 ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome to Human Humane Architecture. I'm Tim Shuler. I'm the guest host filling in for Martin de Spang, who's on break for the summer. And we're doing a mid-century modern summer through the Hawaii chapter of Doko Momo. And I am here with Richard Lowe, who is an urban planner and urban thinker with Lowe & Associates, which is planning and real estate consultancy, right? Yes, it is. And Bundit Kanitthakan, who's also a designer and an architect with Tadpole Studio, which is based here in Honolulu. Thank you guys for being here. Pleasure. Yeah, I'm excited. We're going to be talking about the role of planning and how it's shaped Honolulu, both the past and the present, as well as the future, right? I believe so. I'm looking forward. So let's get to the first slide. We are going to be talking about these three areas of Honolulu. We're looking at a map of Oahu, as well as an inset of urban Honolulu. Richard, can you tell us a little bit about the three areas that we're going to be? Well, it's the A southwest portion of Oahu, densely populated, and with very, very important interests in architecture and planning, because the traffic is very heavy and the highways are very busy and take up a lot of space. And so we're looking to improve upon it in a way that will make it more functional for the community as a whole and more beautiful for those using it. That's wonderful. So before we get to some of those big ideas, tell us a little bit about how you came to Hawaii. You've been working here in planning and in real estate for a long time. What brought you to Hawaii? What brought me to Hawaii was the expansion of the design of the state capital to a master plan for the whole civic center, federal, state, and city. And I had done planning studies. And so I was hired to come over and be on the team that produced the master plan. Let's go to the next slide then. What year was this when you came to Hawaii? 1964. What were your initial impressions of the city when you arrived? Well, at first, getting off the airplane, I didn't want to come in the first place, but I came. It was an opportunity at the time. And I stepped onto the tarmac at the airport, and I had this amazing feeling from my head down to my toes that I was at home. Little did I know I'd be here for as many decades as I had. That's great. And as I understand it, you told me a friend picked you up at the airport or a colleague, someone you knew professionally. And they drove you past Queen Emma Gardens, right? They did. Which was brand new at the time? Fairly new. OK, fairly new. Fairly new. What were your impressions of that building? You would go on to live there later, right? Yes, I actually did. Well, my impression was that it was a somewhat high-rise, a mid-rise building, but very good-looking. And it did sort of add to the calm I had felt at the airport to find such a beautifully designed set of buildings and grounds. Yeah, we have a picture, I think, of Queen Emma Gardens in 1965. And there's an aerial view of the grounds and the tower, the three towers? Yes, very much so. The gardens are very extensive. And around behind the two towers, there are pools and little islands and places where you can have a party and enjoy the out-of-doors, in addition to the apartments, which are attractively compact but attractive. Yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful setting. Tell us a little bit, because we're talking about planning and not just the architecture, tell us about some of the mechanisms that were in play that allowed places like Queen Emma Gardens to be developed in the first place. Very important. The redevelopment law was still functioning in America in the 60s. And they were able to consolidate a bunch of small lots into a lot sizable enough to create this type of project with lots of space and lawns and pools and so on, which other apartment projects sometimes lack, they're forced to fit onto much smaller lots that were really intended for houses. Right, right. And so was this Queen Emma Gardens, was it developed in conjunction with the H1 being built? Was that? No, the H1 came first. OK, OK. Yeah, got it. Let's talk about one of the first projects you worked on. You mentioned you came to Hawaii to help develop a master plan for the Civic Center area, which now we all know but obviously wasn't there at the time. Tell us a little bit about what some of the big major recommendations of the Civic Center master plan was. And describe the scope a little bit. Yeah, well, the first problem was to solve a location for the state capital. Some people wanted it on the waterfront. Some people wanted it. By the way, it had nothing to do with that step. Some people wanted it on the windward side and so forth. And it was prevailed upon by a lot of businessmen downtown and civic leaders that it should be where it is. Near the old capital, Elani Palace. So that was a big decision to be made. And then after the master plan was prepared, the big issue was should it be adopted or enacted as a law that would freeze everything in place, except without permits. That was not done. It was felt that it was best to leave it rather open and capable of being a guideline but not necessarily frozen in space. One of the interesting things was the closing of Capi Lani Boulevard, which used to stop at the edge of the Civic Center, where the Mayor Fawzi's office building is now, and across the street from the advertiser building. And it was removed