Past Proletarian Pretty Priced out Prime Porto Portugal (Humane Architecture)

welcome you back to this show think Hawai's human humane architecture and as we are sure you have watched all our episodes we are now in number 375 and we're back with the two bold bald buddies Jay Fidel and Martin desp one of your favorite places in the world to go and we're sure there's many others out there who share that and that is Portugal and we sent me out as our foreign correspondent Jay and we have to apologize because you have been expecting that I mean you the audience already two weeks ago but uh we in our ventagon broke down and at this point Jay we might say okay wait a minute there used to be what, eight shows per day, five days a week, and now it's boiled down to one show per day. And for um most of them, it's dedicated to keep our democracy. So, is this an exception? Uh maybe not because show quote top left uh we were talking about we were referring to Scott Galloway and he when we were still under the trauma of the election of the American President Trump last time he tried to explain why and he called it the son in the basement phenomenon. He said there's a single mom or single dad and they have a daughter and the daughter is out and able to make a living but the son is not. He's in the basement and gaming and the mother or father single ones are worried. So they're looking for the messiahs who's going to get the son out of the basement. So this metaphor is actually more than a metaphor. It it means that the built environment Jay is very critically important for if these bes dictators get a chance because if you keep people wellfed and welloused uh they have a harder time telling you that they're going to bless you with paradise on earth or or whatever. So this is the framework here. This has to do with keeping our world safe. And before we go to Porto, Portugal, we're going to go back to Barcelona one more time because, and by the way, you have been uh doing a natural intelligence uh commentary with a guy who has hair at the top left there. And this already at that point when I was putting this in there had 38 views, but it actually got over a hundred now. And our uh crosscultural culinary connoisseurs uh Joey and Claraara also um always you know dream uh and think fondly of their time in Barcelona. They were having you know this is the point when we go to these places and we don't go to hotels and we go to Airbnbs and then we potentially steal uh you know uh dwelling space from local residents. Joe and Claraara have been working from there. So maybe not that much as others, but we should always be aware of that. So Jay, we have been uh looking at a very promising piece of architecture last time with Pedro by this guy here uh Luis Sard. And now we want to look into another project of his. And here you see him uh top top left was a show quote of when he was doing this really revolutionary project uh in the 1930s that was social housing at its best. He then went to America when dictatorship came and he became the dean of Harvard and then he built himself a nice house that we see at the bottom right which is a courtyard house and when his deenship was over he returned to his uh home of Barcelona and did this project here le escalis park when I was talking to Pedro about that he basically said I don't really know that much about that project and we all know from him having been a frequent guest, Pedro knows about most everything, right? So, this is makes us curious. So, top left, just to remind us, Jay, um Spain and Portugal have been uh under dictatorships for quite a long time, way longer than Germany. And hopefully we're not going there again because signs are. I'm sorry for the AfD hitting it again big times. you've been reporting about that uh rightly so. Um so this project here I've been we've sent me out always uh Jay the um we we only show things that we have either done ourselves or seen ourselves. So I was like um scavenger hunting around this project here and I got that close but not closer. I was hitting the camera button on my phone when security/front desk people were chasing me away. I caught them when they were putting chlorine into this reflective pool here and then they told me to go away. So I went around. There's one word that I'm going to butcher. I know, but this is a red thread through the show here. This is a leu. And these are basically ceramic tiles that are we know from vernacular architecture in uh both Spain and Portugal. So here they are. There's a there's a chimney here, a natural ventilation chimney. And then there's blades and blinds that is known for. And we see something here that we know from the last project where units might go um over more than one floor. We call these duplexes or mezonets where you have again a staircase that leads you to another floor of your unit. Uh this is uh online a drawing of the of the south elevation of that. This I had to pull from the web as one of the exceptions to the rule that we only show what we have done ourselves or seen ourselves. The floor plans as well. And you see it's a rather spacious situation here where you have large we call these lenai large outdoor living spaces um and uh twostory uh living spaces behind. This is also from architect's website who have been just remodeling one of these units here. Certainly doesn't look that bad to me. Very nice. And on the right side is Pedro showing us the um Miro Foundation uh museum by the same architect. And he was explaining to us the vaults that sort of system how you used to build um u um ceilings and um and and and roofs and sort of an interpreted way out of concrete balls. But again, this project here, um, you are a neighbor to Barry Baker, as you told me, and you want us to get together when I'm be finally back in the spring, but maybe we already do a show with him before uh, and talk about something very touchy. Uh because here is what Sir did when during his time in at tenure um at uh Harvard. He was doing large housing for students and you see on the left still looks pretty much like what we've seen before. But on the right, I don't know um what how does this look to you? Especially if you look at the student uh housing uh um uh room up there. Maybe, you know, we get to a point like we did in our book about Honolulu architecture with with Dom that we were telling the firms, the local firms uh who um are established in Hawaii and in Honolulu that we say if your early work appears in the book, we hope you be encouraged to reconnect with these your professional roots. And you know maybe that's the case with cert as well that he just got taken away uh his fame got into his brain and you know he started as the the inclusive guy and then turned out to be exclusive and maybe it's just or it's more than maybe it's Martin's romantic thinking that maybe there's still some proletarian. You had the Peugeot. I was looking up, but uh until the early 90s, but never this uh little model that was very popular