 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Immunity matters here. Good day, everyone. This is Soto Brown. I'm the co-host of Human Humane Architecture. And our host, Martin Despang, is currently visiting his homeland in Germany for Christmas. This is the day after Christmas when we're shooting this and recording this. And Martin told me last night that in Germany they get two days off for Christmas, the 25th and the 26th. So he is the day off. Not us. No, we don't have things like that. And if you look in the back of me, you will see that there is a picture of what we're today calling the host petroleum people parking winths. What does all that mean? Well, before we get into that, you'll also notice that there is a, you know, on that side there's a, no, there's that. Anyway, there's our host, Martin Despang. And behind me on the right, you'll see a palm tree branch. Now, Martin and I had this discussion last night that Germany is the home of where Christmas trees started. And so here's our little Christmas tree salute, oh, ten and bomb, oh, ten and bomb. That's where Martin is. But we're here in the tropics, so we don't need those. We're going to be looking at tropical things today. And the point of this program is, and this is Martin's kooky idea, but it's a good idea, that if we were to change our transportation needs here and if we were to shift to away from the private car to more public transportation, we would be able to possibly free up all these parking buildings that we have, in which we, in case we could accommodate lots of homeless people. And a lot of the parking buildings actually are rather nice. And so we're going to be looking at some of that parking today. But first, Martin wants us to emphasize where he is with a little video. Martin, what is this video? Well, hello everyone and Merry Christmas. Yes. Germany hasn't valued engineer the way the second day of Christmas, so we still have that. And how cozy and chilly it is here is this clip that you will see now, we'll show that. This was delivered to me by my sons, and I'm afraid they took it while being on the alzobon in a blizzard. So let's keep watching and enjoying it. Oh, I think we've had enough of that. We want to come back to the props. So, so me, yeah, and I'm feeling in this situation like if we can bring picture number one, there is this sort of, I feel like the Chevy Chase in this Christmas movie from the late 80s, early 90s, where he is having these dreams while looking out of his window and the Milliculiki Maka song is playing. That's right. And I'm also back with my sweetheart, Suzanne, here in Germany, and she has been visiting over the summer. And so we did a show that we call Tropical Tourism. And I revisited her point about calling one of the buildings in Waikiki, close to the Waikiki Circle, a shadow house. And this is what this picture is showing again. And this gets us into the next couple pictures. So number two is that big vision is going to show we're going to bring back some modes of transportation that we had and that we had lost. For example, we bring back streetcars that ran on Kala Kala Avenue and kept its feel and atmosphere of being tropical, of being exotic, being a jungle. And the two of us, we did a show about the Royal Wine Shopping Center where the architect in the 70s were respecting that and almost camouflaging the architecture to really bring back or to bring out the jungle again. Right? Right. These streetcars, number four, picture number four, ran up into the mountains. They were easy breezy. They were cool, literally and figuratively. Next picture, number five, then was then, now is now. This is referring to another show with a board member, Nicole Horry, who proposes sky driving. So gondolas, and I prefer ski lifts, which I'm riding in here, but it's rather chilly, but back home and why it's beautiful. And next picture, number six, is referring to another show that we did about the Blaisdell. And we refer to parking in a way that the very top picture left is who most Americans consider the most important architect, American architect, Frank Wright, but he was a fossil guy. And the car you see is a Lincoln Continental that he sort of pimped and got rid of the rear mirror and rear window because he always looked forward and never back, whereas who many, including me, consider the greatest American architect is the one below that, which is Luke Khan, who didn't even have a car. He walked everywhere. So no surprise that he had this vision of a little bit more moderate. He wasn't kicking out the car entirely, but he said, keep it out of the course and make these self-parking cylinders in this perimeter around the city. And so we suggested to incorporate that technology into the redevelopment of the Blaisdell. However, the picture at the bottom right is the newest proposal, and they seem to have been a little bit deaf about our suggestion to just dust off the exhibit hall. And now it seems to be replaced by something monstrous, but never mind. Let's move on. And actually let's now visit some of these structures that could be so easily sort of repurposed. And the first one that we showed is maybe the most obvious because I walk by there every