ONE WORD FROM THE CITY (“can we add some arches”) changed the direction of this design for a community center. Some elements of the original study (above) survived in the new study (below) and those that didn’t may yet find their way back in some form or another. (Nichols Park Community Center, Riverside, CA).
Our projects in the public and the private sector take anywhere between six to eight years to realize from the moment of our hiring through completion, sometimes less, sometimes more. (Yes, the private projects take as long as the public ones). And good thing too, because architecture that lasts needs incubation. I can’t think of one instance in which we got something right the first time we drew it.
WE CHANGED DIRECTION for the design of this library when we moved from an idea of assembling forms (physical model above) to one of carving them (computer model below). The tools matter. (Orange County Public Library, Costa Mesa Branch).
PAPER, SCISSORS, TAPE AND GLUE The formal possibilities of physical models are unique to the technique (Orange County Public Library, Costa Mesa Branch).
SOLIDS, VOLUMES, VOIDS AND INTERSECTIONS The formal possibilities of computer models are unique to the technique (Orange County Public Library, Costa Mesa Branch).
There are plenty of reasons it takes so long—lots of people to attend to and collaborate with, the politics of decision-making, the grind of regulatory reviews and construction. There are a lot of opinions out there and we learn from all of them. And while we always seem to be under deadline (more like hurry up and wait), we exploit the protracted, often awkward fits and starts of the process for the benefit of the work.
A FEW PARAMETERS informed these studies—the desire for fluid shapes, dramatic shade and shadow possible on the south facing side of the building—but exactly how was never readily apparent except only through many attempts (Orange County Public Library, Costa Mesa Branch).
HOW TO TURN A CORNER is probably one of the oldest continuous challenges facing architects since we first began to build buildings. (Orange County Public Library, Costa Mesa Branch).
WHERE MATERIALS STOP AND START is another one of the oldest continuous challenges facing architects since we first began to build buildings (Orange County Public Library, Costa Mesa Branch).
This isn’t to say that our process is all that different from that of anyone else who makes things – the unpredictability and spontaneity that, for example, we celebrate in fashion designers. It’s a myth to think that inventions of any kind spring fully formed and effortlessly from the mind as if from some oracle or conversely that design is somehow a linear, logical process with a beginning, middle and end.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE DESIGN for the West Hollywood library is a dramatic one. Many opinions weighed in over a process that lasted four years. (Los Angeles County Library, West Hollywood Branch).
There are moments of logic to be sure. But it is with a light grasp on the order of the process rather than a stranglehold on it that we make room for the spontaneous to register. Accidents happen (we cut a model piece differently than we had planned, our collaborator misunderstands what we said or vice versa, randomly we see something on the street or on the web that triggers an unexpected thought) and when we’re alive to them even as we maintain our grasp on the process we make room for the accidents and we use them.
THE ORIGINAL IDEA of the exterior of the design was to maximize the presence of the building from Santa Monica Boulevard the main drag of the city a full block away; and to maximize views from the library north to the Hollywood Hills. (Los Angeles County Library, West Hollywood Branch).
AFTER MANY ATTEMPTS to reconcile the two main elevations-- the north elevation facing onto the park and the east elevation facing onto the street-- it became clear that too much articulation was a mistake. One idea that would unite the two sides turned out to be the way to go. (Left, the original design, right the final design) (Los Angeles County Library, West Hollywood Branch).
The benefits of spontaneity may seem like gifts but more often they are earned. They emerge from our having thought and drawn through things over and under, inside and out and all around. Contemplate something long enough and suddenly it hits you, oh that’s it. Or struggle with something for what seems like forever, then leave it alone, come back, and the answer’s obvious, or more often, no, that’s not it, what was I thinking. Or struggle with something until in defeat it gets left where it is and only later does is seem like a success. Having exhausted the possibilities resolution feels like less like elation than exhaustion.
AT ONE POINT we had to step back to assess first principles. No clues were to be found in the neighborhood so the sky was the limit—a blessing and a curse. Traditional or modern? Conceptual or formal? Punched windows, strip windows or all window? (Los Angeles County Library, West Hollywood Branch).
HAVING CONCLUDED HORIZONAL was the way to go ( to capture panoramic views) we were then faced with how to employ the apertures to shape the building and conversely how to shape the building around the apertures. (Los Angeles County Library, West Hollywood Branch).
Sometimes we never get it right. We engage in life- long questions, pursuits for which there are never clear answers only provisional responses. We struggle with ideas and get obsessed with images that capture us until one day they (might) let us go. We hop onto trains-of-thought and sometimes ride them out over one project after another maybe even a lifetime. It is a never ending and yet fulfilling pursuit and something of a way of life.
ITERATION AFTER ITERATION finally brought us to a simple idea: stacks of undulating strips of plaster above and below a continuous void (the panoramic window) draped continuously from the northwest corner of the building to the southeast corner uniting the two sides of the building. (Los Angeles County Library, West Hollywood Branch).
HOW THE BUILDING MET THE GROUND became a project itself. Lots of scary, ugly attempts were made before arriving once again at a simple idea: the base of the building would assume the material and color of the street and the sidewalk as if the base of the building emerged from the street and sidewalk. (Los Angeles County Library, West Hollywood Branch).
THE FINAL DESIGN: San Vicente Boulevard to the left, West Hollywood Park to the right. (Los Angeles County Library, West Hollywood Branch).
In our time, if you want to be an architect you go to school. This is the system we live with. I value my time in architecture school for the fellow students I met and still admire as well as all the things I learned—the skills, the knowledge, a feeling for the depth and breadth of what had to be mastered. Our moment in school was a singular one where particular things were taught and I am happy to have had the experience, one that I put into practice every day. To this day we explore ideas to which we were first introduced in school over forty years ago.
MAGICAL THINKING belied the feasibility of the thin flat plane of the roof of the loggia that hovers above the mass of the building in this first study for the Museum of Redlands. The idea and the image were not easily realized. (Museum of Redlands, Redlands, CA).
But architecture school is contrived. In school we get assignments then pretend we’re our own client. We make up circumstances in order to keep a project from drifting on the tide of its own artificiality. We work under unrealistic time frames in which we are expected within the span of a semester with virtually no experience to conceive and manifest a fully realized project. This in no way corresponds to our experience since school. School is a place to be a student of architecture, but a student of architecture does not an architect make. As architects who practice, we never really master the practice, we just practice.
MANY FALSE STARTS including approaches both graphic and three dimensional were employed to resolve the tricky formal problem of disengaging the loggia. Three years of intermittent studies finally brought us to a solution. (Museum of Redlands, Redlands, CA).
SMOKE AND MIRRORS, or at least folding, slanting planes and mirrored finishes gave us the means with which to finally achieve the original design intent. (Museum of Redlands, Redlands, CA).