Spring 2019
home A Publication of AIA Arizona
mission The Arizona Forum is the semi-annual peer-reviewed journal of the American Institute of Architects Arizona. AzF will advocate for contemporary design issues through critical discourse, address design excellence, quality of life, and urban design throughout the state of Arizona. AzF invites AIA members and authors to share their expertise, practice experience, visions and theories with the profession and the community in general. The Forum challenges authors and readers to solve prescient issues, provide insight into contemporary architectural practice, contemplate architectural theory, and thoughtfully consider architectural design, urbanism, sustainability and technology. The Forum is open to contributions from AIA Members and community leaders. Its roots are based in the AIA Arizona Communications Committee and it is a tool intended to increase dialogue, communication, and involvement on multiple levels. The Forum will foster interaction and discussion that will cultivate relationships between members and the broader community while also encouraging critical analysis and proactive thinking.
table of contents Bright Lights, Sprawling City Eddie Jones Interviews Aaron Betsky Eddie Johnes, AIA page 6
Dwelling and Designing in the Salt River Valley Patrick Daly, AIA page 18
A Home is More Than a House Sarah Levi page 22
Ocotillo
Submissions The Arizona Forum welcomes the submission of essays, projects and responses to articles. Submitted materials are subject to peer and editorial review. All Forum issues are themed, so articles and projects are selected relative to the issue’s specific subject. Please contact Co-Editors-in-Chief Christina Noble at Christina.Noble@gmail.com or Liz Farkas at elizabethjfarkas@gmail.com if you are interested in contributing. Peer Reviewers We are looking for experts in all areas of architecture and design to serve as peer reviewers for future issues. Past authors are also invited to serve as peer reviewers.
Brian A. Spencer, AIA page 26
Comforts of Home Rick Marencic, IIDA page 36
The Smart Home, 1946-style Anthony Denzer page 40
Perspectives on Home Mary Hardin page 44
Arizona State University – “The Second Home” Ed Soltero, FAIA page 50
Desert Density
Rob Paulus, AIA page 56
advisory panel 180 degrees Architekton Ayers Saint Gross Blank Studio Architecture BWS Architects Circle West Architects Dick & Fritsche Design Group Gensler
Gould Evans Associates Holly Street Studio Architects Jones Studio Marlene Imirzian & Associates LEA Architects Line and Space Repp Mclain Design + Construction Rob Paulus Architects Ltd.
forum team Co-Editor-In-Chief Christina Noble, AIA: has a special affection for projects focused on revitalizing communities through sensitive, inclusive and sustainable design. Her past experience has been with community focused and environmentally responsible projects ranging across a broad spectrum of building types including high-profile collegiate, mixed-use, government, and private development projects. Christina is a fifth-generation Arizona native who feels passionately about making a difference in her local community – through the projects she completes as well as through active engagement with community groups and organizations including serving on the City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Commission, Development Advisory Board and Rehabilitation Appeals Board.
Shepley Bulfinch Smith Group JJR Studio Ma suoLL architects Tsontakis Architecture Weddle Gilmore Wendell Burnette Architects Westlake Reed Leskosky
aia arizona PRESIDENT Mark Ryan, AIA
Co-Editor-In-Chief Elizabeth (Liz) Farkas, AIA: An Arizona transplant, Liz grew up in the Midwest and received a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design and a Masters of Architecture from the University of Houston. After studying and working abroad, she moved to Arizona and has embraced the desert. She has worked in the Tucson area for the past 14 years on a number of private and public projects. Her service work to the AIA has provided multiple opportunities to give voice to Arizona architects, including with this publication, and she hopes that this shared knowledge benefits both our peers and the public.
AIA PHOENIX METRO DIRECTOR Lee Swanson, AIA
GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS CHAIR Kate Dudzik Smith, AIA
PRESIDENT-ELECT/CONFERENCE CHAIR Jack DeBartolo 3, FAIA
AIA PHOENIX METRO DIRECTOR Betsy Lynch, AIA
Pete Rasmussen, AIA Shepley Bulfinch
SECRETARY Joel Westervelt, AIA
AIA GRAND CANYON DIRECTOR Joel Westervelt, AIA
SPONSORSHIP CHAIR Richard Jensen, AIA
TREASURER Jack Leonard, AIA
AIA SOUTHERN ARIZONA DIRECTOR Madeleine Boos, AIA
Director of Local Chapters Diana Smith
PAST PRESIDENT Rob Miller, AIA
AIA SOUTHERN ARIZONA DIRECTOR Oscar Lopez, Associate AIA
Director of Membership Charnissa Moore
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Courtney Stewart, Associate AIA
AIA10 DIRECTOR Dennis Bree, AIA
Administrative Assistant Ginger Szoradi
AIA PHOENIX METRO DIRECTOR Rachel Green Rasmussen, AIA
MEMBERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CHAIR Alexis Carver, AIA
AIA ARIZONA Staff EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Tina Litteral, Hon. AIA, CAE
AIA PHOENIX METRO DIRECTOR Michael Jacobs, AIA
COMMUNICATIONS CHAIR Dawn Brown, AIA
AIA PHOENIX METRO DIRECTOR Jack Leonard, AIA
FELLOWS Anthony Floyd, FAIA
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AIA Forum Arizona Associate Editors Darci Hazelbaker Doug Sydnor, FAIA Marlene Imirzian, FAIA Bill Otwell, FAIA Ben Lepley, Associate AIA Corky Poster, AICP
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bright lights, sprawling city
completely bipartisan? AB: They are neutral. They do not advocate. I think that they are certainly skeptical of us for two reasons. One is because of our size. The other is because they were told by a previous administration, that the school should and would close, and so getting beyond that takes a little bit. We’ve been working with the foundation and with them to clarify that we really do want to move forward now.
eddie jones interviews aaron betsky
EJ: I’ll just ask you straight out. Do you see any insurmountable hurdles?
Eddie Johnes, AIA
AB: Nothing is insurmountable, but it is going to be difficult. I think that with the support of many good friends in this community, we passed our financial hurdle to a large extent. Although it of course doesn’t end. You have to keep raising money, and keep cutting costs, to be able to do what you want to do. We also are growing, not just in numbers, but in quality. I think if you look at the quality of the student work that’s coming out of here now, it’s really beginning to get worthier of our traditions, than it has at times been. We also have some terrific new people teaching here.
“Space is the breath of art.” “A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.” -Frank Lloyd Wright
Eddie Jones, founder of Jones Studio, interviewed Aaron Betsky, President at the School of Architecture at Taliesen in October of 2016. Betsky has a long career as a critic, curator, author of more than a dozen books on art, architecture, and design and
EJ: That’s very encouraging. I’m also curious. I know some of your history, you’ve lived in some amazing cities, and now you live out here in the middle of the desert.
F1
as an educator for over three decades. Betsky and Jones’s conversation dives into the future of the School of Architecture, art vs. architecture, tackling Arizona’s suburban sprawl, and the value architects bring to building.
F1 “Downtown PHX Panorama” by Hngrange licensed under GFDL
Eddie Jones: I’m curious, you’ve had many career accomplishments - enough to secure your legacy. You’re certainly world famous. Taliesin called, and so I think you’re taking on a risk, this worthy project, but without a predictable end. Aaron Betsky: Thank you for your praise. It is tough, and we’re not out of the woods yet. We’re not out of the woods for two reasons. One is that partially because of the uncertainty, we became a very, very small school. We’ve always been a small school, but now we’re a very, very small school. We need to grow significantly, to be able to continue and transform the legacy that we’ve inherited, and in which we literally live. The other is that the regulatory and accreditation picture turns out to be even more complicated than I thought. Partially, because there has been such a difficult history, that they need a lot of assurances from us on every level, that we really know what we’re doing, and we’re going to be able to carry forward. There’s a lot of work to be done. EJ: Is that regulatory agency supportive, I mean generally supportive, or are they
“...the Valley has some very, very serious problems in terms of how it uses natural resources, and in terms of the quality of the built environment. I very much want us to be part of figuring out what to do about that.” Is it your nature to enjoy, let’s call it the peace and quiet, of being out here detached from the city? AB: Living here is spectacular, and living in Spring Green is as well. Yes, it is an oasis in this sea of red tile roofs; fewer red tile roofs these days, but brown and beige muck. It is depressing to drive down Cactus to get here. I know some people who go out of their way to avoid the more direct routes, because it’s so unattractive.
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EJ: We all have that affliction. Wherever you live in the Valley, we live in some nice
and five months a year it’s in Spring Green. In some distant future, we would love to find a mode in which we could be using both places, full time. That would take a lot. Actually, more here than in Spring Green. Spring Green you just heat spaces that are only minimally heated now, with a few other additions. Here, we would have to figure out what to do about the shelters. You can’t live in a tent when it’s one hundred and twenty degrees.
places, but you have to drive by the mediocrity to get there. AB: Yep. EJ: Every city I’ve been to it’s been that way, also. AB: Guaranteed, but we all know that the Valley has some very, very serious problems in terms of how it uses natural resources, and in terms of the quality of the built environment. On every level, aesthetic and social as well as in terms of sustainability.
EJ: True, you also have the proximity to a much larger metropolis. AB: Yes, absolutely. EJ: Somebody sent me an article from The New York Times, and you were being interviewed. The discussion was about the elitism of architecture. That there’s this perception from the public that architects, and even architecture, is an elitist condition. It seemed like you were defending that. Do you know what I’m talking about?
“What we need to concentrate on is the creativity of the work that architects do.”
AB: I certainly would never defend architecture as an elite profession. I do think the definition of architecture and art, and many other aspects of our cultural continuum, are changing, as they change continually. Part of that is that the borderlines between what you might think of as architectural, and what you might think of as art, what you might think of as engineering, what you might think of as architecture, what you might think of as various social endeavors in architecture, are becoming more and more difficult to find. I think as such, it will be more difficult for architects, people who are trained as in architecture, to content themselves by pursuing a traditional path, towards being a licensed architect. I think there will have to be many more different ways in which you define yourself.
I very much want us to be part of figuring out what to do about that, rather than just complaining about it. EJ: Do you see any advantage? I’m sure you do, in a stronger alliance with ASU, with U of A? AB: Very much so. I’ve certainly spent some time building those bridges. We would love to do more things with them, and we are doing some things with them. There’s history there, as well. I don’t think we’re the only one in town who see them a little bit as Big Brother. They are, they’re huge. That causes some nervousness. Yes, I’m interested in developing that strong relationship with them.
Given all of that, what is essential is that architecture school is a place where you learn what is core to the discipline, and knowledge of architecture. Which is a particular body of knowledge, as well as a set of skills that you hone there, and continue to hone throughout your life, that allow you to make a particular contribution to your society, both financially and socially. You can do that by being a traditional architect, and make homes or office buildings. You can do that in all kinds of other ways. As a social activist, as a movie maker, as a politician, as what you might call an artist, and any other number of ways. What we must hold onto, is that there is something about that knowledge, and those skills, that is if not privileged, hard won. Gained through practice, and hard looking, and interpretation that the discipline should be proud of, and should find out, figure out how it could contribute more effectively to society. If that’s elitist, then yes.
EJ: I, for one, would encourage it. I think it can only get better. I see this kind of territoriality, even with the museums. It just seems such a logical extension that there would be strong alliances between the museums, in collaboration for a better community. I think the significant schools should be the same way. AB: That’s true I think, in just about every city where you are - the old art museum, and the contemporary art museum don’t talk to each other. The various schools see themselves as rivals, rather than as peers who support each other. Some of that’s just natural, but some of it’s just ridiculous, and based on egos and other things like that. I do hope that we can get beyond that. I had good luck in Cincinnati, developing much more collegial relations with my fellow museum directors, and cultural leaders. I hope for the same here. It is as I’ve now found out, it’s a little odd to be here for six, seven months and then suddenly you disappear for five months, and have to reintroduce yourself to the Valley.
EJ: Are you aware that the governor of Arizona, Governor Ducey is attempting to deregulate professionals? At my age, I’m very secure in what I do. I don’t need a license to give me confidence, or to convince a potential client that I’m qualified to do their work. I would think your students, Aaron, and any student in architecture school, at least in Arizona, would be concerned about this, and having questions. It brings up the subject of licensing.
EJ: Do you have to do that? I’m sure it’s enjoyable. AB: You know, the first year I stayed here. I think I need to be where the school is,
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AB: I think that for me, licensing is a distraction. It’s a false issue. It’s a shorthand for the fact that it is more and more difficult to justify in purely economic terms, what an architect traditionally, or at least for the last one hundred and fifty years in this country, have been paid to do, and how those, and in most of Europe, and how those fees have
been calculated and weighted. It seems to me that as a practical matter yes, obviously, the Professional Organization of Architects, AIA, needs to fight that and will fight that, I’m sure. It will always be a rear-guard action.
EJ: My argument was more in the realm of monetary value, too. A person that hires a licensed architect has reduced insurance premiums, or at least, you get a permit quicker. It seems the opposite is true. But how you state it is more positive. Like you’re saying, show the value, as opposed to trying to keep other people out.
What I think architects should be much more concerned about, is figuring out what it is that they add as value. The argument I’ve always made is, we should stop worrying about the technical and representational aspects of architecture that are seen so much at the core, because as a structures teacher famously told me when he started out, first day of structures, you need to know enough structures, so you know when your structural consultant is bullshitting you. Yes, it’s great to understand structures in your bone, but being able to do the calculations, and being able to provide that is not the point. There are machines that do that, and there are very specialized people that do that. Being able to draft is a joy, but I always tell the little story of Cincinnati in 2008-9, where half the architects were out of work, and one of the firms in town got the job to do a billion dollar, or three-billion-dollar casino in Asia. Everyone flocked there, sent their resume thinking they were finally going to get work, and they hired one person, and outsourced the rest of it to the Philippines, because that’s where the drafting happens. It’s all becoming standardized, rote, machine based.
AB: Here’s the problem, almost ... When you get an architect involved in a project, it’s going to cost more money. The straight value proposition doesn’t work. You have to be able to say yes, it will cost you more money, but what you get is better. What
“...architecture needs to inspire us, needs to be something that draws us together, and makes us believe in where we are, commit to where we are, love where we are.”
What we need to concentrate on is the creativity of the work that architects do, and F2
do you mean by better? How do you define that? What is that? That’s something that architects have failed manifestly to do. They’re running off into this pseudoscience of evidence based design, and all this kind of BS. To me, it’s just more smoke and mirrors. There should be a clear idea about what makes this room that we’re sitting here, at Taliesin West, so incredible, and why is it only a good architect who can create this? Why is that worth spending twenty percent extra, which is probably what you’ll wind up spending extra on the minimum if you hire an architect?
