Post #190226 by bigbrotiki on Sun, Oct 2, 2005 8:32 AM

Highrise Honululu alright. Though still cool, the ILIKAI can be viewed as the watershed between the old Waikiki and the new:

Built right next to the Waikikian with it's gardens and the Tahitian Lanai, it overshadowed that human scale-built hotel, and when the Hawaiian Village went highrise too, the poor Waikikian seemed anachronistic, wedged in between and literally over-shadowed by the highrise canyon sides of the the two towers.

I am conflicted about modernism and tend to side with Tom Wolfe in that when mass-housing demanded ever bigger buildings in the 60s, the architects where in their ivory towers, and only too willing to replace individual and unique design with generic boxes.

While the Waikikian and the original Hawaiian Village were pure "Hawaiian Eye", the Ilikai (with Jack Lord's suite) was all "Hawaii 5-0": Still cool, but more Multi-culti than Poly -Pop.

Like Paul Page sang: "...Tall Tiki towers, Hawaii is on the go." And it went, towards generic mass-tourism, away from it's roots.