 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Broadcasting live from Honolulu, Hawaii. This is every other week's sequence of learning from the past for the future of humane architecture of Think Tech Hawaii. With your hosts, Soto Brown and Martin Disping. Hi, Soto. How do you do, Martin? We've got lots to talk about. I'm okay, but I'm a little bit worried, and that's what we do the show about, because there's one of my favorite places going away, is saying or feeling that sometimes you more appreciate things when they're gone. You do. So let's talk about what we will miss, and let's walk along the shore of Waikiki on the beach. Absolutely. And if we can get picture number one for that. This is what you mostly see, because it's prime beach front. So these restaurants are rather upscale, you know, white tableclothed and waiters similarly dressed, right? Yes, and that's the Holy Kulani Hotel. Exactly. So let's head sort of towards Ewa. Yep. So next, we're going to go one over, and we're almost at Fort Darisi, right? Correct. And it seems like there's nothing else to come. That's right. But next picture, surprise, surprise, there is something. There it is. Let's rinse our shoes off, which this guy is doing there. Yeah, because we've got sand on our feet. Exactly. And let's get in this sort of obscure place. What is that? Next picture. Well, that's the shore bird that was established in 1979. That's a restaurant in the bottom of the reef hotel. And it is. And we feature some of the sort of things that attract people like this. These are the more sort of ordinary, average tourists that, you know, all buy the same local dress from there here and feel good. And they don't want to go to the fancy places. They want to have a lunch that includes all you can eat fish, which is, you know, we're at the ocean. Yes. You have a pretty spectacular buffet. Yep. And in the evening, you can sing karaoke. That's right. And how does that place look like if you go in and we bring the next picture? Well, it kind of looks like that. That's Martin pointed out very cleverly that it might appear that this is an actual photograph of the place. And in reality, this is a composite photo that uses a background, which is not the real background that you actually see there with a well-lit interior, because if we go to the next picture, what it really looks like is inside is very dark and the outside is very bright. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, because as you pointed out, the austere, plain interior makes you either focus on the people you're with or the view outside. It's actually a good thing. So number seven shows that when you go watch Direction Diamond Head again, you see Diamond Head. And this is a real picture because I took that and I didn't Photoshop Diamond Head in there. It's actually what you see and everything else is pretty much in the shade. It's a shadow. Right. And you see what you came here for, because you don't want to necessarily see other people that you don't know. You don't want to see pieces of furniture necessarily. At the top, this is left as the only piece of decoration, which is also kind of the sign, so it's like a wooden surfboard that has the name of the place. That's correct. But that's pretty much the major decoration. And the next picture looks the other direction. And the other thing that I would point out, too, is this is the original structure of this 1955 hotel, which is when it opened. So it doesn't have a lot of stuff going on there. It's a very plain interior. That's the way they built it. And that's the way it has remained, mostly open with sliding glass windows and just the plain concrete of the interior. And when the sun sets, this sort of gets even more intense because also the lighting in that place is very low. So this is our lovely guest from our Tropical Tourism show. And when we went there, we realized that the absence of stuff, of decoration, of interior actually enhances the presence of yourself and the ones you go there with. Correct. And also, as you can see the ocean, because there are some spotlights on the outside. So it really sort of dramatizes the actual stuff that you want to see and that you might not want to be distracted from. And the setting. So it's the natural setting that you are enjoying when you're there if you're close to the ocean. The next picture here is, you know, the main feature is that is that cellar bar. And then as part of the cellar bar, you can actually always get the cellar bar. But what you see barely there in front, we go to the next picture, is a feature that has been around also since this picture I pulled from the web. It's probably from the 80s, you would think, Brian. Possibly, yeah, 80s, 90s, it's an old promotional photograph. And what are they doing on the left over there? They do. This is a feature you can actually get your fish or you meet raw on the table and then you take it over and then you prepared yourself, you grill it yourself. And as you pointed out, this is not only sort of a, something that you can look at for entertainment. You can watch other people do it. But it's interactive. You can do it yourself. And not only is that something for other people to watch, but you control your own food. It's not somebody off in the kitchen who you can't talk to or see. I can make my food the way I want to. I feel like I