 you back to this, our show, Think Tech 1, 2, and you make architecture, this happening to the 279th show, and thanks to our producer Michael, we show you which accumulated viewer you offer. Thank you for that. And this is the Boston Bench Booster Show Volume 16 with our guest, Minister Oblette, talking about what we can learn from his tempered for our at times troubled tropics. Hey, Matt. How's it going? Hey, Martin. So today, it's the two of us were missing our third leg. Holly, I'm always getting in. Senator Chenli Stang's newsletter here right before the show, and one article is about the free leg of social housing, about social housing. Leg here, they have to try our very best. So we're trying to give the sort of clues and everyone else back in Hawaii from our experts. We're kind of seen as we, you know, before the show, we're both in the, in the kind of just around the freezing. So we do both having, you know, sweaters. Sweaters, we wouldn't make it, you know, outside without getting inside, warming each other up every now and then. Yeah, I have, in this case, I have my deep cold sweater on like all the way up to the top. There you go. So the first slide, I thought it would be great to just talk about what the subtitle of the show is, is people that are friendly, democracy, tech, sure. So Democratic architecture, which is the philosophy of the firm ever since the beginning and continued to be. I thought should talk a little bit about what's going on here. We've not, I feel kind of bad just closing the eyes and not talking about the circumstances, the environment. And this is another borrowing from the, to be continued to show comparing architecture and automobile. Very special automobile is something that moves, which is the tank. So number two, so the hottest news from us Germans is that we finally have many months of thinking about it or sending what like 14 of these monsters to the Ukraine to support them, which is great. Yeah, and this article that sent me many months ago, just when that discussion started. Stepdad, so my step-grandfather was developing that beast for the Bundeswehr, the United States Army. So I'm used to that thing, you know, for my childhood and I never would have thought in my wildest, you know, darkest dreams be re-animated in such a way. And how do we cut the curve back to, I guess, people in the brain is if we just contemplate on that for another second, because it's tragic in so many ways. Obviously, every life is so every life lost like the worst drama. And besides that, you know, you guys and we have been featured side by side in the Faden 21st century episodes of architecture with your not LB and and we just wish, you know, we will hear and cheerlead everyone to continue that and to do that. But that's that's like the, you know, the planet friendliness and people friendliness within these buildings that we will talk about. And this tank is obviously, you know, trying to, you know, keep people friendliness by teaching the ones who are not behaving that way. There's a planet friendliness or unfriendliness of that one too, because guess what the gas mileage of a leopard too is approximate. I guess it's something like two kilometers, a liter or something like that. Yeah, I looked up. So it's like 500 liters per 100 kilometers. And his brother, the American brother, the Abrams is even worse. It's like 700. And then it has a kerosene turbine. So at the same time, we're just digging ourselves deeper into our, you know, other big problem, which is the environment, right? So it could be a new market for Elon Musk. Yeah. All right, that being said, let's get the next slide up to higher up. Heading on the next slide we're seeing shows up. We will see a promising back then that was in the 30s. And you remember that one, right? The demaxiom. Yeah. So the gas mileage of that one was like eight liters per 100 kilometers. So like 30 miles per gallon, moved eight people. That was really ahead of time. And we promised the audience, we've been talking about the building on the right, which we know from our school days. That was the fairly recent thing. It was like a decade old or so. So this is Foster's Willy's Faba Dumas building. And since I've been thinking about it, I want to talk a little discourse discussion with you. Is it fair to say that it was still pretty formally driven versus energy performance? I have to believe that's the case, based on the fact, even though this was built in a rather northern climate, this idea of just sort of skinning the outside of the building with pure glass and not having any sunshading on the interior really can only be enabled by huge amounts of air conditioning and therefore fossil fuels. And particularly at the time that this was built, that was pretty much all there was. So I can't remember all the details about it, but it's one of those, I think, seminal buildings that on its own was something. I mean, it had its value and it had its moment. It also is the kind of building that proliferated in much the way that the Seagrams, you know, any of the Mies van der Rohe powers sort of proliferated across the corporate American landscape. This is sort of the precursor to the outer Beltway campus office park working building. Yeah. And Zeitgeist-wise, we also promised to feature the first polo, which was also and that was in 75, the same year. And other than that, they probably don't have much in common because that polo was actually even the more primitive version of that Audi, really for the little people. This is like the little brother of the rabbit, the