 We're live, we're talking about architecture right now with young June Park of the School of Architecture in UH Manoa, and we're going to address one of the biggest questions imaginable in the state of Hawaii and around the country, and that is affordable housing. It was a part of infrastructure in a funny way. This housing has gotten more expensive, especially in Hawaii, and that's a whole long story, but it's the landscape, the environment for this discussion. Because it's in crisis, people cannot afford housing. We have to find a way to build housing afford. We have to change the whole system in order to provide affordable housing. Back in the 60s and the 70s, it was a noble aspiration. Now it's crisis, okay, and everybody has to pitch in. Everybody who's involved, and guess what? Architects are involved, and guess what? Architects have new tools, and young June has new tools, new technological tools that we are just learning to deploy now, and architects are wrapping around those tools. So the question is, what tools do we have? What can those tools do? What problems can they solve? And at the end of the day, how do they allow architects to actually chip in their discipline, their technology, their expertise to make affordable housing? Let me add that I don't think the policymakers know about this. The policy being makers should be listening to home June. The policy makers should be trying to figure out how to fund it, how to allow for it, how to take any obstacles out of the way for it, so that the architects can make their contribution. Okay, so this is an important show on a crisis. Young June, welcome to the show. It's so nice to have you here. Aloha, Jae. Thank you for having me today. It's my pleasure to have a time with you. Well, we already know that there was a partial collapse of the building in Florida, Miami, Florida, which was the Champlain Power South. Actually, it happened in June 24 this year. Do you guys know that more than 80%, I mean, that building, that building was completed in 1982 in Hawaii. And more than 80% of the condominiums in Honolulu are older than or about the same age of the Champlain Power South. It's kind of a very big number and high number. And can you show me the slide of the one? Yeah, so our Hawaii is beautiful. But the problem is it's getting old and very expensive. So the expensive because of the several reasons. So we already know that Hawaii has a high life expectancy and unbalanced real estate property ownership. As you know, the currently 5% of the population owns 80% of the land in Hawaii. So 90% of the population struggle to find their own property from the rest, which is 20%. That's terrible. I want you to know that's terrible. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as a matter of social policy, that is unacceptable. We have to do something about that too, aside from the architectural side of things. In addition to that, we have very limited job opportunities for young generation. That's why our family demographic population structure kind of a bigger and smaller instead of this normal shape of the structure. And also the Hawaii itself is one of real estate investment portfolios for national and international investors. So it's like the price is going to be getting more expensive and also our building's going to get getting older. Then how are we going to solve it? How are we going to? Right. And I think it's worth mentioning that the problems we are talking about are getting worse. They're not static. They're not the same year after year. They're worse year after year. The disparity in wealth, the aging of the buildings, the inability of the people to buy a home for anything they can reasonably afford is getting worse. So the first thing to do is we have to catch up on all this. We have to bend every effort. Definitely. That's why I'm introducing this kind of technological development made in these days. Can you show me the animation, the video that I... So what we are looking at is this kind of morphological transformation achieved through the data interpolation. So which means previously computational design was known as a computer-aided architecture. So it was all having some tools. We're going to make a building, making some better documentation out of it. But in these days, it's not limited that way. We are able to get into the more usage of the power of the computer, which is including this kind of optimization and also the augmented reality and then the environmental simulation and also the building information modeling and so on. Okay, so what does that help you achieve? We're talking about building houses cheaper. We're talking about having more units in a given space. How do these tools help you? So I'm going to get to that. So I show that how the geometry can be transformed with the data driven. And then the next one I show that that kind of idea can be expanded to change the shape of the building according to the parametric value of each component. So in that case, if we are able to encode those variables to the necessary architectural element in terms of cost, in terms of usage of the room, usage of the circulation and so on, getting to the direction of the cost-driven optimization. So can you go to the next slide? Yeah, so we went to the site, which is the Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. That place is a kind of struggling community, which is kind of slum because of the property embedded in that society. Not only that, even though they had a kind of so-called affordable housing designed by the European architect and so on, the problem is they didn't provide, that they didn't maintain and then use that kind of social context usage of the existing family relationship and those. So we wanted to get into the optimization. So through this, we were able to save the, in theory, we saved 22% of the total project cost and also we were able to do the social mix regarding building unit types. And then also with following that kind of design advice strategies from the optimization, we were able to increase 120% of the number of the