 Hello everybody, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's Human Humane Architecture. I am this program's co-host, Soto Brown, and with us verbally and in by picture only is the program's host, Martin Despang, who's speaking to us from Germany, his homeland. And Martin, good afternoon. There you are on the screen. Hello to Soto and everyone, and that's right. I'm still in the durnal realm of our tropical tourist expert, Suzanne, and her native to very Germany. And to Soto, one of our methodologies of research is what we can call reciprocal exoticism. And if we can go to the first slide here, the big picture, that is on our strip, our meaning year is right now, on the strip of Kalakaua and Waikiki on June 9th, 1963. And you found a sign of reciprocal exoticism between our cultures, right? Yes, I certainly did. And it is on the left side of the picture, and it is for a German restaurant and bar. And I'm not even going to try to say it because I can't say it the correct way. Martin, you tell us what that's called. I don't know if it's a real fly, but you tell us what that means because I taught you that. That's right. And it means the court or royal rower, correct? You get an A for that. Correct. Now, but what's behind that sign is what we're actually going to be talking about today. But we're not talking about what you think we might talk about, which is the building that's pretty centred, because that's Poster Tower. That was built a year before the building was built, that we're going to talk about, which we also see on the very left, which is almost completed, but you see some scaffolding and some guardrails failing, missing, not failing yet. And again, what you also see is the motorcade of President Kennedy in his Black Lincoln Continental, which became tragically famous because he got shot in that three months later in Texas. Talking presidents gets us to the next picture because we have been featuring two other buildings about this architect who was actually not an architect. He was an engineer and he did these two other buildings here, which at the bottom is the Scandia building, which is in our immediate neighborhood of both of us, the Soto and the other one where one of the most recent and which we consider one of the best, which is not the current one President lived in and grew up in, that's President Obama. And that's the apartment building he grew up in with his grandmother. And the architect is called Park Associates. And you see that both buildings are square and boxy, but the building he did, we're going to talk about is not, and that gets us to the next slide. And as you pointed out when we talked before, the zeitgeist of the sixties was sexy and curvy. And some architects like this one here, who was the enfant terrible of the Mies van der Rohe school of architecture. This is Bertrand Goldberg, who showed his master his round middle finger figuratively and literally, and basically said, I'm not going to do a square box. I'm going to do a sexy corn cup in this case. This is Marina City in Chicago that was built, that was completed in 64. But let's go back to our island to the next slide and please tell us other round buildings that we have and that we talked about. Well, we've looked at some of the other cylindrical buildings that are here in Honolulu and in the upper two pictures, of course, we see the varsity building, which is still with us today. It's a small four-story building, but it is cylindrical. And then at the bottom, we see some of the University of Hawaii cylindrically shaped dome, dorms, not domes, which also are present. And you were talking about the man who was critiquing these when he came to visit. Tell us about him. Yeah, that's Will Bruder, our esteemed colleague from Arizona, who was here to visit and give a lecture. And again, he was intrigued by these buildings. And how sexy they were is portrayed perfectly in the next slide here, which Y5O always picked. He picked buildings as actors, as we talked about in the show about that. And so here is another round building that's pretty centrally located, the Holiday Village, as well from the 60s. Let's go back to our hood, where our building is. Next slide here is a picture from these days where you can see Foster Tower clearly, and you can also see to the left of that. And I think by now we can mention the name of the building. The building we're talking about is the Waikiki Circle Hotel. And let's jump to the next picture. And these are some that we picked from the web and other better ones from the archives. And tell us a little bit about sort of the zeitgeist background of the pictures we see now, the postcard pictures. What we're talking about is Waikiki in the 1960s, when it was growing very dramatically and lots of high-rises were being built. And when Foster Tower, followed by the Waikiki Circle, were constructed, people began to take photos of them, because for the first time, there was something to aim your camera at. And before that time, there hadn't been any skyline there, so we weren't seeing people taking a lot of pictures. In this particular picture of Kawakawa Avenue, there is right in the center a Volkswagen Beetle. And that's something that we're going to be talking about in a future human-humane architecture show, air-cooled architecture. But we're not there yet. And I think we can go to our next photograph. That's a perfect example of the total, again, of our methodology of reciprocal exoticism. Because you guys were excited about these bugs from Germany. And to the left of it, I was excited and still am about the T-Birds kind of cars, which is a true American, right? So the grass and the cars always greener on the other side. That's right. That's right. That's right. And in