 Good to have you back for what happens to be our 233rd episode of Think Tech Hawaii's Human Humane Architecture. We're broadcasting live once again from three different parts of the world with our Transcontinental Triumvirate Triangle back to our Honolulu, Hawaii with Bishop Museum Historian and Archivist, Yuta Soto Brown, hi to Soto. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Think Tech. And we also have with us again our mid-century modern master, Ron Lindgren in Long Beach, California, hi, Ron. Hi, happy to be here again. Good to have you and myself when you wish so back in Munich or near Munich, Germany. And that gets us to the first slide. This happens to be the volume two of our show being called Kakaako Cool versus Cool with C. And the context, the global geopolitical context we're talking about is very complex. So, but let's still give it a try with a slide here. Last week, we have been saying we here in Munich have the world's security conference coming up and that happened. The picture number four at the top right is what we took of our US Embassy. We drove by, we were able to drive by, although we're some traffic detours you can see here. And we will report more on that one when we get back to our automotive and architecture comparison. So this is a very interesting embassy and tune in again when we talk about that one, interesting details about it. But what in the world does this have to do with the built environment at all? A lot we can tell you because there's a couple of your guys weekly German learning lessons in here, the one at the very middle center to the left is you can probably figure it says Putin's threatening potential with natural gas has evaporated. That ever since has been related because people say you Americans and I'm putting my American citizenship on the side and addressing you too as born Americans who had saved us ones. You save us again for sure through the end of this winter which by the way is almost over unless they related it, it's gonna be really cold again then we're already in trouble this winter. But if we don't get off the fossil then we're in deep trouble as the prognosis to say in the next couple of winters because we and tempered and Ron you come from American tempered continental from the Midwest which is my home away from home and you just sort of have been living on the East coast so we all know what cold is. So in this tempered and here in Germany we rely 50% of the natural gas comes from Russia and that is keeping us in dependency and currently getting us into big trouble. Big trouble is also one of the photographs from the conference at a dinner. It was predominantly a white old male and there were almost no female representatives in attendance and some of the old white male are particularly problematic as being very sympathetic with Taran Putin. Unfortunately, we don't wanna give him more attention and necessary but former president Donald Trump has his own social networking channel and was cheering Putin for what he's doing not any better on my side he's post former German president slash Bundeskanzler Hamilton Schroeder which we see on slide six, image six down there is budding up with Putin and that also happened in architecture. We were talking Wolf Pritz from Coop Himmelblau as one of the articles said is a poser for Putin or being accused of and he also left the European Union with a very questionable symbol which is the high rise tower of the European central bank that we see up there in the middle top on number three which is a fossil formalist high rise. A regardless and this is gonna make a turn to a positive angle. We have a few powerful women in the profession one is just above that picture here who is another president the president of the European Commission Oso La Fonda line and we have the equivalent on the American side because not Joe Biden was visiting us here over the weekend but it was his vice president Kamala Harris. So with that, although the two bottom show quotes also didn't end on a positive note because when you think and paradise everything is more paradissel also the energy problem but we had to find out that the recent high rises as this IO that claims itself to make wind visible we said with a joint venture of glass bohan and triple pane jealousy systems it would have literally been that rather than figuratively saying that or this Ali which you just sort of told us is named after a tree. They both have little nothing to do with the natural environment of that sort and kind but continuing that positive female feminine angle we wanna go to the next slide because we wanna revisit what we have already been looking into so two guys maybe problematic now a third guy joining maybe even more problematic looking back into something very promising because we also have a female architect finally joining us again because Ubisoft reminded us there has already been one and we've been talking please reiterate that but then Ron you please tell us about your experiences of over half of a century and more about the discrimination in our profession and discipline. Yeah I'm happy after all of the sort of bad news that we were discussing with the first slide to counter that slightly with the fact that there was some good news in Hawaii and that the Hawaiians are being graced by a major architectural project by a woman who in fact formed and operates her own firm. When Genie Gang named her firm the Genie Gang Studio it was a very dramatic and very confident