here, the Peugeot 2005. And every car manufacturing is now retro of retro these cars and making them electric. This is an AI basically dream of making a new uh retro electric pujo 20 105 but likely you know even bigger cars are pulling out of this uh submerged parking garage and maybe you know uh third started out to be more bohemian and exclusive to begin with because at the same time he was doing the Kaza block social housing duplex he did this one here at around the same time in 193031 that is called the Lopez house and as you can see from the historic picture on the right that looks um rather um rather upscale already. That being said, we jump forward three decades going back to a project that we've been looking at before, but now we sent Martin back again because this is when we do these things Jay, we want everyone to do that. We want you to go out, be curious, be detectives, and really, you know, sometimes you have to go back a couple of times. And this is a project here again putting things in context, Jay. Uh, Porto, the city of Porto is in many ways very similar to us in Honolulu because populationwise, you see, we're kind of in the same range and then both have a metropolitan area around it. So, we're not that far off. this project we've been talking about before. So it um Alvaro Caesar did this in the early '7s and when I was in Porto the first time two decades ago they were just um completing the project and now we go back because it's a duplex as well. So you bring the single family house to the people in the city to the little people and then you create uh these courtyards in between. And now we want to focus on the population. It's a little hard to see because I have to do these, you know, kind of like uh with phones you can like pretend you're on the phone, but you take a picture because people, you know, you have to ask and you know, I don't have the time or I don't want to accept the no. But you can see here a little blurry, but can see a woman on the staircase of a house with a dog. You're a big doggy person, Jay. And you see laundry. That's a good sign. And we see plants. And we see laundry again. We see more laundry. We see more plants. We see more laundry. And we see people of all sorts. We see young people. We see old people. We see all kinds of people, which is also a good sign. And we see elegance. We see elegance in architecture. And we see elegance in people. Here, this gentleman nicely dressed up just to sit on the stair of this social housing project. And the neighborhood is very old and traditional. There is a small grocery store or mom and pop store as you can tell here with fruits on the street. So there's a very small convenience store in the in the building itself. And it's right next to the train station up there. And this is a f my favorite picture of the one that I took because we talked about the two Pritsker Prize winners that Porto has. And we said, "By the way, Honolulu yet has to have one." So this is encouraging our local architects to ramp up, you know, and do so the jury will be impressed. But while you know, I tried to in the middle there last show I was saying that I was hitting up Edward Deura and was trying to drag him into shift. And probably the most shifty project um is this one here is a strand station. And in the back you see his mentors social housing um by by Alro Caesar. Do we have something like that in Honolulu? We talked about that a couple of times. Our buddy Bundy, you know, has been doing uh a unit. We've been talking about this uh lengthy in a in a in a previous show and he has been inspired to do that in a contemporary way with this great how loft project. So all the architects, you know, consult Bundi how to do that. You can do this typology pretty well. Uh today in Honolulu, we go back to another project that we only were there in the wintertime, which is one of the first projects by Caesar, which is a public pool built into the shoreline into the um into the uh the rock foundation there. And now it was summer, so we went back. They inform you about the architect when you are in line to get into the pool. A long line and while you're in line, you can see that it's rather crowded and then you're disappointed because it's sold out, but you have patience like we did. You get in, but you pay €8. And so that makes it not basically for the people anymore. It's only for privileged people, which is sad. And uh then uh you see which we also did a show about another similarity right we cruise ships come and visit us um our um shift uh ambassador we had a shift ambassador meeting today here's my here's my sticker so we got together today so Christine Lmetra um who owns a unit in Barcelonetta in Barcelona which we were showing you on the second slide and she feels slightly guiltly, but she says she is long-term renting it currently to a a student from Africa who has her parents come and watch her. And so this is a long midterm rental. And she says no one is questioning cruise ship uh you know hospitality. Everyone is banning Airbnbs, but you know, cruise ships kind of slip through uh that, you know, issue, she says. So, here's the pool, and you know, I was rather disappointed, I have to say, because of the overcrowding, because of the overpricing. You have just that little pond of water that is highly chlorent, and you really can't go into the ocean because it's too um it's too much of a surf. Then there is the town the this the the beach town of Espino uh which is up um up north a couple of mines. They have a public pool but it's closed and they have a beautiful art deco architecture. Look at that diving tower there but it's all out of commission. Go wonder. And you know there's uh the beach is pretty pretty populated as you can tell. But you start to see something. They design shade. That's also something we need in Honolulu so badly. There isn't enough shade designed. Certain weird similarities when we have the the the the beach patrol people on their on their ATVs. I always find this weird. On a better note, something we used to have, Jay, is electric street cars. They brought them back not just for tourists but actually for people riding them to work. As you can see the ticketing machine there and this is us hopping the train. Uh fantastic shift amongst other things is about detoxing from technology. This is a perfect example of a 100-y old technology that's so durable that it still works. And at the end of the um the route, the the the driver gets out and manually flips the wire back and flips the seat backs uh back and there you go. Then uh along the track of that historic train along the river, the Duro River, there's housing. The housing has planters for trees. We know this from the legacy of the Killingsworth um u work in Honolulu. And then they built new infrastructure here. They build a new bridge. The bridge is for guess what? For the metro, right? Just to say so our heavy rail that took us so long and is so overpriced and overdone. Uh here they're