pandemic situation of our paradise in Hawaii, and we're doing this with Bishop Museum Historian, our favorite co-host, DeSoto Braun, DeSoto. Good morning, Martin, from Honolulu to Germany. Let's jump right to the first slide and let's recap a little bit where we left last a week, if you don't mind. Yes. You want to do that or I want to do that. Once we're getting cut out a little bit, we have to apologize in advance. We're doing video by Zoom and we're doing audio by Skype, so it's a little more improvised than already. But we left with promoting another, hopefully again, post-pandemic production traveling together to add to the series of study abroad that we want to do that I want to have you with me and look at the special typology of federal buildings for the Allies' forces of the German Bundeswehr. And these are two projects our firm has been doing, and we've been looking at that. And then we want to go to the next slide. And what do we have to say about that, DeSoto? We're at Paul's bookstore in Portland now. Yes. Paul's bookstore is one of, if not the biggest bookstores in the United States, and unfortunately it is financially in trouble, as many bookstores are during the pandemic in particular. But when you visited the Paul's bookstore in Portland, you found a copy of this book, the red book, which is called The Architecture of Democracy, and inside the book is a picture of one of the buildings that we discussed last week, the Mess Hall, or the Dining Hall, for the German Army, and this was one of the two that your firm did. And there it is inside the book. Yeah, you brought, in our discussion preparation, you pointed out an interesting dilemma that the United States being comprised of people running away from Europe for several reasons, but one of them being that they didn't want to be part of authoritarian cultures and countries anymore with, you know, royals and kings and other rulers, it's going to be free. And that is indeed ingrained in the constitution of the United States, we, the people, however, then to protect that later on, they did the opposite because the military is set in a hierarchical way, right? So within your major sort of goals, to protect these, you have a conflict of interest to say the least. Right. Because the whole purpose of the United States was to deny that people were authorized to lead other people simply by the fact of their birth. In other words, we did not acknowledge the existence of royalty as automatic rulers. And so the whole United States was based on the idea of overcoming a caste system and working your way up from nothing to become powerful and rich, whereas in order to protect this system, as you just said, you create a military, which is 100% a hierarchy in which people are better than others and look down upon others and order others around. So it is an ironic contrast. And we said that architects in our thinking anyways have an obligation above and beyond what the client might think they want, and here especially because this is as public as it can get because it's federally operated and run and financed. So it's everyone's taxes that are put into these buildings, right? Exactly. So we took that very position to sort of undermine that hierarchical system, not only typologically as we've been talking about as far as where the different ranks were dying, but also sort of forcing the client to be a pioneer in passive design and passive solar design. So making a building that's truly a post-boscal, a representative of the just begun post-boscal era. This was actually built in the year of the Terminal of the Millennium in 2000. And talking politics, let's move on to the next slide and you share what you remember when we talked about that particular lady here. Well, this lady, initially when your building was built, you won an award for that building from the state where she was the Minister of Culture or something like that. And in the picture in the lower right corner, there's your father, you, and this woman receiving the award that you got for the building, and it's just also acknowledged in the book which is seen there. Queen has gone on to become the head of European Union, correct? Yes, the President. And so she has acknowledged in the award that you got initially that the building you did, which as you just said, tried to break up some of the hierarchy and offer the common people, in other words, the privates, the people at the lowest part of the hierarchy of the military, inequality, and an experience just in that one building that acknowledged that they were just as good as the officers. A little correction, the building she was awarding as was actually a community grocery store. Oh, sorry. Sorry, that's all right. No, you're totally right. But then she actually moved in into this sort of inner imposition, not position, but stage in her life and her career where she actually became the middle picture on the side shows very clearly. And in the picture, I was shooting at an inaugurational event for Marines at the top left, which are a picky basement expert, Stefan and Kirsten's niece had signed up for the Marines, so we were there at their inaugural event tonight, was able to witness her there again, and this time functioning as the Secretary of Defense for Germany. By the way, besides all that, what she was originally, what you indicated, she was the Minister for Cultural Affairs and Family Affairs. She's very qualified in that as well, because she is the mother of seven children. Whoa. And we recognize some recommendations from our culture, your culture might be, we might want to have the female factor in ruling the military as well, which she has done very successfully, and