 Good afternoon. Welcome back to Human-Human-Architecture here on ThinkTek-Hawaii. I'm your host Martin Despang and I'm broadcasting here live from half around the world, 12 hours apart. Early in the morning from Hanover, Germany, my native place and I'm here on sabbatical. And I take the opportunity to, every other week, with our beloved co-host, the solo Brown, to look at our islands of Hawaii from an even more distance view. Today we got to do it without the solo because he's unfortunately sick. So the solo, please get better soon. This is especially unfortunate because this show is for you and about you. But nevertheless, I will do my very best to honor you the best way I can. So let's jump to the first slide here, which is documenting, illustrating where I was until most recently, which is my actual hometown of Hanover in northern Germany. I am doing post-occupancy evaluation and evidence-based design, looking at my projects from my critical practice and looking how they're holding up and how they're doing over the times. And as the solo once said or judged that this is probably my most ticky project, that's at the very corner right, which I've been doing with my family business about two decades ago for the expo in 2000. These are tram stations. They're indeed made of one of the most ticky materials, which is basalt lava. We didn't ship this in all the way from Hawaii because we have some volcanic areas from the past as well in Germany. And I was exceptionally, I usually use public transportation, which I promote, which is project, typology is promoting, but I was using here as an exception to the rule, my quarter of a century young French micro-compact car to commute all the way back to the south of my country here to Munich, but not without saying goodbye to my best German friends, Kirsten and Stefan here, where we're celebrating in their ticky basement bar, which you can see here. Again, just illustrating the fascination, not to say obsessions of Germans with Hawaii. And we about a year ago, almost exactly a year ago, when we were celebrating my birthday, which we were doing, opening a show with a year ago. And that was the picture on the top right is referencing to that. We were celebrating in what was surprising for the Soto in a very iconic, ticky place in downtown Munich in the Trader Vicks, in the basement again of the most upscale by Rochelle Hof hotel. And again, I'm back to Munich now and that gets us to the next slide, which actually only a few steps away from the heart of the city, central downtown on a little where Trader Vicks is located. This gentleman here has a gallery and he's a art collector and art historian and his name is Daniel Blau. And what does he have to do with Hawaii a lot currently? He's in the news because he's very provocatively having a hypothesis about next slide, please. This gentleman here who is Mark Benioff. He's a Salesforce CEO, has made a fortune with that and loves Hawaii, has a home there and wants to contribute to Hawaii in a larger scale. And he has bought this piece here, which is a statue, which he believed was worth quite some money. We're talking about 7 million. And we can go to the next slide, please. Here are some of the headlines of this sort of scandalous discussion. These two men from our cultures have going on because Mr. Blau was saying this might not be worth. It might be a thing as it says here, you could find in a tiki bar and could only be worth $5,000. So this is a very interesting, from my point of view, sort of funny thing. Next slide from DeSoto's point of view who is working for the institution that Mr. Benioff was donating it to, maybe not so much. And this is DeSoto's workplace. This is the Bishop Museum. We continue to talk about, I'm particularly interested in the centerpiece, that sort of replica of a fetched all-around hut. And we constantly talk about the relationship of skins or, as we say, at some point we're going to do, show that we're going to call address code, address code. Next slide. So here is that sort of debated piece on display in DeSoto's Bishop Museum. And next slide. We, however, want to sort of get out of the museum, get into pop culture because many call tiki, Polynesian pop. And we found these pieces here just randomly online while Googling, being constantly in touch and doing brainstorm. And we found these pieces, again, rather compelling, rather eye-catching, rather humorous. Again, tiki is not sort of a serious representation of a culture from the past, but it's a perception. It's what the culture actually really has never been, that concretely, but in the imagination of people, how people thought a place of their dreams would be, that's what tiki is about. Next slide. Last time in the show about tiki and DeSoto having been representing tiki, the tiki culture from Hawaii, which is considered to be the epic epicenter of tiki. And he was a keynote speaker at the most, you know, the world's largest tiki conference. And so we were assessing and saying, well, and people, and many, most of the presentations had to deal in one way or the other with our islands of Hawaii. So many people considered Hawaii or Hawaiian islands the epicenter of tiki. When they come, however, they might be disappointed because one place, we were saying, well, we can only remember two places left. One was Wailana Coffee House, and that, in many way, has disappeared, has closed its doors. So what is probably left is La Mariana. At the very top picture, you can see tropical tourist expert Suzanne being there. And at the middle picture, we're featuring in the show, we're Brutal Visiting. This is the place, the only place where we think we can, you know, bring people and host people and give them a little bit of that Polynesian pop touch. So next picture, we're in trouble, we said, and this was even confirmed. I'm sort of on the mailing list of this organization, which is called the Huki Lau. And they use this, you know, Hawaiian term, which is a community fishing event rather cleverly and a broader sense of saying we bring people of the tiki culture together all around the world, or at least all around America, and they're having these events. This is a very recent event here from a couple days ago. And on the right, you can see listed the places where that was going on. You got many cities in the United States. You got Italy. You got London. What is missing are Hawaii. So trouble, trouble. Next slide. So our show is about giving