 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's human-humane architecture. I am DeSoto Brown, and I am the co-host of this program. Our normal host, Martin Desbang, is on his way back to Germany right now for his sabbatical from his normal position at UH Manoa as a professor of architecture. Martin will be returning next year in August. So until that time, you'll be seeing Martin every other week or so with me on Think Tech Hawaii's human-humane architecture, but we're going to be alternating also with guest programs done by the members of the Dokomomo Association of Hawaii. You'll be seeing more about that in the weeks to come into next year. But in the meantime, what are we talking about today? Today we are talking about more tropical, brutalist architecture. First of all, what is brutalism? Brutalism is a style of architecture that began in the 1940s in France and it eventually became very popular all throughout the world, including here in Hawaii. And that was in the 1960s and the 1970s. So today I want to show you some of my favorite brutalist architecture examples here in Honolulu. I am not showing you everything by any means. This is just a sampling. And let's get started with slide number one. So what is brutalism? Well you see some of the characteristics here. First of all, it usually is a matter of raw concrete, plain concrete, without any adornments. And this is the Frank Fossey Municipal Building. And then you also see a texture, lots of times in addition to just the concrete, you'll see buildings made with different textures, different aggregates, different colors. And I'm going to be talking more about that. But here are just two aspects of brutalism and I'm going to be going, I'll be pointing more out as we continue. So from here we go to the next slide and brutalism is not just buildings. Because as you can see in this example, it extends into other, our built pieces of the built environment, let's say. So on the right we have kind of an interesting brutalist light fixture, which is on the grounds of the UH Monoa campus next to Moore Hall, which was built in 1970. And on the left is a fountain, a brutalist water fountain or a decorative fountain that's located at the Kaiser Medical, the Kaiser Clinic in Honolulu. And I think that's, both of those have aspects of what I'm going to be talking about, the raw concrete, the aggregate, and an emphasis on raw forms and angular forms. Next. Now, brutalism is not universally popular, in fact there are people who really dislike it. And one of the things that they have said about it that they don't like is that, one, it does look very raw, but it also looks institutional or it looks like, what am I trying to say, just commercial architecture or buildings which are not supposed to be architectural but are just there to do utilitarian functions. So in the picture on the left you can see the H1 viaduct, the H1 airport viaduct when it was under construction in the 1980s. And it's not supposed to look architecturally interesting, but it does resemble what a lot of brutalist buildings look like. And on the right, you see the underneath part of Alamoa on a shopping center towards what was then the Sears end or the Eva end. And that was, again, unadorned, plain concrete because it was just there for utilitarian purposes. You were just supposed to park your car there. You weren't supposed to think about what it looked like. Well, yes, brutalism can look like these two examples. Next. But brutalism does show up in ways that you might not necessarily think about. These are the H3 tunnels. And while they were not necessarily supposed to be architecturally significant and they were built after the time that most brutalist structures were built, as you can see they really do look like with the forms and the plain concrete, they do look like some of the other architectural aspects of brutalism that we've seen. But most people wouldn't pay much attention because you're zooming into the tunnel or zooming out of the tunnel at 50 or 60 miles an hour. Next. Now here's something that I don't think most people would even think about as an example of brutalist architecture, but it actually is a very good one. This is the new Wanupali lookout as it looked shortly after it was constructed in the early 1970s. Now notice, it has that raw aggregate concrete structure, but it also has angles to it. It's got sharp angles. It's not rounded. It doesn't necessarily try to look like it fits into the national and natural environment where it's located. But the steps, look at the steps. They are jagged. They are zigzag. And while that's an interesting feature, it was not very useful or practical because the steps were not clearly delineated by color and so people stumbled frequently because the step came in an unexpected location. Next. All right. These brutalist buildings or the style tends to be used for big, monumental buildings. So it tends to be banks and corporations and educational buildings and things that need to look big and monumental and stark, but there are a number of small brutalist buildings. And so here's an example of one of them. This is a small commercial building at 1060 Young Street in Honolulu. And you'll notice not only does it have the rough textured concrete, but it's got these vertical