 So this is our show, think tech-wise human-humane architecture. This happening to be our 301st show, and you are the accumulated viewer that you see below there. And us is only the two from the these days burning gas station as to quote that, which you, DeSoto, are excited about our hooky mid-century German movies from the 30s and the 50s, named the three from the gas station. Today it's only us two, you DeSoto Brown in your childhood Asipov designed tropical exotic home up the Diamond Hill. Hi. Hello, good morning. And I'm also joined by my dog, as I always am, every tech show. And you are. And the birds. And the birds. And Martin only actually, a little distance away wish so, but that's how that close together things could be different rather idyllic almost tuck into our extinct volcano diamond head. You are. And I'm a little further away at the edge of the concrete jungle of Waikiki in the Grand Hotel of it, the Waikiki Grand, which isn't quite as gone as you keep rightly so saying. And I would like to be on the Lanai as well, but leaf blowers, lawn mowers, grass trimmers, delivery trucks of food with AC blasting buses. You name it. It's such a big noise pollution. We unfortunately can't do that. So we have to put up with this constellation. Let's get the first slide up. We're missing out on the third one, which is Matt Noblett, who is this show has has been the Danish Boston booster, because he's certainly we know him fairly well now. And he's certainly one of the finest people and friendly Ness architects in the world and is with us in trying to make our islands be more back to compliance with our most beautiful natural environment. So we want to continue too much without him. Let's spend the time today contemplate a little bit more sort of fundamentally the sort of. And we got we got a lot of views because this is a hot topic because this is thinking about what happened to Lahaina and what we can learn from it and how we can move on. And we got several comments and they range from I mean, the only thing they agree on is that this is not a natural disaster that it's either indirectly informed by us mankind who is not kind. We men are not kind to nature anymore. So from climate change and some are there who said we have directly an impact. And they're spreading some conspiracy theories about how this could have all been made up or set up. We want to stay in the tradition to be moderate and sort of be respectful of different opinions but not get dragged into the extremes on one side or the other one. And but I want to take a chance now to sort of to provoke us to be a little bit not fundamentalist but fundamental and really thinking about what is this all about and thinking about reflecting on your culture. Although you also have some of my culture in your genes but I'm talking to your Hawaiian genes and I'm speaking on behalf of my German genes. So where does this all go back to maybe to start all over is like maybe not to default back to what you had basically taken on from us but maybe how it all started. And so as obviously I'm not a friend of conspiracy theories but I will share a very weird recent and I already did with you and now I will share with everyone an evolution theory of some weird kind. And it goes back to science because our bodies run on close to 100 Fahrenheit, 40 Celsius, right? That's the blood temperature. But since we are engines and we have heat access we cannot have that as the ambient temperature around us we need approximately somewhere in the 70s Fahrenheit 20 Celsius, not to be bean county. So here comes my theory and we're respectful of faith but we're suspicious of religions both of us I might say because they have been doing too much harm. So whoever feels offended now by belonging to which religion forgive us. So whoever created our world, he, she, it's whatever I'm saying had severe attention deficit disorder and only wasn't able to focus on doing it right according to making feel as comfortable not just year round but day and night here in Hawaii. And then he, she, it's whatever lost it and left it up to some minions who had to do it under not ideal circumstances of extremely cold extremely hot places. And they really worked the butt off and tried their best creating these crazy things as like preventing a tree from getting a frostbite having to get kicked off its leaves at that time and shutting down the water supply like I do when I go back to Germany I turn off here the water, right? So it doesn't get flooded and stuff like that. So that being said, DeSoto, you know, we basically and that's why we white people we how these are so stressed naturally because you know, the little minions of the creator left us with, oh, we only got these few months in the summer to get the seeds into the ground, nurture it and then harvest it, chalk up the logs to keep us from frostbites in the wintertime and then munching in our, you know and in our caves on that stuff until it got old until, you know, the spring comes and so the whole thing continues while you and this is you guys, you audience, you get it this is highly intentionally overly exaggerated while you guys just, you know have the low hanging fruit and you had basically had to reach out because everything grows not everything at the same time, but always something. So why in the world, you know did you have to go through any kind of effort but you got stuck with our means and methods of crazy things like money that you didn't have of having to own a piece of the rock of your rocks you didn't know that, right? Your royalty, your people didn't know land ownership and you didn't know how to work. And as you know, for working your butt off the rat race all the time the gratification is vacation. So we blessed you with that because like the few weeks in the year, you know we could then come to your place and swamp it and want to have nothing but the good times that you used to have sorry for us, you don't have any more because you get dragged in that too and that