 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Welcome back for joining us for our ongoing search for a human, humane architecture here on our islands of Hawaii in our progressive paradise, I would say, but progressive paradise needs exotic entrepreneurs and we had plenty of them mid-century and we have one of them today here and he is genetically and was brought up in China, came to the United States in 1948 and then got educated there and then came here in 1960 with, there's some interesting numbers with $2,000 and three children and his name is Peter Xi. Hi Peter, thank you very much for being here with us today. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I really, really do. And if we can get the first picture, we had the chance to actually listen to your work a few weeks ago and we, I'm speaking as a founding board member of DoCo MoMo Hawaii. And so I'm speaking on behalf of my board members and our members and our guests and we call this talk story. And in particular, you wanna thank Don Hibbert, you can see here next to you on that picture who basically was doing a scavenger hunt for the great buildings you have done and which are still around. And so the picture you see on that picture there is actually, if we can get the next view here, this is a rendering of a building that I wish I would have known you already at the point where we were showing that because which building is that Peter? The first one is the Magellan condominium. Mm-hmm, okay, and this one here. Oh, the first one is Gopon building. Exactly. So that's the Gopon building and this is a rendering from the original phase. And if we can get the next shot here, we already ran a show about it which we called exotic Corbubri Soleil together with De Soto Brown. And we did it because I was outraged when I saw what happened to the building recently. And at the bottom right, you can see the original condition, how you designed it. And at the top right, you can see the rendering of the retrofit. And the next picture shows me driving by and I found this shot, you know, sort of remark, made me think he saw locals in the back of a picket truck which is still amazing that you're allowed to do that. You saw a construction fence with some men ray and sea animals, you know, in there. So all is about the ocean and the natural environment. But then what they did to the building is sort of the opposite. They turned into something that pretty much was you introduced these vertical fins. They were to some extent shading the building. They turned this into a thermal mass which is a no-go by adding these glass corners to the building. And I thought to myself, you know, why would you do that? And we had this really interesting discussions that maybe we share with the audience that you had about your philosophy of purity and integrity and skins and makeup. Wanna share that? Yes, I think the building itself, just like our people's face, if you wanna change your face, that become a different person. Because the building, if you wanna enhance it, you can do certain things, but the spirit of the building can be still maintained. I think that's a good way. And this is then shown next picture by, as if we would have known you, this is just a soda and I, we must have sensed that you think that way because this is us trying to explain with a simple, almost like science class, little demonstration here that what you see in Brown, the cardboard, on the top right picture, we try to simulate what they did to the building and taking these hideous metal bands, they're doing nothing but ornating the building. We will get to how much you're against ornating the building. And we said, what if you take, and I allow myself to say as a practicing architect, if you take all the money they use to basically pimp the building and use it in an essential way and basically bracket the existing fins and enhancing them and making them deeper with some metal. And I found this interesting product and it's a German metal manufacturer that has a tickle gold. So alluding to the gold bond building, you could have made this with gold, anodized sheets of metal. You would have enhanced the building and kept as original integrity, right? I totally agree because enhancement is much better than change phase. Absolutely. In other words, if a building has its own character, if you enhance it, this is like a natural process, it makes more sense. If you want a more shade, you enhance it with same thing except extended out, instead of painted differently. Before the glass was black, now I see it blue. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So makes little to no sense, but on the way here, when we were convoing here to the show and I pointed out to it, I was thinking different to Steve Owl's work who unfortunately the Ward Center and Ward Plaza, which gets torn down. In this case, I thought as bad as it is, but luckily you can still take these pimples off later on, you can reverse that process, right? So the building has been kept. That's correct. What they put on, you can take away again and I hope at some point people, maybe through the show, we educate people and say, go back to the, do its original beauty, right? Right. Each person see the beauty differently. Exactly. But their consistency is more important somehow. Absolutely. And the next picture is also, we thought about your building in another show that DeSoto and I did. We can get the next, yeah, this picture here. There was our first show this year, we call it PPPP, the Post Petroleum People's Parking Plints. And it had this very sort of out there vision of, if we would go back to public transportation fully here, we could solve the housing crisis by basically housing all the people in which formerly were parking garages. And I found it totally elegant