A year ago, we published an editorial critique of some of the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts in New Orlean’s Lower 9th Ward, specifically those of the Make It Right! organization. We questioned the vanity of celebrity philanthropy: why build only a few hundred expensive LEED homes when far more homes could have been rebuilt for the same cost?

During the course of writing that piece, we came across a viewpoint even more contrarian than ours: geographer Richard Campanella of the Tulane School of Architecture. Campanella has spent the past 17 years researching New Orleans’ historical geography, authoring six books and numerous papers on the subject.  He pointed out that large portions of New Orleans are on reclaimed swampland that were probably best left undrained and undeveloped.

“If you build sustainable structures but place them in a geographically unsustainable site, have you really ‘made it right’?… I personally identified over 2000 open parcels of above-sea-level land in the heart of the New Orleans historic district. That’s where MIR should have built.” (The map shown at the top of this article indicates the above-sea-level areas in green – paradoxically, they’re the ones closest to the Mississippi River, because in a deltaic environment, rivers deposit sediment along their banks.)

Campanella had actually published a study in 2007 titled “Above-Sea-Level New Orleans: The Residential Capacity of Orleans Parish’s Higher Ground” explaining how he found these open land parcels, and evaluating how many people could be resettled there at various densities.

Geographer Richard Campanella, a professor at the Tulane School of Architecture, has identified over 2000 parcels of open land above sea level within the City of New Orleans that could be used to build safer and more sustainable new housing for people displaced by the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Image courtesy Richard Campanella.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was only one of many forces shaping change in the City over the past three centuries since it was first established, and the population had been declining from its 1960 peak of 627,000 people. Major civil engineering projects that originally enabled settlement of low-lying areas in the early 1900s were also to blame for subsequent environmental deterioration, namely the sinking of the soil by six to twelve feet below sea level and the introduction of gulf waters to within city limits. Regional navigational canals, meanwhile, accelerated the erosion of sediment-starved coastal wetlands, which allowed hurricane-induced storm surge to incur father inland and exert pressure on what proved to be under-engineered federal flood walls and levees. When those systems failed to impede Hurricane Katrina’s surge in August 2005, it was those twentieth-century below-sea-level subdivisions that suffered the deepest flooding.

How has that report been received by governing agencies and the media?

It landed on the front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. That article was mostly dedicated to my observation that half the city is above sea level, but my original report went much farther than that simple fact. That fact by itself didn’t have any policy impact. And for good reason – the question whether the City should move people to areas above sea level played out after Katrina as what I’ve dubbed “the great footprint debate:” should New Orleans close down those low-lying areas? That’s where the trouble started. Suggesting that some residents would not have the “right to return” to their homes proved very bitter and contentious.

Eventually authorities settled on the only thing that seemed workable: all neighborhoods would come back; no areas would be officially shut down, no matter how low-lying, far-flung, risky, or depopulated. They really had little choice. There was no pool of cash with which to compensate homeowners quickly and fairly, so flood victims naturally gravitated back to the one thing they still owned: their land and wrecked homes. The city’s ultimate resolution was simply to let people return as they wished to where they wished, and to act passively on those patterns as they fell in place. They essentially decided to not decide. For better or worse, it was a failure of urban planning, and a triumph of decentralized citizen-level activism. This all played out in late 2005 and early 2006.

New Orleans boasts a wide variety of historical architectural styles. Both these homes are located on Freret Street, which is currently undergoing a renaissance following the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Images from recent property listings on Zillow.

My study, which I conducted after the great footprint debate played out, wouldn’t change any of that. The purpose was to point out that, by the way, we have a resource on higher ground, that we can use without closing down any other neighborhoods. I wanted to change the terms of the debate away from the negative couching of closing down below-sea-level areas, and toward the positive approach of making the absolute best use of above-sea-level areas.

A hundred years ago, New Orleans’ population was around 300,000. Today, it’s not that different -  356,000 people. The difference is, the City in the early 1900s had a much smaller footprint, and nearly all of it all above sea level. The major civil works projects that drained the low-lying swamplands hadn’t yet been undertaken. Of course, more has changed than just the topography. People today expect more living space and wouldn’t necessarily be willing to live at turn-of-the-century urban densities. Still, even with that in mind, New Orleans still has over 2,000 open lots all above sea level that people could occupy and gain a topographic advantage.

Being above sea level does not make you immune to all flooding. If you are unfortunate enough to live in a hydrological sub-basin that suffers a levee breach, you may flood even if you live above sea level. But the depth will be less, probably dramatically. Topographic elevation is an absolute good in a deltaic city. Living on higher ground is the one variable you can control. You cannot control the weather or the wetlands or where the levee may fail, but you can arrange your space to lay above where the water level may settle.

Could people live on those lots today if they wanted to?

In my research, I was looking for open, grassy lots or lots that were very “lightly used”. Not all of these are zoned for residential use, however. So the first thing would be to re-zone some of those parcels to make it possible for people to live on them. At the present time, these lots are ones that could, theoretically, be converted to residential land use. In the newspaper article, you’ll notice that there’s only a small-scale oblique map of these parcels. That’s by design. We didn’t want to get angry calls from landowners who thought we might be trying to take their land away from them.

So, that report is not a policy blueprint. It’s a way to gently suggest that we have a scarce and valuable natural resource here, and it may not be currently put to the best public use.  These lots are almost entirely in historic neighborhoods that were settled prior to the turn-of-the-century drainage operations; the infrastructure to support a high population density is already in place. Filling in these pockets would help to mend the urban fabric that was torn by the population exodus that has been ongoing since the 1960s. And, we can do this without marginalizing low-lying neighborhoods or shutting anyone out. No one needs to move if they don’t want to.

In 1878, New Orleans had a substantial population not that much below what it is today, all of it settled above sea level. Image courtesy of Richard Campanella, originally from "Report on the Social Statisics of Cities" published in 1886.

So this blight actually preceded Katrina?

Yes, very much so. The first exodus occurred in the early 1960s as a phenomenon of white flight following desegregation. Later waves occurred again in the 70s and early 80s, as people cited reasons including declining public schools and increasing crime. In the 1980s and 90s, the black middle class departed historic New Orleans and settled in modern suburban subdivisions in the low-lying eastern half of the metropolis, which had been dissected by navigation canals and lay proximate to eroded coasts and surge-prone gulf waters.

How could people be encouraged to settle on higher ground, then?

Any official policy to direct people to higher ground risks re-invoking the bitter conflicts of the great footprint debate. If the City Council members took it upon themselves to incent people to higher ground, it would implicitly suggest that there was something risky and wrong with lower-lying areas—and that would meet with great resistance from neighborhood associations and realtors there. Politicians are naturally sensitive to their constituents. So don’t look to local government to do the encouraging.

As for me personally, as a geographer, I’m often approached by people considering buying a house or renting an apartment, and they ask me where they should look given the hydrology and topography of the city. I’m more than happy to unfurl my topographic maps and give them a little lessen in the historical geography of the city! But policymakers couldn’t do that without inciting a civic fight. It’s illogical, but not inexplicable.

There are both financial rewards and penalties for moving to higher ground. For one thing, the flood zone determines what kind of insurance coverage you can get, with higher ground of course being better. However, real estate is often cheaper in the low-lying areas – not necessarily because they’re more flood-prone, strangely, but because they’re less historic. Again, there aren’t as many historic neighborhoods in lower areas because those areas weren’t available for building until after 1900.

If policy isn’t the answer, what can the City do?

There is a move afoot already to increase population density through zoning in historic neighborhoods—that is, to return neighborhoods such as Bywater to their pre-World War II densities. Some of the open lots I identified are currently zoned only for commercial use. By changing the zoning to mixed or residential use, government could subtly shift population to higher areas without explicitly speaking negatively about low-lying areas.

What about the private sector?

I’ve personally inspected most of these lots just by biking and walking around the City. There is already a fair amount of infill development going on in these areas. And historical secondary commercial corridors such as Freret Street, St. Claude Avenue, and Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard are enjoying notable resurgences. They do not appeal to developers because they’re topographically high; they appeal because of their historicity. And because of the historical geography of the city, “historic” means “higher ground.” The use of overlay districts has helped these corridors as well, by encouraging certain desirable land uses.

Recent signs of life in New Orleans include these scenes from the Freret Street corridor. Left image shows an image from the Thirteenth Annual Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame, shared by Positive Vibrations, an organization that sponsors art as a vehicle for community and issues fellowship grants to teen musicians. Right image is from a PBS slideshow depicting community design activist Bryan Bell building a community bus shelter. See end of this article for links to original content.

Let’s say that you are a legislator or possibly a developer with resources to do something big. If you had the power to make real changes, what would you do?

That’s a good question… it takes me out of my comfort zone as a solitudinous archival and field geographer, and into the raucous din of public discourse [laughter]. What I would really like to see will never happen – I would like to see a city that never moved into these low-lying areas in the first place.

I would see a City with its pre-1900 footprint when 95% of the population lived on higher ground, on the natural levees paralleling the Mississippi River. I would bring back those intricate and textured neighborhoods and their panoply of architectural styles reflecting the contributions of the myriad cultures, regions, and ethnicities that made up the City. I’d like to have an intimate, walkable experience that wasn’t dictated by automotive transport.

I would like for urban expansion to have occurred laterally up and down the Mississippi River, where the high ground is, rather than latitudinally toward the low ground by Lake Ponchartrain. A more snake-like shape rather than the spread-eagle shape of the conurbation we currently have. I wish those low-lying wetlands had never been drained. We could have used them to store excess rainwater, and to buffer storm surges that instead threaten neighborhoods and people.

This would take massive amounts of money and citizen concurrence, and it’s not realistic to think that we can turn the clock back no matter how much money we have.

Suppose that an existing legislator or private developer were to approach you as an advisor. How would you inform their decisionmaking?

I’d look to what’s currently in the public discourse at the neighborhood level. Local officials could encourage zoning for increased density and infill development. I wouldn’t couch it as trying to get people to live above sea level. I would look at what’s currently already working. Officials could encourage or allow individuals to build apartments in the back of their homes and rent them out.

However, I must point out that there is stiff neighborhood resistance to some of this, and their main concern is that residents won’t be able to park in front of their homes anymore. But fears are somewhat exaggerated. We’re talking about tiny, incremental density increases, not dramatic ones. And these neighborhoods are already depopulated, even since 2005. My neighborhood had 5100 people in 2005 and only 3800 people today—and it’s historic and did not flood. So there’s plenty of room to grow back. I don’t think automobile storage should drive urban planning.

So most of the neighborhood opposition is rooted in the parking issue?

There’s also a suspicion that the people promoting higher densities have ulterior motives, other than societal good. There’s a feeling that they must be involved somehow in the real estate industry, or otherwise seeking to profit at others’ expense.

Although the major civil engineering that drained the New Orleans backswamps to allow for human habitation didn't occur until 1900, another driver of geographical change was the need for shipping lanes. This 1861 map shows both elevated areas and major shipping channels. Image courtesy Richard Campanella.

Do people even want to live on top of each other the way they did in earlier times?

Building in an open lot is one way to increase density, but another way is to increase the number of people living in existing buildings. I’ll give you one example that is a rather humbling admission. My wife and I live in a 2000 square foot shotgun house that was built in 1893, and was originally a double that is now a single. At the time the house was built, the neighborhood was teeming with children. Two families of four living in our house meant eight people living above sea level. Now, with my wife and I living in that house as single dwelling, there are only 2 people in 2000 square feet of space.

It’s humbling to realize my own hypocrisy here. I should convert our house back into a double and rent out the space. But I’m not! This points to deeply rooted American social and cultural issues that are embedded within the density question, and also in the population shifts to low-lying areas. People today want more living space. We no longer live in the extended families of our great-grandparents. Children move out upon adulthood. We can’t pretend this cultural change never happened. This is somewhat counteracted by other trends, namely the rediscovery of inner cities by the same white middle class that fled them 30 or 40 years ago.

What is the architect’s role in promoting healthy change? Should architects be taking on a leadership role or should they stick with the traditional client-driven design model?

Now that I’m teaching geography at Tulane’s School of Architecture, this is a particularly pertinent question to me. The role that architects can play is to recognize that design and materials alone don’t make buildings sustainable. Location matters as well. A well-designed green building erected in an isolated rural area or in a far-flung flood-prone subdivision is not a green building, despite the great effort that went into design and materials. If it’s too remote, you lose the architectural sustainability advantage because the occupants will depend on auto transportation to get there. I think architects should consult topographical maps before they sit down at the drafting table.

Whether architects should take more of a leadership role… well, they may not have the opportunity to advise on site selection. Not if the client comes to them and already has the land selected. If the architect can get involved in the project early enough, they can play a significant role in site selection. If would give them an important opportunity to exercise geographical judgment.

What about public education campaigns to raise awareness of the availability of these open plots?

This already happens on a decentralized, ad-hoc level. Ever see those billboards saying “If you lived here, you’d be home by now”? That might encourage people to make an initial spatial decision to live closer to the inner core, which in New Orleans means living on higher ground. The more people want to make that decision, the more motivation developers will have in converting those open lots to habitable spaces.

In terms of my own effort to educate the public, I emphasize in all my lectures that New Orleans is not unconditionally “below sea level;” in fact, it’s almost precisely half above sea level—and this higher ground is a precious natural resource whose use we should prioritize for human occupancy. Recent research in sustainability suggests the value of cities and urban living. If you want to live sustainably, don’t live out in the woods off the grid. We’ve romanticized living in isolated cabins as being in environmentally benign and “in touch with nature,” but it’s an illusion.

Currier & Ives, "City of New Orleans" shows the city's development by around 1880, including settlements and a lively river traffic. Image courtesy Library of Congress, as provided by Richard Campanella.

Didn’t people realize that the land was sinking, and that the various canals were causing environmental disasters?

I should distinguish between two types of canal: municipal outfall canals, which drain runoff from the city proper, and navigation canals, which were built for shipping throughout the Louisiana coastal region. The former occasioned the sinking of urban soils; the latter occasion coastal erosion and salt-water intrusion in the rural coastal periphery of the city.

Yes, people realized the soils were sinking; that realization came for Jefferson Parish in the 1970s, when a number of houses actually exploded because foundations cracked and gas lines exploded. New codes were put in place requiring pilings beneath slabs, but that only minimizing the cracking of the slab. It does not prevent the neighborhood from sinking. Once all the drainage apparatus was installed and people invested in the new subdivisions, soil subsidence became a problem that simply had to be suffered and dealt with through more and more drainage capacity. It was too late. Urban occupancy builds momentum; prior investment in cities carries with it inertia for continued investment despite increasing risk. There’s both bad and good in this: that inertia is on the reasons why cities often prove to be so resilient. But it sometimes lays the groundwork for the next disaster.

What’s the message that you would like to convey to our readers as the most important takeaway?

It is simply this: we have a valuable and scarce resource—topographic elevation—which ought to be used to the utmost degree for residential occupancy, especially given the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. By populating these above-sea-level parcels, we gain an additional benefit in mending the tears in the historic urban fabric that have opened up since the 1960s. If you look at the satellite images of Katrina flooding, you’ll essentially see the City’s circa-1900 footprint in the unflooded areas. Without closing down any areas or displacing anyone, we can make the best use of this great resource.

References for further reading

Professor Campanella has a very large body of work on his web site, both books and perhaps several hundred articles and research papers. Of these, the most relevant resource for understanding this article would be his book Bienville’s Dilemma, which is an exhaustive examination of the population shifts, agricultural development, and natural disasters occurring throughout the City’s history. Campanella spices up the narrative with vivid first-hand historical accounts, and his writing is fearlessly incisive and direct. You’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know about canals, levees, social hierarchies, and other fascinating topics!

There are also two interesting slideshows about New Orleans community rebuilding:

A PBS audio slideshow about the design and construction of a community bus shelter on Freret Street to serve as a visual and cultural anchor.

A US News and World report slideshow depicting different aspects of community renaissance, charting the efforts of residents to rebuilt Freret Street.

Part surfer, part engineer, part artist, part prophet – how else can I describe the simplicity, the evocative nature of Craig’s designs and his fearless approach? If there’s such a thing as a contemporary West Coast architecture with a clean Zen sensibility, Craig Steely might be a good exemplar. The word “avatar” doesn’t really do justice to his down-to-earth, straightforward demeanor. He and his wife both could be some glamorous Hollywood celebrity couple – at once elegant and informal – but their charisma really comes from a deep-rooted stability, a sense of health and vitality, and a freedom from inner hang-ups.

Mark English, founder of The Architect’s Take, had long been intrigued by Craig because of their shared academic background as Cal Poly undergrads. Like many top-flight schools, Cal Poly has its own mystique, a blend of artistic and engineering rigor, which leaves a stamp on its students. And, both Mark and Craig share a second passion: a reverence for the Classical architecture of Italy, particularly Florence.

The following interview took place in two parts: the first conversation between Rebecca Firestone and Craig Steely; the second part was a professional dialogue between two colleagues.

Interviewer’s comments appear in italics.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up on a farm in northern California. Very rural, we did everything for ourselves: a lot of fixing, building, making things. My Dad liked to customize everything, specialize or “improve” it to what he needed. If something broke, we put it behind the barn to save it for parts. He and I were constantly modifying tools, constantly tinkering.  The folks on my Mom’s side of the family are all very artistic. I liked to draw and they encouraged me. It was this love of drawing that drew me to architecture.

Craig Steely made a splash with his "Lava Flow" series, built in Hawai'i on actual lava beds. The first one, "Lava Flow 1", was for San Francisco designer Robert Trickey. Yes, there's always the risk of new lava rolling down someday, but apparently, it's not so imminent as to discourage either Steely or his many satisfied design clients. Photo: J.D. Peterson

If you loved to draw, why didn’t you become a fine artist?

Maybe it was the customizing part that I liked – customizing things with the goal of creating usable components. “Custom anything” was our family motto. The difference between art and architecture is that I see art as being more self-referential, whereas architecture is a conversation with other people, other collaborators.

Craig Steely's wife, fine artist Cathy Liu, painted this “custom anything” image for a joint show they had together at Mollusk Surf Shop a few years ago (please check them out at http://mollusksurfshop.com/). The original photo was from a 1970s T'ai Chi book that Craig found at a Hawai'i flea market.

Celebrations of the DIY ethos have continued, through events like Burningman [and Maker Faire]. The thing with Burningman is it teaches you about failure. You can work on an idea all year and then it blows down 5 minutes after you get there. You have to be willing to prototype, and be patient, not give up.

That’s how I feel about my own work now. It’s all one house, just done over and over. I see a connection through all of them, between one idea to the next – I’m always exploring contrasts along similar lines: opacity-transparency, heaviness-lightness, action-reaction.

[After reviewing Steely's work during the writing of this article, I felt that each idea or vocabulary element was like a musical theme, and the projects as a whole were a composition that wove each theme and counter-theme together. There'd be a theme, a development, a transition to something new - and then, later on, a return to an earlier theme but with a new aspect. - RF]

Craig Steely's progression of ideas from one "Lava Flow" house to the next is not exactly linear - more like cycling through several interwoven themes. Above photos are both "Lava Flow 2" which celebrates a lightness and translucency of material. Photos: J.D. Peterson

How do you go about approaching a new project?

