Photography by MARIKO REED
Words by LYDIA GEISEL
Styling by KENNA REED
I
sland time is really no joke,” warns Ren MacDonald-Balasia. Whenever the floral designer behind Renko touches down at Honolulu International Airport and spots the distinct ridge of the Diamond Head crater in the distance, she feels her internal clock begin to slow down.
“It’s a very spiritual, special place,” she continues. “It immediately relaxes you.” In springtime, as Ren drives along Interstate H-1 with the windows rolled down, deciduous plumeria trees perfume the car, evoking happy memories of handpicking its fragrant blossoms and turning them into leis. “Usually there’s a pit stop at Liliha Bakery for breakfast—at any time of day,” she adds.
While Ren, 33, has technically lived in California since her middle school years and now runs her business out of a studio in Los Angeles’s trendy Silver Lake neighborhood, she considers Oahu’s Mānoa Valley home. Along the slope of a mountain, amid swaying mango trees, stands the house where both she and her mother, Pamela, grew up. The place goes back another generation: Ren’s grandfather, James Knaefler, and grandmother, Tomi Kaizawa Knaefler, built it in 1960, and Tomi still lives there today.
“Grammie has always been impressed with Frank Lloyd Wright’s work,” says Ren. The story goes that Tomi became friendly with Hawaii-born architect Stephen Oyakawa after hearing he had studied at Taliesin—Wright’s home, studio, and school in Wisconsin—as his apprentice. She interviewed Oyakawa for the Honolulu Star Bulletin (Tomi was the first Japanese American journalist in the U.S. at the time), before eventually asking him to take on the role of her personal architect. His task: build her family a modern home on an overgrown plot of land she and James had discovered after taking a wrong turn down a dirt road.
The first phase of construction spanned a year and encompassed an open-concept main bedroom, two bathrooms, and three small dwellings (one for each of their children). Built out of a combination of redwood, mahogany, teak, and knotty pine, the house was erected on stilts, leaving space for a ground-floor addition, which would be constructed in 1970. Given little kids don’t require a whole lot of room, it made practical and financial sense to hold off on the lower-level plans until later on.
When Ren and her husband stay
at the house, they prefer to sleep in the central bedroom, where breathable linen sheets from Parachute ensure a cool night’s rest. “We like to wake up with the birds,” says Ren. Nearby, an Annie
Selke jute rug lends a dose of texture to the dark wood floorboards.
Nods to traditional Japanese interiors appear throughout in the form of shoji doors, 3-foot-deep ofuro-style soaking tubs covered in 1-by-1-inch red tiles, and zabuton floor cushions around the dining room table. However, Tomi credits this influence to being in the Pacific more than she does her family’s background (her parents moved to the Big Island from Hiroshima before she was born). “Living in Hawaii, so much of who we are is because of our mixing of many cultures,” says Tomi. Growing up, her neighbors were Portuguese and her friends at school were Filipino and Chinese. “Everyone was from all over, and everyone banded together to form a community and survive their new lives on an island in the middle of the ocean during a major war,” Ren chimes in. It’s the spirit of aloha.
Living among towering eucalyptus and ironwood trees also means a blurred line between indoors and out: The home’s facade is almost completely composed of screens (glass has been installed in a few key spots to prevent powerful gusts blowing things over). “We wanted the kids to appreciate the way we lived; to love nature,” notes Tomi. Mission accomplished: Pamela’s fondest memories from her youth include lying on the roof and watching the tree limbs bend so much, she’d close her eyes in a brief moment of fear. “Everything is flying around you, the wind stops for a moment, your eyes open…and all is well,” she describes.
Ren, however, has had a different experience. “Sometimes the wind and rain make terrifying howling noises at night. It sounds like you’re on a tiny boat getting capsized in the middle of crashing waves,” she explains. Unsurprisingly, when she was a child, she preferred being firmly on the ground, examining the fragrant ylang-ylang and red and pink hibiscus her grandfather had seeded before she was born. “These plants were what I had to play with. They were my friends,” she remembers.
