 Good to see you all back to think wise human humane architecture. This happens to be our 204th episode and we're broadcasting once again from the opposite ends of the world with from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii with you, Distoto. Hi, Distoto. Hello, everybody. And me again near Munich, Germany. But we continue to go to a place that we think we can learn from a little bit more because there's a lot of similarities between that place and us back in Hawaii. And let's go to the first slide for that. But also put things in perspective, Distoto, because we're still in COVID, not to forget and traveling. I was sort of lucky or it took a chance the way you want to put it. This is related to the wilderness wedding of our exotic escapism expert Susanne and myself back in a frigid German forest and then adding to that our honeymoon hopping. And that basically got us to Madeira, which wasn't that much of a problem playing safe, having PCR tested, going there and going back. Now it is different because the incidences have been exploding in Portugal. That is unfortunately because of not very well behaving of other people than Portuguese. And the most scandalous was this big soccer, this European soccer game that was the UK against Portugal and Portugal was hosting and that was the beginning of this big explosion. I have the current numbers, which is basically shocking because at the Algarve, which is on the mainland of Portugal, the southern part where all the party people are in the vacation place with all the beaches, they have 432 seven day incidents cases, which is a wowing factor in Lisbon, which is not that far away from that has 330, which is a lot. I, by the way, again, being fully vaccinated now took a chance to go to Catalonia and it's capital Barcelona to see Jo and Clara and we brought a lot of footage of that that we will air in the near future. They have 580 cases. So the Madeira Island, which politically belongs to Portugal, basically is out there 850 kilometers difference between their mainland and that one basically has been made part of that and is basically has to play to the same rules. I just read an article from my hometown of Hanover where some people from there had this ordeal of that region, well, entire Portugal having been called or haven't been made a virus variant area with people having to leave immediately. The airplanes having been ripping them off and it's, you know, 850 kilometers and you've got a little go a little further and actually while we had to do a stopover on my way out to Barcelona, I saw on the display of the leaving flights that there was a direct flight from Munich to Madeira and they sent them all across Europe in like a 50 hours total trip. So poor people. Now it's been improved. Now it's only a high incident area, but that still means I need to quarantine for five days after returning and then you need to show proof of evidence of your fully vaccinated OPCR or you recovered. So it's quiet and so what is justifying that, you know, what horrible numbers of cases do they have? Guess what? Make a guess to Soto. I couldn't even guess. 41 cases, seven-day incidences. So this is a problem. They're obviously now angry. We're angry about our mainland at times, right? Yes, we are. Yes, we are. Things that we don't want and need to do to obey to them and we're even governed by them, right? Yes, we are. Portuguese and the Madeirans are now mad of their mainland equally because they got it. They'd be put in the same bucket although the circumstances are significantly different. So let me just say just in reference to that very quickly, our numbers are very low. Some places in the US mainland are very high, but there are people here objecting to the fact that we still have a lot of restrictions and we're still wearing masks indoors even though some other places in the US have dropped those restrictions. So yesterday there was a demonstration against that. Open up, open up. Well, if it's going to keep the numbers down, let's not open up. Yeah, and that's the same thing. Obviously, we compared that before. There's this remote list that Hawaii and Madeira shares and Madeira is a little better off because it doesn't provide the sandy beaches that basically Hawaii has. It's not as desirable for as many tourists. Exactly. Cutting the curve back to our area of expertise of the show to architecture. If we go to the, or we are still on the first slide, I guess, or we go to the first slide. Yeah, we are on the first slide. Last time we ended on saying the new contemporary indigenous local building material is concrete and here there's a quote from some source which basically says they're doing a lot in concrete here. The sails are up. That was from last year. And so this is a structure that I just, in some remote town at the northwest of the island, we figured we guesstimated what that is. Might be a helicopter platform or something like that, but certainly very iconic and heroic and using it in a way we like it because this is providing shade and shelter from the main things, which is the sun and the rain and doesn't do much else, which it doesn't need over there. And as we keep reminding us, doesn't need it in Hawaii either. So next slide. This is new construction going up. I'm very excited. This reminds us of our