 A little city of my native country, Germany, in Berlin. And I'm having with me sort of all of the three of the pioneer and reward architecture, the silver brown back in on the little white eye of the photo. How do you do, everybody? Great. And we have our friend, Ron Lindgren, friend and partner and all of that and more of the legendary, S.K. Williamsworth with us from Long Beach, California, in Iran. Aloha. And we have slides one up and we're going to dive right in where we left it last time. And this is showing you at the Kahala Hilton at an event which brought you back to the island a few months ago where you guys both were keynote speakers and at an event that you've got to remind us of what that one was. Well, Doko Momo is an organization, an international organization which hopes to preserve and celebrate mid-century architecture. And last year, the International Doko Momo Conference occurred here in Honolulu. And as you said, Ron got to speak at that. I got to speak at that. There were tours of various locations. And in all, it was kind of an orgy of excitement, you might say, for people who like this particular type of architecture. Absolutely. And we can go to the second slide here. And this is just reminding us of the expected and the provocative location of that specific hotel. And in this mapping here, the hotel management, I guess, was trying to make us buy into how conveniently located it was or still is. And we're thinking about when you see a few minutes that is supposedly away or closed to other locations, it makes you wonder what the most transportation might be. It somehow made us think it might be a helicopter. And we were getting to that. And actually, there were some guests that probably most likely came by the helicopter that Yudhisthoda told us about. But while the last two shows were actually about you, Ron, reporting sort of on behalf of a feeling for it was the principle of the firm. And at that time, you haven't even joined the firm when the hotel was built. And Yudhisthoda were at the beautiful early teenager age and I even haven't seen the light of the earth yet. So today we actually want to talk about when you guys were more consciously eye-witnessing the hotel years later. And I guess that's to the next slide, which is a compilation of previous shows we have done. And it basically shows different zones of transportation among some of them are PI and mobile that Yudhisthoda will kind of keep right now. That is on the age of the first introduced in the early 70s and they made a silly late 80s. And that was spending quite a time of when you guys were doing one of the most beautiful hotels on our island. And you all have done the Halifalani in the 80s and then moved on to coming back and basically touch up the Kala Hilton. And I was, when you see up the top right, you see a lot of Franklin Grail, Brenton Evil. Some of the pictures we have labeled accordingly we're using this show have been done by him. That's more the transportation, this beautiful Italian bicycle in the past that reminded you wrong about these days when you were back on the island, right? And please tell us about it. Yeah, I will be talking about when the Kala suddenly became something else other than the Kala when another management company took over. When that happened, I came out for a year to be the architect representative on site. And I must have been in better shape than I am now because I would actually get up early in the morning, jump on my bike from the White Key Park Hotel, which is right next to the Halifalani, and I had designed the preliminary design for the park as well as Halifalani. And then I would bike up to the lighthouse and the sun would suddenly pop up over the horizon. And then I'd coast all the way down to Kala. And it was a wonderful year. But you see in the very upper picture there's a black and white of someone by themselves. Ed's partner, Wa Smith, was the architect's representative for when the Kala was originally built. And it turned out to be so complicated and too much for him that he asked to be replaced. Then he quit architecture as a profession completely for the rest of his life. Oh, wow. Don't worry about it. You're about the age that I am in right now, so not only were you in great shape way back, you're still in greater shape than this photo and I, because you still have that stuff on your head. That's right. Don't worry about it. That's exactly right. Some people are blessed and others are cursed. There you go. Let's go to the next slide. And so here's our PI mobile office and so they're taking care of it. We're approaching that Kala actually from his backside and then we're all basically convened in the lobby and we were talking stories. You actually had four tours that day, Ron, but this was another special tour he did for us. Some of us weren't able to participate in any of the previous tours. And let's go to the next slide. Where you see yourself at the top left in the lobby and I want to refer to a very special video that you took out there that Harvey Keller did with Ed when he was getting up in age and did a wonderful interview with him. And one of the first projects that Ed was probably sharing was the Kahala Hilton. That's not only in its original