 Excited to have you all back to this, our 270th show of Think Tech Hawaii's human-humane architecture. And you, Eric, who runs us, our producer, please tell us which accumulated viewer you are who is watching us now. Hey, Martin, the humane architecture viewer is up to 14,590. Okay, keep that up, viewing us. And us is our read from the filling station here, or the Tri-Enverat with DeSoto Brown, a Bishop Museum historian in his Bishop Museum, hi DeSoto. Good morning, good day. Our Boston-Banish booster, Matt Noblette, however, today from Detroit, Michigan, hi Matt. Good, yeah, good evening. Exactly, on the other end of that mainland. And me, Martin de Spang, from the Waikiki Grant Hotel. That is the Easy Breezy, but since we're still having these rowdy combustion engines, I'm going to, I'm as inside as we all are. But with this first slide up here, we should be, we want to be all outside. And hopefully this is where we're continuously moving, talking moving. And since you're in Detroit and you have become our foreign correspondent, Matt, can you give us a little bit of your sort of synopsis of having been back to Detroit? Yeah, I mean, I think in many ways it's encouraging to see quite a bit of construction activity. I mean, I'm looking out at a skyline with quite a few cranes on it. And certainly sort of hotel and nightlife opportunities are back and quite lively. But it is still very much a city, kind of a post-industrial urban landscape, meaning there's a lot of empty lots and there's just not a lot of life, kind of public life on the sidewalks and on the streets, other than sort of just normal work traffic and things like that. But it's actually been quite interesting to be here for the last 24 hours and see signs of life, let's say, quite a bit of that. All right. And regarding the news up there at the very top, while we're sort of worried about not people out there, which they should, but in that circumstance here when Trump said protest, protest, protest, and you must have helped meds that no one showed, that's great when we don't have people out there. For that purpose at least, yes. So, and I guess speaking of national politics, we got the polls up there at least from last night, a double check. I think it's still the same while we're really happy to have the Senate secured as blue. And not that we could have hoped any different, but the House might, there's only one more win away to keep it red, which is sad, but we don't want this to overshadow our enthusiasm about Josh Green. We haven't really, we were still under the impact of all of that. So I don't think at least for myself, we haven't sufficiently showed enthusiasm and appreciation and congratulations. So I will do this here from my side. Josh, thanks for being with us and working with us on all the levels because that's what it takes. And the sort of the one we remember the most and being engaged in the matters of the built environment, Eric, if we can get the show quote up from the very top right and to whom do these sexy legs belong that we otherwise don't see the body going with it? Well, the sexy skinny legs sexiness is questionable belong to me and I am sitting next to Neil Abercrombie and we were both at one of your class. I don't know what you would want to call that not critiques necessarily but in which the students present the aspects of the different things that they worked on during the semester and we got to react that time to the various thoughts that they were coming up with for developing things for the future and there are a number of things that not only did they come up with but under the guidance of their teacher who's Martin Despang they think outside the box and they use their young imaginations and young thoughts to break away from everything that's already been established and try to think of new ways to build things for people to live in and that's what Neil was reacting to and that's what I was a part of as well and I'm going to be doing that again fairly soon for your class and so I'll be looking forward to that. Thanks for confirming this way. Thank you. Hey, Matt, since we shared that you were just talking with a national German government and their sort of diplomatic branches and speaking of informed clients and informed citizens we talked before the show, Neil's qualification that impressed you. You want to reiterate that, maybe? Oh, right, he studied urban policy and planning or something along those lines. Exactly and sorry that the show quote in the picture is a little bit blurry but what he holds in his hand is what he had his PhD thesis based upon which is Lewis Mumford's Wither Honolulu and he came with that and said, I'm prepared and a little anecdote from the emerging generation aside as you were referring to DeSoto is that one of the team members, Dustin Solars, who makes because we charge them too much tuition and fees so they got to make a living somehow and Dustin is making kitchens near the airport and he told me he basically this was the first year of jungleism in Waikiki in 2015. That's how time fly is by and Neil was running from 10 till 14. So he happened to be a kitchen customer of Dustin and Dustin told us that when he came, Dustin was so excited about the project that he showed in the model and that got misses and Mr. Abercrombie totally excited about discussing what one should have done and could have done and so on and so we said that's the best peer assessment you can get if the highest politicians get engaged and get excited about it, right? So emerging generation keep on rocking and rolling this direction, right? And get to the next slide DeSoto I should have been actually you want