 Welcome back to our exotic tropical metropolis of Honolulu, Hawaii, and in our little tradition of looking at the best practices from the past and how we can learn from that for the future. Today we're going to look at an architect that was very influential here, but he's not remembered to a degree that he should be, at least we think. And I have the scholar about him here today with me. That's Jack Gilmer. Jack, thank you for being with us here. Pleasure to be here, Martin. Thank you. And tell us a little bit more about your project and your collaborators, and then of course who is this fascinating man? Well, I think most people know of Alfred Price by way of the state foundation of the culture of the arts and his work in the state planning office, and also his Arizona Memorial. But what we'd like to bring to the attention of the public is his very fine residential architecture work and some of his fabulous public buildings as well. So we're going to bring out a book on Price's architecture and also some chapters about his other work. And I'm working with Don Hibbard and Jan Peter Price, Alfred Price's son, and we're getting our photographs taken by David Franson. So you'll see a number of David Franson's photographs for our show. And let's start sort of the beginning that most people, projects that most people certainly have seen or are familiar with, and that's number one, picture number one. Right. The fabulous zoo entrance, and it's really a tour de force. It's by far the best building in Capilani Park, and it's one of the city's finest buildings as well. And unfortunately it's more or less abandoned, and the city is not doing much about it. And I'm looking at this disaster because I live over and I look at it on a daily basis, and luckily Don, I think you Don, has reached out to the zoo society and is in discussions with them. So we hope something is going to happen pretty soon. And I just have to say the educator and me, many of my students do things like that again. They like do these funky roofs, you know, that start from small to big. So it's called this parametric today and they use the computer. So he was ahead of its time for sure with that. Well, he loved the butterfly roof, which is what you see on the zoo. And so the next structure is a pretty interesting, very ambitious architectural piece as well. And you asked me to provide a picture, and this is my youngest son Lenny here, who was visiting some years ago, I Lenny, and we checked it out. So which project is that? Well, that's I think everybody viewing this program will probably recognize the Arizona Memorial. It's an absolute tour de force. Its price is last work. It's a work of incredible sculptural quality. And it's iconic already. So that's the kind of architect he was or could have been had he received more commissions. Yeah. And we get to that later. What a phenomenon that after such a spectacular architectural piece, we like to say you're you don't have following commissions anymore. And you wonder where the other where the other Alfred price exactly in talking like keeping things, you know, for the future for the future generations. Whereas in the zoo case, it's the zoo society who is in charge. And you guys are think you guys you put it on the register recently, right? It's preserved. So you can't we hope it's preserved. You can't and well, yeah. And so the owners have to live up to that, right? And there is a spectacular way of fundraising of the Arizona Memorial. If you can get number two back, which to my understanding was the famous Elvis Presley in 1961, giving a concert. He did. Yeah. And the money went to basically preserve it, right? Well, I think it paid for the whole thing. But I mean, he got the national attention that I think pushed it over the over the top in terms of getting funding. Yeah. So let's let's you asked me to find a fairly recent although he he's dead a while, right? But find a picture from his later years. And that's number three. This is how we surprise. Well, this is the price that most people recognize from his work with the state and the state foundation. And, you know, for the audience who remember price and price name, I mean, this is the price they will remember probably. And one of the shows my most challenging show that the soda I'm going to do is about a dress code addressing code and a relationship between skins and what we wear. If we can get that picture back, he's not wearing an aloha shirt. His sort of peer Pete Wimberley was more and then is another issue. So he was very you know, there's something abstract, right? So that's the modern that's the modern tradition. He loved abstract art. So he's a work of art himself. So at that point, maybe we bring the next project and you're going to walk us to different typologies. Right, right. I wanted to share with you some of his more public buildings. And this is a building that I think most of the audience will recognize from Atkinson Drive. As they go in and out of Alamoana Center, they'll pass this building. It's the ILWU Union Office 1953. It's just a marvelous building. Just to look at the details of the flow of lines and so on. We had to clean it up because the street architecture is terrible. The building architecture is great. But there are power lines that cut in front of it. There are