 Welcome back to our Human-Humane Architecture Show here from our hot, exotic, tropical paradise of Honolulu, Hawaii. This is every other week's edition with your hosts, Martin de Spang and Soda Brown. Good afternoon. Good to have you here, especially since, you know, the Descendants movie, it starts with, you know, Clooney saying, you know, people think we never get sick here, but actually we have all the same illnesses and sicknesses. So last time I was sick and you are sick now, but you're tougher than me because you're still here and I was at home. I'm a really tough guy. But then again, let's not talk about old or young people's sicknesses here, but about something that's relevant to more people than us. That's right. But maybe we stay with, like, not feeling well and things we can prevent more than others. So we can protect ourselves. Exactly. So let's go to picture number one. Picture number one is... This is, we can protect ourselves from sunburn, which we in fact should do here because it's not very healthy. And how does this relate to architecture? On the very left, I took this picture when the symphony building was going up. And I was obviously in the shade from this tree to be able to not get burned. And I took this picture. I was thinking, why is the building so sort of exhibitionously opening itself to the sun? And I think, I mean, you confirmed that. There were some litigations here with this building. There was a problem with either the opacity of the windows by the window tint or the excessive reflectivity of the windows. And the picture on the right clearly shows that sunburn is a problem. This course shows it in a very sexy way, but that is nonetheless a problem. A building that gives off too much heat, reflects too much heat can be a problem for the rest of the people around it. Exactly. And this building is also directed the wrong way because it's blocking the wind flow besides. And I just couldn't find the picture. I took one coming from Wart from Makai. And when the evening sun, it just looks like a mirror. It does. It does. It goes right into your face. Exactly. But there is a way to deal with that type of thing. And that's what we're going to be talking about this particular show if we go to our next slide. We're going to be talking about screens. And there are various ways to screen buildings. We're going to start with metal screens. This is the Bank of Hawaii branch when it first opened on Kapahulu Avenue in 1961. And this is the original appearance, which unfortunately you and I, bemoan, is no longer there. It's been changed for a number of reasons, partly to accommodate an ATM in the facade. But if you'll notice, it's got a metal screen not only on the front of the building, which we see here, but also on the right side. Well, this front no longer looks like this. But in our next picture, we can see that the original metal screening is still intact on the right side. So let's go to that photo. And there it is, as photographed by Martin himself. And you pointed out this is a very simple structure. Those are just a series of circles which are attached to each other. The beauty of this is the depth of those circles gives you sideways sun protection depending on when the sun is in that position. And while it's doing a lot of screening, it is also providing a lot of visual access in and out. So if you look in the lower right picture, left picture, you can see that looking in and looking out, there's a great deal of free vision. And yet you're also getting the protection from the sun when it is coming from the side. Great point. So you get the best of both worlds. Right. So you get 100% shading and you also get almost 100% transparency, especially looking horizontally. Directly on. And I want to point out, you shouldn't drive on this island, you should use what I use, my bicycle, and it has the same gold color than the screens. And it's got circular wheels. And it's metal. And it's metal. So it's propped up against the metal screen just the way it should be. And you pointed out this is, so with metal, you can be very thin and very lightweight. And here a tube is the most structural form. So the two together, this is a very light applied screen. And yet very strong. Yeah. And but you can still attach it to like, like a dress. You can wear a dress because it's relatively light. It doesn't put, it's not a night's, you know, armor. Exactly right. But we're going to work. This is, we're going to get to that because the strength and the flexibility and all that stuff is very important for metal screens. Let's move to the most famous screen street here in Honolulu. Which one is that? King Street. And here's one building that's on King Street still today, standing in this location from the 1960s. And this is, I don't know what the name of the building is, but it has the Goody Goody restaurant and bar in it. So that's what I refer to it as. And directly from, directly across the street, as you see at the lower left, you can see through into the inside. You move a little bit to the side. And now you've got a really nice, almost smooth gold surface. And as we just said, this does the, it does the screening. It also covers up, and we'll talk about that in a minute as well. But that is a freestanding structure that