 this our show think take wise human human architecture and this is already the 323rd time we do this we look much forward to have you with us all the time and us is me your host Martin Despang and my co-host slash guest Richard Lowell and Bandit Kanista Khan so welcome back guys and as we promised we said we're continue to go along with you Rich and you're aging along agility recently with some roadblocks in the way that you got out of the way and today as we got ourselves into last time we said we do this along with Queen Emma Gardening so what we're looking at Rich gets us back into a time machine actually not us because I was not even born and you were even less born bandit but Rich when that picture was taken you came to the islands right and share us more about how that was and what it has to do with the building complex we see all right well I was invited you might say to come to Hawaii to work on the project generally known as the state capital project because that was the most recent building commissioned to architects to to carry us into the future that's where the legislature meets and that's where the governor's office is things like that that's right and then you somewhere came with an airplane because that was the beginning of the jet age or one was fully into the jet age and then you were at I assume still you know a great Vladimir Asipov easy breezy tropical brutalist airport and then you drove to town right yes and how did you come across or around this building here relative to the way it's depicted here in this historic image share us more about how these feelings how they were when you were building directly behind you on the picture no it's no we are we are about Queen Emma gardens yeah the one white building complex in front and well of course the the key piece of architecture there is the state capital and it was a long time and coming in the sense that a lot of people had an interest in in placing the state capital in accord with their wishes what was that about no he wants you to talk about creamy in mind well I'm getting there but that's that's okay too I think I think this is this is exciting because they're related you make us think about you know that actually the scenario of the two is kind of not on similar that you want buildings in a park where versus buildings just you know next to each other so I think that's why it's legitimately we're confusing the two for for good reason because they both have this kind of setting right but when you were going again for your job to work on the capital district you also then drove to town first you know you came to the airport arrived at the airport you had your suitcases you had your belongings and then you basically drove into town and we see something here that the way we drive to town or most everyone does these days is actually here barely finished and that's the H1 interstate although that's a false term because there's no other state to connect to right but we call it the freeway right and we talk about that term later so that wasn't finished so how did you get around here you told us yesterday how you came actually on which street and how you've got around the building and what your feelings were when you were driving around that just at that same time so the building was just finished for you rich and how is that how was your perception of that recently finished completed building of Queen Emma Gardens that we want to hear from you. Well Queen Emma Gardens was a project of three buildings which you've just seen and can see now in the upper left corner of this screen and they the short one which is to the right of the group is the Prince building and the other two are the King and the Queen buildings which are basically identical to each other and then the Prince building is similar in some details but the different in its mass and it's its prominence but a lot of people were quite excited about Queen Emma Gardens and they were I had a very close friend who was a lawyer for me and others who remarked one time at lunch that he would be happy to live there and I thought that was a very interesting reaction to these buildings and and the garden around them and in them and so forth so that the building the community was excited because it was the the first housing to use a sort of unpopular term housing in in Honolulu and by housing I mean buildings that look like their brothers and sisters like these do and so they became a focal point for me of learning about what's going on in Honolulu now the site that you see with those three buildings on it was about approximately eight acres quite a large urban site actually and so they hired a distinguished architect to be by by they hired I mean the the authority for the remodeling is that the right word not it's not the right word very great redeveloping redeveloping probably right exactly that yeah so this was part of redevelopment area that extended toward us from what we're seeing and went to the right down toward the ocean that was the and covering parts of Chinatown which is kind of a famous area of Honolulu and it did have a lot of so-called blighted housing on it it's not a very nice word but it's a realistic word and so all of those houses were condemned so that the this project could move forward on their site because it was very near the downtown it was very near a lot of a lot of major spots in Honolulu and so when we came up on the on the highway which was to the you can see it on the left of the three buildings and we turn right on what would become known as the Polly Highway would take us downtown and it would take me to the building in which the firm who invited me to come here in the first place would be and after that I worked with that firm for a number of years and I saw from from this beginning I saw the the emergency the emerging emerging of sort of modern architecture Honolulu because these are very modern buildings at the time they were very modern buildings I would say we can we can fairly say they still are they actually they're more modern than what we see these days that's true they were so modern that I was in I responded as though they were the the latest thing I had two friends in the Navy three friends in the Navy who occupied one of the two bedroom apartments one of them