The Women in Architecture whiteboard outline.

The beauty and challenge of New Media is it’s ease of use. As they say, Content is King, but the democratization of the web allows anyone to say anything. That’s what intrigues me- I trust thinking people to decide for themselves. If you don’t like what you read, start your own blog!

Rebecca and I hope that you have been enjoying our latest Interview Series, The Women in Architecture  program.  As each of the interviewees has stated so eloquently, architecture is a tough business for anyone, especially for women. I’ve been fortunate to get to know them all and share our experiences at dinners, events and committee meetings.  We are fortunate to practice in the Bay Area where open, challenging conversation is possible.

When Rebecca and I decide on a story direction, we’ll get together at the whiteboard and run through lists of possible interviewees and questions. The diagram shown above is the formative outline for the current series.

I hope you find the newest addition to The Architects’ Take, “Short Takes”, to be entertaining and informative. My goal is to include short observations about my profession, the built environment, people of interest, or news in general as items of interest come to me.

As always, please feel encouraged to comment, and let us know if there is someone you think we should interview!

Thanks, Mark

The architectural profession is in crisis. Half the firms in San Francisco shuttered their doors this past year, or so it seems, and those that remain have pared down their staff. Even professionals who’ve been stably employed for years are showing up at job fairs with that stunned and hungry look that – well, let me put it this way. I had it, too.

Karin Payson built one of the first green roofs in San Francisco for her Hill House project, in 2003. Photos: Stephen Barker

Not only that, but architects aren’t always known for their marketing savvy. Residential architects in particular may have a hard time finding clients, because they don’t know how to use the new marketing channels that have emerged in the past 10 years. And who can blame them? Architects are supposed to spend their time designing, not working with their agent to get on Oprah.

Karin Payson has been running own firm since 1992, one of very few woman-owned firms in San Francisco. We asked her not only about the state of design, but the state of the profession. Are young designers any good these days? How does she stay in business? What’s up with interior designers and architects? Who are her favorite designers and why?

The kitchen from Karin Payson's Oak Knoll project shows how a light touch with a sparing hand can create serenity and spaciousness. Photo: Stephen Barker

In the portions below, three voices are represented: Karin Payson (KP), Mark English (ME), and Rebecca Firestone (RF).

Interior Design vs. Architecture

Payson was a hands-on designer from the start. “My father was a textile engineer with JP Stevens and he used to bring home 100-yard samples from the textile mills in places like North Carolina. I learned to sew at age 10 and eventually worked my way through college as a seamstress.”

An architect and an interior designer prepare for another face-off at the project site.

RF: Can you talk about the tension that seems to exist between architects and interior designers? One seemed to emphasize formality, volumes and minimal color palettes, while the other emphasizes color, flamboyance, and a textured experience.

KP: Interior design is confused with decoration – which in turn is seen as fun and mostly about curtains. Interior design is more tactile than architectural design. It’s a tactile world as well as a visual one. I think that many architects are afraid of this tactility. They’re afraid of color and of the tactile qualities of interior finishes.

KP:  Most architects are afraid of color. They think it’s cutesy, poo-poo, fun – not real design. What they don’t realize is that fabric for example can have both emotional and acoustical value.

KP: Tactile has to do with both light and finishes, and how they work together. How the surfaces are finished changes the light in the room, and can give it a whole new dimension. Reflected light off of white walls, or wood, or gray concrete – totally different feeling. Hugh Hardy was my employer and one of my mentors after grad school. He said that architects suffer from a fear of drapery!

Why are architects so afraid of a little color?

KP: Decorating is such a dirty word! But as one interior designer said to me, “I don’t mind being called a decorator, because so few people are any good at it.” To be able to  select accessories, fabric, and furnishings on an art level is really the completion of the design, not a trival afterthought.

RF: A lot of interior work seems to be about furniture placement. Don’t you have to consider this when setting up your views and window positioning?

KP: We show furniture placement with several iterations. This project folio is actually an interiors package that we’re about to present to the client. These examples show how you might furnish the room. There are several lines of sight [shows out the window and a couple that go diagonally across the house].

Influences

RF: Who are your influences? Whom do you admire?

KP: I suppose we have to mention Frank Lloyd Wright and Bernard Maybeck. I studied their work a lot, because we ARE in California [meaning their work is designed for American climates]. I’ve also liked Alvar Aalto and the New York Five from a very young age.

Clockwise from top left, works by John Hedjuk, Charles Gwathmey (the Guggenheim), and Richard Meier.

The Salzman house by Richard Meier was a landmark project that deeply influenced architect Karin Payson's own work. Photo: Karin Payson

Other names… Louis Kahn. Charles Voysey.  Edwin Lutyens… his work was rooted in its time. But it’s not entirely traditional residential architecture. It’s humorous and rigorous, with great proportions. Hans Wegner and his chairs. Brulo Lisle. Going back further… Palladio, of course! For fine artists, Mark Rothko. Paolo Uccello. David Smith. George Rickey. Martin Puryear.

"Something I love but I would never do" is how architect Karin Payson describes the work of 19th-century English architect Charles Voysey. Photo: Heinz Theuerkauf, 1976.

"His work was rooted in its time. But it's… humorous and rigorous, with great proportions," says architect Karin Payson of the work of Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens buildings from top left: Greywalls, Homewood, and Lodge Runnymede.

Photos by Karin Payson of Charles Gwathmey's studio.

Alvar Aalto: Light and Flow

RF: Tell me more about Aalto. Why’d you pick him?

[Brings out a folio of Aalto's work ]

KP: In the summer of 2001, I went to Finland and spent 8 days traveling and looking at Aalto’s work. Observing his houses in their natural environment. That trip changed my life!

Alvar Aalto's Villa Mairea. Original color photo by Rafael Rybczynski.

I picked up a lot of ideas from Aalto, nuances like the positioning of windows in a room. In Aalto’s buildings the window positioning is extraordinary, especially given the latitude. I had never been so far north before, never north of London. The quality of light, and the angle of light, is completely different at that latitude. I was shooting film [not digital], and even on a bright sunny day, I couldn’t shoot ASA-100 film facing north because there was not enough light.

At far northern latitudes, winter light has a muted and indirect quality.

At that latitude, skylights are placed in the south or west rather than north as we would do here.

Small details can be huge. Like corner windows that wrap both sides. The light enters the room from a corner window in a completely different way than from a window smack in the middle of a wall. Here’s one of Aalto’s tricks that I borrowed for my house. In the master bedroom, which faces north and east, the ceiling is canted and washed by light from corner windows. The cant also washes the wall with more light. This creates a room with lots of privacy, but also lots of light.

Master bedroom in Karin Payson's own house, which she designed with maximum light in mind. Putting a small window at the corner and letting it wash the wall with light can be very effective for private living areas. Top photo shows view looking north, bottom photos shows view towards the east. Note the canted ceiling shown in the east facing photo. Photos: Stephen Barker

In the library, you don’t need as much privacy as you do in a bedroom.

A partial wall divides the bedroom from the library. Karin Payson used larger windows in her library, where privacy was not as much of a concern as in the bedroom areas. The partial wall lets the bedroom "borrow" light from the living room. Photo: Stephen Barker

Aalto was sort of sidelined as a regionalist at the time by proponents of the International Style who felt he wasn’t pure – he used local materials, applied decoration and finishes, and colors other than pure white.

Alvar Aalto's use of applied decoration such as wood finishes was a departure from the "purist" approach of the International Style. Shown here is an exterior detail from Aalto's Villa Mairea. Photo: Karin Payson.

KP: Here’s another feature I like about Aalto’s work. Window frames richly surrounding the windows. It helps provide a visual anchor.

The contrasting rich tone of the wood frame windows in Alvar Aalto's Villa Mairea emphasizes the importance of windows as more than just an absence of wall, instead affirming them as positive elements in the overall design. Photo: Karin Payson

KP: And look at this wall, with its change of plane and material. To be inspired by someone else’s work without making yours look like a copy… that’s the challenge.

Mostly white plaster, one wall in Aalto's Villa Mairea is cut away to reveal a brick wall as a sculptural element. (Rough concrete is "in" again now, of course.)

KP: In Aalto’s stairwell at Villa Mairea, the uneven patterning of poles is not structurally necessary. It’s there to echo the forest outside.

Left, the stairs at Alver Aalto's Villa Mairea are designed to mimic the forests outdoors. On the right, Thorncrown Chapel by E. Fay Jones is another design that mimics the forest, this one in the American Ozarks.

KP: On a project which we did in Carmel, the stairwells also mimic nature with straight lines. We originally wanted to create rails by wrapping bronze cord, but due to practical considerations we went with a series of wrapped bronze rods.

