 ThinkTekAway, civil engagement lives here. You would come back because you're so excited for the long-awaited Volume 3 of the episode of the Architecture of U.H.M. Minoa. And so that's what we, DeSoto Brown and Martin Despeng, will talk about into this edition of U.H. Architecture. Yes, we will. That's right. And let's jump right into the first slide. Because you, I was sort of giving you a hard time because of your textbook, you have your textbook which is... Oh, I got my textbook. Here it is. Here it is, right here. So, unfortunately we don't need it anymore, so I put it away because the author Kobayashi had to stop in 82, that's when he published the book. Correct. So we're going to talk about everything, and so the top right picture is sort of a suggestion of us or an analysis of why things changed for the worst. And this is when basically the sort of optimistic America symbolized by even more John F. Kennedy and then basically ending with Jimmy Carter... That's right. ...was passed on to the reactionary phase embodied by Ronald Reagan here. That's right. 1980. So that's the 80s. And I remember when my dear friend and mentor from my Arizona days, Larry Medlin, he told me that the day that Reagan took office, basically all his funding for his environmental research lab was pulled. And we can see it again today, but we don't need to talk about that. So the next picture here is that we actually got spared on that for quite a while because here's our quad. With its latest edition, we talked to us about Asipov's building here, Saunders Hall or Portoiz Hall, previously called. And I had to talk with Tropical Tutor Bill and Tropical Here David, and we had talked about it too, that maybe what was supposed to be temporary, I mean the temporary thing sometimes lasts the longest and sometimes the reason is because they're the best. So here are these portable buildings that actually might be the most truly tropical. They're easy breezy. They're elevated. They're out of local materials. They're just right. They just feel right. And they are forming the end, one end of the quad in this view before there was a permanent building there. And that was the next picture of the school I'm teaching at, I mean not in that building, but the previous buildings. That was the architecture school in these portables. And I thank Mitt Moy who provided the large picture and then our previous show guest, Maggi, Sarvi Maki, who provided the top two left ones. And so this was back in the days and then next picture is that Maggi also provided this one here. There was a very, very famous teacher who designed the building at the very bottom right. This is Yon Utsun. And when he for similar reasons as many of the architects we're going to talk about next here got totally frustrated by his institutional client, he needed his therapy and like many who burn out, they find their piece here in our paradise of Hawaii. So here is Yon Utsun. The pictures were provided by a fellow of Yon who's credited at the very bottom here. So let's see what then happened next on the next picture. Yeah, well all those wonderful portable buildings and you know it was something that I found was ironic back in those days with the architecture school of the UH was located in these portable buildings instead of a magnificent show piece architectural building and that's probably what they were thinking way back to and we already referenced a little bit to that topic on the top left. We did a show about architecture and presidents. And we're saying there's one to cello where it might have been an inspiration for that sort of classicist thing and maybe equally that Jefferson wasn't really trained as an architect. He was like a militant, maybe he tried hard but maybe he wasn't good enough. So this building here too and let's look at it up close next picture. And this is we talk about makeup and Bill talks about how this building has been put together and we talk about makeup on buildings and this building needs constant makeup on because it's so ugly and it's not only surfacially ugly but it's substantially ugly and the top left is like the most absurdity. This is a huge egress staircase that's all enclosed. They see that thing and as you can see on that little picture in that picture here this is from a couple of days ago. They paint the walls in there. So if I would be a student and that's where my money goes and energy is one of the big cost things that you age, I would rebel and knock out the windows in there or you know do something. And as we just said too, for an exterior stairway you don't need to air condition it and you don't need to paint it if you leave it plain concrete. Those are the costs you can do away with with an exterior stairway. Exactly. And you know why in the world would you design something like that and who was the architect? If you can go back for that matter to the last page here in the previous picture. Previous, yeah. So here I basically say the guy if you go to the archives and find the stamp on the drawings that's not the architect because we talk to the architect we'll get to that next. This here was after all research designed by committee or designed by the UHM Manoa campus architect at that time. And he had two sort of program briefs, actually three, sorry. One was it had to be axel symmetric in the quad, stay true to the original sort of idea, classicist idea. Secondly was classicist instead and third was parking on the ground floor. These were the most important things and that unfortunately led to next picture again which we looked at before, looked at that plus sort of the scythe guys of post-modernism that was about prestige and surface and not anymore about substance. So let's visit the architect and you were saying, you were saying well what the hell was he then