 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Happy Honolulu Tuesday afternoon from De Soto Brown and Martin de Spang. Welcome back to Human-Human Architecture here, and we're going to have a show about... That's very political, so we have a political paradise. Is that true? That's true. That's true. We're talking about presidents. Even that. So the first picture who first comes to our mind when we talk about presidents and architecture is we can't get around the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Correct. And he was sort of a hobby architect, we can say, and you visited one of his, his own project. His own project, which is in the lower left corner. That's his home Monticello in Virginia. And again, in fact, if we allow ourselves to be critical, and how can one with a third president in the United States, right? But if one would sell, it's like, seems a little invasive what he was doing. You can also say he copycatted from Italy. He certainly did. There is the Villa Rotunda at the top right. And what he might have wanted to do is just below him is the indigenous architecture. Correct. And this is sort of hanging on and still impacting, like for example, us, because at the bottom right corner is an attempt to be Monticello at the School of Architecture up at UAH and doesn't quite work that well. And that's where you work. So, but that was all sort of pre-contact, right? Correct. That's right. Let's move on when presidents actually had put their foot on the island. That's right. That's right. And so the first president to actually visit the Hawaiian Islands while he was president was Franklin Roosevelt in 1934. While he was here, he stayed at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. There's a picture of the room that he stayed at. And he also was the president who was in charge when Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7th, 1941. He came back for a second time in 1944 during World War II. So he was here twice. Yeah. And obviously, being our show about human human architecture, we want to see what kind of relationship is there between the zeitgeist, the architect's era, and the president's era. And so top right is Will Bruder having visited us. And the Royal Hawaiian was still one of his favorites. And even though it's an imported style, it's imported from a similar climatic region. So it still feels pretty good, and literally figuratively speaking, right? So next picture, who do we have next? Next, we've got Harry Truman. And he visited several times. First time he visited was during the Korean War, and he decided he wouldn't wear a lay because it looked like he would be on vacation. But when he came back after being president and he was a civilian again, he did wear a lay. And during his time period was the construction of the Board of Water Supply Building by Hart Wood. And our friend Don Hibbert is the prime scholar. So that's pretty cool stuff, right? That's mid-century. It's all easy breezy. It's all brisa lay. Yeah. So that works great. Next one is going to be... Next, we have got President Eisenhower. And here he is in 1960, riding around in a very kooky-looking Lincoln convertible. And that was the Googie period. And so on the right, we've got the Foodline Supermarket and the Tiki's at the Windward City Shopping Center from that same time period. And we have the architect, Pete Wimberley, who was raising lotusess with Paul Newman. So like a playboy architecture kind of area, Googie architecture, right? And we're sort of saying, you know, that Lincoln Continental is a little funny, but then the next sort of model revision, you know, it became a very legendary car. And this is his next picture because that is his follower, John F. Kennedy, right? Correct. And John F. Kennedy rode around in a 1963 Lincoln Continental convertible. You see a picture of him going through Waikiki in Kalakawa Avenue in 1963. And that was the same time period, as we can see, that the Pearl Harbor Memorial, the Arizona Memorial was constructed and designed. Yeah. And I'm jealous of you because this is, for me, the prime time of America. It's heydays and high point, right? And you've been here and you witnessed all that. So I'm really jealous of that. And like an example of the architecture of that time is Alfred Price's, you know, Arizona Memorial. Yes. And there's top right. We did a show basically about it with Jack Gilmer. And we're going to have another one potentially by my colleague, Laura McGuire. And so there's my son, Lenny, visiting some years ago. And we also put in like the architecture that's personally surrounded around John F. Kennedy as sort of he was representing what you always call the rocket age because there was shooting the things to the moon and stuff like that. And refrigerators and microwaves, this popped up stuff. But his architecture wasn't quite as Jetson-like, right? It was rather reactionary. What he came from. Yeah. But as you pointed out, the zeitgeist of his time period was his base age and it was forward thinking and it was modern. Okay. And unfortunately, you know, Kennedy was cruising down Calacar Avenue in his Lincoln Continental. And that ended up tragic when he was back on the mainland in Texas. And so we all know, we all know what happened. And that was the same car. And that was the same car. And so who followed, and we'll see on the next picture is President Johnson. And I already, you know, referred to you in the show about the Halamanoa that I said you shook his hand twice when he was up there a couple of years later. Yes, that's right. Right. And also you told me that he stayed in the Kahala Hilton at some point. Yes, he did. Which we did a show about. Yes, he did. And I was digging out one of the early Hawaii 5.0 series, which is the Samurai, which is called, which plays mainly in Henry J. Kaiser's home. And according to online, we also heard that he stayed there. But you told me that was when Kaiser already was there. Correct. So the house, he stayed in the house, but Kaiser was not his host. So again, very, very innovative. And the next picture is a president who we probably wouldn't consider to be most innovative and he's not sort of, you know, remembered in the best way because of Watergate. But in fact, if you match the time of his presidency with the years of architecture, we are going to have, you know, we have Rich in the studio and he's going to do a show in the summer about this one building, which is the capital here. Yes. And, you know, we have Central Plaza of the Pacific. So these are the prime pieces of heyday mid-century architecture that have happened, honestly, at the beginning of his leadership. Yes. But still, that's what it is. Correct. And the next one is we allow ourselves to say when things sort of, well, this is Jimmy Carter, obviously, and you can say he was here too. Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalind, and their sons lived here while he was in the U.S. Navy and he was stationed at Pearl Harbor. So they actually lived here and later on, look back on it very fondly. They were very impressed by living here in the Hawaiian Islands. And he stayed on the base here pretty much. Yes. And he was also the only president who grew up in subsidized housing and social housing and that impacted him up to today. I mean, he's there at the bottom left. He's out there in his 90s in Canada doing houses for people in need, for, you know, poor people, architects of humanity, and he's still out there and doing it. And while his presidency, things like the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center in its original way. Yes. So these were good days. And he also tried to tell Americans when the first oil crisis came, you got to tighten the belt. You can't be as excessive anymore. But at that time, Americans, if I'm not mistaken, said, who are you to say that? We're going to go for someone who can tell us, yes, we can. And who was that next picture? And that was Ronald Reagan. And Ronald Reagan said, in that next picture, Ronald Reagan said, well, hey, let's just live it up. And Ronald Reagan, not necessarily, as you said, a very modern thinking person, but he did live in a very 50s modern home that was provided to him by General Electric Company because he was their ad sponsor on television. And that's what we call ranch style, pretty much. And that was a pretty truly American forward thinking style. And at the top left, you can see him and Nancy visiting. This is taking a bath at Kahala. Yes, that's right. And the picture at the bottom right, we have put in, you know, when he was shaking, you know, a card of the hand and took over. We said that was at the beginning of sort of things turning reactionary from progressive previously. And the actual architecture, we see a building here downtown just next door. This is pretty symptomatic for the time of Reagan saying, hey, let's pump more oil in buildings. Let's be more excessive. Who cares? So that's how that went, right? So let's move on. We have one more guy from back, that is. And that is President Clinton. And he grew up as a poor man himself. But we were saying that does how much does the president have to do with the zeitgeist of the time that he is president? Does he affect it? Or is he just part of it or whatever? And he grew up in humble circumstances. But during his time, there were a lot of ostentatious buildings. Yeah. And the top picture is basically his homes back in Arkansas, one in Fayetteville. And down there are big monsters here in downtown. They're pretty invasive. They're pretty ostentatious, as you said. So again, there seems to be maybe the zeitgeist was turning a certain way. And even though the presidents try to basically maybe re-steer that, maybe that weren't that powerful anymore to do that. Is that fair to say? I think you're right. So let's sort of skip a couple of other ones who came after and move to one which we want to point out the actual architecture he was related to on the island. And that he inhabited. And who's that? That is President Barack Obama. And when he returned to Hawaii after living in Indonesia for a few years with his mother's second husband, they came back and they lived in this little walk-up apartment, which is at 1839 Pookie Street, which is right just a block away from Punahou School. And this is a good time to point out that Punahou and that area became his neighborhood that he was in. And we're going to see all the places that are connected to that. And these few-story walk-ups turned out to be some of our favorites on the island. One should actually do a book about that. I look at Laura, another project she needs. Yeah. I think that's really something. So let's move on. Let's check out his hood, right? Check out his hood. The boy in the hood. What did he do? Well, he got his first job just a few blocks away from there at the Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Store. And so when you go in there today, there is a clipping posted that says here is where Barack Obama first had his first job and it was harder than he thought it was going to be. And also right nearby was the Cinerama Theater. That's where he got to see Star Wars. There you go. That's where I got to see Star Wars, too. You guys, you guys. I know. And next picture is looking at where he worked, right? Right. He worked in this close by building. Yeah. This is Arcadia, which is a retirement home. It was one of the first high-rise retirement homes. Yeah. And he worked in the kitchen and the dining room. And that's what you see in the bottom right corner. But you went in there, this picture, you provide these pictures and that's not the original anymore, unfortunately. It seems like it's cheesecake and brownied. And that reminds us to, you know, makes us to update the picture of the top ride. This is the Denny's at my corner. Yeah. Kallakaua and Kohio, where you basically see now this decorated sort of, you know, pastiche of something. Yeah. Yeah, let's not go there anymore. No, we won't. Let's