 Welcome back to another human-humane architecture show here in the dusky downtown Honolulu, which is our metropolis that is a coastal mountain-y metropolis that's very special. So Hawaiians call that Makai Malka. So in between the ocean and our real mountains, we have created an artificial mountain scape, and that is one of the biggest skylines in the United States after New York, Chicago, LA, of course. So this show is dedicated to relentlessly research about architecture that is trying to be as good as nature is, and we won't give up on that. And last show we had a new piece of architecture by Jim Kusakuma, his new rainbow-driving shoulder. So we're not going to go into another typology, into the high-rise typology, as you can tell. The building we're actually sitting in. And our expert today is our hero of this new show because he had the most. For the last show we had about a couple of weeks ago, you already had 220 clicks and three likes. So this is Soto Brown, Bishop Museum historian. Welcome back. Thank you for having me. Nice to be here. And we have to say, immediately after the show, the last show had poured out of us to say, we've got to do another one. That's right. We have so many ideas. So we choose this one here. We want to jump right in. Before we talk about the building, we're going to talk about the architect, so the creator of the building, and we can get the first picture. So who is that guy? Well, you tell me because actually I'm not that familiar. I do know that that's the space needle on the left, which was created for the Seattle World's Fair, and which in 1962, which I went to and I got to go in the space needle. But the space needle was the famous first, it was the one, it was the rotating restaurant that got the most publicity at that time. And if you ever watched the Jetsons cartoon show, I don't know if you did in Germany, but we did in the USA, the space needle was something that appeared a lot in the backgrounds of that show because it was the thing of the future and we were all going to be living in buildings like the space needle at some point. It didn't quite happen that way. You tell us about the architect. This is interesting because it's kind of your forgiven for not remembering because if it would have been Frank Lloyd Wright, if it would have been Lou Kahn, we wouldn't have forgotten it. And that's a good thing because it gets us to the first point. It wasn't what we would call today a boutique architect or an avant-garde architect. It was actually who many consider America's most commercial architect. And his name was John Graham. And John Graham is the architect of that particular building we're talking about. And he had actually prototyped the revolving rooftop flying saucer slash restaurant for the next year to become world famous. But it was prototyped in our tropical metropolis of Honolulu. And that's little known and little remembered. Correct. And so we go maybe to the next picture. Let's look at our next picture. That shows us the urban fabric. We were just before the show talking about a picture I was trying to find and not finding or wasn't successful. But here is actually it gets close to that because this is the building with a red arrow obviously. So no one will overlook it. Correct. Now I think the interesting thing is that as also we were talking about beforehand, the Alamoana building, which is what we're talking about today, is part of the Alamoana shopping center. And I believe certainly at the time that this was constructed. Let me just back up a little bit. Alamoana shopping center, the first phase opened in 1959. Soon after that was opened, construction started on the Alamoana building, the high rise. I think it's very rare and probably this could be one of the few occasions where a shopping center constructed a high rise as part of the complex. Then in 1966, the second phase of Alamoana opened. And so it became a shopping center that was horizontal with one vertical high rise attached to it or as part of it. And that is pretty much as I say unique. And that picture perfectly portrays that. And this picture is very cool because this is a mid-1960s postcard that shows the Alamoana building on the left in the distance. And the foreground on the right is part of a sculptural fountain that was built at one end of Alamoana when it first opened in 1959. And it has this tile work on it. It's very typical of 1959. And it's interesting because it had a Hawaiian theme. There were Hawaiian names, Hawaiian phrases attached to this fountain. So it sort of had a historical, mythical basis to acknowledge that this is in the Hawaiian islands and part of Hawaiian culture. And mostly we have to say we enjoyed so much to sort of jam the pictures, some come from you, some come from me. This picture we have to give credit to our friend Don Hivert, who had lots of copies of this floating around on the internet. But he took a really high resolution picture of the actual postcard. So thank you Don for that. And if we go to the next picture that actually shows sort of the spectacle, the crown, so to speak, of that building under construction and its context in the back. Yeah, and so we can see very clearly here, and this is interesting because this is a helicopter photograph. So there were no drones in 1960 and 61. So this picture was taken from a helicopter hired