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.

The BRIDGE Housing Corporation, a non-profit company considered by many to be the state’s foremost developer of affordable housing, has built more than 13,000 housing units since its founding in 1983. Although Bridge’s original focus was housing for working families, it has diversified and now has several affiliates and a staff of about 250, enabling it to handle every aspect of financing, planning, development and maintenance of the projects it owns and manages.

Although outreach to the community surrounding its projects has always been an integral part of BRIDGE’s approach to building housing in California, its scope has expanded to include the components of communities and to transforming existing neighborhoods.

This article focuses on the early history of BRIDGE, beginning with an account of its founding and its early projects, Holloway Terrace in 1985, and Parkview Commons in 1990. The recently completed Mission Walk development comprises two buildings on Berry Street in Mission Bay. The missing period of enormous expansion between 1990 and 2009 will doubtless be covered in the detail it deserves, but a blog post is not adequate for that task.

The impetus for starting BRIDGE in San Francisco, which remains its headquarters, was an anonymous gift of approximately $650,000 entrusted to the San Francisco Foundation in late 1980.

The funds were dedicated to creating affordable housing and came at a time when the Bay Area’s high costs of living threatened the stability of the workforce because its members were being priced out of the housing market.

The nine-page document that accompanied the gift contained the following statement:

“The donor has had and still has a strong interest in housing for persons and families of low and moderate income. However well intentioned, various federal programs, e.g., Section 8, have not delivered enough housing to either the inner cities or elsewhere to meet the enormous demand. This in turn suggests that what the private sector needs is a program for the construction or rehabilitation of housing for low and moderate income groups which would attract private investors interested in meeting a real national need and still make economic sense to investors and the business community.

Accordingly, this gift must be used to form a relatively small task force to study the problem, using all the academic disciplines from Bay Area universities at the faculty and graduate school level. Membership of the task force should also include enough experienced businessmen and bankers to avoid too heavy an academic orientation.”

The foundation asked Alan Stein, an investment banker, to chair the task force and select its members. Stein had come to San Francisco from New York City in 1971 to head the office of Goldman Sachs. In 1978 Governor Jerry Brown appointed him Secretary of Business and Transportation, which had ten departments, one of which was Housing and Community Development. Since the HCD department lacked a director at that time, Stein’s first task was to fill that position.

For advice in finding a new director Stein consulted Richard Bender, then dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. Bender recommended a faculty member, Don Terner, who was an ardent housing advocate and had worked successfully in affordable housing programs in New York.

In 1980 Terner was appointed director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development. He moved to Sacramento where he worked closely with Alan Stein and, according to Stein, educated him about the housing field by taking him to see projects throughout the state. Terner left the state government in 1981.

In 1982, to fulfill the donor’s stipulation that a task force be formed to administer the grant, Stein convened a group of people who were successful in various fields and interested in affordable housing. Rather than create another report, the task force chose to start building. The next step was to hire executives to run the operation.

Don Terner’s actions as Director of Housing and Community Development made him a leading candidate to head the organization. He had sponsored legislation which gave non-profit housing developers the first option to purchase surplus public lands and had also initiated legislation that included density bonuses that allowed selected developers to add up to 30% additional units to their projects, thus giving them extra units at no additional land costs.

Terner was hired to be the president of the new organization, which was then called Bay Area Regional Housing Investment and Development Group, later turned into the acronym, BRIDGE. A close associate and former student of his, Rick Holliday, was made vice president.

To raise the capital needed to start building units, Stein and Terner, supported by their board of directors, held fund-raising events for members of the business community. This use of the methods of private developers was a radical departure from the 1960s approach of community non-profit housing organizations which were oriented toward government funding and focused on individual projects.

A highly successful fund raising event in 1983 allowed the first project, Holloway Terrace, in San Francisco’s Ingleside Terrace to start; it was completed in 1985. According to Alan Stein, the success of this and other projects that followed came from diligent outreach to the projects’ neighborhoods, ownership of the projects and careful management, and the serious involvement of board members in the projects’ development.

The original task force members are Dick Bender, Gordon Chin, Ken Phillips, Tony Ramos, Alan Stein, Clark Wallace, Susanne Wilson, Gerson Bakar, Preston Butcher, Tom Flynn, Tony Frank, Dean Macris, Sunne McPeak, Ken Rosen, Mary Lee Widener. The picture on the right is of Alan Stein and Rick Holliday, 2009.

The Salvation Army’s Turk Street Center is that rare building which both honors the context of an historic district and stands out as decidedly contemporary.

The new building at 240-242 Turk Street was completed in July, 2008 after five years of programming and an intensive Planning Department design review process followed by 28 months of construction, which included the demolition of an existing building.

In designing a rippling facade of metallic bay windows the architects, Herman Coliver Locus, have capitalized on San Francisco’s vernacular building style and affirmed its functionality for the architecture of urban streetscapes.

Photograph by Tim Griffith

By coloring some of the window frames blue or yellow, as shown above, the architects sought to allow residents the possibility of identifying the location of their apartment and thereby lessening the anonymity of  the wall of windows.

The eight-story building has 113 apartments, 110 of which are studios with 358.5 sq. ft. Three are 2-bedroom units with 912.5 sq. ft.

