Jennifer: The Trust for Public Land’s mission is to create places that support healthy, livable communities for generations to come. In the Bay Area, our Parks for People program is working in underserved urban neighborhoods to help give everyone a vibrant, quality park within walking distance of their home. Boeddeker Park has been on our radar since about 2006. Over fifty thousand people live within a half-mile radius of the park, and over 10,000 of those are living below the poverty line. The need in the Tenderloin was so great, and the park had such potential to thrive.
We frequently partner with the Recreation and Parks Department, which manages over 4,000 acres of land, 34 recreation centers, nine swimming pools and is the City’s largest provider of the Trust for Public Land’s services. In 2007, we began a San Francisco initiative to rebuild three parks in high-need areas, catalyzed by the generosity of five lead donors: Banana Republic, Levi Strauss Foundation, McKesson, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and Wells Fargo. Working with the City, we leveraged their initial $5 million into $16.5 million of public and private funding. That money enabled us to work with Recreation and Parks to completely redesign and re-build three parks: Hayes Valley Playground (also with WRNS), Balboa Park, and Boeddeker Park. We knew from the start that Boeddeker would be the most complex.
Brian: As for WRNS, we had signed up with Public Architecture’s 1% pro bono program to provide design assistance to nonprofit organizations. The Trust for Public Land contacted us about helping with the design of Hayes Valley Playground. We donated a couple of phases of work, and then for the rest of that project, as was the case with Boeddeker Park, we essentially provided all of our work at cost, donating our overhead and profit.
Q: What were your impressions the first time you visited Boeddeker Park?
Brian: In the old park, you would walk down a main walkway, and it would feel like you were cut off from all the programmatic activities. There were raised benches and low walls on either side of that walkway that divided the green space, the basketball court, the playground. You had to walk around these walls to get into many of the spaces. So it took a lot of effort to participate in the park. And because the entry to the park was a good distance from the clubhouse, it was difficult for the recreation director to watch what was going on while running programs from the building. The building itself had a nice, voluminous space. But its walls had a sawtooth configuration that alternated solid walls with glass, cutting off sight lines, and the main level of the building was 4 feet underground, which further separated it from the park.
Previous Site Condition
Q: What was the community process for redesigning Boeddeker like?
Jennifer: We conducted extensive community outreach, holding public meetings and forums where everyone could come together to join in what we call ‘participatory design’. We invited people to the site and we also had focus groups at various places—youth centers, senior centers, churches—wherever local people were likely to come. Residents from the Tenderloin participated, as well as representatives of service organizations like the YMCA, Boys & Girls Club, Youth with a Mission, and City Academy. Key decisions were made at those community forums.
Brian: There is a lot of housing for seniors in the neighborhood. And the Tenderloin population has one of the highest percentages of children in San Francisco. But the kids and the families and the seniors weren’t using the park very much. We needed to create a space where adults could enjoy the park on their own or with children, while also making room for kids with their families or in groups. The park had to allow people of all ages to coexist at the same time, while also providing a safe space. This is the kind of issue that came out at the community meetings and informed our design response.
Q: What surprised you the most about what the community wanted?
Brian: The northern end in the existing park was a beautiful, quiet space in the middle of a busy urban area. I was surprised at the great reception from the community for nurturing that and keeping it as a quiet area for community gardening, senior activities, and adult fitness.
Jennifer: At one of the first meetings, a hand shot up and a participant asked, “Can we have solar panels on the roof? Can we be off the grid? Can we have a community garden?” I hadn’t expected that the principles of sustainability would have been such a priority.
Q: This was one of the first projects in the Sustainable SITES Initiative, is that correct?
Jennifer: That’s right. The park has pervious concrete and bioswales and a stormwater infiltration system under the lawn. The plant palette has a lot of California natives, which we’re excited about, because the Tenderloin has a lot of new immigrants to California. So the park gives them a little taste of California.
Brian: A signage program throughout the park indicates sustainable elements, and a key map at the front door to the clubhouse explains each element. The clubhouse is completely heated by a geothermal system—it’s one of the first public projects in San Francisco to implement geothermal. About eight cores under the basketball court go down about 200 feet, and they extract heat from the earth and transfer that into heating which feeds radiant tubing in the concrete slabs. The main spaces in the building have no air conditioning. The cathedral-like space in the main recreation room makes use of the stack effect to bring air through and up, so there’s no need for ceiling fans in that space. In the meeting room, we didn’t quite have that volume, but there are operable windows all around and a ceiling fan. Only a couple of offices have air conditioning.
Q: How did you address security concerns?
Brian: Security was a big issue. The community appreciated the idea of creating safety through transparency rather than through gates and enclosures and walls. Now, once you enter the park, you can access lots of different places from one point. You don’t have to go through a playground to get to the lawn, for example.