to be with us, thank you. I should have been with you in your front yard that we see at the bottom right because you had a premiere of a movie and did you have the chance to watch it or hear about it and we see it down there at the bottom left? No, I did not. I certainly know the setting very well, which and just as an aside, Bishop Museum has this great advantage of what we call the Great Lawn which today is a very large open space in urban Honolulu today which is used for all kinds of different events including as you experienced a movie showing and that is something which is we extremely fortunate to have we could never replicate it now with the amount of money that it would cost to have this big open space in Honolulu. So that's just me plugging something that Bishop Museum has as its legacy which is irreplaceable. Yeah, and thanks to you having that because the legacy of dry in drive-in movie theaters which is as American as you can get it, you lost. There isn't any left anymore. And Matt, I don't know if your next time you go to Munich, please go to see in the distance your founding fathers Günther's premier project of the Olympics in 72 and the tower next to it, the needle-like tower. You see it in the distance when you're in the movie, drive-in movie theater in Aschein and so, you know, the irony is it comes from here, it's done here and over there it exists. As we were talking, same with the upmost tiki restaurant and bar is in the basement of the most upscale hotel, the Bayerische Hof. Not anymore, although I was back to La Mariana and it's getting back up on its feet so it's good to have, but it's the only one left, right? So we ironically had, because on Thursday when it was, I have two, which I don't have to but I'm happy to coach the evening so I couldn't go. So we had to actually go to the ward, consolidated theater and I left with a taste of like, okay, I feel really, really guilty of my skin because the movie portrays what we with our skin I have done to you local guys at the Soto and so that's really, really hardening and heartbreaking and getting us to the next slide. We, you just sort of, I think you charged us last time because we were talking about Kakaako and our Kakaako you said, well, we will have to see how that, you know goes on in the future and so, Semi and I went and one of the things they said, we don't have to go back, but you must have read, you know, sugar cane and bracket blame. One of the locals were saying in the movie, okay, that's all they do, you know, to rake in the money, cash crop and so we were thinking by going from Kakaako and top left is showing you met with Bill and Semi taking you out to what's it called Tango, right? And Bundit was the facilitator of that one. So thank you for that. So we know how that part of Kakaako looks like and that is still how it used. So these howly cowboys once below that one is our Kakaako where, which is really, you know, I think the best is actually the graffiti and the graffiti is local artist and there are kind of eye-winking and they deal I think in one way or another one with local culture while what you see on the right behind the pying mobile that Semi proudly poses himself in front of is the collection which is one of the first high rises by Kamehameha school and that one in our discussion we had was like, well, that's cash crop too. That's cash crop architecture where you basically do it for profit and it's a little bit as, you know, Medina when we were talking before the show is like, well, you grow a pineapple and then you cut it and chunks and you give like two pieces to the local people and the rest you ship out for profit, right? That's how it feels a little bit at least to us after this discussion, you know, in that, if that's fair to say. Yeah, and I think the thing that also comes up in this situation, which is somewhat unplanned and maybe a little peripheral, but it's very valid. Matt, you were just talking about there being street life and activity on the streets in Detroit coming back from desolation and how heartening that is. And I think one of the things that's really good to change in Kakaako is and is changing. Kakaako developed as first a residential area with schools, with the movie theater, et cetera. Gradually it became light industrial and the inhabitants of the residents moved out. But even though that character changed, it was still then and still for a large part is a very discombobulated, if you will, amalgamation of lots of different types of buildings, small buildings, walkable streets, et cetera. Now there is the lack of infrastructure, which is a hindrance in some situations where the utilities are not underground and there are no sidewalks, et cetera. But this hodgepodge of diverse buildings of different sizes, shapes, the multitude of street art on the walls, the murals which have been created for powwow, that very disconnection adds a liveliness and a vitality which these mega projects, when they are taking up an entire block with a uniform structure, which is usually the parking plinth, then destroys. So it is a very different feeling. And that is something that Kaka Ako is going to turn into and is in the process of turning into. So what you see in the pictures of the vitality is going to change to a much more sterile, separate and monolithic group of buildings, which is going to be very different. Yeah, and to that regards, the top left picture is the most vital and that is what they call salt and that is actually a repurposed area where they afford it and allow themselves, spoil themselves, I guess, in the pressure of development and going high, not this one because that's the