 Good to have you all back for another episode of Think Tech Hawaii's Human Humane Architecture, broadcasting live these days from half around the world, from the Munich, Germany, where I am, and back to Honolulu, Hawaii. So can we get the first picture up which illustrates our friend DeSoto wandering around and documenting for us how it looks in back of Honolulu and unfortunately after the COVID-19 lockdown when we started to open up or we planned to. Another happening which is the racial riots came which actually didn't develop as drastically on our island for several reasons but especially the high-end stores were afraid enough to close their store fronts again and they boarded them up with plywood that they probably got from Home Depot likewise and that comes from the Pacific Northwest. The ship there is boarded over there so not the most pleasant use and appearance of wood for us woodpeckers who are very very passionate about wood. So that being the case let's get our spirits up and get to the next slide because already some shows ago we had shared an emerging talent's work, Nicholas Chivitano's Doctor of Architecture of Eases proposing a new wood construction system in his case out of a cross nailed with an aluminum nails at that point out of local eucalyptus trees and ironwood and DeSoto and I have been doing some covering about that one. Today which the picture on the left gives you a little clue about another material that's even more unconventional and surprising and we get to the third slide and with that I am going to introduce my guest Kaldi Keano. Hi Kaldi. Aloha. Hi Martin. Hi good to have you on the show and please help us about when you came up with what we're talking about today and refer a little bit to this slide here what we see. Sure and I appreciate you having me on the show. So just graduated University of Hawaii School of Architecture and this is one of the projects that we had one of our studio projects focusing on Vietnam and worker housing and how we can provide for that need and so in this project we had looked at two different local options as far as material and providing something that was natural that was cheap that was affordable and that was pleasing aesthetically visually to the touch and feel and so with this project we began our search to look for what that local material would be and this led us into using coconut wood as one of the main sources of the building material and so this project like I said focusing on Vietnam and being very humid and hot place. We also wanted to focus on a material that would be not only local and beautiful but also could help with ventilation and different aspects of improving workers life as they work all day you know very hard labor and then come home to something pleasing that they can enjoy. Absolutely and we want to add that we did that in collaboration with our utmost Vietnam and tropical expert, Tropicure Rockwood, hi David and thanks for having joined Ventures with us on that. So go to the next slide and this is actually illustrating what you already talked about here is your project that you did with your team the more overall concept at the bottom and at the top you came up with this idea of a very unconventional again say the least material construction system right. Exactly, exactly and so here we wanted to use traditional materials and local materials found in coconut wood and kind of infuse that with some of this modern wood technology that is found in cross laminated timber and so with this we started to develop our own version of a coconut wood cross laminated timber product for the main structure of this building. Let's go to the next slide here. What do you remember about that one? You see the next slide yeah so on the next slide we see again where I was kicking in back again because oh we go to the previous sorry Eric we're too fast. This is something I'm hoping to offer when travel gets safer although Europe we opened up again and so hopefully this can happen soon. It's an anticipated study abroad and I want to share with interested members, participants, the post occupancy and evidence-based design life cycle assessment projects we've done. This one on top is our home we might have been ahead of the game the office home how we call it so obviously the reverse of something that we're all very used to working from home, home office and this project next slide is built in which way maybe fully explain all of it. Yeah so you know this was part of the inspiration of where we got for our Vietnam project and in looking at Martin's project and how we use this type of cross laminated timber to make this simple yet beautiful structure all natural all made out of wood and you know the not only is it beautiful but the way that it's constructed quick construction time very solid very efficient type building structure great for you know mechanical systems and and so this was a lot of inspiration for where we got to put together our Vietnam project using coconut cross laminated timber and in this case we have to say it was a couple years ago so this is still sort of the original and kind of the arcade way of cross-laminating we actually use glue to put them together and that presents some challenges of obviously glue is a material questioned by some people also as far as the fire rating there were some concerns about that so so again that was then and now is now and let's go to the next slide which is a project and even the earlier project however on our side that inspired even more to be explained open why and how this is different than the previous construction system. Yeah so and you know understanding some of the things