 We're back. We're live. We're here with Kevin Newt of the School of Architecture at UH Manoa. And we're talking about time and space today, and that's important because we live in an altered universe here with COVID and reopening and the like. You know, all these tensions and dichotomies and threats. It's interesting because it affects our lives so dramatically. More dramatically, I think, than we fully understand it. Kevin's going to help us understand that. Good morning, Kevin. Good morning, Jay. Nice to meet you. Okay. Now, you've fashioned this title, you know, the contention of time and space and which one would you prefer? I'll let you explain what you meant by that, but I can only tell you that it's something close to E equals MC squared. Well, the original title I stole, blatantly, shamelessly from Marcel Bruce in search of lost time. Because I think architecture, to a large extent, certainly modern architecture, has lost time if it ever had time, which is another question. But, you know, if we go back to a good intro actually, Einstein 100 years ago, roughly, he got the Nobel Prize basically for saying these two things are joined at the hip. You can't talk about space without talking about time. Well, architects do a pretty good job of doing very little but talk about space without talking about time. And yet, if you were to stop somebody in the street, you know, probably 99 out of 100 people in answer to the question, which is more important to you, space or time, would answer time. So there's a real mismatch between what architects are kind of preoccupied with space. And then the rest of the world is really much more interested in time. And if you like, I could explain why I think it's self-evident. But we... Well, I just like to make two comments at this point in your progression. Number one is that, you know, more and more, I know that sounds crazy, but more and more, I look back to the classical times of the Greeks and Romans standing around in their temples and bathhouses and what have you. And I think they were probably less interested in time and more interested in space. That it was static, you know, they built those things to last for a thousand years and there was, you know, nothing renewable about them. They were great and they stayed great until the Rome fell or Greece fell. The other comment I wanted to make is that time is relevant to architecture in the sense, and maybe it should be more relevant to architecture in the sense that things get old. They deteriorate and the world changes around them. And you can't have a building like the Romans and the Greeks did that was in Tennessee last for a thousand years because the world changes around you. Even a condo, you know, that has a lease of say 55 years, you know, they should take it down after that and in Singapore they make it take it down. You can't, you know, you got to, you got to, you know, destroy the building after a good time. Condos here capable of lasting two, three, four hundred years is a business matter that doesn't require reinvestment. But as a practical matter, it's wrong. We have to renew our architecture. Interesting. There's a lot in there. I mean, I, for sure, they weren't as obsessed with time in classical period. They did measure time, you know, they developed some of the earliest clocks, quarter clocks, etc. But they were less obsessed than we are. I would argue that our society comes, especially in this country, more and more obsessed with time. It's the point where we now put these things on our, our risks that kind of, you know, that we think are conveniences, but we're, I refuse to wear a watch myself, because I feel like I'm chained to time, you know. And the watch that I do have has no hour hands or sorry, it has an hour hand, but no second hand. And even the numbers are not there. So I like to know roughly where I am, but not down to the digital sort of nano second, which I think is sort of inhuman. On your point about how long buildings last, I think it's a great point and probably the topic of another, of another discussion. But for sure, I spent a lot, a lot of time, no pun intended, looking at Japanese architecture, where very similarly to Singapore, as you explained, land prices are so high that you wouldn't dream of keeping the same building on the same lot. So the turnover rate of, in the case of Japan, perfectly working in buildings are not economically feasible. You know, their use changes, the surroundings changes you point out. So for sure, time does impinge on everything, including buildings. And I guess my, my point is that architects probably ought to take a little more cognizance of that in many ways. And the way that I'm particularly interested in is how does, not from an economic point of view necessarily, but how do or how does the lack of time in build space affect the occupants of buildings? You know, we, we've talked about this in the last few weeks, where many of us are now spending even more time inside buildings. You know, the less known secret is that we were spending in this country well over 90% of our lives inside buildings anyway before COVID. So it's now probably like 99, in my case, 100%. I don't think I've left my apartment for two weeks, which is extreme, but you know, it is very, very high anyway. So the lack of time, if these two things are important to a space and time, and they are, you know, the lack of time in build space seems like, seems like an issue. Let me, let me roll the first image. Well, before you do that, I just want to do more comments. Yeah. Where you're right about COVID. I mean, COVID changes our state of mind. It's an altered state we live in now. You're two weeks and, and I have the same experience. I haven't left my house very much. I'm happy my house has a second room that I can