Jennifer: During a meeting with the Boys & Girls Club, we asked what would make the kids feel comfortable in the park, and one teenage boy said, “I want to know that I am seen by an adult when I come into the park.” We shifted the entry so that everyone has to walk right past the new clubhouse.
Brian: The old clubhouse was sunk four feet below grade, so rec directors couldn’t see from the building to the park. The new one is raised, and it’s all glass, so when people walk in, the recreation director is going to notice them. Elevating the clubhouse enables building program activities to be visible from the street, which promotes this as a safe center of the community. Also, we took down heavy, wrought iron fences and put in new, visually lighter fencing around the park. It’s still secure, but you can see through it.
Jennifer: From the very beginning of the project, we told the community, “Design is only going to be part of the solution.” The other part is going to be working together with the Recreation and Parks Department, with the police department, and with all of the different user groups to make sure that the operations, maintenance, stewardship, and programming are working together well. This park is going to be opening at a time in which the social fabric around it is a lot stronger and more cohesive than when we started design. Boeddeker is a place where different groups can unite. The park will have a lot more programming than it used to.
Brian: This kind of project doesn’t come up very often in historic urban neighborhoods that have a great need for open space. It is just a wonderful opportunity to make something better.
“Today, history represents neither an oppressive past that modernism tried to discard nor a retrograde mind-set against unbridled progress. Instead, at a time when there is too much information and not enough attention — when a general collective amnesia perpetuates a state of eternal presentness — understanding the channels through which history moves and is shaped by architecture is more important than ever.” –Chicago Biennial
Last fall I spent three days in Chicago, taking in the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Make New History was the theme and participants — 140 architects and artists from around the globe — contributed a range of exhibits, from dioramas to live performances, to explore how history can be invoked to inform new ideas and forms in architecture. The Biennial was held in the Chicago Cultural Center (a grand former library built in 1897 and host to the world’s largest Tiffany stained-glass dome), with associated events throughout the city, and it took place from September, 2017 through January, 2018.
“Vertical City,” 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial: Make New History
Of the many thought-provoking exibits, I was most taken with “Vertical City,” a contemporary take on the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower Competition. With the charge by the Tribune’s publisher Colonel Robert R. McCormick to make “the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world,” the original competition attracted entries from over 260 architects, including Walter Gropius, Adolf Loos, and Eliel Saarinen (who took second). The wildly contrasting ideas influenced generations of architects to come. Resurrected in 1980 by Stanley Tigerman under the guise of “Late Entries,” the Tribune Tower competition (it was actually an invited submittal for a publication) once again attracted some of architecture’s biggest thinkers — Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Bernard Tschumi, and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.
If the 1922 competition made evident a pivot point in architecture toward modernism, and the “Late Entries,” of 1980 turned largely on postmodernist metaphor, fun and sarcasm, how might we understand the “Vertical City” of 2017?
The architects practicing today revealed delightfully varied ideas, represented as scaled models that reimagine the landmark tower. The Cultural Center’s Yates Hall, a large expanse of a room with floor to ceiling windows that pull the city into the space, was given over to the exhibition, fusing the experience with meta. Wandering amid the towers, I felt myself inside a diorama of alternative histories of a building and of a city in which I could, in real time, hear the taxis honking below and feel the glare of the sun moving across the glaze of adjacent buildings.
Of the 16 entries, I found myself sparked by the ones that directly addressed core drivers of the innovation economy: work / life integration, community, connection to the public realm, and non-hierarchy.
Big Bang Tower by Ensamble Studio (far right) and Biennial Project by Kéré Architecture (second from right)
Big Bang Tower: A Column of Columns for the Chicago Tribune by Ensamble Studio
Noting that “an office can be a cubicle and also an open co-working area, a cafe, a lounge, a lab, a multipurpose room, virtual substance in the cloud, a room in your house, and much more,” Ensamble Studio imagined “A Column of Columns” tied together with horizontal structures that vary their positions, heights and areas to frame the city and connect interior spaces. With cores pulled to the sides and located within the envelope (atypical in a traditional high rise) and the asymmetric columns resolving both vertical structure and infrastructure, the floor plates are open to receive a diverse and evolving program. The structure is one in which knowledge workers, who expect work / life integration, might just as easily take in a film as write a creative brief.
“In alignment with current trends, the design forecasts that people will value a balanced work and life ratio while retaining real and meaningful connections with each other and with the places that they live.” Inspired by the Tower of Babel metaphor of a community working together in shared aspiration, Kéré Architecture’s proposal anticipates a mix of housing, workplace, commerce, and recreation in one building. To free up the interior for a variety of amenities and opportunities to connect with community, the cores are pulled outward. Segmented blocks with central voids allow for more private functions, like housing, to be consolidated and located higher up, with more communal activities happening on the ground floor to support integration with the public realm. The proposal offers a microcosm of a neighborhood or a city, a one-stop live/work shop in a tower of the future.
