 Why is human-humane architecture broadcasting live from the opposite ends of the world, we would say? Me here in here, Munich, Germany, and today I'm happy to say that our guest will be our CEO, Jay Feindel, hi Jay. Hi Martin, nice to join you today. Always a pleasure, thank you. Let's jump right in and get up the first page here because the last four shows we have been making the case that there is actually a built environment that is as beautiful as our most beautiful natural environment on our islands of Hawaii and that is from the past and there's the Conrad Hilton, the big hotel guy right, has started his career of tropical resorts in Hawaii with the Kahama Hilton so we were talking about that and that is even attracting Hollywood attention. Eric Bricker who's a Hollywood producer who is just about to launch his current movie which is about the classic air streams so these tin cans that people you know like to move around in the country they're not allowed so much on our islands but elsewhere but before that he had made a movie about one of the most iconic architectural photographers Julius Schulman and the next movie he will do about Edward Killingsworth who is the architect of many spectacular projects from its century that were blessed to have on our islands and you see on the right side two projects at the bottom that Ed wasn't able to accomplish and they're inclusive projects. One is a little small house that you see in the interior picture and the other one is more exciting the bottom is courtyard houses that he was suggesting for the Feveas in South America and the most iconic house from when Ed started his career were the case study houses which got generations of German architects and others. Hollywood decided that although maybe Europeans had invented modernism but Americans have brought it to a way more enjoyable level and the most iconic house of that time is the case study house number 22 that Eric choose for his that movie which you see at the very middle on the left and below that you see a project that the architect that one Pierre Koenig was able to accomplish either which is basically housing for the Native American indigenous population. Both these architects tragically ended up making exclusive architecture which is beautiful they were wrong on that one but they both very much regretted that they weren't able to serve the underserved and that's what we want to talk about today too right. Yeah okay but I want to mention when you talk about the Hilton I want to mention that you know talking about the cargo configurations using containers and all that and the stepped back thing you know out of out of Mayan architecture if you will I guess you're gonna want to talk about that but it brings to mind the Hilton Hotel in Kona I don't think it's there anymore I'm not sure I've been there in a while but this was just south of Kona town on the water and it was the same it just occurred to me it was the same kind of thing it was open it was stepped back it was kind of a concrete structure but an open concrete structure and it was really beautiful and unusual and I think it achieved a lot of architectural value of the kind you know you and I were talking about the last time we talked about using containers. It looked like the mock-ups that you designed and it only occurs to me now so that's just another example Martin and I and I hope that you can take a look at that sometime and see if you agree with me. No you're right you're right I'm recalling you're absolutely right let's go to the next slide and share something that you had talked me with Jay and that is you know the buzzword of affordable housing and you were sending me an article that was featuring the project that we see at the top right which is a project that is you know supposed to be in Kailua on the other side of our island of Oahu and you were bouncing that off me and you basically said well how do you like that and we had this discussion I said no I don't like it because it and just this morning our you know exotic escapism expert Suzanne told me you know it just looks like what we see when we look out of our window which you see at the very top left with our 25 year young micro compact french car the building in the back doesn't it look like what you see on the right which project for Kailua well the difference is I'm having 55 degrees now drizzling grain and in the summer in the winter I'm going to have 20 below and I need these walls to to stay warm we don't need that so that's why I call what we see at the very top invasive and inappropriate and it's also going to be fairly expensive because it's going to be built in a conventional way where you know you a lot of people and you know you have a lot of hours and that adds up so that that is why and so what you already said today we want to look into can't we do this better are we going to look into what you see at the bottom which I call the alchemist chamber which is my office up at your age and see all these artifacts of exploration if we can do things better so let's jump to the next slide and share with the audience Jay what we've been talking about in the review some weeks ago where the emerging generation has had pushed this idea that I had to to a more developed level and this is the initial idea we call the ccc's cargo courtyard cabanas and it's based on the all-american capitalist invention of buying one and getting one free right that says american as you can get so what you do is you space the containers out by their width of eight feet and you automatically get a courtyard for free so container is eight 40 by eight so 320 of enclosed space and then you cut out the side of the container so you get the same 320 as a courtyard for free that makes you 640 and the provocative thing is that the raw material construction cost would be three thousand dollars because that's roughly what a what a used chip at the container costs so how does that sound well I mean you're talking before the show about you know I mean the cost sounds terrific but there's something else too that you achieve with these containers we were talking before the show about the notion of trying to be trying to be attractive to people who otherwise