 and thank you for spending your Halloween week with us, the solo Brown and Martin de Speng. Here in our beiji brownish brutalist building, broadcasting live from our green mountains, Maoka and blue Makai ocean metropolis of Honolulu, Hawaii. That's very succinct. Yes, you said that just right. And if we want to do anything in the show, we want you to teach you how to teach yourself. And we've been teaching each other. And actually, Timothy Schuler has been kicking this off with an article about tropical brutalism in the flux magazine. We got really excited about it. And we actually did individual shows about it, having each other on the shows. And ever since it's with us, right? Yes, it is. And so we got the right lens, so wherever we are. We see brutalism. We see. So you did. And we actually prepared this show a long time ago. You just remembered actually about in January of this year. That's right. And let's go to the first slide, because you spotted something when you were traveling into the island. That's right. I was on Maui and I was walking around in Lahaina, driving around in Lahaina. And I saw very interestingly, a single family residence that was brutalist, which is very unusual because brutalist buildings made of concrete normally are business or commercial. Institutional, right? So this was a much smaller scale one. Yeah. Fascinating for me to just encounter unexpectedly. And it always makes us wonder how to distinguish the sort of invasive brutalists that just comes from the East Coast. It actually comes from France. Le Corbusier originally. Or if it is a tropical brutalism that has been adopted as far as adapting to our climate here. As it should be. As it should be. And next picture, while we bring the next picture up, today I sent you the National Doko Momo Newsletter. It was very nervous about putting one of the icons, monuments of tropical brutalism, or brutalism in general, mid-century landscape. That is by the Lawrence Halperin. And that's the Freeway Park in Seattle on the register. Because they're planning to change something. So they're frantically saying, well, let's secure it. And we here want to also point out that we got the mountains here and the crystal water coming out of it as springs. That's so phenomenal, right? And so it is on Pacific Northwest while Halperin built. Not only this, but in Portland, the caliphon, which is the same, bringing this amazing natural element of water and water falls into the urban area. And there's a very proletarian approach, basically wild. You might not be able to drive up to the mountain if you're so poor. He brings it down to you in the center of the city. And we actually used to have that in a very small scale as part of the financial plaza of the Pacific, right, the full name. Unfortunately, the water has been drained. They shoved dirt in there, and there's grass growing. And now we see a shift of tenants because the American Savings Bank sign is off and the other bank, was it Bank of Hawaii? Or yeah, it's Bank of Hawaii. And there is now one of the largest architectural firms in there. And we urge them to get that money to basically get the dirt out and put water back in there. Back in the way it was originally designed. Because now this place up there at the top right, which we've been referring to, is actually the closest as it gets to a canyon river in the built environment. And that's one block over diagonally from here, right? Yes. And at the very bottom, you can see one of the, now we have to say soon to be former tenants in there. That's the top one. That's the American Savings Bank Tower. And let's go to the next slide. We've been here with Tim up there, you and Tim up there. We've been enjoying this because of these sort of shading trellises. And I was amazed when I interviewed here, they walked me by how they hold up and the beautiful shade they kind of create and sort of like artificial tree canopies, if you want. So, and we move on to the next slide. We're always evaluating from a performative point of view as well and saying while the brutalist by itself, as you once perfectly basically was categorizing brutalism as the minimization of glass and the maximization of concrete in that case, right? And that's per se already better because maximizing glass means overheating. And here we can be sort of, we will start to say how much heat is going through the concrete. And by minimizing the glass, there's less heat getting in there. One at the top left, I will say nothing because I'm not supposed to, but I will say stay tuned and excited about what we see in the top left. We will get to that in a couple of shows. All right. But anyways, American Savings Bank reminds us of something, well, it reminds you of your father, right? Yeah, because as I remember when the Financial Plaza first opened, the shorter of the two towers was the American Savings Bank Tower. And that's where my dad had his office when it first opened. So I used to go there all the time in the 1970s when it was new. And on the way here, me sitting down there with you in the Lanai lobby of this building, this is across the street. It took the sign off, but it so sort of faded out. You still see the silhouette of American Savings. So it's absolutely more than a fantasy memory. Might be something true about it. I hope so. And sort of, you know, having been a good client or representative of culture reminds us of a previous show and project. Let's go to the next slide where American Savings Bank has also