 Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's new show Human-Humane Architecture, which is dealing with that here in Hawaii the natural environment should be entuned and synchronized with the built environment and vice versa. So I'm going to facilitate this topic for the next couple of weeks or month and my name is Martin Despeng. I'm an architect and also an educator. And so today is the kickoff of the show. So my dream guest for kicking this off is a colleague of mine, Mr. Les Wallek, who is an internationally practicing and renowned architect who's awarded with many awards and published. What impressed me always the most was you made the cover of the wallpaper magazine, which also saw in your office. And you're based in Tucson, Arizona, where we had the chance to get to know each other and spend two years together. And you've worked all over the world. You're working all over the world. I always brought you in to talk about your work in China, which I find very impressive how you keep the ethical standards, the integrity of the design, that being rather challenging. But today with all these things, we want to talk about something that has to do with Hawaii, because that's what the show is about. So you came from France, actually. More recently, you spent a couple of months, actually really a couple of two months in France. But so you're mostly in Tucson and all over the world. You're, I should say, frequently in Maui and you're occasionally here in Honolulu. So we're very, very privileged to have you here, Les. Thank you very much for being here with us. It's my pleasure, Martin. And I really had a hard time because of all the projects you have done, and we will show the website at the end. Your firm's name is Line and Space. I hope the audience is going to check that out and see that amazing sort of range of work from residential over civic and commercial and throughout the whole range. Amazing work. So today, we're probably going to show one of the smallest projects, but especially, and no doubt for us in Hawaii, the most relevant project. And Zuri is going to walk us through and she already brings what you said is the most important drawing or diagram of that project she already has up on the screen. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your project, Les? Okay, it's a pleasure. In a way, there's actually another slide I would rather have started with, which is our tent deck underneath the Indian Rain Tree. And because we camped on the site many times to understand the environment and how the breezes worked and rain worked and so forth. It all started like 25 years ago. We went camping in Waianapa Napa State Park and that led us to a love affair with Hana. And so we had been coming here for 25 years. Eventually, we found a piece of beautiful piece of land on the coast, which was unusual to be able to afford, and we were able to work it out. And so we started building there. First, we built a tent deck. My wife and I built a tent deck, like I said, to be up out of the rain and get breezes below the deck. And then sighted the house. As you can see from this picture, it's nondescript from, this is the view from the highway. And the idea was that it's to be a private place and we don't need people on the highway to know one thing or another about the house. And also, in fact, this is the north elevation. So the breezes come in, the east and west are on right and left, and the breeze, it's set up so you can make out that there's a louver, there's a glass corner, and then there's a louver there. And that louver controls the trade wind coming through the house. And there's one on each side of the house, one side of the house. The diagram is very simple. There's two bedrooms. There's a bedroom and an office, and the office doubles as a guest room and living in the middle of that. So over the years, I've done a lot of work and I go to China from here from HANA. It's great. It's very inspirational just to look at that view and design a new project in China. And you also call it the official name of the project is actually the HANA Environmental Design Studio, right? So it's a live work combination, right? Yes, it's a live work. This picture is interesting because it's the deck that comes around the house. That's where our dining is outside there. The chairs you see there are from a store called Ikea. My wife assembled them and sent them. And so this was a total family project. Her son, my wife and I as friends from Tucson and some local people built this house over three or four years of construction. That piece of glass, I purchased all the glass in China and from a glass company I got to know and they did the engineering of the glass for me. And one piece of glass came miscut. They're cut at the angle of the roof from the parallel sides. And it was off by a few inches. And so being an architect, Martin would have done the same thing. It's like piece of glass, table, just designed itself. And when people impale themselves in the sharp corner, I just say, hey. Awesome. So let's be sort of critical or devil's advocate, I guess. So here in Hawaii for the demand we have, we don't have enough building material left to build with. So usually there's this sort of almost nostalgic desire to say build from scratch. You come from Tucson. So Adobe and Rand Earth, our colleague Rick Joy has sort of popularized the Rand Earth sort of methodology. You've done work with that material as well. But as we talked before we walked over here and we're out in the sun, we said thermal math is really something to avoid in the tropics. So talk a little bit about your sort of tectonic, your material strategies because we have an apparent problem on the islands, which is sort of the the lack of availability of material. And at the same time, we have very high labor costs. So both together, hardly allow people at all to get anything built. And if they got something