“If the primary source of derivation for modern architecture is classicism, what would an architecture that is derived from a non-Western historical tradition be?” With its design inspired by ancient Chinese architecture’s central organizing concept of the pavilion, and with pavilions stacked vertically to form a pagoda, this proposal offers a structure freed from hierarchical organization, with spaces defined in relation to one another. “The spaces of this new vertical city are attuned to the nature of the knowledge economy and the contemporary media environment where performance dominates, flexibility sets value, and well-being is the ultimate cause. Pavilions frame theaters, meeting zones, restful landscapes, and hedonistic gardens: the true productive spaces for today’s media workers. This is architecture with a language not rooted in Western thought and with a history outside of the narratives of modernism.”
This was the model to which I returned, walking around it, staring into its corners, wanting to step inside and make myself at home.
Does the “Vertical City” — this third festival of ideas centered on iconic American skyscraper — offer a touchpoint, some indication of where urban architecture is going in response to changes in how we work to propel the innovation economy? If so, I’d take note of the Ensamble, Kéré, and Serie entries.
WRNS defines its work as being about beauty, sustainability, and the public realm. What do these concepts mean to you?
Daniel Johnson: In my opinion, architecture is useless without people, and for me, architecture that extends its experience to the public realm is probably one of the most exciting potential offerings of architecture. Buildings that are primarily private almost seem like giant rocks in a stream redirecting the flow of water, whereas publicly infused architecture is more akin to bridge, and I would prefer to build bridges versus dams. Metaphors aside, some of my favorite works of architecture have incredible public experiences – the modern entry plaza to the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid by Jean Nouvel had a profound impact on my understanding of the power of architecture and the public realm. Not only did the architecture create an interesting relationship to the historical building it was attached to but the way Nouvel created drama from the sky to the plaza was a magical experience that opened my eyes to how architecture not only shelters and defines space, but creates phenomenal connections between earth and sky. When you mix in a flowing stream of people into an experience like architectural value becomes truly evident.
Emily Jones: Beauty, to me, is a moment (usually fleeting) that is prompted by an experience of place. As an observer and a designer, I seek to both experience and create beauty; however, I have found that, in attempting to create beauty through architecture, it is essential to acknowledge and utilize the beauty found in nature. Therefore, for me, architectural beauty is a deliberate and skillful composition of natural elements of beauty translated through design that, when successful, evokes a visceral experience of place. Consequently, for me, beauty and sustainability are inextricably linked as sustainable design strives to preserve what, to me, is an essential element of beautiful design – nature.
Ben Mickus: While all buildings occupy a space necessarily, it is the interaction of a building with the surrounding space that transforms into place. This is what excites me about architecture: a building and the space around it fusing into something more than any of the constituent parts, and becoming a piece of the ever-changing public realm. While the public realm as an abstract concept is fluid, dynamic and buzzing with energy, it is architecture in the public realm that somehow channels that energy, allowing it to be experienced through the creation of views, moments, sequences, tactile interactions, and relations to context. We create a unique experience of a place.
What do you think makes a good leader?
Dan Sakai: I have a toddler who likes to lead me around. Her inclinations rarely coincide with the rest of the family’s, but she enjoys a song called Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes – you may know it – which provides a useful mnemonic for leadership in grown-up organizations.
Head: Clear thinking leads to insight and level headed decisions.
Shoulders: Sharing the load inspires and builds team cohesion.
Knees and toes: Dynamism requires nimble responses and flexibility to address changing markets and individual project and team needs.
The verse repeats and the children touch the different body parts as they sing along. Then there is a bridge including:
Eyes: Vision requires a long view and hawk-eyes for shortcomings and opportunities.
Ears and Mouth: A strong communicator is both articulate and a good listener.
Nose: Integrity is crucial; when something fails the smell test, action is taken.
I am not suggesting adults need to be able to touch their toes, but leadership touchstones are central to effective, inspirational organizations. Getting my daughter pointed in the right direction is another matter.
What drew you to WRNS when you first came? What made you want to stay?
Daniel Johnson: It sounds obvious, but the work is what drew me to WRNS. There was a clear point of view – architecture that was tuned to its context, composed thoughtfully, and used materials in ways that were modern and sophisticated. Additionally I was very impressed and intrigued by the fact that WRNS grew the practice through a terrible recession, and some great work came out of that period of time, which to me signaled that this was a company that knew how to run a successful business, a trait I was very interested in learning. What makes me stay is all of the above but with an added layer, the staff and leadership is incredible. I feel like I can be myself here, and I am surrounded by a bunch of really smart, creative, interesting and idiosyncratic people who have given so much to my professional and personal life. As much as they are my colleagues they are (for better or worse) becoming my family.
Lily Weeks: The work at WRNS is what drew me first. I wanted to be a part of the growing interior design practice in an architecture firm, after all, my education is in architecture and my experience in interior design – it was a great fit for me. What made me stay was the studio environment that I can only describe as a rigorous creative hive with some of the most talented people you will meet, what else could I ask for?