could not afford housing at all and you want to get them in there you want to encourage them to come in you don't want to make a chicago complex chicago you know ghetto out of it so you know what do you do well you you have this forgive my expression but faux art faux upper so so the individual says you know that maybe cheap materials and it may be very you know efficient and everything but it's it looks looks pretty nice it makes me feel like I'm living in an art an art experience or even an upper an upper class experience because it's so kooky and I think that's one way of bringing people in so aside from the cheap aspect I think it's it's magnetic attractive welcoming let's go to the next slide for that j here and you know to sort of cover this a little bit this is actually I learned a lesson very early in my career that architects can't know anything everything anymore these days everything is so complex but you need to know who knows and I you know I'll probably get ousted by my department but for the longest time you know that I've been saying that actually the engineers in many cases have been the better architects you actually had my boss our provost Michael Bruno as your guest a couple weeks ago to report Michael is an engineer and so here at the very left here you see Ian Robertson who was a structural engineer up at your age and we and Bill Chapman our dean we're sitting down here with one of our emerging talents and thinking so how can we push this sort of cabana thing that is one story and that way it will be sprawl and if you know if you do it as an interim solution it might be okay but otherwise we can't waste any more land on the island we gotta keep the country country in order to do that we gotta make the city a city and so we were thinking what about if we stack them and if we get to the next slide this is what almost automatically came out of that is that sketch down there that I did that you end up automatically with cigarettes and that's not because of the of those arts kind of beautifying idea I think there's a lot of BS in those arts which engineers don't get caught up in but we architects unfortunately the reason why this is stepping down is not because of some romantic analogy of mountains or whatever what people are welcome to see in there but it's because on the ends where there's no support for the container and if you want to stay on budget you can't afford another structure so you automatically step up or down and you know how you look at that so it's a very sort of a rational sort of you know perceiving that you know but let's let's talk about the design itself it is a pyramid it's it's got significance historically it's baked into you know global civilization the experience of humankind there's something about a triangle a pyramid it gives you strength it gives you weight it gives you you know stability and longevity doesn't it I mean it has it has a symbolism about it beyond just the efficiency am I right no it certainly has but again different than in the bozards BS that's not the beginning that's one of the interpretations and that's like in the tradition of true modernism just like that call a hill you can see in it like you know some kind of plant because there is like these branches sticking out you know and things like that but you can also see it as a dry cut as its architect Ron Lindgren likes to call it structural expressionism so really depends on what you want to see in there and and that's basically what what what it will become next next slide please here because we want to share again the development this is what you were talking about this is this is not homified this is not beautified yet but that's the space you get as you said if you pick up a couple more bucks you can make it yours right it's personal right and personalize it and and that's I think we agree that's what human nature wants and needs right well there's something about the investment the investment by the individual who lives there if you give him something that's complete if you give him something it's complete the the problem is he's not personally invested or she but if you give him something where he's gonna he's got to put the the wall surfaces on the the wall coverings on if you give him something where he can he can hang something he can fix something he can personalize something then he's invested and now all of a sudden it's not somebody else's house it's his house and I think the concept is exactly right you give him a I don't want to say a shell but something that needs a little more and you let him do a little more yeah no and and also like next slide here in this sort of flexible and adaptable system you can also cut out more of the other consumer container side and then you can create a larger unit right because we might end up you know all these people in the kind of lower paying job areas they're losing their jobs now they might be families right and they might be ohana as we call them on the island so you can accommodate that as well so it's a very flexible system it's not these stuff people in boxes when she actually do in the conventional affordable housing where you stack it's one of the same unit that's repeated over and over again and you're like that chicken in that in that crate right here although it looks more sort of rigid but it's actually softer on the inside and that is conventional right and you change it is it modular is it modular it is not changing back so if I don't like the way I cut it I can yeah reorganize it again yeah yeah and you know the class that this comes out of this called tree texture I call it like that and you know first I wanted to call it because all we need is you know why is a roof so I wanted to call it roofy texture but then it's a night class so I was taught that might be misunderstood so I call the tree texture because the tree is the thing that's most comfortable to be under in our very privilegedly mild tropics right you feel that's all you need and so that's a product out of it and just like nature it is adaptable and just like a hedge you can cut a hedge and I'll keep it short you let it grow so this thing is organic again in a conceptual way not in an aesthetic next slide