In the early days of statehood, despite their commercial paychecks, a few influential Honolulu designers fought a war against ugliness. Famed local architect Vladimir Ossipoff and other modernists knew that much of the city’s future was still unoccupied, and at risk to onerous tenants. As Honolulu grew, commercial tourism, relaxed building standards, and an eager building boom spelled aesthetic ruin. In the slow bleed that precedes the death of empire, the Ugliness won. Now 50 years after Hawaii became a state with Honolulu its cultural and political center, a new generation of designers and artists move beyond the commercial and into the occupied void, post-war.
Designers, like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, shape both what we see in a city and the way we see it. Unlike Oz, designers are ordinarily removed from their creation by the fundamental quantity of time, leaving behind their visuals and skylines as markers of generation and community. From their second story space in Kaimuki — as the space warms and the street rumbles from an afternoon bus below — Hawaiians Chris Kalima and Josh Lake of the design firm Airspace Workshop try to imagine the future. “I hate the word ‘visionary’” Lake explains, using the Chris Farley air-quotes to mock the term. “Man, think of something else.” The yang to Lake’s yin, Kalima clarifies while tensing his fingers, “we DON’T want to throw a party, just another excuse for everybody to drink and say ‘wassup.’ That is NOT what this is about.” Expounding in another controlled blast, “we’re here to talk about… getting to the big ideas.”
It’s those big ideas that make 2059 something more than an art collective. The editors call the project a “Future Retrospective,” a looking back from a place we have yet to arrive. They are doing this with a website as a platform, hoping artists will use the opportunity to get involved in the discussion. In trying to answer the questions needed to save the beauty of a growing city, they are renewing a spirit of resistance and path to change paved by optimistic modernists of the past. Unlike their aesthetic forebears however, the present futurists’ concepts are restrained by the reality of 50 years of statehood and over 100 years of American consumer and military culture.
The format of the project includes work from contributors on five “critical issues,” which will be discussed on the website. The editors will create a publication as an extension of the site, most likely at the conclusion of the project in a year or so. The topics are: transportation, agriculture, culture, development and industry. The organizers are unsure if there will be a full gallery presentation at the completion of the project. Either way, the completed works are guaranteed to inspire dialogue with the contributors who are already on board. The editors are looking for more voices, and interested artists with something to say are still welcome to join.