Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
Goodsill House (Courtyard), Wai‘alae,
Honolulu, O‘ahu 1952.
Architect: Vladimir Ossipoff.
Photo: © Victoria Sambunaris, 2006.
March 14, 2009 - June 14, 2009
Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt
“Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff”
Opening: Friday, March 13, 7 p.m.
Media conference: Thursday, March 12, 2009, 11.00 a.m.
Guided tours of the exhibition Saturdays and Sundays at 3.00 p.m.
Opening hours:
Tue, Tues - Sun: 11.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.
Wed: 11.00 a.m. – 8.00 p.m.
Deutsches Architekturmuseum | Schaumainkai 43 | 60596 Frankfurt
www.dam-online.de
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
Press release
Frankfurt/Main, 10 February 2009
“Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff”
In his seven decades of practice, Vladimir Ossipoff (1907–1998) played a key role in
developing a distinctive form of Modern architecture in Hawaii, combining local and global
influences in his work at a time of swift political and social change in America’s 50th
State. Ossipoff’s prolific output - more than one thousand buildings - demonstrates how
the projects he designed for the Asia-Pacific region, can still provide a model for the
reconciliation of disparate cultural legacies, using the local topographic and climatic
conditions to inform energy-conscious solutions. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Ossipoff
pioneered and promoted the novel approach of site-sensitive planning and design,
alongside the concept of sustainable building using local materials. The exhibition
‘Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff’, brings to light this important
figure, and a forgotten strain of regional Modernism, which is still almost unknown
beyond the islands.
After Honolulu, Hawaii and Yale, Connecticut, the exhibition has now moved to Frankfurt,
its only venue in Europe. Drawing from the architect’s personal and professional archives
and interviews with his family, colleagues, former employees and clients, the exhibition
on the first floor of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum includes some 120 items
comprising
original
drawings,
archival
photographs
and
models,
as
well
as
a
documentary video specially commissioned for the exhibition.
Vladimir Ossipoff (1907-1998)
Ossipoff was neither a native of Hawaii nor of the continental United States but a
cosmopolitan figure. Born in Vladivostok, Russia, he grew up in Tokyo, where his father
was assigned to a diplomatic post. He lived there until he was fifteen when, in the wake
of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, his family emigrated to California. After earning
an architectural degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1931, and failing to
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
find work there in the Great Depression, he boarded a steamship to Honolulu. Ossipoff
settled in Hawaii, starting a career as an architect that stretched over more than 60
years of the 20th century.
From the early 1930s to the late 1950s, Ossipoff worked primarily for a power structure
controlled by the descendants of missionaries from New England who attained wealth and
status through control of land and agriculture in Hawaii. These kama’aina (“children of
the land”) were among the great patrons of art and culture in Hawaii in the first half of
the 20th century. Many of Ossipoff’s clients were members of this oligarchy, for whom he
designed structures that embodied both international modern and traditional Japanese
features. Having grown up in Japan, Ossipoff had experienced the complex subtlety of
Japanese landscape design and known the fine craftsmanship of Japanese carpenters. In
Hawaii he continued to seek out Japanese craftsmen who were capable of realising
architectural details to his exacting standards.
A major turning point in Hawaii came in 1959 with two events: the transition from a
territorial government to statehood and the arrival of the Boeing 707 jet aircraft. This
heralded a huge increase in tourism in the islands, bringing about profound political and
social changes. During the decade of rapid development that followed Hawaii’s statehood,
tourism and the military drove economic expansion, as the islands shifted from the
corporate oligarchy of its Territorial years to its status as a Democratic, multicultural
state in 1962.