Tuesday on the way to the show. And for the longest time, it was under the impression this is condominium, but it's not. It just looks like and only at the very top that has apartments and lofts and penthouses and a pool, which you don't even see from below. But this building looks like you could move right in. So let's maybe rephrase what traditionally we call homeless as you call it perfectly. Let's call them urban nomads because I think that does them more justice. So what's the next building that we can look at? That's also around the corner, right? Right. This is connected right to the building that we are in, which is on the right in this photograph, which is a pioneer plaza. And on the left is the former post office, first post office building built in the 1870s. And this building fronts onto King Street, but from the back side, which is what we're seeing here, from Merchant Street, we have this view. And one of the things we're going to be seeing, a great deal, is how do these buildings deal with cross ventilation? And how do they deal with some cases with disguising the fact that these are parking buildings so that you don't see the car? Some cases you do, some cases you don't. And as we go through this, you're going to see how all of these different techniques are used as we continue. In our next picture, this is one of the ones that, well, this is not one of Martin's favorites. There are two buildings here that are not Martin's favorites. One is the Waikiki Gateway and the other one is Elie Place, which is downtown. And both of them were built about in the early 1990s and included in this picture is two pictures of your hosts right now, DeSoto Brown and Martin Despang, as we looked back in the 1980s. We don't look the same as we did back then. One of the things about this building that certainly the Waikiki landmark that you see here is it does incorporate greenery, and that's what we're going to be seeing more of, but it's also got these very rounded curves on it that in some cases might look nice, in some cases might perhaps seem like they're overdone, but we don't need to get into too much of that. And next we have Kauaihau Plaza. Yeah, that's, we kind of just refer to the next two previous shows we did here about Tropical Brutalism. This is Kamehameha School of Headquarters, and we already said in that show it's actually more comfortable in the parking garage, which is in the same nature as the office building, because the office building got glazed in, and it's hermetic and sealed and all these things. Next picture, number 11, is similarly a parking garage in downtown, Brutalist style, that once again we feel it's sort of ready to move in. Number 12 is showing, this is a little Brutalist series here, this is a government building in Chinatown. Once again, where the parking almost looks like, you know, mundane, staclinized, as Kurt Sandberg likes to call it, it's all there, once again ready to move in. And so is the next picture, number 13, which is relating to a show we did about Ward Plaza. Ward Warehouse. We're back at Ward Warehouse, thank you. And at the bottom left, you see the current condition, it's demolished right now, but what's not demolished is what you see at the top, is the concrete parking garage. And I walked in and the very bottom right shows you actually the inside out, this is how the occupants, the inhabitants would look at it, and you look at the Starbucks, set the nice developments in Takaako, they're exclusive. So here if you could all of a sudden, you know, pay homage or do your duties as far as inclusiveness, right? And have some people who otherwise could not afford, not even in what they call affordable and could move in. Doesn't that look nice? I would like to do that. And would you like to move into the next London solo? Well, I'm not sure, I do have a house, so I don't need to move into that, but one of the things that we have seen occasionally is, usually as a rule, most buildings will put the parking on the ground floor and have the inhabitants and the stores and the offices on the upper floor. In this case, which was originally built as the Liberty House store and then became Macy's and now it's Walmart, the parking is up on the top and the ground level is reserved for things that pedestrians will interact with, mainly being the store itself. So this is usually not the way it's done, but in some cases when it is done, it's actually a better way, it's more people-friendly, let's say. It's absolutely. And the next one, number 15, is not that far away from the previous one, but time-wise, in the early 90s. And this is a building that's highly sort of disregarded and dismissed of Harbour Court. It's deeply zeitgeist and rooted in the post-modernism, but I always have to give it, and I heard the architect got chased away and food from the island, which is sort of sad because he really tried his very best. And this is where you parked, by the way, and one day we just walked back and just checked it out. And we're rather intrigued by the delicacy of these very thin metal louvers, they're angled. And so there's literally almost no view if you look at it from up front, whereas there's a lot of light pouring in and