 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's human humane architecture here every other Tuesday with our category of learning from the past for the future or in other words to say the evolution of exotic traditions of architectural strategies on this island with the Soto Brown and Martin Dissipane. How do you do? I'm good except when I look at picture one I have to say, if we can get this up in picture one I'm getting increasingly nervous about this is the next tower that goes up in Kakaako by Howard Hughes and this is by very respective colleagues of mine who for example did the very notable Apple store which you see at the very corner right but our criticism is they should have exoticized themselves they should have looked in what do I do different in New York than here. So at the top right we allow ourselves a little suggestion we don't want to totally redesign who are we but just saying there is something that's island tradition these are called jealousies and there are two manufacturers still left on the island breezeway and RMA sales but a little bit of sort of patriotism here nationalism on my side this little rooster sign here is the logo of a company they're called Glass Ball Han and they've been doing glass jealousies since the 1950s but then with this sort of increased phobia of energy efficiency they almost got evolutionized away and they were smart and they basically energy optimized their jealousies so this one you see is a double pane system with insulated frames that for example one could have used should have used but then also maybe we should have maybe glass is still a problem we talked about a couple times so let's move on to what we actually want to talk about Correct and so the show is called Corbuses Hawaii Breeze Soleil and why is that and that's called that because we're talking about Le Corbusier French architect who was the creator of something called a Breeze Soleil which is a sunshade it's a French term for sunshade and the way that works very simply is to build on exterior portions of the building or they should be intrinsically part of the building that serve to shield from the direct rays of the sun and by that by doing that you do not turn the interior of your structure into a greenhouse which is enclosed with glass and just eats up and where is this and this is his most prominent example is this is the Palace of Assembly in Chandigarh and so that's in India and have architects on the island been inspired by that Yes, next picture which is maybe the most prominent example is this one Right with great pictures from your archive Yes, this is from Bishop Museum Archives and this is a picture of the construction of the IBM building which is on Alamoana and this is an iconic building by a very famous local architect Vladimir Osipov he designed those exterior concrete forms in a very clever way not only to decorate the building but he also made it so that birds could not roost in them keeping them cleaner than they would be if they were full of pigeons and doves and nesting, etc However, what I was going to say was if we go to the next picture while this is a beautiful building and very decorative and we both do give thanks to the Howard Hughes Corporation for preserving it and continuing to use it but if you look out from the interior of the building you can see that that screen does not serve as much of a breeze sole it does do some level of shading but you still have a lot of sun hitting the expansive glass so it does have this beautiful form and as you pointed out in that upper picture it's kind of flower-like or sort of organic in some ways it doesn't really serve the purpose of what we really want to talk about in this program and while we give Howard Hughes credits for having kept it which he originally didn't want to but we slapped them for having sort of put these pimples on which he can take off again but to your point it's aesthetically very compelling and it's everyone's darling but at the same time probably the artist was more creative than the engineer than the scientist in Asipov the scientist to fixide because again they're treated the same all the way around and the simple rule of thumb for shading is in sort of our climate zones and latitude is horizontal to the south and vertical to the east and the west so this sort of doing it homogeneously around the building isn't really so it's actually more a decorative approach but it is a functionally decorative approach in many ways and it's a good example of modernism that where we're like complaining about this sort of standard chevron they put on today or palm leaf imprint this one here is a very sort of multi-readable multi-duty in its perception actually it's like the logo of the IBM technology way back is one of the design inspirations which most people don't know anymore and I would also say too that it's unique it is not a generic thing because these were engineered and created just for this building so it's the most prominent example but not the most prime and clear and pure so let's move on to an example of nature next picture that teaches us how this works well and this is a cactus plant and cacti grow in areas that are extremely hot and extremely sunny and what they do is two of the adaptions that we're going to be talking about on buildings the ribs which create not only a shadow as you can see each rib shadows the interior of the next rib but there's also a lattice work of spines over the entire exterior which also provides some level of shade too and that's what we're going to be talking about the next picture and project almost relates maybe to literally to that which the architect didn't do but he did pop for the IBM this is the other hero of mid-century exotic modern this is Pete Wimaly who has done the varsity building and as you before the show you said these are not concrete fins and yes they are and I have to give credit to Bob Oda and Paul Kay from Kamehama School who are not giving up on repairing the spalding because back in the days to make these fins was almost impossible without spalding because you got to put enough concrete over the rebars without stainless steel today you have metal mesh you can do this with no maintenance and they're very brave so I'm very proud of them that they're actually going through the pain to constantly... because this building is an icon and you can see it's doing what the cactus is doing exactly and it's a cylinder like the cactus exactly, exactly so next picture it shows this is... I