 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Come you all back to another exciting episode of Human Humane Architecture, broadcasting live here from our urban paradise of Honolulu, Hawaii. And today we're going to follow up with one of our favorite guests from the recent past, that's Richard Lowe. Good to have you back on the show, Rich. Thank you, Martin. Much appreciated. Last time, hopefully people remember, and if not go back and revisit the previous show, you were sharing your exciting experience about how you actually came here to be part of the Warnocky team about the planning around the capital. Right. That's true. But now we want to know what happened following that. And so I got a sort of an appetizer of that, if you can get the picture one up here when you were with us at Doko Momo and gave a talk story. And this is the title of the show, and you see at the bottom right here, we call this show The Ward's Wonder World. And why is that, Rich? Well, the Ward family is one of the most interesting families I've ever thought about. I worked, after I left, after Warnocky left Huanhanlulu following their work, I went to work for Victoria Ward itself. And I didn't really appreciate the complexity and amazing facts about that family. But she, Victoria Ward herself, I think of her as a kind of Margaret Thatcher of Hawaii. Awesome. I'm not sure whether that's appropriate or not. Well, maybe while you talk, let's bring up picture three. Come over one picture and bring up picture three and then we can look at her here, how she looked, you know? Well you can see that as a child and as a grown-up and as an older lady, she had that same gaze, that powerful feel for moving forward and being practical, which she had to do because her husband died very young. Let's jump to the next slide and see the area she was sort of overseeing. Next slide, please. The next one, four. So that's the area, right, we're sort of talking about. And this is an old map from, as it says, 1884, right? Yes, yes. Where you see that long pond in almost the middle of the picture, that was in, on their home place, they decided to move what was then called the outskirts of town. Now of course it's the very middle of town. And let's take a look how that sort of appeared, next picture here, because it wasn't urbanized yet, it was pretty much the countryside, as you explained, and very lush, sort of in the jungle and that was the house, right? That was their house. May I divert for a second, I'll try to be quick. That house and Elani Palace were designed by the same architect, built by the same contractor at the same time. Oh wow, awesome, yeah. But there was something tragic when they moved in, something happened, right? Curtis Ward died within a year of moving in. And then there were many kids, right? Many kids, before they moved here, they had a house called, they called Dixie down near the waterfront. And in that house where all these seven daughters were created. But regardless, or maybe because they were very social, and you know, you would casually call it throwing parties, and let's look at that at the next slide, please, here. And hosting and being very sort of cosmopolitan had people over from, you know, all over the world and, you know, places and races and all of that, right? Very inclusive. Well, they spoke, they spoke excellent Hawaiian all their lives. When she was a child, that's what they spoke mostly. But also she was well educated and spoke perfect English as well. And they were very close to the royal family of Hawaii, very close to Queen Lilio Kalani, very good friend of hers. And they had this, here you are, almost a coat and tie sitting on the ground for a luau. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is an amazing picture. But then again, they were like, really, as you call it, very forward-thinking and innovative, you would call it these days, right? So they were like, you know, this looks pretty casual, obviously, and very sort of traditional, I guess. But then, you know, you were brought in as a Halee, respectfully call you that, right? Myself, and that's how they call us. That's what I am. Yeah, and they brought us in to bring innovation, right? So to bring the best of our world, which is the western civilization. And let's go to the next slide and see how that sort of was laid out and where that area was, right? That's this picture here. If I had a long finger, I'd point out where old plantation is on that, but we'll see that. But this is the Victoria Award purchase, Victoria and Curtis purchased that entire, it was about 65 acres, more or less, called the Sea Lands. And they saw it from the cupula of their house, and they thought, maybe we ought to own that. Yeah, why not? Might as well. And they bought it. Wow. Yeah. Developing that was very forward thinking, and if we go to the next slide, you know, one of the masterpieces of the development, we still have, right? And this is this one here. Yeah. Well, you can see that 40 acres, that orangey, goldy looking place, that was, it became