light poles and mailboxes. And so we have this Photoshop. So this is the idealized view of the ILWU building. Well, and how it looked, how it was. Right, right. And then let's go some details because there's some very fine details. Next picture. And the first detail is actually the inhabitants. That's number five. The clients in it. And that's an interesting background. Yeah, this is interesting. This is the dedication of one portion of the ILWU building. And you have here Alfred Price on the right in the white suit. And you have his wife on the left and their daughter Erika below. And the gentleman in the black suit is a reporter who was on hand for the event. Now, the ILWU was a controversial institution in the 1950s. It was actually somewhat considered a communist threat. It was investigated by the House on American Activities Committee as being possibly communist led. And so for Alfred Price to get involved in a project like this, it's probably something that no other architect in town would want to touch. Now he came out of Austria, he understood the social movements in Europe. They understood the need for labor unions. For him, this was not a problem. And he found a client that wanted a good building and he gave him a very fine building. And we should say maybe more specifically, I mean, he had seen regimes that were pretty bad. He ran away from the Nazis he had to. And then he was in an internment camp here, right? Right for three years, I think. So no, no, just I think it was three months. It wasn't it wasn't that long. Okay. But yes, after the Pearl Harbor, you know, all aliens and he was still not a citizen were rounded up. And particularly he was, you know, an Austrian. And so that was an unfortunate three year mistake. But I mean, the country was in a panic. And they eventually eventually got out and did a lot of work for the government during the war. So let's go to the details with number six here. Yeah, I just wanted people to see the beautiful curve on that building. You may not notice it if you drive by in a hurry, but there's a very gentle curve and and the different floors are beautifully articulated. And he loves a little touch of color. So you notice the blue band on the at the Eve and the textured concrete block detailing. And so you've got the texture of the vegetation, the blocks, the smoothness of the walls. He's definitely playing with a whole palette. And one of the criticisms of international architecture is that it's so bland, and it's so sterile, and it's so industrial. But if it's done well, with a beautiful vocabulary of textures and materials, it's marvelous. And we go to the next picture. But I want to say with a finger up to my employer, you age, there's also a prize, there's a couple, but the one is the post office. The post office also has that swooping curve to the to the Makai side, which we as you age have added on to in a tragic way, so that many say, you know, better tear it down. But that's unfortunate, we need to this is what we try on the show to raise the awareness and say, these are the goodies we have, we better keep them. Good, very good. So here's another again, this is from the other angle. But again, you get the texture of the concrete, the smoothness and so on. Very, very beautiful office building that I think most people have just never really noticed very clearly. Yeah, and the soda and I were just talking about that the other day, and you mentioned that like people come out of the parking garage of Alamona Boulevard. And it's not a building of these days where every every building wants to be the best building, and there aren't, you know, it's like everybody's superstar, you know, in America, and he was really good in doing really fine and refined background architecture, right, that you don't they don't it doesn't jump at you, right? But it's pleasant to look at and you you have a good feeling, you know, more like intuitively the more you look at it, the more you see it, sure, you know, it's just it's so rich. But it doesn't I mean, today's architecture is jumping at you, right? It's just out there and crying saying, look at me, look at me. And then there isn't this attention to detail anymore. So you get excited and then you get really disappointed. Yeah. So but this one is even more interesting or equally when you go inside inside. Yes. Next picture number inside is I look at that stairway, look how the treads are cantilevered off the wall. Each each piece of stair tread is an independent bees with this railing floating up and then price always wanted to try to commission works of art for the buildings that that he designed. And in this case, he's commissioned Pablo Higgins, Mexican muralist to come in and celebrate the work of the ILWU. So it's basically a Longshoreman's Union. And so you have a man tying up the the ship. And then above that, the ILWU represented the sugar cane workers. And you have the workers out in the fields and their their overseers keeping an eye on them and so on. Yeah, amazing. And the next picture is like when you walk up the stairs and you're on the on the top floor, right? Right. So you can see the mural again a bit. But what is interesting about this is look at his treatment of the ceiling. And and the fact that he liked these sliding doors so you could have this opened