 Thank you for having tuned back into human-humane architecture Think Tech Hawaii on Tuesdays here in our exotic tropical paradise of Honolulu, Hawaii, which for an increasing number becomes paradise in pearl. And to talk about that today we have a special guest who comes all the way from Indonesia to be with us and we're talking about similarities and differences about challenges and potential we're facing in our tropical urban areas. And this is Antonio Oresianto. Thank you Antonio for being with us in the show. Aloha. Aloha. And coming all the way from your home. So if we can get picture number one please that is what we agreed upon how basically to call the show and we call it poor people's paradises and you added a question mark to that which is more than more than appropriate. And number two is actually illustrating image number two is illustrating. You're actually here as part of a symposium that is organized by the East West Center and I was snapping your way and stealing you out of your program and thank you for doing this. And so we had to drive up to Waipahu and we were basically coming the way back and that gave you the chance to basically look at our spectacular skyline of Honolulu downtown and Waikiki in the background and Kakaako to grow which is one of the largest skylines in the U.S. we actually have the fourth largest skyline something like 460 something high rises. And this is something that you point out this is happening in Asia right now and many who aren't in Asia look increasingly at Asia the way we look at the slide right now but we want to talk about the other side of development and being underdeveloped and underdevelopment and this is illustrated by the by the next slide which I pass it on to you to explain what's behind these images Antonio. Yes I mean if you see if you see most tourism magazines in Asia you see probably all the good things you know and the glittering high rise anything to do with with beauty but if you see behind the scene of a lot of the Asian countries Asian cities you will see this poverty slums and pollution and this is something that we are working on as how to deal with the urbanization in Asia that is rapidly growing and how do we can solve this to to help people that's living in there I mean they're in in deep poverty and I think a lot of the government doesn't really deal with with them. Absolutely we can go to the next slide which you also kindly prepared and nicely sort of captioned and this is also as extracts from some of the presentations you just gave at the symposium right. Right so this is just to show about cities that doesn't give attention to the to the majority of the poor so basically their space they do need space but they were not given space so most of the poor are living in the in the edge of rivers or even in the in top of cemeteries so if you read in there it's like their space is basically at the edge of falling down earth. And this is rather literally and figuratively speaking obviously. And going to the next image. So this well the first image is actually the situation inside the city where the city doesn't doesn't create or provide spaces for the poor and this is basically another image of the outside of the city even the outside of the city the the private developers are are building housing real estate and and basically like wiping out existing communities indigenous communities so basically the title there says like what you know what what happened with the existing existing uh village. And that's there there are many similarities here to just on the way here from Waipahu we're talking about that where we drove by the heavy rail that just you know in the in the making and we talk about transit or in the development and we talk about gentrification right we walked through Chinatown and you see all that stuff I mean we're both sort of you know have decided for the better or the worse to be cultures who thrive on on the capital right on consumerism on profit and these are the downsides of that of that decision right we're talking about and go to the next picture you got another sort of very provocative polemic proposition yeah so so this is basically a picture of the outskirt of central cities where the developers are buying out all all the villages so this actually show villages being wiped out and the only thing that's left is there is the school and the developer cannot really buy a school the school because the school is owned by the government so it's a public land so that's the only thing that's left so there's a school with no students wow so this this is like a picture of wiping out communities low-income communities indigenous communities and the outskirt of these cities yeah the growing cities yeah I can't make this more radically obvious as as visualizing us so the next slide we go and you have these awesome I think cartoonish kind of manga yeah and illustrations that make it rather clear yeah I think this this actually shows maybe in general is happening all over the world or maybe more in developing countries uh about well I wrote it over there it's actually like the human the human greed where business is basically dominating development exploiting anything they can get so for example the the nature the forest they want to make business out of anything unfortunately will be mostly exploitative and the one that's left out is basically that people there in that circle which is the poor and they also need resource but it's getting smaller and smaller and and that's the the people that we are actually what we are focused actually more the people the poor people and also the the environment yeah yeah so the next picture so we're talking about the underserved right because you know when you talk about Indonesia and you talked about the general perception of Indonesia these are people conventionally the you know say Bali oh great this is going to be my dream vacation I'm going to be in my little eco tourist hut right I'm going to feel good but this is not well others take care of that right I mean you're basically the advocate for the little people and the underserved which are being cut out by talk about the 99% and the 1% and that's sort of inequity we talked on the way here where we're walking by you know homeless communities so to speak they were informally basically forming themselves here along the roads that we were working that that the poor people you know they will not go away and they will eventually as history have has shown they will speak up and they will basically rebel up and then in the history that has been revolution and there has been civil wars and stuff like that so these are sort of you know basically proactive interventions that you guys are basically proposing and you use that term that's very familiar to me I'm very sympathetic about that inclusive that model of inclusiveness so tell us more about that Tonya yeah actually the the the program that I'm I'm here with East wind center is this the subject is actually how do you handle the rapid urbanization that is going on in where I guess almost everywhere but probably more more so in the develop developing countries and the issue of poverty is a big problem and Habitat 3 is a is actually a statement from the UN where is agreed by many countries about how do we build the cities and one of the