just keep going here. Right. Correct. So then this is also in his neighborhood. He went to Punahou School from 1971 to 1979. That's where he graduated from. But he did something more exciting up there, right? Yes, he did. Yes, he did. Come on. Tell it. Tell it. Well, in the parking lot behind the church, which is in the upper left corner, that's where he and his buddy smoked marijuana. There you go. And he admitted that. So this, again, is many experiences there. Very presidential, yeah. Very presidential. That's absolutely right. Next picture is where you and him were born, right? Yes, we were both born at the Kapilani Medical Center, or as it was called then the maternity hospital. So of course the hospital's been changed a number of times since we were born. It's got a number of other buildings tacked on there. And you took a picture looking up Punahou Street at the hospital on the right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And us, next picture, we've been using automobiles as vehicle for thought. So while me driving by there, every Tuesday on my way to the show, I drive by there. And I always, even before I knew the background we're going to talk about today, I thought this is a really cool building. Yeah, it is. This is a nice building. And so. And that's your Mercedes. And then there's the Christop there. So we're talking about sort of clean lines and simplicity and timelessness. And that's truly what that building is. I agree. As another building by the same architect. And the architect's name is Quan Du Park, or the designer's name is Quan Du Park. And he also designed the picture, the project that we see at the top left picture in the background of our last show. That's the Waikiki Circle Hotel Tower. So he did both buildings. But now we're in this building. So let's check it out more. And let's get closer. Next picture. And even though it's called a circle, it's not a circle. It's not a circle. It's called Punahou Circle. It's around the Punahou Circle, right? Yeah, that's right. So here you can see what the building pretty much is. It is a sort of lattice screen that these lanais are sticking out through. So it's kind of a late entry to that show we did a while ago, right? Right. So if you zoom closer and next picture, try to understand what that is. You can see that the lanais are very cleverly designed that left and right of the open sort of lanai that sticks out like a tongue. You've got these discrete screens out of these lettuces. And at the top picture left, just like the varsity building, although they're very sort of skeletal and very thin. And they look like wood. They look like wood because they're brown, painted brown. But as you can see some rebar coming through at the bottom of one at the top left. So they are actually concrete, right? And then sort of... So the left, the left lattice is basically the frontal projection of the door, which is behind. And the door is camouflage like wallpaper like. So you don't see a door. We had that before in a couple of these two-to-three story walk-ups. Yes, we have. And the one on the right could be, you see a little bench in there. And another unit on the very right, you can see you can hide your surf bed on the board there, which he did. He served, right? He probably had a surfboard there. He probably did. He also body-surfed a lot too. Exactly. And the building is also very sort of liberal as I think we can call him. Yes. Because it's not so strict on what you can do or not on the little nice, which the next picture shows because someone started to jungle his little life. That's right, that's right. So this is allowed where in many buildings it's like, oh, you can't do this. You can't do that. You can't put towels over the garbill or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And here it's like, okay, we're pretty much democratic, you know, and everyone can express themselves. But probably the most recognizable of the building is another element that we sort of see sort of diagonally projecting through the image here and let's check this out closer, which is here. That's the crazy cantilevered canopy we did an entire show about those. That's a late entry to that. And this is a late entry to that. And this building was built in 1965, we determined. Yeah. Is that what it was? Yeah, yeah. And it's got this really dynamic up-and-down movement right at the front. And that's the thing that you really see but as we'll see as we go along, those patterns are repeated once you get inside. Let's do that. Let's jump in. So the next picture. And it wasn't until we checked it out last week and basically, wow, this is actually continuing. Yeah. This sort of, you know, diamond, prismatic sort of shape is sort of continuing there. And just try to do this these days with a cost of labor and sort of the sort of little demise, sort of skills of work. Here we pointed out in a couple of shows. Correct. This is pretty top notch, right? Right. Even though this is not a very high-end building, it's got that level of construction that elevates it other than just totally every day. So let's take an inside outlook. Next picture here. Isn't that crazy? I mean, you have this sort of up-and-down, this valley and hilltops of that structure. That is very, very interesting, right? Correct. And again, the effort to do that. And it reminds us of a project. We have our fellow Doko Momo board members here who are going to come and join us at the end of the show. And we were really sort of worried about one particular project, which is another prime example of mid-century modern. It is. And this is the Blaissel Center, which we have done a show, which is this referring to. Correct. And it's basically the same attitude, right? Yes, it is. It's basically making things pretty exotically, tropically, crazy in their form, you know, and making it exciting and going through a pretty large effort to do that. Correct. So this is that. And then so we go further in. And again, the contrast with, we're in