just took these pictures last week and that's exactly what I was just saying I looked at this structure carefully for the first time which is an exterior sheathing around the cylindrical concrete building and I thought that's so thin, that's got to be steel bolted together that has a finish on it and you just informed me as you just informed all of our viewers too no, that's actually concrete and you see how effectively it shades on the left side these glass windows except for maybe the very west sun and the very east sun for some of the bays but overall it's way more sort of shading performatively than the IBM building yes, exactly so let's move on us driving around and taking pictures and your audience don't do it while actually driving so I had to... I was sort of stopping here when I was doing that yeah, right and so this is which building? this is the Board of Water Supply Building on Baritania Street which was built in the early 1950s and it has this beautiful façade which is very, very cleverly and obviously very thoughtfully engineered to serve as a breeze sole to prevent excessive amounts of sun coming into the building and again, if you analyze it if you look at for example just the ground floor has got two horizontal members and then the next upper two floors each have one horizontal member some of these are vertical some are canted some are slanted, etc it's very complicated so here we can say not just the scientists what has worked but also the artists quite admit I mean the refinement is amazing when you want to know more about the building you got to ask your dear friend Don Hiver who has written a book about him and Don has always... Hartwood is the architect another mid-century modern hero we got to move on here with a fast pace because there's lots more and there again just some of what I was saying and here, importantly as this is something we'll see also as well you look directly ahead directly front on to a building like this and you'll see the windows you go a little bit to the left or the right a little bit at an angle all you see is the breeze sole structure that is protecting the windows and driving on down basically King Baritania next picture I didn't get far because only a block further I'm stopping at the next building here and that is the state department of health building which is just one or two blocks further from the building that we just saw the board of water supply and if we go to our next picture you can see some of the... there's the detail exactly there's exactly what I was talking about from straight on all you see is the facade on the side you do not but this building originally I believe was all equipped with louvers so it was entirely ventilated by the natural forces it has been retrofitted to have a variety of different window styles which you can clearly see as well as a bunch of individual room air conditioners and we before the show we said why would you do that and you went so far to be radical and saying you know guys go where Martin is from because if you want cold go to Germany right I mean if you really want to be in a cold cold office then go live in a cold place and Martin has done it and he doesn't want to do it anymore been there done it yes right that's right and next picture this is what the architect provided the architect provided this sunscreen to basically keep the building cool and you can follow everything that's black is basically the shade and everything that's white is the sun and you can see everything that's pushed back is pretty much in the shade moving on there's another building only a couple blocks basically Makai down right this is the capital investment company building which is at Richard Street and Merchant Street and again a 1950s building recently structures were very common in those days not just because it was decorative and not just because it was fashionable but also because this is before a lot of buildings had central air conditioning because that was a very expensive procedure so a lot of buildings still had natural ventilation they opened windows and a breeze sole was a very sensible structure to keep down the heat which is coming in via the sunlight and you can see there's some hierarchy here you basically got the floor slabs projected out then you got some vertical fins there and between our additional horizontal ones and that just has to do with the calculation of the sun angles and seeing how much of these slabs basically have to provide to shape the building next picture shows that in detail pretty clear and again how far back those windows are recessed is very clear when you look at this angle and see that there's no glass visible and as a reference and tribute to our last show which was called architecture I mean this creates some distinct texture and geometry that is just like nature performative and it does multiple things at the same time so next picture is where was I actually driving with my car I was actually driving to get my car re-registered and never mind the goofy looking cars this is not in the future I just did the sort of plain old function on my phone but this is where the DMV in Cali has moved to recently so this is a building from the 1970s we would guess and the next picture shows that it's very ahead of its time because the picture on the right is sort of hard to see but you can imagine it's the corner of the building and I was shooting straight up and you can see that this glass threshold which is the thermal enclosure is actually disconnected from that brise soleil so there's no thermal leakage there's no thermal bridging this is exactly what the highest energy efficient code in Europe and Germany wants you to do you are obligated to do that so there's a mid-century building it's almost hitting the historic registered sort of mark because 50 years and it did that very early and the next picture shows just as we were talking about before this is the facade facing Dillingham so this is east, the morning sun and so on the left part of that picture you basically see I am the morning sun and I'm not getting into the building it's not inviting me in stay out whereas on the other side I'm the light, I'm the daylight and I'm a friend of people and that's why they basically invite me in into the building so it's a matter of direct light indirect light the brise soleil blocks the direct light and the indirect light then comes in without causing as much heat UV damage etc exactly so next picture is there's an easy check on if it works