condition, but at that time very close to your project, Ron, and touching it up. Not only sharing the budget that we want to hear you remembering that, but also about details. For example, that's the beautiful chandelier that you had told us about when you designed it in the last show. The Kahala Management wanted to get rid of that and you were successfully fighting for keeping that. So tell us a little bit about the budget and the cooperation that took over the ownership and the management, Ron. Yes, in 1994 Ed Killingsworth and all of his employees were shocked to hear that the Kahala had dropped the Hilton Hotel in Honolulu from their roster of hotels and it was going to be taken over and managed by the Mandarin Oriental Group. And when they had heard that, he felt quite a bit better about that because as it turns out, Mandarin Oriental Hotels have existed since 1876 when they opened their first hotel in Hong Kong, which is still their headquarters. And they, at the moment, operate 41 hotels, 10,000 rooms in about 27 different countries, including in Munich as I told you, Martin, where they're located in the old town part of Munich and what used to be the old Hotel Raphael Munich. And the single man who was associated with that owned the beautiful house on Kahala Avenue on the way to the hotel that you shared with me, right? Yes, indeed. The Mandarin people, as soon as we met them, we all felt more comfortable because they were really thrilled to add the Kahala to their roster of hotels and so they closed it for an entire year from 1994 to 1995. And we had a year to spend a $55 million budget to do an awful lot of work on the hotel because when Mandarin took it over, it was 30 years old. Almost all of that $55 million went into things that you cannot see but had to be done. And by that, I mean electrical, mechanical plumbing systems. Some of them had to be torn out completely, repairs everywhere. There had to be upgrades to the structure even for tsunami resistance. And all of the hotel interiors had to be refreshed. We had to take care of things like Americans with disability requirements which weren't in the hotel. And strangely enough, we also had to do something for our dolphins in the lagoon. There was suddenly a requirement to build a new little section off the lagoon, a little deeper, 18 feet, which suddenly had become required as a place to take the dolphins when they're ill so they can be treated. So we had to do a lot of things which really can't be seen. And there was limited new construction. At grade, there was an exercise facility. There was a new pool snack bar. There was a child care facility. But the biggest construction was a new restaurant called Hokus. And we'll talk about that more when we've got a picture of the interior very soon. Yeah, let's do this now. And if you want to the next slide and share that with us. Yeah, what I'd like to say here is not only did I have the very great honor of talking on a Friday as one of the 12 speakers, featured speakers, but on Saturday, I had maybe the most fun I've had as an older person. I actually gave four tours. I had two busloads of Doko Momo people, 25 people each, one from a Jean Charleau house and from a Vladimir Asipov house to come to the Kahalit for me to give them a guided tour. So there were two of those. Then I had met all sorts of new acquaintances and Martin, who I certainly call you a friend now, we arranged to meet together as a fourth tour after all that was over. But while I was waiting, I was sitting in the lobby, which is shown in the picture, Doko Momo pins on, and I asked them, did you want to get tickets for the tour? And they said yes. Well, I'm going to give you the tour. So I gave this young couple the tour as the third tour and the fourth tour were all of the people that you see in this photograph. And you can also, I was also going to say too that if you look in the left distance beyond the lobby, you see the Hokus restaurant and in the picture just above that, you can see a picture of the Halikulani hotel, which was designed by Ron as well. So Ron was able to mimic something that he had done at the Halikulani to build this new structure at the re-bamped and remodeled Kahala formerly Hilton. Yeah, but you just saw to share with us what used to be on that situation that Ron then sort of rearranged that you remember from your childhood. Well, this was very interesting. When I met you, Ron, you pointed out that the site of what's now the Hokus restaurant, which is the upscale restaurant in the hotel had originally been, as you said, the most expensive and underused shuffleboard court in the world. And I can remember even at the age of 10 visiting the hotel when it was open for the first time and looking at this shuffleboard court which was originally there off to the Makai side of the lobby thinking this is really unappealing. It's kind of like wasted space. I had no architectural knowledge at the time but it struck me even as a kid that this was a weird underutilization of the space. And I think we can go to the next slide and see what got done with that space because now when you look through you see the Hokus restaurant in the place that it ought to be, utilizing what was this underappreciated concrete expanse on