History, sense being applied

Maui News Editorial
August 12, 2002

The draft proposal to allow the construction of traditional Hawaiian buildings is a ray of light in the fog of inflexibility inherent in any set of modern building codes. Maui County’s housing code says, “The purpose of this code is to provide minimum requirements for the protection of life, limb, health, property, safety and welfare of the general public and the owners and occupants of residential buildings.”

The big question is what’s safe. The issue gets somewhat muddied by the fact that many sections of the county’s building codes were lifted, almost word for word, from codes established for Mainland communities where weather conditions might be different enough to require standards that might be unnecessary on Maui. Wind we have. Rain we have. But we don’t have snow, ice or extreme temperatures to deal with.

Engineers and architects — not to mention government attorneys — are anything but experimental when it comes to unusual building materials or techniques such as fastening roof framing together with lashing rather than nails, bolts or screws. At a meeting of the Urban Design Review Board, there were questions about the legal liability of the county approving atypical buildings, the strength of various materials, and how to judge if the construction was done right.

In the past, those kinds of questions have been nearly insurmountable barriers for individuals who might want to use alternate construction designs, materials and techniques, including Hawaiian designs, that were proven by hundreds of years of use elsewhere. As in most government rules and regulations, the devil is in the details.

Today at 2 p.m. the “Hawaiian rules” will be explained at a public meeting in the conference room of the Planning Department’s Kalana Pakui building (the old police station on the Maalaea side of the County Building).

The Maui County Indigenous Architecture Task Force should be congratulated for coming up with ways of implementing an idea proposed by J. Kalani English during his term as a council member, particularly since many of the provisions will require a common sense approach rather than simple consultation of load-bearing charts and codes being used elsewhere.

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