almost, that's self-supporting. And it doesn't, it's not part of the building. It's not structural, but it's very easy to apply to a concrete building. And that's what we see here. Yeah. And I love, took the picture on the bottom right some years ago when I was celebrating the new bike lane on King Street, which they reintroduced, well, they reintroduced bicycling, which Jay was one of the founding fathers, not just a freak bike, but bicycling. And it struck me that, you know, it looks like a gold bar because there's another thing, this is reflectivity, right? The sun is basically bouncing off and it's not going through because whatever is solid, you know, is opaque, it's going to block the sun, but that light is basically going to be reflected and brings out that, you know, in this case, very sort of flamboyant, right? Gold clear. And yet it's not as reflective as the mirror-like windows of the Symphony Park building, which we saw, which can cause problems. It's not. And the most iconic building of this sort of type here, we always sometimes show as the permanent background and now we will look at it in detail and it's almost across the street, right? Right. This is the King Center building, which is on King Street, as the name implies. And just as we showed before, this is an exterior metal screen, a gold color. And if you look in the lower right corner, in addition to the pretty woman who's wearing the gold gown, and I think that that is, that's something you came up with, but I think that's a really good allegory for the exterior of this building being sheathed in something like a gold gown. But if the picture next to her looking directly up from underneath, you can see that that is the freestanding metal mesh sculpture, which is held to the building. It is separated from the building. So as you pointed out, that allows air movement of the natural air movement of the wind. It also helps vent warm air up through the open top of the building, the open top above where the difference between the mesh and the facade is. So rather than enclosing it and turning it into a little hot house, what we've got is something that allows cooling by also keeping shade on the front of the building. In another sort of analogy from clothing, we could have made to some Arab attire, where the women also wear gowns and cover there. You were actually initially looking for a picture from the 50s in Waikiki, where a woman was wearing something like that. And so there is some, you know, we can learn from how we appropriately dress or how we act, you know, in the sun and staying out of it for architecture. So these buildings are wearing these biochlametic skirts or attires or gowns and staying quite comfortably. Because as you said, you know, it's easy breezy. It keeps the ventilation, but it cools the wind down because of its shading. And then in this cavity space, it sucks up the hot air through a heat eyelid, excuse me, stack effect, solar chimney effect. So it's very cleverly sort of biochlametically engineered with passive systems. There's no oil burned, except the production of the material, I mean, we talked about it a little. Exactly, exactly. So we sort of close the sort of gold collection here and go to some, we still stay in the metal realm. Well, no, this one here is just, we threw it in because this is not exclusive, what we show you. This is inclusive. We want you guys to go out. This is just another one. This is on Etkinson Drive. It's another gold skin and you find your own because there are tons of more out there. It's just creating an appetite here for you guys, for you to go out. And notice again too, as we said, this does, this functions not only as a cover as the way the gown functions as a cover, but it also allows you to see through to a degree. But it mostly covers up the things, the elements on the facade that you might not want people to see of the mechanical things or the disparate or disconnected elements. You get a more unified facade instead of that. Absolutely. So let's leave the gold realm here now, eventually, and go to, stay with metal, the next picture here. Right. This is in our most favorite hood of Kapahulu, where we also, in the last show, found a lot of sun slats. We also find a lot of sunscreens here out of metal. This originally was a savings and loan building and it now just has various other businesses in it. And you pointed out that this is a very clever design. It is metal, which has been sort of twisted into a wave motif. It's been punched through and twisted. So each one of those surfaces is at an angle. And that helps not only with shading, but also we talked about water dripping off of things too. So it sheds water. And again, freestanding, applied to the building, light weight, and yet very strong. And the next one is one we found. This is just exemplary for many others. This is where maybe less of the square footage of the building is covered. And this is just one different. There's a whole variety, I mean, everything is possible, lots more. Here these vertical basically bands and then they inserted these plates, squares and rectangles and created this pattern randomly almost. And it basically screens out the sun, but also screens out the sort of the profanity of whatever is happening behind. You can also keep