by Frank Fawzi, who saw that on the plan and decided it was a heck of a good idea. I remember our people saying, they'll never do it, but let's put it in the plan anyway. But he saw it and did it. So it created what is now the Civic Park. Right. Otherwise you had, because Capi Lani used to continue on that curve up to Baratania, right? It was just a street like. Oh, up to Vineyard. Up to Vineyard, yeah, yeah. So that just all got ripped up. Yeah, that's a theme that I think we'll be revisiting throughout the show a little bit. This notion of the good idea properly envisioned or properly communicated can spark real action. Despite maybe how unlikely it seems at the time. Right. Yeah. Well, what else? So Civic Center stretches all the way from the Capitol building all the way to the waterfront, right? Even more. Theoretically, they wanted to designate that it extends up toward Huntsville, farther than it actually does, because so much of it is built permanent. But yeah, it does go to the harbor, absolutely. Let's talk about it quickly before we move on. I want to talk a little bit about some of the forward-thinking ideas you guys had at the time. Because even though this was the 1960s, it still prioritized green space in a big way. Lots of trees called for in the plan. Lots of big park-like open spaces called for in the plan. Lots of walking paths. Other streets were taken out, right? Mililani was taken out to become a pedestrian path. Those are ideas that it seems like Honolulu could still be using more of today. It is. If you can bundle acreage into large lots, you can do so much more with the intervening space. I mean, creating that whole civic park, for example. And from listening to Richard, we share the same office. So this is the time that the architects, the landscape architects, and also the planner really get together with the community to make all this thing happen. There's a clear communication all around that make this thing happen. And it's still proven to be a very successful, even to this day, Queen Emma Gardens still look very elegant. Whenever we go there, we always look at it and be very cheerful about it. Yeah, yeah. Much of the work done at that time holds up when it was that collaborative when they brought in the right people. One point that may be of interest, too, is that the client for the Civic Center was actually the city and county. I mean, the state, I apologize, for the state of Hawaii was the client, technically. But who represented the client? It was a huge committee of people who were of a good frame of mind, good intent. And they wanted to back the architects, the planners, and create a space that uncontroversially. And it was like that. Interesting. Yeah. Well, let's talk about, let's go to the next slide, the Loha Tower. Let's talk about that area, because unlike the Civic Center, even though it didn't, not every building you drew came to pass, that largely was created. All of the federal building, the federal building, a lot of the state buildings got built. Loha Tower area there, just Makai of downtown, has kind of had a different fate. Can you tell us a little bit about what you know of that area? Well, I got interested in it really after Bunda did. And he pointed out that there is no communication, I mean, very little communication or challenging communication between Loha Tower, which has a very lovely park, Irwin Park, which is now temporarily a parking lot as well, and the downtown in Chinatown, and Bunda felt that we should, that would be a central idea for those two locations in general. And then it flowed from there to the whole community to try to make individual places, whether it's Kakaako or the Bishop property in Kakaako or Alamoana, or even Waikiki, feel as though it isn't thwarting the visits by people who say things like that, oh, I never go to Waikiki. Well, they should want to go to Waikiki, or they never go to Alamoana Park or something. And we thought that they would do so if it were a smoother connection between the two. And that idea, you'll see in several instances here. Right, right. So we have one slide of some of the proposed developments for the Loha Tower area. Yeah, you can see some there. These are all, none of these came to pass, right? These are all suggested over the years proposed by developers and other. Over a 26-year period, the dominant authority and in the Loha Tower area asked for and invited developers to make recommendations and propose to redevelopment the whole thing, including where the tower is, and also to 14, which is near Chinatown, that pier. And all the way over to where next to the federal building. And they received, and it took 26 years to process these requests. And you mentioned we can't talk about each one because we don't have a week here. But two, it was very interesting that Chris Hemeter, the famous developer of a number of big hotels, and a successful developer of those hotels here, he put in a proposal and he spent a million dollars preparing to win that competition. He was very confident and thought he would. And he was very good with bankers. He could always raise the money he said. It was going to be a $500 million project. And it was turned down. And I'd like to be able to tell you why. And I can't, because I don't know. We're going to have to find out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, so this area hasn't been in that 26-year period. We haven't seen a major redevelopment. We did see a new tenant move in. Hawaii Pacific