I was educated as an architect, but most of my best design lessons have been derived from daily life in the built environment.  Perhaps the strongest influence on my aesthetic sense is having lived in a house designed by William Wurster for the last thirty-five years. My admiration for the design of the house grows almost on a daily basis as details of it continue to attract my attention.  Here are a few examples:

View of the house and garden from the southeast looking toward the Bay

Siting is one of the most important factors in residential design.  Our house is located on a property in the Berkeley Hills that is blessed with a panoramic view of the Bay. But the view did not drive Wurster’s design.  He sited the house so that the long elevation of what is essentially a two story, rectilinear box faces east, not west to the Bay view.  This orientation gives all of the interior rooms exposure to a side garden and the morning sun. Selected spaces, the living room/dining room and master bedroom, have direct views to the Bay.  After only a season of living in the house with two sons and dogs, we realized the brilliance of the siting.

We continue to be drawn outdoors for leisure time in the yard, the dramatic vistas, and the eastern exposure.  The kitchen, living room/dining room and three upstairs bedrooms all have extra wide doors that open to the garden or to second floor balconies facing the garden.  The long elevation has minimal exposure to the harsh winds and rains that blow from the Bay. On a sunny morning when we are sitting outside the kitchen at a table on the garden patio, we are reminded how shortsighted it would have been to let the house divide such a beautiful green place into a front yard facing the bay and a back yard facing, well, the back yard.  The house is a primary lesson in what could be called, Architecture is About Buildings and their Context.

The shed roof creates a sense of generous space while providing perfect drainage.

A roof is not just a cover to keep out the weather.  It is a major component of the form of a building and one whose effect can be experienced even from the inside.  Our house is documented as being Wurster’s first use of the shed roof for a residential building.  In addition to simplifying the exterior form of the house while adding a bit of reference to a California farm building, the shed roof allows the interior rooms it covers to be more than little or mid-sized boxes.  The floor to ceiling height of the ground level rooms is approximately nine feet, adding an even more generous sense of space to the open plan layout.  The second floor rooms have a floor to ceiling height at the low side of the roof of approximately six-feet eight inches.  The shed roof allows this height to increase to nine feet or more on the opposite side of the room.

The shed roof is another example of the functional simplicity of Wurster’s design aesthetic.  It provides a very cost effective and simple roofing system.  The framing does not require special bracing given the width of the house; the pitch allows easy drainage; and the finish material can be tar and gravel as on a flat roof.  A shed roof can easily be built to overhang and shelter exterior doorways.  Finally, it has proved much more enduring and alluring to live with over time than the double-pitched version, which requires higher maintenance.  Thus the roof form is critical, both aesthetically and functionally.

From taking tours of other Wurster designed houses, I have observed that he typically made creative use of circulation elements such as stairs to create a dramatic effect in otherwise fairly ordinary plans.  For the thirty-five years we have lived in our Wurster-designed house, I have never ceased to marvel at the beauty created by its simple curved staircase.

View of the curved stairway with the projecting window.

Midway between the first and second floor, a large, projecting window offers a view of distant trees and lights the space. Wurster approximately doubled the wall depth to accommodate this window.  The design permitted simple construction and was relatively inexpensive for such a dramatic custom treatment. Furthermore, it enhanced the experience of going from one level to another.

The upper landing leads to each of the three bedrooms and features a solid bannister overlooking the stairs.  The center point is a rounded element that also is finished to match the plastered walls.  A light hangs over the top of the rounded center and a fixture was chosen that is a simple glazed cylinder.  This stairway is the one dramatic element in an otherwise simple and plain house.  The lesson is that stairways are an opportunity to add spice to the relationship between form and function.

Construction drawing for the projecting stairway window

Every time I look out of the windows in the house, I am stunned by what often appears to be an artful arrangement of what is on the outside.  The single pane opening means that the outdoor space is virtually part of the indoor space. Although  in a time of awareness of energy efficient design, a large, single paned window becomes more problematic–especially when they are made operable–windows and their detailing are of prime importance to the beauty and livability of a home or a workplace.

Single paned windows can frame and organize landscape views

When you are seated inside our house and look out one of the ground floor windows, you can see the ground as well as the horizon and sky.  Wurster designed the window openings on the ground floor to be at a height above the floor level of approximately 27 inches.  The result is a strong visual connection between the outdoor and the indoor space.  There is no sense of floating or of being in a tree.  The design is one of being literally grounded, even in a setting of almost overwhelming long-range views.  The ground plane is made part of the view.  This detail reinforces all aspects of the connection between indoor and outdoor space.

Placing windows near the floor allows sightlines to the ground.