how you, in an integrated way, incorporated the parking, which is almost unnoticeable. So here the middle floor is actually the parking. If you look closely, you can see there's no glass, but additional railing. With louvers. Yeah. So the ventilator, natural ventilation. So what an elegant way, and again, at the very bottom left is these additional hideous ribbons, which nevermind I would cover this up. And the rest is still the clean way you designed it. But the actual beauty, this goes with your philosophy, this building has inner values. So we will go to these, the next picture and explain us what that is here. What is that? This is a speed ramp. It's like a spiral. You go from eighth floor all the way downstairs, just continue to drive down. But when you drive up, you only go from zero ground floor to the first floor. You keep on winding, you'll find your own parking. So the parking is really one way parking, 60 degrees parking. But you come down, you can go very fast all the way down. And some, I mean, this was the first one of that kind on the island, right? It's the first one of that kind. And then other people were copying you, reminds me of the Macy's next door, which is now Walmart. It's also the MFAC building. Exactly. But the one, the Walmart, which is now downtown Walmart, doesn't have a courtyard. So, you know, you get all the fumes and the exhaust. That's right. So this is a naturally ventilated, which makes a lot of sense, right? The courtyard will be between the parking and the office building in the front. It's an airspace. Exactly. And talking airspace and, you know, this title of the show, Human, Humane Architecture, also people like air. So we get to the next picture. You also provided this, right? Inside is like a garden, the plants on the second level and all the way to the rooftop. So it is the airspace so people can live in the office, work in the office, and on the back of it is just open air. Yeah. So it's got this nice tropical, exotic. It got plants. It got flowers. It's just beautiful. So once again, it's this mid-century mindset that you say the building, you know, doesn't want to impress too much on the outside, but it wants to pleasantly surprise you on the inside. Yes, correct. Which in these days, I don't want to get to politics, but, you know, our current president, you know, is doing the opposite. It's all about show, right? But then when you look closer, there's hardly any value and there is no core, which, you know, you were so perfectly demonstrating in the opposite way. So we go, we stay with the same typology of office space and we go to another building you designed in Chinatown. Can we get the next picture? Which is that building, Peter? That's the CQ EHAR building, EHAR Plaza, designed in 1960. And that's the first building using the structural steel and curtain wall. And all the white one at that time was white marble chips. And also the bottom of it, it's a, the collion is white marble. Lay down the painted red with a dragon and all. Oh, oh, oh, oh. But I have, at the end, I have a positive surprise for you, Peter, wait for that one, to that regard. Let's bring the next picture up and let's talk a little bit about that sort of very, sort of vernacular theme of that all the buildings in Chinatown have these awnings, which is very nice because you can, you know, walk, shade it and drive from rain and explain a little bit about this technology you were building this. Usually the roof, if you go straight forward, it's not elegant enough. Usually the corner turn up one to three ratio. One up and three horizontal. So then it's more elegantly tilted. And the whole roof structure is domes construction. There's a plastic dome you put underneath of it. In order to remove the plastic, there's air holes, you blow the compressed air and then the form will fall off. So that's what we did it. Instead of solid concrete, it's just like a two-way joist construction. And these two pictures I took in the picture on the right, I remember when Don was giving me and my emerging colleagues a tour of Chinatown, he explained very passionately that the picture on the right is actually a different building. It's the other end of the block of the building on the left side. And you told me you intended them to grow together, which never really happened, Brian. The building original owned by the CQE hub. And intention is when they turned on the building in between, they can link the two together. But somehow they never did. So there's two parts of it, but the same motif come out. And the building on the right is that one that is closer to the ever side of Chinatown on that block end. And also Don told me that it was originally, which we like to call easy breezy, it was open and naturally ventilated, and then they enclosed it at some point. Unfortunately, again, you can reverse that. I mean, this is going up for being on the historic register soon. So then you should actually take the glass away and get it back to its original idea. That's correct. And it's an amazing, for me, it's an amazing blend between your two cultures. The American curtain wall and then the canopy coming from your Asian Chinese culture and blending the two, right? In a refreshing, innovative way. That's amazing. And at this point, I think we should introduce that when the audience paid attention to your title, you were educated and trained as an engineer. And then on the side, you said, but maybe I can pass this architectural exam. And you did. And from there on, you were an architect, right? I started out as a civil engineer. And then when I studied at Michigan, I said, well, why don't I study structural? And actually, I like architecture the best. I asked my friends, what kind of book do you study? So I went to Detroit, rented a room, holidaying for two