Though by nature a pragmatist and not a theorist, Ossipoff understood both the value
and inevitability of Hawaii’s social transformation and urban expansion. He was
nonetheless critical of uncontrolled development in the city of Honolulu and upon taking
office as president of the American Institute of Architects Hawaii Chapter in 1964,
Ossipoff declared a “War on Ugliness,” focusing on what he considered mediocre and
uncontrolled development in Honolulu’s burgeoning Waikiki tourist district. And in a
prescient statement in 1978, he articulated environmental concerns as being a crucial
element in architectural design, claiming, “...the design of buildings will be oriented to
energy conservation. The emphasis will be not in overcoming nature’s heat and cold by
enormous mechanical means but in rolling with nature’s punches by absorbing or
repelling them with design”.
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
This outlook informed Ossipoff’s approach to design. His office received numerous
commissions - from the more intimately scaled houses, schools, and churches to larger
commissions for office buildings, hospitals, and airports, most of which remain in use
today. His buildings are modern architectural responses rooted in each site, sympathetic
to the land, fusing western Modernism with Japanese elements and other island
vernacular features and making use of the local resources. This is an architecture that is
particular to its place and adapts modern American architecture to a Pacific culture and in
particular to the lush landscape of Hawaii.
About the exhibition - Five Design Themes + ‘War on Ugliness’
This exhibition is being shown at an opportune moment, when issues of global versus
local, energy-use and sustainability are at the forefront of contemporary discourse. But
Ossipoff did not seek to make a signature architectural statement, nor did he theorize
upon and document his architectural principles. In retrospect however, a number of
recurrent themes are evident through the close reading of his drawings and the
experience of his buildings. These form the organising thread of this exhibition, which is
divided into five sections dealing with design themes, plus a section devoted to Ossipoff’s
‘war on ugliness’.
Revealing Site presents buildings integrated with their sites in compelling ways;
Hawaiian and Modern displays the range of Ossipoff’s design sensibility; Darkness
and Air reflects upon his artful juxtaposition of shade and natural ventilation to create
comfort and intrigue in his buildings; Native Materials and Modern Tectonics
illustrates Ossipoff’s use of local resources as well as new building technologies; The
Living Lanai examines Ossipoff’s transformation of the ubiquitous Hawaiian lanai—a
freestanding, open-sided, flat-roofed indigenous structure—into a building type in itself.
War on Ugliness describes Ossipoff’s efforts at drawing public attention to the dangers
of over development in the Hawaiian Islands.
Revealing Site
Vladimir Ossipoff created a resonant alliance between a building and its site. A
fundamental aspect of Ossipoff’s site design strategy was the careful placing of a
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
building. Rather than reshaping the landscape, Ossipoff designed buildings to respond to
the characteristics of the terrain. Enhancing the connection between interior and exterior,
between building and landscape, he slowly reveals the small and grand characteristics of
each.
His most poetic work in this regard is the Robert Shipman Thurston, Jr. Memorial
Chapel at Punahou School (1967), in Honolulu. It sits in quiet repose in a district called
Manoa Valley, linking the grounds of the Punahou School—a prestigious independent
school originally founded by Congregational missionaries in 1841, which the New York
architect Bertram Goodhue master-planned in 1917. There is a natural spring and pond
on the site, after which the school was named.
A courtyard built around the spring creates an intimacy that continues inside the chapel,
where subdued lighting has a calming effect on the high energy of youthful churchgoers.
The main sanctuary floor slopes gently downward, coming to rest at the level of the
pond, which actually enters the chapel. Bands of brilliantly illuminated stained glass cast
shafts of coloured light out across the water. Although the chapel seats five hundred
people, no seat is further than forty feet from the altar. Thurston Chapel is archetypical
of Ossipoff’s vision. It is at once Hawaiian, Modern, and a timeless solution that cannot
be traced to any other precedent. The result is rich in formal expression and materiality,
and inextricable from its site and the legend that resides there.
President Barack Obama spent his 5th to 12th grade school years at Punahou School,
graduating in 1979. In his autobiography ‘Dreams from My Father’ Obama remembers
first going to visit the school with his grandfather, who claimed: "Hell Bar, this isn't a
school, this is heaven". Obama describes "a complex that spread over several acres of
lush green fields and shady trees, old masonry schoolhouses and modern structures of
glass and steel".