up, you can have a great sense of space. But if you want to close it in, you could do that. And to my colleagues, they know I like to challenge code. So I love to leave things out like art rails. And this looks like Oh, price didn't do art rails. But you told me that they plan to add another story which never happened. That's why this is blocked off. That's right. How beautiful is your case without a guard rail. Next picture is the next typology, right? Right. He he did a number of public public buildings. The one that's best preserved right now is the the Lapo Hoy Hoy High School. And this is on the North Helo Coast. It's beautifully done. He liked the use of awning windows to get in as much air as possible or at least be able to adjust to the trade winds. And it's a very gracious building and very nicely constructed for a public high school. That's, you know, as good as it gets. Yeah. And even more with the next project, which is amazing, because this is a very European, very hermetic typology to begin with. And he kind of exoticized that in a fascinating way whenever I drive by. But there's also some some bittersweetness to it. So can we get number 11? That's the project we're talking about. Yeah, it's this first Methodist Church on Barotania Street close to the Art Academy. Price had a grand plan for that whole half of the block. There were schools, there were residences for the minister. There was another chapel. There was like a baptistry. This was just like a European cathedral square. Unfortunately, this is the only piece that's left. But it's the main piece. It's the sanctuary and beautifully designed with complete openness to the outside with the there's a mesh material on the second level there on the outside. And the vines grow up into the mesh. And you have natural ventilation coming through on the lower level. There are sliding glass doors to keep out the rain. And that's what our emerging generation is excited about. They designed stuff like that. So he did it like half a century ago. How cool is that? Right? Literally and figuratively speaking. But this is also a project I just drove by on the way to the show and they're doing some serious renovation. It needs a lot of help. And Don and I happened to be there a while ago with Robert McCarter giving him a tour and we heard some worrying things about how they wanted to deal with it and they weren't as much aware of what you just talked people about. So please to this client as well, you know, be aware of what you have and treat it according to you. But we want to get to we're going to get to your very initial, very fundamental relationship to price, which is this project. Indelible imprint on my life. This is a home I grew up in and it happens to be Alfred Price's first residential design in Hawaii. Designed in 1939 and finished in 1940. And this is his first work after coming in from from Austria and it's very European. It has the influence of the Bauhaus. It has the Corbusier quality. It has Eric Mendelssohn and a very, very classic European box. But notice that the sliding doors at the entrance they just slide completely back. And so there's a complete indoor outdoor flow. So he tropicized the Bauhaus already initially. He opened it up. But then surprisingly when you go inside we see an influence by someone significantly different, right? Can we get to the next picture? When I talked with Alfred Price about the house. In fact, we had him to this house for lunch before we took it apart. We actually moved this house. And he was impressed that we were wanting to save the house. But he said you know I'd recommend that you just take the elements that you like and you know do your own house. Anyway, he said we asked him about the this whole interior design. And he said well we were all very influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright in Europe. So in addition to the Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright was a major influence in European architecture. And so here on the inside of that classic Bauhaus box on the outside you have this very warm interior two-story space with a play of woods, different colored woods and textures. And again, the texture play is wonderful. The fireplace is of diamond head sandstone. And you can't get diamond head sandstone anymore. So that's one of a piece. Oh yeah. And I read in one of the articles they're floating online which one of his other clients, Mr. Kendrell was writing and quoting you majorly which is called The Architect of Hope. He was pointing out that Price's perception of paradise was a little different than what he found. And then he basically sort of developed himself and his architecture. So let's take a look at a couple of other houses where he sort of really developed his relationship with Hawaii and opening up even more. I'm good, yeah this is a good transition because he had an opportunity to do his own subdivision in the back of Manoa Valley. So here you have the beautiful back end of the valley in Woodlawn. And this is Melly Melly Place. And he managed to be able to design all of the houses on this street. And about half of them are still Price's designs. Others have been changed, unfortunately. But I'd like to show you in detail the house in the center here. Okay, let's go to the next picture in 15. This is