out other things with screens and we go to the next picture. These screens like window screening, like you see with the hat that the mannequin head is wearing on the right, well, this is a building in Poulet Circle. And this is in very interesting location of small apartment buildings that someday we probably will do a whole show about. But in this particular case, this building has got these two-story kind of atriums on the Makai side, but they have window screening for both of those two stories. So you've got this completely open space with a lot of air movement, but you're keeping out the insects. And so it also, as you pointed out, doesn't increase the opacity a great deal. So you have a lot of visual access, but you are also protected from another element that wants to do you harm. And to point out another aspect of screens, this is not so much about sun anymore because you can also do this inside, but it's about privacy. Check out a prime example for that one, or at least what used to be a prime example. Right. Right. So this is what was originally the Liberty Bank, which is on Ward Avenue, and it looks like a miniature version of the whole estate capital. And if we come back to us here in the studio right now, you can see one of those pieces, those ceramic elements that was included in the interior of this building. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, these have been removed in a remodeling project. These were used to screen the upper floors of the interior of the building so that the employees could look out, but the customers could not look in. Yeah. And to the very bottom left is us at DoCo Momo at an event where we were too late to prevent them from throwing this out and telling them that what they think is not cool anymore is way cool and, you know, it's vintage. And you couldn't replace it. We had, unfortunately, decided and already commissioned. So now there's some more generic sort of fleshy freeform stuff in there that has none of the capabilities that this material has here. And if we can get the camera to our table here, because unfortunately, at least, we then salvaged the elements and we're treating us for Christmas and each of us members got one of these. And when you look at that, and maybe here's the original sort of interior, I mean, the intricacy and the delicacy, this is a ceramic piece. This is ceramic. This is breakable. Exactly. But it's got a beautiful white finish. It's got this nice sort of off-white finish, shiny, lustrous. Really each one of these is an art piece, I would say, and there were probably hundreds of them. And isn't it very exotic? Yeah. This was allowing the employees in the center, like through the, yeah, let's demonstrate that, through the desperate housewife, your desperate housewife now affect to look through, but I cannot really see you because you're a camouflage, you're behind and in the shade. So these employees could look out, they could breathe the same air that the people, the customers breathe. And they were part of it and yet not be visible because they had their privacy about to be stared at when they're working. Exactly. And also it's a security measure too. I can look down and see you and see what you're doing, but you don't notice me. And that gets us actually to the other materials that we have on the table and let's go to the next picture to introduce sort of what we're talking about. So we're, you know, we had another working title before that sort of goofy one that we gave, you know, with a gentle grills and goons, but we had sunscreens, but we thought that would be too generic. But it has to do with like, you know, when you apply the sunscreen, it's the same with your sunbum in this case, which is a company I always like because they're seem to have a holistic view and the design of their, their, their containers and everything seems pretty cleverly designed. And they have SBC as you can see 50 and 70. So just some modern beachwear, you know, with, with this lady, it's not absolutely tight. So this sort of, you know, pattern, the perforation is shading her. And it's also covering up whatever she wants to have, not, not absolutely. See, although in this case, she could probably not have to cover up. No, no, she doesn't have to. I don't think so. Good point, good point. So let's, what does it have to do with architecture? Let's go to the next pictures and me share some of our sort of encounterments with meshes here. This is introducing something that is manufactured by a company GKD. And we did a cafe with it. We did a metal mesh sky that was alluding to sort of the very glowing sunset of these areas where they basically make the coffee. It's a very abstract interpretation of that. And you can see at some points, the sub construction and all the, all the wiring and the stuff, but you can sort of barely see it. If we move to the next picture, an application that's more about us here, about sunscreening as well and privacy. We clad this tram station here with it. And you can see in the detail left that there is light coming through. And there's also a brief coming through, but they're supposed to shelter you from the rain as well. So we doubled them up. So, so they're, you know, tied, they're rain tied. There's also this interesting moray effect. And