louvers or vertical bar elements or fins across the facade. We're going to see more of that. That's very common, vertical lines as adornments or decorations sometimes or something that you see in brutalism. Next. Here's another small brutalist corporate building. This was originally constructed as a headquarters for a construction company on North King Street in Kalihi. And it's not the same building as the one you just looked at, but it does look very similar because again, it's got those vertical fins. Now the fins are part of the decoration, but they also do serve as shading. So the windows which are behind these fins sometimes are going to be kept cooler because there isn't going to be direct sun blasting right through them. So there's a function to these fins as well. Next. Now, another small brutalist building is this one. This is the Lum Yip Ki building, which is on King Street in downtown Honolulu. And not only does it have the vertical elements of the raw concrete on the facade, it also has, as you can see, these bands of kind of a bronze metal that has weathered that goes very nicely with the raw concrete. Next. This is why a Camilo Square. This again is a commercial building. It's not that huge, but it is very massive and structurally very significant because it looks like it's there as an emplacement that's going to be there for a really long time. And if you look at the walkways that are in the photograph on the left, those are probably the emergency stairway walkways. Again, the incised vertical strips or stripes or whatever you want to call them in the gray concrete. And you'll also notice that brutalist buildings tend to just show weathering because they don't have any kind of decorative elements on the facades. They're not painted. They don't have any other types of things on them. The concrete just weathers and you can see that. Next. Okay. A slightly bigger and more upscale commercial development is this one. This is Kauaihau Square and it is located at King Street, Kapilani Boulevard and South Street built in the early 1970s and it has these very distinctive, very concave concrete elements which are actually attached to the facade of a steel structure. So there's a steel skeleton with windows and then these bands, these horizontal bands of this very deeply incised concave strips of heavy concrete. At some point in the 1970s after this was built, there was a near disaster when one of them came loose, one of these big pieces of concrete came loose. It was not structural. So they had to do some quick emergency repairs to keep it from falling and hitting anybody. Next. This is a building on the grounds of the UH Manoa campus. It is the Dorothy Kahana Nui Music Building and it's kind of a later addition to the early 1960s music building. And while it was built in the 1990s, it does very strongly, as you can see, look very brutalist. It's a concrete monolith. And when you go inside this structure, next slide, you see that it's got this really nice courtyard, which I think is very appealing in a way. It's not very expansive. It's kind of a small, nice manageable size. And the curves of those walls, the railing walls that go around the courtyard, are particularly attractive to me. I think this is a very skillfully done building. It also shows something else which is common in brutalist architecture, the contrast of greenery and vegetation with the raw concrete. You'll see planters, you'll see things planted intentionally to be shown off against the concrete background. Next. This is a really remarkable building and it really looks like a fortress. It really looks like a fort. It looks like an impregnable castle of some kind. This is the building of a Buddhist sect. And I have always tried to remember what it's called and in any case, that's the name of it, as you can see in the archway, right above the archway that's on the front door of it. And it's got this interesting sort of concave element on the top, kind of like a dish. But otherwise, the rest of it is very much a concrete block. Next. Now something that happens in brutalism that I find particularly interesting, first of all, there is a massing of forms. There are lots of rectangular or cubicle or forms which sometimes protrude out, nest together, interact with each other, interlocked. You don't always necessarily, brutalism is not just necessarily one big box with nothing on it. Very often, these elements stick out. There are recessed elements. And that's very much what you see here in this building, what you also don't see necessarily in these pictures, but which is again very typical. The concrete actually bears the texture of the plywood forms that it was poured into. So it isn't smooth. It's not been buffed or anything to make it more perfect. It's got the inconsistencies of the original plywood. So there's a little natural element of wood grain there. But you can just barely see it in these pictures. And again, I like the multitude of different forms because to me that's intriguing. It kind of makes me want to go inside and explore it a little bit. Next. Okay. Now, this is the Kaiser Clinic on King Street. And something unfortunate has happened to this building which has happened to more than one brutalist building. It's been painted. And for some reason, this