 Welcome back to Human-Humane Architecture here from Honolulu, Hawaii. And we're back to every other week's version about learning from the past for the future for our tropical exotic paradise here in Hawaii with the Soto Brown and Martin de Spain. How do you do, sir? I'm okay, except we have to make it through 39 pages. Yeah, we got lots to talk about. So to start confusing to begin with, this show is about architecture. But maybe we give a little hint. This is about, doesn't make it much better. It's about licking, sticking, lanais. All right. So what the hell is that? All right. Well, let's find out what that means. And let's go to our first picture. And that's our traditional Hawaiian grass, Hale, Hale Pili. And when we're talking about in the ancient days of Hawaii, pretty much people lived either indoors or outdoors. And as you see in the holly here, it is a framework of sticks which has grass or peely grass on the exterior of it. And there really was not any other structure. There was no other lanai. There was no other way to live. As I said, either you are inside or outside. That's not the way we live today, because we're going to be talking about balconies on high-rise buildings that serve as part of the place that people live when they're in an apartment or hotel room. And next picture. Let's look when it started to change. Right. So in our next photograph, here we've got a picture of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. This was the first hotel in the Hawaiian Islands to have balconies. The previous hotels did not have them. The Royal Hawaiian, however, as you can see by the picture on the left, which is taken about 1935, only had balconies that could accommodate maybe two people just standing up. The only ones that had larger ones were the suites. So most people didn't have a balcony. They just had a window. And this was true of the other two hotels which preceded it, which was the Moana Hotel and the Alexander Young Hotel downtown Honolulu. And if we go to the third picture, we've got the Edgewater Hotel. This is historically important because it was the first big post-war hotel built in Waikiki in the late 1940s. And for the first time, those hotel rooms have got balconies. As we see here in the detail picture, the balconies are edged with concrete blocks or cement blocks that have holes in them. I mean, there's a grid work there so that there's air movement. That's something we're going to be talking about. But it's an architectural feature which is different from most of the balconies we see today. And it's a cement block weave. And so it's a local material as well because there's production or at least was cement blocks here, right? Correct. Let's move on to the evolution of the next project. And this is the Hawai'iana Hotel, which is still in business today and it is on beach walk. And it's got these really interesting die-cut plywood, I assume, plywood panels serving as the railings for the balconies on the second floor. Now, I think that, first of all, these are really 50s patterns, these abstract patterns. And I think because this is a small building of just two stories, they were able to do something a little more unusual, spend a little more time, effort, and money to make these unusual railings, which today we wouldn't have time or expense to be able to cover, but back then they did because it was a small building. And I like your point of saying these are not chevron or some of them obscured, a skirt, a Hawaiian pattern, these are high-modern American, but yet somehow, you know, from its feel. Absolutely. It has a primitive look. It has a primitive look, and they're exotic, sort of erotic in that way. Right. And they're abstract, as you say. They're abstract. And they're very cool. They were cool. Exactly. As is the next building in a little different way. Right. And the next building is the Waikiki Surf Hotel, which was on Kuhio Avenue and Seaside Avenue, opened in about the middle 50s. And it had a Japanese theme, the hotel as a whole did. So if you look at the dividers between the lanais here, you see that they look like Japanese sliding shouji doors, except these are made with plastic rather than paper panels. And also the railings of each one of these lanais is wood, and it is based again on Japanese traditional architecture. It is. And as you pointed out, it's got a solid panel at the bottom, but it's got other panels up above which have open spaces. So that's always desirable for air movement, and you can see out. And you can, and you can't, because when you see on a low chair or on the floor, people can't see you, but you can see people. So there's a real good occupational advantage to that. Absolutely. And the next picture sort of concludes our little looking into the past, how creative architects were in finding different themes and iterations, getting crazy about it. Yeah. And this is the ocean tower of the Hawaiian Village Hotel in the late 1950s. And if you look on the left, you see that the depths of those projecting floors of the balconies are all different. So you've got this kind of staggered look of shorter, longer, shorter, longer. And then on the right, there's