 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Human-Humane Architecture. And I am the program's co-host, DeSoto Brown. And joining us by audio from Switzerland, where he currently is, is the show's host, Martin Despang. Martin, good afternoon, or good morning to you. Hello, DeSoto, and more specifically, I'm in Zurich, and that's important to make because Switzerland is not Switzerland, but anyways, but we want to talk about back home, right, DeSoto? We are, we are. Because there's a pressing problem. That's right. And it's a problem that we were addressing already at the turn of the year, actually, the show, the last show in last year was done by Tonya Moy, when I was back in Germany, and with Jay Fidel, and they were talking about a potential insignificance of our significant mile, and tell us what the significant mile is, isn't it? Well, the, some people use the term, magnificent mile, for Kapiolani Boulevard. And one of the important buildings, or building complexes on Kapiolani Boulevard is behind me right now. You can see it. It's the Kenrock building. But I think if we want to go to, well, first of all, before we do that, before we get into the history of Kapiolani Boulevard, let's look at our first slide, and we'll see what it is we're talking about that's happening with Kapiolani Boulevard now, because we're changing. It's a changing thing. So here we are with our first picture. This is... And Tonya was brought... Oh, there we are. Correct. Yes. Go ahead. Tonya was rather moderate as she is, and talking about the history, which we will do specifically to this one building. But then Jay is always more open, and he was saying, you know, the new developments that he sees, you know, he caused them junk. Right. And we see two of them here, but we don't want to talk about junk. We want to talk about jewels today, right? Correct. That's exactly right. So let's move on, and you share these pictures here from the archive that describe how it looked way, way back, right? Absolutely. So at the bottom picture, you'll see Kapiolani Boulevard in its early stages. And Martin and I were discussing how Kapiolani Boulevard was built as a boulevard. It was built to be wide. It was built to be straight. It did not have any buildings along it originally when it was developed, starting in 1929 up through the 1930s. And so it was lined with empty spaces originally. So that picture from 1940 shows you Kapiolani Boulevard with virtually nothing there. One of the things that occurred because there was so much open space was in the 1950s, Kapiolani Boulevard was the site of most of Honolulu's used car lots. And so there's a picture of a 1950s used car lot with light bulbs strung overhead and everybody's wonderful Buicks and Oldsmobiles are available for purchase. And then we've got two small commercial buildings from the 1950s, and the very upper top part is of this slide. You can see the Liberty Mutual Building, which actually was called the Miyamoto Building, built in about 1953. And then the Bishop National Bank Building, which is what's today's first Hawaiian bank building. It's got a nice breezeway frontage on Kapiolani Boulevard. It was located Makai across the street of where today's first Hawaiian bank is now. And Martin, what did you want to say about this building? Well, me, who had the chance and pleasure to put the pictures together in the way we have it, I choose the one at the top left as being so, I think, typical for sort of this motorway architecture attitude to have buildings that are almost like trucks, you know, aligning the streets. And you can see this has beautiful breeze block in there. So it's very tropical, exotic, yet very modern. You know, this is not, you know, trying to be Hawaiian, Huda girl, grass shack, you know, little island. This tries to be, you know, America at its best, at its peak, at its heyday, right? Right. Right. And as we were discussing last... So to the next picture... I was going to say, as we were discussing last night, the Kenrock Building also falls into this as wanting to be as up to date as possible and to show that Hawaii was a modern place, a modern American place, and not in old fashioned and not substandard and not out of touch. Absolutely. And next slide is how I got to know the building first. This is when one of the architects was still around, who unfortunately passed away last year. We'll use and see if we're on the next slide already. Yeah, we are. This is Frank Haynes, who's a founding principal of Architects Hawaii. And he was helping with the tour day of Dokomomo. I think this was in 2013, rather soon after I arrived. I was rather impressed, you know, how enthusiastic, how Frank was, you know, talked about the whole development of the street. And as you can see here in particular, the Kenrock Building that we see in the back. And the Kenrock Building is currently threatened to be torn down and to be redeveloped. The site, which made us to do a little documentary. And so if we go to the next slide and the next slide will be your documentary, the photo which you had kindly done this shooting here. Good job. And you want to share that with you, right? Yeah, so the Kenrock Building, even though it is called a building, actually consists of three separate buildings, developed over a period of about 12 years. And interestingly, although there was a long time span there, they all have a similar facade facing the street. They do go together very nicely. There are some differences between them, which we will get into very shortly. But as you