we looked it up. We never had a female Secretary of Probably Time to get that. I would agree, and we also discussed Angela Merkel as the leader of Germany in this time of pandemic problems and how her ratings had gone from very poor to very high in Germany. You said she's up to 80% approval because of how she's been handling the pandemic versus how people had been looking at her before with other problems, and being majorly the welcoming culture of letting in a million people who are not from here. Talking to female boards and factor of women in the military, let's go to the next slide. We always encourage the audience to think about examples from their immediate family or other social context, and this is one that you threw in about a very beautiful lady at the very top at the middle, and someone looks very familiar to us. Well, let's pray for a million to me because the woman standing in the center of this photograph, which is taken in 1942, is my mother is a very young lady, and she is part of the Red Cross Auxiliary here in Honolulu after the start of World War II. And when World War II started and throughout the war, one of the major things that happened in the United States as well as other countries was that women got moved into other roles that they had not had before because many of the men were in the military. So women were really the backbone in some situations of running things, certainly workers in munitions factories and other situations because of the unavailability of men. And that is something that it's also some it's also an indication of in times of disaster or stress or major changes like what we're going through right now economically and socially with pandemic, that we shake up the roles and we look at things differently. And sometimes we will that will lead to some long lasting effects that we don't originally at the time we don't anticipate are going to be the situation. So the period of World War II and the period we're going through now may be comparable in a lot of the changes that are going to come about that we don't see right away. Martin, are you there? Is a very important eye witness. I'm still there. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, I hear you. I'm back. Yes. Yeah, you can say your mother is having a very important birthday, which she's going to be, you know, one century young. Yes, she is. And so she is. And she said she's an eyewitness to this time period. And she's fully mentally there. And she's telling me these stories. I was telling her she was telling me stories last night when I showed her this picture. Yeah, and, and talking about, you know, coming up birthdays, I want to extend retrospectively just a day late birthday greetings to my mother, who is just turned three quarters of century young. So, you know, happy birthday mom again. Yes. So let's look closer into the subject matter how the island has been, you know, dramatically informed by previous sort of catastrophic events of having to do with the military and wartime. So let's go to the next picture. And these are all treasures from your treasure box. But before we do that, before we go to this writing, let's do your weekly dose of German reading and recall what a text at the very top is about. Well, when we talked about the two mess halls or the dining halls that you and your father built for the military, you discussed how difficult it was to get your changes into the building the way you wanted them. And the military, of course, being very controlled by rules and regulations was resistant to this. And so you ended up with a very bad relationship and a rejection and nobody talking to each other after the second building. But years later, you got a letter from one of the officers who wrote you. And that's the text in German at the top of this picture saying now that the building has been in use, we have to apologize. We are very happy with it. It worked out very well. Thank you for the work that you did. So you were vindicated. Yeah, what we can pass on to the emerging generation as an encouragement versus we as the community design center in the School of Architecture is waiting for the Department of Defense coming and asking them or us meeting part of the school to basically do something that we might want to consider to go the other way that we look closely at them, especially in times dramatically changing times on all levels and also for the military and us being well educated, advising them what to do and obviously what we have done in that past. And so because buildings might not be as sort of, you know, inclusive any more military buildings and they used to be that might open up for in many ways on many levels and which we would hope become more sort of inclusive and how, you know, a culture could be all of a sudden being exposed to things that otherwise hidden during times of military escalation shows this treasure document from the archive and explain a little bit more the reason behind. Okay, well, so what this is introducing us to some of the pictures that we're going to look at right now of military in Hawaii, particularly on the island of Oahu. And in this picture, it's a really interesting, I think, fascinating thing from the 1920s because it's a regulation sign saying dangerous driving by civilians is not allowed on this military reservation, which is probably a picture taken here on Oahu. But because of the multicultural and ethnically diverse culture which we live here, this warning is also written in the Hawaiian language on the left and the Japanese language on the right, in which these regulations are being enforced. And now we're going to look at some of the many great deal of evidence there