 Welcome all back to Human-Human Architecture, broadcasting live here from Honolulu, Hawaii. This is the show that is looking for progressive, positive, propositions, proposals for our paradise in Pearl for the Poletarians. And we continue to look architecturally critiquing what's going on in terms of dwelling and dignity here on the islands, particularly on this island of Oahu here. And the last show, we spotted something promising the Halei Nohona, which in the neighborhood, which seems to become our proletarian hood. And that's the one you can see here in the background here to the left and to the right. And today we're going to take a look closer at what you see behind me. And if we can please go to the next slide here. So up there you can see the last couple of shows we already made an indication about that project. It's pretty much the Heart Use Corporation who is nestled in that area has done lots of high-end stuff and felt obligated and was forced, both of them probably together to do something more, which I call affordable. So this is their attempt and we will take a closer look at that. And next slide, being an architect by training here and we want to educate. First we want to look at the floor plan. But the most important thing is the guy up at the very right there, which is the north arrow. So we want to see how the building is positioned as far as how it's confronting, being an artificial architectural environment, how it's sort of confronting and living in balance or not with the natural environment. So if the camera could go back to studio here, I picked up this self-published magazine here by the Heart Use Corporation, which has that promising title up there right in your face forward. And on page nine it's showing the project and actually through one of the people who, persons who live in there and this is this gentleman here who is a chef. And this picture here of the building is pretty much subtitled, Bathing in the Evening Light. And I have to say before it's evening and you can bathe in the light of the evening. You're facing this condition. I picked this here up. Oh, it's upside down. Sorry. But it doesn't really matter. At a postcard stand here, which is saying the golden suns of Aloha. And this is a very postmodern because if you ever have been in that golden sunset sun without any protection, it's very, very hot still. So if buildings face that, if we can go to the next slide, please. Like this building here, which is just down the road. And we've been talking about that some shows ago. The bottom right is a picture I happen to take from the award Starbucks close by our project here. You can see how the sun is basically baking that. So there's no bathing in the sun. There's baking in the sun. And we know what happens to us when we bake in the sun, which we can see at the top right. And this is what that building here does. Our building, if you remember the North era, is not that unsimilar. There are some parts who are actually the long side to the West is actually facing that pretty harsh and brutal and hot sunset sun. So how does the building react to that? How does the building deal with that? We will see on the next slide here. As you can tell, we were closely watching the building going up. And you can see they're putting some clothing on the building, which is what it is. And you might say, well, maybe then that's blocking the sun. Maybe people stay cooler in there. So let's check that out and go inside of the building. Next slide, please. Well, there we go. In a very ironic way, the realtor thought he had to decorate the single wall unit AC with these pillows here, with these cushions. So implying that could be a couch. So you sit on your monster aggregate machine that obviously is necessary to keep that building cool. However, the poor people or the more proletarian working class people can't afford as much glass as the other millionaires, which you can see in the background, which is the earlier how it used projects here. But they still aren't protected from the sun as much. So even though they have less view, they still got that nasty machine that is burning fossil fuel. And I know about you, but makes me sick. As said in many shows, I've lived in a Waikiki Grand for seven years, never had that nasty machine on. Our cohost here, who is today, unfortunately, loaded with work, DeSoto Brown from the Bishop Museum has to pull in all nighter. He's working on a Manoa hotel exhibit. So good luck with that DeSoto. DeSoto has shared as well that he grew up without air conditioning and he's still living without. So guys, it's doable. It's possible. Looking at a floor plan of a typical unit here, a smaller unit, you can see it's rather generic. It's one bedroom. What's really unfortunate is that the bathroom is basically facing the double loaded corridor. So there's no natural ventilation. You rely on that artificial exhaust. I have that and I have to deal with mold in the bathroom. The Hale Nohana had done that better. It's a double single loaded corridor that gets natural ventilation to the bathroom. So let's look how then the next slide, how the realtors and the illustrators basically give you eye candy, how you could possibly furnish your unit. And if you take a close look at nasty AC unit is still there, but it's sort of neatly hidden behind that sofa there. So that's the lure. And there's a ceiling fan, but what's the purpose to run that ceiling fan? Ceiling fans are one of the prime vernacular devices to stay cool in the tropics because hot air is rising up. And then you can take that out. But there is no such thing of this one here. All you're doing is basically pushing around the fossil fueled AC air in this unit here. Go to the next slide. While we were watching it closely, we got our hopes up about a particular element that we dedicated a show to, which is that a couple of organizations on the island amongst them the DPP, the department of permitting and planning with him Hugh and it's main guy together with the bets Howard wig known here in the house as the author and the host of cold green and Socrates, but our tacos have all teamed up and saying we're going to change code that we can bring something back that is something very tropical exotic, which is exterior fire stairs. I'm using these as my cardio in the morning and it's wonderful to go up and down on them. So you can see on the side of the building here that going up and go to the