that Martin was able to share in his personal experience of actually using this material and the success of it you know inspired us to be able to take this one step further and bring it from you know a European setting to a tropical setting and infuse that with a local understanding of local woods and the benefits of using material found right here in in the local construction sites. And while the previous project is CLT so cross-laminated this one here as we can call it side nailed because you just nail one board to the next and so on and while I was honored to share with you my previous experience I had a similar situation back then in 2002 with a gentleman that you see at the very top left his portrait there just below the book he's an author which is the timber manual and that's Julius Natura who's a professor at the EPFL in Busan so thanks Julius for having been a coach and an inspiration for me in order to convince my client I had to build that sort of full-scale lockup that you see me with more hair in front of it and so we the client was very suspicious of building entirely in solid timber for 40 thousand square foot school and so we had to go ahead and build this full-scale lockup that shows all the details and all the connections and how that was a motivation for you we will see further down our talk really so let's go to the next slide and kick in and and start where you where you departed from where we picked off here and on this picture. Yes definitely so here in this slide you know I worked with as a carver and woodworker here in Hawaii for quite a few years so I understand a lot of the woods and a lot of the uses and benefits of it but coming across this diagram really connected with me because it showed all the benefits of coconut wood and if you can see that you know as far as a numbering system and giving it a rating coconut wood compared to other local woods here in Hawaii has some of the best benefits across the board as far as different types of uses but one category that was discerning to me is the category of a major commercial timber where there's a circle and there's no X there and so coconut wood although it's been around for many years it's a it's a it's a material that has been used for local civilizations for thousands of years as a main major material in many different ways in building homes and building canoes and building musical instruments and using it for weapons and different types of things but although it's been used traditionally in in native Polynesian or different even in different tropical regions as a construction material or it's not been commercialized at all it's not mass produced and it's not used across the board in any way and so what I wanted to focus on is how can we use this local material and bring it into the commercial realm and use it more fully in different cities and regions whether it's in the you know major major cities such as Andalulu or more rural areas of Hawaii or even other countries like Vietnam or the Philippines where there are millions literally millions of coconut trees growing and ready to be used absolutely and the top row of pictures is in a little sort of funny way showing how most people and especially we with our mono economy at least in the past currently not working which is tourism this is how the visitors basically know about cocoa nuts in various way you know as the food trucks along the roads you know serving coconut milk drinks and then you got the coconut bras and you got all sorts of things but again hardly ever would anyone imagine it being of significance for the built environment and that's the exciting endeavor you took on and while you said you know it applies to many of the other tropics which maybe more abundance of actually the wood source but you still wanted to take it home or keep it home at the same time so that brings us to the next slide here and explain a little bit your your how you looked on the island and what you're suggesting to actually then have sufficient you know material to go what which you will share with us for a long yes exactly so you know it's it's obvious that Hawaii is for hundreds of years been an agricultural state I mean looking at pineapple looking at sugarcane and even before that before these commercial type of items were used there was abundance of other tropical crops such as taro or even coconut trees were highly used here as well and so although we do not have a large coconut forest such as in southeast Asia where they they really have this market of making coconut water and coconut oil there is still opportunity to bring this this material back to Hawaii and help with economics of Hawaii's agriculture as well as agroforestry sectors and so looking at different areas throughout Hawaii and there's quite a bit of open land agricultural land and opportunities to grow this material here in Hawaii and so the diagram in the bottom if you took a one acre plot and you space these coconut trees and a recommended 21 feet apart you can grow about 81 trees on one acre of lot and so you know understanding this and looking at all the open land throughout Hawaii throughout the state of Oahu and many of the outer islands here in Hawaii there's a lot of opportunity to grow these coconut forests and so one of the great benefits of coconut trees unlike other trees in agroforestry or other crops such as sugarcane and pineapple coconut tree it's beneficial throughout pretty much its entire life as it grows you have the leaves you have the coconuts which there is no limit to the amount of things that it can be used for whether coconut oil coconut water making things to the coconut shell things