This winter, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will exhibit The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment, and Idealism, a deep dive into the conceptual planning behind the iconic Sea Ranch development in Northern California. Designed by Charles Moore, Joseph Esherick, William Turnbull, Lawrence Halprin, and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Sea Ranch is considered a revolutionary effort that melded speculative suburban development with budding countercultural movements in an effort to “live lightly on the land.” The naturalistic development was planned in 1964 and driven by its conceptual opposition to the suburban American model of development that hardly considered site issues or natural beauty. Created by developer Al Boeke and a group of Bay Area architects, landscape architects and graphic designers, the project was listed along with other nearby works as a later example of the Bay Region Style, a localized variant of Modernism coined by Lewis Mumford in a controversial 1947 article he penned for The New Yorker.  The exhibition will showcase archival and contemporary photographs, original drawings and sketches of the initial designs as well as a full-scale architectural model created for the exhibition. “In mid-20th century California, Modern architecture represented social progress," said SFMOMA architecture and design curator Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher in a statement. "It signaled a shirking of tradition and bold new models for living. The Sea Ranch was envisioned as a place to embrace the land, a particularly moody and memorable land, that could expand California’s existing indoor-outdoor lifestyle." The exhibition runs December 22, 2018 through April 28, 2019.

When the Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, and Whitaker Architects-designed University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) Faculty Club opened in 1968, architectural historian and critic David Gebhard wrote in Forum that the complex was “theatrical (like Hollywood) and planned, even though on the surface everything appears haphazard and disjoined.” The compliment applies in opposite to the recently-completed $11.25 million renovation, restoration, and expansion to the complex by Charles Moore’s successor firm Moore Ruble Yudell (MRY), where a series of rationally-organized dining facilities, hotel accommodations, and administrative offices conceal nuanced and rich architectural detail. The complex was originally designed as an homage to the era’s Pop Architecture phenomenon that blended Spanish Colonial Revival stylings with a 1960s penchant for dumb shacks and postwar vernacular modernism. Though from the outside, the building originally appeared as a stuccoed mass of disjointed shapes, Moore and Turnbull’s original vision was decked out inside with soaring framed archways, criss-crossing mezzanine walks and stairways, and neon signs and symbols decorating its walls. The project’s showpiece, a central, multi-story dining room, contained all of these elements and more, including deep-cut architectural references to other famous works—like a sloped entry reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center at Harvard—that were amplified and repurposed throughout the UCSB Lagoon-adjacent complex.  Today, the expanded club boasts a wholly new 15,760-square-foot wing hosting 34 guest rooms wrapped by perimeter circulation, as well as a renovated and restored central dining hall and a bevy of new sustainability features. Overall, the building has more than doubled in size from 14,595 square feet to over 30,000 square feet today, an effort that has overtaken but not necessarily overshadowed the existing PoMo gem. MRY has taken a gradient-driven approach to the project by restoring the easternmost two-thirds of the original building while also adaptively reusing the remainder of the existing complex and adding the new wing on the building’s west side.  The upgraded dining room—dialed down in terms of its furnishings and place settings from the 1960s version, as one might imagine—is more spare than before. Gone are the expanses of wall-to-wall red carpeting, Mid-Century Modern-styled dining chairs, and glass-topped dining tables and their frilly, folded napkin arrangements, which have been replaced with more paired-down and contemporary elements.  Many other aspects of the existing building have been retrofitted for contemporary times as well, including the building’s windows, which have been replaced with energy-efficient panes. The complex boasts passive design features that facilitte matural ventilation throughout. Added too are new sensitive lighting designs that allow for task-level lighting control in the hotel rooms, as well as new ambient lighting in the dining areas that compliments the large glass light fixtures already inhabiting the space.  Perhaps the most unique elements of the complex come in at ceiling height, where many areas feature drop-down roof rafters that evoke the vigas of the Spanish Revival as well as the slap-dash 2x10 ceiling joists of the Mid-Century vernacular, as well.  These elements are complemented in the hotel rooms and in the building’s many shared areas by peculiar ceiling geometries that result from the building’s heaped architectural forms. Everywhere rooms and entire wings explode askew to the structural grid, with massive octagonal arches doing the work of keeping the building standing, as sloping ceilings, pop-out window walls, skylights, and transom openings combine to create delightful ceiling geometries.  Overall, the architects have proven that it is possible to respect and embrace history—even what might be considered by some today as an over-wrought PoMo relic—while also building for the future.  In Santa Barbara, PoMo isn’t “back,” and it’s certainly not dead—It’s been here and will continue to remain. 

