 We're delighted to have you all back to this show, Think Tech Hawaii's Human-Humane Architecture. And you watched this already the 324th time if you watched all the episodes the first time. And we, as us, back our mid-century modern architectural master taught us a term that I yet have to remember. But it means three at one strike. And that's how he calls us, which is Richard Low, Bandit Kanikakon, and Martin Despain. So we are back to go back into Queen Emma Gardens. And we promised everyone to take you inside. But we start outside and we're standing here in front of the building with its engineer, Alfred Yee, who we introduced to you last time. So gentlemen, let's talk about this picture here in terms of the title that we put here, Address Code, Addressing Code. So what do these two characters, its engineer, and the building have in common as far as what they wear? Let's talk about that. Richard, what do you think about what L wears and what the building wears that he created, the parts that he created? Let's think about that. I think it's entirely unique. I've never thought of it before as clothes for a building. But the clothes of that building, using that term, are because of Ali's cleverness at using chunks of concrete to actually make something that feels good and that raises the building up more rapidly than other buildings go up often. And so Queen Emma has a number of unique qualities that among them is that it was designed by a team of people. And I wrote a very, very long sentence, which I've been advised not to read, although I've been dying to read it. Oh, do it then, please. Please do it. Just ignore what you're advised. All right, I'll do that. I'm saying here that I seldom use the word essence, but this slipped out of my mind and I use it in this first sentence. The essence of Queen Emma's gardens is the combination of artists, that artist brings to central Honolulu and to the housing inventory of Honolulu, both because of its double accomplishment, that is, of a very good architecture and very good site planning, both of which are attributable to the selection of architect and engineers, landscape architects, and interior designers who had the ability required to achieve the excellence, excellence of fine design in their personal judgment. In other words, the mixture of their cleverness as professionals and also their personal judgments about architecture and interiors and so forth. So it really created one of the best housing projects in the United States and the location on the edge of downtown Honolulu and the civic center of the state capital, which was rather recently in terms of the timing of this, one of the best, in my opinion, the best state capital designs in the world. Now, that's going a little far perhaps, but I think the state capital of Honolulu, which it was very interesting in several ways. First of all, the location of the capital was tremendously and widely argued among leaders in the islands, all of the islands, and the more developer world of real estate agents and developers. And then the question is, how do you go from there to what we've got? Or more importantly, what does that have to do with Queen Emma Gardens? It's just that Queen Emma Gardens sits on an eight-acre area that was at one time lousy housing. I don't like the word lousy. I usually look for a more attractive term than that, but anyway, it was an area designated by the redevelopment agency as needing to be torn down and something else to put in its place. And so that is really what happened. It was a marvelous building. And I say that not because I lived on two occasions, once with several friends of mine who were active in the Navy and once with my wife and first child. And it was excellent for each of those groups. And we could go into the slides a little bit that might explode this point better. So now let's do that. I'm so glad you violated your advisors. This was excellent. Good. And I would say, to frame this, in Germany, we call you a Zeitzeuge, which is a really funky word, lots of sects, right, and meets contemporary witness. Just for the audience, well, we see you now well-aged, like good wine, but we want to immerse ourselves back then. This was in the early 60s. You were in your mid-30s. And when we go back to the previous slide one more time, please mind how what they were. It was very, John F. Kennedy was going for Waikiki in his Lincoln Continental, as we were recalling. And he was more dressed, more formally. He had a jacket on, a dark jacket, which is climatically not a good idea because it absorbs the heat. And here, L.E. is in the 60s. So you had to be formal with suit and tie. And not like you banded charmingly, always want to do this project with a Hawaiian shirt with that line mark that depicts where it's usually tucked into the pants, where it shouldn't be. And there's also no Hawaiian pattern on there, which is the thing, right? So, and there is a criticism, Richard, that people, let's not say Hawaiian, but basically local people were kind of almost overwhelmed by statehood and didn't have the chance to develop from one-story buildings that's cut to high-rise concrete buildings. But L.E. is actually a good exception to that rule because he's homegrown boy from there. And he represents as the sort of photo who was gonna pick up from what he just talked about the Civic Center pretty soon over a spring break in two weeks. He always says the best of both worlds. So there's, we see the American in there, as the formal, you know, no suit, but tie. And, but we see the local as the short sleeve and we see no BS and we see no pattern and no Hawaiian shirt, right? And I think that's very much what the building is as well. And yeah, let's go to the next slide and now show the little sort of pieces of garment, of clothing, you know, which make what you so perfectly set rich, which makes you comfortable in the buildings. So which are these sort of devices that create this comfort? And you Bunnid, you always point out because you're the prime scholar. This is from