 Aloha, happy Aloha Friday. It's Kaui Lukas. I am host of Hawaii is my mainland every Friday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And today I'm so excited. I have been wanting to do this show for six months. Ever since I first saw this project in the capital, there were posters of it. And I said, oh my gosh, who is this brilliant student? And here he is, Joseph Valenti. Along with his mentor and one of my just inspirations for all things sustainable. Matthew Lynch, who is the system coordinator, sustainability system coordinator. I'm not getting it right. That's close. So system sustainability coordinator, system sustainability coordinator for UH system wide. So all 10 campuses. Correct. All right. So these two have an amazing project to talk about. So I'm going to let them talk about it. This project here, this thing that we see here, is a what? Well, to start, it's built out of albizia almost entirely. And it is a small scale, low cost housing slash shelter for potentially housing, our as you could say, houselessness community, houseless community. Yeah. So this was it was so inspiring to see all the different aspects of this project that were that they had up at the capital. This, especially because earlier in the session, I have a picture of it there. They were showing us these these pods made out of plywood in the rotunda that were supposed to be a model of sustainable transitional homes. And when I saw this, I just wanted to cry. They wanted $2,000 in donation for these. And we will get a picture of it up eventually. It's the transitional housing for the homeless. Yeah, the pods. Oh, no, this is this is this is the beautiful thing. Okay, so the one 53.1. There we go. Oh my gosh. Look at that. They wanted $2,000 a pop for these as a solution to homelessness. And I was so horrified, as you can imagine, this is got a little drawer and a little mailbox. But so the houseless population is supposed to feel safe and welcome here. So when I saw your project, Joseph, I thought, Oh, thank God. Somebody's thinking, somebody's thinking holistically, somebody's thinking about solving multiple problems at one time. So you won an award. Matthew, can you talk about the award? Sure. So Joey was one of the first award winners for the inaugural UH President's Green Initiative Awards and the category that he won was in the Green Project Implementation Award. So this is a program that we've set up to help empower our students and to help unleash their creativity, really. So we partnered up with some private sector partners. Johnson Controls actually provided the funding for this particular award is $10,000 in cash to support the implementation of either campus based or community based projects that would have measurable impacts and results that we could measure with a timeframe on it. So we announced these at the spring, well, the fourth annual Hawaii Sustainability and Higher Education Summit earlier this spring. And next spring, 2017, Joey will be presenting out the results of this, so the hope is to build a prototype at scale, which $10,000, quite frankly, is not a lot of money to do this. So I've been really impressed with the way that Joey's been able to work collaboratively across the campuses and with the UH Bonoa School of Architecture program that's provided some really key support and matching funding to support a paid position. So we've already been able to double that money and we're working on leveraging it even further so that we can get this prototype built and really learn about all the technical pieces of what it actually takes to convert something that is a problem and that we have an excess of and turn it into something that's useful. So one of the things I love about it is that the albizia wood that you were actually working with came from another campus of UH Bonoa, right? The Lion Arborellium. Right? And so just take us in and tell us how this all came together and where you are. Okay. Well, let me start back to, in my research, last fall. And it started with really an investigation of what our community here is dealing with in terms of the urban environment. Some of the most critical issues we have today and in our foreseeable future. And undoubtedly, you know, number one is a housing crisis. And but I think there's more that embodies that, given that we are an isolated vulnerable island community, climate change, you can look at, you know, various aspects that we can begin to design as a way of responding to these issues. So that was the first step. And then in the middle of all that, it was really an effort to look more deeply into what we have here in abundance and really try to, I guess, extract something that was not yet discovered. So that was a big step in trying to combine a way of resolving these issues and also bringing a more sustainable approach to responding to that. So what that led to, and I have to give credit to my committee chair, Judith Stogenbauer, because in that transitional phase of understanding really what I was after, she had noted to me that the line arboretum at the time was doing a removal project. And that project was specifically a large sum of albizia trees. And from my understanding, they had no use for it. It was just all going to get dumped. And these are mammoth trees. I mean, albizias are horrible. They can undermine, be quickly toppled by wind. And they had that problem with the storm in Pune last year. Some people blame the dams busting on the root structure. It's an invasive tree that grows incredibly rapidly, 20 feet the first year. Wow. Okay, so we need to get rid of those. And so there's an abundance of it. But this isn't just about, I mean, there's so much to it. And we have so little time, it's kind of hard to get into the beauty of this design. So I'm going to ask that we look at the 53.3 site picture. And have you kind of articulate all these factors of what's been happening in our community, and how you put them together here? Would you like to talk about that? Sure. So that is a simple site modification rendering, basically showing that that is these units here, as you see in this model. And then, in that whole picture you're looking at is basically lightly integrating these into a site. So you have the pods, as you call them, the units. And then the site modifications are basically, you know, lightly implemented into a site. So you're looking at a, you know, very easily adapted to a site type design. And you're also looking at something that's very holistic in terms of the community that it creates. So you're not just, you've got a plan that talks about the interactive features of this into actually a community, which I thought, I don't know what the design parameters were for this project, but I thought that it was really good to, it was very heartening to hear that that discussion was happening. Right. So the parameters that, you know, essentially I created the site parameters and I based that on