residents. What I'm trying to say is it's not just about making the columns and walls and then slab and then the roof, not this way. We want to compute the older information, those information, getting into the transformation of the geometry and then the shape of the building, arrangement of the rooms, and so on. What does that do for affordable housing? Affordable housing? Does it make it cheaper to build a building? You're looking for comfort, you're looking for cheapness, you're looking for different materials. I mean, what are the calculations and optimization do to make affordable housing? Yeah, so the affordable housing in that case, we are able to increase the number of the rooms to accommodate the people within that even constraint of the site, size of the constraint site. And also as you mentioned, the cost. So in terms of material, in terms of the usage of that component, the cost evaluation estimation. And then the third one is design context. So are you going to put the living room and then the bedroom and then also this dining and kitchen? Which way? It's kind of a combinatorial search. So the human being can do the expert designer, can easily do ABCD, combination of the one house. But when you get into the bigger, into the one apart component, multiple apart components, and those, how are you going to manage all these different variations? So the computer going to do this, do us, not only the computation, but also the simulating the design proposal. So let me see if I understand. The idea is you have so much space, so much room, so much of a footprint on the ground. And you want to put as many houses there as possible. You don't want to make the walls any thicker than they have to be. You don't want the rooms to point in the wrong direction because that's wasted space. And this optimization can help you make the building more efficient, more efficient to build, more efficient to put more units in. And I guess at the same time, you don't want to make it the walls too thin either. No, no, no, no, they have to have their privacy and so forth. Yeah, sure. So what happens is you put in data, like the size of the building footprint, you put in the number of units you want, you put in your presumptive distribution of the square footage for each unit, and bingo, out the other side comes a plan that will maximize the number of units, minimize the number of obstacles and the size of the walls, maximize the living quality, which is important in that space. And then I can get a thousand units on an acre, maybe, which is actually what Stanley Chang, who was the senator in the Hawaii State Senate, is trying to do in certain areas here in Hawaii. He's very advanced and he's talking about the same thing. I don't know if you've talked to him, but he's interested in you. Actually this summer, I had a chance to have a conversation with Stanley Chang because he thought about the multi scale of the affordable housing, how this can be done. One architect can do it. So I showed this example and then he was very interested in, but after that, we didn't have any further discussion. But yes, I really want to extend this kind of collaboration further. So in addition to what you just said in terms of optimization of that housing components, the more important in three-dimensional generation of the buildings, not just two-dimensional map, and also the computer going to give us how many one bedroom, how many two bedroom, how many three bedroom, how many studio, even those going to be computed by the machine. The machine is going to encode it with a government subsidy. So how are we going to maximize the government subsidy and also the profit in that case, how many different room types, those kinds of things can be encoded into the building design. I'm not saying that these architects so far, architect is very pure designer, but at the same time, I hope architects can accommodate these opportunities, unlimited opportunities to enhance their capability to go further. Well, what I hear you saying, and I think this is a real takeaway for our discussion, is that architects are changing the way they do business. Architects are incorporating more advanced technology because this is very advanced. This is not something you go down to Best Buy and buy a little software. This is pretty sophisticated. Okay, and so that's one thing. The other thing is you are addressing a serious social problem crisis. And the third thing is you're happy to collaborate with, cooperate with and educate legislators. So that's it. You know, architects didn't do that 10 years ago or 20. It's only now architects are learning how they have an involvement in social policy. They have a responsibility for social improvement, social development. And you're the point of that, aren't you, Hiyang Jun? Yeah, and then let's move on. If you don't mind, we can move on to the, I mean, I'm not sure how much time I have. Can we move on to that cost-driven example of this project? Actually, this project was titled the optimization of the building design and its management solutions on the view of cost-effectiveness for building users. This was supported by the research fund from the Senbu, Hawaii. So in this project, the optimized the building design strategy and its management solutions for maximizing the potential for the ability and marketability of the building has been developed. So basically, through this technique, you are able to see that 36.4% of the reduction in its maintenance fee compared to the original building. What I'm trying to say is when you, you can make a beautiful building in very expensive manner. However, if you are able to kind of a decent building, which have minimizing unnecessary cost will provide more spaces for the people and also more convenience for the people. In that case, we are able to achieve the resilience. So I mean, you talked about in the beginning about this problem is dynamic. It's not just static problem, affordable issues and only see issues and those very dynamic problem. How are you going to respond to this? Many people talk about the resilience. In