play in. If I didn't have a second room like many people in the state, you know, do that becomes really claustrophobic. So, so this, the space, if the space is adequate, then you don't think about it. If the space is not adequate, you do think about it, especially if you're cooped up. The other thing is time itself. I don't know how you feel over the two weeks, but I kind of lose track of time. I marked my time with specific events, but they seem to be harder to find now. And I go through my, my obligations. They seem to sort of get away from me now. So I don't feel that my commitment to time, my connection with time, as it would be, you know, in an office setting or a studio setting downtown, is the same. I'm in a kind of mush of time now. And I believe if I'm in a mush of time, so are you and so are most people who spend all their time at home without, without a commitment, a demand, a wristwatch. Right. Yeah. No, it's true. Things are drifting. You know, many people have commented that their, their productivity has gone up. They're not goofing off. They're working longer hours. You know, they end up working after dinner. And while I was doing all that kind of stuff on the go as an academic, but my weekends are completely indistinguishable from my weekdays now, totally, which is not good. I'm not proud of that. Back to, back to your comments about architecture kind of and time and the ageing of buildings. John Ruskin said that, you know, we can do all sorts of things. You know, we can live and die with, but we can't remember without architecture. And yet modern architecture was supposedly timeless. You know, they actually made the claim ridiculous so it sounds, you know, that those modern white boxes, you know, you put them up and they'd be forever. You didn't have to change them. Well, of course, you know, the second week, they started to look a little less white. And after a few years, if you didn't maintain them, they look decidedly sad, much sadder than classical buildings that were designed with the notion that they would actually, you know, age. So, you know, you can deny we're getting more time, but I only have to look in the mirror in the morning to realise it's not ignoring me, you know. So, you know, we might want to pay attention to it. Let me show you this first image, which is kind of what I hope is moving. Maybe you could click on it to get that to move. I don't know. Oh, that's a pity. It's not, should be a video, but you're going to have to imagine the flames flickering and the sound of crackling and the water is moving. And that's the environment that our distant ancestors would have grown up in or were involved in. And really, that's the environment that we are used to. Physiologically, we haven't really changed. We still need that stuff. Now, if we go to the second image, this is what I meant by modern architecture. You know, there's really very little connection to the past. You know, you uproot people out of terraced houses, which were not great, but they were not bad. Put them in high-rise buildings, and they're completely disconnected from their roots, from their neighbours, from their community. You put people in offices, like the one in the middle, there's, you know, no change from hour to hour. And there's no kind of sense of the future, in many cases. So, what I've been looking at is to look at time, not from some sophisticated point of view, but absolutely from the point of view of what are regular people think about when they think about time. And they think about it, really, in these three domains, perhaps, the present and the future. So, that's what I've been looking at. So, if you go to the next image, this is the hearth. We call that an archetype. It's a type that anyone would recognise. Even if you grew up in a high-rise building and never went camping, there still seems to be a fascination with the fire. And it seems to be timeless, and it seems to transcend culture. So, these kind of things, I think, and Jung, Carl Jung, would say, well, they're appealing to a collective unconscious, you know, that we don't consciously remember necessarily, but there's something deep inside us, remembers, or that remembers, sitting around a campfire, even though we can't for the life of ourselves. I actually remember doing that, perhaps, but it transcends the individual memory. Sure. It's anthropological. It's anthropological. It's a driven thing. It's built into you. What's the word? It's baked in. And it's the same thing with water, you know. I mean, we came from the water. And so, there's always a pleasure in going back to water. People need to go to bodies of water for the same reason, I think. Yeah, absolutely. We're not necessarily conscious. I never grew up near the ocean, but boy, if I look up from my screen, I can see the ocean. This is what I've wanted to do all my life. And yet, I was 50 miles away from the ocean, which might as well have been a million miles. We didn't go very often, but it has, as you say, a profound, deep effect. You know, you're talking about fire. Fire. And what's interesting to me is that fire, if you go back to the clan of the Bear Cave way back when, remember that one, that prehistoric thing. It was a very good book. It was a place where you gathered and structures in general, I hope you'll agree with me, structures in general over the life of the species have been places to gather. Until recent years, you know, any structure was a place, you know, going back to classical times or before and after, it's a place where everybody got together and it facilitated that. It protected you in a group. These days, they build condos that are so small. And they have, you know, sort of the breakdown of the family. One person lives alone most of the time, stays in the house most of the time. It's