Alvar Aalto's stair detail from Villa Mairea on the left inspired Karin Payson's work for the Carmel residence shown on the right. The straight and tapered lines of the California forest outside are continued through the upsweep of the stair rails, just as Aalto's stair was also designed with the surrounding natural setting in mind. Left photo: Karin Payson. Right photo: Matthew Millman.

KP: The smooth and rich materials, natural materials used in this house defend the importance of the tactile.

Walnut tread, bronze stair pans, and wrapped bronze rods are tactile details that add to the richness of this Carmel home designed by Karin Payson. Photo: Karin Payson

KP: Before seeing Aalto, I was more married to the grid. I was obsessed with it. It’s my “post-Bauhaus” training. But Aalto’s floor plans, while rigorous, did not use this grid. Instead, they focused on grabbing light, on nature, and on circulation. It’s more about how people will experience the space.

Strict adherence to the grid isn’t enough to make a great room. [shows her Hill House project] Here I finished the entry wall with Douglas fir, very warm, and it’s washed by light from two vertical windows.

Placement of windows and selection of a warm matte wood finish adds luminosity and a tactile quality to this entry hallway in Karin Payson's Hill House project. Photo: Stephen Barker

— to be continued in Part 2 —

This is Part 2 of our interview with Karin Payson. Here’s Part 1 if you haven’t read it.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Do We Dare?

RF: I’m afraid to even mention this, but I visited a Wright house once and hated it. Tiny dark corridors, no shelving… I felt trapped in there. What do you think of his work?

Frank Lloyd Wright intentionally kept walls close in this design, as shown in the Pope-Leighey house in Virginia.

KP: For my earlier projects, I studied Wright rigorously. I was still working from the “tartan” grid. Part of the power of that grid is that you can create a building that looks symmetrical at first glance, but isn’t.

KP: Later I realized that Wright was actually very Victorian, very dark in sensibility. I visited Falling Water a few years back, finally, and I was astonished at how oppressive it was. So dark. Yes, the exteriors are amazing. But inside… it’s almost as if he’s treating you as if you’re in a tube and he wants to squeeze you out into the landscape. So controlling!

RF: When I think Victorian, I think of over-carved armoires and corsets.

KP: It’s a mental corset, really. Wright thought he was thinking outside of the box but he was still locked into a sense of what I’d call “interiority”. [interiors as dark, confined spaces that are mainly intended to keep the outdoors out]

The heavy, dark furniture and corsets that we associate with the Victorian era seem to speak of a mental and physical confinement that contrasts with today's informal, contemporary lifestyles. Typical Modern architecture emphasizes a spacious, and airy feel - a freedom to move and to act unfettered by the past.

KP: Contrast Wright’s sensibility with that of Aalto’s Villa Mairea house. It’s at a far northern latitude [below the Arctic Circle but not far off], and I saw it on an overcast day. There was still such a relaxed quality to the interior, of Aalto’s work, built at the same era as Wright’s Falling Water.

ME: I’d like to get back to the Frank Lloyd Wright issue. I’ve never understood it, always thought he was antiquated, a 19th century architect working in the 20th century. And his manipulations are obvious. His need to control everything down to the doorknobs is oppressive.

KP: But consider this. He’s very important to our clients and in the popular imagination, because he designed homes, unlike Frank Gehry who got away from residential design as soon as he could! Wright really *is* the great American architect. And yes, he had a gift for self-promotion, cape and all.

Interior view from Karin Payson's Carmel project. Multiple visual destinations highlight the owners' extensive art collection. Photo: Matthew Millman

RF: OK, if you’re brave enough to trash a few icons here… what do you think of Zaha Hadid? I’ve struggled with her but maybe I’m ignorant. Never visited any of her built works.

KP: Anyone who can get themselves out there, I admire. I’ve been practicing for 25+ years and it’s hard to get anything built, and to get good clients. Do I like her work? No. Do I agree with it? No. But I still admire her. I looked at video of one of her recent projects, a car manufacturer, and it’s an example of her work applied appropriately.

Michael Graves [of the New York Five] was popular in the 1980s. But regardless whether you like them or not, they serve as our culture’s muses. They draw attention to our field.

Richard Neutra

Mark English joined us for a subsequent conversation.

ME: Last October I was in LA and saw a Neutra exhibit. That man can draw!

Drawing by architect Richard Neutra.

KP: Why was LA so attractive to those German ex-pats? Maybe because it’s so wide open and free, especially in the 40s. Unlike the planned hierarchies, it was wide open socially and professionally.

ME: Dwell magazine reminds me of some of these Neutra designs, but they were of course earlier.

KP: I refer to Neutra a lot. He was incredibly prolific, too. I sometimes comb his books looking for floor plans. For me, the floor plan is the generator of all ideas. Neutra’s plans were very simple, very clean, not overly academic.

RF: What do you mean by academic?

KP: Not outwardly formal. Not trying to shove everything into a conceptual “parti” or a diagram. That’s what I got from visiting all those Aalto projects in Finland. I saw that Aalto was also rigorous about organizing space, but not in the way that I had originally thought about the parti.

Neutra also had that gift, to create a strong organizing concept, simply expressed.

Plans and photo of Cyclorama building by Richard Neutra.

ME: So did Stirling in the old days, or Predock. I loved Predock when he was more abstract. Now he’s more literal – it’s a pyramid, now it’s a bridge, now it’s a mountain, now it’s a pyramid again.

KP: His Rio Grande Center near Albuquerque was cool. It’s a very humble project.

ME: Predock focused on you as a visitor moving through the space. It was about the visitor’s experience.

KP: Circulation is the heart of the plan.

Stair detail from Karin Payson's Carmel project, showing the circulation through rooms and levels. Photo: Matthew Millman

ME: Some designs are done without starting from a floor plan. You just start with the stair. Start with the circulation.

KP: The first time I took the licensing exam, I forgot about the second egress.

ME: Yes, that’s the freshman mistake, isn’t it? Forgetting about the stair.

Mentors

RF: So you have mentors or consultants for specific areas such as marketing. Do you have mentors that you still use to be a better designer?

KP: Not as such, but one important mentor was Susana Torre at Columbia. She was my professor and is now a friend. She co-founded the “heresies collective”. She came from Argentina along with other designers fleeing the coup in the late 60s.

Karin Payson, right, directing work at one of her projects.

KP: She still keeps me on my toes but is also incredibly supportive. When I face real professional crises, she’s someone I can talk to. She’s had her own crises and has always risen above them. At Columbia University, she was denied tenure when no woman in the architecture department had ever been granted tenure. She sued them and won a settlement. Later at Parsons she ran her own department until being lured away by Cranbrook for a 5-year contract as the dean of architecture. Cranbrook broke that contract a year and a half later, after she’d already given up other positions! But she got up and dusted herself off, and went on with her life.

Modernism and Good Design

RF: What constitutes good design?

KP: Quality of idea and the depth to which the design expresses that idea… the number of ways that a simple idea or message can be reiterated, the clarity of expression. Design is not the same as a style. I believe in style, but not necessarily of the fashionable sort. But I’m happy that Modernism is back!

Commercial interior by Karin Payson for Plath and Company shows spareness and simplicity. The brushed translucent panels diffuse the light for a softer minimalism. Photos: Cesar Rubio

RF: Modernism has an image problem… a lot of people like myself haven’t grown up with good examples of modern design. We grew up with bad design, cheap institutional knock-offs. Americans aren’t educated to appreciate design the same way they’re educated in math and science.

KP: Charles & Ray Eames offered midcentury modern designed for the masses. Their furniture is very expensive now, but originally it was intended to make good design available for the post-war American middle class.

RF: Perhaps the Cold War-era drive for Americans win the space race, the arms race, and at the Olympics took away from the study of art, music, and culture? I think that today’s Americans are well-educated in technical fields but design appreciation is not as central to our culture.

This simple wire chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames was originally designed for middle-class consumers.

KP: Another factor may be that Modernism is too abstract – it lacks enough of a tactile experience.

Dining room detail from Karin Payson's Starfish House project. "Tactile" here means that the surfaces here appear as if they would be pleasant to the touch, not harsh or cold or uncomfortable. Photo: Stephen Barker

Floor Plans and Orientation

RF: What do you think of these modern museums? Some of these spaces just make me angry, confused, and lost.

KP: The Jewish Museum in Berlin by Daniel Liebeskind is cool and photogenic, but the floor plan is so confusing that they painted huge red arrows on the floor and have full-time staff just to direct people where to go.

Daniel Liebskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin is intentionally designed with broken lines to symbolize broken hopes, scars, and racial trauma.

