 Good to have you back for what happens to be our 230th episode of ThinkTek Hawaii's human-humane architecture. You're broadcasting live from, you wish so, one location, at least, which is near Munich, Germany. My co-host, the Soto Brown Bishop Museum historian and archivist and Ronald Lindgren, our leisure legacy legend, are number one under the weather. I'll get better at the Soto soon and run under the radar for family visiting reasons, rightly so. So I'm going to deliver on behalf of the three of us because we produced and prepared the show together, which is still airing under the conditions of the three C's, which is COVID coronavirus climate change and civility in brackets caused through increasing unrest through social equity. So architecture has to do with all three. And we're putting the hat on of reviewing and assessing and critiquing constructively critically the most recent developments on our island of Wahoo city of Honolulu. And if we can get the first slide up for that. We're in the second volume of our living wall, the Leon in Waikiki building, and in the last show we were looking at the framework of it at the setting at the context. And we were quoting Ron who said, recently, unlike in his days, unfortunately the architect isn't quite so much in charge anymore of the architectural projects unless they're star architects. But these days, other than that they seem to be more facilitators rather than originators and producers of the buildings. So we've been introducing the architects of the Lillia Waikiki project that I remembered from back in my student days when we were doing our field trips to the nearby it only took us eight hours in my plan the fury to get to Chicago which is the city nearby in the Midwest. And we were talking about a crate and barrel store that is now a Starbucks reserve on Michigan Avenue. And that is by Solomon court wills and view it's and just I had to talk show quote top left to my best US buddies since my prairie college days at our University of Lincoln Nebraska then Kubrick, who was associated with young. John behind who tragically died at young age of 81 in a bicycle accident, about half a year ago, and dear Dan is hanging in there. And we've been on the phone, the first time, shockingly shame on us since a decade. And so we were catching up, and he told me that he talking speaking Michigan Avenue he's working on a project a tower condominium project on Michigan Avenue that is called, or the address is 1000 south Michigan Avenue, and the project is called 1000 m. It's a high rise condominium. It's a glass tower which probably double or triple glaze which makes sense in Chicago because he told me there's no in and the lake effect snow is especially quite something in the Midwest out there so you got to protect yourself from that harsh climate that you do with that curtain wall. So that gets us back to Honolulu, because the fellow architects Solomon court will be ones who are also in and from Chicago. And have already been on the island here with the project you see on the three other show quotes or the two other ones on the right, but their first project was the one at the bottom left, which is the second Howard use tower, which we always call the intestines and actually the name they gave it, which is something like Anna, indeed, even sounds a little bit like where the intestines ends and it's a tower that we said after careful, considerate observation is fossil and they went through a lot of effort, making it look funky and fancy through having the glass wave around, but it is what I call a microwave and Ron calls it a refrigerator, because it only works as such when you air condition it and when you turn the stove off, then that happens what I call it then you get fried in there. And it, what the soda also always, you know, criticize is rightly so is that it has no line eyes, which we said by building code should be mandated every building in Hawaii has of what we, you know, enjoy the most to be outdoors, which we can do online eyes why Kurt Sandborn calls it idealistically and ideally stacked one eyes. And you wouldn't you wish so then maybe, you know, since the architects haven't done that, they might be not considered anymore on the island but that is not the case because on the right side you see there recently proposed development that's the one where Richard Meyer project get pulled, and now so the sort of Southern Court will be once kick in again with a tower that were shocked, because again no line eyes again, and just a refrigerator on microwave glass box. I guess it'll even in a little worse from the solo side as they named it after Victoria Ward and they called it the ward place and referring to the show with Richard low from back in the days who had worked with Steve owl on towers that tribute to the legacy of Victoria Ward. This tower does not so much. So that being said, and now Solomon Court will be once our back all good things are three hopefully that gets us to the following slide please. This is also my daily background that shoes, and this is referring to the show quotes at the very top, a show that we called proletarian people power parking plans. And this is the vision of, if we all basically move away from private car transportation to more shared public transportation of multimodal kind, we would as an effect on the side saw the big housing crisis, which addresses the same civility and its threat, because all of a sudden our urban nomads and everyone who would want to join them could basically move in where previously the cars had been parked and and shelter it as we can see here because they dedicate quite some money and effort to these perforated metal screens here that you know keep the cars cool behind and they would keep the people cool behind. This tower does a little bit different because usually the default is that the parking plan is on the street level. Here it is elevated pulled above it and on the ground floor you see something that developers really pride themselves for although it's not something new it's been around since the little European people, us, you know, settled in America, and, and came with a wagon train to stop and build a little towns and the person running the saloon downstairs lift upstairs and we call this mixed use, you can do just one thing in your building you do multiple things, in this case two things. So here it is retail gets us to the next slide. This is all been documented by us by the end of the last year, you see me here on my post fossil vehicle my bicycle with my burger Bell stopping by, you can see the building, primarily under construction, close to completion. You can already see something that that is the sun, the sun we know so well and the sun is kept out by this elevated white part of the facade because it's opaque and closed. But the glass behind that had just been recently installed only gets shaded by that little overhang upstairs and