 Welcome back to human-humane architecture here from Honolulu, Hawaii back in Paradise and I'm talking back, I'm back and I'm physically back because thanks to the Tropical Tutor Bill I was on sabbatical for the past eight months in my homeland in Germany so now I'm back in studio and if we can get my dear friend and co-host and host and guest in all of that and more who was keeping the show running over the sabbatical from being physically here and I should squeeze you and you should make some sounds that people don't think I'm still no because because we had months of Martin talking to us from Germany via electronics with us folding background that he had to learn how to fold and unfold and now he's actually here it's and thanks you know and Rob does all the work thank you it's like it's paradise again for me in multiple ways and last time we were so excited about you know reporting about wrapping up from over there that something happened to us that never happened before correct we didn't make it through the show but we said it's a good thing so we decided to basically finish up with what we didn't so let's go to the first slide here that shows that you were surprised and I was caught up between the geranium how we call these flowers and the yeah or the hibiscus that's on the VW bus and so what we did is good let's go to the next slide we drove to a place virtually to a place where friends of us friends of Suzanne live in the outskirts of Zurich and it's a little town of 1700 people only and there is a commuter train or light rail going out there and we thought this is maybe worth to learn for us planning and actually doing the same thing with the light rail going out west and what people call the transit oriented development and we say let's have some transit oriented discussions yes so so this is basically the final station there and you would the picture at the bottom and you wouldn't think well this this looks like this looks big right 32 big yeah to flamboyant for such a small town but it's obviously built an anticipation of growth right so this will and we will see that in a couple of slides yeah and what would you see what would we see at the top well what we've got and and Rob you can come back to the studio for me to show off this book this is a book that is entitled destinies in architecture the essential guide to 1,000 contemporary buildings it is available in the boards in a bookstore at Alamo Center which we will see when we go back to the slide but before I do that I will show a relevant age here because this picture right here is of a small train station that was designed by your family's company and it's in a small town in Germany so it's not a very big flamboyant station as you would just saying and this is for an underground station as opposed to an hat green station but it is a very elegant building and if we go back to that slide so that's what we're seeing here and what you were seeing is why should we not have elegant buildings for our transit so we urge the community the architectural and the developer community make every station on the heartline one that's internationally recognized and published because of Martin and family can do it you can do it right that's our message that's right so let's go to the next slide here because why our friends pretty much Ollie and Courtney and her two kids moved out there is because they couldn't make it economically anymore in Zurich in downtown Zurich so they moved out there because it was supposedly cheaper there and and you also had to have and they had these sort of social infrastructure we can see what else do we see in here well there's also a small grocery store right there on the right that's called a spar and what we see in the upper left corner is the grocery store that you are a family company designed in a different place in Germany but what you pointed out is that there is seating development there seating in the front of the building and it's under the canopy of the actually incorporated smuggled in because my client was a very thrifty guy and he said I don't have any money for a bench and I said well never mind so we're gonna do it anyway of seeing and he said well people sit in my building and I said oh really so again what we're saying is the budget or the typology might it be small or profane it's not an excuse to not make ambitious architecture right so we want to see that along the hard line as well hard line the hard line so next picture here is the grocery store again here in its entirety at the very bottom and again it's a very modern building so we don't want to see any hula skirt buildings here that want to pretend to be pretty much pre-contact no we want to continue at its best of Wahoo and Honolulu which was post-contact and which was mid-century and yeah we have an event coming up that you are part of which is the National Dokomomo Symposium right and that's what many people in the scene and in the community consider us the best in the country and not in the world so we better pick up from there and evolve that right that's our message all right right and you pointed out in the pictures at the top there's the picture of the interior of that store the spa store but the picture on the upper right is from your family's another one of one of your family's instructions and there again is somebody taking his leisure you pointed out this is a homeless person or a houseless person he is able to drink beer openly because it's Germany not the United States but you're saying making accommodation for people is what part of architecture should be doing yeah and we don't want it to be out there another exclusive ghetto or right right sort it is it will it has to be cheaper out there that has traditionally been the reason for going out west right mm-hmm so you will also these people will follow mm-hmm and you better include them you know better than we're doing here in our urban core right let's move on to the next here what else do we need to settle in a robust in a obviously in a community you need schools too because you're going to have kids and so in the upper left is a school that your your family company designed and what's going on I can't remember their the bottom one is in that community and they fenced it in and we opted after long discussions not to do that there is a bench again there's a canopy there's shade so you want to be exclusive versus exclusive and you want to be welcoming right so next slide and at the end what you of course need what you already saw in the background of the previous one is housing right and we were