 Welcome back to Human-Humane Architecture here from our coolest mid-century modern tropical paradise of Hawaii. Today is going to be a very cool show because we talk about the coolest era that we had architecturally on the islands. And we're going to do this with our special guest today, which is Beth Iwata from Historic Hawaii Foundation. Hi, Beth. Hi. I'm Don Hibbert, our representative of Dokomomo, Hawaii. Hi, Don. Hi. Hello. Thanks for joining us on the show. And we're going to talk about an event that we're collaborating on. And it's going to be a Dokomomo event. If we can get the picture number one, please. Because you're curious what Dokomomo is, then please watch another show, which our President Tanya has introduced not that long ago. So please look up the show. And in a nutshell, we can say at least what's behind the acronym that's documenting and conserving the modern movement that's pretty much it in a nutshell. But today we want to talk about, we do lots of things, which we talked about in the show. Today we want to talk about a special event, and maybe it's the most special annual event. And what is that about? Every year Dokomomo has a national tour day. And it's the first Saturday in October every year. So we've been doing them now for five or six years, and this year we'll be going for the first time off island. And we're going to be going over to Lihui and feature some of the modern architecture that's present in Lihui from the 1950s and 60s. That's very exciting. And before we go there, we take a look at one of the previous events we had. If we can get the next picture for that. When was that? That was, I think, three, maybe four years, I think it was three years, not maybe four years ago. And we did a walking tour of Kapiolani Boulevard that time. And we're very fortunate at that time. Frank Haynes, who is firm, designed one of the buildings, the Ken Rock Building, which is now in jeopardy of possibly coming down, was able to be one of our docents because when we do the tour we have people at different buildings and they'll discuss the building. And so Frank could give everybody a first hand information not only about the design, but his firm also had their offices in the building when they were designing the state capitol. So it was a very informative presentation. Really awesome. And that's what we do. We try to get eyewitnesses who were offers in the projects. That's the best if we can get that. And Beth, can you help out explaining the picture at the very top left here, the little one? Oh, well, actually, we happen to have this booklet here today. This is the Preservation Honor Awards. Historic Hawaii Foundation annually holds the awards and we honor different preservation projects and preservation media projects as well as individuals. So this past May we happen to honor this guy here, Don Hibbert, for his achievements in helping preserve many homes and buildings throughout the state and all his work as an architectural historian. So congratulations, Don. So well-deserved congratulations, Don. So stepping back a little bit when we get the next picture, usually if mid-century modern is considered to exist at all on our islands in Hawaii, it's like, for example, there's these publishers out of the UK. One is the wallpaper magazine, which is the top one. And then the bottom one is the monocle city guard in that both considered our islands to be worth reporting on architecture. But then, no surprise to me because these are pretty critical journalists. They don't pick any of the new stuff. They predominantly pick the old stuff, which is the good stuff. But both of them basically pick buildings that are predominantly in our capital city of Honolulu. So it's a little bit surprising, I guess, when we get the next picture. So if the general public and audience Googles the term Kauai, I did that. And this pops up. So it's predominantly nature in its most beautiful way. And you see one resort down there, never mind. But anything else seems that architecture is off the radar of the island. So it's really sort of provocatively polemic, almost, to suggest we're walking on Kauai. So if we can get the next picture, which is our pitch, maybe you guys can talk about that here, what that is. And now we start to talk about a booklet you guys have been putting together. Well, for the walking tour every year, we put out a little pamphlet that goes with so people can see general information about the buildings that we'll be either stopping at, looking at close, or just walking by. So every year, we put out a little pamphlet. In this case, we're doing it on Lihui. But this year, we're doing more than just our walking tour. They'll come almost partnering with Historic Hawai'i, or they're partnering with us, I don't know which. But essentially, we'll be putting out a book, as well, that'll be talking about the entire island. We have a little series of book that started Historic Hawai'i's been publishing. And so this is the one on Hawaii Modern. And we'll be doing a new one this year on Kauai Modern, which I think will also be a nice addition. In addition, Historic Hawai'i is sponsoring several talks, which maybe Beth can talk about. Sure. So the walking tour will be on Saturday, October 7, starting at 3 p.m. for a couple