View from Martin Luther King Jr. Street

First floor plans

Second floor plans

When you walk or drive around Berkeley’s flatland neighborhoods, the buildings that line the grid of streets are not likely to attract your attention. A few large turn-of-the-19^th century houses that once occupied outsized lots indicate that this is former farmland. Their neighboring houses are usually modest and were built later when the original parcel of land was subdivided and sold. Neither the lots nor the buildings are large. So unless you are looking for a particular address, you would not pay attention to the passing scene. Nor would anything about the houses attract your gaze

View of the new building

But if you arrive at the intersection of Dwight Way and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way from either of those two streets, a complex of two buildings on the northwest corner is likely to catch your eye. Not because the buildings–the corner one is a renovated two-story structure of circa 1900 and the other is a new 2-story apartment building–have unusual shapes,  but because they seem to have sprouted pieces of cars that either look like strange carbuncles or are recognizable as the windshields of hatchbacks that once belonged to Mazdas and Porsches.

That is what they are. The railings, awnings, fences and gates of the complex’s buildings and grounds are made from discarded car parts and street signs which Karl Wanaselja, one of the design/build firm’s two partners, has avidly collected over a period of years.

Stair railing in the courtyard wrapped with street signs

At the very early age of three Karl was introduced to cars because his parents participated as amateurs in car races, and their brief career imprinted their son with a passion for automobiles that found expression, not in racing, but in preserving and rehabilitating used cars in his architectural career. In his practice, which combines design and construction, he has salvaged parts from over 250 cars for use on 7 different projects.

Easier said than done. Indeed, if he were not a skilled craftsman with an extensive knowledge of materials and a determination to convert these agents of environmental pollution into green materials, we might not detect any morality in his madness. He explains that, “he was motivated to explore using car parts in buildings as a way of merging my seemingly contradictory interests in automobiles and environmental stewardship.”

Karl and his partner and wife, Cate Leger, who is also a staunch environmentalist, have devoted much of their design energies to salvaging and restoring tons of wood and metal for use in their projects.

The Dwight Way complex was the firm’s 30th and most visible in 20 years of residential projects to explore a full range of energy-saving strategies,  but three measures alone saved the two buildings the cost of a year’s worth of energy. They were: using blown-in cellulose insulation made from old telephone books and newspapers instead of fiberglass; substituting 50% of the cement in the concrete with fly ash,  an industrial by-product of burning coal, and leaving the aluminum siding on the existing corner building instead of replacing it with wood or stucco.

In addition to adopting the recognized means of recycling materials and saving energy, Karl and Cate have practiced what I propose calling Artisanal Recycling, a craft-oriented approach to reusing materials and objects. Examples of this kind of recycling in the Dwight Way complex begin with the two gated entrances to the landscaped court between the buildings, which was formerly a large side yard of the corner building. The first gate, visible in the photograph above is a two-tier assemblage of the rear ends of  eight Volvos operated electronically.

The pedestrian gate to the courtyard. Photograph by Scott McGlashan.

The second gate between the two buildings, shown above, is made of recycled street signs. The gate’s design raises the issue of how this reuse, which completely changed the signs’ original function, should be classified.

An assessment of the original function of these standard-issue signs makes it clear that information, not wit, was their message. That their color, format, and font are repeated without variation except for the length determined by the words, reassures those traveling in cars on these roads that the sign they see some distance ahead, but cannot read, will give them the information they need to follow their chosen route. Were they upended, as these signs are, their function would be destroyed. Yet we are entertained by this change of meaning which, under other circumstance, could be labeled vandalism and a violation of the law.

Above, the courtyard’s interior. The stair railing to the upper floor, shown above, is wrapped with street signs. Photograph by Cesar Rubio.

Projecting from the corner of the second floor is a carbuncular bay window clad in aluminum plates which, it turns out, are salvaged street signs which have been flipped over. Its underside is clad with California highway signs. Two other such bay windows projects from the rear corners of the building. The roof overhang is also composed of reversed aluminum street signs and define a balcony railing above a shallow bay on the building’s south side. Mazda and Porsche glass hatchbacks were used on the exterior and interior. Shown below is a Porsche rear window converted to an awning above the entrance to the apartment building.

Below it is a view of part of an interior stair railing on the second floor level, which also shows the connection of the window to the floor.

While the mass-produced articles that make up much of the content of our daily lives may seem to have only the one use determined by the time of their creation, their life span is even more determined by our only seeing them through the lens that led to their creation. If they cannot surprise us by suggesting other uses, they must be replaced by new devices while the previous ones are consigned to the scrap heap. Today’s challenge is to cleanse the windows and doors of our perception and reanimate these artifacts, as Leger Wanaselja have done.

Unless otherwise noted, the photographs are by Leger Wanasalja Architects.