the tropics with vegetation being lush. Yes. So the really cool contrast between the cold concrete and the warm sort of warming up the cool concrete lush vegetation. Correct. And as you like to say, this is completely easy breezy. This is completely open to the treatments. Well, let's go to the next picture because that told me. There we are. And never mind the stupid cones. I think this is our paranoid attitude today that people might hit their heads at these sort of slightly angled things. We don't know. So I'm not sure what that is. But this is basically pretty much concrete floors, you know, pure concrete floors. Yeah. And everything is pretty much authentic and is real. And this could be from these days. I mean, this is what the emerging generations are crazy about and folding and all these things and being, you know, yeah, using all these softwares and basically creating these forms. Yeah, that's right. And they were pioneers and basically doing that. That's right. Back in the days. No computer generated anything at the time this was designed. Exactly. Next picture again shows there's some significant planter areas in there. And you also see a bunch of chairs in there and they don't look like, you know, Null or Herman Miller. No, they're not. No, they're not. They're pretty like, you know, whatever. So they have a nap. Exactly. But you can, you can certainly say, I wasn't there at the right time of the day. That was sort of midday. But I assume, and I've seen this driving by at night, that the same thing happens in my building, bottom right, the Waikiki Grant, that the open lobby becomes the collective living room. Correct. So it's a very social. Yes. It's very inclusive. And isn't that what he was when he was a president? I certainly think so. I think that that, I agree with you. Yes. So let's check out the other sides of the building here Correct. And we always want to point out the orientation of buildings, which is the one on one. What you do, this is the picture top left, the Google. And the building is facing the right direction. It's facing with a nice Malca and pretty much north. Whereas the south facade, bottom left picture has the circulation, has the Lanai circulation. That's going to shade the building. The bottom right picture is the east facade, the warm morning sun being kept out because it's minimally glazed and open pretty much. Right. And the picture at the top right is something you pointed out to me that I think Obama was first. They were on the top floor and then they moved down to, they were on 12 first. No, no. They lived, I think the entire time they lived, or certainly the last one that they lived in was on the top floor on the diamond head. Yeah. But they were on the end and because the ends are larger units. They get a bigger picture. Because they go all the way through. Correct. They have this sort of window that you can see and that's facing south. So it's got that eyebrow overhang that keeps out the sun and the rain, just the way you should do it in the tropics, right? Right. So it's just done right. And so next picture is the sort of outdoor area. There is this CMU wall that's fencing off the property to the street. I think that's to Punahou Street. And once again, there is this sort of sexiness within the tectonics of that wall. Yeah. It's a sponginess of, you know, this sort of seating in these look through ones. Correct. Otherwise it's blocked. So it's just nice all the way through the little details around the building. Exactly. It's not just a solid plain wall. No. It's got detailing that's very attractive for the eye. And when you look then more Makai next picture, you see the adjacent property which is an actual urban jungle. I mean this is heavily vegetated with all your citrus fruit and with your mangoes there. Yeah. So this is urban jungleism and it's finest, right? Yes, it is. And so, and you're also talking about at its finest, he was looking at other fine pieces of mid-century modern architecture next picture because this is the other adjacent one that's just down towards the ocean. We see Century Tower back which is a prime Joe Paul Rongstead skinny tower example That's right. where he lives and so we yet have to contact him and show him about that. Right. But again, this is like the context pretty much he grew up in with and around him and so again we always tell the emerging generation everyone don't judge a book by the cover so don't look at buildings from the outside in but look from the inside out but unfortunately even though you had an inside into a unit when was that? After his grandmother died after President Obama was elected Bishop Museum was called and we went to the apartment to choose things to be given to our collection from the Obama family or what is his Obama family home they were called Obama because that was his grandparents so I did get to actually go into their apartment and see that it was not a very grand apartment at all nothing in it was grand either. Okay. So but then and also we don't unfortunately know someone who lives in there right now but thankfully there is a realtor next picture who provides these pictures on his website so thanks Bill Ramsey here and who provided these pictures and once again you can see now how much this makes sense so this sort of sticking out tongue like concrete bellestrade that just has that sort of steel guardrail so you can still look through but you have privacy, intimacy, projection and protection and basically behind that in front of projections is this biochlametic thermal comfort device of these louvers right and so from looking at the building from down you don't see any louvers because louvers are mostly sort of controversially seen these days as being outdated and old you don't see any louvers and the louvers do a great job because you basically get in the air where you want it at the bottom and then it's going to rise up because hot air then rises up and then you take it out to the backside where there's the jealousies on the