Design Briefs

THEWEDGE It’s the architecture studio project that keeps giving. The Wedge cabin designs that originated in Associate Professor Juintow Lin’s Revamp the Camp 503L studio in 2014 have inspired the new visitor’s center that opened in August at Bodega Bay’s Doran Beach. The Wedge cabins were designed by Emily Williams, Bryan Charney and Antonio Fernandez (’16, all master’s in architecture), and were constructed with recycled material. The cabins were intended to entice millennials and urban residents to experience the great outdoors. The Wedge captured the interest of California State Parks and the California Coastal Commission aer its debut at the 2014 Los Angeles County and California State fairs. The cabin design earned a Citation Award in the Inspire Category at the American Institute of Architects Orange County chapter 2015 Design Awards gala. Four Wedge cabins are available to rent at Pfeiffer State Park in Big Sur, the site of the first cabin. Three other cabins at Spring Lake Regional Park campground can be reserved. The cabins are ADA accessible and can accommodate up to four people.

Wedge cabin at Spring Lake Regional Park. (Paul Vu Photography) BOOK IT: Bookings for the Wedge cabins fill up fast. Reserve at least six months ahead. RESERVATIONS: Reserve America, (800) 444–7275; www.reservecalifornia.com COST: $60 to $100 per night

Guy Nordenson Receives 2017 Neutra Award

Princeton Professor of Architecture and Structural Engineering Has Worked With Architectural Icons

The Department of Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona honored Guy Nordenson—professor of architecture and structural engineering at Princeton University’s School of Architecture—with the 2017 Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence on Oct. 9. Nordenson has been involved in complex and challenging projects. His New York structural engineering practice, Guy Nordenson and Associates (GNA), was founded in 1997 on the principle that collaboration is essential to design. As an engineer, he has an extensive history in architecture, having worked in the joint studio of Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi in 1976, then later establishing the New York office of Ove Arup & Partners in 1987.

tectural firms, include: • National Museum of African American History and Culture in

Washington, D.C., with Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup. • Corning Museum of Glass Contemporary Art + Design Wing in

Corning, New York, with Thomas Phifer and Partners. • Kimbell Art Museum Expansion in Fort Worth, Texas, with Renzo

Piano Building Workshop. • New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York with SANAA. • Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Expansion in Kansas City, Missouri, with Steven Holl Architects. • Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion in Toledo, Ohio, with

SANAA. • 2004 Museum of Modern Art Expansion in New York National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C. (Brad Feinknopf) with Taniguchi and Associates. • International African American Museum in Charleston, South

Carolina, with Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. • Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center in Houston, Texas, with Johnston Marklee. • Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Glassell School of Art with

Steven Holl Architects. Notable GNA projects, completed in collaboration with ranked archi-

Since 2007, GNA has been engaged in the development of strategies for climate change and coastal adaptation, working with stakeholders at the local and national levels—a measure of Neutra’s “Survival Through Design,” the idea that planners have a responsibility to connect their design practices with advancements in science and research in diverse fields. The Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence is an annual honor conferred by the Department of Architecture at the College of Environmental Design. To see the full list of past honorees, visit env.cpp.edu/arc/neutra-award.

The Richard Neutra-Designed Chuey House, Which Is Being Sold as a Tear-Down, Is the Latest Historically Significant Structure to Potentially Face Demolition in Los Angeles

