RED Office Returning Role of Architect to Its Roots

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

RED Office returning role of architect to its roots

Mark Armao/The Daily Transcript

Ted Smith (left), Kate Meairs (center) and Héctor M. Pérez are the principals of The RED Office, an architectural firm that designs, develops and performs general contracting services on building projects.

By Mark Armao In ancient Greece, an "arkhitekton" was a master builder in charge of both the design and construction of a building.

Over the years, that role has become increasingly specialized, and the modern­day architect is retained primarily to provide design services for a developer's pre­conceived project.

But in San Diego, a group of architects is reverting to the classical function of master builder while pushing the profession forward with innovative designs and a unique financing model.

The RED Office was founded two years ago as an extension of the Woodbury School of Architecture's Master of Science in real estate development (MS­RED) program. The company's principals are Ted Smith, Héctor M. Pérez and Kate Meairs, who operate as developers and builders besides their design efforts.

Both Smith and Pérez are faculty members at Woodbury, and Meairs is a graduate of the MS­RED program.

After Meairs ­ who came into the master's program with more than 15 years of professional architecture experience ­ pursued a high­rise project as part of her thesis, she stayed on with the team. The trio then established The RED Office as a way to give MS­RED graduates a leg up in the field while exploring a new way to practice architecture.

Instead of designing buildings for a fee, The RED Office offers its services to clients without upfront costs, opting to provide "sweat equity" in exchange for partial ownership of the building once it's completed.

Although the strategy is inherently risky for The RED Office, the absence of an architectural fee makes it an attractive model for landowners who don't have the cash to develop a property.

"The power of the RED Office is that we're all working for free until a project is built, and then we're making some money from it," Smith said. "But, the front end is all speculative."

Because they are not wedded to the prescriptive demands of a corporate developer, the architect­builders from The RED Office have greater creative freedom in their designs. And, by hiring subcontractors and overseeing construction themselves, the design team assumes the role of general contractor.

This independence frees the architects from the adversarial environment that can arise between the developer, architect and contractor on a project.

"We're not going to sue ourselves," Meairs said.

The firm has chased about 10 projects and has three on the board: A hotel in Hillcrest, artist lofts in Barrio Logan, and an alley house in North Park are in various stages of development.

Several current students in the real estate development program earn an hourly wage working for The RED Office, while graduates of the program get the chance to partner with the firm.

For graduates working for sweat equity, every hour they put in earns them a percentage of ownership. "Everybody's an equal in this office, from the youngest alumni to the oldest guy," Smith said, pointing to himself. "We write our hours down and then we own all the buildings together, and we split the profits without a gradient."

Although RED stands for real estate development, Smith noted that the firm's ideology may bring to mind the red flag of socialism. Despite the company's Marxian organizational structure, the end goal is to make a building from which each individual can profit.

"We believe in capitalism, too," Smith said.

With its unusual approach, the firm champions a progressive design philosophy: Use sustainable building practices to create unique places that bring density back to the urban core.

The RED team believes the design of buildings and of cities themselves should address environmental issues such as climate change. By concentrating development in the urban center ­ instead of in the suburbs ­ cities could reduce the car traffic between the two areas, lessening the environmental impacts from fuel emissions, Pérez said.

"The goal is to have a smaller footprint, and in order to achieve that, you have to stop building further and further away," Pérez said. "The most beautiful cities we can think of are the ones that have density and vibrancy."

In urban areas, the team favors relatively thin structures built around an open space. Building on the perimeter of a block allows each unit to be naturally lighted and ventilated from both sides.

To maximize the number of units while still maintaining a sense of openness within each space, the architects often design high­ceilinged rooms on small floor plates.

The model is on display in The RED Office's headquarters, in Little Italy. The main office space has about the same square­ footage of the average motel room, but the high ceilings and large windows make it seem spacious.

The building is part of the LIND Block, which is a mixed­use block containing structures designed in the mid­1990s by Smith, along with some of San Diego's most well­known architects. The other designers involved in the LIND Block include Rob Quigley, who designed the new San Diego Central Library, and Jonathan Segal, who holds a faculty position at Woodbury.

Smith's colleagues often refer to him as the "godfather" of the architect­as­developer movement in San Diego because of his work designing GoHomes, experimental housing units he developed in the early 1980s.

In Barrio Logan, the Woodbury architects are planning another collective infill project. They have subdivided a property originally purchased to expand the Woodbury campus. After the plan was halted by the recession in 2008, the architects developed the property themselves.

Pérez took the first crack in 2012, building La Esquina, a small apartment building comprising eight live­work units. Designed to maximize space on a small floor plan, the micro­units have sleeping lofts and shared patios.

Pérez used inexpensive materials in his design to ensure his units were affordable for the artists, designers and musicians for whom the space is designed. Making non­subsidized affordable units for creatives is another guiding principle of The RED Office.

"All the people that don't make enough money to live in the city are the people who make the city wonderful," Smith said.

"We're always very interested in making housing that's affordable by that group of people, and designed for that group of people."

Although The RED Office is still in its infancy, the team hopes to expand its footprint by integrating space­efficient, sustainable and affordable buildings into the fabric of the city while educating and influencing the architects of tomorrow.

Meairs said San Diego is at the epicenter of a movement within architecture redefining the practice. "Instead of trying to sell a concept to a developer that may or may not want to take a chance, you can actually follow your intuition," Meairs said.

"It's a better way to realize your design." mark_armao@sdtranscript.com