doing this. And then there's an architectural model of that in the adjacent train station where you can see how that's you know nice model by the way and they point out the engineers and the architects and here we're back in the metro by Ziza and Sudo Deura and we're back with our aules the traditional ones that our exotic escapism experts is posing in front and then on the right is a contemporary one and guess what that is that is a metro station. So they're very high on public transportation and architecture and design plays a significant role. Not always does it sort of um u impact the what we call this transit oriented development, right? You put you put a train station there and then beautiful things grow around it. Well, not so much here on the right. The construction crane, there's too much glass there. shift is about detoxing or having a diet from glass as Thomas or rightly so calls it. When you exit this tram station here, the Kaza de Musa, you end up what's oval in red, the Kaza de Musa, and they have an exhibit that includes it that they use a Delorean from Back to the Future uh on the uh advertisement billboard. So, we went to the exhibit. There's a large architectural model there and it tries to explain why this when Porto was the the cultural um um epicenter of um of the world um at that time around the year 2000 the turn of the millennium we went to a fo play which was beautiful as music but we couldn't help ourselves I saw this two decades ago my first time in in in Porto. And you know, maybe the the the Delorean comparison is a really clever one because as we remember the Delorean was not well powered, nor was it, you know, uh well, uh crafted because it was out of stainless steel that made it even, you know, bigger and and heavier. But what was cool about it was the form. And so maybe it's the same with the Kaza del Musa that isn't really so cool except it wants to look cool. And um I say something I have a hard time because Metnol was always saying we need more architectural educations and yes we do. But maybe in this case where Remolas the architect tried so hard because he knew the Pritskar prize I guess at that time well Ziza already had its Pritskar prize but Suda Deura got his Pritska prize so he knew he had to really try hard because he won the competition but then he knew there are these Portuguese masters and he had to try really hard but he didn't really get anywhere close to them. So I'm saying here very carefully but still that I have the feeling maybe sometimes you need to have regional competitions where you have so many great architects like in Honolulu, right? You have all these great talents that go to school at the University of Hawaii. Why don't you make architectural competitions amongst them so they get great work going? And then I want to encourage just to go just to go, you know, on a stroll and then you see the street with a beautiful facades that we love Porto for, but we see also something that makes us curious. That's this thing in the middle and that's obviously might be might be newer. So it is a new building here that has a courtyard. That's also a theme that you know is ingrained in Honolulu a lot. We did like several shows about it. So, they dwell on that theme here just as well. And it's a it's a beautiful project that I, shame on me, wasn't able to find out the architect yet, which is also quite maybe an understatement. Um, great modern almost neotropical brutalism spaces here and places. some very playful way with the name um of of the building. And then look at this. Yes, this is crushed glass, right? We on the island we import Heineken bottles. This is the green. We have brown bottles maybe. What was your uh your your PO bottles? Well, they have cans, never mind. But you know, all the bottles of all the different colors. So, they throw this into the concrete as aggregate. Did they use fly ash in this concrete? I don't know. The the the curious and maybe critical thing is things like this are next door. Maybe this is the sa that the Portuguese are famous for that they're so melancholic that while at the same time they let things fall apart like this here and then they build new things next door. Um this is the the beach of Mato and Yha is where yes in Hawaii. So surf is always branded although there is um obviously Nazare which has just as big of a wave you know as we have uh in in in Hawaii. But still you know that's how popular we are. Even in Portugal that has great surf. They brand things like a surf store after us in Hawaii. And in this neighborhood is a tower. Tower is the biggest thing for us in Honolulu. We've been exhaustingly, you know, criticizing them and reviewing them. So there is a new tower here. Thomas hour is um in the situation to say no towers anymore because towers are not efficient nor effective uh anymore. But let's still look at this tower. And we look at the tower. The lady on in front on the left is uh our exotic escapism expert Susanna's Portuguese mother from her three years in Portugal at age 16. So this is a while ago, three decades ago. And she worked both for Ziza and Suda Deura. And on the right is her mother-in-law and her nephew. So we were driving by and checking out the tower. And while Thomas says, you know, a diet on glass, yes, this tower here in a climate that's not that uncimil reduces, right? It's it takes a diet on glass because it has, you know, a good window wall ratio as we call that. Um certainly again we have concrete. Um the question is you know how light of a you know footprint carbon footprint does that have? It has when we look at the units, you know, um units that just in our treetop apartments show quote on the top right from like two decades ago, cross ventilation on the corner units. And even the units that are not on the corner have three small little, let's not call them lenai, but little balconets or so. And so that's you know what creates um the um the the image of the building. So this is when we turn the shift uh logo around it means thumbs down because what makes it thumbs down is the price tag. So 1,100 to 1,800 are the rents in this place. We will find out later but we can already say it now because it's important. €1,250 is the average income of the average worker in Portugal. So this is unfortunately socially um disqualifying and Sebastian Cth um from TM always um reminds us of that we talk about shift, we have to think about affordability and for whom it is and we currently have this gentrification going on. why we might say well this is intelligently designed although there is kind of a little neocclassicism going on but again the question is okay how much what's the what's the what's the gray energy of the concrete and then the question is how much shade is provided and for who is that so maybe this project without further investigation once again doesn't hit it then we have our emerging generation Jay these are the students right they're very vulnerable to. So here this is the University of