can see, there's a central building and then two on either side. And they were not built in that order. That today they are called Buildings A, B, and C. They actually were built at a different time table than the way they are called today. Pardon me for being so inarticulate there. Let's go to our next picture. Yeah, we went and because I'm how far away is 7,286 miles, it says at the bottom because I googled that. Okay. And Miracle 2 modern technology, we can do that. So here you can see the layout. And you were pointing out that in the back, that big chunky, chunky piece is Walmart or Sam's Club. And so before in front of that, the finger, like the three fingers is the Kenrock building. Right. It's like the letter E. I also put in the north, yeah, and I put in the north area here, which is always very important to us. So we can see that the buildings are principally facing south, which is the street down there. So these three fingers basically get east-west orientation. So you can get some cross breeze. However, the middle building is actually sort of two buildings back-to-back. So we've got two offices with back-to-back. So we got exterior walkways here, which we can see on the right side. But these buildings are a little disadvantaged because they're double loaded corridors, but with two separate outdoor accesses. Whereas the other ones, which we'll see, have single loaded corridors. So orientation-wise, which is always the first check if a building is good. The client brief, which Alyssa from DoCo Mobile kindly provided us with a brief of the client. That client particularly asked for a building to be in balance with the natural elements, which wasn't that unusual if we're talking with century 50s because air conditioning was invented, as Don Hibbert once taught me when the first one was. That was a little earlier even, but it wasn't really implemented. No, it was uncommon. So these buildings are still pretty biochromatic and tropical exotic. Yes. And just very beautiful in that sense. So let's move on to the next picture, which is... I think I got this here from a brush here. So thank you guys for providing. And then our originally architects of Y, as you can see, provided these original drawings. So this is here, that longitudinal section of a particular part of the building, that middle part, where the offices are basically floating above, which we see on the next picture that you took. So the whole side is pretty much like a big parking lot, which makes sense for mid-century, where the car was the new thing. Yes. Bring it by, and you want to maximize parking. And then you made the buildings pretty much float above, which is also a theme and residential in Honolulu. Yes, it is. Beautiful two to three story walk-ups. Yeah, Ray, go to the next picture. We talked about... There we go. Yeah, and this is what Martin is saying. The central building of the Kenrock Building cluster is, as he said, floating above a parking area. So because it doesn't get to use the first and second floor for offices, two floors of offices are put on one floor. That's why it's double-loaded. The other two buildings have a first floor and a second floor, and that makes them a little bit different. So if we go to the next picture here, we see how that building then looks from the outside. So due to the orientation of the building, as you can see here, this is probably somewhere midday, where you get a little bit of that shading from the overhang. But you can also already see that you can get the very west evening sun, and the very early morning sun is sort of hitting that facade. So there are buildings by Frank Haines, something that's very close to me, Sinclair Library, just the other building next to my very unfortunate building I have to work in. But Sinclair Library is a Frank Haines designed building that is very beautiful and perfectly placed and positioned due to the sun and this building here. But this is a commercial typology, and the lot was given. So again, I think they did the best that they were able to under the given conditions. Correct. And you know what? This is a deep lot. The frontage is not so extensive, but it extends back from the frontage. So the only direction that they could put the buildings was in the way that they are. And that does, as you said, get the morning and afternoon sun, but that was the configuration of where they were able to build. And if we go to the next picture, we can see one of the other two buildings, which you explained, and they're basically two-story. And so they're sort of framing the lot at the very ever end and at the diamond head end. Correct. This is also the permanent picture whenever we see that. That's right. That's right. So should we move on to the next one? Let's go to our next picture. And here's another one of the plans. This is for the first time that was built. It's dated 1948. And so the construction was from 1948 to 1960. And of course in between, the existing buildings continued to function in between those periods where they were building new things too. And we were analyzing that. We said it's a very clean, very efficient and effective floor plan that you like the size of the rooms, the units, everything very tangible. And with the shared spaces like the bathrooms, so centralized, it reminded us of another building that's unfortunately gone, which is Ward Plaza, which had a similar layout with centralized bathrooms where people every now and then were working down the exterior hallways, catching debris, catching a breath and basically going