have something going on here. And it's part of the enjoyment of the experience, particularly because this is a low cost, fairly low budget place. So it's a little perk that you get that you don't get other places. It is. And we like to call things like that performative. Exactly. That's the word I wanted. And you see everything else in that place is performed. So there's one other thing that you can also say is iconic about the place. And this is a detail. We like to zoom into the architecture because we think good architecture and good places are getting better the closer you look. And the next picture is that sort of main feature that totally surprised and got me thrilled because this is the predominant way of climate control, of achieving thermal comfort in a post-fossil way or in a pre-fossil way or with little fossil because these are fans. And fans is in the tropics the main way you get the heat that rises up and then you basically take it out by pushing it away by turning the wings of the fans. But usually in these days you have a decentralized way where basically everything, every unit has one motor. So all these motors can break. And this reminded us of the old days where the streetcars were around where also sort of everything was basically centralized. Exactly. And then you were distributing the electricity through the cables. And each individual streetcar touched the cable and got its power that way. Exactly. And here you think once again this must have been the way it was. As you pointed out correctly this is also the way it was in factories at the very beginning. But you pointed out the dangers of this is sort of on the level of the way you operate and the belts snap and you know they chip off people's head. It's a problem. Obviously here we have never heard of such accident because up in the ceiling. Right. And so nobody can touch it. This doesn't exist. But it looks and it certainly is nostalgic. But it's once again it's performative. I mean they still benefit from that fact that they only have to repair that one engine. Right. And whenever a belt gets you know old it's like in your car you got to change your belt every now. Exactly. But this is way less of an effort than replacing. This is very low tech. Replacing all these. Each one of those units that turns has no power. So it just is the matter of the belt turning. Exactly. Exactly. And so it's far less likely to break and if something does break as you just said you replace the belt. And what it does is I love to look up there and see this sort of beautiful kinetic play of things moving and the belts moving. And it is something that makes you feel very tropical. But it's not a sentimental. It's not the fan that is the manual fan. Right. Right. It's a machine driven fan. And as you said too this is performative. This is something this is a performance for you to look up at and enjoy. It may not seem like it. But it is something that's intriguing and fun. And particularly I can imagine as a kid I would have loved to look at that thing happening on the ceiling. Absolutely. It reminds me of a little you know one of our guests Nicole Horry who is promoting the sky driving how I call it basically a gondola and ski lifts. Yeah. I had a gondola I keep telling her when I was a kid that I played with that was attached to something on the floor and at the door. And I had a little crank and I can move it up and down. It's exactly the same thing. Right. It's exactly the same thing. It's a very cool thing and it's cool and cool. You know what we point out. Physically cool as well as culturally cool. Exactly. And as you point out that's obviously been around so pretty much and you've known the place ever since back then. I can remember it was and it's interesting because one of the things I wanted to mention that you also acknowledge this is a word of mouth place. You find out about the Sherbird because somebody tells you or you happen to go there. It's not a big budget of advertising and back in the early 80s this was a cool place to go and not only for the food but also it was a disco too. Yeah. So the Sherbird disco, the Sherbird dining room and disco was a cool place to hang out and you're still going there. Because you're very cool. Exactly. So thank you. We go into your archives now because we want to actually check out how it has looked like and surprise, surprise it's pretty much still looks. So here besides a couple of you know swimwear we don't even see many people there. Yeah. But it's pretty much the same. So this is a postcard of the reef hotel about the time that it opened. It opened in 1955, this entire complex. And the reef was one of the first big hotels built in Waikiki in this time period of the mid-1950s. At the same time the Princess Cuyulani, the Biltmore Hotel and the Rosalea Apartments all were opened. They were all about 10 stories tall. And at the time that seemed like an amazing huge boom going on in Waikiki. Of course a lot more was going to be coming in the near future but at the time it seemed very big. So if you look at the postcard they used to as you correctly said promoted it and we avoid to say brand because that's what we do these days. Correct. We prefer to say they promoted it. Right. And here again early view, early postcard view, Diamond Head in the background and the two structures the larger reef hotel on the left