although we get to some organic aspects of it too next slide this is how we probably so we're facing when you age opens up again this is what I've always been teaching outdoors this is a Vladimir Asipov Saunders Hall which houses the department of urban and regional planning here and we're doing these mass studies here to get a feel for it literally and figure of me speaking how these would step and so this is the crew here the team that was doing that next slide and this is sort of you know what we came up with as sort of the composition and again you you feel like this is a natural way of going you know stratospheric the containers and next slide wait wait before you go to the next slide though Martin you know you've got you've got a number of pictures showing the three you know pyramid shapes triangular shapes all in a row all in a row and touching each other and I'm wondering if if that's part of the concept that you've come up with or is it possible and to me this would be attractive is to have them in some other arrangement where they're not just all in a row all in a row sounds so linear can we do it in some other way would that be better could it be better you can we'll see at the very end we actually proposed just one pyramid but there there you can configure it them in a way you know they can one of the reasons again as you were calling you know in world architecture the pyramid of the ziggurat is one of the archetypes and it is like that also because it's the most rigid configuration that you can imagine you're wider at the base and you're thinner at the top so this is almost ideally showing how gravity flows makes it very sturdy because we're we're now in a COVID chaos why we are in racial riots we're economical exodus and just wait for the hurricane sees the kicking which it just did so we might see the next thing coming right which is nature's forces fighting back and and this is this is a very resilient way of building so people don't only have to feel comfortable because of the space but also because they're pretty well protected from the from the elements go to the next slide because we then had to look in how so we detail them so containers have doors on one side we're thinking we leave the doors on and can use them if we put them on the east or the west and we turn them they could be shading devices and they could also carry additional outdoor space which we call in nights next slide is the other side would need some kind of access to the unit so some kind of vertical circle laser we're thinking to kind of pull out some kind of system that allows us to travel vertically and then potentially using vegetation as a shading for if it would be the west elevation or the east elevation next slide you know we we discussed that the last time and um uh you had you had a kind of a funicular funicular kind of affair sort of a uh 45 degree rail elevator we get to this now again i keep bugging you and poking it provoking you without i just want to add looking at that last slide previous slide struck me that you could put containers on one side see the row of containers closest to the camera here you can make those you can make those containers into a passageway for a stairway now of course the ADA is going to require more than just a stairway but but if you wanted to have a stairway and i think most people would like to have a stairway you could you could build a stairway very neatly very aesthetically very effectively using one one uh one line of these containers on the side no perfectly and that's where they would go exactly and it's this beautiful basically you know ascending and descending that you know you feel your your stratosphere in yourself you're getting higher and higher in elevation and it's outdoors and you catch the breeze you don't catch the bug these all things you know that we have to address in in architecture more than ever so well the next slide and this is exactly kind of the situation that you would then would see on the right side is this corridor on the left side which we uh with our horticulture team members said this would be the the growing terraces almost like again not literally but figuratively speaking the terror terraces or one of our team members twice from vietnam he said this is how we grow rice so in the world and wine grows on on bluffs even here in germany so that's a very uh internationally known system how we can grow and that's another thing right custom housing is one thing but custom food is the other thing that is a burden to people so because what we want to create is sort of worry-free housing right where people don't get burdened with with a mortgage for the rest of the life which ties them down right this is this is not this is not paradise right it's slavery of capitalism if you want so what you do to people conventionally and we want to change that well returning to the um you know the practical of it uh if you give me an area where i can grow some food that is a real tremendous benefit and a lot of people should and would but you have to secure it you have to make it so that um you know i'm i'm the one with the access not everybody else how do you do that is that happening in this design we're looking at now it is and let's move on because that's going to be addressed in the next couple of impressions here this is this uh sort of supposedly west facade and you're there's something interesting when you uh there's actually a project i send you and we have to share with the audience in dusseldorf here in germany a building that is entirely covered by christoph engenow and then we had olf meyer who worked for him in the show with the old urban transcendence days and so what's what's interesting with green is if you make the green essential so people need it for eating they also need it for stay cool in their space they will keep it intact right they will water it they will take care of it because it takes care of them i think is that easy at least in theory and we should prove it in in in reality right this is not so much architecturalism the human experiment it is yeah next slide so this is going to be uh the where the planters are the elevators so even people on wheelchairs or older people you