announcement that a very distinctive and talented new architect had arrived on the scene. We're looking at a high rise from near the ground looking up the face of a high rise building that's newly complete that she has designed and she's designed it not partly I think in terms of having to overcome sort of sexist assumptions by men that have always pestered the profession and then and now. When I talk about then when I got my first class in 1959 as a freshman at the University of Illinois my architectural class was over 900 students of which only two were women. Five years later when the program ended it wasn't so surprising that the hardy class of 46 who had left included the two women. But women in architecture are just I having so many things to overcome and despite the fact that about 50% of women students in architecture are now doing their thing and the fact that a little over 30% of teachers part-time or full-time in architectural teaching are also now women. That sounds like an improvement from my bad old days but consider the fact that of the 116,000 or so licensed architects in the United States only 17% of them are women. So why are women sticking with the profession sticking with the industry? Again, it's the same old male assumptions sexist assumptions, macho assumptions. First of all, you don't hire a woman because she's going to be married and she'll be leaving very quickly. She probably doesn't even have the talent of men. Some men who I've talked to have said that very plainly but they considered women inferior as creative beings which is rather astonishing. And so what happens is and probably the one I ran across most as the practicing architecture on site was these same men had a real problem with any women being on the job site. They felt that women couldn't stand up to the rigors of maintaining authority on a job site amongst all male contractors and subcontractors. And so what's the result? Unequal pay, unequal opportunities and the old school form of architecture still hangs on but it is dying away much too slowly however. Yeah, but extending that optimistic view from within education I can confirm what you said as a positive trend in both quantitatively and qualitatively the women are on the rise in my current studio. You guys be happy about it. The woman in our current studio are out waiting us guys. So that's very weird and that's good to see. So that being said again, but we still wanna be fair and not be prejudiced in one way or the other. So we wanna now basically go to the project and try to be as fair as we can, although we're guys and we're talking about one of our female colleagues here and this picture here we took to probably present the building in its best way that it really wants to come across as it prides itself to be inspired by sugarcane and in this position, but mainly from this position you can really see this sort of borrowing from the organic nature of vegetation. But when we go to the next slide this is an reiteration of the initial show we did about two and a half years ago. And on the top left, we wanna recall that architects when Genie was first showing up with a project called the Aquatow, which we see at the top right people were saying, well, this is so refreshing. It's the first time ever since Marina City which is by Bertrand Goldberg, which is Bertrand is a student of me's and he was going up against basically his mentor who had started out organic before he was kicked out by HIPAA and luckily found a new home within the United States. But in the United States, he basically went foxy. And so Bertrand was basically going up against that as well as the other mentees and disciples of me's chipperade and partner who dig lead point tower. These are two organic towers. But Marina City is an example also of something we've been talking about. We will continue to talk about which developers always pride themselves of mixed use. Marina City is a prime example of that more than most of the towers which just have a couple of stores at the bottom and then just dwelling above. But this one had a theater, had a boat harbor, had a bunch of other infrastructure there. So it's a much better example. That's however, a half of a century, 50 years, young or old. And you were alluding to again, alluding to nature that they nicknamed the corn cups. And we're saying, you know, people can clearly understand why, but we're not trying to distinguish between form and perform. And I'm saying you, Ron and I and you, just so we've lived in the cold and we know that probably in the summertime, you prefer to have a North or a South unit in this universally illanized towers. But in the wintertime, I would choose any of them but the North one because it's keeping me warm. So energy plays a big role in it. And that is one of the observations that at the bottom left is when I was still in the prairie in Nebraska teaching and Chicago was my hub in and out, I was suspicious and afraid that I didn't see something and it's not there. And when I finally got the chance to tour Genie's office for the emerging generation, we had one German staff member who I pulled aside and he confirmed, he said, we didn't do this. And this is basically that would spin around in Europe forever and made it up to Canada, which is the thermal disconnection of the structurally connected lanais and they didn't do that. And that way it kind of causes what we can call our reverse radiation, because all that cold in this current season