 ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome all back to ThinkTek Hawaii's human-humane architecture here from Honolulu, our capital in our sometimes-in-parrel paradise. And recently, it's full forces of nature, hurricanes. We're approaching Olivia, which is on the edge of being a hurricane, but our folks on the east coast heading the Carolinas is way more severe. That's Florence, category five hurricane. So I have my recent guest on the show, Chris Ford, who is heading there mourning the death of his father. So Chris, please stay safe out there. And since this show on this Tuesday falls on 9-11, we cannot not remember what has happened 17 years ago, which is an event where more human forces were involved. And that's the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. So this being an architectural show in about Hawaii, I was sort of struggling to find the right way to deal with that. And slide number one, please, up. I went to our most commercial bookstore, which is Elamuana. And I'm sorry to say we have lost our architectural chapter, and we got merged with arts and photography. And at the very bottom left, you see what is left. And one of the books was one World Trade Center, which is not exactly the replacement building because the two footprints got left and made into a memorial, but the tower next door, which you see at the top left. But many, including me, think that this tower doesn't have the same level of innovation, which the original one had. So I don't want to talk about that one. And I found something that gets close, I think very close, because the architect Minoru Yamazaki built two buildings on the island, and one actually shortly before the World Trade Centers, which were built in 70 and 72. So we're talking about a building he built in 68. And it was looking for the most appropriate post-occupancy evaluator. And I found him an almost emerging, ambitiously emerging practitioner, Joey Valenti. And so Joey, welcome on the show. And you are remotely on the show because you're known, I think, to Kauai. And some of the shows are featured here on the top right through your Albezia project. And you're currently traveling on that related wood innovation brand around the islands. And you're chasing, or the hurricane is chasing you and trying to get your way out. So thank you for taking your time, actually currently at when the audience here is wind. This is in the windy, easy breezy Kona Airport on the big island. So welcome, Joey. Thank you, Martin. And I'll try to block the wind as best I can. Thank you very much. And so again, an update on your project will happen probably with my fellow host at the head start of that thing. We want to talk about, and I collage this in a way that I'm saying maybe this building or this part of the building in the middle of that page here might have been an inspiration for that building. And let's go to the next slide and basically check out. I'm almost to say, you know, this is where you currently are. This is somewhere out in the woods. But where is this exactly, Joey? So this is actually on the 1350 Alamoana. So the above the parking garage podium. And it's a very nicely laid out swimming pool, barbecue amenities, fitness center. Yeah. And I made a reference to the recent show with the Soto Brown, which we call re-archineering. So this is sort of in the interface between architecture and landscapes. Late number two shows what you just explained. Next slide, please. That is basically the pool, it's kind of camouflaged behind the sort of circular hedge. Next slide, number four is nice walkways meandering through this very sort of jungly landscape. And you know, the architecture almost sort of being an integral part. And next picture, number five is an outdoor gathering space right in the building and in the park under the building, I should say. So but the way to actually get into the building is the next slide here. And this is approaching, you already said, the name of the building is simply its postal address that's very understated, very humble. It doesn't have a fancy Hawaiian nice name or how they do it today, a theme name. This is very simply dry cut, typical for the sort of understated mid-century, just naming it with a number of the building for 1315 Alamoana Boulevard. And by the time I was checking out the building, this sort of vintage bug was parked in front of the building. So I thought this is a nice pair of two vintage sort of symbols of their time matching each other. So let's go into the building and next slide. Where are we there? Joey? This is the lobby, the front lobby entrance as you walk into the building. As you can see here, right, it's what kind of features do you see and you guys are proud of? I think a key feature that speaks throughout the design is the natural ventilation. So you can see the levered system above the entry and exit doors. Yeah, let's turn around sort of 45 degrees. This picture, this is looking into the lobby, reminds me very much of these glorious American days of mid-century. This reminds me of the Emelco or Standard Oil Building in Chicago, Edward DeRail Stone, which we have a building on campus by stone that we will