by the construction, you know, the company or the contractor. It shows the La Ronde restaurant under construction on the very top of the Alamoana building. And by the way, that building is also called 1441 Capulani because I think that's its official name. And then in the background you can see Diamond Head. Well, La Ronde was a rotating restaurant and the whole point was you had dinner or whatever for, usually took an hour to turn around. There it is. So that was your view of this beautiful vista. So La Ronde really was something to go to because it was something to look at. I mean, in lots of other places I can't imagine you would have had the view. As you said, we've got a Maoka view of the mountains. We've got a Makai view of the ocean. We've got a beautiful vista for this 360 degree view. And today, well, La Ronde is no longer functioning as a restaurant. It's still there present and Martin got to go up there and view it. But you can see that today Diamond Head is completely obscured by high rises. So the view now would be nothing like what it was back in 1961. No, that picture, I had a chance to be up there. The gentleman to the right was my oldest son, Joey, and we had the chance to go up there. And it's almost unbelievable how you talk about the prime sort of economics of real estate and how they have been exploding and how can such a space basically be empty, can be abandoned. There is the reactivation of the little sibling of that, which is in Kawakawa Avenue, which is called the top of Waikiki. And that just got recently reanimated, reactivated. And it's really a hot spot where people go. But for some odd reason, in this case here, and La Ronde, we have to go back. I mean, you grew up here, so you know this from your old childhood memories, which you will share also about the main part of the building later. But this was a location, this was an event. I mean, Talking Cool, that's why we named the show The Cool. And I actually should have said The Cool List Commercial Classic. Because this was top notch. This was America at its best as a total piece of artwork. And it's not only for local residents to go there, but this is also at the time already a tourist destination. So you've got a market of people who are from outside who are going to want to take this 360 degree view thing, as well as people who lived here. And just as with everything when it first opens up, you want to go see it. And number seven proves that pretty, because some celebrities obviously helped to promote that as well. Number seven is that picture with gentlemen, you know, and he's in love. And they're up there. And you said before, you know, this was the space age. This was going, you know, shooting people on the moon. You know, some debate about what we don't know about all these people. But this was the way to basically show excellence and a culture that is superior and can do all these things. And it's also to show that technology is there. Technology is capable of taking us to a greater, brighter future. And at that time period, you have to remember, people were really believing technology was saving the world. And in a lot of ways it was. There were a lot of things that were improving. But at the time, 1960, we're just seeing like the future is so bright we've got to wear shades because technology is saving us. And here's a rotating restaurant to prove it. And you, you segwayed us into, into the other cool part of the building, which is picture age shows actually a construction picture here. So there's this plinth with these breeze blocks. I'm going to say hi to my friend and colleague Lance Walters, who's doing great work with the students to think about that tradition as well. I think he's, hasn't touched with you guys as well to potentially, I mean, this is a whole different story. And we probably should even get Lance here and talk about that. I think you should too. But what we want to talk about is actually sort of that. We call that traditionally, that's the plinth. And we talk about the shaft that's in the background. And then we talk about the crown, which we have already, which is the flying saucer. But if we get to the next picture, this picture was, was the raw structure. But something is happening here. What, what, what happens there? This is again part of technology. Here's technology saving us. The Alamoana building had a very interesting exterior, which consisted of, and you will see in a, in a few minutes, what we're talking about, vertical louvers, which moved according to the position of the sun. So in this photograph on the left, you can see those louvers have already been installed, actually on the right too, but they're open. They're in a different position. So this is the louver system in, as it's being created. And next picture, please, we see actually the louvers, how they are being brought on side. So you can see them on the right there. They even have these sort of fin shaped, you know, elliptical kind of, kind of profile. Very much like airspace technology, airspace thinking. Correct, correct. This is high tech, right? Right, and they were mounted vertically. So you're seeing them lying down horizontally, but on the exterior, when they were in use, they were vertical, mounted at the top and the bottom, and they could pivot and turn in whatever direction was necessary. And the next picture