Hawaiian and Modern
Although Vladimir Ossipoff was educated in the Beaux-Arts tradition at Berkeley, he
embraced Modernism and developed new aesthetics and technologies in Hawaii. Many
elements of his designs incorporated Modernism’s abstraction of form, efficiency of
structure, and minimal ornamentation. Yet Ossipoff’s approach was pluralistic: he did not
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
deny the inclusion of Hawaiian customs, indigenous materials, and influences of the
subtropical climate on shelter. His commercial structures, in particular, merged local
conditions with international sophistication, resulting in a style that affirmed Modern
architecture as the architecture of Hawaii’s statehood years.
Darkness and Air
Ossipoff often remarked that the traditional Japanese house—with its thin walls, dark
interior, and natural ventilation—was better suited to Hawaii than Japan. Working within
a culture that blends Pan-Asian values with a balmier climate, Ossipoff’s residential
interiors demonstrate how low levels of filtered daylight cast upon natural surfaces can
create elegant, mysterious spaces, both aesthetically pleasing and comfortable. This
subtle articulation of shade and air was a balancing act, allowing permeability to the
trade winds, yet providing protection from rain and sunlight—all while preserving views
with carefully placed windows.
The Goodsill House, an intimately scaled house designed for a young lawyer and his
family in a new suburban tract on the southeastern slope of Diamond Head in Honolulu
(1952), illustrates this theme well. A compact jewel box of surprises within a nautilus-like
shape, the residence is fragmented into three parts. Curling around a garden tucked into
its centre are separate wings for living and dining, a master bedroom, and children’s
rooms. Ossipoff creates a house that is a sensitive response to the site and combines
sophisticated spatial organization with natural ventilation, using a familiar palette of
materials, which are modulated through light and shade.
Native Materials and Modern Tectonics
Vladimir Ossipoff recognized the importance of connecting a building to its context by
using local materials, while applying the most advanced engineering and construction
techniques his clients could afford. In his interiors, he often used native ko‘a and ohi‘a
woods to add appeal to both residential and commercial buildings. He also mixed local
volcanic rock and sandstone from the shoreline into his buildings’ structural concrete and
interior surfaces.
Ossipoff designed several innovative structures built of site-cast and pre-cast reinforced
concrete. His Diamond Head Apartments (1958) was the first fully pre-stressed
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
concrete high-rise in the world. Another of Ossipoff’s commercial buildings in Honolulu the IBM Building (1962) is a Honolulu landmark that brought cutting-edge, reinforced
concrete technology to a prominent urban site. Ossipoff sought to portray IBM’s
international image as a leader in computer technology, while still creating a Hawaiian
sensibility. He designed a simple, seven-story, reinforced-concrete frame structure and,
to protect the building’s floor-to-ceiling glass curtain-wall from the blazing sun, overlaid it
with a sculpturally distinctive, pre-cast concrete grille, a screen that is practical yet
abstract. In a news article he wrote about IBM, Ossipoff stated: “Not only does the
systematic, rather repetitious pattern of the concrete grille express the computer-world
character of the IBM Corp., but [it] also gives the building a sense of belonging in the
sun. The deep shadows of the grillwork become as significant a part of the architecture
as any part of the structure itself.” Ossipoff further emphasized that his grille was
custom-made to address other problems: designed to be self-cleaning, it was angled to
keep pigeons from nesting in it.
The Living Lanai
One of Ossipoff’s most innovative contributions to Modern architecture was the
transformation of the indigenous lanai into a building type unique to the islands.
