THE DIVISION OF THE STATE ARCHITECT in California was established by the Field Act passed by the legislature in 1933 after a devastating earthquake in Long Beach, CA destroyed many school buildings, and it has become the primary regulatory agency for all public school construction in the state.
Buildings are inherently unsafe. They can catch fire, break apart and fall on you, trap you, and trip you. They can be disorienting and inhibit free movement. And therefore, aside perhaps from the health care industry, there is no industry that is more regulated than the planning, design, and construction industry. (We are amused by the growing cacophony of big tech’s whiny protestations against even the mere wisp of a fledgling regulatory regime that might cramp their technocratic Ayn Rand-inspired libertarian enterprise.)
AREAS OF DSA JURISDICTION are many of which the three principal ones are fire and life safety, structure, and accessibility but also energy and water consumption among others.
PROFESSIONAL DISCIPLINES who are licensed by the state and required to sign the documents that we submit to the DSA include architecture, landscape architecture, civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering.
Building codes regulate fire truck access, walkway and ramp slopes, concrete foundation and steel base plate design, the structural performance of primary and secondary steel bolts and welds, light metal framing screws and straps, ceiling support structures, equipment conduit bracing systems, the fireproofing of wall and roof assemblies, stair and railing dimensions, accessibility of door widths, hinge resistance and handle shapes, the heights of counters, sinks hand washing and drying equipment and the clearances around toilets, lighting levels, and floor slipperiness. There is no component of a building’s construction that is not regulated by as many as two or three regulatory agencies.
A CONDOMINIUM TOWER IS NOT THE COLOSSEUM but still, the latter has survived 21 centuries, the former less than one. Both were destroyed by people-- the latter by marauding outsiders over generations of vandalism, the former by our cheap and irresponsible generation of builders and citizens.
Regulations follow disasters and in the accumulation of disasters so too do regulations accumulate. Most Americans are familiar with the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, and New York’s Triangle Waistcoat Factory Fire of 1911. In the aftermath of all three, new safety restrictions and innovations were imposed on building design and construction. Southern California in 1933 experienced a destructive earthquake centered near Long Beach, CA caused not so much by the severity of earth movement as by the inadequacy of building construction. Schools were among the hardest hit.
THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE OF 1871 taught us that steel melts and collapses under extreme heat initiating an array of subsequent requirements to insulate the steel from fire.
THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE OF 1906 gave us subsequent utility conduit and fixture bracing requirements as most of its damage was caused by fire initiated by the rupture of gas supply lines and prolonged by the interruption of the water supply lines.
THE NEW YORK TRIANGLE WAISTCOAT FACTORY FIRE OF 1911 initiated nationwide fire suppression requirements such as permanently installed sprinklers and the fire escape now ubiquitous across lower Manhattan and historic city cores across the country.
THE LONG BEACH EARTHQUAKE OF 1933 hit poorly built schools hard and led to the establishment of the Division of the State Architect (DSA) the agency that regulates public school planning, design, and construction across California.
THE CAMPAIGN FOR ACCESSIBILITY AS A CIVIL RIGHT culminated in the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 resulting in a set of regulations that has permeated every area of building planning and design.
In the aftermath of the Long Beach earthquake, the California legislature passed the Field Act which established unprecedented seismic stability requirements and the Office (now Division) of the State Architect (DSA) as the agency with which to enforce higher quality and safer school construction. Just the mention of the acronym sends shudders through most architects’ veins as it has evolved into one of the most comprehensive and thoroughly intrusive regulatory agencies in existence in the world –so much so that experience with it has become a priori discriminating stipulation in the architect selection process, high-quality regulatory compliance having replaced high-quality design as the highest priority pre-requisite for consideration.
GEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS are a first step in the engineering of any building’s foundations and structure in California. They test soils under the building for their supporting strength and lateral stability.
IDENTIFICATION OF OCCUPANCY CLASSIFICATION AND CONSTRUCTION TYPE of a building and its components are another first step in determining its egress, fire separation, and construction requirements.
But why have some buildings lasted hundreds even thousands of years, most of them designed and built in the absence of any regulation, while we seem to find it so difficult? We learned how to build solid, stable, and safe buildings over the centuries through trial and error (and many fatal mistakes). But having learned what we have, why aren’t well designed buildings today safe and accessible as a matter of course and why do regulations continue to accumulate?
STRUCTURAL DRAWINGS, DIAGRAMS, CHARTS, AND CALCULATIONS must as a precondition for approval demonstrate the viability of every structural element in the building beginning with its foundations.
EVERY STRUCTURAL JOINT AND CONNECTION including bolts and welds must prove its gravity load-bearing and seismic movement resisting viability via diagrams and calculations.
THE DSA REQUIRES that we document how every wall in the building is built including metal framing gauges, insulation and sheathing types, steel fastener, weld, and strap identification to demonstrate fire resistance and structural integrity.
ANYTHING THAT COULD FALL ON YOUR HEAD in an earthquake has to be documented to demonstrate that it has been sufficiently secured in place and braced against any kind of compromise (earthquake or otherwise).
HANDRAIL DESIGN is an example of how structural safety requirements extend to every element associated with both the inside and outside of a building.
The answers are many but the short one would be money. The monetization of land and buildings (the commodification of real estate), meaning in the private sector making buildings to make money or in the public sector making buildings while spending as little money as possible, has set off a race-to-the-bottom in pursuit of efficiency and expediency that inevitably invites regulation by the state whose principal purpose has always been to protect our safety and welfare. (“Monetization” may be a familiar term to anyone who has followed the rise of Silicon Valley’s influence followed by the realization of its deleterious effects on society and commerce followed by calls for its regulation).
FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEMS include most prominently fire sprinklers whose planning and design must be integrated into the documents submitted for permit.
PIPES AND CONDUITS serving sprinkler, lighting, and air distribution systems must be shown to be adequately braced to primary structure to prevent their rupture or collapse in a destructive event (earthquake, fire, or other).
Is it also, though, the relatively recent monetization of the practice of architecture--meaning its evolution from a vocation, a way to make a living, to a source of profit, a business, that has yielded a similar kind of race-to-the-bottom? Are regulations so onerous, so complicated, and time-consuming to comply with—even understand-- that they must inevitably inhibit our effort toward high-quality design? Or is the effort required in pursuit of high-quality design so all-consuming of our all-too-limited brain space that we will inevitably create irregular or non-compliant designs that can’t be built? No and no. Under the pressures of both time and money, we embrace the array of regulations as a necessary but insufficient framework within which high-quality design must flourish even as we reject the premise that from regulations alone high-quality design will ever emerge, that relegating design to regulation will inevitably lead to anything other than safe and accessible mediocrity.
DISABILITY ACCESS REQUIREMENTS determine the dimensions of clearance requirements throughout all areas of a building including the minutest of details as best illustrated in how restrooms are described for permitting purposes.
CODE REQUIRED SIGNS extend to every room and area of a building with detailed requirements for their placement, sizes, font types, and sizes with an emphasis on readability by and accessibility to the disabled.