University now occupies quite a large portion of the Aloha Tower, right? They own, in Leesold, everything right near Aloha Tower, except the edges, which belong to the harbors strictly, and where the ships dock. But they own everything inside in the buildings and so forth. Got it, got it. And I've even noticed already, since that happened, there's been much more, it's been activated in a certain way. There's been a stream of students continuing up Fort Sheet Mall to the main campus and back, which is really interesting. But that ties into something you guys have been working on together a little bit. Been developing a much kind of both safer, but also more pleasant connection from downtown to that area, right? Can you tell us a little bit about that? And we can throw up the next slide so we can see this rendering that you guys have done. This is the idea. Tell us what we're seeing with this. If you walk down the Fort Street Mall, it's very beautiful. The trees are beautiful and the views are wonderful, both directions. You look down and you see a Loa Tower. It's a remarkable view. But when you get to Nimitz Highway, it's like the Mississippi River. Yeah, sort of discourages walking across with all the traffic. It's just not hospitable. But the landscaping in Fort Sheet Mall is very pretty. And that's not the only place. You mentioned Melalani Street, I think. And it's very pretty there, too. But we want the landscape to be full and pleasant and feel as though it's all one place. You basically merge the downtown with the Loa Tower Marketplace. Right. And so you do that through a pretty, you can see in the photo, Nimitz has actually been dropped down. And this is, we should say, this is just a rendering. It's a proposed idea. But cities around the world have done this sort of thing. They've buried highways, created park decks above them, describe a little bit how this vision works, and mentioned the rail, too. Well, fortunately, I mean, once you accept that the rail station is going to be there, to which others in the architectural world have objected, it is going to be there, so far as we know. And we assume that that's the case. And that will dump a crude term, will dump a lot of people from around the island. When this becomes a more hospitable place in general, that will be a great source of patronage for whatever is built and rented and so on within the Loa Tower Marketplace and the other piers, as well. And then putting the Nimitz Highway Underground as a vital part of that. I mean, it's one way to make it a more peaceful part of the garden linking downtown. And it's also reemphasized the connection of the Fort Street Mall from the mountain to the ocean. So we reestablished the connection again, the mountain and the ocean, for the citizens that live in Hawaii and the tourists. Yeah, you get rid of that giant block there. And we walk around the side and we just come up with it as we move along. So we usually go walk around at night and during the days after meal and just see what we can do to make Honolulu better. So he has a lot of knowledge, and we have a lot of creativity, so we collaborate. Yeah, that's wonderful. I would love to see this happen. I think we need more green space. And if you can bridge over traffic while you're doing it, that's all the better. It also doesn't remove any traffic, which is the drivers like that. You're not closing the road, you're just burying it. Well, let's talk about, so you guys have explored these kinds of ideas elsewhere as well, not just for the Aloha Tower Marketplace. Richard, you have, in addition to the Civic Center, you also helped develop the master plan for Ward Village, which is very much coming into its own now. But you were working on that master plan also about 40 years ago, right? At least. And yeah, at about the same time as on the Civic Center master plan, we did that master plan. We published the Ward master plan in 1967. And then, of course, it's gone through several changes of ownership. It was sold by the Ward family to the owners of the Ala Moana Center. And then they had a bankruptcy problem and sold it to Howard Hughes Company. And even during the time when Victoria Ward only began, they built the theaters as kind of a first glossy project. And it's been changing as we all see since then. And dramatically now. Yes. Yes. Well, I want to throw up the image that we have from the original plan from 1967, because it's really striking to me how it's not building for building by any means, but it's really striking the similarities to what we have. We have these, it's still relatively low density, even though everyone looks at the towers and thinks, oh, so many towers. But it's actually still very, it's a tower and then a lot of space still. Between them. And that's exactly what you guys envisioned in your plan. Was that inspired, do you feel like, from your experiences at Queen Emma Gardens and looking around at the way that towers and large landscaped courtyards? Maybe. I can't insist that it is, but it must maybe by intuition or the habits of thought that we had, it turned out that way. And then that Howard Hughes Company has the ingredients to make it happen. They have a lot of money evidently. And so it does take that, and it takes management expertise, really sharp management company and vision. Yeah. Well, so speaking of vision, we saw the plan, but plans, as you guys have mentioned, are not static, they're always evolving. We just saw recently this image of the elevated