and then the two the smaller buildings on the right which is what we're focusing on right now. And that's something we'll get to as we get further along in the program to discuss what's going to happen here and the changes that are going to be coming to this area very soon by High Shore Bird. That's what we're talking about. And way back which is why we love them at Century Modern which I always think was a total piece of artwork. Yeah. I mean America was. Yes. And let's look at the sort of the little flyers or booklets or brochures they did to basically promote it. Correct. And so these are two very early pieces from the hotel. The Edgewater was another hotel across the street which was owned by the same company. And on the right you can see this very 50s type of layout and appearance. This is the folder that went in every one of those guest rooms that had information about the hotel where the dining room was where the laundry was and all that kind of stuff. And it's got this very 50s fish motif in which there are architectural renderings of the dining room which is the lower picture and the upper one is the bar. Of course things have changed since this was first done but when these renderings were done I'm not even sure the hotel had opened yet. This is before there were photographs of the places and this would have been right in the room right when people first started coming there. And some of this architectural look we're going to see as we continue in some of the photographs that you took. Absolutely. And we wanted to point out as sort of culturally observing that wasn't retro. There wasn't looking at sort of the indigenous and all this stuff and the hula skirt and all this stuff. Right. This was pretty much very modern but it was as we like to say exotic because this wasn't invasively dropping some kind of mainland thing. This is capitalizing on the view and the breeze and it's using very modern graphics and obviously it's using the fish as what swims in the ocean and what is the main dish they were serving and they're still doing and there's sort of you guys have to go left and you do that you do that lunch fish all you can eat included you know offer. And you know what else I like just look at the two there's an eye each fish has an eye and the eye is actually an element of the picture so in the top picture it's the sun and in the lower picture it's a hanging light fixture I think that's really clever. It's pretty awesome and so let's take the next picture which is also a permanent background and we're sitting at the what you taught me is called the kidney pool. That's right that's what is called a kidney shaped pool or a free form shaped pool this was very popular in the 1950s when swimming pools particularly in southern parts of the United States and Southern California were being installed in a lot of homes and it is this very distinctive shape and in this promotional photograph which is a postcard you can see the pool in the foreground the lower building the shorter building on the left of the connecting platform and then the bigger reef hotel on the right and as you pointed out up in the upper left hand corner that same kidney shaped swimming pool is still there today but probably for not very long. We will talk about that in a bit. I'll say hi to my former Bavarian landlady in Tucson Arizona because she had a kidney pool in her ranch house or outside of a ranch house so hi Trouty. So let's go back to these days and look at that sort of backside of the Shorbet restaurant if you look very close in a very good eye vision you can see at the very right corner and see and maybe rake and you see little bonsai a neon sign that says Shorbet vertically right but it's a very nondescript it's very very humble and once again it basically capitalizes on that people know and feel where the ocean is so they will be drawn to it no matter what. Correct you're going to want to want to do it. But you can see indicated and implied there's something you talked about the other name for the pool is free form pooled so we see a free form here indicated so let's look closer what that is and go to the next picture. Right and this is an interesting thing there is this round we've got the free form rounded pool but we've also got this large these two circular motifs that one is coming up from the lower parking level and then at the second level there's yet another one so in this very rectangular long skinny lot with rectangular buildings on it they also introduce these rounded forms and the next picture goes actually down and then walks up and this little picture at the bottom in the middle is what this thing reminds me of this is what when you go online use it says it's one of the first pool at the zoos in the world and how do you call these birds those little birds that live in there they're not that little are penguins exact so that's a with ramps and that's from 1935 designer architect Lubitkin in London and it reminded me of that in equally very profane typology this is not a bohemian this is not an exclusive stuff where some kings or queens walk up these little birds and where the similar situation is these dirty cars that basically parked down in this parking garage that you said was one of the first parking garage in Waikiki we expect there to be multi-level parking garages in Waikiki in abundance today this is the