friend, Ron Lindgren, who Hi Ron is going through some serious systems issues back in his wonderful home. So we continue to wish you all the best for that and have you back for the three from the filling station sequence soon. Ron, this looks like Ron's and his partner and friend at Killingsworth structural expressionism. At least I'm hopeful that this won't be covered up at the structure and there's some indication it will do so. And there's also a little thing we discovered before the show. If you look very closely, where is that and what is that? Okay, well, when I looked at this picture, I saw that thing and thought, oh, it's just hanging off of the construction crane because it looks like that. But actually this is a aerial gondola system like is installed in ski slopes and other mountainous areas where you get taken up on a cable and you ride from this glass enclosed structure underneath it. So that is that little aerial gondola slash cable car device, often the distance hanging from the cable. And we're going to see it again if we get to it in later in this show because this island, like the island of Oahu is mountains that come right down to the ocean. So they have to go from sea level up the mountains. And this is one way to do it. Absolutely. And let's go to the next slide and look at concrete architecture that's been there for a while, a little while. This one here we discovered while discovering the island and there's a small fisher town next to it. And if you go around at one corner, if you see in the distance, which you see at the top right is one of the highest cliffs actually in the world, they've used a little distance but you said it still looks very high. And then there was this little thing on the beach that caught my eye and we walked up there and it ended up being a restaurant that if we asked the people, they said it's from like the early 2000s. So it's not that old, fairly young and the sure architecturally very iconic feature of that cantilevering concrete at the very bottom right makes us aware of a problem that we share in coastal areas. And then let's go to the next slide because we can see it better at the top left image. And that reminded you of some very recent sad news from the other tropics, the other American mainland tropics in Florida is still the right. You want to share that? That is right. And that was the collapse of the Champlain Tower south condominium which was just happened a few weeks ago. And I was recently, I recently have been looking online at various videos that engineers have posted about what they think happened to make that building fall down unexpectedly. And one of the things that occurred in that building, which we see in this picture in the top left is concrete spalling. And that is when water gets into concrete and it is so saturated that the rebar, the steel rebar inside the concrete rusts. And when it does that, it expands and it breaks the concrete off the surface, which then exposes the rebar to even more rust. So that's what's happening in this picture. And this building shares a similarity to not only what happened in Florida, but to us as well, because it's right next to the ocean. So if you have water that's got salt in it that is also coming into the concrete, that makes it even worse. So this is not just a cosmetic thing. This is a potentially very serious deterioration of the structure itself. And that example of what happened in Florida is something that we need to keep in mind that concrete is not forever, even though it looks like it is. But you've pointed out that there is a way to get around this with a newer type of technology. Yeah, and that's called fiber reinforced. And last camper as president of Grace Pacific Rocky Mountain Precast out there, West in Campbell and Dustboy Park is always sharing with the emerging generation that this material is now cost competitive, with conventional corrosive rebar. And since you don't need as much concrete to cover it up, the actual cost is now cheaper. So again, for concrete constructions in the future, you don't have to worry about it too much for us local momos and interested in tropical brutalism, obviously, you got to take good care. But again, hey, that's if we're responsible, our teeth needs to be brushed, right? Our cars need to be washed. So, you know, you got to do these maintenance intervals with bail with buildings as well, right? This is a really, this is a really nice building I found. The picture at the top right is, you know, shading is there at the right place is wooden louvers. There is a piece of metal in between that's bracketed by the wood and there's this dropped ceiling that's also made out of these slats with the lighting integrated. And by the way, the word Madera is the Portuguese word for guess what for wood. So just like the Hawaiian islands when they were discovered were just a jungle ride. And so where there was Madera, there's another material introduced there at the at the bottom left already, which is the counter and the walls they're made out of piles and clad with piles. And let's go to the next slide. The next slide shows us reminds me a lot of Ron and the case study houses with where the fronts of the buildings are very sort of simple to say the very least people would say austere and then it all opens up to the