Porto where architects that we keep running into. This is the firm of Oda did a student housing tower here which is called Mika Pus and it's obviously out of concrete as you can tell and it has lines or at least little balconies. It is out of concrete. It is out of you know um prefab concrete. So it pride itself and by the way long time ago this the first one was even in the old transcendence show days and then early in the human doain architecture we had less and Adam campers from grace specific rocky mountain precast. So if we can you know um basically improve concrete with fly ash which le said it's only a logistical question we can do that we have the capacity to do that in Honolulu just as well as here you they try to do a nice job to make it you know compelling this is a nogo shiftwise because behind that screen they're hiding what single AC wall units no go another project in the back has this even more and the lobby looks like what like a middle class motel lobby and then they brag about their financing capital concentration of course they have a a lead briam is the eur is the European sister of the of the lead system there then they're installing these electronic gates to get into your student dorm right and at this point we have to point out the holly Halani, which is that new student housing on Dole Street in Honolulu, where the units go from 1600 to 6,000 per month. And this is criminal, right? This is really, really, really bad. You rip off students. As far as the floor plan, yes. Um, this is something for us to learn. In Honolulu, there's a scissor stair system where you have you need two egress staircases. So you can collapse them into one um with a system here. So this is an innovation that we can learn from also you know maybe they remind us of Halamanoa in terms of the rawness and the compactness of the system. Also the price here 550 to 900. Alammanoa is 30 bucks per night, which also makes it 900. But still, one could do better, especially if you would give it to the great Alfred Ye back then as he was looking at Primitiva one. And just that little trick of making the core hollow that way, making it a circular double- loaded corridor, little things can make a big difference. And only then it would you know look like this. Next project from our roof terrace we saw these two towers and the cranes. And I asked everyone what is this? No one was able to tell me. And you see this little haloish around it. And I was very curious. So I walked towards it and I was guessing is it suda deora again or pritska price? But it's the firm oda not. And this is a project in um in the Kosovo in Tirana. On the left, that dancing, you know, thing is by this firm Oda. On the right is something they do together with Suda Deura. The show up there long time ago, six years ago is my favorite tower is by Soda Demora is the Borgo Tower. So I was hoping this project might be by him or obviously maybe by the two of these. So this is this firm here that I found. They're really kind of um talking about horizontal office structure. Uh but there is there's founding principles and these are the guys at the bottom there who do the firm and the next project by them is this project here. So this is the context, right? This is old Porto. It's obviously falling apart. we should say getting torn apart and getting um getting um revitalized or reconstructed or whatever want to call it. So here is a tower rising out of this um traditional factory and then they do something that we also more than joke criticize that they theme buildings after some Hawaiian elements. So here you got the air building, the fire building, the earth building, the water building. This is from the developers website. And then while it goes up once again out of you know heavy concrete, you see some color there and the colors are guess what have to do with the Azoo again once again. So here they are. So they put some boxes on the lai and then they basically glue tiles on it and on the construction fence you can see renderings how it's supposed to look like. So while again the buildings at the bottom maybe they wait to be touched up and to be you know neatly restored as you know almost museum fronts. The neighborhoods um is a very gritty neighborhood. You see people on the street. You see trash on the street. You see new buildings being developed um that are out of concrete and then you lick and stick granite on it and auge of course. And is this really for the people that you see on the left? Um uh an immigrant family here with kids. Um the neighborhood is rather gritty to begin with. There's some nice buildings. This really reminded me of my former home, the Wiki Grand. So maybe there is a genetic code they're kind of adding to. And you know, um I I come from, you know, concrete from pre-cast concrete. So I'm sympathetic with, you know, what they're doing. Or at least I should say if I would have been, you know, reviewing this some decade ago or two decades ago, maybe I would have been way more exciting about it because these days again, we might want to build differently. And here we go again. So the monthly average salary of a Portuguese between 11 and 1,200. These should sell for 250 to 650. Welcome to Honolulu Jay. Right. This is exactly what's happening in Honolulu. And this is how a unit, a studio for €250,000, the exchange rate between the US dollar isn't really that much. So, you can say it's pretty much the same. And that looks like any studio in any of the new developments um in Honolulu. This is a little nicer design, but it also has single wall AC units, which we say is a no-go. And on the developers website, they even brag about it and brand it that way. Again, two decades ago, we've been doing similar, you know, corner units with natural ventilation. We've also been doing community grocery stores out of concrete, which they have one as well. So, I'm sympathetic with that. And let's stay or shift to that typology of the Merkantile. This is an interesting project here because this is in the heart of Porto and it is a little strip mall and you know from that strip or that crack of the canyon you can look at this very iconic every tourist knows this tower and they put so much soil on the roof that the iconic cork oak trees can grow there but it's also on the expense of high maintenance as I caught this guy up there, you know, pulling weeds while the kid down there is is on the cell phone. And of of course, like cost isn't like um you know, on a lower end fashion. So, this is also a very sort of high-end u Gentry project of course as now we get to the markets, the good old markets, Jay, that we remember melancholically there. So that's, you know, where we want to have our Aino Vera and our sardines, right? This one here is a renovation of the most popular market, the B how market from the 1920s and it got gentrified. And yes, we're guilty as well because here we had our oysters and our venova. And um so we go to another market here. This is um the one in the