 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome back to the human humane architecture here in our tropical town of Honolulu, Hawaii. Welcome back means for me, I'm back because I've been in Germany for the past three months and the soda was kindly covering and we had shows every other week and now I'm back and before I dive, we dive back into our everyday island routine, I thought I'd take advantage of my time away and sort of this take advantage of a distant view of our island in Hawaii. So for that, I brought a special guest with me from Germany and that is Suzanne. Welcome Suzanne to the show. Great to have you. And so we want to jump right in and show a couple of pictures because you're back to the island of Wahoo and when have you been here before? Oh, that's a long time ago, 18 years ago, 1999, I spent time here. And can we get picture number one for that please? These are some impressions of you way back. There you go. Oh, that's Hawaii, yeah, I remember that picture. And so you obviously were here, we're excited about being in our tropical paradise and looks like you dressed accordingly, right? You were excited about the things one might wear on the islands. Very flowery dresses, beautiful. And so let's jump to the next picture which shows even more, I think your interest and your perception and your passion about the tropics, right? Because where you come from, no such things exist, right, is that correct? So a palm tree, a coconut, even dress even less, right, and really enjoy or I would say indulge in the tropics, is that fair to say? Yes it is. So let's jump to the next picture which shows the next stage of you really wanting to be one with nature and the elements and this sort of passion also you made your profession. Will you help us explain a little bit the certificate we see on the right? Yeah, after my extended stay here on Hawaii I decided to proceed a career in tourism and business management so I went to university for that and got my master's in tourism and I always wanted to sell those dreams to other people that I got to see when I was young and awesome. So since this show, I mean tourism is a big thing and it's encompassing a lot of things but this show is about architecture as well and so let's jump to the next picture and you were kind enough to go to your archive and dig out some pictures that actually have architecture as a background so please explain to us what these are and why you think the pictures were taken with these specific buildings? Well these pictures were taken and I wanted to keep some memories to take home with so the rainbow tower that's a typical building that connects with Oahu and Honolulu, Waikiki everybody knows the rainbow tower and I went surfing with a big bear or I think it was his name and we took this picture just to remember the day. And very interesting, the building in the background of Big Bear and you surfing, you called that what? A shadow house I think. It's very interesting because you identify it as layers on the facade that keeps it easy breezy while shading it, very important aspects here that architecture should have and there's another building we're actually going to go to a Doko Momo board meeting after the show together and so there's the next picture is a building that we all love as Doko Momo members here, which one is that? That's in Kahala, that's the Kahala Hilton, I got to spend time there and it's just so beautiful in the view and the architecture it's just astonishing. So for me as a critical observer it's interesting that you didn't have someone take pictures in front of grass huts, holly-peely huts, sort of nostalgic sort of illusions of a paradise but actually sort of this evolved metropolitan paradise where architecture is urban, right? That's rather unusual. There's not too much sticky housing left unfortunately. That's true. You've got to go further down to Polynesia if you want those, yeah. That's true. Well the tourism industry tries to fake these today and tries to make them and sort of satisfy the needs of people who come here but maybe, this is our point, maybe we need to maybe rethink tourism in its nature. In order to do so we really spent the time, we're back in Germany if you can get the next picture to look how apparent prevailing the Hawaiian culture is on the other side of the world. So please explain these, you know, a row of pictures here. Well that picture you see me in a typical Bavarian dress, it's called a durnbell and the girls wear it at the Oktoberfest, this big festival that takes place in Munich in September, every year, it's a beer festival and we dress up in this local dress and to show our heritage and we're proud, yeah, and then, yeah, you see I'm having fun there, there are lots of rides and beer and food and gathering and millions of people come to visit every year. So the Oktoberfest in Bavaria is certainly what Americans and Hawaii has become, for better or worse, part of America, the 15th States, so most Americans consider Bavaria to be the original, the true Germany and so when Germans think about Hawaii, they're also associated with clothing, with dressing, and so do I got to make a show about skins in the future that's almost challenging and, yeah, show that we're gonna have ahead of us and so certainly the hula skirt is like the synonym for the Hawaiian islands and the female