[For an alternative take, try this blogger's manifesto.]

RF: What about the Contemporary Jewish Museum here in San Francisco? I like it. I don’t normally like those crazy angles but I like that space, and I don’t find it disorienting. The music room sounds really good. And he worked in the Jewish mysticism in a genuine way – not superficial or shallow.

KP: He had more limitations to work with, and in this case that was good. [The Contemporary Jewish Museum is] a nice building.

This oddly shaped media room in Daniel Liebskind's Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco actually sounds terrific for musical exhibits.

RF: Visiting some of these museums is like being lost in an airport, but without the helpful signage.

KP: Signage alone is not enough. You also need a simple and easy to follow floor plan. Visitors should enter and feel that they have now arrived. From there, a simple path to get to where you need to go. They should always know where they are.

This classical floor plan of the U.S. Capitol building is balanced, mostly symmetrical, and easy to orient within.

RF: What works for this?

KP: I always try to minimize the number of corridors and maximize the views to the outside. Outside views are one way to orient. Natural light also helps with orientation. In my own modest home, the original first floor skylights became a two-story light well that serves both the first floor and the new sauna.

Karin Payson created a two-story light well when adding a second story onto her San Francisco home. Photos: Stephen Barker

KP: I’m not interested in floor plans that are full of dead ends and pointy angles. In museums, I like simple floor plans. It makes for a more peaceful experience. I always know where I am – orientation is for people as well as buildings.

Master bedroom and bath from Karin Payson's Hill House project. Photos: Stephen Barker

KP: Being in a building should be an uplifting experience. Even at its most banal, for example at the doctor’s office, the building should at least be comfortable and functional, and if possible it should have good natural light.

RF: Some buildings are deliberately designed to baffle and confuse the patrons. Casinos and shopping malls, for example. It may depend on the purpose of the building. Forts are designed to be hard to penetrate, and the Viet Cong tunnels were also structured to slow down pursuers. Of course casinos and malls are designed to trap people so they can’t find their way out – in their wanderings, they might see something and make an impulse buy.

KP: Buildings are there to serve, even if the client’s first thought is to impress visitors rather than aid them. As a designer, part of my function is to give people what they asked for, but perhaps in a form they never considered. In that spirit, by making the building a peaceful experience, I am serving the client even when this means going beyond their first directives. A building should enhance their sense of security and peace.

Front and courtyard views of this residence by Karin Payson uses height and lines of sight to create a calming and peaceful setting. Photos: Tim Street-Porter

Current and Past Projects

RF: Some people get so used to having some annoying wall in their way to the point where it makes a dent in their mind. In Feng Shui they call this “cutting the chi” because you’re so used to it that you forget it’s there, but it still impacts you every day. Your body, driven by memory, still flinches from it. Then, an architect comes in and says, “You know… you could just take that thing out!” et voila.

KP: Sometimes this “going beyond” becomes apparent to the client only when they actually see the wall go down! Our Star Fish project on Broadway started out as a facade refresh for a humdrum 1970s design; the original front wall was broken up [show]. But the client still wanted a traditional home.

Before, left: Karin Payson's client had wanted a traditional home. After, right: When the client saw the walls come down during the demolition, she changed her mind and went Modern! Right photo: Stephen Barker

KP: Then, she saw the wall come down during the demolition, and a door opened in her mind. For the first time she could really grasp the possibilities. It became a Modern project, a much better project in fact!

Same project as above. Karin Payson creates an atmosphere of Modern serenity and warmth in this San Francisco remodel. Photo: Stephen Barker

RF: So what are you working on now?

KP: I’m having a blast doing interior architecture. One of our projects is a public library in San Francisco’s Bayview district. The lead architect is THA. In this project, we’ve had many lively discussions about color and pattern and texture.

Rendering and sketch for the Bayview Public Library project, a joint effort between Karin Payson and THA. Top: Rendering courtesy of THA. Below: Hand sketch by Karin Payson

KP: The lead architect did a bold move in the interior with two big blocks clad in Heath tile, one green, one burnt orange. But aside from this big gesture, he wanted everything else to be white, with grey floors. I worked hard with him to develop an interior that we are both excited about.

Interior sketches of the teen area (left) and childrens' area (right) for the Bayview Public Library project. Hand sketches by Karin Payson.

RF: One of your projects was described as a compromise between two totally different sensibilities: ultra-minimalist and traditionalist. How did you manage to balance this in the project and not get caught up inside their marital conflicts?

KP: That was the house which I call “Garden House With Music”. The husband had studied architecure in the 1970s, at Princeton, and he wanted something very contemporary. The wife wanted a traditional home. The Garden House With Music was my response to these differing needs. I like to call it “the Maybeck house that wasn’t”.

Architect Karin Payson drew inspiration from Maybeck to create this entry for this private residence in Atherton. "When you see this deeply recessed entry, you know that you have really arrived." Photo: Matthew Millman

KP: The detailing is more muscular, more streamlined. It’s modernist detailing in a traditional architecture.

The detailing is streamlined and adapted for a contemporary lifestyle. Photo: Matthew Millman

Exterior and sitting-room views of the "Garden House With Music" residence in Atherton designed by Karin Payson. Photo: Matthew Millman

On Conducting a Project

RF: One thing they really don’t teach you in school is how to run a project.

KP: Running a project means you have to grab and hold the owner’s attention and respect. People really trust me because I’m so direct, but it doesn’t help me sell. I’ve been told I have a lack of instinct for schmoozing. Working with demanding clients is a delicate balancing act, no doubt about it. One of my first mentors, Paul Wiseman, told me something I never forgot. On our first project together, he said to me, “Don’t ever forget, sweetie – we come in the back door.”

Karin Payson re-did the interiors for the West Portal Library in San Francisco. Photos: Cesar Rubio

RF: Do you ever have to play therapist with your clients? Especially married couples.

KP: I don’t play therapist, actually – I play teacher. I educate my clients about the possibilities. It’s a delicate and perennial problem, and it’s a part of just about every project. Managing the expectations of the clients sometimes means learning more than I wanted to know about THEIR relationship.

RF: In a project where the interiors could be done either by you or by someone else, how do you negotiate who does what, without fighting over who gets a bigger share of the pie?

KP: It’s a dance, no doubt about it. Trust and teamwork are important all around. A general rule of thumb is, whoever brings the client has the clout. But that’s also why I’d rather work with the big boys, people who are already secure. People like Paul Wiseman or Barbara Scavullo really know how to run a project. I like working with interior designers, because I get great projects with the budget to have everything nicely finished.

Kitchen area of Karin Payson's Starfish House project. Photo: Stephen Barker

RF: What about contractors?

KP: The contractor is very meaningful. You don’t want to end up with the owner pulling the builder aside and overriding directives without telling the architect. I have mixed feelings about design-build architects who offer their services as contractors to other architects. You don’t want two architects suddenly pushing the design in different directions.

Terrace view from kitchen of Karin Payson's Starfish House project. Contrasting window framing recalls Aalto's Villa Mairea. Photo: Stephen Barker

RF: What’s your litmus test for a contractor?

KP: First, do they return my phone calls? Second, do the send me a copy of the proposal?

RF: How often do you get to really see your designs all the way through construction?

KP: A lot of architects don’t do construction administration. But that’s how you really finish your design. Otherwise the builder will change things, move things around. With the house that I did with Wiseman, say you’re turning a corner with a window, even a few inches off can devastate the final effect.

Master bedroom of Karin Payson's Starfish House project. The use of matte surfaces and a sparing color palette creates a warm and home-like feeling without sacrificing simplicity and openness. Photo: Stephen Barker

KP: It comes down to design intent versus contractor’s realities. Contractor’s realities can be a cop out, an excuse to just say no. The contractor wants to do what’s easiest for them, especially in public projects that are low budget to begin with. Design intent must come first. That means the architect has to be on the spot to enforce design integrity, and if the contractor doesn’t want to build it, the architect has to ask, “OK, so how do you think we should do it?”

KP: I was working on a project for an Oakland developer [shows loft-style town houses]. The owner wanted someone that he could control. When the contractor complained to him saying “She’s not sending me any details”, I had to teach him to read my drawings right in front of the client!

KP: I said to the client, “You have three options. You can fire me. You can fire the contractor. Or, you can pay me to teach him to read my drawings.” The chose Option 3, and to his credit, the contractor rose to the occasion.

These Young People Today

ME: So what do you think of young architects coming out of school? In my experience, dedicated people are extremely hard to find. It seems that schools are producing people who are not excited about anything. Is it just our profession? This generation has grown up with so many distractions. It’s a generation that is very easily bored.