What are you excited about in architecture right now?
Hattie Stroud: The way in which social responsibility is becoming an important part of practice is really great. I’m a big fan of offices like MASS Design Group that really champion the ways design can be beautiful but also smart, sustainable, and supportive of its community. This isn’t about community process dictating a design – it’s about architecture that is responsive to its context.
Where do you see WRNS in the next five years? How do you want to see us grow?
Ben Mickus: As WRNS grows, the design profile of the firm–as defined by the caliber of projects we pursue–should grow with it. The diversity of projects in the office has been so strong since the inception of WRNS, and I hope it will continue to be a defining strength, as we deepen our experience across so many practice areas.
What are your inspirations outside of architecture?
Dan Sakai: Autonomous vehicles are super-exciting. As economies of scale incentivise ride-sharing over personal vehicle ownership, tremendous amounts of land currently used to store empty cars may become available in places we care about: along our streets, on the ground immediately surrounding many destinations, and in robust structures in high land-value areas. Extensive use of ride-shared autonomous vehicles may actually align incentives for congestion pricing, change commute patterns and public transit paradigms and radically shift development and planning patterns (for better or worse). There is a lot at stake for urban communities and the environment.
Lily Weeks: Art & fashion. Every morning I walk to work, 30 minutes downhill – I walk past the merchandise displays of Prada, Valentino, Dior & Britex Fabrics. These brief but constant glimpses of human centered design, textiles, and pattern play give me my first creative jump start to the day. In moments of creative daze I have taken a short respite to SFMOMA, just a few blocks from the office, to visit a favorite piece, wander a new exhibit or sit & reflect on a balcony.
Lightweight, Green, Efficient
Residing somewhere between stucco and French limestone there’s Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete (GFRC), a building material typically associated with suburban office parks, less with distinguished architectural design. Yet, working with GFRC on several projects in recent years has helped us innovate, using common panelized materials while still addressing issues of scale, texture, rhythm, and even transparency and solar exposure. Produced with far less concrete than cast-in-place, or even pre-cast panels, GFRC is lightweight, cost-effective, and green.
UCSF Mission Hall Global Health Sciences Building
This 266,000 square foot project was initially a design competition requiring an early team commitment of Architects, Engineering Consultants, Contractor and sub-contractors to collaborate from day one to evolve the highest value solution, which was then delivered as a Guaranteed Maximum Price offering to the client. Working together, our team adopted construction strategies and committed to particular forms, materials, and fabrication techniques, inventing the production process alongside the design. Thanks to the early involvement of the builders and manufacturers, technological exploration and innovation became integral to the design vision.
Wanting to avoid a static or gridlocked aesthetic, we adopted a shifting-panel strategy likened to industrial metal mesh. Mission Hall’s skin required a variety of aperture densities and relationships, but it couldn’t be too complex given budget constraints and the need to limit panel types. Given our overall budget goals, we knew we would need large, repeating panel shapes and that the lightness of GFRC would be the most practical way to get there.
Past experience at smaller scales had shown that a material as prosaic as GFRC could be transformed into a cost-effective yet poetic signature feature; however, we had not yet found a way to dematerialize its basic wall-like nature. At UCSF, we wanted to re-invent GFRC as a trabeated wall assembly (column and lintel), not as a masonry wall with punched openings. Our partners, Walters & Wolf, helped us achieve this with a window-box truss system incorporating metal spandrel panels, allowing us to imply a much more open mesh framework than a strictly budget-driven panel wall would have allowed.
Panelization requirements led to a long truss (32” x 30 ft), which accommodated all four curtain wall versions, and streamlined both fabrication and erection. Built off-site, these panels amounted to significant savings for the client. The solution creates interest along the facades while still allowing for flexible and myriad programmatic options within. Because the South and West sides of the building experience stronger sunlight, we tightened the apertures to reduce heat gain, while the North side opened up more to admit diffused light and provide views toward Downtown San Francisco.
How We Got There
Specific patterns, textures, and materials were sampled, developed, and tested in mock-up form to nurture and test our ideas both before and during the production process. Darker Precast Concrete at the building base level along with typical off-white GFRC wall material mockups are shown above.
GFRC pilasters were presented in smooth and wash-board-shadow, and the proportions of specific wall fragments and adjacent window voids were adjusted for solar exposure, spatial and technical reasons, as well as façade-making.
Well ahead of production, we were making careful studies of texture and scale, guided by practical input from the designated panel manufacturers, to confirm we had it right prior to mock-up and production. The resulting panels vary between smooth and wash-board texture to provide shadow, scale, and variability. The light color of the GRFC also provides a contrast to the darker concrete at the base level. The GRFC appears as though it is a framework floating above the darker glass and metal elements underneath, creating the building’s outer “mesh” expression.