talking that this is that sort of height this is what most people here think of what's going to happen along transit oriented development along heart which is not high-rise buildings not primarily are not immediately maybe down the line but it's also hopefully not sprawling single-family exactly more right right right right so what we see here and this is very typical of Europe too if I may say so having never been to Europe myself you're right but there's a lot of four to five-story residential structures that's what you lived in as you were a kid that's much more typical of urban areas in Europe as well as the older cities of the United States and Honolulu doesn't have that because we grew primarily during the automobile age so this is something that we hope to see the building in the upper left corner again it's one of your family's buildings that looks out into the trees which we were about to see in the next picture and in the upper right we go back to our container shipping container which are proposing because that might be a cheap way to do it but also maybe an interesting way to do it you can stack them even higher because that's how they're stacked they are structurally made to be able to stack and then comes something next that surprises you or is worth sort of provoking next slide please right well this is the crazy thing the this is the building in Germany that has a line I that's bigger than anything we have here and the point being that it's only usable comfortably for maybe three months of the year whereas our line eyes are usable twenty twelve months of the year your picture in the upper left corner is again the treetop development that looks out into the trees in Germany of course the trees lose their leaves for a long period of time but that allows the sun in yeah which is what you want for heating yeah here a similar development you'd be looking out yeah to greenery all the time and at the top right we would have one of the primitive our suggestions here and we're saying you know it should be a cold requirement here in Hawaii to make like 30% of your square footage a line I mean this is the line I had water in the world right and you shouldn't have more line eyes in Zurich or in the outskirts of Zurich this isn't Germany this is in Switzerland but same thing it's still cold exactly the next slide here along that line here you have older developments of that range and new developments and we've been making some suggestions of how densifying the urban fabric here and retrofitting others so go to the next slide while this is the end of the line this is Ollie and Cordy's house at the very bottom it's a very nice 70s passive solar house very sort of low key and at the top left I took this picture when when Brad picked me up to get our private investigating vehicle back and this is in and you know back in family we're joking about how to pronounce couple a and we were saying carpool a yes so this is on carpool a road h1 and we're seeing higher you know more more high riser or mid-rise development along that one we're saying hey wait a minute you know maybe the way this looks like if you get closer and you drove up closer and you saw it's an office building correct but it doesn't appeal as have anything to do with primitivo or journalism or something you weren't suggest hey maybe reconsider when you built there that's right maybe you built in a different way that recognizes more it's actually countryside right right next slide this is from Ollie and Cordy's house and you get this sort of they're still out there and it's yet waits to be densified and they look at that train and it reminded us of the heyday is here at top left is that book that had shows color kawa when it was still the palm grove and they cut the artery for the streetcar through or the Royal Hawaiian shopping center which we liked in its original condition with its approach to be the non-object as you know the Japanese architect can go kuma called it once you know you want to you want to camouflage and make the architecture invisible versus it being in your face so maybe that would be a strategy for out there keep the country country that yet functionally got to densify but maybe aesthetically and visually you want to make it more disappear and being more nature than right then then building right and next slide here again thanking our hosts you can see up there atop around our house from the Alpine silhouette and this is like Zurich and next slide we ended last show and saying hey don't we shouldn't be too full of ourselves here and because thinking we're the only ones who have waterfalls and rainbows because other countries cultures have that as well yes and that gets us to the next slides because I ended going back for the last couple of weeks to further north to the further foothills of the Alps back in Germany this is in the Munich area here this and it shows probably shows that we have rainbows there too even in the urban area right so then it looks like I came back and next slide and I was happy to be at one of the last remaining movie drive-through or drive-in theaters here on a while who right no no no no no and I know that's not true because I look at the license plates of those two cars and those are not Hawaiian license plates this in fact is in Germany there's a DeLorean on the left it looks like it came from back to the future and an old American pickup truck on the right and you said you've got your what's at your Renault or your Citroen yeah that's a Renault that tiny little this are European p-i-ing car and Suzanne there and we were watching a movie next slide and you know we went into that little concession building there up there and get get some drinks and they had a poster of one of the movies they were showing was with local boy Dwayne Johnson who married yesterday just got married right here in the White Islands yes yes so it was fast and the furious but at the at the bottom you can see slow and hilarious for this wagon thing that's drawn by a by a tractor and you can they have these girls night out party they're going on and watching the movie and obviously enjoying the rock right I think the sexiest man on apparently that's what they're there to see right as a lesson at the top left it's hard to see but I tell you a coke was two euros 20 cents and more preferably what everyone in Bavaria drinks which is beer is only 250 and we're talking the the the half a liter so this is like the half mass it's a big big mark right so why don't we put back a movie theater a drive through back in couple a and and subsidize beer