KP: A few months ago I was mouthing off at the AIA-SF Small Business Committee about misspelled and badly written resumes, partly as a response to this superficiality. I sometimes want to ask these kids, “So, if you make a mistake in a building, what do you think is going to happen? Why don’t you start right now by paying attention!”

ME: Is it due to the use of the computer, do you think? The computer eliminates that sense of connection.

KP: Yes, I suppose it is a separating tool.

ME: It makes things too easy. Anyone can use a computer to draw a box and make it look like something without really trying. But with physical model-making, accidents can occur that are really fruitful mistakes, fortuitous errors. That doesn’t happen with the computer the way it does when designing using a manual method like a model.

KP: Computers aren’t very spontaneous. I’m the only one in my office that uses study models, but that’s how I like to work. Intermittent floor plans, sketching, and massing.

Here’s an example. Here’s a Hudson River property that my husband and I own. We plan to build in 2012. We did something new for the design process on this one: I worked with a young man who had no architectural training, but who had a background as a sculptor. He created these two study models: one at 1/40th scale for the site, and one at 1/8 scale for the building area.

Working with this model, we could change things at will more quickly than on a computer. If we didn’t like the way a roof is going – just rip it out and turn it around. Clients can immediately grasp the concept with a model, too.

I’ve had clients ask me not to spend time doing these models. I responded once by saying, “OK… you don’t want me to waste time on models. But would you tell your lawyer not to use a law library?” They immediately get the point.

RF: Are models that expensive to do?

KP: Not necessarily.

ME: It’s like a long night before a big project is due at school, it’s kind of fun. And then there’s the drama of ripping the model up right in front of the client.

KP: The computer is definitely a distancing factor. The best trained people know how to use both manual and computer methods. My brother, who’s also an architect, says, “If people can’t draw, they can’t draw any better on the computer.” I look for people who can draw. Or a musician… someone who’s had ANY artistic training.

RF: Someone who’s wrestled with the medium.

KP: Yes. I’m a believer in the value of a good liberal arts education. Maybe it’s an East Coast mentality, but I believe these two things: where you went to school matters, and so does completing your education and actually graduating.

ME: Very few people are interested in licensing these days, too. What’s up with that? Things sure have changed since we got our license.

KP: I blame NCARB for that. What people have to go through now is terrible! [describes new test taking procedure] There’s no sense of collective effort.

KP: When I took my exams, I gave up studying the mech portion. I had gotten to the electrical portion and I just couldn’t get the difference between amps and ohms. Then when it was time to take the exam, a colleague said to me, “Oh just read it…” and I did, and turned out I did know most of the answers after all, just from working experience. The mech was a 3-hour exam and I finished in an hour and a half, and got a 75 which is enough to pass. I would never have been able to do that under the new system.

ME: I took everything in one week. By the time we got to the design portion, at the end of the week, I was totally fried. It was a communal, almost a tribal event. But that’s all gone now.

KP: I think it devalues the profession, really. Maybe the licensing process is why the new generation seems simultaneously unenthusiastic and entitled. If you can work 15 years and get the same salary as a licensed architect… why bother getting a license at all? In California, you can do a lot even without a license.

KP: That’s totally different from other professions such as medicine or law. You can’t even work in either of those fields without a license. But you can call yourself an architect and get away with it, for the most part, because even if you’re caught there’s no enforcement.

On Working With the AIA

ME: Tell us about your public service on the AIA board. How was it?

KP: I wasn’t even a member of the AIA when I was invited to be on the board. But I loved it, because I got out of my little hole. As a small practitioner you can get really isolated. At the AIA, I had access to other architects and access to architects who were principals in bigger firms. An example of how that was helpful was as a reality check for bad employees. I could talk to other firm heads and ask them, “So, you’ve got an employee with these skills, this performance. What would this person be worth to you, and how much would you pay them?”

KP: I’m not sure I accomplished much on the board. I was more of a counter-balance. If I think something’s ridiculous, I say so. The Monterey Design Conference [put on by the AIA-CC] was an example. Last year’s conference was a bust. They lost a lot of money. I suggested that we cancel it for this year, and combine it with other events, but the board is pretty big – 60 people. They didn’t want to change. It’s this institutional inertia at the AIA. It’s getting better, but slowly.

ME: You and Michael Bernard have the small-firm advocacy.

KP:  The AIA as a whole doesn’t do enough for small businesses, even though the vast majority of all architects are working at firms with fewer than 5 people! Our chapter in San Francisco does a lot more than most.

ME: The San Francisco House Tours, for example.

KP: But on many design projects the architect is still invisible.

ME: The AIA Awards aren’t pitched for us, either. There’s no awards category for small residential detail projects or residential interiors. That’s all lumped together with large commercial projects which is totally inappropriate. I had a master bath to submit last fall, and I had to compete against airport interiors.

ME: Architects who do small residential interiors never win AIA awards with them. Mid-level firms are completely cut out. Min/Day Architecture, for example, does a lot of interior work, they’re quite the rising star. There is no easy path to recognition for firms like theirs within the AIA awards process.

On Getting Media Acknowledgment

ME: Getting published isn’t any easier. How have you fared with this?

KP: The furniture has to be really fancy to get anyone’s attention.

ME: The newly-defunct Metropolitan Home magazine said this to us, too, when we submitted some of our work for consideration. They didn’t like the furniture. And, I felt cautious about getting them to mention us at all for the Baker Street project. I had to be very, very persistent.

Business Development

RF: The outlook for small firms is pretty grim. How are you keeping your hand in the game? How do you find clients and how do you get recognition?

KP: Referrals from other clients are rare. I get more referrals from owners’ reps, interior designers, and contractors. Then I have plenty of testimonials from past clients. Sometimes people find me from house tours, but not as often.

KP: I did have one Napa project in the late 90s that resulted in follow-on work. The client gutted a 60s ranch house with a decent plan, well-built, but the orientation was all wrong – small mean windows on the south side where all the light is – so we worked to remedy this. That client called us a year later to commission a guest house on the same property for his son and daughter in law. Then, a few years after that, the son and daughter in law commissioned us to remodel their home on the Peninsula.

Women in Architecture

RF: It must be even harder for woman-owned firms to stay in business than ever before.

KP: 40% of my graduate class were women, but only 9% of licensed architects are women. There are very few women running their own firms, and even fewer doing it alone without architect husbands. Toby Levy‘s been an architect in San Francisco for 30 years on her own, but she’s one of the few.

KP: Where are the other women? You know where I think they are? Buried! A few years ago, Robert Venturi got the Pritzker Prize. He had a practice with his wife for over 30 years, and they wrote two books together. She co-wrote those books, but wasn’t originally listed. So now when he got the Pritzker Prize, she was ignored! It was a huge scandal, in my opinion.

KP: He should have turned it down. But after 40 years of working together and publishing together, you’re not going to split up over that. It was a different generation.

Photo Credit Links

The following professional architectural photographers have consented to share their images for this article and the preceding one:

• Stephen Barker
• Matthew Millman
• Cesar Rubio
• Tim Street-Porter

Larissa Sand in the office of Sand Studios; a door she designed, shown at the office entry. Photos: Kenneth Probst Photography

As we chatted around her kitchen table upstairs from Sand Studios, Larissa Sand was curious about why we wanted to interview her. Mark English explained how he was inspired to start The Architect’s Take after seeing how smoothly the interior designers collaborated on a recent Metropolitan Home showcase at 2201 Baker Street, and how different their process was. Architects, he explained, are more competitive almost by training, and they don’t engage in discussion and communication as readily.

We told her that we wanted to know what informs her design process, how she thought, what she was passionate about in design – in short, what makes her tick. How did she come up with some of these minimalist, yet sensuous designs? Trying to follow Sand’s mind through the conversation was like trying to catch a darting hummingbird. A very elegant, refined thought process that was both feminine and yet willing to take bold risks: artistic, technical, and financial.

Three voices are represented in the conversation below: Larissa Sand (LS), Mark English (ME), and Rebecca Firestone (RF).

Top shows kitchen in Larissa Sand's own family residence in the Sand Studios building. Bottom shows the dining area. Rough ceilings are tamed with a soffit; chandelier and rolling blackboard designed and fabricated by Sand Studios. Window treatments are carried throughout the building, including the office downstairs. Photos: Kenneth Probst Photography

ME: How do you like working in San Francisco design community?

LS: Among design communities, San Francisco is very gregarious. People are very supportive and friendly. When I first moved to San Francisco, it was very social. There was the IOOA [interim office of architecture], and a whole art and sculpture community. It was a mutually inspiring climate, and a very eclectic time – a rich fabric of artists who were genuine, friendly, and not at all pretentious.