weeks, and study all the books they recommended, and passed the exam. There you go. So I began my architecture afterwards. And then the next picture is you were provoking, once again, and entrepreneur-ing in a creative way, because then you bought a piece of land and said, why can't I develop this? And with that, you were pioneering in the culture of condominiums here on the island, right? And this is this project. That was 1969. At that time, AIA had a rule. No architect should be a builder or developer. Afterward, they did change the rule. There you go. But I did not read the architecture bylaw too carefully. Good for you. And then so I developed this Magellan condominium. It was 75 units, two-bedroom, two-boss. As imagined, I sold it at that time, leasehold, $39,000, and later on the fee is $100,000. So now it's worth about $450,000 each unit, two-bedroom, two-boss unit with the balcony. Awesome. And talking balcony, I mean, whereas developers these days, they come from profit and commerce, whereas you came from a cultural approach because you cared for the people who would live in there. And the right little picture, the tall one is one that I took of you at the talk story and explained to us what you were pointing out it. I pointed out the balcony. The balcony is actually, with curvilinear, it's like a quarter of the circle. The reason I did it is because if you are on one balcony and give you the privacy, you're not connected with another balcony. The balcony itself is concrete curb coming up. If you lie down on the easy chair on the couch, nobody can see you. It's totally private. That's the reason I have the curvature separate to balcony and not together. So once again, it's not add-on ornamentation. It's very strategically engineered human-humane comfort. It's part of a relief. So the balcony sort of separate and yet more elegant than they put together. Absolutely. And next picture is you also went pioneering because our island is facing growth and we can't build more, we can't sprawl more. So you were sort of investigating and going taller. So there's this tower here, right? Yeah. At that time, the Solig area have a zoning. You cannot go over 320 feet. So I felt if you can go 325 feet, you can have less footprint on the ground. So we designed a twin tower and so the whole thing rise 40 story high. At that time, only maximum height is 320. So this is 320 feet. And you were creating maximum comfort because two units share one elevator. So it's almost like you have your private elevator, right? Two units share two elevators. Oh, wow. So one unit have one elevator, totally private. And then also, even though you live very compacted and condensed and waste the least of land, you have 100% privacy because they're staggered, right? So you never look into your neighbor's space. Yeah, never look at each other. And yet you can see the view of the Salt Lake. And because the building is so skinny and tall, you have more land on the ground. There's more recreation area on the ground. Activity room and all kinds of things there. And a lot of greenery. And as you can see on the right pictures, the entrance is very elegant, even the parking is very, you got the breeze blocks. And thank you for using the term skinny and my emerging generations knows how to recognize that because we're developing skinnies towers right now and at our place. Let's move on to, because so far we had talked about typological innovations. Now we wanna talk about technological innovations. And can we get the next picture for that one? And this is me taking a picture of you on the left side pointing out what you had developed. Also on the right is a sketch you had with you at the talk story that I took a picture. And the bottom right is the name of one of the buildings you were basically applying that technology to. So what did you do, Peter? This building is actually, we're using the concrete block, which is on the table. And they call it double eye, double eye. There's a groove on either side. You can put the temperature steel. And the vertical steel, you can just pan the beam. Because the cell, it's small, all you need is peak gravel, you put it inside and put the gravel down and pull it out. So the whole thing, instead of eight inches wide can be just six inches. And it's much stronger than regular. The whole top and bottom is grind smooth. So when you put epoxy, two bead on epoxy, like this, like a toothpaste. Absolutely. In one hour, the whole thing is adhered into one unit. Absolutely. So a very efficient way to put up something. What a great arcaneering innovation. And so is the next one, if you can get the next picture. You're also cultivating something that you call tilde up. And this article, we also have to give credits to basically Matt Moy, who was providing articles from the archives about your work. And this is something, explain a little bit in two sentences what tilde up is, Peter. Tilde up is instead of have a concrete poured with a vertical form on both sides. That means if the wall is 28 feet, you have the wall, the plywood come down, and pour the inside. And once when you pour the inside, it's hard because aggregate will be on the bottom of it and very hard to vibrate. So if we have the concrete floor on the outside, why can't we put a brown breaker on the ground and pour it four inches curved, pour the slab on the ground and just lift it up? It's much faster. As a matter of fact, every concrete wall can be poured on the ground. Each one just keep on and lift it up like a tilde up. And then you pour concrete pallets there which is collium and block them together. All the reinforcing steel will be matched together. The whole thing becomes one entity. It's easier way to construct and very fast. And in the best tradition of Hawaiian, so if I always share their