next slide. Once the building was further completed, you can see that staircase there being a steel staircase outside, which again, the department of permitting and planning recognized that rather than in New York City where it snows and when the building is on fire. And you might want to save your life not to break your neck on an over iced exterior metal staircase that ice we don't have here. So we might not want to enclose it and it using it wasn't the way way back and the international building code on a unfortunately sort of super imposed that on us sort of through the mumo over our love easy breezy staircases and the department together with Howard and Socrates were sort of unmoomoeing and sort of stripping them naked again, at least giving the legal background for them. But go to the next slide. Unfortunately here then boo, we what we do we do we enclose that we dense glassed it and go to the next slide. Now you don't even realize if you wouldn't know that there's a staircase behind that. So we're saying this is really a lost opportunity. And what are these measles or pimples or acne the the yellow ones doing on the building we don't know if they would have been operable vents for the staircase that you can get some air in there would have been a nice but didn't happen talking acne and pimples. I see that really big yellow one there that I want to squeeze or at least take a look at it before that and let's go to the next slide. We're doing that. So this is probably the most spectacular about the building the owner and the developer who calls this skyline eyes and that sounds very fancy and sounds indeed tropical exotic because this one here in particular seems to be all open you can have party there you feel the breeze you have the view nothing connects you from a disconnects you and keeps connecting you to this most wonderful natural environment that we have here on the islands. So this is a rendering so this is a suggestive illustration as we like to call it let's go to the next slide which is how the promise been kept these are some people checking it out while it was close to being finished and take a look and I'm not afraid of heights nor am I afraid of the breeze so I think this is a rather brave move to do that go to the next slide when you look how it's sort of finished you know both the tile and the furniture seems a little love deprived as far as the architectural attention that was given to it so it looks very bling from the outside but then doesn't seem equally appealing from from the inside and it's sort of at that point we're playing the architectural or pop cultural historians here now for the next couple slides and let's go to the next one germations like me and the younger ones have to do their homework and look this up but they used to be a tv series in the other tropics way over at the other end of the continental united states and it was the sort of while we had as we were talking quite a bit in previous shows we had a y5o and magnum pi and we in fact have them again in form of their reboots there was something similar in florida and that was called my me vice and in fact that's been rebooted as well but this is the original one here which is which is pure 80s and there is a this is from a trailer that you guys can bring up online and this is the sort of the opening scene that's always the same where the camera walks through the main feature which i haven't snapshot is is don johnson and his partner basically speed boating in one of these cigar boats these high speed boats through the ocean there but then the camera walks through the city as well which is a background for the for the settings and at the top right and the bottom left you can see that's a featuring a building that for my generation well i'm a product of of the late era of postmodernism which the 80s were and i was finally came to the united stage which was like the holy land for me in the early 90s and that was the hottest building that you can think of architect was architect tonica and this is their building the building is called atlantis it's a high-rise slab containing condominiums and again it was it was featured and basically showcased in the opening scene of my me vice and right after that came the bikini girls just to show the environment and the culture there based upon the climate right you're naked or close to that as soda was closing one of the recent shows so let's check that building out a little closer next slide and you know the the building wasn't just about commerce it wasn't just a developer project it was it was a manifesto and these are drawings that basically are symbolic for that that they did you see obviously this is upscale here so you see a Royce Royce convertible cruising down the boulevard there and having this building as a sculpture and the building then as you can see is sort of perforated unstyled and added to and another very typical 80s postmodern drawing of it as an axonometric in the in the upper right corner so let's move on next slide here this is how the building looks like if you want to buy a unique and if you break down the square footage and the cost is actually not far off from the affordables here in the building we're talking about so I would rather say from inside out remember the previous atmosphere I go for this one here and it is you know an all lever house international style building fully glazed exposed to the sun probably climatically not appropriate but again way back in the 80s under President Reagan no one really cared so much right about energy efficiency in fact it was the opposite right Carter cared and Reagan not anymore but these times are gone it's almost four decades away in the past so again think this over about you know cost of building and quality of living let's move on to the next slide here and what what our building our doesn't have is lanais and again you have lanais here in Florida and you don't have them in Hawaii that's something to think about what makes you think next slide but the most iconic of the building that the camera in fact in that trailer of Miami Vice zooms into is that opening and that sort of reminds us of the feature we know from our building here this one here I ever let's check it out a little closer let's go to the next slide this one it looked a little bit more passionately furnished this one had a jacuzzi or a small pool so that is something you know ours has a pool too but it's sort of