been demonstrating way back. This is the one on Ward. And we were, as Doko Momo there on the right, we were too late when they already decided to basically bling that with, and the newest, the oldest outdated and the newest cool is some kind of flimsy, translucent panels. And they kind of threw these wonderful ceramic tiles out. Luckily, each of us got one as a little Christmas gift. And I think we have them in storage somewhere. So at least they're kind of salvaged. But again, they're not in the bank anymore. And that's unfortunate. But you said, and this is, these are custom made ceramic pieces that are fitted together to make the screen that you can see, that the screen's the upper floors. And I think in that picture, I'm holding that up, looking through it with King's Center in the background. So yeah, that was a unique part of that building. And the building was also unique, not only from inside out, but also from outside in. And you have some cool childhood memories of that. Let's go to the next slide and share that. Yeah. Well, so when this building was built in the Ward area, it was still all low rise, lots of wooden buildings. This looked extremely modern and very eye catching, but it also is a predecessor to the state capital. So it looks like a miniature bonsai version of the Hawaii state capital. And when I saw the state capital in 1969, I said, that looks just like that bank building. Yeah, that's interesting. Usually it's the opposite. All right, right. Let's go to the next slide that shows us the most iconic. That reminds you of that, the top part of the capital, the cantilevering floating part is basically the glass behind this kind of fins. And look at the concrete quality. That's superb. That's mid-century. That's most likely poured in place because that's what they did, what they were able to do, which we can't do these days anymore, where labor is so expensive and the skill has gone down the drain. Here, not so much, everything was still up. And I love the way there's that interior edge, detailing edge inside that that upright rectangle. Absolutely, very lovely. So while I was on sabbatical, you kept me up to date. Yes, I did. And told me that this client, the bank, which is one of the main banks on the island, and my friend and colleague, Tropicare Rockwood, actually banks with them. And he told me and I looked it up because it doesn't sound very Hawaii at all, but it is a local bank. It is a local bank. Yes, it is. The other ones call themselves Bank of Hawaii, First Hawaiian Bank. So they dwell on that local, but these don't so much. That's kind of interesting. They're kind of doing the opposite. Yeah, there's a whole other interesting background to this Asian people starting their own banks because they weren't being helped very much by the established banks. And that's what one of these are. These are the rebels. These are the rebels. Okay. Yeah, they are. Well, let's see how they live up to that rebellious, because they did architecture, right? They said, let's do the best of the best. And looked at you, how that taper is down at the bottom, which is really exquisite. So next slide is that you kindly kept me updated when I was half around the world and you sent me this article here and basically saying that they have been so dispersed with their different facilities, as we're talking about, and there were more, they tried to consolidate and bring it all into one half-quarter building, as it says there, for a big budget, big bucks. Yes. And then they have this sort of making a curious image there of a very prestigious location, which is not far away from us here, right? It's a couple blocks over, Eva and, and, you know, we the easy breezy fanatics would say, oh, wow, this is all out there, but we have to disappoint already. There is actually something that separates you from the environment. There's the plate glass window there. So let's look at that. Next slide. And we've been, as we're the private investigators, we've been snoop-dogging around here and there. And at the top left is when we were out there at Great Pacific Rock Mountain Precast at Campbell Industrial Park, the prime precast manufacturer on the island, they were actually making panels for the beginning of the building and the bottom is them being tracked out there. Next slide is when that all got assembled here. You shouldn't drive and take pictures, so don't do that. But you did. Don't do that. I probably stopped, right? I think you did. So here you can see, and it's this rather interesting thing that goes up there, which is sort of strange. It looks almost s-tech, right? Very crude, very monolithic, very suratomic, that big chunk. Yes. Where you're wondering, you know, what that might be, which we didn't know too much about it at that point. We were just curious. But next slide became more obvious because all of a sudden, how did Jay call that? Because of our permanent background, he says it looks like a pagoda. He said it looked like a pagoda. I said it's a pagoda full of money, if that's the case. But it does. It is a separate structure on top of what we just saw. And I have one informant who knows the building fairly well, also from inside out, and he basically can't be named, but he basically knows more about it than we do, and he basically calls it the palace within the poverty. And that's another issue because this is a location here where the urban nomads like to congregate, find a place to stay pretty much. So, and this is also a very