is just creeping into the tower. And that's obviously something that is bad and it's not quite as bad in the tropics but still in these days, again, if the Ukraine problem teaches us something, we should get off the fossil everywhere no matter what and kind of regain our independence and that way, you know, make it way easier to get along with each other in the world. And but what you were saying Ron, at least the project the Aqua Tower already had lanais and so has the Koula and so has, you know, it may be inspired and informed the most recent high rise condominium that we sort of quote at the bottom right, which seems to have some analogies to the project. So with that, let's jump to the next slide. And here again, we see a show quoting at the top right. Do we have the, yeah, at the top right, we will see that rigid form with a rebar sticking through that you better use for your lanais and having it from the disconnected. We don't see this in the Koula either. We didn't have it in the Aqua, which was bad. And here we don't need it as badly as in Chicago, but still you should do it and it hasn't been done. So that's something to definitely improve. And now we want to return to aesthetics and if we can go back to the, no, we don't need to go back and go to the next slide, move on to the next slide. Because I want to quickly talk about the top right chokehold and the middle image in there, which I took when my buddy Dan Kubrick told, took me to his, at that point, new construction site some property about a decade ago. This is when the Aqua Tower was going up and his building was going up, which is 600 North Fairbury with his boss, Hal Moudian. I had that chance to take that picture from frontal, like as an elevation and there is no Aqua to be seen. So this sort of image of something natural, might it be water, as in case in the Aqua Tower, might it be shuriken, as in the case of the Koula? It really depends on the perspective and the position you look at the building, right? And I'll leave it up to you, Ron, to judge this view that we took. Yeah, I was going to say that there is a slight move in an architecture called biomorphic architecture, where architects are growing as far as having some of the architectural forms sort of mimic plant growth, or even if it's just a regular square framed tower, it might be completely smothered, as you see in some great examples in Italy now of vertical gardens in the sky. But Genie Gang claimed that what we're seeing here visually represents a number of shurikane stalks next to each other. And I find that sort of justification for this look rather dubious. On the other hand, however, any time an architect makes an effort to enliven a building with shadow, which will arise, and with handsome proportions so that there's a gray snow against the urban sky. I always applaud that, and she's trying here. But again, as DeSoto has been telling us, there aren't any examples of shurikane in Hawaii anymore, but that's the day that it's coming down. And shurikane is like bamboo. It doesn't twist, it's straight, and it also sort of rather unceremoniously cut off against the sky, kind of just brutally cut off against the sky. So again, the justification that it is shurikane, I think might be a little bit stretching the point. Someone looking at it from a distance, I don't think would make that connection in their own mind, even native Hawaiians. But again, kudos for a building that is interesting and up close and looking up the face of it over your shoulder, Martin. It is an interesting residential tower. Yeah, and move on to the next slide. In all fairness, this was basically captured about four months ago or so. So at this point, it's probably completed, or very close to being completed. But DeSoto, you had a good point about not minding effect, trying to make a bold statement, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think Ron just said everything that I agree with. Making something that isn't just a plain rectilinear box is something that I admire as well. And going to the extent of doing something different is also very good. However, I would also point out, as I said earlier, to go to the difficulty of forming plywood, which is flat and rectilinear into curving forms to create these undulating surfaces is a big deal in building a building. And you normally wouldn't go to that trouble in that extent and that expense. But what we do note, and this is something we're probably gonna get into as soon as we can, is, is this performative? Is it just decorative or does it actually do something? And we will, I won't get into that yet because that's something else we're gonna do a duration. Yeah, and performance happens on multiple levels, right? One of the, we were having, you know, threats of men and woman kind on many levels. And one is on social equity and affordability, right? And having to cut glass into different forms and pieces as it had to be done here to follow the curving is also very, very large effort and is increasing the cost, right? So on that performative side, questionable. And on a thermal performance side, there's this interesting pattern here that's not painted on, that's a good thing, that's what many do, but it's actually these kind of white, lintel, shaped, you know, things are basically shadows cast, but look at them. And when we go to the next slide, in detail, what they are, and so little ironic that this is basically the sort of Southwest elevation, when that really