 Welcome to a healthy and happy 2018 human-humane architecture with your every other week's edition with your host, DeSoto Brown and Martin deSpanck. So I just got back from Germany, so picture one is me back with my loved ones, personally and professionally thinking about the evolution of tradition. And while I was there, the first show in this year was done by, let's picture number two by J. Feidel and by Tonya Moe. And it made me sentimental about the magnificence of the magnificent mile here in Honolulu that is about to go. And as modest and moderate Tonya always is, next picture J was a little bit more specific and talked about all the new stuff that's replacing the magnificent stuff from the past being eclectic, but he said that would be too much of a compliment. He then said it's junk. And also some informed citizens look at it that way, as this guy who's quoted here as a response to Kurt Sandberg's blog on civil beat. And next picture, not only enough, but next picture, one of our informed Doko Momo members took this picture while driving and because it's referring to a show we did, this is Warped Plaza and we were hoping it would stay around for a little longer, but unfortunately doesn't look like it, right? No, it's got a fence around it and it's going to be demolished and that is a disappointment to us. So that's sad. And so on a little bit more on the bright side, on my way back, then I had an unexpected stopover, next picture, and they put me up in this nice little piece and it's interesting because they probably didn't want to put me up in the most fancy slash exclusive, expensive hotel, right? No, they did not. So they put me up in the most budget one, and that's one that's classy that unfortunately maybe we don't see that these days anymore. This is in 1969, what was it called? SeaTac Motor Hotel. And it used to be, thanks to Mike Guskert who helped us out, it used to be the largest motel in that region at its time. That's right, it had 800 rooms. Exactly, and some of the features that we see here, the big linear detail at the top reminded us of the project we actually want to talk about today and next picture, it's still connecting to, I'm still a little homesick because my, I had to leave my sweetheart Suzanne back home and we want to talk about the project we briefly touched on in her show Tropical Tourism where she was when she was here 20 years ago as an au pair and tell us where that is and what that is. We are talking about the Kahala Hilton Hotel and the Kahala Apartments and so this picture Suzanne is on the balcony of the Kahala Hilton Hotel and the apartments are beyond her and if we go to the next picture, we see an historic view when the hotel first opened in 1964 of what it looked like looking towards Cocoa Hand and Cocoa Crater from this new wonderful Hilton Hotel. And you have another picture that you hold on to and give it to people upon special requests that shows actually the actual hotel room behind and there's something interesting because the hotel layout, the plan is pretty generic, an American typical standard double loaded corridor but the trick they did is that they turned the hotel room sideways so it's actually facing outside with its long side and that way it looks way more spacious because if you look at the facade, it's pretty generic, it's pretty much punched in holds, the opening isn't too big but the trick is it looks much more big and spacious as it actually is. Yeah, there's a secret inside. It is. Next picture gives us a clue about the offers behind and this is on the left is the architect Edward Killingsworth who we see a monograph about his work at the very bottom and no surprise the middle picture at the bottom. This project is published in there and who's the guy on the right who's actually his client. Yeah, the guy on the right is Conrad Hilton who is the head of the Hilton Corporation and at this time when the hotel was built in Kahala in 1963-64, the Hilton Corporation was very actively expanding internationally and it was building hotels outside of a lot of the traditional places where they had already been built in downtowns and other places and like that and the Kahala Hilton is a perfect example of that exact type of motion that they were going through. So and Hilton most likely next picture hired a Killingsworth based upon this project here because Killingsworth participated in the very famous case study house series from mid-century which happened on the west coast in America and this is the case study house number 25 that he designed and what they all share is this sort of zeitgeist of these progressive young architects who made architecture that was very simple almost austere from the outside but next picture once he went inside it totally blew your mind because it was like giving you something spectacular mostly blurring the inside with the outside here actually bringing the outside into the inside because there's this courtyard that has some louvers for shading but it's otherwise open to the elements and big windows and big windows and it's introducing the element of water into the architecture yes we're going to see that again we do that but before that step back and tell us a little bit about more about the side to sell the next okay well in our next picture here is an aerial view of the site of the Kahala Hilton hotel which would be in the lower right corner sort of in the center part this is the Wailei golf course which was constructed in 1927 for the guests of the new Royal Hawaiian Hotel so people would have been taken from the hotel to this golf course obviously it wasn't easy wouldn't have been easy to build the golf course right next to Waikiki and in the 60s this is where the hotel got built and in the next picture we've got a view from the new hotel looking out over the site of what became those Kahala Hilton apartments as well as the parking structure for the hotel this is what it looked like right when the hotel opened before these other things have been built which we're about to show you and in our next picture as I was saying here's a here's a view an architectural rendering of the hotel on the left and the apartments on the right and when the hotel was first built it was considered to be so far away from Waikiki the people actually wondered if guests were going to want to stay there and in fact that is what happened in a lot of very important people politicians as well as movie stars and other personalities liked the fact that the hotel was not right in the middle of Waikiki as was the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel which we see down in the lower right corner with the pink Jeep in front of it which we're referring to a show that we did some while ago that's correct look this up guys right and in the next picture we've got a view of the dining room this has been altered since it was originally constructed but they also built that little that little island offshore so that you had something to look at that made it an even more romantic Pacific South Seas type location so very exotic as we like absolutely so it is the next picture absolutely stunning architectural feature right and that walkway over the lagoon where the porpoises are jumping for many years was like that just this thin very elegant looking concrete strip with no railings and nowadays it's this very hunkered down very significant structure with railings in those days they had it totally different and where did these good times go exactly and this is also the on the far side of the lagoon has also been developed since this picture was taken as well and the next picture shows us this is being fuzzy because we can already jump to the next picture because the big architectural challenge was how do you basically make this big chunk of a program and building basically blend in and not looking austere and monolithic exactly and we jump to the next picture it gives a little bit of a detail where you can see it sort of trellis the sort of cumble flash with this additional layer and in the front you also see some very sort of industrial generic these are these famous double T's that we see at the end of the show some of us like these days again so these are it's it's a very sort of international style rational building that yet sort of had some reference to some sort of vernacular tectonics which we see on the next picture which is actually a preview of the projects we're actually going to talk about but he did the same in the hotel and in here you can see this very bony sort of language right of architecture skeleton a freestanding skeleton around to these structures absolutely but before we go there let's stay in the hotel and go to the lobby right quick next picture yeah so this is the original lobby of the hotel in 1964 and a very recent view of the lobby and you'll see that while the furnishings have changed they've kept the same basic structure as well as those specifically commissioned light fixtures which have what look like beach glass pieces from them that are kind of an icon of the hotel so they've never messed with those even while they've made other changes and another part sort of a lobby as well as the next picture is this sort of open area where the the water pours under the building and I guess where the dolphins are right right and this is still like that today it gives this very much more lighter appearance rather than monolithic solid appearance and if we go up in the building next picture we can pretty much see this sort of you know signature language of killings worth that on the left is that case study house you can see how he brings the outdoors inside and the same is in the multi-storiness of the of the hotel where through extending out these beams and sort of you know bracketing these members you almost have the feeling he's creating another sort of outdoor space like a lanai yeah and while you know this project also I forget to put in a slide but there's if you if you Google you find a lot of celebrities throughout the year staying in the hotel right I hope you guys go to Diana Ross which I do this Friday and it wouldn't surprise me if you would stay there I mean that's true and that's one of the things I said when president Johnson came here in the 1960s for peace talks involving South Vietnam he stayed at that hotel because he could be taken there by helicopter and land on the golf course and he could be guarded more easily and next picture we actually now go next door and talking celebrities this is certainly not both projects are not basically a low budget or inclusive they're rather exclusive they are up to these days you can see the cars there speak for themselves but there was also a famous guy in history related to Hawaii who actually permanent lived there in our project that's right who was that okay well that was Jack Lord and and let's come back to the studio so we can show people what we're talking about and there he is that is the German version of Hawaii 50 with Jack Lord on the cover and Jack Lord lived at the Kahala Hilton or the Kahala apartments because it was exclusive because it was attractive it was convenient for him to get to work at the Diamond Head studio where he worked and again upper class expensive exclusive and very trendy at the time it was made and I have to thank my best friend Stefan who gave me this set this is actually the second season and these have the entire you know CD set in there and again as you were surprised you never heard this in another language this is a Y5 no and it is also tells you how popular that still is absolutely this is legacy and tradition of the islands and so is the building so next picture please because the building is actually a non-building this is how you approach and it looks like a jungle this looks tropical this looks lush and next picture the architecture in there also looks like you know trunks yeah but they have this nice feature of a negative corner in architecture we call this the mesian corner so they went through some effort to actually make the the structure more more skinny more more delicate as I just said it's less monolithic it's less heavy it's less weighty because it's got that empty corner and it goes exactly along with what we're saying it absolutely and the next picture also the beams the beams don't just stop where they could stop according to their primary function the right here they actually project out yes and this is an interesting sort of play that's typical for these mid-century howly architects who came and we're looking at indigenous structures because when you were doing the the hollies you had to do that because you had to latch them and so you had to project out with your memory to get your stuff around right so this is an interesting but it's not a basically a literal which everything we see today is a palm leaf imprint or a chevron or something this is truly modern but it's sort of an exotic modernism yeah and it's an abstraction of what the exactly what you were talking about of an of a traditional building style and it does serve a structural function but it also decorates the structure in a very attractive exterior way that looks