my opinion, resilience response should be first, robust planning. Robust planning is we need to kind of make a plan not only the right now in terms of a future creation, robust planning. Second, rapid recovery. Rapid recovery means when something happened, the system should be able to respond that issue very quickly. That has the way to be designed. And then the third one is consistent adaptation. So through the building design, people should be able to adapt the given situation. So those three things has to be resolved into the developing the design, developing the project. So this is kind of one of the examples that we did. And then we at the time we went through about 17 high-rise condominiums in Hawaii and then six condominiums in Florida to find out what is the kind of exemplary prototype we want to follow. So when you do the optimization, there are two ways. One is that we're going to do optimization from the scratch to the end. Or if you want to save your time, you want to start with some kind of a standard and prototype, you want to use it as a model, then try to use your problem to kind of getting rich to that kind of a standard. Not exactly the same. So through those study of the 23 analysis, we were able to get into the kind of building model included with the program. That program will accept kind of various data. So simply saying based upon the analysis, you get the prototype. Prototype will be kind of managed by the data in terms of a cost, in terms of a living condition, in terms of a circulation, in terms of a hierarchy of the rooms and so on. So that's what we did with this project. And then, yeah. It's a total order. I mean, all these various things, you know, ending with resilience and recovery and those things, they're hard to do. You really have to think around the corner for that. And you have to get your owner to think around the corner for that because if he's into value engineering, he's not going to be too concerned. He just wants to get the thing built and let the buyers or the tenants worry about what happens in the future. Are there any buildings that you know of here in Hawaii that have already been built that match, that accommodate these various concerns about planning and resilience? As far as I know, not yet. We have to get that going, don't you think? Definitely, we have to get that going. So there's one condition. Somebody can ask a question. You know what? When we have an expert architect, he can do it. Yeah, I don't disagree. He can do better than the computer. When you have one building, one house, when you have one house, design this one, one house, maybe one building, the one architect can do better. However, let's increase the number of the buildings. It's going with the community. It's going with the whole district. I think the computer can do better than the expert. Sure, you make it modular. You're designing a framework and you're going to repeat the central components. But you know, one thing that strikes me, when I ask you, part of architecture is to make a better aesthetic experience in a city, for example, make us feel better, make us feel better about our surroundings. And if you give me buildings that all look alike, you're losing something in the aesthetic, how do we avoid losing something in the aesthetic? That's why the, can you show me that the first animation that I showed in the beginning, this is the possibility of the morphological transformation by the computer. We can do the complexity of the design freedom. But right now, because there's a problem, it's very small. So that's why I didn't include all this flexibility of the design. But as you see, we can get to that high quality of the design complexity. We can do it. As you see, this is the evidence. Okay, let me ask you another thing you mentioned earlier was artificial intelligence. Yes. And you know, that's really the sort of the magic box. Nobody knows how far it can go. But we know that it can do extraordinary things and solve extraordinary problems. Where does artificial intelligence fit in all of this? There are three different areas. First of all, the most important thing is artificial intelligence in architecture is a data driven. So you somehow you need to train the machine through the existing data set. So through data set, somehow you are able to, when you do some sketches, so then through the sketches, you are able to find out how these different architectural style can be applied to that kind of line drawings, let's say the kind of mood or the kind of design mood. How can I just have those? So through training the machine into that different categories of the data set, machine can with having very limited information that you are machine can provide those conceptual design variation at the early stage of the design. At the same time, in the middle, through this design optimization process itself, in these days, machine have multiple outcomes. So they are trying to get into that optimization process itself. So sometimes I'm getting scary. And then the machine can take over all the things what we can do. That's a good question. You pose a good question. The role of the architect seems to be to need the information into the computer and then pull it out again. Where does the architect fit? I mean, I've always seen architects as critical people in our society. They design our cities. They make our lives worthwhile. What happens if we take them out of the equation? It's an excellent question. I believe that you already know what the testing knowledge is. Testing knowledge is like a ride or bike. So the testing knowledge is kind of contrast to the explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge can be written and delivered through these images, writings, and so on. But how to ride a bike? It's not easy to through all the written information, right? So the thing is, machine cannot have those data. The testing knowledge data. Because without data, machine cannot run. So for now, those creativity, those testing knowledge reside in the heart and then the brain of the architect, designer, and