implementing these. And, you know, obviously we have, you know, a big issue with limited space here, especially in our urban context. And the site was selected based on, you know, investigation of underutilized spaces in our community. And what I specified it to that point was a site, actually UH property. And it was an abandoned parking lot over in Kalihi, Kalpalama. Oh, we have a little short video of that. I didn't realize that it was UH property. Aha, even better. So here we go. Tell us, okay, so this is at the end of Kokea Street. Yes. And it's an empty parking lot. And, you know, I made multiple trips down there during my research and every time I'm there I've seen a single car in that parking lot. So, you know, giving that it's on the water and obviously it's very empty, as you can see. The context with that was also tied to the TODE plans and how this site is also in proximity to transportation. So when you're thinking ahead as this our community develops, you can look at these types of things where you're not necessarily needing parking, but rather than having that parking, you can have housing. And that was, I think, a twist on all of that. So, you won the award, you got some money, and they said, okay, now make it real. Yeah, yeah. And that's where we are now. So I got to go visit you in your workshop at UH. It was so great to see that UH Manoa has in our School of Architecture actual fabrication. So it's not just theoretical. I mean, a lot of times people hear, you know, say things about the ivory tower, but hey, we're doing it. And there's a slide of you 53.4 processing. It was just the model, but there's some, this is how the model came to be, and it shows that tree there. And some of the other important features. Do you want to talk about this? Sure. So, you know, the whole process of this is really broken down in that image there. So you have, starting from the top left, that was actually at the line arboretum during that removal project. And that X image is the log that they donated to me. And from there, we, you know, we milled on site. And luckily, I'd support from them to train me how to use a chainsaw and the rig to make that whole thing come down to those individual boards. And then in the research, it was really taking that, you know, they call it, they would call it essentially a weak material or unstructural or nonstructural material and turning it into something that's actually buildable. So when you get down in the second row of images, it's breaking down the process of milling the boards into panels and gluing them up as a cross laminated system of wood panels where you can then use digital fabrication to basically cut out the kid apart for this structure. Excellent. Okay, well, we're going to take a short break and then come back and learn more about this amazing house. My name is Justini Spiritu. This is my cohost Matthew Johnson. Every Thursday at four p.m. We host the Hawaii Food and Farmers series. This is the place you can come to for insight on the perspective and history and passions of Hawaii's farmers and all folks involved in Hawaii's local food system. What kind of folks do we have on? So we have everyone from local farmers. We have foodies, chefs. We also have journalists, researchers, anyone who's actually working to help make Hawaii's local food system that much better. So join us every Thursday and tweet in the us and ask us some questions and leave your comments as well. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kaui Lucas and with me here today is Matthew Lynch, UH's system sustainability coordinator. And I got it wrong, but I got it right. Oh, okay. All right. And one of the rising stars in the world of sustainable architecture at UH, part of their doctorate degree program, Joey Valenti, who it has fabricated this beautiful model that's here in the studio out of the nasty albizia tree and is now making a full size prototype prototype. So we have a couple of pictures of you down in the studio. But I'd like to just hear how far along you are. What kind of challenges have you had? How are you dealing with them? Oh, look at that smile. It's as easy as building this first model. No, it's, you know, it's a big task to be taken on that. Every now and then I wonder what am I doing? You know, what am I really taking on here? And but at the, on the other side of it, you know, I'm very excited about what this could potentially become. So that's my motivation. And I think from graduation in the spring until now, there's been a lot of coordinating, making end to meet, sourcing funding, getting other departments involved within the university system, and even beyond that, into the community, finding a sawmill team, limanola wood, who has graciously jumped on board for this, and they're really going to help make this come to life. So you need a lot of, you know, ends to come together. And I think that was the big challenge and what's gotten me to where we are now. And, you know, testing with the engineering department was a huge step to see if this has even feasible. So I'm sure that people who are in the construction business and are looking at this going, yeah, right, LBZL, I'm sure. How is the strength testing come along? Well, yeah, as you said, you know, pretty much every other person I meet has that response that there's no way that this is going to come to life, you know, and it takes you down a notch and then you realize, wait, yeah, this is going to happen. You know, I convinced myself, at least, that this is going to happen. And the test results in the engineering for the first phase were, I would say, a success. And really the weakness in what we found was the joint system that we developed. Since these are such long members, we're developing a joint where you can connect pieces to make them come together. Connect pieces in these in these long members or particularly the longer members. So so nothing is actually going to be built as one solid piece, but broken up into a few and then joint it together. So these these are all laminated beams. But they're also not long pieces. So so I've been working to standardize it to a four by eight panel, which is the size of the CNC we have in the size of the web, the CNC machine, which is the digital fabrication, which is the machine that's basically digitally cutting out these these cool curves and stuff. Okay, that was that that big machine with the with the hose on it in the workshop. Yeah, very cool. Okay, so it sounds like. How far are you actually? I I feel like we're at a pretty good place with the project. We're still at the the target to have this thing built for the 2017 Sustainability Summit, which is March, March next year, next year. So not too far out. But we're pushing 180 days or so for this counting. So Matthew, I have to think that you have been working a bit to help bring in some of these partners. And where is it actually going to be built? Or is it being built