F2 “Fountain and terrace, with dining and dormitory area beyond, Taliesin West” by Lar licensed under GFDL
EJ: Why don’t you tell me, then. AB: I can say that I believe that the three qualities that I repeat as my mantra are sustainability, meaning figuring out if you’re going to use non-renewable resources, and preferably you’re not, but if you are, a good architect should be able to because of her or his knowledge of land, space use, material use, systems, be able to figure out how to maximize the sustainability of the construction. All the way from materials and where they come from, through construction, and the tremendous amount of pollution that comes from the construction itself, all the way through the eventual reuse of the building, whole cycle. EJ: Which can be measured. what they provide to clients, to communities, what is the true service they provide? The true service they provide is not obtaining a stamp from the city. The true service they provide is not making it stand up, however, we have this commodity, firmness, delight idea. There are other people who are better at that than architects, with a few exceptions. What they provide is something different. We must figure out what that something different is. What is it that’s so great about providing great spaces, or creating something that is a beautiful environment, or any of the kind of phrases that architects will find themselves reduced to? There is value to them, but we must figure exactly what that value is, and how we represent that value.
AB: Absolutely, and Europe is much further along than us in that sense.
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The second thing, and this starts to get a little bit more nebulous, is that there is something about architecture that should open us up, and provide access in a social sense, an open architecture. An architecture that comes from the commission of somebody, because they have the funds or the resources to commission it, but that in the process of design, creates a structure that not only allows, but encourages uses by different people. A democratic architecture, a social architecture, an architecture that breaks boxes. Again, although it’s more difficult, you can measure that. If you look at
what is horrible about everything out there in the Valley, it’s complete unsustainability, but also in the way that it isolates us in our boxes, in social senses, in gender senses as well, but certainly in social senses. Really, at the root of many of our problems is the very geography of sprawl, roots social injustice in space. All the way from urban planning, to the way that houses themselves are laid out, and offices are laid out. It’s a very particular, and very big task for architecture.
design, but architects are involved in that pile of construction material out there. AB: Although very little, I mean if you analyze the standard multi-family development, even if an architect is involved, they’re involved only to stamp drawings, or to do one or two houses that get replicated many, many more times. The first thing we should do is care about that. As you very well know, what drives me crazy about going to the Phoenix AIA meetings, is this obsession with downtown. It’s like who gives a damn about downtown. This is not a downtown focused area. Yes, it’s great moving there, yes, we have cultural facilities there. It is the CCC like every other city, the culture control center, where big business and culture, commerce and culture are headquarters. Fantastic, it doesn’t do anything for the rest of us. Even if they build out the sixty thousand units they want, that would be one percent of the population of Phoenix. It’s not the point. The point is all of that, and I wish that Phoenix and the other people who care about architecture should look at that, and not just say “well, we can’t do anything. It’s too difficult,” and say “well, let’s roll up our sleeves, and figure out what we can do about it.”
The third, which perhaps is the most nebulous of all of them -
“...well, let’s roll up our sleeves, and figure out what we can do about it.” EJ:
But our favorite.
AB: Our favorite is that we must make it beautiful. I mean, this stuff is just ugly, and it demeans our lives. One of the things that drives me crazy is, that people who want to make an architecture that is open and sustainable, think that it should be ugly or at least unremarkable, because otherwise it looks expensive and it puts people off. I think architecture needs to inspire us, needs to be something that draws us together, and makes us believe in where we are, commit to where we are, love where we are. Just yesterday, UNESCO published a big study, which I just downloaded this morning, so I haven’t looked at it yet, in which they claim that they can prove that arts and culture, including architecture, is core to the attractiveness and resilience of urban environments. I hope that they in fact have proven that. I think it is, feels that way in my guts.
How to improve the parts that we criticize.
AB:
Exactly, or ignore.
EJ:
Do you have any ideas?
AB: I don’t have specific ideas. I think that there are people doing small things that are interesting. Right here, Matthew Salenger with the projects that he’s doing, limited, but a good start, a try. A couple of years ago, they had the Flip-the-Strip competition. Great things came out of that. Every time I look at, or find myself in another strip mall, in just about everything I do, from going to see my doctor, to getting my haircut, to going shopping is in a strip mall, or a complex like that. I just wonder, what is it we could do to make this better? I bet you that we could find ways to do something
“...at the root of many of our problems is the very geography of sprawl, roots social injustice in space... It’s a very particular, and very big task for architecture.”
EJ: What’s the difference between architecture and art? AB: I think that’s a false question. I think that first we should understand that architecture is a cultural pursuit, not a technical pursuit. Building is a technical pursuit, but the transformation of buildings into architecture is a cultural pursuit. Like all cultural pursuits, they’re intimately interrelated. We hive off everything that we think is useless, and beautiful, and fall apart. We have hive off everything that is slightly more useful and can be inhabited, and call it architecture. Those distinctions are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Some of the most interesting architecture is being made as pop up performance installation, and some of the best art is being made as full constructions, things that you inhabit. I think we should stop worrying about what the distinction is, and start worrying about how to make it good. EJ: I agree. We keep looking outside the window. At first, we see beautiful Palo Verde, but there is that Valley out there, that both of us are very critical of. The part that depresses me Aaron, is architects design that. I don’t even know if you can call it
EJ:
about it. EJ: When you state it like that Aaron, it just makes me want to do it. Bring on this challenge.
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AB: The tough one is the single-family home. I tried on two occasions, to teach studios on how you can take suburban tract development and make them better, and they were failures. They just were. It’s a really, really tough problem. That core problem of how to make the single family suburban home, that has been engineered to value
maximization perfection, so that as little money goes into it as possible, and it sells for as much as possible. It works according to standard modes of social behavior, and it’s a horrible thing. Trying to break that open is very, very tough. If any architect ever does that, they deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, let alone the Pritzker Prize.
EJ: That could be self-regulating, too. The other example of what started this conversation was the Case Study Program. That was meant to be beautiful, affordable housing. Perhaps it’s not surprising, that these beautiful solutions to suburban living, of course sell for maximum amounts of money now. The Case Study Houses, they’re certainly not affordable anymore. Even if you tried to replicate them, those conditions that allowed those light weight, transparent, beautiful boxes to occur with that level of detailing, those conditions have evolved.
EJ: Weren’t there some attempts? Wasn’t the Usonian house an attempt at that? AB: Certainly, and one of the things that interest me about Frank Lloyd Wright is, that he was one of the few people who took this stuff seriously, and said “What can we do about it?” As early as 1905 with the ‘Ladies Home Journal’ projects, and the ‘House Beautiful’ projects, and all the way through Broadacre City, and the Living City are projects that were inspirational. They led to some slightly more shall we say, far fetched things like Arcosanti and Arcologies. What if we didn’t go there, but looked at how he had proposed furthering this Jeffersonian ideal of living in a loosely knit agglomeration of social relations, in close relationship to the great American landscape? What can we do with that? How could we make that work? To me, that’s inspiring.
AB: This Valley has great examples of people who did push that further. Al Beadle, and people like that who EJ: Ralph Haver did some wonderful homes. AB: In LA, we wound up living in a house by a guy called Fickett. Fickett did these incredibly expressive apartment buildings in Hollywood/West Hollywood, mid Wilshire area after the war, when everyone had GI Bills and money coming in from that, and there were easy loans. Then, he built a whole slew of subdivisions in the Valley. Some not as good as what you have here, but certainly interesting attempts to figure out how to make a modernist suburban home. I think we can go back to that.
EJ: Do you think the single-family home at least in this century, is becoming more and more antiquated, more and more obsolete? You mentioned Arcosanti. Conceptually speaking, it’s on solid ground. It’s all about living a sustainable life, and living in a city that gives more than it takes. Bless Soleri’s heart, building a city by selling bells. Name one other architect that had the courage to do that. Populations and density, and resource -
EJ: I am interested in your opinion, because I don’t have an answer to this. You’re right. We have had great examples of solutions to live beautifully, affordably, in a suburban setting, and they never seem to catch on, and I wonder why.
AB: You’re pointing out a very interesting question. The problem is, predicting the future always gets you in trouble. We’re already ... I have some personal anecdotal evidence, that the result of the changes in technology, are finally eating away at the logic of building more suburban office buildings, for instance. The same is beginning to be true, as you begin to see the traditional notion of the family, two parents and
AB: Money. EJ: They start out affordable. AB: People talk about the fact, why is that architecture never figured out how to mass produce houses, the way they mass produce cars? They did. It was called stick construction. It was called balloon frame, and all the other racks of things you can find at Home Depot, let alone in a Sweets catalog. It is componentized mass production, that combines with one of the most rigorous and profitable allocations of capital anywhere in our system which is – home building.
“We have had great examples of solutions to live beautifully, affordably, in a suburban setting, and they never seem to catch on, and I wonder why.” two kids, fall away. The American birthrate is below replacement, but you also are seeing economic realities, in which adult children live at home. Aging populations which mean that people wanting to ... The amount of friends that I’ve had in the last couple of years, who have quit their jobs or moved to take care of aging parents, is astonishing to me. What kind of facilities do we have for them? My mother in law, she’s eighty-seven, and she is damned if she’s ever going to go into any kind of assistive care, or any kind of anything, and so she sits in a single-family home, which is ill suited to her needs, but that’s her place. How is that going to look in the future, and will people still have that sense about it?
EJ: Development. It’s astonishing when you look at how much money can be made, and how costs have been squeezed out of the physical part of it to the point where it’s approaching a purely financial market. In Los Angeles, they refer to the whole thing as fire insurance real estate. AB: The little nugget of that that’s actual construction, has been reduced to its barest, barest bones. If architecture wants to enhance that, and to argue that it needs to be a bigger part of that financial picture, it’s going to have to figure out how to make that argument about what’s so big about it. EJ: I think it’s far more complex than we’re giving it credit for, too. AB: Absolutely.
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EJ: That home that’s been reduced to the most common denominator, and perfect
in a financial model. You can’t improve on it to make more of a profit. It’s down to where it needs to be, but it’s protected by the real estate community. It’s protected by the banking community. It’s certainly protected by the building community. Then, it gets protected by people buying it as fast as they can build it.
millennia, and luxuriate in telling students and showing students what’s so great about it. Then I look around, what we have now, and I just want to scream. I want to figure out how we can make that better.
AB: Maybe this is where we can improve. We can look at how realtors frame people’s opinion about what house they need to buy, and what to look for, and what’s the latest thing. To me, it just seems like it’s all status.
Edward (Eddie) Jones, AIA, Principal, Jones Studio and his brother and business partner Neal, were raised in the oil fields of Oklahoma. From a very early age the two brothers aspired to be architects and share a studio. Eddie moved to Arizona in 1973 after graduating from Oklahoma State University. He founded Jones Studio on June 8, 1979, three months before his 30th birthday. Jones Studio is a mid-sized architecture, interior design, public art and planning firm based in Phoenix, with a strong reputation for designing beautiful and resilient buildings for the Sonoran desert climate. Recent projects include the Mariposa Land Port of Entry in Nogales, AZ, which was awarded the 2016 AIA Institute National Honor Award for Architecture.
“...the most luxurious item you can possibly buy is space.” EJ: At the same time, back in the ‘50s when this was really getting legs, at least those neighborhoods had individually identifiable homes, even if they were little cracker boxes. You knew which one was yours, without having to see an address.
Aaron Betsky is a critic, curator, educator, lecturer, and writer about architecture and design. He is the dean of the School of Architecture at Taliesin. Betsky has written numerous monographs on the work of late 20th century architects, including I.M. Pei, UN Studio, Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Inc., Zaha Hadid and MVRDV, as well as treatises on aesthetics, psychology and human sexuality as they pertain to aspects of architecture.
AB: Now, in fact the first time I ever saw it in my life, was here in Scottsdale. A whole neighborhood built at one time with the same color stucco, and the same color tile roof. I thought “who’s going to buy that?” Oh, was I ever wrong. You know, people get what they deserve. EJ: Well, I wouldn’t agree with that. Here’s one of the interesting dynamics, I think which is that the things that used to be worth buying, investing in, have become so automated and become so cheap, that from appliances to materials, that the thing that is the most luxurious item you can possibly buy is space. AB: The maximization of space becomes the major prerogative. It’s true all the way from the mansion, which is the thinnest possible shell, around the biggest possible space. Shell in a limited lot, pushes all the way to the boundary, all the way to an airplane seat, where you pay eight to ten times as much to get a few inches or a foot more, a square foot more of space, for a limited amount of time. Space is just about the most expensive thing we have. Space used to be defined in acreages, as opposed to square footages of interior space. EJ: Exactly, so I think that’s part of the logic of it is, it’s all about the maximization of space, which makes architecture thinner, and thinner, and thinner. AB: You don’t have any ideas yet on how to adapt to that. EJ: I certainly think that high modernism and its pursuit of a transparent architecture that maximizes space, should offer us some clues in that respect. I just love architecture. I sit there on my screen, looking at the great architecture that we’ve produced over the
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dwelling and designing in the salt river valley
supreme. I think also of the recent crusade against the pensive facial expressions of celebrities walking down the street caught in their own thoughts. Dwelling as thinking and dwelling as place both have an element of fixation to them. When we are devastated by troubles (‘in a bad place’) we tend to dwell on nothing else. Heidegger writes of four components to our dwelling, translated as the fourfold: we dwell on the earth as mortals, under the sky attuned to the seasons, before divinities, and with each other2. I could not do justice to the language in the essay and will not try except to say that with the fourfold he writes of dwelling as a kind of “sparing
Patrick Daly, AIA, NCARB
Building, Dwelling, Thinking, an essay by Martin Heidegger from the late 1940s, was written amid Germany’s severe post-war housing shortage. The recurring topics were often intangible: being, authenticity, the nature of things, poetry, and our phenomenal experience of the world. In Building, Dwelling, Thinking, Heidegger ruminates on these two questions: “What is it to dwell? How does building belong to dwelling?”1 Heidegger writes that to be human is to dwell, which could be thought of as an amalgam of living, thinking, and building. Here in the U.S. we often use dwell only in a negative sense. If something unfortunate happens we are advised ’not to dwell on it’ or to disallow something to fully consume our thoughts. Or we use dwell as a synonym for linger or fixate as in ‘we should discuss x but we shouldn’t dwell on it’. Building codes often use the term ‘dwellings’ neutrally in the sense of ‘places where people live that can take many forms’. That we only use dwell in a negative or neutral way is unfortunate. We use it casually or think in terms of what might consume our capacity to dwell but less about the wondrous and quotidian aspects of how we dwell. What follows is a simplified interpretation of Heidegger’s response to the first question: What is it to dwell?