artist. That's what I think. So, you know, I guess one of the questions that has been in the room here with us is who exactly writes the code? Who exactly develops the algorithms? Is it you? I know it's not Best Buy. Is it you? Who is it? And these people are going to be very important going forward. And maybe if it isn't you right now, it's somebody who's like you, who works for you, who is an architect and database person, and artificial intelligence person. Maybe architects are going to change the way they relate to their own work. Yeah. So the it's like teaching your children, teaching your children that this is how to design it. This is how to develop the high-rise condominium in terms of cost saving. In that case, how to teach, how to provide a direction, and outcome will be different. So what I'm trying to say is who's going to guide that kind of direction? I think that's the architect. That's maybe the collaboration with the client, collaboration with the police maker, various stakeholders. They can make a decision. Then according to the kind of decision making, artificial intelligence can support all the works. But not 100% right now. They can do little things for now. Well, but it'll change. I mean, these algorithms will become more powerful. All the processes you're talking about will become more powerful, will be able to design things more sophisticated, be more responsive to the architect. So everything is changing. The only constant is that everything is changing. Yeah. I mean, though, in order to get to the level, I think we can exercise and advance this what we already have in terms of design optimization. These kind of things can be more deeply applied in the development of the building designs. Then we can have some better benefit for our society. Let's think about the big picture. I know it's a very honorable way to have a decent house for the people, but at the same time, we are able to collaborate together, get into the more bigger kind of community design and then block district. And further, the bigger problem that we have, which is in dynamic status, then I think that's what we can do as a member of the society for the contribution. So we, luckily, if you go to the next slide, that course driven. So the outcome of my research was able to kind of a basis of design of this Capulani residence, which has the kind of honorable award that 2021 gold award on the affordable housing category of the 30s FIA BCI, the International Real Estate Federation in France. And also, this Capulani residence was invited to the United Nations habitat for better of one future. So that's the kind of achievement we were able to have. You have more slides you want to discuss? The last one, last one. The last one. Oh, I mean, the last two, if I have two minutes. Yeah, this one is the, my doctoral students projects already done by Michael Honiak. Actually, he found that, oh, this kind of prefabricated modular design is very suitable for the Hawaii. You know why? Other areas, which has four different seasons, prefabricate this modular system problem is a joint. If there is a different temperature, then the joint going to make some, making some clicking sound, making some problems. However, weather in Hawaii is constant. So it's the perfect condition to use those kind of prefabricate modular design system in the design of the very in high level of the design complexity. However, we cannot use those things more and more in Hawaii because of the lack of the police making. So I hope that if our politicians can provide kind of proactive making of this kind of policies, then we are able to accommodate more enhanced technologies and then more enhanced applications in our state Hawaii. That's my hope. Well, let's talk more about that. It seems to me that you offer a lot to the School of Architecture that you have expectations of your students that they have to be akamai about these things. They can't turn aside. They can't think classically when the role of the architect and architecture in the community is changing when the demands of the community are changing. So what do you expect to contribute to architecture in Hawaii? And what do you expect the school to contribute and the students to contribute in the next generation? I sense with you, young Jun, that there's a new generation of architects, call them the technological architects, call them the social policy architects. They see it differently and you're here to make a contribution. What is the contribution you want to make? So that's an excellent question. In the year of the Marcus Petrubius Polio, who is the architect in the Roman Empire a long time ago, at that time the architects was a master builder who is the kind of a medium between the god and then the emperor. He's the one who delivered this message to the emperor to make the buildings. So in that case, he was able to know that construction in terms of mason, blacksmith, and all the different issues. However, due to the, ironically due to the development of the technologies such as perspective drawing created by the Philip Brunelleschi and also the orthogonal drawings used by the Andrea Palladio in the age of the Renaissance and those. And then architect, you know what, just send the drawings. I don't need to go to the construction site. I don't need to deal with those issues. And then he's a vicinity getting shrinked and smaller and smaller and then just let's draw this one within my studio. However, ironically, also with the help of the technology, you are able to recover the status as a master builder which can make a real contribution for the society. That is just the medium between the god and then the emperor. You can do the heart of the society. That's what I want to see. Do what you can, yeah? And maybe more than you think. So, you know, one of the things is that Hawaii has made some really awful architecture. I'll take you for a tour one day, okay? I'll show you what I think is really, really awful. And it's a long tour. This may take several hours. And the problem is these buildings that are awful have a useful life