I wanted to say both of these buildings to me look really elegant and I think the thinness and the the airiness and the delicacy is what gives them that elegant appearance absolutely and next picture here comes that water feature again here is the building in part sits in water and that's rather challenging to keep that you know the water from not stinking and also keeps from the building not getting wet so this is pretty high and pretty luxurious and it's just beautiful I mean this is as tropical as you can get it also in the only in these you know climatically privileged tropics evaporative cooling works a little bit so this also helps to climatically cool the building so it's not just decorative and as you said too this is a very mid-century technique exactly and we occurred in other places and another feature you know what else do we associate with the tropics and when we swim here tropical fish next picture there we are here they are there we are it's all incorporated so it really has an exotic theme we can say next picture but again the architecture is almost hidden I mean these are actually so the the floor plan of this building is like a comb or like a hand with the fingers and the fingers are actually the the dwelling unix and so they're these linear courtyards they're heavily vegetated yes with these with these tropical vegetation correct as we can see and next picture every now and then sort of the architecture glimpses through yes so it's mostly not existing but every now and then it just pokes through as you can say with these sticking out members and you get the sort of dialogue between the natural branches and the artificial and also because this is an expensive building they are able to do that level of landscaping which you do not find in most buildings because it's so labor intensive and it's expensive yeah also in maintenance that's what I mean yeah it's expensive to maintain all of that absolutely and the next picture is showing something when you actually see the architecture and there's something unfortunate happening because the the story in the middle is actually the original one where it was all open and the lanai and you see the ceiling fan it was easy breezy and I heard at some contractor came in some many years ago or you know manufacturer of these aluminum window systems and basically sold it to the clients with the result of putting a c in making it more hermetic and you said it was all about the maximization of square footage raising the value because all of a sudden then that became living space so your your unit became bigger that's it was all about the money that's right all about capitalism and initially it was a cultural approach to seeing we're in Hawaii we're in the tropics we want to love the outdoors right and another unfortunately the original thing which was unfortunate is the next picture which is the circulation which is the hallway and you were quoting your mother and having known people who basically lived there and even you know criticizing that way back absolutely that she thought the building was very nice and when it was a new building in the 60s of course you all everybody wanted to go see it because it's got a lot of publicity and I remember she's always maintained that it's a beautiful building and the units are nice except the callways look terrible yeah and who am I to criticize my famous colleague killingsworth but I would say and I'm sure maybe he probably would have done it just you know keep the beams running across and making a catwalk that's separated from the walls as he actually did in a project we see very soon and then having some linear skylights to bring the light down maybe even making the the courtyard outdoors which he has done in other projects but as you said this was probably not on a tight budget but was made to make profit yes so that probably the dirty term of value engineering probably happened here I think it did but next picture at some other um details you can still see the original this is a really nice delicate filigree jealousy wooden jealousy with this original hardware that's still there and speaks of the sophistication of the architecture both architecturally and climatically yes and another nice feature is next picture which is also part of our permanent background where there's this planter so architecture you know at the ground floor and some plants are incorporated into the design and this planter trough and then it's also you know staying true to that theme of sticking out projecting out and I think that the thing that strikes me is that's concrete but it doesn't look massive no it still maintains some level of delicacy or lightness in spite of the material and good point because actually of the end because it almost seems that this ant cap is pushed back in yes so you see the trough in section is actually a U like the letter U and he just inserted and that that's a sort of level of sophistication that especially mid-century architects seem to have more than unfortunately these days correct and this picture I took this at the end of the the unit facing the ocean which we can see in the next picture where this is the conclusion of the project and all of a sudden you know you get out of the jungle and all of a sudden you're at the ocean what what a surprise what what a spectacle yeah and I can also point out that jack lord and his wife Marie lived in one of the optimum units in the building which they were able to get of course which was at the end right next to the Kahala Hilton so they didn't have as many neighbors and they looked out right on the ocean beach so they chose the nicest one absolutely and probably no surprise to our viewers we often have a mission the mission of this show here is we go to the next picture to prevent this project to happen to at what happened to this nice project here which is also a killings worth project on another island which one so this is on the island of Maui at Kapalua it was a Kapalua Bay hotel and as you've pointed out when the well essentially it's been demolished and bummer yeah it is and it again is something that you wouldn't be able to replicate today and it wouldn't be replicated and you see I mean you know he was working here with four columns yeah you know as opposed to one and was really indulging in this theme of bracketing of layering structure and we got the projecting horizontal members as well you you got the water pouring in you got you got nice shading and in a what a shame and especially what a shame because next picture we don't want to look at that too long but