and you basically see at the very bottom left of the image you see the proof of evidence that it works because there's actually a guy sitting there and no it's not the tree that shades him primarily it's actually sort of the slab where he's hovering and feeling comfortable so it pretty much works and if you again pay attention to the angle so the sun angle and the shadow tracing that you can see this building is effective and efficient in being a biochlamatic building a pioneer from the 70s next picture however the client is not taking advantage of it it's fully sealed it's fixed glazed they got these blinds and it's fully ACed so our recommendation is guys whenever these windows go old replace them with the innovative version of the glass jealousy right and let the wind come through and let the wind do the work absolutely that you do not have to pay for absolutely and next picture is a demonstration that this is interesting because it all traces back I mean concrete is the means and methods of the Le Corbusier style bristle laid here because he was working with concrete and so the concrete pre-fab industry way back Hawaiian dredging basically build it for themselves this was the headquarters at Kapa Hulu and date they're not there anymore you guys probably know it because the side street in is there and then one realtor a firm and this is an unfortunate side here because it had actually more trees that are on the street side where you said you hardly noticed the building here they took them away because of the homeless sweeping you see that unfortunate orange fence which is another topic so this unfortunately reveals or unveils that this building is not perfectly this is facing west and they didn't do the sun angle calculation so it actually gets hit by the sun quite a bit so it's a more ornamental approach exactly they knew what was in style and they were doing it without actually understanding the substance so we urge you architects don't just do it because it looks cool exactly do it because it keeps people cool in the building and the analysis of where the sun is at different times of day as well as different times of year is very important based on where your building is situated where it's facing etc all of those things you can do not only decoratively but to enhance the experience of the interior of the building for the people who are in it next let's move on to the next pair of pictures here and as always we're just telling you and sharing with you the little we have seen there's lots more out there so pay attention to it now that we make you sensitive and now that you've been introduced to it look for other Brie Soleil buildings and in these ones here there's sometimes shading more or less and sometimes they're more gestural and sometimes they're more functional and so you can see from the sunshadows here at the time of the day you took the pictures it's probably pretty okay but there are other buildings who aren't quite as and that's the next picture which is the gold bonds building or at least was I have to say on Alamona Boulevard in that Kakaako Salt area here and this is a building that was a very sort of there was a block and they call it I think you know perfectly a very typical institutional looking building and it was characterized by these sort of more gestural vertical fins and it was as you said it was sort of homogeneously you know clad with that yes exactly it had a very homogenous similar frontage I mean the entire facade of the building looked the same and you said it's from the mid-60s mid-1960s gold bond I won't even get into but gold bond trading stamps were but this was part of that entire operation and it has which was what a modernist building liked to look like it was like symmetrical it was like in you know it was the absolutely it was in style it was like the corduroy where they came in the 70s more in clothing exactly but this is again you wanted a symmetrical plain facade or not plain facade but one that was uniform and that's what we have gotten away from now with what is perfectly it's just trendy now so retrofitting has happened like in real estate it is people think of the old as like outdated so let's spice it up let's prep it up so they are hired someone who basically thought well what do I do and they did two things one main thing is pretty much what you see at the corner of the building and they basically put and I just I mean I took once again I'm obviously taking pictures why at least not driving but standing but I saw the pickup truck with which always puzzles me like that people are still allowed to sit in the back of the pickup truck and not sort of having a seat belt on but it's certainly an easy breezy phenomenon right and then you got that construction fence that that basically shows mantras and you know sea life so both things you know show a certain sensitivity towards the environment but then the building is doing the opposite and let's do a little bit of a science demonstration here if we can get the camera on our table here and we're going to demonstrate so let's say these are the fins we have seen in the building and let's say you basically DeSoto is the sun and there is the sun like which I'm trying to aim at and so the sun goes around because this is facing basically west and east and they basically have the wind could pass by and cool down the concrete you don't allow this anymore because it's encased so these sun rays pass the glass they get converted into heat and that's basically going to bake the concrete it gets trapped behind the glass and you create a glass house a greenhouse yeah and that is a no-go in Hawaii greenhouses are for tempered climate where it gets cold and you need to conserve and conceal a no-go for that one and the other thing is if we can get the next picture is that the architect pretty much had done another thing and he was like wrapping the building almost like you make a gift and you have a ribbon and you basically put this ribbon around the building so what that is doing is pretty much not a whole lot and we have a little piece that would simulate that here it's kind of what they did here that happens sort of marginally so it doesn't do a whole lot to begin with it's just decorative and not performative at all correct correct so we're saying well all this money is spent why don't you basically go ahead and we suggest how one could have used these metal this piece of metal basically differently and let's now use our glass again where it's probably going