old plantation, and that was the name of their house. And then it was bought, just about when the last of the daughters died. They sold it to the city. I think $2 million, although I don't want to be quoted on that, because I'm not absolutely certain. Yeah. That was a lot of money. Yeah. It went down. Yeah, yeah. But you can, the concert hall now, the exhibition hall and the arena, fill that out. Yeah. And we will revisit that in a little bit, but let's move on to get a little bigger picture next slide, please, about, yeah, I mean, what else were they thinking? And here, you know, you can, this is mid-70s to mid-80s, as you sort of, you know, stated here. And this looks pretty familiar to us, right? Because it's pretty much, I mean, by the way, this area is now more than less the Kakaako area, right? Well, actually. Or being close to it. Right. You're close to, from the left of this picture, some of that land is, and still is, Victoria Ward Limited, but little commercial spots in this and that. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, this is the ward, now the Ward Village, and that, they're following the plan, this plan, this was published in 1967, takes a while to develop things. Yeah. So, please, Rob, can you go just briefly over 11 and 12 and 13, and while you talk about it, and you basically said, that's what we planners do. You kindly, you know, casually said, you know, we look at zoning, we look at circulation, accessibility, we look at sort of time frames. The next picture, you know, 12 is looking like, you know, we're not going to build this all at once, you know, there are time frame windows and it grows organically, right? This is about the leases at the time we did the plan, and what could, where something could be built soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what couldn't be built soon. Yeah, very strategically laying out, but the next slide here is sort of, again, part of a vision that's, and this is where we're deviating away from the doko-momo part, because the doko-momo part basically made you think about, hey, I got to reconnect to an old buddy of mine who was involved with you. And the next slide, please. And this is a gentleman that I had been wanting to have on the show at least four times, but in his way being so humble, he said, basically, you're on your own, you can do this, you don't need me. And so here are four of the shows we did. And this is your old friend, Steve Owl. Right, right. This is just you recently reconnecting, and here you are. And that made you remember sort of his very ambitious visions as far as residential high-rises in this area. It certainly did, yeah. And so let's move on to the next slide and take a look at that vision as a larger. And you tell us a little bit about the nature, literally and figuratively, of these, I call them skinny towers because they're rather small in footprint and they're rather tall, right? They are, they are, they are. So let's talk about their nature. And the next picture here is our friend, Bandit, who insisted that we spend some time talking about the intricacy and the delicacy of the composition in sort of in plan, slash planning, right? And the little diagram at the top. That's what people don't do these days anymore. Take into account Malka Makai, you know, the breeze, not just the view. Today everything is about the view and nothing else. And that's why buildings are positioned the wrong way in many ways. But this is so eloquently composed, not just sort of in a technocratic way or technical way, but this is sort of an all-encompassing, yeah, composition, right? Yeah, this is the site plan. And Steve designed the whole set of two towers as a possible first project for the Victoria Ward Company. And you were in next picture taking, we take a look at one of these floor plans here. And you said, you know, it's, it has a little sibling in the neighborhood, right? Which one is that? 1350, designed by Manoro Yamasaki for Dilko was the developer of that building. Exactly. And we did a show about that with Joey Valenti, who's a resident. And we will allude to that a little later. But, you know, the reason why you're referring to that is that they're very similar sort of ways of thinking and making as not making them all glass towers, which then end up being microwaves, you know, that get pounded by the sun. These are basically like organisms who basically are self-shading themselves, and the breeze is going through, and there is large lanais, what you said. So they were more organic in nature, right? Yeah, they're a little, from some, some people I think they're old-fashioned, and the kitchen is a room, as opposed to being in the living room. I know. This is so cool because it's like, yeah, I mean, you know, things happen in circles, right? So now like the open kitchen block is the cool thing, almost like the standard. But if we think about it, you know, when you cook, you got all that smell everywhere all over the place. So here they mostly have these folding doors. So you can either separate them, you