and chatting to each other. So a very, very social attitude, very social notion of the building, very sort of human scale, you said as well, right? And also exterior access, no interior hallways. You're going from your offices, you're walking outdoors rather than indoors, and therefore you don't have to air condition that, and therefore I think, and I think you think too, it's a more pleasant experience, particularly in our climate, where it doesn't get brutally cold. Absolutely, not at all. So let's move on to the next picture, where we can see the other little wing, and that's just the diamond head wing, and you can see the Alamoana building in the background that we will talk about again in a little bit. So once again, very, very pleasant as you say, and we got another drawing. The next slide is again here, looking at the elevation, the original pictures. And as sort of casual, the buildings are as clean and clean and mean as these drawings. They're just like nice and simple. There's nothing made up. There's no Hawaiian ornament needed to make them look cool as they do today. This is simple, but this is appropriate. So we can call this, you know, tropical exotic in the best sense, don't we? Yes, agreed. So the next picture is looking again at the other sort of framing wing here, which shows us again the layout of the buildings and the sort of clean horizontal line, which is always something very iconic and very sort of typical format century. And the next picture is a beautiful shot you took, which made me curious when I was zooming in. I saw that little bird at the very bottom right, which was either landing or taking off. And it's sort of celebrating that also very sort of, almost aero seren and TWA-like there, a building we just talked about some shows ago. And look at that stair. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that sexy? Wonderful. And it flares out at the bottom. My heart is bleeding, and my heart is bleeding to see that go away. And it better be replaced by something that's at least as good. That's what we hope. But it's got that flare at the bottom of the stairway that is a nice smooth curve on the inner side and the lower side. And let's look at that stair on the next picture as well. Right. In a shot from looking down at it. And we were saying it's almost sucking people up there. The second floor is traditionally a little disadvantaged because on the first floor people can just roll into the unit whereas going up is always a challenge. But here through the excellence of architecture and detailing and tectonics, they just made it sort of very welcoming to get up. And this is also from a time period where they were doing these beautiful stair railings, individual stair railings out of wrought iron that were very clean, very geometric, but very typical of the time. And I think probably something you would never see today because it would take a lot of hand work and that's probably not something that people would pay for or be able to afford anymore. Unfortunately. And another very iconic thing they did in the past we'll see on the next picture. And another typology that this one here is sort of a sister or a sibling of, we said as motels or as little strip malls, which is a little strip mall if you want so. And essentially they were always incorporating greenery and planters. And not only here in Hawaii where we have a 12 month growing cycle but also on the mainland. And these planters are sort of ironically mostly covered up by roofs or by hallways here so they had to be watered artificially and drip irrigated or whatever. But this shows that if tenants still care for the building they keep it green and people do hear. So we have to say this building is not empty, is not vacated by the clients or by the customers. People love that building. Still working, it's functioning, it's looking well until that raises the question why replacing it. Well because you can make more money. You can make more money developing it in another way. Yeah, but before we talk about that let's celebrate what the building is or soon we'll have been. So next picture is what you took here is the end, the front end of the building where the hallway sort of slips or slides into this sort of plane. A very beautiful architectural composition. And the next slide shows that in the sort of elevation of appearance. And you can see also that we've seen that in other very utilitarian functional simple but elegant building. Yes. Of the few story walk-ups that very cleverly hear the walkways are basically widened at certain points where here where the staircase lands and then they are narrowed and goes into that little goes into that little slit and that little slit goes into the sort of the money-shot part of the building which we see on the next picture which you so iconically caught here on your photograph and these are these front ends of the hallways that look so iconic and that look so fresh and so we were saying we were discussing yesterday they almost have a residential scale that would almost be the nice of a resident and biochromatically these are best because these are facing south so the horizontal overhang takes away the mid-day sun where the framing slabs take care of the morning and the evening so this is perfect, biochromatically perfect and I can see myself and you having all my ties up there on the lawn. Yeah, looking at cars going by. But you see also too something else that is very typical of this time in the mid-century period the contrast of the smooth white concrete of the