or whatever my ties the local version of that you know ideas like that because you gotta you gotta make it attractive in a more inclusive way and as you pointed out there's still empty space up there that could accommodate a drive-in together yeah yeah so let's move on to the next one because we have beautiful sunsets there too and what it's a little hard to notice but I tell you at the very left left of that little forest chunk there is a tower and that tower belongs to the next slide please the place we spent Christmas Eve this was the craziest fireworks and we have fireworks here every Friday in Waikiki but that's nothing compared to this is on a hill you can oversee entire Munich it was crazy it felt like you're trampled to death and but we survived it but what you can see there is one of the most because the question is what kind of architecture make you in the outskirts of the city here in 1972 next slide they made one of the best pieces of architecture ever this is the Olympic Center in 1972 and on the left it's engineer fry Otto who at the top right tropical walk a record is its utmost fan and expert so if you don't want to know more details turn to him and I took the pictures next to David just just recently and it looks like brand new what they added is the spectacle that you can sort of do a rooftop tour so you can walk on these artificial mountains like your mountain climbing it's great and while you know at the bottom in the middle there was a tragic event of the attacks in there but mostly the place is remembered for what the engineer and architect good to banish anticipated in and what you said you know is overcome the trauma of the war and all that dark era of my home country and basically demonstrate yourself as a young having learned a democratic society and the architecture is embodying right right and that hill we went to reappear is here at daytime and and that was fascinating for you yes that is made of absolutely and I conjectured is this one of the hills that was made it's an artificial hill it is made of rubble or debris generated by the bombing raids of World War two and because Germany had so many stone buildings and masonry buildings and brick buildings when all those buildings were destroyed they had to do something with all of those chunks of rock and they turned them into yeah artificial hills in parks and that's what that is so our mandate for here is if you're going to do some kind of event architecture out there which you know they're thinking about you know redoing the arena you know the stadium out there because it's rusting away they're redoing the Blaisdale yep and we're saying guys then this is the level of sophistication of engineering that you got to achieve it by the way David is opting for that we should have more tensile structures here because here with no snow loads and stuff like that right and with a jungle as a as a natural sort of a a been a mentor Tarzan like this might really be a way to think so again turn to David when you want to know why when you do something like that so let's go to the next slide and and fly back because I was on the airplane with a Star Alliance partner United Airlines and watch enjoying some movies and this one is called the aftermath and it deals with the exact period you were just talking about right here at the bottom you see the they were called rubble women exactly and they were women who in Germany received payment in the form of extra food rations to go through the debris to sort it yeah to separate out the things that could be reused and the rest of it got dumped to make as we saw that artificial health and the movie next page here is really interesting because it plays in and it makes me now coming back aware of my two nationalities because I'm proud American as well for some two years but I wouldn't be a proud German if it wouldn't have been for you and us proud Americans because you helped us back on our feet after we screwed up yeah yeah it was not just Americans but Russians and and British as well and this plays in the in the British district here and a an officer with his wife comes and occupies a German's house and the Germans have to move into the attic and then and it perfectly portrays the sort of shift from yes the past the history embodied by the old house and the old furniture and this drifting away to modernism and modernism and and he is this architect and designs this means from the row alike yeah clean building and these drawings and that the very romantic scene at the very bottom right when they both start to have an affair and they're in bed and he sort of just really writes or designs or draws the verbally and physically on her body yeah it's very romantic yeah yeah yeah and so so we what does this have to do with Honolulu again we're we're having this sort of boom this sort of little building boom along the heartline we will so again the Komomo symposium there is this legacy of mid-century modern this has to be continued this has to be evolved right yes and no sort of kids again who last heard how way on us exactly we have a lot of you know because the heart is not primarily not for tourists right this is for people who are struggling to make a living on the island that's right so you got to be real and serious and not fake right now it's not Disneyland in that case exactly so let's go to the to the next slide that was from my oh well this one first I have to I got my our private investigating car back it's the same brand as the end of the scene of the movie here which shows the Mercedes star so thanks to Jay Mormon and Fred Sege Kava here we got our car back ever since it got unmoved and it's easy breezy we're gonna we're gonna make sure we're gonna say we only use it once a week for the show day and then do groceries and stuff around it otherwise we're gonna use public transportation there you go next slide shows because that was on my way back to the airport and what good what surprised you about that well this is a picture inside this commuter train that's going from Munich to the airport right exactly and in the distance on the other side of the train that guy with the headphones is holding an object and that object is a skateboard and if you look to the right the close-up view of the logo on the skateboard is the Hawaiian Islands now this is in Munich Germany yeah what on earth yeah I even says Juckies Hawaii we were looking this up and we're sure in the skateboard scene he's known we're not in that scene so we don't know right it's obviously the guys showing demonstrating his sympathy with a place far away