Last year we started a interactive discussion pairing visionary people to talk about how relationships inspire what they do. In architecture school, students tend to see dozens of architects give their version of the “Recent Work” lecture about their buildings, talks that tend to endorse the myth of the individual genius. For 2X2, we were interested in hearing from people who could talk about how they work with or depend on other people. And maybe have a beer or glass of wine.

We started with Mark Wheat and Maren Kloppmann who spoke about creativity in personal relationships, followed by Tracy Singleton and Greg Reynolds who spoke about the connections between Greg’s organic fields at Riverbend Farm and Tracy’s local-food-loving restaurant, the Birchwood Cafe.

For #3, 7:30 pm on September 18th at the Locus studio, we welcome Wing Young Huie, creator of The University Avenue Project, to talk with art historian Anna Tahinci about beer ads & basketball, Rodin & Rolleiflex, epic spaces & ethnic realities in public art.

You provide a $10 cash donation at the door, we’ll provide the drinks and the intellect.

Special thanks to Mark Wheat who will introduce our guests and help us with post-lecture Q&A.

RSVP to wynne@locusarchitecture.com before Thursday, September 9th to secure your spot.

Green building? Check. Chalkboard wall? Check. Wood interior walls? Check. Low operations cost? Check. Half a block to bike trails and swimming beach? Check. Check. Check.

Snap it up, you’ll love it, and it puts us one step closer to starting nowHaus 02!

Please take a quick look through the Locus website (www.locusarchitecture.com) and let us know your thoughts on any of the following:
Message – Are we telling the proper story?
Content – Can you find all the pertinent information you want?
Ease of Navigation – Can you get to everything easily?
Imagery – Are the images captivating?
Layout – Does the layout present Locus properly?

If you’re a past client, please let us know what brought you to Locus in the beginning.  If you’re not, what do you find in the website that does and doesn’t interest you?

We value your opinions and, as your time is valuable, welcome any tidbit of feedback you can offer.  If you’re too busy, don’t sweat it!!

Thank you,

Paul and Wynne

When I was in California recently, I caught up with one of our early clients, a couple who have slowly – but methodically – worked on their home since we started designing it in 1999. The abbreviated story goes something like this.

In the mid 80s Roger, a metal sculptor, and Carol, a business consultant, say farewell to their loft in San Francisco and buy some land on Merritt Island, south of Clarksburg, CA. They meet neighbors Carter & Dodi Sparks. Carter, they learn, is an architect. Liking the sensibility of Sparks’ regional mid-centry modernism, the Berrys plan to have Carter design a house for them, but Sparks’ life is cut short by a fatal stroke.

Two years later, over wine, the Berrys and Dodi get to talking about a house that Carter might have designed. Dodi suggests the Berrys talk to me, a native of Clarksburg and a sort of Carter’s-spirit-next-of-kin.

My training as a Sparks groupie started early; I grew up in a Sparks home a few miles from the Berry’s property, where he was a frequent guest at dinner and cocktail parties. I can remember him down on the rug in the entry hall playing Matchbox cars with me, dressed in something bright – an orange linen suit perhaps – with a martini expertly balanced on his knee. I lunched with him and my father sometimes during the summer; afterwards he’d show me the projects underway in his office. On Sparks’ recommendation, I studied at U. C. Berkeley as he had.

Interested by the coincidences, and my familiarity with the landscape, Carol and Roger contacted Locus in 1999. Shortly after, we began our collaboration. Organizing meetings around my visits to California, Locus spent five years working on design. Construction began in 2004, and continued for several years, with completion of the lap pool in 2008, and landscaping ongoing today.

Roger designed and built a number of custom pieces for the home in his studio across the driveway; the stair, 300-lb. cor-ten steel siding panels, chimney, and entry trellis were all built for the house on site.

After a dozen years of watching it come together, it’s one of my favorite project on an absolutely beautiful site for two extremely warm and talented people.

Check out Roger’s work at the link above, very thoughtful and exquisite work.

Let’s look at the Walgreens store first.   The bench is located over 15 ft. past the roof overhang – a point at which daylight noticeably decreases.  Though the setback enables shoppers to conveniently pass by without tripping over the legs of those seated, sitters are left in the dark without much to admire. When resting at the bench one is confronted by cars – aligned at the same height as a driver seated in their vehicle.  There is no spatial sense of separation aside from the curb and occasional appearance of the column / bollard grid, thus the “arcade” is as much a dull attempt at pedestrian-izing a parking lot as it is store front circulation.  It straightforwardly states, “get me in and get me out” by funneling patrons from the expansive parking lot along its hard edges toward the barely distinguishable front door.  The passage through this sort of threshold (parking – sidewalk – store wall) is as easily forgotten as the search for an open parking stall.