second floor and the textured Arizona flagstone of the first floor and that contrast was something people really liked in mid-century. And let's zoom into that on the next slide which you took some nice detail shots here Arizona flagstone as people can tell comes from Arizona where I've been for two years before I came to join you to Soto here that was very popular on the mainland in sort of the middle class developments, residential fireplaces were clad with that and certain parts of the entrances and they were emphasized in the horizontality it reminds me of a building in Chicago in the north coast when Frank Barthright was still working for Sullivan and so over emphasizing the horizontal mortar joint and sort of diminishing the vertical one it's all about that. You said before this has little to do with Hawaiian locality and lava rock and all this stuff we talked about but this is about we want to be as good as on the mainland or better. Absolutely, right that is exactly it. We are showing that we are as modern and as up to date as anyplace else in the United States that was something that was very much of the zeitgeist of that time period in the Hawaiian Islands. And isn't that a model that should still be true, right? We live on the most beautiful place in the United States so every building has to be more beautiful than anywhere else, right? That's right, that's right. We shouldn't give up on that agenda. So the next picture is another building because K Boulevard isn't just that building there's plenty of them and another one is almost across the street tell us which one that is and what are your memories about that one. Right, this is the Boycent Paint Company building which is late 1940s so it's the same age as the first Kenrock building and it was originally built for the Boycent Paint Company. They did not however just sell paint there. There was a retail store for housewares, furniture, etc. My mother bought our dinner plates there which we used when I was a little kid she still talks about that. My ex-sister-in-law worked there in the 1960s and unfortunately unlike the Kenrock building the Boycent Paint Company is in very poor condition. It does have however the same Arizona flagstone as we can see in these pictures here as the Kenrock building so just down the street we've got a sister or brother or cousin of the Kenrock building this is probably doomed as well right next to it is the newest very tall high-rise on Capilani Boulevard and the very poor and rather derelict condition of the building suggests that it's not going to be around much longer either unfortunately. So now let's get to the point that we have to unfortunately and go to the next picture please the reason why these buildings all have to go is as you were already hinting is pretty much capitalism and it's predator capitalism because you want to go higher and bigger and the building in the back here is dated 1980s and this is sort of more mediocre mainland architecture that one basically that invaded us back in the 80s at that corner and that trend of basically densifying and getting more money out of your lot is continuing and let's move on to the next picture this is a building picture I took when it was under construction shortly after I came in 2012 this is on the Alamoana mall side and this is they built on top of a parking garage this is general growth properties the owner here and look at that building where is the lanai for me there is no such thing as not having a lanai in Hawaii but here they do it this is a glazed microwave and if you have a kid until the mall was building that funny little playground feature very recently when they redeveloped the former Nordstrom wing you could not play anywhere unless behind your glazed and baking window right in your window let's go to the next picture that is a building a little further down on the ever end this is next to the which almost we talked about that in almost every other shoulder blaze they'll send which worries us so much their redevelopment and they built that which they call the symphony and the symphony that's happening in that building is the symphony again of the sun baking its tenons unless they put that push that AC button which basically prevents them from basically it glares and it burns almost right yeah and remember that there was a controversy for a time about they had used a tint that was illegal because it was either too shiny or too dark and at which point it was impossible to take it off financially so it's still there exactly and another no go is the orientation of the building because this thing is blocking the Malka Makai winds they should have turned this 90 degrees which gets to the next picture of one of our most favorite building yeah which was not only the first high rise in Honolulu but the first but it was on Kapiolani Boulevard and this is the Alamoana building and how popular that building has been and still is shows you this sort of collage of references we have made to Y5O to Magnum to Blue Hawaii Elvis and all these things and next picture is a Malka this is the building not quite completed because when it was completed it actually looked like at the top right is a picture I found on the web and I love that one because it looks like the picture of the symphony we had before but it's the opposite because this building here then was sort of completed with beautiful sun retractable louvers that were gold tinted on one side and dull aluminum on the other one and that's probably the gold side closing and keeping the building