I have a sketchbook of ideas that are just waiting for a project to happen. The ideas can morph to suit the circumstances, and they get refined from one project to the next.

[We drifted to some discussion of music. Craig's had some exposure to Indian music through a cousin who spent time in India studying with a music master. We compared a few notes on Indian and Middle Eastern musical theory. The life in Hawai'i seems to involve a lot of impromptu jam sessions called kanikapila. Craig learned to play bass so he could contribute to these jam sessions, since usually these gatherings didn't have a bass player. - RF]

Back to structural elements and systems. I see the design as a holistic process. The entire project team gets excited about each new design. The structural engineer really has to take the project to heart, just as much as the architect does. Everyone has to give it their best – not just protecting themselves. The last word is that everyone on the team is accountable, including the client.

Craig Steely works closely with structural engineers to make the steel framing as light as possible. In "Lava Flow 5", the framing was actually assembled in prototype fashion in San Francisco prior to being shipped to Hawai'i. Photo: Craig Steely Architecture

What makes a good client?

To me, a good client is someone who’s interested in the process. Someone who really WANTS to be involved. I demand it, actually. Someone who enjoys the process as much as the product, someone who sees it as transformative, challenging, and enjoyable. I only have good clients because I’ve set up my studio in a way that I only have to work with people that I like and respect.  Seems obvious… the point of taking only good work is that you’re more invested in it. I love what I do and don’t want to get burned out. I’m very protective of this and I don’t want bummer clients or bad jobs to bring it down.

Craig Steely's home office helps set the tone with new clients. Left photo shows his office on the second floor. Right shows the front entry, including a custom-made door with translucent inserts. The door was actually made from reclaimed surplus materials. Photos: Rien van Rijthoven

Doesn’t turning down work keep you from expanding your firm?

I’ve never thought you have to be a big firm to create meaningful work. Architects as a rule are future thinkers, but they need to stay more in the present.  I’m all about focusing on the work that I have right now. There’s a sense of grandiosity about the image of a big office for its own sake, but that doesn’t always serve. From experience, and from becoming more secure with my own abilities, I’m more in control by being less controlling. When you relinquish some control, you are free to let other people do what they’re good at. It’s not just about pulling down an hourly wage.

Clean lines of sight where the eye is guided by the alignment of striated materials is one theme that emerges over and over in Craig Steely's designs. This one is "Lava Flow 3". Photo: Cesar Rubio

Tell me more about your present office space here at Beaver Street.

When I was first starting out, I renovated this house we’re in now. It earned some good press and publicity, which got me my first commissions. But then we outgrew it. So we tore it down to the ground and started over a second time. People thought this was shocking. It had been in books!

Craig Steely re-did his Beaver Street house twice. The first was a more conventional Edwardian intervention, but the second remodel, shown here, represented a sea change in his design approach. Note that although the facade is distinct from the Victorian right next door, no neighborhood objections were raised - practically a miracle in San Francisco. Photos: Rien van Rijthoven

[Unusually for San Francisco, the approvals process for the second Beaver Street remodel went smoothly, with no objections raised by neighbors. The fact that Craig had already known his neighbors for years was a big factor. We discussed projects where out-of-towners would come in, buy a house in some nice area of town and then try to max it out - only to be stymied by stiff neighborhood opposition. Good relations may not be something that can be created in an instant; it's something to cultivate over a long period of time. - RF]

What exactly don’t you like about the first remodel that you did here?

The first remodel kept the proportions of the existing Edwardian and was mainly repairing other people’s mistakes. The scope was limited by our budget and the fact that I didn’t know enough about construction to really tear it down to the roots. It cost only $17K! We did most of the work ourselves. We opened up the space to light, enclosed a back porch, added translucent display cabinets to the walls.  We rebuilt a lot of objects recycled from Urban Ore in that first remodel. At that time, I loved to build something based on a part that I had found. You could say that first remodel was “hot-rodded”. But those same ideas about transparency, implying space, and attention to the interstitial spaces – I’m still working with those same concepts today.

By the time "Lava Flow 5" came along, Craig Steely had refined his vocabulary further: lightness, clean lines, openness.

What do YOU think constitutes good design?

For me, good design comes down to proportion and balance on all levels: visual, intellectual, functional.

"Skateboarding is all about finding the perfect line and flow," says architect Craig Steely. He enjoys both surfing and skateboarding.

Any pet peeves?

Fear-based decision-making. At some point you need to take a risk.

How do you talk people out of a fear-based mindset?

Look at this project, Lava Flow 4 on the Big Island in Hawai’i. It’s an all-screen house. The clients had said, “We want simple!” – and then it got complicated. They wanted roll-down doors for weather protection from the storms on the Kona coast. I had to talk them out of it, and their neighbors, too. During construction, the neighbors would come by and comment, saying, “You’re making a terrible mistake!” But there was protection, both from the surrounding trees and from overhangs around the porch.

The clients for Craig Steely's "Lava Flow 4" were initially very concerned about getting wet in an all-screen house, and so were their neighbors. Eventually they decided in favor of simplicity - no roll-down doors needed. Photo: John Granen

“So what if it doesn’t work?” the clients worried. And I responded, “The worst that will happen is your furniture will get wet.” And they said, “Oh, is that all? OK, then,” and they were fine with it, once they knew what the risk really was.

How do you deal with challenges such as objections from a neighborhood association?

In order to be an architect, you have to be an optimist. Always, after an excruciating project is completed, we all say, “Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” because now it’s over. One challenge is to remain civil and effective when things do happen, such as when neighbors come forward with objections. Don’t make it a pushing match. You have to find common ground. It’s about communication skills, and staying focused on communicating your point.

[At some point we wandered briefly onto the subject of surfing, about learning to recognize wave patterns and going along with them. You can't control a wave. "Go with the flow" as they say, right? Surrender as a method of control. - RF]

In another amazing maneuver, Craig Steely worked with a conservative San Francisco historic preservation association, convincing them to accept a very cutting-edge facade on an otherwise traditional streetscape. The design includes transom portholes in the front glass curtain wall, and adjustable vertical louvers on the side.

In San Francisco, neighborhood groups can have tremendous power. They can stop a project completely, and many homeowners have spent tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, only to be shot down during a design review.

You have to express respect for the neighbors’ opinions, whether they are about architecture or politics. You have to work with the neighborhood groups to make them part of the process. You have to maintain a level of decorum, discretion, and respect. You need the ability to communicate with people even when you don’t agree with them, to find some common ground. I had to convince them that my heart and soul was really in the project. So now a very modern building is going up there and everyone’s totally into it.

Ultimately, we prevailed in the design review by being more than reasonable. Compromise is a good thing, and it can actually strengthen the project in the end by providing better neighborhood context. You need broad shoulders, from which to give. We redesigned the project over and beyond what the association had requested. It ended up as a better project because of those compromises. With any design review board, you have to convince them of the care, intent, and interest that you are putting into each detail.

The "Carr Apartment" project by Craig Steely was a re-do in an existing apartment building, featuring a custom light wall/video installation. Photo: Rien van Rijthoven

What did you get out of architecture school?

The best thing I got out of architecture school at Cal Poly was gaining the ability to motivate myself. Another thing that stuck with me was the skill to evaluate my work on my own terms. Is the design successful to me? Certain school projects that I did got accolades, but other projects that went unnoticed were much more satisfying and successful to me. It’s the same with my work today.

I remember best the professors who challenged us to be self-motivated, and then gave us the freedom to run with it. Terry Hargrave, John Lange – and in Italy, Christiano Toraldo and Gianni Pettena. There were some amazing studios, too, that were all about drawing and painting. Vern Swanson, a watercolor instructor; Eric Vartiainen for drawing, who was a student of Alvar Aalto.

Do architects need to know how to draw?

For me at least, it’s very important. I think people who can draw have a certain grace to their design process and how ideas come together. I spent a lot of time in school learning to develop a physical connection between the eye and the hand. It’s just the way I work. My wedding ring has a hand and an eye on it, because the hand and the eye are so closely related in the act of design.

Sketch by Craig Steely of his "Gipsy House" project.

What type of person do you like to work with?

In terms of whether schools teach the right skills for the workplace – I don’t hire people right out of school generally. What I look for in a potential employee is character and intelligence. A person with character and brains can learn anything, pick up any new skill.

Is it really such a good idea to be friends with your employees?

It works for me. It’s a matter of communication. I look for people I can really get along with. With an office right in my home like this, it’s very close quarters. There’s no place to hide. There has to be trust. That applies to moonlighting as well. Sometimes I get projects that I don’t want to do, and I’ll give those projects to my staff. I don’t understand offices that restrict employees from working on their own outside the office. You know people are doing it, so why set them up. Don’t force your own people to be dishonest.

In this office, we are pretty loose about working hours. Everyone knows what needs to be done and by when. The people who stay are the ones who respect this. There’s a sort of internalized work ethos in a well-functioning team. Putting things back where they belong so that the next person doesn’t have to go hunting for it. My dad called that “knowing how to work” and he meant that on a construction team, one person would already have the tool ready for you.

How do you work with builders on your projects?

The usual architectural process is to send a project out for bids and choose based solely on cost [without considering any difference in quality standards among the various bidders]. But if you can establish trust earlier, it’ll be a better project. The owner should establish clear expectations early on, get the contractor involved earlier on, walk through some of their projects if possible. I have three contractors that I like to work with, categorized by project cost. Clients choose which one works best for them based on their level of expectation.

Even though Craig Steely claims he's always doing the same house over and over, it's clear that there are several parallel themes or "families" emerging, possibly in response to the various California or Hawai'i locales. The "Gipsy House" is located in Northern California. Photo: Cesar Rubio

How do you interview with potential clients?

My house is a litmus test for potential clients. They come and visit the office, right here at home, and if they like it, they’ have a good idea of what is important to me. It’s a long client interview process, on both sides. There has to be chemistry. And how do I know it’ll be a good client relationship? Lots of experience, lots of mistakes. It’s like surfing.  At first, a new surfer doesn’t understand the waves. Later, you learn to see patterns and you learn to see flow, you learn to be in the right place at the right time.

For architect Craig Steely, knowing when to engage with new clients requires the ability to see patterns and flow, similar to knowing how to surf. "Surfing is about proportion, flow, and perfecting line," he says.

It’s like being in a marketplace where everyone speaks a foreign language. At first it all sounds incomprehensible. But then you learn to perceive the cadence of speech, to see rules in the chaos. The client interview process is similar: over time, and with experience, you learn to trust your instincts.

How do you know when to tear down and when to preserve on a remodeling project?

It’s driven by the client and by the situation. You don’t want to end up with a facade that’s a parody of what it was. If a client wanted to preserve something that I didn’t feel was warranted, I’d send the client to another designer. But I like some of those really massive Victorians with the huge interior spaces. I’d like to try something with objects inside of that big envelope.

Bathroom detail from Craig Steely's "Gipsy House". Photo: Cesar Rubio

Craig Steely is not one for pomp and circumstance. The second part of our interview included Mark English as well as Rebecca. Craig arrived on a skateboard. Of course, we all met at Tartine, a San Francisco pastry shop so exclusive that you have to make an appointment there to buy a loaf of bread! Fortunately, no appointment was required to get a mocha, although I did have to cadge a dollar off him because I’d forgotten that I had run out of money…

In this part, Mark English’s questions appear in italics.

The house known as "Lava Flow 7" by Craig Steely features cast-in-place concrete and a tensioned fabric roof.

Mark English: Thank god there’s some modern work in San Francisco these days. When I first got here there was nuthin’.

Yeah, at one time if anyone used corrugated siding I thought, “Hooray!” At one time, anything modern in San Francisco was a rarity. Now the City has enough modern architecture that we can afford to be critical. That’s a good thing.

Some areas of San Francisco really do have a history, like North Beach, with the old Italian neighborhoods. Less false preservationism…

I used to live in North Beach when I first got back from Italy [after school]. I loved hearing all the old ladies speaking Italian. The place was on Kearny and Green, a cottage behind a house. We lived there until my motorcycle and furniture-building hobbies outgrew our kitchen space.

It’s interesting working out of your own house, isn’t it?

It either breaks or seals the deal for potential clients who come to visit. They can see for themselves what they’re getting into. It gives me freedom. This dialogue at the beginning makes for great clients. I’m totally honest with them about pricing, construction, and how we’re going to work on their project.

What does this driftwood hut have in common with the new house shown below, besides that both are recent designs from architect Craig Steely? Both are examples of a strong, single idea informing the design. Images courtesy Craig Steely Architecture

And then the clients interact with one another.

When my clients serve as references, they also act to pre-screen new clients for me. They can call my attention to something if they see a red flag. One potential client who had impressed me favorably went and talked with a few other people, and one of those former clients sent me an email saying, “WHOA! This guy needs to be straight with you! He’s too fixed in his ideas about what he wants.” It could just be that the potential client wasn’t as frank with me, but was more open with the other client about what he really wanted.

In another situation, a client’s negative reference actually worked in my favor. The potential client called up the reference [husband and wife] and spoke to the wife, who said that I spent too much time detailing. The potential client thought this was great! He wanted someone with an obsessive attention to detail. The point is to let the new clients know what they’re getting into.

I see you did an apartment in the Fontana building, where we just completed a project. Moving even one wall was a huge issue because of all the pipes. How did you fare in working with the management and the board?

With a building like that, every wall is full of pipes because the mechanical is all on the roof. My project was a 4-bedroom 5-bath penthouse, and we essentially made it into a one-bedroom by removing walls. We increased the electrical service from 100 to 150 Amp and had to shut the power off for the entire building for a day! That was a tough sell. This was for a steam shower. We could have done it with gas; we found a gas pipe on the roof that would have let us do it that way, but a Fontana Board member said, “No gas! It’ll explode” so we did it electrically instead.

In this San Francisco penthouse remodel, "Ludwig Apartment", Craig Steely opened the space to sun and views, combined rooms for better flow, and re-assigned functional spaces for elegance and simplicity. Built-in woodwork is custom stained walnut. Photo: Rien van Rijthoven

This particular Board member had served in the Navy in the Pacific once upon a time and he had a very military thought process, which we jokingly referred to as “vague and to the point”. I did my best to relate to him in a very “yes sir, we’ve got our best people on it, sir” attitude. If you can find a way to relate to someone, then you are more able to come to an understanding.

In our project there, we did a radiant floor and had to sell that to the building management.

Didn’t that raise the floor and make the ceilings too low?

No, not really. We pushed up the ceiling in a few places and used small Pex pipes. The main thing they were worried about was the water. I showed them a small bucket that contained all the water for the radiant system, and it was a lot less than a conventional radiator system, with its virtually inexhaustible supply of water.

In the penthouse, I used small radiators that were hidden inside a notch in the walls. Apartments are a tough job – you have to work around the building infrastructure, condo boards, and other tenants.

A second view of Craig Steely's "Ludwig Apartment" showing the San Francisco Bay. Photo: Rien van Rijthoven

You and I share an educational background at California Polytechnic. Cal Poly attracts people who build, people who work with their hands. Before the latest code changes came out, I used to do all my own structural – and I really liked it.

I love doing that part of it, too! We’ll take a stab first, and then give it to the structural engineer. Thinking about the structure is, for us, a part of the design process. By the time we hand it off, the engineer knows what we’re trying to do and can make better recommendations. Builders, too. Instead of spending time on detailing, we can tell them, “We don’t want to see too much flashing,” and then they’ll say “Well, why don’t you do it this way instead?” and it’ll be a better idea.

Which structural engineers do you use?

In San Francisco, Val Rabichev. In Hawai’i, Ray Keuning (who’s retired now) and Wally Vorfeld. They’re very hands-on and they’re willing to accommodate. I like smaller firms. A big engineering firm tends to hand the project off to a more junior person with less experience. I like working with the older guys, the ones who have those 10,000 hours of experience that Malcolm Gladwell says you need to be an expert in anything. They have a better command of the craft.

How did you get your first Hawai’i project?

Through Robert Trickey. He’s a very well-respected San Francisco furniture and upholstery designer. A few years before, I had brought him a modern Danish couch to restore.  He truly understood the mechanics of unbuilding and rebuilding it, and a great working relationship came out of it. We bonded over that project, and when he bought his property in Hawai’i, he called me.

The engineering behind Craig Steely's "Napa River House" is intended to float the living room on a special pillared base in order to preserve the root structures of the surrounding oak trees. Image courtesy Craig Steely Architecture

Every custom project is a prototype. This makes it hard to get comparable bids, because there’s no chance to do it a second time.

There are different personality types, too. The owner’s personality and needs are what drives the project. Some people are qualitative-based, others are quantitative-based. Their attitude also depends on their occupation, their station in life, even their basic happiness. With prototypes, you’re going to make mistakes. You have to take the attitude that the mistakes will end up making the project better in the end.

Two interesting details that stood out about this photo of Craig Steely's "Lava Flow 2" house were the lowered cabinet on the left, which makes for a more visually interesting composition, and the circular skylight above the round bath/shower stall that is visible from the adjoining space as well as the bath itself. Photo: J.D. Peterson

What are your tools for design?

Drawing and model-building. I like 1/4″ scale physical models. For computer visualization, I’ll draw plans and sections, and then my staff puts it into Rhino 3D for fast visualization. The clients can see right away what the status of the project is. There’s none of this “I’ll get back to you in 2 weeks with a rendering”. Renderings can be misleading if you don’t know what’s important. Sometimes people will look at a rendering and focus on some temporary texture like the wood grain, instead of looking at the form. Clients still need to use their imagination, to understand that the rendering isn’t exactly what they’re getting – it’s an abstraction.

With a physical model, you’re more invested. But, happy accidents can occur which aren’t part of the plan.

It’s obvious to me when people design solely in model. The model ends up looking great, but the change in scale to “full-size” doesn’t work. Changing formats can be helpful, though. I like to draw and I can lie to myself with a drawing, but that lie becomes apparent when switching to another medium. When that flow of design slows down, it’s time to change medium or format. Seeing things in different formats helps the design. It helps me get to what’s really important.

Craig Steely's design for "Lava Flow 6" is a simple and efficient steel frame house for a remote Hawai'i location. "Thinking about the structure is, for us, a part of the design process," says Steely.

You mentioned the importance of sticking to one design idea.

It’s a beginner’s mistake to put too many ideas into one house. They might feel that it’s their only chance, their one good client, and it’s now or never. As designers get more experience and more confidence, they feel less compelled to use all their ideas in the same project.

Sometimes models and materials can be misleading to clients who don’t know what they’re supposed to be seeing.

