During last week’s wet weather, it began raining inside the basement of the state Capitol.
The carpet in the Senate chamber got soaked. Tarps covered the ceiling and plastic sheeting covered furniture and office equipment. Visitors were redirected to the dry side of the building.
The water came from rainwater seeping from one of the two ground-level pools surrounding the building. Unfortunately, this is nothing new. The pools have been leaking for years — even when they’re empty, as they are now, to accommodate more than $30 million in repair and renovation work that began in May. The Capitol is surrounded by wooden construction barriers to keep people from falling in.
The pools, meant to symbolize the lifegiving ocean surrounding the Hawaiian Islands, have come to stand for something else: bad smells, leaks, corrosion, thousands of tilapia (and for a few years, a barracuda). And state-government ineptness.
It’s time to reimagine the use of the 80,000 square feet of space. Certainly, it should not be refilled with water as before. That has been a problem since the building opened in 1969, when algae buildup created an unbearable stench.
Since then, taxpayer money has been spent on all kinds of solutions: chlorine dioxide, ozone, radical oxygen, reverse osmosis, inmates applying enzyme sprays, and the tilapia. Nothing has worked. And there’s no good reason to think that the Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS) will ever have enough money and wherewithal to recreate something that never really existed — beautiful pools that also are clean and sanitary.
Given this reality, DAGS is exploring conversion of the pools into waterless platforms that resemble pools. That would be a good start, if it launches the process of revisiting the original intent of the Capitol’s innovative design, making room for new ideas.
Changing the original pools into something else would require approval from the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) of the Department of Land and Natural Resources. The Capitol is on the Hawaii and National Register of Historic Places, and rightfully so. It’s a unique structure that reflects our culture: open to the elements and welcoming to the public, unlike the ponderous dome-and-stone hulks in other state states.
The Capitol structure is meant to evoke the natural features of the Hawaiian archipelago. The cone-shaped legislative chambers symbolize volcanoes. The columns around the perimeter resemble palm trees and represent the eight main islands. Instead of a traditional dome, the center of the Capitol is open to the sky and stars.
And there are the pools. They are supposed to symbolize the Pacific Ocean. At the moment, however, they are nothing more than a structural problem, and the wooden barriers surrounding them a visual blight.
SHPD and the Legislature, which has spent so much money trying to fix the pools, should consider broadening their perspective and seek out fresh ideas. After all, symbols can come in many forms. The public, including design professionals and students, should be invited to participate in reimagining what the pools could become.
Could they be turned into a freshwater garden, with taro, giant lilies, water grass, koi and snails, as the Legislature envisioned in 1989? Not if it involves water directly in the pools. Could they be repurposed into a seating area like the Hawaii State Art Museum’s swimming pool? Or something else?
The Capitol’s design reflects the boldness of those who commissioned it, those who wanted to build something new and beautiful. Let’s try that again.