sort of particular yellow, mustardy color is what people often have used to paint brutalist buildings. Now, the whole point of brutalism is you don't paint them. They're not painted. They're not adorned. They're not decorated. It's just the raw concrete. In this situation, because people, again, as I say, there are people who don't like raw concrete. It looks institutional. It looks like it's just industrial to take away a little bit of that. Sometimes it gets painted. And also, it updates it. So it doesn't look as old-fashioned. So once you paint something, then you can make people think it's new. Well, again, I wish that it hadn't been done. But the elements of the brutalist building are still there. Next. Some of the building didn't get painted because they didn't bother to paint the parts that were underneath where the parking was. And so in this part of the Kaiser Clinic and the picture on the left, you can see that's what the concrete originally looked like before it got painted yellow. And it also, again, the massing of the forms, the different types of rectangular forms, also, what you can see in the small photograph on the right, is the sort of jagged edge of one facade of the building. And it's got this kind of zigzaggy pattern in which the windows do not directly face the sun. So what defaces the sun is the concrete and the window is protected. That is something that keeps the interior cooler and is easier for everybody to deal with. So that's a practical matter. Next. The Honolulu Airport. The Honolulu Airport was originally opened in 1962. But starting in 1970, it got a brutalist makeover and it didn't just get a makeover of the existing parts of the structure. It was added to very substantially. So it was enlarged a great deal and that shows you economically what was going on at the time. There was a lot more people coming here for tourism. Well, as you can see in this particular ticket lobby or check-in lobby, first of all, it's a really big, expansive building and it has a big open space. But secondly, look at the strength and the power and the massiveness of the beams that make up the ceiling of this room. And we've got these horizontal ones and then we've got these other crossbeams going across and in those other directions, you see the light coming down from there. Well, to me, one of the things that really works is the suggestion of stability and the suggestion of safety, if you will, because this building is so big and strong. Something else that very commonly happens with brutalism is the contrast of the ubiquitous concrete that you see everywhere with other surfaces, which are either natural wood or sometimes smooth finished surfaces like the terrazzo floor of this ticket lobby. So the shininess contrasts with the dull matte fixture finish, if you will, of the concrete that is above it. Next. So again, textured concrete. Now, concrete is liquid when it is poured, obviously. And pardon me, when it is poured into a form, it will assume the form that it's poured into. Well, one of the things that you can do once the form has been removed, if there are things that are sticking out of it, extrusions, you can chip those off and you can make a rough texture. That's very common. Then you see that very often in brutalist structures. This raw textured wall that you see in the picture on the left with those vertical chipped ribs extends not only on the outside of the building, but on the inside of the building as well. And on the right hand side, there's a later addition to the airport from the 1990s. Yeah, that was early 1990s, but they've made it look brutalist so that it will match the older building. Next. Very typical. So here's an example of the inside of the Honolulu Airport. And by the way, the airport is being remodeled and renovated in a variety of places right now. And it's, to me, a little sad that there will be losing some of these original integral parts of what was originally there, which was part of the original brutalist appearance. However, it must be, it must be. But notice, we've got the contrast of the wood, we've got the contrast of tile walls, the tile floor, and in addition, look at how the garbage cans and the stool or the seating that I think is probably on the right next to the water fountain also carry the concrete theme of the brutalist building. Next. Well, one very famous brutalist building is the Hawaii State Capitol. And when it opened in 1969, it was really noteworthy in the 50 states because it was not a traditional Grecian temple type of building that almost all the other ones were. So it got a lot of attention. It does have columns like a Greek temple, but as you can see, they don't look like that. They look like a palm tree. You also see the different forms that I've been talking about. You see that sort of swooping form at the bottom that's supposed to look kind of like a volcano, and then there's this big rectangle plunked on top of it with, again, those vertical fins. Next. Well, after the Capitol was built, it was decided that the area around it needed to be upgraded into what was called, to be called, the civic center. So it was to contain other government buildings. So all of this private land was condemned and redeveloped into the civic center, which contained, of course, because it