 thrilled to have you back for another episode, which happens to be our 249th of human human architecture on Pacific Hawaii. And you are about to be around our 13,200 year which we're thrilled. We is us, your host at the contrary nodes of our round globe, back in our Honolulu, Hawaii at the Tropical Exotic Osipoff Design Brown residence with you, the Soto. Hi, the Soto. Hello, everybody. And hello, ThinkTek and hello, Martin. So lovely to have your tropical exotic birds singing, dog sleeping scenery there, which I'm happy, very happy. And me, your other host, Martin, the Spang has moved from Zurich, where we were around Zurich last week, back to Dresden on the eastern side of Germany. And it's dark here, so the birds went to sleep. Otherwise, there would be some here too. So we're still operating under the challenging clouds of COVID cases going up. Climate change continued to be and everything overshadowed by the threat of civility through wars in many places, one that I'm getting closer and closer to ideographically moving around because Dresden is just close to the Czech border. And Dresden is also the town where dictator Putin says this is his favorite town that he has ever lived in. So as we were talking to Soto, luckily, there was a gift stall where we saw a little postcard that was saying Putin. And there was someone throwing the head of Putin into a bin, a waste paper bin. So obviously, there are people here who don't are quite don't have quite so romantic feelings about Putin when he was here as a KTV agent back in the days. So this is the operating umbrella we're talking about. But get us back to the first slide. And related in many ways are exotic escapism experts, Zana, who is one of our utmost fans, but also critics gave me a rain check last week when I was doing that show because of what this Soto, we talked about that before. Well, you were saying that you were comparing home ownership between Switzerland and the United States. And you were pointing out that the high, the really high level of median income in Switzerland is around $10,000 a month. And that's what's considered decent wages for them, certainly. But what you were saying was that because of that high income, people were able to live more comfortably and to attain in an ironic way, something more like the American dream. But Suzanne pointed out that the American dream is home ownership. And what's going on in Switzerland is not ownership, but in fact is renting. So it's a different situation. But what you're saying is that what people can afford to live in as a rental place in Switzerland is far superior than what they can afford to live in as a rental place in the United States for comparable money. So it's a more equitable situation and a more comfortable and a more livable and decent living situation in Switzerland. And in a larger sense, of course, what we're talking about is European countries having offering agreed to more for citizens, which they pay for through higher taxes as well. And that's something that a lot of people in the United States get insane about because how dare you raise my taxes and how dare you try to impose socialism when in fact it's a totally different situation. But nonetheless, the two Switzerland and United States situations are not exactly comparable, which is what we talked about before the show. Yeah. And on the left, we see the map of Germany, or at least the large majority of it, the very West and the very East is cut off a little bit. But this is from a real estate sort of, you know, on the phone app where you can check the value of your home. And the legend at the very bottom there is color coded. It's basically the more heedy, the more yellowy, the more orangey and the more reddish it gets, the hotter the market is. I guess that's how they choose the color I can only imagine. And the colder and the bluer it gets, the cooler the prices are. So you can see here clearly that it's very hot and red where Suzanne is from. That's why we have a similar, we're talking about the comparisons of Hawaii and Bavaria, which I call cynically the Department of Bavarian Homeland trap she is in with her house. I use that term to echo the Department of Hawaiian Homeland, which is where locals can't afford a home anymore. We're talking ownership now. And that's very similar here. The other hot spot is there was a show way back that we called Hamburg's Harbor City and compared that to Kakaakal. This is Hamburg. This is another red zone here. Other than that, in the East we have Dresden where we currently are, but only in the metropolitan area around Dresden. Everything else very quickly goes rather cools off to the blue. And this is still the former East, which still many decades after the wall came down is still trying to catch up with the West. There's still discrimination there as far as wages and opportunities and economical challenges. And where we were basically the last couple of days was back with Joey and Lenny and their ladies at the very West in the Colin Park in Duisburg. And that's where all the steel industry, all the heavy industry went away. And that's why it's only in the areas of Bonn, Cologne, and Düsseldorf. It's yellowish, but everything else cools off rather to greenish. So that's basically the kind of the mapping of of economical situations. And so again, what is true for Munich as like the 6,000 euros per square meter, which is insane, but it's equally insane in Honolulu. So that no normal person, and this is something that