 Welcome you all back to Human-Humane Architecture, broadcasting here live from Honolulu, Hawaii. So from our tropical, exotic, cosmopolitan coastal atropolis. And so we're going to have our co-host, Ron Lindgren, with us live from Long Beach, California. Hi, Ron. Hello, Martin. Glad to be with you again to talk a little bit more about the Harbor Square Project. Absolutely. Today it's only the two kits from the Harbor Square Block because our third member of our Tri-Ambriat, DeSoto, cannot be with us today, but he will make him join next week again. So we're on our own today, but we will do our very best. So why don't we go to the first slide and you do a little recap of what Volume 1 was, Ron. Yeah, I thought it would be a good idea to have a short recap on what we discussed about Harbor Square last week. Designed 50 years ago by the architect Ed Killingsworth, Harbor Square is an early and a rare example of a large multi-use urban development in downtown Honolulu. It entails an entire city block and it's located right at the very junction of that city's business and government districts. The project encompassed condominiums that had ocean, mountain, and city views, office space, a very busy restaurant, a historic sailor's hotel, and a lot of supporting parking. 360 one and two bedroom condos, all furnished with spacious linens, are located in two 20-story towers and those towers rest on a recreation deck with a swimming pool which in essence is the roof of a six-story podium that contains all of the other facilities in this architecturally distinguished and humane development. If you look at the picture in the upper left of this first slide, the tower at the right in that picture is the Harbor Tower. A particular interest at Harbor Square is the fact that the architect designed the two condo towers ostensibly for two very different sets of buyers. The Harbor Tower, again as I said on the right, was envisioned as being a home for a business man and government officials who had probably worked in downtown Honolulu for years and had created or certainly established some significant professional careers. Though they were provided with one garage parking space for a per condo, these men and women could now easily appreciate walking to work. And that's my recap, Martin. Yeah, and on the bottom left you can see how the units in this tower look like. The pictures on the right I worked in as of this morning because based upon your recommendation and our exotic escapism expert, Susanna, I went back to my Wall Refian research ritual in the morning through your Hale Colani and I ran into Nathan. And on the slide at the top right, you can see yourself and Nathan talking. And he was the one who approached you when you were there last time around your keynote speech of the Documoma Symposium. And he has said, hey, I haven't seen you in a while. Actually, since the 80s, I haven't seen you. And obviously he remembered you. And he says, hi, and I was telling him about the show we're going to do today. And he very enthusiastically shared his memories of something that relates to the picture at the bottom, at the bottom right, that we actually forgot to report about the last time we were talking about the very multi-functionality and multi-use of the building. And what was that, Ron? Well, originally, and facing out on the busy Alamo on a boulevard, it was quite a large restaurant operated by a local restaurateur. It wasn't a chain restaurant. Very busy because, again, being right at the junction of the high-rise business downtown and the more low-rise governmental buildings. Breakfast was busy with all kinds of people there before walking to work. Lunch was busy. Nighttime dinners were maybe a little slower, but there were plenty of people who had overtime and could catch a meal there before they went back to their offices again. The fact is that there was a no-serve garden there and what is shown in the photo, and that strange concrete wall wasn't there. In fact, it was really exciting to sit in that all-glazed side of the restaurant looking out at the traffic, roaring by all day long. That's what Nathan was saying, he even had memories before that, which gives us an idea how the place was originally. We said his father dropped him off when he was a kid, so they were doing spear fishing in the harbor. You wouldn't see that that much these days anymore. And there was a surf shop just next door and he said, we looked over and saw this restaurant all open, Florida ceiling glass, which there still is, but unfortunately now it's boarded up and some office space and they're even storage, so our pitch is basically bring this back, put a restaurant back in. And so it makes me remember, which I can't remember because I wasn't here, it took me until, we'll talk about that in the next show, the two decades later in the early 90s when I finally came to what I considered to be the Holy Land of America. But the RPI-ing mobile that we were cruising around that you see at the top right was actually designed and basically introduced and available to buy at the same time early 70s. And so the early 70s is actually a time that was critical for you as far as your history where the Killingsworth office because 1970 was that very special year and why don't you share with the audience what happened in 1970 and also why you think your future boss and friend at Killingsworth actually hired you. And that also has to do with it. One show we dedicated the Veterans Day last year. And yesterday we had Martin Luther King Day. So this is remembering the heroes. So please share with the audience that story. You know, 1970 is