The House Whisperer

When called in to renovate a house, you as the architect are interviewing the potential clients as much as they are assessing you. There are several items to note: if interviewing a couple, who is asking the questions? Who seems to have the vision for the project? Who would rather be undergoing a colonoscopy without anesthesia than sitting here with you? You will learn there are many reasons why people hire an architect, but two really stand out above all others.

1. An architectural modification is necessary.
This occurs when there is a dramatic change in the family structure, such as the initial purchase of the house or when children make their imminent arrival known. In the latter case you will always be asked if the house can be ready before the baby arrives. This is always a dicey situation. You want to say yes, but there is so much that is beyond your control that, if you are being honest with yourself, you have to say no. But you need the job, so you rationalize saying yes by assuming the best of all possible scenarios will happen simultaneously, that for instance, you will be able to finalize all decision-making in one month, that it will take another month to do the drawings, a month to get the permit and the contractor on board, and that all the construction will take less than six months. Which would mean you would have to start work the moment the baby is conceived, which could be awkward for all parties involved. In any case this is an example of when a true lack of space must be addressed.

2. A relationship needs healing.
This occurs when a couple can no longer tolerate a particular spatial relationship with one another. For whatever reason, something has soured between them and they imagine the easy fix to be an alteration of their physical environment. Unless you are a scholar of the human psyche, you are in a lose-lose situation. If you listen to one half of the couple the other half feels left out and can never quite get behind the project. If you try to appease both of them, they gang up on you. If you need the money and can handle the abuse, obviously take the job; however if you have the means to avoid the project, do so.

Often both sorts of House Whispering need to take place. The wisest course of action during design meetings is to deflect the conversation away from the personal needs to the physical. When issues of snoring or foot odor come up, turn the conversation to the office/den off the master that could double as a guest room if necessary. Truth is, who’d want a guest that close? But you should always strive to address the problem without embarrassing the offending partner.

3. Your career comes first.
There is another option when all else fails. This is the opposite of House Whispering. This is when you ignore everything that the space and the clients are telling you and listen only to the voice in your head. This is when you force your will upon the couple. They hired you for a reason, right? Clearly they want you to design a space in your style. So you exploit this. You design whatever you want and make them pay for it. Oh sure, you may have to divert them with grand theories and intimidating concepts and suggest that if they don’t quite comprehend to just trust you to deliver what they need. At first they will be relieved -- they will be happy the burden of decision-making has been removed. They won’t really have a sense of what you did until far after they’ve moved in and paid all their invoices; and when they wake up several months down the line and realize they hate what you’ve done, you’re long gone, having settled into a new project or two with new sets of clients to snow.

However, in this New Economy, I’d try House Whispering first.

California Cooler

Last night I had a dream I was stuck in a basement. When I climbed up the stairs I was in the attic. Where was the house? I wondered. Then I realized that this was the house; that architects and real estate developers have spent fifty years ignoring basements and attics to get more bang for the buck in their buildings; that maybe we should return to an architecture of basements and attics if only for the green benefits.

Instead of designing just living space and throwing an oversized HVAC system to regulate heat gain and air flow, etc., we should consider an architecture that connects to the earth and reaches to the sky. We should look at that remarkable produce storage mechanism that relies solely on the passage of air from the basement to the attic, the California Cooler, a staple in the California Bungalow of the early 20th century.

People lived for years without the benefit of air-conditioning; if we could employ a few time-tested passive means to achieving energy efficiency in our buildings, perhaps we wouldn’t need to overload the grid with electricity demand. We could save energy costs and improve the quality of indoor air at the same time, never mind the added storage space.

What could be cooler than that?

Good People, Bad People

Part 1 Building Our House

In building our house we found ourselves dividing up the subcontractors into the good ones and the bad ones. Rarely was anyone merely competent.

THE GOOD PEOPLE, in order of appearance were:

Tom Courtney
Having worked with him before I knew he was the contractor of choice. And although he warned us that our plans were too ambitious, we still thought we could afford him. Until we got his first bill and realized we couldn’t. To help us out Tom graciously offered up his subs with whom we would be contracting directly, which saved a ton of money. But without Tom’s pull, some of them were less motivated to perform well job (see “Bad People“ below).