of hundreds of years because they're built with materials and locations and costs, you know, the economic considerations, they're going to be there for hundreds of years. And, you know, I wish we could tear them down, but that's probably not in the cards. So, when you say make a contribution, you're really talking about areas where you don't have to go through the humbug of tearing everything down, where you have green fields to work on, or at least places that are buildable. Okay, here's the question though. When you put all this new design into a building, and you make it a building that satisfies the social needs and the technical needs of the community, now, using all these tools, using this new design concept you're talking about, that building is also going to have a useful life of 50, 100, 150 years. Okay, and while that 150 years is passing by, there'll be new ideas, new designs, new tools, new architects, new generations of architects. What happens when the buildings you're building now get old? Okay, yeah, I understand. So, well, I cannot get to that, the kind of big picture, but I cannot get into the small problem related to what you just said. So, one of the issues in Hawaii is a multi-generational housing. The multi-generational housing in the beginning is going to start with a nuclear family, a couple, then they will have the children, and then the children getting bigger, and then the house is bigger, and then when the children went out, then they have to think about how you're going to divide and then change the form of this one. So, my current research development is how the building can evolve with the change of the family structure. So, as you mentioned, building can go up, and then what is the efficient and effective manner to make it smaller, to make it collapse, and to make an addition based upon what you started. That's why in the beginning I called it the resilient design approach. So, as you mentioned in the beginning, dynamic status, you have to deal with past, present, and future at one time. With the help of the computer, you are able to somehow forecast. That's what I believe. Thank you for that. That really helps me, actually. And my last question, if you don't mind, my last question for you is, you know, we made a movie about climate change and the relation of climate change to endemics, and we interviewed faculty here and around the country to talk about that. And what we found at the end of the conversation was always the thought that what I say as a scientist, what I say as an academic, it doesn't necessarily get into the city council, and it doesn't get into the legislature, because those guys do not understand that they don't care. I think they care. They think they care on a political level, but not beyond that. Anyway, so, you know, and every scientist we talked to had concerns about their ability to affect policy, to affect the policymakers. And what I found was so interesting is they said, you know, in the past, in science, that was okay. We were in science, and they were in public policy, and if they listened to us fine, if they didn't find, it wasn't our job to try to, you know, muscle the public policy. We can only tell them what we thought. Now some of them came up with the notion of, wait a minute, part of a scientist's job is to go out there and affect public policy. Part of us, and I'm really talking about architects too, part of a scientist's job is to change public policy, and some of them, and this is the most interesting thing. This is my question. Some of them said, well, you need to have scientists who run our office so that they will have the influence of policymakers themselves. So Yang Jun, what do you think about the possibility that an architect steeped in all the technology and design we've been talking about would run for office? And he'd be shoulder to shoulder with Stanley Chang and many others in the legislature and the city council, he'd be an expert in the next office. Would any architect do that? Should architects do that? Let me tell you something. So Jay, we already have two big warnings. First warning is environmental changes, climate changes, which is about our science is not lie. It's related to our everyday life. And then we had the second warning, which is this COVID pandemic, that, hey, look at this science and all these issues. It's not away from your reality, it's just happening. Even your everyday life going to be kind of regulated, kind of pushed back to the corner. Right now, the third question is, are you going to still going to ignore the help, possible help you can have from the science, technology, all these applied areas? I think it's time to reach your hand, then shake hand in the collaboration. I think that's my answer, a humble answer. Okay. All right. I just want to give you the opportunity, Jun, to leave a message, a message with our viewers, a message with students of architecture, owners who might call upon architects, and government people who might interface, engage with architects and architecture. What is your message to them today in view of the things we have discussed? Okay. Can I show the last slide that? Sure. Yeah. So this is my website. Which is idotdesignforfeatures.com. So if you visit there, so you can have more information. And my last message is, if you allow me to use my very poor Latin, so this says, destitutus ventis, remus adhibe. So in English, if the wind does not serve, let's take to the oars. Yeah. I think that's my last message. Okay. I think I know why you speak Latin is because architecture really got a huge start in classical days. And we're still using the lessons that they gave us. Am I right? Yes. So we're going to find out the future through the window of the past. I think that's what we are trying to do. And also we are living in present with the desire and hope in good manner, I hope. Yeah. Young June Park, Professor at the School of Architecture, UH Manoa, part of the generation that's going to change our world here in Hawaii. Thank you so much, young June. Thank you for having me today. Aloha. Aloha.