 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Welcome back to human-humane architecture here in our tropical paradise of Honolulu, Hawaii. That, if you look at popular media for sure, or lifestyle media, actually has been the coolest a while ago, almost like a century ago, and I hate to say that, and we got to get it back to that. And De Soto and I have been on a roll recently at the beginning of this year, so to speak, to look for some of these gems from the century that might potentially be endangered. Yes, that's right. And so today we want to focus on one that is sort of typical for a couple of buildings here mid-century, and I would say they were on this sort of hula hoop thing. Hula hoop thing, we might say that, circular buildings. Let's bring the first picture and we see, if we can get the first picture now, we can see actually... There we go. Three of them. And the one at the bottom is my neighbor back in Waikiki. That's a circle tower from the 60s, and so is the one above, which is the Jade Tower in Kaimuki. Yes. Both still existing, but the one we talk about today is the other one. Which one is that? And that is the Varsity Building, which is located on University Avenue, and we have been told by somebody in the know that it is threatened with potential demolition, and so... Oh, no. Oh, yes. We don't like that, and we are sorry about that, and we want to address that. Nor one's historical why one's that, and I pulled that picture here, if we can zoom back out of it. We can see, I just pulled that from the web, so you guys can do that too. And they've been writing this article, I think, some years ago, in like 2013. Yes. Where they already sensed that that might happen. Correct. So we want to start talking about the creator of the Varsity Building, and that is the next picture, who is an architect, and we apologize because we, you know, once we heard this like few days ago, we said, okay, let's do the next show, let's scramble together. You didn't even have the chance to go into your marvelous archives, or at least not Dick Dieb. Right. But you went out and took pictures while I was down with the flu. Yes. So we did our very best, and I pulled this here from myself when we, at Delcomo, had a talk story that also you did one of the best ones ever. Thank you. And this one was Pete Wimbley, the architect we're going to talk about, later partner, Mr. Gu, Don Gu, who was giving a slideshow about it. Yeah. And so I took this from the screen, and this is a picture of a slide he did, and you see the master of the time, Vladimir Asipov, that's very familiar to you personally and professionally sitting, and you see Alfred Price standing next to him, and the guy sort of almost in the middle to the left who looks the most casual is our guy of today's show, and that's Pete Wimbley. And there he is in his aloha shirt. Exactly. And while sort of rushing this time, we didn't pull from a previous show that we had shared probably his most, say globally his most popular building, and which one was that? Well, that's the Alamoana building, and when we say it's popular, it's because when it was constructed in 1961, it was so prominent in the skyline of Honolulu that on television and in movies, you very frequently could see that Alamoana building in very prominently in the background. And plus I brought something here for Ken Barken. And you brought something here, and let's get back to the studio so everybody can see what Martin has got. And that is the German DVD of the film Blue Hawaii and starring Elvis Presley. And in that film, in more than one scene, you can see the Alamoana building in the background. And you can see that too. And I have to thank my best friends, Kirsten and Stefan, who gave me that. So it's called Blowers Hawaii. That's the German version. And it's available these days in the store. As it should be. As it should be. It shows it's still popular. That's right. There's this building, but at the end of it, sort of the celebration, at the end of the movie, it celebrates another building. Absolutely. It celebrates the Coco Ponce Hotel. Exactly. We did an entire show. We did. Unfortunately, one that is threatened as well. Yes. So poor Pete left and right. His work basically gets endangered. Yes. But since we're in Honolulu, we choose to show another project, which is the next picture. Correct. And there's also something we have touched at a certain point. And our most activist journalist, Kurt Sennberg, was the most outspoken labeling what has replaced that building, which is a high-rise, a timeshare condo. Yes. And he has taken it as the prime shot for his article that he called Ugly Honolulu. We analyzed a little why in a show that we called the Lanais or something like that. But this one here was prior to that. That was the Waikiki Inn, as we can see. And so that was Pete in his early era, which is very ticky, right? Yeah. But as you pointed out, it was also not specific to Hawaii. It was very Californian. It was this type of style, which took from a lot of different original Pacific indigenous cultures, was found in a bunch of other places, particularly California, but other places in the U.S. and even internationally, because it was exotica. It was an amalgamation of elements from different things that were not supposed to be 100% accurate to the cultures they came from. No, in fact, in the last time we talked about this hyperbolic parabola. That's a tongue-breaker in many ways. Yes, it is. But I tried my best. I went to North Carolina when I had a job offer at NC State, and there was a building just like that. This one here, sort of, Pete, maybe wasn't at its best yet as far as what he became later, because you can see this was fully glazed, and you can see the sun hitting it. So this probably