down on the plinth level we see that later on and it has another a couple of other features there's actually a mature a pretty you know big palm tree there and then there are these other architectural elements like these spiraling very red very sculptural staircase and on top of that next slide that that yellow looks familiar to us right from our big pimple in our building and this one here was was this wall and that wall is very sort of neatly sculpturally created it's a wavy wall and it sort of reminds I mean this is Florida this is close to Cuba this is somehow very sort of Mediterranean as well if you want so there's some Louis Barragan influence in there very sort of quotational and this is what the the the 80s and postmodernism was about quoting sort of and mimicking other elements mostly from from the past so next slide this is again how this composition comes about and it's in fact you know very very passionate in in its way it's been composed and and comprised of these elements so next slide is again it came it there was a there was a concept and again a many a festival and I've never seen any of these conceptual this is how every that's how we urged the emerging generation this is how every project should start with an idea and with a with a with a dream and this sketch here as sort of naive and immature it might seem but it certainly speaks about that the architects had that vision and had this idea and to the right you can see the execution that's that's equally passionate and you know considering the 80s which were just about the fake and the surface and the makeup is some pretty nice craft been executed here so next slide the soda immediately sort of architecturally categorizing it says oh this is very Memphis and this is who many consider the founder of the Memphis mood is the movement this is a Torah satsas here in architecture however we got spared on postmodernism luckily I have to say many American cities got really trashed by stupid invasive hermetic just formal towers all over the United States we got spared but a little bit sad we sort of got it got hit by a delayed at the very bottom left you see a building that's from the early 90s when postmodernism was actually over but I guess we're we didn't quite get it and this is the Ali place and this is what I learned from the Soto is is a plant and and a flower and and this name is now maybe almost ironically used again for the next hard use tower to go up that we will then take a closer look but the plan is that the very on the left side in the middle here and it reminds me I'm sorry about when you break your leg and your bone is sticking out so I'm not quite sure what goes on again seems a very formal gesture that we should be past formal we should be performative in many ways and that's what we try again we're you know in a show in a recent show we were pointing out again the name Ali and their project and that it has sort of more of you know dynamic more affordable furniture which which is a good thing but again this is not an affordable building that's the problem so only the rich ones are able to afford that well as we say maybe the poor ones the proletarians would need that more than the rich let's move on to the next slide and go back to us here at the very bottom left you see a gentleman that you will see a lot in the future because we're going to do quite some shows with him in the future and this is Mr. Ronald Lindgren hi Ronald has been with us for the last couple of days around the national docomomo symposium and we were cruising around and having a coffee here at the Starbucks and he was looking up at the building and and and I'm quoting Ronald now he basically once we talked about the sort of quoting or mimicking or copy catting architectonica way back 40 years later he basically said well architectonica being truly postmodern was making a joke and it was a pretty good one as we also sort of went through and sort of agreed and he said this one is a really bad joke so that's quote on quant Ronald and what capacity and authority does he have to say that you will see even later in this show here and then in many shows to come let's go to the next slide here and he calls it that postmodernism to be continued obviously is shallow it's just on the surface and you can't trust even anything you see so these are two of the details of the building the podium is basically clad with what looks like wood but if you look at the joints you don't basically mortar joint cement join the woods so this is a ceramic in best case or in worst case a vinyl that wants to look like wood and up there you can see what's you know it looks so fancy the the yellow stripes is basically just lipstick on and well you can almost see where this is going what we're saying which kind of animal we are referring to however we don't want to insult pig I guess so let's go to the next slide and it's sort of particularly kind of sad because architectonic other firm basically has moved on to do some pretty you know more performative buildings this is a building in Miami at the Bay I think it's named Bay something and you can see they did some more I mean lots of lanais obviously now and they're sort of zigzagging and but anyway so they create more of a performative ornament I guess and they still keep their little signature style of their colored gimmicks in the building which is fine because they're more sort of subordinate to the design we almost would have had one of these buildings because of the top right is what they call the Vita this was a mcnaughton and Kobayashi development that unfortunately got pulled that and our activist journalist Kurt Sennberg got very excited about it because it actually was the reintroduction of a single-loaded corridor and we were heavily debating and arguing if sort of the sort of the but that it was creating towards the mountains to Maoka being comprised of the staircases and the elevators would have been a sexy but or not so this is where we basically left with a discussion because unfortunately we don't know because the project as said got pulled next slide please this is very early from pulled from the web illustrative you know renderings from the building something that got value engineered is that strip of glass on the most northeast end which would have brought in light obviously also sun so you could have should have shaded that but it would have brought light in the otherwise unfortunately now