had to go out to sea may ask me if I would just take his place for the time being which I did and I must say I found it a marvelous place to live we were in one of the two of the taller two buildings and we could see the ocean and the downtown and the emerging city to the right of that very important street that's going to sort of from the right lower corner toward Diamond Head as a matter of fact yeah I guess that's great you you share you know again we were not born yet but soon and so these these were the picture we were doing little detective work and from what we read and what we see what the two things together they said that the first buildings were completed and marketed and ready to move in at the end of 1963 and the whole project was completed by 64 when you came and so we we see at that time parallel to that they had you know not even finished because it stops there the interstage slash freeway and so it was also the same time as we do you know remember history when when John F. Kennedy was cruising through Honolulu in his Lincoln Continental that unfortunately three months later he was assassinated in when he was back in Dallas but never mind that said happening it just speaks for and he was speaking everyone should it's available online that speech and he got all the mayors of the United States together and he was talking about basically civil rights and giving African-American black people the same right and he was calling the Negroes and not in a derogative way as we're not supposed to say this anymore but in an empathic way and so that's these are the times we're talking about right that we can only I mean you bonded and I can only dream about and you are you know our personal witness of so we very much appreciate you sharing that with us rich but let's move on to the next slide which is here and now the same building that we visited us as being agile speaking of agility parts of doco Momo documenting and conserving the modern movements and this is what's one actually our latest tour that we had a walking tour and you too were the hosts and the post for the Queen Emma guards and that's when I took this picture rich you're not in the picture because you already were moved up into one of the units that they showed and we were just checking out the building and it just looks as fresh as it always did and we will go into details Monday because you became the its main scholar having digged into archives and with a people who worked on it and you have proof of evidence why it's holding up so well but before we go there let's go to the next slide and actually connecting to where we left last time gentlemen because at the picture at the bottom right that's the show quote and let's dwell on the on the gardening part so Queen Emma gardens gardening so let's talk about the absence of architecture and the presence of nature first rich how would you sort of you know share with the audience who have not been there explain how the landscaping is the open space well I think the landscaping and the buildings the earliest buildings there were all of one design and they hired a New York architect who had had an office in Detroit actually which gradually moved to New York and so forth became a very prominent architect for large projects and and then locally they hired George Walters who is a already a fairly distinguished landscape architect because the two things had to be designed at the same time and that's still the case for fine pieces of architecture and landscape architecture so it started off as a beautiful garden with lawns and trees and places to picnic and things like that yeah one thing I like to add Martin is George Walter I think he's from Hawaii and he has a previous degree in architecture so he has some great sense of landscape design and especially the sense of arrival another thing that I learned about the landscape is by talking to the maintenance crew there for the whole site they only need four people to maintain it and just one lawn more to just get everything you know in place which is you know very low maintenance so the landscape itself it's pretty elegant yet low maintenance so something to add to it yeah because it's after all we would talk about more what we heard from and learned from other you know people involved and eyewitnesses that it started out as you we already say Rich as a you know urban renewal redevelopment of as you use the correct yes provocative term blighted area so it used to be we can even be more concrete and say it was slums and prostitution and crime and they thought that's not good so we're going to make it better so that's what it basically was and it started out more inclusive than it actually is right now it fell back to the open market so capitalism reigns and it's all about the money but it was actually way more less about the money and actually making it work for as you rich shared you know for the average people this was not for the millionaires right this was pretty much for normal ordinary average people you know work working people that had jobs of various kinds and I can already say it's engineer that you bunded will share a lot with us and you rich first and foremost Alfred Yee the one and only time I had the privilege to meet him he said it was for the bus driver and the millionaire and he said there were rules there had to be rules there was one warning and after that when you were out no matter if you were the millionaire or the bus driver in the case he recalls it was the millionaire who was out so there was no such thing money talks be as walks back in the days it is this today so that really makes the project that is a very human humane project in sort of many ways and so let's walk in a little bit next slide and see uh there what are we looking at here I mean it's it's a little hard to see but I give a clue it's an it's an architectural model that we are very familiar with as educators we make our students make these because it's a very good learning tool that we don't want to miss out on in these digital rounds where everyone sits in front of the screen and things they know but we think they don't but what what is this model doing there in the in the in the building well it's it's it really reflects the the site as it was finally developed at at this