cool I mean what we call the cool commercial classic or something that show if you guys are interested go back so let's look at today two pictures you took here the next page here this is the newest high rise development that just went up next to the boys in building and you saw a man without a head here yes poor man he was walking around headless and we can assume the way we see him here he's not on the upper end of the food chain I would think so and this is what that building is about it's called affordable and if we do a quick assessment the building I think orientation wise you know never mind it's also blocking the wind but architecturally sort of artistically it has a nice that's good it has obviously here a single double loaded corridor because on the east and west we see that slit of glass and at least it tries to bring light in there we were saying okay you know if it's sort of principally not that bad how is it architecturally does it touch you the solo as much as the Kenrock and boys in buildings do no no it does not and that there are lots of reasons for that and certainly everything that we've been talking about a high rise can never have the detailing that is a low rise building can a high rise is always going to be a much less human structure than a low rise building is we also acknowledge as we have to that Honolulu is a big city with lots of big buildings in it we're not going to undo that but one of the things that you'd like to say is that if you're going to replace something you've got to replace it with something that's equally special or equally valid okay let's conclude the show that way with an optimistic outlook and let's go to the next slide because in little respect for this agreement the Alamoana building a commercial development this century had the same sexiness as the Kenrock building obviously in a different way but unfortunately now it's naked it's stripped naked so let's go to the next slide which shows when the emerging generation myself went up into the Alamoana building and exploring it we're looking down on the boulevard and seeing a very very unique feature of it which is you told me that it's unique to Honolulu in this way which is the alignment with these huge wonky pot trees and that greenery and we were just saying what if that greenery could be the inspiration for the next phase of the innovation of tradition and let's go to the next picture and you share a little bit because you're an expert in that building because I see on the very upper left at a review about the project right well this is one of Martin's classes projects and this is Primitiva 2 and the purpose of doing these projects is to be innovative is for these students at UH to think differently and think about different stuff and to be more open to the natural environment which we see in the rendering here and of course in the model you can see with the stairs going between the two levels of the build of the floors there's a lot of openness in the next picture we again playfulness being innovative the open stairways are actually lined with a kind of netting and this is where kids can play this is a safe place it's not metal there are movable nets in which kids can clamber, climb go on the stairs, do stuff within the building that they live in and if we go to the next picture we've got this is a particularly interesting thing and Martin pointed this out to me on the top of the Alamoana building was the La Ronde rotating restaurant and that is of course a horizontal disc but at the top of Primitiva 2 there could be a vertical disc and that could be a treadmill so as he says it's like a hamster wheel it's like a little a little pet running on a wheel endlessly people could use that as a form of exercise but them doing that turning that wheel can also do things mechanically in the building like help run the elevators well of course it's still fantasy at this point but this is the type of thinking that can be done outside the box literally to get us to a different type of outlook as to how Honolulu gets redeveloped and the final picture is showing then how the building was then only then looked like because that's how it works and it also has water curtain walls to introduce another natural element so I think our pitch is the sort of that we say if you have to densify our city which we're not against and you have to take away these jewels we want you to think it over and really be sure you want to do it but if you do it you have to replace it as we said a couple times with something significantly better than it already was very very good so that's what we give the developers and hope they listen to us there we go well I think that's going to bring us to the end it does it brings us to the end of our program today and there he is back on the screen hello again everyone thank you Martin for joining us from Switzerland from Zurich we'll be back at some point I'm going to be traveling myself but Martin will be back on the air at least verbally are you going to be on the air next week Martin or somebody else well next week we have our concluding show with our documomo board members look forward to that one then you will travel next week and then we will of course do a show I'm so eager to hear because the SOTO is going to the to the world conference of Tiki and so Tiki Oasis San Diego I'm looking forward to that one and for that one we will both be back in studio so again everybody we'll see you on the next time you tune in to think Tech Hawaii's human humane architecture and until then aloha