a lot of air coming through. So it's a very nice example. And once again, this is like, there was a show with David Rockwood a few shows ago where we talked about screens and providing privacy, which some of the parking structures don't necessarily do yet. Many do, which are the ones we show next. But this one here is really, really perfectly acquainted to even intimacy and privacy as sort of an inherent human need. Correct. And so it's the next one, number 16, which is a building by an architect that our next show will be about. It's Edward Killingsworth, and he did this apartment building here in downtown. And again, at the plinth or the base, you see horizontal louvers. They're not covering just the parking, but also some circulation elements. Once again, very nice, delicate, elegant building. And these sort of very fine lines are sort of accentuating the architecture. And maybe our most favorite, and this is why we choose it for the permanent background, is the next picture, number 17, which in the middle row of the pictures, we were digging out something that we were remembering from Chicago. When I was there and some 25 years ago as a student the first time, I was intrigued. It's sitting next to the Mies van der Rohe's IBM building. And it's by one of his disciples, short chipperade. And it's actually using the same Z-shaped aluminum profiles. I think in that case, they're kind of quart and steel or so. You see that detail at the second from left. And you were surprising me in saying, well, all these decades with all respect, you didn't think this would be a parking building, right? Exactly, exactly. Because it's so well disguised. It's such a nice base for the base of the high-rise tower. It's so dark that you kind of don't see it. You don't kind of really notice it. And yet it is, in fact, the parking structure. Now, one of the things that you have talked about, Martin, which is very important is, if people were going to move into these locations, one of the things that they would get, which many of us don't get, is free air circulation. They would not need air conditioning. And yet there would be, as you just pointed out, a certain level of privacy. So in some cases, this certainly would be better than living on the sidewalk. And in some cases, really rather pleasant, as opposed to living in, as you said, a hermetically sealed glass box. Yeah, and making this reference to maybe where it was inspired by this ship rate building, it certainly is sort of not original to the island. So it was imported, but it's not invasive. It's exotic because it's actually making more sense here than in Chicago because Chicago gets even more chilly than here, the windy city. And imagine that in the winter. So you won't be able to sleep in there, but here is where all we have to worry is the sun all year round. It's perfect, right? Correct. I agree. Let's move on to the next couple series, which is introducing another sort of means and methods to basically deal with the plinth. And this is my direct neighbor. This is the Queen Kapoleani Hotel by Ernest Hera, which is currently under massive renovation. And do you want to talk a little bit about what they did there? Well, the thing that's interesting to me is that we're talking about all these different ways of disguising or covering up parking structures. And in this case, what they chose to do was to create unique concrete structures that are shaped like breadfruit leaves or oolu. And so they are clearly acknowledging the tropical location of this building. They're doing it in a beautiful, interesting way. And yet it's serving the same screening function as the other things that we've already seen. Yeah. And there's this myth that the exotic music people were like recording in one of the rooms, maybe there in my building next door, and being inspired by the animals in the zoo and incorporating that into the music. And you can see Ernest having done that in the architecture, doing these sort of crazy, exotic, sort of precast concrete elements. And I get this to the next pictures. Number 19 is the first one. This is the, I think, called Surf Rider Ride Hotel or apartment building on Alawai. Next couple buildings are all on Alawai. And Alawai shows a couple of ways of doing it with breeze blocks. Breeze blocks. And this was a very common theme and we probably should have my colleague Lance Waters do a show about it who is currently researching that. And so number 20 is showing another one at the end of or beginning of Alawai close to the harbor. And I encourage you guys, when I took this picture, I got really up close and checked how deep they are. These are really, really deep. So there's hardly ever any sun getting in there. But there's still a lot of porosity for the air, as you correctly said, is able to flow through. And the next picture, 21, is probably the most generic. I mean, these are just rectilinear precast concrete boxes. And every once in a while, there's one sticking out. So there's a little bit of ornament there, but it's not decorative or ornamental, as you perfectly call it, right? Right, correct, correct. And we got one more, which is 22 is on Cudillo. Once again, it's a hotel and it's typically 