privileged, I guess, favorable view of the, this is actually on my way home. I park on Nimitz, and then it's my little congregation in the morning because to reset my mind to what we're talking about in our very inclusive manner, I walk by the urban nomads, so it really sensitizes me about that issue. So here it's sort of over romanticizing because there's a rainbow there in the back of it. Right. It's almost like staged, whereas there's another reality to that, which is the next slide here, which is this picture here, which again, in this newspaper article, they were sort of describing it a little bit twistedly or the wrong way around. We said as from inside out, they're talking about the view and kind of the view changing through high-tech glass to basically allow it to be activated in a way that you wouldn't get the glare, and when the glare of the sun is gone, then you would have the view again. Correct. But as you were saying, it may, it's not just the glare that is the situation because heat is coming in as well. So does that cut the heat transmission into the building? And if it doesn't, you're building a nice little greenhouse that heats up. A microwave. That's right. And that's, we're referring to that bottom left with a symphony and bottom right is the symphony at sunset, which might look cool. And I should have brought this postcard that they have. They have these bedazzling kind of glittery postcards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we brought them in another show. Yes, I have. Which, and then they're titled, the one we have is titled The Golden Sunset of Honolulu. Like a key. Yeah, exactly. Well, it might look good on the postcard, but if you're behind glass when that sun sets, it's hot. And you know, given the sort of quality of glass has improved over time. So you were, you're able to do low E-coded, high reflective glass, triple glazed, argon filled, but it's still glass, right? So with the extreme sun here, all glass buildings have always been wrong and will always be wrong. And so let's check this out a little bit more here on the next slide. We've been talking about, you know, the bioclimatic design 101. This is facing south pretty much. And to the south, we used to bring our cap and have the lid. And say when the sun is high, the lid helps you. So for the south, it's horizontal shaded. Yeah, that's right. Right? These are vertical. So they don't do anything, but how do you always call it? Well, they're decorative. Yeah. They are just a decorative element to the building, which doesn't perform anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the next slide here is us again. I think you brought us. I said it's our Halloween show, right? Yeah. Yeah. So last year, if I can hold this up, last year at this time, I was doing a show about Brise Soleil or sun shading. Yeah. And I wore a costume. Well, I don't have a costume this year, but I do have this one. Put this in front of your face. I do have this wonderful, scary, giant, jack-o'-lantern cookie. And I think color-wise, it blends in well. We were talking about Beji and brownie brutalists. That's right. That's right. That's right. And then the golden sunset of Waikiki, et cetera, et cetera. But back to this building. Back to that one, exactly. So to the west, yes, vertical fins are principally, but they need to be significantly deep. In best case, they need to be rotatable, as in that building on Waila Avenue, and or in perfect case, they would be turned north. So you basically block the west sun. This is how the Alamona building had it to its west side and also to the east side in the morning. And then you get that nice northern light while basically blending the harsh We're keeping out the really blinding direct sun. Exactly. Right. So here again, according to your classification, this is decorative or ornamental, you like to say. Yes. You know, as well. Yes. So not so good. Let's go to the next slide. So what could one have done better? So here at the top, we've been pointing out one of the recent hard-used towers by Bolin Sevitsky Jackson, who is a firm that's very knowledgeable in glass construction because they did the Apple Store in New York City, which is all glass. It's all structural glass. That's top-notch high-end. So they can do better than just basically fake glazing and some gestural awning windows that aren't enough to get this through. And I was surprising you with this sort of exotic jealousy system here. Correct. Correct. And so this is from Germany and of course the innovative German people. And you said it's triple glazed. It's got argon between two of those panes of glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's jealousies. Yeah. So you have on one hand the advantage of being open to be able to open and close them to let the breeze in and out, which we have. But if necessary, you can close them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And on top of that, as you can read, it says triple glaze. It's thermal broken and it's flush or glass. Look, so you achieve the same clean, sexy look that they won. Right. While it's performative. Exactly. And as you point out, if like now, you know, the heat has gone, it's fall here. So it's perfect. So you've got the same 73 outside that you would like to have inside. Right. So let's bring the jealousies open and use the all-natural, all cheap, the best air conditioning in the world, the trade wind air conditioning. While in the summers, where I'm sneaking away, so you have your