hours, and then have a finish with Paul Hanna. That's all happening. People can meet at Lihui Civic Center on my street. And then the evening before in Lihui, we'll have a presentation, which is we hope to share some of the buildings, but also just talk about Lihui and how times change and put the buildings within the historic and social context, and kind of do talk story, trigger some memories about their town, and just encourage people to take a moment to think about where they are and that there are some very valuable buildings there. Which we now in the following will share some with you and show you some sort of glimpses of it, right? And also, I think that not only will we be doing that talk on Kauai, but we'll also be doing it in Honolulu on the following Wednesday. Right. Wednesday, October 11, there'll be a similar presentation and talk story at the Ward Village Courtyard. So all of this information is available on our website, historickauai.org. And there's registration. And also, you can purchase the Kauai Modern booklet, which is going to come out soon. And that's not too confused with what we're going to show you soon, which is basically the booklet for the tour, but you're working on another one, which gives you even more information and more data. And what we have on the screen right now is if you guys are already excited, which we hope, you can go frantically and fast to Eventbride to serve your spot, right? This is what that is about. These are basically screenshots from the Eventbride announcement. And you can also see the price tag for that. It's up there, right? So it's little money for a lot of things, right? So we'll spend it. Exactly. And it's a good chance to go to Kauai for the weekend. That's right. It's a three-day weekend. Yeah. So maybe we bring number eights, picture number eight up. This is a simple, gives you a simple location pin. Maybe who doesn't know Lihui? Maybe you guys want to say a couple of more words about what Lihui is on Kauai? It's the capital of Kauai. And it was made the capital primarily because it is in a central location and with the north shore on one side and the west side on the other side. So it's the commercial hub of the island. And during the 50s and 60s, it enhanced its position that it already had. And that's one of the main reasons why we're there because they did a major facelift of the entire city at that time. And the meeting point is pointed out on this page here, right? Yes. Yeah, right near the airport. The next picture is going to be zooming in a little closer. It gives you the map of Lihui. And what do we see? What are the black dots and what are the pictures on the right side of the page? The black dots are the stops that we'd be making on the walking tour. And so it's a little map. So essentially, we'll be making a big circle. And it takes around a half hour to walk the entire thing. But then you'll be stopping at eight different places. And the buildings will be discussed at that time. And what secret is behind the right side of the page and the little I spy modernism? Oh, that's the last couple of years we've been finding people enjoy a little scavenger hunt along the way. So those are little building details or elements that people can keep an eye out for when they're walking around. And if they identify them correctly, we'll be giving them a copy of the Kauai Modern booklet that we're doing. And it's sort of the educator part in me. It sort of proves one of my architecture theory and history, 101 sort of lessons to the emerging generations like that. Real good buildings get better the closer you look. Unfortunately, with the modern buildings that many don't recognize as being good, it's the opposite. They look good from a distance, but the closer you get, the more kind of cheap and cheesy they are. But with modernism, this is different. So this is sort of our encouragement to zoom in and look at its pores and look at its making and the materiality and the shadows cast. I think during the 50s, it's very true that the level of craftsmanship was much higher in workmanship. Exactly. So let's look at some of the projects as appetizers for you guys to really now go. Let's look at some of them. And so let's go to the booklet. And number 10 is now showing us one of the pages of the booklet. But we're going to zoom right in and go to the picture at the very top right. And we can get the next picture for that. This one here. So the bottom right picture is also referring to a show we just did about the architect. About the building and leave it up to Don because of many reasons to talk about that architect because you're very associated with him together with your partner with whom we did the show. Right. Jack Gilmore and I are working on a book on Alfred Price, which I almost hate to say because people keep saying, when is it going to be done? When is it done? Far away. But Alfred Price is best known for his work He did the Arizona Memorial. We just registered the old zoo entrance at the Honolulu Zoo. Awesome. And so those are two of his works that are very familiar to people. But he also did the ILWU Halls. He did the one in Honolulu on Atkinson Boulevard. He also did one on Maui, which no longer exists. This beautiful structure, which he did on Kauai and another one