back of it here to the ocean. And another thing you see Suzanne here enjoying her yummy fish soup there and we present the bill there which has this shocking prize of 15 euro 20, which is for two, you know, made from scratch fish soup and then there's this this delicious Portuguese garlic bread and then I had a beer and she had a lemonade. That's pretty good steel and deal right especially for such a nicely designed restaurant. So what we try to say with that is that the cost of living on Madera and the cost of visiting and the cost of vacationing there is not nearly as high as we know it is in Hawaii. We just want to point this out and you know that means we discriminate right certain people we keep away because they can't come and that's something to think over right you see behind Suzanne and you see the shading there that's very effectively hovering over there. The next slide is something that Suzanne and I debated if we should buy that and I gave in and so this is a coaster I guess you call that where you can put a hot beer a pan on there and it's comprised of two materials there are very sort of typical for that's what tourist things you know want to do they want to depict what's typical of a place right and it reminded us of why we're in best case it says on these things that you buy designed in Hawaii made somewhere else but in most cases it's both somewhere else right because we unfortunately don't make significantly enough things on the island anymore this is sort of misfitting here too because the periphery material is basically cork and that's the bark of the cork oak I haven't seen any of these on the islands of Madera nor have I seen any clay because they're volcanic islands so here the tiles you know is an imported sort of invasive reference from the mainland but the picture in the middle that's depicting this place and the capital of Madera the city of Fengshan you know let me know what you think about what we see on their disorder well we see first of all an amalgamation of all the cliches that you want to see of the ethnic the particular type of a-frame building that we discussed in our last show you see some people you see a woman wearing a traditional outfit you see cruise ships offshore that's something that that industry is still not coming back from covid yet but we do have those immense huge ocean liner ships coming to Honolulu well we will when that resumes and you and I were just discussing how the city of Venice has just banned those ships because they are so intrusive they have so many people and they also had a ship accident in which one of those crashed into a dock within the last few years so they've just shut that down that particular type of tourism and Venice is a very environmentally threatened city and location they need to be taking those steps what we also see in the picture of Madera is there's a city skyline or there's a some cluster of buildings in the background of that view and makes me think of sort of the similarity to Honolulu with a bunch of high rises at the base of mountains right next to the ocean and it looks like those are pretty tall buildings but you have explained to me what they really look like and we're about to see that in just a second yeah and back to the to the cruise ships we make some show references on the ride here um where we had a show that we called them Honolulu's temporary horizontal high rises because there are as big as as high rise yes they are at the top right there is a horizontal building that we will dedicate an entire show to later as a follow-up on this one because it's by the legendary tropical exotic Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer so you guys can look forward to that one you being the archivist and historian let's go to the next slide and you share with us how this city had started out originally and what similarities we see to us back in Hawaii well again as I've just been saying we're look we are in a place where the mountains are right behind us and we look out towards the ocean and we have to go up on those ridges in order to find places to live because we don't have a lot of flat open space well that's what happened in Madera as well they formerly those mountain slopes were all forested ours were as well once humans get to a place they cut down all the trees for a variety of reasons and so they lost their forest we lost most of our forest our forest has been replaced by introduced trees so for the most part we no longer have our native flora anymore we've got fast growing trees like banyans and eucalyptus that have taken over that over so that we have a watershed and the water that falls from the sky is rain is preserved but this also has a a little railway that we can see in the picture this makes both of us think of the railway that used to run up cocoa head or cocoa crater which was installed during by the military during world war two well that no longer functions but that's a place where people hike for recreation on the former train tracks and also as we look down in this view towards the ocean we see a number of ships offshore these are steam ships this is a modern view from the 20th century not sailing ships from the far distant past and i don't know if those some of those are fishing boats or whether those are purely for bringing people and