Could Charles Moore’s Kresge College put University of California Santa Cruz’s Banana Slugs in a preservation pickle?

Maybe. A mandate from the University of California system to add more housing to the bucolic university campus is putting pressure on UCSC to redevelop Moore and Turnbull’s experimental, Tuscan-inspired dormitory village. Built during the 1971 Oil Embargo, the building was a casualty of that era’s meager construction budgets. Detractors cite resulting anemic construction and impermanent materials as reasons for replacement, while boosters point to the inventiveness and optimism Moore imbued in his work. Kresge College is also fully a product of the counter-culture, known among students for hosting various acid conferences in the 1970s.

And while we do not know exactly what is planned for Kresge College, it’s clear the complex will play some role in the university’s housing plans. The university’s Campus Housing Study, published in July 2015, makes mention of the “redevelopment” of Kresge College’s existing 350 beds, as well as the addition of 100 new ones. It is not clear from the document whether “redevelopment” entails demolition of the existing building or merely renovation. Sources tell AN Moore’s legacy firm Moore Ruble Yudell is in competition for an RFQ due back later this spring.

Send NIMBYs and RFQs to eavesdrop@archpaper.com.

In a moment of deep irony, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien are in the center of another demolition controversy, this time—some allege—as the perpetrators. Their Folk Art Museum fell to MoMA’s wrecking ball in 2014, prompting a massive national debate, while two more of their projects face uncertain futures: The pavilion for Hurricane Sandy victims in Highlands, New Jersey, and the Mattin Center at Johns Hopkins University. Now, the pair is helming a project that would raze—but also renovate and preserve—parts of the Charles Moore-designed Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

Charles Moore and Chad Floyd of Centerbrook Architects and Planners—a firm that Moore founded in 1975—designed the building in 1985. The 40,000-square-foot structure is restrained compared to some of Moore’s other works: Tucked away between an 1884 red brick library and a 1962 modernist performance center, it’s a series of rectangular brick volumes with slanted copper-clad roofs. The most prominent exterior features are its exposed concrete gateway, which faces the Dartmouth campus, and a small cupola atop the rear of the museum. As part of the plan Dartmouth and Williams and Tsien are implementing, the gateway, the museum offices, and one Moore gallery would be destroyed, and a courtyard adjacent to the museum would be filled with new construction.

Kevin Keim, director of the Charles Moore Foundation, said that the Hood is Moore’s most important museums and among the top ten projects of his career. Hood Museum of Art director John Stomberg explained that the Moore building has acute architectural and programmatic failings that necessitated the expansion. “We have leaks, mold, vapor, and heat loss…some structural issues,” he said. To cope with snow and ice falling off of its strongly angled roofs, Dartmouth builds snow sheds along surrounding paths in the winter. Stomberg said that Hood, a teaching museum geared toward putting undergrads in contact with art, has drastically different needs since it was built in 1985. Three new “object-study classrooms,” designed for “the direct study of original works,” along with a new flexible-use atrium and 50 percent more gallery space, will take the place of the demolished sections and the courtyard.

As for the remaining Moore galleries, Stomberg said: “We’re spending so much time and energy painstakingly renovating [them].” One aspect of the redesign, said Stomberg, will actually help realize an original aspect of the Moore building: The original museum’s grand staircase was topped with skylights that were left closed to preserve the artwork. Those skylights, covered by the new Williams and Tsien addition above, will become illuminated lightboxes. “This is something Tod and Billie are very proud of; restoring the experience of ascending a Charles Moore staircase with the pacing of the fenestration just the way he had originally intended,” Stomberg said.

It may be the destruction of the gateway that has been the most polarizing. Inscribed simply with the word ‘HOOD,’ it connects the museum to the adjacent library and performance center. It’s also an opening for a walking path that runs through the museum courtyard and connects campus to the southern part of Hanover. However, the museum’s actual entrance is tucked away in the corner of the courtyard. While students will always find the museum, “that entrance has to tell the community that they’re welcome too. It hasn’t really done that,” said Stomberg. The new museum entrance, which will take the place of the gateway, will create a prominent facade facing campus and the main road that runs through it. The courtyard’s pathway will be enlarged and straightened.