people wearing that and what's the equivalent of that in your culture that has to do with the other picture? That would be the journal for the girls and the leather trousers, the leather hula for the guys and once you're grown, you can order one, it's custom made and it's pretty expensive and you can just, yeah, it's custom branded and it lasts for 20 or 30 or more years. So what has this gentleman been doing here with the two cultures? This is a guy from our neighbor town and he has been blending the traditional leather trousers with the Aloha Bavaria, kind of his own branding to bring the exotic, the tropical to Bavaria. And we see, we saw that more and more happening, we go to the next picture even like, you know, very close, friend of yours are on the same train, if you can get the next picture please, pretty soon. Oh yeah, this is an old Volkswagen bus, a friend of mine owns a car shop, a garage and he fixes up those buses and like you see he branded it with the local flowers, which are not typical in Bavaria, but when you travel in one of those cars, you'll get this feeling of tropic and exotic and adventure and I think that's what he wanted to express. Very cool. Next picture is me and a very good friend of mine, Kirsten, who gave me this gift of these these swimming pants and who are basically my hood, this is my neighborhood, we ran a show about the Waikiki Grand and interesting this is a Hollister California trousers and it's not even giving any further indication, there's no labeling Hawaii or Honolulu or Waikiki, which it all is, so it's sort of a self explanatory and we found this rather intriguing as well and the next picture is Kirsten again and her husband Stefan, who had just installed a tiki bar in that basement. In Germany. In Germany, exactly and that's again, they're big fans, hi Kirsten and Stefan, thanks for watching and they're big Hawaii fans, they've been here and they will come again next year so this again is quite the expression of appreciation for a culture half around the world. Next picture once again, there's almost no place we found out where you go, where you can get away from it. I mean even in a home depot here, there is a stand of metal plates like license plates and one of them is a Loa tiki bar, I should get that you know Kirsten and Stefan and you know what was your finding on the very right of the picture here. Yeah, on the right side, you see a stationary store, a local store in a tiny town and you get those pencil cases and it has Hawaii on it and it has the flowers and the ocean and kids can buy that for school, even though we are on the other side of the world from Hawaii. It's rather remarkable. The next picture is sort of equally interesting, what is that? Oh, I guess we can see our backpack, you have some memories of Loa backpacks, right? Yeah, I remember when I was here and then I wanted to take something home and that was in 2000, I bought this East pack, it was a green backpack and it had all the main Hawaiian islands on it and I took it home and I went to school with it, college and I loved it and it's still there, it lasts and they still sell those backpacks now, this is a different brand, well we don't want to have any publicity. We ran across that because our business partner Isabel needed one for her daughter Teresa and she got that one, she got that one for her for this upcoming school year. Next picture, what is that? Oh, that's Jochen Schweitzer, he's a local person that, how do you say that? He's an event manager? Event management, yes, he offers events, you can book and they offer next to my town, they offer this indoor surfing for people and you can experience the waves, you get the board, you get the suit and they sell those events instead of they say why don't you have an event instead of just buying some flowers or some chocolate for the birthday, why don't you give a gift certificate and let people have an event and one of them is indoor surfing. And once again the big Hawaiian waves, the big waves in the back. No, not no public line there. There's also this one spot at the Isar ride which is called the ice. We have a wave in Munich at the ice bar in the English Garden and you can surf year-round, you can surf, very cold, people do it. We have one last encounterment with Hawaiian culture which is this one here, what is that? Oh yeah, we went to the movies and that's the latest million for a movie and they were again and bringing up the aloha and Hawaiian culture and this treehouse, the kids with the minions. Exactly, so you got the lays, you got the ukulele, you got the coconut bra, you got it all right. So all that being said that raised the question we were talking if Hawaii is so apparent perceptionally already above and beyond where it is what does that mean as far as the sort of expectations of visitors, tourists who basically come and come here, how can reality hold up, you know, be as exciting as the perception as the hope. Well the expectations are very high. I think this is a paradise island so far away, 22-hour flight, 12-hour time difference. So the next picture which is a little bit of a shock because that's what people find these days. You jog by there in the mornings you know and that's what you see and yeah we pulled this couple here is pulled from a website that's called what not to wear in Hawaii and this is typical how people