The horizontal proportions of Walgreen’s funnel (~16’ wide by ~10’ tall) are practically flipped at the Mission Santa Barbara.  The less deep and more vertical space allows daylight to stream through the arcade to the exterior wall where a variety of benches are shaded, but not left in the dark.  The height of the space offers a sense of lightness with expansive skyward views; however, it does so while maintaining a sense of safety and separation from the parking area.  Level changes and a variety of architectural and vegetative layers create a stage-like setting that oscillates between foreground and background – containment and permeability.  Notions of threshold extend beyond that of a curb and front door to include exterior sidewalk, planter, stairs, balustrade, and archway.

Such a layering offers sensorial choices – varied, but clear – to the action of entering/exiting and does so within defensible space – simultaneously offering both prospect of possibilities (ranging from “stopping to smell the flowers” to racing for the front door) and refuge from undesirable interaction (e.g. facing windshields head-on).  The proportion of the arcade works together with the entire system of aforementioned elements to achieve this experiential richness.  Had the height been halved, the crescendo effect of climbing the stairs would have been lost, not to mention the expansive view.  Conversely, had Walgreens raised the height of the ceiling, the spatial experience might be less claustrophobic, but not necessarily more desirable given its immediate adjacencies.  Climatic conditions aside, the Mission succeeds because of the attention put toward threshold and reminds us that enjoyable space doesn’t occur from materiality, proportion, or context alone.  Rather, it requires a deep understanding of these interrelationships.

The course we led in Biloxi, MS three years ago closely resembles the work of the Rural Studio.  It had all the ingredients of the messy, “get-your-hands-dirty” kind of architecture that combines a highly creative learning environment with meaningful results.  Working in the shadows of multi-billion dollar casinos, our students designed and built a pavilion for folks with little means, many of whom had lost nearly everything in Katrina.

Our work at Locus has also been somewhat non-typical for many architects.  Recently, when we looked back over our firm’s history, we realized over 80% of our clients spent less than $4,000 in fees with us.  While this doesn’t represent the poorest of the poor in our country, it does suggest  a wider range of clients than what the public perceives as the norm for those purchasing architectural design services.  We take pride in the work we have done for clients of all shapes and sizes and we continue to look for ways to bring the benefits of architectural design – inspiring spaces and outstanding functionality, among others – to as many people as possible.

Paul Neseth, Locus principal and co-founder, will be a panelist at the post-screening discussion, where he will talk about the Rural Studio’s impact on Locus, as well as the newly formed RAW – Real Architecture Workshop.

A vast overhang of EIFS looms over the bench. EIFS, pronounced EE-fiss, stands for Exterior Insulation Finishing System, one of many inexpensive manufactured siding materials textured to look like something else, in this case stucco (see also: vinyl siding, aluminum siding, Hardie siding, cultured stone, manufactured stone, asphalt shingles, etc.). Sitting there, I could imagine this awful space being labeled “ARCADE” on some architect’s set of drawings, which is a little bit like serving Budweiser as an “APERITIF”.

How many times have I heard a variation of one of the following phrases? 1. Architects are too expensive. 2. Architects tend to overdesign and spend money frivolously. 3. I can’t afford an architect. 4. I don’t think I need an architect. While I don’t deny these statements may be true at times, I hesitate to condemn the profession of medicine simply because health care is costly.

We believe there is value to design, yet we admit it is not easily quantified in a market influenced by realtors, appraisers, home inspectors, and bankers who have understandably tried to rationalize the monetary value of property. I can’t imagine how one could analytically measure experience in dollars; yet I think most would agree taking a coffee in Piazza San Marco, Venice is more enjoyable than an outdoor corral adjacent to the parking lot of a neighborhood Starbucks.

Consider the photo above with the one here.

An arcade worthy of the name

I could spend a week sitting in this space, considering the sunlight, the collage of colors, attention to detail and proportion, the curve of the arches, and the visual weight of materials. They all contribute to giving my visual senses a feast that can be consumed slowly or enjoyed while napping on an ancient chunk of timber.

Is it more expensive to build? Yes. Over designed? Frivolous? The arcade at Mission Santa Barbara has been embraced as worth saving for over 150 years, despite its mud-brick construction in an active seismic zone. Noone would lament the loss of my neighborhood Walgreen’s, built cheaply with ample understanding of market forces, yet this structure might stand for centuries.