do the next show about. And so this is very sort of classy, yet understated. It's not to try to bling and overdo it like in the lobbies of these days. It's very subtle and humble and elegant, but yet very impressive, I have to say. And we have known each other before from working at school together, but when I was checking out the building on my own, I got as far as the doorman, the security guy, and he was suspicious of this guy checking out the building maybe even before, because of the tragic background of Yamazaki buildings having become victims of attacks. And you saved me and helped me out because you were coming out with your partner and okay that and say this guy is okay, you can let him roam and actually all the pictures we're seeing here, I was able to take thanks to you. So let's check out the building. Let's go up the elevator here next picture and see we're here on a typical floor plan and I pulled this from the website from a realtor, including the text. And it's almost like they feel a little bad when they say this is a more traditional design building compared to its super luxury neighbors. And we want to point out in the show that that's nothing to be ashamed of, that's something to be proud of. I put in the North era, which is very important to fully appreciate and understand the building. As we can see it's a double loaded corridor, so it isn't the ideal with a single loaded corridor that we love the most. But it's open to the Malka end of the hallway and you know this picture I took of that little feature where the floor plan is narrowing, it's sort of echoing some of the details on the exterior that we're going to get to in a little bit. And why don't you walk us through a sort of a typical unit and with that let's go to the next slide, slide number 10. Okay, so that last image you saw was the third floor, I believe as you would walk out and there are units on that on that bottom level, but it takes you out to that grassy night that you had showed earlier. And then what you're seeing in the following image is a typical unit. So it has the original kitchen, which is a semi enclosed space and my my renovated so that that kitchen has been opened up and we have a peninsula once you change some things in the wall. And speaking of experience, if we turn around now 180 degrees, we're looking inside out. Next picture, please. And now that that takes you to the outside line, each unit is equipped with a nice space that has I think 100 and something square feet of exterior space. And that seems very much like an outdoor living room, like a perfect lanai. And next picture, number 12 sort of shows that this element is sort of does multiple things at the same time, the sort of convexing out allows you to stand at its most, you know, outside, and it's almost like you're flying, but then this sort of concaving in towards your neighbors, the dividing slab avoids that you can actually sort of peek around into your neighbor's unit. So it's very clever to design and it also gives this sort of very rectangularity of the building a pep and a spice of of of sexy curves, right? Mm hmm. And so let's go back in next slide and explain a little bit sort of the the extended layout of the of the units. So this looks like a patient through a unit where they've opened up that space between one of the bedrooms. And if you look at that open door on the left, the previous image of outside lanai, you have this open living floor plan that's adjacent to the kitchen. And then in this specific unit, you have a partition of opening that has allowed a much larger space between the unit and the bedroom. And we have to say, although we see that nasty machine out on the lanai, which is sort of not supposed to be there, which is a single, you know, AC unit, but they were actually designed to be work without AC. We're talking 1968. And so AC wasn't as dominant and predominant yet. And the building was designed in a way to actually naturally ventilate itself sort of by climatically air conditioning itself. And you told me that, you know, for sure, the original owners, you know, many of them have always been doing that are still doing it. And we're hoping that through the show, we can encourage more to do it because that's sort of a USP, something specific that all these new towers, they're designed in a way you can't do this anymore, right? So that is not a disadvantage in the sort of re sort of appreciation of natural ventilation and of biochlamatic design. This might be a classic to that degree. And I want to point out this, what you explained to the right, it's a very clever setup because you see this sort of set of two windows and then you see this closet. And, you know, this is something you would never find in modern buildings where it's all about the view, which is a little absurd because the more you know, buildings you build, the less view you have. But they always go about the view. So they end up being nothing but glass and you get blasted. And here he puts a closet, you know, towards the view. And why did he do that? We could jump to the next next image. Yeah. You can actually see the vertical fins that are exactly. Thank you for teaching