when I mustered out of the Navy as an officer in the Seabees. And I literally walked up Long Beach Boulevard from the Naval Station in the city of Long Beach up to Killingsworth's office of I wasn't thinking that I would be hired. So the big surprise was that after I walked in and talked to people in his office and to Ed, I was hired on as a beginning draftsman. I found out later that it certainly wasn't the work that I had shown that I had done in college, which wasn't particularly earth shaking. But Ed had been drafted into the military after his university time at the University of Southern California. And so for almost five years of his young life was spent in World War II. Well, I had graduated from MIT with a graduate degree. And then in the very last month of the Vietnam draft before the draft was ended, I got my call. And so the last portion of my young life, almost three and a half years, were also spent in military service. Ed appreciated that, remembered what he had gone through, and that's really the reason he hired me. It's only luckily that I turned out to have been able to develop some talent and actually contribute to the achievements that his office made during the 30 years that I was there. Well, thanks to the humble and understated guy you are. But I would say I lie myself with all respect that he intuitively hired you for the real reason of living up to his ethics and practice, as we can say it, and his philosophy in the sort of applied build environment. So that, the restaurant at the bottom also sort of made us think about since we got the audience excited to join in because of that fascinating, mysterious story of the principles and the secretaries. So we said they might have actually then come down and had some lunch or dinner together. And let's go to the next slide and actually check out where the secretaries, then when they went back up, where they lived, and explain a little bit the layout of that tower on. Yeah, in the town tower contains smaller and less expensive one and two bedroom condo units. And they, therefore, were more affordable to younger buyers, those new to Honolulu, and just beginning their business governmental and political careers. At Killingsworth considered these to be perhaps interns, secretaries, bank tellers, political aides, law clerks, junior accountants, et cetera. There is no parking provided for the town tower condos. So for these folks, these younger folks walking to nearby work is mandatory. Also, tower residents have no personal condo, washer dryer hookups, and must use a community laundry facility. So this was a younger group. And in this slide, we were looking at the typical town tower floor plans. This reveals that the 160 condo units all had lanais. These were, as you can see, simple rectangular constructions that were considerably less expensive to build than the harbor towers, lanais, which were much larger and involved some curvilinear shapes in the plan. But nonetheless, each resident of the town tower had a five foot deep, like 20 foot long lanai, and easily furnished outdoor room. And if we go to the next slide, you can see one of the four corner units, two bedroom units. And that, on a various basis, the one that I'm mentioning, encompasses both the living room and the bedroom. Nicely enough, four out of eight of the units on each floor, that is 50%, were corner units, which helped to develop a sort of diagonal, natural cross ventilation and less need to rely on air conditioning, except for the worst and muggiest days. Yeah. And I want to add to that. And by the way, at the top left might have been one of the secretaries we're talking about who is here. Oh, yes. And one thing I want to point out, because I don't have that luxury, although my building is very nice by Ernest Harra and the Waikiki Grand, but I have a trapped bathroom. And the main bathroom here also has natural ventilation because it's basically fronting the exterior facade. And that's certainly a big luxury, especially in the tropics, to basically vent out the humidity you bring in through being in the bathroom, right? And indeed, there was the possibility of sitting in a tub and having a view out over the lanai to the fire distance. Wow. So let's check this out, how it looked on the lanai. Let's go to the next slide here. Yeah, this shows that someone loves and is using their lanai because it's furnished. And you can see that it is all floor to ceiling glass, all the way across. Just off in the near distance is the recreation deck. And in fact, in the next slide, we'll see that that recreation deck was furnished with quite a handsome swimming pool and recreation area. And in the next slide, it shows just one of quite a few sort of shared pavilions that were created as places for parties or just to get out of the sun. And the fact is, it's very possible that employers and their own employees sort of share those recreational facilities regularly. And I've always wondered, as a sort of social logical experiment, just how that worked out. I cannot report on that, but it's an interesting idea. You're talking about the principles and the secretaries, right? Indeed. We don't want to come across as much as here. So we're talking, in these days, at least, luckily, we're sort of gender discriminations, hopefully a little less than it was way back. It could go both ways, right? You could have a female boss and you'd be a male assistant as well. But this might have been the place and the space besides the restaurant where they could actually meet. The little pavilion I want to point out here is special because it actually shares several of the other