he did in Hilo as well. But he very much is working in a very modern vocabulary. And this is 1956. It's going to give me one of the first modern buildings to hit the island of Kauai. And it's very striking with its use of local materials. The coral rock uses sunscreens, the A-frame, all of which were very new for the time. Yeah. And we could characterize it for a good reason as being modern. But I go further and I call it timeless. And that's for a selfish reason, because I'm just working in Germany on a project that's rediscovering the benefits of an A-frame. So it's a very universal, very timeless type. He did here very early mid-century. Let's look at the pictures we picked here are for some reasons. And one is that we show you the whole broad variety of typologies. So this is pretty much an exhibit hall. The next picture, number 12, what typology is that? Again, a very modern. This is almost across the street from the ILWU hall. And again, a very strong design statement. And it was done by Clifford Young, who's a Honolulu architect. Young is probably best known. He worked with I.M. Pei on the east-west center in Honolulu. And that was the main reason he got this commission. There was a board that was selecting who would be the architect. And they were impressed with what he had done up there. And so they brought him to Kauai to work on the convention hall. This has a major visual attraction with the dome. The dome is framed in timber. And the architect was very excited about the use of glue lamb, which was a new technology, which is just coming in, and which allowed you to have very large spans, which before you would have to interrupt with columns and things. So this convention hall is very open. And also, again, if you look, you'll see incorporated local stone in the design. So it's very much a regional, modern building. And that's something for the emerging generation to just be aware how innovative these mid-century guys were. Whereas today, I allow myself to say sometimes we get the worst of the worst from somewhere else. And way back, we're getting the best of the best. And people came here were so stunned by the beauty of nature that they said, well, we got to really do the best that we can here. And as far as innovation of technology and our emerging architects look into cross-lemonated timber these days, which is pretty much the same technology. And how can you update that and using albicia and reclaim it with a project by Joey Valendi, who's doing that? It's the same kind of rounded truss structure. Let's go to the next page and look at a couple other buildings and building types. And we zoom in here at the very bottom left. And we see that more in detail in the next picture. Which project is that? That's the Lee Huey Public Library. And again, this is a Honolulu architect, Steven Oyakawa. Oyakawa studied and worked with Frank Lloyd Wright for many years. He was born in Hawaii. Then after working with Wright, he returned to Honolulu and worked here. And again, a very dramatic building. Again, a regional using lava rock for grounding it on the bottom. But a very sweeping paraboloid roof with a very wide fascia. And so very dramatic. And again, exhilarating, OK, here's the future coming. And so it was all part of that. That's my favorite building. Yeah, you know, it's pretty amazing. And again, surprise, surprise is on this little island, which people hardly ever would think of cutting edge mid-century modern architecture. As we have another example, which is the next picture. This is by another architect who has done several buildings in Honolulu. And who's that? This is by Edwin Bauer. And Edwin Bauer came to Hawaii during World War II and actually worked for the military during the war. And then he stayed after the war and started his own practice. And he's done a number of very innovative buildings. In 1965, Lihui Plantation was starting to thinking, OK, we want to keep Lihui as the commercial core. And they tore down a bunch of old buildings to build a new shopping center. And one of the buildings they tore down was the building that Hawaii National Bank, which is now First Hawaiian Bank, was in, as well as their own office building, Lihui Plantation Office Building. And Bauer got to design both of those buildings. And they shared a parking lot on the other side of the street. And again, using local coral stone in both buildings to clad the buildings, but also a very modern style of building with the very interesting eave line with the cutout rectangles in it. So you get these different shadows all day long. But also a very formal building. So it was a formal type of modernism, but also very regional. Yeah. And as we're referring to other shows in self-interest, and to give you more, there might be one coming up because our fellow board member, John Williams, expressed interest to do a show together about that specific architecture. And indeed, when we do the tour, John will be talking about that building. Very good. So another reason for you guys to have to join the tour. The next picture is one of the last pages from the booklet of the tour. And we're going to zoom in to the next picture at the very top left. Yeah, this is part of the shopping center that replaced the first Hawaiian bank building. And this