once where they had a store and half of it was daylight and half was artificial light and they sold more from the stuff that was in the daylight side. Visiting the first apartment that I was thinking of of purchasing when I walk in the daylight was so dramatic that it almost made me make a decision right there because it just makes you feel so much better by having that room bright and nicely lit. I remember a condo was downtown here where they had they set it up so that some units got the direct heat of the sun in the afternoon when it was hottest and good view but it was really, really, really smoking hot. And those were not the appealing, those were not the popular units. The popular units were the ones where it was facing the other way and it was cool. I guess that was the mountain view in that case. And so sometimes you have competing considerations and some owners, builders, or rather residents might have different views about different competing considerations. So how do you please everybody? Yes, so in Hawaii when we designed buildings particularly in the hospitality areas ocean views always demand a higher premium. If you look at a hotel where you stayed they always list ocean views as more expensive. So a lot of people prefer the ocean view. Maybe they're visitors, they don't have to stay there to night the weeks on end to experience the heat in the afternoon. So we do have people who like that aspect of the units being on the ocean side, but then they have to live with the fact that they're going to be in the afternoon sun. Myself, I like the mountain views. I don't have to use that much more energy. But if you think about ocean views at night it's just black and then the mountain views. It's much more fun, yeah. But this raises the question of air conditioning. I asked you before about that. There's some buildings, you know. Back in the heyday they were building lava walls open lanais, window structures where you could open it up and the roof would allow the air to come through. There was no need for circulation. So many buildings had this. No need for air conditioning at all. Now, especially in taller buildings which I agree, we need them to house people. Everything is air conditioned. It costs more. It requires more. It's more expensive to build and to operate and maintain. So wouldn't it be better unless there wouldn't be better if we could go back to open air and open the window in your office building? Oh my God, they haven't done that in decades. Open the window in your office building? Let the air come through and condos? Who knows? Or is that gone forever? No, absolutely. You're right in terms of using the natural environment to help us make out habitable space much better. I'm going to have a project later on a picture showing what we're working on a housing project out in my e-leaf. We're using exactly that. We make sure that when we site the building we're excited so that it takes a full advantage of the traywind and then we use landscape to block it so that it's in the shade most of the time. When you talk about high rises it's a little bit more difficult to do but the corridors we have difficulty in terms of bringing cross ventilation into one example that recently the Makapolo fire that sort of have people sort of let the door open and the wind just spread the fire and the cold is trying to avoid us doing that those situations occurred but when we do a smaller scale project where we can have units that have both front and back windows and that's when we're able to open them up and have the wind go through the unit so that it's much more comfortable and you don't need to use any air conditioning. Are people willing to go along with that or do they want air conditioning? Good point. We can do as much as we can in terms of setting the project up so that it takes full advantage of the natural environment but people will do what they want. If you have air conditioning and windows that open you have at least an efficient I mean the most inefficient way to do it. You can train people to behave or change their behavior think of the energy used a certain way but you can't force them. Maybe you have to give them a short course. Sustainability 101. The biggest incentive is your monthly electric bill so in my own house I have all the windows open all the time so that I don't need to turn on the AC. Maria, can you take Leicester through a lot of more pictures so we can see some of the projects? Yeah, I think there are a couple left. Let's take a look at the rest. Leicester's pictures. This is the project that I'm talking about. It's being two story so a very low scale. We have to deal with a central corridor so that we don't have to worry about smoke or flame spread in case of a fire. Each unit has front and back windows so winds can come through and just cool the entire space down. I think there might be one more. There we go. Here's the last one. On a scale like this it's much easier to do those sustainability concepts compared to a high rise where we have to stick with more conventional by providing some mechanically ventilated corridors. This would be appropriate when the land was cheaper. For example, the neighbor islands hopefully and the land would be cheaper. We're starting to see a lot of these projects in the urban area but further out in the west side so we happen to do more land to be able to do this type of density. You mentioned, we only have a couple minutes left and I'm going to turn this over to you. You mentioned that there was a return to Hawaiian values and architecture most recently and that we had a period of, what do you want to call it, scramble for 20 or 30 years and hopefully it's going to be better. It is being better, the homes that are being and buildings in general are being designed more faithful to a kind of common denominator that is more Hawaii. But my question for you is where are we going with this Leicester? If I asked you to plan a building that would be, quote, sustainable in the marketplace not necessarily with regard to energy but in the marketplace in general and would retain its sustainability for 20, 30 years from now what would it look like? What would you think about in designing it? Well, the hottest topic right now is resiliency and sea level rising. As you know, the climate is changing rapidly. The way that we've been mitigating this or planning for this type of design has pretty much just raised our building about three to five feet because to... On stills? On still or on foundations where we know that, you know, get it out of the flood plains or the project that I visited in Boston designed the ground floors to be completely what they call wet... Disposable. Yeah, disposable. We've been right through and they're fine with that. So that might be the path to move forward but we can do all of that without built environment particularly the buildings where we control. The harder part is the roads. How are we going to elevate that to get it out of the... That's probably going to be a city problem. Yeah, so that is a huge issue that, you know, we haven't been able to wrap our brain around. But this is something you think about. You're building now for the possibility to see. Now, it's not true but the rumor that you're going to build buildings on pontoons. That's a good idea. You heard it here. Because, as you know, land is limited here. We haven't seen it but we see a lot of city in Asia where they have to go into the ocean to reclaim land. So that's not always good. So instead, I've seen projects from students and a lot of researchers they make pontoons in the ocean so that floating city kind of thing. Coming soon. Jay thought he was making this up. Yeah, he was making it up. I guess the point is the sort of an arbitrage of ideas. You see something in Asia that could be useful here. Take a look at it. And we are leaders. We are certainly leaders in this area in sustainability and resilience. And that can be used somewhere else too. It's sort of a global arbitrage of ideas and you're in the middle of that. Good for us. Is AHL going to open an office somewhere else? Does it have an office somewhere else? We had offices in Hong Kong before we don't anymore but we want to concentrate our effort in Hawaii. Okay, well that may not be forever. Okay, Maria, take it from here. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. We saw some beautiful pictures that's built. I love it when things have been built and you can actually see the final product. And then here about what went into some of the design elements as well. One thing we didn't really talk about is the connection with the transportation side of things. So just a very quick question. A lot of folks are using bicycles and they might have wheeled vehicles that are smaller. Is anybody thinking of making it so that you can bring your bike towards your condo unit but not have to drag it in and get the carpet all dirty? You know, a little mini garage for your electric scooter or these little devices that we might have for that last mile from the transit or from the bus to your home. Does anybody ever talk about that or is that still out there? Well, AHL, our office, do have storage for bicycle storage and scooters and I've seen surfboards in there. Oh, good, good, good, good. So we encourage our staff to ride bikes or use other forms of transportation other than their car. So we provide that and we incentivize the use of other forms of transportation. And that's what helps in terms of getting the traffic jams of our streets and that's great to pollution and all of that bad stuff. So we're heading towards that. If we want to have space for the buildings then we can do some of that parking and all these other hardscapes. The city mandates quite a bit of bicycle parking now so I think that's a good thing. Yeah, sorry, I talked about digressions. But I did want to thank you for coming and sharing your recent successes and some of your views of some things that might be coming along in the future and I hope we'll be able to have you back soon talking about more of your projects. The moving target for sure. Unless there's no pressure on you but we're looking to you, to AHL to build our new state and to build our state so that everyone likes it. Everybody, all stakeholders like it so that it's beautiful, resilient, sustainable and cheap. Cheap. No pressure. Thank you, Lester Regan. Great to have you on the show. Thank you very much for inviting me.