not like it was. It's not like it has been. Right. No. And I'm not suggesting that we necessarily turn the clock back. But some of these things still have, you know, even for those people who live on their own in a high rise, as I do, you know, these things still have a powerful resonance. And that's what interests me. There's another one. And so before we move on, then the hearth, some, some architectural theorists have said that that's the beginning of architecture. And you were getting very close to that. The first time somebody sat down and made a fire, basically, that was architecture. Because as you absolutely, like you said, people gathered around for the heat, right, to get cooked food, to be protected from animals. But yeah, but also for the camaraderie, you know, like we're all in this together. So, you know, you know, the hearth is fundamental to architecture. And yeah, you know, if I look around my apartment, no hearth, you know, and that's the case with many. If we go to the next one, along with the hearth, if we go to the next image, is the sloping ceiling, the sloping canopy, which again, even if you grew up as I did, you know, flat ceiling house, I still long to live in an attic and have them, luckily, in many cases. And I still find it far more comforting to be under that sheltering roof than under a flat, plastered ceiling. Again, these are archetypes that, and there is some evidence, we've done some experiments to show that people really do prefer. And they do. Starvely, why is that? Where does that come from? Well, it's very practical, you know, that that is the shape that most effectively sheds water, you know, so from any place in the world that has any appreciable precipitation, you know, you figure out, well, if you invert it, right, you realize you end up very wet very quickly, right, make a V shape and it rains, or if you make it flat, my description of a flat roof is upon waiting to happen, right? So, so, you know, that says what it does. It's also security, don't you think? For example, some rocks come down, a tree falls, if you have a flat roof, it's going to collapse, if you have a pointy roof, it'll deflect. Yeah, so, you know, even for those, again, even, similarly to the heart, even for those who didn't grow up in spaces like that, there seems to be, as you put it, a big in preference for this kind of space, even for people from the Middle East, for example, who didn't have a need to have this kind of protection from a great deal of precipitation. I've asked people, and many of them still find that shape still has a symbolic meaning for them. So, this is not, you know, a direct individual memory, it's a sort of collective memory, as John would have put it. There's one more, which you may or may not be familiar with, if we go to the next image, one more archetype. This is known in our field in landscape architecture as refuge and prospect. Basically, this is the view from, you know, the proverbial cave mouth, where nobody can creep up on you from behind, but you can survey the scene in front of you, and you can see threats or opportunities coming long before they've arrived. And the opposite, of course, is when you're stuck out there on show, waiting to be gobbled up, right? So, this is an empowering habitat. Animals likewise, you know, will frequently place themselves in a corner where nobody can surprise them, and they can see everything in front of them. So, this is super primitive. And, you know, if you find yourself in, you know, in the corner of the kitchen at the party, then that's what you're doing, basically, is reverting to this primitive archetype that makes this view secure. You know, it's like, nobody's going to surprise me, and I can see who's coming, you know, and either evade them or stay here, you know. Well, the problem is in modern residences, you know, there are multiple entrants and exits. And, you know, if you watch just a few horror movies, you find out that the bad guy comes in the other entrance, and you don't know, and you are surprised. Every cave should have a backdoor, I believe. There was a design fault, I absolutely agree. Because, you know, your protective cave becomes your tomb, if the saber-tooth discovers you're in there, it just decides to count by its side, you know, what are you going to do? Star or you can cut dinner. So, these are tools that we have in our architectural toolkit, and for evoking, I would argue, positive connections to the past in built environments by simply using these archetypes that were hardwired to respond to. And it's not that people have to go consciously thinking about these things. You know, the best outcome is that they go, I really like that space. I have no idea why, but I really like that space with the slope ceiling or with the harp or with that window seat that I can sit in, and I can look at everything outside, but nobody can see me. So, can you tell them about the anthropological history of these things? When you talk to a client or you just let them, you find their own residents themselves, yeah. Absolutely. You know, people should join the dots for themselves, and if these are as powerful as I think they are, people will, you know, they'll go, I really like this, you know. The minute you find yourself as an architect having to explain, you've lost, you've lost the architect. You know, you see pictures, and I mean, we've all been in residences and offices. Gee, I really like your description of the office where it's intended not to tell you what time it is. It's intended, it's like intended to make it feel active or make it potentially active 24 by 7. You're not supposed to know your intellectual juices are supposed to flow all day and all night. That way, they get more work out of you, you know. Maybe that's why people like to spend