 ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome back to the Human-Human Architecture here live from Honolulu, Hawaii. Today is very special 2018 midterm election edition. So I'm going to say something that I never say and will never say again. You can leave now because you should because there's, if you haven't voted only then because there's two hours left and every vote counts. So that being said, welcome back because you're now watching it YouTube when you come back from voting. But we're going to keep on going here because I thought how can I best address this sort of special day and myself being a first-generation immigrant here to this lovely island and the United States as well. So I felt most comfortable to get a fellow previous former alien. And so I have Mireille Turin with me. Hi Mireille. Hello. Thanks for being here together. And if we can get up slide number one, the ones of you who don't know Mireille, you can go back to the previous show which was called Urban Transcendence and that of course needs to be updated because that's been several years. But we introduce you where you come from and how you got here. And the picture in the middle is the clue is the key. The show was called From the Mountains to the Trees. And you came here having won a tree house competition. And so your sort of vision to live year round outside in the trees drove you here and basically kept you here. But then at the very top left, you sort of moved on to a little bit more domesticized tree house, I guess. And this is the littlest trend house up there and you actually lived with Vicky and Bob. For a little while and we did a show with Bob about the house. And so we were looking for a house that maybe best embodies why we Americanos are so thrilled to be here. So something that we won't find where we're from and you're by the way from Switzerland and I'm from Germany. So something that is unique here to the island we're looking for. And the two pictures at the bottom here is from the last show with the Soto. This gives us a clue because the Soto came back while researching up on the university hill and he said, wow, there's one building that I'm extremely fascinated by. That's Calla Hall. And that's by the architect that we're going to introduce today with another piece of work that you, Mire, are very, very familiar with. And let's move to the next picture slowly but surely getting closer. We both brought our textbooks, our related textbooks from this famous German publisher, Taschen, here, which we call Taschen books, Taschenbücher. And why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit why you associate that book with the project you're going to introduce to us. So I brought along the Prouvez book here, that one. And Jean Prouvez was an engineer architect in France in the 1920s to the 60s mostly and he was also collaborating with Le Corbusier. And he invented a lot of interesting steel structures, steel facades and fast buildings that could be set up really fast in the tropics or for affordable housing. So in a certain way the method of construction that we will see in our house that we're going to present today, I was sort of reminded to his work, to the French architect's work and we'll probably see a little bit why. And also you reminded me or had to tell me, had to educate me that the architect we're going to introduce today has worked with Peter Shee and Peter had a show here and this is on the very top right here is the screenshot of his show. We're unable to reach out to Peter again for this show so we're sort of on our own and do our research. So I brought my Tushin book as well, which is the next slide please, because it reminded me very much of the case study house series up in California by Intenza initiated and then Julius Schulman was the one who did this amazing photographs and that basically brought it to the entire world and architects were looking up to America being so progressive. And one of the case study house architects we have on the island that's Edward Killingsworth and we did the Kahala Hilton hotel and the apartments and some other buildings. One of them we will do a show when I'm back in Germany in the spring, one of the first shows will be about a hotel renovation that will then belong to the Halle Kalani. But then we were digging deeper and I looked at Killingsworth and I thought there's actually another guy that applies more to the house we're going to talk about today and that's this book here by Pierre Koenig, this one here, this guy and his case study house if you can go back to the third slide at the very bottom left of the third slide, the next one please, yeah. That's the most iconic I guess and the most famous of the case study houses, the number is 22 and it's the Stahl House. I was getting as close as the very picture on the on the right bottom where when I was in the Hollywood Hills it was not open at that day so I could only go to it from the very bottom and did the shot here and I ran into this lady in her Escalade Cadillac who had a pathetic Tuscany style home and I was there with my, my old big boat car and she was suspicious what I'm doing there and I said well you know I'm this is that famous house and she's like what famous house so she didn't know she had no clue and I said well you got to understand there might be more people like me showing up because this is something that many people in the world basically worship and my dear sister Cynthia actually had the chance when you were still in the animation industry shortly after she came out of school she knew people who knew people who knew Joe Silva who was the one who did the Matrix movies and he used to own the house by that time so she knows it from inside and so that's that that's sort of you know how we can sort of the context we can put the project in that we're going to talk today about so let's go to the next slide and this is this is your house and it reminds me very much sort of the this approach to the street of these houses is very much that people say where is the house I just see walls and you know I don't see a door so it's the opposite to the Victorian where it's like it's very impressive and very representative and you know a big fake front as