I had one client for a house in Hawaii who said, “Do what you want.” So I built a model, boxed it, and sent it to him with no explanation. The client responded “Aggh! Why don’t you just do what you did on this other house that you did 3 years ago?” I had to explain things to him in a way that he could accept, and I said, “I’m in a better place than I was 3 years ago. Trust me – it’ll be better.” And to his credit, the client stepped up to the plate. He realized that if the architect is happy, the client will be happier, too. Happy architects make better houses.

The themes that appear over and over again in Craig Steely's work are well developed by the time of "Lava Flow 5" - steel framing, simple lines, and most these houses seem to have the presence of water or a pool feature as well.

What about Bauhaus? I saw a Bauhaus exhibit in Berlin. The craft integration was intriguing, but it went way beyond that. The written diagrams scared me – the social hierarchy diagrams, for example.

What’s good about the Bauhaus was the emphasis on craft and functionalism as a simple idea that informs the design.

That gets us back to the importance of the single idea…

Dieter Rams is one designer who has embraced this. He was head of industrial design at Braun for 30 years. The architect, Mark Mills also talked about the simplicity of a strong idea. I can see the single idea even in things like burlwood furniture – things typically associated with hippie art, or California art. If one looks hard enough, one can see beyond the “hippie” trappings to the core of an idea. Even God’s-eye place mats and macrame could be compared to something like a Dieter Rams turntable – creation guided by an underlying set of rules that are self-created. Even macrame follows this: you have a basic rule for execution, and then there’s technique, balance, form.

Not all of Craig Steely's work is in Hawai'i. "Xiao-Yen's House" is a vertical San Francisco hillside house with the same steel frame and roof pavilion re-interpreted for a different locale. Photo: Bruce Damonte

I think of it as intention. Buildings are the artifacts of intention. Archaeology interests me for that reason, too.

The intention is like a map that shows how inherent human conditions can cross time and boundaries. Archaeology is dirty and very labor-intensive. It’s very honest.

The intention could be different, though. A building can be designed with the intention of winning awards. Or one could have a whole bundle of intentions.

If a building has a clear intent, that intent should be obvious – at least to other architects. Though even an untrained person can sense when an intent is present, even if they don’t know exactly what it is.

Other elements of the Hawaiian "Lava Flow" series that are shown in Craig Steely's San Francisco project "Xiao-Yen's House" include transparency (or perforation) and new approaches to bringing indirect daylighting deep into the interior. The roof also includes a turf garden. Photo: Bruce Damonte

Kate Stickley and Vera Gates of Arterra LLP in San Francisco have both been in the landscape architecture business for over 27 years, and in a thriving partnership together for the past 8 years. These days, with so many design firms either cutting back or closing their business, it’s a refreshing change to see a successful woman-owned design firm where the principals really love what they do. Their offices are serene and airy; projects and sketches cover the walls, and a rear deck provides a refreshing view of San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood.

Interviewer’s questions appear in italics.

Arterra LLP is a San Francisco-based, woman-owned landscape architecture firm. Left: Vera Gates. Right: Katherine B. Stickley

Family Background

Vera: I grew up on a Vermont dairy farm as a 7th generation farmer. We had 300 acres of tillable land plus another 300 acres of woodland and swamp. We raised dairy cows and worked the land. We also tended the woodlots for timber and maple sugar. We built what we needed and used what we had: timber and stone from the site itself. My dad loved doing stonework, while my mother was the dairy calf expert. My parents still grow a huge “victory garden” every summer. My dad has a new project – converting methane gas from cow manure into energy and selling it back to the grid. That is his idea of retirement!

I had 3 younger sisters and a big crew of cousins – literally a truckload of kids! We grew up doing chores together, cleaning fields together, building together. When I was 10 we built our house, and it was the single most influential aspect of my childhood. To see this dream emerge for my parents and to have the help of our whole extended family was an incredible experience.

This "Hillside Transformation" landscape design by Arterra LLP is one example of the artful use of stone to create a rustic-feeling terraced wall. Photo courtesy Arterra LLP

Vera: I took art when I could find it, in high school and summer courses. It was more crafts, though – building and making things. Art inspired me to weave together the agrarian side of things with the idea of sculpting the land more artfully. When I was a student at Cal Poly, a friend and I went to Manhattan for a week and visited every single art museum. The contemporary artworks and the architecture of the Guggenheim just blew me away. I saw landscapes in everything, and suddenly I saw the potential for art to emerge as a landscape of forms and composition. I began to explore landscape design as a sculptural endeavor. But first I had to learn about site grading – the actual process of moving earth to create or shape volumes, hills, flat surfaces.

This landscape by Arterra LLP titled "62 Degrees" got its name from the angle at which the garden is sited in relation to the lot. Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography

Kate: My family background was a bit different from Vera’s. I had a suburban upbringing. We were the first phase in our subdivision, so there were a lot of open spaces and construction sites to explore. We were construction junkies! I crawled around the buildings that were going up, and built forts in backyards with materials from the construction sites. I used to leave my house in the morning with a pair of clippers and cut my own paths through the woods. There was a creek, which we would dam up. We’d go out to view it during storms, play on the ice when it was cold. We gained a real-time appreciation of the weather and micro-climates.

Kate Stickley of Arterra LLP spent her childhood damming creeks and building backyard forts using reclaimed materials from nearby suburban homes under construction. This project, "A Garden in the Redwoods", features a natural-looking creek that formerly flowed through a concrete channel. Photo courtesy Arterra LLP

Kate: My mom was a very creative person. She was one of the founders of the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, and she was always making art herself. She is a fiber artist now. When I was a kid, it was ceramics. I had contact with other creative people, mainly organizers in support of the arts. I liked art, but didn’t think about careers until a high school guidance counselor suggested landscape architecture. I loved being outside, loved to ride horses, so that together with the art made landscape design a good choice.

Early Mentors and Influences

Vera: I had an aunt in Berkeley. I lived with her when I first came to California at the age of 18. She was a guiding force, someone wise and brave enough to speak the truth. She was a professional woman, also – a Certified Public Accountant. She kept me on track and she was always right in her career advice. When I was debating whether or not to go for my license, she said to me: “You can’t ride the bus if you don’t get a ticket.”

The landscaping and exterior design of the "Family Country Home" by Arterra LLP complements the home, which was designed by San Francisco architect David Gast. Photo courtesy Arterra LLP

Vera: One professor that I had was Gary Dwyer. He was a sculptor, a photographer, and a landscape architect. He saw the world through a very different prism. He pushed me to my outer limits of discomfort… and he’s still doing it today. For example, in teaching us about design, he wouldn’t start at the beginning in a linear, methodical progression. He’d start at the end. He’d tell us to create an entry or passageway without telling us what that entry was for, or what the destination of the passage would be. There was no starting point. Then he’d ask questions that I couldn’t answer, and I’d have to start the design all over again. To him, using a recognizable form was cheating.

Kate: I recently attended an art opening by sculptor Brian Wall. He said that his favorite pieces were the ones he hated at the beginning. He’d ask himself: “But WHY do I hate it? What could be done to make it something that I like?” Many of his most successful pieces were started this way. People like Brian Wall are inspirations for me. I love learning how artists and designers personalize the creative process.

A second view of Arterra LLP's exterior hardscape and landscaping of the "Family Country Home" project, done together with architect David Gast. Photo courtesy Arterra LLP

Kate: My mentors were people who were able to see in me what I had yet to learn about myself. People who said to me, “You CAN do this.”

Do mentors have to be the same age, gender, or background as you?

Kate: I don’t think it’s necessary for every mentor to share one’s own characteristics, but it helps if you can get it. I had only one female professor out of all the landscape architecture faculty. She talked about things like balancing family and profession, and that was helpful.

Vera: It’s VERY important if it’s an option. Today, 50% of landscape architects are women. In our partnership practice, Kate and I mentor each other. We have a lot of women friends who are sole proprietors of their own firms, and when we get together socially for ski weekends or whatever, they always want to talk about business and bounce ideas off of us.

Who says teak lawn chairs always have to be painted white? A small color accent among the wildflowers helps the seating to harmonize with the natural surroundings. Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography

Sharing Ideas and Mentoring Others

One place to share ideas is at professional gatherings. The American Society of Landscape Architects has annual meetings in a different city each year, with different themes. By contrast, some of the “green building” or “sustainability” training seminars aren’t as focused on landscape design; they’re more concerned with the building systems and technologies than they are with the site components. This isn’t to dismiss them – but maybe someday they won’t put the landscape architecture in the last 5 minutes of every presentation.

Professional gatherings also give you a chance to start giving back. You reach a point in your career when you begin to guide and mentor other people. When I had less experience, I was the one looking for guidance. Now I go to these conferences and meet people at dinner, and I make their day. When I first realized that, it was a great dawning!

There are so many people along the way who can give you ideas, feedback, and support. We are always willing to share with our colleagues. Mentoring for us is an ongoing exchange of ideas and information. Our efforts to build collaborative relationships go beyond working on projects together. We want to build strong business associations that will help our designs evolve and our businesses to grow. Within Arterra LLP, we are always exploring how to be better mentors to our young landscape architects, so that they have the support they need to flourish and thrive.

The "Jewel Box Garden" from Arterra LLP shows how careful attention to detail can make the most of even the smallest of garden spaces. Photo courtesy Arterra LLP

Collaborative Teams Can Create Better Designs

Within a project team, the level of collaboration varies depending on the project. Sometimes it’s the architect who sets the cadence, who has primary access to the client, and we follow suit. The buildings are already sited and our role is more limited. A more ideal situation is an “integrated design” approach, where the entire team walks the site together on Day 1, and shares in the client’s vision. We bring things to the table that other people aren’t schooled in. We are another set of eyes – we can spot opportunities for the building to interact with the site that others might miss.

It’s really the ideal of an old-fashioned charrette session, where everyone on the team shares their point of view – the biggest problems they face on the project, and the potentials that they see. Upon hearing one person’s challenge, other team members may be able to suggest alternatives that otherwise never would have occurred to anyone. This approach to problem-solving builds a collective group memory which can speed things down the road, especially if the entire team is involved from the very beginning.

Sometimes the site reveals the whole in a way that is only partially visible from the ground. This conceptual plan from Arterra LLP shows how the arcs and lines, transitions, passages, and focal points of the residence are contained within a circle inscribed on the land itself.

Creating a Sense of Meaning

A robust team effort results in a more meaningful project for everyone involved. We each identify the priorities for our phase of work, and look for common purpose and shared resources of construction. When everyone has buy-in on the design ideals of the project, we are all better able to deliver a built project that fits the site, the program, and the budget.With a more integrated design approach, you end up with a building and a site that really BELONG together.

A site has an engineering component, both for the house structure itself and for roads, drainage, grading of the land and such. The traditional approach is linear, as done by engineers. Engineers are problem solvers, and their job is to make it work. But we don’t just make it work – we make it work BEAUTIFULLY. For example, a straightforward engineering solution would be to put all the storm water piping underground. They wouldn’t necessarily consider making them intentionally visible.

So, which architects have you worked with in a collaborative way?

There are so many! Currently, we’re working on projects with Jonathan Feldman, Cathy Schwabe,  Eric Carlson of Carlson Design Group in Colorado, and Jim Caldwell.

In a collaborative approach, each design professional gets a chance to share ideas directly with entire team, including the client. Above: in one design meeting, landscape designer Kate Stickley overlaid her different concepts of outdoor spaces over the architect's printout of the interior floor plans. Image courtesy of Feldman Architecture.

Favorite Landscapes

Kate: My favorite landscapes are actually ruins. I love Hadrian’s Wall, Hadrian’s Villa, the Forum. I like to look at a half-fallen arch and try to picture what it was.

Vera: Delphi, and the Mayan ruins in Yucatan. The siting of these cities was both scientific and spiritual, based on the movement of the sun and the seasons.

You'd think that landscape designers would like other landscaper's work the best, but Kate and Vera of Arterra LLP both love ancient ruins as well. Left: Hadrian's Wall in Britain dates from Roman times. Right: Mayan ruin at Chichen Itza.

Good Design and Sense of Place

What constitutes “good design”?

Kate: Good design speaks to you in a way that feels good. We’re surrounded by design all the time: handhelds, cars, furniture. For landscapes and living spaces, we like a sense of place and a grounded nature. Each project is unique and should be celebrated as such. And, we have found that one of the best ways to realize this goal is to work collaboratively. When the entire design and building team truly shares a vision, the final built project is infused with a distinct and memorable sense of place.

This "Contemporary Update" landscape by Arterra LLP conveys a compelling sense of place, an oasis that is both inviting and restorative. There's a lot to look at, and yet it's not too busy, either. Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography

Our goal is always to design in the spirit of the place. We identify the essential, natural qualities of an existing site and we strive to conserve and protect these aspects. We look for the potential to transform the site into something more, something magical. We strive to achieve a sense of meaning and beauty in everything we touch.

Where once we designed for purely visual reasons, to create a beautiful landform, today this ideal has been tempered by function. It is less about the high art of sculpture and more about creating beautiful, meaningful landforms that work. We work openly to incorporate the functional grading, conveyance and storage of water, and unique planting systems into a visible and beautiful part of the design.

Site plan of Arterra LLP's design for "62 Degrees", a garden for a San Francisco home. The angle was chosen to align with an existing stair extending out behind the house, but Arterra co-owner Vera Gates joked that it could also refer to the average summer temperature in San Francisco.

Gesture

Vera: Good design is about the gesture of the landform. “Gesture” in this context means “parti” or “gestalt” or “overall shape” rather than a specific bodily movement or position – more like a unique signature. The human form has a gesture. Trees have a gesture. Architecture has a gesture. Each project has its own gesture.

In order for the built landscape to feel natural, there must be an ease of gesture. Any element that is over-thought, or over-wrought, will feel awkward and out of place. That’s another reason why collaboration is so important. The working systems such as stormwater drainage must be integrated into the overall design in a beautiful way, or they will stand out in a way that detracts from the design.

The sign of a successful project is that after it’s done, you can’t imagine the site WITHOUT the exact composition that was put in place. In fact, you can’t even remember what it was like before. If we are successful in our design, the site is essentially preserved or restored to a naturally sustainable state. The building will be aligned for solar aspects, and will be so well-sited that it appears to emerge from the land. If the gesture is interrupted somehow, it’s not as successful – it doesn’t have the same feeling of completion.

This winter tree silhouette shows a gestural quality that is consistent throughout. Even within the same species, individual trees can each have their own personality.

Finding the Sweet Spot

We begin our design with a site inventory and analysis. We try to identify the “sweet spot” – that one place on a site that feels magical and special. And, if we find it, we work to preserve and protect that spot, celebrate it. Far too often, though, it simply isn’t there. People feel this, that there is no heart to the garden, although they can’t always articulate why. But this “heart” is often what they are looking for.

Our design approach is holistic. We provide a sense of magic and well as a workable landscape in which water is conveyed, plants grow naturally, the soil is healthy, and wildlife can thrive. Through good design we link home to site and provide a sensory feast for our clients with all the sights, sounds, fragrances, and perceptions of being in a deeply meaningful landscape. The landscape is living, breathing, and ever-changing. From this, a unique sense of place emerges and begins to tell its own story.

Abstraction

Our blog profiles a lot of Modernist and contemporary architects, some of whom create very abstract, minimalist designs. In fact, one of our unstated missions is to convey an appreciation for some of these conceptual designs to a general audience. With landscape design, it’s harder to find really far-out, abstract work, possibly due to the nature of the medium, especially living plants. Plants are inherently representational, and they continue to grow and change over time instead of staying exactly where they’re put. This led me to the question:

Is it even possible to create abstract or minimalist designs out of such unruly materials as living plants?

Vera: Our designs aren’t really abstract, they’re more organic. One of the main goals is to minimize pruning and shaping. Something abstract and artificial like a cubical tree would require constant maintenance to keep that look. That’s not practical.

Kate: I like Dan Kiley’s works. He had a simple Modernist way, very ordered.

Dan Kiley's landscapes have a feeling of serenity and order, as well as a sense of the infinite.

Vera: Our work is responsive to site. It takes on its own voice and evolves. There’s no abstraction simply for the sake of abstraction.

Andy Goldsworthy's art is often very ephemeral, but he also does permanent works like this stone cairn. All his works are pretty nifty and blend easily into their natural settings.

Vera: Our work differs from architects in that we are setting in motion a living, breathing place. It will evolve over time, over 5 years, and over 50 years. We want it to hold together continuously through changes that time will bring.

Trees are a sculptural aspect, too. Sculpture is not just about landforms or built forms. Sometimes we’ll work on a site that has existing trees. If it’s got a stand of oaks that are all around 50 years old, then they’ll all die around the same time. In that case, we might plant new trees of the same type nearby that would come to maturity around the time that the old trees die out.

Arterra LLP's project "La Jolla de Santa Lucia" worked around the existing stands of native California oaks.

Sustainability

What’s your approach to sustainability, now that “green” is such a hot topic?

Sustainability is more than a celebration of nature. What’s crucial to sustainable design is this: an integrated design team, correct siting, minimum site disturbance, and reducing resource consumption both during and after construction. We also incorporate food production into our designs as much as possible. We believe that it’s very important for people to know where their food comes from, and for children to be able to go outside and pick food.

The perception of what is “beautiful” is changing. The idea of planted roofs, seasonal creeks, and winter ponds is much more appealing to our clients now. They “get it”. The look of native and low-water-use plantings has become popular, and we’re finally moving away from seeing so much water-intensive lawn.

Some of the green guidelines specify things like “native plants”, but what does that mean exactly?

It means exactly what it says: plants which are native to the region.  “Drought tolerant” is typically more of what we see, and includes a mix of native and non-native plants. Our landscapes aim for low water use, with no pesticides required.

The "Casa Esperanza" landscape design by Arterra LLP in California's Carmel region made extensive use of low-water native plants and existing trees. Photo courtesy Arterra LLP

There’s a bit of a myth about the drought tolerance, though, that native plants never need irrigation. If it’s a plant from a nursery that’s been raised in a pot, it will take 3 to 5 years to adjust to its permanent home. Once it’s established, it shouldn’t need watering, but before that time, it may need some.

Habitats

We want to create habitats that invite native creatures to come in. But even here, some species are undesirable. No one’s ever asked us for a garden that attracts skunks or raccoons, for example. People have asked specifically for gardens that attract birds, butterflies, or bees. There are specific plants that are good for hummingbirds – they like a deep trumpet flower.

Not all "natural" or "wild" critters are desirable near human dwellings. For example, people love hummingbirds, but very few people want to attract skunks.

Vera: Our “La Jolla de Santa Lucia” project in Carmel took 5 years to build. There were wild turkeys, deer, and even a mountain lion. The client actually sent us a photo of a wild turkey on top of the fountain. We noted the existing deer trails and left them alone, because they’re already in use. Deer paths, once established, can last for a hundred years. One can take the attitude of “this is MY land” and invest in deerproofing so the deer don’t eat the foliage, or one can choose to accommodate the animals that are already there. Animals need passage, food, and also cover. So, for example, we might work around the deer trails that connect new landscaping to mature trees, so that the deer can continue to have access to all these areas without interruption.