rat race and have to work your butt off and actually when the ones of us who, you know take time off from that rat race you know, you have to do this all the time. Is that totally unfair to say, what do you think? Well, let me say too that a traditional Hawaiian culture was not just an endless vacation obviously and yes, there were a lot of things that people worked for but you're absolutely right in comparison to many other environments in the world of Hawaiian islands are as optimal for human existence as pretty much they could possibly be but I do also want to say too that it shows the amazing resilience of human beings that we can survive at North the North Pole and we can survive in the hottest desert. So that's why there are way too many of us for the earth to be able to support comfortably because we are adaptable and we can exploit the environment. Nonetheless, you're absolutely right that we are living in again the optimal conditions for human survival and when we say that the important thing is our buildings should reflect that and that's something you and I just talk about constantly here on human human architecture. So when we are talking about Lahaina specifically and the rebirth of Lahaina that we're gonna look forward to there are various things that need to be taken into account. One, the redevelopment of things that are not gonna burn again the way they did. So that means using new materials. It also means trying to reduce our fossil fuel use by how we build and what we live in and where we work. It means the consideration of moving back from the shoreline as the ocean levels rise because that's inevitably going on. But something else I just wanna pull in because I'm a historian is I would like to also think about what was Lahaina traditionally, what was its environment like when Hawaiians were living there and there was a whole waterway system that was there and you just talked about keeping yourself alive. Well, Hawaiians primarily kept themselves alive by growing kalo or taro and that grows in water. There was a whole waterway system, a natural system which Hawaiians altered to their benefit, which was used for growing kalo. And it was also a place that was renowned for its groves of ulu trees, breadfruit trees, which again, were watered by the natural runoff from the mountains which has long since been interrupted. So in the rebirth of Lahaina, the restoration of the wetlands is something that other people have already discussed plus the restoration of the ulu groves because breadfruit is a fruit that's edible. And it's something that you just mentioned, we instead of adopting a Western culture in which everything is shipped over the ocean to us for us to create more of our own natural environment output of food is also something desirable and ulu is a food. So those two things to bring back the way the traditional Hawaiians used the land and lived on the land of Lahaina is something to keep in mind as we talk about where is Lahaina gonna go and how is it gonna literally return from the ashes? Yeah, right on. And only ultimately it will also lead to shelter, right? Yeah. But again, sheltering from mild temperature, from warm rain, from harsh sun, yes. Takes a lot less than your ancestors, your Hawaiian side. It took a lot less material and effort than my ancestors because yours was roof architecture, mine is a roof, but wall, thick walls, a cave, right? So why is superimposing that too much effort over your culture, which the predominant architecture has been doing on the island, right? And I just bumped into it's like my 10th anniversary, actually my 11th year here. And so I just bumped into a team member by accident or intentionally the other day who was working on when I just came here, came from a moderately German tempered climate, went to a way more extreme in the American prairie, move on to the hot desert of Arizona to finally come here. I really know, I mean, when you guys say it's too cold, I said, no, you don't get a frostbite. When you say it's too warm and I know I'm not here over the summers, I have to take that criticism, but I look up the temperature and I got heat waves over there just before I came back. We had it hotter than here. So not why would be basically then built to the standards of the extremes that we don't have here? And that's the point. And so this was the age home. So I was asked go figure why me and the team, to think about how a wine should live differently than DHL is doing. And I'm looking at this, looking back, I would do it much different these days, but that was in the beginning and we didn't know any better. But what we tried to do and the criticism is, okay, what's supposed to be on the homestead land, DHL, 99 year lease, phenomenal $1, which is great. What is not great is then you get ripped off as the Hawaiian by having to buy a termite food and found out the heart and the two hot way, a fire combustible is like built like matches, right? That you light up candles are engineered to catch fire from all sides. And that's how stick frame construction basically is, right? And we try to do better and this is a concrete frame and it has a multitude of things. And but I think what we didn't get any further to say, okay, if they rip people off, excuse me, if they burden them with a mortgage for a lifetime, then don't rip them off but give them something worth their money. That was the point. But that's how far it went. And then you taught me about the recent endorser who we see up there in the big picture who because in my office, which holds on to AC, they just proudly announced they had been repairing the AC and nevermind. I mean, you and I know from our age what a phylophax is an analog filing thing that has a leather case and I keep it in my office because it's grossly molded because it's animal skin. So I'm thinking if that happens to this, if I stay in there, that happens to me and my lung and everything. So I reject it. The irony and thanks to your dog now cheerleading the buddy