is of how this military construction has affected us here. Yeah, and look where all on the island of Oahu and picture here. Yeah, because this is this is Hickam Air Force base, right? Yes, it is. And that's, and that is very close to as to the Honolulu International Airport. And so you told me that one of them come through where airport one is going to pull, you know, down and going to take off from there again. Yes. And here from your archive again, very interesting snapshot from different situations when it was under construction and that was sort of deconstructed through again, attack. Yes, exactly. So Hickam Air Force Base is one of the many huge military installations on Oahu. And when it was constructed, you can see pictures of it in 1937 being constructed. It was a huge airfield. I mean, even by international standards, this was a big group of airplanes and a big group of hangers here on the island of Oahu and hard to believe in the middle of the ocean. And because it was such an important military installation on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked it and caused a great deal of damage to it. You can see that in the picture on the lower right. But in the picture on the upper left, we see how big I mean, this picture is taken in 1959. And look how big it is. And it's still there today. It's a major installation. Absolutely. And the next slide is just one of many pictures of because the next slide of Pearl Harbor and the attack. And then at the top right, oh, we could need to go back one picture, please. Yeah, here we go. But at the top right, not wanting to over sort of romanticize the tragic events, but there's sometimes something good about everything bad is actually how after the war, the Austrian immigrant architect Alfred Price has built the famous Arizona memorial that floating sort of memorial space place over the US is Arizona. And you you you were adding an interesting aspect of his personal life and how it was intertwined very tragically to war events, right? Yes, it's an amazing situation because this iconic structure, which is so symbolic of World War Two was done by this man who was ethnic or national, his national identity was Austrian. And he in fact was put in a temporary internment camp here on Oahu during the war because he was considered to be an enemy alien. He had an Austrian passport. So he along with many ethnic Japanese and Japanese citizens was put in a in an internment camp. He was imprisoned. And he gets out of it. And later we also discovered he was looked down upon as potentially being a communist after the war, which is considered a terrible thing. And then he does this incredibly patriotic thing, which is so considered so American by designing the Arizona memorial. Absolutely. And we're going to see him again very soon. Let me go to the next slide, which is showing us another big location of the military that's more slightly inland and that's Gofield Barrie. Yeah, when I was showing this to my bonus and Sammy here, and in the previous picture, actually visiting the Arizona memorial was with my son, Lenny. But here Sammy basically said, Hey, this all looks very much lined up very in order. And we argue, you know, that's the nature of the military, that they're lining up in a row and then marching in a row and everything pretty regulated. But you also add that there is also a diversity when that within that uniformity, right? Absolutely. And what we're going to see is when we're talking about architecture for the military, which is the point of what we're discussing here, it is not necessarily all exactly the same building repeated over and over again, because the military built all different kinds of buildings for different uses. Some of them are just a house, machinery. Other buildings vary because of who in the military is supposed to use them. So for example, officers quarters and officers entertainment buildings are far more plush and comfortable than the ones with the common enlisted men who are down at the bottom of the hierarchy. So it's a very, it's a really varied group of things that don't all fit together just because the military built them. And we were let's zoom in and look at some of the buildings from the building stock for the next slide that that you provided here. And they, you know, started to remind us of against some European sort of heritage. And we threw it into of the Kirby's days. Buildings there on the right is the Villa Stein and to the left is the Weissenholz Settlement here in Germany. And as you were analyzing, then you said in there in their making, they're not they're not standard. And they're using new elements, they're using prefabrication, they're using automation. So they're very much like the Kirby's day was saying I live in. Yes. As far as exactly, exactly. And to the top right there is the Alton Price again, it's actually the first project he ever built for himself. And we feature this in a show where this is a quotation from what Jack Wilmer, who's currently living owning the house and living in there. And that one looks like if it fell from the sky and came straight from Austria, right? Right. It certainly did. And these little white boxes that you see in the big picture are homes for junior officers with families at Schofield Barracks who were built in about 1932. And yes, they are quite different from everything else in the background or anywhere else you were going to see on the base there, because they were being modern and they were being efficient and they were using the trends that were popular then. And let's go to the next slide of other buildings on Schofield Ballard experience, which were, which we like more, previous ones, although