your website at the Shen Gallery and from the archives of the family. You say this is prefab. So which prefab element do we see here and what is that doing, Richard? Well, I think the building is quite informal on the one hand and quite formal on the other. I know that's kind of a mix of ideas, but it's a very modern, what I would call a modern building, especially then. And there housing was very big at some of the schools I went to, Cal Berkeley and MIT and housing was a very big subject at the time. First of all, the lack of it and second of all, the poverty of it. And so here we are with a combination of talents who are really able to put together all the pieces and make it into a very comfortable environment. That's not to mention the site planning, which also under the direction of some of my professors became a very important element of any design of anything. And the site planning at Queen Emma Gardens is particularly effective. And they were able to locate three large buildings, one parallel to the Polly Highway and quite big in its own right and two others on the other side of the, on the Nuanu side of the complex. And I think it just, it turned out wonderfully well. The site plan, of course, has a lot of features that are traditional and also new. And it really comes across as a park next to a park and next to other parks. So it's, the location of it was miraculous. It was a large, they needed an eight acre site for producing the number of units they wanted to. And so that happened. And they have beautiful pools, traditionally Japanese looking pools and gardens around them, as well as kind of cabin-like buildings that house things like weddings. Perhaps the word funerals should be added, although I'm not sure of that. But a very attractive environment of buildings in the first place, and then linked together beautifully with walkways and landscape galore. And there it was in the right next to the downtown, very, very close to the Capitol and all the state, federal and city buildings of Honolulu. And I think that the mixture of all those things was really kind of miraculous. I'll try not to use that word anymore because I've just used it twice. And the building emerged from really the hands of very, very good designer of large buildings. Yeah, I can add something to it, Martin, if you don't mind. Do, yeah. Just to add on to Richard, this is the building that, if you refer back to the dress code, it's the one that allow a lot of, you know, sun, protect the sun from coming into the building. And this is what you see in the slide is the photo of the eyelid that help protect the sun to hitting inside the building just to keep it very comfortable inside. And it's all precast in couple A and they track it in. So just like Al-Yi shirt that, you know, it made somewhere, but he just happened to add, you know, with short sleeve. I do wish though that he doesn't wear tie, you know, and let loose, that's my two cents. But these were, again, the sixties, so in all fairness, right? One had to be very formal, but he's as hang loose, you know, as he can under the given circumstances. And let's go to the next slide and show the other piece of the garment of the building that is so cool, literally and figuratively speaking. So what are we looking at here, Richard? Do you remember what these elements were and still are? Yeah, we're looking at a part of the window design wall of the building. And to be frank with you, I can't remember exactly what that particular piece was doing on the building. Luckily, we have someone again who knows very well as the prime scholars. So Bunda, help us. That's the eyelid that, you know, kept the roof top, you know, of the building. It's also precast. And like I said, it's just cast in couple A and truck it in piece by piece. And it's also allow people to go up on the roof to do the maintenance and to do a proper waterproofing up there. And if you have anything to add, let me know. Yeah, I think these are also or they are alike. These closets that are stacked on each floor. And if we go back to the first slide, Michael, one more time, we see how like in garment where it's all sort of woven into each other. So we see the eyelid browse in front of the living rooms. And then we see in front of the bedrooms between the eyelids here. We see something that is very unique and we don't see any more. Unfortunately, that is opacity, meaning the absence of transparency. Because as you said, so perfectly, you know, Richard, especially you and I, you know, white skin howlies having half the same the certain dermatologist for that reason to always check on us. You want to keep the sun out and away from the first skin, our skin and the second skin that's holding and the third skin, which is the fenestration of buildings. So it does that by providing, you know, opacity through these prefab closets and it is double duty. So you already have your builds in, which is a very, again, Asian tradition that you bonded a very familiar and Alfred's ancestry is and bring us in. And at the same time, it's keeping you cool. So another very clever device, climatic control device as a passive system. And then the most spectacular one is the next one. We go to the next slide, well, slide four, we have to go back to start. Now we go to slide four, Michael, exactly. So what in the world is that Richard, what are we looking at? Are we inside? Are we outside? Where are we? We're inside and that particular space that we're looking at, I say space, even though one wall of it is missing because it added a highly mobile space that the people who bought in that part of the building, which was the Malka end of each of the towers, of two of the towers, the big towers. And so they were able to kind of live as though it's a lanai on the one hand and a room on the other. And I haven't... Exactly, I'm... Pardon me? No, go ahead. I haven't been in every apartment in the building, I've been in lots of them. And so I've seen how variety you can put to a space that's as simple as that one as a marvelous view