parkways. This is a brand new announcement from Howard Hughes that they're imagining something very similar to what you're proposing downtown. They're proposing a sort of landscaped, pedestrian friendly linkage over Alamoana Boulevard, to Kuala Basin and Alamoana Beach Park. True, yeah. It's very interesting coming out. They have a new leadership now, and that's what he has proposed. He's saying, let's refresh the master plan. And it wouldn't violate the master plan much, but I think it adds a lot of interest and functionality to the whole idea. And so let's talk about taking that then over to Alamoana, the shopping center. You guys also have ideas for this part of town. Right, so Rich can talk about it. Yeah, well, Alamoana Center is, when you think about it, it's very isolated. And it doesn't feel like that when you're there, because there are 1,000 people around you at all times. But in fact, it's a very austere experience, in a way. You're just there. And we think that it could be just as commercially viable by connecting it better to the park and providing places where there are some parking lots upstairs, places to have a restaurant, a terrace, and you can shop more and experience the environment better if that were the case. And then we have this bridge idea. Yeah, next slide. Yeah, from approximately Neiman Marcus location. In this case, leaving the roadway as it is and connecting with the upper level of Alamoana and then bridging over. But again, a great deal of landscaping and attractive features. We can imagine such things as sculpture gardens along the way and so on. And just utilizing the whole vast space there, both of these places, Ward and Alamoana, are 50 and 60 acres. So there's a lot of space. And to use it more liberally toward the arts would be a definite goal. Definitely. Well, also, again, providing that connection visually and physically across this major roadway to the water. And just go back from the Hawaiian knowledge about the Maokai and Makai. So people have that understanding about the mountain and the ocean. It's make it pedestrian friendly. Well, let's take this idea then extend it all the way to Waikiki. We're going to skip the. We all know what Waikiki looks like. Let's skip Lulio Kalani Gardens and talk about the people mover extending the idea of taking rail, which right now stops at Alamoana shopping center. Currently, the idea is to provide a connection to Waikiki, which is the main tourist hub of Oahu. Tell us about this idea of bringing some kind of fun, funky, Waikiki-esque people mover there that would then connect to the rail, because I love this idea. I know. I think so. There's one in Montreal. It really, there are two types of this. There are a million ways of creating connections, vehicular connections, between two places. But this one we feel needs, it began, so far as I know, in Lausanne, Switzerland, where every 20 years they have a fair, displaying marvelous technology that is accessible to people and fun, and very much in the open, much of it. We thought that, actually, we first thought of a gondola system. And then between us, and especially Bundet began to realize that it would be a huge towering system if we had gondolas hanging. And they'd have to go over a lot of high-rise buildings. So we thought, let's keep it lower, like this, and sort of light rail, but also serious, so that if it's a rainy day, we don't want people having to, even though that might be fun for some. Right, so you imagine these kind of arched posts, but still not blocking the streetscape, but just kind of hovering, sliding over this traffic. And these arched spaces can be like when people arrive to Waikiki, they start to give the sense of arrival. This is a different zone that we arrive to, and keep repeating it, and keep going through Waikiki. So that's how we envision it. Yeah, yeah. So that's great. Well, we're almost out of time. Do you have some final thoughts on the role of planning? What do you? Well, we might speak for a second. I guess we have that much, or something, where when we look at this slide 14, we're looking at, as you know, Lilio Kalani Gardens. And the way it was, before this was built and obedient to the Waikiki Special Designers District, rather new law, zoning law, a lot of buildings were built in Waikiki, where somewhere on the kind of southern end. The whole lot. Yeah, yeah, a whole lot, a whole lot. Very little setback. Then the law came, was passed, and then on, they had to have garden pools and be much more open, less dense. And that's an excellent example of the result of a change in the zoning law. Right, yeah. So the cities can guide the way they're shaped and formed through the law and through ordinances and things like that. And you know, for us, too, it's just the idea of gather everyone together and have a clear understanding and clear path of communication, work as a team to come up with our good intention and to make this thing happen. We need the whole group of missionaries and find people with good intention to make that happen. And collaboration with all the discipline, landscape, urban planner, architects, and more importantly, the people that live in that area to make all this thing happen. These are just a bot that we just plant a seed and hope it gets somewhere. Yeah, so. Well, I think the seed has been planted. Thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you. Yeah, thanks to all of you for tuning in. And we'll see you next time on Human Humane Architecture.