bringing commerce and bringing goods between to this island offshore i think it's i think it's the letter and as we said the other tragic similarity is that these islands were basically hidden from mankind except the little people that lived there and then it was basically taken over and hijacked and you know predator conquered one can say yeah and then yeah i mean thinking about again madera meaning woods and as you pointed out the the very sort of specific sort of more european tropical forest are called laurist forests and there is some parts that they try to preserve in the center of the island but again as you said in major parts it's all been cleared for human occupation and inhabitation it's still the next slide and see how that looks like the bottom picture i took from one of the early pioneer hotels that we will compare with the moana surf rider and the royal Hawaiian as their sibling back on wow that's the reeds palace and you see also you see the the horizontal neemire there at the on the right but if you compare it to our provocative polemic proposition of the primitivas three where we're saying when our hermetic high rises will basically open up and being grown over by vegetation and then we see it in our primitivas threes we are a high rise city right we have like the sixth or so largest stylized in the united states uh full shawl has been saved from that because this is as tall as it can gets there and pretty tall buildings but they're not high rises right yeah they're just not as big as our buildings no no absolutely so let's go to the next slide um we with our renome agon our rented car you know our gps and navigation was driving us crazy and so we got fed up and bought the good old map uh that we folding map that you can see here and uh what does this show us what other similarity to soto which was indicated by the circle right so in the comparison of the map of oahu in the top right and then the map of madera the circles show where the densest urbanized part of those prospective islands are and they are in similar positions on the southern coastline and then on the eastern part of the island um obviously madera is not as large as oahu madera is not as heavily populated as oahu so the density is not going to be exactly the same but there are of course as i keep saying a lot of similarities of a mountainous volcanic island surrounded by the ocean in which you have a deal you're dealing with again just as we are um the changes of elevation and altitude that you do not have a large flat open space to occupy for whatever human activities you want okay so for the last five minutes of the show let's go to downtown and have a drink here in full shawl next slide there we go this is the main sort of touristy frequented pedestrian street in full shawl where um something that we like to see more in hawaii is more outdoor dining especially during covid that makes more sense than ever right and here we were uh you see on the bottom left the wine is that famous madera and wine that we talked about in the past that madera has known for i think at the bottom right we're at dessert already at a nice cheese plate that i'm uh that i'm eating there and enjoying but at the bottom left picture in the distance something that we zoomed into at the bottom at the top left there is this table car again right right right right and you said that that this goes from the down at sea level all the way up to a mountain peak which is actually a botanical garden and i said is this intended for or used by residents to commute and you said probably not it probably is a fairly recent structure and as it is just for tourists to get a pretty view etc but there are places and i certainly have seen pictures i know in the in the country of columbia in south america uh where there are systems like this that in fact are used for commuters who live in the favelas or the shanty towns that are on the steep slopes of some of these cities so they're not there just to look pretty they're there to move people for transportation and for their jobs to get their jobs in their homes yeah and one of the most spectacular ones is a Rio de Janeiro where it goes into one of these favelas and basically is the only way to bring people in and out for work and then the tourists use them as sort of a side effect the positive side effect and we would like at the top right refer to a show a long time ago when where former board member nicole hoary was our guest and she is a proponent of introducing that to the island where the heavy rail the hard stuff fails and it fails a lot and where it's not even going for example school starting in about four weeks right and you know we all know the mess when people go back on university avenue either by car or walking or me suicidally on my bicycle guess the the beauty of the alternative of sitting in your ski lift like um you know lift and being able to do your homework last minute while sliding through the tree canopies how beautiful would that be so with that i think that's it for today and more to come with more episodes of comparing the islands of wahu and madera and see you for that next week or we do another automotive show to change things up we will see by any case hopefully you will be back for the looking at the madera in mind and until then keep that up bye bye