needed AC, which isn't quite in line with a sort of polyneedee and sort of pre-fossil, easy breezy kind of way. But there were many Pete's, and the next one, his next picture, is another Pete once again, me from Don Gu's slideshow at Dolcomomo. He was racing his Lotus, his orange-yellow Lotus, together with this familiar-looking guy, Steve McQueen. So I labeled this Pete the Playboy. All right. So he was a guy who really enjoyed life, and we paired this sort of era with another project of his that's luckily still there, at least in large, and that is which one, next picture? The next picture is the Bank of Hawaii Tower in Waikiki on Kawakawa Avenue. And as you pointed out, unfortunately, the ground floor has been changed quite a bit from its original appearance, as you can see in these pictures. But the bulk of the building is still there. It has this very interesting exterior covering, which people wonder what it was supposed to be at the time in the 60s. Was it supposed to look like a palm tree? Was it supposed to look like the top of a pineapple? He, as I understood it said, it isn't supposed to resemble anything specific. That's natural. It is just a path. And I think that's an excellent point. And dating that, the Waikikian was early 50s or something? Middle 50s, 1955, 56. So this was 10 years later. 10 years later. So he had sort of moved on. And it's exactly like you say, you can see in it whatever you want to see it. So the typical tourist probably sees something exotic in it, some palm leaves or something like that. But the scientist, the engineer, just sees a repetitive pattern that is basically arches. And arches is one of the best forms and structure that the Romans and all other cultures have used. Have used for a moment. The user, I know someone who lives in there who says, you know, it's actually keeping us cool. Significantly. Not perfectly, you know, but sort of like in the range of the IBM building, which we'll get to at the very end of the show. So a very nice, true modern building that different than postmodernism, just wants you to see that one thing only. This here allows you, you know, in a democratic way to see a multitude of things. So next picture is Pete, the provocateur, because these nice and sexy legs, I'm just wearing shorts. That is Pete. And so if we would put our feet here up, maybe we'd do it at this point. That's what we will allow ourselves to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we're believing easy breezy as well. So there are all these guys who come to the tropics with their pants on and are overdressed. He wasn't. He believed he went to the beach where he got his ideas and he sketched. So he was a truly exotic guy and so probably his most exotic building or representative for that attitude is our today's project. And the next picture shows that this is a picture, all these next pictures come from you. You took this here and this is great because you took it from where the tree is and I teach this class here, which is called tree texture, which recognizes that the most comfortable place to be in Hawaii is under a tree. Right. And so this building has a lot to do with nature. We think, and in fact, we referred to it in a previous show that was called Tropical Brutalism and we made this reference to the saguaro cactus. I was familiar with it because I was in Arizona for two years before I came here. And a cylindrical form, which this building assumes, is a natural form. There are a lot of plants that assume a cylindrical form, not just cacti, but the trunks of trees are roughly cylindrical as well. And just like, not just formally postmodernism, but modern, high modern, a saguaro cactus has that crazy shape of a section because it shades itself. It surely does. Always at any time of the day, significant parts of self-shaded, that's how it survives. Right. And so Pete said, should architecture be here on the islands? And the next shot is one that I took on my daily bicycle up the hill to Manoa. And I always felt, when you step back and you see it from a distance, it's nicely pixelated. It's got these shadow dots. Yes. And so has the mountains in the back. Yes. So there's a sort of performative in the term performance, is also the term form. So there is this sort of alluding to a natural phenomenon that in fact... Correct. And the cylindrical part of the building is not solid. No. You are not looking at a solid concrete surface there. Exactly. So stepping back a little bit, next picture, this is the most familiar view that we're afraid will be soon gone. But that hasn't always been the case, because in fact, if I would have been here as long as you have on the island, I would remember what we see in the next picture. Right. Because next door to the varsity building, and in fact, before the varsity building, was a varsity theater. And you can see in this photograph, the varsity theater in the foreground and the varsity building in the background. And the varsity building took its name from the theater, which was from about 1939. And the varsity building is from the 60s. The varsity theater was a typical streamlined building of that time period of the 30s. It had a nice exterior, not only that thrusting out facade, but it had a large open space, which as you can see in the upper picture on the very top, was to accommodate people waiting in line or waiting for the next movie to start. So it had an ample exterior part. But those two buildings right next to each other meant that you didn't see either one of them completely by itself, because you saw them together. And today, of course, the varsity building has no neighbors, and so it stands by itself. Yeah, and then the lush vegetation seems tropic exotic to me, but picture top left unfortunately gone, I think in 2008. 