actually demonstrates that. I took that, I noticed that first when you had worked and helped here, when the mall got expanded, there was an obligation to sort of keep the memory intact and there was an exhibit. We just saw the principal of the firm of Mason Architects walking by when we were preparing for the show outside. So Mason Architects were doing this construction fence exhibit. They totally froze me. I mean, I just wanted to go to Longs and buy something and I just got totally paralyzed in front of these boards and was soaking them up and was thinking, oh my God, what little did I know? Because the building now we have to say, so the building was, maybe at the end of the show, people agree it was the coolest building. It is not anymore, but our pitch will be it could be again. Correct. The reason why it's currently not anymore is that somewhere in the early 90s, the facility manager, and this is me guesstimating, and maybe I'm wrong and I'll let myself be corrected, but people came and said, well, this is technology and you always got to grease and oil and get it maintained. So this is sort of maybe too much pain in the butt. Why would you take these things off and we just beef up air conditioning in the building? And then, and this is my other guess that, and I have, you know, my dentist at 20% of the island's dentist population is in the building. You said your dentist as well, right? He actually told me that the architect, the record of their renovation, wasn't quite sure himself about what they did instead. What they did instead is a little whimsical horizontal louvers that everyone in architectural environmental classes, 101, understands something that's not even the foot deep, doesn't even work to the south. That's why our hats are caps. You know, the lid is significantly longer proportionally than our face. If you do this to the west or the east, it doesn't work at all. So this is just decoration, so the building wouldn't look like too naked, right? I was just going to say that the original louvers actually were functional, and I think what's on there now is just decoration, so it's not just a plain block. And this is the picture we're looking at right now is an artist's view of the building, not necessarily its accurate appearance, but it does give you a feeling of what the building looked like. And those louvers, you know, as you said, they're no longer in use. I am sure that they deteriorated in various ways. The mechanism to keep them running probably gave out, and rather than trying to redo this entire exterior of the building with new louvers, they said, let's just take it all off, and also too, we were talking about, it, quote, modernizes the building. You take off that original 1960 exterior, and you have a building that looks more up-to-date, and if you are looking for tenants, that's something that's a benefit for a lot of tenants. Oh, yeah, look how modern it is, and it's all cleaned up and everything. Okay, we're going to take a short break and then continue that exciting story about the coolest commercial classic in Honolulu. See you in a minute. Aloha. My name is Richard Emory, host of Kondo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. Our show is all about educating board members and owners about their responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. each week. Aloha. Hi, I'm Donna Blanchard. I'm the host of Center Stage, which is on Wednesdays at 2 o'clock here on ThinkTech. On Center Stage, I talk with artists about not only what they do and how they do it, but the meat of the conversation for me is why they do it, why we go through this. A lot of us are not making our livings doing this, and a lot of us would do this with our last dying breath if we had that choice. And that's what I love to talk to people about. I hope you enjoy watching it, and I hope you get inspired, because there's an artist inside you, too. Join us on Center Stage at 2 o'clock on Wednesdays. Bye. So we're back to Honolulu's coolest commercial classic here with the Soda Brown from the Bishop's House. You mean I'm the coolest commercial classic? Always, always. Alright. Okay, me and the building we're talking about. You haven't been stripped naked, like Eli, as the project we're talking about. My louvers didn't are still functional. Very good, very good. So let's talk about what's so fantastic. Let's go back to that picture, 12, please. Because what we see, again, is this sort of illusion of the building or this sort of aspiration, what the building wanted to show. But actually, if you would have looked at the building at another angle, it would have looked slightly different. Why is that? Well, as you pointed out, the louvers were different, had different colors on different surfaces. So one side was a more gold color, the other side was a more plain aluminum color, so that as those louvers would have shifted, you would have seen a different appearance to the building. And again, how many other buildings have that? Exactly. They don't, they don't. So if we go to picture 13, which will only show for a fraction of a second, because it's so blurred, and I had to zoom in on another historic picture. But I allow myself to say, you know, the goal of the show to look for what's the closest to nature and architecture, that building might have actually been. And in an interesting way, it