60-ish. And these breeze blocks are almost like skirts, like drapery and very nicely textured and done. And one of the two things I like about these, one, they provide security and safety, in that you do not have to put in railings, because the entire wall serves as a barrier for people to not fall out. That's correct, yeah. And two, every one of these blocks is a different shape, has a different pattern. So in some cases, there's a certain similarity to all of these breeze block buildings, but in the same time, there is uniqueness, because every one of them is a little bit different. And so the next three ones are a little different theme of treating them. The number 23 is which we featured in one of the previous shows called Volcanic veneer. And the top two floors are basically standard 20-floor parking garages. And the architect brought this into the vertical. So you get these kind of ribbons. And the next picture, number 24, if you increase the density of these ribbons, you get more privacy, you get more shading. And on number 25 is a building that's entirely dedicated to parking. And that's a classic example. That's Mark's Garage in Chinatown. And we're saying there's this artist gallery in there. So if people who move in there after the cars are gone, they're going to be artists. And then you get this artist live work community, and that gets us back to how most of our culture started out. Like you had the work at the base, and you had the living at the top of it. Right. And that's the basis for urban living throughout the world in many situations, a two-story building. As you said, the commercial aspect on the bottom, and the living quarters above. And next picture is when I was in San Francisco a couple months ago, I saw that San Francisco is massively investing in mass transit. They're doing what we are struggling with to bring the rails basically into the core of the city. And there's this massive transit, multimodal transit station that they screened with this perforated metal, which in this case is purely decorative. And it's been this fashion, we can say, has been brought to the island. And the next couple pictures are some that you took, or we took together, different situations. That also shows these are actually the new developments by Howard Hughes, mainly in Cacaaco. And we drove by there at night, and they show, so if we can show number 27, we can show then the effect almost inverts itself, right? Camouflaging at daytime, the sort of safety light inside that has speeder in order to drive is basically going to reveal everything that you basically want to hide, which is a little bit absurd. And we were, I mean, if not Christmas, it's a ton of dream and have crazy ideas. We were saying, going back to the raw, to the authentic, to the wild, maybe even, why don't people go back to sleep when the sun goes down as they used to? Use some tiki torches, and then you have less sort of bombardment of fluorescent light tubes in there. And you get a way more gentle atmosphere for your sort of repurposed function of the building. So next picture is number 28, is another one of Howard Hughes. And here the architects start to decorate once again. They start to ornate. But these pinballs or wavelengths, whatever are post-modern sort of play, but they don't have any performative, as we define performance function in the building. So we would say next picture, also part of their complex is number 29. It's what's more pleasant. It just does the job. Horizontal louvers, that's all you need. Stick with that. And the next picture, number 30 is, which I'm still puzzled, and hopefully we find out one day, but I'm pretty sure this building has just been completed during the past couple of years and it's humongous, like 20, 25-story concrete monolith, entirely exclusively dedicated to parking. It's right at each one on the edge of each one. So once again, what a potential. You got a whole building that you could inhabit. How cool is that? And what do you think about the next project, number 32? Well, let's see which project that is. Let's go to that picture and see what it looks like. Okay. Thank you. This is in Cacaaco. This is kind of an interesting, if not sort of strange way to deal with a parking building. As you can see in the lower picture, the parking building is behind a thin wall, if you will, just one apartment deep of apartments. And the strange thing is that if you look in the upper right-hand corner, you drive right by somebody's lanai, which is just immediately to the right of that, and the lanai also has an unfortunate permanent guest on it, which occupies a good amount of space, which is the air conditioning unit. So this to you seem to be sort of a fraud, if you will, to sort of put this veneer of inhabitants in front of the building to sort of cover it up, but does it really work? Exactly. And another sort of a little absurd in another way, current application of that topic is the next picture, number 32. This is American Saving Bank currently under construction at the end of Baratania, close to Chinatown, and here in an era of the 21st century where we shouldn't dedicate buildings majorly to cars anymore, they still do. The major part of the