this picture. We'll go on to the next picture. So again, we're just seeing some of the street scenes of Waikiki, a bustling and very increasingly congested district at that time. And here's a black and white picture of pretty much the same thing. But there, very prominently on the left is the Waikiki Circle, which we're now going to be examining in more detail. Exactly. And that's the next picture. These are some that we took. This is us looking up at the tower. And our traffic hearing fellow, David Rockwood, once talked to me about how intriguing these thin, these lanai slabs are. You got to imagine there has to be rebar in there. So steel to make them hold up. But also there are these lights pictures in there. So you got to get the wiring across the rebar. And I can tell you, being in the practice of architecture realm as research, you will find no structural engineer these days who will have the guts to basically do that. So that shows us how sort of ambitious and exploratory and innovative people were. And probably here because the designer was an engineer. So he was probably relaxed and saying, hey, I can do that. Because that's my business. Right, right, right. And it wasn't mysterious or scary to him. No, no, it was. Today these would be twice as big or three times. It would look chunky ugly. And that's, you know, you've got to wonder about culture, right, about evolution or de-evolution. But let's not get tied up there. Let's go to the next picture, which we took here. And you can see clearly how people on these still pretty floaty lanais, they're like a term that you taught me, the petals. That's a flower. These are like petal-like balconies lanai. And you pretty much float out there and enjoy this sort of prime location, first row in Waikiki Beach. And you were pointing out an interesting sort of utilitarian advantage of that sort of geometry, which we see in the next slide, which is one that we took from the hotel's website. And what is that aspect? Well, because the building is round and cylindrical, each one of these individual lanais is not directly next to the next one. And it also has a little more of privacy because you're around the corner, if you will, from the other lanais. So each one is not directly rectangularly next to each other, but instead they're all a little spaced out and all at slightly different angles. And the next slide is another picture of how it looks today. We want to point out another aspect, which is the biochromatic aspect, which is very important to us. And while a cylindric form is sort of a non-directional, so you get naturally some units that are facing east and west, they're probably more problematic, but I've been watching this over the time because it's on my daily jogging route on the Waikiki Beach. And so I'm always seeing that, always at some times of the day, some parts of the buildings are shading themselves, again, just like nature does it with the leaves on a plant, right? So there's some, the geometry is not perfect, but again, there's, and especially if we look at another aspect, which we see on the next slide, which is another one that we picked from the web, we see something sort of confusing and I would say disturbing because we're sort of the post-fossil and pre-fossil enthusiasts. We see that nasty single wall unit possibly fueled AC unit. And that's puzzling us because AC was not in place yet as much as it is today in mid-century. So how did that look slash work way back and thanks to your heavens, your hunting out there, you found a proof of evidence of how it was significantly different way back and that gets us to the next slide that you please explain to us. Well, as you pointed out when we were discussing this last night, this is an amateur slide which I purchased on eBay and unfortunately somebody put their finger across the lens when they took the picture, but ignoring that, you look at the exterior of the Waikiki Circle and what do you see? You don't see solid walls and you don't see air conditioners, you see walls which are composed of solid wood jealousies. So these are not see-through, they're not glass, there's more privacy there, but that meant that every one of these rooms was air conditioned, if you will, by natural air movement of not only the sliding doors on the lanais, but also the jealousies which could be individually adjusted in each room. And so they weren't necessary, it wasn't necessary to have air conditioners then. They had the trade winds, they had natural air movement and we've talked about jealousies. Don Hibbert and I did a program about jealousies and we've also seen new, more modern applications of jealousies not only by designers, but also from manufacturers. And so we look forward to more of those coming out and some of those are actually coming from Germany. And that's at the bottom right, this is a class going on right now and wrapping up because the semester is concluding, this is Tropicare Rockwood again, which is very, very relevant course that he teaches about the rejuvenation and the revitalization of that typology. So tropical typology, because I'm saying, yeah, easy breezy, that is easy breezy, right? You pretty much, as you said, it's an all open fenestration that's differentiated by sliding doors on the lanais and then the jealousies, as you pointed out, that gives you the variety of things when the western sun that we talked about that you might be sort of discriminated by facing with, you can close them off, but you can close them off in a way that you still get breeze and air and the light through it, right? So this is perfect. Again, perfect, the engineer, the architect having been an engineer and as I'm biting my own hands for the longest time, I'm thinking maybe the engineer have