was done by a Seattle architect, John Graham. And it's sort of like a spaceship. It's part of the whole spaceship and Sputnik era and thinking. John Graham is best known today for doing the Space Needle in Seattle. But he also did La Ronde Restaurant and Alamoana Center before he did the Space Needle. And he also did the Ilikai Hotel here in town. And he was hired. He was probably the top of the line shopping center designer on the West Coast at that time. So he had done numerous shopping malls in the mainland. And so when Louie Plantation picked up, yes, let's take him and his reputation. And obviously, he already had Alamoana underway. So yes, we'll have the same architect on Kauai working on our building. This building was the third phase of the shopping center and housed the office buildings. But also it has shops as well in the building. Sears moved in as one of the anchors. And the other end was Kauai shopping the store. I can't remember the name of it, food market or something. But now it's all it's been converted. It's now all county offices. And once again, at the bottom right of that last picture, you can see our referencing to another show that are learning from the past. For the future, a fellow, DeSoto Brown, and I did a show about. And we call this the coolest, I think, commercial building. Because the Alamoana building had vertical retractable louvers and was self-shading itself. And the flying saucer topped it. And that's as a form reminiscent of this building that we see. We're going to jump on and conclude with two more buildings. One is the next picture. Which one is that? And which architect? That's the state office building in Lihui. It's done by Shoso Kagawa. Kagawa is a very interesting architect himself. And that he was a member of the 442nd during World War II. And after the war, using the GI Bill, became the first Asian-American to be accepted into Columbia School of Architecture and the first one to graduate. He was also the first person from Hawaii to go to Columbia School of Architecture. And he designed several, a number of government buildings around the state, including the Kalani-Moku building right across from the state capital building. And that's certainly a very modern metropolitan-looking building, so Lihui was the metropolitan for Kauai. Right. And actually, it's very formalist building. And that's what government wants to portray as its image. And so you get that sort of image for the state. Which also is then sort of the same case with the last project we're going to show you on the next picture, which is also a permanent background. This is the Kauai Museum building. And originally, when it was built in 1960, it was done also by a Honolulu architectural firm, Meryl Sims and Rarik. It adjoins right next to it what was the old Lihui Library. And that building is also a lava rock building, but it has a classical front. And this building was built right next to it. And it incorporates the same concrete courses that was used in the old building, which was done by Hartwood in 1920s. And you also wrote a book about him. Yes, I did. And so this building was built right next to it. And then when the Uyakawa Library was built, the museum got the library building as well. And then they connected the two. And that big window you see in the building was put in at that time. So we're getting towards the end of the show. And my last two pictures, one is the next picture, which also says there is enough stuff out there, including stuff that there's no chance we can possibly cover. Also some stuff that we can't show anymore because it's not around anymore. And that's one of our main missions, is to basically raise awareness and appreciation for these old jewels and keep people away from tearing it down or from altering it so significantly so it won't be considered authentic anymore. And that's unfortunately the case. It will be the case with the Kokopon Resort that also DeSoto and I ran a show about. So if you guys are interested, watch that show. But closing on a more optimistic note, the next picture is we also have to say we suggest accommodation for lodging, but we don't prescribe it. So you guys follow our suggestions or go on your own, as I did when I was invited by my mentor, Nebraska mentor, Bill Borner and his partner, Rebecca Ahai. The two of you, two times, I choose the Kauai Inn, which to my understanding is one, if not the oldest, hotel on Kauai. And even there, around the pool, you see a sculpture by the renowned mid-century sculptor, a brownie. So what we want to do is encourage people to just go above and beyond what we suggest. Ours are just appetizers to create your appetite and then go from there. So with that, I very much thank you both. And I hope have you back, Beth, in particular, to talk a little bit more about Historic Hawaii Foundation if you don't mind. Thank you. It would be great to do a show just about that. Love to. And yeah, thanks to the two of you in promoting our event together. And hopefully now we will be sold out in no time, right? Of course. And so yeah, thank you both for coming. Thanks, Martin. Thank you, Martin. And see you guys all next week for another episode of Human Humane Architecture. And then until then, stay self and yourself and safe and happy. Bye-bye.