Howley-Yuzzi one, but the very bottom left Eric, that's that salt area. So these are good, you showed that one before because that's like what the Howley's do and then you see bottom left what the locals do. And that in fact is very, also because it is a grown urban fabric and it's some grittiness to it, right? It's not all lean and clean and new. So upon your request to Soto, but you're sitting already so we don't have to worry too much that you're dropping. But next slide is the answer to your question that see how that will develop. So this is what Kamehameh School has out there on their website as far as what the future, their master planning is. And again, there is a lot of wording up there which is actually the project that will be the first one to actually be executed. And before we leave this picture here we wanna read through this. But before that, again, Matt, we've been talking about the traditional and drawing style of the Danish firm that it was famous for rightly so but the difference is then it actually translates through the kind of charming chaos and reality I would like to call it which you can call people basically powered. That's like where things get alive. And so you carry this all the way through while here I think it's a scam. They wanna get across, oh, it's harmless. It's kind of cute because, you know, we drew it by hand. But in fact, when we analyze this more guys where do we get to? What's our assessment of what we see? Let's get it going. Yeah, I just wanna say that when you mentioned salt salt at our cocoa is successful and I really admire it. But when you create things like this it is not possible to know beforehand if people are actually going to come use it and turn it into a space of vitality and human activity and salt has been successful which I really admire when you go there there are lots of people walking around they're doing stuff. That's great. The rendering that we're looking at here makes this place look lively and exciting and wonderful but the proof is going to be when it's built and you can't force people to come to something. They have to want to come and once they come they attract more people. We're very social. We like to go where there's activity. So I hope that this will occur successfully. But again, you cannot be 100% sure that that's going to happen even if you draw a nice rendering. Let's say the rendering is well intended but are there clues from reality why this might not work the way it's suggested? Matt. It is a good question. Just because you draw people in the image doesn't mean there's anything there that actually brought them there. This is of course one of the architects great tricks is to be able to sort of... It's sort of invisible forces. Things you can't necessarily draw that play a big role in how is DeSoto said how attractive or how appealing a place is. I think any kind of development of this scale also brings to question that kind of... It almost by its sheer size implies a kind of demographic shift. Who is actually going to be renting these places and how is that going to change the inherent composition of who goes there and who lives there and occupies that place? Yeah, I have to say and this is exciting. I yet have to... You have to show me your projects which I haven't seen basically in America, right? But the ones of your firm as in my hometown, the North LB and the big town over Hamburg the Unilever building. You guys were programming. You didn't leave it up to here. It's like, okay, these tenants you got to really pull people, right? So it relies on if there's good restaurants and good shops, if not people don't go there. So you as an architect always showed in very sort of private, very exclusive typologies of a bank and other corporate headquarters which by their nature have nothing to do with the public. But you say if it's in a city, it has to be and you made sure and your architecture sets the stage for that because we know what people like and what they don't like. So it's not rocket science to script that, right? And that's what you did. There's a great restaurant at the end at the backside of the Unilever building right at the river. And we know that people like to be on the river and they like to eat. So, you know, and that draws them and there's public shops and you don't see the best is that of course there's security of, you know that not everyone is supposed to walk up into the corporate headquarters. And that's solved in such a discrete way just like before Gunther did it with the Bundestag, right? Where you didn't do basically barricade things off and scare people, right? You can make it very discrete, non-visible and basically give people the feeling oh, this is a public building, although it's not. That's real. And I think, yeah, Unilever does it in a similar way to the Gensai building that we looked at last weekend that it puts the lobby of the office building at the second floor with a big stair going up. So it's not hidden. I mean, anybody who goes there to do business with that company knows via this kind of generous stair that goes up in the security or the kind of registration desk that sits there that that's where they should go. But the ground plane through the entire building is given over to the public. Anybody can walk through either one of those buildings at the ground level and actually be in the atrium which is kind of a special thing, right? Not too many office buildings or corporate buildings actually let you do that. Exactly. And as we will see again, because sorry for the too long, weekly architectural criticism together here but that needs to be done. But we get back to the Gensai building