This project looks at how the ecology and connection to the natural environment have changed from the ahupua’a and aina land model to the mainland suburban model of land occupation. Looking at the factors that made this transition happen and are keeping the ahupua’a from successfully providing for its people, the project proposes to reestablish the practice of ea and aina. It considers a possible future that is a product of these overlapping histories and a deconstruction of the human interventions to allow the return of aina. Through adaptive reuse and the acknowledgment that nature is a decolonizing force, there is an enmeshing of materials, histories, and futures. Returning the fish ponds to a state of aina requires their connection to the rest of the ahupua’a. The urban grid gives way to reestablish the river network that delivers nutrients from the kalo fields up the river. Buildings are “unconstructed”, removing walls to allow the shifting sand dunes, fish ponds, streams, and Waikiki breeze to move through their hollow frames and out from the Fort DeRussy site.