this very interesting pattern of the exterior fire escape stairway, which you probably isn't legal now to do anymore. Well, it's again, thanks to our colleague host, Howard Wick. He changed the code, so we can do this again. Oh, we can. We're back. Thanks, Howard. And again, that makes a very interesting pattern. And it's like a continuation of the structures of the balconies that the building already has. And how do we actually get excited about this topic here? Was a couple of shows ago. Right. Next picture. We're just next door. This one isn't existing anymore, but we took these pictures here. So this is Edwin Bauer's Lagoon Tower. We're also going to make a show about Edwin Bauer with our Doko Momo colleague, John Williams. So get prepared, John. And so we got excited because these are so sexy, swooping curves. And if you want to know more, go back to the picture. And then we started to go out and about next picture and walking through our urban fabric and seeing this interesting potential analogy between the floral realm and the architectural realm and certain similarities. Right? Right. And what Martin pointed out, and let's go to our next picture because Martin had a statement that these extruding exterior balconies are not unlike something that grows on a flower. What's that word? Oh, you taught me that, sir. It's called pedaled. Pedaled because he didn't know the word in English for that. No, I did not. Now I do. And not only do pedals form an attractant for insects to come and pollinate the flowers, which is the whole point of flowers, they also are a place for insects to land and take off. So they are not only attractants, but they have a physical purpose as well. And we thought that the balconies that stick out of some of these buildings are like pedals. Exactly. So what the show wants to do is encourage you guys to go out and find your own. Look at the ones we show you and look at more. And maybe you look at them in three different matrixes, categories. And these are the next three pictures. The next picture is, which usually ends up to being last, which is how it looks like. We want to upfront that because if a balcony, which we will show Earl and I, isn't beautiful, forget about it. Exactly. Right? And we want to encourage you guys to see how sort of unlimited sort of the ways of variations, iterations are. If architects are created, you can create, you know, produce numerous of these just like flowers. They're basically of the same kind, but then each flower is unique, right? Right. And the other thing too that we're going to get to is this field of tulips, as you just said, they're all the same form, but they've all got different colors and shapes. But the symmetry is still there. Exactly. And symmetry is important on buildings for aesthetic purposes. And we'll talk about that as we continue. The next picture shows is another way you want, you see, this is also a permanent background picture because I think it's so cool to see this analogy between the organic palm tree and then the sort of organic form of the sticking out lanais. And you see this red dot, which is a person. And on the top is a picture you provided once again from Kauai, which basically shows, demonstrates the occupational because there shouldn't be decorated from the outside. They should actually be performative from the inside out and make you feel good in different ways. And the third one, the third category is called biochlametics. This is the next picture. And I use this building here, which is the tallest in Waikiki. This is the Island Colony building. And so I want to show you guys something which I have to put on my head here, my cap. Yeah. So let's get back to us in the studio so we can demonstrate that. So if I use my flashlight here and I have my head on and I turn it on. Here's the light. I use this light and I'm looking south and the sun is high up. This is going to shape my face. If I'm going to wait half day, the sun is basically going down west and shoots straight into my face. That means we would need horizontal, and if we're going to get back the picture number 12, we need horizontal louvers, which basically the slabs of Lanais can be. And we need vertical ones to east and west. I put a north arrow here, which I always tell my emerging colleagues is without a north arrow, you can't even judge a building here. Dillingham made it almost right with a grid in Waikiki, but not quite. And basically, so the north facades are also facing slightly west and the south facades are facing slightly east. In this building, the biochlametic check is that the Lanais are deep enough to the south to shade, and on the north, the vertical dividers, the slabs are long enough. So it is a biochlametic tower, also because it's orientation, or mainly based upon that it's orientation, it's running Malka Makai with its long side, so it allows the airflow. But also because of the solar exposure, is it a beautiful building? I'm not sure most people would say no. So going back to category one with the tulips, it got to be all of that. So let's jump and let's take a look at other great examples. And we're already within the linear realm, right? Correct, absolutely, the