built, they're basically become victims of certain standards. They're pretty much the American, the generic American standard of stick frames. Hawaii, research project with me that you had a piece of thermally modified timber buried in your ground for a while and gave it to me back after two years, I think. So Hawaii had sort of embraced or welcome certain things that it didn't want to and one of them is termites, right? For example, especially the foremost termites. So if you build a house here out of stick frame, which is actually the predominant way one is still building here, you got to have every 10 years or so, you got to wrap your whole house with a tarp and you poison it. So there are all these things and now you're very environmentally conscious person, you're also a very health conscious person. So talk a little bit about these aspects, how they inform your choice. Well, it's a frame house like Martin was saying thermal mass is is caused a lot of problem in being able to have thermal comfort, because it holds heat in and doesn't it the doesn't cool down very fast. It's causing a heat lag so into well into midnight, you're still getting heat from the walls. So we we did very light walls, though a house is frame and it's built up above the ground to get freezes below and above to keep it cool. One of the things about the stick frame, which we used a lot of lumber is that it's all treated with boracare, which is a borax based termite treatment, which works well with termites. And it's not it's not a problem with being poisonous to humans. The one problem is the water soluble. So during construction, you can leech out all the boracare. So what we did was as the lumber came onto the job, we painted it. And that sealed the boracare in. So everything was painted and sealed. That's great. You know, because borate is pretty much a silicate and that sort of salt. For me, this is interesting to maybe reinvent some of the indigenous practices and basically some of the houses that were built back in the days were done with wood from another island. So they were floating the wood through the through the ocean through the Pacific Ocean. And then basically we call that seawater curing, which is basically what the salt bit to the wood. And that's one interesting research strain with a thermally modified wood that you basically closed the cell so it cannot leech out anymore. So it's sort of for the sort of further research. But in the other part is I think maybe this sort of sec, this sort of sweat equity part, right, that you basically cut out the problem of cost of labor by building it yourself with with your friends, right? Yeah, we, we built a lot of the house we prefabricated parts in Tucson actually when we when we were able to we shipped a small container out with the kitchen cabinets and all that kind of thing. So we built them in our garage at home and just filled it with drawers and headboards and beds and everything else we could think of making. And so that worked out quite well. It was a family affair in the sense that Susan became very, very excellent at tying rebar and our son was a, you know, forced labor. You also had our very dear friend, Avril Malo involved. Yeah, the director of architecture in Tucson is a very precise guy. So he seemed perfect to adjust all the drawers on our cabinet so that they would came out perfectly. Yeah. This sort of traces directly back to the beginning of your firm where you actually started off as a design built firm, right? Yes. Which is also the project that got you famous in China and got you in business in China, right? Because one of your clients basically saw one of these houses that you basically designed and build with your team. Yes. A Chinese architecture magazine profiled our firm and included in that, like Martin said, was this one project that this particular Chinese group really enjoyed. And so we've had a nice 10 year, even though I swore that I would never work for developer and I stuck to it for about 25 years in Tucson, this group came out to see us in Tucson. They were so compelling that we decided to do it. And 10 years later, we just got it. Now we're just doing a zero discharge boutique hotel on a very fragile site. They choose us for that kind of project. And maybe for the audience that is not so much into our terminology is that basically means net zero, right? Yeah, net zero. So in other words, there's no sewage discharged. Everything is composted. There's no rainwater discharged off the site. It's collected and recycled. There's no trash whatsoever that comes off of it. For nice for a little hotel. That's a very, very nice way to go into a fragile site. Yeah. And we're going to take a short break here. And then we're going to pick up from there because when you talk about resort and tourism, this is what we're running by here on the island of Oahu or the islands of Hawaii. So let's talk about that after the short break. Aloha, everyone. I'm Maria Mera and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show Viva Hawaii every other Monday at 3pm. We are here to show you news, issues and events local and around the world. Join me. Hi, I'm Keely Akina, President of the Grassroot Institute. I'd love you to join us every week Mondays at 2 o'clock PM for a Hanukako. Let's work together. We report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future. We have guests covering everything from the economy, the government and society. See you Mondays on a Hanukako at 2 o'clock PM. Until then, I'm Keely Akina. Aloha. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. So welcome back to today's show, Human Humane Architecture with our guest Les Wallek, who talks about his HANA Environmental Design Studio, which I by the way, sort of allowed myself to title a little differently. And it's called LESSES, Line and Space, Lanai. And as good friends are allowed to agree to disagree, you share it with me that you would have phrased one of the words differently, right? You want to share that? What was that word? It's an interesting point because it's the last word of Lanai. You say you actually prefer to call it a deck. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the terminology I happen to be used to. I think that's very charming, because you obviously, howly as I am. So you're obviously not trying to make this sort of look sort of nostalgically local or sound nostalgically local. You basically approach it as all your projects very rational. And you think about the very specifics of the location and climate being an important part of culture. And basically said that approach, will that sort of automatically be respectful of local sort of desires and also sort of feelings? Well, you know, obviously, in different places we work and particularly in China, it comes up a lot. How are we culturally in tune? And so essentially, the idea is that there's two main components to finding out what you need to do. One is the program, which are the essential needs of the project. What does the client or in this case, what my wife and I and son need to function? And the other is the site and how the site dictates how the building will sit on the site. The sun is tells you how to orient the house, the view sometime in conflict with the sun also tells you, I mean, how to orient because that is crucial to the enjoyment of the house so they can blur the distinction between inside and outside. In our case, it's not a tiny house, but it's not a giant house, including the office, it's about 1500 square feet. But the deck, or as Martin likes to call it, the lanai is about 1100 square feet, almost a one to one ratio. So it's not and the roof is much bigger. The roof hangs out well past the lanai. And it's kind of common to our projects. Often the roof is twice or three times bigger than the floor area of the building. Now here in this in this particular diagram, one thing that one sees those red arrows, the blue is air coming in. And where the yellow is by the cartoon person is a continuous slot vent. And there's a like a four to six inch space above the ceiling that exhaust by by convection, one of the ways of heat transfer one of the three ways of heat transfer convection follows the slope of the roof and goes out through another exhaust, a continuous stainless steel wire exhausted to 70 feet long and about a foot and a half wide. So it exhausts the air out very, very well. And so that's a cool roof. You could call it a cool roof. Yeah, it's a conductive roof. Yeah, and it's very cool, literally and figuratively. It works. It works well. Yeah, yeah. So it does get a little chilly sometimes even in the summer. And there when they when the trades are blowing, you can feel like I think I need to put another shirt on or something like that. And at night, we definitely sleep under blankets. Yeah. So and our next door neighbors has told us how how hot it is. And we're saying, Well, you know, their house was built a long time ago, and didn't take these kind of things into account. Yeah. So maybe you're sort of provocative without trying to be provocative because you're not that kind of personality. But the product is provocative in terms of the building doesn't show any Chevron symbols, no Polynesian ornaments, right? But yet, it is a very Hawaii building, trying to avoid to say Hawaii in because that's a different thing. But it's a very Hawaii building. You know, we like to think that we do architecture of its place. And the other the other main element is of its time, time and place. Those are key words in the sense of describing a philosophy of architecture. So if you're not trying to do kitsch, which a lot of architecture is, when it starts to try to look like little grass huts, and it's 10 story building, then you think time and place. And that gets us directly to when you say in a tall building that maybe the audience could say, you know, this is this is still sort of not addressing the problems we're facing on the islands, which is affordable housing, which is homelessness, which is transportation, all these things are maybe not directly addressed. But I think what you try to get across and what the building does is that the principles you're basically applying the applicable to other typologies. Definitely, this is the ideal place for natural climate control. Natural breezes were thankful to have trade winds here that are pretty consistent, not always perfect. But for the most part, yes. Yeah. And when you mostly reside in Arizona, which I had that experience to where the climate is significantly different. You got the time lag of cold nights and hot days. And that leads to thermal mass is actually an ideal building material here and sort of a vernacular way of building. How do you feel about Hawaii? I mean, when we drove here, and I was addressing all the challenges, not to say problems, you said, Martin, I try to not look at that anymore, because it just makes me that's you didn't say that. But that's how I felt kind of meant it. So positively speaking, what be would be your advice for the islands? As far as sort of maybe even building codes, we will have a good friend and host co host Howard Wigg on one of the shows coming up. And he's the advocate of actually sort of adjusting refining the international building code that Hawaii has unfortunately adopted a while ago. That is basically then sort of even sort of code wise officializing making hermetic building. So he's trying very hard to bring it back, you know, crafting an appendix that allows all the natural systems there are so specific. So you have some recommendations along? Well, one thing that's quite different from the desert here, you have the vast ocean that's mitigating effect. And so the diurnal temperature changes are not as extreme as Martin said there, where in the desert, of course, it can get 40 or 50 degrees