 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Happy to have you back on a show. This show here recognizes that on our most beautiful islands here of Hawaii, which is most substantially beautiful, we just say architecture has to be equal to that, and we're not giving up on hoping that. And mostly we find examples for that in the past and we want to learn from the past for the future. And today we want to go, can we have picture one? It's like a following up show from one that we do two shows ago. If we can get picture one up for that one. So here that was with the Soto Brown and we were sort of touching the edge of the campus of UH, which is in the foothills of our awesome jungle of Manoa Valley. And we were talking about the gateway dorms and this picture is provided by the Soto here who when he's not on the show, you know, he usually would have to charge the pictures but he gave us three today for free. So thank you to Soto for that one here. And we also owe to give you the architect of the awesome gateway dorm building and this is the one you can read here, Merrill Ruring on Dora and Kinder here, who did that building. And it's the gateway to campus and if you continue that road, which is pretty much East West Center Road, you end up on something, and again, Don Hibbert gave us the information of the architects once again. Thank you Don for that. So next picture is where we end up going. This is East West Road. This leads up into the valley, into the campus here. And this has to do with a project that was initiated by Lyndon B. Johnson at that point in the late fifties and then in 63. The picture at the top right, Kennedy in his Lincoln Continental was cruising down Calacao Avenue and few months later he did the same in Dallas and that didn't go well and he was assassinated, as we know. His wife, Jackie Kennedy, was basically choosing an architect, I am paid for designing the memorial library for her husband, which you see at the very bottom right. And because of that tragic happening of the assassination of President Kennedy, the project was basically renamed after Kennedy, which is a little ironic next picture because I just was watching a documentary on CNN about the Kennedys and they were saying Johnson and Kennedy weren't really getting along that well with each other. So this is basically the groundbreaking here and you see Johnson there. And every other week's co-host is Soto Brown who provided these pictures here. At the age that you can see him up left, he heard that Johnson was coming back some one, two years later after Kennedy was shot and he was revisiting his project, which had been finished in 1962. And he sort of heard about it and he was rushing with some buddies to the intersection of Metcalf and University Avenue and then Johnson was not afraid to stick his head out and his body out of the moonroof and basically shake hands and he shook the hands of Little to Soto twice here. So this is a little story behind that here, how it all came about. And the next picture is also a donation by Soto Brown here, which you can see the east-west center. But the part we want to focus on is not the event space and research facility in front, but basically in the back. And next picture is showing by what many say and pay himself as well that the inspiration for that building was by the architect Le Corbusier. And Le Corbusier built something called the Unité d'habitation. The most prominent one is in Marseille, but a little patriotic here with my original German culture. There's also one in Berlin that I chose for this one here. And the next picture is that preparing the show, I ran across an article that is called Concrete Paradise by a guy whose name is Darren Bradley. And Darren Bradley is an awesome photographer who shoots the best architecture all around the world and is also a great critic at the same time. And I reached out to him and wanted to ask him for permission to use his best photography and he wasn't able to get back to me. So hopefully now, retrospectively, Darren, if you see this here, I hope you'll find. So all the good pictures that you see, a quote up there, a link is basically by Darren Bradley here. So from here on, I will pass on because today is not so much like I'm the host and you're the guest or the professor, you're the student, but it's basically us as, I shouldn't say I witness, but basically as all senses witness as residents of this building here. And if you bring the next picture here, Mo, please walk us through the pictures and your experience with your building. Okay, first of all, thank you, Martin, for having me in the show. This is my dorm. By the way, I'm a graduate student at the School of Agedeshia at UH Manoa. And I'm currently staying in the building of Hale Manoa, the one that we previously showed. And this is my dorm room. As you can see the width of the room, it's very narrow and this is a single room. So the picture to the left, you can see my workstation area. I am trying to maximize the use of the space and the picture to the right, you can see my bed mattress. I leaned it up so I can do some work out in the middle of my room so I have more space for my work. So moving on to the next picture, there's a picture of a double room there. And originally all the rooms at Hale Manoa, they were all double room and then later they divided some of those rooms to have a single room. Basically I think is to have more residents be able to host a lot of people at once. So you can see the curtains, the ambient lighting into the interior. And we're going to move on to the next picture I want to show you. So picture to the left here is showing a unisex bathroom. So in my unit I have other females and other males that we are all friends from all over the world. We are sharing the bathroom here. It's a very safe environment very friendly at the same time. People are very matured. So you can see a picture on