know can can do their gardening in there next slide and and this is again the uh we have a young the youngest team member is is my partner susanne teenager sammy and sammy as you see at the bed and bright we did a show when i was we were in in zürich and he's as a generation is very interested in the exclusive as they're taking pictures of the lumpo females of the ferrari's there in zürich but he now immediately qualified himself being an expert team member in the inclusive as well because when we're thinking about how in the world do we do the circulation in equally efficient and effective way using a system that's usually you know something you want to use for architecture immediately set you know construction scaffolding why don't you use that so we you know we picked up on that idea the middle picture on the right is a is a is a project by a dutch firm mpr dv you would get the spectacular scarecase in rata dam that goes up to the roof of a of a historic building and it's it's very catchy as you said you got to make it sexy right otherwise you know it doesn't fly so that's that's a good precedent for that next slide and and this is the uh this is the other side this is the southern side and again um energy creation or generation is is the iffyest point especially if you're on a budget so as if now we propose formal takes knowing they're gonna need an initial investment but that's where they would be optimally they would both create the balustrade and be at the same time the generator for the electricity you need which is however you know uh keeping consumption down because the the major consumer a air condition you you have cut out because the whole thing is easy breathe next slide you know martin what what strikes me is that um not not to say that every kind of meeting in hawai has common common amenities you know like a meeting room uh who knows a ping pong room lounge anything a lobby um and uh you know i think it it does it is an enhancement to any project to have at least something like that does this design have anything like that you're right on you see it on this side is actually where uh either the stairs would be on the or on the other side again usually it's a luxury amenity right it means common spaces means you know more investment but here it's just it's just three thousand dollars more because that's what the container costs that's adjacent to it and we host it so you can you can actually accomplish that and achieve that in a very cheap way we're really trying here we show we are really trying to have every component of the project being within the philosophy of repurposing reusing and here we know that the fishing industry has to switch back to buy degradable fishernets because all these beautiful sea live as the poor turtle here gets caught in the plastic ones so then we can get the plastic ones and basically make the the the the bellows straight infill cover that entirely with fishernets with reused fishernet and that's all we need and then the vines or the vegetation can grow up on it uh next slide so this is uh we're almost at the end but this one here is most compelling one of our team members um basically Keola is currently uh hold um taking care of the Charleau house which we as a school of architecture take care of which um was built by Pete Wimberley for the artist Charleau and so he walks by the exclusive Kailua beachfront or bicycles by where he goes to get food at the Kahala mall and so he said you know let's let's basically hijack let's annex one of these uh one of these lots which sounds highly radical revolutionary socialists but not so much because we're indicating here this could be like a flash mob event because the containers because of the modularity they only need like a day or two to basically come together and they only need the same time to go away if they would have to so maybe we find an owner who has a lot and you know hasn't yet decided how to develop it he lets us be there for that little while and as you point out we make it look good and feel good and work well and then it will actually help his lot right and the appreciation of the plot yeah well if it works he's more likely to let you keep it there longer isn't it um so you want to not only impress your your residents you wouldn't impress the landlord where he feels this is a you know a positive aspect of the program exactly and let's go to the last line which it has to be because we're at the end of the show but uh I want to thank um the team which we're listing there at the top of the screen um I also want to thank the jury which you have been part of and um uh but the canister con has been as well and Bill Chapman has been part of that and tropical rockwood and we're actually going to push the project to the to the next level in the fall in the studio where we call it favei and it's it's again you know it's um I never wanted to think about suburbia but people do it anyway if Martin likes it or not so we will go out there and suggest and propose a better uh better out west there better couple lay you know this couple lay really have to be that sort of suburban american track home tragedy or could it be better and that's where we're basically investigating it and so we we keep you posted on that jay well i think i'm going to take it further martin there are a lot of issues not necessarily or architectural issues but there are issues about ownership about leasing about you know the special arrangement with the landlord there's this lots of financing um and you know i would say that you could really get traction on this as a real project beyond just conceptual and have it work in hawaii and therefore uh you know be a be a symbol to other places so carry on will you i will i promise i will pass on the encouragement to the dean and that will fuel us so thank you jay all right we're at the end of the show see y'all next week for another episode of human human architecture we're going to have another emerging talent uh kelly keano and the title of the show will be uh koko housing no nuts and you will be surprised what what he's suggesting something equally uh surprising to say the least and until then stay all safe and sound and tropically exotic bye bye