Matus um in uh closer to the Boa Visha area. It's from the 1950s. And this is how it looks. Looks rather stuffed and cluttered. And it also has AC units. Woo. And this is how it used to look like right when it was actually a real market. Now it became a food court for mainly, you know, rich people, business people, tourists. And this was for the people. This was where you bought your fruits and vegetable for your daily use. So we conclude this with one example that's a little better and it's in the Matsinosh area. It has a sort of the Mora tram station in front of it which is very close to the courtyard project that we were uh reporting on in the courtyard uh episodes. And once again it's a great um open arch space in this case here. And uh it still has at least in some areas you can buy vegetables and fruits. I like this here a lot because this is decoration out of sea plastic garbage. Um and of course gentrification also doesn't stop here. This is where um our her Suzanne's um sister-in-law took us out for for lunch and it was more on the on the pricey side. Um and I was um surprised or mesmerized by the arches and the the glass on it and how that was constructed. And it has fans. There we go. You can do without air conditioning. you can still do with fans as we should do a lot in Honolulu as well. So, um this is uh Shidler, the equivalent of Shidler Business School in Honolulu. This is the department of business um at the University of Porto. It's a project that is wonderfully restored back to its original condition including the furniture and uh the architect we've been reporting on a um uh building the one and only hotel of Oscar Neimire in Europe is on the Portuguese island of Madera show quotes at the very bottom and the contact architect um uh D Lima was doing this building here. So um it makes me cry, Jay, because that's what I wished would have happened here uh to our beautiful um library, Sinclair Library by the great Frank Haynes that they're ripping apart. Dodto told me recently it's even not completed yet. Budget 50 million for what? Because what they should have done is exactly what has been done in Porto with the project we just saw. You just have to to have the eyes open eyes for your own silverware. So we're coming to the conclusion here in this in this toy store with the little model cards there. There's a Renault there's a Renault 4 and I caught this real Renault 4 in front of the building. And the Renault 4 is also now getting retroed. At the very bottom right, I photoshopped that in is the e retro version of that one. But you know, nothing beats the original beats the real deal. And you know, we always make this analogy between cars because we love cars and we restore them and we keep them in the life cycle. The building in the back might not be the most pretty, but there is some design thought behind it and it's it's abandoned. So how why why is this abandoned? So uh this is my restaurant recommendation Jay and for everyone go to restaurant Novo Paris and this is your host Fabio Lopez. Hi Fabio. We went there every night because it was so delicious. Uh we how do we find out about it? Um I was um having Suzanne get being stung by a was before we uh hopped on the plane. By the time we ended arrived in Porto, it was swollen. So we went to a pharmacy clo pretty much before they closed down. And the guy said, "Oh, that's not that bad. I give a little cortisan cream and you should be good, but you should go and eat out." And I recommend to you a great restaurant which is just, you know, a few feet over. It's in a side alley. This is the side alley that hardly anyone finds. Um, and it's going to it's going to be hard to get there because it's going to smell awfully um of excrements because um you have which we call the urban nomads living at the end of this dead end street. So this is where the homeless live and unfortunately they're not provided sanitary facilities. So then they end up doing that on the street unfortunately. So um every evening I was discussing politics and uh and urban and architectural issues with Fabio. Thank you Fabio. And now I'm quoting him with a solution. Jay and everyone because this number here, there's 700,000 empty buildings in all of Portugal. And Portugal isn't very, you know, densely populated except of course Lisbon and Porto, right? So a majority is is in these system is in these is in these cities. So um what he is saying is like stop building new buildings but renovate each and every old building that we have. Force the owners to do it. And this sounds again dictated right and they just come out of not just but you know since the 70s they've been out of dictatorship. It seems like bringing back dictatorship but maybe there's a good call it regulation right say to the owners you know you're you're you're mandated to do this and if you can't do it you know maybe you get support um we will see and do it you know here it looks like they're doing it but um they're only sort of doing it because you see this building is hollow right so they demolish everything on the inside including the beautiful exterior only to have the Azo Juu postcard fake front remaining and everything else behind is is is being torn down. So the viewers to all the viewers out there if you go to other cities like us to Porto this is the major you know tourist shot place there where you sit in front of the letters of Porto and then you're in front of a a historic building and again why is uh Porto so close to us because look at the numbers of of tourism right we thought we have many tourists right Jay Hawaii but Look at Porto. Porto has more than we have at this point, which is the same big burden. So, we're going to close with our great Kurt Sandburn, and sorry Kurt, I didn't find this article until now. Shame on me, which is from 2015. And it's called My Trip to Paris. So now we want all of you whenever you get out of the US which you should do a lot especially in these days and get your eyes opened and your mind opened then do it by becoming a detective like Kurt did where he didn't just go I mean he drank wine of course you know and croissants and and whatnot and drank champagne I'm sure he did but he also did architectural investigation here in in in the master of loruse and he was making some connections and and came back with some suggestions like example here which used to be was supposed to be the Vita we've been talking about as you can see here now it became the aliyah doesn't really matter except the VA he was excited about that it could have been a a single loaded corridor now the aliyah is a double loaded corridor and it has the same ugly back that you see on the left side which is from Dodto's great few media out that the state daily that he does weekly architect uh coverage is about and this is the photo that he provided which once again you know what is that it's just another one of these h not supposed to be their buildings anyways I stop it here this was the fireworks of food for