killingsworth projects that we've been talking about in the past. And actually, we will. Your partner Larry Stricker is actually heading out to his project, the Manalani on the Big Island. And then Ihi Lani, he basically was sort of doing these little folly pavilions that fully basically implemented the vocabulary of what Don Hubbard calls the flying trellises and the flying beams. But we were puzzled that actually this is only sort of really implemented in this sort of very expressive way in the sort of substructure, while the tower almost, we feel bad about the term, but we couldn't find any better one, almost feels amputated, that there are indications of that where basically the volume stop that something wanted to project out. But then also, they almost seem to be cut off. Do you have an idea why that might have been wronged? Are you talking about the next slide where there was kind of an amputated version of some killingsworth structural work? Well, no, actually, we can go to the next slide already, but I'm actually talking about the tower itself. Because the tower itself, once the tower reaches its end, or even where the podium reaches the end, there are sort of beams almost wanting to come out, but then they don't do it. Then they're cut off. And you pointed to one, and you said, this looks really odd, right? And we can't really figure. Because in the- Yeah, I have to admit that that is strange. Because typically, it would have well-proportioned beam extensions going out quite a ways, which helps to provide a cap to the tower of a very visible roof. And for some reason, it couldn't have been cost, because there wouldn't have been much concrete involved, some porcelain, yes. But they're rather stubby there. And I've never had the chance to ask it how that came about, unfortunately. Yeah, and in these days, you could- I mean, from practice, I had this happen many times. You call this very dirty American term of value engineering. But way back in the 70s, we were been reporting on the former seaside now shoreline tower where, actually, with LE, there were the developers. So it was their money. And they still afforded them. While here, there must have been a decently effluent client. And we can only wonder why this is the most sort of amputated of these very signature style of the Killingsworth-Urbra kind of work, right? And so now we're like with that being the case, almost across the street, going back diamond head, there is this little now Chevrolet dealership that actually has them in a very over-exaggerated way. And so this is actually a good example that Ed was, and you guys were actually informing with your avant-garde work, the mainstream of architecture in some very profane building types as a car dealership. So that is pretty. And you have an example on your very own that, actually, we might want to share in the next show, because you're living in one of these examples, right? Indeed. So you're living in a developer home that is a spec project from some while ago that is not designed by your firm. But it feels very much like it, right? Because, again, there was this sort of inspiration from you guys for the mainstream. What I'd say is that my own home, which I decided to show people in next week's program, is kind of a contractor's version of the very famous and iconic Southern California mid-century modern architecture from that period of about 1945 to 1970. A contractor's draftsman was inspired by Killingsworth architecture and designed dozens of duplex units, one of one half of which I live in. Yeah. And back to this car dealership here, I mean, if I look at the picture I took at night on the way back from one show last year, doesn't how the beams and the little sub columns reach the very thin slab roof very much be reminiscent of the Kahala Hilton, the very first project, right? Yeah, it's definitely the Kahala Hilton lobby, but the columns are amputated at about mid-height. So the whole thing ends up being sort of a small assemblage, whereas the Kahala lobby is quite a soaring space. Exactly. And talking a contractor, the contractor's favorite car is the Ford F-150. And they're sold here. And I want to hijack one of these for the moment of backing them into what they just recently, under two of the flying trellises, they put these sort of hideous buttress pillars. And I want to take them out, so I want to back the truck into them and make them go down because it doesn't need that. Flying trellises have to fly, right? But again, this is a nice piece here again informed by you guys. So let's go to the next slide and contemplate a little more. This is actually just to demonstrate the sort of pioneering relevance of the Harbor Square Tower. It was pretty much the tower that was preceding all these later projects here that I took pictures of while walking through downtown. And they all don't live up to the elegance and excellence and performance on multiple levels, as we keep talking about of Harbor Square. They're very hermetic. They're very lanai-deprived. We can go to the next slide here all the way through the 90s, right? They have either no lanais or they have very sort of not worth the term balconies. So it's sad that obviously that was sort of value engineered. I guess here comes the term again. But again, it just speaks even more for what sort of a pioneering treasure Harbor Square is within this typology, right? Indeed. Why don't we go to the next slide? Yeah, what I'd like to say here is it was certainly a hero of mine. But I found this particular view of the ocean-facing elevation of the Harbor Tower to be rather heroic in its sort of classical symmetry and the