you find out when you go through because then it's like oh well this is it with these houses it's almost the opposite right and we wanted to say something in German in Germany we call that which I don't know how to translate that actually but maybe in a certain way I find it's like it's like a shell a clam shell and inside there's a pearl you know the outside is very plain but by the time you you take the pain to get to know the person or the building in that case you actually see all the beauties that are inherent in this in this design and we'll yeah and a little picture on the on the top left is an association you have sort of with the strategy of the building right and it's a reference back home to Le Corbusier again yeah because the way that the building's been this constructed reminded me of like you know building a structure with posts and here and lentils and the roof first and then you're already in the dry so to speak and and that was the idea with Le Corbusier's house in Zurich but in this case it's even more I think interesting because of the location where the house is situated gets a lot of rainfall and it's kind of like at the cost where it's rainy and dry so it's right in that interstitial space and I could imagine that it was really beneficial for the people that had to work on that construction site to have a roof over their head fairly quickly and then you know do the build out while being in the dry yeah that was very clever and it sure is and so before you walk us through the house let's go the next slide because this was me when you had me over and you can see something at the very front left is something that's new to that wall and then it has to do with a gentleman at the very top right who's on Hibbert because the story is I mean in a nutshell from my point of view that you I remember you reached out to me and you said well there's this there's this project I'm asked to basically look at the kitchen maybe remodel it and then you said once I saw what's around the kitchen you basically the gave the recommendation not to do anything at least not the way they wanted it and that's how the whole project started which we're excited to hear from you now what's it all about the house and you so yeah so I was asked almost four and a half years ago or maybe even five now to look at the kitchen of this house and as we talked about before you know the house looks very plain from the outside and I didn't really expect that much and by the time I got inside the house we didn't come through the more representative entrance we came through the entrance that's more towards the kitchen I was just blown away by the potential that was in this building and I told the clients right away that I don't want to touch any of the structural elements and none of the you know the layout the way it's been joined and everything but I think the house could need some TLC and just just bring it back to its original or as close to its original glory as possible but it wasn't a very easy task to to begin with we we didn't talk for another two years and then they asked me again to do something with the kitchen and I told them again well you know I think we should really approach this very delicately and by the time I had a thought that I could actually show them the Lillia Strand House and sort of remind them or show them or introduce them to almost a sibling you know because there's so many details in that particular house that are very I mean identical to certain things at the Lillia Strand House and and after they saw the house they jumped on the wagon and we're actually excited to take that trip and you and the end of the trip we're at the beginning of it but the conclusion is the success is that you know it's on the historic list now so it's registered so it's preserved for the coming generations to show and as we believe it's a very unique house but let's walk in so next slide is basically you here you are and you walk us in now so this is like the breezeway of the house and that breezeway connects the carport with that same roof the metal decking roof with the proper house and we'll see the later that would be an entrance to the more private spaces and then on the opposite side of that courtyard is some more representative entrance for guests and once again as we say you don't run straight into the house into the door which is the Victorian way but sort of he goes sideways he takes your round it's a tangential approach yeah I would I would sort of like refer it to the promenade architectural a little bit that the Corbis introduced where you actually by walking experiencing the space you discover new facets and ideas and you're getting more and more excited and I mean other American masters like from Frank Lloyd Wright did that a lot you can see that in Oak Park almost every other house Leucan did it you know in his very different way but there's a great tradition to that that is sort of the anti-missionary you know the anti-British you know that sort of you know my home is my castle approach right of wanting to show up so let's check out that entrance go to the next slide please and here it is we're looking kind of back from that breezeway towards the house and you see these really interesting sliding doors that have this hourglass inlay basically and that that would be the more representative entrance for guests and that would also lead directly into the living room the main living room the horizontal band that we see there the horizontal window band actually is the kitchen windows and and that to me already when I first approached the house had this sort of Jetson feel to me so I was really excited to you know actually enter the house once I came around that first garage wall so carport was interesting you remember from because you're a fellow practicator as well as practicing and educating architecture when you were still at school which you hopefully will be soon again Maggie soggy Mackey was still there and Maggie was here briefly and and we gave a gave a talk here and there was a house at the very top right a reference to that show that had almost exactly that sort of triangular door a pattern and even the color as you can see so it was it was it was a universal thing