circle island right so it's really clever so I think this sounds really high end exclusive right and these are probably because the president lived in there right and it's a punahoe right so it's probably going to be multimillion dollar units that's what you're thinking and they're probably basically condos own condos correct but then let's wait a minute at the bottom right there's some signs by Bill right in the front and doesn't it say apartment for rent it certainly does one bedroom so let's check out go online check out the price of that I'm sure it's going to come from the top one unfortunately it's sort of undressing itself more and more and it's very overly dressed way the what's it called Mahana Harley Mahana which is by you invasive hermetic privately financed housing at the intersection of King and University Avenue and we're just like the price tax on that is like two grand for a studio or something like that so what do we read down here we're like one bedroom with almost 700 square foot goes for 1300 that's right man that's cheaper than my Waikiki grant well considered to be a pretty proletarian paradise right right right so the Punahoa circle apartments is not an elite building that's not a plush building but we've seen it's got some really nice things to it and it has withstood the test of time because of the math right it was built in 65 and the circle tower Waikiki was built in 63 and so when Obama moved in he was it was seven years later right it's holding up well and you know it could need some you know refreshing here and there but the substance is still really really solid that's right so we want to phase out always some with some personal sort of reflections here and next picture is basically that being said you know I can say he was very inclusive for me because at the top right you can see my German general consul Dennis Zolli here looking a little bit you know the way he looks at the presidential election the last one the morning after and that's when I got pulled through by local boy Barak as 65 other ones aliens here and just he basically pulled us through because the immigration policies were way more moderate and way more supportive than there are right now and immediately when I got the the document I basically took this picture was this selfie of me which shows the invasive hermetic symphony in the back that what what Governor Abercrombie basically calls a serial box and we say a microwave serial box and you see the simple two-story building where they basically put on this sort of Obama mural so that's saying something and the next picture is another connection we have to again I grew up I have to say in a similar way and you know in this five-story walk up in Germany and we had everything that Obama had to hang out around the hood including a movie theater that we had down there so I can relate to that very well and as you can see at the bottom it informed us to build all these components that this sort of inclusive neighborhood life basically once but let's get back to Honolulu here next picture and this is something where we had what project is that you know that well by now that is the varsity building and the varsity building is in the plans in the foreground I'm assuming that's what that is and who are you meeting with well that's a great compliment for the inspirations but that's primitivo one oh that's primitivo which is an homage to varsity pardon me pardon me and we had the great chance to have that being critiqued by the legendary Alfred Yee yeah structural engineer before he passed away and he endorsed it and he basically said I don't want to talk about structure that's easy I want to talk that the building is alive yeah and this connects to this project here because once again we have a situation here because Mr. Kwon Do Park the architect yes was acting as an architect but he was trained as an engineer correct and him and Yee had a partnership which Don told us from 1955 to 60 yeah so again all comes full circle you're literally and figuratively speaking that's right but we're now working on primitivo 2 correct and can you update us a little bit well sure the primitivo is the project that Martin's classes work on in his UH class and they are always intended to be inclusive they are intended to include a lot of activities and a lot of intermingling of people there are natural elements such as tree-like forms etc. that they take into account and they want to use natural materials as much as possible replenishable materials so these are all the things that go into the projects that your students work on and you will see it tomorrow because you'll be on the review oh that's right I better be ready so they're going to be very exotic so what kind of leader would that need to be basically to thrive that kind of architecture next picture concluding picture well we're thinking that maybe this is another presidential candidate who again grew up and lived part of his life here in Honolulu and in fact Dwayne Johnson also known as The Rock lived in an apartment right near the Pagoda restaurant there's a circular building right there and he's Polynesian and maybe he's going to be another president who grew up right in Honolulu we'll just wait and see that sounds good to us so with that we're going to basically conclude and we're going to phase out into a summer that we're going to do every other show me being in Germany and you being here and every other week we're going to have our buddies from Doko Momo which is documenting and conserving the modern movement we're going to have them come to the stage now because this is a summer that's right crouched down a little bit so they can see you there if you're too tall there you go hello everybody so come on guys there's more and more so you guys please tune in over the summer human human architecture with every other week going to be mid-century modern Doko Momo Hawaii and it's going to be even better even better and more exciting so look forward to see you then bye bye