basically put on these symbols you can say that that suggests you're sort of part of the culture but the question is to what degree are you actually right and if you go to the next picture this traces back to your core qualification and so what do you think? This is a standardized hotel room and this could be a paperback wall, diamond head and yeah it looks like any hotel anywhere in the world and you don't really feel that you're in Hawaii unless you open the sliding doors and you hear it and you smell it and you see it but there's no indication really that you're in Hawaii. So that's probably there's I heard some sort of some desire of such kind to feel the real thing so maybe that's best illustrated by the next picture which also illustrates another tropic area that culture that you have experienced right? Yeah that that was in Brazil where we took an extended trip friends of mine during university and you can really feel the nature there and go to the waterfalls and feel the water and the warmth and the sun whereas at some artificial hotels they have waterfalls but you're not allowed to go there and water is chlorine water and sweet water and yeah just artificial. So you want the real deal? I do. And increasingly maybe so let's go to the next picture which is your current experience at least the picture on the top right you experience that right now right? We ran a show about this project here with Tom Miller who's a resident of the Waikiki Grant and you're currently living there right? Maybe you explain a little bit how life is in this little bit different way of dwelling. Well this is not one of the upscale all air-conditioned fancy hotels it's more they keep it more traditional with if you don't want you don't need to put the AC on you can live on the Lanai and have the door open and the wind the trade winds coming through and hear the animals in the morning close to the zoo and hear the ocean at night and they give you the opportunity not to be boxed in. Great and so based on your enthusiasm and appreciation of such things I want myself to share with you one of the projects we have in the making here which is the Primitiva Tower and this is a suggestion of how these what we call slices of paradise could be so this is a very tiny space very minimal very reduced to the to the essence and but it has all the elements that you were just talking about right it makes you feel the breeze it has vegetation and all these things so the question is always when we come up with these sort of visions that people say well that doesn't work because you know we've never seen where's the furniture right whereas how does it work so maybe we jump to the next picture and we can indeed see how it would unfold right they really and so out of this box in the back in the kitchen unfolds a little room unfolds and the couch unfolds out of the floor so it was interesting we were back in Germany a friend of yours is actually demonstrating that that kind of interior design approach actually works and we see that on the next picture so yeah this is the house of a friend of mine she bought for her family with it was built by an architect and as you can see there they have a built-in kitchen and rooms and right behind me there's the bathroom you don't even you almost don't see the door so it's possible and where she is is actually the kitchen there's a little niche there and you can open it up when you want to make a cappuccino which you did for us and once you're done you just close it then you don't look at a you know messy at times kitchen because that's what kitchens are and you can open all the cupboards behind the wood so it was very good for me to see sort of a polite project that you can see very well used very thoughtful very good and also the use of wood we suggest to use the invasive albecia wood and this is very raw sawn you know very local wood it's probably large wood or something like that so it's very kind of rugged and rustic which your culture partly is you know the very as a very wooded area you know very sort of crowned it in the later holes as you told me before the show is sort of a synonym for that sort of very earthy very rustic and and natural it's a it's an animal skin you cannot really wear it down even after 30 or 40 years the skin gets closer but it usually doesn't tear apart and that would be good if that would be the same for buildings and we get us to the next picture right if a building would be so durable you know that all the wood surface it would get better over time right they pick up the T9 they're real like the later holes and is real you know this is not like a a layer this is not a skin that you can peel off it's actually the real skin right so that applies to that as well so tell me your thoughts about that picture which is the the common space right the circulation space outside of the units and and how maybe it relates to your experience within your Waikiki grant right now well the common space becomes more and more important as for the gentrification and the families not being as large as they used to be elderly people as well as kids they need to interact somehow while the parents are at work and need to make a living and yeah the individual visual space is more and more limited and very costly mm-hmm we should consider that we need more common and open space available for everyone that