their time at home these days. Is it just like a casino? Do you realize that? I've never thought of it. Yeah, sure. Right, yeah. So, but anyway, I think if you walked around some of the modern buildings done by architects, you will find none of these anthropological influences, none of them, and it will be cold and it will, you know, have all the wrong metrics to it, but it'll be modern looking. I'm sure that there must be some kind of dichotomy within the architectural community about that. Will you build this kind of stuff that has nothing human in it and yet people are willing to spend a lot of money for it anyway? Well, there's an element of fashion in everything and architecture is not immune to that, but what I'm talking about is the very opposite of fashion. You know, this stuff is original in the sense of it goes right back to the beginning, not original because I thought of it this morning, you know, and it's the latest thing, but this stuff is hardwired into us. And I think, you know, I will say to my students very often, look, it's great that you've got an architectural training, but you're going to be no good to man or beast if you don't remember what it was like before you were an architect. What's it like to be a human being? Inside that architect, there ought to be a human being and a child, right? And if you forget that, then you're of no use. You just become somebody who talks to other architects and basically, as forgotten that we're actually not just paying lip service to, we actually do serve other human beings. So understanding how human beings not so much think but feel is critical. Otherwise, how could you possibly do your job? And that's not something that's talked about a lot, you know, that it is, there's so much to learn in architecture, the tools of the trade and the techniques. It's easy to forget. And I did for many years, why are we actually doing this? What is the mark of success? And the mark of success in my book is evoking really great feelings in somebody who probably will never understand, never fully rationally understand why do they feel so much better in that space? That's fine. Or worse, you know, I tell you the truth. You know, I'm not in love with 40 foot escarpments. You know, and you see those in Kakaako with some of those buildings they built down there. And my wife and I were down there, this is before COVID, we were down there walking around. And I actually got turned around, Kevin. I didn't know where I was. I said, lived in this, in this city for 50 years, and I'm walking down the street, which I have walked down a thousand times. I didn't recognize the street. It was very disturbing to me, not only because it was, you know, completely sterile, but because it had changed, it had taken away my landmarks, my reference points. I didn't know where I was. Yeah, this is so important. And honestly, every conversation I have with you, Jay, leads to me thinking of like, oh yeah, we should talk about that sometime. The landmarks, I've been writing about that recently, that it is enormous, you know, that there are some fixed things in our lives. And you know, you both fit literally, as you were talking about, you know, a man, the horizon, familiar buildings, whatever. But, you know, across your entire life, there have to be some things, we like a little bit of change, but we do not like chaos. We do not like to come back to our house and find that everything is not where you left it. We're creatures that like kind of an 80-20 kind of change, ratio of familiar to change. And we don't like 100% familiar, that's kind of mind-numbingly boring, but we hate chaos as well. So it is disturbing. And I thought the same sort of, that happened to me a couple of years ago in Oregon, where it snowed, and I lived there for 20 years. And I got completely lost because the snow removed all landmarks. And I stopped somebody and said, can you direct me to Hillier? And they said, you're standing on it. Which is pretty embarrassing. I mean, it was like four feet of snow, but really, you know, it's really worrying. You know, you're in a familiar world, but you go right back to, you just lost your mother. For the first time, you go, oh my God, it's the end of the world. Just connect. I want to tell you a short thing that relates to this. You know, in my earlier day, I used to go hiking on Manawawa. Manawawa has a series of ahus. An ahu is a stone cairn. They built up the stones and it's like triangular and sometimes two, three feet high. And you can see them at some distance because the lava up there at the top is relatively flat. I mean, there's no obstruction. So all you can see in this distance is the cairn. And so it's comforting to know that the cairn is going to take you somewhere. It's a reference point. It's a landmark. And if anybody knocks down the cairn or the cairn falls down, you're lost. And I think this is one of those baked in points, but you have to have landmarks. You have to have reference points. You have to know where you are or you're very uncomfortable. So I've lost my weekend, which is a reference point. You've lost your going into the office at whatever time. These are reference points in time that we also need. That when time discloses continuously, we kind of go, what does it matter? Whether it's Tuesday or Sunday. And I don't know that that's necessarily good. I don't want to be a slave to time, but I also don't like the idea of just one continuous. So we do need some kind of references. So see how I brought that back to time there, Jay. You always do. So how is it going to change for us in the new abnormal? I'm serious. I believe we're in an altered state that's going to last for a while. Well, let's go to the next image. Perfect intro. These should be moving. Unfortunately, they're not. But a couple