was done in the 1970s, some brutalist buildings. So this is the Kalani-Moku building, which is a city and county office building. And again, look at those different forms, those different rectangles that are protruding out. Next. So the textured wall, just like you've already been seeing, and the form that's sticking out. Now in the picture on the left, the form that is protruding at the top has an interesting element. It's got stained glass windows in it. You don't know that that stuff is stained glass, you don't know that pattern unless you see it at night illuminated from within. But it's not a traditional church type of detailed stained glass window. It's made of big, raw chunks of glass of different types that go along with the raw concrete. Next. And the other major building in the civic center is the Frank Fossey building that I mentioned earlier. Two notable things. One, notice how the windows are really downplayed. Brutalist buildings are not glass boxes, the way we tend to see new high rises being built today. They are concrete boxes which have windows recessed or downplayed. So the windows in this building are reduced to these horizontal strips that are recessed. And also the Fossey building has this remarkable base which is completely open between sort of a plinth or a foundation on the bottom and then the start of the building itself. So that's what you see in the picture on the right. Next. And because this was all one big brutalist time period development in the civic center, even the underground parking building has brutalist elements. So the stuff that shows above ground or that's where you can actually see it that isn't where the cars are parked has brutalist elements as well as you see in these two buildings here or these two elements here. Next. So not every brutalist building, however, is concrete. I've been talking about raw concrete. You think of concrete cement, it's gray. Not always. It depends on what elements you put in it when you are forming it. So there are blonde brutalist buildings. And Martin, take note, we're gonna use that term in the future, blonde brutalist buildings, all right? Okay. Well, this is the Pan Am building which is located on Capilani Boulevard. And if you look at the picture on the left, you see a detail of the aggregate that's used to make this building. You can make sand colored buildings, but as this one is, but you also have got the texture of the different colored rocks that are also incorporated. Next. And another blonde brutalist building is the American Savings. No, this isn't American, yeah, this is American Savings. This is in downtown Honolulu as well. And not only is it blonde and not only does it have the texture, the windows have been recessed, but the parking building is particularly interesting because it has horizontal grooves, not vertical ones that are so chipped that when you look from a distance, you don't even get a sense that that's raw, rough, concrete. It looks almost sort of wavy or smooth in an interesting manner. Next. Now across the street, diagonally across the street from the building I just showed you is probably Honolulu's most significant or one of its most significant brutalist compounds. And that is the financial plaza of the Pacific which was constructed in the late 1960s. It replaced a block that contained a variety of different buildings of different traditional styles. And one of them was the picture that you see in the upper right corner of the Castle and Cook building, which again looks like a Grecian temple. And we got away with that. We got away from that 100% when we went to brutalism. Next picture. Here it is. This is the financial plaza. It's composed of three different buildings of different masses and different sizes. There's the Castle and Cook building which is the tallest high rise, the American Security Bank building which is the shorter high rise and then the Bank of Hawaii which is the squat low, again, very fortress-like building. They are all diverse. Again, they're not 100% identical but they all do follow the brutalist pattern. Next. And one of the interesting things, as I said earlier, and one of the things I like about brutalism is the frequent incorporation of vegetation are plantings into, again, the entirely man-made environment of the stark concrete. So here are two examples from the financial plaza of planter boxes which contain palms. Now, the picture on the left shows what was originally a fountain. The fountain is no longer there. Probably it was removed for maintenance purposes. So now it just contains grass but it does have these three planter boxes each with a separate lolu palm in it which kind of, to me, mimic the way the entire structure is set up. Three different buildings, three different heights. Well, these three palm trees kind of go along with that but they look really nice against the plain concrete background. Next. So, one of the most significant things I think about the financial plaza is that when it was constructed, it incorporated open space. All of the buildings that had previously been on the block went all the way out to the sidewalk. Really, there was no way to walk in or walk around them. You can only walk in the front door and then be inside. This is very lavish with open space and as you can see