Working within parameters of efficient glass size, pushing limits of texture and relief, we arrived at a highly animated open-weave expression, completely free of panelized punched-wall expression with a limited amount of actual panel variation. Compositionally, every effort was made to view simple things in complex ways, to produce more visual interest through proportion, offsets of panels, mirror-reversals local adjacencies, and interrelationship of basic elements. Our tools were limited, but by careful composition, the solution rejects the grid-locked and static pitfalls typical of GFRC panel walls.
Where We’re Coming From
A core tenet of our approach is to tease the poetry out of the practical: to find ways to make an office building (or even a parking garage) beautiful and simple; elegant and functional; practical yet fresh, while improving our everyday experiences. Even the most seemingly mundane materials can be reinterpreted and optimized to provide an articulate and coherent architectural expression. We see something like GFRC not so much as a “budget material” but as the lighter side of concrete.
Dia:Beacon
The early morning sky and the beat of the steel pull my gaze to the Hudson’s flat surface, the fawn landscape. It swishes by. I’m headed up to Beacon, a small leafy town just over an hour’s train ride out of Manhattan. From the station, I walk through the gathering heat, up a small hill, and around a bend to a low-slung brick structure surrounded by quiet, ordered grounds and trees. I pass through a dark, compressed entry and into the museum and I stop — that sense of quiet and awe that happens to me in a great place. There’s just so much light. Skylights pull in the blue from above and the landscape is in every window. My skin is warm and illuminated. I run my fingers along a rough-hewn wall. I wander.
Art + Architecture
I can see why Robert Irwin, who has spent much of his career exploring spatial relations and the subtleties of perception, wanted to help reimagine how an old Nabisco box-printing factory built in 1929 might be transformed into a museum housing art from the 60’s and 70’s. Irwin designed the master plan, grounds, and windows at Dia:Beacon — his own contribution to the ethos of permanent installation, or art as created, installed, and experienced within a site-specific context. The raw beauty and honest construction of industrial architecture — broad, day lit spans set to brick, steel, concrete, and glass — make the building itself feel like art. And much like the works it houses — Donald Judd’s wood boxes or Sol LeWitt’s patterns — this place leaves the story up to you. It’s like you’re the point.
An Excursus
I find Irwin’s Excursus: Homage to the Square³ — sixteen interconnected, square(ish) spaces constructed of translucent, white scrim and illuminated by vertical fluorescent tubes. Originally installed at the Dia Center for the Arts in Chelsea in 1998 and site-adapted for Dia:Beacon, Homage to the Square³ invokes Joseph Albers’ seminal inquiry into the subjective experience of color.
Walking through the space, I imagine falling into an Albers painting, his squares tilted upright and organized into a maze. As I move through the chambers, the colors, vibrant in the hands of Irwin, shift to the peripheral. There is daylight and warmth. Ghostly figures pass through the scrim. Footsteps on the soft wood. Trains rumble up the Hudson, making the sounds of industry, past and present. After a while, Albers recedes, Irwin falls away, and it’s just the daylight, the space, and me — playful, pensive, and ethereal. It seems like a good idea to just lie down on that luscious wood floor and stare up at the sky.
But West Texas awaits: a large-scale installation, Irwin’s first and only ground up building, has opened at the Chinati. His exploration of the phenomena of perception through the mediums of light and space in the Chihuahuan Desert is something I need to experience.
Marfa
It’s a bit mind-blowing to wake up to the taxis, stilettos, and steam of a summer day in New York and fall asleep under the black lit silence of a West Texan desert. As the white noise of the city gives way to the thunderous silence of the land — the bark of a dog, the steel grind of a train — my senses hone.
The Chihuahuan desert is situated atop a highland plane called the Marfa Plateau, punctuated by low-slung mountains under a sky that curves all around you. The grassland, cacti, dirt, rocks, and adobe meet the sky to make a variable brown-blue palette that changes throughout the day.
Like many of the buildings in Marfa — modest, straightforward adobe and concrete structures that defer to the geography and climate — Irwin’s modern, concrete building is a quietly elegant portal into the unexpected. U-shaped and organized around a landscaped garden, untitled (dawn to dusk), 2016 sits within the footprint of an old Fort D.A. Russell hospital originally constructed in 1921. It is approximately 10,000 square feet.
when things start to get super untitled
A kid who seems strangely serene for someone who appears to be 15 lets us in. My friend and I managed to miss the scheduled tour (desert distractions abound, I tell you), and so it’s just the two of us. It’s late in the day, but the sun rides high. The land and the light and the sky follow us through a tall and generous sequence of windows. We’ve been asked not to take pictures inside the space.
Again, the scrims: white and black panels, veins running up the building arms, divide the structure into light and dark, intersecting at the crux. We immediately grow quiet and separate, our footsteps on the concrete. The building’s original use is with me — I imagine the people who came through, living and dying. I walk the length of the white scrims, watching the landscape through the sequence of windows, light and space given shape.