horizontal. So this is, what? This is the Ilikai. The Ilikai was the really big, the first really big apartment hotel building built in Waikiki, opened in 1964. And the diagram on the right is fascinating to me because it shows that the division of the three prongs of the Ilikai hotel kind of serve as a prow of a boatwood going through the water in that the airflow, the usual airflow of the trade winds blows up against that and goes to the side. And this is courtesy of Liam Tran, one of our emerging colleagues who did this analysis way back. John Graham is the architect. We already pointed out with a previous show, which is about the Alamoana building that, although he was America's most commercial architect, he had a bio-climatic interest, so no doubt here. He was dealing with these sort of very American, extruded, efficient, effective linear lanais, giving them a spandrel in this sort of iconic turquoise color. So it provides you with an option. You can either sit behind, have a little less airflow, but be private, or you can sit in front of the vertical grading and be more open and be more easy breezy. So let's go to the next picture. Another project we will do a show about with my emerging architect, David, who has his grandma living in this building, which is the senior housing on Kalakaua next to King Street. And the architect basically made the bellows straights these wind scoops. They're a wintry effect. They shove in the wind, and it works. She's easy breezy and loves it, just like your mother. And that's the way to go, because we're in Hawaii. They don't like air conditioning. Exactly. Let's go to the next picture. This is back on Seaside and Kohio, a nice little tower where you can see these are sticking out. And you like this term that I said in Germany. It's called Auf dem Präsentierter. What is that? Well, you said that that means it's on a presentation plate, as if a waiter is presenting something to you. And what I like about these is they look like they are displays. They look like they are out there, partly for the enjoyment of people to look at when they're outside, but also the fact that each one of those has the same rounded chair on it, and it's in the same position, really adds to the aesthetic attraction of the similarity and the intentional display. And it's a nice mid-century chair that goes with sort of the aesthetics of the building. So we want to compliment the hotel management. And now we're pouring some pretty nasty water into this wine we're making here. And also want to discourage future generations with the next picture, because he would see the same theme. But what has happened here? Yeah, right. Well, these are not livable balconies. These are roofs that are shading and protecting individual AC units for each one of these apartments. These days, single wall unit ACs? No way. We want easy-greasy back, right? Right. And it also doesn't serve any purpose for the people inside, because you can't go out on it. Oh my god. Let's go to the next picture. Does it get better at a soda? Well, no, it does not get better in our next picture. Oh, next picture. And the discussion that we've also been having is the type of railing. And one of the problems with the type of railing that we see here is glass. Glass has some detriments for it to be used as a railing for a balcony. One, it is solid. It does not allow air movement. Two, it is potentially dangerous, because it can break. Three, it gets dirty, and you have to clean it. And particularly the exterior, you really cannot clean that. So with that, I think you classified it as an evasive material versus an exotic. So it would say, ban it. Don't do it. This is the collection, by the way, in Utah, brand new. This is facing pretty much south. You get baked. And it's just like, why even doing these, right? Next picture, it gets better now, right? You promise? No, it does not get better yet, because now we've got the Wikey Key, Grand Wikey Key and Time Share, which is part of the Hawaiian Village Complex. And we were saying that aesthetics are important in the terms of symmetry and repetitive images and repetitive designs, which are pleasing. This breaks all that up. We've got three totally different types of things sticking out in this building. Not only that, but we've got something that you point out, these exterior decor panels, which really don't have any intrinsic significance for the building that you see on the right that are sort of like a, I don't know what that pattern is. And plus, we've got the Chevron, which is kind of the current thing that you slap onto a building to make it look Hawaiian in the railing that we see at the top. So this is a disruptive thing. This is not aesthetically pleasing to look at for somebody on the outside of the building. And Kurt Sandburn made this the flagship image for his great article, Ugly Honolulu. It certainly deserves to be the number one. And they just couldn't decide. The middle piece is not even a utilizable. That's just the decorative. It's just like a roof. It seems like Greek or something. Yeah, it's just this. They got really screwed up like culturally. What is the Caesar's Palace? Or