that then got sort of tweaked you know and customized to the local but it was sort of up in the air right in a in a all the Jetsons you know that that was a cosmic thing it wasn't just specific to a certain place it was now referring to the color palette that you just mentioned I mean that was the atomic age and you actually have that term atomic color I mean they're like an actual color range that people use for posters or you know architecture what not you know so so it's a very encompassing aspect I mean we're talking by the way about the late fifties here building was built in 58 so that's full on that age and I believe and you know probably well deserved or you know no doubt there's probably still viewers who say okay what's so cool about the house it's still like sort of fully so where's the Huey so let's go to the Huey let's go inside and that's the moment that you had right this is the wow effect yeah so so we're looking at basically it's the opposite way from the bed from the living room out to the outside of that that main entrance door and the the very amazing thing was actually that the owners originally got these mahogany furniture from Denmark proper I mean they had like an uncle or a brother of their father was basically shipping a container full with modern Danish design and it of course works absolutely harmonically and perfectly with the building itself so it's really a pearl that on earth there and let's keep on moving let's go to the next slide which is of looking the opposite direction so looking through I mean this is like the case study houses you you basically look through the building right there is a seamless transition between inside and outside and they have this really large door assembly and we only see two now but there's you can see the part of the mirrored ones though it's it's basically four huge doors that open to a side yard entrance yeah side yard and yeah the connection between inside outside is very prevalent and the louvert the wood louvert windows are also very critically placed because they're sort of on opposite angles and they make great cross ventilation we never need any air conditioning in this house you got the best air conditioning the trade when you're conditioning working here let's take a left turn and go to the kitchen as sort of the heart of the building here here we are looking back from the kitchen towards that living room there's a light trough that sort of connects both spaces the dining room space and the living room space it kind of jogs around that back wall there and we see already the kitchen counter it's almost a small island and in that sense a very modern layout for a kitchen I mean very unusual which is also almost the standard today about way back it was more the separated room it would be a wall and just a door that you can close and basically so it's an open kitchen connecting visually and spatially with the dining room area and you know why there is so much light on the on the furniture we will see in the next slide because that's what's behind us if we go to the next page yeah so this is now the look towards the side entrance with which has a louvert door and another big sliding door array assembly on the on the right hand side and the look into the kitchen through that horizontal window band to the carport and what I guess we haven't talked about really is the ceiling that is very unique which is part of that post and pier and metal column very thin metal columns basically two inch diameters which is super super thin and the junior beams are like eight nine inches tall and super thin as well and then on top of these beams lays what they called Robertson decking it's this trapezoidal decking that is a structural membrane in itself so it's super thin the whole roof is only like three inches tall with a layer of insulation cork and then just a built-up roof and that's all there is it's never like the sound is perfect if it rains it's not loud it's it's totally amazing and that's that's what makes the style house you know has the same if you go back to the studio here to the book you can see here on the title on the cover page of the book here in studio you can see the same corrugated metal here so that is like the industrial look right that they introduced and the goal was actually we should say to make very affordable houses for the middle class right and by you know prefabrication and using industrial materials that sort of achieved the goal pretty much and and the surprise is that you would think well it looks not homey right but as you can see here the contrast that you preserved or you we should say brought back because you told me when you got into the house everything was a big pile of things and you needed to go and sort things and put it all back in place and sort of re-orchestrated back to the original right so that wasn't the condition you found when you came in it was money as you can imagine if the house has been lived in for 60 years almost and you know things accumulate and you know it's it's not easy to keep a house in tip-top shape all the time so it was actually almost like an archaeological situation and you know removing for instance window treatments that were very opaque and you know didn't allow for any view that was a huge thing and also now the clear story that you see with the vertical louvers is in is working again and so it just very very much we got to keep and sort of speeding up a little bit going through the house because time is flying by faster let's go to the next page and let's go to the sort of the bedroom part of the house which is sort of in behind this whole theme of tangentially moving through the house this is another you know opening that's alongside a wall and it leads us to the private rooms in a corridor coming from slab on grade concrete slab on grade to now wood flooring in the low and the back and let's go there that's the next slide here so this is the former twins room now transformed into my office temporarily and and you see the the hardwood floor it's a direct three three and a quarter inch oak floor directly sitting on six inch joists wood joists I mean it's super direct yeah we'll look at it from below at the end so let's keep on looking in the