From its unofficial beginning on a San Francisco ferryboat to its current status as a nationally recognized program, the Architecture Department at the University of California, Berkeley, played a significant role in American architectural education. Faculty and alumni from the UC Berkeley Architecture Department have profoundly influenced architectural thought, practice, design, education, and the built environment of the San Francisco Bay Area. Design on the Edge provides insights into the history and development of the department that included such notables as John Galen Howard, William Wurster, Catherine Bauer Wurster, Erich Mendelsohn, Christopher Alexander, Joseph Esherick, Spiro Kostof, Sim Van der Ryn, Dell Upton, and Marc Treib, as well as more recent rising stars such as Michael Bell and Lisa Iwamoto. From its inception, Berkeley’s architecture program enrolled women and minorities; recently, more than 50% of its graduates have been women. Discover how Berkeley’s Architecture Department became the national model for incorporating social responsibility and environmental sustainability into design and design education.

By assembling a wide array of informal reflections, scholarly essays, and writings from a variety of past and current students, staff, and faculty, Design on the Edge will appeal to a broad audience of people interested in architecture, pedagogy, the creative process, and the built environment of California. Its hundreds of photographs and drawings and readable text will engage and entertain.

The images below may be downloaded and used for reviewing or promoting Design on the Edge: A Century of Teaching Architecture, 1903–2003. Copyright for these images is held by the Regents of the University of California. Please credit the Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley, unless otherwise noted. Non-promotional use requires written permission from the Environmental Design Archives.

The Ark was designed by John Galen Howard

For its first 50 years, the UC Berkeley Architecture Department was housed in a small, shingled building that everyone called the “Ark.” It was designed by well-known Bay Area architect and founder of the department, John Galen Howard, in 1906.

Students from 1928

Architecture students in the Ark, 1928.

Picture Courtesy of Prof. Emeritus Richard Peters.

William Wurster, a well-known Bay Area architect, was invited by the UC Architecture Department to bring the program into the “modern” era. He’s pictured here (right) in 1952 with Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus in Germany and later an instructor at Harvard University. (Courtesy of Prof. Emeritus Richard Peters.)

Architecture "1N"

As the new dean of the Architecture Department, William W. Wurster invited innovative and forward-thinking architects and designers to reinvigorate the program and shape a new curriculum. Here, students stand with their projects from Charles Eames’ new course “1N” in 1954.

Picture Courtesy of George Kostritsky.

Well-known European Modernist Erich Mendelsohn, pictured here with his students, taught at UC Berkeley from 1948-1953.

A Beaux-Arts Approach circa 1930s

Student work changed significantly over the years, from a Beaux-Arts to a Modern approach. Note the difference between a 1930 drawing of a “swimming club” (above) by student (and later architecture professor) Vernon DeMars and the image below…

A Modern Approach circa 1961

… of a 1961 drawing of a “professional-commercial center” by student George Winnacker.

Wurster Hall

Having outgrown the Ark, the Architecture Department in 1964 moved to its current home in Wurster Hall. During the first weeks of occupying Wurster Hall, the department had to close its doors more than once because of student civil rights protests on campus.

Courtesy of Prof. Emeritus Claude Stoller.

Over the years, many world-class designers and educators have made their mark on the department either as lecturers or as visiting instructors, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, and Buckminster Fuller, pictured here (center) collaborating with UC Berkeley students and faculty on his “Fly’s Eye” project.

Photo by Maria Moreno.

Architecture students in the famously colorful stairwell in Wurster Hall, 1999, just prior to the building closing for a major seismic retrofit.

More Information

This article was originally published in the May 21, 2010 issue of the CED News

CONTACTS

Waverly Lowell
Tel: 510-643-5655
Email: wlowell@berkeley.edu
FAX: 510-642-2824

Elizabeth Byrne
Tel: 510-643-7323
Email: ebyrne@library.berkeley.edu
FAX: 510-642-8266

About the authors

Waverly Lowell is the curator of the Environmental Design Archives and author of Living Modern: A Biography of Greenwood Common (William Stout Publishers, 2009). She has consulted with design firms and directed the California COPAR survey which resulted in the book Architectural Records in the San Francisco Bay Area: A guide to research.

Elizabeth Douthitt Byrne is head of the Environmental Design Library at UC Berkeley. She has been an art and design librarian for more than 40 years

Betsy Frederick-Rothwell is a graduate of the UCB Architecture Department and a former archivist for the UCB Environmental Design Archives. She is currently a preservation specialist for the U.S. General Services Administration.