which I actually did play shuffleboard as a kid, which is now this elegant restaurant. Next slide. Next slide. Let's go to the next slide. There we are inside. What I'd like to say is that in reality, even though indeed, that roof over a restaurant at grade was nothing other than a shuffleboard court, Ed Killingsworth had always intended that a restaurant be built there someday. And his plan had a single-pitched Hawaiian tile roof but coming from my experience learning about CW Dickey and putting double-pitched roofs on the Kaplua Bay hotel and the Hale Klane Hotel I did the same thing on this restaurant Hokus. This picture is showing that we used the volume in the roof so that the space really is quite elegant. It actually helps somewhat with toning down the noise that sometimes can be a problem in a restaurant as well. And so that was Hokus. It is a hermetically sealed restaurant only because Mandarin wanted the kitchen that's attached to it to be completely open to the guests. And when you do that you can't have operable windows or at least you can't have open windows because obviously birds and vermin and flies and whatever would fly in. But they still have a chance to open them on occasion when they wash the windows and maybe in the reopening which is supposed to happen on June 1st they could crack them a bit to have some fresh air to ventilate in this age of COVID-19 where guests hopefully will all be seated far enough apart that the social distancing is there and with a little ventilation that will also help the situation to make the guests returning to the hotel safer. That being said Ron I have to say referring to the top right little quotation of the show we did where we shared with the audience and your former colleague has shown you the remodeling of your I think he parted out of the hall of Puna and the New York architect basically has done it nicely but as you pointed to you said Ron very tragically so again you were ahead of the game and almost foreseen the changes that would come and that's been a situation is actually of your restaurant and the Kahala hotel is more timely than the just finished renovation of the lobby of the Hall of Puna. I can't continue. Let's go to the next slide here which is us basically going away from the restaurant towards the main lobby and the circulation in the distance which gets you up into the hotel and here you are Ron with your esteemed and interested audience you know enjoying your new grade tour and I was going to say there's the stairway on the left which goes down to the lower level which we've talked about in our previous shows and then on the right as Ron pointed out to us earlier the crowd on the right is where they're checking in at the check-in desk because this is the main lobby and we'll just walk through here to go straight where the elevators are in our next picture and one comment about that is that Ed was so smart to have the entry lobby be just that an entry welcoming lounge space and sometimes the check-in and check-out procedure can get a little noisy especially if there's a conflict over the bill so it was held as shown in this picture to the right of that photo but far enough away from the lobby so that any of that sort of noise wouldn't be leaking into that quiet serene and classic space right and Ron you were also pointing out quite sort of astonishingly he used a very soft material being wood in a highly frequented you know area of the lobby and how much warmth and homing that to the atmosphere of the lobby Ryan what this photo shows for the first time we've shown the lobby for example in black and white photos before from as far ago as when it first opened in 64 but this is the existing 1964 parquet floor which all we had to do was just kind of smooth it out a bit rewax it and it made this wonderful warm there was no need for carpets because the floor itself was a wonderful carpet from wall to wall wonderful yeah so let's go up into the building go the next slide which on the right side of the image shows us the elevator and then there's this little display which has a hula ball from supposedly 1930s and it struck me that this is the only thing that's almost the predominant way in all the hotels these days when they want to brand themselves with the pre-contact the hotel is truly presenting itself as a modern resort that doesn't need to rely on excuse me to say kitsch from the past which we have a lot of respect for don't get this wrong but again here the hotel doesn't need to dwell on that and the second part on the left is he shows that really clever trick that having when you get off the elevator you step into something rather surprising which is daylight but has access to the to the exterior of the facade and it pours light into where you see John Williams here standing and how beautiful that makes the double loaded corridor not this dark trough but a very pleasant and the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak is almost like a natural way of finding the light quite beautiful and go to the next slide is more stunningly is basically the view like you get when you get out of the elevator all of a sudden you have this panoramic view over the montrages and the golf course which is really stunning I must say it's