Vera: I assigned my students to read the book Chambers of a Memory Palace and then gave them an exercise to describe their earliest memories of a garden. These memories almost always involve animals, not just plants. A lot of memories also involved picking food, or playing with seedpods and burrs from the trees.

Site Stewardship and Resource Conservation

We are always working to educate our clients to the resources of their site and guide them in their stewardship of the land. This includes an understanding of water management, soil preservation and cultivation, tree care and protection, habitat creation, and how the landscape is designed to support passive heating and cooling.

Oftentimes, a site is severely compromised during the course of construction. LEED has acknowledged this and has given a value to conserving a percentage of the site in its natural state. This is certainly the right direction, and it works great on a large site. Even so, much of the land is impacted by construction in one way or another. Site grading, building and road construction, drainage and water conveyance, staging, and parking all change the lay of the land.

We look at the movement of the earth – that’s what construction is, after all – as an opportunity to sculpt the land and create a beautiful building-site connection. If it’s done well, the natural systems already present on the site are restored, and the plant and animal communities can recover.

A rear yard detail from the "Carmel Homestead" landscape project by Arterra LLP, showing the view all around of the pristine natural setting in California's Santa Lucia Preserve. This pool and fire pit could be equally inviting during the evening or at night, too. Photo courtesy Arterra LLP

Water Management

We spend a lot of time designing for the conveyance of water. This is the single biggest resource challenge in designing our modern-day homesteads, and it is here that we collaborate extensively with civil engineers. We prefer to keep these systems visible, in a way that’s integral to the overall design, and we want them to be beautiful as well. However, at the end of the day, the engineers have to make it work and it has to calculate out.

We are often hamstrung by antiquated code requirements and uncooperative building officials. This too becomes a source of inspiration as we figure out creative solutions that can pass muster. Water is so fun and so challenging to work with. It is fascinating to be able to practice at a time when there’s a sea change occurring in people’s understanding about this precious and imperiled resource.

We are actively exploring a full range of options for managing our site water, including water collection, storage and re-use, grey water usage, and methods for slowing or storing water onsite so that it has time to re-charge and seep back into the ground-water table. Green roofs, winter ponds, seasonal creeks, and reduced or water-permeable paving all work towards this end.

Even something as pedestrian as site drainage can have an artful component - and still meet all engineering requirements.

Materials

Earth is of course for soil, grading, and sculpting. Rock and stone. Concrete… we love concrete. Metal, including steel and bronze, for railings, fences and sometimes garden structures. Wood, if it’s sustainably harvested, or if the wood is reclaimed or repurposed. Moorish tile and glass tile. Crushed rock, glass, and porcelain.

The "62 degrees" landscaping project from Arterra LLP was a very site-specific response with a surprisingly varied mix of materials. Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography

Unit pavers of different sizes and proportions. And of course plantings. In a way, the plantings are just the showiest strand in the weave. A project in Healdsburg that we did together with Feldman Architecture is an example where we mixed materials to achieve an intent. That project has a lot of site walls and grading. Some of those walls we wanted to highlight, while others were needed, but we didn’t want them to show. So for the walls that made a statement, we made them thicker, of concrete. But the other ones had a very thin profile, with rims of steel.

Our material choices are part of the overall strategy which is usually to minimize the hardscape. Instead of a huge hardscape where the entire ground is paved over, we’ll use smaller paved areas with paths between to create a series of interconnected “rooms” surrounded by softscape – i.e, plantings. Sometimes these areas are meant to be used at different times of day. For example, one of our projects has an extended outdoor area including a “living room” with a fire pit, an outdoor kitchen, and a dining area.

For the "Contemporary Update" landscaping project, Arterra LLP created a series of outdoor "rooms". Here we see the living room with the outdoor kitchen behind, and the dining area off at the far corner. Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography

Working With a Landscape Architect

WHY would someone want to hire a landscape architect?

Vera: It’s the level of attention to detail and the scope of capabilities. We don’t do a hard sell. We just show clients our work and explain the process. If the client doesn’t know why they’ve hired us, it’s not a good match. Sometimes clients know what’s “wrong” with their current site, and they have desires, but they don’t know what to do about it. We start by asking them questions like what do they want to use it for, how they have used similar spaces in the past, whether they’re a sun worshipper or a shade seeker.

Arterra LLP uses various materials in their landscapes. Here we see a bronze detail from their project "The Emerging Garden". Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography

Our clients come to us with a narrative and a set of ideas. They look to us for an inspired vision and they expect us to deliver a site that is both beautiful AND sustainable. To achieve this, we take inspiration from the client, the architecture, and the mandates of the site. We find that the best design flows gracefully from this effort.

A well-designed garden can double the size of your house, by expanding the usable living space.

That’s true. And some people tell us that they just want to look at their garden, but then they’ll end up using it once it’s there! It invites them in, gives them new ways to use their space. We give the same care to the detailing, to material selection and design proportion, as an architect would for the home’s interior. With careful detailing, we can take that landscape “past the magazines”.

The "Buena Vista" urban landscape design from Arterra LLP. Something about the shape and balance of this pool is very intriguing. Note the screen of ornamental grass, the placement of the seating on either side that extends just slightly beyond the rim edge, and that even the pool rim is not uniform in thickness all the way around. Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography>

There’s too much CAD. Computers make it easy to just throw in a patio and a fountain. Then they tell us “We already have a hardscape…” but going back to why hire a landscape architect, sometimes people will ask “Civil engineers can do the drainage. Why do we need you?” and we respond with “Well, did you ever drive down a highway and see a beautiful drainage pipe?”

We don’t negate the work of engineers. We work hand in hand with them. A structural engineer can do the job but they won’t necessarily create a striking looking design. They might not think about the impact of using a 12″ or an 18″ retaining wall, for example. General contractors also need to appreciate what we do – we make their work look good! On one project under construction, the client was constantly complaining, until we talked the builder into letting us come in to do the plantings. After that, the place looked a lot more finished. The client was reassured, and calmed down.

When does the landscaping occur during project construction?

Not while the scaffolding is up! Seriously, site grading happens early on. Hardscape and retaining walls come after framing. Finishes and plantings come later. Sometimes the plantings are phased, or are scheduled to occur while equipment is available for other tasks. A large tree might have to be craned in, so it makes sense to do that while the crane is already there. Our collaborative approach continues through construction, as we work with landscape artisans and builders to craft a shared vision. Final plantings occur right before move-in time.

Questions on Style

Do you have any do’s and don’ts for landscape design?

One thing we see a lot is the “one of each” approach. We try first to design to the spirit of the place, but then we let the design percolate until it tells its own story. The creative process should be natural. Sometimes though, it feels forced, because we’re not listening to the site. The engineering problem-solving mentality can lead you to do things that aren’t a good fit for the site. Just because you COULD make something work doesn’t mean that you SHOULD.

Glass tile is another material that Arterra LLP likes to use in their garden design. These tiles are from "The Emerging Garden" and recall the iridescence of Mexican fire opals. Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography

Another problem is people who see a garden and want an exact replica. They’ll see something in Sunset magazine and say, “I want this garden at my place,” without realizing that the original design was very site-specific. The client has to trust the design process. If you force it to fit, it’ll always feel forced.

What about styles of gardens from different times or cultures?

Historical garden designs are based on local conditions, available materials and technologies, and also on society’s view of humans’ relationship to nature and the cosmos. The French, for example, wanted to control nature – keeping trees that are exactly 8 feet tall, for example. Islamic gardens evolved in arid climates where water was a precious and celebrated resource, and were intended to serve as a wellspring of spiritual repose and replenishment.

Moorish tile is an appropriate material for a Spanish garden, which in turn of course is historically informed by Islamic-inspired designs. This landscaping project is the "La Jolla de Santa Lucia Preserve" by Arterra LLP. Photo courtesy Arterra LLP

How do you deal with landscape maintenance?

Trends now are that clients can’t always maintain an elaborate garden by themselves. So we often design low-maintenance gardens with maybe one area for weekend dabbling. There are also maintenance services that go beyond the typical suburban “mow and blow” operation. Merritt College offers a master gardener program. Another great resource is Bay Friendly Landscaping, a program from StopWaste.org, which offers workshops and training for landscape professionals on environmentally friendly landscaping, addressing conditions specific to the San Francisco Bay Watershed.

Do you have any pet peeves? Things you see all the time that drive you crazy?

Kate: One of my pet peeves involves lawns! All that grass is a waste of water and energy to maintain. Sometimes we have clients who want mostly lawn. They’re often from the East Coast and they grew up that way. They associate grassy lawns with family activities. We might propose alternatives like sport courts or a bocce court. Or a community park – why not go there? This area is so rich in parks and open spaces. But kids play differently now. They’re not outdoors as much, and when they are, they’re much more supervised. Parents can’t let them roam like in the old days, so even when they are allowed to play outside, they’re kept very close to home.

Kate, you did resort design at one point. How’s that different from what you do now?

Resort design is like figuring out a puzzle. You have a certain number of housing units, hotel rooms, holes of golf, Fitness Centers, Retail Zones and other recreation areas to fit onto a designated site. It’s very prescriptive, very manicured, more commercial. And we were working for a developer who is not the end user. With custom work, we can dialogue with the end user and have a lot more impact. Kate was able to see projects to completion over 5 years, but Vera’s resort work was all paper architecture. It wasn’t real, wasn’t tangible.

The "Sunset Idea House" landscaping by Arterra LLP drew a lot of attention from readers who wanted one at their own homes, without realizing that this design was a very specific response to the site. Photo courtesy Arterra LLP

Facing Challenge

We love challenges! Challenges are what make each project unique. We never do things the same way. Every client, every site is different. Challenges are compelling. That’s why we love custom work and figuring out solutions. There are different types of challenges: permitting, neighbors, site.

Sometimes we get large projects that move so fast they’re a design/build, where things are being built while they’re still in conceptual design. That’s challenging, too. We’re wearing many hats all at once: design, cost and budget, then converting conceptual drawings to CAD overnight. There’s a sort of domino effect of implications, trying to remember what’s already been figured out.

Cost

We’re always educating people on what things actually cost. Some people have the wrong idea that landscaping is cheaper than architecture, but we’re using the same materials that you would for a house: tile, stone, wood, metal. The level of construction also matters. People sometimes have a better idea of how this impacts the house in terms of cost per square foot, but they don’t know as much about landscape costs.

The fact that we have a web presence now and so many people can find us on the web brings a lot of traffic, but it’s more casual. In the old days, 95% of our business was word of mouth, and people came to us almost pre-qualified. They had already heard about the cost and the process. Today, not as much. We now spend more time trying to get clarity on their budget expectations before interviewing and taking the time to write a proposal.

The garden by Arterra LLP at the "Sunset Idea House" included a custom-made plant tower, which has a metal latticework frame underneath to hold everything in place. Photo: Thomas J. Storey/Sunset Publishing

Lighting

Lighting design for landscapes focuses on practicality, on getting safely in and out of the house. It’s also for viewing in bad weather or at night. Some of our clients work long hours during the week and the only time they get to see their garden is after dark. We try to highlight key features and spaces. The newer “dark sky” ordinances require shielded light sources and less of it, but lighting is also necessary for safety and security – something the ordinances don’t always take into account.

Arterra LLP give careful thought to lighting in their landscape designs, such as the "Contemporary Update" project. Many clients who work long hours may only get to see their gardens at night, except on the weekends. Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography

Essential Skills for Landscape Architects

We do a lot of concept drawing by hand. Its quick and you don’t have all these CAD details to get hung up on. Many of our designs are curvilinear and fluid. Of course, technology is here to stay and it’s vital to or practice. The trick is knowing when and how to use it.

When we were hiring about a year ago, we received many applications from highly qualified people. Most of the design programs teach the same set of core computer skills. But what we were looking for most of all was someone who was a creative thinker, a visual thinker. People who had freehand drawings in their portfolio stand out to us more, because we can see how they think. And we know how to guide the process with someone who can draw.

Famous Last Words…

Kate: We love what we do!

Vera: These are extraordinary times to be landscape architects. Everything is changing so fast and for the better good.  Each new project is an opportunity to design a beautiful, sustainable garden that include new technologies and the fundamentals of land stewardship I learned as a child.  We are so fortunate to be doing meaningful work that we love.

The pool at Arterra LLP's landscape design for "Family Country Home" invites both viewers and participants. Photo: Michele Lee Willson Photography

Way back in the mists of time (2009) when we started this blog, our very first article was about Min|Day Architecture. We were so interested in the thinking behind a couple of their projects that we forgot to ask them how they got there: why did they choose architecture as a profession? And what do they think really constitutes “good design”? So, we revisited both EB Min and Jeffrey Day to follow up on these important questions.

They’re an unusual firm in several respects. First, they’re geographically separated. Jeffrey Day is an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. EB Min works in Min|Day’s San Francisco office, and is also an Adjunct Professor at the California College of the Arts. Second, they’re unusually technically savvy, with a design process that relies on close relationships with their fabricators. They’ve won several prestigious design awards. And they seem to combine a very advanced design sense with a humanistic approach that keeps people at the center of the designs rather than elevating formal concepts and expecting the occupants to fit themselves to an imposed environment.

Jeffrey Day spoke with us by telephone.

What was your family background? Any designers?

I’m from New England, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both sides of of my family have been in Massachusetts for long time. My family moved around a bit, including 5 yrs in New Zealand, and Seattle. I finally finished high school in Maine.

No one in my family is a designer. My father was in publishing. He wrote a few novels and children’s books, then worked as an editor in publishing house, editing non-fiction and fiction. He also did development writing for non-profits. He’s retired now, and still does some writing for non-profits in Vermont. My father’s foremost hobby is building wooden boats, which is somewhat relevant to what I do now.

My mom has degrees in physics and chemistry. She worked as lab assistant for a while and and then became a full-time mom.

How did you end up doing visual studies at Harvard?

I had been interested in architecture for a long time, maybe as far back as junior high. I considered other schools like Syracuse and Cornell, each of which had 5-year architecture programs. Eventually I felt that I would get a more diverse education at Harvard. There wasn’t an architecture undergrad major at Harvard, so I took courses in studio art, history and theory, graphic design. Extracurricular activities included working with the drama club on theater and stage set design.

Some of our current projects like the Soft Cube at the Bemis Art Center in Omaha draw on that background, using a stage-set approach to create an atmosphere for various events. Bemis is a “social stage” a background for unscripted and unprogrammed activity.

The Soft Cube by Min|Day Architecture is actually a curved wall created as an acoustical installation inside of an otherwise empty room at the Bemis Art Center in Omaha, NE. The name "Soft Cube" refers to a desire to soften the "white cube" of the gallery space.

The Red Shed video lounge is another example of a social platform. It’s an environment for video art, where the seating surface also serves as the screen. Unlike video rooms in museums (dark, isolated, hermetic, hushed) this one was supposed to foster social interactions.

The Red Shed video lounge by Min|Day Architecture is intended to foster social interaction and choice - the interior surface is simultaneously a lounge, a seat, and also serves as the viewing screen.

The CalmDome is another one. This was a collaboration with group of artists in Kansas who called themselves Carnal Torpor. It was an odd-shaped, egg-like geometric thing. It was intended as a spiritual space. From the outside it looks like an object sitting in space. On the inside, it’s filled with electronics, proximity sensors, motion sensors. Visitors interact with a soundtrack and a synthesizer soundscape. The CalmDome was first shown at the Smart Museum in Chicago, and then at the Bemis Center in Omaha. It now resides in a long-term installation in Kansas City.

The core concept in all three of these projects was the use of stage sets as environments. The intention in the CalmDome was that people can’t just be spectators. It’s social. Up to eight people can fit inside at once, but they’re crammed together a bit, and thus forced to interact.

The CalmDome by Min|Day Architecture contains an array of proximity and motion sensors that respond to visitor movements.

Did you ever study proxemics?

Yes, I read Edward T. Hall’s works on proxemics. He was interested in the behavioral aspects of space, how space shapes behavior, and how cultural conditioning affects people’s responses to particular spaces, particularly their notions of privacy.

One critique of this approach is that  social science looks at averages, and makes assumptions about what large groups of people will do, how they will behave. Architecture is more focused on individual experience, about people behaving in individual ways – as if they had a choice. It’s not trying to generalize about “how do PEOPLE interact in space.” It’s “How will YOU interact with THIS space?”

At Min|Day, we design based on the individual. We’re not predicting results or forcing people into a certain response. There’s a choice.

Airport lines and cattle chutes have one thing in common: they don't offer a choice.

Our Red Shed environment had a chair-bed that gradually morphed from one shape into another. Visitors could pick their own spot anywhere on this continuum. It offered a choice, and actually confronted people with the need to make a decision about how they were going to inhabit the space. It wasn’t a difficult or threatening choice, but it was a challenge.

Min|Day Architecture's installation, the Red Shed video lounge, challenges each visitor to choose their most preferred spot.

What does it mean to “inhabit” a space? How’s that different from just moving through it?

It’s a verb. It’s active. The person is an actor who is doing more than just traversing. Inhabiting makes it more conscious, but without predetermined roles.

I bet that kids love things like the Red Shed.

Kids are more experimental when interacting with new spaces. Adults are more concerned with being proper and behaving in expected ways.

Who were your mentors?

I have a different answer each time someone asks me that question. I don’t have single favorite mentor, no single point of reference. My mentors were various instructors in college, who taught me how to be creative in architecture.

What are some of your design influences?

Early 20th century avant-garde artists like Marcel Duchamp. American artists of 60s and 70s. Michael Heiter. Robert Smithson. People who worked outside of the gallery system. The art world was breaking away from the gallery, becoming more process-based. Sometimes works were in remote and inaccessible locations.

Architects who influence me included Alvaro Siza, Peter Zumthor, Rem Koolhaas’ writings, and de Meuron.

Another influence was traveling in the 3rd world: Asia, China, Tibet, India. It was important, but it’s hard for me to say why. I remember thinking of the Tibetan structures and their relationship to the land. Our Lake Okoboji house has aspect of Tibetan religious buildings in that the exterior shows the same monolithic, earthy, natural colors you’d find in the surrounding landscape, while inside is a de-materialized world of bright colors and indeterminate edges.

Min|Day Architecture designed this interior of a live/work loft in Nebraska using bright colors and custom-cut wood screens inspired by the prairie grasses outside.

Some of your writings reference vernacular architecture, which seems to be a product of local culture. What does culture have to do with architecture?

I’m interested in how various cultures inhabit space, how their architecture emerges from that backdrop of space to meet basic needs. Not so much as an imposed culture, but more about how culture and place are related. As part of my lecture materials, I have 2 slides, each showing a different valley in Tibet. These two valleys are far apart, but they look the same. Roads, town, river – it’s how one settles in space. A pattern emerges. In Western culture many of our inhabited spaces are electronic, virtual.

Two valleys in Tibet, far apart from one another, still show similar patterns of settlement. Above: Tikse in Ladakh. Below: Yumbulakhang near Tsetang. Photos provided by Jeffrey L. Day.

What are some of your favorite buildings?