thinking, right, let's look at that next picture. Well what they were really thinking wasn't necessarily what ended up being there. No, this is kindly provided by the architect of record who said you know what he was forced to do, he's so ashamed, he doesn't want to be associated with but we didn't give up and asked him to overcome that sort of you know trauma and with the support of John Harris, Dara, Mayumi, they were going and digging into the archives. So how does that look to you? Well see what I see going on here is one, rather than the completion of the rectangle of the quad, he left it open so there was an entrance to the quad. Two, the building in fact is up on the Mauka side so that it's next to an existing building rather than taking that space and then three on the lower Mauka side there is a nod to the classicism of the quad through a garden folly or a sculpture almost which is a pillard but ruthless open area. Exactly. And so as you said this is porous and so it's not blocking anything but I think it is a nice addition to the quad. But it's almost an interpretation of the of the previous, you know, portables. It's sequence is like a wagon wheel sort of us on blanche of the portables. They're all, you know, single loaded corridors, easy breezy. Look at the lower left of the perspective. You can see it basically facing the quad. That orientation is facing south. You can see overhangs. You can see a shade there. You can see pretty much, you know, thin horizontal lines, which is basically jealousies. Yeah. So it's just right. That was a truly tropical, exotic building. Lots of greenery inside. Lots of porosity, lots of courtyards space, but unfortunately was shut down with the three bullets that I was mentioning before. Three requirements. This was not exosymmetric in the quad. It's not a classicist in style. And it's not devoting itself to the parking. This is devoted to the people. How bad is that? It's terrible. Exactly. Cars are very important. So let's stay with John for a little longer and go to the next picture here because John is a very good exception for that rule of the 80s, you know, having been not so good. This is however, you know, late 70s still. And this is the Burns Hall. But it's not to be confused with the Burns School of Medicine that ended up down here in Chakaaco. This one here is more in addition to the East-West Center by Impay. And it's very skillful one. It is. And maybe it is because it was before Reagan took over. So it wasn't about I'm the movie star, which ever since then it is like that, more or less. You know, I want to steal the show. He was very much saying I want to be devoted and be respectful to Master Impay. And I'm going to do something along the lines. But look at the at the nice, you know, plan and considering the whole composition and not just itself. So it's a very contextual building. But it doesn't try to suck up to anything else. And what I was finding, you know, privately investigating when I was with my Yumi and John at the very top in the middle, this is a model, large scale facade model that they still kept. And you can see it looks significantly different to what's basically got executed. We ran a show about that sort of element, which we called Corbou's Breeze Soleil. And it had a lot more shading devices, which unfortunately you aged and value engineered and shot in their own foot because they made sense. And now they're paying, as we talked, energy is one of the biggest things. That didn't go so well. And there is a picture at the top left, I say for John is kind enough to come in and do a separate show and we'll talk more in details about all the stories behind, which can't wait for that. It's super exciting. So let's move on to another John building that is one of your favorites, because when we, a next picture, please, when we went out to do our own field work, and you came back and you said, hey, this is one of my favorites. This is a small modest, as you said. What is this? The Snyder... No, this is Sherman Labs. The Borentory. Okay, and it's a small, concrete, kind of almost brutalist, but it's got this nice courtyard, austere, plain, but a nice scale. And it struck me and I liked it. And it is, it's material, it's postmodern, but in its language, it's very sort of postmodern with a sort of layering. It's like New York Five and this element, but in a very sort of nicely, you know, still a tropical exotic way. The top left picture is provided by Mayumi and John, shows it when it was completed and the trees are still small. The middle part is the model that's still in his office and the lower one is like it feels this time, you know, these days, it feels nice, it's shaded, it's cool, it's comfortable, it's all of that as it should be. Yes. So let's move on because in all honesty, there were a couple more architects who were doing a decent job on campus, in that area, this is the student center building that looks very sort of institutionally modern, almost brutalist, you know, modern, but when you go inside, surprise, surprise, there's our courtyard. There's some nice concrete shading fins there. Another example next picture here is a building that we already talked about a while ago, the music school, but they needed an addition. So they did that and from the outside, this is the picture on the middle on the right. That's how we know it when we drive up to school. We always think, is that a fortress? But thinking back how the, you know, Alamwana, excuse me, the Alamwana shopping mall had the same approach to be very austere, almost like offensive or, you know, fortress. Fortress keeping you out, but once you come in, it's like, wow, it opens up, it has a courtyard. It's very nice. And the last one of that theme here, next picture is the Hawaiian studies building on Dole Street, which is