 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome back to the Human Human Architecture here on Think Tech Hawaii. And today we're broadcasting here again from our retirement paradise of Honolulu, Hawaii. And there's probably no other place that is so popular for people thinking spending the autumn, the fall of their life, because we're so privileged, the climatically temperate here. So we want to talk how architecture can have an impact in that, so aging and architecture. And our very special guest for that is David Liang. Thank you, David, for being here. Thank you for having me. And the audience might now be surprised and saying, well, you know, is he really aged? And you are, but not in the traditional sense. But you are an expert in that topic because why don't we bring up picture number one here. And you explain what that was and what that is, what we were doing there. Right. So what you see in the picture right now is me and my fellow classmates doing an XP day. And what an XP day is basically, me and my fellow classmates along with our professor, Martin Espang, we go explore sites, different buildings and study them through like social, politically, and economic effects, and then sort of take that as inspiration into our own designs. And you're in charge of that. So you basically this day was basically looking at senior housing and then shame on me. I got the address wrong. So I ended up going here first, which we then returned to, which is when I took this picture here. And it was rather irritated, I have to say, because thinking why would we want to look at that building, which I drove by and I saw a van pulling by and sort of picking all these pretty phlegmatically looking people up. And I just thought, OK, I don't want to end up like that. Not that I would ever do that because you guys quickly looked up what they charge here. And it was like in the 5,000 range, which in a pre-discussion we had with Jay was like, oh, that's cheap, but never mind. It's all relative and paradise, I guess. So if you go to the next picture, there's another project just across the street on the other side of Kapilani Boulevard, another just recently completed senior housing project. I'm referring to that one because the Soto and I had that in the previous show. We're talking about balconies here. And this was one of the silly examples where these very sort of extravagant lids have no other purpose than sheltering the single-wall unit AC. And you wouldn't think you would do that these days anymore. And especially, do you want to be stuck and basically warehouseed away as a senior behind these when you're living in Hawaii? That's what we were sort of discussing. So luckily, that wasn't what you choose. And you were actually more specifically in charge and made yourself in charge of this specific XB Day. And if we could get the next picture, where did you take us? Right, so I took me and my classmates to my grandmother's senior housing in Kalakawa homes. Immediately, when I was thinking of XB Day, I thought of we were doing a project in high-rise. And so I was thinking something along the lines of Easy Breezy, because Martinus Bank really loves talking about Easy Breezy. And so I thought, what a great idea to take them to my grandmother's senior housing, because even at a young age, when I ran through the hallways, when my grandma kind of took care of me, I always remember that throughout the years, I never experienced that they had any ACs or any modern amenities that we see in a lot of buildings now. A lot of it is just using natural ventilation, and using the surrounding environment, natural surrounding environment like resources. And you share it with us, thankfully. And the next picture is we walk you guys through now how we walk through the building. So we started out going through the lobby. And whereas in the other newer project, there are the inclusive ones and high-end ones, where the people were like, flagmatically sitting there, waiting to be taken care of. Here, I thought I'm like in a junior high school, because there was this ping-pong tournament going on of the residents. And they were going crazy. So that was an awesome welcoming to begin with. And then we walked up, and this is here. And although many of the seniors don't necessarily all take the stairs, there is an elevator, but at least we still have an easy breezy. Thank you, referring to the term. Stairway here, which our fellow host Howard Wigg, our hero, is allowing us to do again because he just made sure that code got changed so they don't need to be enclosed, which I used to be under the invasive International Building Code, the IBC. So we walk up to then having that view in the next picture. And that's pretty much like a multimillion-dollar view, right? You can't beat that. I mean, this is what probably all the Howard uses and command their school would love to advertise with and saying, you've got the view to the ocean and to Diamond Head, as you can see here. But in fact, where we're standing and looking at, we see in the next picture and explain a little bit what's behind what we see here, David. So what you see behind is sort of my little, well, my grandma's little space that sort of makes her own. So sort of see a place where she can comfortably sit, but not sort of intersect into the main circulation hallway that's in front of each individual unit because this entire building is single-loaded corridor, so... Yeah, so the architect had designed that, had planned that, because once you start pulling furniture into the existing circulation, you get in trouble with a fire marshal because it's a fire hazard. So the architect basically designed these L-coves, these niche, and they become sort of the front yard of your individual unit, which the next picture shows even more, I guess, excessively. As another neighbor here was literally, you know, having to take the shoes off, but they also cultivate a lot of vegetation, and some grow their herbs and little vegetables, and just literally make it their front yard, which is usually something we associate with single-family typology. So this architect brought that into the multi-story, which