Marble-patterned bathroom in the Sand residence, designed by Sand Studios. Photo: Kenneth Probst Photography

LS: My favorites were David Ireland, Chico McMurtry, John Randolph, Bruce Tomb – I loved their work. I also remember Matt Heckert and Bill Werner of the Survival Research Laboratories.

ME: In the 1980s it was Mark Mack.

LS: He was my first teacher [at school], along with Richard Fernau. Ann Fougeron was the TA. She’d smoke cigs with us students out on the balcony.

Kitchen and wine room from the Marvisi residence, a private condominium project in Miami, by Sand Studios. Photos: Ken Hayden Photography

RF: How did you decide to become an architect? Were your parents designers, too?

LS:  I had a somewhat alternative childhood. My parents were scientists; my mother was a doctor. My upbringing was academic, old-European. It incorporated art appreciation as a basic necessity, as a part of middle-class European culture. You’re not human unless you have paintings in your home, you listen to music, read poetry… that’s what does the most for humanity.

The Guttman residence, a penthouse suite by Sand Studios, includes an indoor fountain with brushed steel, concrete, and marble. Detail on right shows the custom-made entry door. Sand's doors all have thrust bearings that allow them to pivot easily and silently. Photo: Ken Hayden Photography

LS:  My family survived World War II. Their parents were very educated, but with zero income. There was the expectation that I would have to get straight A’s “for the Ukraine” – for all the people back there.

Detail of Guttman residence fountain by Sand Studios. Photo: Ken Hayden Photograph

LS:  As a child, I drew a lot, including architecture. I drew up an entire hotel complex when I was six years old. It was a six-year-old’s conception, but it had all the major elements – parking, a lobby, guest rooms. As a child, I loved Modern art and Modern furniture, even from age 13.

I always wanted to study the arts, but in my first year at college, I liked the sciences and so I started taking pre-med. And then I went to Europe for the summer spending time with… architecture! And one day a journalist was talking to me, asking me what I wanted to study. I was looking at a particular building I admired, and it just came to me. It’s almost as if it came pouring into me. I wanted to study architecture!

Architecture has aspects of both art and science. I really enjoy the engineering and technical side of architecture. A lot of science involved an exclusion of the arts, though.

Two bath suites in the Marvisi residence by Sand Studios. Photo: Ken Hayden Photography

ME: How did you land some of these great projects?

LS:  In Miami, I did one project and it led to a lot of work. Our style was so completely different from what was already there. Of course there was already a lot of contemporary design, from both local and New York designers. But we were recognized as having a unique sensibility. We had a different approach. Our use of unexpected materials was appreciated, for example juxtaposing rough concrete within a steel kitchen. My work was softer, more textured, more detailed. Unexpected materials, and a lighter hand.

The Marvisi residence by Sand Studios shows a carefully chosen combination of materials and textures. Photo: Ken Hayden Photography

LS: Our clients run from very high-end to very humble.

ME: How do you work with “humble” clients?

LS: They’re likely schoolteachers or Berkeley professors with champagne tastes and beer budgets, and they go for smaller projects, like kitchen remodels. A client like that can’t spend $10K on a front door! But even with a modest budget, you can still do good design, with nice lines and simple materials, and a touch of uniqueness.

Elegance, industrial fabrication, and a laboratory-like precision characterize custom-made kitchen cabinetry from Sand Studios. Photos: Cesar Rubio Photography

LS: Design is about good space planning, and how to work with what’s existing. It’s about understanding space, and understanding light in a space. That’s what Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies [van der Rohe] talked about.

Sand Studios' limited palette has a sensual richness enhanced by a disciplined design aesthetic. Left shows the black slate and custom door at the entry lobby in the Marvisi residence; right shows a view from the interior atrium, with the slate portions visible towards the far end. Photo: Ken Hayden Photography

Design’s design, whether it’s rare ebony wood or painted MDF [medium density fiberboard]. It’s about the detailing, the refinement, and the composition. A kitchen island is a sculptural object.

Marvisi residence bathrooms, by Sand Studios. Materials are selected for contrasting luster, color, and texture. Black slate finish on right echoes the entry lobby of the same project, shown previously. Photos: Ken Hayden Photography

ME: There’s a very interesting mix of exposed and finished elements in your offices and apartment. What was your experience with renovating this building?

LS: This building was a wreck, and the first floor was cramped and dark. That’s one reason we opened that window from the office down into the shop.

Office level of Sand Studios building. Concrete from the original structure is left exposed, offset and complemented by a smoothly articulated and finished ceiling. Photo: Kenneth Probst Photography

LS:  A wall can clean up the space and break the notion of “the box” as Frank Lloyd Wright has said.

With doors, most people assume that they only come in one size, or height. When we made our own doors, we were free to experiment. Whether it’s eight feet tall or twelve feet is arbitrary. With our own space, the question was: How do you assemble old and new? Scarpa does old castles with a lightness of hand. We’re not doing that – but there’s a similarity.

Top: Scarpa's work emphasizes the sculptural lines of the entire structure. Below: Sand Studios' renovation of their own building exposed the concrete shell and original flooring, then contrasted the original materials with smooth expanses of glass, a sculpted white ceiling, custom-made doors, a few well-chosen industrial artifacts, and a very simple but beautifully translucent window shading. The glass box seen towards the rear is a view downstairs into the shop area. Bottom photo: Kenneth Probst Photograph

ME: Why do you like working with steel?

LS: Steel is inexpensive and very strong for its size. It’s a great material for connecting diverse materials, giving lightness to a space, and making transitions with delicacy.

In 1993 I took over the shop from Jeff Sand [husband] when he started his snowboard business. Today, he designs all kinds of sports products and eye products, while I’ve continued with architecture and interior design.

I work with all aspects of metalwork, including fine hand work: TiG welding, machining, milling. We don’t do production parts, but we also work with many other fabricators who have diverse expertise: CNC machines, technical glass work, water jet cutting, and more.

In 1991 when I got out of grad school, I had lots of experience in the machine shop because our very early projects required it. My comfort in construction is especially on the finish level. I spent lots of time in the shop with cabinet makers, stone masons, and other tradespeople, going through things with them and learning how their components are used. I spent a lot of time in communication with the trades.

Entry door to Sand Studios building. Sand Studios' work conceals fasteners and welds in order to imbue the final product with a refined and sculptural quality. Photo: Cesar Rubio Photography

LS:  Steel work is one aspect of the craft at which we’re proficient at the finest level. To create a door without a single visible weld and a smooth appearance. I spent time perfecting the craft and developing it for the purpose of architecture and lighting.

Entry facade and interior bar of The Local, designed and fabricated by Sand Studios. Photos: Cesar Rubio Photography

LS: To understand our doors, you have to understand that we approach architecture more like sculpture. The door is sculptural, but so is the rest of the building. We approach architecture as a sculptural medium:  light, void, intersection, movement… its what the thing IS, in a compositional and artistic sense.

Closeup shot of glass and steel door assembly at The Local shows subtle plane articulations. Photos: Cesar Rubio Photography

LS: We had talked about refining the medium, but there’s another part to working with steel.

Steel is feminine. It’s thin, and lithe. If you work with wood, or concrete, or marble, it has to be a certain thickness. But steel allows us to make things more graceful. Think of a suspension bridge. Or a stone countertop with pencil-thin legs. [shows us her couch with thin, reflective steel legs that make it appear to levitate]

The feminine qualities of steel include its strength, which allows for thinner, more graceful structures. The mystery of this door's assembly enhances the illusion of lightness. Private condominium residence by Sand Studios. Photo: Ken Hayden Photography

LS:  Steel is the connective tissue for disparate elements; it can be used to integrate or mediate between heavier and thicker materials. It has a certain lightness. Of course, you can put wood directly next to concrete and it’s fine. But by using a little steel, things stand off from one another, they float.

We aim to truly understand the structural properties of steel. There’s an economy of structure, like a tree. Everything helps to carry the load. We design with a sense of structural purpose, where no element is superfluous.

ME: That’s certainly true of the doors that you’ve done. Your work is very integrated, with discrete parts blended together into a unified whole. I can’t look at it and identify parts like L-brackets, I-beams, or angle-irons.

Sand Studios condominium project. Photo: Ken Hayden Photography

LS:  There was a time when that was not the case. In the early 90s, I loved the industrial look. We all did, really. I appreciate the structural honesty. Jeff and I did the stairs in the Clock Tower in an industrial style.

Jeff and Larissa Sand did the Clock Tower stairs for this San Francisco loft building conversion in 1993. Left Photo: JD Peterson Photography. Right Photo: Metropolis Magazine, July 1993

Surface magazine once called our work “functional exhibitionism”. We had so many nuts and bolts – we had buckets full of bolts! Eventually I wanted to work in a more subtle way. Now, I can’t stand to look at another nut!