us biochlamatic design one on one buildings facing east and west. The shading device has to be vertical versus if you're facing south, it has to be horizontal and north. You don't need anything. And that's building is demonstrating that pretty cleverly here. And since it's south, east and northwest, you need a little bit of both. And so these horizontal overhangs do a little bit. At certain times of the day and mainly and majorly the vertical ones. So zooming out next picture again, hopefully now people watching the show look at the building differently. This isn't just a formalist approach. This is a formalist approach. And so the architecture has a biochlamatic genetic code that is basically making up an experience. And I allow myself again with your project going on, you're going along the same lines. So maybe intuitively or consciously, you know, you grew up in the I mean, you have been in the building. So I've been a resident. So you probably the genetic code was sort of seeping into your system. And you're living it and jump to the next picture, which is another biochlamatic aspect of the building that is doing really well. We're on 16 exactly. We are now looking at the we're looking at the entirety of the building. And I put in the the north arrow again, because I wanted to point out the macro aspect of climate, right? So this building, this building is is running Maoka Makai. So it is not blocking the predominant winds. They are created that way and go that way, which unfortunately reference to other shows here on the on the bottom right, the symphony at the top, which is becomes a microwave and then the new affordable tower and Kapiolani Boulevard. They both violate that very important simple rule of buildings having to run Maoka Makai so you don't block the urban fabric. And when everyone puts that building blocking the wind, you don't get any wind anymore. So these early masters because they're biochlamatic masters, they just knew that. And obviously, then with the through the introduction of oil, we afforded ourselves to basically unlearn that, which is sort of unfortunate. So let's move on to the next slide, because this building is also a product of something we're returning to because I know that you're working with a great team of multiple disciplines. And so you're sort of undoing the sort of pretty fatal development of architects. Star architecture where the architect is the mastermind and the other ones are minions. And here, one of the creators of the building was a legendary engineer, Dr. Alfred Yee. And we had him at DoCo Momo, give a talk story. I had to miss that, unfortunately, because I was in Germany over the time. So the next slide, please, I had a chance to meet him once before he then passed away that long ago. And he was involved in all these marvels. You see East-West Center, IBM building, Kahala Hilton, Arizona Memorial, Frank Fazel building. You name them all. And you see another one at the very top that we want to point out. This is his other project, which you want to point out at the very end. So next picture is I got an appointment with Alfred Yee. And he was looking at a building that we're doing in my tree texture class, Primitivo 1. And next picture is, again, extending that sort of team building, basically integrated project delivery. We call that in the discipline. We have a bunch of gentlemen here, Howard Wick, my host fellow, Socrates Baratacos from the Honolulu Fire Department, and Scott Wilson, AIA. And we get less campers on the right side. And let's jump to less, because he, next picture, here we are. And an inherent sort of inspiration for the building are his 20s that we're using. And so was Alamoana Boulevard. These closet boxes pretty much have been prefabricated elements that had been craned in. So they were pouring the floor slabs, and then craning in these. So very innovative also in its making of its architecture. And next picture is, you can see our design attribute or an evolution of 1315 Alamoana Boulevard by a climatic easy breezy, obviously pushing it to an even more extreme level. And next picture that they would appear almost like more than natural organisms in the landscape here, polemically placed, on the Alamoana Mall could be the proletarian people, power tower hosting all the low paid service people who are working in the mall. And they don't have to truck themselves out to the West and drive back in. They can stay where they basically are. So let's keep on driving Alamoana Boulevard going west in the next picture. And that shows us how you approach the building now these days. This is the more recent development next to it that used to be the seers in an open parking lot for decades. And recently, McNaughton and Kobayashi Group built this high residential development. And moving on to the next picture is driving by, passing the building and looking back. And you see something that they currently do to the building. What is that, Joey? So it's undergoing renovation on the exterior. You can see the stripes they've actually begun painting. But the initial work they did was spalling repair on the individual lanais and repainting the entire unit. So there are days