hope and giving suggestions. And so we, ever since we did the show last year, a year ago, we were thinking there must be places that continue the tiki fascination and obsession. And indeed we were successful. This here is, we found this, found this when tropical tourist expert Suzanne was on her summer research trip. This is on our sort of parallel strip to Kawa Kawa Avenue. This is Coheil Avenue. And here we were in a place that looks rather tiki. It looks very, as DeSoto explained it, it's about the dark. It's about the cave. It's about the mysterious. This place has to offer these things. You know, and then you start to think about authenticity and there's this sort of thing about the authenticity of fakeness because again, tiki is a perception, is a dream, is made up. So it is not real by itself. But the question is, what's the quality of fakeness? Here we were thinking, you know, it's very sort of, one of the subtitles we had in mind for the show was tacky tiki token, but we thought we'd leave this up to the audience. So please go to this place. If you knock on that, what looks like a basalt, you know, hole or cove. It sounds rather hollow. So there's Styrofoam on there, which is coated with some fiberglass stuff. So it's, it's very obviously, you know, you know, unreal. And I think it's sort of doing this in an eye-winking way. Next picture. Inside you got that seating area. You got that panoramic of what's not that far away outside. Actually that iconic diamond had view. Next slide. And on the outside, it's decorated with sort of fetishized, you know, articles collected this big pineapple with a straw in there. And you can actually get very cheap mites in there for five bucks. So it's, it's, it's a fun place that is obviously called Lava Tube Waikiki here. And it has, which we consider to be a must for Hawaii with our most privileged climate. It has an outdoor seating area, which is on the, on the left. And the next slide talking eye-winking here. You've been welcomed by these tiki guys here with a red eye and welcome to join the world of tiki. But there's another place, which we think is even better. I think they're run by the same people, but I'm not quite sure, but go to the next slide. And the other place is again, has been inspected here by our tropical tourist expert, Suzanne, who is always interested in the erotic exoticness of the tiki culture. This is why she came to Hawaii some two decades ago, and that's why she has returned and is continuously doing her research here. So next slide, this is how we found the place. It is rather underscript. It looks like this is in the center of Waikiki. This is where we have a forest of buildings and not a real green forest anymore. But there is this little oasis here where you see these statues standing there. So you're wondering what's going on. It, you know, makes you curious and you start to walk into the place, which we're doing now. Next slide. So, or not yet. So this is how the place sort of explains our brands itself with a rather sort of ironic and humorous description of saying you can call us whatever you want, but we call us CC, which stands for the Cuckoo Coconut Waikiki Place. So again, it's alluding to, you know, what only we have. We have cocoa palms. We have cocoa nuts and we enjoy life and reach out to the low-hanging fruit. That's what people think and that's the reason why they come to Hawaii. Us who have to work there know it's a little bit different, but the ones who really are interested in the place try to live that dream on a daily basis, which I'm privileged to do into Soto as well. So when he's back to health, especially, so again, get better buddy. Next picture here. This is now when we enter the place. So again, it's a very dungeony place. It's a dark place because it makes sense because the heat is hitting us on the island. So we got to protect ourselves and Tropic here, David Rockwood, who by the way, became grandpa today with a grandson, the son and his daughter, the mother as well. So congratulations, David, awesome grandpa, Rockwood from now. We love it. So here we always say what we do when we think about with our emerging generation, how we should build. If we wouldn't have to build high, if we could stay low, this would be the way to build. This is tensile structure. This reminds us of an idol of David, who is Friado, who has been built in this sort of very light way. These are basically umbrellas put next to each other. And there's this very clever gutter system that looks like trunks were carved out and used to drain off the water to irrigate the plants that we have. So this is very tropical, exotic. This is very ticky. This is very performative. This isn't just ornamental. This does a job, does a functional job, which Soto keeps confirming me Hawaiian culture has always been doing. And there's decoration in there. This is another, this is another panoramic. They have live music there, which isn't necessarily Hawaiian music. It's cosmopolitan. It's from all over the world. It's what the people like. It's fun. It's a lot of fun. This is a fun place. Next slide. And yeah, you got, you got a combination of everything. Lots of things. It's stuffed with attributes of what people believe our Hawaiian culture is about. Of course, you got the drinks that have been invented by John the Beachcomber. As the Mai Tai, we already talked about a lot of flow and drinks like that. So everything is themed about that. That you hardly find again in Waikiki. Waikiki has and is increasingly, we have lost international marketplace, which we're doing one of our very first shows, which we're mourning because it has become a mall that has been themed and branded and excused as being Hawaiian, but we believe it is not that anymore. So we were very happy to see this sort of very undescript place, this hidden gem here in the jungle of Waikiki that is still about what Waikiki used to be. I mean, it's, it's interpreting that obviously in a contemporary way, but this, you know, the Waikiki not that long ago, 100 years ago and you know, European terms, that's nothing how Waikiki was basically swamp or in best case palm groves. And so this brings back that sort of memory and the desire to still have that. So it's satisfying that need that the sort of tourist has. Next slide. We had another scholar here. This is Maggie Sagamaki. She was stopping by who was with us and Steve Kodegavara. She's now in Australia. She came in different capacities. She