 So this is our show, I think it's a human-human architecture. This happens to be our 259th show, and your rounds are 13,909. Viewer, it's all about the number nine today. And us is you, DeSoto Brown, in your Bishop Museum. Hi, DeSoto. Good morning, good day, everybody. And it's me, Martin de Spang, in my grand hotel in Waikiki's bathroom, broadcasting live from the same place in Honolulu, Hawaii. And if we can get the first slide up, we want to jump right back in where we had left last time. And this is making the connection between the two cities we're looking at, and which are these, DeSoto? We are looking at Honolulu and Chicago, both of them. Do have some similarities, they're both on waterfronts, but our climate conditions are extremely different. That's very relevant for the buildings that we discuss, because Chicago has to deal with extremely cold weather, along with very hot, humid weather. We are fortunate enough to not have those extremes, but there are a lot of similarities in that. We have a lot of skyscrapers or a lot of tall buildings. So how those buildings are created and who's doing them and what innovations they show are something that we can apply to both locations. Absolutely. And our ongoing investigation, just so to make sure we're not getting paranoid about the similarities, there is a BIST journal article from a while ago that says our imported skyline. We import a lot of things here, too much, almost everything. We don't make anything anymore on the other hand. So we also import architecture and skylines. And we just have a new proof of evidence for that. And this is the slide here that we, because Howard Hughes is keeping building in the Kakaako area. And this here is their newest proposal that's going to go up pretty soon. And that is we're still having to share your new archiving material that you just recently shot that shows this site how it is currently still is and will soon no longer be. And until then, please describe a little bit where the location is and what we have there still now and soon not anymore. Yeah, well, Kakaako is known as being a light industrial district of Honolulu. And that's something it evolved into in the 20th century, because before that, it was previously just low-rise individual homes and wooden houses. And so today, this particular site is what had been built in the 1960s as a discount store, which us old guys will remember as Gem, G-E-M. And that was a members-only store like Costco is, kind of. And in addition to the Gem store, which became a variety of other businesses over the years, there were other small buildings built on the site which had a variety of restaurants and other small retail stores. So this is going to go from a lot of open space for parking as well as low-rise buildings to, again, one single dominating high-rise, which is what the Howard Hughes Corporation continues to do, has been doing, and is continuing to do in what was called the Ward property in Honolulu and Kakaako. Absolutely. And there will also be one more in front of it, so Prime Waterfront. And that's where Steve Owes' Award Plaza had to go, unfortunately, that we missed a lot. And that's been a parking lot ever since. Hasn't been developed as soon as one would have wished. We would have wished for, because it was a great building. We could have had our pop-up interim School of Architecture in there, which would have been much better than an R piece of cake. That was just got an email from our administration that they were filming, what is it called? DS? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's it called again? That crime series? Yeah, I can't think of the name just for pictures you're asking. You'll be right this minute. But yes, yes. It's OK. It's not like Hawaii 5.0, the original one. It's that one we remember for reasons that architecture was a distinctive actor in it, a tropical, exotic, distinctive actor. Not anymore now. It could be in Miami or whatever. High-rise, they're not treating tropical, exotic. This one here will be called, is already branded, to be the Park Ward Village. It's not to be confused with the park of the Midtown Alamoana building that we've been doing very, very many shows about it, but it has the same name. This is fronting that green zone. That's where it gets its name from. And then also the Kula by Jeannie Gang, which is the one that we're making connections here, because Jeannie is the main leading architect in Chicago, as of now. And this is this tower. And also, with this building, Chicago shows up not just across the park, Jeannie, but here, is that firm that seems to really be being washed over a lot from the shores of Lake Michigan to our shores of the Pacific Island here. And that's Solomon Courtwell-Buenz. The first one they've been building was for Howard Hughes, is the Anaha. That reminds us of intestines, even is sort of implied in the name. And as it's weird, pervy forms and no lanais, also a short quote, a top second from the right, is the a-li-i. Not that these names matter, because you confirmed this so that they're made up. They're branding names that have little to nothing to do with Hawaiian culture. They want to make a connection, but that's probably abusing your Hawaiian culture for commercial reasons here. And there is also the picture second from the top right is one that we took when we were stuck with our second P.I. mobile that Larry keeps running. We have today, Suzanne and the boys will drive by Larry again, because we have the second screw in the second tire, and he is not giving up