right on the corner of Bishop Street and King Street, there's this open plaza space. When the building across the street was demolished which was the Alexander Young Building in 1981 and that was redeveloped directly diagonally across, they also left an open space which is called Tamarind Park. So, based on what the financial plaza had done Tamarind Park was then done 11, 12, 13 years later so that now in downtown you've got these two open spaces. You can see across, look at the vista of the other building and Tamarind Park in particular allows you a place to sit down and relax. They are a very, very good complement to each other. They have brutalist elements, if not actual brutalism and they're a big asset to downtown. Next. All right, let's look at something else, another important structure that was complex that was again brutalist. This is in Waikiki on Kalakawa Avenue and it occupies the space that you see in this picture here which was taken about 1955 along Kalakawa Avenue originally that was just the grounds of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. So, there were just plants, there were just hedges next but it was realized that that land was too valuable to just be allowed to stay like that as a garden. So, between 1950 and about 1961 four, three or four structures were built there which were all retail shopping and these were all distinctive buildings. They were very nice 50s and 60s buildings but there was no coherence to them. They were all diverse things. Well, all of this was then next picture demolished in the late 1970s to create a whole new structure and those diverse structures which didn't go together or match were then in the construction of the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, next picture they were all turned into a large, coherent mass which was all brutalist and it was again, the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center. Now, the reason for this was this is land that's owned by Kamehameha Schools. It is the requirement of Kamehameha Schools to earn money through the use of its land to support the schools. So, this being a very prominent area they turned it into a shopping building with multiple floors to increase the profit which would then flow to the schools but next picture when this was done, well, as I had said too I think one of the things that was decided at the time was to make it one structure that clearly all went together but at the time it was criticized a great deal for being concrete. People didn't like it, it looked like a blockhouse. Next picture. Like other types of shopping centers, however everything was aimed to the inside. So, the exterior wasn't important they wanted you to come inside and come to the building to the stores that were on the inside part. Next. And over the years the concrete structure really got covered up a lot by vegetation. So, in 1995 when this picture was taken you don't see the concrete very much but in 2005, next picture we shifted away. All of those trees were cut down and the facade began to be remodeled. So, what had been a coherent frontage instead became, next picture a variety of diverse frontages a variety of different storefronts. So, today the Royal Hawaiian Center on the outside doesn't look like a coherent thing anymore but on the inside, next picture we still do see the elements of the original Brutalist building in these angles and the textured concrete. Next. And I like this particular stairway with its angled walls and cutouts and the fact that you can see through the steps underneath, next. And basically that textured Brutalist blonde concrete is still going to be there even as other parts of the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center change, next. I wish that I could say everything was wonderful for Brutalist buildings but that's not the case. This is the Ward Plaza was located at Ward Avenue in Ala Moana built in about 1970 again, horizontal, plain concrete, next. And something I really liked about Brutalism the idea that you wanted to go in and explore because you couldn't see everything when you looked at it right from the beginning. I thought this was a very attractive complex but next picture, we have lost it. It has been demolished and that's one of the things that Brutalism doesn't get a lot of aloha sometimes people don't think it is worth keeping or they don't really wanna think about it very much just a concrete building, tear it down. And that's unfortunate because we lose buildings that way and even if you don't like certain things as time passes, you often will come to appreciate them better. Well, that is a quick and very superficial examination of some of my favorite Brutalist buildings here in Honolulu. What do I want you to come away with? I hope that you will appreciate Brutalism I hope you'll be more aware of it you'll watch for it you'll enjoy it, you'll see it and you'll know it's part of our urban fabric. Well, next week there'll be another Think Tech human-humane architecture and right now I can't remember what we're gonna be talking about or even if I'm gonna be on it but it doesn't matter if I'm here or not. We want you to come back keep watching human-humane architecture and at some point in the near future I'll be seeing you again until then, aloha everyone.