never wanted to look like nature, because nature is nature and architecture is architecture. But it was sort of understanding the principles of nature, of being biochlamatic, that shade is a characteristic, is a survival tool here in the tropics, and so it employed these mechanisms in a very high tech, in a very sort of, you know, space AG, Jetsons kind of a way. But if you look at that palm leaf, and the texture of it, and the louvers, and both are not static, both are dynamic, the wind makes the palm leaf swing, and the operation, the biochlamatic operation, met that building changed its perception. And please change that experience, that childhood experience when you saw your dentist in there. Right, and I was at the dentist, and I was probably about eight years old or something, and I saw the louvers actually moving, and was quite mystified as to what is going on, because I'm sure there had been publicity about it, but as a little kid, I didn't get it. And so to see these tall vertical things in front of the window start to move was really mystifying as to why are they doing it? And as an adult, I do understand. So here they are, and I think the same is like nature. We don't completely sort of scientifically or logically understand, you know, unless we're biologists, you know, we understand how everything works, but otherwise we're puzzled by nature in a positive way, right? It just touches us because of its perfection of performance. So it isn't form per se of form, and it isn't performing per se of performing. It's a blend of the two. Correct. And now here, this is the thing that you were talking about earlier, that there is a way, and this is a modern version of the same system that the Alamoana building originally had. And this is in England, I believe, Britain. Here are the same louvers, and they can turn and they can pivot, but it's probably today this same system could be done in a more reasonable fashion that would probably be longer lasting, possibly use less electricity, et cetera. And if they could do this in England, which doesn't have a heat problem, I've been there, I know it doesn't have a heat problem, that certainly this could be done in the Hawaiian islands as well. And it isn't just something to do because it's kind of quirky and fun. It actually has a function. So it isn't just decoration, as we were talking about. This actually does help the building function and it helps it be more functional for the people in it. So we're making a case or a pitch to sort of reverse the process, basically bring back, and I made some really, this is far out there, and I'm stretching myself, and especially regarding the Bishop Museum, I'm a background, I really want to be careful, but I compare the buildings just shared to a feather cape. That's a very thing very known to the culture here, right? Well, absolutely, but the point that you made, which I think is very true, if we get beyond the cape itself, but we talk about the bird that has the feathers, you made up the point that birds cool themselves off by putting up their wings or fluffing up their feathers because they can do that. If necessary, they can also put their feathers down to be more sleek and aerodynamic. So while the Alamona building was certainly not intentionally looking like a feathered cloak or bird, it still was using natural types of reactions for heating, cooling, et cetera. So I thought that was a really good point because it's true there is a natural component to this and there is a natural analogy to it. And you made a great point too before the show that you said, well, mid-century-wise, everyone was taken away by the beauty of our islands, but they did not try to even compete or compare themselves to nature. They were actually saying, well, we're leading the world and we can do stuff that's so stunning architecturally that it naturally will blend in and will be equal to the performance of nature. It's a spectacle of itself. In other words, we've got the mountains and the ocean, as you just said, we've got the sky, we've got clouds, but we also can build buildings that are of themselves are eye-catching. And so I think that's true and I think that this building was like that. I think that was one of the intentions. And one of the things that's very true about this well, we've got one more innovation to talk about, but after that, we can focus on how this building really was iconic and it's time. Okay, let's get this out of the way because this picture here is basically, this is me, the practicing architect, kicking in and having worked for commercial clients and working for them. So if Martin wants to go up and today sell to a client to make a facade, a building envelope, and another facade over it, good luck, Martin, because we live in a highly capitalized way and unfortunately that spirit of, you know, doing more for symbiosis of reasons is unfortunately gone, let's face it. But we can maybe still smuggle it in if we add a performative aspect. And the aspect is if by nature if a louver is shading, it's exposed to the sun. So if we take that long side of the louver and equip it with modern foldable take technology which is thin film PV that you can code on by the same time the building is reducing energy by being self-shaded so it doesn't overheat, the rest of energy it needs for, you know, lights and computers and