Stairs by Larissa Sand for Todd Takersley Photography. In this project, the attachment hardware is still exposed, but is lighter and more elegant. Photo: Todd Takersley

ME: Tell us about your shop. How do you integrate your design and fabrication functions under one roof?

LS: There’s a level of sculptural refinement in the shop. If we designed things and sent them out, we wouldn’t have the ability to refine [during fabrication]. For example, working on a table we might say, “These stops are too heavy. Let’s go from 3/4 of an inch to 1/2 an inch.” If we have enough time, we can send back the material and order the right one.

Flame retains a primal directness in both modern and ancient forms. Lighting and fire fixtures designed by Sand Studios. Photos: Cesar Rubio Photography.

LS:  We do ridiculous shop details with obsessive precision. Our shop guys often have backgrounds in art or architecture, and they’re very particular. Because we have this level of control, we can try different things every time.

Andy and Kevin, hard at work in Sand Studios' shop where the famous doors are made. Photo: Kenneth Probst Photography

LS: We develop on a material level, not just a concept level. Developing on a material level is more sculptural. Doing our own office gave us freedom to experiment and try new things. The shop allows you to experiment, to include added technical refinement. A lot of our clients are architects and interior designers who bring us in to do aspects or portions of their projects – front doors, facades, gates, chandeliers. The problem with sculptural refinement is that your profitability falls out!

RF: Your online bio mentions the use of classical proportioning systems. Could you tell us more about this?

LS: We use classical proportions, and le Corbusier’s Modulor system.

Le Corbusier devised his "Modulor" system of proportion based on the Golden Ratio

LS: We use the Golden Mean, the Fibonacci series, all of that. I’m a big believer in Palladio!

Andrea Palladio's Church Redentore shows his balanced sense of proportion. Palladio's work is considered the gold standard of Renaissance architecture

RF: But to really build human-sized stuff, don’t you need to know how big your “ideal” human really is? Would a house or furniture that is “right-sized” for someone who’s 6’5″ work for someone who’s only 5 feet tall?

LS: We’ve actually found that designing around a six-foot person works pretty well for a range of body sizes. It doesn’t have to be so literally exact. Taller or shorter people are already used to accommodating themselves to the spaces they have to use.

Sand residence, designed by Sand Studios. In the kitchen, a juxtaposition of smooth and rough, opaque and reflectivity. In the master bedroom, a closet on the far wall is hung floor to ceiling with custom-made sliding steel panels. Photo: Kenneth Probst Photography

RF: How would the Golden Mean apply to those niches in The Local, or the slate openings in the Guttman residence bath, or one of your doors?

A door can double as a wall, a sculpture, and a visual destination. This door from Sand Studios is part of the Sand residence. Light in photo on the right is also a Sand design. Photo: Kenneth Probst Photograph

LS: It’s really in the spacing of the different elements, vertically and horizontally, and the relationship of the elements to one another.

Golden Section diagonals applied to the design of the door for the Sand residence pictured immediately above.

LS: In music, in musical scales, certain intervals just FEEL right. And some scales, like Middle Eastern, have different pitches from what we are used to. But if the proportions are there, it sounds much better. I design from the gut initially, but then afterwards we fine-tune using these proportional systems. I insist that everyone in my shop do the same. [referring to a large blackboard in her home which displayed a note to her daughter] You can think of it as “Mom’s Rules in the Shop” – tuning is mandatory!

RF: Do you ever use curves, odd angles, or irregular shapes in your designs?

LS: Lately I’ve preferred things to be very linear and clean. One reason is cost, but another is to make the sculptural items bold. It’s a minimalist take. I’m not against curves, but the projects shown here are the ones I liked the best. I like simplicity and working with straight materials. My raw materials are already in a linear form: steel bars, wooden sticks and lumber. That’s just how it comes. Maybe if I used different materials I would use curves.

Universal Chair and Table designed by Jeff and Larissa Sand. Photos: Cesar Rubio Photography

RF: What future directions are you pursuing? Any final words of wisdom?

To continue to further develop the sculptural nature of architectural elements and lighting. Design is really a meditative state, where mind and hands are one.

This is the second of a two-part interview series with the principals of Zack/de Vito Architecture. The first part, which you can read here, featured Jim Zack. Here, Rebecca Firestone (RF) of The Architect’s Take chats with Lise de Vito (LD) about her art and design approach.

RF: How did your fine-art background lead you to become an architect?

LD: My dad was both an industrial designer and a graphic designer. My mom was a fine artist, but she had also studied apparel design. From a young age I was exposed to a visual world wherein decisions were made on a visual and a cerebral basis. I would go to my dad’s office after school and there would be a full collection of markers and tools, letrasets, etc., that we could play with… my sisters and I had a heyday! 

Lise de Vito and Jim Zack built the Laidley Street spec house for themselves. Photos: Bruce Demonte

LD: Our parents took us to museums and would ask us questions: “Do you like this?” or otherwise try to get us to talk about what we saw. As a kid, I didn’t always like being forced into engaging.

In high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and ended up pursuing a strong liberal arts curriculum. Architecture was the culmination of everything I’d studied: fine art, color, a graphical way of presenting an aesthetic. 

RF: What do you get out of painting as opposed to architecture?

LD: There are similarities between the design/build process and the process of painting. Both start in a way with a blank canvas. With a building, certain parameters are laid on [spatial, programmatic, economic, regulatory]. With painting, all those parameters are self-imposed. But in both, there’s a process of layering, of making decisions based on earlier decisions, resulting in an outcome.

"Cross Current" by Lise de Vito (2008)

LD: It’s interesting that my painting and my architecture are so different. My paintings are rough, loose, layered, and abstract. But the architecture I do is crisp, graphic, and clean – but still a juxtaposition of materials that make up the whole. There’s still a roughness to each individual material. It’s the composition that defines it and cleans it up.

The construction process is quite messy. It doesn’t seem as if a project in the middle will ever get done. That’s interesting to me, too; from the chaos, to the recognition of the intent.

"Cross Current" detail

LD: Architecture is a crazy profession. The process is so lengthy. It is insane in terms of the time that it takes to design and build something. Painting is an outlet that offers a certain immediacy, to satisfy artistic yearning.

RF: But paintings can take a long time to finish, too.

LD: That’s true! And even though a painting is “done” it’s never really done. I’m always walking around my house and wanting to pull a painting off the wall and work on it some more. Or I look at something in the house and wonder “Why did I do that? What have I learned from that?” One needs to be continually asking that question.

The angst of an artist looking at his own work

RF: How do you and Jim work together on projects?

LD: Since I’m in the office part-time, the speculative projects work out well for me. I do the developer stuff [the houses Lise and Jim have built for themselves and then sold]. We’ve done three of these so far and are currently living in #3. The first was a remodel, and the second two are new construction.

"Been There Done That" artwork and detail, by Lise de Vito (2005); acrylic, wax, masking tape, paper, No. 2 pencil on canvas

LD: It’s a very different relationship to not have a client. It’s nice, but I also miss the interaction with a client. Now I have to make every single decision myself. The husband-wife partnership is a good foil, because I have someone to bounce ideas off of. Otherwise it feels like I’m designing in a vacuum.

RF: What’s it like, living in your own work?

LD: I’m very lucky to have such an incredible learning experience. When you become the client, you realize how hard it is to be a client. Especially a client who’s never worked with an architect or designed anything before. There are so many things most clients have never even thought about: what they like, or need, or want – and how they want to manage their own project.

Some clients that come to us are just overwhelmed. Working on our own homes has given me a lot more empathy for the role of the client.

Rendering and photo show the same project from Zack/deVito Architecture

LD: The process of drawing a plan in scale and being able to see it spatially is a skill that architects develop, but it becomes really honed when you live in your own projects. You get a heightened understanding of what that skill means, where things should go, and how to accommodate the human body.

RF: How do you consider the human body in design? Can you enumerate the factors?

LD: Well, a home is not supposed to feel uncomfortable. Many people have this view of modern architecture as uncomfortable, mean, cruel, and sharp. Bloggers have seen our work and asked questions like, “How could they raise children in there? Where are the chatchkes?”

"Untitled" by Lise de Vito (2006); acrylic, sand, wax, paper on canvas

RF: Well I wonder that too sometimes. I mean, people go crazy child-proofing their homes. How safe are these minimalist contemporary homes with all those hard edges?

LD: Kids adjust… just let the child learn about their own bodies by maneuvering through the world. They can learn their way around even a modern home just fine. Once they get used to the home, they can find their way around even in the dark because they know the space. My kids have never had trouble in any of the homes we have designed and lived in. 