Guy Thomas
This man is definitely the dirt whisperer. He spent months grading, benching the slope, over-excavating and recompacting, etc., to make this project work. The only problem was we had no idea all this work was necessary when we embarked on this project. In the bid breakdown, we had allotted only a fraction of what it ultimately cost to do this work. Which put us upside-down with our budget even before the foundations were poured. Still, I count him as a good guy because he was pleasant to work with and truly tamed our site.

John Ecker
A master concrete guy.

Dick Marriott
A quick framer, fairly priced, though it was difficult to get him to come out do the finish work at the end.

Michael Sandford
Pan Pacific Metals did a great job with the metal siding.

Steve Malsbury
In addition to the gutters and downspouts, this guy formed, by hand, the metal eaves as well.

Rick Pycz
This mason did such a great job with the fireplace that the inspector was impressed enough to ignore the fact that Rick did not insert the 5’-0” high bond beam that is usually required by the city.

Brad Spolar
A tile specialist borrowed from Pae’s mother, Brad even indulged Pae’s desire for red grout in the Guest Bath, to great effect.

The Stainless Steel Guy
I can’t remember his name, but he was good.

Max Macias
We felt very lucky to find Max to do our drywall. Not only did he live up to his promise to deliver walls “as smooth as a baby’s butt,” but he managed to work out the complicated geometries of our entry hall.

Mary Sargent
After suffering through a series of not-so-great painters, we went with Max’s recommendation. She proved to be knowledgeable as well as skillful, and was able to help us determine which colors would work best in which rooms.

Alan Myers
The man who came in and corrected all the mistakes of the bad electricians (see below).

THE BAD PEOPLE

Live Wire Electric
These guys were nothing but trouble. Since we’ve lived here, we’ve had to have other electricians come in a fix their mistakes – receptacles shorting out, sloppily installed switches, ungrounded fixtures, etc. The problem with these guys is that they were clearly irritated that Tom Courtney sent them over here, away from their usual Pasadena/San Marino/La Canada territory, into the hood. They were contemptuous from the start but the problems really started happening when they lost the plans that I went over with the only bright spot in their company, Mike. Even he was flabbergasted that the plans had disappeared; but at some point they refused to send him over because, since he was the only guy with brains in the outfit, he was needed on the big money projects that the rest of the company must have been screwing up without him. And then, the coup de grace, the undergrounding of the power line. They brought in their own grading guy who, unlike Guy Thomas, was as moronic as they were and did not excavate all the way to the power pole. So it took weeks of begging, pleading, and finally threatening him to come out and complete his work. Then, once the trench was dug and the power line in, Live Wire was supposed to embed it for most of its length in concrete. Which they came out to do. But the idiots did not bring enough concrete so there was a twelve foot gap that, again, required weeks of phone calls to get resolved before the inspector could sign off on it so we could get our C of O before the deadline that IndyMac bank had set for us. Again, begging, pleading, threatening. I just don’t think the head guy over at Live Wire would believe that his people could make such a huge mistake. Finally Tom Courtney had to lay down the law and they finished the job. What a nightmare.

Marrone Plumbing
Again, this was a case of a few lousy workers leaving a really bad taste in my mouth. They had no problem hacking away at our cabinetry to put the plumbing through, leaving us scant shelf space under our kitchen sink. They redeemed themselves by sending in the guy with brains at the end.

Quality Craft Cabinets
Here’s a rule: if they use the word “quality” in their name, they’re anything but. These guys were by far the low bidders but that’s no excuse. Their workmanship was terrible. We had to have them come out two or three times just to adequately reinforce the drawers, some of which are still sagging, one of which won’t remain shut. They won’t even return our calls anymore, even when we call under pretense of more work.

Joe’s Quality Painting
Again with the quality? (see above) This guy gave us a good bid then proceeded to encourage us to go with a “time and materials” contract. “Sometimes it works out better for me, sometimes it works out better for you,” he said. Right. Never again. He did lousy work then charged us way too much. Then his workers came early one morning, took their compressor, and then claimed someone stole it. Then Joe wanted us to split the cost of a new compressor which I agreed to until I realized it was another scam.