here, yeah, there you go. They are teaming up and saying and the AC people ironically are telling lead in order to keep working in there, they opened the window, which is not supposed to do. It has a lock, but they unlocked the lock and they opened it up and this guy must have been sneaking in and basically now living in the Hawaiian home. And you told me this funny story if you can repeat that from your mother who lived for more than or became more than 100 years in that home that you're sitting in. So must have been very healthy because otherwise you don't get older than 100 years. And you told me the funny things about the endemic, the indigenous geckos, lizards and the exotic ones or maybe they're even invasive depending on, share that. My mother, okay. So in my youth, there were only brown geckos and those that came in the houses and there have been a number of geckos that have been introduced over the years and other types of lizards as well which we suddenly have this turnover of new ones coming in. So my mother, when I was a child and this is over 60 years ago was scared of the brown geckos in the house because she had a fear when she opened her closed curtains, one of them would fall on her head and that was particularly upsetting to her. And yet when the green gold dust geckos which are exotic were introduced intentionally because they're pretty and they moved into the house, my mother decided that they were wonderful. So now she wasn't scared of them anymore. Now she loved to see the green ones instead of the brown ones and she gave the green ones different names that lived in different parts of the house and happily look forward to seeing to them and to talking to them and giving them names. So I don't wanna praise things that are exotic and or invasive in productions but my mother did change her mind about geckos once she saw green ones instead of brown ones. Thanks for sharing and getting back to the human factor here in collaboration with the animal one, this lucky guy here because of the miniature version that we give him of the age home does not have to go to the bank and get that lifelong mortgage and mortgage rates are the highest since 2001 and whatever, right? So you as a Hawaiian get locked into for a lifetime into a Western thing which is money and borrowing money and paying it off and having to have multiple jobs. And if we get to the next slide because that's the background of what we shared last time the cargo courtyard cabanas basically say free Hawaiians from that and in many ways it's a home work that because we were charged with or we were shot with the five bullets that I call it by DHHL and three of them were with B there were bugs, burglars and budget. And so in many ways using cargo steel is an answer to that one with a raw construction cost of whatever the market price of the ship and it is was $3,000 at that time. So this is our point. Why don't you hopefully get compensated now by your insurance, by whoever the government, rightly so but then rather to getting back locked in the same thing, why don't you maybe then do something like this and with a rest you can continue or reconnect to live a life that you rightly so used to which was a conducive of the climate and culture life here and not that sort of in slavery Western kind of lifestyle. And I'm speaking of the VW 181 the thing that comes out of the darkest days of my culture. This was a Hitler initiated car, right? But you through what we say through its simple anatomy was able to convert flip from the evil to the positive when the hippie generations have adopted it. And that's the idea you just mentioned we 90% rely on shipping things in. So the shipping container is equally not just as bad and not a symbol of dependency, right? Or something bad. We flip this and make it a symbol of self-sufficiency again of freedom, of decolonization if you want so. And to the left we got what we indicated last time this is now the images going with this is what they do and we assume they mean well again, they wanna help but do they do they do it right? You're living in a box. This is probably not what not even animals you want a box in the echo wants to live in the age home. It was going through the window to move in, right? So it wants an open easy breezy lifestyle. Who wants that? I think it's sorry kind of an insult for Hawaiians who are blessed with the best of circumstances climatically and shove them into a box with a window that works for the places where I grew up in Germany and Nebraska in the desert maybe even to keep you cool because it's so damn hot but here really sort of again, I give them all best intentions but then the results matter and I'm sort of unsure about that increasingly when I see that I don't know how you think about it. Well, I think the temporary housing is temporary housing but you and I and you've enlightened me a great deal on building materials and things that are innovative that I think this is the time for Lahainas to think in terms of innovation and new materials that can fulfill what you and I have just been talking about. We've talked about aerated concrete which is not as hot. It doesn't retain as much heat. It is not flammable. It's not going to burn. It can be turned into building materials that are actually more easy to use than traditional cement or concrete. And then also just the very basic concept of let's say that every new building in Lahaina from now on has to have a white roof to reflect the Cruel Sun which is the name Lahaina. The traditional Hawaiian name means Cruel Sun. It means it's hot there. Let's adopt what we can use that's new and modern and different to take care of the things that you've just been saying. And share another ones of these materials that you got totally excited about which I brought to you the same. Yeah, so then there's this other stuff which is. And go to the next slide for that reason because we might want to make clear. I mean Matt already said it's not as easy to say oh throw up a tent and this