brutal, harsh, yet beautiful sunset sun comes, this is the situation around sort of everything sort of past midday. And you see that these extravagant sort of fins, warping fins are basically self-shading themselves, which is good thing, but they're primarily shading the lanai, which is easy breezy anyways, while they, on the other hand, leave what's that fixed glazing panel next to the lanai absolutely brutally uncovered. And then there is this, at least there's an operable part of it, but that is not sufficient to basically cool your space, you know, sufficiently, as one would need to. And go to the next slide. The several show quotes up there where we were looking into how you mitigate the sun with vertical louvers, with breeze delays. There's so many great examples in the mid-century modern mastery of architecture that you know so well because you practice it wrong, that is there. So we're not redesigning the building for a genie game, who are we? But we just throw out, you know, if nature wouldn't have just been a buzzword that you give, that you name the building after, but you would have taken it more seriously, then look at what's right next to you is the lease of the palm tree that is louvered. And having something like that is it be the outer fenestration of these glass panels being directed so that the sun wouldn't get in, wouldn't heat up the glass, and it would still keep the view and light, you would have gotten much closer to nature than just, you know, pretending it sort of name-wise. Right? Yes. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. So go to the next slide. Us always in our easy breezy PI mobile here once the mumu is off that while it's sitting with you, the solo it has it on, but we're gonna take it off soon. And so when we look back at the building there, again, we're seeing this, you know, especially towards the ocean, you're seeing that the glass gets bigger and bigger and bigger and gets buildable. The next slide, once you drive away, you see the building in its context around the other recent hard use high rises here that we've all been looking into and observing them and assessing them. And next slide, once you drive by the building, you more clearly see this very front end that is Prime Ocean View 1A, as real estate people call that. But it's again, it's on the expense of that, these corner units which have what you call butt joints. So it's an all glass joint that really do materializes it. So from the inside out of the view, it's beautiful, but talking energy and crisis and fighting, basically endangering the world peace because of fossil fuel, which we are having closer as ever. I mean, again, in Europe, we had things to you guys when you helped us out last time when we had, we were in peace, right? And that's been like, what, 70, 80 years. This is the first time. And then once again, it's over fossil fuel. It's so bad. So we should take any effort to avoid that and make buildings that don't get us into this trouble. Talking back then, next slide, we got these modern masters impersonated by Huron and then also by buildings of this era. And this is Yamasaki with Alfred Yi, 1315 Alamoana Boulevard that is so carefully calibrated in its fenestration that over the turn of the day, hardly any sun is hitting the glass. And that's after all what nature does, right? That's how talking performance. That's how plants are engineered because otherwise they would die, right? They do this naturally. And we just throw this out as a hypothesis. Maybe that's why we think nature is so beautiful because it's so perfect, be basically engineered in a biochlamatic way. And we just wish architecture would do this more. And probably our concluding slide for today before we pick it up next week is the next one. And the final one, starting at the bottom, this is what we took as panoramic views in walking along the beach of Waikiki. The bottom picture basically shows to the right, the Trump Tower and to the left, the Waikiki in which is one of the recent timeshare towers. They're both, believe it or not, right as far as orientation because they run Malcom and Makai, but they're wrong in fenestration in two different ways. The Trump Tower because it's all glass and gets then as you run, right when you call it refrigerated, if you're still burning fossil fuel, which trouble, trouble, or you get microwave when you turn this off and the Waikiki in prides itself of having various sort of value engineered, thin concrete panels of like three to four inches. But how long does it take to have the heat of the sun transfer through and radiate back in? So these are bad examples as far as fenestration. But I bet you that the middle role here is what Genie wanted to be part of that gang. So Genie gang, Genie gang wanted to be part of this gang of the best practices starting from the right, the Rainbow Tower, maybe not so much, but for sure the Lagoon Tower by Edwin Bauer, then the Ilikai by John Graham. Also John Graham, our favorite Alamwana building with his Lovered Feathers, the 1315 Alamwana Boulevard. And then by you guys, Ron, the Harbor Square, right? These are best practices that Genie really seems to wanting to be buddy with. And again, how much she was successful or what else we could recommend maybe to to approve then we will pick up from today next week and we leave you for this. And until then, please stay very easy breezy and breezily easy and that way safe. Bye. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.