The Science Park and the Buried Fishpond

HOST Park at Keāhole Point is a 900-acre coastal science and technology campus where cold deep ocean water is pumped to the surface and put to work by over fifty tenant companies in aquaculture, desalination, energy research, and sustainable agriculture.

Just north, beneath the lava flows of the 1801 Hualalai eruption—lies what remains of Pāʻaiea, one of the most significant ancient loko iʻa in the islands. No photographs exist. No maps with any real fidelity. What survives lives in the archaeological record, in historical documents, in oral tradition, and in the knowledge of the people who have studied this land.

The modern science park and the buried fishpond are not separate stories. They are the same story of people working the resources of this coast, told across centuries in two very different vocabularies. Two contracts with NELHA totaling $200K gave our Tetrachrome team the opportunity to tell it.

Phase I established the platform: a visual identity HOST Park didn't yet have, a custom Webflow site with a tenant directory, infrastructure catalog, and a 360° virtual tour of the campus. Phase II went deeper — into the history of the land itself, producing a dedicated editorial section, photorealistic 3D reconstructions of ancient Hawaiian fishpond types, and new landing pages covering the geology, aquaculture, and cultural history of the Kekahawaiʻole coast.

My partners Andrew Hara and Joey Trisolini captured the photography, cinematography, and success story videos for phase I and phase II. Bobby Camara provided the historical research foundation for Phase II — drawing on his deep knowledge of Pāʻaiea, Hawaiian accounts of the area, and research he conducted for USGS in the 1990s on the volcanic geology and flows. His base document shaped every history deliverable that followed. Judy Edwards condensed decades of NELHA annual reports into year-by-year summaries for the contemporary history content. Chris Dickens cleaned up video transcripts for subtitle production.

Platform strategy, information architecture, brand identity, web design and development, 3D illustration and rendering, field capture, research, content development and virtual tour production were mine.