building, the plinth, the big plinth is a big concrete box that's topped by some chores of office. And I have to give credits again once to the makers, since Grace Pacific, Rocky Mountain Precats, I mean, these are pristine panels, they're super, but the architect was decorating, was ornating, as you called it perfectly again, because the openings actually in this sort of massive block are rather small. And what looks like could be little slit holes are actually not, they're just sort of real yes, right, they're just shadow. So most likely it's going to be pretty hot in there, so maybe this won't be our most preferred easy breezy and new urban nomad dwelling. So the older the better, and the next picture, the number 33, another maybe not so good picture, this is the project that our friend and former guest in the show, activist reporter Kurt Sandburne, probably lost his job, because it's a risk-culting, and he was really critical about it, and I can extend the criticism down to our topic, because they put these pimples on, and these pimples don't leave any gap for any air, so basically in the pitch dark on the inside, and no air passing through, it's just decorative. At the bottom they do another part of the building, they do it right, they keep it clean, they keep it simple, right? Right, right, yes. And I think one of the ways that you can go in the next picture really takes it to the extreme, in which you have a mesh that is on the exterior of the building, and you use that to support the growth of plants. So in that case, you're completely open, you are as green literally and figuratively as possible, and as you pointed out, it might be rather pleasant to live inside there with a green wall of leaves and branches instead of a silent wall. Yeah, yeah, that's true. However, some of us, like we just talked about Kurt Sandburne and David Rockwood as well, they always make fun, and they say, it's like growing green beards on buildings, you know, maybe that's something for... What's that drinking that Scottish holiday called? St. Patrick's Day? That's what I was thinking of, exactly. So that's for the St. Patrick's Day. So the next one is maybe a little bit more pleasant, right? Right, right. This one I think is particularly nice. This is the base of the discovery, excuse me, Yacht Harbor Tower's condos, which were built in the early 70s. And it's got a step, as you can see, slanted backwards at an angle facade. And then in these planter boxes are ample growth of bougainvillea plants. So it really is very pleasant, and it disguises and yet does not... It's still honest. It still is honestly a building with concrete planters, but there's a great deal of greenery and flowers to really make it look much more attractive. And so the next picture is at the top left. I saw some guys who are ready to move in as well. This chicken here and its kids are obviously excited to be dwellers in a garage. And so hopefully the people below that here. And this is a project we've been promoting for a while. This is Primitiva. This is our invention and our solution. If you build a new building, and it's pretty much a parking garage from its structure, but hopefully on the picture, as you can see that it doesn't come across like that. It's a pleasant building that basically applies the methodology that you just perfectly explained with the picture before and the project before. And the next picture, second to last, if we convert our urban fabric back to walkability and mass transport, we free the streets from the cars and you can bring back vegetation. And then some green, exotic jungle stuff grows in front of your formerly parking garages, which are now nice dwellings. Which last picture, number 38 is the end of the show. Again, why not dreaming wild at this time of the day? Maybe we bring a little bit of that into our goals for the new year. How about that? Well, there we are. So that's our fantasy view of what might happen to parking buildings if we were to repurpose them as post petroleum people parking plinths. I hope you're happy that I managed to say that correctly. You rehearsed and trained well. You didn't break any tongue because of that. So see you guys next week. Next week is going to be very special. It's going to be Tonya Molle, our Dukamomo president, chapter Hawaii, and our CEO, Jay Fiedel. And they will talk about something that we're interested as well. So they're talking about what happens currently to our magnificent mile, which is that strip of Capdeani Boulevard, pretty much from the convention center down to Picoa Street, which had some very nice mid-century pristine buildings, many of them by Frank Haines, which has passed away. And it gets developed in a maybe not so magnificent way. So let's be excited about that show. And we're going to be back in two weeks, right? Yep. So I'll be back here. Martin will be back. Everything will be back to normal, but until we all see you again, until next time on Think Tech, about your human humane architecture, Aloha. You guys stay warm. All right. Okay, done. Done, done, done, deal. I can crash again. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night and all that nonsense. Exactly. Although it's always a pleasure.