1. Martin Heidegger, translation and introduction by Albert Hofstadter. Poetry, Language, Thought. Harper & Row, 1971 p. 143 2. Heidegger. p. 148 3. Heidegger. p. 147 4. Heidegger. p. 147 5. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report: Part 1 – Point in Time Estimates of Homelessness in the U.S.
What does it mean to dwell here in the Valley of the Sun? and preserving”3. This is the fundamental peaceful nature of dwelling. Dwelling is the simple desire of mankind to live peacefully and to allow others to do the same. We attain to that condition with mixed results.
6. Heidegger. p. 159 7. Victor Farias, translation and introduction by Albert Hofstadter. Heidegger and Nazism. Temple University Press, 1989
Now let’s consider Heidegger’s second question: “How does building belong to dwelling?”4 The other sense of ‘dwelling’, the dwelling place, covers every variation of home: house, apartment, mansion, houseboat, hut, etc. We bring our tendency to dwell into our dwelling place and we always remember the places where we first learned to dwell. But Heidegger claims no distinction between the two. He unpacks the etymological roots of the words dwell (buan) and building (bauen) and finds something beyond a connection between dwelling and building: “to build is really to dwell.” We dwell within our place of dwelling. We think about the things most important and meaningful to us in the place most conducive to our focused thought. Home is where our dwelling is rooted; a place where we can simply be ourselves. We dwell at home as we can nowhere else. The constancy of our home provides the space for us to dwell. Dwellings do not merely occupy a site but are fixed on them, whether it’s rural Montana or midtown Manhattan.
...to be human is to dwell, which could be thought of as an amalgam of living, thinking, and building. We dwell as we work, travel, cook, clean, design, build, walk, do laundry, sit, and make plans, but dwelling is not a mere activity. Here in the Salt River Valley we seem to spend a good deal of time dwelling as we drive. We ponder our lives and our place in the world, our families and struggles, our defeats and victories. We dwell easily, often without acknowledging it as such. Americans seem allergic to the idea of appearing to be thinking about our place in the cosmos. Two forces work against it: a work and activity ethic that values doing over thinking, and a false association of pensiveness with vulnerability. I think of Facebook where achievements, amazing weekend activities, extraordinary travel, fine dining, and easy family relations reign
The capacity to dwell is a form of privilege. Those fortunate to attain dwelling have their place in the world both literally and figuratively. Roughly 10,000 people in Arizona do not5. Architectural essays so often acknowledge shelter as the starting point of building, our third skin. That we attain dwelling reframes that. Shelter is necessary and sufficient for survival, but necessary and insufficient for dwelling. The irony of an architect citing this essay is that Heidegger explicitly states that dwelling transcends notions of style or building technique.
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What does it mean to dwell here in the Valley of the Sun? If the primacy of dwelling is universal for mankind and the particulars are secondary, then what does this have to do with dwelling in this valley, in the Sonoran Desert? Can this be connected to us, here, in this place? Heidegger was concerned with authenticity, and locality. His life
and his focus was never far from the Black Forest and his rural roots.
on this path would be the question: what is the state of dwelling in our precarious age? … The real plight of dwelling is indeed older than the world wars with their destruction, older also than the increase of the earth’s population and the condition of the industrial workers. The real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell”6.
Some years ago my wife and I shared an apartment close to a golf course; the complex had a frivolous name and the buildings were unremarkable. Many things about living there are difficult to remember now but at night from the golf course we could hear the sounds of coyotes howling, and sometimes the sounds of a lively party at the club house. These things located our apartment in the West, in Arizona, in the Valley, and penetrated through the inauthenticity of the ‘apartment community’.
Philosophers and architects share an affinity for fundamental questions, with differences in scope and purpose. Those who design dwellings thoughtfully and authentically can do so only because they dwell. They extend their own capacities for dwelling to the space needs and wants of others. The best of these buildings question our assumptions about how we dwell. Learning to dwell and renewing architecture are both perpetual and necessary projects. Designers confront the default preferences of their day and must find a path between reception and rejection. The designers who find ways to challenge our default thinking find that new path, or perhaps renew neglected paths. Unique buildings stir unique thoughts just as we behave differently in different clothes. Our third skin is just as important as our second for our survival, and our capacity to dwell.
Just as we are born with hearing but must learn spoken language we are born to dwell
The desert seems to hold a different way of dwelling in a way that regions with four distinct seasons do not. The sky we dwell under is a monolithic blue canvas for much of the year until it produces a fearsome drama. Under cloud cover the typical bright contrast yields to nuance and subtlety and transforms the day.
AUTHOR’s NOTE: Heidegger publicly supported Hitler in the 1930s and was a member of the Nazi party from 1933 to 19457. Regarding his party membership Heidegger’s own self-assessment was that it was “the biggest stupidity of my life” (Farias), but from 1945 until his death in 1976 he never publicly acknowledged the holocaust (Farias). His own notebooks, some recently translated into English, reveal that he was anti-Semitic decades after World War II ended. I will not offer excuses on his behalf. I believe that his best philosophy stands above these flaws in thinking and character but understand and respect the views of those who feel otherwise.
but must still learn how. The desert seems to hold a different way of dwelling in a way that regions with four distinct seasons do not. The sky we dwell under is a monolithic blue canvas for much of the year until it produces a fearsome drama. Under cloud cover the typical bright contrast yields to nuance and subtlety and transforms the day. Modest tree cover allows distant views of South Mountain, Sierra Estrella, Camelback. Winter snow can be a full-body experience: a battle against the elements requiring energy and motivation. Our summer heat requires patience, forbearance, and fortitude.
Patrick Daly, AIA is from Queens New York and discovered architecture through a class in the art department of Queens College. As a youth he often travelled to France with his family and reluctantly visited numerous cathedrals and châteaux not realizing their powerful effects. Patrick found his passion for architecture late, graduating from the University of Houston School of Architecture in 2000. He took some philosophy classes along the way with particular interest in stoicism and existentialism. He believes that the best and most fundamental questions are unanswerable but worth the effort. He is an Associate Director and Senior Architect in the Office of the University Architect at Arizona State University and has been honored to help initiate some of ASU’s most significant recent projects. He and his wife Meredith dwell in Phoenix.
Do we design buildings with dwelling in mind? Not just the obvious concern for dwelling that comes with designing a home but also perhaps a laboratory research building where a graduate student, far from home, can see Camelback Mountain in the distance. The vast majority of buildings in the world are in furtherance of our dwelling. Yet I have painfully observed architects compelled to plead for and justify humanistic design elements to balance the mechanism of ‘function’. All of us dwell but very few of us speak openly of it. Heidegger ends Building, Dwelling, Thinking with an impassioned plea:
“We are attempting to trace in thought the nature of dwelling. The next step
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a home is more than a house Sarah Levi
From the very first time I stepped foot in the David Wright House for a holiday gathering with my family to the last tour I gave to starry-eyed visitors marveling at this unique building, I’ve always felt a special connection with this residence. For me, it wasn’t just a house that my great-great-grandfather Frank Lloyd Wright built for his beloved son David and daughter-in-law Gladys in 1952. Mr. Wright designed and built many houses across the country, where many families enjoyed his genius and minimalistic approach to building, but the vision he brought to life at the base of Camelback Mountain was more than just a house. This was my home. A home is more than just a place where a family resides. It is the feeling of
* All photography, and images are the property of the author unless otherwise noted.
Staring out the windows into the sea of citrus groves known as ‘David’s Lawn’ while soaking up the scent of the trees was one of my favorite memories of being at the house. warmth that overcomes you when you step inside, the bright memories of spending time with family across decades, the jolt of inspiration as you find a new detail to explore. I’ve lived in different houses in different cities with different cultures across the country, but there is only one place I feel is my home. When my great-grandfather wrote to his father in 1950 to request the construction of a home for his family, Phoenix was a very different place. The Southwest had yet to hit a population boom in the post-World War II era and the urban landscape we now associate with the Valley was still decades away. In Arcadia, citrus groves stretched as far as the eye could see from Camelback Mountain with
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estate-style houses just beginning to pop up in the area. As Frank Lloyd Wright began his work and planning on the project, he knew he wanted to create a house that fell in-sync with what Arcadia represented and felt like at that exact moment in time. This wouldn’t be a house that would fit in New York or San Francisco; his plan for the house was entitled “How To Live In The Southwest”. To this very day, stepping on the estate property and seeing the house is to be transported back in time to mid-century Phoenix. While Arcadia has evolved quite dramatically, the house hasn’t been changed or renovated in 64 years. It isn’t just the cabinets or furniture that remain; it’s the same feeling of home that hits me every time
I walk inside. One of the finest features of the house is its connection with nature and the surrounding area. Tucked in between Camelback Mountain to the northwest and the Papago Peaks to the southeast, Wright designed the master bedroom to give David and Gladys a perfect view of both landmarks upon waking up each morning. The full-length windows in front of the Romeo and Juliet balcony and those that surround the rest of the house allowed natural light to soak through at any time of the day, rendering a unique glow into every room of the house. Staring out the windows into the sea of citrus groves known as ‘David’s Lawn’ while soaking up the scent of the trees was one of my favorite memories of being at the house. I’m often asked if Frank Lloyd Wright’s belief that to live in the house is to be one with nature is true. As I remember those moments gaping at our surrounding area, I know that I had no stronger bond with nature than when I saw what the house was a part of. My connection with the desert landscape, towering mountains and endless groves is as strong today as it was then because of the special moments I shared with my family there. The wide, open living room space was designed to welcome every family member in for playing games, singing and dancing around the March Balloons rug. The shapes and colors of the rug inspired all of the Wright children to think big as we played instruments with Grandpa and Grandma Wright or watched movies projected
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F1+2 Exterior rendering - property of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
Sharing the house with the thousands of visitors has given me the opportunity to let others experience what my family and I have been a part of and feel the same inspiration that I grew up with. Each person that takes the time to remark on what a marvelous house my great-great-grandfather built is a reminder of how important it is to appreciate the beauty of architecture and the Southwest. The architecture and desert landscape certainly make it a stunning house, the building many know as Frank Lloyd Wright’s last residential masterpiece. But for me, it is the memories of my grandparents and family spending time together, the smell of citrus, the sound of music and laughter, the peace of mind I still get here that make it much more than a house. It is the inspiration to create art and memories with the ones you love in the city you’ll never want to leave. It is much more than a house; it is my home.
Sarah Levi, descendant of world-renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, was the first scholar-in-residence of the David Wright House. Ms. Levi, like her family, is a devoted advocate of the art community. She spent three years as Vice President of Artlink, a nonprofit organization dedicated to linking local artists, business and the public to better understand and appreciate the emerging Phoenix arts culture. Ms. Levi continues to work closely with the David & Gladys Wright House Foundation to promote its educational mission and inspire the next generation of artists.
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on the concrete block wall. Even for those who didn’t grow up visiting and living there, my greatgrandparents’ house is still a magical experience that inspires us to look at the Southwest in a different light. Seeing the faces of children light up as they stand on the Echo Stone in the middle of the courtyard and hear their voices boom back towards them is an experience that will never get old. And for those who have lived in Phoenix for their entire lives and only recently had the opportunity to see what Frank Lloyd Wright created, it is a simple yet powerful reminder of not only his genius but what our community had been so many years ago.
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ocotillo
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Earlier in 1928 Frank Lloyd Wright had received a request from a former employee, Albert Chase McArthur, for permission to use Wright’s patented “knit block” construction method. McArthur and his two brothers were contemplating the design and construction of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel with the Biltmore Corporation of Los Angeles. The Arizona Biltmore Hotel was sited south of the Phoenix mountain called Vainom Do’ag by the Tohono O’odham people of the Sonoran Desert. Albert Chase McArthur had worked for Frank Lloyd Wright some twenty years before in Wright’s Oak Park, Illinois, studio. The Arizona Baltimore Hotel project was most
Brian A. Spencer, AIA
On November 28, 1928 Frank Lloyd Wright wrote to Frederick Goodkin of Winnetka, Illinois Dear Frederick, A long detour, violent, troublesome, expensive, yes, horribly wasteful, of the past four years is ended….. Truly, the previous years had been brutal in Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal and professional life. Taking all in account, most self inflicted, it is amazing that Frank Lloyd Wright was able to stand tall and continue his work as well as pursuing his penchant for life itself. Frank Lloyd Wright lost his Wisconsin home, Taliesin, to the Bank of Wisconsin on September 6, 1926, for a $ 25,000.00 mortgage in arrears. He was in a brutally contested divorce from Maude Miriam Noel as she filed a $ 100,000.00 lawsuit against him for alienation of affection. He and Olgivanna Milanov Hinzenberg were arrested in Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota and jailed (spending two nights in the Hennepin county jail) for violating the federal Mann Act. And, work in his studio was scant at best.
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1 Frank Lloyd Wright’s spelling of his Chandler desert camp as “O-c-a-t-i-l-la” and variations of the phonetic pronunciation of ocotillo (or the candlestick) has been discussed in recent publications. I believe it is the phonetic pronunciation, which varies by individual, that was the root of the reason that Wright spelled it in the manner he did. The hand drafted text entitled “Arizona,” dated June 1929, has both ocotillo and saguaro misspelled in the general text, as well as for the name of the camp. There is no underlying notion to asymmetry in the spelling; Wright was too precise and prided himself on the essence of the true nature of an idea. The camp is described in terms of the “cactus”*; this was his intent, and this was romance in itself. “O-c-a-t-i-l-l-a” is a mere chance of phonetic misspelling. *Ocotillo is a desert shrub, not a cactus.
* All photography Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives used by permission
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2 Frank Lloyd Wright handwritten note for a telegram to Dr. Alexander Chandler January 1, 1929. (FLlWFA)
F1 Mountains behind Arizona Biltmore F2 Dec. 28, 1928 (L to R) Klumb the German, Karfic the Czech, Engineer from Chicago & Kastner the German partially seated at front.
likely the largest project that McArthur had tackled and he felt that Frank Lloyd Wright could add to the success of the project. The McArthurs offered Wright a contract to act as a consultant on the hotel design, to provide six renderings and to be on site in Phoenix for construction consultations. As Frank Lloyd Wright was completing his contract with McArthur on the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, he met with Dr. Alexander Chandler for a two day discussion regarding a new resort hotel, with a visit to the proposed site, about 11 miles west of the town of Chandler, Arizona. The story of “Ocotillo” begins to unfold following their meeting, when Wright sent a letter to Dr. Chandler on March 30, 1928 with the scope of his architectural services and detailing the textile block system he wished to use. On April 30th Wright wrote Dr. Chandler a second letter, noting he was free to begin design drawings of the San Marcos in the Desert hotel, as its scheme already taking shape … ... that to start any actual building experiment such as I contemplated when I thought of camping down near the building site 2.