I used to be interested in contemporary Spanish and Portuguese architecture. They did a better job of expressing vernacular principles without being too literal about it. The designers referenced vernacular in a deeper way than just putting a bay window in a building to make it feel like it’s in San Francisco.

Jeffrey Day feels that in general, contemporary Spanish architects do a better job of expressing vernacular forms by re-inventing them, rather than merely seeking to replicate the past. Clockwise from upper left: Magma Arts and Congress Centre by Menis Arquitectos, interior/exterior views of a residence by Fran Silvestre Arquitectos, and a contemporary Spanish style home by WDA Architects in Palo Alto, California. (These images were selected by Rebecca, not Jeffrey Day.)

In particular I would point out these Spanish architects: Ábalos & Herreros, Alberto Campo Baeza, Miralles & Pinos, Mansilla + Tuñón, RCR Aranda Pigem Vilalta Arquitectes. From Portugal: Alvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Aires Mateus. But, overall, I’m less interested in the formal results of architecture than in the process.

Here's a collection of Jeffrey Day's favorite Spanish and Portuguese architects, works selected here for their potential resemblance to local vernacular forms. Clockwise from upper left: Mimesis Museum by Alvaro Siza and Carlos Castanheira, a residence titled Quinto lo Lago by Eduardo Soto de Moura, Museu Paola Rego Casa das Historias, also by Eduarto Soto de Moura, and a residential complex by Aires Mateus.

How does one express a vernacular in a deeper way exactly?

Well, around the Bay Area, people are so in love with the idea of San Francisco. It’s hard for architects to break away and think. The knee-jerk reaction to San Francisco includes the standard tourist fare – the Painted Ladies that are the Victorians, with their gingerbread facades and bay windows, for example. People seek to preserve and replicate this look regardless of actual design needs [or in the absence of a wholistic design approach]. Distinctive features such as bay windows are degraded into formal elements added to a building regardless of whether it makes sense to put one there or not.

When setting forth design guidelines, local Planning Departments often try to define character in these sorts of physical terms, because it’s not as easy to write a set of rules for conceptual ideas as it is to list discrete physical elements.

If a client said “We want a Tudor” – well, that’s 14th century Germany. The styles that emerged at that time were the result of a process: a response to local conditions as well as available technologies. But someone who requests that style today doesn’t want a process, they want a product. That’s how realtors and developers tend to think. We don’t do that sort of product-oriented architectural design. We focus on how to use space, on programmatic needs, and on budget. But first, we have to draw the client out of that real-estate mindset.

[That can be hard to do when the idea of "having a Look" is so embedded not only in realtors' minds but in developers' and neighborhood associations' minds as well.]

Vernacular architecture… emerges out of basic needs, using available materials and systems, as it makes sense in a particular place." - Jeffrey Day of Min|Day Architecture

So what is vernacular architecture, since we’ve mentioned that term?

I studied with Albert Szabo in college. He was educated in American Bauhaus in the 50s – he was connected to le Corbusie and Mies van der Rohe – so he was a Modernist. But he was also very interested in “indigenous” architecture, which is architecture that emerges from a particular place.

Further examples of vernacular architecture from Europe and Thailand. These homes are not monumental architecture - that's something else.

At UC Berkeley, I studied with Richard Fernau of Fernau + Hartman, and later worked with that firm. Now, at Min|Day, we are interested in the process of creating architecture – be it vernacular or contemporary – not into just repeating its forms. Nonetheless, Fernau talked about vernacular architecture as “expedient”, rather than as nostalgic. Vernacular architecture is one that emerges out of basic needs, using available materials and systems, as it makes sense in a particular place, without seeking to express a self-conscious, stylistic agenda.

Are DIY Burningman shade structures "vernacular"? They meet basic needs, using available materials, with shapes refined yearly through windstorm stress tests - but of course Burningman does have its own stylistic agenda.

Then not everything that’s old is vernacular, either. All those ancient palaces, cathedrals, and monuments were self-conscious, seeking to make a statement.

That’s right. They’re not vernacular. They’re too refined.

Large-scale public buildings and royal palaces are not considered "vernacular", even though they are also a product of place.

And some of today’s post-industrial building styles could be considered “vernacular”, particularly slums and shantytowns.

People forget that vernacular is continually evolving. A Midwestern American barn is now a pre-engineered metal building. Even Levittown is somewhat vernacular, although it was based based more on marketing than on meeting direct needs, so it arose from a different circumstance.

A pre-engineered metal barn is a form of modern vernacular, in a way: meets basic needs, using available materials, and - assuming the purchaser puts it together - an understanding of process.

I prefer to view vernacular architecture as including a clear understanding of process.

Vernacular architecture, such as these hand-built adobe houses, implies a clear understanding of the process. Left image by Dmitrii Zagorodnov

By presenting design as a process, you’re asking clients to take a risk. They don’t know how it will come out.

Clients need to take the time to allow the process to happen. If we do a large house, we need time to consider everything. But not everything we do is slow. The Soft Cube was fast, under 6 weeks. It’s more of an architectural intervention than a separate structure, though. The client treated us like artists, to – no formal desires were imposed, and the impermanence of the project meant there was less pressure.

What constitutes “good design”?

A tough question, hard but necessary. I’d say that a good design emerges as a response to first principles of program and site. It’s about allowing a project to emerge, more than formal maneuvering. The designer can provide direction as to how the project emerges from its constraints.

An interesting convergence of art and activism is currently occurring, where artists are coming back to utility and away from autonomous concepts of beauty and expression. For example, Mel Chin’s “Fundred” project is trying to address lead paint contamination that is affecting children in poor neighborhoods. Artists are making change happen, and not just talking about it.

How do you teach the concept of “good design” to your students?

Well, if the design assignment is to create a library, then the students should list the spaces that it has to have, but they’re not judged by their adherence to the program. The students should question the program, re-evaluate it, re-define the program as part of the design process. Only after questioning the problem can they take a position. My belief is that there is no such thing as one right answer to any design problem.

The Seattle Public Library is an example of good design. It emerged from questions about what a library really is in the 21st century. It’s not just a repository for books.

[Arcspace has this to say: "Koolhaas sees the new library as a custodian of the book, a showcase for new information, a place for thought, discussion and reflection - a dynamic presence."]

Rem Koolhass designed Seattle Public Library first by re-examining the program - in the 21st century, a library should disseminate information, encourage thought and discussion, and serve as more than a repository for books.

There’s a sort of dichotomy between form and function. I just asked myself “what is art?” and immediately thought “anything that’s otherwise useless” – something that’s purely for the sake of beauty but has no practical application or value. Something frivolous, done purely for the love of the thing. As an artist myself, though, I’m not very comfortable with this notion of art as useless.

Architecture does have some expectation of utility. Art doesn’t have that requirement. But architecture really has to go beyond utility. It has to question that utility. Art and architecture inform one another in this regard. On the one hand, architecture gives the artist a structure and a process which in turn enables the execution of larger art projects. Studio artists who do large-scale works have to approach their projects in an architectural fashion – thinking about structural integrity, engineering, fabrication techniques, and budget.

Min|Day Architecture uses a structured design process to create the sculptural shapes for custom-fabricated furniture such as this table for a private house on Lake Okoboji.

On the other hand, art can influence architecture as well, by emphasizing originality and a projective engagement with the world. Art has conventionally been distinguished from architecture based on utility – architecture must do something, while art is free from functional requirements. However, art can lead us to approach architecture as something more than just rote problem-solving. Injecting an element of “uselessness” into a building allows the artistic elements to form an intellectual background against which the building’s functional aspects can be fulfilled in innovative ways.

Ironically, contemporary artists are much more engaged with the actual world through activist agendas that directly address social and environmental problems. Thus, the distinctions between architecture and art are less noticeable than in the Modernist period. Art helps us innovate how we deal with the world, beyond purely normative solutions.

There’s nothing wrong with uselessness. If you take away the “useless” aspect, it’s nothing but functional problem solving, and I’m tired of that!

The Raindrop Wall is another built-in feature designed for the Lake Okoboji House by Min|Day Architecture.

So how do you combine useful and useless to make a better building?

One example is Theaster Gates. Gates is an artist who buys old buildings and develops them to meet community needs. [His web site says: "Theaster Gates is an artist, musician, and “cultural planner” as well as Director of Arts Program Development at the University of Chicago… When Theaster is not making art for museums, he is committed to the restoration of poor black neighborhoods, converting abandoned buildings into cultural spaces…]

Omaha is a depressed area, and re-purposing old buildings – soul food restaurants, urban farming experiments – is a good way to take something “useless” and make it useful to the community once again. One initiative for us is working with the Salina Art Center in Kansas on some of their diverse spaces. They have a residency program for artists to engage communities.

Tell me more about your Qatar university tent-making class, where you “experimented with tradition”. Usually tradition is presented as an either-or: either people seek to preserve a tradition unchanged, as a museum exhibit under glass, or they want to toss it out. Even if they keep it, they might cannibalize it without regard to its former meaning. Experimenting with a tradition while still respecting its validity is a sort of dual heresy.

I was invited to teach this class by a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University – Qatar, a Swedish architect named Johan Granberg. Earlier, he had taught a one-week design/build class in Papua New Guinea on the use of bamboo. He got students to work with traditional building techniques that everyone there already knew how to do. The students were indigenous builders who were being asked to do something new, but with familiar materials that were locally abundant.

The weeklong tent-making workshop focused on getting the architecture students to think about why tents assume certain forms. Photo provided by Jeffrey Day.

This class wasn’t in New Guinea, though. It was on the Arabian Peninsula. Locally abundant materials include a lot of sand. But, the tent is a common vernacular form in that area of the world, even for people who live in palaces. I used the class to encourage the students to go beyond what they think of as “architecture”. A lot of architecture in that area is palaces, actually. The big design decision these students might face is whether to finish it in gold or marble. When I asked them to design a tent, I wanted to get them thinking about why a tent is the way it is.

The weeklong tent-making workshop focused on getting the architecture students to think about why tents assume certain forms. Photo provided by Jeffrey Day.

So did anything come out of that class?

The class was only a week. On Day 1 we all went to the market and bought canvas, poles, and rope, and then they had 3 days to create structures. Then, there were a few cultural difficulties. All of the students were women, but in that area of the world you can’t send women out alone to a fabrication shop. They were unfamiliar with the design/build concept, and were not used to making things. It was a challenge getting them to work in teams – some of them were more interested in going to the mall.

Tents of all sorts are still in use just about everywhere. Left: traditional Bedouin tents from Yemen. Right: the slightly more space-age Kelty tent from REI.

American architectural students seem to understand that one should know about how things are made.

I wanted to ask you about your geometries. Some designers use crazy geometries to express the disjunction of contemporary life – although your geometries appear very complex, they don’t feel chaotic to me. There’s an underlying visual logic that is apparent as in the Stones Table.

Those crazy geometries were part of the deconstructionist 90s, but that has pretty much disappeared now. I’m interested in connecting architecture to real issues, not just some concept of disorientation.

Min|Day Architecture used a parametric modeling aid in refining the form of the Stones Table, which was inspired by Voronoi tessellations and also by Japanese Zen rock gardens.

The geometries in our designs are not just about form for its own sake. They’re based in performance criteria, about how light and air move through the space, and it’s about making it work – not just about “expression”.

The Bemis Art Center Infoshop by Min|Day Architecture uses a recursive geometry to create a dynamic and usable space.

The Reflecting Wall is not about solving a particular problem, but it does meet strict criteria: a complex aperiodic pattern, a dynamic experience of surface.

The Reflecting Wall by Min|Day Architecture uses a complex tiling pattern that seems to blend in with the colors of the sky.

We had a project in China (which has since been cancelled) that used a traditional Chinese “ice-ray” pattern to set up a site plan for 23 acres. We used Grasshopper, a parametric modeling program with an optmizer to generate variations for master planning of 90 lots and homes of 10 different sizes. The evolutionary problem-solver we used with Grasshopper is called Galapagos. [more on this project at the end of this article]

The CalmDome is a truncated icosahedron, an Archimedean solid.

The CalmDome is based on an Archimedean solid (a polyhedron whose faces are regular polygons, but not all the same ones).

The Soft Cube wall is a double curved surface. The non-parallel surfaces act to reflect and scatter sound for acoustical purposes. The rough cardboard material helps to absorb sound, and the slats in the wall further aid in sound baffling.

The rough pressed cardboard slats of the Soft Cube wall aid in sound reduction at a low cost.

How did you and EB Min come to form a design firm? And how do you make it work with you in Omaha and her in San Francisco?

We’ve known each other for a long time. So there’s a familiarity there, and complementary skills. Our design process is very fluid, with a lot of back and forth, charrettes, even heated arguments. With our joint design work, we’re not so interested in quantifying results. It’s more about intuition. With color, for example, we think about it a lot, but we don’t consciously try to elicit a particular response.

Our work is Modern but it’s based on livability. It’s about how people perform their daily tasks and live their everyday lives – mundane in a way, but it can also  be creative. We don’t have a toolbox of standardized responses to these needs. For each project, we have to think anew about how to construct views, how light enters the space, the relationship between spaces, and how the family lives together.

"Our work is Modern but it's based on livability," says Jeffrey Day of Min|Day Architecture. Shown here is the bathroom from a Metropolitan Designer Showcase home on Baker Street in San Francisco, where each portion of the home was re-done by a different designer.

So, if every project is new, do you have a way to test or prototype your ideas before you go to the trouble and expense of construction? What happens if the idea isn’t working?

For some things, we can test or prototype the idea ahead of time. One example is a wheelchair-accessible house that we did. We build a cardboard mockup of the kitchen and made a lot of adjustments based on our experience with the mockup. Color schemes can be tested after construction and finalized on site. It does mean a longer design process.

What sort of design course would you teach to high school or middle school students, if you had the chance?

I’d teach them how to understand and confront a problem. Give them a project, some materials, and let them go at it. I wouldn’t teach techniques like detailing; you can’t teach people all at once to understand every kind of building. Architecture school does this well: teaches how design addresses a problem. What I don’t like about it is the implication that there is only one solution.

Thom Maine says that schools should specialize. This pigeonholes people as specialists or experts of various sorts. But I think architects should be generalists – rigorous ones. They have to be intelligent enough to grasp the main principles in related disciplines, like structural engineering, so that in design meetings they can understand what the structural engineer is saying.

What skills do graduating architectural students need today?

Digital technology, problem solving, a knowledge of how buildings are put together: building systems and how they interact, including mechanical systems and building envelopes. Regarding digital tools, today’s architecture grads know more about computers than the people actually running firms. Not only BIM, but parametric modeling techniques and scripting as design tools.

Is hand drawing still useful?

Not hand drafting. But, you can’t beat hand sketches for quickly generating and communicating ideas.

OK let’s go back to the China ice-ray project. We’d touched on this when discussing your geometries. What is an ice ray pattern, anyway? Is that anything like a Voronoi tessellation?

An ice ray is a pattern used in traditional Chinese architecture, used in the organization of lattices and screens, and sometimes in paving. It’s a way of subdividing a polygon in various ways. We used it as a site planning tool for a housing development in China, to create a sense of randomness with some controls, and also to keep a sense of Chinese-ness.

The "ice ray" pattern is used in traditional Chinese designs such as lattices and paving stones. Min|Day Architecture used this as an algorithm to generate site plans for a housing development in China.

The development program called for group of houses of 10 different sizes, plus a larger, centralized club-house. We started with the 22-acre site itself, which was a trapezoidal shape, and proceeded in stages. To create the plan, we used an evolutionary modeler called Galapagos, with scripting in Grasshopper. Each stage was optimized in the modeler before going on to the next, but when the whole thing was done, we could go back and make adjustments to any stage and re-run the whole thing.

The ice ray analysis by Min|Day Architecture began with a trapezoidally shaped site, which would be divided by successive stages in the optimizer.

The first step was to divide the site in half as two mirror images. Next, we divided the two halves into 5 spaces for a total of 10 spaces each. Each area had to be 4-sided, identical in area, but different in shape. These spaces were the “neighborhoods” and would have 10 houses each.

After dividing the site in half, Min|Day Architecture divided the areas again, first into "neighborhoods" and then into individual sites for detached homes.

Then, we divided each neighborhood once more, to create areas for each house. There were 10 discrete house sizes, and 9 instances of each for a total of 90 houses. (The club-house had a neighborhood all to itself.) Each neighborhood had one house of each size.

Sample house plans from Min|Day Architecture for the China housing development project.

We added some very basic Feng Shui principles into the computation as well – things like ensuring that the windows of one house didn’t face directly into the windows of the next, and configuring the entrances according to the expectations of a typical Chinese buyer. If any of the housing units violated these common design practices, the houses wouldn’t sell. The concept was that the houses were like “scholar stones” within a traditional Chinese garden – objects of contemplation.

The resulting site plan shows roads, site drainage, and houses that are both sited and oriented according to basic Feng Shui principles.

The software we used, Galapagos, is what is known as an evolutionary problem solver, meaning that it uses a genetic algorithm to generate better and better solutions. These solutions are headed towards an ideal, but they never actually get there. Our problem was relatively simple, so each stage took only about 5 minutes to run. But, as with the other projects we discussed (the Fog Wall and the Stones Table), once the end to end runs were completed, we had the ability to change the parameters within any one stage and re-generate the solutions.

We usually don’t use this blog to brag about our own work, but this time we had to. We’re very pleased and flattered to have our Fontana Building remodel featured on two major design blogs: The Contemporist and Houzz.com.

This interior remodel from Mark English Architects transformed the original early 60s decor into a sleek and sexy pied a terre. Photo by Matthew Millman.

Getting recognition for good design is a challenge that all design firms face. It used to be all about “getting published”, back when when getting featured in high-design magazines like Architectural Record was the pinnacle of architectural fame. Firms hired publicists to pitch and place stories, invested in professional photography and staging, and relied on insider connections to get the ear of a senior editor.

Now there are a greater number of places to present work. Magazines, books, and academia all retain a big role in promoting vanguard design ideas and emerging technologies. But now, online media has become the new go-to sourcebook for the general public consisting of architecture fans, potential design clients, and various professionals.

Yes, getting published is still important, and that still starts with having great photos. Typically, the architect has limited influence over the client’s interior design choices. But if the photos are cluttered, or the furniture is mediocre, the designs just don’t look as appealing. And there’s not much an architect can do about it.

That’s why this project was so exciting for us. We were doubly lucky that the interiors got the finishing touches from Gary Hutton Design that made the place picture perfect. And, photographer Matthew Millman‘s sensitivity and dedication to detail brought out every last bit of texture that, in person, make the place the perfect pied-a-terre.

The original layout had a wall that blocked the line of sight out to the San Francisco Bay. The revised plan maximizes the dramatic views and creates a theater from which to observe spectacles such as the Fleet Week aeronautics as well as Fourth of July fireworks. Parti sketch: Mark English Architects

Part 2 of a conversation with Gary Hutton. Interviewers include myself (Rebecca) and Mark English.