to deal with your heat here. But so did you this last summer in Europe. And we will see how to deal with that at the end. Right. And then you can close up and do what they call split system and run your AC a little bit. But then you keep the cool inside. Right. Because you don't, you don't lose it because through even like, you know, single pane anyways, as we were shocked to see when they were retrofitting the Waikiki Park Hotel until the Hala Puna, I stared up close when Ron was during the building and I was with him and I saw a single pane. Right. Yeah. But with triple pane, you know, argon filled, there is no such thing. Right. So it would be. It's insulated. And again, it's like, well, we're not, we're not pre-contact anymore. Right. We're post-contact. The world is wide open. So you probably want all the goodies from everywhere. That's right. Here. That's right. We do. There's no reason for us not to have them. Exactly. And if this technology will help in any way, then let's do it. Yeah. Absolutely. So if you wanted to go at the bottom, let's go to the next slide here. There's a project we did for Minoa a couple of years ago. We call it the Tropical Textile and developed at the bottom is Les Campers, president from Gray-specific Barclay Mountain Pre-Guest, who by the way, his son is in Company 2 and it's Adam Campers' birthday. So a happy birthday, Adam, along this way here. And the difference here is that you can see, well, we can say by now what the kind of the plinth is at the savings building is basically parking. It is. Yes. And you got maybe a porosity percentage of maybe, I don't know, 40% or something like that here. It's like 80%. Correct. Because these are almost like chimney blocks. They're turned sideways and so they have maximum transparency and openness to let the breeze go through while they're calibrated with three feet wide, high and deep to always block out the sun. So you never get the sun going through but you always have the wind going through and that's the way we think you should build on the island and maybe one could have built that plinth as well because maybe not just for the cars and something else, we're going to get to a more tradition of polemic propositions towards the very end. But let's first, before that, find out a little bit more about the building. Let's go to the next slide because online you find this one here. This is from one of the largest architectural engineering firms in the country. Leo A. Daley had quoted in Omaha, Nebraska and that's my home away from home out there in the Perry. And so they have been credited and crediting themselves as to be the architect of record originally. And that reminds us next slide of a young emerging talent here, Met the Boer, Haimet, who was basically teaching their corporate firm a lesson within the same typology. Please go back and watch his show. Then you will see that he was bringing in a little bank project. And basically that way he got that firm getting the awards. They wanted so badly but never got because of their corporate nature, they got them again and reconnecting to their roots and so if you want to see that bank building go back and watch the show but here on the top right you see his academic work, his thesis that's very much in line with the primitivas we're exploring. So he was and we're visiting each other. So go to the next slide. That being said and Met basically then wasn't appreciated as much as he should have been so he moved on. So our message to these corporate firms is to use these young emerging talent. Don't let them get away. Because they're going to be the future and they're going to direct your way which is a post-fossil way because they're the generation post-fossil. They're at the beginning and the future of our world and their world is in their hands and they will be passionate about it and fight for it. Yeah. So let's just say what if so here's again Les Campers for a specific Rocky Mountain precast the double T's and then the middle is a long-term collaborator the legendary Dr. Alfred Yee when we had a chance to meet each other in the middle here and go to the next slide because then I had my individual meeting right with Alfred Yee and very nervous and he basically said Martin structurally that kind of bony system he said don't worry about it that's a no-brainer but I want to talk about the building because it reminds me of Queen Emma Gardens which he had done with Yamatsaki and the early 1960s and then I said that building is alive and it lives and so this one here is so that was very encouraging. Right. So and next slide we would have built with the same elements that they have done basically the parking garages and we refer to Walmart I might always look at the ones who are the most efficient and effective and we don't want to encourage everything that Walmart does with cheating their employees as far as wages and stuff like that but as far as building the way they built their parking garages makes sense that's the most efficient and effective way to basically build this precast t-shaped panel and as you were saying was that made here? Yeah it was that's what you said West at Campbell Industrial Park and it's perfect perfect quality and surfaces and finishes it's really great and you can celebrate that and that's what the Primitiva is pretty much you kind of do go to the next slide and then you end up with Primitiva all right right and you end up with Primitiva but what you pointed out too this is also where the