CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
The IBM building as it looks today.
Iconic design
The IBM Building has been saved from demolition to play a critical role in Ward Village
By Nina Wu
January 26, 2014 – Honolulu Star Advertiser
Compared with the sleeker, newer high-rise condos next door, the IBM Building, designed by famed architect Vladimir Ossipoff in 1962, is compact and rectangular.
Over the decades, some have called the building, with its distinct honeycomb grille, a work of beauty, while others see it as an outdated period piece.
Just a little over five years ago, the IBM Building, off Ala Moana Boulevard near Ward Centre, was slated for demolition, perhaps for another high-rise. On Saturday the Howard Hughes Corp. celebrated completion of its $24 million renovation of the structure.
The IBM Building will not only remain, but will serve as a gateway to the developer’s master plan for the surrounding 60 acres of Ward Village, housing an information center and sales offices.
Nick Vanderboom, senior vice president of development for Howard Hughes, says the building has grown on him.
“It’s a distinctive, iconic building,” he said. “It stands out as unique. It’s one of the buildings where the more time you spend in it, the more you appreciate it.”
Preservationists who opposed the demolition of the building are breathing a sigh of relief.
“Ossipoff is one of the most well-known and celebrated of the tropical, regional architects of the 20th century,” said Kiersten Faulkner, executive director of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation. “It’s almost unthinkable to demolish one of his masterpieces.”
Famed architect Vladimir Ossipoff designed the IBM Building in 1962.
“We were, of course, quite pleased when (Howard Hughes Corp.) decided to preserve, invest in and make the IBM Building a part of their overall development.”
While the IBM Building is safe from demolition, other works by Ossipoff, who died in 1998, have not survived redevelopment. That’s why a recent fundraising campaign by the Hawaii Architectural Foundation on the Indiegogo crowdsourcing website was timely.
The campaign aimed to preserve the architect’s plans, drawings and sketches at the University of Hawaii’s Hamilton Library for future generations of architects. Launched in October, the campaign surpassed its goal of $27,000.
Lynn Davis, head of Hamilton’s preservation department, said Ossipoff’s works will be the cornerstone of a newly established Archives of Hawai‘i Artists and Architects comprising architectural documents and related journals spanning the 20th century.
“There’s nothing else like this in Hawaii,” said Davis. “It’s also about sense of place, how you look at these plans and what they tell us. It’s time to bring this all together as a visual statement.”
Sid Snyder, Ossipoff’s longtime friend and a partner in Ossipoff Snyder & Rowland Architects, donated more than 1,000 folded, hand-drafted building plans dating from 1937 to 1999. The initial funds will help the library purchase flat-drawer files to properly store the documents, but more is needed to get the project off the ground.
The drawings will be carefully unfolded one by one for storage in acid-free files.
Among the collection is a line sketch of the IBM Building viewed from Ala Moana Park on tracing paper, plus a display board of Honolulu Airport’s central concourse and slides of the Outrigger Canoe Club in Waikiki. Besides homes, Ossipoff also designed The Pacific Club, the Queen’s Medical Center and Punahou School’s Thurston Memorial Chapel.
WHEN THE IBM Building opened in 1962, it was heralded as a modernist piece of architecture ahead of its time and won awards.
Even then it garnered mixed reactions.
An April 1979 newspaper clipping from Ossipoff’s files (now housed at the library) features a letter to the editor from a reader deploring the prominent display of the IBM logo on “one foul-appearing building” against the “spectacular mountainous backdrop.”
Today the Howard Hughes renovation has its critics as well.
While the grille, known as a “brise-soleil,” or sun-shading structure, in architectural terms, has been left intact, the developer transformed the entire ground floor into an information center.
Walls were knocked down and replaced with glass windows, opening up views on all four sides.
“We wanted to honor Ossipoff,” said Vanderboom, who consulted with the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation while finalizing design plans. “We made a conscious decision not to touch the brise-soleil. I think it’s a way of celebrating and acknowledging the pattern he created and amplifying it in certain ways.”
The parking lot was transformed into a courtyard-style gathering space that can be used for cars or closed off for events, with a water feature that buffers the noise from traffic.
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
The IBM Building’s parking lot was transformed into a courtyard-style gathering space. Shown here is a water feature with the same patterns as the “brise-soleil” on the building’s Ala Moana Boulevard side.
Patterns along the courtyard as well as interior walls on the sixth-floor sales center echo the same patterns in the brise-soleil.
A new addition, a cubelike structure that reflects the building’s modern style, extends out toward Ala Moana Boulevard and is slated to be a restaurant lounge area. The rooftop lanai was extended to provide a platform with unobstructed views of the ocean and make more use of the outdoor space, according to Vanderboom.
Snyder is a critic of the modifications to the original design by his former partner. He said the exterior changes are “unsympathetic to the architecture of the building.”
The grille, he said, is a distinguishing feature of the structure, but so are the proportions, which are no longer the same. He would have preferred the extension on the opposite side of the block. He also would have preferred a more muted color to the brightness of the white on the new cube and top.
CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARADVERTISER.COM
A presentation board with an original drawing of the IBM Building by architect Vladimir Ossipoff in the ’60s. A campaign to preserve Ossipoff’s plans, drawings and sketches at the University of Hawaii’s Hamilton Library launched in October.
“There are so many ways to accomplish what they did without being so offensively different from the architecture,” he said.
Valerie Ossipoff, the architect’s daughter, echoed those sentiments and does not particularly like the new additions, either.
“I think they could have done it another way, certainly,” she said.
But she’s glad the building is still standing and is encouraged by how the community came together to help launch the Ossipoff archives at Hamilton Library.
“I’m very pleased that the archives have found a home, and it seems that they genuinely have,” she said. “Things were beginning to get lost and destroyed, so it’s nice.”
From an aesthetic point of view, the IBM Building’s exterior was designed to resemble a computer punch card. From a practical point of view, she said, the angle of the grille shades the sun while letting light in and is designed to be waterproof and pigeon-proof.
“He loved the IBM Building,” she said. “He was very proud of it. It stood out all by itself for a long time.”
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Project architect David Akinaka of Ferraro Choi stands in the IBM Building’s theater room on the ground floor. The newly renovated facility will serve as an information center and sales office for Howard Hughes Corp.’s Ward Village master plan.
The Howard Hughes Corp., despite the criticism, donated $5,000 to the Ossipoff documents campaign and committed $50,000 to fund grants over the next 10 years supporting the study of modern architecture in Hawaii in partnership with the State Historic Preservation Division.
From his office on the inside looking out, Vanderboom said the brise-soleil frames the view while providing shade, which he appreciates more and more every day.
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Historic Hawaii Foundation 1974~2014 ~ Celebrating 40 years of preservation in Hawaii!
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