the right side. There's the shower right there. And the next picture I will show you there's the narrow stairs that lead you up from the main floor to each of the living areas. So at Hale Manoa, the living floors so we have the kitchen on every third floor. So I'm on the 12th floor but I don't live on the 12th floor. I live on the 13th. So you can see the picture here with the stairs is leading up to the 13th floor or you can take stairs to go down to the 11th floor. So picture on the right shows the narrow path within each of the dormitory rooms. So as you said the private spaces are kept very tight, very small just about as big as they need to be which the hallways are just about to cold probably even a little less. Exactly. And to then basically afford what we're going to see in the next couple pictures, right? So number 11. So this next picture here shows a very beautiful elongated view of the hallway. So this is the 12th floor that I'm talking about. As you can see the ceiling above so above that's where students are living and below the floor you're seeing that's the 11th floor. But I mentioned to Martin something very important here visually that the way I am designed to the building see the heavy structures. It's perfectly framing the landscape outside. You can see how Manoa valley from here there's a very picture here on the left. So that's the Jefferson Hall right on the corner of the picture. And as I said all the pretty pictures the big ones are by Darren and all the little ones they are sort of semi professional more dilettant are by me. And this is all the pictures that you saw in the recent past is when you generously hosted us and welcomed us to basically tour us the building and have us. And us means basically a studio last year I've read you at studio and again you explained the building to us in a very kind way and so that's you know the pictures sort of show this sort of idealist you know star architect photographer view and then sort of our more post occupancy evaluating evidence-based design because we want to learn from that building right? Exactly. So we can move on to the next picture here. So this next picture here like a Martin he will give the credit to the photographer. Yeah that's Darren again. Yeah so. And this is another spill out place right where it basically cuts through. We have to say at this point that the orientation of the building as you can imagine because we're looking at Gateway Dorms and Gateway Dorms we explained that V is facing south and south is pretty much looking Diamond Head and now it is pretty much looking Maoka. So you got Makai view, Ocean view and Diamond Head view and City view on one side and then you got the Maoka view to the other side with different exposures. So this is facing pretty much south and you're looking at this composition and again Darren did such a great job that I think it really highlights the beautiful easy breezy single loaded corridor Gateway Dorms which we talked about last time and sort of camouflage is the hermetic invasive beast of Freer Hall and which we if we go to the next picture this is what I in sharp contrast with my not so good skills I brought out the invasive beast in front of Diamond Head and it really depends on again on the time of the day and the person who looks so it's like if you look at a picture you call these frame views and it's like pictures depending on the museum who looks at the picture you see something differently but they're all framing our natural and build environment in symbiosis or sometimes in conflict but let's go keep walk on and so tell us where we go now So actually this is my kitchen on the 12th floor of Halle Manoa you can see my friend a 21 Valdes sitting there he was asked by the photographer if he can take the picture of him and of course he's a gentleman he agreed to that as you can see the arrangement of the tables and the furniture around it is a very communal area so you can see on the railing side there are those openings through the concrete it's part of allowing the tropical climate to flow through the kitchen area so this communal area the kitchen it works out very well as you can see on the ceiling there has never been any time that you can see any collection of a mark spot when you cook the smokes and the steams you don't see that at all this is a perfect example of a design that responses to the climate here in Hawaii absolutely and I am so thankful to live at the East West Center in the meantime absolutely and so we felt up there at the right corner same feeling, same experience always cool, always comfortable very nice well-being appropriately designed and the next picture is again me with my dilettant skills but maybe good in this case here where basically just the auto focus of the iPhone camera was basically focusing on the panoramic and that's not unlike how you actually I mean Darren did a great job because he wanted to point out the architecture and show the details but perceptionally sometimes this is close too where you basically just have this and what set the top right corner is from a show that we did with David Liang who is a colleague of yours and in graduate school within our program and he was touring with us his grandmother's dwelling which is not un-similar, it's public social senior housing at the beginning of Kalakaua Avenue and this is her view from Herla Nye so once again whereas these days views like that you probably have to be a millionaire and buy into the upmost penthouse in some of the Howard Hughes Towers but that's so great about these architects that they basically gave this sort of very rich experience to the people who can't afford it the least I think it's designed for the people Oh absolutely, yeah, no, perfectly sad, yeah so next picture one more time again obviously the kitchens and enhancing this sort of commutal once again like if you're in Hawaii why would you want to stay