When Ren and her parents made the move to the continental U.S. in 1997, the then 8-year-old clung to her roots, talking to her grandmother every night by phone. “There is a lot of everything in L.A.—there is a swiftness—and we knew no one,” recalls Pamela. Ren found solace in sports (she competed in rhythmic gymnastics professionally until she was 21), but ultimately wound her way back to flowers, pursuing a career creating fantastical floral arrangements. Even when she is supplying blooms for a wedding in Beverly Hills, she’ll try to source from farmers on Maui and the Big Island who have agricultural licenses to ship novel varieties like Heliconia xanthovillosa (a hanging plant covered in velvety yellow hairs) to California.
—Ren MacDonald-Balasia
“It’s a living, breathing part of me. My grammie’s whole essence is in the
house. My mom’s essence is in the house. It’s a very strong female presence.”
Back at the family home in Hawaii, few things have changed over the decades, with the exception of some kitchen appliances. There has simply been no need: Ren recalls days spent cleaning the exterior screens and meticulously vacuuming the cork floors as a child—one effort of many to keep all the original details in pristine condition. To this day, “nothing can get wet,” she says in a semi-serious tone. “We’ve got to wipe up any water as soon as it spills.” The walls are adorned with images of the women throughout different stages of their lives, from childhood photographs to more artful representations, such as the watercolor portrait of Tomi donning a haku lei (circa 1983). “It’s like a living museum, in an oddly non-narcissistic way,” explains Ren.
There are, however, a lot more lamps and overhead light fixtures in the space than there were when Pamela was a kid. “We were always reminded by my parents that Abraham Lincoln studied by candlelight,” she says of the once super-minimal setup. Ren and Pamela, who now lives in Oahu full-time to help care for Tomi, hope to make some pressing practical improvements in the near future, such as hiring someone to finally clear the fireplace flue. “A chimney sweep is hard to find in Hawaii,” says Ren with a laugh.
Ren admits to handing over the cooking responsibilities to her mom and husband—she and Tomi just keep them company as they chop veggies on the checkered Mōmi cutting board or fill up the old wood ice bucket.
Of course, such restorations don’t come cheap. Pamela took it upon herself to apply for a certification through the Hawai’i Register of Historic Places so they could secure funding. (To be eligible, a residence has to be more than 50 years old and tick a bevy of boxes, starting with the fact that it maintains the original integrity of its materials, design, and feeling.) The process turned out to be an around-the-clock job of filling out mountains of paperwork, having blueprints drawn up, and attending Zoom presentations with board members before the Real Property Assessment Division reviewed their final petition. “Each step was a challenge,” says Pamela, but the official plaque now hangs proudly on the front of the house.
On the right, denim napkins from Hudson Grace set the scene for family dinner. Below, a woven silicone Shore rug offers a cushy spot for Ren to stand when she works on her arrangements at home.
In preserving the home’s original features, Ren and her family are also protecting the feeling of the place. “It’s a living, breathing part of me,” explains Ren. “My grammie’s whole essence is in the house. My mom’s essence is in the house. It’s a very strong female presence.” The unwavering aura goes back further than the three generations. “We do think the house is haunted,” she says. Her husband, Andrew, felt a spirit pulling at his toes in bed once, while she swears she has heard mysterious footsteps. “But it’s a very protective energy,” she notes.
Ren’s plan is to one day follow her mother and move back to Mānoa permanently. “I was born in that house and I’ll probably die in that house,” she says. Then the home will be passed down to the next generation—and the one after that and the one after that.
Deep in the verdant forest of Hawaii’s Mānoa Valley, a mid-century marvel ties a grandmother, mother, and daughter together.
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Linen Duvet Cover
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Meghan Woven
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Annie Selke (from $118)
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Deep in the verdant forest of Hawaii’s Mānoa Valley, a mid-century marvel ties a grandmother, mother, and daughter together.
Pamela MacDonald, Ren MacDonald-Balasia, and Tomi Kaizawa Knaefler gather in the living room of their Oahu home.
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