one Ron was still with us, you know, brought that up, getting back to our show here. And I think we can bring up the next slide for that. The area around Alamoana, where this one is the volume 13, us elaborating on that one, where basically, you know, this is this is not affordable. The projects there, that we're talking about, what they call affordable is not affordable for normal people. It's still you're still privileged if you can afford something in that in that area, that's rather rather shocking. And so what else do we have on on that slide here to compare things? We said that the building that's supposed to be on that lot here will be by the Storchitech Rem Colas, and it's from Oma. And us having the that's easy that on the show called a number one on number six, we're celebrating the 15th anniversary of our favorite Olympics in Munich. And it's Olympic Village going along with it that we pointed out as something to learn from. So that is 50 years young now. And there's an initiative in the city that's already projecting for the next 50 years. So how can we basically evolve that traditional innovation as we like to call it, you know, one of your favorite talks about that subject matter in Honolulu. So just hot off the press, this slide number two, is that the same Rem Colas was chosen as a winning competition entry for what they call the urban production for BMW. So here we have the private sector that is stepping up and hiring, you know, one of the architects, which is a good thing. Again, slide number three, they did this before with Wolf Precks, who, you know, made the mistake to team up with Putin. And also we think with this BMW world was doing more of a silly attempt to live up to the great Frey Otto and get to banish with their sort of, you know, flying roofs. And so we can only wish that Rem will basically, you know, do better and live up to his full potential as the public sector has done. Because what do we see on the slide seven, eight, nine, the solo that we were talking about and you got excited about? Well, you were talking about this earlier. And if I'm not mistaken, these are prefab slabs, essentially, which are being installed, they're wooden, however, they're not concrete and they're not steel. And this is a new complex. And it is got this tremendous overhang. And tell me more about it because we talked about it. But this is you need to inform me again in our audience. This is once again, we get later to our main educational institution, which is my employer, the University of Hawaii, that should have a leading position in most of things. We're a tier one research institution. So we should do cutting edge, build research as buildings. And there's a great tradition as there is in Honolulu that to build upon because mid century architects were doing that. Here, they continue to do that because this is for the Technical University of Munich. This is an athletics building here. And again, a win, a one competition by the Austrian firm of Dietrich Untertriefaller. I don't ask you to say that because this is the thumb breaker. And this is a very, very good firm. And again, they were building, as you already described, this is prefab wood, pushing it to the max as far as cantilevering there. This is all again, doesn't need any scaffolding. It could be set up with a crane. And that reminds us a lot at the top right. But what is that? At the top right is one of our favorites. And that's the Alamoana building. And the Alamoana building is or was, I should say, when it was first constructed extremely innovative and very livable and very much ahead of its time. It no longer has the features that it originally had, which is too bad. But that is something that we look to as a role model for what buildings can be in terms of their energy usage in particular, and the comfort of the people who are inside them. Yeah. And that reminds me of the one and only time I had the chance to meet the great Alfred Yee that Bundet did this great exhibit about that's up online of his gym gallery. And this is pulled from his website. And Al basically shared with me that story that is very first building in downtown Honolulu that doesn't exist anymore. Unfortunately, he had this ambitious idea to make it all free spanning without any interior columns, spanning around the whole width of the block, slash the building. And once you had designed that, he found out, oops, I forgot about the lack of buildability almost. He says there's like, where is so he had to go back and actually design the tools, the cranes, and he got himself inspired by basically St. Island and all the shipping cranes cargo cranes. And he designed the tools to put the beams in place. But in terms of being mid century and you know, where he was, I guess he was on a budget. He basically designed it in a way that almost Egyptian that was like people powered. So they were like all these people who had to basically push these cranes. And when they first started it didn't go anywhere. It didn't move an inch where he was scratching is that by that time he said there were like articles in the paper popping up. There's this silly young engineer who was already basically done by the time he starts his business because it's not figured out. So he was like really under pressure put himself under pressure. And then it was like he realized it's like if you have like a chair that's on wheels has like, you know, five horizontal legs and they're they're rolling ball, you know, underneath and when