teaches there at the university and she is also a Doko Momo member. And so she was very curious what that guy was doing there, talking statues. This is a big lizard. This might be the guy called lizard. So as you can see at the bottom right, she was curious, what in the world is this guy doing here? And next slide. Again, this is a combination. This is a mix of cultural attributes. And we've been talking about that quite a bit in one of our last shows, which we're referencing at the top right. This sort of was spotting that little hope boy sign and he continues to do his German listens and you know, he can't get away from that in the future. He gets a break from it now, but he would have said something very well that he can see as being part of that sort of little booth there, which I reference at the bottom right. This is Jägermeister, which probably everyone knows, but which people might not know. It's very close to the northern part of Germany where I come from in Wolfenbüttel. So this place is not afraid of mixing cultural attributes. It's not absolutely serious about itself. It's fun. It's eye-winking about what it alludes to and it's inclusive. It's not exclusive about wine things as tiki is not exclusive to anything. It's very inclusive. Anything that works to sort of fuel that fantasy of the tropical exotic is allowed is legitimate. Next slide. And this goes to another German lesson for him. It's for De Soto is singing, a skip can be of Hawaii, which means there's no beer in Hawaii. This is a classic tune from its century in Germany. Of course, there is beer now, but again, there's the sign of cuckoo, cucko nuts here. And my bonus son, Yoni was saying, Hey, look at the guy. You know, he's representing both cultures. He has a pineapple. This is Hawaii. And here has the beer mug, which is of course the beer capital here, Bavaria in Germany, which is the hometown of his mother, tropical tourist experts. And next slide back to Hawaii. This is De Soto with the statues and he was giving images here of some that are replicas, even in the museum, not all are original, he said some are lost. So some had to be replicated or even made a copy of them. And next slide other ones are original and obviously sort of deteriorating conditions, but also they have made some forms from original ones and use them as a mold to craft something that's as close to the original, but yet again, it is not the original piece. That's what De Soto tells us. So next slide, we want to sort of slowly but surely phase out and do some of our polemic propositions that we do at the end of the shows. I'm also assessing this is at the Larry Stark center here, headquarters, my youngest son, Lenny, when I was visiting him, he's still back in the North. We were watching the original Hawaii 5.0 and to see what part of the architecture plays in it. As we said, the major role, it's an actor and this episode here is from season four, episode 13 and it is called, is this the way to run a paradise? And it's basically about people going against the urbanization of Honolulu. You see at the top left picture and they're sort of using sort of voodoo things. By the way, you know, talking about Yoni, he has made this really nice voodoo puppet piece here that goes with that. Thanks, Yoni. So here they're using sort of a maxims referring to sort of the authentic culture to go up against and they're creating this voodoo mask and sculpture to go up against the sprawl of out west in what is now Kapolei. And next slide. And we all know what happened to Kapolei and we want to make suggestions how to improve. This is my Yumi and John Hara on their show who have built the campus of West Minoa and we're thinking about what about you don't sprawl it with single family and one-story commercial buildings. Why don't you do what we propose primitive us which are tall buildings, which are inclusive buildings, which are organic buildings, which you won't even see because they're hard. They use vegetation as fenestration. Next slide. Again, I get sentimental. The few things in there are still left. I get sentimental about this is something that I said in the last show, I was mistaken for one of Henry J. Kaiser's catamarans, but Don and the soda told me it's not, but at least it has these, you know, tacky, ticky statues on the ship, which I like. So again, I'm obviously desperate and hungry for some of that stuff that's left, but we don't have much left. Unfortunately. Next slide, which is our last slide here. This is referring to my oldest son, Joey, who is with my daughter-in-law venturing out and to sort of finds this particularly interesting because they Joey has a has a has a recent master in automotive management and engineering and he decided to before he maybe goes into that or whatever he's doing to be an ambassador of Hawaiian culture, not the indigenous, but a modern aspect of it that is actually not that modern either because it was 70 years ago when Japanese people bought shaved eyes to the island of Hawaii and he got really excited about it when he was there and he said, hey, let's be a representative of that. So let's do some cosmopolitan cultural correspondence in a culinary way and they were swinging by in this case here, the island of Malta and and see how they can represent again. And we, I think, you know, the solo got really excited about the project. Thank you to Soto and he suggested. So we're going to do a show about it. So let's let's do that next week. Well, actually not next week. Next week we have another Doko Momo show and the week after I think we're going to return and talk about Joey and Clara's enterprise and how again, the point is maybe not literally, but figuratively how a culture could and should evolve because again, we're living now in the beginning of the 21st century. That is different than mid-century last century, which Doko Momo is mainly interested about portraying. But again, human human architecture goes further because we're interested and Soto is interested because he's going to live long again, get better this Soto, but in 50 years, his job will be to look at what is worth keeping and preserving what has been created today as well. So with that, we're at the end of the show. Thank you for your attention. And so see you next week for another Doko Momo show then see you the week after for explaining more in detail what Joey and Clara are doing and until then stay happy and healthy to Soto and totally tiki. Bye bye.