The 1980’s-era building debuted as the Honolulu Club, a fitness and social-networking hub for the city’s well to do. Despite its exclusive membership, the seven-story structure was uninspired architecture: a solid, beige, unarticulated block, with strip windows interrupted by a large blank wall on the main facade. The building’s formal reinvention has been a matter of strategically revealing the existing mid-rise by removing portions of the historic fabric and inserting new elements consistent with the site’s new purpose. On the upper floors of the primary eastern face, the grid-like concrete frame is brought to the fore by recessing the glazing behind it. Elsewhere, two large, glazed volumes project out beyond the envelope. At the corner, a pyramidal form clad in dark, textured, ceramic, composite gives the building an enhanced sculptural presence. The building’s programmatic scheme moves in successive layers: welcome spaces and administrative uses on the lower floors; educational and activity spaces in the middle; and athletics at the top, including a new gymnasium on the building’s existing roof. Much of the dynamism visible from outside is a direct function of this dense functional array—the lower of the three box-like projections houses the dance studio, while a new oversized elevator connects them vertically—all considering the post-tensioned, existing structural system. Seen in section, the stripping-away process continues in spaces like a black box theater and wood-clad music hall that occupy former double-height squash courts. The design demonstrably breaks down old barriers and gives hope to the most vulnerable native Hawaiians.