been and might continue to be the better architect, but again, blame me for that that we at the School of Architecture and an architect myself say that, but I don't have a problem because we want to encourage the architect to think more logically and less romantically formally, right? Correct. So we have substantially, you know, fundamental in our thinking and making. Another intriguing detail that is not in place anymore, we find on the next slide here, which is the Gartvale detail. And you were pointing out yesterday when we were rehearsing here that this is ironwork, so steel ironwork handmade, and then there is something that traces to the owner and developer of the project which who is innovative in so many ways because first of all, I believe this is not here, her, this is the tourist. The developer was a woman, Mrs. Chun, and Mrs. Chun was Chinese, that means she was a minority, and she was 70 years young when she was developing the project and of course she was a woman. And her Chinese background basically probably informed sort of the shape and the sort of symbolic form of these little circular details. And I was saying, well, and that's sort of in sort of a micro-compliance with the overall form. And then we're joking that the tourist here, the lady is in compliance with that too because she has dots on her shirt. She's got a poke, not diamond on. Well, you pointed out earlier too that these original railings, which are not there anymore, by the way, are very filigree. They're very delicate looking. They're not super substantial, but like the platforms of the Lanais themselves, they are thin and lightweight. You can see through them and there's a delicacy to them, which again is a unique design attribute as well as something which is handmade work, which you'd be very unlikely to encounter these days in a modern project. And indeed, and how it looks today, if we move to the next slide, we can see not that these are bad. These are also, we always say no glass because then there is no breathing anymore and you block the wind. So these are very sort of simple vertical metal guard rails that allow ventilation, allow the view, but they don't have anything of the intricacy of the sort of multitude of meaning and certainly not the craft sort of no bless that the original one had. So again, but the other thing is again, you can see here this almost ironic ornament of this sort of staggered single wall unit AC boxes here, which are really nasty to begin with because they use fossil fuel. They're bad in so many ways and they create this sort of pretty hideous sort of ornament. So again, next page here, next slide, when we look at this historic picture, which is also a permanent background picture here of how well it fit in. I didn't try to be sort of what happens a lot today that things want to look literally like nature and sort of Chevron imprints on buildings or palm leaves that want to look like, this is a building, so it's not a mistake and it doesn't try to be nature, it is architecture, but it functions upon the same principle as nature does and that makes it blend in first and foremost. And I would also say too that this is in a resort area and it is not supposed to look substantial, weighty, it's not a bank, it's not a school, it's supposed to look sort of light, it's supposed to look sort of fun and it does look like that because you're here on vacation. So here's this 20 cylindrical building with these very light textured exterior protuberances that are not like columns or Sirius, it's fun. So true and notice the detail of the top of the building where sort of the core shaft protrudes out and then you got this very nice sort of petal-y ring around it with these things that are bent up and are very sort of flowery, very floral, but again, not in a literal way, still in an aspect way of what mid-century was so great about it, we unfortunately have lost and should try to get that back. And another detail that is really sexy and really cool, we should go to the next slide. This is a picture, the big picture is from the website. The hotel has been remodeled some years ago. I find it a little unfortunate because it's very sort of designed and takes away from the original design. When I visited that before the renovation, there was just this sort of very sort of informal box, I think on wheels as the front desk because it's pretty much outdoors because what they did is the same thing that happens at the top of the building happens at the bottom of the building that only the core is standing. And from there on, it's pretty much cantilevering out. It's a little sort of confused here or sort of camouflaged by that canopy that itself is cool because it's a crazy cantilevering canopy. So it could be a late entry to the show we did about that, but it's a little bit distracting from that aspect of the whole building, cantilevering, but we see that on the next slide here, which you provided from the archive, it's a treasure because it's a picture of an architectural model. That reminds me of my dear friend, Brett, Ziggy Kava, hi, Brad, who is the last living and standing model maker on the island here. So this is a, I would have to ask him if he knows who the thing did. And here you can see better and more clearly how the building pretty much is pretty much tailored, almost like a corset here, that minimizes its footprint at the bottom. And there's another interesting, you can see also how leverally they basically were working with all these program things, the parking garage on the knees. So it's sort of the split level, you go up half level, you go down half level, and they didn't want this to inform the appearance of the building because the appearance of the building is significantly different