to the coconut husks things woven from the leaves of the coconut tree so it's it's a giving tree that's why it's called the tree of life in many tropical nations it's a tree of life for an important reason because it gives life and it's useful for a wide variety of things so not only growing these trees for the end use of the wood but throughout its span we can use many of its resources even before we harvest the wood absolutely and to comply to our rules and regulations at the School of Architecture of the University of Hawaii you had to gather a team of at least interested in best case expertise and experienced people so let's go to the next slide and please introduce your extended team to us for me yes definitely so as part of my team I really wanted to bring on people who were familiar with this type of system that I was trying to put together and motivated in this realm so besides Martin who was my chairperson I also had Ian Robertson who was over at the School of Engineering here at the University of Hawaii who also collaborated with some folks in Maui to do some of Mandala Homes to do some studies on using coconut wood as a construction material also Bill Chapman Dean Chapman was on our team as well as Joey Valenti many people know him for his albizia work and and all his research and his applied studies and the things that he's contributed to using trees here in Hawaii that it might be looked at as waste trees but actually can be used in structure as a structural material as well and so collaborated with this team we're able to come up with a great project with a lot of good direction and and help from each member of the team yeah and another team member you introduced by looking finding it at the which you see at the very top left which is my alchemist chamber my office and and one of these Christmases when I came back from my home trip I basically brought something with me that I introduced to you and do that hooked on that one and that gets us to the next slide even explain please what what that one is yes so you know quite a few years ago in one of our studio classes Martin had introduced us to this big company who had a wood nail gun that is what they call lignolock which is the first of its kind to pneumatically shoot wood nails into material and so I really wanted to incorporate this in my research and in my studies one because it was natural and all the benefits as well that comes from it in my project it was something that I wanted to not only use this modern understanding of mass timber but also to keep it as natural as possible and so infusing this lignolock wood nails in my project was very important a key for the success of of this project and also explain to us the guy next to the nail and the nail is next to the the back company name but explain the guy next to us and who has the fantastic name of and the mysterious name of vascular bundle so what is that yeah so in the picture in the bottom left corner if you took a you know small piece of coconut wood and you kind of smashed it apart you would find that really the structural strength of the coconut wood is found in its vascular bundles which are these veins that run up through the entire trunk and the more density of these veins the higher the density is the stronger the the wood is and so ironically unlike other types of hardwoods or woods in general where the center is the hardwood and the hardest part of the the densest part of the tree that is quite opposite with coconut wood where the peripheral area is the densest part of the tree and so the one of the signs of finding one of the densest part is these vascular bundles that run through the trunk and when you find a higher density of these vascular bundles that's where the strength is and so in the upper right pictures you'll see on the right one of the lignolock wood nail wood nails and on the left you'll see one of these vascular bundles that are extracted so side by side you know it's almost complementary to each other like coconut wood and vascular bundles wanted to be a lignolock wood nail or vice versa the wood nail wanted to be a vascular bundle and so collaboratively you know they work great as far as being sustainable and using materials that are you know that we don't have to worry about as far as any VOCs or you know what it comes from and it's what it's made out of. Yeah and also different than the which already the the aluminum nail that from a previous system that Nick used already not as vulnerable to ruin the the the saws that you and the blades of the saws you cut the wood with but obviously wood you know connecting wood is a even more mutual fit and they indeed look like buddies you know getting along very well with each other and getting along very well with each other gets us to the next slide because you're a man of many occupations and the silver and I were looking at aviation on the island connecting us to the rest of the world in a multiple variety of shows and one of them is quoted up there and below that I put the airline delta airline and explain us how are you connected with them and how they were helpful here exactly so prior to going to school you know I worked for Delta Airlines for quite a few years and actually my first couple of years while going to school I was still working as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines and so having that benefit you know I really wanted to use it to my advantage especially in my research so Martin introduced me to not only the ligno log nail gun but also to the CEO and to the crew there at ligno lock in Austria so in getting contact with them and getting contact with Christian Beck