they're all pointed in a different direction, your chair doesn't move anywhere. So he had to like synchronize like a ballet, the first have them straighten out the roles and then go in the right direction and they were able to do it. And that was just so fantastic to hear from himself, like his sort of his beginnings, they were overly ambitious, and so enthusiastic. And but just like his pure will and passion finally made it happen. So that's why it reminds me of when I when I read about this project here, they talk about, Oh, we don't we didn't want to use any scaffolding, we wanted to make it very efficient and effective. We wanted to make it out of wood is the most sustainable material. So I was like feeling there is the same kind of spirit in there. That once again, coming full circle here, where are we going with this one? We're we're hoping that the the the private sector here BMW is getting inspired by that. And also, kind of lack of ego, it would probably be too easy to basically have the trick on that we follow say, Oh, we want to basically homage to the great fry auto with I think a good portion of, I guess, you can probably say patriotic patriotism of them being Austrian, they actually allude to their architect in that area, which is Paul Schwanzer, who basically built the four cylinder like BMW headquarters towers that BMW built for or around the event of the Olympics, because they wanted to look good, mighty good. And so we're innovative as well, we're the BMW, we're a leading automotive company in the area and in the world. So once again, coming full circle, hopefully here, the the the private sector, which we also encourage our university, we unfortunately have to share later on in this show here, the next week, however many volumes we still need, that actually he is currently doing the opposite. But hopefully they're going back to their roots and their tradition. And then the private sector is following that raw model of the public sector, all wishful thinking, a little bit more about, I guess, you know, when they're branded as Midtown, Alamoana, it sounds like a new thing, right? You know, all their buildings popping up left and right and pretty much the same manner is. But in fact, if we look at the picture, the sort of the the pioneering step of of further developing that area in the way they do it right now as as high-end housing, that foundation was laid earlier, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. And the whole district of Capilani Boulevard has undergone a lot of different changes in its existence since the 1930s when it was first built. And in the background of this photograph we can see on the left what's called the Luraku Tower, which was built in the 1990s by a Japanese firm. And it is a high-end residence. It's a high-end condo. And next to it on the right in the center of this picture is the central. This is a new one of these new condos. And one of the things we always point out is the new buildings are all blue. They're all sheathed in blue glass. Central is like that as well, but we could go back to the 90s. Luraku is a different greenish color. Now Luraku to its credit does have lawn eyes. It does have some level of livability. And one of the things that we always advocate is every building should have lawn eyes. Every building should have open and openable and closeable windows. Luraku does. Central does to a less, a limit, more limited extent. And we do not like the fact that too many of the buildings being built right now, not only in Alamoan but other places, are just solid blocks of unopenable and unclosable glass, which we don't like. What we're talking about in terms of what's going to happen and what we're looking at is the building lot in the foreground. And this is at the ever end of Alamoana center. It's next to the parking building of Alamoana and it's also where there currently is a small 1980s strip mall. This is one of the sites that's probably going to be replaced by one of the many towers. We look at that as that does have a, it does, one of your favorite restaurants is in there. It is less expensive. It does cater to people on a budget. It also has parking. But what we're looking at is potentially yet another one of these towers, which can be criticized for a number of features that it does or doesn't have. Yeah, which is basically environmental and social sensitivity or appropriateness because in both areas we need more ambition. And again, what you pointed out like children, restaurants having to correct myself. Last time I was saying they had to adjust their prices to inflation and things, but they're still hanging in there and offering the yummy kitchen stew with all these yummy side dishes for just under $10. This is a copy of my bank statement here that proves that. So once again, where does that go? Where do these, where do places for people at the lower end of the food chain go both as feeding themselves and housing and sheltering themselves? This is one of the major challenges that we have on the island. And talking, raw models to learn from not only is the Alamoana building just there, however, as you said, unfortunately robbed from his performative feathery Cape of adjustable aluminum louvers, they were able to be open and closed, following the sun. And that way being, you know, like a, like a kinetic, a bioclimatic, you know, wonder that Cape was stolen in these nineties by the way, which wasn't the greatest era either, where they just beefed up the AC system in