maybe that little bit AC you can harvest yourselves. So we're saying we're taking this building that has sort of collective memory in the city and we're boosting it into the future because we're saying the nature of these clients, they want cool and they only want the biochlamatic cool if it's pop-culturally cool. That's our point. That's right. But again, the technology we were just saying, technology was seen as the savior of things. Here's a situation where it may not save us but it certainly is going to enhance things. It's going to make things better. So being able to generate your own electricity through an architectural element is a winning in both situations. I wish it was integrative to the system. So we're having to step aside a little bit about my locomomo membership and you being the historian where we would love to bring things back exactly the way they were but maybe if that is impossible, we've got to compromise if it's in an integrative way and not in a sort of attached way. Correct. And even if it isn't this particular building which we wish it was, it's still something that we can look forward to is something that is useful and it looks interesting. And as a motivation, let's use the rest of the show to bring a little bit back that collective memory we were talking about in the next picture. Okay. Where's that from? Okay. Well, this is from the film Blue Hawaii in 1961 and it's a kind of a distorted picture but Elvis... Because I took it that way. Because you took it that way on a TV screen but Elvis Presley is talking to his girlfriend, Joan Blackman, and down in the right-hand corner they're supposedly having a picnic on Tantalus. Down in the right-hand corner you can see the Olimwana building which at the time was in the midst of a long, large, flat open area. So it really stood out. Any time anybody took a picture or a film of Honolulu, there was that building right there prominently. And interestingly, this scene is where Elvis is saying he's going to become a tour guy because tourism is booming so much. Well, that was true for that time period. So as he's talking, in the background is one of the symbols of this economic growth. Amazing. Next year another Elvis movie came out that was a little reactionary and then there's this one here. Yeah, and this is a film called Girls, Girls, Girls. Now interestingly, this film is set in sort of a mythical, unidentified location because he had just been in Blue Hawaii. They didn't want to put him in another Hawaii-based film. So they never really specify where this place supposedly is that he's a boat captain. But in this scene right here, you can clearly see there's our Olimwana building in the background. We caught them on that one. Oh yeah, we did. I thought because they weren't intending to show that and it goes by so fast so they didn't want that. Yeah, but we see it anyway. And we're all in some pop culture. And there is Thomas Magnum, star of the television series Magnum PI, which replaced Hawaii 5.0 in the 1980s as the most popular Hawaii-based TV series. And in the background again, there's our Olimwana building because you couldn't escape it when you were filming or photographing. They didn't want to. They didn't want to. There was no reason to. The opposite. But also too, in the opening sequence of the original Hawaii 5.0 series, there are two, one or two shots that are very difficult to identify, but it's a very quick zoom towards the blue neon that was around the edge of La Ronde. So in addition to Magnum, who we just saw, you can also see a little bit of La Ronde in the opening of Hawaii 5.0. So there's our iconic building right there. Perfect. Speaking of iconic building, we have a minute left for the show. There's one building that could motivate us for our case since we can bring up number 19. This is the building that could be a motivation, right? There it is. Because that has been transitioned from almost being demolished and then thanks to Dean Sakamoto and others having told Howard, use this as a prime piece that you want to keep and you can use it to your advantage to promote, right? Right. And they did. And they put their showroom in there. And a lot of the ground floor is this very high-end Howard Hughes Corporation showroom of here are the buildings we're going to be building. And I'm very grateful it got kept. And I think it looks fabulous. It looks great. So that being said, the last picture is going to be our final pitch picture to General Growth Properties who is the owner of the building. And our propositions is just bring back La Ronde. It's not rocket science. That thing must have been running on an electric. More high-tech technology wasn't around. So it was always low-tech. So that's easy to bring back. Correct. Again, it would be, it always was a unique, wonderful experience. It was something that people enjoyed. If it was possible, I tell you, I'd go back there. And they may not have a round menu the way they did in the original, but why not, you know? It's a round building, a round menu. Exactly. With that, so we're going to bring it back. Thank you very much for having been here. We have already lined up a couple of new shows. So be excited about that. Thank you very much. You're welcome. You're welcome. Awesome show. Next Tuesday, early evenings for another round of human-human architecture. Thank you.