Currently, this $50 million dollar project is scheduled for completion January 2019. Keim is at a loss about the project: “I honestly don’t know what else we can do to protest the expansion,” he said. However, Stomberg said the project was better received in Hanover: “We had a debut of the [expansion’s architectural] model and we had over 350 local people come and the response was really enthusiastic.”

Any fan of architecture is familiar with the rich history of the Yale School of Architecture (YSoA). If they aren't they are likely familiar with some of the projects that have resulted from the school's influential concrete halls. From Paul Rudolph's heroic brutalism to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's "Learning From" series—and the productive friction between the two—the school has had an impact on much of the history of 20th and 21st century century architecture. A new exhibition, “Pedagogy and Place," organized by YSoA dean Robert A.M. Stern and curator (and AN contributor) Jimmy Stamp with Alfie Koetter, presents a range of student work that tracks the history of Yale architecture, and in parallel, the history of American architecture alongside political change in the U.S. The show is located in the YSoA Gallery in Rudolph Hall and is free and open to the public. With the bush-hammered concrete walls enveloping visitors, the show unfolds as a series of eight "eras" in Yale's history, including its beginnings as the American Beaux-Arts, to the beginnings of Modernism, to the high-flying Heroics of Rudolph and company, to the radical experiments of John Johansen and Charles Moore. The material in the exhibition is all student work, labeled as such with student names and their professors credited as well. It reads like the old issues of Domus or Progressive Architecture, but with student work illustrating each period and line of thinking. Education and the academy plays a serious role in the pursuit of intellectual innovation in architecture, and Yale is one of the leaders. A related publication, “Pedagogy and Place: 100 Years of Architecture Education at Yale,” will be published in April 2016 by Yale Press. A symposium, “Learning/Doing/Thinking: Educating Architects,” will be held April 14–16 in New Haven. All of this coincides with the changing of the guard as Stern moves on and Deborah Berke, architect and founder of the New York-based design firm Deborah Berke Partners, assumes deanship July 1. Pedagogy and Place YSoA Gallery in Rudolph Hall 180 York Street Monday–Friday 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

As 1970s and 1980s architecture returns to vogue, a new recognition of those associated with its making and documentation also arises. So it is with Wayne Thom, long the preeminent architectural photographer of the large, Late Modern building by the large firm. Thom began photographing in the late 1960s and his work in Los Angeles, the Western U.S. and beyond to the Pacific Rim documented changing tastes and approaches toward the architectural subject. Hundreds of images are on view on his website. It’s a distinctive and significant body of work, but one without a home. Presently Thom is looking for an organization or institution to take on his sizeable and meticulously organized archive. As time goes on, Thom’s remarkable work seems increasingly ill-suited for sequestration within any one house, including his own. Born in Shanghai in 1933, Thom was raised in Hong Kong, and emigrated to Vancouver in 1949 with his family that includes brother Bing Thom who went on to become a highly noted Canadian architect. Arriving in the States in 1964, Wayne graduated from Brooks Institute of Photography in 1968. By the following year he was working with A. Quincy Jones (“A.Q.”) who gave him his big Los Angeles break. Jones, and others whom Jones later introduced on Thom’s behalf, were impressed with approaches that would over time become Wayne Thom hallmarks. These include the use of natural light only, no props whatsoever, and big buildings—particularly the high rise, as his subject. A breakthrough assignment, Wayne’s prominence further rose with his image of the 1971 CNA Park Place Tower in the Westlake section of Los Angeles. Completed by Langdon & Wilson, CNA Park Place was the first all-over smooth-grid mirror glass skin building—a soon to be corporate vernacular—completed in the Western United States, and likely the Country. Thom’s image of the building overlooking Lafayette Park and the people within it won the First Award of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass (PPG) Architectural Photographers Invitational in 1973. Among his clients through the 1970s, Thom frequently worked with the A.C. Martin office where he photographed a variety of projects including their various Downtown LA projects, the underrated (and unfortunately renovated) Sears West Coast headquarters, and even an A.C. Martin–designed jet interior. In that decade he also began steady, multi-year work as the primary photographer for William Pereira (“Bill”); San Francisco’s Transamerica Building was among his many Pereira assignments. Among other publications, Thom’s images were featured in Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, Architectural Forum, and Domus—where he photographed for Gio Ponti, the magazine’s founder. His award-winning Bonaventure Hotel image is the February 1978 Progressive Architecture cover. Architect Arthur Erickson, whom Thom knew since his much earlier Vancouver years, tapped him to assist in assembling the team of associate architects, landscape architects and designers that ultimately won the 1980 competition to redevelop Bunker Hill sponsored by the City of Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. In a highly publicized coup, they battled against the “All Stars” team, which included Barton Myers, Frank Gehry, Ricardo Legorreta, Charles Moore, Cesar Pelli and others under Maguire Partners Development. Yet says Thom, “We won the battle but lost the war;” aside from a single Erickson building and the hardscape (Two California Plaza was completed by A.C. Martin) the rest of Erickson’s winning scheme was never realized. Thom continued in full-time practice until 2013, when he curtailed his workload. Living in Rowland Heights, he maintains meticulous records for his thousands of negatives and slides plus hundreds and hundreds of proof books and presentation prints. Now, he’s interested in releasing all of it. In addition to his artifacts, the photographer’s memory is institutional and he seems to have known every single Los Angeles Late Modernist, with insightful if not funny tidbits on most of them. If it all possible, his basic hopes are that archive stay intact and be made available to the public.  