that's questionable, what we still call them sort of invasive, because they were very literally coming from another culture and climate. These ones feel we like because they look very exotic, because they're recognizing the specific climate we're having being out in the sun. So there are our caves here, there's a little nice there. And they don't even look very institutional. They look more domestic, right? Correct. And so what we see in the biggest picture are the enlisted men's barracks at Schofield Barracks from the early 1900s. And they are, they have arcades, they have large open areas, they're very easy breezy. This is all before air conditioning. And so they take advantage of and embrace the climate. And there also are, for example, in the lower left corner, there's the library at Schofield Barracks, which looks domestic, it looks like a home, it looks like a tropical home. And on the right, we do see officers' homes, which are filled with shrubbery, and they look very pleasant, and it looks very domestic, it looks like an upper class suburb someplace. Let's go to the next slide here, because we want to check out some, some, well, before we do that, that's, that's again, Schofield Barracks. And if you look at the picture at the bottom left, it's sort of recognizing the exotic, the tropical exotic, because when you sort of seriously think of soldiers having to be confined in boxes, as you know, our client was requiring, and we were rebelling against that in a democratizing to the pacifist way. Here you see people in a picture from the early 90s, sitting outdoors, hanging out in the breeze being shaded, so very tropical exotic, right? Right, right. And with palm trees next to them as well, but you also pointed out in the picture in the upper left, how these wooden stairs, which look kind of like bleachers, which you added to the second dining hall that you built for the military in Germany, those steps actually can serve like a bleachers and people can sit outdoors on this wooden, these wooden surfaces during good weather and enjoy their, enjoy their meals if they want to. And again, democratizing and making things more comfortable for people. Yeah, let's move to the next slide. We've been so far predominantly being on the south and the west side of the military. And to add to that, the very top left is Brett Sege Kava, who we used to host our P.I. and mobile, my P.I. and mobile before you kind of do it this year. And he's basically at Barbara's Point. In Barbara's Point, he basically with his helicopter cruise business, they got kicked out because the military is sort of reclaiming that. And so we're talking probably the Magnum Studios get kicked out, but they can move into the former Hawaii 5.0, which is in your front yard at Diamond Head, continuing the reboot. We're talking about reboot of both shows. That might be something that is happening. We also see one of the most iconic buildings of that typology of military architecture by the gentleman in the, slightly to the left of the middle, who is Albert Kant, who is considered to be one of the prime architect who has done a dedicated humongous body of work, that typology. And at the bottom there, we're actually at Kanoa, Kanoa Bay, right? Yeah. And one of the things that's important to note is that some of these military bases have in fact been given back to the state of Hawaii from the military use. So we've lost some Dillingham Airfield and Fort Ruger by Diamond Head, etc. Some of this land has in fact been not used by the military. And going back to Barbara's Point, that picture there with that rounded, very modern looking building. Again, for a personal connection, my grandfather, my mother's father was one of the commanding officers at Barbara's Point, again, during World War II, which we talked about earlier. So that again has a personal connection to me. Yeah, very interesting. And being now sort of on the on the north, or East Shore North Pole, let's go to the next slide here, because this is another location, bellows, bays, and that's close to Waimanalo, one of the most beautiful beaches on the island. And up there is, again, how our pying mobile was cruising by there and was pushed away because they had to do some training. And you pointed out that the first embodiment of that ability was actually a nomadic nature with tenants. And so I threw in at the very top left a project by when our emerging talent, Graham Hart, who is now teaching at our school, was designing in that area. He sort of, you know, subconsciously or intentionally kind of referred to that in his design. But at the top right, we see another contemporary sort of reinterpretation of that type. And what is that? Well, unfortunately, when military was here with tents, we see this being mimicked, if you might say so, by the homeless or the urban nomads, or in this case, as you said, suburb and nomads, which also you see at Waimanalo. So we see the historic tents of the United States Army. And we see the current day tents and makeshift structures of homeless people in the same location. Absolutely. And let's get us to the last slide here, because we're saying, you know, all things consider it maybe not literally, but figuratively the mindset of the military and these very honest thoughts, they're a little romantic, you know, or melancholic, they're very on the spot and very efficient. And they could also be effective. So we're saying maybe, again, providing what we call the CCCs, which we developed with the Carver Court, could basically be a contribution to, again, to humanity being based on the principles on the military and even being delivered by the military, right? Exactly. And one of the