Recognizing the potential of this open-sided, freestanding, and lightly roofed structure to
serve as the primary living area of a home, or as an inviting public space in a larger
structure, Ossipoff created and perfected a sort of “non-building.” Protected from the
trade winds and rain, the lanai creates an ideal indoor-outdoor space that is minimal both
structurally and in terms of its visual impact. It has a low profile roofline, while being
buffered from the weather by service or private structures, such as kitchens or bedroom
wings. In projects that presented opportunities for merging interior and exterior, Ossipoff
explored the possibilities of the lanai as a total structure, eventually transforming it into
large-scale complexes.
Ossipoff designed Blanche Hill House (1961) on the Kāhala beachfront like a lanai, in
order to be as informal and open to the environment as possible. Although it was
demolished in the 1980s, the Hill residence was a finely situated complex of small interior
rooms linked by expansive exterior spaces. To maximize openness, Ossipoff concealed
the header beams inside the ceiling assembly above the wide openings across the lanai
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
and living area, allowing three layers of floor-to-ceiling sliding and bi-folding panels—
wood shutters and glass-and-screen doors—to open or close completely to the outdoors.
With much of the building’s structural support concealed, the home offered exceptional,
unobstructed views. The overall effect was one of delight, structural ambiguity, and
seamless indoor-outdoor living.
It was through the evolution of the lanai that Ossipoff contributed most profoundly to the
Hawaiian built environment. By combining the logic of an indigenous vernacular typology
with twentieth-century Modern precedents and a Japanese sensitivity towards nature, he
established a timeless and original building form possible only in the tropics.
‘War on Ugliness’
Upon taking office as president of the Hawaii Chapter in 1964–1965, Vladimir Ossipoff
declared a “War on Ugliness” against what he perceived as a deficiency in the public’s
understanding of good design and its land use policies. This represented the pinnacle of
Ossipoff’s career-long pursuit to elevate the civic realm of his adopted hometown. His
decree was timely. As tourist-related development in the new 50th State burgeoned
without effective planning controls, he advocated guidelines which were in harmony with
the unique topography, setting, and climate of Honolulu whose population had doubled
since the pre-war years. Through the local news media, Ossipoff announced that
architects would speak out on planning and design issues to make “… the people of
Hawaii, … more aware of the part every individual and segment of the community can play
in making this a more beautiful place to live and work.” Key to his activism was his
influence on the City Council to adopt a general plan for O‘ahu and to enact a
comprehensive zoning code with input from local architects.
Ossipoff’s design values were consistent with recommendations made nearly three
decades earlier by the American cultural critic Lewis Mumford in his report “Whither
Honolulu” (1938) which was commissioned by the city’s Parks Department. Mumford
cautioned that while much of Honolulu’s natural virtues had “…already been spoilt. More
disastrous results may follow unless steps are taken at once to conserve Honolulu’s
peculiar advantages such as its connections to the ocean and to create buildings which
take full advantage of the balmy trade winds and exceptional foliage that are unique to
Hawaii.”
Mumford’s
prophetic
words
and
Ossipoff’s
civic
engagement
eventually
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
contributed to the enactment of Honolulu’s first comprehensive zoning code in the late
1960s and later, the creation of specific guidelines for special design districts such as
Waikiki which remains in place today.
‘Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff’, curated by Dean Sakamoto,
was sponsored by and first shown at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Hawaii from
November 29 2007 – 27 January 2008 and then travelled to the newly restored Rudolph
Building at Yale School of Architecture, New Haven, Connecticut, where it was shown
from August 28 – October 24, 2008. This exhibition represents the first scholarly project
on Ossipoff’s extensive body of work and the topic of modern architecture in Hawaii.
Press quotes on the exhibition
“An extraordinarily interesting exhibition... the first to focus on this important but
overlooked architect’s career.”