what is it? Or Hawaiian, Hawaiian, Kamehameha version of it, meeting Caesar or something? I don't know. And the guardrails, can't they decide? And the most opulent one has no use. And then they certainly think, because the glass one occurs rather rarely, but the other one. So they think the glass one is the coolest, but literally speaking, it's actually the middle grading one. OK, I need a break from that. We need to go back and look at a picture of some good old ones. Right, right, right. So next one, this is sort of starting where the linear one started morph, right? Right. And so what we're going to be seeing as we continue is the ways you can make changes in these things, they don't all have to be the same. They don't all have to be rectangular. They can be curved. They can be angular. They can do all kinds of cool stuff. And as you pointed out, you can go out to that front part where it sticks out the most. You can be sticking out a little bit. It can be kind of exhilarating unless you're scared of heights, in which case you don't want to do that. But if you do, that's a cool place to be. And this is my neighbor Park Shore, you know? And it starts to like, yeah, be fun. And it's nice to look at. And it gives it the more exotic tropical feel just through the sort of playfulness of them, which is also performative. So it's just like very appropriate what nature does here on the island, being very performative and looking very good. Right. So next picture. And this is sort of an interesting one, because I find this very voyeurist. Because you've got these slabs that could sort of give you privacy, but then there is this cutout, this goofy cutout, sort of like Googie architecture. And it allows you to either sort of look down on someone's bald head on the one diagonally down, or maybe even more exciting looking at someone's pants or skirts. So this is sort of interesting. There's a buggy, right. And interesting. So the next one is sort of along the same lines of that sort of scheme here, where basically the linear gets sort of pretty much like Googie and curvy, right? Right, and wavy. This looks like this is kind of a wavy. But wavy in an abstract way. We're not talking the literal waviness where you like stick wavy pattern on buildings, or you make it a whole glass front and it comes later. And you say this has to do with water, which is the opposite. We'll see that later. So here for this type here, you luckily were digging into your archive and had an inside out impression from the 80s. So our next picture is that's kind of what it looks like if you're on the inside of it. You can see you are projecting out. And as I said earlier, exhilarating if you like it, because you have only this kind of frail appearing framework to hold you back from tumbling down. But it does look really exhilarating and exciting. And something else that I mentioned earlier, too, to you was here in the Hawaiian Islands, this is actually part of your living space. A balcony here is something you can lose a lot more than you can in, say, Chicago, where only for a limited time of the year can you even go out on it. Which we will go to in a couple pictures. But before that, we move on. And we're referring to one of our last shows, Tropical Brutalism. This is the Halecoa Military Hotel in the Fodorisi Park. And you can see this is all cast and placed in place, a board-form concrete, and it got soft edged. So it gives it the sort of touch of curvy, of wavy, and an abstract wavy. And not as brutal as. Exactly. And another one, next picture, is in my hood again. It's sort of the same kind of pattern. This is, as you can see in the little picture at the top, how it looks from the elevation looking up. So it's also the same sort of soft edge curved corner. And it gives you a different feel, but it also helps you, as you said, give you these options. You can get out at the very tip of it and feel like you're flying and want to jump off, hopefully you don't. No, no, no. And if you're more afraid of heights, then you basically stay more behind. And then you're also more protected from your neighbor's view. So you have these options, right? Correct, right. The next picture is basically the other show we did recently is the reef, right? No, this isn't yet it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not there yet. There are too many. And that's a good thing. There are so many. There are so many. It's like the flowers. Which one is the flower you just spotted? We talked about, they all look the same, but they're all looking different. And I like this because it's got the contrast of the really strong vertical elements, the vertical lines, contrasted with those round, sticking out, curvy, pedal-like balconies. And the next one is what I thought this one here is, this is the Art Rigor Reef, which we talked about last one. And this is introducing another theme so you can curve these lanai slabs and you can also then start to stagger the glass, which obviously has been done for a better view because they all want to look at the ocean. And sort of this is a different twist and it obviously does different things. If you walk through every categories, you can