dark and sort of shining movie shining like double-loaded dark corridor and and again the biggest thing seems to be for them as you can see with the biggest printing here is common area of the sky line eyes and next slide we the soda and I discussed this and we thought you know it's almost like you see down there which is actually the greatest thing in kakaako isn't the buildings is the artwork and it really is sort of a cry out of locals and saying you know please evolve our culture and and keep it gritty and keep it natural sort of rewilded almost and we're thinking along the lines you know you should have basically almost inverted the whole concept of the building keep the basic living unit open sort of stacon eyes as Kurt calls it and keep it easy breezy and then when a storm comes through basically escape into the which code has already in place to the safe rooms it reminds us not in a literal because we're not post modernist but modernist and in a in a way of the cocoa nuts on a palm tree where which is solid and you basically could flee and escape into these closed rooms until the storm is over and when I did the research on the architect of this project I found it really sort of ironic that at the top right this is the architect who is la base the name is ac martin something which sounds like really funny but it isn't because the real name and this is a building that did in the early 60s very cool by a climatic tower with these horizontal free soles that were shading a glass box so again they should have stayed in their tradition and and blessed us with that here half a century later next slide but they didn't and this is once again somewhere on their website again they use the natural environment as a branding precedent and idle but then here on the podium deck where this sort of uninspired playground is that you don't want to see your playing there's no shading there well at some point that lonely tree gets larger but otherwise you get baked there and you're burning your feet because this is not cool grass this is hot plastic called astro earth next slide currently in the heart use corporation showroom you can see a model and on the top left is like the streetscape it doesn't look very inviting you get this fixed glazing these awnings that don't do anything long drugstore is going there then you got that hatch that's separating you from the building and there's a bus stop and then the future top right the the hard heavy rail will basically cut very close and actually have a stop very close to the building so again there's down there is the model in the heart use showroom and they have an aloha shirt exhibit and the aloha shirt is a symbol of easy breezy and you know it's sort of almost ironic to see an uneasy breezy hermetic building next to these aloha shirts I don't know if they're aware of that so let's face out with some positive polemic propositions here as we always do next slide we're suggesting something like that why don't you keep everything open the structure is exposed as Ronald calls it structural expressionism you get local food vendors farmers markets maybe a water curtain wall instead of a fixed curtain wall because we have the potential of evaporative cooling here in our very specific special tropics next slide and if you want to go for and this is primitive or one that has also been proposed for block d here in kakaako so not that far away and that would have you know still sort of compartmentalized units but they would be very sort of multifunctional and things popping in and out so could have reimagining the the kind of the micro unit scene and once again it's all easy breezy it's open to the air it's using vegetation as fenestration next slide and again or you go one step further primitive or two is basically just bare bones and cascading landscape where basically locals can dwell as they like the most and do the best over the weekends on the beach put up their tent you might think this is all weird and probably not possible next slide which is the second to last one here this is um Ronald Lindgren again here down there is what made it to the title postcard of the whole national docomomo symposium these are the color apartments by killingsworth brady Lindgren and stricker how the name how the firm is called and ronald is here up in front of a perfect fenestration just as we're talking vegetation in a trough and a curtain behind it was executed and designed by his partner layer stricker and this is the ihilani resort and to the left or at the very bottom this is a julius schulman picture and julius schulman is the great hero of andrea bretzi who is our generous photographer through the symposium and he took us to his home which are the kahala apartments apartments and that's just next to the kahala hilton and the very top left bigger picture is from his apartments here so again this is island tradition what we're talking about is might be weird but not impossible because this has been done in the past we just need to reactivate that so we're at the end of the show in the last slide here again the show was curated and created together with the soto and we were saying you know we need these new buildings because what's happening right now as trump's place out there and the other fake tropics and and trump running around like crazy the new generation like redda and france they're basically coming up and they won't put up with all this stuff and here in hawaii we're planting down there is like planting 10 000 trees as part of the sort of global reforesting initiative we have a new local food movement we see that down there the this is the local newspapers title page just last week after the show we ran by that to see that global warming is happening here and the cost of electricity goes up because people are more and more air conditioning the heck out of it and more desperate but we don't need that we need to just do what the soto is lobbying for at the top right and his famous basically plato ye and and and an encouragement to say there's an incredible post-contact tradition of innovation on the island and we need very fast to arc have architecture return to that so that's our message to you guys and we're at the end of the show and we look forward to see you next time again for another episode of human humane architecture and next time next week the soto is back you promised and until then please stay very tropically exotic exotically tropical bye bye