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Upon Dr. Chandler’s desire to move ahead on the San Marcos in the Desert project, the need to build a working staff became apparent. Wright began answering letters
from draftsmen who had made inquiries of opportunities to work with him at Taliesin through the summer and fall of 1928. On October 31, 1928, Wright responded to several in short letters requesting…
by Mrs. Smoot, the wife of the rancher just west of the building site.
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Won’t you be so good enough to send me some of your drawings and sketches, so I may look them over? It is possible that I may need your help 3.
The change to the desert climate, although cold at night in the San Tan Mountain range, was a tremendous change for the group. They had left Taliesin and Spring Green (Wisconsin) with temperatures ranging from –25 degrees on January 7th to a high of +24 degrees on Friday, January 11th.
Letters were sent off to Henry Klumb in St. Louis, George Kastner and Cy Jahnke in Milwaukee, Donald Walker and James Yee in Chicago and Merrill Nusbaum in Cleveland.
The idea of camping at the site had been seeded in 1928. In early January 1929, in a hand-jotted note possibly for a telegram, Wright questioned Dr. Chandler on the availability of housing,
Those chosen to join Wright began to gather at Taliesin with the arrival of George Kastner November 20th along with Donald Walker and Cy Jahnke about the same time. Wright sent off a telegram to Heinrich Klumb on January 5th, 1929…
…we are fifteen office and selves – would need both houses and perhaps another and a well lighted place to work in. Can we find such or would we better build sightly (sic) camp of wood and canvas on suitable site somewhere and all live and work there. Will be moving your way by motor in few days 8.
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Would you come to Taliesin for interview prepared to stay if satisfactory 4. Vladimir Karfic’s November 23rd letter of inquiry also prompted a reply by Wright. Vladimir Karfik had advised Wright that he was earning $ 60.00 per week working for Holabird & Root while James Yee wrote that he was supporting his mother, brother and sister working for Z. Erol Smith at $ 125.00 per month. Obviously, recognizing the expense that would be associated with transporting and keeping staff and families on a cross-country sojourn, Wright advised those who had inquired… ...and I am not in the habit of paying beginners in my work, as I find that it takes a year or two to make a man serviceable 5.
F3 Frank Lloyd Wright in his studio at Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin 1928
The Wright’s: Wright, Olgivanna, daughters Svetlana and Iovanna, along with the draftsmen, left Spring Green, Wisconsin the week of January 14th, as reported in the Tuesday, January 15th, Baraboo Daily News and confirmed in Spring Green’s Weekly Home News the following week. All traveled the 1,665 mile trip from Taliesin to Chandler via automobile except George Kastner, who took the train. The Westons followed later in the week in a new Studebaker sedan that Will Weston purchased for the trip.
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F4 January 1929 Taliesin - Day before departure. Kastner on left, Karfic on right F5 January 1929 Taliesin - Day before departure
Karfik didn’t hesitate, responding… The question of salary is really irrelevant to me as long as I get equivalent for it in any form 6. …then sent a telegram the following month that he would be arriving from Chicago on the afternoon of January 11th. Neither Nusbaum nor Yee were asked to join the group. On the household side, Mrs. Clara Daigle, who previously worked for the Wrights at Taliesin, was living in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, when she answered their letter to join them for the Arizona project… Nothing would please me more than to go back to that beautiful place and work at anything you thought fit to put me at 7. Emma Louise Tagatz of Germania, Wisconsin, joined the family-group as nursemaid for Iovanna, the Wright’s youngest daughter, then three years old. Will and Anna Weston were asked to join the group, as was their daughter, Nettie Weston, Wright’s secretary. Will Weston was to be the field manager for the construction of San Marcos in the Desert and Anna would assume responsibility of the kitchen and cooking for staff. The Weston’s son Marcus, then in the eighth grade, was naturally taken along to Arizona in order to continue school in Chandler. Both Marcus Weston and Svetlana Lloyd Wright attended school in Chandler and were taken to and from town each day
3 Frank Lloyd Wright letters sent to potential draftsmen-architects October 31, 1928. (FLlWFA) 4 Frank Lloyd Wright letter sent to Heinrich (Henry) Klumb January 5, 1929. (FLlWFA)
8 Frank Lloyd Wright handwritten note (possibly for a telegram) to Dr. Alexander Chandler undated. (FLlWFA) 9 Heinrich (Henry) Klumb. “Wright the Man”. Courtesy of Richard E. Klumb, P.E.
5 Frank Lloyd Wright letter sent to James Yee dated November 16, 1928. (FLlWFA) 6 Vladimir Karfik letter sent to Frank Lloyd Wright dated November 23, 1928. (FLlWFA) 7 Mrs. Clara Daigle letter sent to Frank Lloyd Wright dated October 10, 1928. (FLlWFA)
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The first night in Chandler, January 20th, was spent on cots in the tight quarters of a little house, provided by Dr. Chandler. The following day the troupe visited the site on which San Marcos in the Desert was to rise. Wright chose a small hill with a full view of the hotel site as the location on which to build the group’s working and living quarters. Heinrich Klumb noted that sketch layouts for their desert shelter were made that evening on improvised furnishings. The next day studs, boards, battens, rafters, white canvas and other needed items were bought and taken to the site. “Ocotillo” was measured and laid-out January 23rd with the first cottage going up January 24th. As Heinrich Klumb noted in his essay “Wright the Man” Working from sunrise to sunset, “Camp Ocotillo” as it was named, came into existence. There it was, rising overnight, sitting dignified, human in scale, on a rocky rise of the desert floor, interwoven into the Arizona landscape, belonging to it, in form interwoven with the geometric triangular-shaped mountains and rock formations, sparkling in the sun with its white canvas roof surfaces, rose-painted lumber walls and the coral-painted flaps providing ventilation, arousing a joyful thankfulness in being alive to everyone who came upon it 9. George Kastner’s notes at the time shed light on Wright’s thought and delight of camping out
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You see, the camp idea is making furor. Mr. Wright evidently planned that all very carefully, or rather calculated its effects. On its appearance it was a matter of sudden decision, with the plans quickly sketched on a piece of wrapping paper. But I know, ever since his first intention of coming down here, that he contemplated on the camp and that he even made some trial sketches that very time. It is, in fact, a very spectacular view, this camp, and much spectacular, a phenomenon. For as far as I know, no architect ever did something like this and it is undoubtedly singular in its existence. Give something like that to the magazines with the tactile support of pictures of the picturesque place and it necessarily must make
(an) impression and is apt to be hailed as a splendid idea, enterprise – success. Well, it does its trick…it must make whoopee with the public. A splendid advertisement for both, Mr. W. and Dr. Chandler. Both draw their benefit from this idea…10
11 George Kastner “Excerpts from letters to Elfie” dated February 4, 1929. (Spencer collection)
Once camp was established it was about four weeks time before all settled down and work began in earnest on development of the construction drawings for San Marcos in the Desert. Even though Wright prepared only six drawings for the Arizona Biltmore Hotel under his agreement with Albert Chase MacArthur, he did visit the hotel construction site to see his “knit-block” construction in practice. George Kastner noted one such venture to the Biltmore site on February 4th, 1929. We arrived at the Biltmore. The Westons in one car; four boys, myself included in the other. To gain entrance, however, one had to have a pass. Mr. MacArthur strictly prohibited any exception. Two men with good-sized sticks were guarding the gate. Mr. Wright had called from Chandler but had found that Mr. MacArthur was out…Well, there we were. But we could not get in…an hour and a half later, Mr. Wright himself and the family arrived… We went around. I called Mr. W’s attention to a lighting fixture. He stopped a second, looked, turned around again and all I heard was “rotten”! - it truly did not fit into the scheme because all fixtures are built-in, the lights being concealed by glass blocks instead of concrete blocks. Well, there he was, his majesty! “Rotten” Short and snappy!
10 George Kastner “Excerpts from letters to Elfie” dated January 30, 1929. (Spencer collection)
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12 Author interview with George Cronin (Taliesin August 1929 to November 1930) June 21, 1982.
F6 concrete block model in center of camp
Donald Walker was assigned to drawings for the Richard Lloyd Jones house and St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery as well. Francis Sullivan from Canada arrived in March and a local draftsman, Will “Cueball” Kelly, came to support the work as needed. George Kastner’s notes tell of the desperate situation of Francis Sullivan who had earlier been associated with Wright on projects in Canada: The newcomer, Sullivan, was a sick man when he arrived. He had to flee head-over-heels from Chicago, as a result of his divorce and alimony trouble. He became sick more and more and could not work, but at the same time he had to stay in camp, he could not go to a hospital because he did not own a cent…Monday he was…ready to be delivered to the
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F7 Ocotillo plan F8 April, 1929. Iovana Lloyd Wright at center
We soon left; with a grand gesture, of course. – “Boys, you all follow me now!” Expectantly we did. In an elegant curve, three cars turned around and flit away. First straight, then a turn, then another turn, and soon we had made dozens of turns and more. The sun went down with southern brilliancy. – More turns. We had left the concrete road behind us and the dust was flying up thick…for times we could not even see the taillights of the car ahead of us – which was Mr. Wright’s…when we had started to go, we all knew that we were to be shown a real snappy shortcut on our way home from Phoenix, or, maybe even, that we would have supper somewhere in a fine place, all in Paps style…It was dark for a long time, when the car ahead stopped to ask for information from a farmer. Then again; turn after turn. I believe we turned every square mile. That’s about the way roads intersect hereabouts. And then some more stoppings and askings…Well, we arrived at the camp,
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“There it was, rising overnight, sitting dignified, human in scale, on a rocky rise of the desert floor, interwoven into the Arizona landscape” however hopeless it had looked, and though it was very late. But, of course, papa had never lost his way! He was but experimenting, trying to find out what the roads would be. 11 Other side trips taken by the crew included ventures to Casa Grande, visiting a gold mine of a Mexican miner and travel up the winding Apache Trail. Back at camp Henry Klumb worked on the plans for the San Marcos in the Desert hotel while George Kastner produced the construction drawings for the variety of concrete blocks.12 Vladimir Karfic devoted the majority of his time to development of drawings for St. Mark’s Tower in New York City and was especially proud of the aerial perspective.
hospital. When he finally left for Phoenix…old man Kelly accompanied him. Sadly, Sullivan passed away at the Eucalyptus Sanatorium in Phoenix on April 4th fighting tuberculosis. Lloyd Wright (Wright’s eldest son from Los Angeles) joined the group during March and April to illustrate perspectives and watercolor renderings of San Marcos in the Desert. 30
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During March, a similar camp of horizontal board and batten was designed and constructed for Chandler Heights Citrus, Inc. The April 18th Chandler Arizonan reported that… The new citrus tract lodge of Chandler Heights Citrus, Inc., a dozen unique summer houses of odd Egyptian style, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, architect of San Marcosin-the-Desert, is completed and ready for occupancy and use. The novel ‘village’ is electrically lighted, and includes a residence for W.R. Klink, manager, and Mrs. Klink; six sleeping quarters, for visitors or ‘locals’; two offices; a recreation hall, a dining hall and a kitchen building. Over the last two Mrs. Wade Bandy, just arrived with Mr. Bandy from Norco, Calif., where she operated the Norco grill, presides. The color scheme of the citrus tract camp was a flat green in general with accentuations of darker green in the triangles. George Kastner described it as… much more complicated than ours. Marcus Weston recalled visiting the site with his father during construction as Will Weston had to explain the roof framing to the local builders, as it was more complex than they had expected. George Kastner was as much an observer as an architect. A telling little story is included in his “Excerpts from letters to Elfie 13 ” which he titled “The Captain”: A little more than half a week ago the weather became bad, we had rain and a heavy gale blew from the west. His (Wright’s) personal quarters at the camp are located at the southwest corner of the lay-out and had to stand the unbroken attack of the elements. It is not very difficult to suspect that this location had its reason. And it has. Atop of the hill with a beautiful view towards the south and west with a fine exposure normally and the largest saguaro group in its immediate vicinity, crowning the spot, this was certainly the point and was selected to serve the chief ’s needs. Spectacularity goes always first with him. So the storm came up. The day following we talked about it how well the houses stood up against the elements without damage. He emphasized the storm’s severity ‘a 30 mile gale, at least’, (but one can deduct quite a good percentage and the result will still meet the truth). ‘And this corner right here got it the worst’. Well, he is used to laurels and helps himself to them in case they are not offered, as so many other times before where I observed it. I replied to him that he had the choice of location and did not need to be uncomfortable by the wind if he just would have had his quarters erected on the east side of the hill, this location being more sheltered. And here he showed his splendid mental constitution. Without hesitation he put forth in unexcelled self-assurance the brilliant words ‘The worst is the captain’s place’. And that gave me the rest. So I was quiet 14.
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F9 February 3, 1929 Arizona Biltmore Gold Room under construction
16 Henry (Heinrich) Klumb. “Wright, the man”. Courtesy of Richard E. Klumb, P.E. 17 courtesy of Richard E. Klumb, P.E., son of Henry (Heinrich) and Else Klumb
Henry Klumb aptly described the experience of “Ocotillo” in an essay “Wright, the Man” All this achieved with bare hands, locally available materials and inexpensive hand tools. Here we experienced in a couple of weeks Frank Lloyd Wright’s principle applied. A lesson to be taught without teaching, taking architecture from its pedestal and putting it to a simple task in solving a minor, immediate and pressing need to provide a temporary shelter for work and living, all accomplished within limited economic means, with low cost materials and, of course, willing hands. Where are the architects today whose dignity would not suffer when called upon to use their hands for menial tasks? This was not below Frank Lloyd Wright’s dignity. At the age of sixty he worked side by side with us, showed us how to hammer, how to saw with least exertion, how to coordinate action with rhythm, or to rake patterns on a gravel path with a twist of the wrist. 16
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F10 March 24, 1929 visit to Roosevelt Lake via Apache Trail
From the June 1929 handwritten draft of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Arizona” the following lines:
F11 Chandler Citrus Camp 1, April 1929 F12 Staff in Ocotillo Drafting Room cabin FLlWA
So ever well-designed Ephemera may be no less important than buildings we call ‘permanent’. I think we pay to (sic) slight attention to making ‘slight’ buildings beautiful, to (sic) much usually to make them left in this changing period of our own relation to the soil. Why may not box-boards, battens and canvas catch and reflect divinity of idea quite as well as this
13 “Elfie” was Elfie Farber, a Milwaukee watercolorist and friend of George Kastner’s.
