Reinvigorating Waikiki: Multi-Sensory Architecture for Urban Agriculture

Abstract

One of the great tourism destinations of the world, Waikīkī has been evoking and providing unique and attractive images in the minds of many visitors for years. Lately there has been a plan that one of Waikīkī 's icons, The International Market Place, will be demolished and redeveloped (The International Market Place Revitalization Project). This project's program and concept are somewhat similar to the proposal in this study. The research started with ""people's images of a place."" These images are important for a city in order to determine the quality of urban planning and to conceptualize architectural design. I utilized public input to identified my development site. The aim of this research is to change previous images of Waikīkī and enhance them with a new image that reflects sustainable planning and design development. Therefore, I have focused on visitors' images of Waikīkī and their hometowns in order to understand what kind of spatial qualities affect their memories. Based on this study, the visitors' images of Waikīkī are primarily positive. In reality, however, Hawai‘i and Waikīkī have many problems that impact the environment, such as a lack of recycling, inadequate transportation, agriculture and aqua-culture issues, as well as, water and energy concerns. Therefore, this project will apply the dreams of these people to a realistic world and proposes a new sustainable solution including urban agriculture with an international event, Expo Hawai‘i 2020. This event is transition, but the dream city will perpetuate a new image for many people and solve several problems of the environment that will continue to benefit the sustainability of Waikīkī long after the Expo concludes.