2008 it was demolished, so the varsity theater is gone. Okay, so let's hope we can make that picture. Don't do it to this one. Let's go inside, which you did next picture. Right, so there we are inside the varsity building, which has small curving interior hallways, which in some ways are not that inviting, and you made the additional comment about, well, first of all, the hallways inside the Alamoana building, which we see on the middle lower right, are a lot less forbidding than that. They are more open, they're more easy and nice to walk into, but we also recently discussed the Kahala Apartments, which has a beautiful exterior, but the interior hallways again are really not very pleasant to walk around in, and those are the two pictures that you see in the bottom right. Exactly, but we imagined in the next picture, right, that if you would go inside into a unit, which we didn't have the chance, but as we sort of were estimating in the previous show about the Brise Soleil, that it must be pretty pleasant because you're not tortured by the sun and there's no glare, so it's probably a very comfortable work atmosphere within the building. But you do have a view as well. It's not completely cut off, but you also are not, as you said, the glare is going to be considerably reduced from, and this is at a time period also, let's say in the 60s, they didn't have film to put on glass yet to reduce glare, so this is, you just had plain glass and if the sun was coming in, that's what you got. Yeah, and next picture is when you step out of the building and into that open staircase, that's where I sort of reflect on what you just said, whether Kahala Hilton's, and you said that was a linear, I mean, that was a long, long, long trough, you know, trap trough. But this one here is a relatively small building and short circle, and it reminded me of the John Graham Alamoana building that we keep talking about, which they allowed itself the luxury, John Graham, another purely commercial architect. This was a commercial project, a commercial program, but they allowed the luxury to basically sacrifice one rentable unit to make it the hallway that goes out and that way you basically protrude out and you get that sort of beam of light that basically gives you orientation like a natural wave form. And I also want to say too, of this building, the varsity building consists of two separate units. They are connected with walkways at each floor, but there's the large cylindrical building and then there's the skinny rectangular building on the right, which you see is where the stairs and the elevators are. So it's really two units next to each other. And plus you taught me that what we see on the right side was originally not there. It was open, easy breezy, and as for wind blocking, you know, this is where the Minoa wind comes and the rain can come with it too. Right. So let's go to the next picture, which sort of celebrates that iconic staircase sculpture, you can say. But then again, let's go back to these iconic fins where even more iconic. This picture and you walked inside and documented this interstitial space between the fins and actually the glass. Correct. And that's pretty remarkable because that's sort of under current developer terms is sort of wasted space. But it's actually not because it helps cooling the building because they got that buffer where the air is already not over heated. There's air circulation. Plus he probably never in his life, the opposite of it, imagine that would have allowed the depth for that nasty AC machine. That's right. But it allows the depth for window cleaning and for keeping maintaining these slabs, which we will talk actually in about the second to the next slide. But the next slide here is you once again zooming in into these iconic fins and what's in between. Right. And we discovered something interesting. Yeah, and you pointed out something which I would not have thought about, but in terms of engineering, the folded look of these interweaving panels actually adds strength to them rather than them being a flat slab. So that V shape makes them stronger, but it also adds interesting visual texture to the outside of the building. Exactly. If the camera could go to studio for one second, we could just simply demonstrate that here with our cheat sheet here. Right. Which, you know, that is pretty instable. Right. But once you start to... And then... And once you start to bend and you get structural integrity to it. Right. So once again, whereas, you know, you can look at these spandrels as a chevron and that's one of the most popular pattern that you find these days. You just throw them on buildings. Right. Here throwing on wasn't the intention. No. The intention was very engineering. Correct. It was very clever. Correct. It was very much like any indigenous culture would have done it in the past. Exactly. Including here. It wouldn't have been just... Do the most with the least, you know. Just to make it pretty. Exactly. It would have been because it made some sense. So to that degree, you can call this sort of and, you know, evolved indigenous building because he was just thinking like everyone had been thinking in the past in a progressive way and was just like doing this with modern means and methods and materials. Right. So this is really interesting. Yeah. So this next picture he took at the left part was taken where? Okay, that's at the very bottom of some of those vertical panels and this is where a large vehicle happened to strike these and chip off the concrete so that you can see the interior structure and there's actually rebar in there as well as this sort of strips of metal that have holes in them and that's the structural part of what was concrete. I said originally when I saw