Studio Visit subject Moore Ruble Yudell is the legacy firm of architectural master Charles Moore, who founded the company more than thirty years ago with John Ruble and Buzz Yudell. Many of Moore's architectural priorities are encapsulated in a unique community of oceanside homes he helped design, Sea Ranch, which just celebrated its fifty year anniversary. Celebrations of Sea Ranch's birthday wind down over Memorial Day with a concert by the Kronos Quartet. Last fall AN contributor Kenneth Caldwell attended The Once and Future Sea Ranch, a one-day symposium on the community's history and future. Below are his notes. When you hit middle age, it’s time for another checkup, and if you are a group of affluent nature-loving Northern Californian neighbors, perhaps a check-in. Residents of Sea Ranch, a second home community stretched out along 10 miles of the Sonoma coast north of San Francisco, have been holding a number of events to celebrate its 50th birthday. On October 18, there was a day-long symposium to look at how history might influence the future. The goal of this confab was to generate new ideas about the next 50 years of Sea Ranch’s existence. Led by former UC Berkeley Art Museum curator Jacquelynn Baas and original Sea Ranch architect and retired UC Berkeley professor Donlyn Lyndon, the presentations ranged over several topics but eventually seemed to coalesce around a few key ones. It’s Really About the Landscape Lyndon, who has served on the Sea Ranch design committee, now chairs the landscape committee, and has designed several homes since the community’s founding. What he understands better than most is that what matters at Sea Ranch is not so much the widely published architecture, but the landscape. The point of the intense design review process was to try and prevent design from interfering too much with the place. This has been a central attraction and source of conflict for 50 years. Lyndon presented an overview of the community and its development. One of Lyndon’s main points is that much of the mature landscape that you experience there was planted when Sea Ranch was first developed. Now it has to be managed prudently to cut down on invasive species, protect views, and most importantly, prevent fires. This reinforces a basic idea: other than the ocean, man made Sea Ranch. Lyndon then turned the floor over to design professionals who are not part of the Sea Ranch scene. As a central steward of this now historic locale, he knew that he needed new voices to generate new ideas. Nature Shaped by and for Humans The presentations revealed a core conflict, which goes back to the Sea Ranch’s semi-utopian beginnings. The emerging values of ecology and living in harmony with nature that took root in the early 1960s are not in harmony with the free market. Both Lyndon and UC Berkeley landscape architecture professor Linda Jewell explained the thinking of landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who brought a romantic notion about a kibbutz-like community where everybody would share the common meadows and build modest cabins up against the beautiful hedgerows. The phrase was “live lightly on the land.” This dreamy if affluent hippiedom was best captured in Architectural Record editor Cathleen McGuigan’s presentation on how the East Coast viewed the development. She featured several rarely seen images of dancer Anna Halprin, wife of the visionary, leading diaphanous dances at the shore. While Lawrence Halprin and his team of scientists went to great lengths to study the ecology and create a self-effacing community, it was still a development idea that would tame nature for man’s pleasure. The environmental movement caught on and, as Lyndon describes in his recently revised book on the topic, eventually threatened the existence of the community. The voters also got ecology fever and passed the Coastal Initiative in 1972, which provided public access to the state’s beaches. For several years, multiple government agencies were entangled in litigation with Sea Ranch over beach access for members of the public who might want to dance there as well. Sea Ranch wasn’t so communal after all. When the court cases were settled, the original developers, part of Hawaii giant Castle & Cooke, wanted out. The result was that the northern part of the ranch was not developed according to Halprin’s original site-sensitive vision. Some folks say that there are essentially two Sea Ranches: the tasteful, quiet southern part and the suburban golf-playing northern sector. In his presentation and comments, California College of the Arts professor of visual studies Mitchell Schwarzer pointed out that the unbuilt environment at Sea Ranch that we so cherish is an illusion that depended on global and technological advances and was created by excellent design. It didn’t just grow there. He was able to contextualize the place as a resort community that focused on contemplation more than any specific activity. We Are Not Getting Any