nomads are and what's been there are several things to advocate for first of all Primitiva which is the projects that you push in your classes at university in your architectural classes but also to allow the nomadic people to be moving into the spaces occupied by cars after we shift away from using cars as personal transportation and they've done some steps at the American Savings Bank building to mitigate that and if in fact that takes place then yeah and that's coming soon more in detail but here also we integrate nature in a more substantial way and not as you say in an ornamental way decorative way yes right and there's as long you got a water and this has nothing to do there with the interior they're looking pretty right and so you go into the lobby and next slide and we can you know we're too suspicious as the kind of scandal reporters we are right so they didn't let us we have to rely on the person I know who is in the building often so he tells me it's very they're trying to push again the kind of the nine to five dolly parton open office thing again but you know has always had its issues with privacy so the same thing is like they didn't improve anything on that side so that people are saying well we're not allowed to have our customization our individualization and so there is issues it's really not that hasn't evolved and then in the lobby this is totally a seat chilled down to the 60s and it's all basically corporate sterile surfaces and materiality and this lady here is waiting for France to do her yoga in in-house pretty much so they all stay inside her medic artificially oil conditioned yes yes and then there is this little monitor there in the back that almost every building has to have these days and then this tells a story about what they call the sense of place right you're very familiar with that I'm very familiar with that because you guys sometimes get asked to be part of that and bless them and yes that has occurred which I also experience you and say no I don't do these no I don't and there is a reason for that that's right so next slide here is pretty much zooming in and ironically I say they this is the story they tell is about a stream and the stream is just on the screen and you're sitting in this AC so it's very surreal and the next slide is how it could be less surreal and basically be more performative that's right the water in primitiva too where the water is recognizing we can have a repetitive cooling effects here in our very special tropics where we don't have 100% humidity saturation in the air and so that we can do and the next slide is going further into detail what you already scratched the surface that here in the article they talk very elaboratively about that transportation system that who chooses not to use a car gets incentives and these allow the other ones to use a car but if you do more there's our culinary connoisseur Joey down there our cross-cultural in Munich in downtown Munich and this is one of these innovative commuter bikes and he's commuting with public transportation and thinking about getting himself a scooter so all these things considered next slide here is as you already said if you basically encourage a large majority of people to use public transportation you can free up some space in that sort of people power parking plan that we did a show about and welcome the urban nomads and have a coexistence between the privileged who live upstairs and the ones living downstairs which I think they're actually more privileged because it's naturally ventilated and easy for easy and not hermeticized that's right I would move would like to move into the plinth and not into the microwave not into the microwave right and the other problem you can solve is that is that dirty river down there so as well as I mean the along the river the people problem you solve and in the river you saw that because next slide and what is that well this is astonishing you said this where is this this is Hamburg in Munich Munich Munich so downtown Munich there's a river running through it and there is Joey looking at the banks of the river taking a picture and there is a man submerged in the river and that's you and that's because it was incredibly hot during during this past summer in Europe so you jumped in the river to cool down and as you said it's very cold because it's coming from the Alps it's coming from the Alps a little bit from the Alps but the main point is this is a river going through a major city that is clean and has natural borders it has natural banks it's not culvert it's not in a concrete culvert so you're saying okay that can be done in Germany why can't we do it here exactly and that applies to both right there's close to no people on the street so if we can solve that problem there we can solve that here that's really and we can and we can have clear rivers in a city that's as large even larger than this city we should be able to do that and this tenant here is supposed to do that clean up the river right which I hear there are sort of but they're a little behind so we encourage them and also again let them live in your building to then last slide to live up to your promise right that you make to your customers on their credit slash debit card with the clean pure beautiful ocean breaking onto the beautiful exactly right so with that at the end of the show hopefully you see us again soon with another epitaph of human humane architecture and until then please stay very tropically exotic bye bye