looking down toward the Civic Center and in part the downtown and leaves it completely up to the owner. Yeah, and again, while L had the advantage to be a homegrown local boy, he knew that there is really no winter, but Yamasaki, as you pointed out, it's collaborating architect was from New York. You grew up in California, which is more moderate, but you also went to the Midwest, which we get to later and you were in Chicago. So you know what temperate climate to its most extreme means. So doing something like this is truly tropical exotic way done as you said by this collaborative collaboration of these mid-century modern masters. And if you're wondering how this all comes together, then today, next slide, is what we were stealing from a Realtors website. You can actually see in behind, you see that, which is the ultimate of Lanai as you, Rich, you called it last time, so perfectly. It's way more than a balcony and it is bigger. It's actually a main room, right? Yes. It is. And so, but you also see in this contemporary that we don't quite live it up to how they offered it to us because this is pretty much stuff and there's this big solver with its back sort of towards, which is that back butt. It's facing towards that thing and there might be some furniture there. So again, I think we need to sort of, you know, raise sort of re-appreciation for what's provided there. And that gets us to the next slide, which when we were yesterday at the Outrigger Canoe Club as per your generous invite, Rich, as always we were preparing here and you rightly so asked to put this in here because this shows where it all comes together. All the elements that we've been talking about, even sketched in that little eyelid that they, the Realtors website again, forgot to see the shading closets, you see the lanai, but you also see the other parts. And so, gentlemen, and especially you, Rich, as the prime type solver, the contemporary witness, that's what it means in English, and having seen many units and lived in two, explain, share with us your experience, what was so comfortable and cool literally and figuratively speaking and what kind of clues can we take from this for the future of creating more of that? Because by the way, we are in a severe, if not the most severe sheltering and housing crisis. So what can we learn from this for the future, Rich? I think you can learn that the floor plan is very, very interesting to me and I think to others in that you enter a front door, which is typical and it passes by a kitchen, which is more or less typical, but it still, it maintains the sort of wood look of the building and then it gives over to a master bedroom, which is the big room on the left and a smaller bedroom, which is the next bedroom, and then the lanai, which is on the right of the living room. And one thing that's interesting to me is the lack, I say lack, not critically, but because it didn't try to get all sort of fancy and large bathrooms with enormous showers and all that kind of thing, it kept it very simple. And these units are very, very simple. And they were originally built to be rented by the company that built several buildings. And I think they use great taste in keeping them simple. And yeah, so right, and on that note, if we can go back to slide four, because there were little numbers in there and little, would you think you could basically snap a masterpiece by one of the most, if you go to Wikipedia, by the way, Yamasaki is mentioned next to Ed Stone as the most prominent representatives of sort of a new formalism they call it, go figure, they were very prominent architects. So would you think you could find something, a masterpiece of them on Craigslist? Yes, you can, where you will usually buy used bicycles and whatever for a cheap, right? This unit is for sale, I mean, that unit that has this room here is for sale, as you can see down there on Craigslist, and you see the price up there. So rich, while yeah, it was sort of intended to be inclusive and rental. And now it fall back to the open market, which you're also very familiar with, because one of your many talents and occupations has also been in real estate, just to mention on the side. So the price of this unit here is still pretty reasonable, right? So, you know, its intention of being affordable has been kept and has been maintained and retained even through the claws of creditor capitalism, right? So they were successful. And one last thing, and then we're at the end of the show, but you really get me going and thinking a lot, which is the point of these shows, Rich, but, you know, Yamasaki had actually started out as even more social housing-wise with this one that I have to remember how to pronounce the name, You Help Me Out in St. Louis, that ended up a very tragic example for having failed, and it got torn down soon later in the early 70s. So this is actually really remarkable. This is one of the early works of Yamasaki and actually the first one in housing that actually was successful and continues to be successful. That's pretty remarkable sort of in the oeuvre of that. So that being said, we need to continue next week. So we're gonna be in our episode 325 and you're gonna be the viewer in number that you see down there. So please keep watching us, keep supporting us. Push that donating button because that's how we keep this there running. It's pro bono and non-profit. And so going into more details next time, guys, is actually the kitchen. As you say, the kitchen is rather sort of, you didn't say conventional or sort of normal, but then let's pick up from there and say and start out and saying within that, how is it also unusual and special and different? And that's gonna be the kickoff of another exciting half hour with all of you guys together next week. And until then, please stay all as tropical, exotic, as El, Minoru and you Richard. See you next week. And that is a real compliment. Of course, all of these units in the building were rented originally. Hey. Yeah, they were. I'm being notified. All right. Hmm.