Jordan Air
Another case of a sub upset at having to do a favor for Tom Courtney. Not only were the units undersized, but the vents were practically useless. We’ve had to hire a series of HVAC guys to come in and piece together a system that actually works for us. What really pissed me off about the workers at Jordan Air (I think one was Howard Jordan’s son) was that they took a hammer to the corrugated metal siding to make the condensers fit. Morons.

Jack Ruttan
I don’t know how we would have gotten our windows in without Jack, but he was so personally offensive, especially to any Mexican within earshot, that we had to get rid of him. We thought it was good timing, after he had installed all the really heavy aluminum windows; however, he had not put in the flashing yet, and we’re still suffering for it.

Taylor Brothers
I know everyone loves these guys, and sure, they’re nice enough. But they were total assholes about our front door. I mean, granted, it was oversized, and had a special operable window inside it; but did they really have to put MDF in the bottom panel? So that in the first rain, after the paint had cracked, water seeped in and expanded it like a sponge? It took months, MONTHS, of bothering them to get any sort of response. They kept saying they did not guarantee doors that large. Fine. But the problem was in the panel, which could occur in a door of any size; were they really going to stand by putting MDF on a panel that not only faces due south, but is painted black? Finally, B&B doors, the people who actually fabricated the door, felt bad and came out and fixed it.

THE LESSON
I don’t know if there is a lesson, other than the relative amount of attention the Bad People get compared to the Good People: those who go in, do their job quickly, quietly, and skillfully are appreciated, then removed from thought; those who come in and blunder about, take too long, create chaos – these people stick in your craw, they continue to irritate, like a pebble in your shoe, until whatever havoc they’ve wrought can be resolved. The lesson is, maybe it’s better to be forgotten.

The Tree is not a City

In Los Angeles, our mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has decided that native trees are better than non-native. I would say that in general this is true, that the native species do have a singular fit with their environment; but there are a whole assortment of adapted species coming from similar climates around the world that flourish here. In fact, Southern California has been defined by a handful of these: the Jacaranda, the Liquidambar, the Ficus. But the palm tree has been specifically singled out by our mayor as particularly offensive, mostly because of what occurs during the Santa Ana winds when its fronds are strewn over the streets, wreaking havoc on passing cars, houses, and the occasional pedestrian. My feeling is that if the city would do routine maintenance on the trees, there would be no problem. I personally cannot imagine a Los Angeles without the subtle play of more traditional street trees – the Sycamore, the Magnolia, the Jacaranda – against the tall, sinewy Washingtonia robusta or the squat yet eerily evocative Phoenix canariensis.

The city of Pasadena has a different problem. They have embraced the palm, in fact using it as the street tree on one of the main approaches to the city, the Arroyo Parkway connecting the city to the end of the 110 Freeway. The problem here is, it’s the wrong palm. Clearly they wanted to use the Phoenix canariensis, a tree that has, for as long as Southern California has been depicted in literature and other media high and low, come to signify beauty mixed with a forlorn sense of longing, an impending doom, a paradise soon to be lost. These trees give the streets of Pasadena a certain nobility, a vaguely Mediterranean air that appeals to those in the city who imagine a connection to a distant, patrician if not European past.

Instead of the Phoenix canariensis, the geniuses at the city opted for the Phoenix dactylifera, a desert date palm whose many negative associations include the groves that you passed on the way to Palm Springs, rows and rows of ratty looking trees that were once farmed (and perhaps still are?) for dates but that were so uncompelling en masse that, passing in the family station wagon, they never once inspired a quick stop, unlike those immense dinosaurs down the road. No, the choice of the dactylifera by the city of Pasadena only has one explanation: Value Engineering. Unable or unwilling to foot the bill for the canariensis, some bright fool from city hall decided that it would be acceptable to substitute for the lesser tree. As if nobody would notice. I mean, come on, if you don’t want to spend the money on the right trees, find another solution: maybe there are fewer trees; maybe you adjust the design; or maybe you don’t put in those ridiculous crosswalks that scream “bad public art” and that snarled traffic for months along that crucial artery.