I'm just quoting basically Jay who says you know modern architecture is mostly junk and you know this is what replaced it this is what replaced it and this is a generic developer thing and none of the the passion and and and dedication to an interpretation of of local sort of exotic inspiration we see here and I think also too it's fair to point out that the level even a concrete building even a plain concrete building or not plain but a concrete building can have a lot of elegance and it can have a lot of detailing which sets it apart from everything else and that's what we saw with the Kahala Hilton and the Kahala apartments I like that the way you put this and before we actually I want to go a little deeper into that but next picture I want to not forget to thank the one that I I owe you know that I was able to take the pictures all the pictures I took because Nathan Tuthman and his family had the chance to live there for a while until they were not able to afford it anymore but this is his elevate which couple shows ago we we we featured it and you can say with the sort of the the filigrenous and the elegance of these members you know I think to a certain degree probably it was an inspiration and Nathan and Tiffany told me it was so thank you guys for that and the next picture is is my testimony of of me and my family business being very sympathetic to what you just so nicely said that these are all bare-to-the-bones buildings these are bear tectonics and even in their completion phase they basically stay like that and there's nothing wrong in celebrating the raw and rugged of construction and achieving you know elegance and delicacy we don't need this sort of makeup that we see on buildings these days right and we also don't need bunkers no we don't need concrete bunkers and that is kind of the easy cheap cheap and dirty way to do it and to get beyond that may be more expensive than what people consider to be affordable or possible exactly and so this here being said next picture a great local master of the same thinking of the same ideology if you want so was the structural engineer behind the project this was Dr. Alfred Yee and these are pictures from his website because he was the structural engineer of record for the building and here you can see it going up and he very proudly you know talks about the efficiency and effectiveness of the construction so it's very sort of cutting edge at its time very modern very prefabricated and and then again but you see you know it's when you see the how close the the units are if it wouldn't be for the vegetation that is so important people would have never like this it was oh my god i can see my neighbor oh my god it's so close i don't like that so you know a little bit sort of respectfully disagreeing with you when you said well today you know vegetation people are afraid because of the maintenance but if you look at a jungle an actual jungle is no maintenance right so the question is which kind of plants do you plant you always use this nice term of decorative or ornamental if you use plants are not native to here you got the trouble but if you choose the right plants that maybe need a little less so why don't we incorporate more landscaping is we don't we haven't talked about landscaping very much but that is absolutely crucial and it is a matter of maintenance what will grow what won't grow you simply cannot put a plant in the ground and say i like that therefore i want it there it will not necessarily live it's just like building a building you can say i want the building to look like this you may situate it in a place that it won't work absolutely so the next picture shows uh Alfred Yee and actually this is a top right as a picture i took in his office when i had the chance to meet him before he unfortunately passed away about a year ago and so these are all the pictures of the projects and these are all the projects we basically have covered or will cover because these are the most innovative you see Alamoana hotel you see the Frank Fawzi building that i think we should do a show about uh we have a little mention of it we did we have Alpha Prizes Arizona Memorial and then you know it's sort of hard to see because they're reflecting but there's tons of more out there and there here is the Kahala Hilton hotel and the condominians and at the bottom right is is Dr. Yee and myself and me with a lot of i was very nervous and went there because i was uh asking for his advice about a project that we have shared with the audience a couple times and we will now do with the last picture soon which is Primitiva and i basically asked him about you know structural issues and uh i was i was so touched because i got the biggest compliment from him that we could have gotten because he said Martin it actually reminds me of Queen Emma Gardens which is another project he has done which we also should do a show about yes and he said just like Queen Emma Gardens it's a building that lives that is alive and he said i don't want to talk about structure we can figure this out this is no rocket science but i want to talk about the human humane the name of the show aspect of the building and the approach right so here's Primitiva and you can see an homage to uh Killingsworth and an homage basically to Alfred Yee as the team and to why don't we do the raw and rugged again and the necessary why don't we live easy easy why don't we incorporate nature and people and all of that into architecture so with that we're we're at the end of the show um we see you guys in two weeks and a project that's somehow related because now we're onto wanting to save the few good vintage stuff we have on the island so we spotted another one that we think we should you know address which one is that we're going to talk about La'au Gardens La'au Gardens and the La'au project or the La'au area is uh two three-story walk-up buildings built in the early 1960s the La'au Gardens is one of them yeah um we've had discussions about the different buildings that are located in this place what we like what we don't like etc um and we probably the probably are threatened um we know redevelopment is very likely for that area and so we need to at the very least document it talk about it and at least advocate for some of it to be retained if possible very good and speaking of advocating next show is going to be with Chief Sock Socrates from the Honolulu Fire Department all right who's a great supporter of some of the ideas we had true so uh we look forward to that see you then and until then stay as exotic as you can bye bye