half around the world so we can see obviously that with a world having opened up exoticism goes both ways right there are things that you're obsessed about and this is why we always like to work with each other we're interested in each other's exactly exactly and explaining that each other because these worlds are meeting right it's not like way back where you heard of oh no exactly they're they're confronting each other absolutely literally and figuratively and and as well you know with technology at the very top right because this is again we had a very long cold winter so I was happy to be inside this hermeticized thing and bundled up and stay warm but now we had some heat waves as you heard oh yeah it's terrible they were like air conditioning that thing and the same kind of train the hard people bought from Italy and at the very top right the second from the right is that train yeah and we're saying why is it not what it used to be which we see on the top right which isn't which is an easy breezy street which is recognizing our special condition that we never have freezing conditions that's right so why in the world are we importing an invasive train an invasive piece that we then because somehow feel bad about it we draw a wave on to make it look exotic right but that's rather silly yeah and we were talking about the advantage of homegrown right because you make something locally it just makes sense because you think about it well let's almost have no other chance and that in fact is what happened in the days of the Honolulu Rapid Transit Company that ran the streetcar line they did in fact of course they did buy a lot of stuff you may not manufacture is but they manufactured and made their own cars as well yeah so there was a sense ability of keeping things open and there was no air conditioning in those days you had to have windows it would open yeah otherwise you'd boil to death and you were talking about the heart you know it goes I mean the travel time is is is decent right very much but it's not like a tejuve or like a shinkanza train or like an ICE in Germany that goes super fast no he couldn't open the window right yeah and again in like if it ever hopefully will also extend from the airport to the urban area so well and eventually to the university yes you know that's when most all the people including me who came here the first thing he recognizes being so intriguing you never forget is the smell yes is the right it's the rich tropical smell exactly right and you get off the plane and that's a person you feel and the original airport architecture by the architect of your house and home yes was recognizing that that's right but then you get into hermetic train you know and you lose that and you're disconnected from that's right that's doesn't seem like right so right gets us to and what do we know gets us to the next slide because what do we know but here's a person who knows because she's trained in that area that's tropical tourist expert Suzanne we want to maybe rename or rephrase as the exotic escapism expert who's saying exactly that dwell upon your the term that comes from her discipline your unique selling proposition yes and having a 12 month perfect thermal comfort season is the thing to do but then you want to embrace that all the time with easy breezy you know vehicles and easy breezy ventilation for buildings and and all these things and one thing she throws in and I have to translate usually I make you do your window no I'm not gonna do this one I do this because I'm here yes yes so this on the left side is a screenshot of of an info of a sort of news came through that says that many of these little towns in the outskirts are are eager and hungry and thrive to be connected to public transportation yeah but the downside is then prices a real estate immediately we're talking about you know it's great to develop around these transit-oriented developments that when people whenever people say that you got to be careful where they come from because if they come from the capitalized versus the cultural corner you know it's about money-making and then once again maybe people who you know originally moved out to afford something maybe they can't afford so we need radical new models that's what Suzanne is saying and and and you need to you know at least incorporate a cultural approach to the commercial one which you of course will always have when you develop yeah of course so right yeah that degree and and again while we're getting to the end of the show and we had a little bit more time and now we made it again which we'll promise to do from now on yes again yes but we want to close up with which is also the the the permanent background here because the question is why is this all relevant what we're talking about and why the hell you know Zurich and Munich is so far away right but but there is a reality here that that you're facing and you're we're visiting that with your family with your mother and sister and what do they what did they communicate well this is a this is a storefront in a shopping center in Kapolei which is called Kamakana Ali and it's about the heart line it's about the train line and you can see right in the center limited passenger service begins fall 2020 and that probably is going to mean from the termination at West Oahu college campus just as far as the stadium but that means that this is happening that means this is real yeah and it isn't just theoretical anymore and we are going to be seeing the things that we've talked about the development at the train station is going to be a reality yeah and that's what we've got to be facing and thinking about exactly and so with that we urge or we encourage the audience to maybe think about one of the other the things that we learned from a community half around the world that happens it you know similar situations and conditions and so we expect talk you know cutting edge and pop notch evolved why architecture along the hard line yeah because that's what we deserve everyone and right deserves and we all and so from that's we're at the end of the show we're going to use our sort of refreshed view to look at some of the island developments in a little bit more clear it way so we do that next time also as a fringe benefit on the side for me to cure my going along with that my post sabbatical stress disorder which I have when I look at some of the stuff that has happened in between yeah but it will be as always in the humorous and constructively critical way right so thanks for watching and until then stay tropically exotic bye-bye