sort of almost like a late sort of a tiki twist on vernacular architecture, right with the roof lines. But he had very modernly interpreted and he got a courtyard, which is the picture on the left in the middle, which I took quite a while ago. And it's got basalt walls too. It's got all the ingredients, of course, but again, it's not in a sort of Polynesian culture center way that wants to pretend to be authentic, right? It's an interpreted, it's a very nice modern interpretation. It's not a traditional building 100%. So with that, we're gonna look what has happened ever since and for that, we have a new textbook and if the camera can maybe go to the studio here. So we picked up this nice brochure, he got a full page here. I'm not done writing. Do it right. So I picked this up in the dean's office here. So this is how our university is marketing itself today and then nicely sort of outlined the area of UH here, Minoa, you know, and for me for a while, excuse me, not having, still having to learn a lot. I was saying, hey, it's sort of where in Minoa is this game, right? Like I said, it's Coconut Island, it's not in Minoa. Okay, all right. So let's go back to Minoa and let's look what we have from the more recent days here. So next picture. And next picture, and I let you take over and one more picture here. Correct, after that. And I'm gonna basically say, okay, you're the historian, stay within that capacity, but time travel, like 50 or 70 years ahead and imagine how you would think about these buildings if you would consider them to be sort of of value, you know, to looking back and say, oh, these were good days, you know, this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's look into that. So next picture, next page. Next picture, okay. Well, what is this called today? This is really kind of a big food court. And it's called homes. What is it called? Well, maybe start with a history here. Correct. So we switch roles. I'm the historian now. Okay. You look at it contemporarily, but it was way back, it was an architect who we did a show about here in the middle where this young emerging talent here, where his grandma lives. Correct. And this is a very inclusive social housing at the beginning of Kalakaua at Kings Street. And this was Frank Slavsky and Frank did this awesome, sort of very reminiscent of the other project on the very up here. Yes, there. Right there, right there. Which is from the Blaisdell Center. Yes. The exhibit hall, unfortunately gets torn down. Unfortunately. It replaced with something that we're not so sure about yet. Correct. It very much uses the same sort of inverted mushroom pillar system, very tropical exotic. Now, and you ask what it's called, it's called Paradise Palms. Paradise Palms and it's now an enclosed food court from being an open structure to being a closed hermetic air-conditioned structure. It looks very Floridian to me, very Miami vice, very pastisci. That's right. I can see Don Johnson with his pink jacket walking by. As he should. And so let's move on to the next finding here. The next finding, well, that is something that's not strictly speaking on the UH Manoa campus, but it's very nearby and it is a housing complex that's aimed at potential UH students. And it's down at the corner of University Avenue and Barotania slash King Street. But then you pointed out when you look up from that speckled pink thing on the right hand side of this picture, you see in the center that blue building. And that's what we're gonna look at next. Is that correct? That is correct and I would say next page. But in both cases, I think the architects wanna compete with the natural master of the natural environment and wanna build big mountains. But you better be really good as an architect to compete with nature because nature is the master. That's exactly right. So this building here, what kind of a mountain is that? Well, it looks like a blue glass mountain to me. And what is this? Pacific Ocean Science and Technology building and you were saying you went inside and that blue tint which supposedly is keeping out too much sun and heat actually isn't really doing very much except making it all look blue. And your face. And everybody looks like a zombie. Everybody looks like a zombie. Exactly. And so you do in the very inside because given that you discovered a theme which we're gonna unveil at the very end and we basically come inside and you say there's probably a courtyard in the middle. And there isn't. No, there's trapped conference spaces in there. And then around that is this like from a hospital, horror movie, film, these like trapped courtyards. Where zombies are. Where zombies go, exactly. It's pretty horrid. Yeah, and I interviewed people. I mean, this is a semi-public space but I went to do offices and I asked the staff there and they were like cardboarding up their window and saying we're getting beaten by the sun. It's too hot. This glass isn't, the blue is more decorative than performative. So maybe that one isn't one that you will remember and talk about in 70 years. So let's move on, another chance. Next chance. Another chance, well, this is, this is the gym? No, this is not, the gym is coming next but it has a total similarity to it. At the very bottom right, you can see it was the Edward Durrell storm building that we talked about last time that someone must have thought that kind of looks outdated and dated. So let's put something in front of it. We gotta sort of make it nice in front of it. And that's called Seymour Harley. And some of us called me including, we called it the microwave banana. Because that's what it's kind of curved. It's kind of curved and materiality wise, you know, it's probably out of concrete inside but outside it's all steel and glass. So there's very little local in there. And