Why Handmade Is So Important

Gary Hutton: There’s all this furniture hype about “handmade”. It’s really about knowing how to make things. That’s what you learn at a good art school. My furniture is made by people who do the finest work in this country. People in the know, people who work with metal, they see my tables and they say, “Oh… my… God…” If you look, you’ll see that there are no visible welds. They’re put together by a process called plug welding. That’s really about the craft, having good craftsmanship.

At top is Gary Hutton's A6 table design. Below, the table (along with several other Hutton furniture designs) is shown in its natural habitat: an East Bay interior also by Hutton. Photos: David Wilson

Ingenuity and Resourcefulness of Material

Rebecca: But the cool thing about your Baker Street project was that you were very ingenious with simple materials.

There’s a big difference between working with a developer and working with a custom builder, a difference in thought process. Developers want to achieve the biggest bang for the cheapest buck. They want the “wow” factor and to pay nothing for it.

This interior by Gary Hutton was for a Metropolitan Home designer showcase on Baker Street in San Francisco. The sculpted carpet probably wasn't cheap, but the curtains are actually made from recycled soda bottles. Photo: Matthew Millman

Rebecca: I remember these felt curtains made from recycled soda bottles. So simple and yet so elegant. And that wall with the push pins.

That was a seismic map of North America made with 1100 pearls. Don’t ask me how I came to have a collection of 1100 Swarovski pearls!

From the same Metropolitan Home showcase, Gary Hutton's seismic map installation. Photo: Matthew Millman

Knock-Offs

Rebecca: So tell me about knock-offs. The Ciao table, or the Puddle table. Does it bother you?

It bothers me tremendously, but there’s nothing I can do about it. These designs can be copyrighted, but the Supreme Court ruled in the early 80s that if 10% of the design has changed, then it’s not the same thing. Of course the proportions aren’t exactly the same, either. The shape isn’t right. Look… here’s a design publication that just came out containing photos of 2 knockoffs from my designs. The original tables were cast bronze and the knockoffs are in wood or painted wood. I’ve been making that Ciao table since 1986. These are designers. They should know better! Seeing that absolutely ruined my weekend.

If you see it up close, Gary Hutton's "Pool Table" is a finely crafted cast bronze piece. In a catalog, however, a cheap knockoff doesn't look that different - and there's nothing a designer can do about it. Photo: David Wilson

Rebecca: But does it actually hurt your business?

The people who can afford to pay for meticulous craftsmanship are not going to buy a knockoff at Crate & Barrel. Nothing comes fully formed. Some Modernist schools like the Bauhaus really emphasized the art and craft. Consider the Breuer tubular steel chair. They were not the first to make it. But they saw the possibilities for mass production, to make fine art available to the masses. But then this Breuer chair has its cheaper knock-offs, too. There are 27 bends in the original Breuer chair. The cheaper copy has maybe half that number. It’s not as comfortable.

Gary Hutton's Havana chair design almost looks like it's on pointe - the legs recall stylized arrowheads. Photo: David Wilson

Ergonomic Furniture Design

Rebecca: Do you consider ergonomics and comfort in your furniture designs?

Oh yes, I think about it a lot. With seating, there’s not a lot of flexibility. The seat pitch front to back has to be around an inch and a half – otherwise you’ll feel like you’re pitching forward. Regarding seat depth, there is a sweet spot that will work even for a very short or a very tall person. But, furniture designers have tended to design to their own body’s scale. Michael Taylor was 6’4″ – and his furniture is BIG. Billy Baldwin was tiny, and his furniture is all very delicate.

Gary Hutton showed me a version of the Thayer Sofa, which is specifically designed with a deep pitch so that a person can lie down lengthwise and have enough room to read the paper.

I have to think about how people will want to use each piece. Not everyone will sit formally in a chair, for example. Some people prefer to lounge, or to read – a sofa should support people in how they want to live, not the other way around.

Creating New Furniture Designs

The economic downturn has stalled the development of more furniture pieces, but that’s my creative outlet. Interiors are work, a by-produt of client needs and desires. But my furniture is closer to pure expression. Typically, it takes 1-3 years to create a new furniture design. The Sturgis chair is one example that took 3-4 years of prototyping. We made 4 or 5 of them, and we had to keep going until it “sat” right, and we could find the right gauge of metal. And we have to pay someone to make each one, one at a time. A lot of it is finding the right person to make it. You need a really skilled fabricator.

Mark: That’s similar to what architect Anne Fougeron says about some of her stair designs. The engineers look at her designs and say they can’t calc it out. So her closest relationship is with her fabricator, who’s not afraid to give it a try.

Rebecca: Maybe it’s better to let the engineers figure it out afterwards. Get it to work first, and then the engineer can figure out why. So, how do you get the first inklings of a new furniture design? Is it a visual image? Kinesthetic? A concept?

The Sturgis chair started with the idea of handlebars, like the handlebars on a motorcycle. Then came the single-piece cantilevered seat – figuring out how to attach it at only two places and make it springy. Getting the curve of the attachment piece right was hard, because if it wasn’t coiled enough, it would break or bend.

The same chair design can change like a chameleon to suit different settings and tastes. Here we see three versions of Gary Hutton's "Sturgis" chair. Left photo: Matthew Millman. Right photos: David Wilson

Fabrication, or How We Do It

People today are totally disengaged from actually making things. Even designers have no idea how things are made, how they go together. Here’s a video that explains how we make our pieces. It covers lost-wax bronze casting, our welded pieces, and the upholstery. It’s very exacting. When something is completely made by hand, like a custom home, there’s a Zen to that. Your body recognizes it almost on a cellular level.

Rebecca: Isn’t that a conflict with the philosophy of mass-produced art or furnishings, the “design for the masses” approach whose original intent was to make good design accessible and affordable to a greater number of people?

Mark: As Michelle Kaufmann once said, true prefab is without intent. If you change it – it’s no longer prefab, it’s some strange hybrid.

We recently had the privilege of working on a Quincy Jones house in Belvedere that had been brutally remodeled. All the finishes had been destroyed, bastardized. My client bought it anyway. We were walking through it and went into a secondary bedroom that hadn’t been altered and she asked me, “Why do I like this room better?” Well, it was because the original handcrafted intent had been left alone in that one room. Her instincts were correct.

Interior Design Thought Process

Rebecca: What’s your typical approach when starting a new project? How do you go about strategizing or thinking about it?

I listen, and I talk to the clients, try to find out where they’re coming from. What they say is not necessarily what they mean. I have to watch closely for visual clues of personal style. What is their clothing, their surroundings, their car? I observe them interacting with things in space, and how they move through that space. As a designer, I have to figure out my clients. What are they really after? They may not want to tell you. I also ask them to bring pictures of stuff they don’t like. Sometimes, you can get more information that way.

An East Bay interior renovation from Gary Hutton. Photos: David Wilson

There’s a story about Billy Gaylord, who was a San Francisco interior decorator. He was doing a presentation for a couple’s bedroom. She kept saying she wanted contemporary, but it turned out that this was only because that’s what she thought he wanted. It just wasn’t working. Then he said, “I want the bedroom to feel like the inside of my wife’s lingerie drawer. I want to feel like I’m being invited in every evening, like I’m entering my wife’s personal lair.”

Gary Hutton made this Venice loft very sleek and modern - but he put a little "street" into the bathroom for contrast. Photos: Matthew Millman

The North Point Project

On the apartment renovation that I did recently with Mark English Architects, Mark had already given us a beautiful design. But the furnishings were still lacking. I had to take what was already there and make it stronger, complete it. There was already that round sofa, which I echoed on the other side of the room. The oval ceiling is echoed on the floor. With the master bed, the client told me that he wanted it to  feel like a really, really fancy hotel suite.

Gary Hutton designed this curiously alluring master bed as a built-in for an apartment renovation done together architect with Mark English. Photo: Matthew Millman

Colorful vs. Monochrome Interiors

Rebecca: What’s your take on use of color? Most of your work features a very restrained palette – why is that? And yet some of your past articles talk about “bling”. So… in your heart, are you minimal or bling?

I like to say that my furniture is the low child of Judith Lieber and Donald Judd. I like cleanliness of line and spareness. I’ve worked for so many art collectors. They don’t leave a piece in the same place forever. They like to rotate what they have up. So I use a lot of neutrals because any art can rotate in or out of that space. There’s one client, I’ve done 6 or 7 projects for over the years. There have been five pieces of art over one particular sofa in as many years, including a piece by Jeff Koons and a video installation. There’s a Frank Stella hanging there now, my favorite so far.

Gary Hutton's interior designs are often intended to showcase major art collections. Photo: David Wilson

I’ve done rooms for people that were colorful, too. One such room had red furniture, an Oriental patterned carpet, and an ottoman in red, yellow, and purple. It was a warm and intimate spot.

Creating Dynamic Social Spaces

Rebecca: A lot of interior re-work isn’t about colors or fabrics, it’s about flow, furniture placement, reducing clutter, social organization – space planning. Is this at all a part of what you do with interior design?

Furniture groupings and placement are important in defining social interactions. Sometimes I’ll come up with a couple of different schemes for people to choose from. What are people going to want to do in different areas of a room? One area might have a sofa to take advantage of a certain view, for example. Or a south facing window might have a reading nook.

In his interiors, Gary Hutton pays attention to furniture placement as a way to shape and define social interactions. Photo: Cesar Rubio

Here’s one example of that. Clients from Hillsborough, a couple who were well traveled, and well prepared to work with me. They brought photos of things they liked, but they also told me this story about a horrible dinner party one of them had attended where he ended up trapped with the same four people all evening, because the dining table was too big. So, we knew that we needed to organize the furniture in their rooms to allow for movement.

The room strategy, if you will, was to have seating groups to allow for conversation where one person could easily turn from one group to another. It was a very large room, too, with 14′ ceilings. But it wouldn’t’ always be full of people. To avoid having it feel empty when there were only a few people at home, we put the smallest group of furniture by the fireplace, so there would be a cozy, intimate spot even within this cavernous room.

[Rebecca: This is Gary Hutton's Secret #2 - the ability of a psychologist or therapist to observe closely, read the client's unconscious desires, respect their inner feelings and needs, and win their deepest trust.]

Rebecca: In most of these rooms so far it sounds like the main focus is artwork.

Rooms should have a focus. But it doesn’t always have to be artwork. One client I have is a total TV person. He’s never more than 10 feet away from a TV. He and his wife have two TVs in the bedroom, one for each of them to watch their favorite programs, and a TV in the bathroom ceiling right over the tub.

"Every room should have a focus," says interior designer Gary Hutton. Shown here is one of Hutton's interiors, a Los Angeles residence. Photo: Matthew Millman

The Future of Print Media

The focus of a room consists of the things people carry around with them from place to place, things that are important to them. Their books, their art, their TV. It becomes part of their collective consciousness. But you can’t get a room published if it’s got a TV in it. These shelter magazines don’t want to see TVs. Or toilets. All their top editors are women, and they don’t want to see TVs or toilets. Architectural Digest has rarely published a bathroom – and never have they shown a toilet or a TV. That could change now under their new leadership.

Rebecca: But there’s also this kind of worship of the bathroom.

Trade magazines are the ones who will publish kitchens and bathrooms.

Interior designer Gary Hutton took the idea of "bathroom worship" in a whole new direction, in this remodel of an apartment at the Four Seasons. Photo: Matthew Millman

Rebecca: Print magazines are in trouble. They’re still relying on an antiquated business model which consists of selling a lot of advertising. Their ad space is expensive and who knows if it’ll lead to project work?

Electronic reading devices are becoming popular, but most magazines haven’t caught on. They don’t offer online subscriptions, only a per-issue charge that’s a lot more expensive.

Gary Hutton's not afraid of color. Shown here his Thomas chair covered in red satin, which completely changes its personality. Photo: David Wilson

Rebecca: Magazines today seem like artifacts or relics.

There was one magazine that was really great, called Flair, published in the 1950s. Fleur Cowles was the editor. It had fantastic work by writers, photographers, and designers. It was only around for a year. It was privately funded and didn’t need to turn a huge profit. By contrast, Architectural Digest is – or was – a money-making venture. In the past 8 years, though, it seems to have become the People Magazine of decorating, a celebrity phenomenon. The sort of thing that drives impulse buys at airports.

Makeovers as Holistic Transformations

Interior design and architecture complement one another. The interiors complete the architecture. A good analogy might be a guy who’s really handsome, great physique, but he’s still naked. He needs the right clothes. Then, once he’s outfitted, you realize that in order for him to truly look his best, he needs a few finishing touches, maybe getting his teeth capped and a different haircut.

But to really be transformative, you have to intuit to the heart of the client’s real character, get to what really makes them tick deep down inside. I was watching this TV show on TLC called “What Not To Wear”. They take someone who’s a wreck and then these two stylists show up. The deal is, they give you $5,000 but you have to bring everything you already own to New York City, and they get to throw it out if they want to.

Watching that show is like watching a reptile. It’s so fascinating that you can’t stop looking. I remember a young woman from Dallas in her early 30s, who was married to a 23-year-old guy. When they walked down the street together – she was often mistaken for his mother. She dressed in this dumpy way and didn’t care for herself. Well, it turned out that she’d invested her life savings in a neighborhood bar in Dallas. It was something she really, really believed in – and eventually the business failed. When that happened, she caved in on herself. She was punishing herself for this failure, and she believed deep down that she didn’t deserve to look her best.

Gary Hutton provided the interior design for this guest suite in an apartment renovation done together with architect Mark English. Photo: Matthew Millman

On that show, they try to find that nugget in the client’s personality and consciousness that makes them who they are. The woman from Dallas had a Betty Page physique and sensibility – that 1940′s pin-up look. She loved that vintage vibe. So they sent her out to vintage stores, not to re-create the look but to take the spirit of that.

A second person on the show was a 30-year-old woman who’d just finished her Ph.D. in social psychology, but she still looked like a college student. She thought style was pointless, superficial. She refused to accept the premise that people make judgments based on what you look like. As a child, she had been very interested in clothes, but it all fell away in college. She turned her back on it. She’d go into her mother’s closet and wear her mother’s dresses because they were there, and while they fit, they didn’t look as good on her as they did on her mom.

And some people on that show have refused to buy into it at all. They resist! But the TV stylist hosts understand the psychology of people and how some people ignore their appearance to their own detriment. The stylists have to figure out: who are they, really? And then, they have to offer the clients the comfort that allows them to move forward with life so they can get to the next stage of development. It’s things like this that I, as a custom designer, also need to capture.

Managing Clients

Rebecca: What about your biggest pet peeves?

Indecision, and lack of candor.

Gary Hutton created the interiors for this private residence specifically to showcase the owners' art collection. The white sculpted wall is an art piece created by Rudolph Stingle out of styrofoam. Photo: Matthew Millman

Rebecca: How do you work around it?

With indecision, sometimes I have to tell them, “If you don’t decide by next week it’s going to put the project back six months and cost another $30,000.” That usually motivates them.

Rebecca: Sometimes as an artist you have to take charge. People respect you more.

There are times in a project when you have to take charge. Lack of candor is a little harder to deal with, but sometimes clients are really doing their best. I have one client who has her own eccentricities, but she understands that, and she owns it. She’ll call me and say “You just have to listen to me for a while. But I want to make sure you bill me for it.” And then she talks for a while, and I listen, and then she’s through.

Rebecca: Redoing someone’s interior living space is a very intimate exercise. There really has to be trust on a lot of levels. I’ve heard other architects say that design is a little like being a therapist.

Yes, it can be. I took a lot of psychology classes at school and I loved them.

Rebecca: Do you apply that knowledge in your practice now when dealing with clients?

Yes. Sometimes I have clients who are unhappy about something to do with their project. I tell them: “Don’t worry. We’ll resolve it one way or another. I can’t tell you how long, but we’ll do it, because we have always come through for you before.” And that’s our core commitment.

[This is Gary Hutton's Secret #3 - Knowing when to be direct, and still being able to pull it off with poise and dignity.]

Two images from Gary Hutton Design. Left: the Green Fairy graces a silvery Facet 5 table. Right: a view of a Venice, CA loft remodeled by Hutton. Left photo: David Wilson. Right photo: Matthew Millman

Photographer Note: Matthew Millman is based in San Francisco, CA.

Gary Hutton‘s office in Potrero Hill is a nice place to visit: warm and welcoming, with a very finely honed and understated elegance. At first, I was highly distracted by the vintage 70s disco platform shoes that were apparently part of the decor, to the point where I forgot all my clever opening remarks. But then we went into a conference room – with a beautiful table made with cast concrete legs and a thick plate glass top – and the words flew for hours. We had a follow-up session with Gary, myself (Rebecca) and Mark English.

His personality is both warm and forceful. Deeply empathetic, quick to laugh – but underneath, a core of steely determination to never, ever compromise on quality. I was looking for the secret of his success – read on if you want to know, too.

Gary Hutton designed the Facet 4 table as a marriage between minimal and bling. Photo: David Wilson

Childhood Proclivities

I grew up on an apple farm in Watsonville, California. Even as a small child, I had a real interest in interiors and was decorating my room all the time. My parents were very indulgent – they just closed the door and let me have at it. At age 5 or 6, I saved my allowance and did a Polynesian theme – fishsnets, glass floats, plastic orchids.

Later at age 14, my sister got married and moved out, and I got her room, which was much bigger than my old one. My dad and I put up a wall of wood paneling. It was the Pecan color – I remember that I was very specific about it at the lumberyard. I painted the ceiling bright yellow-gold, and the other walls were off-white. I found an old metal and wood trunk in a barn and painted it olive green. It’s still there… still olive green! (In the 90s that would have changed if anyone had been paying attention, but I was long gone by then.) For window coverings, I had roller shades that looked like burlap, with gold trim to match the ceiling.

Childhood Hobbies

As a kid, I wasn’t a collector per se. I built model cars. A love of automobiles was one of the few things my dad and I shared. Here are some trophies I won for model cars, and a few more for cheerleading. In 1968 we won first place in the San Jose Cheerleading Competition. Cheerleading wasn’t as athletic as it is now. My main job was to hold the girls up. That takes balance more than strength.

Before I got to high school, the model cars were my main diversion. It took so many different skills to make one back then. Even the spray painting was a two-step process. First a metallic silver color, and then a clear color coat on top. I would go to fabric stores with my mom to buy corduroy, and then cut individual wales to make the piping for the car seats. I’d cut thread to make the spark plug wires in the engine. I would cut the front off of one car and join it to the back of another, creating custom hybrid cars.

These vintage 1970s disco shoes are on display at Gary Hutton's office, on a table he designed called the Ciao table - here shown in one of several available patina finishes. Photo: Mark English

Growing Up in Watsonville

Back then, Watsonville was a small, agrarian town of 12,000 people. Our 30-acre apple ranch was 6 or 7 miles out of town, too far to walk anywhere. I spent a lot of time by myself, exploring, finding artifacts and machine parts. There were trees to climb, and places for forts. My sister was 5 years older than I was, and was not interested in hanging out with me. We never fought – we were just in different worlds, culturally as well as age-wise. 1966-67 were transition years. My sister was into poodle skirts and Elvis, while I went to high school with hippies and the Rolling Stones.

