 Good to have you all back to another episode of Think Tech Hawaii's human-humane architecture, our persistent search for humanity and humility in the built environment. We're broadcasting life again from the opposite ends of the world, me near Munich, in fact in Würzburg I'm kind of now, but from an American perspective doesn't make much difference. And then we have you DeSoto back in Honolulu, Hawaii. Hi DeSoto. Hello everybody, hello Martin and you can hear I'm in an easy breezy room and the trade winds are blowing outside. You can probably hear that in the background. And you pointed out I'm wearing, I'm overdressed for the tropics so that indicates that I'm not there. That's right. So let's go to the first slide and apologize a little bit for this is actually the volume two of our shows about the vintage village and we were a little bit under the weather under the clouds of the election night. And this here illustrates from a German perspective because this is one of our most critical left wing weekly and magazines here the Spiegel, the mirror that has been following the tragedy of the who was ruling our US or America. And I remember as trying to do it kind of a therapeutic self treatment. I was once doing a show with our founding uncle Jay that we see at the very top right and we call it the cynical classicism because Trump as money of many of his stupid things. He was trying to mandate a style which we're thinking we should be past that. Because that while the 20th century might have been about form. The 21st century that we're in should be about perform. So anyways the next slide is basically explaining a little more because when we were airing there were the first kind of predictions of where the votes are going and and these snapshots of these color coded maps here the one at the very left was the one that I saw when I woke up hours later after I show and I was pretty depressed because it was very very red. And fortunately that has shifted to more blue and that much blue that were have our hopes back up that we're going to go back to what at the very bottom right where we're talking to Ron you remember what we're talking about as far as inclusivity which we see at the bottom right. So well we were talking about Martin Eichler who was a builder of homes mass builder of tract homes and suburban homes in California in the 50s and 60s. And he was a very forward thinking man. He was inclusive in terms of who he would sell his homes to which was at a time of segregation in which people of color were prevented from buying homes in suburbs in many situations and he also was inclusive in terms of who he hired to work for him he hired disabled people he hired men who had just gotten out of jail. So he was a very forward thinker in addition to being an architect who designed homes that we've been looking at and really praising for their attributes from that time period 50 and 60 years ago. Yeah that we want to so desperately and urgently reconnect to and we want to add that the very bottom right picture when our friend Ron Lindgren was describing that we weren't quite none of us were quite as specific as we should have been because this is an image that Eichler had in his office on his wall and if you would see these two boys from the other side you would see that one has a white face and the other one has a black face. So it's a black boy going along with a white boy and that again was rather shockingly provocative to say in times where racism was even more present than we had them increasing unfortunately in the last four years. So again we have our hopes high up there that we're going to reconnect to these good times best times of America they were you know hanging around until as we said the 70s even the late 70s and just with Jimmy Carter then you know we had to let them go and hopefully and pick them up from there again. So what we also want to do as we said we want to be inclusive again we don't want to be nationalist again we want to again take advantage of the best of all worlds that we represent and so let's go and pick up from where we had left last time and go to the next slide and what were we talking about this soda here. Well we're back in the Munich Olympic Village which was constructed for the 1972 Olympics and we were in an area which originally had been built as you said for the female athletes to use as housing and this I thought was remarkably similar to the container housing that we keep talking about using shipping containers in terms of the scale and the size. You said that these probably are preformed precast concrete panels which were set up in to make these similar houses these similar size houses unfortunately because of deterioration they had to be demolished but because they were historic they were rebuilt to look very similar to the originals and you just got to walk around and look at them and take pictures of them and you saw that they also the individual tenants which now are university students are allowed to paint them or decorate them the way they want and it's a nice little village it really looks like. Yeah absolutely and more specifically about deterioration it was actually that they weren't up to energy code anymore so right that's right they rebuilt them recognizing they had to be insulated better which once again we don't need to worry about that too much in Hawaii if we built the right way and allow the natural systems the trade winds to do the job. Right and next slide is I'm taking advantage of my remote situation being the sort of you know the ambassador abroad so to speak I'm have arranged with the emerging generation to make the best out of