we use this picture to introduce you guys when you design, design from inside out, as you already pointed out, as much as from outside in. Because you still want to have, if not a view, but sufficient daylight efficiency in your building. And let's move to the next picture, which is another train station of the same line that we tested another. And this is getting some very, you know, simple off the shelf industrial gratings that we discovered in this case, we were cladding it over a wood cladding that the wood wasn't aging, wasn't getting gray as soon as usually, and that has to do because this screen to some degree keeps away the water, but even more, it keeps away the sun. And you need both to make wood gray. Right. So we just covered this almost by accident. And so we can go to the next picture and see that on the right. This is a grocery store we designed. And to the right is the very sort of not very pleasant way. You usually have to cover up some rooms where they keep their money and stuff like that. So they prison it with his metal grating. So we use this horizontal flat steel grating to louver the building with and also integrate egress things. But then I want to point out the very top. This is another metal grating that's usually used on floors to scrape the dirt off your shoes. And we discovered that one has great shading capability to show the next picture to create this sort of thermally comfortable situations in a very sort of industrial kind of very rugged ways. Yes. And we move on to the to the next picture, which is introducing the metal grating as well as well in another project that we've shown before, which is this school diner. Since the line I we didn't because of cost reasons, we didn't want to make it deeper as deep as it needed to be to shape the glass behind. So we introduce then what we had learned before through the other project, the metal grating, applying it to the south side. And these these ribbons of of metal flat steel are perfectly adjusted almost by accident to the sun angles. And we see in the next picture, we see the winter condition where the sun is low and shoots through and see these guys. This is back home where it gets cold right now. It dropped below freezing already. Poor guys out there. And next picture, we privileged ones here have this condition all year round and you can see that this middle grating is perfectly shading the glass way before it. So even stay cool on the line in that situation, which you would want to once again with a very, very simple material, very industrial off the shelf material. Introducing one more material is the next picture. This is basically a a membrane. This is a PVC membrane perforated a micro perforated PVC membrane that we use for a grocery store. We're inspired by these trucks who have these tarps. You can see the people installing it and goes very fast. And you can roll this up and it's very lightweight fabric. You know, yeah, and shipping this in, you know, it's very the manufacturer gave himself a very provocative name. They're called Ferrari and that doesn't sound very cheap. But in fact, they aren't that expensive. And so they're called Ferrari architectural screens or something like that. And when you use that, you know, think about I think the poetry of things that the next picture is is my privileged view out of my place. And when I see, you know, how Diamondhead changes on the top is our condition right now because it rained so much. Yes, when it's winter in Hawaii, it's when Diamondhead is green, as they say, right? And you got the summer conditioning at the bottom and you got the rain of the few couple days in the middle. So it's so amazing how nature here can be organically dynamic just through sort of the changing elements. So number 24, the next picture is showing how through the sort of intentional use of that metal mesh, the same thing happens. This is the same facade been taken at a different time of the day, basically at the bottom, it's backlit in the afternoon and at the top, it's front lit. And at the top, you can also see where it's shading, although the client value engineered the horizontal part that it also needed. So never mind. So that would need to be added to give the full thermal performance, but you can see that you can create spectacle just back to the goons and the dresses of the women. Yep. And also it depends on in some cases, whether the whether it's daytime and the exterior screen is lit from the exterior, or whether it's nighttime and it's lit from the interior by artificial lighting, in which case the same effect would occur, as you see in this picture here, just based on the position of the sun. Absolutely. So to sort of aren't screens cool? Let's grab some here. Come back to us, Ray, come back to us in the studio so that people can see. So here are some of the screens that come from a German company that you've been talking about that are very cool. And not only are these these started out as just purely industrial things, but they have these beautiful decorative uses and see this one actually can bend. Isn't that cool? So I could I could put it over my face in a bended motion and there I am. But this also does when I look at it this way, I can see light through here, but it blocks a great deal of light. And