is rather interesting. And then behind these jealousies, we basically walk right into the main space, which is the dwelling space, and the next picture, please explain a little bit this warm, very warm hospitality of your grandmother. She welcomed us with cookies and ice glasses of water because it was a pretty hot day on that day. And so she sort of gave us a tour of what each unit looks kind of like. So what you see in the picture is basically the usual floor plan or what each unit looks like inside. It's pretty modest if you look at it. It's not too large, and it's not too small. It's comfortable. So pretty much where she was preparing the food is behind us at the very behind the bottom picture. This is where the open kitchen is pretty much. And to the right, you can see we can go to the next picture. We're standing sort of in this open hallway or just this opening between behind is the bedroom. And you can see, why didn't you explain a little bit the feature of that wall? So that wall is actually a closet, but it doesn't reach all the way to the roof. So it doesn't cut off natural circulations from reaching all the way behind into the bedroom. And so there's one continuous circulation. So no matter where you are at in the unit, it always feels well-breathed, so you don't feel too high. Amazing. Why don't we do this again these days? You got to wonder. So the next picture is another feature of this really what you're saying is the very sort of biochlamatic design. And so she introduced us to the fenestration on the Malca side, which is facing northeast where our prevailing trade winds come from. So the next picture, why don't you explain a little bit how that window works? So underneath these windows are sort of these dips that sort of like funnel the wind upwards instead of having natural regular straight ventilation through windows, it's actually being scooped up into the on-road. So the horizontal sort of wind and rain gets kept out while the breeze gets welcomed in, right? And that's a very sort of cleverly, very tropically engineered Scott Wilson who just talked to me the other day, basically said we should get woe high here, who is the most cutting edge, easy breezy, skyscraper firm in the world, and they're out of Singapore and they just reinvented that sort of window that we have it here. So I said to Scott, why do we need to bring woe high here while we have us? And you guys, the emerging generation, you can do that just as well, probably better because you are from here and certain things are different here than in Singapore obviously. So, but it even gets better as far as bio-climatic performance of the building which the next picture shows and what is that? So this is a washroom that's attached to the bathroom in each unit, which makes this particular apartment unique because as my grandma sort of quoted that she's never seen it in any other senior housing. This is one of the only units that she's seen in houses. So pretty much behind us is basically the bathroom and the bathroom has sort of this additional space where it has a sink. So you can do whatever other cleaning you wanna do. This is basically your sort of facility room which you can change clothes. Yeah, you can do that. And the next picture is what we already see on this one here is basically you can dry your laundry, right? And if you think about this in sort of a multiple ways, I mean the basically the laundry dryers are the biggest energy hogs overall. And here it uses the most natural and free because we're gonna basically talk about price of this because if you would like all brand and sell this, this could be multi, I mean, this could be high luxury, mostly exclusive housing with all the features, right? It's healthy and makes you happy. And but this is social senior housing. So this is all sort of out of sort of the necessity of having to make it work with the least cost in probably building the building but also maintaining the building and your maintenance fees. Because we all know that these condos have the big problem that the maintenance fees then finally eats up all your savings. And that's with old people, especially that mostly had the chance to somehow own a single or family house, but some I think including your grandma never had that chance. But even if you had one, that can be eaten up so fast by these horrendous kind of fees that these buildings have. So this building really tries to keep the systems down and basically use all natural systems, right? But what if you're not basically, you don't want to do your laundry yourself. We go to the next picture, where can you go then David? So this is actually located on the penthouse or I believe the 20th floor, very tough floor. And it's basically a laundry room. So sort of typically on the top floor, the penthouse is usually where we have the most expensive units. But in this case, they're using this as like a community space. So they're really thinking about the community first, the people first that are living there. Having a laundry room space and adjacent to the laundry mat is an actual open community space that they can use for anything. Can we have that next picture that illustrates that? Right, so this is the adjacent space that my grandma has seen that sometimes they have people going there to sort of learn dancing or some people have actually gone there to just hang clothes. But the windows that you see there currently actually weren't there originally. They're only recently placed in. They have the more traditional jealousies and then we were told that these here are a little bit more storm resistant. But I really think your point is well taken that you say this is the opposite to the current developments which are all high-end, all exclusive. And the higher you go, the more expensive it gets. So the richest guy gets the penthouse. You can use the term. And this is a very sort of socialist approach to say the least where you say, you know, this is for everyone, right? It's a very, I mean, a more moderate way would be to say there's a democratic way because if you just basically are exclusive and you only have it for the richer, the richer you are, the more you go up. This is very, very sort of non-democratic at least in my understanding. So that's great that it's for everyone and they got the multimillion dollar views without paying multimillion dollar rents. And we're not exactly sure we talked about but you said you don't know the exact rent but they're rather moderate, right? They're moderate in the range of a thousand or something a little bit more or less. It's based off of a percentage of your income. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it still a low income housing? Yeah, absolutely. And so talking amenities and talking about the facility obviously being sort of talking aging, it's a dated facility, it was built in 1969 but we can certainly say it aged well and you wanna maybe talk to that a little bit how it's sort of been up kept and certainly adapted to people moving in and the next picture is a good illustration because they're also adding things, right? So what is this we're looking at? So what you're looking at right now is community garden that was recently been placed in the parking lot that's like right behind the senior housing. So originally that wasn't there but recently they placed that in I guess because the parking wasn't being used as much. And so each lot is actually designated to different units. So it sort of gives incentives to each unit to sort of have their own space to grow their own greens and try to like revive the community, their sense of community in that place. Absolutely. And that gets us to the next picture which is also a shared space that we discovered on our way out. What is that? So as we were passing by this there was a door and right above it interestingly said auditorium. And so this space at that time was being used to sort of teach that. It seemed like it wasn't only just restricted for seniors but it's open to just the general public because there was a wide ranges of ages in there. So once again this seemed to me more like high school kids prepping for prom night because it was really sort of active and vital and not at all like through the stereotypical prejudice you have against or about senior housing where it says, okay, these are people who are at the end of their life and they're like checked out and locked away, unfortunately. So I think the current sort of businesses take advantage of that and basically sort of make people needing care and then they can basically sort of charge. And so it's their self interest to make people like old or feel like old. We're here, it seems the opposite that the building is basically trying to keep people engaged and your grandmother has lived in it for how long approximately? Approximately about 17 years. And so yeah, definitely what I liked about this building is because in a lot of like new senior housing you're seeing like these very extravagant amenities just like a restaurant but a lot of these spaces are just luxury things and they don't tend to the basic needs that seniors like want. They want to feel involved. They want a sense of community because a lot of times they might end up living by themselves and they still want to still feel young so far like feel independent. And that's what my grandma senior housing does. It's you know, reviving community. It's really giving a place where they can feel independent and young. Absolutely. And another aspect that contributes to that shows us the next picture here because you also shared with us that your mother lives in a very disciplined way. She lives on a strict sort of a diet that she has brought from her culture from elsewhere, right? So she's exotic herself so she brings something from somewhere else that complements because she's not becoming also a burden to society and you know and because she keeps herself up and stays healthy because of her rigid way of living, right? That and also because my grandma has a heart condition but I mean I've always known her to sort of live to that strict diet. Always waking up at five or six a.m. Waking up to pray and then going down to well you've seen that picture like the backyard garden where she does her morning walks to really get those joints and muscles working and then going back up and sort of cleaning the house and doing the daily chores. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And here once again, the landscape around the building is conducive of these activities because it's very lushly vegetated and shaded. So she isn't out in the sun and beaten down which probably you sort of drain her. So it's very sort of, yeah, it's very well designed all the way around. It's a very organic building that you know, lives and it allows people to have a happy life in it. And if we go to the next picture, we had an interesting discussion here up front. We're running into a founding father J and Tim Appichella and had a little chit chat and you wanna share a little bit about the content of that? So what we were discussing earlier with J, J did mention that this building was very huge and monumental in scale. And I agreed it to be as true if you were thinking, when I was thinking back in the days when I was younger and didn't understand the true value of this building, when you do look at it apart from its surrounding buildings, sure, yes, it does look very monumental. But then when you sort of like walk closer and you know, look at each individual units and seeing how modest they are. And it's just like the small little details, it really changes your perspective of the overall building as a whole. And with that sort of also speaking to Doko Momo, it's certainly a prime piece of mid-century modern exotic architecture because again, Frank Slavsky's the architect as Don Hibbert, you know, taught us, you know, was from the mainland. He grew up in Denver and went to Berkeley to school and it came here like many of these architects somewhere in the first part of the last century and then worked for the military and he started his office in the early 50s, so. But he came here certainly informed and inspired by international style, certainly by Le Corbusier and by people like that and he did all the living machine. There's many analogies, but he