Despite the fact that Antonio Villaraigosa declared war on the palm in Los Angeles, someone managed to slip in a few fairly recently along Century Boulevard approaching LAX. Whoever was responsible for that certainly did it right – bolding alternating the Phoenix canariensis with Tipuana tipu in the parkway and lining the median with Washingtonia robusta. Pasadena should have taken a lesson from that and spent its money well. But then again, who would have noticed?

A Line in the Sand

At the end of July, the Montecito Planning Commission delayed approval of Rick Caruso’s plan to transform the Miramar Hotel from a collection of dilapidated buildings alongside the 101 into a new resort destination. At the end of the 11-hour session, Caruso was begging the Commission to deny his proposal outright, claming the changes they were requiring would kill the project.

The problem as I see it is not the relative quality of this specific project – the Miramar certainly could use a major overhaul – but in something much larger: a subtle but very real sense that we as citizens have lost our say in our government. Instead of playing a part in the larger debates of our time – how do we fix and expand our infrastructure, improve our education, provide universal health care, and invest in sustainable energy – we focus on problems we can manage.

Witness the proliferation of Design Review Boards, Town Hall meetings, Neighborhood Councils, etc.: our powerlessness with the big issues makes us hypervigilant when anything that reeks of the bullying power of money comes too close to what we hold most dear. It seems that only when our specific community is targeted, when our immediate surroundings are threatened, or when the very authorship of our lives is at stake, do we take a stand.

Our lack of power with the bigger issues makes us passive and apathetic; we tolerate the erosion of our democracy because it falls away in vague, abstract little bits that are hard to define or even perceive. But come too close to home and our instinct to fight kicks in. Sure, you can plunder our schools, ruin our environment, and suspend habeas corpus at will; but don’t dare come into our neighborhoods and tell us how we should live.

Rick Caruso entered the fray with the confidence that he could win over the locals the way he has in retail projects across Southern California. However, in those other projects he was building retail developments near other retail; the fact that he added housing to the Americana at Brand perhaps gave him the idea that residential and retail could happily coexist.

When he proposed his Brand New Urbanism in Montecito, screening a video that showcased all the cheesy elements that make the Americana so dreadful – the period architecture, the bold perennials, the water fountains dancing to Frank Sinatra classics – Rick Caruso was sure the Montecito Planning Commission would eat it up. Fortunately, they saw past the song and dance routine and were able to request specific improvements that would better reflect the spirit of the old Miramar, a formerly middle class retreat set among humble cottages lining the beach in this particular corner of the city. And at the end of August, after complaining about the changes the Planning Commission requested of him, Caruso came back and received unanimous conditional approval for the project. Final approval is expected at a hearing on October 8, 2008.

Neighborhood activism clearly paid a part in making this a better project (though I fear the dancing fountains remain). The larger and much harder question is, can we extrapolate on this experience? Can we harness this power to shape our world locally to address some of the bigger, scarier issues? Or do we retreat to our lives, content in having fought off the beast, but unwilling to look beyond the borders of our community?

The Carmack Cheeseball

This is something that has haunted me since childhood, or at least since my mother started getting these things, these green fuzzy balls that came, wrapped in plastic, in the weeks before Christmas and, for most of my brothers and sisters, initiated a frenzy of consumption that eroded, triscuit by eager triscuit, these perfect round globes of goodness.

Needless to say the recipe is closely guarded by Jim Carmack and his cheeseball collaborators. However, over the past few years, Pae and I have been conducting forensic investigations of our share of the booty. And this is the result:

8 oz Kaukauna Sharp Cheddar cheese spread
4 oz Philadelphia Cream Cheese
2 oz Mystery Cheese
2 oz Bacos, finely chopped
2 oz minced onion, dried
2 oz dried parsley
2 oz raw pecans, finely chopped
1-1/2 Tbs Cayenne pepper
1-1/2 Tbs A-1 steak sauce
1-1/2 Tbs KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce, original recipe
1 tsp Wright’s hickory liquid smoke, from concentrate
Distilled water to achieve texture
Sugar to taste
MSG to taste

Load ingredients into bowl. Place under a mixer. Blend to proper consistency. Form into balls 4 to 6 inches in diameter. Roll balls in extra pecans and parsley. Place in plastic bag. Place plastic bag into another plastic bag. Tie bags with red and white yard from Stats. Distribute.


