In traditional Hawaiian culture, when a child is born, some families would carve a small crater into the ground and place the child’s umbilical cord into the hole as a way of connecting the child to the land. The term Kamaʻāina literally means “child of the land,” speaking to the deep connection between people and place. The Hawaiian word for umbilical cord, piko, is also used for navel.

Craters, lua, are the navels of the islands, connected to the heart of the planet. Every island in Hawaiʻi is interconnected - formed by subterranean actions activated by heat from the earth's core. Just like lua, our navels – our individualized piko – are evidence of the transfer of energy that played a pivotal part in our existence. This is our common connection to each other and the land.

A small shade structure provides a shady moment in the harsh Kona sun as one walks from the parking lot to the judicial center building. The welcoming curved forms and shiny ‘cones’ are meant to calm visitors as they move through the installation. The shape of the shade is meant to evoke both the nearby mountain, Hulalalai, and a traditional Hawai’ian house architecture, or Hale. The patterns of cones, meant to evoke lua or pu’u (small volcanic dome/crater) as well as piko (human navel), were derived from tracing an aerial photo of Hulalalai.

The entire structure is made from 316 marine-grade stainless steel in order to stand up to the salty Hawai’ian air and harsh climate of the area. The sun, La, creates a variety of lighting/shadow effects through its various positions in the sky relative to the installation.