thought with photos your response Jay >> wa I have so many responses Get them all out, please. >> Oh, do we have the time? Well, uh, what comes to mind first is the thing about concrete. I know you like concrete, but um, some of those um, some of those concrete structures look like jail exercise yards. Um, you know, I know you haven't seen really a lot of pictures of the old Porto, which is beautiful. It's, you know, it's 18th 19th century. Um, it's a diversity of colors and design. It's all kinds of statuary uh on the buildings. U it's a pleasure to look at. It's a joy to walk down the street with all that diversity around you. And um the new Porto, you know, is really problematic for me. Those the concrete gets dirty. The concrete is really not sustainable as a an aesthetic experience. But you know that it is very hard to knock down a concrete structure. It has a useful life of hundreds of years. And who is watching the store? Who is who is fixing it? You know, it's not built to be sustainable. It should be various colors. It should be painted or designed somehow. Uh there should be green all around. That's not so it's not green all around. Um so the new Porto is not appealing to me. I'm sorry. Uh in terms of the aesthetic and some of those buildings are nice because they have len they have diversity around the building in terms of you know the the the structures in and out and around. I like that. Um but the but the you know the 40oot escarments don't do it for me and the high the highrises don't do it for me at all. I'm not saying that we're doing any better here in Honolulu. We're not. Uh and I think, you know, the takeaway point for me is it's really better to uh re revitalize old buildings and build them the same structure but better and more aesthetic and more comfortable and more human. Uh if you keep on building concrete buildings and and jailhouse, courtyards, um you're going to turn people away. Um, the other the other aspect of that is that Porto has a huge social problem and I put that in a in a commentary uh alongside where this show is and that is like Honolulu, it's too expensive. Um, and you have all these uh, you know, tourists coming and it's too crowded using the existing amenities. Um, and the apartments are way too expensive for the you know, the average person. I mean, I know I've seen I've seen pictures and videos of of the bario outside Porto. People couldn't live in Porto Porto anymore. They had a they had to find shacks outside um you know with you very very fragile looking u you know breakaway buildings Allah de bario and that's where a lot of these local people are going and that the city fathers are really not taking care of them which is really terrible and they're they're favoring that 7 million tourists in in so many ways. So if if Porto wants to stay the way it has been and capitalize on bringing all these millions of tourists from Europe and elsewhere uh to Porto as a destination resort, they better start thinking about local architecture, local design, local people, and the historical qualities that brought people there in the first place. Uh it's ironic that one of these days Porto was going to lose that 7 million because it is no longer going to be uh aesthetic. I think it's a beautiful beautiful city, but the part I like best is the old part. Um in terms of the crowds on the street, you know, that's a problem all around Europe, isn't it? Yet crowds come from everywhere. I'm not sure why. And they're crowding each other out. They're elbowing each other out. Um and you have to wait online for nearly everything. And uh it's it's tragic in the sense that um it doesn't it doesn't really improve the life of the citizens, but it also doesn't improve the life of the tourist either. You know, if you're a tourist, you hate to be in a crowd like that. Like you say, I can't stand waiting online. I don't want to go there. So Porto has a lot to be said for it. It has had a lot to be said for it over many years, but I think it's uh it doesn't have as much of a future as we would hope. And I and I say if you want to learn something from Porto, uh you know, there is a uh a lesson to be learned. Don't let Porto happen to Honolulu. Uh don't build a lot >> and 40 foot escarments. Don't allow crowds in. um you know and and serve the little people and serve the design and maintain the original aesthetic that made it so appealing to the local people and the early tourists you know the early um the the early people the early people who came here and made their lives here. That's that's my basic reaction. I hope I'm not being too negative. >> Rightly you're you're right on. I mean it's um I I have to say again I these these architects mainly this firm ODA you know we've been it reminds us of Honolulu. There's a firm we did like more than 20 shows about Chicago and Honolulu because we detective wise found out that there is this architectural firm of Solomon Courtwell Buans that both Howard Hughes and Kamehameha school and Brookfields are using. So it's the main this is the main architectural firm uh in has become in Honolulu and ODA is that for Porto except they are from Porto and they have all the the founding principal have been you know working for renown architects and so they all got good training and I I give them that they mean well but I'm I'm quoting you with a capital concentration. I think they become victims of capital concentration and they don't challenge their clients with the important columns of shift as you were saying energy gray energy. So you're pumping massive concrete you know and this is we know uh concrete is one of the biggest CO2 killers. So this is is no good. And then the social part that we're saying these are only for and they're not just for tourists, right? Just as Kakaako is not for tourists, it's for parking investments there. So you're making these things for rich people from the all over the world and they park their money there. And then as you always say, you look at in the evening you look at dark, you know, units because no one is there because you know why to leave the light on when no one is there. So this is and it's and then you're on the street and when there's no people living in the buildings then you got no cano or vinoa umbrella as you always you know call it. So this is this is really the the big problem. It's not just a city that invites tourists because tourists at least, you know, they go to restaurants like we do Fabio, you know, and leave their money there. That's at least something. But if you just buy a unit and then you just let it sit there, you know, or you rent it out for astronomical prices that you know, no one you know, only the rich people in the town. I think this is even a bigger problem. I think is a capital concentration uh that we have just like that in in in in Honolulu as well and and this is the problem I think you know we've been proposing you know before we got off towers at all and joining Thomas and saying we need to rejuvenate