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14 George Kastner “Excerpts from letters to Elfie” dated January 30, 1929. (Spencer collection) 15 Pedro W. Guerrero is the father of Pedro E. (Pete) Guerrero, photographer. It was this small instance that peaked father Guerrero’s interest in Frank Lloyd Wright and ten years later suggested to his son (a budding photographer) that he visit Wright at Taliesin West, starting a lifelong relationship. Conversation with Pete Guerrero July 19, 1999. F12
One other construction adjacent to the “Ocotillo”/ San Marcos in the Desert hotel site should be noted. There was a horizontal board and batten billboard announcing:
great Sahuaro (sic), standing there erect – maybe six centuries old. There beside it is tiny little hollyhock blooming for three days in a crevice of the burnt rocks. Reflecting the same idea no less…’Ocatilla’ an architect’s camp is Ephemera. To last a few years…to drop a seed or two. 17
This is the site of San Marcos in the Desert plans now being completed by Frank Lloyd Wright More than likely, the signage was constructed by Will Weston and painted by Pedro W. Guerrero, the only prominent sign painter in the valley and who knew Dr. Chandler through other work15. 32
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More ephemeral than ephemera, “Ocotillo” was transitional. It lent another ground for experiment with form and idea. But, “Ocotillo” was not a lone thought. Coupled with this hastily built desert camp were similar studies and projects for the Chandler Improvement Co. Citrus Workers Camp, the San Marcos Water Gardens Tourist Camp for Dr. Alexander Chandler, the Chicago Y.M.C.A. camp, not to mention
the desert camp for Ras El Bar, Damiette, Egypt. Nor was “Ocotillo” a passing thought in how Frank Lloyd Wright presented the idea of this temporary camp. As transitory as Wright described “Ocotillo,” it was a most important endeavor. “Ocotillo” provided an immediate accommodation as Wright’s family and the troupe of draftsmen settled into Arizona for development of the construction drawings for San Marcos in the Desert for Dr. Chandler and for oversight trips to Albert MacArthur’s new Arizona Biltmore Resort, then under construction. The desert camp was a much freer expression than the prairie houses of the Midwest or the concrete block houses of California. Wright discovered greater openness; natural light filtered through translucent canvas fabric and forms different from the horizontal line. With the construction of “Ocotillo” he also found the immediacy of design and construction of a project that he quickly used for publicity, even as other projects waned with the beginning of the Great Depression. Readily, Wright insured its survival with several pages in the August 1930 Architectural Record and, as he wrote in An Autobiography,
18 source unknown
22 Frank Lloyd Wright. hand drafted text “Arizona” dated June 1929. Courtesy of Richard E. Klumb, P.E.
19 Author interview with Marcus Weston, Architect. May 8, 1999.
Was “Ocotillo” ephemera? Maybe so in construction, but in its reality it became part of the soul and spirit of those who were there. And that same romance of architecture continues today as a new generation seeks out that sense of spirit that so enlightened this troupe of fifteen or so pioneers. Was “Ocotillo” transitory? No. Frank Lloyd Wright saw his little desert camp as a romantic freedom of idea and continued to refer to the journey to Arizona, the journey of organic architecture and the journey
20 Frank Lloyd Wright. hand drafted text “Arizona” dated June 1929. Courtesy of Richard E. Klumb, P.E. 21 George Weldon letter to Frank Lloyd Wright dated June 5, 1929. (FLlWFA) 22 Frank Lloyd Wright. hand drafted text “Arizona” dated June 1929. Courtesy of Richard E. Klumb, P.E. F13
…with no help or suggestion from me was published in German and Dutch magazines two months after it was nearly finished. 18 On June 2nd, just over a week from the time that Wright, family and draftsmen left “Ocotillo,” fire of unknown origin destroyed half the camp. George Weldon, the local caretaker, saved half the camp by taking a saw to the zigzag connecting walls. 19 A building lost, but an idea that continued to grow in many directions.
“At the age of sixty he [FLW] worked side by side with us, showed us how to hammer, how to saw with least exertion, how to coordinate action with rhythm, or to rake patterns on a gravel path with a twist of the wrist.” of change as elemental design:
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Especially here (read Arizona) you may see that never will these nature-expressions of life revert to monotony within the single type, but they will go on changing within it forever, until the type itself changes. The more change the greater “Success” apparently. The law of change being so essential to the fertility that is Life 22.
Why may not box-boards, battens and canvas catch and reflect divinity of idea quite as well as this great Sahuaro standing there erect – maybe six centuries old. There beside it is tiny little hollyhock blooming for three days in a crevice of the burnt rocks. Reflecting the same idea no less ...20 June 3rd George Weldon, the local caretaker for the camp, wrote to Wright back in Wisconsin with I am sorry to report that we had some hard luck yesterday – about 2:00 o’clock I discovered a fire in camp. I worked until 1:00 o’clock cleaning up and making the ice box and went down to the guest house and stayed there a little while and I heard a car on the West side and got up and went out and saw it was leaving. I didn’t see anything until about fifteen minutes later when I heard a fus (sic) and I went out there and saw the fire coming through the roof. I ate a cold dinner and had not had any fire there since breakfast. This car left and went West and the people that live east of the Lodge said the car went by just a few minutes before they saw the smoke, running very fast, and they didn’t think anything about it and didn’t get a description of it. The kitchen, dining room, cook’s dormitory and the Weston cottage burned, and the garage caught fire but we put it out.
Unfortunately, San Marcus of the Desert hotel was never constructed, succumbing to the woes of the Depression and other hindrances. However, the seeds of inspiration which filled the air during the design and building of the “Ocotillo” camp were carried on the winds, taking root at the foot of the McDowell Mountains in the form and function of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, where the box-board and batten, burnt colors of desert stone, canvas and spectacular building site nourish the growth of young minds for further exploration and innovations in design.
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Brian Spencer, AIA is a registered architect with 40 years of experience. He has worked domestically throughout the United States, as well as internationally in Europe and the Pacific Rim. He has lectured on Frank Lloyd Wright and American organic architecture in 22 countries. Spencer is an Honorary Professor at several Universities throughout Eastern Europe and was an adjunct faculty member of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture for over ten years. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Taliesin Fellows and served on the Board of Directors of the Frank Lloyd Wright Wisconsin Heritage Program.
F13 Second construction day F14 Lunch the first working day at camp
There was a sack of potatoes in the kitchen but I couldn’t find any potatoes after the fire and there were also a number of cooking utensils gone. They must have stolen them. I did not hear the car come but I heard them turn on the gas to go……
F15 San Marcos in the Desert billboard
Very truly yours, George Weldon 21
George Kastner’s watercolors, painted in late April, 1929, along with his extensive
photographic studies of the “Ocotillo” site, helped preserve the idea. Frank Lloyd Wright insured the importance of the idea in An Autobiography.
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comforts of home
allows one to dream in peace.” Imagine the simplest of dwellings from our deepest of daydreams, the Primitive Hut. A famous illustration by French artist Charles Eisen was used as the cover for 1755 edition of the Essai sur l’Architecture, by Abbe Marc-Antoine Laugier. The illustration is a much quoted and famous allegory for the meaning of architecture. Here a muse in the form of a woman who is resting upon the broken stone columns of the ancients, points to tree trunks which have been formed in the shape of a gabled house. Her young child student, just learning to walk, is also learning the fundamentals of architectural expression and the notion of what a house can be.
Rick Marencic, IIDA
“Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.” Laurie Anderson
Bachelard expands the idea of the Primitive hut as it exists in his mid-20th century contemporary time, here the idea of home is carefully expressed within the family living room, “…..only to listen the stove roaring in the evening stillness, while an icy wind blows against the house, to know that at the house’s center, in the circle of light shed by the lamp, he is living in the round house, the primitive hut of prehistoric man.”
The root idea of performance artist Laurie Anderson’s quote leaves us with the feeling of aspiration, of hope eternal and the living sense that around the next corner one’s dreams can come true. For many of us we link this aspiration to our sense of what a home is, what we want it to be and how that can constitute our own unique form of paradise on earth.
Protection from the elements, warmth and light are all key functional components we take for granted when establishing a benchmark for comfort in our modern homes. Consider that there are still many people alive today in the United States who have a parent or grandparent that did not have electricity, running water, or toilets in their home. In our own country, we witness homeless people who must search out shelters where they can have the benefit of using a toilet, a shower and warmth from a cold winters night. For those of us not homeless, one can visit a public event or concert at a city park to witness what it is like to use a porta-potty, as compared to our friendlier water closet. These simple facts continue remind us of the comfort we derive from technological inventions that we take for granted.
For many of us, our homes are a recluse from the busy world, a personal space where we are protected from the hustle and bustle of the outside world, a place of respite where we can recharge and rejuvenate is broadly expressed throughout contemporary media, from home focused magazines like Dwell, House and Garden to a multitude of
“...the house allows one to dream in peace.” cable home and life style cable channels that are available to watch. In short, these expressions are directly linked to fashion trends; their life-span is short and fluid. Home inspired television shows and web-sites such as Zillow capture a wide variety of approaches to living, from extreme luxury, to do it yourself fixer-uppers, to midcentury modern lovers, to the tiny house movement. The prevalence of Zillow’s real estate quest website and associated advertising links to home furnishings websites as Wayfair and All Modern, Bellacor, Hay Needle, and further advertising links to bricks and mortar predecessors and home lifestyle stores such as West Elm, Crate and Barrel present a simply overwhelming variety of choices for how to create, furnish and shape our home life. The current fashion trends reflect a rooted sense of home that is both present in our cultural history as well as our own personal lives. On an even deeper sub-conscious level the study of phenomenology and its focus on how we perceive the world around us can help us to better understand why we feel so strongly about the idea of home. In 1958, Gaston Bachelard, a leading mid-century philosopher and phenomenologist wrote Poetics of Space. Bachelard explored the roots of how we perceive the house, the idea of shelter and our deep connection to the objects within our homes by returning us to our oldest collective memories of dwelling. If we build walls and a roof to offer protection from the elements and we choose to live in this space then we have deliberately created the essential basis for the idea of a home. The sense of security we now have, offers us a chance to reflect, and relive memories of houses we used to live in as we always return to the house of our childhood and its warmth, “the house
In order to better understand our contemporary expectations for comfort we must examine various technological advances that took place in the 19th and early 20th centuries and how these changes affected our sense of culture and idea of what home means. Witold Rybczynski, in his book Short History of the Idea of Home, offers a succinct summary of important technological advances that have led to greater domestic comfort. In additional to the 18th century invention of the water closet, the 19th century invention of the gas light made the illumination of homes possible for the first time without the use of hundreds of candles. The quality of gas light was measurably brighter than candle, kerosene or whale oil lamp light allowing the homeowner to carefully examine their walls and experience first-hand the build-up of soot from wood and coal burning fireplaces and kitchens in corners that natural light could not penetrate. The presence of household odors and smoke from cooking and heating stoves also fed a larger concern of the time that fresh air was important to ones’ health.
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The invention of electricity followed by the electrical motor and the fan were innovations that had multiple benefits. The fan facilitated the movement of fresh air through the house and was especially critical in alleviating the discomfort of the predominately humid North American environment. The small motor that powered the fan was later used to invent some of the first electrical appliances including
the electric iron, the vacuum cleaner, and washing machine. For lighting, Edisons electric light bulb was much safer than natural gas light and was easier and cheaper to maintain over long periods of time. The construction of electrical generating stations grew rapidly and by the early 20th century the use of electricity in the home was a commonly accepted practice.
catalogue house made building your dream that much quicker and easier. Balloon framing and its successor, the more fire resistant platform framing allowed for a housing expansion across the United States that continued well into the mid twentieth century. The house became the attainable goal of the growing middle class. But in recent years fundamental economic changes and multiple recessions have magnified the ongoing dialectic between wealth and poverty, making the middle class dream of a home more difficult to obtain. It is somewhat ironic that while many of us aspire to the lifestyles of the rich and famous and their McMansions, we also feel
The late 19th century also saw the development of printed magazines which focused specifically upon home life, such as Ladies Home Journal. Many of the authors were women, who largely took a very pragmatic and scientific view of domesticity. Catherine Beecher (sister of abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe) was one of the leading contributors. She postulated that the popular English Victorian house was too large, it had too many rooms, too much furniture and required too many servants to maintain. Her 1841 work A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the use of Young Ladies at Home and at School; featured a number of plans for smaller homes, storage solutions and countertop configurations all offering tangible solutions to real life problems. Her ideas quickly caught on amongst highly educated and independently minded women, among them Mary Pattison, whose book Principles of Domestic Engineering argued that servants were not open to working with new technologies and because of this a new servant-less household needed to be developed, utilizing the new technologies available. Beecher and Pattison’s ideas were well ahead of the technological inventions and by 1900 only 90 percent of households had domestic servants.
...the idea of home regardless of size or cost can be repository for our larger aspirations for a better life. somewhat repulsed, that’s not for me, or it’s too ostentatious. While on the fringe of society many homeless have lost their jobs or former institutions that housed them and have been forced into living conditions, cardboard boxes and shopping carts that pre-date the 19th and 20th century technological innovations in domestic comfort. In 2015, Los Angeles artist Elivs Summers was inspired to create a small solution to this destitution, by building and distributing 37 brightly colored and decorated shelters to homeless people in Los Angeles. These houses began to appear in a multitude of places, but tiny homes under the over-pass caught local officials’ attention and the homes were removed from the streets. Through community activism Summers’ solicited nearly $100,000 in a tiny house campaign and one year later these homes were returned to a Compton church parking lot.
