A Hawaiian Modernist, by Way of Russia

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Architectural models, drawings, site plans, photographs and assorted documentation by the celebrated Hawaiian Modernist architect Vladimir Ossipoff (1907-1998) are the subject of an overhung but nonetheless extraordinarily interesting exhibition at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven. The show celebrates the reopening of the Art and Architecture Building after a $126 million restoration and addition, designed by the New York firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates.

Russian-born, Mr. Ossipoff was raised in Japan before immigrating to California with his family in 1923; in 1931 he moved to Hawaii in search of work following the onset of the Great Depression. He thrived as an architect in his new environment. Within a few months of taking up residence in Honolulu, he found work with the architect Charles W. Dickey working on the Immigration Station at Honolulu Harbor. In 1936 he founded his own architectural practice in his home and never looked back.

The current show, organized by Dean Sakamoto, director of exhibitions at Yale School of Architecture, is the first to focus on this important but overlooked architect’s career. The displays, divided into five sections and showcasing more than 30 architectural projects, show how, from the 1950s through the ’70s, Mr. Ossipoff pioneered and promoted the novel idea of site-sensitive planning and design, along with the concept of sustainable building using local materials. He was an early environmental architect.

In the excellent and beautifully illustrated exhibition catalog. Mr. Sakamoto explains that each of the five sections relate to design strategies that underlie Mr. Ossipoff’s design practice. They are “The Living Lânai,” “Native Materials, Modern Tectonics,” “Darkness and Air,” “Hawaiian Modern” and “Revealing Site.” Some of these strategies are more original than others, for Mr. Ossipoff’s early buildings are in the vein of international Modernism, a major architectural style of the 1920s and 1930s characterized by the simplification of forms to geometric shapes, a minimum of ornament and the use of glass, steel and concrete as preferred materials.

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The Hawaiian Life Insurance Building in Honolulu, completed in 1951, is typical in many ways of the international style. This six-story L-shaped structure was Hawaii’s tallest new building and the architect’s first really big independent project. And yet it is also pluralistic in its influences, the architect adapting Modernist forms and ideas to the Hawaiian way of life, indigenous materials and aspects of the local tropical climate. For example, vertical aluminum fins on the exterior redirect sunlight throughout the day, while a lower wing buffets the entry area from wind, sun and traffic noise.

The adaptation of Modernist building forms to Hawaiian living conditions was to become more pronounced in Mr. Ossipoff’s later buildings, and also eventually evolve into his signature style. It is particularly evident in his numerous residential projects for the island’s wealthy and influential residents, like the house designed for Marshall and Ruth Goodsill, completed in 1952. Mr. Ossipoff’s design employs deep overhangs, carefully oriented windows and vents to create a naturally ventilated structure that is permeable to the powerful Pacific trade winds yet protected from rain and excessive sunlight.

Mr. Ossipoff drew inspiration for his design for the Goodsill house from several quarters, including the traditional Japanese house, with its shaded interiors and natural ventilation. Photographs displayed of the interior of the Goodsill house reveal low levels of filtered daylight falling upon natural, local wood or stone surfaces to create shadowy, mysterious spaces. This subtle manipulation of elements of shade, light and air within interiors was to become a trademark of Mr. Ossipoff’s designs, and is everywhere apparent in the residential and civic designs that are profiled throughout the show.

Mr. Ossipoff’s other source of inspiration was Hawaiian architecture, in particular the lânai, an open-sided, freestanding and lightly roofed structure usually buffered from the weather by foliage. His floor plan for the Goodsill house, also on display, reveals the use of a shaded lânai as the primary living area, creating an inviting indoor-outdoor space around an intimate garden. Mr. Sakamoto regards the transformation of the indigenous lânai into a building type as Mr. Ossipoff’s most innovative contribution to modern architecture.

Mr. Ossipoff’s design for the Honolulu International Airport Terminal, completed from 1970 to 1978, manifests his lânai concept on the scale of grand civic architecture. It is an open, airy post-and-beam concrete structure that takes full advantage of Hawaii’s year-round trade winds as a form of natural air conditioning. There are very few inner walls and a long flat roof that blocks out the sunlight. Still in use today, this gateway to the islands for thousands of visitors each year stands as a testament to Mr. Ossipoff’s brilliant adaptation of Modernism to Hawaiian conditions.