A versatile space can accommodate work and play, as seen in these two projects from Zack/deVito Architecture.

RF: Do you have any human-sizing guidelines?

LD: Designing with kids in mind is different from just designing for adults. They’re more tactile. In places like a kitchen, for example, children need different features than adults in order to be comfortable. 

"Fragment" by Lise de Vito (2008)

LD: Scale is different for children, obviously. Cabinets that are low enough to see over and through to the space beyond, windows at their height – kids appreciate when they’ve been thought of. They learn to use the home in a playful way. They learn to negotiate through their world on every level starting with the home.

View from a child's closet in the Chattanooga Street home by Zack/de Vito Architecture

LD: Some aspects of design you can play around with, and some you can’t. You can vary window heights and ceiling heights, but not the height for handrails or countertops.

I remember in school the first time I was exposed to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language It was profound to me, as someone always thinking in that context and scale, even in school, to be exposed to that seminal work.

A Pattern Language, written in 1977, is still one of the best-selling books on architecture.

RF: Getting used to a new type of space is hard, too. Even if it’s better, it’s not what we’re used to. It’s like driving an old VW Beetle for years and then going to the latest in high-tech gadgetry.

LD: My first car had a sun roof, and I learned how much I need light. My designs now have as much light as possible, even using the trickiest ways to get light in. A windowless room with even a sliver of light is so much better than one with nothing. Tadao Ando’s churches are great examples of how little light you need to heighten emotion. It’s part of our human instinct.

Architect Tadao Ando's minimalist designs act to draw in natural light. Shown here are the Koshino House and in the center, the Church of Light.

RF: Do you ever get a design that didn’t turn out the way you thought it would?

LD: More with little things – details and materials, not having a simple enough palette. I’m happy with the big picture. There were things I had wanted to change, but that Jim felt strongly about. So we still put our fingers on each others’ stuff [design].

Zack/de Vito Architecture's use of materials to transfer light and create layered spaces in the Laidley Street project - the blue square is the view out through the rear side of the house of the Bay Bridge, viewed through the top of the 13-foot-high master bathroom.

RF: Do you have formal critiques?

LD: Not any more, now it’s daily banter. We are open to each other, and we highly respect each other, but we just don’t have much time to sit down and go over things in detail.

Lines of sight penetrate throughout Zack/de Vito Architecture's Laidley Street house. Photo: Bruce Demonte

RF: How did you and Jim meet, anyway? Was it at an office?

LD: Actually, no. Jim was organizing a show called “Overtime”, the first of three such shows, representing the work done by students and young architects in their off time. Jim showed some of his furniture, and we met at the opening. 

It’s interesting to look at the work and then look at the person who produced it.

The kitchen of Zack/de Vito Architecture's Laidley Street house is bright and serene. Photo: Bruce Demonte

RF: Were there any surprises at that show? Someone whose off-hours work was totally different from their day job?

LD: One guy showed robotics, back before robotics was so cool. They were incredibly detailed and aesthetically spooky. It was a contrast because he was such a buttoned-down sort of person. 

A cozy window seat in the corner of the kitchen at Zack/de Vito Architecture's Laidley Street house. Photo: Bruce Demonte

RF: What’s your feeling about green design?

LD: Jim and I have talked a lot about the current “green” movement. Over the years people have struggled to define what is green, and how to build a green home. The crunchy granola, wood-everywhere look is no longer mandatory. All that wood comes from forests, right? Shouldn’t we be using LESS wood?

A green home doesn't have to look a certain way; it can be organic in shape or it can blend in to any ordinary neighborhood. Right photo shows one of the first Net Zero Energy homes to be commissioned.

LD: Aesthetically you don’t have to scream out how green you are. The aesthetics don’t have to be pre-determined by your ecological sensitivity level. We know someone who’s very active in the green movement, very public about it, and then I went to his home and I was shocked! A house that did not have many green features other than maybe a composter. It just proves to me that we are all growing into this.

We all try to be 100% green, or the public expectation is that anyone pushing it has to be 100% green themselves. But we should not be chiding one another. We’re all learning how to be green, and some people don’t know much. I’ve had clients who said, “I’m green – I turn the water off when I brush my teeth.” Maybe it’s a generational thing, too. 

We’ve got PVs on our current home. It was a substantial investment at the time, but we felt that we needed to do it and as architects we have to be an example. And it does feel good. I’m proud when I get my electricity bill and it’s zero except for the hookup charge. Making and implementing those green decisions really did feel good!

RF: What constitutes good design? If you were teaching a class, what would you ask your students to look for?

LD: It’s in the scale. How do you feel in a space and why? The primary thing in judging design is how the space makes you feel. Do you feel big or small? Even the floor you’re standing on is going to feel a certain way, or make you feel some way. 

Techniques like juxtaposing levels from one room to another, or dark and light areas in the home, creates a response when you transition from one space to the next. It’s not manipulative, but it is.

We led an after-school field trip for my kids’ class, second to fourth grade. We took them to City Hall, the Federal Building, and a few small restaurant spaces. As we walked through each place, we asked them questions about what they saw.

Living area in a recent San Francisco project from Zack/de Vito Architecture

RF: What did they notice? Was it different from what an adult might notice?

At City Hall, they noticed the marble, and also the light. They liked the cool materials in the Federal building, because it was different from anything they had at home. Both places gave them a sense of scale: “I feel so small.”

Entry gate designed and fabricated by Zack/de Vito Architecture

LD: In my own designs, I emphasize views and vistas, both of other parts of the house and of the outside. Each view is constantly referring to something else, but it’s also telling you where you are. If you’re designing a passage into a room, even without a door, you need to create a threshold somehow. A cabinet, or other symbolic indication that tells your brain and body that you’re entering another space.

RF: Some spaces just make me angry.

LD: Me, too! Elevator lobbies especially. There’s something about the typical quality of light, all that fluorescent. Hospitals make me very upset – and it’s not because I’ve had bad experiences in them. Hospital design has really changed over the generations, so maybe it’s just the decisions they’ve been forced to make.

Sensitive artists may find typical office-building aesthetics too stressful.

RF: How do you see design and architecture evolving in the future?

LD: We as human beings need to understand where we fit in the world, and how we are moved by our built environment and how we impact it by our decisions. Light and air are basic needs, and they are qualities we try to capture as architects. The human body was not meant to be locked up in a building, working in a cubicle. 

Bath detail from Zack/de Vito Architecture's Laidley Street project

LD: A good space should have a sense of unity. It does something to you, moves you. There should be a reaction. The worst reaction an architect can get is “Oh, big deal” or “Next!”

A few weeks back, I was standing in line at the opening party for Metropolitan Home’s Modern by Design showcase at Baker Street, wondering what the latest from San Francisco’s top interior design luminaries would be. This project, a high-profile rehab of a 7,700 SF home, involved invitations to 14 design studios and giving them the freedom to create the interiors as they pleased – on their own dime.

Imagine my surprise at the top to discover Min/Day Architecture‘s playful and colorful three-room “Jack and Jill” attic suite with handily elegant Murphy bed tucked away behind a custom-perforated sliding panel, a jewel-like green-tiled bathroom, and an adjoining room featuring large pink dots, with a modular table that looked like something Andy Goldsworthy might do if he ever tried working with stacked birch plywood as a fabrication medium.

Stones table

The overall theme looked like a mathematical distribution of dot patterns repeated in various ways – how did they do that? I wondered, my eyes watering a little as I squinted at the madly dancing dots. What algorithm did they use? The components were too regular to be hand painted, but too lyrical to have been generated by a mindless machine. Oftentimes, industrial-design vectors and geometries are easy to spot – but these dots defied easy definition, and seemed to indicate an intellectual and creative process that was very different from the sensibilities in the rest of the house.

I was so curious I went and asked them. EB Min and Jeffrey Day have a practice with offices in San Francisco and Omaha, and they’re both well-versed in advanced fabrication design techniques. How did they make their clean-edged, precisely fabricated components so… organic? And how did they ever dream up this idea in the first place?

Jeffrey Day and EB Min of Min/Day Architecture

“The Murphy bed came first,” began EB. “The rooms seemed more playful than the other areas of the house – small, low ceilings, slanted rafters. The front room had great light and views, and would make a great home office. The Jill room was a problem at first… should it be for daydreaming, play, studio, or lounging?It was like a hideaway.”

Then Min/Day hit upon the idea of “interior landscape”  – something they’d done extensively in past projects. A lakeside home in Iowa, for example, featured a “Raindrop Wall” – a waveform interference pattern on the stacked-plywood head board that echoed the lake surface 10 feet away. Min/Day designed custom furniture in Rhino, and also designed all the landscaping.