the rest of the glass gets heated up so we might have another microwave problem that we can only solve on the expense of petroleum by refrigerating it. Next slide is the construction sign that you see that gives us a clue about a couple of things. First of all, the developer is as you can read Brookfield properties there mainland real estate developer company, and you see the general contractor as well the name again of the project and you see a rendering and that rendering is depicting it in sort of a dusk situation where the renderer did a good job in making it look tropical exotic you see palm trees. And then you see, you see lights in there, but again it's all fully glazed so from inside out it might not be as tropical exotic as the renderer tries to make it look like. Next slide. So renderings this is a rendering that shows the proposed project that is now pretty much completed. And we reviewed it when it was under completion close to the end of completion here and there is a text quoting from the developers website. So we then also get a clue about the name of the project, and as we can read here, it's a tribute to the favorite flower of Queen Emma, and that favorite flower was the lily lily in Hawaiian. And you know sets up the bar, obviously, you know, the royals took good care of their people, and no one was left behind. And to that regards we have to in our sort of assessment of the project we give have to give it a green check mark of the box of evaluating because it prides itself to be the first, you know, mixed use high rise development in 20 years and why key key and since why key key is our model functional vacation neighborhood. This makes a difference because it's basically for people to live there, because it's a condominium. It's sorry it's not a condominium because this is not for sale as the other ones by hard use that we looked at before but it's for rent, it's a rental it's a rental apartment tower. So that is primarily a good thing. Next slide. So we had a check on typology now we'll do our check on orientation. You see the Google view of it. The two yellow pins, the one at the bottom on color cow avenue at the corner of couple who and color cow is our white key key grand that we know very well. And you can see because north is up the North era is set in such way you see that Kapahulu Avenue runs pretty much east west. So the buildings on it phase, if they're parallel to the street, pretty much directly south, which my white key grand does the second where the top left is where the lily is you can see that the white key and grid is slightly offset from that pretty ideal east west orientation with southern exposure because the Dillingham people didn't care too much about micromatics but more about the buck, and they basically, you know, basically set up the layout of the lots in a way that was best developed. So we're, we're having a slide turned towards west and west is problematic because that's where our intense sun sets and is so low that no cap, no lid is going to help us to that regard as next slide. As it is on our white key key grand here, my generously philanthropously donated dedicated unit by my landlord for reasonable rent. This is my lanai. And since I live what I teach and and teach what I live is that I, you know, celebrate the easy breezy lifestyle have my jealousies and my sliding door open all the time. And my lanai is fully shaded in the summertime. And then each day towards, you know, the spring at the winter. The sun is eating approximately about an inch or close to all of my little footprint because I'm not using air conditioning to cheat and allow me to be behind glass all year round. I'm basically accepting that the sun is chasing me. And in the winter, when the sun is the lowest I have the smallest livable footprint, if I don't want to get overheated. And then my footprint grows towards the summer and that's just a natural way to do it without again cheating with fossil fuel. So how is that playing out with the lilya next slide. This is a view from the Northwest. And we also have to give the lilya something another green check mark, because orientation again is primarily good because it's running east west and that way it's not blocking the macro wind flow from to Mackay. It's within or intense within the wind flow and that's certainly a good thing to commend the building because there is other buildings like the rates Carlton for example that is doing the opposite. It's sitting with its long side and it's basically blocking the winds and that way it also exposes its long facades towards the critical orientations of east and west, where again the shading of the panel levering horizontal line eyes as in my white kitty grand principally doesn't work. So we go to the next slide, where we see, again, the building being in the diet or in the right direction, but we're also seeing its end, it's facing the mountains. And that one is then causing a situation that you can see rendered up there at the top right, which might be good for the view, but it's not good for your thermal comfort because again that's where the sun is low in the building shoots deeply in your space and makes the unit rather costly, not affordable because, first of all, the units are probably priced higher because of the view, and then your maintenance cost is really tall because you're having a pretty high electricity bill that is the highest kilowatt hour price to begin with in in the Hawaiian islands in all America. And in Europe, we have the same thing we have inflation rate going up to more than 5% and that's mainly because of rising energy costs. And people here have to pay for it because otherwise you die from frostbites, which that doesn't happen in Hawaii so you wouldn't have to do it this hermetic that way in Hawaii in Chicago as we taught where Dan is and in Munich where I likely would like to be now is where this won't happen. So getting us to the next slide. This is the view from the privileged units on the other end on the, on the west end. Again, it's all about the view these days. Here you got the view, although you got a couple of high rises in front of you so you're not not having unobstructed views as the, as the Victoria plays will have in sort of prime ocean location but you still have the slits of ocean view. But next slide. It's, and, and, and again the previous slide maybe Michael go back one more time. That one is cheating a little bit because we don't see too much of that sun in there. So there's just a little bit in there. But again, if this is sunset, you will have lots of sun in there and it's going to get very very hot in that unit. And that next slide. Well then cause what we had been analyzing what the symphony does on top Yolani Boulevard, a show called top right is what would give you a sunburn. If you wouldn't hide behind your, your glass and, and have the AC blasting. So again, East and West elevations unfortunately