we all share and we socially engage and that way we're not isolated you see like we put granny in there who watches the kids you know she's not locked away and yeah so it goes back to the the way it used to be right in all cultures pretty much and the next picture is probably the most polemically provocative of of the project that we suggest that the inner core which is sort of like the lung of the building has a stainless steel netting which functions like a trampoline and a trampoline is very familiar to you right yeah I remember a lot of occasions where you know we talked about trampolines yeah right because in a lot of backyard it's back in my country they have trampolines for the kids mm-hmm they just love it mm-hmm so maybe that's a good segue into the next picture because you talked about the kiki so tell us some of your backgrounds and your involvement with the children well I work in the field of education right now and children when they gather they they want to be in a in a space in a natural environment and yeah they want to just be part of it and experience one another and yeah just have a good time together and not be somewhere isolated or locked away they are very social mm-hmm mm-hmm so explain that the left picture is from way back yeah that's way back 18 years ago mm-hmm the kindergarten here in Honolulu mm-hmm and the picture on the right the picture on the right that was taken last Christmas that's school in Germany where they do what did we do oh that's the Colossus oh yeah that's a lot yeah that's Santa Claus they celebrate mm-hmm they invited the parents they prepared a show for the parents they were very excited mm-hmm and I found this intriguing because it was feeding into our search and research for the optimal layout of the primitiva building and we ended up with a circle of form so here you pulled out that picture which shows the children sitting in a circle yeah which is I think the most natural way of coming together mm-hmm so everybody can see everyone interact mm-hmm so you're speaking from your own experience and your own children and and also being an educator and and find the built environments very important right for because you actually prefer as you are for your kids to be out in nature right oh and you try it I mean you've been living that for a while and try to you know homeschool and and and be out and about and not be stuck in artificial environments yeah but but if we have to make artificial environments then we better make them as good as nature and that's that's the point of primitiva maybe the next picture is an illustration because and that's also the permanent background picture all the time it just shows the the sky guard and you know so the building on top once again what you're advocating for has a communal space and has a lot to do with the experience with you know the elements of nature with birds and plants but it looks like you're also growing something there yeah those bananas mm-hmm we do okay we do and that gets us to the next picture where this is food I know food is very important for you in many ways also for your children so this is what we're suggesting to have that food either grown on top of the building or being brought in from farms via rail again and basically have a farmers market on the bottom of the building so it's a big shaded plaza that you buy your food and you walk it up and you don't have trash and waste and all these things so would you think that would be attractive for you know your kids to grow up in the environment very much so when my kids went to forest kindergarten for a year that was the most exciting time for them they're still talking about it mm-hmm that was years back and they're still talking about that how they grew part of their food that they had for lunch and how they were preparing it every day with an open fire and making everything from scratch and getting some herbs and berries and potatoes and carrots and salad and yeah good so we count you guys in I guess and that gets us to the end of the show and our final picture which makes me thanking you for having been on the show and you've been the first person from your discipline from the hospitality industry so to speak or tourism having want to call it who looked at our suggestion of an inclusive environment and we're on an island that's dominated by tourism and the military and so we maybe should think about sort of the rejuvenation of that kind of activity say the least and yeah so thank you for that any final thoughts you have well thank you Martin very much for having me on the show mm-hmm I hope you get to realize your building and then a lot of people get to live there thank you I appreciate very encouraging your appreciation and sympathy and I sort of sort of stored in my mind as sort of an advocacy for the authentic versus the synthetic which we're seeing a lot with these sort of hawaiian are a low ash or it's all made out of plastic and manufactured somewhere else but it seems like you're really advocating for the real deal in a very holistic way so that's very encouraging so thank you very much for being on the show and your encouragement and yeah thanks very much again with that we're at the end of the show we look forward to see you next week for another episode of human humane architecture here from our tropical paradise of Honolulu Hawaii bye bye