know, to keep that smell, you know, contained, or you can open them up and way more sort of multifunctional, right? And the bedrooms, like 1350, you can see are minimally fenestrated. That's kind of a fancy word. No, it's perfect, I love it. I use that very often. Me too, yeah, thank you. But, I mean, in this building, you don't have, you're not, if you get up naked at five in the afternoon from a nap, you're not going to be seen. Yeah, and we should be all more or less naked because we're in the tropics, and we can afford to be naked, right? And not where we both come from, where you freeze your butt off, right? When it's cold. So we can do that. And so I love that sort of way of you think and you, you know, they're easy breezy and they're easy going, you know, and so very, very sort of exotically tropical in nature. And let's zoom out and let's look, have two of these wonderful hand-drawn perspective next slide here. This is how they would then sort of be, once again, almost like sort of man-made trees in that sort of landscape, right? Yeah, I mean, we're looking at the towers from Ala Moana. And they, I think, I find them, I'm prejudiced, however, I find them very beautiful. Yeah, no, I do too. I'm less prejudiced than I agree with you, you know? And I think they're like, like the times and like, you guys, they were so elegantly eloquent and eloquently elegant at the same time. They weren't like these days, you know, I want to be a superstar. You know, it's all about me that goes up to national politics and, you know, that sort of narcissist syndrome. They were very humble personalities. They wanted to be a backdrop and, you know, being very good and solid, but not being the forefront. So they were like not trying to compete with what's most beautiful about Hawaii is the natural environment, right? So the mountains and all that stuff. So these tried to be, you know, in balance with that and not compete so much. Well, the wards themselves were on the, they weren't shy, but they were, they were not outwardly aggressive at all. And you made a reference to developers these days and back in the day? Yeah. Well, they chose not to go ahead with this project, maybe unfortunately, because they didn't have that tremendous drive that, you know, people like Stanford car, they can undertake something and just ram it through. And I admire them for that and their ability. But sometimes you would, you would, you would wish they would have the same no bless and, you know, nobility and humbleness and, and just like and, and, and inclusiveness, by the way, because the next slide here, which we're really struggling and this is just another view that basically shows also how the, we're now, we're almost, you know, always like saying, you know, and how it uses and, you know, as big times branding the streetscapes and say, oh, we got restaurants and we got trees. But we were just revisiting the term, you know, canopy cover, which, which is about like how much percentage of foliage you have leaves on trees. And we're actually way behind we and in a 12 month growing cycle environment, we have like in the 20s and some cities were, which we know on the mainland, where the climate isn't as privileged has like in the 30s or something. So I think there is an initiative, a public initiative to bump up that canopy cover, right? But this is showing here that it's, it's not just about the green vegetation, but it's about sort of built vegetation and, and street furniture and planters and surfaces and, and, you know, a blend of a natural and an artificial environment there in harmony and, and exciting, you know, and an exciting creation of both mankind and nature. Yeah. Well, this, this was the concourse through which you would enter the building and enter the garage. But there also were little shops along that concourse. So it was humanized in that sense. Oh, and taking you up on that term, which is a brilliant one gets to go to the next slide, because here's the ratio of like occupancy from a social point of view. So humanized, this is what we're struggling in, like the Stanford cars and the other developers, how can we make what they call affordable and at the same time being naturally ventilated, which they say it's a conflict, which I don't think it is. And we will see at the very end, why I think this is not a conflict, right? But here they were shooting for, you know, a robust rental market, right? And then, you know, an offer, you know, that you have the majority was intended to be, which we don't have now, the majority is ownership. And, you know, then the city is pushing now for a quota on, on affordable and renters, right? Whereas here, almost the renters seems to be the, the majority and the standards. And then there are some who can buy. So it was way more democratic and inclusive, right? And, and I mean, probably like the wards were and certainly the royals, right? Because there was, to my understanding, but what do I know, no homelessness, because everyone was taken care of, right? In a society. I would think