to sit which is somewhere in this area here so you know the fins are not very deep so now we have a suggestion if we both start and seeing how we do this here so we're using the same amount of metal and basically instead of wrapping the building like a gift we basically bracket the fins with these metal strips correct and bring back your son or you be the son and go and illustrate what it is what we're saying is that now we've got a brise soleil and the son is coming at an angle formally it wasn't because these are gone and this gets hit by the son correct and all of a sudden we put these back and now we are protecting from the son not only does this protect from the son but the beauty is also it continues to carry on the original intent or appearance of the building and so while it is not 100% the exact same building it is in the spirit of the similar building and it's also more useful it adds utility I mean the working title for the show the innovation of exotic tradition rise the original architect did justually the right thing with these fins right and now in times of the 21st century you said okay let's enhance that right and you basically just deepen them and I would say you know allow myself as a practicing architect having done projects and having done remodeling taking the cost of the sort of green housing the corners and using the metal ribbons you could have used the same amount of effort and money and basically all basically fin enhance the building and that's what we're saying you know doesn't this here look cool do we think so because of course we are not let's get this straight we're not against innovation we're not against the moving on the flow of time we actually want to support it we say some buildings need to be pepped up but as you said please do it within the notion and the integrity of the building so show some respect and as the result your building is cool and cool correct right both it's it's more useful and it's looks different and it looks unique and it looks up to date so it's not exactly old-fashioned and talking up to date I'm going to volunteer in the tradition so with an example of our work here the next picture is when we were charged to design a school cafeteria and I want to emphasize that the design approach of being the the breeze so late architect is an inside out approach because you don't do it as in the bad example of what we just saw as to impress or basically you know the PIMPA building you basically make a building that people feel good about and in it and in a bio-climatic way this is in temperate climate so if you would want to do this here once again replace the fixed glazing with jealousy but there you go basically you have the same thing and you build it that way from the beginning exactly just add it on as an exterior element exactly and every other thing is basically together with every other one every other one is structural and then every other one is basically performative and they all together do what we see at the next picture where we want to encourage you know the future generation to also go the next step where as many other examples we have shown are applied it's an additional skin this one here is an exoskeleton right so the structure is doing two things it's holding up the building and my dear friend Pat Rand at North Carolina State once said you know sustainability if you want to use that word which is highly deflated and inflated but let's use it is basically like gravity you can't defy it so you want to work with it but you basically infuse it and make it integral and integrative to your building design and the third component is maybe the most important this is the human I mean you can see these young teenagers flirting in the building and with the building so we talked about people and planet friendliness right so you of course you want to make a building that's off the grid net zero which this is but you don't want to do it on the expense of human humane architecture which is the title of the show you want to make people happy and healthy absolutely and you know I just want to point out too that the view of the building at the bottom on one hand it is very stark and it is very modern it is stripped of all of its ornamentation and yet it still retains interestingly to me a lot of classical elements in the same as Greek architecture of a facade that's basically made up of vertical elements as columns those columns have been reduced and they don't look exactly like a Greek temple but you are in fact looking a lot like classical western architecture does these are the principles that have worked and will continue to work and we're going to conclude going back to Ireland of course because that's what we want to help and innovate so the next project is once again starting with the next picture starts with the inside out approach of something we had envisioned up from Manoa which we call the tropical textile and it's basically a woven fabric that most importantly makes you feel like we're suggesting there so light is pouring through the porous fabric of the building and you feel the breeze and you smell the flowers and you really in Hawaii and you do this in a way as you see down there but the next picture and concluding picture which is also a permanent background is basically through we developed this sort of things come full circle with great specific rock and mountain precast who are the follower of Hawaiian dredging and we did this with the campers Les and Adam campers and we developed this as a structural skin so the building this is structural it holds up the building and at the same time it's basically firmly performing the building and so that's our encouragement for you guys think about our tropics differently and find sort of tectonics and technologies that are conducive of our very privileged circumstances of being the most beautiful place on earth I agree so with that we're at the end of the show but we can already give a glimpse of what the next one will be correct so when we come back next time in two weeks we're going to be talking about similar types of building exteriors exteriors however that will be not only decorative and pretty a look at in some cases interesting but also we'll have some other functions in terms of privacy and protection as well so that will be our next time what are we calling that sunscreen we call that sunscreen as like the sunscreen you put on your body SB 20 30 and 50 exactly that's right then stay breath so late see you then bye bye