subject is actually what they call inclusive city basically is is about whether the poor can also live in the city so you know whether the question is actually whether the city is only for the rich and the poor as has to be outside and if we do this it will be a problem yeah I'm going to the next page and I'm really appreciate what you're saying as far as our condition where we're seeing a lot of high end luxury development here in kakaako and then you know there is some you know care for the for the so the middle class the affordable we talk affordable housing but this is still we're talking about the half million range this is still absolutely unaffordable for too many so though how do we house the underserved right how do we really I mean and the way you say it you don't have a problem which I appreciate calling it poor so how do we deal with poor people and giving them dignity right and decency as far as dwelling yes yes so if you look at this picture it's actually it's a picture of a competition so for example I mean if you see there's a table and the table actually represent a city and all around the city around the table is all the the stakeholders the players so there's the the central government the mayor and there's the businessman the bankers private sectors and on the right side you will see the people the informal people the marginal folks that doesn't have the power for example the lobby power or bargaining power for them to be to exist in the middle of the city so I put that red dot close to that in the circle that's that's basically what we are doing as as an entity uh kind of helping the people to be part of the I call it like basically like the urban game so they can also exist inside the city I will make this a viewing assignment for my emerging generation of architects that I have the privilege to work with and David Rockwood and myself are basically encouraging them to sort of do research the manga way so the exactly the way you do it you illustrate you know human activity and event so it's it's way more clear for us that it's not about pretty pictures it's not about surf it's it's about substance and it's about people it's basically authorship authorship and and taking becoming and in charge again of of their actions so I really applaud you for that this is this is really good let's jump to the next picture and just briefly you know talk about another issue that both are sort of coastal you know ocean cities and cultures face right yeah this this picture actually show show and a big issue that that we face actually we we means probably more countries that is island based small island based and the problem of climate change where the water start rising and if if you know Indonesia most most of Indonesian settlements are at the coastal or given an under river where a lot of the major cities are actually already under under the the waters and we have to deal with this yeah I mean unfortunately the current law of the the Indonesian law is like all settlements that's living next to the waters are regardless illegal and if we we go to the next picture and we've got to speed up a little bit whereas we here in Hawaii feel this sort of marginality a couple of you know land owners at the north shore they feel the king tides what they call it and we got a little less speech here in Waikiki but pretty much it's still pretty unnoticeable for the general public but that is different with you guys right as this picture sort of very dramatically shows I mean this this is just one project that we did it's it's actually a slum on water and we revitalized with a new new housing development we might want to look into that too and the next picture illustrates that very beautifully Ray our producer fell in love with that immediately and this is also the permanent background picture because we also love it so much so this is sort of this so you turn the the the dilemma of flooding cities into the virtue of floating cities right yeah I mean this this is maybe one one alternative solution that we we think we we might have to deal with if there's no more land then we probably have to to build houses on top of water so this is just an experiment that we try to do so this this is actually a structure on top of styrofoam yeah and thinking about how which is repurposed right right it's turned waste until building material awesome so how do you do with garbage exactly sort of recultivating that and next picture returns to the to the other main issue again we've been there you know the slums and let's move to the next picture and I have to apologize because I had the tough job yeah if we can go to the next picture already I had the tough job this presentation originally had 65 slides and I just learned you had 225 or 250 so there's way more information so I basically to weed out but what I kept is number 14 from the sequence that tells this story here which I really love about the sort of grass Rudy that you don't believe in in top down because we don't trust you know our leadership are you know our governments our municipalities to make the changes fast enough you know as fast as we need them but you you believe and trust in the people to be able sort of from the bottom up sort of grass Rudy you know take actions so that's yeah our focus of what we are doing is actually dealing with the with the poor and one of the main main needs of the poor is actually jobs and what we are working on a lot is actually finding space for for the poor to have space to do to survive and this also triggers into an architecture number next picture number 15 is is with the same approach you know from people based and human activity and event you know that creates appropriate architecture that is not about representation but there's really the architecture is sort of the facilitation of these actual you know fundamental needs and you the next picture is this seems like you know a little stuff but this shows it has high impact because as you very sort of humbly put at the very top right this has gotten you guys one of the most prestigious awards for architecture in developing countries the aga count award for architecture congratulations thank you very much and let's jump to the next picture here again as we talked before we want to now walk with a little remaining time we have of 10 minutes we want to walk through a couple of case studies of different kinds how you basically enable and empower the people to build their own communities right yes this this picture is another slump so what we did is actually through through community participation we rearrange their their their housing because most of their housing doesn't have a sufficient infrastructure so either water sanitation so we did this through what we call land consolidation which is basically rearranging land so that's what we did awesome and that's all participation yeah absolutely which we see in the next picture um as well so that before situation once again all the as people can read all the problems going with it but then the next picture is sort of see the see the potential in that yeah the previous picture is another case actually i showed 12 cases in the in the program but basically like this case is actually also dealing with the slums and not only dealing with housing but the whole the whole holistic view