these I thought maybe they were metal with a finish on them and you pointed out, they truly are concrete. That's what you said in the Tropical Brutalism show but I have to say they probably shouldn't have been concrete because there's no space in there to cover the rebar sufficiently and I want to give credits and thank Kamehameha Schools, Maintenance, you know, bosses Bob Oda and Paul Kay because for many years you've seen this building almost all the time in scaffolding and they've been doing, you know, very, very careful, you know, and so thank you guys for doing that and probably little, you know, that they know that there would be sort of a sad, desperate sort of destination for the building to be taken down but the top right picture here is our previous guest from the early show, Urban Transcendence, Les Campers who's just demonstrating to our emerging talents here that these days you can make these fins again by using the carbon fiber reinforcement that doesn't have the spalding problem anymore so you can actually make them I mean these days that shows us again how ahead of the time Pete was correct and the problem with rebar is it rusts and carbon fiber isn't going to rust so if it doesn't rust it's not going to crack the concrete and talking ahead of its time that Pete had, next picture is also true typologically and this is a project that has informed me the most when I was in the Midwest students in my mid-20s and this was the hottest building and still is, this is I am Pays and we have East West Center from here we're blessed and this is a bank the NBC Bank at its time now it's bought by old Fargo as you can see in the picture I took at the top left and it's a marvelous building that has a lot in common you see that sort of structural biochlamatic fin screen bristle lay but also more important as importantly is that the structure makes that stretch to keep the lobby all open it's one big room it's free flow and it's as big as you can see at the top right that we were able to have these exhibits in the building, these big architectural urban displays and so that gets us to the next picture because Varsity was not unsimilar and these are all drawings we were able to obtain from Pete and actually we have to make a correction because the firm at that point was still called Wimbley and Cook and this one the drawings at the very top right are actually signed by Mr. Cook as partner but that was before it became how the firm is called today and so these are original drawings and if you look at that how passionately and playful he was sort of undulating that theme of circular and of swooping curves that's just pretty remarkable and obviously a left over from that original function as a bank as you can see First National Bank is that sort of a window where you can drive by it's got a road entirely around it so people can drive around and use the drive up teller and so if you're still not convinced why this is so innovative if you look at the plan usually if you're not an architect where structure goes down it's mostly more visible it's chunky so like black dots but were black dots in these drawings and the next picture is he didn't forget them no not in the center let's go that's what the lobby looks like today and thanks to you you shot this picture here and this is like the best usually we don't stand up in studio I know but let's do this here hopefully they'll forgive us for that so the building functions go on your one leg because that's what the building is doing and then it reaches out with one arm and then it is not touching itself but it's touching a ring and I should have brought a little hula ring here and we would have been holding on to that hula and that is how the building basically works and then all the top floor is coming up we're going to rest on our arm and isn't that crazy one leg is off the floor we're standing on one leg and we're holding our arms out and in the center that's what's holding up and the empty space so when we look at the interior of the ground floor of the varsity building that's what that is exactly and give us the next picture please that's the drawing that basically is the reflected ceiling plans how we call that and usually that's the least sexy that's the least sexy the most unsexy plan but here it reveals a super ingenious and it wouldn't surprise me if Pete Wimberley worked with basically Dr. Alfred Yee on that one I don't recall but it's just like amazing and what's also amazing is the next picture because you were in there and got an impression of the most current use because it's been empty vacant for quite some while and you were rather impressed by what's in there right so what's in there now is something called the YY Collective which is a Hawaiian themed gathering place they have art shows, they do music they do other types of events making use of this one big space that we just were talking about that's got this wonderful dynamic ceiling with the open beams that they've accentuated with the new lighting that they've put in and they are using the vault as part of their space as well so what you were pointing out is this is very innovative of an innovative Hawaiian use of what was originally an innovative building and we're really wow if I look at the clock we gotta keep going and it's innovative it's within Hawaiian tradition down to the details next picture down to the bathroom door and the bathroom door just simply points out that this is for men for women and for transgendered people as well so that's really inclusive and that's what Hawaiian culture traditionally was and should be but unfortunately hope everyone is seated we are again so next picture this is where our fear comes from because this is exactly across the intersection of where the varsity building