we can give a green positive check mark that gets a red one literally in figure speaking, because we're lacking a shading there. And as we say in biochromatic design rules 101 East and West you got to do vertical shading ideally louvers turn towards the north. So you're blocking off the overheating you son but you let in the ambient daylight, which you want, and you still get a view, you know, and it's a direct view but it is a view. So it's possible. Next slide. We, again, have to give another plus primarily principally, because different than the Anna and the Victoria place that has no line eyes we seal and eyes here. And that's sort of interesting because the two hard use projects are very exclusive. They're for sale their condos and their high end. So the rich people don't get the nice sorry for them. And here the little bit more little people which at least was the ambition of the project they're more they're more privileged because they get something that we would think, you know, is something that gets close to the nice this sort of zigzagging way that they gave it reminds us of the very top left to show quote from Munich's most interesting and and fascinating student dormitory, quoting in the middle at the top from their right and you know playing off heavily of that name branding and the Livia and how it how it blossoms in this beautiful, you know, violet kind of color. This is what top right. This dormitory hasn't real because there's actually this vine crawling up on it this creeper vine as the solo taught us that one has flowers and these flowers actually help to perform by automatically, because they create in temperate climate, temporary shading and and help to keep the building cool while in the wintertime because this is a deciduous plant. It gets rid of the leaves which you see at the very top left, and then allows passes solar game. So, again, we don't see anything like that we see some sort of God rail wrappers on the picture at the bottom. This slide reveals that that was only temporarily for the construction and to hide what we now see which again makes us want to give a plus, because these are not glass guard rails that we said should be banned from building in Honolulu because they do nothing but be wrong from their energy bill of production of shipping in of putting in place making yourself hot behind all these things make glass guard rails something that we continuously say we don't want so the developer here did differently and he defaulted back to the good old vertical guard rail that basically allows breathability. Also doesn't you know get when it gets dirty doesn't obstruct the view so it's basically just the better way the better version to do it. And, but if we look closer at the line is we want to reference back to the to the sibling project gets us to the next slide please. Which is the mid century, a few story walk ups across the street that we talked in the last show that the developer was basically making up for the mandate of affordable units and he basically put them into these historic buildings. But in there you can see what people then do on their lines. They're not just spending time there but they're also leaving things there that makes sense when you're living in a maritime metropolis because there's boogie boards there's surfboards and stuff like that. And while that basically is is okay and is a nice sort of an occupational decor a performative. You know ornament you can say, imagine you do this in the high rise where winds are sometimes pretty high so I'm not sure if especially the light boogie boards will just basically fly away from your, from your. high space that then you know makes you question if to what degree the term line I actually applies. And so our next slide. Next slide is a reference to a project of ours on the other side of the world in temperate climate, where we were affording the nice as well, but you see the line eyes are significantly deeper, they're about like 34 up to five feet. And we don't have glass guard rail because we need them because we only have few, you know month in the year where it's really warm outside the other times it's rather not. And so we enjoy being a little bit warmer behind glass guard rails. We recognize the need for maybe storage where you can store your boogie board and your surfboard which we don't have in Hanover Germany because there's no ocean to serve with the boogie board. But we dedicated this box in the box a wooden box in a glass box that you can store your things, which is also a good sort of privacy mitigator between the units because the glass goes all the way up. There's the acoustical separation acoustical privacy, while the daylight is able to jump jump over and the little, you know, inserted detail up there is a product that's been around in Europe forever it made it to Canada and not to the US, and I saw the construction I didn't see this. This is a product that's called easel shuck. And it's basically structurally connecting the line I to the inner floor slab by at the same time with this rigid form strip basically firmly disconnecting it because otherwise it's a thermal leakage that again we don't need because the warm air or the warmth, the warm thermal mass gets basically transferred into the building so these are suggestions again, and this is again Hanover Germany so if you could build that way in Hanover Germany, you should build differently in Honolulu Hawaii. Next slide. And so you see it here, you see some rather, you know, more apologetic division partitions between the units that aren't doing as much as the ones we just show to you. Again, also the Linais are rather shallow and you can see the sort of midday shadow line here, not doing much. So, the Linais might not have the depth, then the ones in Germany and not the ones more importantly of the Waikiki grant, and even in the Waikiki grant should have been a little deeper, but they're significantly deeper than the ones here. So the final slide, zooming in even more, you might have already seen it in the previous slide we see something rather suspicious, which is a box with a fan and this is something that's familiar to us, but we don't want to see any more these days this is a single wall, a sea unit that they try to camouflage away by painting it with the same sole predominant on the island beige color. But again, we're not blind and we're seeing it so that gives us another indication that again, the Linais are not doing the job to the degree they should have and they could have if they would have been engineered with the sun as a co designer and using it applying the sun angles because the orientation is good for horizontal shading. So that is it for today. We're picking up from here next week again with three from the assessment board to Soto and Ron hopefully back. So then you all stay most importantly healthy and happy and increasingly tropically exotic please again. Bye bye.