things the military has got to do is be able to transport things, put them in place and set them up very quickly. And that's something that we hope could potentially be done with the housing that can be developed from shipping containers is something we've talked about before. And it's something that is potentially even more relevant as we deal with the economic fallout of the pandemic, making huge changes economically and potentially putting people out of their homes. So if we're going to need housing, this is something that we need to look into. Yeah. And going with that, pairing that on a positive note, if what the current situation is due to using less than fossil fuel, fossil fuel is what the United States has majority fighting over and about. So if we cut this back, we might free up some funding that we could relocate to the things that might be more necessary than fighting each other in the world, right? I think that that is a wonderful option. We're going to do one to the economical force who is as powerful as the military. And that's going to be tourism. So we're going to return to that, but also how buildings are intertwined and their past and future potential. And we have our exotic escape system experts who's done it. Join us for that, that we're looking forward to. That's right next week. All right. So until then, stay safe and sound.


Snatch drunk. Game developers in the early to mid 90s had a revelation kids that grew up with the NES are now teenagers And what's a teenagers like violence blood gore and punches to the groin? So here came Mortal Kombat at the forefront of a new era in gaming man when this game hit arcades in 1992 It was an event. I remember my friends and I walking to the bowling alley and there'd be a huge crowd Standing around Mortal Kombat. I was a 10 year old at the time and this game was just beyond belief I couldn't believe I was actually seeing this stuff let alone imagine how somebody could come up with some of these moves So Mortal Kombat was what was seen at the time as a natural progression of the fighting genre Street Fighter 2 took their franchise in a direction where the games were predicated on speed and precision Mortal Kombat went in a different gaudier direction, but how is that gaudy direction held up over time? Are the Mortal Kombat games worth playing today in a word? No These games are incredibly dated that very clearly relied on shock value to get attention from mainstream media and to play to a male Teenagers based sensibilities and instincts sure there were a lot of games that did that then like doom But that game is still perfectly playable with smooth and responsive controls Mortal Kombat is just bad especially on Super Nintendo give Sega credit They had the best port of the first game by far and not just because it had blood and the SNES version didn't it was better Looking it played fluidly and since the controller had less buttons It actually made the finisher combos a lot more straightforward the Super Nintendo version blended in with every other generic fighter not named Street Fighter 2 It wasn't until Mortal Kombat 2 came out that the SNES surged ahead that game at the time was everything you wanted out of a Mortal Kombat game Tons of personality with a detailed backstory that I ate up with a spoon a lot more characters a lot more settings some Interactive which I admit is still pretty cool to this day a lot more finishers Babalities and friendship friendship, and of course he got a love the announcer And of course this guy My biggest problem with this game though is that every character might as well be the same person Everyone's basic moves are literally exactly the same the only difference in being their looks and a few special moves At least with Street Fighter 2 you had characters of different sizes different speeds different range of motion And all that combines to lend itself to a wide variety of gameplay that is aged really well Mortal Kombat 2 almost everyone's the same size and speed everyone's punches and kicks and uppercuts are the same Combine that with how stiff the controls are and the completely lazy Half-assed animation of the characters and this game is just not worth playing today outside of entirely personal nostalgia And even then you're gonna play for like five minutes and then turn it off Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 expands the universe a bit more with even more characters and some more multiplayer friendly game modes the graphics and character Animations are mercifully polished up a bit, but the game is still really stiff Everyone moves and plays the same and they stubbornly insisted on having a block button.  That's automatically triggered when you press back while the enemy is attacking again Street Fighter 2 nailed this aspect But it's among my biggest pet peeves of the Mortal Kombat series like I said before though I do like how fully realized this game's universe is you really do enter another world when you play these games playing a Mortal Kombat game is a little bit like watching a cheesy 80s action movie like Delta Force or Bloodsport or whatever It's fun for a while, but you'll get your fill of it sooner rather than later Anyway, I can't think of a game series that's gone downhill over time as badly as Mortal Kombat Except maybe Sonic, but at least the older Sonic games were really good Again, if you still like it for nostalgic reasons, obviously, there's nothing wrong with that Just don't expect any actual substance in the gameplay here Even if you decide to check it out out of pure nostalgia after 10 minutes or so You're likely to be wobbling around like Liu Kang here. I'd much rather play Street Fighter 2 Turbo