gulf. And the Willys building was always, you know, to begin with a more upscale sort of thing. And I guess Buckley Fuller, the show quote at the bottom right, which is also actually not a show quote, but a preview of that immobilia show to be continued, that Buckley was present in Hawaii through his Kaiser dome in Waikiki. That's not anymore. And so and and Foster did this, the thing he's standing in front there at the top middle is actually a replica or like an homage because he got to know Buckley and was really considering him a mentor and an influence. So he was building that in 2000 or something like that. And by that time, I think he cut the curve and I always when I talk to the emerging generation and you please let me know if this is appropriate, I compare Foster in his own personal union and I guess his partners in his team, but to, you know, the transition from Gunther Banish to Stefan Banish and you guys, while Gunther had as we keep talking about a very social approach to architecture and you guys added the solar approach to it. And Foster did this too with a building that next slide, you guys encouraged me to check out with the emerging generation, which this year shows that we did. This is the due support built in 1993. So there's actually two decades later, you know, being very ambitious about and we had a really great time. The building manager only has the building since one and a half years and he's an engineer and really is really happy to have him because he recognizes what he has. And he's not shy about talking about all the challenges that the previous management's had pretty much disrespected and scoot things up pretty badly. One of the most obvious examples is in the center on the right where you see, you know, taking pictures of the the jealousies that go down. And they were of that you remember, then actually remember them from back then and he says they're actually not manufactured anymore. These are these micro perforated ones are brilliant because even though the shades are all down, as you can see, up one, you can still see through and light comes through. So then below there where I placed the Jaguar E which we started to compare the car going with it is, you know, it is a collectible car and it takes a lot of maintenance to keep it in its original. And what it's sitting in front of is where they had replaced blinds with opaque ones and it's like totally spruced in the dark. That's funny because they do still manufacture, there's two, there's still two companies who manufacture perforated blinds. I'm surprised that they did that. You should get me their names and I should actually get it to him that would probably help him to to swap these out to switch these out. And so yeah, he at the building as with, you know, with many, you know, who want to be critical about foster even with a Hong Kong Shanghai bank and the commerce bank say, oh, they don't work, you know, the way they were intended. I think it's fair to say, you know, he tried. Only if you try, you can fail. You always try to improve and learn. And often the ones who say that haven't even tried, and so yeah, I think I mean, I think it also brings up an interest, a critical point relative to the impact of building ownership and care. I mean, we can do as designers the best we can. And sometimes we expect too much. And that's clearly not great. But you know, as building technology evolves and improves in terms of its performance, it's as much incumbent on the people who live in and operate the building to understand the way that it was intended to be operated and try to do that faithfully as it is on the designers to pay attention to new developments in technology that can improve building performance. I'm glad to mention that because that reminds me of my memory of when I had my first teaching gig in Bremen, and a colleague of mine had, you know, an inner scoop to the North LB through Dr. Boudin, who was the boss there, the big boss. So he gave us a tour, gave students a tour, and I was joining them. And so since you set me up with Thomas Auer tomorrow, who's a trans solar partner and professor at the tomb. So thanks to you, we get together tomorrow. And I will, if, you know, opportunity on itself will share this story with him, that through that connection, we're able to get access to that one little secret room where from trans solar we're there on a daily basis and basically push some buttons. And we were taking a chance and saying, Hey, now the secret, what doesn't work? And they basically, you know, very honest and bluntly said, the factor human doesn't work at time. And the best example was that the night pooling has to be activated, which is an essential part of any even passive house. The cooler night air, especially in our tempered climate, flush the building naturally overnight, and then gets you over the day. And there is this flap that you explained to us also in another project that we looked at last. And they just said, people just leave the office, rush home, which is understandable. But if they want to have a comfortable next morning, they got to understand that they opened that flap. And I said that to continuously tell the people, but I have to say after, especially comparing to foster, this foster building, unless for maintenance, where you can actually open, but only with tools, the frame, it's, it's hermetic. It's not engaging something that you guys are different to. I mean, Foster is categorized and put it to the drawer as the high tech architect together with Rogers and Grimshaw. So you have a different