On the Loss of Historic Homes

By Professor Luis Hoyos, Department of Architecture Co-Coordinator Concentration in Historic Preservation Take a look at any guidebook for Southern California cities and you will find lile jewels hidden in plain sight in the countless neighborhoods that make up our poly-nucleated metropolis. Houses recognized as historic because of their design, the people who lived there and, possibly, events that took place in them. For those who know, the houses are like life-long friends you recognize on the street, “Nice to see you. How’ve you been?” As we’ve built Los Angeles, we’ve used up most of the readily available land and face the necessity of clearing land so new construction can happen, potentially endangering historic places. For example: While the preservation community holds dear every house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (nobody in their wildest dreams would tear down one of his houses, although the Ennis House was a challenge to fix), a property owner had no hesitation in tearing down the spectacular Bird of Paradise House (1965) in Rancho Palos Verdes by Wright’s son, Lloyd Wright, as well as the iconic Moore House (1959), also in the same neck of the woods. The houses were innovative, forward-looking designs, Photograph of the Chuey House interior (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1960 by Julius Shulman. © J. Paul Ge y Trust. unique and irreplaceable. Ge y Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Their bad luck was the simple fact of their location: fabulous neighborhoods on large lots with views to die for. The economic logic of what is now called “mansionization” is inescapable: small houses on big lots that can hold a lot more. In this manner, a 2,000-square-foot house on an acre view lot is a goner when the lot can hold a 10,000-square-foot spec house that can go for several million dollars in today’s real estate market. The steady drip of demolitions of houses designed by prominent architects shows no sign of ending. Gone are several houses in recent years by noted architect Paul Revere Williams. Gone is the Shusse House (1951) by John Lautner aer a protracted fight to save it in 2010. Preservationists were shocked by the demolition of Richard’s Neutra’s Visitor Center at the Geysburg National Military Park (known as the Cyclorama Building), ironically perpetrated by the National Park Service which embeds preservation functions at the national scale. An all-time jaw-dropper: the weekend demolition in 2002 of the Neutradesigned Samuel and Luella Maslon House (1962), an unquestioned and intact 13-room master work beautifully sited on a golf course, commissioned by art collectors in Rancho Mirage, demolished in a hurry with furniture in it. There are no easy fixes. You can move a house in order to save it (rarely done). Cities may be goaded into writing preservation ordinances, certain protections may delay demolition, but public pressure does ma er. At the end of the day, there is li le that can stop a determined property owner in our country, where property rights are the ultimate sacred cow.

The property owners who demolish recognized historical structures are guilty of a crime against culture, history and society. One doubts whether they feel guilt. They likely feel supremely confident in cashing in on an incredible deal, preservation and history be damned. The neighborhood loses a dear friend and gains a bloated eyesore. Nothing can replace the original. Developers oen offer to document a building as “mitigation”—cold comfort in the face of absolute loss. The drawings and pictures become the remaining record of the dirty deed. However, you cannot really inhabit a drawing and a picture of the Dodge House (1916, Irving Gill), and those will never replace the real deal (demolished for a failed school proposal in 1970). Eventually, I suppose, we will be asked to consider whether a virtual reality version of Orange Coast College will suffice, as plans progress to demolish a substantial part of its collection of Neutradesigned academic buildings. The California Environmental Quality Act/Environmental Impact Report [CEQA/EIR] process is no guarantee that a preservation alternative will result in a positive outcome. Not all buildings can be preserved, but works of recognized master architects should stand a beer chance of surviving.

Raymond Neutra Vividly Recalls a Magical Night of Artistry in the Chuey House Designed by His Father

In the summer between my senior year at Pomona College and going off to study medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, I had a job with the Los Angeles Unified School District: taking art teachers on tours of modern homes. The houses included the Charles and Ray Eames home in Santa Monica overlooking the Pacific Ocean and my father’s Chuey House high on the ridge of hills between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. The Chuey House, owned by Robert and Josephine Ain Chuey, boasted an extra high studio to the back and a living room with a broad overhang against the southern exposure. It was supported by a spider leg ending in two shallow reflection pools. There must have been five or six of these weeklong tours that summer, and the Chueys were gracious about leing me and my gaggle of teachers traipse through their house. Robert was a retiring and reticent man who taught painting at Chouinard Art Institute. He had studied with Rico Lebrun, Howard Warshaw and Bill Brice (who also owned a Neutra house). Josephine, with bright blue anxious eyes and an enormous head of black wiry hair, was a poet who was devoted to hosting the first wave of Tibetan monks. That summer, I was studying classical guitar with Celedonio Romero while living with a family of Japanese musicians and trying to learn their language. In gratitude for their hospitality, I asked the Chueys if they would like to have a house concert of Spanish and Japanese music. They accepted with enthusiasm. The musicians were happy to experience my father’s design. Celedonio and his son, Pepe, who were not yet famous in 1961, came with their guitars and the Wakita family came with traditional Japanese instruments, a samisen and a koto (string instruments) and a shakuhachi (bamboo flute). As Celedonio played Isaac Albéniz, the carpet of jeweled lights of Los Angeles spread out before us through the large plate-glass windows. Then the moon came up, reflected in the shallow pools beyond the balcony. The room was silent except for the shakuhachi. The memory is vivid half a century later.