it's, you know, I think it got lead platinum or something, but it's doing the lead thing in a very technocratic way and a textbook way like checking marks. And way back, all these buildings were showing you the last though, the thrive. They're probably all lead like best lead. They are naturally. By naturally, by intuitively, right? They knew where the sun is. They knew where the wind is. And that's all you need to know. That's right. And not computer software that sort of makes you buy into whatever doing stuff like this one. How do you like that little pathway through the building? Well, yes, as you pointed out, it's rather a dismal, drab, dark pathway to enter into that. Not a very inviting one and not something it looks like you wanna walk into. No, and green is incorporated but it's very sad sort of decorative green on the wall in an aced atrium, poor green, right? Right, and it's not a courtyard. It's not the outdoors. It's a little chunk that's been put on the wall. Since you were already ready to work out, here's your gym and come next. And see next picture. And the reason I got confused is because again, we've got more blue glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of a thing that's happening now. And you're just pointing out, well, okay, wait a minute. If this is the outdoors of the beautiful tropics, why are we air conditioning and putting in enclosed spaces to exercise in? We can do it outside? Exactly, and this building is in all fairness. It's orientation is right. Facing south at the very bottom has this overhang to the east and the west that got the louvers. But then there's ventilation and where is ventilation? There is no ventilation. You're trapped in there. This is an artificially air conditioned space. As you said, why not working out in where it's always beautiful to work out? And then they wanna fool us with it's supposed to have a green roof which is brown upstairs. And there are these wind scoops who just bring in northern light and behind the louvers, the AC units are hidden. So, and the building already got makeup to begin with when it was born and it's peeling off as we can see in the center. And you can see all that AC unit. So maybe another one that's maybe not so much. No, no. You know, so next one. Yeah, so next. Okay, information technology center. You said this has got to be where all the computers live. So there does need to be protection of them. They shouldn't be exposed to the sun and the air. But there's still too much glass there than computers need. And if you make it totally opaque, it's gonna be the Royal Wine Shopping Center or such an attempt that they make glass for the people. But the people close their curtains. And then, you know, you got the sterile, generic American sort of rooms in there. And Will Bruder, you know, was assessing it quickly when he was here. And he said, don't rep louvers all the way around in the same way. That's not how it works. We know how the sun is. The sun doesn't want it all the way around. Correct. Let's move on to the next one. Yeah, the law school edition. Okay, the main thing I notice about this we discussed just before this is it's got this little exterior framework around it that's supposed to mimic an earlier structure. And I said to myself, wait a minute, those are not actual beams protruding out of the building. It's a little cage. So there's no honesty to what that is. And the original building was doing it better. It had some closed parts first and then. And it wasn't the primary building element, the primary building element was a courtyard. Yes. So this building here, we're trying to find the courtyard, but the second from the left picture is the center of the space and the hot summer western, you know, sunset sun is going to shoot deeply in there. So once again, this is decorated to be contextual, but it's very much a hermetic invasive piece. And if I'm not mistaken, the glass is blue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there you go. And we got one more, which is currently under construction. So we only found these pictures here online. Life science building is under construction. So these are just, we don't know what it's actually going to look like, but. Well, we can assume it looks like that, but we didn't find the floor plan. But in all the renderings, I saw no courtyard. And this is probably from, you can figure the western elevation. And you can see your favorite blue glass, right? There we go. But we don't see much shading to the west. You need vertical shading. So it seems to be another sort of hermetic invasive thing. And it's particularly a shame because John Hara would have done it better because he was respectful of what's adjacent, which is East-West Center, right? Yes, exactly. So what are we doing? And we got some suggestions here in the last couple of minutes. Let's move on to the next picture here, which is our favorite, also our permanent background picture that like nature is so overwhelming. Exactly. Like the jungle rolls in. Exactly. And I'm a tree enthusiast. You are. And these magnificent trees are right there on the campus, work around them, honor them. And talking beings, giving optimistic suggestions and the architects who also designed the executed School of Architecture. As many of the buildings you had just assessed last, they were done by the architects who did this magnificent building that we talked about and cheered last time. This is the arts building. So please, you guys go back to where you came from. They incorporated that tree and made tree the main element. And the other tree is in front of that Hemingway Hall. And when I took the picture, there was this guy on the left and he saw me taking the picture. And he said, what a fucking fig this is. I never recognize. So that enthusiasm, we expect