 I'm Laura McGuire. I'm an architectural historian and professor at UH Minoa in the history of architecture. And I'm hosting today as a part of Dakamomo's summer series on historic architecture in Honolulu and in Hawaii more broadly as a subset of the show Humane Architecture, which usually runs during the season. We're doing a little bit of a special series on historic Honolulu architecture. And today we are going to be looking at a housing development that was completed in the late 1940s through the early 1950s by the famed Honolulu architect Alfred Price. We'll be talking a little bit about that project and I'll be showing you some exciting photos, both historical and contemporary of the housing development. And here to talk with me today are my guests, Brian Strahan and Carla Cioralta, who are both practicing architects here in Honolulu, as well as colleagues of mine at the University of Hawaii at Minoa. And we will be discussing not only the creation of the housing project in the late 1940s, but also looking at it in terms of what implications or lessons this particular development might have in terms of solving Honolulu's housing crisis today. So I'd like to welcome you all. Hopefully it will be an interesting discussion and probably many jokes will be made. First up, I would like to introduce my guests here. To my left is Brian Strahan. Brian, would you like to say a little bit about yourself? Yeah, I work at the University of Hawaii Community Design Center and I work with students and faculty there on projects for state agencies and nonprofits around Hawaii. Great. And Carla? First of all, thank you for inviting us and for having us on your show today for coming. I'm also an architect that you already mentioned that. I essentially teach and also work sometimes at the Community Design Center and right now we're currently working on a housing project. So it might be really interesting to talk a little bit about that housing. Where's the project located? Well we are actually looking at housing as a whole and affordable housing as a whole here in Honolulu. Okay. Perfect. But across the whole state? Yeah. Most recently in my third year's studio last semester we actually worked on the development of a 16 acre unit, sorry 16 acre lot, which is very similar in size to the housing project that we're going to be talking today. Okay. Great. So I guess just to start off what I thought we could do is just to look at some old photos of the housing development, I'll give a little bit of background historical background on how it came to be, which is actually a really compelling story of community action in and of itself. So if I could actually have the first slide please. So this is actually an article that was published in a Honolulu magazine in the 40s, publicizing the project. Veterans Village Dreams Come True. Basically what was going on in the post war situation in Honolulu is after the war an enormous number of veterans were returning from combat, some of whom had been Hawaii residents originally, some of whom though were also people who liked Hawaii and just wanted to stay. And as a result there was an enormous demand for housing and really substandard housing conditions for many across the island. So a group of veterans got together under the rubric of the American Veterans Committee and chapter one in particular, under a man named John O'Cow who actually became very important in promoting the Democratic Party later in the 1950s in Hawaii. But it was John O'Cow's idea that if veterans could actually collectively raise money and then get support through the state that they might be able to build housing for themselves. And this is where the architect Alfred Price comes in. They approached Price and I'm not really sure how this meeting came about. Price was a little bit of a socialist. He was interested in community action in general, probably got hooked up with John O'Cow through some of these more socialist circles and offered to help them, said, look, you know, I will design a couple of plans for these houses that you guys can then build and execute yourself. So he designed basically two plans for the houses, one a single story design and one a two story design. But with the idea that they could be altered or expanded depending on the family's needs. Now right at the bottom of the photo you see this big table full of wonderful food and things like that. A part of this development was actually going to be a general store and even a general eating facility so that the veterans could all come together and have community experiences together. There was also going to be a kindergarten on site. So through my research it's unclear whether that kindergarten ever ended up coming into being. Next slide please. So here is just this great photo on the very far left is Alfred Price. Sitting next to him is someone who architectural buffs on the island will recognize Vladimir Asipov. Price and Asipov were working together in a firm that they had created around this time and Asipov was kind of loosely interested in this project. But Price was really the one who was pushing it forward. And what you see here are people within this potential community looking over plans discussing the kinds of things that they might need or want in their houses. Next image please. Yeah, and here's just another really wonderful photo of actually women, housewives being involved within the design of this community. And I think a really important thing to point out for Hawai'i in particular is that the ethnic makeup of the Veterans Village complex was thoroughly multi-ethnic and multicultural. That was actually one of the goals and it was one of Price's goals. That this would be an integrated community full of veterans from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds with the idea that everyone could live together in harmony. Whether it completely worked out that way or not, we don't know. But that was definitely the goal. Yeah. Next slide. So this is the site that was chosen in Pololo Valley. It had been farmland before. And part of the way that Price and the veterans got a hold of this land is that it was actually, we'll talk about this later, relatively low costs. It was agricultural land that wasn't being used. And the person who owned it, sympathizing with the plight of veterans, many of whom were homeless at the time, was actually willing to virtually donate the land at a very low cost. So land always being one of the most expensive things on the island. The veterans got a real deal here. Next slide. And this is what happened. A development of really lovely, in many cases, two-in-one story houses situated along the riverbed. There were some problems with that later in terms of flooding. But that ended up being solved through barricades and barriers being placed through the stream area. Yeah, but wooden houses very simply built. And actually also expressing a fair number of modernist styles. Price was a modernist architect. So you see these wide expanses of windows, a lot of horizontal kind of orientation. Next slide. And this is just a curbside shot. And you'll notice in a few, like, squint your eyes and look at the text. It says here the homes are shown of those by Yesunori Kano, George Miyashiro, Herbert Tang, Yoshiro Fukuyama, and Flint Yonashire expressing really the multi-ethnic makeup of this community life. And here's just some examples of the one-story house versus the two-story house. And one of the things that I always notice about the house on the ride is, in a way, it has this sort of Frank Lloyd right quality to it with those wide overhangings. Carla and Brian are actually from Chicago. It's a little bit of connection. So there's a little bit of connection there. It probably looks a little bit familiar to you. In a variety of ways. Do you know how many of these two-story houses versus the one-story? Yeah, that's a good question. I actually haven't gone out and done a count. The one-story houses were more prevalent, mainly because they were cheaper. The way this worked was veterans were getting loans for the building of their houses, but not individually. The loans were administered through the American Veterans Committee. So it really was a collective organization. And veterans who were interested in this development could pay in a certain amount towards this collective mortgage. So they weren't being asked to finance these things completely on their own. There was also a lot of money available through the federal government in terms of giving veterans a certain amount of money towards the construction of their houses. So there was really a lot of investment, both at the community level, but also at the federal level at this time, which is something I think we're lacking now. I mean, the federal government had an interest in making sure that veterans weren't homeless, given that they had just won World War II for the United States. And unfortunately, today what we're looking at is a housing crisis or a much broader swath of the population. Veterans are, in some ways, getting decent services here on the island, but everyone else is not. Yeah, yeah. So it's a complex question. Yeah, so next slide. This is just another one of the single-family houses. I have a bunch of images of these. We can move on and actually just scroll through a couple of the. These are the color images. And this is actually one of the best-preserved houses. It's on Ua Drive in Palo Alto Valley. This is probably the house that is most like what price originally designed. It's had the fewest alteration. So we have these nice kind of lathe screens. Lots of little details, both in color and in trim. But the houses themselves are very, very low-cost. So not a lot of money is being spent, but price was trying to design in detail. And if ornamentation, if you will, I think through the use of very prosaic and kind of plebeian materials to make these really livable. And they all have a broad overhang. And some sun shading, it looks like. Yeah, absolutely. So those overhanging eaves, definitely always something that's important in a tropical climate to keep them shady and soft. And potential for natural ventilation. Yes. So protect yourselves from the sun and allow the wind through. Also up off the ground. Yes. Yes, that too. Yeah, so they're actually all raised off the ground. And I think I haven't completely figured that out yet. But for one, I think it has to do with insects coming in. But also because the Pololo stream is so nearby, if there is flooding, the houses can be elevated and protected. Yeah. The next image. Yeah, and this is a shot of the same house. So lots of window space, lots of potentially natural ventilation, although lots of people have put in air conditioning. I see that in the window. Do you know how big the, how many bedrooms some of these have? Yeah, so most of them have three bedrooms. They were really designed for families. So the ideal being the nuclear family, so a mother, a father, and one to two children. Some of the two story examples do have four bedrooms. And in some cases, the veterans who built them, because they were allowed to change the plans, actually added bedrooms on the ground story. Rather than just having the building raised, but they finished the basement. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. There's just a lot of flexibility built in. Price made the plans, but then said, do what you want with it. Yeah. Next image. Just another little detail shot, the color. And I think the next image. Yeah, you can see those wide eaves for ventilation. And next image. And this is just one of my favorite parts. What a great detail. Great detail. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, using very economical materials, but doing it in such a way to give it some aesthetic content. Was there a community association that was set up? Or, I mean, traditionally, today we think of it as like paint colors and deciding what kind of mailbox you can have. As far as I know, there was a community association, but I don't think they dictated details like that. People seem to, if you go walk around the Veterans Village now, I mean, so many alterations have been made at this point. But I think people were actually really allowed to do whatever they wanted in terms of decorative trim. I'm sure that Price would have preferred that everything stayed the way that he designed it. Totally. But he kind of was willing to be fairly hands-off afterwards. Unlike someone like Frank Lloyd Wright, who micromanaged. He wanted to have total control. Yeah. Our next slide. Yeah, and then just that nice sort of labing for screen. And a lot of people have actually removed that from the houses now. Many people have actually enclosed these areas to make another room, essentially. But the idea being here that it's a place to put your shoes and to kind of get out of the weather and maybe be a little bit outside, even still when you're partly inside. It was nice because it would give you a little bit of privacy, too, when you're arriving or leaving or just to keep your front door open if you wanted to. It's a threshold. It is. It was the importance of the threshold. It is. We were talking on the way over about learnings from this for today or any housing development in Hawaii. And I think one of the things that we were talking about was how low density this was. Even though they appear in photo to be rather close to one another, it's much more spread out than you would get today. It is, absolutely. So these sort of privacy screens that you see at the front, sort of blocking the view into the front door from neighbors, those are the sorts of things we were hearing from the people that we talked to in the community about what they wanted and their housing. Because they do want a threshold. But every time there's available space, it gets enclosed and turned into interior space. So I think that's one of the. Yeah. So some of the communities that exist today that we've talked to are very similar in terms of density. So for example, for 16 acres, there's about 221 units, which would be the equivalent to like 94 units, maybe 414 acres, which is what this development is like. And that privacy is really important. So this would be an example of how to design a screen, for example, for that privacy. And also have access to the outdoors too, not only just have the door right away, right in front of a sidewalk. Yeah. Or the car. Or the car, right. And there are some examples. And we can just go through some of these images really quickly so we can actually get to the more contemporary substance part of the discussion. These are the interiors, really low cost, very simple. But the built-ins are what we were hearing from residents what they actually wanted in homes. So when they were moving in between units over the course of their lifetime, they didn't have to move big furniture. So the value of the built-ins are in this particular image, I think are really interesting for current context as well as in 1940. You don't have to buy all that stuff. So it actually is more sustainable too, because then you can use it and reuse it. No matter who moves into it. So that's some of the value that design can bring. And that's very simply detailed, made of nominal umber. It doesn't have to be fancy, which is what this image is showing, but nicely designed. Yeah, and that's actually something, and this is getting all architectural history, but this is something that an idea that Price actually kind of imported from Vienna because he grew up in Vienna and was trained in Vienna, which was at least when he was trained in the 20s and 30s, the land of built-ins. Everyone was going gaga over built-in furniture, and he was able to kind of translate that into a holy context and also to a low-cost development kind of context. Yeah, next image. Yeah, so lots of good cabinetry, lots of good storage space. I think having a house for people where everything is laid out in a way that makes it very usable is a good thing. That's a roomy kitchen. It is a roomy kitchen. For 1940s especially. Yes, it is. But it's also giving you an opportunity. It's kind of like what we call today open plan. A little bit because it's giving you the opportunity not only to look out and not block in the view, to look outside while you're doing the dishes or cooking, but also an opportunity to have a big table, which I'm guessing I think is there. Maybe in the image. So that you can have dining and have cooking at the same time, which is really like a modern idea. Yeah. A very modern idea. Yeah, and it was really not until the 1940s that people, at least in the United States, started to develop that idea of the open kitchen. So price is kind of on the cutting edge in a project like this, and then bringing what's kind of avant-garde in a way to this low-cost housing development. And those are stainless steel countertops, which are, is that correct? I don't know those are original, actually. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing they probably are. They could be. Yeah, I think they could be. It looks like a white kitchen supply. Yes. We have those in our unit now from the 1960s, yes. Wow, wow. But it is a really great kitchen. And I just want to point one thing out because I know another image is coming up, but the cabinet, the kitchen cabinetry, matches around the house, if I'm not wrong. And I think that that's also really nice. So we'll see it, I guess, next. Yeah, the next image? Yeah, there you go. This is the bathroom, the toilet paper image. But I just wanted to highlight these lovely drawers, everything being built in, nice kind of bringing in a pop of color through that fermica and through that tile. So making these really livable, aesthetically pleasing spaces, but for not much money. That's probably not the original toilet paper holder. Probably not. Yeah, I'm guessing that was new. It doesn't match. It doesn't match, yeah, yeah. But next image? Yeah, so this is actually one of the larger examples, but it's still, again, as you pointed out, using that screen as the threshold, and then doing that really nice, angular little railing of the details. So just throwing in these little details kind of in life in the house, in what would be otherwise a kind of prosaic sort of building. I guess now, I mean, it would be good, I think, since we've seen a little bit of these, just to kind of turn the discussion over to what this might teach us about our contemporary situation, and I'd like to hear some of the work that you guys have been doing, particularly your opinions on how this kind of community design with architects helping, because that was a key catalyst here, which realized a really wonderful project, how that's going for you. I think some of the learnings that we can take from this particular project that we can still apply today, maybe we can start there, we were discussing, for example, the idea that the user is involved. So these families are talking to the architect directly and the table, they're having discussions, they're telling him what they want, what they need, and so he can take those learnings and bring them directly into the design. Also that them being a community and thinking about all these amenities, probably we're thinking a lot about what the ideal community would be, and we're brainstorming, I guess, on that, and we've been talking a lot about sustainability, we've been talking about walkability, and we've been talking about equity, and I think in terms of having amenities around you, it makes for a walkable community potentially. I hear there was a daycare plan, and maybe a park, and I think you mentioned something else, I forget what it was. Yeah, basically a grocery store. So that would be ideal, so then you can, not that long, you can just go out and walk and get what you need. So I think those are very important. I think the idea of the walkable community is one of the things that we're extremely interested in today, and I think the density that was appropriate in 1940, which is approximately how many, was it? 72 years ago. 72 years ago. Yeah. At 86 houses, that's crazy. Oh gosh. 86 houses on 14 and a half acres, which today might support, in a mixed use sort of, there's this phrase, high density, low rise idea for walkable communities, if they can have a grocery store, if they're adjacent to a school as well, and a restaurant, if you're lucky, or a small store where you can pick up just odds and ends every day, they can support more like 1,000 or 2,000 units on that same size. And that's what we're looking at, I think, to try to figure out with the real coming in on these sort of transit oriented developments with larger parcels that the city owns or Hawaii Public Housing Authority owns, that they can be developed to a greater density and still be really great places to live. So we're looking at this idea of 20 minute living, where can you walk within 20 minutes or if you have to hop into a car, can that be a really short trip in the car and reduce overall number of car trips, which helps with traffic problems which we get to enjoy in Hawaii along with the weather. But also it improves health because you walk more, you're not in the car all the time, not only physical health, but also mental health, you get outside and it's just more livable. Do you think in terms of, and I realize we're almost out of time, but do you think in terms of just the financial aspect, this was a situation in which a community organization essentially was responsible for obtaining the mortgage or the bigger mortgage for the development through individual buy-ins by veterans themselves. Is that a model that could possibly work today? Or is that just, are those days gone? That financing model is very, might have been cutting edge at the time and I know in Chicago they were trying to do that in the 50s and 60s as well. Very levels of success. I think today that is not enough to make one of these projects happen. Public-private partnerships are a necessity. They're over a billion dollars, these sort of developments that can support low-rise, high-density living in the city where people wanna live near work and near their schools. So those sort of economic models are not quite as sophisticated as the ones we need today. It's a whole lot of these sorts of projects. I think we need a whole show to talk about. I know, we should do another one. I would like just to say that what is important is that to understand that design is for everybody and it doesn't have to be fancy but it could be for all different types of housing. Well, thank you so much for coming with, this was just much too short. I always feel like I could have so much more to talk about. But thank you for joining us. This was, I think, a really interesting discussion. Got to look at some interesting buildings, have a little bit of conversation about what housing needs to be here on the island now and hopefully in the future. And I do think it's always important to kind of go back to history sometimes to see what we can do in the future. So thank you very much for joining us.