time and uh the the model and the and the actual buildings are are you know reasonably similar and so yeah the community could see what they were going to get before they actually got it and it became very popular to stay in and if you you you had to rent you could only rent a unit there and if you did you you you had to pay whatever certain limits called for and there was it was inexpensive at the time and you couldn't have more assets than than met their criteria for serving as you say the the average person looking for a place to live yeah yeah that's right you absolutely that is it was rental first and then at some point that expired kind of the binding you know that the city gave and then it fall back to the open market and now it's owned and then speculation kicks in on these things right so let's go to the next slide because it also speaks about the iteration the iterative process of architects that you know Yamazaki we can always say Minoru Yamazaki is the New York based architect that you were talking about Rich and he was becoming quite famous and his most known project also tragic are the Twin Towers in New York City that since 9-11 aren't anymore so he was getting quite popular so why would he take on almost a social housing project as you kind of rightly so call it and then why wouldn't he say oh I had this genius strike you know this is it but here we see it actually look quite different right let's celebrate on that a little bit how this comes across to you guys well I think he the the architect I think was attracted first of all it was a large job for him to receive and it was a had a national significance since it was a part of the of the the program that that tore down a lot of old buildings and build new ones in their place and so it it was a a key part of the redevelopment of American cities where they they needed improvement all right so well put I share a little another thing that I uh L he told me when he um as Ubundit said you know as his as his main scholar it was actually his favorite project which he um repeated to me but then he said that he had known the architect Yamasaki before and then he reached out to him uh to do this by the time when he was doing you know way more flamboyant fancy stuff the way he he got him in was very sneaky because he said you know I know you Minoru and you're not very good with money so you might actually end up in something like that which is almost social housing right and he said in his very charmingly you know humorous way you know that was the way he basically got him in how funny is that huh they were good friends before when they look at the archives that's a lot of correspondence between Yamasaki and yeah and they they go out drinking a lot from where yeah so amongst friends as we are you can say things like that right as we do so let's go to the next slide which is the actual model of the final execution as we know it and that's just a close up uh to it as it sits there but then as he just started uh bundled here let's go to the next slide and Alfred Yee and and give you uh rich the chance to share with the audience who that man was Alfred Yee who was the structural engineer of this project and many others tell us about him I didn't know as much about him as I do now but at that time uh I'm sure the architect did know about him and his skill at perceiving the construction process of a big building and because of that they built up they came rather quickly up and captured the attention of of Hanlulu right both from a marketing standpoint and and a reality standpoint okay one thing I'd like to add on top of Rich's comment is that this building it's all precast um concrete building that's what Alfred Yee is known for and he can build this within like not too long period of time and another thing that happened you know to this Alfred Yee that he has a great sense of connections that's why we have an exhibition called Modern Connections and how he put all this building together and it's a fortunate thing too that he teamed up with a contractor called EE Black that can help let's go let's go to the next slide because we see all these the three guys here right okay that's good yeah this is the one so the the one on your left is um Alfred Yee the second one in the middle is um Mr. Yamasaki and then the last one that's um EE Black that's the contractor that helped make this happen yeah yeah well thanks to you yeah thanks to you Bandit you know there is this uh again the website that you put up and when L was then in in in high age you know leaving us on earth at least um his his office was closed down and his website and um I was able to you know uh sneak away some of the ones uh the one my favorite is the one which is on your website which is when the Kahala Apartments were under construction as at Killingsworth caught them the four shoe boxes on the sea and I always share it with an emerging generation because they look like nothing you ever imagine you want to live in because they're very as you you know rich were classifying this is very modern it's very rational so it's not by nature human humane I mean these strategies right but these masters were able to both be very efficient and effective and very rational but at the same time be very poetic so they were pragmatic and poetic at the same time and that's what we love about them and we wish these times back and we keep provoking the emerging generation to do so right true and then the interiors of of these apartments they were they were carefully understated and they're in the way they were livable in and I lived in with friends for for a while and later I moved in with my wife and our first child was born while living all right so that that being said being at the end of another exciting 20 minutes you the audience now want to see that what rich remembers and only him you can tell us because we haven't lived in there and we're going to reflect on that obviously next week because otherwise you would be left in the dark and say well everyone can say that but we want to see that we want to discuss this more so that's what we're going to do next week same time same place think that kawaii human humane architecture aging along agility with queen emma gardening with richard low and bonnet canista con see you then