HULIHIA FRAMEWORK

In Hawaiian, huli means to turn, flip, or change direction. Complex challenges rarely reveal themselves from a single perspective. Housing, transportation, education, climate resilience, workforce development, and community well-being are all interconnected issues shaped by history, culture, economics, policy, and lived experience.

The Hulihia Framework invites participants to "huli" a challenge..to turn it on its side, examine it from multiple perspectives, and imagine possibilities that may not be visible when viewed through a single lens.

Rather than seeking immediate solutions, Hulihia begins with curiosity, listening, and exploration. Through this process, new questions emerge, assumptions are challenged, and opportunities for innovation become visible.

Many of today's challenges are too complex to be solved by a single entity. Universities have a unique role to play in bringing together diverse perspectives, expertise, and lived experiences. At the same time, communities possess knowledge, insight, and wisdom that cannot be found in academic research alone.

Hulihia creates a space where these forms of knowledge can meet.

The framework recognizes that meaningful change often begins not by asking "What is the solution?" but by asking:

• What are we missing?

• What assumptions are we making?

• Who is not represented in this conversation?

• How might we see this challenge differently?

1. Convene: By bringing together individuals with different experiences, expertise, and perspectives.

2. Listen: Creating opportunities to hear stories, research, data, and lived experiences without immediately seeking consensus.

3. Examine: Exploring the challenge through multiple lenses, including cultural, social, economic, environmental, technological, and creative perspectives.

4. Huli: Turning the issue on its side. Challenging assumptions. Reframing questions. Considering alternative viewpoints and possibilities.

5. Create: Generating ideas, concepts, prototypes, narratives, designs, and new ways of thinking that emerge from the exploration process.

6. Reflect: Evaluating insights, identify patterns, and consider what has been learned.

7. Share: Returning ideas, findings, and creative works to the community, inviting continued dialogue and future action.

Creative practice plays a unique role within the Hulihia Framework. 

Artists, designers, storytellers, media makers, and creative technologists often approach problems differently than traditional planning or policy processes. Creative work can reveal hidden assumptions, communicate complex ideas, visualize future possibilities, and create space for conversations that may not otherwise occur.

Within Hulihia, creativity is not simply a way to communicate solutions. It is a way of exploring, questioning, and discovering new possibilities.

The Affordable Housing Hulihia serves as the first implementation of this framework.

Through presentations, discussions, classroom activities, and creative projects, students, faculty, community members, government agencies, industry professionals, and nonprofit organizations explored housing from multiple perspectives.

The goal is not to arrive at a single answer. The goal is to better understand the challenge, uncover new questions, and create opportunities for future collaboration.