and this is the other thing I mean you always um you know speak highly about Christine camp rightly so who's who's who's buying you know because when we're talking about Porto The difference is there's a much bigger building stock of old buildings, right? It's a historic city that's centuries old. Honolulu isn't to that extent, right? So all these 700,000 buildings according to Fabio. It it's like you go through the streets and you see, you know, abandoned buildings, falling apart buildings left and right. So it's it's like so obvious that someone who runs a restaurant, you know, sees it and then, you know, he's a smart young guy, but other people should see that as well. Just is saying, "Okay, stop building new buildings because you have enough buildings." And you know, we know that um that um it's it's a it's it's the new uh no-brainer that before you build a new building, you keep buildings you have because nothing is more sustainable as using something that's already existing to rejuvenate it, to repurpose it. Uh we do that, we should do that with everything. We talked about cars, right? Old cars. And when Christine Camp bought the Davis Pacific Center, that's a Steve building. That's a jewel. That's a gym. Now, you know, the challenge is again for even for her, you know, um how do you uh do that? And we've been doing, you know, crazy as we are, you know, suggestions maybe to do it differently than you do it conventionally. But the fact that she's doing it is great. So she's not, you know, becoming another Howard Hughes even Kamehameha school, but she says, I'm taking on existing buildings and I'm trying to keep them in the life cycle. That's the way to do. So what applies to the cute little picturesque you know you know fewtory high buildings the equivalent of that is our downtown fabric of highrises that following co um um home office uh are not used as much as offices anymore. So they should be re reused but then the question is how do you reuse them? I mean, we've been critical about that or trying to give her advice and saying don't chop them up into little, you know, studios as well or prison cells and air condition them, but try to find other ways. They're more cooperative and more, you know, using our trade wind air conditioning and things like that. But I think that's like because otherwise people say, well, we don't have these cute old historic buildings where we used to have them. you know, in in Chinatown, you have them in even in Kakaako, of course, you had, you know, to them to some extent, but not to to such a massive amount as they have it in Porto. So, I want Fabio as a mayor of Porto and to make that happen, right? We have I told you we have we just have a new mayor in Munich. He is 33 years young. He is from the Green Party and he is gay. Yes, you can you can fa shake things up and we wish him all the best that that he's doing that. Right. So, Fabio must be in that age range. So, I want him to be the mayor of uh of of Portugal and basically implement that. And you could do such great things, Jay, as you know, uh the little people. You could empower them and and train them how to fix buildings, right? So then they can earn them living in there by restoring it. There, that's all possible. If there's a will, there's a way. Let me let me add a couple of thoughts. One is it's clear that the Portuguese people have have a great sense of design. And among them are some great designers. Um, and they really know how to use space and so forth. And they built all this great historic stuff. And um I'm sad to say they're going to lose it if they don't uh continue that by rehabilitating old buildings and the like. Um the other thing is it seems to me that government has to do its job. Its job is to make the city livable. Look at Paris for example. There's a political will in Paris. It says we are going to not only make Paris beautiful, we're going to keep it beautiful. >> And we're going to you know it's not just for the Parisians, it's for anyone who comes. It's an icon of design, an icon of of beauty, and Porto could be that. It's not too late for Porto. Um, so the mayor has to get in there and do stuff. And I say the same thing for Honolulu. The government has to get in there and do stuff. And the one thing that comes to mind which I have you know been thinking for a long time is that the government can give developers tax breaks and give them guard rails you know to do aesthetic things to do things that uh that that are acceptable uh for the local people um that um are sustainable in the long term. um they can give them a tax holiday or a tax reduction incentives of one kind or another in order to shape you know the development activity in the city and thus achieve at least at some level a kind of Parisian phenomenon um that that is visible in Paris uh although it's under threat I'm sure um and it is hopefully it was visible and could be visible again in Porto and the same for Honolulu >> absolutely And along the lines, we've been not tiptoeing around, but you know, we we've been claiming social housing and we will after this little trip to to Portugal, we will have to return to Barcelona and also get Pedro back because social housing continues to happen in Barcelona. And even though the great master cert you know lost it so to speak because you know he became the dean of Harvard and then he got addicted to that high end I guess. But um um Barcelonian Catalan architects you know did did did not follow that demise so to speak of what happened to the master. They basically unfortunately here in Porto I really hope I did my best. Um if there's anyone out there who tells me, "Oh Martin, you uh basically didn't see and you forgot uh about this one." I'm more than happy to uh report on that. But I really, you know, haven't seen any social housing to the extent of what what happens in Barcelona. And that's why we sent me out around the UIA uh World Architecture Congress a month ago. And I did some really heavy massive footage that we will show and share um in in the next couple of shows as great encouragement because we don't want to end this. I mean for Poto I guess we agree both Jay we say we warn Poto and we warn it because we know so well uh how it can go down the drain because we're experiencing that in Honolulu uh for too long and so we know exactly you know we're the masters of high-rise miseries and you know we only see these few and we probably should send this to this to this architectural firm firm and saying, you know, try to um educate your clients and the government as you rightly say. So, as to not let them run by capital concentration, by by social ethics and they're, >> you know, architecturally they are ahead of us. They're they're they're they're doing better as you said. you know, you you like their their attitude, their architectural attitude, the way, you know, they they all have lai, right? We don't have this anymore. We got less and less lenai. They have been like deevolutionizing in