weeks ago, we did talk about how to introduce change into architectural spaces or into indoor spaces there. And any kind of perceived sense change connects us to the present. If it gets our attention, it makes us present, which, if you paid any attention to things like mindfulness and all the rest of it, being present is enormously important. Because if we're not careful, we spend our most most stress, for example, is as a result of there are some stresses that happen right now. You're stood in the middle of the road and there's a bus coming. But they're rare. Most of our stress in today's world comes from, wow, I wish that hadn't happened and regret. Or, oh God, I hope that doesn't happen. And of course, we spend time, a lot of time stressing over past events that we can't alter and future events that may not happen. Instead of actually being present where you can actually get things done and interact with the world and being aware. Don't you think a big driver, this goes back to anthropology too. A big driver is keeping up. You got to keep up with the leader. You got to keep up with the pack. We are pack animals. We are pack mammals, as it were. And I can, you know, I visualize, this is out of another movie, Quest for Fire. Also about the Prius Dark period 100,000 years ago. So in Quest for Fire, you have to keep up. If you don't keep up, you're a straggler. If you're straggler, then those threats are going to get you. And so you keep up then and now. And the way to keep up, conceptually, is with time. Yeah, it is a resource. You know, you have to be careful how you use your time. You know, you can fritter it away or you can store it up, you know. But the thing about time that differs fundamentally from space is that you can go out if you have enough money and I know you do. You can go out and buy space, real estate, right, any time. And I believe the last time they checked, the universe was still expanding. Not that it really affects as much. But guess what? The minute you and I entered this world, our allocated amount of time, which of course is unknown, which makes it even tougher, is diminishing. The only thing we know is it's limited and it's diminishing as we speak. And that's totally different from space. But this goes to a final question. I want to ask you, we're out of time and that is, so you spoke of your two weeks. And of course, the limited amount of time we all have on the planet, who knows how much, but it's limited. So the two weeks, and in my case, the same thing, is it lost? Have I frittered it away? Would I prefer to do other things? Or does this have value of equal value or even greater value? How is this COVID time get marked up in the book of life? I personally, I mean, I joke rather inappropriately with friends that I've been preparing for social distancing all my life. So this hard as an introvert, you know, I'm hardly blinked. I mean, clearly it's had, I do miss, you know, I enjoy it. The only reason I come on your show, Jay, is just I need somebody to talk to, you know, you realize. I'm always available for your camera. But seriously, terrible, though it's been, and scary as hell, you know, especially for somebody my age, or older, I think it has created a lot of introspection and it will change the way people work. And how long those changes will go on? I don't know. But I don't think it's going to be, and many people have said this before me, you know, just back to business as usual. So strange though it may sound, I think we are living through a unique, just as the Spanish flu would have been a uniquely scary or any world war would have been a uniquely scary experience that changes people and changes the world. I think we're living through one now. And I'm not even as affected as a lot of people who have lost their jobs and lost loved ones. And, you know, those kind of things can happen without the world changing. And it ought to change. You know, I don't I think it would be offensive if if this tragedy ended, and we just said, okay, back to normal then, you know, it would be an offense to to all the people and all the suffering that's going to happen. We will all of us will have time to do some some introspection on it, I think one way or the other. And what interests me is that, you know, COVID cause it was a part of the cause, one of the many causes of the George Floyd protests around the world. People were just too happy to get out of limited space. They were they were feeling, you know, the pressure of claustrophobia and all that. This this was a release a relief that that was important enough, you know, to take the risk of going out of the street. The other thing is a and I learned this from you today is that there is a huge relationship between space and time. And those are the two most important things. I think you said this at the outset, those are the two most important things in our lives. And we have to be mindful of them. Yeah. Well, I would argue that that the time actually outstrips space, which is the opposite of what most architects, you know, most architects understandably preoccupied with states. And I'm saying, well, it is important that is our discipline. That's our thing. But time actually may be more important to people. So we need to integrate time more actively into spaces to, you know, it's very important that we be able to recollect, remember in a positive way. It's very important that we be present. And it's very important that we have something to look forward to. You deny that and you I look forward to our next show. And if you're talking about time, we're out of it. So that's Kevin Newt. We've been talking about time and space, a really interesting, even luscious kind of discussion. I hope we can do something equally interesting next time, Kevin. Thank you so much. Thank you.