also the north facade yes I must say that Ed was so clever in laying out the hotel because originally there were two guest room wings and he pushed them a far apart from each other at the centralized lobby so that no matter where you were in a corridor, no matter which way you looked, you saw a daylight at the end of the corridor which helps with that problem of feeling sort of trapped in the awful corridor situation that some hotels have and here I was showing some of the local Momo members even though the people who have rooms on facing to the north didn't have a direct ocean view it was still a pretty spectacular view over the wildlife golf course to the Koh Olao Mountains oh yeah, absolutely yeah and this is Ed well the Naga by the way was a proud resident also of the Kahau apartment next door a recent resident who inspired by having met you and has decided to move in there as long as she can until the lease comes out and you don't know what's going to happen and you got to get back to Ed by the way because she wants to stay in touch and do some more oral and other history would be wrong so I need to remind you of that I'm looking forward to that great so let's get into a representative room that's sort of the next slide here and let's talk about that a little bit and also the lady on your left introduce her to us we're looking at one of the rooms that for example did not have a lanai basically every other of the typical rooms had a lanai and then the other ones between them just had this sort of step out only on Juliet balcony and we're looking out to the ocean view and I just wanted to put a shout out for the young Japanese woman I was talking to on the left and she happens to be a Kahala employee and she is the Asian public relations and marketing sales manager but she was so kind to arrange the fact that all three tours except for the young couple that I spoke to by myself all got to see a typical guest room which is revolutionary and then see what happens when a number of typical guest rooms are connected together and become sweet. I really thank her so much Wakako Sasaki and let's take a look at how the room looks when you look the other direction for the next slide for that I hadn't seen the remodeling that have happened since really since 1964 this in my mind is a little bit heavy-handed with the Hawaii Anna but the fact that there's that wonderful paddle fan is a really nice touch that's always a nice touch and the hotel is getting close to that time when it's going to need another refreshment of the rooms all rooms and suites and it'll be interesting to see what the designers and maybe the architecture get involved might have in mind this has to be and along these lines so I can't wait for that to be able to get back to the Bishop Museum and digging out some of the original photographs of how they will tell what and now it's been touched Jim so it actually might be worth to reconsider going full circle into the very original and the next remodeling Oh yeah, that's absolutely right Yes, absolutely right and there are a few pictures in Bishop Museum that show the original rooms from when the hotel opened in 1964 and I agree with you Ron that this is a little bit heavy duty what we're looking at in this picture right here in terms of what the room looks like but one of the things that I think we can mention if we go to our final picture last picture in our presentation today up in the upper right corner you see Martin's dear friend Suzanne and he's as if looking up at her and taking a picture of her and she was a guest at the Cahala Hilton in the 1990s or about early 2000 and she's the person who has reminded us frequently that hotels must always keep reinventing themselves and must always keep updating, freshening cleaning up and making themselves look modern and appealing and so that's exactly what we just have talked about when the last time the hotel went through a big change like that well it's almost time as Ron just said for it to do it again so we'll see what comes of that and the basic structure that we see on this exterior view from the long eye of this exterior lattice work that we talked about in our previous shows is still going to be there but what goes on inside will always make a difference in the guest experience to make people want to come back because it's not old fashioned and my greatest wish is that when those rooms are refreshed that it's done by a local Hawaiian firm of interior designers architects the fact that Hale Puna in Waikiki was basically completely redesigned by designers from New York City meant that they in fact didn't get hardly any of the Huayana in the rooms, they looked like a room a nice room in New York City and I'm hoping that the next group who get together might even be talking to me about that in my opinion Let's do that, I can't wait for that until then let's wish that Jim will be next to you Ron Richard Lowe are multiple guests and shows of the past wish him all the best because and we're talking he has to have some work done on him and as they meet in the hospital so Richard Lowe the best for that we look forward to having you back soon and join us in the club thinking about the session and they all say some sounds and see you next week ok bye