now? That's a good question. I got to your first point. Joey's really the one that's doing all of the heavy lifting. So what we're finding is that just in general with our approach to students, there is so much latent creativity, and this burning desire to try to solve some of these essential and complex questions of sustainability, that it's literally let's set up create some resources, set them up and let them rip. So I might have been able to make a few key introductions along the way, able to get the initial funding with the support of the president's office to be able to launch the program in the first place. But with imagine this with a small $10,000 investment, right, that's done in partnership with private sector and the university, we've been able to create resources that have stimulated this type of creativity. So the other green project implementation award that was given away is a full scale pilot vermicomposting unit at Leeward Community College, where their STEM club is actually building a vermicomposting reactor that is diverting their food waste on campus. And then that's now the intent is to then become a nutrient input for their on campus farm. So you know, I don't come up with these ideas. These are all student ideas. All we're doing is providing the resources and setting them up and then providing support. Well, I hope you give me the name and number of whoever's doing that because you know after our trip to Cuba and seeing those composting amazing vermicast composting things. I got to see that. I just got to see that be happy to introduce you. Yeah, but so Joey has is learning firsthand how complex it is. You're not imagine how much work goes into building this scale prototype. And the lesson that you learned before we're getting to the full scale, the next size up, what's the scale that you're coming? The new one is double the scale. So it's twice the height, twice the width, twice the size all around, which also is ironically perfect size for his cap to fit in. Yeah, a little bit of smaller scale structure testing. The cat when I when I built this, it was I had a kitten, so he fit in quite well. And then he grew in was breaking it when he was trying to go in. So now I have a new one that if I bring it to him, he will probably be all over it. Okay, but at some point, we're gonna get a human size one. Are we moving to dogs? No, we're gonna love them. Yeah, I actually have had people say, I should make these into doghouses. But I think let's, let's get straight from the cat house to the full scale human. Right, because we definitely have a dire need for them. And after that pathetic slide that I showed you, really, you know, what's interesting, too, is the complexity, the elegance of this design, the underlying structure is quite it's quite complex to build a structural beam that has this curve and spans that length. It's not like you can go to Home Depot by a few two by four slapping together, and you're good to go. So not only does this sort of innovative modern design that has sort of passive cooling features built into it. You know, it's also just a really elegant, I mean, I'd be interested to live in one of these for an experience to see how it is. So it's putting the dignity back into it. But what's also fascinating is that by solving for the complexities in this design, we're actually Joey is pushing the envelope. It's like Tesla, when Musk came out, right, the first electric car, he didn't build the affordable electric pinto for everybody. He built a big sexy beast. That's what this is. And from there, because you build up at that high performance there, then the lessons that you learn because you're pushing yourself, you're pushing the design envelope, you can scale those lessons back to simpler designs. And that's one of the most one of the more exciting aspects about this. I'm actually more excited about the implications for its potential to generate economic cash flows that can support the end goal of ecological restoration. Because what happens after we remove these LPs is what happens if we can create a local a local industry where we can produce low cost affordable local building materials that we can use to build our in our construction, right? Now we've got cash flows that can actually fund LPs of removal. So let's not stop there. Once you remove it, what are you going to replace it with? Right? So there's many scales of complexity and intrigue in this project. And the only way that you're really going to fully understand what those implications of those interconnectivities are is by actually going out and building something at scale. So one of the design. So let's talk about it doesn't have windows. I mean, people are probably looking at that going, Well, where are the windows? Well, there aren't windows. Has one window. Oh, sorry. This big one here, which I actually designed it as a screen screen. And then this doesn't quite show. But I think in one of the images you put up, this would be a living wall so a vegetated and then natural light would essentially enter the space from that side. But yeah, like you're saying, there are no windows and there are no traditional doors. And that was intentional. It was really looking at eliminating those types of imported materials, because you need there's no local industry for glass or steel. So if you can basically fabricate something like this, it's almost entirely made out of local. So the energy needs are what are you thinking? How did you design that to energy water electricity supply this? Okay, so my doctorate project took this on not as just a single unit but as a community and the site that we looked at earlier was I think 30 odd units. And I call those the pods. And then I actually looked at a bio mimetic approach to design for the site. So we took the pods of the obviously achieved and broke that down in analysis of the pods or the units and then that supply is fed by the stem, which leads to the tree, which the tree I considered the infrastructural tree or core, that would be the communal facilities that would house each of these units. So the communal facilities we have about a minute left. So there would be the these are the living spaces, but there would be community kitchen, food, preparation and then hygiene would also be communal. Okay, so in many ways, this is breaking with tradition. And why not? Because we see where tradition has led us. And time to to expand our horizons a little bit. When do you or the the model that you need to have by March? How big is that one going to be? That's full size, full size and how big is full size? Square footage wise, the floria area would make up from you know, end to end side to side about 400 square feet, 400 square feet. And there's a upper level loft, which doesn't show in the model. But so it's a two story type space. Well, thank you both. I'm so excited about this. Keep on keeping on and come back and show us when it's all built.