Younger There were other miscalculations besides the popularity of the early environmental movement. The drive from the Bay Area lengthened over the many years since Sea Ranch's inception, with increased development through Marin County and Santa Rosa. Often the journey takes three long hours filled with curves, and short weekends up the coast are not really viable. There is no way to get there but to drive—or fly, if you have your own small plane. And no way to get around once you do get there except by car. The demographic is tilting Sea Ranch towards becoming a retirement village without the usual retirement amenities. Most of the full-time residents are over 60 years old. By 2020, it is estimated that the number will be 80 percent. The few hundred gathered for the event only supported those numbers. This presents a challenge in terms of social and medical needs. How does an aging community renew itself? As one resident pointed out during the Q+A, “Pray for a heart attack and that you drop dead.” Lack of Public Gathering Spaces Although there are three recreational complexes and a golf course, there is no informal gathering place in Sea Ranch, no town square. There is a small bakery tucked away on the hill that serves as a de facto hub, but there’s nothing that was planned. If the lodge expands, as has been rumored for several years, that might be an opportunity for creating some kind of intentional hangout space with opportunities for a few retail services. However, given that there is an empty retail building up on the ridge near the airport, is there enough demand to accommodate additional commerce? Schwarzer’s presentation went a long way to explain this lack of a hangout place. For the most part people go there to be alone or in small groups. What is the Nature of Preserving This Nature? As the slides showed, the natural environment is vastly different from what it was 50 years ago. Lyndon mentioned that the hedgerows, which separated different sheep fields, have matured and block more wind, as do the new plantings. As former UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design dean Harrison Fraker (and others) pointed out, Sea Ranch isn’t a sustainable community. Although Halprin’s original vision called for greater density, it is, like so much of California, essentially a single-family car-oriented cul-de-sac community. Several people also talked about the lack of a coherent bike trail system. There were lots of suggestions about landmarking the place, creating a cultural center, and densifying the remaining undeveloped plots. Perhaps the most inventive idea came LA Times architecture critic Chris Hawthorne, who suggested reviving the Case Study House program at Sea Ranch. But it’s pretty clear from the response that the homeowners don’t want significant change. The most reasonable suggestion presented was for studying in depth the demographics (which the census does only once a decade) and studying in depth the plant and animal life, much as Halprin tried to do when he first came to the site in the early 1960s. Noted Southwest architect Will Bruder offered up lots of ideas including one concrete suggestion that seemed to have some resonance: create a summer institute for students. Although Halprin and Esherick were established professionals in the early 1960s, it was the young bucks at Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whitaker (MLTW) that gave the place that odd twist of self-effacing drama at their condo complex, so the idea seems appropriate. The empty retail building near the airport, designed by William Turnbull, could serve as the base for such an annual gathering of the next generation of talent. In an offhand comment, Lyndon said that original developer Al Boeke knew of Ed Barnes’s famous Haystack School in Maine and that its architectural forms and materials were not unknown to the early designers. Maybe a kind of Haystack that focused on the ecology of the Northern Sonoma/Mendocino coast would work here? Or planned sustainable communities, or even the creation of a more sustainable community at Sea Ranch? It seems unlikely that a group of entitled design students would be interested in doing research for the benefit of a group of well-to-do nature and design enthusiasts. But if the mandate were slightly larger, such as how to evolve the original place-making and environmental ideals of Halprin, Esherick, and MLTW, that might work. There are challenges for the area beyond creating gathering places, meeting seniors’ needs, and overseeing the ever-changing natural environment. They include affordable housing, adjacent timberlands, and strengthening Sea Ranch’s relationship to the small town just across the county line that provides most of the services and retail operations. There is a room for change here, but even with the input of leading thinkers, it won’t be dramatic. But as with the original place itself, a dash of youthful genius could move it forward for the next 50 years.