the Ozzie Bushnell House. Bushnell was an author and teacher at the university. And notice how he's beautifully integrated this into a garden and the playful use of color under the eaves. Yeah, let's show that from inside out. The next one, 16. So here if you see the doors there, there again it's this complete connection or flow from the inside to the outside in this lovely window looking up into the back of Manoa Valley and then the sculptural fireplace. And take a look at that from the other from the other angle. The other angle, yeah. That's 70. Yeah. That's a fascinating fireplace. And then again, Price's play with cabinets. Always it's built in cabinets. He was into the total architecture concept that we would do everything. And I also see some sort of Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, the way the colors are used. And to the next, that's maybe a good transition because number 18, it reminds me of the King's Road House by Schindler, which is his own house and had a very small budget, right? And this is what you told me about. These projects are for very moderate, modest budgets, right? We're in Manoa and a lot of the clients were basically university professors who didn't have a good deal of money. There we go. And Price was very interested in working with them. He liked intellectuals. He wasn't intellectual himself. These are the people he liked to talk to and people he liked to work with. If they had a tight budget, he would do a building on a tight budget. And number 19, and he didn't let this be an excuse for bad architecture, right? That's right. Which today is like, oh, we don't have a lot of money so we can't do much. Here was the opposite, right? Yeah, no, he did a wonderful building. And look at how this fits into the site and plays off the mountains. Yeah. Again, the transition with that grill and then the outdoor seating area. And the big alumni, yeah. And let's look at 20, how that looks from inside. And as you pointed out before, look at the skinniness of these columns. They're almost not there. They're like two pipe columns holding up that entire cantilever. Yeah, yeah. You can't do this these days anymore. Good luck convincing a structural engineer doing that. And look at 21 that shows it from the outside. Yeah, that you get the real sense of that cantilever. And then again, he likes the upstairs deck thing so that you can have a sun deck and a sheltered living area. And again, the beautiful interplay with the landscape. Scandalously minimalist guardrails again. Number 22 is the stairway inside. He didn't like wasting a lot of space on stairways, but he liked them to be beautifully lit in here. And he loved the play of glass block with cinder block. And this is a good example of that. That's why we included that. So before you said he was sort of cultivating the profanity in buildings where usually architects, you know, kitchens, I'm not interested. Always I'm not interested. But next picture, you can see that he was very much celebrating these sort of utilitarian things. Well, if a client wanted a good kitchen, he would give them a good kitchen. Wow, yeah. And this is a marvelous one-piece stainless steel U. And then there's some trademarks here. His, the door to the left is one of his signatures. It doesn't seem to show up on the slide. There's a window panel in it. The windows at the counter level there, on the left they feed into the master dining room. And at the end of the counter there, they go out to the barbecue area. So you have a direct pass through from the kitchen to the various areas. And then there's a skylight that brings a natural light into the kitchen. Very, very brilliant. And number 24 gives us another glimpse of this approach in another house. Interesting case for a client. You know, wanted a lot of entertaining area. I wanted a big kitchen. And this house has a beautiful master bedroom and a very tiny guest room. And that's about it. And this incredible kitchen. And these houses we have to say, these are houses that are in danger, right? They haven't been maintained that well for one reason or another. So the clients are thinking, should I keep it or not? And we of course want to make a picture and say, of course you need to. And Kendrell did that. He writes this in his article that all the builders said bulldoze it down. It's not worth it. It's all termite eaten away. He said, no, if there's a will, there's a way and there was a will. So please, all the other owners or future owners. So number 25 shows again a sort of customizing the utility area. Well, that's that same house that has the incredible kitchen. These people were entertainers. They needed an incredible closet. And you've got the natural lighting and you have this matting on the doors that allows for free ventilation. So, I mean, he could give you what you wanted and could afford basically. And 26 is a very spectacular ceiling in the house, right? This is a different house. This is the Panfiglio house in Kailua. And it's in major need of repair. But fortunately, this incredible ceiling. These basically you've got a butterfly roof that's being supported by these incredible rafters. Number 27. A beautiful house in East Tunnel Alou on the waterfront. This is Alfred Price's second to the last house. And it still lived in by the man who