is this is new exclusive hermetic invasive student housing going up what drives me the most crazy and you're from here so I can't imagine how you must feel where Hawaiian terminology is basically used slash abused for basically invasive development and why is it so invasive next picture because if we're up on our university hill next picture the right picture is you barely see varsity at all but you start to see that big chunk which the left part of the picture is that monster and so why is that why are we fearful next picture as far as the varsity building is concerned you took that picture it's going to be overshadowed by the new Halimahana building which the varsity building right now by itself looks really large and substantial but once that new building is there it's going to permanently change that neighborhood in the high-rise neighborhood and we're afraid what's going to happen until that develop it's going to be some years and it's going to be more Christmas trees which is what it's used for for that time there are more RVs which I thought RVs are not allowed on the island so never mind now we're doing a stretch we're like apologizing to Pete but saying if we don't want to be called basically yesterday people called Waldorf and Stettler the guys on The Muppet Show overly sentimental right the two old guys if we want to say we believe and change and evolution has to happen the next couple picture is going to be a project we've been doing at school and you've been starting to talk better about it than I could do it's called Primitiva and it is not unlike the varsity building a round building it would be a high-rise building it would be more open this is the rooftop this would be open for people to be growing things enjoying nature more if we see in the next picture we've got and if I'm correct this is just one of the different floors and so the floors open outwards everybody looks outwards you've got this inner part which again has more open spaces for people to do things you've got greenery just like we just did in the varsity and in the next picture we've got this is the ground floor and again open space we've got the open stairway we've got walkways with the central part open like we just saw and on the left we've got that kooky mode of transportation which is essentially a ski lift which has been proposed for moving people around in that neighborhood rather than automobiles that traces back to the bottom ride to Nicole Horie a board member here I think to Kawai who's proposing that bringing like the students and Minoa residents up the hill in an easy breezy correct and enjoyable way and that's very breezy I can tell you and in the next picture this is well tell me what's going on here well this is we go one step further where we're complaining about the hermeticness of Pete's core we open this up this has a green light so it's got a central skylight exactly and that's the central part and on the ground floor next picture on the very ground floor we would have in our there we go we've got a farmers market so you've got people bringing in food and you're buying food you're intermingling with people and that's where you're getting your sustenance so once again it's a social space in place it's dedicated to the public it's not exclusive it's not a controlled security controlled lobby where it's all about if your resident come in show you a card Ryan exactly and this is not like that so this is a break from what the most high rises are now which are exclusive in which if you do not have a past you don't get to go in exactly and not because of all that that you were so kindly explaining the next picture is that's how it would look like right in that same similar location except it's filled with greenery and I don't think you'd see the Beatles walking across the street but perhaps in your vision you might it's it's exactly and we want to be very clear we've been saying this not as a Doko Momo board member founding part of me as University of Hawaii member but mainly as a practicing architect who is a big fan of Pete Wimberley and as you can see is informed and inspired by him he's really one of my mentors and that being said let's not even think about what you just tried to promote in the last couple pictures but let's make our last picture which is the last picture and this is something if we can there we go this is a picture I pulled from from the web from Flickr so at the first glimpse because it's grayscale I thought this is a historic picture but you can see from the contemporary cars it's not that old so someone you know many people out here must think this building is so iconic it's so cool and we caught the shore the show Vanity varsity varsity vanity and this is just like on vanity fair right and he called Kidman is posing as Marilyn Monroe so there's something timeless about certain people about certain actors about certain images and this actor is certainly one of them and we want to point out to a positive case because it's a positive show and we are a positive positive yes we are yes we are because there was a case with Howard Hughes where they also originally didn't appreciate one of their buildings and wanted to tear it down and that's the IBM building and today they got it and this picture was pulled from them and probably celebrated as their showcase their showroom correct and both the IBM building and the varsity building have unique exteriors designed just for them and both of them are iconic both of them one is a survivor now the other deserves to be a survivor alright so to everyone out there who owns the varsity who wants to own it who wants to redevelop redevelop around it but let's keep it but let's keep yes alright with that stay exotic and stay like Pete see you next week bye bye