Isle architects win national award for ‘Mixed Plate’ film

A film by local architects Kaoru Lovett, Graham Hart and Ronald Ribao, “Mixed Plate: The Architecture of Hawaii,” won the national People’s Choice Award in the American Institute of Architects Look Up Film Challenge.

As part of the AIA’s multiyear public awareness campaign, the challenge was to highlight the impact architects have on their communities.

The local team took third place in the juried, national film challenge last month, at which time it also was honored as the top film in the Diversity & Inclusion category. Meanwhile, People’s Choice Award voting continued through Nov. 1, and the national winner was announced Monday.

It’s easy to see why the film won, 2015 AIA President Elizabeth Chu Richter said in a statement. “The film speaks to all generations, from every background. It’s inspiring and truly makes people want to look up and celebrate the beauty of life’s diversity.”

Lovett and Ribao are designers at Group 70 International, while Hart is a project coordinator at WCIT Architecture.

The local team got shots of noteworthy architecture at locations around Oahu, including the University of Hawaii at Manoa, downtown Honolulu, Chinatown, the Valley of the Temples and Kakaako, but in the film it also used beauty shots from around the island, such as the Pali Lookout and Halona Blowhole, to name two.

The video talked about all the tangible and intangible facets of our lives that make us who we are and which have molded architecture in Hawaii.

The script, minimalist and compelling, could have been written by the kind of creative house or advertising agency that produces thought-provoking, heartstrings-pulling commercials for the Super Bowl.

“We wanted to keep it kind of vague in essence, to make it more relatable to a wider base of people,” Lovett told TheBuzz.

“We tried to speak on architecture as a whole,” he said.

The perception may be “that an architect spends their day drafting plans for buildings, but in Hawaii, architecture is a culturally based profession that not only has to figure out how to speak on certain cultures within the islands, but how to represent them in a thoughtful sense — to bridge the gap,” Lovett said.

“Hawaii is not a melting pot; it’s a mixed plate,” he added.

The film elaborates, describing a mixed plate that “together, it is one meal. One cuisine. Identifiable as parts to a whole.”

The 3-minute, 23-second film can be viewed online.

On the Net:

>> https://vimeo.com/140461317

Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.