New York Times, 26th September 2008
“Just like you can't say you know European Modernism if you don’t know your Le
Corbusier, you can never really profess to know Hawaiian architecture if you haven’t had
the chance to admire the work of Vladimir Ossipoff “
Wallpaper.com
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
List of projects shown in the exhibition
REVEALING SITE
Pauling House
1957
Robert Thurston Jr. Memorial Chapel, Punahou School
1967
Mary Persis Winnie Classroom Units, Punahou School
1950-55
HAWAIIAN AND MODERN
University of Hawaii Administration Building
1949
Lum House
1965
Clark House
1953
DARKNESS AND AIR
Goodsill House
1952
Liljestrand House
1952
Davies Memorial Chapel, Hawaii Preparatory Academy
1966
Laupahoehoe School
1952
NATIVE MATERIALS, MODERN TECTONICS
Diamond Head Apartments
1958
IBM Building
1962
Kahului Airport Terminal
1966
THE LIVING LANAI
Blanche Hill House
1961
Boothe Luce House
1969
Outrigger Canoe Club
1963
Ossipoff Residence
1958
Honolulu International Airport Terminal
1978
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
Support/ Sponsors
‘Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff’ was organized by the Honolulu
Academy of Arts with guest-curator Dean Sakamoto. This exhibition, its accompanying
publication and programs, are made possible with generous support from the Harold K. L.
Castle Foundation, Mrs. Marshall Goodsill, the Atherton Family Foundation, Cooke
Foundation, First Insurance Company of Hawaii Charitable Foundation, Group 70
International, Armstrong Companies, Hawai’i Council for the Humanities, Donald and
Laura Goo, State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Graham Foundation for Advanced
Studies in the Fine Arts, McInerny Foundation, Ameron Hawaii , Jean Rolles, and
Thurston and Sharon Twigg-Smith.
With kind support of the US Consulate General of the United States, Frankfurt am Main
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
Exhibition imprint
An exhibition commissioned, sponsored by and designed for the Honolulu Academy of
Arts, Hawaii, USA, Director: Stephen Little. Curator: Dean Sakamoto
Director Deutsches Architekturmuseum: Peter Cachola Schmal
Guest curator: Dean Sakamoto
Organiser for the DAM: Hester Robinson
Exhibition design for DAM: Mario Lorenz
Graphic Design: Gardeners, Frankfurt
Translations: Gaines, Frankfurt; Art language, Essen
Press and publicity: Paul Andreas, Stefanie Lampe
Exhibition secretarial team: Pascale Baier, Jeanette Bolz, Inka Plechaty
Library: Erich Wagner
Models made by: Dean Sakamoto Architects LLC, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Registrar for HAA: Cynthia Low
Registrar for DAM: Anke Gabriel
Exhibition realization: Pietro Paolo Brunino, Enrico Hirsekorn, Eike Laeuen, Achim
Müller-Rahn, Michael Reiter, Angela Tonner, Beate Voigt, Detlef Wagner-Walter, Valerian
Wolenik under the management of Christian Walter
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
Publication
A fully illustrated, 328-page book, ‘Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir
Ossipoff’ co-published by Yale University Press and the Honolulu Academy of Arts
accompanies the exhibition.
‘Hawaiian Modern’ was edited by Dean Sakamoto, curator of the Hawaiian Modern
exhibition, a critic in design, the director of exhibitions at theYale School of Architecture
and principal of Dean Sakamoto Architects LLC, New Haven, together with Karla Britton,
a lecturer in architectural history at Yale University and author of Auguste Perret
(Phaidon, 2001) as well as numerous articles on the history of modern architecture and
urbanism. Both Dean Sakamoto and Karla Britton have written essays for the book.
Stephen Little, Director of the HAA and Kenneth Frampton, architect, architectural critic
and historian, wrote the forewords. Other contributors include Marc Treib, professor of
architecture at the University of California, Berkeley and practicing designer, Don J.
Hibbard, director of Hawaii’s state preservation office for 24 years, and Spencer
Leineweber, professor and director of the Heritage Center at the University of Hawaii’s
School of Architecture. The colour photographs specially commissioned for the book and
exhibition were taken by Victoria Sambunaris.
For the duration of the exhibition press images released for printing can be
downloaded from our website: www.dam-online.de !
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Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff
Press Office
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