Kakahako. the the the the the WA first thing, you know, that I found horrible with its sort of um wavy facade on one side, but the other side actually has pretty large and I would have never thought I would ever praise this, but it's like in politics, right, where I never thought I would say something good about Ronald Reagan, but Trump makes me do that, right? So, it's the same in Kakaako. I would have never never thought that I would ever praise that first tower at Hugh's tower. But uh but but now that we have towers that have no lenai anymore, you know, everything is relative as the good old Einstein used to say, right? >> Every city is a is a lesson and there there are lessons that are very good lessons which you know we we we we're students. Honolulu is a student and it should take lessons from from Porto and many other cities in Europe. Um but there's also cautionary tales >> and uh it must study the cautionary tales as well. Um because we we don't want to go down a rat hole and there there are things that we need to avoid and we could study them too. Um the perfect solution for Porto is to um you know is to preserve its own heritage uh for its own people and um we we have to learn from that and uh there's no reason why we can't do that but we have to be aware and awake about what's going on elsewhere like in Porto. >> Yeah. And and coming full circle on that note, Jay, it is fundamentally critical and essential and existential for democracy because if if if the people are not served, if they're struggling to make a living again, they listen to these parents who promise them to provide it for them. False promises, of course, but mostly they find out too late, right? So this is really although it seems a little luxurious to do the human humane architecture show but the more we think about it the more it is in the core of fighting for our democracy and in Spain you can I mean it's it's not that easy. I mean Portugal has unfortunately right-wing tendencies just like as I already said and apologized Germany has very unfortunately big time. So it's it's not that easy to be said, but you know the the the Spanish government um maybe one sees a correlation between the innovation of social housing and and the government. I mean not that Spain is is safe, right? We know there's extremist tendency just as well. But um again if if you forget about or ignore uh social housing then history as you say we should learn from history and we know what happens then. So >> amen amen to all of that Martin. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, you know, and it makes me think that um you can make a correlation between green grass and open spaces um and the the quality of life of the people and then you can make a correlation between the quality of life and the people uh to democracy. So all of that is connected. You're absolutely right and I totally agree with you. >> Yeah. And to that extreme, probably the project that we showed and maybe we were too overly critical with, you know, with the Lacost store and the, you know, the the oak the oak uh uh um cork, you know, trees. But it is a good example that you know sometimes we don't want to be you know capital is what runs you know us cultures but you can do it in a cultivated way and I think that project is a good one because you provide public space on top of commercial space and to be on that on that park up there and there's also a bar and you know it's not a a super luxurious ious bar. You can buy an Estrella. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. Portuguese will hate me for that. So, Superbach, of course, it's superbach because Estrella is Spanish. You can buy a Superbach for for €3, you know, and and enjoy the park in that restaurant while others, you know, buy their, you know, fancy $200 lac shirt down there. So, there is a way of serving both right at the same time. So I really, you know, commend that project for it that you don't have to be one or the other. You can be as well as as this project shows. So >> we we can't stop until we address one more issue. >> Mhm. that is uh you know in in Porto the local people resent the tourists and in Barcelona they resent the tourists and in Spain and Portugal in general they resent the tourists and they make policies and limitations and regulations um that um that demonstrate that they resent the tourists. But isn't there a way to have a beautiful city and welcome the tourists in any numbers to accommodate the tourists uh to build a city to accommodate both local and tourist populations and thus still have the benefit of all that tourism brings and I believe that's possible. Um sending them away does not appear to me to be a solution. What do you think? I think you make a great point and give me an idea. I mean, we already talked about that local people could um bring in sweat equity, right, for renovating the houses and then they could they could welcome a visitor as another way to call a tourist, right? And integrate them into their daily life. I will I mean you talk about the French uh there's the chradot I will never forget when very early in my life I did a road trip to the Bratana and we stayed at this single family house where these empty nesters had been renting out the the the room of their grownup and out of the house daughter and the whole room was rosecoled. So the bed sheets, the wallpaper, everything was rose. And in the morning they came with a rose colored tray with the most delicious coffee and croissants for us delivered into the rose bed for us. And this was such an amazing experience that is still so apparent, so vivid although it has been many moons ago, right? So that would be a way you basically don't lose your your d living space your dwelling space but you allocate a certain portion to visiting people and then the beauty is that you exchange you know cultures and thoughts and you become friends and all that stuff and I'm not sure again I'm hesitant about the mandating or encouraging right but you're a little bit more forceful and and and hopeful that maybe that becomes a policy, right? Because there's I mean there's good things to mandate, right? There's good policies. So maybe that's a policy and then again you get you get incentives, you get tax subsidies for doing things like that. How about that? Just off the top of our bald old heads. Thanks Jay. Great idea. >> You Martin, great show. All right. So, as we promised, we will go back to Barcelona big times because you know that we continue to find what we're looking for and to learn from big times for us in Honolulu. And until then, stay democratic and in dignity. We need that more than ever. Okay, bye-bye. Can someone here tell me one way to broaden our knowledge of the law and its proper application in our society? >> How about you, Mr. Miller? >> Yes, professor. We can broaden our knowledge of the state of the law by watching the talk shows on Think Tech Hawaii. >> Good answer, Mr. Miller. You're right. You'll make a fine lawyer.