including jobs garbage water pollution so it's it's a total community development yeah from bottom up and down from the essentials and you know who wants to deal with garbage but this is one of the fundamental problems that you also turn into an opportunity and the next page is i'm very happy because i've been talking about that for quite some while as to incorporate that into the project actually the one that i show at the very end as one of the examples that we came up with where we had exactly the same idea so tell us more about this well this is this is this is the continuation of the the garbage uh people look at garbage something that's not useful so we we try a system where garbage can be can be transferred to something useful which is energy so they don't have to spend money for for their cooking on the top right side is actually if you we are we are trying to produce garbage to become compost but compost is too cheap to to make a sufficient income from all the efforts so on top is actually uh it's like the second generation from garbage we do seedlings of plants and we sell the plants so we can create more money income very cool very cool let's move on here to the next picture which gets us a little bit more disciplinary here the show being human human architecture although all the stuff you've been talking about is also because the fundamentals i mean we call the systems right you got to figure out the systems because otherwise you're just basically not being able to handle these sort of living environments but um so you're also looking into a sort of typology and materiality and technology and sort of you know learning from the indigenous from the vernacular right yeah like this this picture is i mean most of the case case studies are are all Indonesian experience this case is actually in Mexico so basically if you want to to deal with the poor we have to think about land land is probably the major issue finance and in this picture is is probably more the building system land is probably the most expensive thing to solve but this in this case this is a site and service project using local materials those local plants beer cans yeah and self-help this is self-help housing yeah brings back this is this is chris alexander's project in Mexico yeah you know brings back great memories of my two years in the desert yeah in Arizona oh yeah right and joy and will brooder who will have as a speaker in our lecture series so let's move on to the to the next picture in learning by doing right so you don't really do like teaching people how to actually so cut out capitalism and the middleman and you know the construction to yourself raise the cost and make it unaffordable we're working a lot on on how communities can build themselves from from local build building materials and if the government can also provide tools it's just the philosophy of give them tools for them to be self-reliant so that's empower the people and the next picture shows a another example the case study where you guys have been doing that yeah this is back to indonesia actually it's about the same thing we give them a tool a block machine and they they build their own roads l.a.'s public bathrooms and their own houses by just giving them the tool exactly and you're not staying within sort of the more conventional realm of more western you know technology but you're also next picture are more sort of exploratory more experimental right right this is this is back to Mexico yeah well as you as you title in the first page you talked about this is in Mexico this is in us this is in indonesia right because we're basically facing these problems all over the world and especially you know where capitalism goes gets out of control right and we are left with the poor in peril we we gotta be creative and find ways out of that sort of dilemma and your sort of last project picture is the next one which also goes back more to sort of an urban scale right right this this is basically a project that we are working on actually the the main problem that we have or the poor have is land so we we have thought if there's if we have problems with land then when we build land instead of fighting for it so this is what would be called the project land on land and let the people build themselves the the other thing that it shows in this picture this is done by by my friend you seen oh you can see there his name is most of the slums problem our solution is to displace them to to apartments high rise apartments so we and and we are proposing for a different kind of solution which is housing with it's not only housing but it's also a place to work which is not the case with most of the solution that they have the apartments very this this is a solution that a lot of countries does it's just they give they give the solution only on housing but yet the problem is also jobs yeah very inclusive sort of manga driven approach and you also do just the necessary this very familiar to us we have a lot of emerging architects we're you know working with who do just the framework the platform the facilitation and yes that's all you need in the tropics right you need to be protected from the rain in the sun but you don't need this enclosure you know as much as you needed in temperate climate well we were discussing on on what we were walking about the the homeless and exactly so they give them space exactly and that's getting back to the end of the show this is so encouraging Antonio I can't even tell you getting to the next picture this is a project we proposed along the same lines where we repurpose cargo steel avoiding saying shipping container but that's what it is this is one of our contemporary abundant building materials and many architects have tried to do something so this is our approach repurposing that and repurposing albicia wood and just coming up with thank you and you know it has the same you know this is one thing but the sort of the essence of it has the same with you we're talking about our you know cooking is basically all generated you know biogas driven and we repurpose everything and it hasn't worked so it's it's the same approach and it's for the same sort of need and necessities of the rising poor here in our sort of very privileged developed culture of Honolulu and so we're at the end of the show but with the last picture which is a beautiful very poetic drawing of yours beautiful and I want to also send this message you know to the emerging architects and do it sort of passionately and poetically right I mean you're dreamers but and we want to make you know life better for the people who are really sort of at the lowest you know chain of of society so really I want to you know thank you and congratulate you and keep up that great work and let's stay connected and help each other out in yes in various ways and so thank you very much for your visit and your great projects that you share and I will now bring you back to your symposium and thanks again that I was able to steal you away for that little time so thank you thank you thank you and if you like the show be back next week always on Tuesday afternoons 4 p.m here on think take a why for a human humane architecture and until then have a great time and help to making our life you're better on our islands and everywhere in the world see you then bye