In his fantastic book, seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees, Lawrence Weschler writes of Irwin’s artwork, “Perhaps the central concern of all these installations has been their presence — temporal, spatial — such that any descriptive report of their character or intention necessarily betrays their essential nature.” And yet, the procession:
I turn into the crux of the U. The darkness is sudden, dissonant. The contrast a jolt. I slow my pace through the dark side and reach the end. I turn back and walk slowly through the black scrims. I feel weightless and heady. The landscape, the sunlight, the sky recede as I move through the space, the clarity, and the blur.
Each scrim a thunk at my chest, a slow pulse. I pass through something and something passes through me, and it has weight and energy and a beat.
My friend and I lock eyes.
“I know, right?” she says.
There are tears in her eyes. Mine too.
She can’t know what I feel, nor I her. But as we leave in silence, I think we carry something out — a sense of our own consciousness. And perhaps we are closer to knowing the profound and beautiful difference of that in all of us.
How did you get into architecture?
I spent the summer of 1994 studying the delicate protein folds of a little virus called P22 in a refrigerated laboratory in Massachusetts. After a miserable day in the cold room, I would spend my evenings walking around the humid streets of Boston and marveling at a built environment that was about as different as could be from the urban fringes of LA where I had grown up. By the end of that summer, my interest in microscopic protein had been eclipsed by the textures of Sever Hall, the hush of Pinckney Street, and the shape-shifting simplicity of the Hancock Tower.
What's your approach to architecture?
Multivalent. I tend to triangulate design problems in a way that is almost clinically straight-forward — listing out all the criteria for success, iterating design concepts, and testing those concepts against the criteria. I say “almost” because the criteria can range from highly objective (cost per square foot, FAR, net-zero water use) to totally subjective (“lightness,” “fun,” “views to the sky”). What matters is, first, that these criteria are meaningful to our clients and to the larger community, and second, that we satisfy the criteria in a way that is elegant, timeless, and seemingly effortless.
What are you excited about in architecture right now?
All the latent design possibilities of emerging construction technologies such as cross-laminated timber, hybrid rammed earth, and 3D-printed concrete are exciting to me in that they fuse analog and digital approaches to craft. These technologies help compress the distance between architect and builder. Similarly, the use of tactile regionally-specific materials and building processes can help us engage more directly with the work we do and the places we make.
I remain excited about hand drawing and physical modelling. We do our best work when we can collaborate in a direct and visceral way during the design process. At the same time, I am excited about the coming shift to an all-digital workflow for design review and construction. Plan checkers, field inspectors, general contractors and the construction trades will very soon be working off the same 3D computer model. Apart from saving reams of paper, this will simplify communication and streamline pre-construction.
How do you hope to make an impact at WRNS in your new role?
I want to foster a scalable studio culture that can grow as the firm grows and keep that special sauce that makes WRNS, well WRNS. That means putting design first. That means promoting innovation around both project design and project delivery. And that means approaching every problem from the standpoint of a novice: with an open mind and critical eye.
What do you want to teach the next generation of WRNSers?
We are at a moment of generational transition: from architects trained to draw by hand to modeling exclusively on a computer; from an enmeshed ownership economy to spawning a sharing economy; from valuing individualism and status (the age of the “starchitect”) to authenticity and connectedness becoming design bellwethers. I think the next generation of WRNSers has much to teach the firm.
As one of the younger partners at WRNS, I hope to be a transitional figure, building bridges between these groups to keep us moving forward.
New Partners Tim Morshead, Russell Sherman, and Lilian Asperin
Currently, more than sixty-five million Americans are living in areas where access to primary care is limited, and they suffer from higher rates of chronic health problems, disease, and death. In addition to the insufficient supply and poor distribution of care, many of these residents face additional barriers when they do get care, including communication challenges, lack of privacy and comfort in clinics, and inconvenient hours and locations.
The Firehouse Clinics are an innovative step towards bridging that gap. Spearheaded by the County of Alameda and Public Architecture as part of their 1% Solution, “Firehouse Clinics are an innovation in community health care focused on serving vulnerable, low-income, and uninsured individuals and families. Leveraging the trust and expertise of emergency medical services (EMS) and local Fire Departments in the pre-hospital care system, Firehouse Clinics are designed to be conveniently located at neighborhood fire stations where there is critical need for access to health care services.” (visit the website for more information).
Public Architecture approached WRNS Studio to provide a clinic prototype, a conceptual design, and a set of guiding principles for a 1,200 square foot clinic adjacent to a firehouse.
The result is a clinic that is welcoming, easy to access, and dignified. Nothing about it says “low income” or “free clinic.” Located near public transit and the neighborhoods it will serve, the clinic is intended to reflect the values and aspirations of its community. With its adaptable and easy-to-execute prototype, Alameda plans to open clinics throughout the county. The hope is that other communities will follow suit.