this and then basically being up a little later in the afternoon so I can be help them early in the morning and to show them around and I was walking them through the village and then there was a door open and I basically knocked on that open door and the the student who lived in there you know allowed us in and so you here you see the the students comments about how did we get in and oh this looks so efficient and so spacious they're pretty much like a pioneer of what's so prominent these days which is the tiny house movement right they're kind of early examples for for tiny houses so go to the next slide. They again dealing with thermal performance on the bottom right you supposedly see the original condition with world on shades at the very bottom left you see them improvising more kind of horizontal awning and again you know I've been sharing my experiences with our firm as at the top left an exoskeleton where the structure could shade itself or again frames with world on shades so that's certainly something that again with a new leadership a new management of our country and one of Biden's utmost goals is to rejoin the the Paris initiative of climate change combating so we will increasingly move more into things as we've done in the past four years luckily and hopefully so the next slide is there is a piece of new construction within the historically preserved which is rather interesting and then next slide is going to show us a glimpse of how that looks like and what's your opinion what's your feeling how do you think this well if I'm if I'm reading this correctly the court the open space in the foreground is is that original or did is that original or did they replicate no that is original and again or we talked quite a lot about these kind of pipes you know and here we can actually see how hollow they are there's much in them right yeah so we talked about it so that one is original but the building is new so the pavement is old the pipes are old the building is new okay okay well you were pointing out that that in the midst of this very innovative 1972 complex this new building is not particularly innovative and that's something that we're going to come back to as we continue this show the whole concept of carrying on innovations from a time when people were more innovative to try to keep that updated rather than simply saying this is what we're going to do now because it's easy in chief and that's what everybody expects and and and innovation gets us to the next slide because innovation of this development wasn't just within the built environment but it was also in the natural environment what we're seeing here right yes yeah and you I asked you what that big tower was in the background and this is a big open space park area and in the background is the sort of iconic structure which is a broadcast tower and that was because it was before satellite so you needed the big tall towers to broadcast television transmissions and I also said that there was already one in East Berlin this is the time of East and West Germany and in East Berlin there was this very large iconic tower so this is the West German version of that but in this area of parkland you can see that there is a berm or a artificial hill at the base of that tower in the distance and this is something that's replicated at the other end of the development so in both cases to screen out a large busy street they built this earthen berm and then planted trees on it and also from the street you don't see the whole complex you see what looks like parkland or forest or woods so it's beneficial on both sides yeah absolutely and next slide is this sort of very packing it very densely with these terrace towers here allowed them to free up space for recreation in open spaces there's also this artificial lake in this you know very innovative community and we will show you now in the next slide how beautiful it looked like from the very beginning right the solo well actually from the very beginning and you can see this is it under construction the construction cranes are still in the midst of all these buildings and it actually looks pretty terrible at this because it's just concrete it is a dense concrete complex and it looks very unappealing it looks institutional it doesn't look warm it doesn't look inviting but in fact that was just the way it looked when it was constructed and if you go to the next slide we're going to see that it changed quite a bit through time because it's covered with greenery now now as we have to point out this is in a temperate climate so during the winter it's not as green because everything has lost its leaves but during the summer not only is there a lot of foliage at the bases of these towers but there are these troughs which are filled with and we're going to see in some cases large mature trees that screen things that green it up that give you humidity that give you more oxygen and make the whole thing look a lot more inviting and a lot more livable and why it looks like a jungle eyes kind of a sculpture in large so like a formal approach it was actually designed the opposite which we're always recommending is the better way to go and gets us to the next slide which is the inside out design approach right yeah and we're seeing here I screenshot that from a documentary on local TV from some years ago and it's featuring one of the associated partners with banish the architect of record Fritz our who grew up in this neighborhood because the architects were so convinced about it that they thought I want to live in there what I designed which isn't always happening but it shows that they're really you know