Throughout his busy career in architecture, which stretched from the early 1930s to the 1980s, Cliff May profited from and contributed to the ebullient spirit of the post-World War II era In California, his native state. He designed over 1,000 buildings, most of them houses, which came to symbolize “western living” for a national and even international audience.

May’s accomplishments were not confined to architecture, which he learned as an amateur by crafting furniture before turning to building houses. He was a dedicated horseman, a musician who in
college had his own dance band, an automobile collector, an airplane pilot, and a talented self-promoter. He seemed to live the idyllic life projected in his designs.

You might say that Cliff May inherited the archetypical Spanish colonial ranch house, which he adopted as emblematic of the California being publicized as an earthly paradise. His great, great, great grandfather was a member of the Estudillo family, builders of the San Diego adobe house that Helen Hunt Jackson made famous in her romantic novel, Ramona, an enduring best-seller published in 1884.

May’s early houses hewed to the character of the colonial adobes. Although they acknowleged the automobile by makng the garage an important element of the house front, they were low one-story structures with heavy tile roofs, uneven stuccoed walls, and other elements of the pre-industrial Hispanic culture that, while useful, also functioned as decorative features.

Although May had no architectural training, his wife Jean, had taken a college course in the subject. They collected the arts and crafts products produced by the Spanish colonial revival style and copied the furniture marketed in California in the late 1920s. But this nostalgic use of history never interfered with equipping their houses with the latest appliances. May even posed for a photograph scooping ice cream from the freezer of his 1937 rancheria.

The country’s acceptance of the modern ranch house began in the mid-1940s when this new vernacular style was presented as an alternative to the cool and hard-edged International Modernism showcased by Philip Johnson in the New York Museum of Modern Art’s 1932 exhibition, “Modern Architecture: International exhibition.” In 1944 Elizabeth Gordon, editor of the widely read magazine, House Beautiful, published a long article showing Cliff May’s house #3 on the cover.

Thus began an advocacy of California living that declared its anti-modernism in such statements as Gordon’s 1946 article description, “A House Can Be Modern and Not Look It.”

Above is the cover of the February 1947 issue of House Beautiful, which featured the Pace-Setter House.

Entering the national quest for the postwar house in the 1940s, Sunset magazine published designs by several young western architects, but ultimately adopted May’s approach as best representing the magazine’s vision for the future with its abundance of “new convenience ideas” that would make housekeeping joyful in tastefully designed homes. In addition to his continuous production of Sunset’s published tract houses, May created the magazine’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California. It was a roughly 30,000 square-foot ranch house–the crowning achievement of his long association with this so-called “Laboratory for Western Living.”

Below is May’s drawing of the proposed Sunset Magazine headquarters building in Menlo Park.

Although May’s ranch houses remained talismanic, their design was never frozen in time. In the mid-century decades the houses merged gracefully with Modernism, exchanging the overtly colonial features of the early work for the light-filled, open-plan house with glazed walls that minimized the separation of inside and outside and integrated the garden into the whole.

Photograph by Joe Fletcher

Gregory’s book follows this trajectory with gorgeous photography and detailed descriptions of the buildings. Excerpts from original publications recapture the changing colors and graphic styles of the times.

Author Daniel Gregory is highly qualified to guide readers through Cliff May’s work and the period’s history. Gregory was employed at Sunset for twenty-seven years. He served as a senior editor for fifteen of those years and is well versed in the history of the magazine. His grandparents built a seminal ranch house in 1928, designed by William W. Wurster. While Wurster never made a career of designing ranch houses, his influence on Northern Calilfornia architecture has a somewhat parallel course to Mays’s. Gregory’s account of the family “farm”, as they called the Santa Cruz property, enriches our understanding of the times.

Although Sunset magazine still publishes designs for living, Cliff May’s ranch houses no longer spread new wings over the California landscape. Instead, they are being restored and landmarked, as befits the legend they embodied.

The Glen Park Community Plan is one of several planning efforts underway in the City’s transit-served neighborhoods. Glen Park with its BART station is a piece of the Citywide Action Plan to meet the need for housing and jobs.

The Glen Park Community Planning effort seeks to make Glen Park a better place to live and to help Glen Park function better for transit. The long-standing Interest in a neighborhood planning effort for Glen Park increased in response to the 1998 fire that destroyed the local grocery. After the fire, the Planning Department identified grant partners and was awarded a Caltrans grant in mid-2002. After many unavoidable delays, the community planning was started and has culminated in the plan to give the Glen Park community the tools it needs to guide future development in keeping with the neighborhood’s values.

Related Sites:

• BART > Glen Park Station > News | Chronology
  The official site for BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit.
• The Glen Park Community Plan at the San Francisco Planning Department
  This community planning process sought to provide the opportunity to balance community needs and address planning issues facing the neighborhood. Planners tackle circulation issues important to the community, including pedestrian safety, traffic flow, access to transit, and parking. Planners also evaluate ways to respect the neighborhood character through zoning, design guidelines, and other city policies. Public improvement opportunities like the use and design of buildings surrounding the BART station, the design and character of streets, and connecting public open spaces and neighborhoods were also explored.
• Glan Park Station at Wikipedia
  This is the only BART station in San Francisco to have parking.