the CEO of the company we had a lot of good conversation and understanding how their technology can be used in our coconut wood and I also asked them if he wouldn't mind if I visited their company and brought some wood along with me and we did some testing at their facility so in January of this year I actually took a flight with a big box of coconut wood and we did quite a bit of testing right there at their facility in Germany and I was so fortunate not only to have Christian Beck on board with my research but he also dedicated the whole day's worth with his research and development team and we spent the entire day working on this coconut wood and understanding how the coconut wood and the ligno lock are compatible and compared to each other so the large picture shows one of these initial testings that we did there at their facility in shooting some coconut wood with the ligno lock nail guns yeah and at the bottom left we have to say that was you when you were proactively on your own bought a gun online and then share with us what then happened once you met Christian and gets us to the next slide and explain a little bit more of the process going from there yeah so a couple of weeks prior to my trip I actually found the company online where I could buy my own gun and so I did some of my own testing just to understand if it is actually a viable resource to bring these two together and I did have a couple of you know great uses of it and it was working well but there was also quite a few issues with using the gun that they had at that time and so they did have upgraded model which when I went to their company in Austria I brought my nail gun that I bought just a couple of weeks before with me and they actually traded out for their newest model which was actually had a lot of enhancements which made each shot go in a lot smoother and and so it was a great upgrade to have their latest gun and they actually sent me home with one of their newer guns which was great for my applied research part of my studies absolutely and on the left we can see again on the very left we can see how it is in the coconut wood and on the next to that we can see how it's in more conventional wood and again for all of you this was new territory so you guys were extremely excited when you were all but you didn't just do the mere shooting you also did another test that gets us to the next slide and explain to us what they were doing. Yes so like I said Christian had dedicated a whole team to work with me for one full day his research and development team as well as his guy Thomas who also does the testing so after each shot we we put together pieces that we could test for sheer as well as pull out pull out strength and not only was I impressed but also their team there in Germany their research team was also impressed as well how well not only did the ligno lock nails shoot into the coconut wood but also the the amount of strength that it provided in sheer as well as in holding and so we had great results from that and of course you know to get excellent and results you should do you know 30 of these tests for each but you know I was limited to the amount of coconut wood I could take so we only did about three tests for each category but still we had great results. Yeah absolutely we're getting close to the end of the show and we will close with you showing us your team your Austrian team so let's go to the next and last slide and again explain to us who is who to introduce so myself for the Aloha short of course a shirt of course and to my right is Christian Beck the CEO of the company and this Beck company I believe he's the fourth generation it was started by his great great great grandfather and so he is recently I believe about two years ago became the CEO and what a wonderful guy picked me up from the airport and really hosted me very well to his right Stefan his director of research and development and then on the other side to my left in the picture Thomas who was a great resource there and so this is the team that hosted me for not only that one day of testing but for a day prior and after taking you around the city and showing me so a little bit in Germany and really developed my appreciation for not only their facility and their team but also for this beautiful country and so great results we had there you know great collaboration we came good friends and we've kept in contact since then and so you know with this with this experience we've been able to grow and develop upon this and actually jokingly Christian and his team were talking about how those vascular bundles that I mentioned earlier maybe one day they could turn into these ligno lock nails to be shot with their pneumatic gun so we'll see how the one day come up endless opportunities and where this led once you return to the islands we will share with you in the next volume two of that show and then and this is exciting enough but then a more important project has come to fruition and that will be the birth of your son who is about to see the light of the earth in a few hours we can say so we wish you all the best and join happiness for that fantastic most important project of yours and this is already very important so hard to talk but you will so from a proud father of many sons and all the best wishes to you Kelly and your wife and again once you have recovered a little bit from your hospitality challenge for your new family member we will share with the audience volume two and the fantastic project and you came up with based upon this initial research so thank you very much Kelly and all the best all right I appreciate it thank you so much thank you bye