best things tracing way back, you also exported that technology all the way back to another thing we share to Nebraska, right? We did on Nebraska, we did Lincoln, Nebraska, and purely Illinois. We did on six different places, Philadelphia also. And including also, of course, we benefited from that here. Next picture, this is a project in Waikai. You applied that technology too, right? Yes, Hawaii Kai is Hawaii National Bank, in Waikai, the two-story building. Instead of pouring concrete vertically, I actually poured all the things which is collium right on the ground with a bump breaker. So in two days, the whole concrete can be tilled up and then tack welded together become one entity. So the whole thing come up in two weeks time, the whole building. So very fast, easy way to construct and very strong. Yeah, and as this little extract of an article that Matt found also points out, sort of in the Da Vinci way, the very comprehensive and holistic way you're thinking, the article says, precast concrete low bearing columns that act as sunscreens. So the environmental aspect is inherently included in your designs, right? Right, because the sun shade, just like a sun shade, vertical sun shade. So when the afternoon sun we're not able to sort of diffuse the sunshine. So that's served the most purposes. But once again, unlike today, we're like add on something and it causes extra costs here. It's almost a side effect of your engineering. It's a part of organic way of treating the sun problems. Absolutely. So you've worked with almost all materials. You have done steel, you've done concrete, you've done concrete block. But this island has a lot of trees. So it would surprise if Peter wouldn't have made a project out of wood. And if we can get the next picture and pour it in Soto Brown, went through the extra effort to look for it because he didn't want to believe that it's not around anymore, but it's unfortunately the case. But we found this beautiful model that you might remember of it in this article that Matt found. So explain us what the Mid-Pak Lumber building was about. Because Mid-Pak Lumber wallets lie, they're selling the lumber in plywood. I thought instead of using the regular concrete, why can't we use the plywood for the roof? Because the plywood itself is the same. You can have three layers, five layers and seven. So I picked the three layers one and able to fold it. So become airplane wing. So the whole thing can be lawn span and very skinny in the middle and the whole thing has a lawn span. So that's the reason we designed such a way, look like an airplane wing. Absolutely. So a nice wooden lattice screen and sunshade in front of it. For the sunshade, that's correct. So very nice. So the mid-century modern, and you also kindly sort of credit the European modernism tradition as an inspiration for your work. That's right. I liked the Bauhaus, the 1900s and afterwards it becomes so elegantly instead of very ornate before. I liked the Bauhaus approach. It's really very interesting. And because of that, I allow myself to show you in the three next slides how much I can relate to you and how much you're an inspiration and hero for me. Peter, in the next image is a school we did some years ago, which I share with you. You see a similar lattice here on the top right. But what I also share with you is tragically that the left part of the image here has been destroyed by the client. So we share the same thing. Our wood projects are the most endangered. Next project is the first kindergarten we designed where we basically epoxied a brick skin. So once again, here we are sharing more things. And last but not at all least, the next picture is a project we developed here, which is called Primitiva, which is once again inspired by your skinny towers. This is a skinny tower, which is bare to the bones, concrete construction, and it is an extruded doughnut. So it has a hollow core and that we sort of know from your gold bone building. Very elegant. They put up the towers. Very beautiful, right? Thank you so much. We appreciate it. So once again, Peter, I can't thank you enough for being such an inspiration. And it's so refreshing to see the tradition of pioneering you brought to this island here. And since I promised you a goodie at the end of the show, if we can bring up that next picture, because this is truly demonstrating how timeless and always and forever your work will be because the Soto and I and Kurt Sennberg have gotten interested in looking at the original Hawaii 5.0 and we're gonna re-watch them again. So this is one, this is actually the very beginning. This is season one, episode one, where you see McGarrett in his Mercury cruising down a Chinatown. And you see the same situation that we've been shown at the beginning of the show. And here you see your column, surprise, surprise, before it was painted red. And this is the original marble chips. Marbled chips. And so the producers of the show particularly used architecture that they thought was most representative of what Honolulu was at that time was a growing boom town, a metropolis, right? And a blend of cultures, which you so perfectly portray with your work. So... Thank you very much. Once again, Peter, I can't thank you enough for having been here and thank you so much. This is really a pleasure to be together with you, this is wonderful. No, absolutely. And thank you again for being the inspiration. And you guys hopefully be with us next week with the Soto again. Our topic will be something from the same time, but unfortunately entirely torn down. We call the show Makaha Magic. It's about the Makaha Resort way out west and we have been sort of detectives and archeologists about that. So look forward to that. And until then, please stay exotic entrepreneurs just like Peter. Bye-bye.