first one that had two levels that was ever built in the middle 1950s and that's the granddaddy of all the other ones we have today and this granddaddy does it masterly I've never seen it anywhere else how masterly you take people who come out of their car and process them through a space to basically bring them up to the main stage that level with the pool and you make that progression a part of the architecture it isn't hidden away in the corner it's a feature to look down at and participate in exactly the next picture once you get spitten out there on the main level we want to pay attention as our check on architecture gets better the closer you get you see this very very spaghetti like skinny columns that today would make one big one they decide to do small really skinny ones and then pay attention to the detail at the top right where basically where they hit that ceiling there's this little recessed reveal a shadow reveal that reminded you of what it reminded me of what we talked about in an earlier show which were canopies that have holes for palm trees to grow through and so there are other such buildings like that in Waikiki and this reminds me of those palm tree canopies with a hole absolutely so to the right of this is where we go next in the next picture there's a stair that gets you up to the next level and you can see a very fantastic feature here that sort of the bellestrade is sort of a double wall construction and it basically is supposed to take vegetation green on the inside so once again it doesn't look like a bellestrade it looks like a green yes a green and it's a substantial feature it's a big thick thing it's often by putting the vegetation in there absolutely so when we keep going in next picture you end up and I'm already up on the next level looking down you can see that this is really the main theme it applies to everything sort of the bellestrade that fences in the hole the circle and then in the back you can see this is basically the front yards for the ground level hotel rooms which the next picture I allow myself to stalk and look at one family here who was taking advantage of that and it's very very cool that in the sort of streamlined form of these green cavity spaces you can find that kind of privacy so eye level is pretty much all green so you have privacy there but at the same time you're part of that whole outdoor experience and you're also exposed to the natural light to the natural air movement so you're not, you are closed off for privacy and some protection but you're not hermetically sealed which we also then best see on the next picture which I took looking basically all the way and you see these wherever there's a column there's another unit so once again it looks like on eye level it looks like you're somewhere in the bushes in the jungle pretty much and only heads pop out at times and when you sit you don't see that these units the glass walls are basically staggered so they're shifted and there are these skinny columns again here they didn't seem to feel to have a double column because there's probably no car that's going to crash in there so there was no need so once again we would wish architects and designers would design so human activity and event sensitive these days which we would encourage them to do again that being said and this will be redesigned and if you guys go online on the website of the owner the Art Rigor Reef you can see them reporting on what we see in the next picture which is pretty much getting rid of what we talk about today in closing shorebird and bulldozing down these buildings and also basically taking out that kidney pool and making it sort of a lifestyle lawn I guess would maybe be a fair way to call it You also said this is kind of a Maokatama Kai concept which is maybe a little too grandiose for that it's situated on a long skinny rectangular lot and what they're saying is we'll open it all up and so we've got this grand as you said lawn or a grand open space without anything in the way to look out to the Pacific Ocean and the beach and vice versa look in but there is an element on the far right which makes us uncomfortable which is a high rise which as we've discovered is not necessarily going to be built right away they're going to wait until economically it makes more sense to do it as you pointed out what we don't like about it is its configuration or its placement it is blocking the trade winds if it's placed like that angle the way the other two buildings are you'd have the air flow around it and preferably that's the way we would like it to seem we'd like to see it and we can even make this more clear with the next picture where you see the bigger context and you could basically as we say as a rule of thumb you can categorize the existing buildings in good and bad ones as far as the bigger thermal comfort on an urban scale because all the buildings that are facing or directing Malka Makai are allowing the winds to blow through them whereas the ones who are turned 90 degrees and are running EVAM and Diamond Head are basically the wrong ones because they're blocking the wind they are barriers to the wind and we believe this should be a biochlamatic zoning and our friend Kurt Senber talked about that he got really mad about the Ritz cotton I was just going to say that is exactly one of the problems with the Ritz is that they