Honolulu Oahu: Architectural Guide

When Hawaii became the 50th state of the USA in 1959, a period of intense construction and a growing tourism industry followed. Luckily, this coincided with the most creative phase of the mid-century modern masters, who designed buildings that took full advantage of the archipelago’s unique, consistently pleasant climate.

Tropical modernism is therefore one of the main focuses of this guide, which presents the architectural history of Honolulu Hawaii’s capital city on the island of Oahu through almost 150 buildings. The selection ranges from vernacular architecture and nineteenth-century churches right through to war memorials, iconic 1960s hotels, and recent exclusive and inclusive condominiums and apartments, concluding with evolved proposals addressing the climate and housing crisis.

Compiled by four leading experts and longtime Honolulu residents, this book is more than just a reliable travel companion. With extensive map material, a large number of archive images and color photos, in-depth essays, and extra YouTube viewing material, it also invites armchair travelers to dream of Hawaii.

Author Biography

A lifetime resident of Honolulu since his birth there, DeSoto Brown’s lifetime has covered the city’s growth from containing only two structures of almost 10 stories in height to today’s total of over 400 high-rise towers. Always fascinated by history and feeling a need to preserve objects of the past, he’s assembled a large collection of Hawaii-related paper ephemera mostly connected to advertising and promotion for tourism. He’s worked at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu for over 40 years in its Archives and Library. Among his publications as a sole author or contributor are “Hawaii Recalls” (1982), “Aloha Waikiki” (1985), “Hawaii Goes To War” (1989), “Finding Paradise” (2002), “The Art of the Aloha Shirt” (2002), “Hawaii At Play” (2003), “Surfing: Images from Bishop Museum Archives” (2006), and “Art Deco in Hawaii” (2014).

Climate and culture became the basis for Martin Despang’s co-coaching (SoA architecture and TIM hospitality) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, based on critical practice (with his family firm Despang Architekten in Germany) and practical critique (as a weekly video journalist with ThinkTech Hawaii). He was born and raised in moderately-tempered Hanover, Germany, where he first studied architecture, followed by the more extreme-tempered prairie of the USA at the University of Nebraska, which then invited him back to teach. After this he continued to the hot arid desert at the University of Arizona and finally to the tropics at the University of Hawaii. William Chapman is the former Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM). Educated at Columbia (M. S. in Historic Preservation) and at Oxford University (D. Phil. in Anthropology), Chapman is a frequent contributor to UNESCO and ICOMOS projects as well as serving as reviewer for numerous World Heritage nominations. He is a member of the ICOMOS History and Theory Committee, the Historic Town Committee, and the Vernacular Architecture Committee. His latest publication is Architectural Conservation in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands (Routledge 2024). A four-time Fulbright scholar (Italy, Cambodia, and twice in Thailand), Chapman previously served as the Chair of the Department of American Studies and is the Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Historic Preservation at UHM. After toiling for 24 years in the Hawaii State Historic Preservation Office, first as an architectural historian and then as division administrator, Don Hibbard entered the private sector and for the past 20-plus years has provided heritage specialist services to various architectural firms, governmental agencies, and individuals in Hawaii. In addition, he has taught courses in historic preservation and architectural history at the University of Hawaii and Hawaii Pacific University. Two of his books, The View from Diamond Head (Honolulu: Editions Limited, 1986) and Designing Paradise (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), consider the development of Hawaii’s visitor industry and architecture as a conveyor of history and a sense of place. Other books include Hart Wood, Architectural Regionalism in Hawaii (2010) and Buildings of Hawaii (2011).