commissioned it 50 years ago. That's awesome. And 28 gives us an inside out impression of that beautiful house. And notice the railing there, how he's playing with the ups and downs. There we go. It's not a boring railing. It's a very interesting railing. And this deck, of course, is in the lee of the trade winds. And so it's beautifully sited and a little dining nook here as well. Very, very masterly. Yeah. So number 29. Same house, just a living room. And it still has its period furniture, which is very nice. It's got these framed views out to the natural environment and blends it, blurs it. Right. Number 30. There we go with the fantastic kitchens again. And we should go back to our main photo because that's the lanai on the other side of the house. Can we bring the background, please, that or permanent background where we're sitting in, if we can get that back? The permanent background that we're usually sitting in? No. I guess not for the point. Let's move on because we have only a couple minutes left. Let's go to his very last project, right? That's 31. Number 31. This is his last project. And we had to use pictures from the house and garden that was featured in the House and Garden magazine. It still exists, but it's been largely destroyed by renovations. But here it is. It's a totally outdoorsy kind of living area around a swimming pool. The main living room, formal living areas to the left, stairways to the upper master bedroom suite. The entry is by the stairs and the formal dining room, kitchen, family room. But here you have a house, basically without walls. It's just amazing. Fascinating to see this development. And this reminds me a lot of Intenza's case study house, Sirius in California, and Killingsworth, who also has work here at the Kahala Hilton. Some other projects. So this is very much in this zeitgeist, right? Exactly. Of this heroic... This is modernism, me coming from Europe, too. Modernism, we lost the war. Modernism was stiff. And America adopted it and made it enjoyable. And in heroic, in a very healthy way, I believe, that sort of model to sense. Look how light that structure is. It is. So see that even more as the next picture is 32. Just illustrates that once more. The formal dining area. And again, that's a screen there. That's not waterproof at all. The furniture is waterproof. So the sort of shocking thing is that this price is... You would think, okay, with this house, this should be the beginning, but it actually was the end of his private practice as an architect. He had finally not worry about budget as much anymore as he used to be, right? So Arizona Memorial and this one are sort of his biggest pieces. But most ironically, it was, and he wasn't, you know, didn't live a fancy lifestyle, right? But he had his kids in school, right? And he couldn't make it, right? Couldn't make it. And basically then started to become... So he had his very active years on the turf. And then he became a coach, right? Can you talk a little bit about it? I think he shifted into working for the state. And I think that we're very fortunate that he did in a way because he worked as an advisor to the state planning office. And he got involved in things like the state civic center, capital district, and all that beautiful open space is largely related to price and air and levine. And then he got involved in things like the blowhole overlook and the poly overlook, those kinds of park things, the Hilo waterfront plan. And then he slipped into the state foundation and the culture and the arts, which is where he sort of ended up. And he brought in that 1% for art budget. And that goes back to his wanting to commission art for buildings. That's awesome. We have one minute left and I will pay tribute to the tradition always ending with a positive outlook. So the next picture is just quickly showing how connected I feel to him. My mother is Austrian. It was just a birthday, happy birthday, mom. And this is a picture from our family practice that hopefully shows how much I think we think the price sort of philosophy is still true. Can we can still do that? But more importantly, then the next picture, another similarity, we also don't do the cocktail party. So we have similar problems and that's probably why I work for the state as well. But these projects are more important there, the emerging generation. And this is houses for DHHL and Kapolei doing it differently, differently that we do it right now. So you can almost say, well, this is the price. What's the consultant on these projects? And last picture, once again, celebrating the outdoors and the Carport de la Nye being the main place in space, but otherwise very simple tectonics, very simple elements. So once again, dear colleagues, emerging colleagues, and existing peers here, please remember Price and let's be inspired by him and thank you and your collaborators on this amazing scholarly endeavor and writing the book and we look forward to all buy it, right? Martin, thanks for having us. And hopefully everyone will enjoy Price and appreciate what he's done for architecture and for Hawaii as a state. We will, especially after your great introduction today. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jack. And see you all back next week for another show of Human Jumain Architecture. Bye-bye.