The design is easy to build, efficient, and materials can be chosen specifically to match the surrounding neighborhood. The entry is visible from the street, inviting patrons in. Patients walk through gardens to check in at a kiosk and wait for their appointment in a waiting room that feels comfortable and “at home.”
GLS Landscape | Architecture designed surrounding wellness gardens that will be visible from within exam rooms, providing a calm, beautiful alternative to fluorescent lights and sterile white rooms. A green roof and gardens increase the welcoming, natural feel of the clinic. The roof’s plantings will be adapted to the neighborhood, making the building of its place — implying holistic wellness to passersby.
So, why co-locate with firehouses? They are centrally located, accessible, and plentiful (even in neighborhoods that lack other resources). People’s trust in firefighters often outweighs their faith in law enforcement, perhaps because firefighters’ sole purpose is to do good for the community. The hope is that this inherent trust will bleed over into the neighboring clinic, bridging the divide for residents who are suspicious of healthcare providers or unfamiliar with navigating a clinic. Having a group of EMTs next-door also serves a practical purpose in cases of emergency.
Leveraging the neighboring firehouse and people’s generally positive association with it, these clinics will provide a new model for community-based care, one that is appropriate and culturally relevant. The clinics will become a resource hub for health education, wellness, health insurance enrollment, and referrals to specialty care.
Armed with a promotional website and an executable design, Public Architecture and Alameda County Health Care Services Agency are sharing the vision for the firehouse clinics with communities across the nation. The dream that began in Alameda County of providing efficient, culturally relevant care to people who have historically gone without has the potential to really catch fire.
Founded in the 1880’s as a train-stop in the farthest western border corner of Texas, Marfa has become a rite of passage for design lovers curious about Donald Judd’s escape from New York (he needed space) and the making of this place. I’d wanted to visit since friends returned with tall tales of dancing with cowboys and running through concrete boxes under the desert sky.
The mind-clearing road in and out of Marfa: It pretty much looks like this for 200 miles. And there’s a lot of rail. Photos by Bruce Damonte.
Roughly paved, ghost-towny and quietly brimming with artists and tourists, Marfa has been “found.” A quick internet search will land you in the archives of Vanity Fair, Dwell, the New York Times and endless blogs that care about modern architecture and art. Still, it’s a massive trek to get there — with a four hour flight from San Francisco to El Paso, followed by a three hour drive through rolling, empty desert, you’re looking at a solid day of travel on either end — and once you arrive, it kinda feels like you’ve landed on another planet. The Chihuahuan desert plays no small part in this other-worldliness. Situated atop a highland plane called the Marfa Plateau, the town has an earthy palate of variable browns made of dirt, rocks, and adobe, and blues from the low-slung mountains and the endless sky that makes a curve all around you. There’s also a lot of grassland and cacti. With sparse, mostly single-level homes and few visible signs of commerce or humans from the two-lane highway that runs through this one stoplight town, it would be easy to sneeze and miss Marfa. So, in many ways it still feels super off-radar.
My friends and I arrived late on a Tuesday and went straight to bed. On my first morning, I ventured out solo for coffee. Living in a city for the past 20 years, I expected, naively, to find a cappuccino within a two-minute walk. I crossed the interstate (which sounds dramatic given how few cars pass) and happily found a hand-painted wooden sign propped on the street that read “coffee,” but which led me to a dirt lot with an abandoned school bus that recalled a horror film I’d seen too young. There were no obvious stores or restaurants, just houses and a field. My pale skin was starting to tingle. Things were bright and flat. A train rumbled by, making its big steel noise. I wondered quite seriously where I was.
Photos by Bruce Damonte.
My coffee dependence is real, like I might get a migraine and go fetal in the dust, real, so I asked a man working on the roof of an adobe house what to do. After a few minutes of chitchat (turns out he’d spent a good chunk of his life in San Francisco’s North Beach before moving to Marfa in the late 90’s), he pointed me to single story building of indiscriminate use, and boom! it was like I’d stepped through a magical portal to design-lover land — concrete floor, high ceilings, natural light, beautifully crafted books about design and architecture, all arranged very neatly. A nice man who looks like my dad after too much tequila (wild white hair and a grimace that’s actually friendly) told me I’d find coffee on the other side of the train tracks.
Train whistles and steel grind are the sounds of Marfa, punctuating the desert silence. Being on foot here is about crossing the tracks, which run through the center of town. Did Judd ponder the trains, notice their repetition and symmetry, simple form and use? Images top and bottom, Molly Thomas. Middle: Bruce Damonte.
Disoriented, slightly irritated, I stepped back out into the sun and took a breath. I reminded myself that I was operating under a different set of parameters. I needed to chill and go with the flow. It was in this state of mind that I was joined by my friends who were already in Marfa mode — by this I mean they were unconcerned about any kind of agenda. We found the coffee, but not before stumbling upon a shop and talking to a woman who let us see what she said were Judd sketches hanging on the wall of her studio. And this experience seemed to unfold into others. We might be headed for a sandwich and end up talking to a gallery owner for two hours, who, realizing how into his shop we were, took us into his home to show us more art. It seemed like everything — galleries, restaurants, the Chinati – took place on foot, under the hot sun, meandering past buildings with unclear uses, cutting over dirt that led to diversions of the best kind.