Rybczynski further explains how the growth in 19th century industrial production and theories for greater efficiency and productivity made their way from the factory floor to the home. Mary Pattison was directly influenced by industrial engineers such as Philadelphia’s Winslow Taylor who observed and recorded the working patterns of employees in steel factories to better understand task work on the factory floor and how it could be improved by measuring the amount of time taken to do a task and by moving equipment and modifying tools to see if the task could be completed in less time. Pattison applied Taylor’s scientific methods to home activities through the creation of her Housekeeping Experiment Station in Colonia New Jersey. Her contemporary, Christine Frederick’s pursued similar research. Both ladies did multiple studies to determine optimal work surface heights, used stop-watches time recording of household tasks such as cooking, sewing, laundry and cleaning. They recorded their rigorous research through photographs, diagrams and the use of space planning to better understand work efficiencies. Their process pre-dates the 20th century disciplines of ergonomics and interior design. While the leading women authors were redefining our understanding of domestic life, another revolution in building construction was taking place. Fueled by invention of the nail machine, steam generated circular saw, edger and planer combined with an abundant supply of wood near population centers, balloon framing emerged quickly as the predominant construction method. Lighter smaller sized dimensional lumber; the 2 x 4 and 2 x 6 were available for the first time. These materials were fastened with an abundant supply of cheap nails in contrast to the use of joinery and heavy timbers which required skilled labor and large groups of men to tilt up the construction. Balloon framing allowed more construction faster with fewer men. A housing boom occurred that swept across the country with the westward expansion. By the late 19th century this was fervently exemplified by Sears and Roebuck’s Company catalogue houses for purchase and the prevalence and variety of the Victorian style home in nearly every town across North America. For the 19th century do-it yourselfer the
The importance of Summer’s small homes reinforces deep-seated ideas about how we can derive comfort and sense of dwelling from even the smallest of primitive spaces constructed by the simplest of means. Summer’s homes may not have the latest technological gadgets, but they do provide a roof, a door, windows and walls and they were highly preferred by the homeless who lived in them. The Los Angeles tiny homes send us an important reminder about how the idea of home regardless of size or cost can be repository for our larger aspirations for a better life. Rick Marencic, IIDA, is Studio Leader and Design Principal for JCJ Architecture. For over thirty years, Rick has designed hotels, restaurants, casinos, aviation, food and beverage and corporate offices. From 1988-2014 Rick was employed by Daroff Design in Philadelphia where he created innovative design solutions for clients such as Comcast, Marriott, Loews/Universal, Disney and the Smithsonian Institution NMNH. Rick’s furniture designs have been featured in Philadelphia Magazine 1990, ICFF 1996, The Vitra Design Museum 1997, Design Philadelphia 2009 and Herman Miller’s Eames Modern Classic Chair Competition in 2014. Rick is also the first place winner in the 2016 Sandler Venice Seating competition. 38
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the smart home, 1946-style
Brown of course knew the corridors and sun porch would be heated directly by the sun, but his true intent was to collect and store heat in the massive rear wall. The heat would be radiated later to the rooms on the north side. The now-familiar terms thermal mass and thermal lag did not yet exist. Essentially he sought to moderate the diurnal temperature swings in those living spaces. Brown designed the storage wall to be eight inches thick because he believed heat would move through it one inch per hour, so it would collect heat for approximately eight hours a day and emit it at the same rate each night. Architects, at this time, did not have the scientific knowledge to calculate those effects, but Brown’s rule-of-thumb was essentially correct.
Anthony Denzer, PhD, M.Arch
The next time you hear about a new ‘smart home’ full of high-tech electronics and claiming to be green or sustainable, consider this: one of the smartest homes in American history was built in Tucson in 1946 without a single bit of gadgetry. It represents a different view of sustainability based on energy efficiency and simple, affordable comfort. If you replicated this home today, it would be desirable, stylish, and authentically green. The Rosenberg house, by architect Arthur T. Brown, represented an absolutely original idea. Brown wanted to take advantage of the free solar energy abundant in Arizona, but he realized that there’s a fundamental paradox: the solar heat is strongest at midday, and the house will easily overheat. You would like to save the heat for when it’s really needed, in the middle of the night and early morning. Brown understood this paradox. In the Rosenberg house he developed the sunspace and storage wall. He is known as “Tucson’s pioneer of solar design.”1
1 Anne M. Nequette and R. Brooks Jeffery, A Guide to Tucson Architecture (Tucson: University of Arizona Press), 2002, 184.
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2 Anthony Denzer, The Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design (New York: Rizzoli), 2013. 3 “House, Tucson, Arizona,” Progressive Architecture 29 (October 1948), 70-72.
* All photography and images are the property of Maynard L. Parker archive, Huntington Library F1 South facade
As described in The Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design2 , the intelligence in Brown’s design for the Rosenberg house began with the floor plan. He created a linear floor plan, one room deep, running east-west. He used the term “in a line house.”3 The main living spaces faced north, and a single-loaded corridor, with floor-to-ceiling glass, faced south. Behind the corridor he placed a concrete block wall, covered in
One of the smartest homes in American history was built in Tucson in 1946 without a single bit of gadgetry. It represents a different view of sustainability based on energy efficiency and simple, affordable comfort. plaster and painted dark, running the full length of the house. This represented a clever inversion of passive solar houses in cold climates, especially those by George Fred Keck in the Chicago area, which also had linear floor plans running east-west, but had the living spaces on the south.
The sun porch and storage wall would later become known as an indirect-gain system, though that label did not exist in 1946 and Brown did not cite any precedents for his idea. More pointedly, because Brown’s concept allowed the corridors and sun porch to overheat and overcool, this represents an early sunspace. Both of these terms, sunspace and indirect-gain system, were popularized in the 1970s. The Rosenberg house may well embody the first modern appearance of these strategies.
At the center of the plan, in front of the living room, the corridor widened to become a dining room and “sun porch,” and Brown gave this section a taller roof with more glass to accommodate its depth. Form followed function. 40
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Interestingly, Brown also called his storage wall a “barrier wall,” and he said it “enables
the owner to be in or out of the sun as the weather—or his pleasure—may dictate.”4 His emphasis on variability, and his willingness to let the sunspaces overheat, represents a striking critical attitude, particularly in the late 1940s, when architects and engineers focused almost exclusively on producing uniform temperatures with mechanical systems. Indeed, when Architectural Record presented another of Brown’s creative environmental contributions (the Rose Elementary School), the magazine uncharacteristically offered a broader critique: “we are building into our structures increasing quantities of mechanical and electrical equipment … In a way our progress is almost circular, like the route of a dog chasing his tail.”5 This sounds a lot like Brown himself. Brown also recognized that the Rosenberg house would need plenty of natural ventilation. This he learned from other solar architects of the 1940s and Fred Keck in particular. The convection vents and hopper door—seen in the period photographs here—allowed the heat to be distributed, isolated, or exhausted as needed to some extent. These elements were critical ingredients in the ‘well-tempered environment’ Brown created for the Rosenbergs, and again afforded comfort and control without depending on mechanical systems.
4 “House, Tucson, Arizona,” Progressive Architecture 28 (June 1947); 56.
F2 “sun porch”
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5 “Structural Components for School Buildings,” Architectural Record 120:2 (August 1956), 164165. 6 “House, Tucson, Arizona,” Progressive Architecture 28 (June 1947); 56. 7 Helen J. Kessler, “In the Solar Vanguard,” Fine Homebuilding 11 (October/November 1982), 29-33. 8 Helen J. Kessler, “In the Solar Vanguard,” Fine Homebuilding 11 (October/November 1982), 29-33. 9 Arthur T. Brown and Kathryn M. Wayne, Arthur T. Brown, FAIA: Architect, Artist, Inventor (Tucson: University of Arizona), 1985, 8.
The Rosenberg house performed well. After the first winter, Brown reported: “It has
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not been necessary to use the furnace at night, after a clear day, or in the morning, after nine o’clock.”6 To substantiate this conclusion, the Rosenbergs collected temperature readings on a cool winter day in 1947, showing that the living room remained comfortable while the sunspace overheated:
Trombe wall is remarkably similar in intention and performance to Brown’s storage wall. DATA7
Decades later, Helen Kessler asked Brown if he would change anything in the Rosenberg house retrospectively: “he replied that he might cut down the number and size of the openings in the solar wall to retain more mass; but on the whole, he is pleased with the house’s design and performance.”8 The system would have performed even better if the glass had been covered with insulating curtains at night, and if double-pane insulated glass, then called “Thermopane,” had been used. (The Rosenberg house had single-pane glass with continuous metal frames, very inefficient by today’s standards.) Although the sunspace and indirect-gain systems became quite popular after the 1973 energy crisis, Brown was never properly credited for his invention. By contrast, French scientist Félix Trombe developed a similar technique in the 1950s and 60s. Trombe placed the storage wall directly behind the glass wall, with a few inches of airspace rather than a corridor or sunroom. When this technique was ‘exported’ to America in the early 1970s, it was called the Trombe wall and the name stuck. The
What about style? We now recognize the Rosenberg house as a fine example of Mid-Century Modernism. In his slim autobiography, Brown claimed that he did not work from prescriptive aesthetic objectives. He remembered a remark from a critic all his life: “Never design in a style. If you have to design in a style, remove everything that makes it a style.”9 From today’s point of view the lesson is clear: a smart home is one which creates comfort in a harsh climate with a minimum of technology. And that never goes out of style.
Anthony Denzer, Ph.D., M.Arch., is Department Head of Civil & Architectural Engineering at the University of Wyoming. He is an architectural historian focusing on the modern period (1920s-1960s) and social and environmental issues. He also maintains www.solarhousehistory.com.
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perspectives on home
tradesmen, and the relevance of building codes to a critical practice of architecture. The design-build program within the University of Arizona’s School of Architecture has overlaid these perspectives on “home” for almost two decades as faculty and students have designed and built a series of highly energy efficient dwellings for sale to Tucson residents earning below 80% of the Area Median Income. The residences featured here represent designs from 2006 on that explored the thermal properties of different materials in wall assemblies, passive solar strategies based on the typical lot configurations in Tucson, flexible spatial configurations in response to client
Mary Hardin
What lies at the intersection of various notions of “home”?
...for almost two decades...faculty and students have designed and built a series of highly energy efficient dwellings for sale to Tucson residents earning below 80% of the Area Median Income.
For architecture students nearing the end of their formal education, the assignment to design and detail a modest home provokes a great rush of pent-up ideas and the impulse to express every compelling idea they have. For many renters earning below the Area Median Income, the desire to own a home is based on the premise of home ownership as a platform for financial stability as well as a step into mainstream America. F1
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needs, and ambitious aesthetic intentions in spite of constrained budgets. All of the dwellings were designed by faculty and students in the School of Architecture in studios for course credit during the initial phases of the projects and then developed into construction documents for permitting purposes under the supervision of a registered architect via the non-profit Drachman Design-Build Coalition (DDBC). The non-profit organization was incorporated in 2004, as an entity separate from the University of Arizona, that has a stand-alone budget, administration structure, business license and residential contractor license. This entity makes it possible for the faculty who are Board Members to raise grant funding for the residential projects, purchase land parcels, take out construction loans, and conduct business outside the auspices of the U of A, even though its sole mission is to educate students through the provision of affordable housing. The design goals for each residence are trifold: to create a generous, functional residence for homeowners who need to realize the most value for their dollars, to find energy and water conserving strategies that balance initial construction cost with longterm maintenance and utilities costs, and to compose space and materials to achieve a strong aesthetic statement in spite of modest circumstances.
For an architect and builder, the goal of designing and constructing an affordable home is a struggle between initial and long-term costs, and between concepts and constraints. For an architecture professor, the educational objectives involved in the design and construction of an affordable home include research on strategies for energy and water conservation as well as an opportunity to imbue in students the values of building community, respect for clients of limited means, collaborative interaction with other
The energy conserving design strategies have generally been grouped into categories of thermal mass walls, highly insulated walls, and hybrids of thermal mass and insulation. The distribution of mass or insulated walls depends on the solar orientation and the long axis of the land parcel. Built on typical Tucson infill lots, the houses have “thin” floor plans to fit the narrow parcels. Designs for the lots with a long north-south axis incorporate courtyard spaces to break up the building mass and allow more north and south exposures for windows and doors (since those are more easily protected from unwanted solar gain). All of the “thin” plans allow the interior spaces to be cooled with natural ventilation, thus reducing the need for air conditioning during the shoulder seasons in Arizona.
F1 DDBC Residences 2-6 on a single block in central Tucson. The group of homes is now a community that has encouraged more infill development and home ownership in the area that was formerly zoned for industrial uses. Photo by Liam Frederick. F2 DDBC Residence 3: Armadillo House. Project architect: John Folan. Photos by Liam Frederick.
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In order to monitor the actual thermal performance of the homes, a system of thermal sensors and weather station equipment was set up for a full year once the homes were occupied. The homeowners agreed to allow the monitoring as a condition of the sales contract, and some also voluntarily shared their utilities bills with us. The findings were interesting – in most cases the design strategies for conserving energy worked as predicted. The rammed earth and super-insulated steel houses behaved in a similar way to our computer simulations and predictions, while we learned that our ventilated south wall strategy would benefit from an added damper to close the cavity in winter months. We speculate that the Integra Block home would perform better in the shoulder seasons if the family had opened the windows in the evenings, but they did not have a feeling of security about open windows at night. So, we learned that we could have designed some built-in security features that would have helped to optimize performance.
of spaciousness – views from the interiors tend to continue past the glazing into outdoor rooms. Many of the designs also include flexible interior spaces – created by sliding wall panels that allow reconfiguration of bedrooms to modify them from single bedrooms to dormitories, or from a bedroom to a den or study that adjoins the living area. These accommodations were a direct response to observations that some families in the community had more children and dependents than they had bedrooms, while others carved out space for businesses run from their homes.
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In Barrio San Antonio, where five out of the seven DDBC residences are located, students and faculty had the opportunity to present design ideas to the neighborhood association in several meetings before the first home was constructed. These meetings revealed the hopes and fears of the neighbors (mostly hopes that owner-occupied homes would help stabilize the area) and set up a friendly atmosphere for seven years of construction activity. With the advent of each house, students and faculty were offered assistance by nearby neighbors – temporary use of water or power, surveillance of stored tools and equipment, donations of plants and shared fences.
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Decisions about building materials were driven by the desire to utilize regionally available materials (earth, clay, stone, volcanic cinders, and masonry) as well as durable materials that require little or no maintenance over the long term (steel, fiber cement, ceramic tile). Because these are not the least expensive building materials available in our market, faculty and students had to be inventive in their construction methods (stackable plywood forms for rammed earth, for example) in order to use the materials F5
The hands-on experience of designing and then building real homes has added a valuable layer to the professional education of a generation of Architecture students. The first iterations of the design-build program in the UA School of Architecture were projects that were quite varied – random opportunities that matched community partners with funding (such as the Gila River Housing Authority, Chicanos Por la Causa, and Habitat for Humanity) with a studio and professor who wished to realize an actual built work. The incorporation of DDBC as a non-profit in 2004 began a new era of projects funded by construction loans rather than partners, and with a focus on conservation technologies. From those earliest residences, designed by faculty and students and constructed with the help of their community partners to the more contemporary DDBC projects, the entire spectrum of architectural professional activity has been part of the studio endeavors. Although fourth year students have worked their way through many design projects, having to clarify their
F3-5 DDBC Residence 7: Sentinel House is a thermal experiment with scoria walls with a foam insulation panel embedded in the center. Project architect: Mary Hardin. Photos by Mary Hardin.