Did the Greeks protest the expenditure of state funds for the Acropolis of Athens? Romans for the Coliseum? Parisians for the Louvre? No doubt they did, the same way I bristle at the sales tax for the construction of the new (beautiful!) Twins Stadium. Are we better off for them? Ticket sales and summer travel itineraries suggest many people think so. All four sites would not be what they are without talented designers, breathtaking architecture. That’s unquestionable value.

From small scales, say a bench, to that at the scale of a city, design affects our experiences. If our culture expects richness in those experiences, we should expect commensurate investment in thoughtful public and personal spaces. The returns may or may not be financial, but what is the worth of satisfaction?

Each time a carload of boys would arrive, they’d sprint up the walk before jamming and wiggling through our front door simultaneously – like puppies. Breathless, most of them would take a quick look around and stop.

“WHOA! CARTER, YOUR HOUSE IS SO COOL!!! AWESOME!”

And boom, they were off to explore, drop toys over the catwalk, write on the chalkboard walls, stick magnets to the bathroom door, crank the stereo (of course), throw paper airplanes out the third floor windows, and crawl along the translucent floors while buddies cheered from below. “Let me try, my turn, my turn!” An indoor jungle gym of untapped potential.

The parents would come in a minute later, take a similar look around, and address my wife and me with a more calculated reaction, delivered in adult code. “Hey, this is really different…must be interesting to live here. What do your neighbors think?” TRANSLATION: What kind of weird maniacs would live in a house like this? Can I even trust my children here?

As our children develop into teens and adults, what happens to our acceptance and even thirst for difference? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting the masses should have a house like mine nor do I dismiss Tudors and Colonials as safe repetitions of worn European patterns. On the other hand, if kids – without a single exception in my experience – think our home is awesome, what changes after childhood to make people of their parent’s age suspicious?

I don’t have an answer, but I wonder if it has something to do with advertising. Sameness is somewhat ubiquitous in American culture, while regional culture may well be eroding with globalization. Gross oversimplification coming – in general, we eat similar foods, wear similar clothes, covet similar cars/bikes, and hang around with like-minded people. Our homes, when put on the market for consumption, are “depersonalized” so they appeal to the broadest (most beige) tastes. Why do we settle for this kind of life? Most of the people I know crave unique experiences when traveling, eating, or even just exercising. Why not demand it every day in the spaces we occupy?

I’m not going to take up skateboarding anytime soon, and I refuse to limit myself to my boys’ preferred eating habits, but maybe it’s time we try to see the possibilities our second graders see when viewing the world they move through. In fact, I think I’m going go home tonight and spray them both with a garden hose after a game of whiffle ball. In return, maybe they’ll try some escargot.

New porch + bath towards the end of construction

We answered by referencing the roof line and construction of the original cornice and fascia, detailing which was important to the neighborhood group. Windows and trim also recall the original colors of the existing structure, yet all of this is contrasted by a vertical-grain redwood screen that provides privacy to porch-sitters a mere twenty feet from the sidewalk. Tree huggers need not send me hateful notes, all the redwood and douglas fir used in the project is in its second life. The redwood was sourced from Duluth Timber, reclaimed from wine barrels.

Hidden above – in the roofline – is a “dish” flat roof for a future planted surface using Live Roof. The project was carefully and lovingly assembled by Ed Erickson of Ed Erickson Construction.

Reclaimed redwood screen

AN ENERGY-EFFICIENT MODERN HOUSE at Art-A-Whirl? Huh?

At Locus, we’ll be launching PPoD FOR SALE, an inexpensive small kit house perfect for cabin, pool house, DIYers, or urban infill. Buy one today, sit on the couch enjoying the living room view by the end of summer. Seriously.

PPoD 1.5, with red steel siding & roofing

PPoD Living

We’ll have information about underutilized services we’ve been offering for years: inexpensive fixed-fee design packages and free design consultations during First Thursdays in the Arts District. Naturally, we’ll be displaying beautiful images of environments created by Locus Architecture.

Bored? Yawning? Heard all about Art-A-Whirl too many times already? Bet you don’t know about Travis Nichols. On Sunday at 2, Travis will be at Locus to read from his first novel Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder. In a recent review in the Star Tribune, Jane Ciabattari writes “Although sometimes unpolished, ‘Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder’ is both original and haunting.” At times, the novel reminded me of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, which remains one of the most original, thought-provoking, and entertaining books I’ve read.

Art-A-Whirl opens Friday and closes Sunday, May 14-16. Friday night 5-10, Saturday 12-8, Sunday 12-5. Adam will be in Friday night and Sunday. Wynne will be in Saturday 12-4, and Paul will take the evening shift on Saturday, 4-8. See you there!