so. It wasn't cut out. I would think so. We have it these days, right? So let's get the next slide and look at how that sort of presented itself, right? So the towers obviously didn't happen. Because you said, you know, they didn't feel like so empowered to do that. So they ended up doing way more low rise. And as I like to add, which we see in the next couple of slides, also low key in a respectable way, not being a bad. Well, they were, they were, they were comfortable doing the two-story warehouse type things, the retail things and so forth, which you can see here. We can see where the awnings are. That was the ward warehouse. Yeah. And we actually take a quick glimpse of that soon. But let's go back to the centerpiece, which is the Blaisdale Center. And let's go to the next slide here, please. Because if you guys remember the first opening slide today, which I repeated at the bottom here, this is Hewitt-Docomomo, you know, presenting that master plan with a masterpiece being the Blaisdale. And at the same time, our host for the Docomomo talk stories is in charge of the redevelopment. So we have this sort of, you know, duality of the past and the future. And so here at the top right is, is what they're proposing. This is the Scandinavian firm Snow Hedda together with WCIT here teaming up. And we let ourselves be surprised. We give it the benefit of doubt, but we, you know, DeSoto and I are not shy to share our opinions, you know, and then we were saying, hey, maybe we could have kept that center, you know, dual piece of the exhibit hall as well. And in a way with, and not trashing that and replacing it with something, you know, because it's a, it's a high bar to live up to because that was a, was a very exquisite, you know, piece of tropical modernism. And so we wish them luck to, to live up to that. And we let ourselves be surprised because there are examples of things that aren't around anymore. And let's move on to the next picture. I think this is one of your favorite pieces from, from, you know, you said this was the first thing that actually got built from the master plan. That's right. This is the first thing that was built, the garden office building that was designed, that was Hogan and Chapman architects. At that time we're doing small things and eventually did bigger things. And that was, had to be torn down in order to create land space for the Ho Kua. Yeah, yeah, we will see later. And one of the bigger things they did later is at the top right, we did a show about the Pan Am building, which is one of the buildings. And at the bottom, that's very nice. When we were doing the, the UH Manoa investigation, DeSoto discovered the courtyard theme, which then also is Bandit's, you know, favorite thing, one of his favorite things. So this is maybe something to reconsider that sort of courtyard theme is seemed to have been a very pleasant one, which we also had, if we could maybe jump over the next slide and get number 25 here, because this is then Ward Plaza, which doesn't really show in this picture, but it also was high on courtyards in the middle of it. If we'd had more pictures for that, it would be interesting to see the whole complex. And the audience has, because if they go back to that show that's referenced at the top right, we did a show about it so people can see the courtyard. And you had a great idea about how that one could have been kept and yet still being, you know, using the land in a way that, you know, more efficiently and effectively, right? I'm sort of sentimental about that building. I thought it was a very, very nice modern building. I would have thought maybe the high, now that site was slated for high rise once the wards got beyond the two-story limit in their heads. And I would have thought maybe the tower could have been built, you know, as a part of that complex. And that becomes the podium, you said. And maybe sacrifice the courtyard to become the tower, but then the towers themselves is sort of an interpretation of courtyards in the vertical, which is one of our dreams. And the other thing that's not there, another Steve, if we go back to the 24 now, is what warehouse, right? Yeah. Yeah. And again, people can revisit that. We did a show about that. And then let's go to 26 here, which is basically, which we already said. This is 1315 Alamoana Boulevard. And I charged myself to go through all the original Y5O episodes, and I'm screenshotting them and archiving them. And this is basically celebrating 1350 Alamoana Boulevard where around it, it was, you know, adjacent to story very low rise development. And then it was the first, you know, large sort of beacon sticking out. And the next page is then showing, as you said, you know, which then happened many decades later, right? These towers were developed. Very much so. And we said, let's respectfully agree to disagree on this one here, because you said pretty much, well, these towers are sort of following the, which I call the Kevin Lindsch, you know, basically towers in the park sort of theme. But I'm saying, while