there and then gave it some hideous, just ornamental, as you like to say, you know, other stuff on it, which isn't doing much anymore. But, you know, and I have to say as coming from practice, and that just proves once again how innovative the Alamoana building that was not by any talking star architects, Rem Colhats, right, or Wolf Pricks, John Graham was not one of these. He was America's most commercial people would say boring architect. He was kind of a suit and tie guy, no offense to him. But, you know, to give him more credibility or credits, this guy was able to do such a top notch thing that, you know, only people like Thomas Heatherwick at the Google headquarters were pointing out that some many shows ago is suggesting something similar, but otherwise good luck, even, you know, architects high up there, suggesting something to their clients will probably not work. And so, well, maybe if adjustable louvers, you know, wouldn't fly, but how about fixed static louvers? And we got another great precedent inspiration here. And we really look at, you know, probably the element that is the best of biochlamatic performance that is a tree. But then, you know, architects trying to learn from nature and live up to that, just behind that tree at the very bottom left, we see something glimpsing through. And in the few five minutes remaining time, please just sort of tell us about that. And also with the next slide, that is something that is very close to you. Right. This is the Hawaiian Life Building built for an insurance company in the early 1950s. This was the first multi-story concrete building constructed on Kapiolani Boulevard. So historically, it's very important. It's also by Vladimir Asipov, who is a local star architect, you might say, but in a positive way because of the many achievements he made during his lifetime as an architect. And this building relies on a very simple, very old process of essentially shutters. You can open and close these because these are fixed in place. But what they do is offer shading to the exterior of the building, depending, of course, on the position of the sun during the day and season of the year in which the sun is shining. But this does have, again, these vertical louvers which do provide some protection from the sun. They don't move, like the ones on the Alamoana building used to when they were in existence. But still, this is a very simple, very basic and very easy thing to design into a building, keeping in mind, of course, that you don't just put them on there for decoration, but you pay attention to where the sun is and how the building is oriented toward the sun to maximize how you can save energy and reduce glare at the same time as being decorative in a good way, looking good, and looking like, I think, a building ought to look. Yeah. And who are we to criticize Asipov? But I guess talking to optimize, this building is facing north-south. Due to the south side, the louvers do a lot early in the day and late in the afternoon. You get that east and west sun. In midday, they're not doing too much, and so one could insert, however, some horizontal middle grading. It could look like a non-descript that could make up for that one. But we're not talking about retrofitting in Asipov building here. That is a landmark. The pictures, by the way, the one at the bottom left is the only one we pulled from the web. This is sort of an interim condition that you remember the Soto, but I don't because that the rainbow color code is not original and was when I wasn't on the island yet and when I arrived. And the other picture at the top right is what I took when we had a Doko-Momo walking tour on the Magnificent Mile, which is the nickname of Kapilani Boulevard. And we had a bunch of architects. We were talking a couple of times about the Grand Frank Haines. The architect of the, unfortunately, not there anymore, Kenrock Building, was touring that building. And here we had Sid Snyder, who was a late partner with Roddy Mirasipov, who actually provided these drawings there, which are original drawings that he had with him. And I just snapped the picture of that. And the little picture at the middle on the right is a little hard to tell, but that's a picture of the lighting fixtures that are in this sort of covered walkway. And it has a sort of flipping out lid that's sort of directing the light and also blocking you to be glared by the fluorescent light tube. So just as what Asipov is known for, some very, very fine, beautiful detailing here. And we can only hope that whoever owns that building here is highly aware of that and knows they have a gem. So we will go to the next slide, although we don't have time to talk about it. So we just throw it in here as an appetizer, because this is just further down that same road going Malka. And this is us next week revisiting one of our favorite architects, John Hara, with his daughter, Mayumi. And in that case, here also, Mayumi's grandfather and John's father, Ernest Hara, who is very close to me, because Asipov is very close to you, because you are right now sitting in an Asipov that you grew up in. And I have been sitting and growing up as law, you know, for since I came to the island in an Ernest Hara building. And that is my Waikiki grant. And so that building in the background there, how that relates to the area and to the topics we're talking about, you have to wait until next week. And until then, please stay very inclusively exotic, exotically inclusive. Bye bye.