Book Details

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: University of California, Berkeley, College of Environmental Design, 2009
Language: English
ISBN-13: 9780981966731
Product Dimensions: 9-1/4″ x 11-1/4″
Price: $72 (including tax)
Purchase at: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaID=198393
Proceeds support the Environmental Design Archives

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The Brower Center at Oxford and Allston Streets.

The recently completed David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley is a memorial to a major figure in this country’s environmental movement. Brower served as the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club from 1952 fo 1960 and later founded such environmental organizations as Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, and Earth Island Institute. He inspired a generation of environmental activists, some of whom now work in the building at the intersection of Allston Way and Oxford Street that bears his name.

Thirty some national and international groups occupy 24,000 sq. ft. of office space on the building’s upper three floors. Their mission is to foster collaborations, engage new people in advocacy and facilitate cross-sector communication and partnerships.

Although the work of the building’s tenants is a story in itself, the subject of this article is the Center’s building design and its structural system, which were created to insure that the physical embodiment of Brower’s legacy would be a state-of-the-art expression of his life’s work. The building is on track to receive a LEED platinum rating—the highest possible—from the US Green Building Council.

Plans show the shape of the site and the Brower Center's rounded facade derived from the street corner it faces. Plans of the Oxford Plaza housing are shown on the right.

The building’s site is unusual in that the corner it faces has a rounded edge. This feature prompted the architects, WRT/Solomon E.T.C., to design a rounded façade that enables a more natural flow of space than the typical right-angled street corner. Pedestrian traffic flows from the building’s entrance on Allston Street past the Center’s ground-floor restaurant, Gather, to a gated open space between the Center and the apartment complex, Oxford Plaza.

The building’s façade suggests a temple form with engaged columns set on a raised base, a slightly projecting attic story above, and a cornice, which departs from the classical type by continuing the solid array of photovoltaic panels on the south side with a slatted trellis that follows the roof line and rises as it curves around the eave from south to north like an upturned hat brim.

View of the Brower Center from a building across Oxford Street.
Both photographs on this page are by Tim Griffith.

The panels’ downward slant on the south side moderates the greater amount of daylight entering the building from that direction and reduce heat gain in the summer; their upward tilt on the north side increase the admission of light to meet the seasonal greater need. Measures like these have made the interior nearly 100% daylit.

In respect to materials, the metal used for the façade is zinc, which requires less energy to mine and work into forms than aluminum or steel. Its matt surface avoids glare. The window glass redirects sunlight and thereby reduces heat gain. Operable window sections allow changes in ventilation.

The concrete used in the building is 70% blast furnace slag in the foundation and 50% slag in the super structure. The use of this by-product of manufacturing steel reduces the building’s energy content and its “carbon footprint” by 40%. The Brower Center is the first Bay Area Project to use high-slag concrete on such a scale.

The C. V. Starr East Asian Library on the University of California’s Berkeley campus opened in March 2008. The EAL is the country’s first free-standing library dedicated to east Asian collections built on a university campus; it was named for Cornelius Vander Starr, an early leader in the insurance industry and founder of the American International Group (AIG), Starr attended UCBe as an undergraduate.

Designed by Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, the building occupies a site on the north edge of the Memorial Glade that is part of the campus’s landmarked Classical Core. The library‘s rectangular form, tiled hip-roof, vertically proportioned punched windows, and granite cladding were mandated in the criteria of the 2002 New Century Plan and derived from the neo-classical buildings in the campus core area. The library’s location across from John Galen Howard’s monumental Doe Library made designing the building to harmonize with the tone of the core particularly important.

Yet, while honoring the criteria, the architects created a building that has more in common with the tenets of Modernism than those of Classicism. Notwithstanding the primary use of poured-in-place concrete and the exterior’s 3’-7”x 7’-10” granite slabs, the library does not convey the sense of a masonry building kin to its neighbors. The 2.25″-thick slabs are treated like giant tiles affixed to the concrete walls. The walls’ separation from the roof gives them a screenlike appearance, and the punched windows with minimal projecting heads contribute to the impression of thinness associated with Modernism.

The defining feature of the long south façade is not the grand flight of stairs that typically announced the entrance to a neo-classical building, but a bronze grille 110 by 32 feet designed in a variation of the traditional “cracked ice” pattern often used in previous eras in Chinese history. This and two other elaborate bronze grilles located on the east and west walls were cast in sand in a foundry in Hangzhou, China. Night illumination increase their magical effect

In addition to their aesthetic contribution, the grilles have the practical effects of lowering energy costs by reducing over forty-five percent of the direct sunlight entering the building and allowing office windows of different sizes to be hidden behind the south wall’s grille.

Cherry wood was used throughout the library interior, often in sections of narrow battens backed by a red fabric, as shown above. Floors are made of bamboo.

Photographs by Jonathan Reo