28 DIGS.NET | 8.7.2020
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L E G E N D S | N O A A
(FROM TOP) EXISTING
AIRCRAFT HANGARS
FROM THE WWII
ERA, WITH NEW
CONSTRUCTION LINKING
THEM, MAKE UP THE
CORE OF A MASSIVE
UNDERTAKING BY
INTERNATIONAL FIRM
HOK AND HAWAII-BASED
ARCHITECT FERRARO
CHOI TO HOUSE THE
FUNCTIONS AND
EMPLOYEES OF NOAA
UNDER THE SAME ROOF.
PHOTOGRAPHS:
COURTESY
OF
HOK
W R I T T E N B Y J E N N T H O R N T O N
PRESERVATION in the PACIFIC
Headed by HOK, a monumental adaptive reuse project ushers
in a new era for NOAA at Pearl Harbor.
T
he events of Dec. 7, 1941 forever changed
Oahu's Ford Island at Pearl Harbor,
where the Japanese staged its ferocious
attack on the nation's Pacific Fleet. While a
number of vessels sustained damaged or were
destroyed, a pair of aircraft hangars designed
in 1939 by leading industrial architect Albert
Kahn—mastermind of, among other Metro
Detroit buildings, Ford Motor Company's plant in
Highland Park—narrowly escaped annihilation.
Today these historic structures are the
protagonists of a massive adaptive reuse project.
Led by global design firm HOK, in
collaboration with Hawaii-based architect
Ferraro Choi, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Daniel K. Inouye
Regional Center is a laboratory, research and
office complex. Named after Hawaii's late
U.S. senator, a decorated WWII veteran, the
project—a 350,000-square-foot building set
on a 1,263,000-square-foot site—is as epic
as the statesman's reputation and called for
the conversion of the original hangars, with a
new steel-and-glass building to link them. As
the heart of the work, the hangars are, as HOK
describes, "inspired, beautifully simple solutions
for how the new Center uses air, water and light."
Key to the design, the firm continues, is the use
of "clear, simple forms and materials carefully
selected to complement the scale and framework
of the existing hangar buildings while providing
a state-of-the-art Pacific Region headquarters
for NOAA," where extensive programs are
conducted and federal departments, such as the