twisted it to a tropical extent and maybe you want to talk about that little detail here that we see. So this little detail, especially on the picture on the right, right now they have these glass panel railings, but before that they had actual metal bars for railings. So it actually allowed natural ventilation to go through. And again, this is showing how they had that under scoop to funnel the wind upwards, but then on top there's actually another like overhang scoop that sort of flows that wind into individual units. So it's very much designed, you know, with nature as an advisor and that way probably sort of this the gesture, the kind of the gently curving and swooping curve of these panels make it look sort of more lofty and less sort of stiff and rigid. But it doesn't come from a superficial, like we see at many pieces of architecture nowadays where it's decorative and it's added on and this disorder keeps calling it basically ornamental where you throw on sort of floral pattern that have their postmodern perception. But this one here is sort of designed to perform and we can say just like nature is designed to perform biochlamatically, it's a prime example. So basically then also looks pleasant and gentle because it's just respecting the principles and practices of nature pretty well. So we come surely to the end of the show, we wanna sort of phase out here with some sort of polemic propaganda and some sort of food for thought. And so the next picture is going back to the beginning because this is the sort of, you know, to us shocking because of all the reasons set where you so much, you know, we're honoring your grandma's plays, all these things don't apply to this one here. It's almost like it's the opposite of it in all its parts. It's hermetic, it's exclusive, it's expensive. You got these glitzy restaurants and shops but what is it good for the old people? You know, can they afford it and is it more for someone else to show off or a mixed use or something like that which is that sort of fancy work they're using these days. So I used, this is a picture I took when it was under construction. So let's just make a little sort of mind game here and think about how we could reverse time. And since the crane is still here, let's use the crane basically to undo what they have done and sort of, there you go, to deassemble the building and it would look like that. And wouldn't that be what you just, you know, quoted easy per easy? I mean, this would be, it protects here from the elements, from the rain, from the wind. Certainly some screens, you know, for privacy and certain wind protection that we're actually gonna have a show with our co-teacher of our current studio, Professor David Rockwood ran a class about screens and we'll share that with us so you can have something, certainly to infill. But, and also maybe you wanna refer, as far as technology and the way they built that, maybe you wanna refer to another XP day that we had together. We went to the people who made that. Out in Kapolei. Oh, I remember that one. Very specific, yeah. Oh, very yes, very specific. Yeah. We were able to visit that place and they showed us a few projects that they worked on. Can you remember the project that they did? Well, they made, if we go back to that slide, they were the contractor of this structure. So, if you strip off that extra makeup, and you know, I'm allowing myself that reference too, because when I saw your rainy, she looks so healthy and just natural and there's, you know, a little makeup on, she doesn't need it because she's healthy. Whereas the people in this building all looked like really old and they needed to be covered up with lots of makeup. So, it's really like it tells. And so, you know, reversing that, Martin, let's face, it's probably not gonna happen, but what this polemically tries to say, and what I'm saying here is very specific was making that, so we should basically consult them and have them work on new projects. And then the next picture is a project that we have been promoting in the show. This is Primitiva here, which is pretty much everything you talked about is pretty much infused in Primitiva. All the whistles and bells of biochlamatic and socially sort of promoting design. However, next picture, Primitiva is 21st century and your grandma's place is from the 20th century. They're both sort of taking different takes on it here. We organized life in a circular way to be more socially conducive and there's another granny there. That's what she's supposed to be, that lady on the left with a white hair who is just sitting there and enjoying the kids. And again, just to make clear, maybe we weren't specific enough, but you basically partly grew up in the building. You just showed us today. So, you know, it wasn't, and your grandma, as I understood, smuggled you in. It wasn't generally allowed, but she found her way. And you had a pretty happy childhood, just roaming the corridors and just, you know, having your fun in the building. So, with that, with the next and last picture, let's thank, first and foremost, your grandma of having shown us her building, her pretty amazing, inclusive, easy breezy senior dwelling that she really appreciates. And as one can see, she's a happy and healthy person. Thank you for having been here today, speaking on behalf of her, obviously, as well, but also from your own perspective. And let's thank friend Slaski, who is the architect, who, and let's sort of, let's think about to work in his tradition and evolve that kind of thinking that we can keep this very beautiful place paradise, also for the people who are not necessarily the richest, but still have a place here and call this their home and deserve to sort of dwell in dignity and decency. So with that, thank you very much again for having been here. Thank you for having me. Much appreciated. And with that, hope you all enjoyed. And so please keep our tropical paradise inclusive. And we hope to see you next week for another episode of learning from the past for the future with the Soto Brown. And we talk about a very eruptive topic, which has to do with volcanic nature. So see you then, bye-bye.