in your dorm room by yourself exactly, why don't you get together and cooking is the best sort of event to get social and talk that's why everybody makes a friendship long-lasting a friendship you know and we have to say that this is on UH territory but West Center is an independent entity It is and its mission is if I'm correct is basically refer and represent the Asian Pacific realm and invite people like you from other islands and out there to be here for a while and make this possible we don't want to talk exact rates but we know that you told me that the rates here are very moderate and they're more moderate than the housing on campus delivering you know, UH and for sure more affordable than the ones of the private student housing that's going up at the intersection of King and University Avenue which we were shedding a light at in the last show with the SOTO and we were like having these steep price tags of like $1,700 for a studio which means this is exclusive you can only have rich kids stay there and this is very inclusive both sort of from the intercultural mix and also from the social equity point of view that's pretty excellent so the next picture is again one that from Darren's website here which was shot right after the building was completed but we want to point out if you look at the pretty much East West facades which is very bioclimatic because that's where the sun is the lowest and the most problematic facade this is getting hit by the low by the lowest sun in the afternoon and you want to keep that close so he was basically designing with a sun in mind and keeping this close but you can see that he articulated that what we could call a double facade by this line and you can see it's approximately like two feet that that IMP was dedicated to and explain a little bit more how you experience that sort of that clever facade so those thick wide sunbreakers we can call it that in the architecture world they serve a double duties you know they provide sun provide shoulder from the sun at the same time it's clever how IMP recessed the living interiors right next to the wall but it's a little recessed into the inside so the sun is directly on the occupants yeah so it's a bioclimatic double facade that basically keeps out the sun and the rain and people always say when we design something like that which we tie they say oh this doesn't work because then you get a windy and rainy day but you experience that hardly ever you know accept some really crazy storms which is hard to keep the water out anyways but the moderate wind and rain is going to you know not go much further in than these two feet and if so they're like these draining holes drainage holes that get the water out that little water and the surfaces are all like outdoorsy right so there's no carpet to ruin right there's no nothing to mold it's basically all solid we call it stear atomic concrete and it's all easy breezy and holds up really well as as you kind of point out and since we're talking about these bioclimatic features of the building let's jump to the next picture and talk a little bit about what we see here though so the big picture on the right side there's an example of it's called a storm windows so the wind is blowing up through from the bottom of the ledge where the window is sitting there wouldn't and you can see the handle there you can rotate it to close it or open it and it's located on the north side of the building and so you can adjust it according to the wind to allow and control how much wind you'd want inside if it's getting windy and there's a little screen above it so that's keeping out I would say the box so we're coming from the right picture as we're talking about the Malca side the north side this is where the wind comes from the rain comes from so here you don't want to have the wind the cooling wind come in directly you get it indirectly by basically it being glazed horizontally but then open permeable from below very clever bioclimatic design and the next picture is getting a little bit away from the science but more to the arts here we made a show about these features facade features here we call it Corbuses Hawaii Breeze Soleil because there's a lot of pieces of architecture that were inspired by Le Corbusier's later work where he was introducing these these three-dimensional shading devices mostly out of pre-cast concrete so pay was in that tradition as we talked before and so but different than the new building the Mahana privately finance that we were talking about in the last show and I just refer to that which tries to give this sort of artificial sort of dad's appearance of playfulness and of dynamism right dynamics pays building does that in a in a natural way and not trying to look like architecture not trying to be bioclimatic architecture is architecture but it understands the principles of nature and so I think there is a symbiosis between architecture and nature here in this case and I just happen to be there at the health center and I had this beautiful condition of sun and shade and I just thought this is a good complimenting each other pretty much the next picture is once again having a beautiful picture by Darren but also having his great criticism and this is the concluding play to you of its article where he basically encourages well he's questioning and criticizing why architects ever since the mid-century have not been following and evolving and perfecting that kind of methodology of the perfect tropical design exotic tropical design but have deviate away but then positively speaking he says he would like to have the young architects basically pick up from there and so we want to take his encouragement to our heart and conclude the show here with a couple of examples so the next picture is the third project that was missing when our last show with the Soto was telling sharing two student projects from that studio we did a