and we've featured that in a couple of previous show and let's go to the next slide and tell us about that. Well, the building sits upon a plant, it sits upon a platform, a rectangular platform at the bottom and to perhaps add some solidity or strength to that plant or the basic foundation, it's got this basalt rock wall around it. So on one hand you have the solidity of the basement and then the more lighter cylindrical part sitting on top of that. But we also like that this base is very open. So the eggs and things restaurant, which as you pointed out is not just exclusively for the people staying in the hotel, but is for anybody off the street and is very popular, as we can see. It's also very open. So we've got a solidity, a sense of solidity, but we've also got openness, we've got free air movement and free movement of people in and out of that space. So that's absolutely right. And again, talking about the sort of reverse exoticism, we will do a show about some of my trips here I did and we will do one about a time in Zurich I had with Suzanne and we were pretty much, we had just barely above freezing and people were so hungry to sit outside and they bundle up and they have all the heaters and maybe they spoke to feel warmer, but they sit outside whenever it's somehow doable, whereas in Honolulu, unfortunately, it's so often people basically hide inside in this cute, comfortable AC, which makes me always sick and they don't appreciate the outdoors as much as they should. And here you can see there's table, there's just one of the few examples where they actually tables on the street and you can sit and enjoy the outdoors. So it creates a sort of, you know, engagement. It's a very, as you pointed out, an inclusive approach versus an exclusive. There is no sort of front door with a guard or something like that. And then you have that AC blasting. This is very much very exotically tropical. And we're slowly but surely phasing out, so let's get to our tradition of our polemic propositions and demonstrate what we can learn from these treasures that we have that we first and foremost better keep and secondly, build some more of that because you're gonna be 110, I trust you on that. So when then you're still, you know, in your archive, we wanna talk about stuff in 50 years that has to be built now, right? I guess we do, I guess we do. Well, if we go to the next picture, we are going to see a proposed building. This is called Primitiva. This is from Martin's Budding Architects at University of Hawaii. It is a cylindrical building. As you can see, it has a different type of interior structure with a steel frame. But this is, we're going back to the cylindrical form and if we go to the next picture, we can see here that not only do we have the open space for the interactions of the people who live there, but the rest of the building is open as well. So it isn't intended to be as enclosed or hermetic. The individual dwelling spaces are more open. They are more multi-purpose. They can be accessed by different people as we were talking about. And so we've also got a situation where we don't have solid exterior walls, but we're using vegetation as a screening device on the outside. So again, air movement and oxygen and good things like that. And we have to say that of course, it has the same sort of layout of dwelling spaces which are like PIK. That's right. Cut them out. And I have to sort of make a little correction and we're probably, it's a good thing because it makes us probably have to, we should probably talk more about that. The structure is indeed also concrete. Although it looks like steel and the reason why it's so filigree because I had the chance to run the project by our the legend talking engineers, the engineering legend on the island who when you name all the fantastic buildings from the past, you name them all. Dr. Alfred Yee was behind them as the mastermind engineer. And so I had the chance to visit with him once before he passed away in his 90s after a very successful life and until he sort of endorsed the project and I'm very, very humble and thrilled about that. Again, learning from these masters and trying to do stuff that tries to be as good. And that's tough as we keep talking because rules and regulations and codes and stuff have become tougher. So it's hard to be as good because the zeitgeist has changed. We're way more paranoid, we're way more liability consumes and all these things. And that maybe gets us to the next picture here because we're introducing our project, Primitiva One is a team member of a sub category of cylindric buildings because it has a cylindrical core that is open. And there's also examples for that in the world and the most prominent and most sort of controversially is to be received is the Ponty City Apartments in Johannesburg in South Africa. And this is a social housing project which is the key for us because Primitiva One is in a way that as well in a very inclusive way here because he created, once you put the same of the same people in something you create a ghetto and it doesn't matter if it's for rich people like in Kakaakaua of the towers it's ghetto, a rich ghetto. This is sort of more lower income. So it was a poor ghetto and people weren't, when you throw the same people, poor people in there they don't basically identify themselves with what they have. So they use that big hole as a trash chute which you can see on the very right side. It's been cleaned up and remodeled by now. But we have an example of that sub-category in Honolulu as well and that's the bottom row of pictures and explain us where that is. Well, this is the kind of key jade and as you were pointing out, we can see first of all there is one of the rooms in the jade