All of the homes were designed to allow for expansion of interior space into covered outdoor areas to accommodate celebrations and events that would be crowded within a modestly sized dwelling. without employing subcontractors or heavy machinery and equipment. Similarly, choices of HVAC and water harvesting systems were made with economy, longevity, and long-term maintenance criteria at the forefront. All of the homes were designed to allow for expansion of interior space into covered outdoor areas to accommodate celebrations and events that would be crowded within a modestly sized dwelling. Most of the living areas open directly to carports or shaded patios, while others are adjacent to courtyards and patios. The concentration of glazing in these boundary walls between inside and outside aids in the perception
intentions with large-scale detail drawings and full-scale mock-ups is a challenging new demand. Multiple iterations of a line-item budget for the residence and simulations in ResCheck and other energy auditing software are reality checks that distinguish the design-build studio from their previous courses. Meeting with future subcontractors for feedback is humbling and suddenly truly relevant. Negotiating the city plan review process and the many steps toward securing a construction loan is all new territory. But the experiences with the most impact occur on the construction site and in the interactions with other trades and building officials. 46
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It is one thing to draw what you dream of – it is another thing entirely to try to construct it. Many of the CAPLA students have not had the opportunity to work on a construction project before the design-build studio, but they do have good preparation with tools and equipment in our Materials Lab. They are able to translate their focus on craftsmanship to a larger scale project, but have little experience regarding construction sequencing or methodologies. After four years of working at a computer screen in an air-conditioned studio, some struggle to acclimate to afternoons outdoors in the Arizona heat. But the lessons learned from realizing their design drawings as full-scale building assemblies eclipse all of the discomforts. They
F6 DDBC Residence 5: Trombe Wall House was also designed as a hybrid of thermal mass and insulating walls. In this case, a south-facing trombe wall collects winter solar gain through glazing onto a solid masonry wall, and transmits the heat into the home through vents in the wall. The long porch on the south exposure shades the trombe wall during the summer months and provides sheltered outdoor living area. Project architect: Mary Hardin. Photos by Liam Frederick.
finally see the three-dimensional reality of what their detail drawings represent. They find out that sometimes they have drawn details that cannot be built due to faulty logic in the order of assembly. Or they find they have designed a space that arms with tools cannot fit into. But, mostly, they learn to think three-dimensionally, “around the corners” of a building. They learn to anticipate the construction issues caused by a design decision. They begin to value workers in other trades for the great skill and expertise they can add to a project. And, finally, they experience the immense satisfaction of watching a design idea become a tangible thing – in this case, a home. While students meet the homebuyers at the very end of the process due to the rules of the HUD homeownership program, they complete a thorough series of precedent studies, and are able to speak to the owners of the previous houses to get feedback about the function and aesthetics of the earlier designs.
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As much as the design-build residences are learning experiences for students, they also serve as vehicles for research about affordable housing design, thermal transfer through various wall assemblies, and cultural responses to contemporary design ideas for the faculty members who are involved with them. The efforts to learn about best practices in the design and construction of affordable housing continues to be a driving force for the professors who take on the design-build studios, long days on the construction sites, and the inevitable warranty repairs. Most importantly, these projects have provided a way into homeownership for families who may have otherwise been relegated to the rental market. Because the DDBC homes are designed and built as a joint venture between an Architecture school and a non-profit home provider, the homes can be sold for the cost of materials, fees, and subcontractor involvement. This allows the residences to go on the market to graduates of HUD home ownership programs who are earning less than is required for the purchase of a comparable dwelling without these savings. Only a small percentage of the American population is able to benefit from the services of an architect for the custom design of their homes for a specific site. For the rest, the real estate websites Zillow and Trulia provide the introduction to homes available at their price points. In the price range of DDBC homes, very few buyers have access to design services. It has been a rewarding experience to provide homes that are affordable, in both the short term and long term accounting of costs, to a population who can most benefit from careful consideration of design opportunities and constraints.
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Mary C. Hardin is a professor in the College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture at The University of Arizona. Mary served as Interim Dean for CAPLA from 2016-2017 and as Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs for CAPLA from 2011 to 2016. She has held a concomitant position as a Professor of Architecture, specializing in design-build studios and the provision of affordable housing. She is a registered architect and licensed residential contractor in Arizona. Hardin has received national awards for teaching, designbuild project delivery, affordable housing policy initiatives and collaborative practice, and state AIA awards for her project designs. 48
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Tempe campus and overlaid a diagram illustrating sequences of movement from hot sunny areas into locations with dappled shade. Areas denoted as semi-open represent strong possibilities for either sensitively sited shade structures or regionally appropriate landscape interventions. These connect to artificially conditioned spaces depending on population numbers residing in those spaces. A case in point is the relatively new sustainable power generating photovoltaic parasol that functions as the Iranian maydan or shaded public square. It is complemented by a lushly landscaped pedestrian mall (see Figures 3, 4) in what used to be Orange Street and is now the Orange Street pedestrian mall.
Ed Soltero, FAIA
The higher-education institution is often loosely associated with serving the role of the “second home” wherein teenagers commence their transition into adulthood. In fact, the institution often provides the setting for the acquisition of the complex social skills needed to cope and function throughout adult life. However, those unwavering requests by parents summoning kids in their formative years, “Turn off the lights . . . . “takes a whole new meaning in this new independent situation. The leadership teams at Arizona State University (ASU) take an active role in the students’ maturation and not only teaches them but also the entire University community about sustainability.
* All artwork, photography, and images are the property of the author unless otherwise noted. F1 View west towards Power Parasol along the Orange Street Mall date palm garden designed by Colwell-Shelor Landscape Architects F2 Memorial Union Power Parasol by DeBartolo Architects
At ASU, sustainability is very much part of the institution’s DNA and is therefore approached comprehensibly. There are three Platinum, 27 Gold, 16 Silver and one LEED certified ASU buildings for a total of 47. The Sierra Club ranked ASU in seventh place in its 2017 “Cool Schools” annual issue that rates America’s greenest colleges and universities. Mitigation of the institution’s carbon footprint, waste reduction and energy conservation are but a few of the factors in the overall equation. Therefore, ASU is capitalizing on the opportunity to teach about sustainability through the multitude of capital improvement projects on the boards, now in construction or complete. Not only will these initiatives reduce the negative impact of the previously mentioned factors, but they also serve as built case studies to be analyzed on a realtime basis for teaching purposes. As is true of all coursework leading to graduation, the development of these projects takes on a similar iterative approach.
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This newly constructed public space is a loose interpretation of the lush Chahar Bagh or four-squared Persian garden, albeit sans the four squares commonly found in such layouts. The OUA landscape team selected the palette based on the leaf-mass index of trees to generate as much shade as possible in order to mitigate the heat-island effect of the existing built environment.
A case in point is the charge that the team at the Office of the University Architect (OUA) is leading both at the larger campus scale and down to the detail of selecting regionally appropriate mechanical systems. At the Tempe campus, one may note that the architectural cohesiveness, in terms of materiality, master plan layout and landscape palette, often found in more traditional campus settings, is absent. How then does one create that “cohesive” signature in the absence of those critical elements? It is done through a creative approach to sustainable place making at a campus scale.
Future capital projects at ASU will closely adhere to these planning principles. The campus recently completed a hardscape master plan and the first phase of implementation is evident in the new pedestrian mall (see F1) that fronts the new Student Pavilion. The landscape design team at the University Architect’s office carefully selected the materials to mitigate the heat island effect. In addition, new bio-swales were also integrated into the mall. They will support desert-appropriate landscaping in what is to become a lush canopy of shade trees. The OUA team is studying the existing Cady Mall fountain and will eventually replace it with a new engaging fountain that will teach students and visitors alike how to respect the use of water in the desert.
This approach to place making draws inspiration from what the University Architect refers to as “Lessons from the Latitude.” With the larger Phoenix metro area’s fixed location of 32.3° on the planet’s latitudinal line, it is a simple exercise to move along this perimeter to extract lessons from the architecture situated along this location. Ancient Iranian city master planning techniques that focus on creating a network of shade and shadows provided a precedent, which has now been re-interpreted and materialized on the Tempe campus. At the largest national public institution, in terms of population, the beginnings of a shadow network are well underway. The University Architect mapped the existing
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Building upon the previously mentioned master planning scale, the student lesson further intensifies. For example, the architects developed highly sustainable passive
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F3 Tooker House Engineering Residence Hall by Solomon Cordwell Buenz Architects Photo: Bill Timmerman F4 View from southwest orientation of the recently completed CAVC facility by Gensler/Architekton Architects Photo: Bill Timmerman F5 Southeast view of vertical solar control fins at new Student Pavilion by Weddle-Gilmore Architects
education. The campuses collectively generate approximately 24.1 megawatts of direct-current equivalent energy. These photovoltaic arrays are very much part of ASU’s built environment and there are 82,456 panels at the various sites. Nevertheless, the message does not stop there. Students in many disciplines are regularly toured through the facilities and many choose these projects as case studies for their research-an invaluable lesson gleaned from actual physical manifestations. Their faculty and the University Architect support and guide them in these endeavors.
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architecture through correct solar orientations and heavily scrutinized window-towall ratios to mitigate heat transfer into the interior. The Tooker House Engineering Residence Hall (see F3), completed this fall, is a visible testament to the effective integration of passive design elements. The architects also effectively minimized glazing and shaded the façades appropriately; the project is slated to reduce its reliance on artificial cooling and most importantly its carbon footprint.
Moreover, construction of these projects is only half the battle when it comes to embedding sustainable thinking into the young minds of these future leaders. Members of the Office of the University Architect are working with leaders from ASU’s office of Educational Outreach and Student Services to develop a user’s manual to aid in the correct operation of this ultra-low energy consuming facility. A case in point is the development of a Net-Zero Energy charter that will outline rules and guidelines in the sustainable operation of the building from opening day into the future. The overriding goal is to modify society’s energy consumptive behavior by creating ambassadors, which will propagate the message throughout the world as they conclude their educational journey and return to their respective countries of origin.
The architecture is unique to the Sonoran Desert environment. The architects methodically placed the vertical shading devices to mimic the dappled shade produced by desert trees. Furthermore, they appropriately incorporated wall cavity insulation according to orientation and embodied energy was minimized through material resources extracted from locations close to the building’s final siting. Another example of passive desert architecture is the Student Pavilion. The recently completed structure (see F5), is a prime example of such strategic initiatives at the building scale. The aspirational goal was to develop a net-zero energy facility. A project that generates as much energy as it consumes. With its close proximity to the Memorial Union Power Parasol, the emerging net-zero facility will draw sustainably generated energy from the photovoltaic structure to support its daily operation. In fact, ASU maintains a leadership position amongst American institutions of higher
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Another example of the didactic opportunities represented by these new projects is the recently completed College Avenue Commons building (see F4) on the northwest edge of the Tempe campus. Here, the lesson is on the use of the building massing to create urban shade. As the reader may note, the building masses where extruded in different directions, but most importantly on the southern face of the building to create a shaded corridor. In addition, the project also includes a real-time solar radiation heat transfer monitoring system on all layers of the building’s exterior envelope. The project will soon be available for students, faculty and researchers from
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response to this hot and arid region. To augment the sustainable procurement approach, the beauty of this local material is enhanced through a fanciful “ballet of light” which pirouettes across its façades. It is produced by the vertical blades interspersed adjacent to the windows that minimize heat gain through the glass but also symbolically allude to the interplay of shadows, which occur in Arizona’s spectacular canyons.
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And, while the few examples illustrated in this writing represent but chapter one of the student’s lesson, this unique pedagogic approach has established a sound foundation for a successful and life-lasting educational journey. One must remain hopeful that these new student energy ambassadors disperse these lessons in a timely manner and at a global scale, in order to reverse the irreparable damage levied on the earth through irresponsible energy consumption and resource extraction.
around the world to study the effects of heat transfer through all faces of the building. These findings will produce relevant information to teach both future designers and materials manufacturers on how the construction of the building actually performs as opposed to how it was conceptualized during design. In like manner, the ASU Tempe campus will soon be the recipient of yet another highly sophisticated research facility. The roughly 190,000 square foot Bio-Design C (see Figure 8) research building, which is scheduled to be completed in early 2018, will feature a sensitively designed exterior skin which modulates solar heat transfer into the interior of the building. The design team incorporated copper scrims with variable transparency ratios according to solar orientation.
Ed Soltero, FAIA, LEED AP has a Masters of Architecture degree from the Newschool of Architecture and Design in San Diego. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University and an aspiring scholar in desert architecture. His dissertation topic focuses on developing a framework for “Desert-Adapted Modernism.” His varied career includes design leadership, management of multifunctional teams in both private sector firms and institutions. During his tenure at ASU as University Architect, he has led the development of over one billion dollars in capital improvement projects. He has also transformed the way the campuses are developed in support of his approach to sustainable placemaking.
F6 View from southeast orientation of the new Bio-Design C Research facility Image: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca/BWS Architects F7 Solar shading scrims of the new Bio-Design C Research facility Image: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca/ BWS Architects F8 East-facing façade of the new Arizona Center for Law and Society designed by Ennead/Jones Studio Architects Photo: Bill Timmerman
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This is yet another example of a modern re-interpretation of ancient passive cooling techniques. Here, the architects drew inspiration from the ancient Egyptian wood mashrabiya window (see F7) screens which are also used to modulate heat gain into building interiors. Yet another subtle and ingenious approach to sustainable design, that the University Architect espouses, is the understanding of emergy. The term is loosely defined as the type of energy expended in the direct and indirect production of materials or services. It is also commonly labeled as the embodied energy of a material. When one looks at the entire cycle of creating a construction material, it is often alarming to visualize the carbon footprint of the process-from resource extraction, finishing of the final material, transportation and onto final installation. The Arizona Center for Law and Society (see F8) at ASU’s Downtown campus illustrates this sustainable approach. The new law school’s exterior skin was quarried from a nearby Arizona location to minimize its carbon footprint or in essence, the resultant polluting effects of the aforementioned transformation cycle. Not only does the design of the facility reflect a more sustainable approach to embodied energy, but also represents a unique regional
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planning between Tucson and Phoenix: the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument where up to 2,000 people lived and farmed along the Gila River for over 1,000 years. In contrast to American Suburbia, the 600 year old ruins tell a story of a resourceful and sophisticated community that lived off the land and prospered in the Sonoran Desert. The primitive earthen structures included portals in the outer walls of the primary structure that align precisely with astronomical events. Not much remains of the village as the indigenous building materials used in the structures have assimilated back into the earth. A drastic flood around 1350 destroyed their miles of irrigation canals and their agrarian way of life. 5 Our current, modern day potential for climate disaster runs parallel with the dissolution of the native people along the Gila River but on a much larger scale.