My dad was a railroad engineer. He drove trains, had a cap, the whole works. He mostly stayed local, doing runs to San Francisco and back, or loading and organizing the cars for cross-country trips in the railyard. I remember he would deliver boxcars of sugar to the local Wrigley’s plant, and go back to pick up the loads of chewing gum. My mom was a homemaker. She didn’t really have any hobbies as such. Both my parents were active church members in a Baptist denomination. Making bandages for missionaries, that sort of thing.

Education

I was on the college prep track at Watsonville H.S. which didn’t leave much room in the way of electives. Since my parents insisted on music, the electives I was able to take were choir and band. I didn’t take a single art class in high school – it wasn’t until I got to junior college at Cabrillo that I had my first art class. I was torn between art and interior design. But the head of the Art Department at Cabrillo College was “not down with decorators”… And in those days, people thought that going to San Jose State was like flushing yourself down the toilet. So the way he presented the choice to me was, “You could go with fine art at a 4-year institution like UC-Davis and study with all these great people, or you can go to San Jose State… and be a decorator.”

There’s a world of difference between a designer and a decorator, though. A designer is a decorator who can draw. Anyone can call themselves a “decorator” – but there are also ways of going deeper into the design.

A "decorator" without formal training in fine art and craftsmanship could never have designed a table with the level of sculptural refinement shown in this Gueridon table from Gary Hutton. Photo: David Wilson

In retrospect, being an art major at Davis was the best thing I could have done. That was a golden time for the art department at UC-Davis. The department was still small – 125 art majors total – and every class was amazing, with instructors who are now icons. I had Wayne Thiebaud for drawing, William T. Wiley, printmaking with Roland Peterson, sculpture with Manuel Neary. Classes were small, only 10 students per class usually. So we always had a lot of personal attention.

Rebecca: Sometimes great artists aren’t always great teachers, though.

Thiebaud was the greatest teacher I ever had. He conveyed such love and curiosity. One class he taught was on theory and criticism, and that was at 9 in the morning. At noon, we’d get out and we’d jump in the car and go straight to the SF-MoMA to look at what he’d just been telling us about.

Robert Arneson, on the other hand, was totally incapable of communicating in a formalized classroom setting. His class was a total bust. BUT – if you were willing to hang out in the sculpture studio – if you were willing to play in the mud with Bob, on your own time – it indicated to him that you really wanted to understand, and he’d share everything he had with you, side by side. He had an incredible generosity of spirit.

Robert Arneson (self-portrait shown above) was one of Gary Hutton's art instructors at UC-Davis

Rebecca: Do you have any examples of your early artwork?

Interior designer Gary Hutton created this sculpture as a fine-art studies undergraduate at UC-Davis. Photo: Mark English

I made this from a single redwood board, which I laminated and then began working on. Starting out ahead of time with a “plan” wasn’t producing very good results, though. The professor told me to let the material tell me what it wanted to be. I was so frustrated I ended up taking the skill saw and just HACKING at it! The cut I made – it became a defining line in the finished piece.

Furniture Craftsmanship

[Hutton showed us a few examples of his furniture pieces that he had in his office.]

Shown here are the Facet 3 and Facet 4 tables from Gary Hutton Design, which I saw in person. Even the closest of inspections will fail to turn up any evidence of visible welds or other means of assembly. The metalwork and finish on these tables is as smooth as polished stone. Photo: David Wilson

Rebecca: This bronze table rings like a bell! What a beautiful tone it has. You can’t hear this sound in a photograph, though. And it’s so smooth.

No… and you can’t see how it’s put together, either. Look underneath. There are no visible welds.

Gary Hutton designed the A3 Table and the A7 Table as well. These are museum-quality pieces, except you're allowed to touch them. Photo: David Wilson

[Rebecca: This, in my opinion, is Gary Hutton's Secret #1 -  intensive studio art training, a close attention to craftsmanship and detail, has given him both the hand and the eye of a sculptor. It is as a sculptor that we can best appreciate his furniture and his interiors.]

Interiors as Showcases for Fine Art Collections

Rebecca: Who are some of your favorite fine artists?

Oh, there are so many! Donald Judd and Frank Stella are just two.

Donald Judd is one of designer Gary Hutton's favorite artists.

Rebecca: How does art selection fit into your practice as an interior designer today? Do you pick the art for your clients?

I work with serious art collectors, so no – they’ve already got their collections, or they work with art consultants. I create the background for their collections. Many of my clients rotate their collections, or they’ll move pieces from one home to another. The interiors have to be able to showcase anything they might want to hang there.

This Venice loft is one of Gary Hutton's interiors. The room is designed to showcase artwork, but is not so closely married to any one piece that it would be ruined if that piece were exchanged for a different one. Photo: Matthew Millman

Gary’s Favorite Interior Designers

Rebecca: Who are some of your favorite interior designers, past and present?

After graduating from Davis, I spent a year trying to find a job as a sculptor. Imagine that! [laughter] I did actually get one commission. Then I went back to school, to CCA, which was called CCAC back then, and studied design. At that time, San Francisco was a major interior design town. Now it’s not – now it’s a food town. Back then, though, it was a hotbed of design. There was one socialite, Harry DeWilt, whose famous quote was, “San Francisco is a quaint fishing village run by interior decorators.”

Let’s see, who was there? Michael Taylor, who created the so-called “California Look”. Diana Vreeland called him “The James Dean of decorators,” because he challenged and rebelled against the design trends of his day. Tony Hale. Billy Gaylord. Eleanor Forbes. Eleanor Ford. John Saladino and Joe Durso from New York – I loved their work. So many of them have come and gone, and yet here I am, all these years later, still standing!

[Rebecca: I was curious about Michael Taylor and how exactly he might have influenced Gary Hutton, which is how I came upon the two above-referenced sites. Taylor said, "“When you take things out, you must increase the size of what’s left.” He rebelled against the clutter and pretentiousness of Postmodern designs that relied on fake columns and other such gimmicks. Taylor also believed that white was the best color for capturing light.]

Rebecca: What’s the secret of your success in this recession, when so many design studios are closing their doors?

I’ve always remained small, and haven’t gotten big to absorb huge projects the way some studios did. The most people I’ve ever had on staff is 5. This keeps us nimble. And, up until this recession, having the furniture line helped carry us through other slow periods. This time, furniture sales have dropped off to almost nothing. But, most of our projects last a long time, 18 months to 3 years. These long projects didn’t get stopped, which was fortunate. The projects are long because often we work from the ground up with the designing architects, so we’re there from Day 1 all the way through construction.

Gary Hutton's training as a sculptor possibly inspired him to invent this screen made with Ivory soap bars for the Metropolitan Home Designer Showcase on Baker Street in San Francisco. Of course, the metal frame itself was very finely crafted - something I wouldn't have thought about if he hadn't told me. Photo: Matthew Millman

Interior Designers Who’ve Worked With Gary Hutton

I’ve had a few people come through my studio who are now out on their own. Steven Miller, Joel Robare are just two. It’s great to see people grow. I see it as a process of mentoring those around me. After 30 years, hopefully there’s more than just air space inside there!

I first met Steven at CCAC. Jerry van Slambrook was there. He was a contract designer, one of Gensler’s first 12 employees, and also worked at Perkins & Will before turning to teaching. Jerry asked me to critique his class. Steven Miller presented, and I thought, “This kid has got STYLE.” Two years later, he came to me as an intern, and after that I hired him. He was great fun. At a certain point, he needed to go and do his own thing. He had trouble coming to grips with that. And I didn’t have enough experience with employees to understand what was going on. But we’re still friends!

Mark: In my experience with employees, when it’s time for them to leave, a certain amount of friction would occur. Sometimes the mentor gets plowed under. The energy to launch came partly from a rejection of the mentor.

Well, this is a small town – as you know. Stuff gets around. You learn to keep your mouth shut.

Mark: I do some mentoring at the AIA partly out of a feeling that there’s really no escape from the community. The design community is my family, so I might as well make it better. There might be some family spats but that’s all they are. We still have to get along somehow.

Yesterday, I was leaving the gym just as Richard Beard was coming in. The Museum of Craft and Design was having a show, architectural models, and a lot of people I knew were in it. I was thinking, “Oh, I really should go…” because I knew I’d get pressure if I didn’t. Sometimes that pressure is part of being in the community, too.

This San Francisco apartment renovation was a collaboration between architect Mark English and interior designer Gary Hutton. Photo: Matthew Millman

Museum of Craft and Design

I was on the museum board for a bit at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design. They’re unusual in that they don’t have a collection. They do shows, these pop-up shows. They just had another wonderful show, three artists and three installations. And last winter, they had a terrific jewelry show. There was some strange conceptual jewelry, and a beautiful installation – a series of cast latex rubber hands on posts. There were pins stuck through the fingers to keep the rings on. It was creepy, but wonderful at the same time. There was a serpentine necklace of black silicon, so thin that it conformed to the body and looked like a tattoo. Another piece was a series of luxury brand corporate logos like Nike, Pepsi, Chanel, all collaged together to make a giant crucifix.

They did another show in the Castro recently, a sound installation. The artists blew huge glass vessels that were motorized, with a stylus, played like a finger on a wine glass. There were 15-20 vessels on each wall, making random sounds – glorious!

Ted Cohen designs most of their exhibits. He’s in his 80s now, and does museum exhibits all over the country. He doesn’t have a cell phone, doesn’t do email, and he doesn’t drive. He takes public transportation everywhere. He’s still totally his own person. I want to be like that when I’m his age!

Good Design and the Test of Time

Rebecca: What constitutes “good design”?

Suitability. Is it the right thing for those people, in that space?

Here’s one example. Tony Duquette redid a Venetian palazzo for one of his clients in a way that was totally off-the-wall crazy, but it worked because it was right for her. She was so stylish, so self-assured, and so in love with the most avant-garde fashion imaginable. And Tony made it work. Who else would think of taking a 12th century Venetian palazzo and covering the molding with leopard velvet? Or taking the grand plasterwork and covering it with coral? There’s a chandelier in there that’s made of coral. It’s beautiful in its wackiness… glorious.

Gary Hutton made special mention of Tony Duquette's leopard room in the 12th-century Palazzo Brandolini in Venice.

Another amazing interior was the Union Bank Headquarters in San Francisco, right on Sansome and California Streets. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill redid the interior the late 70s or early 80s, with Charles Pfister as the lead I.D. on the project. This was at a time when the Japanese had more money than anyone else and they wanted to show it; this project was supposedly the single largest order of Knoll furniture ever placed. It’s not there anymore, unfortunately.

It was a beautiful commercial interior: spare, elegant, colorful, in that early 80′s corporate lush sort of way. The lobby is 2 stories tall, with the tellers sitting inside a marble donut in the middle. The access was actually from below, from downstairs, so the donut was completely unbroken all the way around. There was a cylindrical light fixture overhead that hung most of the way down in that soaring lobby. A mezzanine ran all the way around, and there were conference rooms in each of the four corners. These were cylinders as well, with smaller cylinders inside covered in ombre silk going from red to orange. Everything else was pale – the carpet, the marble, and the pale oak furniture.

Rebecca: Do any of these really bold interiors stand the test of time?

Well, fashions come and go, but then they come back around again. Wayne Thiebaud once said, “There’s nothing uglier than a 20-year-old car, but there’s nothing groovier than a 50-year-old car.” It’s our own thought process that has changed, not the object itself.

Of all Gary Hutton's chair designs, the Lafayette might be my favorite. Photo: David Wilson

Rebecca: Some of that has to do with the condition of the object. A vintage Chevy with fins that’s all banged up and dilapidated isn’t as exciting as one that’s in pristine condition.

That’s true enough. There are fashions in art, too. There was a painter in the late 1800s, Bierstadt, who made these giant paintings of places like Yosemite. He was one of the most successful artists of his day. But by the 1950s, nobody wanted them. You could pick them up for next to nothing. Now, they’re in great demand again. In today’s contemporary art market, Warhol, Koons, and Picasso are very fashionable. Especially late-period Picasso. Abstract expressionists and color field painters are not as fashionable as they were 10 years ago, though. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, really.

Wayne Thiebaud once said about his own work, “I’m a painter, not an artist. Only time will tell if it’s art.” In interior design and in architecture, too, the idea is to do the best job you can, and to work in your craft to the highest level possible, but then you just have to wait and see.

Gary Hutton designed this foyer to complement the various pieces of art and sculpture, including a specially commissioned floor from artist Robert Miele, created using painted vinyl inlay. Photo: Matthew Millman

Back to fashion. You have to look at the big picture. The Barcelona Pavilion in the 1920s by Mies van der Rohe is another example. At the time, people hated it. Now it’s one of the icons of Modernism. It was partly his genius, but also partly being in the right place at the right time, and getting a commission that wasn’t hampered by a lot of functional requirements. A pavilion isn’t a school, or a hospital, or a train station. This gave a lot more freedom of expression.

Rebecca: Yes, and now some of these early Modernist works are the focus of historic preservation efforts! People put incredible amounts of time and effort into restoring them exactly as they were made at the time. But that brings us back to the importance of craft…

[to be continued, in Part 2]

Photographer note: Matthew Millman is based in San Francisco, CA

It all started when Mark English went off to a 3-day conference in New Orleans sponsored by Hanley Wood Media (which was a fantastic conference, by the way). What he had to say upon his return didn’t have much to do with the conference itself. He focused instead on efforts to rebuild in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. One particular high-profile rebuilding effort appears to be serving the vanity of its celebrity backers more than the displaced people it’s intended to help.

When I visited New Orleans last fall, there was no way to prepare myself for the despair I felt when walking through the Lower 9th Ward, even 6 years after the storm. Hurricane Katrina began as a natural disaster but has since become a manmade one, of epic proportions. A vacuum of leadership at every level has left the task of “salvation” to celebrities, and their private celebrity architects – with projects that are an exercise of vanity over practicality.

What was most dismaying was seeing “celebrity architecture” masquerading as sustainable housing. What place does LEED certification have in a disaster recovery if it makes construction so costly that only a handful of homes get built? Are we seriously expected to believe that a handful of LEED houses will somehow create a template for the future, even while the architecture itself destroys the porch culture that formerly characterized the close-knit social life of the neighborhood?

Whose intentions are really more important?

- Mark English, AIA

Why such harsh words? Well… consider this group, founded by Brad Pitt, called Make It Right. Make It Right intends to create a total of 150 LEED Platinum homes in New Orleans’ 9th Ward, where according to its own web site, closer to 4,000 homes were destroyed (another figure given elsewhere was 5,300 – the American Red Cross estimate is that a total of 275,000 homes were lost to Katrina but that’s statewide).

We feel that this is a wasteful approach, for several reasons. Although 150 new dwellings is a good start, each of these homes is costing two or three times as much to build as a less ostentatious building would. And taking longer, too. They’re all designed by prominent national architects, selected by invitation. This particular initiative was heavily promoted within the conference, including a carefully monitored bus tour where no contact with residents was allowed.  In fact, no residents were present at the conference, either.

Disaster tourism came to New Orleans, too. But some people did stop to help, and stayed. Image source: Kathy Price

The residents are not invisible, however. They’re featured prominently in four pages of stories on the Make It Right web site – tough survivors who’ve never given up their dream of returning, saving up for their portion of the down payment required for these new homes. It would have been nice to speak with some of them directly to find out how they liked their homes, and to have their presence and input at the conference.

The consensus amongst our small group of conferencers was that the fancy LEED homes ignored the social fabric of the old neighborhood in subtle functional ways, thus providing a fragmented, expensive, and incomplete solution. In addition, many of the building features that may have originally been intended as functional appear to have become ornamental – more expensive to build and less effective.

The Great San Francisco Earthquake Disaster Response: A Comparison

Compare the New Orleans rebuilding to another effort that took place here in San Francisco after the Great Earthquake of 1906. At that time, the priority was to create as many housing units as possible, as quickly as possible, and the solution was the now-historic earthquake cottages that continue to dot the landscape. These cottages were small, portable, and they did the trick, all without name-brand architects or LEED.

Following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the City built over 5,000 portable earthquake cottages within a year, and housed people in refugee camps like this one in the Presidio. Some are still around today - the right photo shows an interior remodel of a San Francisco earthquake cottage by Klopf Architecture.

The above-mentioned site describes both the speed and efficiency with which the first-response tent camps, established over the spring and summer following the earthquake, were transitioned to shacks for those still homeless:

As winter approached, the city built 5,300 small wooden cottages for those still in need of housing. These “earthquake shacks” were a joint effort of the San Francisco Relief Corporation, the San Francisco Parks Commission, and the Army. Union carpenters built the structures, which are said to be based on a design provided by General Greely, who had personal experience in building Arctic shelters with few supplies… At peak occupancy the cottages housed 16,448 refugees. Tenants paid $2 a month toward the $50 price of the cottage. After paying off their new home, the owners were required to move their cottages from the camps. The last camp closed in June 1908, leaving earthquake cottages scattered throughout San Francisco…

The Make It Right initiative didn’t go for simple pedestrian solutions designed by Army engineers. Nor did they sponsor an open design competition. Instead, Brad Pitt teamed with Graft Architecture and two other firms, to assemble a list of hand-picked “name” designers. Although the criteria included an interest in New Orleans and sustainability, the resulting designs often look like they’re from Mars.

The San Francisco built 5,300 cottages in under a year, while comparable efforts in New Orleans don’t seem to have completed anything close to that. Habitat for Humanity has built around 80 homes (Musician’s Village), Make It Right has completed around 60 out of 150, and there are other groups less touted that are building on the same scale in surrounding areas like Pearlington, MS.

A few months ago we interviewed Richard Best, an architect who had worked in Dubai and was then seeking to join with Architecture for Humanity in order to work on rebuilding the earthquake destruction in Haiti. What he said at the time was something that would seem to make sense for New Orleans as well:

For Haiti… our plan… involves a couple of stages. First, we want to get the survivors into palatable living conditions as quickly as possible. This means moving them away from the rubble into immediate shelter, so that we can remove debris safely and lay down new infrastructures. Since the reconstruction may take several years, we might need to move people again so that they have someplace to live in this interim period which could be 10 years. So, one idea is housing that can move, can be transportable, but will still provide shelter from hurricanes.

As in the San Francisco earthquake, a possible solution involves moveable housing, but without the hugely expensive foundation work.

Leaderlessness at Local and National Levels

Another difference between San Francisco in 1906 and New Orleans in 2005 is that some experts and authorities suggested that New Orleans was not worth rebuilding, due to its challenging wetland topography – more on this later. In addition to a leadership gap at local planning levels, there was perhaps political indifference on a national level towards a region that the then-in-power Presidential administration did not count amongst its strongest supporters.