built in that configuration rather than going with the wind they block the wind exactly so our recommendation would be just turn the thing but then also the next picture we have some other recommendation whereas we might not be able to save most likely Shorbert it will go away let's just face that but let's rethink that what is the other sort of subtitle of the show is the humbleness and hospitality which you discovered where you want to point out is an island tradition it is and one of the things that is very noticeable that's changed over the last 50 or 60 years is that lots of times in the early hotels the ones we're talking about in the reef and up into the 1970s those hotel rooms were very austere they were very plain in comparison to what all of us expect today they were plain concrete boxes they were very minimally carpeted not a lot of plush anything today we expect this mound of pillows on the bed a big cushy comforter and all that stuff they didn't do that in those days and customers were very happy with it what we see in the top picture there the swimming pool that says wish you were here is the surfjack hotel which is a recently remodeled 50s or 60s building in which they've taken the enforced austerity and the plainness and tried to turn it into kind of a branding thing where they give you some other little amenities but they are admitting that it is a very plain and austere room like the two that you see in the bottom which are photographs taken in the 1950s and 60s of hotel rooms in Waikiki so the next picture is food for thought comes from our tree texture team in pretty much sort of reactivating potentially that sort of island tradition and this is my favorite picture that I got from you that you could get or visualize and bet on what you're talking about you said there is no TV and you're thinking why should there be a TV because this is the best show you can watch that's what you come here the view out of your room and this is again a plain concrete box you can see the textured walls where the plywood made contact with the concrete when it was poured there's no air conditioning no radio, no television two beds, a little bit of furniture a wicker chair that is just attached to the ceiling but the kawaii surf and that's what this is when it opened was considered a very comfortable hotel and yet today we would say oh my god there's no air conditioning how dare you some would say we as the tree texture team we say this is the epitome of the easy breezy a tropical exotic and we design things like that again next picture please this is within primitiva sort of a solution or proposition for dwelling again in balance and taking advantage of the outdoors but while we are in a sort of more culinary gastronomy, gastronomy typology this reminds me of a project we did way back which is the next picture which is my hometown which you can if I would have taken the picture a little bit more from in the room you would see better that this is actually facing with a large glass front the backside of the classic opera house in my hometown so the same goal was obviously here also with some free inform and swooping curves to basically say make everything non-descript and stay in the background and capitalize on the people there and that's why the furniture is on the Jacobson chairs and all chairs but otherwise they're just these old which are light fixtures basically anchor the place for meeting with the people and even the benches are part of the wall so the attempt was to design less to capitalize more on the view and probably we could have done even better if I now revisit that I said I should have done even less and a view like as we've been saying a view can be a natural view but it could also be a man-made view an urban view can be just as appealing to look in a space like this as looking at the ocean or diamond head so the last picture we conclude the show with is once again we go back to Prima Tiva this is how she looks at the top right and this is basically Paena Cafe who had to go away from Warthouse which is about to be torn down we did a show about it so once again our attempt is like less design less is more the old Mies van der Rohe sort of goal sort of the tropical version of that it's really capitalizing on what we have here and not interiorize and not over design so our plateau is for the outrigger of course on a macro scale turn the tower around but then to other potential clients in the future maybe there is some revisiting of the island tradition of humbleness and hospitality correct and unfortunately when things are redesigned and rebuilt these days and renovated it usually is that they go from humble to upscale they go from lower cost to expensive and it's not that you shouldn't be redesigning or fixing things up but perhaps there are times when you don't necessarily make it expensive and more upscale you keep it down to the humble level at the shore bird is so with that we're at the end of the show and if you guys enjoyed it then be with us in two weeks we're going to have another episode and we already know what it is and we give it an equally cryptic title we call it Architextia and then we call it Sticking Stacked Lanai so hopefully that makes you excited enough to want to know what's behind that and that's going to be historic ones and modern ones too until then stay happy and healthy bye