on us. So we took this picture when we were driving to him or front him, and that is Victoria Place. That is the boarding Alamoana Boulevard. It's a shocking one, but it has no lanais. And they also ventured out into our hood here, into Waikiki and the liliya that has some pretentious or pretending lanais, they're not really worth the name. So here they come again, and an assessment here to the left that rendering is what we in the architectural education, when us coaches get frustrated, we call this pushing and pulling, what sometimes the emerging generation gets lured into, working as a sculptor. And what might look sort of as an interesting way to give structure to the building is actually nothing else than basically pushing the glass of every fourth floor back in an angled way. So it seems, again, there is three-dimensional texture to the building, but again, it's only for the aesthetics. It doesn't do anything performatively. It casts a little bit of a shadow here if the orientation is right that we're looking at, but that little triangle isn't really helping to keep it cool. Otherwise, it is a glass box, once again, with these extruded floor slabs that once again in the past haven't been thermally disconnected. That German product that is there to do that hasn't been used, so we are not that impressed again with this one here. And the plan at the bottom right shows it's the same old double-loaded corridor that is keeping the breeze from flowing through. There are, the only innovative thing is an old thing from our favorite Alamoana building where they were sacrificing a little bit of rentable unit space to give light to the side of the tunnel, to the elevator course. And we see an egress staircase that could be using the code change of being easy breezy again, but we don't know in this plan enough and the rendering isn't showing it from that side. On the other side, it's dead-ended. So this is the same old 20th century, not tropical exotic at all, but another pretty invasive species if you agree with that, the Soto. Yeah, the one thing that struck me in what we were just saying there is I thought there needed to be emergency stairways on both ends of a building, not just one end. So that doesn't appear to be the case here. It is a little hard to see there is one, but the one that is actually here on the woodshade don't even go through the attempt which we appreciate to use Hawaiian verbiage here. They call it mountains and not Maoka. So they have the one that is attached to the side of the hallway up there at the top left. The one that's to the ocean side is basically at the end of the corridor that dead ends before a very pricey unit because that's prime waterfront, right? And they didn't want to have a staircase that no one uses unfortunately to block that. So we can also say they treat the Maoka, we would say an external staircase in the century that was something to celebrate that people actually used and walk up and down. I do this here on the Waikiki Grand, but in reality, we're a minority. Most people don't do that. They use the elevator. So they put in the egress staircase there where no one wants to be and they don't put one there where there's this prime waterfront. So again, pretty disappointing. And then they seem to have a little bit of a bad conscious because in one of the realtors descriptions here, they say it was designed to have large Juliet balconies, they even, at least fair enough to not try to probably even lanai's that can open to make the interiors feel like you are out on the lanai. This way you can enjoy that feeling yet not have to worry about wasted space and have to frequently clean your lanai. I would say give us a break, right? Because I rather go through once a week cleaning my life a Waikiki Grand lanai than not having to have one. And what's it with these Juliet balconies? We heard that before and discussed that before and that way we bring back at least virtually our dear fellow Midwestern out that Chicago belongs to Ron Lindgren. And let's go to the next slide and just remind us of what these Juliet lanai's are disorder. Well, the Juliet lanai or balcony refers to the famous play by Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet. And it has a famous scene in which Juliet comes out on a small balcony and calls to Romeo where for art thou Romeo? Well, this refers to sometimes not even really a balcony at all, but essentially a railing on the outside of a very large floor to ceiling window or sliding doors. Sometimes there's a very little tiny balcony that you could maybe step on to but there's really, there's no place for any furniture, maybe a potted plant, but that's it. So that's referred to as a Juliet balcony. I'm not against the idea. I mean, the idea is perfectly nice. I don't think that as you just said that that really takes the place of a real lanai nor would most people consider that a lanai to be quote wasted space that you quote have to keep clean. So it's better than being a glass box that doesn't open at all. But as to whether that is better than an actual lanai that you could go out on to, I don't think I would agree with that. Yeah, and show quote, top rides. I think that other pink palace up there if I remember correctly was one that Ron grew up in, right? No, that is the one that my, not my mother. Oh, that was yours. There you go. That was it. That's the one that my mother grew up in in San Francisco and it was a building. It's a high-rise building built in the early 1920s and it has some Juliet balconies. And when we went to