Rob Paulus, AIA
Living lightly on the land is a critical component of sustaining life on planet Earth. Population has intensified since the industrial revolution, and with this human expansion there is less natural habitat and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is changing our climate and world in negative ways.1,2 NASA compares our atmosphere to the thickness of saran wrap on a basketball and yet humans keep filling up this finite space with more and more greenhouse trapping gas that can remain for thousands of years.3 Another life sustaining element is vanishing; the demand for fresh water will exceed the supply by 40% by 2030 according to the United Nations.4 Fresh water makes up less than 1% of the water on earth yet only 0.007 % of the planet’s water is available to its 7.4 billion people.5
Learning from the Past; Passive First In the mid 1960’s architect Bernard Rudofsky created an exhibit, Architecture Without Architects, for the Museum of Modern Art that featured non-pedigreed design found throughout the world. The exhibition defined an organic, non-didactic approach to built environments that rely on positioning and making buildings and spaces with indigenous materials. From an amphitheater for 60,000 in Muyu-uray in Peru that was set into a meteoric crater, to the simple trellis slung between compact earthen buildings in Morocco, the projects presented by Rudofsky establish an honest sense 1 “World Population.” United States Department of Commerce. https://census.gov. 2016.
“City growth has caused climate change, but that growth is also what’s going to get us out of it.” - Matthew Kahn, UCLA economist
2 “Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet.” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. https://climate.nasa.gov. 2016. 3 “The Atmosphere.” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. https://grc.nasa.gov. 2015. 4 Shahan, Zachary. “How Much Clean Water is available for Human Use?” Blue Living Ideas. http://bluelivingideas.com. 2014.
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Are we on a “Road to Nowhere” as David Byrne sang in the 80’s? More specifically, have we done a good job as architects and planners to influence the design of our cities to create a more sustainable way of life given the realities of climate change and potential water shortages? As the current administration running our country continues to ignore fact- based evidence to further immediate monetary and political gain it becomes increasingly important to act locally to have a positive impact on a global scale. We can’t solve every problem with design but we must ask ourselves, what can we collectively do as makers of the built environment to create a more efficient and integrated way to work, live and play? Lessons Learned On a recent visit through Queen Creek to attend my daughter’s gymnastic competition, the reality of suburbia was on display with an entire town designed around cars, culde-sacs, corporate chains and wood frame tract homes. This “Drive to Qualify” approach is still happening across the nation and is furthering a car-centric approach to city planning that is environmentally damaging and doesn’t take into account the true cost of water, fuel and energy. Following the gymnastics meet, my family visited the ancient example of community
F1 A single layer of saran wrap is .5mm thick equaling the first 16.42 miles of atmosphere. 99% of the total atmosphere mass is concentrated in the first 20 miles above Earth’s surface. Image by RPA
5 Haider, Zain. “UN Predicts Serious Water Shortages by 2030.” The Weather Channel. https:// weather.com. 2015.
F2 Muyu-uray- Retrieved from: www.elqosqoinka.com/moray/
* All artwork, photography, and images are the property of the author unless otherwise noted.
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Location Efficiency: Household and Transportation Energy Use by Location
9 “Arizona’s Water: Uses and Sources.” Arizona Department of Water Resources. http:// arizonaexperience.org. 2016. 10 Overpeck, Jonathan. “The Changing Earth: It’s Not Just A New Normal.” https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=SGRgmdSJNng. 2016. 11 Wood, Antony, and Peng Du. “Dense Downtown vs. Suburban Dispersed: A pilot study on Urban Sustainability.” Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. global.ctbuh.org/resources/ papers/download/3361-dense-downtownvs-suburban-dispersed-a-pilot-study-on-urbansustainability.pdf. 2017.
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TOD - Transit Oriented Development
CSD - Conventional Suburban Development Transportation Energy Use W/ Green Automobiles Home Energy Use W/ Green Buildings
12 Cervero, Robert and Erick Buerva. “Urban Densities and Transit, A Multi-dimensional Perspective.” UC Berkely Institute of Transportation Studies. its.berkeley.edu/sites/ default/files/publications/UCB/2011/VWP/UCBITS-VWP-2011-6.pdf. 2011.
- Alan Kay
Density In the 1970’s Jane Jacobs contended that we could reduce our damage to the natural environment by living in high-rises and walking to work. This approach is finally beginning to shape our modern urban environments in Tucson and Phoenix by infilling pre-existing urban space around new modern transit systems. Looking at urban densities throughout the world, Phoenix and Tucson are unfortunately low
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8 “Location Efficiency and Housing Type.” Environmental Protection Agency. https://www. epa.gov/smartgrowth. 2011.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it”
Precious Resources With a current average rainfall for Arizona of only 12.5 inches a year and 43% percent of our water coming from groundwater, our water usage is highly important to our survival in our desert cities. This is especially concerning since our population in Arizona will grow to 9.5 million by 2025 from our current 6.7 million.9 Jonathan Overpeck, noted climatologist and dean of the School for the Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, indicates there will be roughly 20-35% less flow in the Colorado River by 2050 due to climate change alone; hardly an issue to ignore given Arizona’s population and economy is so dependent on this resource.10 A recent study of water use in Chicago found that urban households use 39% of that consumed by their suburban households and also have a lower per capita consumption of land, energy and materials. 11
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Energy and Urban Design If we look at increased CO2 as the primary game changer for our future society, then we must advocate for density. The Environmental Protection Agency compared the energy use of a conventional suburban development to a more compact transit oriented design and concluded that the occupants of transit oriented design consumed 50% less energy simply by living in an urban location with convenient access to transit. This efficiency jumps to 62% less energy consumption if the household drives an efficient car.8 This “Passive first, Active Later” approach to creating location efficiency with density has been in place for many millennia and is now, more than ever, needed in our cities. The opportunity is ripe for architects, and cities, to combat excessive CO2 emissions with responsible urban density.
EPA Location Efficiency Diagram, Retrieved from www.epa.gov/smartgrowth
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In these buildings and dense cities designed without electricity, efficiency is paramount, and they define a world of design without cars and the distractions attributable to our modern world. Common threads of these ancient environments are similar to our current day urban areas where people live in dense environments that create a fertile environment for innovation in ideas, technologies and processes.
7 Rudofsky, Bernard. Architecture Without Architects. New York: Doubleday, 1964.
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of place with responsible density that are quite modern in their expression of function and simplicity.7
Some forward thinking cities have had the political will to jumpstart their urban development by incentivizing density; Portland Oregon created a growth boundary in 1979 for the entire city while Albuquerque provides impact fee reduction in urban areas. The Phoenix light rail and corresponding higher density zoning along the rail route has spawned a renaissance of growth in the inner core. Tucson’s modern streetcar has had a similar positive effect with multiple, multi-story mixed-use projects going up and in the queue as a result of building rail lines and loosening the zoning rules to allow greater density. A great redevelopment tool has been the State of Arizona Government Property Lease Excise Tax that reduces a project’s operating costs by replacing the real property tax with an excise tax. The excise tax can be abated for the first eight years after a certificate of occupancy on the building is issued if the property is located within a Central Business District and a Redevelopment Area.
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F3 Lake Mead, Retrieved from http://politicsarizona.com
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on the scale with less than 3,000 people per square mile. As a counterpoint, West Hollywood is +18,000 and Barcelona is +41,000 people per square mile. Light Rail needs 30 people per gross acre or roughly 18 units per acre assuming 1.66 people per dwelling.12 This means we need to increase the current density to roughly 20,000 people per square mile to make public transit work. The question is: How can we accelerate the pace for density and create more diversity, efficiency and architectural interest to have truly walkable, transit oriented living?
Urban density provides a great opportunity for designers and developers to create and interpret a more compact way of life within our desert cities; from infilling a single family lot to providing multi-story mixed use. The positive effects include less energy and water use with the added benefit of saving undisturbed natural environment and eco-systems. Responsible density also builds meaningful communities that provide a platform for interaction where people can build relationships with their neighbors and have chance encounters that broaden one’s view of the world. 59
Most interesting to me, as an architect and developer, are projects that are conceived
and realized where the designer is also the developer. The following examples illustrate the wide variety of potential for infill from single lots to large high-rise densities that tap into existing infrastructure, provide additional density into existing neighborhoods and are achieved with the designer running the show.
Boyer was able to then develop his intriguing scheme of one, two and three story units with parking below and have complete control of the aesthetic outcome. The high contrast and desert appropriate design greatly enhances the neighborhood and proves that good design can enhance value to the community and the development process.
Onesie-Twosie Joel Contreras is a talented designer/developer who is working with single-family lots and homes in Phoenix’s Coronado neighborhood near Seventh Street and McDowell Road. His team at Contramark development is reinterpreting a historic vocabulary with new elements and materials to complement and enhance the older buildings and historic neighborhood. These for-sale homes are located within existing infrastructure and represent immense design opportunities with an upside of profit. A typical developer wouldn’t have the panache to execute the quality of concept and detail that is appealing to the buyers of these modern homes in historic neighborhoods that want to be in existing neighborhoods near amenities.
Repurposing Old When our team of four partners began developing the 1920’s Ice and cold Storage Building in 2002, it was in a marginal neighborhood, next to train tracks, surrounded by industrial with two weeks for due diligence; we bought it anyways. By providing development, architecture and real estate skill sets all within our group we were able to be nimble and fully control the outcome of the first re-purposing of a warehouse manufacturing building into residential in Arizona. The project required a re-zoning to allow residential in a formerly industrial area that doubled the existing square footage with additional levels to provide 51 condominiums in 72,500 square feet. My family has lived here for 12 years and loves our little village with the added bonus of having our office across the street that offers me an 80 second commute by foot.
Multiplex, Townhomes Benjamin Hall, architect/developer, and his team have created an introspective, sixunit rental project in downtown Phoenix that is beautifully composed with honed masonry, steel and glass details. The simple orthogonal spaces of White Stone Studios are minimal but layered with light and materiality to reveal the immense design potential of what can be created with a small budget and big ideas. This surprisingly dense project is fully leased out and exhibits the demand for well-designed, compact living space.
Mid-Rise Our current development project, Trinity Mixed Use, is an 83,000 square foot, mixeduse project that will include residential, office, retail and restaurant space in the West University neighborhood along the new streetcar route in Tucson. The project is the first rezoning in an historic district in Arizona and represents years of entitlement work with over 30 meetings with neighborhood groups, planners and politicians. The Planned Area Development Rezoning voids the historic district’s antiquated replication approach to new building and redefines compatibility through abstract reference and working with historic proportions. My wife, Randi Dorman, is a pivotal part of our develop team and comes with a completely different skill set from myself to make a complex and politically charged project like Trinity possible. With good design and a willingness to explore all possibilities, the historic neighborhood and city at large will be enriched with a modern and compatible transit oriented project.
Urban Multi-Story Art Haus, in central Phoenix, is a decidedly modern 25-unit condominium project that is minutes away from light rail, the Phoenix Art Museum and the downtown ASU campus. Architect/Developer Jason Boyer used his talent and craft to create an inspiring and cohesive vision that won a City of Phoenix RFP process for the site.
High Rise David Hovey, Architect Developer with the Optima Company, has built over 4,000 living units and completed over 29 multi-family projects. His start into the world of development was a 6-unit townhome project in Chicago and this has grown to include multiple large projects in the Phoenix area. His company Optima is full service: “We’re the owners, the architects and the general contractors,” he says. “We don’t have to answer to anybody. It’s a huge advantage.” 13 David has shown the viability of welldesigned, dense urban housing at a large scale with elements and approaches that can be incorporated at any scale. Optima had revenue of $89 million in 2012.
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13 Sharoff, Robert. “David Hovey, Thinking from the ground up.” Chicago Business. chicagobusiness.com/article/20130608/ ISSUE01/306089982/architect-david-hoveythinking-from-the-ground-up. 2013.
Conclusion Climate change and how we adapt to a world of rising global temperatures and oceans will determine humanity’s legacy on this planet. There is a growing evidence of green house gas reducing possibilities that can be met with the responsible design and development of our cities.
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Responsible density in an urban core is a key strategy for minimizing the built environment’s impact on the climate through techniques such as up-zoning for more density, passive solar orientation, repurposing old buildings, utilization of local and reclaimed materials, building within existing infrastructure, minimizing water use and
Above: Density Diagrams
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“Smart Growth defined: Making the car an option, not a necessity� - Dom Nozzi creating durable design with proximity to transit and services. The task to change the same old, same old approach to development is not without its challenges but there is substantial traction that needs to be seized upon to create a more compact and efficient way to live in Arizona that is beneficial to both developer and user.
Architects need to play a bigger role, at all scales, in the shaping of our cities and built environment to create responsible density and reduce the demand for energy, water and land. So whether we develop our own urban projects, embed ourselves into Rob Paulus, AIA is an architect, developer and musician who founded Rob Paulus Architects in 1995 to create unique, award winning, and regionÂŹally-specific architecture. Rob is a frequent lecturer, former president of the AIA Southern Arizona chapter and an active community member in promoting high quality design with appropriate density.
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the political and planning arena to push for responsible density or simply work with enlightened developers to infill the urban environment, the market is there for desert density that is high quality and unique. We need to challenge and change low density zoning where it makes sense, and take on the complexity of building dense where already allowed by existing zoning, to create a better future for humanity.
F5 ArtHaus by Jason Boyer Architect/Developer, Photo by Bill Timmerman F6 White Stone Studios, Photo courtesy of Benjamin Hall F7 Ice House Lofts by Deep Freeze Development, Photo by Bradley Wheeler
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spring 2014
identity
A publication of the American │ Fall 2018 a publication of aiaInstitute arizonaof+Architects aia phoenix metro