while ago together with Haram Pail and this one here is now the location number one which actually happens to be directly south of Hale Manoa and the next picture is the emerging colleagues basically having been so inspired by that precedent that they basically said you can't really you know make it better so they basically did a twin pair of Hale Manoa and the thing that they did different is they did the same as you appreciate the living rooms are to the north but then the entire south they basically donated to these shared spaces because they thought they were so successful in Hale Manoa so you can call this an evolution of a typology and of an example just like nature always gets better over time and always finds out ways to perfect itself and the sort of biochlamatic design for the facade is inspired by a project that we showed many shows ago at the bottom in the middle which is basically the Alamoana building by John Graham which used to have vertical retractable louvers that you could change with over the day according to the sun path so that is that and the next one is me a very personal experience because when I as I looked at the very bottom here in the middle some quarter of a century ago when I was where you are an emerging talent here you don't look like it not quite I lost some hair and other things but I'm still okay and so this project has been the project that informed me the most it's an eye and pay building at the top middle there's a monograph out by it's solely that's called the complete works it's incomplete because that project is not there this was built one and a half decades later in 1976 but that was after the oil crisis so pay basic just enhance took that crisis as an opportunity to basically enhance once again the biochromatic building performance that in a temperate climate is once again a very very efficient and effective building and probably if you would lead rate that would probably be a lead platinum both buildings because they're just built right this amazing it is amazing and so next picture is my more personal experience the same that you had because in my very first week here when I had that rented Jeep and a week with two bags that great institution hosted me as well as it did you for how many years have you lived in there now I lived there for three semesters already okay so almost almost yeah almost two years so I had I had a week but that was a great week and I also had a room facing north and I I love the sort of sparse monk like sell quality and even the details are still original I mean come on give me a break to live in an I am pay design dorm how cool is that right exactly the next picture is no doubt that this inspired me and has been with me in a project that I proposed for for Manoa for you age and here with less campers we're talking about tectonics and stereotypes so way back and things have to evolve so how the Manoa was poured in place way back labor was cheap that was doable concrete was a local material but labor is so expensive you can't do this anymore so I was inspired by the building to you see these little tectonic or seratomic models here and I teamed up and got consulted by this campus from great specific working mountain precast and so we envisioned this sort of biochlamatic structural exoskeleton to be the skin and the facade and everything for the building and the next here picture shows how the emerging team basically developed that and beautiful suggestive illustrations and models this is the tree texture class and I'm teaching here so again very much like saying you know why reinventing the wheel if something really has worked and it's so great and also you can see this reference of the pixelation and blending in with the pixels of the mountains because it's like trisillian's little leaves right but again not copycating that but just like you know continue that genetic code if you want so but last not at all least we want to conclude with how your building inspires you and your current work and if you can get the past thank you Martin this is a picture of an inspiration that I had in my small room it's very tight and as you can see the L shape of the desk and I have my screen in the front so it inspired me for kitchen design in my dissertation that I'm proposing it for wheelchair users so you have the refrigerator on the right side and a sink on the left directly in line and so the plane you're facing you don't have to turn around much so you just push yourself back from the front counter and you can reach to the fridge or reach to the sink on the left side so that's one of my design inspirations that I got from living in my small room that I'm glad that I came across something like this and I think it's a solution for small spaces that we are facing now in urban areas you know it's all about maximizing what you can do with it so thank you and again we have to thank our Idol by I.M. Pei which is such a perfect example for substantial beauty versus just surfacial beauty which is the trend these days that things look pretty but on the expense of oil and air conditioning and this guy knew how to do it and again he's our idol and I try the very best to live up to that and so thank you for having been here with me and sharing these arts here thank you Martin for in my team it is a great experience and I like to learn a lot from today's talk I'm inspired to design more for people and make a response to the clients so next show next week we'll be with DeSoto Brown again with building in the typology once again of inhabitation of local people more grown up people and then also visiting people tourists and the show is called the Ilikai Innovation and as you can tell it's about the Ilikai building by John Graham and until then you guys please stay as exotically tropical and tropical exotic as I.M. and as we call our team today there may be a design studio in the future exactly thank you again