building and it's got our wonderful jealousies and a view of Diamond Head and it's got free air movement et cetera but it's also as you pointed out it's got this open cylindrical part in the center. I've never been in it but it's always been very intriguing to me. People don't throw trash there. Do a show about it. Yes, let's do a show about it. There we go. There we go. And did we decide that the rooms have been remodeled and don't have jealousies anymore? We weren't sure about that. Unfortunately, we have to basically be nasty about that in that show that we do. Okay. So unfortunately, no, there aren't either, yeah. Yeah, next slide is Prometiva again. We're celebrating the core here. We're putting in, we go as far as putting in stainless steel netting so the air can go through but kids can be on it and bounce and it's gonna be that trampled in. It's possible. It sounds like crazy but there's an art installation in the museum in Düsseldorf in Germany that do that. So it's all sound fictional but it's actually doable. And the next picture, as you pointed out the solo it's using vegetation as a screening device. And so here you can see that they will come across not as less than architecture, more as nature and there are sort of man-made trees if you want. So the next slide is sort of maybe for some people unfortunate news that Kupupam Resort on Kauai by Pete Wimbledy that we dedicated the show to is not gonna be remodeled. We're actually kind of happy about it because on the top left you can see how they wanted to do it and it's not living up to the original super cool integrity that you can see at the top in the middle and especially at the top right we picked this from the local news here the number of homeless living on Kauai Street nearly doubled since last year. So it's a resort is also not addressing that pressing issue. We just have a different side guide. And next slide referring to a previous guest that we've been doing multiple shows this is Nathan Toothman and his elevate the structure here in a very recent update picture of that. And this is a little bonsai circle tower actually a multitude of them and they're very cool because they can basically change from being playground trees over the day or the kids that the tourists and at night time they could transform and morph into dwellings for houseless. So I suggest to populate the grounds of Cocoa Palm with Elevate for example. And you pointed out too that you can actually you can inhabit the platform but you can also live underneath it as well. So we've got two levels that can be used by people. Exactly and they're very cool. They're very cheap. They're very affordable. They would be the right thing to basically I think tribute to Keith's legacy not in the way he did it because there seems to be no way to just redo it over so many attempts but to move on to a stage and contribute to the current challenges and opportunities in culture and society. So we're phasing out to the next couple of pictures here. Again, Hawaii 5.0 again of the circle tower for the reasons we discussed has been an actor has been a prime actor as you can see at the bottom with McGarrett. Clarice Speedy here. It's always there. It's one of the big actors and talking reciprocal exoticism. It is today in the everyday news. This is when we escaped once again one of the harkens recently here. Next picture. This was a German TV coverage, just the news. And they were interviewing these very northern German looking because the more north you get in Germany the more blonde the girls get. So some northern German supposedly girls here who have been interviewed and where have they been interviewed in front of the Waikiki Circle building? There it is. So also there is a USA Today site that talks about the building and the history of the building. And as well, the second to last picture please now is again how the thing has been looking in the past and even how it looks today at the top right. Here's Will Bruder again. Not only did he like the dorms as we shared before but he also included Waikiki Circle Hotel in a selection of the best things he saw. Very good. So pretty much concluding is the last picture here. What we're saying is please bring whenever they're gonna do the next step of remodeling and as Suzanne told us it's gonna be seven to 10 years they're gonna do a totally hall over renovation. When they do that next please go through the effort of bringing it back to the original, bring the wooden jealousies back and luckily times evolve and technology evolves and at the top right we refer to a show with Patrick Donahue who is the mastermind behind the new innovative material of firmly modified timber which we propose to be the new Hawaii wood where you take local wood species that you firmly modify and they will last much longer. They're especially perfect for jealousies, horizontal jealousies because the wood doesn't bend and bow anymore, it can take any water. So it would be perfect. So you bring it back to the original beauty and we were talking and you were endorsing that idea to say within the sort of the increasingly corporate nature of the hospitality industry, especially these sort of smaller and still supposedly or probably privately owned buildings might be the most interested or able or interested to do these things. To do innovative things that are different from everybody else, right? Well I think that brings us to the end of the show. We're wrapping up, we gotta come to the end. Thank you for being here, Martin, thank you for joining us. Thank you all for watching. I'm DeSoto Brown. We're ending up Human Humane Architecture on Think Tech. We'll be back, our Martin will be back, I'll be back and until our next program and encounter, see you then, aloha.