fact that it is adorned with working and large lanais is much to his credit. Yeah. And I threw in the pictures at the top because it reminds me of when I finally was able to come to the Holy Land America, me the German Americano, as a student in 1990. So two decades after this was built, the sort of embodiment of that sort of heroic patriotic American zeitgeist was still around embodied by the car I couldn't resist to buy, which is my 72 Plymouth Fury up there at the bottom left. So exactly almost a year later after the building was completed. And you can see the similarity, right? Both are boxy, but then they have this sort of soft-edged, sexy, curvedness within in their detail. And now if we do the math, Happy New Year 2020, we're talking 1970, do the math that's 50 years and that's why we threw in Historic Hawaii Foundation. The building is now ready to be on the register. And again, as we use vehicles as, or cars as vehicles for thought, again, when I bought this car that while ago, I bought it for $600 because it was considered to be a junky big boat. I look them up now, they're like in the 10 grand. So that is the same with the building, not only as you describe the building as being heroic and special. And it's certainly also of one of the architects who gets increasingly more appreciated, that despite his sort of humbleness and understatement to have been one of the most influential American architects and you having been with him on that. So again, we wanna obviously then tell people, the owners and the tenants in here, be aware of what you have and go and sign up and go to Don Hibbert and put this on the register to have it been more protected and be more recognized of more than a young timer because then it's gonna be an old timer, right? Yes. Jump to the next slide. Yeah, let me jump in here. These are obviously realtor ads for units that are available in size all today, now at Harbor Square. And although Ed's one and two bedroom units seem spacious, they actually in terms of square footage weren't all that particularly large. For example, one bedrooms ran from 590 to 865 square feet and the two bedrooms could have been as small as 740 square feet and the largest of them, 1,180 square feet. And when you consider fee simple and leasehold prices for those units ranges from about $325,000 for one bedroom to 660,000 for two bedrooms. And those are today's prices. And that's almost a steal, especially considering what you get for the buck, right? You get a classic and you get it for a very reasonable price. I mean, this is almost social housing doesn't exist in America, but affordable housing, what they call here. And what do you get in all the developments? You get these hermetic, A-seed invasive boxes in here. You get a real good heroic American piece of architecture. That next slide is our mandatory biochromatic check. And while, you know, and the top right is obviously the beginning of you guys work Kahala hotel and Kahala condos. And for different reasons, they're very biochromatic. Over a square in all things admitted and granted, depends on the orientation. And at the bottom right, you see that West Sun setting. So if you are having the view that we just saw in the previous picture with the ocean view, you obviously also are faced with the sun while if you have a unit that actually the one that ad-head and you were in, as I recall correctly was looking diamond head. So you actually experienced how the lanai was shading it pretty efficiently, effectively, right, Ron? One thing I might say, however, is that the harbor tower is pretty much square and there are units looking out in four directions. If this had been designed today, I as an architect would have not just treated all four sides exactly the same. There should have been a greater reaction to the East West exposures, which can be brutal. I'm glad you say that as a message to the emerging post-fossil generation, Ron. Thank you very much. And we're, believe it or not, we're most at the end of the show. But one more slide here, please. All that being said, being self-critical of, which is relative to your really great work. This picture you see out the right here were the buddies of, I think, architects of Hawaii who got totally taken away by international style and an invasive hermetic box. You guys were doing at the firm you joined that year for the reasons we keep talking about all things considered, it had lanais and depending on the orientation, the lanai was helping. You also had something that you usually don't do anymore these days, dedicating some facade, exterior facade to opacity. That helps to keep the sun out. And then what you pointed out, you have sliding doors on all sides. So you can have, at the corner, you notice as shown here, cross ventilation or what we call side ventilation, which unfortunately took away in the remodeling of your Waikiki park hotel to the Halepuna. So that being said, we're at the end of volume two. Needless to say, we're very excited about volume three, which we will actually share some sort of what if ideas, right? Because originally this project was supposed to be developed by another architect that we will talk about. And then I raise the question, if this is actually how many other condominium towers are there in the killings worth over and the answer to that question, we will share with you guys next week. So until then, thank you, Ron. Thank you, Martin. Have a good time. We have a lot to prepare for the next show. It's going to be an exciting one again. So until then, stay as exotically erotic as these buildings we were talking about and see you all then. Bye-bye.