we're believing in what they were doing and so the sun basically decided to also stay there and raise his family and he is however privileged to have a ground floor unit within a large talking courtyard or last theme for the last nine shows so he has a courtyard but you had a concern right that we were then discussing well if the courtyard certainly looks really nice but I thought you don't really have a lot of privacy in the courtyard because when you're down there everybody in the building above you can look down at you and in reality you cleared that up for me the troughs which are used as planters are so wide that you cannot actually stand and look over the railing from your balcony so in fact you don't have people looking down on you and spying at you in your backyard or your courtyard you have privacy as well as all of they them have privacy in their balconies not only from people looking up but also from people next door to them looking from side to side so it's a very successful design in terms of that again making it more livable and more appealing yeah and going to the next slide showing us more the side of representative units which all the stacked ones here you can see I pulled this from websites from some for sale or for rent you can see there's a multitude of different situations there's even a two-story one at the top right you see that spiral staircase different fenestrations they're all pushed back so they're not you know basically shaping the front of the building they're in the back so they're allowed as well but next slide certainly which you had been you know already saying we want to talk about it this is the most feature is how it got basically taken over by the natural environment who really kind of jungle eyes and nature is crawling over and invading the structure and that reminded us of our friends from Killingsworth and Ron Lindgren and Larry Stricker here is Larry's ihilani hotel up there with a Carlos Denise rendering where he said we wanted to Bougainville the whole thing and I got value engineered and only other other floor ended up but still it's a very prominent feature of the Killingsworth office and next slide at the top right is my most beloved detail of that parking garage slash gym part of the ihilani which shows the superb easy breezy space with around the structurally expressionist tectonics and the fenestration is basically plantation is plants and is a curtain so ever since I saw that I thought wow it's it actually you know it works it is it has happened and ihilani has been around since the early 90s and then here you know the German architects basically have and we use the term zeitgeist have been you know in the same zeitgeist doing this here and this is what you were been talking about before look at that mature tree in the middle of that big picture here right so these troughs are really big and can hold a lot of soil so there isn't just little flowers growing in there but as you pointed out only in the summer few months a year not so much anymore and the next picture is going to show us what we're going to have next most likely it's this white stuff that if I'm saying you don't know you might be offended and saying yes if I go up to the top of Mauna Kea I have it but that's pretty much it from yes knowing it in Hawaii right and so that might give you some chills but also what might give you some chills are the little pictures at the top right yeah because those are real estate listings for these apartments and we see that they do not rent for cheap they are going for as I remember one to two to three thousand euros a month so that's comparable and even more than dollars and then in the upper right there's a little one for sale that's a studio that you said was about 330 square feet and it's about well it's 249,000 euros so as you said it's up around 270,000 $75,000 so the prices are not dissimilar to what we know in Honolulu and as you said to me this is because it's a very desirable place to live so the prices are high because people want to live there and that shows you it's successful but it also shows you that a certain segment of the population is shut out because it's expensive and that percentage of the population is growing unfortunately so they should be in the center of our attention of developments new developments and that gets us back to Hawaii what might this all be good for next slide for you know multi-story developments here are cargo courtyard cabana clustered that I did a show with with jay about where again we stack cargo steel and shipping containers um we again in the tropics we should dwell and basically massage um our easy breezyness because it allows us to be way more cost efficient uh and effective and the next slide while you know cargo steel is not for everyone you know we have other kind of post-contact uh local construction methods as for example precast concrete right out there at gray specific rocky mountain precast that in the top middle picture a quote of a show that you have been investigating and doing a phone interview with its architect bandit canista con and he's been using that method for its molly lofts we've been doing it a lot and then also on the island there is the kahala apartments and this is from the old when the website of alfred y's office was still up there the kahala apartments were pretty much built the same way as we see at the at the bottom there where the whole olympic village pretty much has been prefab so that was really innovative at its time and it's still a very desirable construction methods that we should look more into because um next slide uh as you kindly um uh update me on what's