to be about buildings as well as for that, where we don't get it. So how can we get that next picture here? This is our tropical tutor, Bill, who went to the UK to come up with this little suggestion here to basically do what you did with yourself. We grow a beard. And I basically call it basically the foliage approach. We grow leaves around yourself. And this is UH Minoa tradition, because down there, this is the original engineering building who had fig vines. So there you go. There it is. Go to the next picture. You wanted to talk to me about something? Well, you were telling me that this is a picture of a building you designed, but I don't see a building in there. I just see a meadow. And this is sort of my suggestion. It's here, be in such a beautiful landscape on campuses, be less building, be more nature. And correct. The next picture is my project from the other side, which I built for Germany's oldest university. And again, it got published in ARC Daily. So you want, I think, architects who are internationally recognized. As I pay was, as SOM was, as Edward Durrell Stone was, are architects who have been locally, really, of high standard, as John Herra. And they need to get jobs on the campus here. Next picture is my previous school at the University of Arizona, where they did that. Eddie Jones, who is a local hero of international recognition here, designed the School of Architecture. At the bottom left, this is north, where the sun is not coming that often. But to the south, he was making the sort of middle grading. And this is what Bill suggests in detail to do for the architecture school, and basically do that in the middle grading that grows on top of it. So the next picture is given that foliage theme. Also, you might want to have, you have the potential of professors who come from practice. So there was Bruce Etherington here, who did this great little experimental, environmental little plug-in cell, the very top right there. And they were supposed to basically be implemented all over campus. And the other pictures are from our tropic here, David Watwood, who was participating in the Solar Decathlon and National Competition. Again, since politics seemed to be virulent for UH, it didn't make it. But it should have made it, because it's, and again, David has been recognized by Kenneth Fremden up there for the house for his parents. So he truly has, again, the credentials to do stuff like that. Next one, you know about that one by now. Yeah, and tell me, again, what the title of this is. We call it the Tropical Textile Up for Manoa. So it was another suggestion here for the university that we did. We said it's an exoskeleton done with Gray-specific Rock Moon Mountain Precast, Les Camperas down there. It lets the breeze go through. It lets the wind go through. It's got plants around it. But it keeps the sun out. It keeps the rain out. And it's also a safe and closed space, but not an impressive one. It is, it is. So with that, we basically closed that sort of potential to be a reintroduced theme of basically foliage and green in various way. And we come to the other theme that we already said we had identified. And this building has it too, by the way, the roof has this little thing on top of there. Next picture. So that theme is, and you came back, when you did your first assessing up there field assessment, you came back and said, oh, well, I think there's a theme. And that theme is courtyards. Because a lot of the best buildings at UH, we discovered have courtyards. They make things a lot more livable. They are spaces where people gather. There's a great deal to recommend courtyards as a theme. And the buildings that we discovered that we liked, we have that list that's on the left-hand side, which is your writing. It was us sitting down where we did, like, we're structuring the shore. We were writing down the names and the dates. And then we came up with that little symbol for a courtyard. And this is Martin's from Martin's Brain, the architectural brain, a little square symbol to show that there's a courtyard in those buildings. So we phase out. We've got 30 seconds left with two polemic propositions for potential courtyards. So next picture? Next one is? And so this is Primitivo I, which is a circular building that has, essentially, a courtyard down the center in the core and in open space. And it's certainly referential to the show we had about the other cylindric student towers that don't have a central courtyard. So that's why they're a little hot. So we hope to improve it for this one. Correct. And last but not at all least here. And not. Yeah, this is the compute. Wait, wait, wait. This is the container courtyard cabana. We call it cabana. Cargo courtyard cabana. I didn't have the name right. I apologize. And yeah, and I'm researching the history of container shipping right now. And containers are something that should be reused for housing in other words. It's a post-contact tradition that we build upon. But in this case here, we're currently developing this here in school. We try to do the most with a lease for the ones who are the most in need. So we space out the containers eight feet, which is their width. And then we can use the container doors for the courtyard doors. Correct. So you make a space that sits in 44 times eight, 320 times two. The method is the all-American buy one, get one free, right? Exactly. So you've got an enclosed space and an open space and an enclosed space and an open space. But again, just in the tradition of the theme of courtyards, and obviously evolving that because today we got more urgent needs than we had in the past. Exactly, for housing people. So without, we're going to phase out. See you next time. And until then, please stay very educationally exotic and exotically educated. Thank you.