and keep that thought and we will see it again. I will just say there's what we all know is that being out in the sun is uncomfortable. Palm trees rendered here predominately don't give much shade. We don't see the umbrellas that we just saw in the previous image at Salt and we see this concealed surface that radiates back. The only comfortable people are the two guys or people under the tree to the right, right? So I mean, that's why I'm saying this image here is basically fooling us because under real conditions, this is not. And now we get to the architecture that is sort of like nicely not gone into more details but you already get clues because there is very few horizontal double or multiple lines which might indicate balconies. Don't even want to go and call it lanais yet. And so, okay, leave even less sort of doubts go to the next slide. So this is now when the computer kicks in and Kamehameha school tells us the answer to your question, the Soto. How is the future of salt going to look like? Yeah, yeah. And I think one of the things, you know, Martin, you come from a European tradition where there are town squares and in some cities in Europe there are immense plazas and South America as well which come from a European tradition. We don't here in Honolulu have those immense plazas. Now, the immensity and the view plane in one sense can be very uplifting and exciting because the sheer space is so big. But at the same time, you don't want to linger because as you just pointed out, there's no shade. It is paved. You may cross it on your way to something but you're not going to just stand there. It's not likely unless you're looking at the view. So what salt has is a lot of smaller more intimate spaces where you're not overwhelmed and you are protected. You can be in the shade. You can gather really big spaces may look impressive and they may be uplifting to gaze upon but you don't necessarily want to go and live there and spend a lot of time there. So what I'm looking at in this view here is a huge boulevard with an open space right in the center that people are crossing in diagonal, you know, red light situation. But even though there are trees it is not looking like you want to be there for any length of time. Well, where you want to be is I see some blue up there horizontally. There is some pool there. Yeah, but you don't get to go there. That's only the people who own there or rent in there, right? So that's just not what you've been talking about, Matt, where you make the private public or, you know, you may get inclusive. This is highly exclusive. And you got the same old, we're in the 21st century, way into, and Matt, you said, when you left as you said, wouldn't this be the island with basically mainly electric cars because this is the best circumstance? But I want to go, we discussed, we have been dedicating many shows to that, the Soto, and we show quotes, you know, one with two up there to the right. If we find, because we got the most ideal circumstance and it's not only for renewable energy, which would fuel electric cars, but also basically for public transportation of multimodal way as, you know, moving bands and gondolas and all that stuff that even works in winter resorts. But, you know, when you don't have the snow, we remember, you know, we got the job for the canopy for the subway in Bochum because it always snows on and it goes kaput. And that's why they could save some money. You don't have this here. So really for continuing the 21st century, potentially post-fossil and multimodal, really wasting the parking, the first couple of floors to that fossil dinosaur, I mean, or even if you say it's a post-fossil, but to that very inefficient and ineffective chunk that clogs the streets because it's not going to be less traffic jams and congestion with electric cars, right? It's solving the air is more breathable and there isn't as much oil on the roads, but the rest of the problems basically stay, right? And that's, yeah, so this isn't very encouraging and we have to go more into the architectural detail also because the first of these projects that they basically told us is going to be up is the one that we see at the left in the very back of that new stuff here in the left. And for that one, Eric, we have to go back forward to the previous slide and quickly read through the project description here and that needs you to sort of, because once again, they're using Hawaiian birdage here. Yes, yes. Yes, workforce and affordable housing. The Kahuina mixed use project will include two residential towers, a 43 story tower named Lamaku, meaning large standing torch is planned to offer up to 120 units of workforce for sale housing in addition to 329 market for sale units. Addition adjacent to story is called Mamalu and like, oh, oh, and honoring the legacy of Princess Victoria Kamamalu will feature 125 units of affordable rental housing, 273 ground floor commercial space, nine story, 3000 stall parking lot, garage, 12 little work lofts, open air gathering places. Okay, so yeah, some some really big, really big towers and a huge parking area. Yeah, and we want towards you more than with this torch that we're gonna show you at the beginning of next week show, but I promise, promise, promise that we skip on our weekly because I'm sure there's gonna be a new project popping up that we skipped. So we only show you that one on one slide to then bring the hope up high again and reconvene with the all inclusive, easy breezy in its way as much as it can be in temperate climate, gents I'm building. So until then, please have a good week guys and everyone else and see you next week for that. Bye bye.