visit my grandparents there, I thought that the Juliet balcony in their apartment was kind of strange because what can you do with it? And particularly there, because it was always cold. Well, Portalulu is not always cold. So a Juliet balcony, certainly as I said, is a nice thing to have, but it isn't a replacement for a lanai. Yeah, and in the quote we were just reading before, they at least are honest because it really comes from the greedy factor that you basically have all the square footage of the rentable fully, because a lanai only or a balcony only counts half oddly, which also should be different here in our privileged tropical exotic tropics, but from a realtor, a monetary point of view, that's the thing. And that's why many of them getting closed or getting closed, which is bad. So here they're basically saying, okay, let's not even do any, but then we feel a little bit bad. So get more breeze in, but then depends on what kind of guard rail you put in front of us. If you do the ones that we don't endorse, which is the glass guard rails, then it's not any better because then you have to fix thing that doesn't allow any ventilation and you only have an opening above, which is then not much more than a window. And so what I confused, but now, so that was your grant mind you, but Ron's memory is the one that he designed and created. And these are the three different, the three other show quotes, that is the design as the where Kiki Park Hotel recently rebranded and for that reason remodeled Hale Poonang by Hale Polani, which Ron designed as well. And we're very critical about that renovation because the panels, the glass panels that were flushed with a facade next to the Lanai's had these Juliette Lanai's and they were great because when you open the sliding door on the Lanai and in addition to that one, you've got something that we call side ventilation. You get the breeze through the side and that was great. In the renovation, they threw this out, they replaced it with a fixed glazing. So they were basically, grading down, devaluing, devaluating that biochlamatic effect that Ron had designed. And we're saying developers, owners don't do that. We're saying when there's the next renovating cycle here in some decades, please bring it back to the original. And for us here, and this is very relevant, particularly for some other places in the world right now, energy usage goes up. You do not have any windows that can open here in Honolulu. And that is not as crucial for us again as it is for places like Chicago or Germany where energy is going to be very tight this winter, coming winter. But regardless of that, even if we don't need heat to keep us alive, we do like to save on energy and save on our energy bills by utilizing natural air movement instead of forced air conditioning. Okay, so next slide, we're gonna return for two more slides to Genie Gang's most recent project in Chicago which was initially the Vanda Vista Tower which is now the Sand Regis. And here we have another sort of similarity to one of the towers that was actually Howard uses first that's the YAR by WCIT local firm. And they went so far to compare the inspiration to Hukilao and that is how your ancestors were fishing in a very communal effect, very biochromatically whenever there was a pregnant female fish they threw it back in because they knew it was their future food, right? So we find that a little far stretched that building this wavy glass facade has something fundamentally and substantially do with these sustainable practices of your ancestors. So once again, more a sales pitch and a branding and also we see sort of a tragic similarity because I always tell the emerging generation that at the end of a lifecycle of the building it costs eight times as much as its initial erection cost and that is basically of course heating and cooling which unfortunately in the past had to be done in the future with post fossil buildings not anymore but also the maintenance of buildings. And what if the issue do we see when the architects went through these efforts to make the glass not be vertical? Well, I'm looking at a picture that shows a lot of streaking on the glass and I assume that that's what you are talking about because I certainly see that in the large picture to the left of me or yeah, to the right of me or wherever I. Yeah, and that is again, this building is sort of having a sort of a periodic course sitting going on it gets tailored and then bigger and tailored and bigger we can quickly go to the next slide and that's how it works and that's how it looks like but going back to the previous slide that's what it causes whenever the building is sort of not leaning inward the facade but leaning outward dust settles and dirt settles on it just with EYA and you are not just getting dirty glass to look through but you're also having more maintenance and having to clean the glass and what do we clean glass with? With nasty cleaning materials so this is all adding up to a nasty carbon footprint of the building. So emerging generations think about the forms that you're creating and what kind of a genie or gen out of the bottle people there are and what kind of effect and burdens they kind of cause. Also we're quoting from Genie's website here to the top left some, you know I would say justifications about it's biochlametic performance or the absence of it and maybe shame on me I need Genie's office to explain this more to me what they're talking about I have the feeling as of now it's basically trying to make something up I don't