take. And we did the same with the kindergarten that joins you in the Faden is that we said, no, we, even though passive house says no operable windows, we ignore that. We do. It's at a time where the temperature is the same outside and inside people meet that and they deserve it. So yeah, totally agree. What I like about that story too, is the mental image of like two trans solar employees having been like accidentally built into a room at the building that they just never figured their way out of during construction. I will quote you on that one tomorrow. And at top right, just quick, I also took a chance to show them our subway canopies there very early in the morning. And so they got a, they got a taste of that one as well, because public transportation is also something that we need to better and a little bit more poetically, pragmatic, pragmatically poetic, which is what this project tries to dwell upon quite a bit. And the next slide on with my Lenny, because as we said, you know, Stefan has one too, and he's also in medical realm. And so both our youngest sons are the medical Lenny. So my medical Lenny significant other Rima, we were going in their polo, which we introduced to go and buy the ingredients for a delizious sushi that they were making. And we had to go to Düsseldorf to do that. And we drove by this, which used to be a smart dealership, which I remember, because we have been the local contact architect for these in the city of Garbson. And the least of sort of concept, and then it was sort of smothered a little after that, are another spin off banish architect and proves that sort of, you know, principle not to hold on to the people and enslave them and only have the owner of the first glorious architect. But your guys philosophy is the more you can send out and teach, you know, and get the message out even further, the better. And that was Kaufmann and Tyler. Yeah, not too many, not too, I don't think people realize when within the German architectural landscape, how many firms were were born of an experience with either banish and partner or banish architect and that exists as very successful practices today. Yeah. And that's great. And it reminds me of your friend, our friend bunded, who does the same, that says philosophy and coaching the younger generation that he equips them with little opportunities and jobs so they can, you know, start their own firm, which is really quite reputable. Another thing on the right column is that Lenny's hand rests on a display of timber columns. So they're proposing, which is a trend, as we know, a good trend to make the structure of this whole building, which is rather amazing and ambitious, because it's that solid timber. And that's again, following the footsteps of many below that is your concert hall out of solid timber. And in the same city where we have consulted the local smart thing in Garps, and I just read and then you use that our solid timber school gets expanded, which I'm as far as the fenestration, which we will then cut the curve to your Harvard project back is there was a promotional, you know, a book out there in the center in the middle. This double page was dedicated to, as it says, high tech facades, the same in English and in German. And when you read through the fancy, you know, of the other diagrams there, it's pretty much the same old as, you know, the double facade and the double facade really here in the temperate seems to get a renaissance that's we're always stumbling over it be something. I was just debating that with the emerging generation and studio and again, as we sort of concluded already last week, maybe in Hawaii, it's sort of too much like having that puffy coat on and that head with a windmill and in film TV. Because again, and the glass has to make it there and glass used to be sand and you need 1000 degrees of soda, the overall circular economy thing is ends up being sort of quite questionable. But here in the temperate, you know, especially under the trouble of, you know, us having relied on Putin too much and not having followed your Nord LB and our kindergarten too much. And to be more than ever on Vogue and in fashion. But again, in detail, they're pretty much the same old I look through these diagrams, of course, they have to have triple pain glaze as the main thermal one. Nothing really has changed. And we want to look at things that are different, especially make maybe sense also in Hawaii. And that gets us back to your Harvard engineering project with the next slide that we have already seen and talked about with the solo quite a bit last week. But we haven't talked about what you want to do now is what we see sort of on the outside behind the glass. And for that reason, I think let's go to the next slide and you explain us the thought process of what the option would have been. Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe just starting from your previous comments about the double facade, we I think I think I've always had been a bit we've done a little bit of looking into that. And I've always been a bit skeptical about whether the kind of the classical ventilated or sealed double facade was more of an architectural dream than an actual performance benefit. And of course, architects love it because it brings depth to the elevation and to the building facade, which is the thing, especially in a cost, in a cost difficult environment, you would really struggle with everything that you can afford when you have limited amount of money to spend looks very flat. But what does make a big difference to the building performance is a some is the layer outside that stops the sun from hitting the glass because buildings like greenhouses that are mostly glass will heat up and the UV rays will be trapped behind the glass. And you overheat, you know, you continue the sun beating on the glass continually over the day, we'll just overheat the environment behind it, which again, you can only compensate with cheap energy in the form of air conditioning, which is really one of the biggest drivers of buildings carbon footprints in the world today. So what we were looking at here was a way what you're seeing here are some schedules that were made to think about, of course, the depth and the architectural qualities of the facade. But with I think the kind of assumption that there was going to be some kind of layer here that was going to control the sun relative to the building interior. And what we were also concerned with is that what you're seeing here is the front, the print, the main elevation of the building, the main facade, and it's about 500 feet long. And so we wanted to look for a way to break the scale of the building down for one thing, which we did obviously with these three articulated boxes. But even those boxes are quite large. And what we thought was if there was some kind of almost like a veil or a scrim that could be hung in front of these boxes that would kind of disguise the scale of them, that would be a beneficial thing. So we really started kind of exploring, not articulating the facade with punched windows and visible floor lines, which would tell you intuitively what, how big these things are, but really to make it more, a bit more mysterious as to exactly what you're kind of looking at. Yeah. So that's understandable. Yeah. No, I like your sort of professional criticism of the fetishism with certain things, even though they're kind of, you know, driven by the right motivation, principally, but maybe as we said, maybe it's a little too much. And then, you know, how do you keep that genie sort of in the bottle? As one was reading, so we don't need to get back, but the project in Düsseldorf that proposed this by Tadao Ando, who's one of the masters of minimalism as it was called when we went to school. He was up in the early 80s and fostered by the way, it was late 80s, so two of these, you know, really, you know, legendary people who really pushed the profession in the profound direction we're thankful. But again, it's, it's, it's challenging as to keep things moving and not to become trapped in sort of, you know, in sort of trends that you then sort of uncritically take over. And so well appreciated your again, attempt here to rethink. And so then let's take a look at the in the last, I guess, two, three minutes we have. Let's go back inside of the building. And there's two more of the great sort of interior breakout spaces and livable hallways, as always, even with our small, you know, kindergarten projects where every, you know, room and very square feet is prescribed. The room we have is making the floor, the hallway a little wider and make the street the same on a very sort of a profane typological scale. But again, on the on the left side, before we then really dig really deep and you explain us the development of the system, the prototypical development here, we get a first taste and glimpse of how it forms and not just, I mean, the energy performance we will see later on and more elaborately, but here you really see how it visually aesthetically, you know, phenomenologically forms, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, this if you can kind of at some level see all three of these images is related. The one on the left is the is a is a is a typical office in the building, and you see the sunscreen on the outside of the glass there. And not only does it shade the sun from the interior of the mercy shade the interior of the building from the sun, but the top surfaces also sort of reflect the daylight deep into the into the depths of the not only just this office, but then through the glass partitions that line the corridors into those public spaces. So like you said, it's just as important to create. I mean, it's important to obviously create that space that corridor space and these kind of eddies of space that allow people to have little tables and chairs where they can gather. But it's equally as important to pay attention to the qualities that those spaces have. In this case, you were talking about obviously daylight and the ability to see through these offices to the outside, it makes those interior zones livable. And in addition to to sort of making the kind of visual communication with the offices very, very clear. Absolutely. And then we can, as we did the last couple of times, we can throw in an appetizer here with a next bite without having time to talk about it just to make you mouthwater and make you hungry for coming back next week when you will show us more in detail the development of these systems here and here already you can get a taste of it. So right now, where it's cold outside, you basically harness and harvest the solar capacity of the sun and support to stay warm inside while in the endless summers that we have in Honolulu, it was always keep you cool. So looking forward to that more in detail next week and until then, please, yeah, everyone else and with us in the temperate, stay very social and solar and in the tropics, hopefully again, the solo you'll be back with us next week, stay equally social and shaded. Bye bye. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.