is it. It's not meant that literally not any of these suggestions are meant to be the solution by the way. I'm highly allergic to that as well from cultural baggage because Hitler said the endlösung, the final solution which was the most inhuman and humane. So I'm very sensitive when people come and throw out and say oh I got these solutions. I'm like wait a minute. I'm also very sensitive when people say I'm the Führer. I know I'm the only one who knows. I'm very because of obvious reasons very sensitive to these things. So it's not and Matt already said it as being the hybrid of the German company he works for and the American he is. But as we say a tent recognizes primarily to be sheltered from the rain at the sun it does but this one here the pavilion lets the breeze though. And this is one of the many products we're not selling. We're not making profit. We're not teamed up with any industry. Not at all. We just point out in several directions. And so this is one company I got introduced to through my sister because the one at the bottom there in the middle is hers. And it has these sides that you can close down that you might want to do in the evening when you need more privacy when you need more security. But when the sun is out there again and the wind and the wind has to cool you you roll it up again. And we have an ongoing thing comparing automobiles and architecture. We see our pying mobile up there. That is doing that. It has a convertible soft top that I put up when it rains or when it's actually too hot. But when I drive in the evening I take it down. On overcast days I take it down and get us to the next slide. When it kindly stays with you and we see at the top there I throw a car cover on. So we can learn from that for architecture that you basically have a kind of beomorphous way of changing according and Western architecture invasive important one does not do that. It's always the same, right? It is not adaptable. And your traditional structures did that. So here we see you in front of your lava rock childhood home that you're sitting and broadcasting from and being excited what I brought from you from this German company. Thanks to Karsten Kleiner here and his staff from the company Siltex. And what did we bring you in the good tradition of your royals who also did the same thing? They went to see us guys and brought back goodies from all over the world. Which is this one that gets you so excited to share in the three and a half minutes left we have? You brought me a woven kind of a cord or a wider band. And it is interesting because it's flexible and you pull it and let it come back and pull it, let it come back. Well, it's not just that, but it is made the threads, the fiber is made from basalt in a process that is mysterious to me. But that doesn't matter, the technology exists. Basalt is what the islands of the Hawaiian islands are made of lava. And lava can be essentially turned into a building material not just as rocks, but it can be turned into this fiber, which is again flexible. That's astonishing to me, but the wonderful thing is, and I took this to work and asked people if they could guess what the heck this substance was. And nobody could obviously, because basalt is a rock and this is a flexible fiber. Well, the point is again, it's a technological innovation and there is a huge supply of basalt in the world that the earth creates on its own. We're not creating something new, we are reusing it. And this is again, a way to think outside the box of a new type of technology. So if we're saying that we're gonna use tent-like structures, and that doesn't necessarily mean a tent, it means fabric or some kind of flexible thing that you put over some kind of a framework, which could be this type of cord, this woven cord, because the company you went to makes woven things of different substances, including basalt. Let's go to the next slide to illustrate this more, how this could be as my favorite of your lectures, your stories is the evolution of the tradition of innovation, right? Yes, exactly, exactly. So here's, you and Matt and I in Bishop Museum visiting me in front of the Holly Peely, the Grass House. And this is the only surviving real Hawaiian Grass House still in existence today, although of course it has been rethatched. And there's the stuff that we're talking about. There's that flexible basalt cord. There's the basalt itself, yet it turns into that flexible stuff. And that is almost magical. But again, that's the innovation that we can talk about to, and in these photographs, we're looking at a very traditional Hawaiian structure from ancient times. And then in front of it, we're looking at this modern material that can be used just as innovatively as we want it to be, particularly when we're talking about rebuilding Lahaina. Exactly. And that's what your kings have been doing that traveled the world actually to save their kingdom and we're lobbying for it and brought back, again, electric lights for the palace. That's also a very, you know, I mean, it is, and I would say tropical exotic and not invasive because it has a lot of lanais around it that keeps it cool. And he brought back electric lights, the light bulb. He talked Thomas Edison into giving it to him before the other palace in Washington, DC, the White House, right? So that being said, and we have only 20 seconds left, Karsten Kleiner says hi and we shared that with him and we said, hey, why don't we maybe thinking in developing an enclosure of these days out of the basalt weaving here? And he said, interesting. So that's, you know, we're, and again, this is not the solution. That is not the thing that we say one thing, you know, for everything. And this is just one of the many more ideas that we're going to share when we come back next week with Matt who is now in a train to New York City and then flies to Munich. So hopefully we have him back for continuing next week. And until then, please stay tropical exotic, exotically tropical. Bye-bye. Bye.