of this, I think, over the next several months. Before I go any further, I was tapped on the last question. So I got a little distracted. But that was my five minute mark. I have maybe one or two minutes left to kind of wrap up before I head into the airport. All right. Well, thanks for staying with us for so long, especially under these circumstances here. So I appreciate it. So you said the justification for the color within the building board association was what? It was mentioned. I asked the GM and the design of the building. But I'm not sure on where that information was. Yeah. And this is being private investigator. It's probably the second to last question when you had to go through security. I can maybe give a little clue about that. But we were saying before the show, doesn't really matter because color is like makeup. And you can take makeup off and put it back on. And yellow seems to be the color of these days. Because the neighboring building on this side next to the round one has yellow on it. And also the new Kobayashi-McNaughton has yellow. So probably they thought everyone wears yellow. So we got to wear yellow, too, right? But we were saying maybe in the original days it was just baton-bru because these were the times. And you can sandblast that off in clear-coated at any time. But we were saying what we appreciate is that versus that previous beige washing all over the building, leaving the floor slept beige and only making these infill boxes, which are actually the closet boxes, is actually making this tectonic element of plugging in more visible. So we want to give them that. Appreciate that. The next slide is, again, from Alamoana Beach Park looking. And you see it amongst these pretty hideously hermetic, big monsters that are doing everything different than Alamoana Boulevard basically does it. So we want to encourage people to see it as a really well-aged, very sexy, mid-aged lady that is looking as good as she always did all these years. And the next picture is two of our previous guests here, Tropical Tourism guests Suzanne and Tropical Tutoring Expert Bill having dinner at one of the Nordstrom restaurants and facing Alamoana Boulevard. This side hasn't been completed in painting. And there you go. It's this sort of very classy, mid-century building that no one has to feel ashamed of. In fact, when you learn about the building, you think that is actually the coolest building. And we obviously, people who know us, we don't mean this literally, but also figuratively. So we hope people sort of appreciate or re-appreciate the building today as much as they have in the past, because the next and second to last page, which we already promised, is having there's an event because a Wi-Fi of all turns half a century. And the celebration was supposed to be at the end of this week, but it's got canceled due to Olivia as your original itinerary sort of hopping the island in the mission of your wood innovation had to be rearranged. So you're on your way back because you were supposed to be in Maui, and Maui is unfortunately most likely gonna be hit the hardest. So everything has to be rescheduled. But again, thanks for having been with us. But this picture here shows, this is one of the early episodes of the original Wi-Fi of all. And you can see, as we pointed out in the show about architects, Wi-Fi, oh, the architecture of this pioneering era wasn't just generic background, like in the current one. Oh, now we hear the winds blow. Hopefully you're still on the ground and not flying away. And so again, they were very proudly basically celebrating that building that they thought of being very innovative and unique and pioneering. And so again, we just wanna keep that in mind. And by having understood the building, thanks to you're explaining it to us, I think we're gonna appreciate the building even more. That gets us to the end of the show. The last picture here is again, we have not only one building, but we actually have two buildings by this very famous to be memorized today because of the special event architect. And the other one is at the very bottom left. I inserted that into the Time Magazine cover that he got way back. And this is Queen Emma Gardens. And Queen Emma Gardens is a little bit different. It was built four years earlier than this one here in 64. And it also had a little bit more of a social approach. And with that, it's probably even more an inspiration for your project that you're doing and what we're doing. So we're gonna talk about that. But we also wish, especially our houseless neighbors and fellows on the island to basically stay, especially safe and sound in these hours and days of nature's full forces. So Joey, thank you very much for your time. Much appreciated. Have safe travels. Excellent, thanks so much Martin. I appreciate you having me. All right, so thank you Joey. All right, so see you next week for another episode of Human-Human Architecture with the Soto Brown. It's gonna be called the Built Rainbow, Superficiality and Surface of the Architecture of UH Minoa. So be excited about that one. And until then, please stay as sexy as 1315 Elamona Boulevard and safe and sound. Bye bye.