look at the look what you can do with it. Yeah. So these are really cool things. I'm I'm I'm I'm really impressed with these. Yeah. And so screens are cool, cool and cool, cool, and look cool. And that's right. And is that something that other people recognize too? Yes, I had the chance to fly over to San Francisco next picture. Yeah. And I saw the know the new multi transit hub there is a Caesar Pelle tower left to it and this new tower is going up. So this is going to centralize all the the Caltran. Yeah. And the and the the Bart the Bart exactly there. And they see what they have. They're crazy about screens. Yeah. That's the screens here. This is San Francisco. It is what's the other saying the coldest winter is the San Francisco. Yeah, exactly. Something like that. Yeah. So in this canyon of buildings, you hardly ever get sun to begin with. Right. So this screen is doing nothing but looking pretty, right, which is already, you know, it looks like it could be in Hawaii. There's a palm tree, but don't get fooled. It gets cold there. It sure does. So it's nice. But it is. How do you always call that purely ornamental? Exactly. And again, ornamental is not bad, but it doesn't have necessarily a real function as the screening that we've been talking about does in the optimum usage. Exactly. So let's wrap up the show with some potential suggestions for a reintroduction of screens. Yeah. Our scene here. This referring to a show with one of our first shows was an international marketplace. The picture I took was when it was under construction. And I get overly excited about the scaffolding, the nature of scaffolding, where you basically create this maze of, you know, individual members, posts to hold it up, but many of them, and then these horizontal walkways, catwalks that the workers go. And I bet you this is pretty sufficiently shading the building while still letting the breeze go through. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you create new lanai. So wouldn't that be a theme for buildings to keep them easy breezy? It would. Don't put a facade on that glass or whatever that can heat up. Right. This is a very sort of funky way of screens. But you pointed out, you know, there's a relationship to Asia. There's a tradition. Right. And what happens in Asia? Because you're fond of talking about the use of organic materials and getting away from fossil fuels, et cetera. In Asia, traditionally scaffolding for buildings was built out of bamboo. And I don't know if they still do that, but certainly in Hong Kong for many years, for decades, as they were building even tall highrises, they had bamboo exterior scaffolding rather than metal. Exactly. And we got to hurry up to finish the show. The next picture is our raw model in nature, literally. So leaves on a tree, they give enough opacity to shade where the sun can go through, but where the sun can go through, you get enough light and you get enough breeze through. Right. So why don't we take this also literal and do facades like that. Right. The next picture. And in fact, we have. I mean, first to a show, we could get the next picture refers to a show that at the very bottom right Jay was doing with Scott Wilson, and they called it architectural aspirations, because this is a picture from a project that's executed in Milan, which is a temperate climate. So these trees even get rid of their leaves. Correct. But we could do it and you found the building that demonstrates that the most. And this is the parking building that is for the south shore market, the TJ Maxx building, the store, etc. There are a few other stores and in the Ward area, which is now obviously being very extensively redeveloped. There is obviously there, as you can see, and a complete exterior covering of organic actual growing plants, but they need the support of a metal screen or an artificial element for them to climb on. So this is a combination of an exterior screen with actual plants growing on it, kind of the best of both worlds. And there's a very sort of tiny out of little just wires, three-dimensional, as you said. Check it out, but don't get run over, because it's like there's the ramp for the cars. Yeah, exactly. We're gonna finish a show with once again referring to Primitiva, our project, where we use another, it's vegetation again, but the vegetation is freestanding, but behind that is another mesh that we introduced before. It's a sort of fissure net. Yeah, so come back to us in the studio, Ray, so we can show people, there we go. And it doesn't really, you don't see it that easily in this particular picture, but this is wire mesh. Yeah, and it's not blocking much sun, but it's leaving, it's giving security, protection, it's letting the breeze go through and vegetation behind is a good combination. Correct. So do it. Do it, and another one who has done it, this is the next picture and the last picture, and this is introducing one of the next show. This is our Tropic here number one, Professor David Rockwood, who has worked with his emerging students on sort of innovating the very island tradition of screens. Yeah. So we will dedicate a show to that, and until then, stay easy breezy and put the sunscreen on and keep enjoying this wonderful tradition. Yeah. All righty. See you later. Bye-bye.