other direction in that room right that's your view from your desk have a nice little lounge area there and yeah so maybe what's what's kind of interesting is how somebody actually took the paint to cut out that trapezoidal shape out of these tempered hardwood hardboards so so very amazing joinery that very intricate very detailed so let's move on to the bedroom well this is still part of that one yeah let's move on one more which is the bedroom here yeah so we see like four wood louvert windows next to each other facing a beautiful yard in the back and again the clear story with the vertical glass amazing cool climate in there and it's it's really and these glass louvers if we go to the next slide please remind me going back the left half of that composition here is me back to keller hall where I went through the hallways and I saw one door this is a bathroom still has the vertical glass louvers and unfortunately they were taken out and the whole thing was air-conditioned and it also has these very nice z-shaped aluminum shading louvers that have a little crank on the inside to basically turn them everything is unfortunately you know falling apart and we don't do enough maintenance for that which is a shame again credits to you you stepped in which our university is obviously struggling to do you stepped in as a private person basically did that and and you can see a similarity of you know very clever joinery and carpenter details and and you know using very simple you know very low-key and low-tech materials that perform very well yeah both aesthetically and functionally and you were very super excited about these drawer doors sliding closet doors they're just basically made out of pegboards mounted on a one by three substructure and it perfectly ventilates your closet space so there's no more nothing in your for your clothes it's it's really that's one of the cheapest materials available still these days you know ten dollars exactly and how beautiful both functionally and performatively like nature is one last view from your picture and who was the photo of the photographer of all Koening what's his name now you tricked me now we get we get back let's move on and give you time buy your time let's go to the bathroom here which you had some we're running out of time so we got to go fast but again you were very sort of you know a good mentor for the building and and and trying to you know talk the clients into doing very careful and keeping the integrity renovations and not going to modernize in a way that it would sort of violate the integrity and certain things you know you were able to accomplish and we could do a whole not a show about that because he taught me so many things but we got to move on and go to the next slide here which as we promised this is us looking underneath and you can see that sort of the steel beams here and these these wooden rafters and then just the the wooden flooring is just basically on top of that we were saying this is like you call this in the wall single wall construction this is single floor construction precise and everything is visible so you can maintain it you can monitor it we're saying you can have the chicken running there and they eat the termites so it's like the most obvious way to do it again very sort of reminiscent of Proveys way of working in the tropics right and we so phasing out here is the next slide here is which you already referred to in your bedroom you said you know it's it's the view right so it's I mean you you're in the tropics you have these amazing fruits here that you know the low hanging fruit extremely low hanging as you can see basically the jackfruit on the left hand side is really producing a lot of fruits even on the trunk and we have this Polynesian coconut tree that the fruits are really hanging right on your eye level and next slide there's also a significant sort of you know space left open to be the outdoor extension of the indoor space right and I know that these are very attractive for people to maximize their profitability and they put these 80 use in their backyards and I would say hey please don't do this here because it's so much a composition and I think the outdoor space should be historically preserved as well so I would suggest to put the money into the house versus outside of the house but that's just me and my personal sort of feeling so we got a minute left so next slide I want to thank you for being here for what you've done for the house and maintain it for the future generations and here is the future generation that you basically had over at your house and was we're doing a studio project which we call cargo courtyard cabanas it's about repurposing cargo steel trying to avoid to say shipping containers and you pointed out there's a lot of similarity in sort of the thinking and the making of you know spaces and places and materiality so so thank you for having yeah and the dimensioning we never talked about the bays are eight foot six on center so that's very close to yeah yeah yeah steel what do you call them not container yeah cargo courtyard cabanas yeah so last slide he's here us thinking our partners in life you and your husband Harald who puts up with you through this process and you know you sort of infected him you know with a sort of fetishism about mid-century modern and and as well my partner Suzanne who puts up with me being excited about all these things and and she has a sort of affinity to sort of young living that's why we called the show as what she's pursuing as a business here in a different way but also a related way sort of about the essence of things you know and I think this is what it's about and sort of rejuvenate that sort of lifestyle you know about being more in touch with the elements again and with oneself and architecture that sort of can catalyze that right so with that we want to thank you again and stay tuned next week we're gonna have a show with Richard Lowe who is another eyewitness from these glorious days and Richard is gonna talk about the ward wonder world he was working for Victoria Ward and that's equally fascinating as you know the world of Clifford young here so until then please stay young at heart and soul and see us next week bye bye