assess this and come up with your own mind. And I kind of like that. I think that's interesting. I like that contrast. Yeah, definitely. And the next one is actually the same one so we don't want to talk about it, but we just want to point out that there's the same theme sometimes occurring only slightly differently at different places, like just you find the same flower next to it pretty soon and it's a little different because it's an own plan. Each plan is an own species. That's right, that's right. And let's move on and almost come full circle because you want to introduce a classical vintage example where it all started. Right, so our next picture is a historically important one because this is the, what's now called the diamond head wing of the Moana Hotel, but originally it was called the surf rider. And when it opened in 1951, this was the first building here in Hawaii to look like this to establish this concrete box pattern with the lani or the balcony that we now see and see all over the place. And in the upper corner, we see the Princess Ka'iulani Hotel opened in 1955 carrying on that tradition. And those are very old buildings for Waikiki as it is constituted today. This is where it all came from right here. And also tracing back to our most activist reporter, Kurt Sandburne, he's so activist because the one next to the Moana surf rider, they wanted to build a huge tar recently. He was part of the team that defended that. Because this is a pretty iconic building and it certainly has its place in history of the islands which is not sentimental, it's not nostalgic, but it's pretty modern. And you see, we just wanna encourage the audience of emerging designers to really think bi-climatically, think occupationally, think aesthetically in these three categories. And here at least you see under the curved slab is this sort of bristle lay grill thing, which because I'm running there this morning, I'm running by, I'm thinking like, well, this is facing west in that case. So they're probably not gonna do much, but they do something. And they do here now whatever time of the day that is because you can see this shadow being cast. So it does a job and you guys have more tools these days and eco software and ecotech and stuff like that. You can basically sort of design this way more sort of scientifically and way more strategically. So we wanna encourage that. So getting to the last third of the show, wrapping up is what are our suggestions and recommendations and let's go to the next picture. And you already said Chicago from left to right, this is Chicago, this is Bertrand Goldberg's from Marina City and he was a Mies van der Rohe disciple, but he was the rebel and the black sheep. And whereas his master was doing the boxes that we know from the Dark Knight movie, the IBM building, he was saying, I'm not gonna do this master, show you the middle finger. And this is literally it and he went organic. A big cylinder. And then, you know, for decades almost Chicago has not been doing anything of that significance until Ginny Gann came, one of the few female architects we have in the profession and she stepped in with a sort of tough job to basically decorate a already developed tower that was developed by a developer. And she did it in this way to the third image to the right, which looks a little bit like my hair when I'm not shaving myself easily. And so this was aimed to be cool, but the picture in the second to left is actually me with my friend Dan Kubrick and a building that he was construction supervising. We looked at the Aqua Tower and it doesn't look at all like he didn't even know it's the same building. No, I didn't, because if you look at it straight on, you don't see that pattern. Exactly. You have to see it from the side. So maybe here only category one is achieved, which it looks cool, which is already great. And that has to do with a building on the right, which is here in Honolulu. And that is called the Symphony. And that's on Capoliani Boulevard in Ward. It's already sort of under supervision because it's like baking people in the neighborhood. Also, its orientation is wrong because it's blocking the winds. It's facing west. And last but not at all least, it has all these sort of white lines are basically projecting out, extruding out balconies. And next picture, whereas, and this is what I was taking here to the right when the Aqua Tower was the middle slide, little step back, but then here's my detail. I wished when I was there flying in and out still my western days that they had used something that we see on the next slide, which is a system that we had in Germany for decades. And it made it to Canada and hopefully America gets it, which is basically you start to cast the slab of the floor, then you cast that thing in and the rebar stick out. So it basically structurally connects it, but then there is a strip of rigid foam that thermally disconnects it. And we should use that. And while it's maybe more dangerous not to do that in the cold because you end up basically making a radiator and that's what the Aqua Tower is doing with being stewards of the environment and our earth, we shouldn't have leaks