see any really good environmental performance behind the formal performance of the building it is a building that again, because it's all glass it can get some past the solar gain in the wintertime potentially and probably likely it does because it's a pretty, you know there are skinny towers or three skinny towers, you know, bundled together so the sun is getting to it from all sides the floor plants are not very deep so in the winter condition I give it the benefit of doubt that it would but I'm sorry in the summer condition we also see these here very popular arming windows that kind of pop out and go only give a couple of, you know inches of air circulation so they're not really doing much so as of now until someone tells us differently this is fossil formalism and next slide again which we already very briefly on it for sure leaves it with a spectacular form that seemed to have been the intention of the studio gang office and that might be it but again, we already gave the recommendation of Howard Hughes's tower that they did with another more towards the mid-western or in that case actually East Coast architectural firm that's Bolin Savitsky Jackson and their building and for Howard Hughes and Kakaako that when they said, you know if they would have used this German system of passive house performative glass jealousies that are triple glazed and hold that cold in the summertime that you create inside and they keep the heat inside in the winter time but at the time that we also have in the spring and in the fall in Chicago which is what we have here all the time when the outdoor temperature is close to what we found to be perfect for us and it equals for that reason the indoor air temperature then you would open them up so this is pretty much a missed opportunity also maybe we wanna educate the audience about what we share the aqua and we chose and Philip Moiser and Bjorn Rosen kindly followed our request to give the title page color the one of our Pacific Ocean here especially when the tides are low that very sort of iconic turquoise color sometimes the Chicago River goes into this direction and as well and that's fascinating you would share that with the audience Well, the river that runs through downtown Chicago every year is dyed green for St. Patrick's Day and that's one of the major things that they always do and that's something everybody looks forward to every year it is done in a non-invasive way that doesn't poison anything and it originally got started just by chance because they were trying to trace leakage into the river from various like sewage systems or drainage systems and it became aesthetically a thing that they wanna do every year so every year it gets dyed green and it's a bright green every for a few hours every St. Patrick's Day Yeah, along these lines I was just recently talking to someone who asked me if I had been here when what the Joe Wein band Green has a song dedicated to the 40 days of rain that you could really remember I don't because before I came here to 10 years ago but I was told that again everything that rained into the Allah wine basically became the sewage and the swamp nothing worked anymore and this is what you get when you dump your waste your human waste into your precious water that by the way, we have an aquifer here so we don't drink the ocean water that for that reason would have to get desalted we have the aquifer in Chicago it's actually the Chicago, the lake water that they basically drink and when as rivers usually flow into the water they were polluting their own drinking water for that reason they did something engineeringly gigantic they reversed the flow of the river and it basically flows back now a little ironically into another river which is the Mississippi River eventually then that goes into the Gulf of Mexico so they like burden them with their stuff and so for that reason again also the flow had to be reversed for the reason of not polluting the river so that some sort of stories of our water coast that we share and how that sort of green color then seems to reappear on the surface is sort of walking up but not as we propose it in primitivas as water curtain walls which by the way would not work in Chicago because you basically get I was once actually at Niagara Falls in the winter and I saw when that freezes over you get the frozen Niagara Falls which is really a spectacle nice to look at if you're bundled up in your puffy jacket but to try to reside behind that is not a good idea it doesn't work we don't have that freezing so you could sit behind a water curtain wall all year round and enjoy it not so much in Chicago so next slide, look at it only for another minute because then we're at the end of another exciting 28 minutes but we see that green or blue glass here appearing on buildings this is by an architect here who his name is David Hovey I believe yeah there it is written out at the top left he is an architect who then our mentor of this shows here told me was acquainted with Hamilton Young and he did a project in Arizona that I remember from my desert day at the top right that however was working with way more biochromatic systems as vegetation which this you know two towers here pretty much I don't do at all which is unfortunate okay more about our two windy cities next week and until then please all stay tropically exotic exotic and tropic bye bye aloha thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo you can also follow us on Facebook Instagram Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com Mahalo