they might do that on a planning level, on an architectural level, they're not following the genetic code of what we talked to Steve Auer, you know, more natural organic towers and its sibling, 1315 Alamoana Boulevard. These are way more invasively hermetic. I will, to give them a little more credit, I might say that they have so much space between the towers that within those spaces, they have extensive gardens. I've been to dinner many times at the Nauru Tower with friends of mine, and we always eat out in the garden. So it's not all. And you're just being so nice, and I'm inclined to say too nice, but there is no such thing before. I know, but I take you up on that sort of lush space in between the towers and come to the next slide, which is also our permanent background picture here, right? And this is sort of pushing that to the max. I mean, this is an additional picture that you were digging out, you know, we were almost at the show, and you said, Hey, can we please work this in? And I said, Oh, this is super because that makes us segue out of the show, because this is a vision here again of once again, you know, the towers in the park, right? And we're talking, we're talking a canopy cover, you know, this is probably 90% right? Yeah. Well, this was, this was a proposal of the state of Hawaii in 1982. And in the report, Governor Arayoshi is writes the first page letter and so on. And it was very interesting. I remember when that happened, when they thought of having a way up in the air through all of Kakaoka, Ward, Bishop, Oha, and so on. And how funny that we just heard this again recently. And we mentioned that in several shows. You actually, in your show, in your last show, and then we did as well, because when Howard Hughes is pulling the Richard Maya tower, they want to sort of re-naturalize that area, at least temporarily until they rebuild. And they want to re-introduce these skywalks, but we heard something through the Great Wine, you know, that it maybe it might not happen. So who knows, but let's follow that and go through the last couple of pictures here and, and dream big or the next one here, how maybe, you know, we could sort of rejuvenate and re-naturalize existing urban fabrics as Waikiki here with the emerging generation a couple of years ago and just saying, you know, the towers are private. So, you know, talk to owners into, you know, taking off the glass and bringing the green into the buildings, you know, let the, from the podium, let's grow up into the vertical and especially shade the so problematic Western fenestrations, as you so perfectly use that term, right, and make the buildings cooler, literally, and figuratively. And then go through the next slide here. And you please comment on what you see. It's obviously our visionary work, but I would like to have sort of your feedback, how you think about this. I thought it was very interesting. These ideas, which are concepts that really could be carried further, whether it would occur within Ward Village or not, they're pretty strictly planned, but much of the city is going to be redeveloped. We know that. We can see all the big towers popping up around the Alamo Center. And here we're seeing a different take, you know, because we can't afford like the sort of the low, you know, density within the footprints. We have to go higher density and maybe closer so we can learn from the natural environment, from the jungles and go to the next couple of pictures and rush through. These are sort of proposals for the individual sort of plants within that sort of jungle. Yeah, like a built, you know, manmade environment that's very much sort of boring from the natural environment, although nature is nature and architecture is architecture. And bringing the landscape, I like this, bringing the landscape up into the buildings at different levels. And we're out of time. So we're going to conclude with the last slide and thanking you again for having been with us again. And you're going to be back, you promised over the summer and you're going to bring your buddy Steve out and, you know, have a show and another one with the soda hopefully and talk more about sort of what to learn from the past for the future. And again, if we can get the last 33 slide up here, because until then, this is us having been out last week in the jungle in the real jungle with Bundit and our emerging generations. And so, you know, next week we will revisit an article that your previous, from the last show, your previous host, Timothy Schuler, has written an article in the Flux Magazine that's called The Brutes at the Beach and it's looking into tropical modernism. So until, you know, that show again, thank you so much for having been here, Rich, please come back. And I already told you, you have to come back and read on that one. Thank you, Martin. And thank you so much. And until then, you guys, please once again bring back slot number 33 for one more time, because until when you see you next week, please stay as Tarzan-y as Rich. See you then. Bye-bye.