in the building and all these leak. I mean, the sun is gonna hit our slabs over the day and it's gonna creep in and it's basically gonna heat up the building. So the next picture, we have to some more dirty water here, this is, whereas Kurt probably didn't think that the Waikiki and couldn't be the worst one because it got worse, right? Yeah. I mean, this is. So this is again, part of the Hawaiian Village complex. And as we were discussing before this, first of all, it's got glass railings, which have very few, not a lot of good positive things to say about them. And then we've got some happy tourists in the upper right corner who presumably the ones who are gonna wanna live in this place and tell us what else is not very good about it. And there's one sitting there already. There's one person in there already. And this is the most generic American, looks like a hotel, could be anywhere, right? This is precast concrete, punched holes in. There's no easy breezy lanai sliding door. It's reduced to one hole and then one sliding door. So what the hell is this doing in Hawaii? That's right. Go away, go where you came from. That's right. Next picture. And also, if you guys renovate buildings, this is on Kohio, a recently renovated thing. They had the original vertical guard rails, but they had to add this metal mesh and you see a guy sitting behind. It's not really camouflaging him, which was the intention, but it's blocking the wind. So again, think about this twice. And the next two pictures you were walking around and see it's even de-evolving even more, right? That's right. So in our next picture, we've got what things are happening right now in Honolulu. This is, well, yeah, there we go. Yeah, so on the left we see the de-evolution and almost the vestigial remnants of a lanai or a balcony that just forms kind of a decorative exterior element, but really doesn't have any projecting part that's of any great use. And on the right, again, one of our new buildings in Honolulu, there aren't any balconies at all. And the exterior of the building has a wavy texture, which kind of looks like balconies are sticking out, but in fact, it is one big glass box that heats up because it's got to be air conditioned entirely and the sun streams in and the air conditioning is fighting against the sun. And the next picture we already got a pre-glimpse, there's also a very practical survival, existentially surviving reason potentially for lanai, right? And this is the Marco Polo Hotel and Marco Polo apartment building as it looked after the day after the fire, the disastrous fire, which occurred in July of this year. And some people survived the fire by being on their balconies outside. They still were exposed to a great deal of smoke and heat, but they survived whereas others did not. Okay, let's live up to the tradition of our show is to end on a positive note, optimistic. And you always cheer me up with your goodies from the good old times. This is the Kauai Surf and this is the epitome of Easy Breezy. This is the guardrail limited to the most minimal bars that you can get and it's capitalizing on what Hawaii is, the view and the breeze and everything. And it's a complete extension of the room to be completely livable outdoors. So why couldn't you do this again? We say yes. Next picture is our Primitiva project that we already showed you a couple of times. This is it and we're using, and this is at the top row I inserted where Primitiva could all be. And as the guardrail material, if the camera could please go to this material here that I have in my hands here, this is basically a stainless steel fissure net that you can use and it's even more minimal. It's even more minimal than any of the other stuff. Correct. And it lets the breeze through entirely and you almost don't see it and you can use it with vegetation and stuff like that. And so you can do that and go... And this is a steel mesh and so if we pull on it, you can see that that has got a lot of strength. And you almost don't see it. You just see the connecting dots, right? Wouldn't that be the ultimate and the epitome of a guardrail, of a tropical exotic erotic guardrail? Correct. Can you do it? Last picture and then we're at the end of the show. We get even more polemically provocative whereas this you need to ship in and even though you roll it, you have way less material but you still need to ship it in but we have no surprise and even more provocative proposal. We would basically negotiate with the fishing industry and basically convince them to use bi-degradable fisher nets again because the vinyl ones, turtles get caught in there and die and underground reefs gets ripped out and underground avalanches of reefs, all this stuff. We don't want to do anymore and we repurpose, we take, we're so nice to take their vinyl fisher net and we make the guardrails out of that. Exactly. So if we haven't shocked you enough and tune in again in about two weeks which is another version of the soda and martin talking about learning from the past for the future, and until then stay easy breezy and stay on your licking, sticking, stacked lanais if you have one. See you next time. Alrighty, bye-bye.