Richard Campanella, Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Tulane University in New Orleans, put it into a wider perspective:

The rebuilding of New Orleans is a vast decentralized undertaking being executed an/or funded by a weakly coordinated cast of players that includes individuals, neighborhood associations, volunteers and foundations, the private sector, the city, the state, the Federal government, and even some international entities. MIR is simply a high-profile example… a very famous micro-scale demonstration project involving a handful of families – but no more.

So, what was there prior to Katrina?

In New Orleans, the 9th Ward is a peculiarly isolated place. Steps from downtown, it’s cut off by a canal with drawbridges that can stay open for half an hour at a time. And yet, stories abound describing its stable, neighborhood feel. 80% of the residents owned their own homes, some having been there for generations. A strong tradition of local activism also seems to have continued. The architecture and layout was highly regular: single or double family shotgun cottages, only 6 feet apart, with generous front porches and modest dimensions of 800 to 1200 SF.

This photo from Kathy Price shows a row of houses that were restored after Hurricane Katrina. The colors are brighter, but the original architecture is the same.

The porch was probably the most visible and certainly the most socially functional feature. Generous overhangs protected the house from the sun’s heat and the rain, and especially prior to the days of air conditioning, it was likely the most comfortable place to be in the summertime. People would sit on their porches, conversing across houses, watching the street, facing outward.

This image from Kathy Price shows a restored Victorian from New Orleans' 9th ward. The vertical windows make the house seem taller and grander.

The other observation we had was that the homes appear to be clustered together with large gaps between, and no commercial strip or local services. Given that it can take upwards of 40 minutes to drive anywhere from the 9th Ward, it seemed strange that so much attention had been paid to the individual nature of every building, and none to overall neighborhood patterns.

It should be noted that many of the residents whose homes were destroyed either had no insurance, or have had great difficulty in obtaining insurance reimbursements. They may still own the plots of land – which I’m told are worth about $5K apiece – but, without capital, they’ll need assistance of some sort to return.

This example porch is closed off on the sides, and also can't be entered from the yard or street. If the owners want to run to the neighbors, they'll have to go inside the house and then out the side. Note the expressive (and expensive) canopy on the left that is meant to shade the side of the home.

What’s so wrong with the designs, anyway?

It may seem nitpicky to focus on a design critique when the overwhelming importance is of course to restore life and habitable dwellings, but this IS a design blog, so let’s get out our magnifying glasses and have a go.

Before: Houses were all lined up, same size same level, with open porches that encouraged communication. “It was very democratic,” says Mark English, again expressing a general consensus among the conference-goers.

Now: In the new scheme, the houses all seem to be at different levels, with different setbacks from the street. The porches on the new homes are sometimes blocked from the side. In other parts of the country, the “inward looking box” is the ideal – privacy trumps street awareness. But those other regions don’t have the same close-knit community feel, either.

A row of restored houses in New Orleans' 9th Ward. Photo: Barry Bahler/FEMA

Before: Porches actually shaded occupants from both sun and rain. The buildings themselves were also protected from the sun’s summer rays.

Now: In the home on the left below, the screen doesn’t actually shield the building. It’s purely decorative – often at a disproportionate cost. The house is probably super-insulated at least, so it shouldn’t need as much shading, but still… In the home on the right, the overhang has been minimized and is so high up that it can’t provide either shade or rain shelter.

Sidewall shading devices ore of questionable utility, and amazingly expensive. Mark English asks, "Would they even be necessary if the houses were sited to shade each other?"

Before: Roof lines were modestly pitched.

Now: Roofs are more steeply pitched, and more elevated, ostensibly for solar panels, but we think it might also be to allow the designing architects to play more with volumes. Also, a roof designed for solar panels should be pitched to take advantage of the sun’s highest position within the home’s particular latitude.

Before: Roof lines were conventionally angled.

Now: The roof on this house below looks like it’s falling off. It’s more expensive and harder to construct, too. Mark English adds, “Is this design device worth the extra money in this setting? What is the architect saying? I thought the most important function of a home was to house a family.”

This design looks very authentic from the front, but this side view shows the roof tilted at a cockeyed angle, which could add to the difficulty and cost of construction.

Before: Houses were so close together that there was no point in ornamenting the sides, because they’d never be seen. Almost all of the ornament was in the first 10 feet of the house.

Now: This siding, both in shape and openings, is an architectural statement having little to do with local convention.

We felt that this siding served the purpose mainly of making a clever design statement. Its impact will be lost if other homes are built at the original spacing of 6 feet apart.

Here’s one house that actually references local vernacular. Not surprisingly, it’s by a local firm. Its wraparound porch has an overhang that actually shades the house, and anyone sitting outside.

This design is the closest to the original styles. It's got a slightly tilted roofline when seen from the side, but the essentials are here: the generous wraparound porch shades the house, and shelters anyone sitting out there on a rainy day.

The Floating House Folly

Here’s one thing that really set Mark English off: a nifty pylon system by Morphosis that allows the house to float in the case of a flood. Check out this video. Well, what’s wrong with that, you ask? Flood-proofing would seem as obvious to New Orleans as quake-proofing is in San Francisco… but is that really a cost-effective solution?

“We have flood-proof housing right here in Sausalito,” answers Mark. “It’s called a houseboat.”

These houseboats in Sausalito, CA are compact and naturally flood-resistant.

But why do we have to exactly restore what was there before?

If we as Modernists are trying to get away from fake Tuscans in California, why try to replicate an archaic gingerbread-y vocabulary in New Orleans?

We don’t have to create new homes that look identical to the old ones. It’s better to keep the forms simple, and allow the owners to customize things through color or other additions and features. What’s more important is to preserve the needed functionality – and in some sense or fashion, the proportions and scale.

Why are architects from other places criticizing the authenticity of a neighborhood they’ve never even lived in?

After a more careful review of the material I’d have to say that even vanity rebuilding is a whole lot better than NO rebuilding… and publishing the homeowner stories at least legitimizes their existence and involvement in the process. It’s clear from these narratives that all the people who chose to return had deep roots in the area, and it also puts the personal tragedies into perspective. It may be mainly other architects, who know what could be done better, who find aspects of Make It Right’s approach so objectionable.

What’s wrong with making the new homes LEED certified?

The LEED designation may cut drastically on monthly energy bills – one writeup on the Make It Right site claims a cut from $250 to $35. However, the two main critiques of LEED, especially from a residential perspective are the following:

• The certification process itself is highly cumbersome and expensive, up to $15,000 just for the certification – and that’s per house.

• LEED has no requirements for post-construction verification that actual energy use is as low as anticipated. This has led to some embarrassing moments with LEED buildings that turned out to use just as much energy as any other building, and also LEED-certified buildings with counterintuitive functions that don’t support environmentalism, energy conservation, or renewable energy. Who ever heard of a LEED-certified gas station? And yet, there is one.

Where are the original residents now?

Here’s where it gets even more interesting. Remember how we hinted that no one cared about the 9th Ward because they were “low-income” (as if Kanye West didn’t blurt it out first thing)? According to Tim Culvahouse, FAIA, a prominent architect and educator, many of the Katrina survivors declined to move elsewhere in the city, into currently available housing because they were too attached to their one plot of land.

As Culvahouse tells it, back in 1979 New Orleans had a program to revive tens of thousands of abandoned homes that existed in the city at that time. These were usually places where the owners owed unpaid property taxes. The city allowed interested third parties to take over these homes as long as they were willing to pay the back taxes. The new occupant of the abandoned home could then fix it up, live in it, while the original owner still had 2 years to repay the occupant for both the back taxes AND the current market value of the improvements.

Apparently many of these blighted homes are still around and available. So why didn’t the Katrina survivors take the city up on it? Well, according to Culvahouse, some may have preferred to keep living in exile rather than give up “their” land that had been in the family for generations, while others may have returned, but to other parts of the city. He subesquently added, “What is certain is that the ones who have rebuilt in the Lower Ninth, either on their own or with some help, have chosen the relative exile of that essentially rural landscape over life in the city.”

This design at least doesn't look like it's from Mars. If that porch were a bit more shaded on the top you could probably shelter from the rain and sun. Now if only the porch could wrap around to meet the stairs…

What about other organizations?

There are probably several local groups that don’t have web sites or press releases. Here are a few that do, although it’s hard to find out how many homes they’ve completed or whether those homes are occupied.

Holy Cross Neighborhood Association – The Holy Cross neighborhood is a historic district within the 9th Ward. The HCNA works for sustainable rebuilding and restoration, with a community-centered approach. I don’t know that they’ve actually built anything themselves.

Habitat for Humanity New Orleans – A worldwide Christian-based organization with local affliates, the New Orleans Area HFH has built 418 homes since 1983, but no information on how many of that total were post-Katrina. However, their “Musician’s Village” project provided 72 homes specifically for New Orleans musicians following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  (They look a lot more like the originals, too.)

Musicians' Village was a set of 72 homes built by Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Historic Green - They’re rebuilding with attention to historic preservation in N.O’s Holy Cross neighborhood, in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council.

Global Green – This was the U.S. arm of an international company (founded by Gorbachev!) doing legitimate energy consulting and sustainability work. Our observers have reported that this group built a few green showcase homes but the scuttlebutt at the conference was that no one had purchased them because they were too unattractive. An interview with Matt Petersen, president of Global Green USA explains more about their goal of showcasing sustainable architecture.

ACORN – Well, they’ve since been heavily shellacked in the media, but their volunteers did build two houses. Which people are living in.

One has to wonder, though, why private organizations and government agencies don’t focus more on empowering the residents to return, and perhaps aid them in navigating the financial and legal systems in order to do their own rebuilding. Could it be that the City of New Orleans doesn’t really want them back?

On Vanity Philanthropy

So, why didn’t Make It Right make it a priority to get as many people as possible back into clean, efficient housing? One observer attributed this to a combination of leaderlessness at the local Planning Department, and to the egos of the architects and celebrity sponsors – all of whom would like to swoop in and create something heroically glorious. The real work comes AFTER the buildings, with the gradual restoration of the social fabric over time.

And why does Brad Pitt’s name and image need to be everywhere on the Make It Right web site? It puts displaced persons on display as an object of charity, with star billing reserved exclusively for the donor. Rudyard Kipling’s famous call to “take up the White Man’s burden” is part of what this NY Times article calls the “Western fantasy of omnipotence”, where wealthy nations may have a genuine wish to relieve suffering, but are hampered by their own belief that with enough money they can “fix” everything.

Many other celebrities have gone in for humanitarian projects – Madonna, Paris Hilton, Bono, Oprah, Bill and Melinda Gates, Richard Gere. When Paris Hilton suddenly developed an interest in Africa, people were more willing to believe that she was simply a pampered socialite trying to beef up a drug-tarnished image. It may depend on how savvy and sincere the founders themselves are – and how focused. Some of the most effective givers aren’t known at all outside of their own communities.

Direct Charity Makes Poor People Poorer

I took a closer look at some other well-known celebrity foundations, notably the Gates Foundation from Bill and Melinda Gates, and also the Skoll Foundation, founded by Jeff Skoll of eBay. Both these foundations don’t do direct action themselves – instead, they give grants according to well-defined criteria that support the mission and beliefs of their founders. They’re not just dashing from one humanitarian disaster area to another. And, the Gates Foundation does a lot of follow-up to see how well things are working – something that’s often ignored in international aid efforts, where it seems that the more money is poured in, the less local concerns are heard. The only people who benefit are the Halliburtons of the world.

Kathy Price Blog

In our searches for images among other things, we found a blogger named Kathy Price who started with a remodeling blog, but who eventually moved to the 9th Ward after seeing the devastation. She’s written reams about her subsequent involvement in neighborhood activism – not as a self-promoter, but as a reporter and preservationist on the spot who seems willing to walk the walk. See her entry from December 21, 2008.

She’s pretty bullish on the Make It Right people, and also has a big focus on color design that’s very interesting and informative. And her Green Building thread is worth a read, too.

Other Design Critiques

Tim Culvahouse writes about effective patterns and local typologies including “camelbacks” and shotgun homes, saying that the Make It Right houses are “putting the chariot before the cart” and “will not form the coherent streets so beloved — and so highly functioning — in New Orleans.”

Another publication, Cite Magazine published quarterly by Rice Design Alliance in Houston, has an interview that explores some of the same questions we’ve raised here.

The MIR Founding Architects

The core design team for Make It Right included at least three firms: Graft Architecture, William McDonough + Partners, and John Williams Architects, LLC.

Graft is actually only one of several architectural firms selected by Brad Pitt as part of the core design team, but they seem to have had a great deal of influence upon the aesthetic direction. After reviewing so many comments about the lack of local sensibilities I was surprised to see a fair amount of lip service paid to just these very things in Graft’s own writeups (which are best found in various entries on e-architect.co.uk rather than on their own highly annoying, Flash-infested web site).

Graft Architecture proposes this as a modern interpretation of the "camelback", a traditional New Orleans typology.

Here’s what they have to say for themselves:

…we have additionally drawn inspiration from the camelback shotgun typology. Historically, camelbacks emerged as a way for residents to add a partial second story to a residence… In our design, we utilize the camelback strategy to stack a second efficiency unit above a first floor shotgun house.

Tim Culvahouse talks about camelbacks in his critique referenced immediately above – he says it’s ignored, but it looks like it’s still around, in some form or fashion. Graft goes on to describe exactly how they are indeed referencing local features like the porch culture:

A critical programmatic goal within the design is to establish a strong connection between the private interior zone of the house and the shared public space of the street. The primary challenge in achieving this goal lies in negotiating the 8′-0″ first floor height that is required to make the houses safer from future flooding of the street level. The broad and spacious deck located in the front yard mediates the relationship between public and private by raising the deck 5′-0″ above grade. This offers a welcoming gesture to the street while at the same time creating a semi-private space for the inhabitants of the house to enjoy.

So, I dunno. Here’s Culvahouse’s vision of the camelback.

A traditional New Orleans camelback diagram, provided by Tim Culvahouse.

I tried unsuccessfully to contact a spokesperson from Graft, but it appears from their literature that they did recognize the former neighborhood’s “atmosphere of engagement” and they tried to keep it, but also to inject a Modernist vocabulary. Maybe that was a vanity move, but a lot of thought went into it.

Speaking of vanity, Graft does have a lot of unbuilt work that looks highly idealistic and futuristic, as if Zaha Hadid had gone into sustainable design, and they also are building some LEED certified luxury resorts – sustainable luxury resorts seem a bit of an oxymoron, but someone’s gotta do it. After all, we may reason, those resorts would be built regardless, so why not make them a bit more environmental (or a bit less damaging, depending on how you look at it)?

The other two firms seem to have more realistic bodies of work and relevant experience – although looking at their beautiful contemporary residential designs does make me wonder whether their vision of sustainability could ever be coupled with affordability.

The Four Questions We’d Really Like to Ask Brad Pitt

We’ve been trying (unsuccessfully – surprise!) to contact both Brad Pitt and the Make It Right executive directors to ask them a few of the questions posed in this article. Until we hear from them, here are the four questions we would like to ask them directly:

1. After Katrina, over 4,000 homes were lost in the 9th Ward, yet you’ve chosen to build only 150 new homes, all by big name architects. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to make the designs less self-conscious, keeping the flood-proofing but ditching the crazy designer roof angles, and let the homeowners customize them later on? You could have built a lot more houses for the money that way.
2. It’s  a common critique within the design community that LEED itself is expensive and not worth the money for private residences, so why pursue LEED certification, instead of putting that money into building more homes?
3. How much attention was paid to the local social fabric – the “porch culture” – in relating one home to the next, or to providing shelter from rain and sun to keep the porches actually usable? On many of the porches, the shading is often so high up that there’s no shelter from the elements. What sense of community will there be if the homes are too closed off from the street and from the adjoining neighbors?
4. How much attention was paid to creating livable neighborhoods, not just homesteads? Did you consider planning for services such as a viable and accessible commercial strip?

We’ll update this article if we ever hear back ;-0

Geography as Destiny

Having argued back and forth about modernism, sustainability, vanity architecture, there’s still one more thing to cover: geography. When national authorities determined that New Orleans wasn’t worth rebuilding, it wasn’t just racism talking. Professor Richard Campanella, mentioned earlier, possibly knows more about the geography and settlement history of New Orleans than anyone.

Among his books is Geographies of New Orleans: Urban Fabrics Before the Storm, a thorough analysis of the settlement history – architectural and cultural – of each neighborhood. It’s a bit like Edward Tufte’s classics on envisioning information – massive amounts of research expressed in statistically elegant graphs showing, for example, not only how many Jews or Creoles lived where – but the likelihood of that information being correct. Meticulously honest, respectful, thorough, and non-partisan, Campanella might be the most authoritative voice of all regarding New Orleans history.

Richard Campanella, Research Professor in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Tulane University, and author of the book Geographies of New Orleans: Urban Fabrics Before the Storm.

We sent him an earlier draft for his comments, and he has most generously allowed us to quote him here at length.

I would point out that, well, it’s Brad Pitt’s money. He can do whatever he wants, within the limits of codes and laws– and he broke none of them. He could have spent it on silly hats or jetsetting to Cannes. True, he raised money through his foundation, but to my knowledge, that was all private money as well. So in my view, MIR has a certain level of license to be creative, utopian, innovative, and perhaps a little zany, and may be forgiven if its efforts eventually prove to be inefficient and ineffective. It would be a very different story if this were public money…

I’ll leave the architectural criticism (stylistically and structurally) to architects and designers, and I’ll leave the civic-engagement criticism to the sociologists. What I, as a geographer, can opine on is the decision to build MIR at that site, precisely in front of the high-velocity breach flooding, on land that is mostly below sea level and adjacent to two risk-inducing manmade navigation canals. This was a bold, high-minded, and morally majestic decision, but a foolish one. It reflects a romanticized notion of the relationship between place and people (culture). It indulges in the tempting (and popular) but problematic presumption that “place makes people,” whereas in fact the opposite is more commonly the case. It attempts to “save” the culture of that neighborhood by rebuilding in that exact spot, as if culture emerges from soil. The truth is that human beings adjust their place all the time. They move to different houses, neighborhoods, cities, states, nations, and continents incessantly. Most of the pre-Katrina housing stock near the MIR project only dates to the 1920s-1960s; residents moved there from other neighborhoods only a couple of generations ago, at most.

More troublingly, MIR’s site selection decision reveals a breezy arrogance (note the name “Make It Right”) and a misguided sense of defiance. At whom are they shaking their fists by insisting on making their statement at that unsustainable site? Global warming? Under-engineered levees and floodwalls? Centuries of delta urbanism and their deleterious impact on the landscape? The whole Katrina tragedy?

Make It Right seems to be more interested in making garbled political statements and basking in the glow of progressive righteousness, than in building a maximum number of reasonably sustainable low-cost houses in a sustainable location. I personally identified over 2000 open parcels of above-sea-level land in the heart of the New Orleans historic district. That’s where MIR should have built. And it is from those neighborhoods that most residents of the Lower Ninth Ward can trace their roots.

If you build sustainable structures but place them in a geographically unsustainable site, have you really “made it right”?