difference between the daytime temperature and the nighttime temperature. But still a couple of those principles when Martin kind of turned my head and forced me to look at a certain building. I was thinking, you know, it was a big it's a big mistake using cast in place concrete frames that really dominate the thermal mass of a building. But one thing that that can be done is to reverse insulate the building. So in other words, the installation put on the outside of the building in and that thermal mass then is used to affect kind of a flywheel effect. And you open the building at night, it takes a certain amount of management. And they those big thermal walls become heat sinks. Of course, everyone knows heat is what moves heat flows to a place with less heat. So if the walls cool, and you're hot, your heat goes to that wall, and you feel cooler. That's that's radiant cooling. Yeah. So for the last seven minutes left that we have, I want to maybe talk a little bit more about the, if we say architecture is arts and sciences, and they inform each other. I think we have talked a great deal about the science, which I think is incredibly important here to educate the larger public about it. But also I sometimes my students watch these what she shows here. And for me, it's tremendously important to say, you know, science alone doesn't do it doesn't cut it right. A building that's just, you know, performing well. Well, if you look at you look over Martin's shoulder there, my shoulder in this case, there's the columns are split in two. They didn't have to be split in two. But I felt that that would be that I would enjoy splitting the columns in two. It allowed me to use a slightly less mass in the columns. But it also gave me the opportunity that the cross pieces that come across them become lights. And so at night, you get a beautiful light and shadow coming down the column. And so that's part of the art of the column. That's interesting, because if you look and you hadn't explained it that way, because that's not your mindset. But if you look at indigenous architecture, they have built in a bony way, you know, with members, and they often, you know, multiply them. So this is in fact something that that again, you don't sort of mimic, you don't fetishize as kitsch. So it's not about sort of the image or that or the illusion of it, it's basically sort of, I will say it's evolutionary. You just look at, you know, you're certainly aware of these of these sort of of this heritage, but you reinterpret that from your from your global perspective that you have, right? We will have Bill Chapman coming up in one of the shows in the show will be called How the Architect. So I would I would most respectfully call you that, that that you come from another place, come to this place, you're blown away by it as most people you have utmost respect. And that leads you to act very respectfully, right? With the economy of means, with the material, with the space you create, just to be more more explicit for the audience, it is a building that is not using air conditioning, it uses the trade winds basically to condition it. You can see how it completely opens up to the outside. So when we're talking about blurring the distinction between inside and outside space, which of course is not an original idea, but kind of a philosophy among quite a group of architects, it allows you just to move seamlessly between the inside and the outside, both visually and in your living. So when we eat, we think we don't say we're going to eat outside, we just go to the table, which is outside. And it protects you from the elements as the rain and the sun. And that's what architecture's main purpose of shelter has always been doing. It's interesting at the very beginning, go back sort of full circle at the show here that you started with a sort of very blank, almost try to what to say hostile, but that's how some people would actually say this is not even there's no house. Is it shed? They don't they just see a shed. Yeah, well, that's what it is. And they see corrugated metal, which is not the material that's conceived to be traditionally beautiful. You know, this is it's it's very sort of rugged. It's very almost industrial, you can say, right? But it's very utilitarian at the same time. So I, you know, the the the Hawaiians with a fat stroves that was also very logic, very utilitarian, only then cultures later on perceived it in a romantic nostalgic way, right? So I would say your house is very much in the tradition of these original ways of building and space making. One kind of important idea that a lot of people could adopt is that as you're looking at that towards the tree there, the roof extends substantially farther than the the deck and the lanai. And that's one of the reasons those columns are angling like that is to pick up the additional load of a roof that's bigger than the deck that's below. It all makes sense when you think about it that way. But it's like a big umbrella there. Thank you very much. As we're reaching the end of the show, and I would allow myself to call this house a case study house because there's this sort of legend very case study series in California at the West Coast by Joe Intenza. And I very much see your building sort of in this tradition of making something out of out of nothing almost. And so thank you very much. I think this is an important lesson and should be a great encouragement for some people or maybe thinking, doing something likewise that's going back to the working title of the show, Walking the Talk. It is possible and thanks for the encouragement and hope to have you back on another show because so much more to talk about. But thank you very much for this awesome beginning. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, Les. So see you all back hopefully next week on Tuesdays five o'clock. It's humane human architecture in Hawaii with Martin Despeying.