Raindrop wall in lakeside home

Another project was the L Residence in Omaha – custom-cut fixed wood panels serving as guardrails or as grilles covering diffuse recessed lighting. “We wanted to reflect the exterior in the theme,” said EB, “and devised this close-up view of the prairie grasses to reflect the outside surroundings.”

Custom cut wood panels and screens mimic Nebraska prairie grass

For the Baker Street project, Min/Day wanted to continue exploring the fabrication methods that they had employed in previous projects, and to stay in keeping with the concept of celebrating the local natural environment. “We’re interested in the relationship between quantitative process and results … something that’s digitally fabricated, but with an organic result.”
And nothing says “San Francisco” more than fog. Fog… clouds… daydreaming… and thus the Cloud Wall, the Stones Table, and the Fog Wall were born. Software tools included Rhino, Grasshopper, Illustrator, and Vectoraster.

Cloud Wall

The Cloud Wall was created from a photo using Vectoraster, a graphics utility that generates scalable vector-based halftone dot screens with customizable grids.

Cloud Wall, posterized

Jeff explained, “We started with an image of actual clouds. After creating the dot pattern in Vectoraster, we took it into Illustrator to mask to the shape of the wall and ceiling planes and to scale it precisely. Since we were working with a vector-based file this was easy, unlike using Photoshop’s half-tone filter. The wall coverings were printed by Giant Impressions, a large-format graphics print vendor in San Jose.”

Cloud Wall Step 3: Wallpaper

Did you pick discrete dot sizes? I asked, betting with myself under the table. Yes, they had, probably a posterize filter in Photoshop. Keeping the sizes simple actually reinforced the optical illusion, especially from very close up.

Stones Table

In addition to honoring the clouds, Min/Day were inspired by Japanese gardens like Ryoanji, which features clusters of large stones arranged so that some are always hidden from the viewer.  “We thought of making ‘stone poufs’ and then had the idea of assembling them all into one table.”

Stones Table Step 1: Evenly distributed center points make uniform shapes

They created the table shape as a Golden Rectangle with standard proportions.The first challenge was dividing the volume into six random but pleasing shapes that would be stable enough to stand alone. Instead of just manually slicing up the volume, Min/Day decided that it would be more elegant and natural to let mathematical law determine the shapes using a geometric concept called a Voronoi diagram.

Example of a Voronoi tessellation

A Voronoi diagram is essentially a type of surface tiling, created by defining a discrete set of points or “sites” on a surface plane, and then defining “cells” which consist of all the area around each point that is closer to that point than to any other point. The boundaries between the cells are where it is equidistant between two sites, and the corner nodes are points equidistant to three (or more) sites. The table of course is three-dimensional, not two – making the problem-solving exercise that much more complex.

Stones Table Step 2: Playing with the center points

To allow Rhino to employ an algorithm to create the slices, they used Grasshopper, a free visual scripting language that works as a Rhino plug-in, and played around with the location of the points until they got a result they liked. The pieces had to each be unique, and they also had to be free-standing when disassembled. “We deliberately included one shape that’s almost useless… it’s mostly center volume,” said EB. “We also built cardboard models to see if they were really stable, and we also included a piece that looked little bit tippy, but was secretly counterbalanced inside.”

Stones Table Step 3: Rounding the bottoms

Initial versions were “too angular” and looked like “shards”. We added rounding to the bottom using an ‘erosion filter’. That was a lot of work.”

Stones Table Step 4: Adding surface texture

How did you simulate the eroded effect on the bottom? That’s where they went to Grasshopper once more. “We needed to take each vertical vector and taper it from sharp to round. It’s very difficult to round them by hand in Rhino. We were going to have the rounding done manually during fabrication, and if we’d had access to a five-axis milling machine, this would have been a lot easier. The person we outsourced the CNC routing to only had a three-axis machine, and he ended up doing it “his” way without asking us.”

Stones Table Step 5: Rendering

Why did you even bother going through this painful exercise? Was the end result that much better because of it? I asked. “It speeded up the iterations. We could play with any factor and immediately re-generate the whole thing,” EB explained. Grasshopper has multiple levels of undo and even a projective history function. So, we could make a change to any step within the process without having to re-do it all from scratch every time.”

Visual script editor

“Grasshopper itself is free, and it’s only a year old,” said Jeff. “Word is that it’ll always be free, because they don’t want to have to provide tech support for it. It’s very popular in schools right now, but serious scripters would probably laugh at it. We generated the basic forms using a 3D Voronoi script that comes packaged as a component in Grasshopper. The rest of the formal permutations are embedded in additional Grasshopper components that we used in the final “definition”.  Because Grasshopper is parametric, we can determine as many variables (parameters) as we want, and then adjust them for each new iteration.”

The final table was fabricated from stacked Baltic birch plywood by Andy Colley, who also fabricated the Raindrop Wall for the lakeside house project. How “green” was this table? I asked. Was it made from recycled or reused material? “We chose Baltic birch for the look,” replied EB. “It’s not reclaimed or reused, but it could be made from other materials as long as they were cuttable.”

Stones Table Step 6: In the shop

Was casting an option? I wondered. “If it were a cast piece, it might not need rounded bottoms,” EB mused aloud, with Jeff on speaker phone. “And casting it from recycled plastic would make it greener for sure.”

Fog Wall

The perforated panel that slides to reveal a Murphy bed carried the cloud concept in a new direction. “Fog masks and disintegrates things. Objects in fog dissolve; they’re mysterious. The Fog Wall both hides and yet partially reveals.”

This time, they didn’t start with a photograph, though. “We randomly drew four curves in Rhino. The curves would determine the dot size through proximity. The definition of each curve included its influence – how far out its effects go, as related to a set of center points.”

Fog Wall curves hand-drawn in Rhino

Scripting all the transformations in Grasshopper allowed for a very iterative design approach. “Most architects think about form. This method emphasizes logic, and the forms are the result of that logic.” They could experiment with just about anything in the model, from the hole sizes to the axis of extrusion.

Fog Wall curve definitions in visual script editor

Fabrication turned out to be a much bigger challenge than anticipated, because they had to represent not only different size dots, but each size was associated with a defined amount of penetration through the screen. “We had an early mockup done of the perforations, and there were too many different hole sizes. The fabricator recommended optimizing the pattern to 5 discrete diameters and 4 depths in order to save on machine time and fabrication costs, so we came up with five different hole sizes. This allowed the fabricator to generate a grid of holes and drill each size to a different depth. All he needed was five different drill bits.”

Fog Wall in the shop

Natural Geometries

There’s something very elegant and abstract about Min/Day’s designs, and yet despite their formal qualities, they are very much based on what I would call natural law. They’re not sterile ideals of intellectual perfection – they look like natural forces such as gravity and wind have been at work. In fact, Min/Day’s use of computational geometry parallels the discovery of the original laws and formulae within nature, and is a use of digital technology to highlight nature rather than leapfrog it.

Tessellation in natural formations - Tasmanian granite on beach

The five-dollar word for “tiling” is “tessellation”. Tessellations frequently appeared in the art of M. C. Escher, and they also appear in natural sites such as this Tasmanian beach.

Fabrication

We talked about the ins and outs of relying on tightly controlled custom fabrication. Fabrication can be easier, but information management can be a challenge. Having more control over the logic enables Min/Day to work very closely with their fabricators and to control timelines far better than with outsourced custom furniture, which has a typical lead time of 12 to 16 weeks.

You Get What You Pay For

Although Min/Day donated their labor and material costs, they do get to keep the items afterwards. “The Fog Wall assembly was designed for portability”. Metropolitan Home funded the permanent finishes and fixtures. The whole project was done in four and a half months.

So, how much did it all cost you, if that’s not too nosey a question? “I’m afraid to know” EB laughed ruefully. They haven’t had the time to calculate their hours and all the material costs. “The Fog Wall was made by Delphi Productions in Alameda. They can build almost anything. Mueller Nicholls made the cabinets and casework, and A Cappella did the installation. The Stones Table was made by Andy Colley of Colley Furniture Studio, who works out of Omaha, Nebraska. We’ve worked with him for 3 years. He’s very adventurous and he really enjoys a challenge. The Cloud Wall was by Giant Impressions in San Jose. They did a terrific job installing it – you can’t even tell that there are seams.”

It turned out that much of their project was built on barter. They persuaded vendors to donate or discount materials and installation in return for the exposure. “But for us, this was a great project,” said EB. “We had the opportunity to experiment and explore, and it gave us a chance to stretch our wings and get recognition for it.”