(If anyone reading this knows the identity of the Mystery Cheese or the actual recipe itself and cares to correct this one, please do. We are committed to having a fully functional replica by Christmas this year.)

A Manifesto

The current fascination with Pre-Fab homes as promoted by Dwell and other magazines has roots in a genuine concern, that is, to provide a form of housing that is inexpensive and quick to install. The promise has been that, if done properly, Pre-Fab might provide much needed housing for low-income families and the homeless. However, what has happened instead is the emergence of Pre-Fab as commodity, seen online on a variety of websites promoting specific models, but understood most clearly with a quick browsing of the www.fabprefab.com website. It is here where the most crucial of activities related to the production of prefabricated homes takes place: marketing.

Gone is any concern for cost (I could not find anything that could be built for less than $200 per square-foot); gone too is any hope that these could be viable alternatives for affordable housing. What remains is the Pre-Fab as a consumer product, like a car or a toaster oven. More often than not, Pre-Fabs are designed to appeal to the environmentalist in all of us, sporting sustainable features that distract us from the fact that we might was well be shopping for an appliance -- and in the end even these accessories provide more for us as symbols validating our status as earth-friendly consumers than they do as functional elements.

So, without cost or status or even sustainability to justify our acquisition of the Pre-Fab, what are we left with? Convenience. That’s really what it comes down to. I’m guessing that (if you leave out the permit process and the construction of the foundation), these puppies can be bolted into place over a weekend. So Pre-Fab, which came out of a desire to build a home quickly and predictably, has been burdened with a whole host of semes, memes, and other themes that disguise the true motivation for wanting one of these things, which, it turns out, is sheer laziness.

Let this then be a call for Slow Architecture.

A good home takes time to build. The selection of site is critical, as is the placement of a house on that site; the specificity of a site demands a specific response. Every decision made during construction is crucial, and adapting to the ever-evolving conditions requires constant attention. The amazing part to me is that building this way also saves money. Any advantage gained by building a Pre-Fab in volume get lost in other ways - shipping perhaps, profit margins definitely. And when you’re done with your project, when you’ve handed over the wad of cash to the Pre-Fabricator and enter your new dwelling, you’re entering a house that is too small, too expensive for its size, and neither reflects you nor its site.

There’s an old saying in construction: “Price, Speed, Quality: pick any two.” I say pick price but pick quality; and leave the speed to the Autobahn.

Manifest Density

The concept of Manifest Destiny lit a fire under the feet of adventurous Americans over a century ago, stretching a thin film of Western culture from sea to shining sea, and providing justification for all the sins against native cultures that we committed. But Manifest Destiny was a sales pitch masquerading as a pseudo-religious calling and its ultimate result has been the infection of every corner of the continental US with profit-motivated consumer capitalism, an expander of economies to be sure, but a primitive mechanism in the development of cities, a stupid, blundering process that, for the most part, has created a nation made up of cities without civility.

With the rise of the internet, a counterposing movement has emerged. As individuals discover their neighbors online -- in chat rooms, blogs, and Yahoo Groups -- they become more personally invested in their community. In neighborhoods across America, people have begun to take more personally how their environment is being formed. With the land having been conquered, cities are becoming more crowded and density of development is inevitable; yet as concerned citizens begin to take on a more activist role in their communities, they provide a check to the unlimited growth that would occur otherwise. And as a result, cities are becoming more civilized.

This maturing of American cities might be called Manifest Density and promises the advent of a more enduring sort of urbanism. The tyranny of the wealthy, who historically have viewed land as just another natural resource from which they can extract profit, now must engage with the politics of the masses who have now assumed active stewardship of the built environment.