Book Review (kinda): Building Community: New Apartment Architecture
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| 8 Octavia, designed by Stanley Saitowitz // photo my own |
It's not often that I purchase a book due to a select few quotes that make up less than 1% of the entire book, but this is one of them. Well, the rest of the content has some great architecture in it, which I'm also very much interested in. But given the subject matter of this blog, I am focusing on these few quotes.
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| Cover |
He is quite prolific in San Francisco and was among the first architects to repair the urban fabric of the SoMa district from dilapidated industrial buildings to what is now a chic and trendy part of town. He stated that it was a district the planning departments were encouraging growth and given the industrial nature of the region, they encountered little resistance from NIMBYs to building, which plagues much of the rest of the city.
Included in his eclectic array of work is multifamily housing, scattered throughout the city:
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| 1234 Howard. I was harassed by some homeless guy either crazy, high on something, or both, while taking this shot. Thanks, San Francisco. The base provides a solid visual plinth with hidden garage doors and highlighted entryways behind a perforated metal finish. The metal rainscreen above outline and provide privacy for two units. The semi-private courtyard provides plenty of natural light for the units. The facade organization pays respect to its context, both of its immediate neighbor and multiple buildings down the street while maintaining a more modern design. // photo my own |
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| Yerba Buena Lofts, perhaps my favorite building of Saitowitz's. The modular design saved time in construction and provided an interesting array of boxes across the facade, an homage to the industrial heritage of this area of SoMa. // photo my own |
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8 Octavia at night. Thanks to COVID-19, I parked twelve steps away from where I took this shot, an impossible task during normal times. This is situated in an extremely visible corner, along the bustling Market Street and at the end of the 101 Freeway where it turns into Octavia. While I like the building itself, I am uncertain it fits in here as well as some of his other projects, such as the Yerba Buena Lofts. // photo my own
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In the book, Stanley Saitowitz was quoted for scathing remarks against the bureaucracy of city planning departments in the area. These complaints are very similar to my own.
He fumes, in much kinder words than I would use:
Dealing with the City Planning Department, which doesn't understand architecture, is a very slow process; we sometimes wait three times as long to get a permit as it takes to build.
Only three times as long? Stanley, you lucky dog! Okay, his buildings typically take much longer to construct than the ones I design, which skews this ratio in my "favor". There is a project in Pleasanton that I briefly worked on that had been awaiting design approval for 10 years thanks to bickering NIMBYs and a restrictive city council. It is only now finally in the stage to be sold off to a builder to build. It's not going to take more than 3 years to build this project.
We firmly believe in respecting scale; Planning wants textbook replicas.Don't I know it! I have always pushed my clients to respect the scale of the neighborhoods we're in, stepping tall buildings down to respect the shorter houses neighboring us. Planners learn something about scale, either from some textbook or the term floated around in a planning commission hearing, and idiotically apply a rigid standard of scale, congruent for every building no matter its context. Surrounded by dirt fields? Step the building down. Surrounded by tall buildings? Step the building down. I recall rather unfondly, of a project in Livermore where the idiot planner, since retired, directed us to step the building down across the entire length of the building. As a result, the building lost all cohesiveness, resulting in a pancake, where the second floor had no interaction with the first floor. To make his demand even more idiotic, the buildings are near a downtown area, stepped from two stories to one story, across a busy road, with three-story townhomes across the street. Exactly what scale was he thinking about?
Far too much effort goes into explaining what we are doing. The bureaucracy is obstructive, and committee-type negotiations tend to make the buildings worse, not better.I work in the Tri-Valley. I had to drive one and a half hours to Petaluma to meet with a city planner, since left for another job, to explain their own city ordinance and design guidelines to him because he didn't understand how his own code worked. Then I had to explain to him how our house design does comply with their Hillside Design Guidelines because he couldn't picture the house in 3D. I had to pull out the section we drew and essentially teach him how to read a section. He couldn't even figure out his own ordinances, which he is supposed to be the expert in, nor does he understand how to read plans, and we're looking to these people to evaluate architecture? I don't think the $600 billed to the client for this little excursion to teach a planner how to do his job was particularly well spent. It sure as hell wasn't worth my time.
This project I'm working on in Mountain View has been a terrible ordeal, continually trying to make our plans clearer at the demands of a city planner that clearly doesn't know how to read plans. These plans were already painstakingly clear, with more callouts and information than a design submittal for any other jurisdiction I've had to prepare one for, and yet, so much effort still goes into explaining it to confused ears.
Fortunately, or rather, unfortunately, architectural review boards do contain "experts" in the field of architecture. The unfortunate part comes in where these are all too often composed of the experts that can't figure out how to do well in their own practice, so the only way they can put their fingerprint on architecture is to impose it on others by force. In Richmond, the architectural review board was so obstructive that it eventually took legal action to get them to back down, obviously overstepping their jurisdiction of applying city design guidelines. Throughout the process, our buildings, already weaker than they could have been due to the city manager demanding a certain nonsensical style for the area, grew even weaker and yet at the same time, more expensive. These architect rejects, employed by the city, may be even worse than the planners that don't understand architecture because they have it in their mind that they know best, over all of the other professionals in the industry that, you know, are actually able to get things built.
The only people who benefit are the banks because of the carrying costs on land - and the consumer pays. As a result, housing in San Francisco may be more expensive than in New York.This is absolutely correct. Developers often rush their consultants because of these carrying costs. Every delay the city makes cost them enormous sums of money. They can't rush the city staff, because quite frankly, the city staff doesn't give a shit. So what if they take a long time? The developer can't fire them. They can't decide not to work with them. Their only recourse is an expensive lawsuit, which could jeopardize any future projects in that city. So they rush the consultants. And of course, the consumer pays. Developers aren't in the business of losing money. Housing prices have to come up to the point where it's worth the risk and cost of dealing with these jurisdictions.
Not content to stop there, Saitowitz, in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, states that:
The design guidelines in Mill Valley are pretty rigid and essentially they control every aspect of building a house.Mill Valley is a town in Marin County, north of San Francisco, which is infamous among architects and developers for its difficulty to obtain permits. Even the county is extremely tough to gain approvals. I have heard of a developer pursuing a project in one of the rare cities that are relatively easy to obtain a permit for there. At some point, the city decided to transfer jurisdiction over to the county, and without missing a beat, the developer dropped the project, not wanting to deal with the associated headaches.
Unfortunately, these cities with rigid design guidelines are not that uncommon, even in periphery cities. Fremont, for example, even sets the types of garages houses must have in a small lot development. The city of Mountain House requires a certain number of shutters each elevation must contain. Don't like shutters? Too bad. What, you think you actually have property rights?
Preach on, Brother Saitowitz. Preach on.