That initial mixed-bag feeling of disorientation, mild discomfort, curiosity and intrigue — experienced on every trip I’ve ever taken, but sharpened by the flat, hot, wide-open landscape — stayed with me throughout the trip. Indeed, it was my first and constant experience of the place. Part of me wanted to dive in, part of me wanted to bail, like every time I’ve ever put pen to paper when an idea first strikes and I free-write out of curiosity and angst. It’s about being open. And being open in Marfa is deeply connected to its canvas-like landscape, terrain at once rugged in the foreground and velvet in the distance, inviting you you fill it with your own stories, and to take in its mysteries, which brings me to Judd’s concrete boxes at the Chinati Foundation.
Judd’s 15 untitled works in concrete, 1980-1984 were cast and assembled onsite over a four year period in a field at the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum which Judd founded. Each unit is 2.5 x 2.5 x 5 meters, made of concrete slabs that are 25 centimeters thick. Photos by Bruce Damonte.
“The specific intention of Chinati is to preserve and present to the public permanent large-scale installations by a limited number of artists. The emphasis is on works in which art and the surrounding landscape are inextricably linked.” – Chinati Foundation
There was, in Marfa, the metaphorical wander of the loose agenda: the quiet, the lack of distraction, the realness of people not face-screening. Like much of Marfa, where circulation is unsanctioned (the desert seems to assert itself over the built environment) and the programming deeply unclear, Judd’s concrete boxes in the grasslands running the perimeter of the Chinati pulled us into their world of play. I’d heard people talk about the big Texan sky. And the nights were a spectacle; stars haven’t twinkled like that since I was a kid staring up at them from a mountain called Ladyface. But it wasn’t until I walked through the concrete boxes that I saw the Marfa sky truly embrace the land in a slow dance. The big sky and the magnificent light hitting a flat golden earth seem to have provided Judd the space he needed to create and define his art, and for his art to craft space.
One of the people I met in Marfa, not an art lover, said he thought the boxes looked like an unfinished building project, like someone laid foundations and ran out of money. Strangely and unspeakably in that moment, their foundational simplicity was exactly what I enjoyed; the box, for me, elicits our innate need for shelter. In constructing shelter, we alter the landscape, the sky. We can bring them together or tear them apart. Or we can respect, celebrate and experience new things in the land and the sky that could only happen in a specific place — if we’re open to it.
Trekking through dirt and grasslands, wandering through the boxes, the art a kind of canvas for my own experience of wonder and confusion, and joy in all of it — this is how it felt to be in Marfa as a whole, where the circulation is mostly unclear and the programming is up to you. Photos by Bruce Damonte.
There is a certain thing about biking. On the streets or hillsides we are close to the places in our cities or countrysides that inspire us to relax or create. Kermit the frog rode a bike. So did Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It is fun and romantic. It is athletic. There is a certain childlike freedom in it. Biking is, of course, simply useful at times. It gets us places. And difficult. We have to climb very big hills and sometimes we fall, break things, pop tires, get hit. Biking as metaphor for life? I don’t know. What I do know is that cycling is a way of life for some here at WRNS, one of the simple things that bring us together.
We have jerseys that we make every year. You might see groups of two, four—and on Sundays as many as ten —of us out on the Bay Area roads, neat in a pace line or spread out on a winding climb. Our jerseys make us fast and light.
Some of the best road cycling terrain in the world is right here, from the top of Mt. Diablo and the east bay hills to the coastal roads of Marin and north.
What do we talk about when we ride together? Road bikes. In achingly mind-numbing detail. Combine the natural predilection of architects to prattle on about the structural virtues of titanium alloy over carbon fiber with the cyclist’s penchant for considering the weight of fiber in an already tiny Italian seat and you’ll have some idea. There’s some shoptalk, but mostly not.
If you see one of our jerseys out there on the road, please give us a (subtle!) honk or whistle.
The mind-clearing road in and out of Marfa: It pretty much looks like this for 200 miles. And there’s a lot of rail. Photos by 
Judd’s 15 untitled works in concrete, 1980-1984 were cast and assembled onsite over a four year period in a field at the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum which Judd founded. Each unit is 2.5 x 2.5 x 5 meters, made of concrete slabs that are 25 centimeters thick. Photos by Bruce Damonte.
Trekking through dirt and grasslands, wandering through the boxes, the art a kind of canvas for my own experience of wonder and confusion, and joy in all of it — this is how it felt to be in Marfa as a whole, where the circulation is mostly unclear and the programming is up to you. Photos by Bruce Damonte.