going on on the island but sometimes it's depressing me which is not your fault but the fault of people who are proposing this and what are we looking at here well we're looking at the plans potentially for what's going to happen to alamuana center and one thing obviously is the train station determinists of the train line is going to be there so that is spurring a lot of development there but the um the current owners of alamuana i believe are seeing it less and less as a shopping center and more and more as a real estate venture in which they can build more high rises on that very now valuable piece of property that's very centrally located and it's ripe for development so they're proposing a bunch of towers be built in addition to what's already there uh that's the shopping center and we are i mean we'll see how much of that actually happens and we'll see what these buildings end up looking like but um they don't look as though they're going to be particularly what we would prefer to see and one of the things that's particularly is makes that a noticeable is right in the middle of all of that is the alamuana building from 1961 which was an extremely innovative building for its time it was from a time period in which innovation and technological advancement was really looked up to and we're seeing the buildings being built around it as not taking advantage of that not harkening back to what was originally designed there but just building a bunch of glass boxes which are hermetic and are users of fossil fuels and no indication of what even the olympic village did in the 70s in munich and temperate climate large lanais here we see no lanais right and that's a shame if how it uses doing that it's bad enough but then these people should learn and see well what can we do differently and next slide again provided by you kindly but again making me depressed is it doesn't get better the more they reveal the details of their project this one here also location wise you know makes me sad because in this location i used to be in my little favorite hole in the wall koreen restaurant that has yummy things for decent money and they're most likely not able to go back in because of the rent is going to be too high and while this building is orientation wise okay it's running mauka makai but then fenestration wise it's very much alike if you look like the symphony that you see in the middle compared to the provocative sunburn that lady here has because these buildings are doing the same thing and you've got to power against this with burning fossil fuel and as you pointed out it's even more tragic because you can see in this aerial view on the left you see the iconic alamuana building you also see 1315 alamuana boulevard which is by alfred yi and yama saki as very very great bichlametic pioneers that did it all right half of a century ago right so next slide we obviously want to see a reconnection to that because again here are here's the legacy of that of that site right it wasn't only john graham basically with the alamuana building probing and testing for the world fair in seattle with an equal similar rotating restaurant right but it was also alfred yi again with the alamuana hotel that if you look it up was built just two years before the olympic village and can pride itself as having been the tallest structure you know at that time so as you and your great show referencing at the bottom right there's a tradition of innovation on the island and you want to evolve that right yeah and so next slide is you know suggestions to do that we're looking at primitiva one that we've been covering here and there and the great alfred yi before he then passed away had the chance to look at us and cheerleaded us and said you know keep on going that way and you were sitting next to who else who we see at the very top left one is in a review we had neil abacromby at at your class in which we critiqued and or listened to the presentations of your emerging generation students and i was present also along with him and so i've gotten to see as you've gone through this what what your students have come up with for these types of not only being innovative but also dealing with things that we have to deal with now not only in terms of costs but livability and so on and not another c is covet right you pointed out easy breeziness is the way to go and to breathe easy you want to be outside we soon and right now starting can't do this anymore but you can and you should in hawaii and so the next slide was primitiva two that tried to do that even more with the less territorialized nature of the units but more be like a fluid cascading landscape that is more built upon what people do anyways on the beach and popping up their tent and have a more informal settlement right why can't we adopt that and in housing as well and the last slide we want to show because we're launching primitiva three in the spring and it's basically the great structural conceptualist of the olympic games part with a gigantic tent structure we were talking about fry auto is a is an informal mentor of that project and we're just like tarzan and jane you know have been using tensile structures to move through the jungle we're looking at if a tower couldn't or shouldn't do that as well so obviously stay tuned for that we will keep you updated on that one so with that thank you for that half an hour of taking me back to paradise and your birds and at one point the breeze was so strong we couldn't hear you anymore right and the dog has decided to stay on the comfy side today so treasure the tropics and see you next time again to soda and everyone else a little