Inability to get out of your own way (Part 2)
Continued from part 1.
More design inanities now from DRB
Stuck with the Santa Barbara direction, we were going to make lemonade out of lemons. We decided to make some great Santa Barbara architecture, absurd as it was, and sprinkle in modern style architecture as well.
No dice. We went into the design review board and were promptly shut down. The board liked the architecture independent of each other but thought the juxtaposition between them was too jarring, fixating on the gable roofs versus the flat roofs. It was a fair point. We wanted to say that we were forced into this position from the irrationality of the city and we were just trying to get something in there that we thought would be in the best interest of the public, but of course, that would just lead to more tension. We instead argued that the roof forms are not so much a focal point in four story architecture as they are in one to two story architecture and that as long as the vocabulary of the design is followed, traditional architecture can follow to modern design.
They were having none of it. Our attempt to give the project some semblance of sanity was dashed. We moved forward with ultimate consistency. We went forward with designing all of the buildings on site as some kind of Santa Barbara style, largely varying only in detail and roof form. Our desire for modern was limited to several buildings that had the character of Santa Barbara but with cleaner lines and details. It would be a good looking project if it was located somewhere else.
By the time we made it back to the design review board, its makeup had changed. Some people had left the board and were replaced by new faces. These new faces were not any easier to deal with. While some comments were good, most of the demands were either terrible ideas, items originated by the city itself, or of such insignificance to the public that it was way outside their scope to even care about.
One comment came in that the roof ridges were too long. Excuse me? These are large buildings and therefore longer ridges are still in scale. This board member required ridges as short as 25 feet to be broken up for scale. For scale? There are single family homes with a quarter of the footprint that have much longer ridges! How this board member, an architect, can so grossly misunderstand scale is a bit alarming.
Another board member worried about a sea of red clay tile roofs. Don't look at us, that's what you get when the city demands Santa Barbara architecture across the entire site. I'm not sure if she's ever looked at the roofs in Santa Barbara. What color and material are all of the pitched roofs? Perhaps most frustratingly, we had anticipated this and threw in some roof tile that are about as charcoal colored as red, and she threw that one out, resulting in a more consistent color palette. Talk about saying one thing and doing another.
Yet another board member focused on the lighting fixtures. Being Santa Barbara architecture, we selected fixtures a bit more similar to the old oil lamp style where the construction is mostly of wrought iron and clear glass surrounding the light source. No way, he said. He talked about the glare of looking at the light source when going down the street. Okay, fine. So we specified the glass to be frosted so the light would be diffused. He then threw a hissy fit, demanding all the lights be indirect and we eventually settled on a blase 1990s style modern light. On a Santa Barbara. For some reason.
Nearly the entire board spent nearly two separate public hearings furiously misunderstanding our client's proposal for gates. From the beginning, our client wanted gates along individual drive aisles for security. Not the entire site. Of course not. There is a great park in the community, there was never a desire to close off the entire community from the public. But it took two separate sessions for them to finally realize the gates would only section off private drive aisles which serve two buildings each and no other public amenity. Then they were fine with it. What a waste of everybody's time.
The authoritarian mindset
Perhaps the most disturbing was the authoritarian mindset exuding from the DRB. To be fair, it was mostly emanating from two of the people there, both architects. One of them was the ideal board member, if you're into having a free society. He said nothing except to say that he had nothing to say.
In one of the early sessions with the new makeup of the board, one of the architects started expressing his desires for the project and the other architect turned to him with a smile and said excitedly, "Well, just say what you want and we'll get it". He had an accent from the northwestern region of Europe. I don't know which country he's from, exactly, but no, that's not how things are supposed to work in America, a supposedly free country. The government does not get to demand things of private citizens on the whims of a wannabe dictator.
The board member that threw the hissy fit about the lights, when we came back with the frosted glass proposal, yelled at us "NO, I WANTED INDIRECT LIGHTING!!" You wanted? Okay, go buy your own piece of land and install indirect lighting. You don't own this property. You're not a future buyer. You aren't the architect on this project. Even if you were the architect, you should have learned in school that you're not supposed to take the "I want" or "I like" approach because unless you're your own client, it's not your property. What the architect wants is irrelevant to the project. The job of the architect is to guide the client to something the client wants and loves. What a city design board member wants should be even less relevant since he has literally no investment whatsoever in the project.
We later learned we were not the only ones who suffered at the end of the petulant feet stomping of board members drunk with power. Our client, after the DRB sessions, met with the mayor and apparently, numerous other applicants to build housing in the city has met similar resistance and demands, well overstepping the bounds of what DRBs should have control over. They delayed projects for months on end and forced land owners to add more and more cost to their projects for aesthetic reasons while people can't afford to put a roof over their head.
Continued on Part 3.
More design inanities now from DRB
Stuck with the Santa Barbara direction, we were going to make lemonade out of lemons. We decided to make some great Santa Barbara architecture, absurd as it was, and sprinkle in modern style architecture as well.
No dice. We went into the design review board and were promptly shut down. The board liked the architecture independent of each other but thought the juxtaposition between them was too jarring, fixating on the gable roofs versus the flat roofs. It was a fair point. We wanted to say that we were forced into this position from the irrationality of the city and we were just trying to get something in there that we thought would be in the best interest of the public, but of course, that would just lead to more tension. We instead argued that the roof forms are not so much a focal point in four story architecture as they are in one to two story architecture and that as long as the vocabulary of the design is followed, traditional architecture can follow to modern design.
They were having none of it. Our attempt to give the project some semblance of sanity was dashed. We moved forward with ultimate consistency. We went forward with designing all of the buildings on site as some kind of Santa Barbara style, largely varying only in detail and roof form. Our desire for modern was limited to several buildings that had the character of Santa Barbara but with cleaner lines and details. It would be a good looking project if it was located somewhere else.
By the time we made it back to the design review board, its makeup had changed. Some people had left the board and were replaced by new faces. These new faces were not any easier to deal with. While some comments were good, most of the demands were either terrible ideas, items originated by the city itself, or of such insignificance to the public that it was way outside their scope to even care about.
One comment came in that the roof ridges were too long. Excuse me? These are large buildings and therefore longer ridges are still in scale. This board member required ridges as short as 25 feet to be broken up for scale. For scale? There are single family homes with a quarter of the footprint that have much longer ridges! How this board member, an architect, can so grossly misunderstand scale is a bit alarming.
 |
| Aerial of downtown Santa Barbara. Only two pitched roofs visible are not red clay tile - one at the bottom which is not traditional Santa Barbara and a charcoal color at the upper right which the DRB member did not want. Image exported from Google Earth Pro with attribution. |
Yet another board member focused on the lighting fixtures. Being Santa Barbara architecture, we selected fixtures a bit more similar to the old oil lamp style where the construction is mostly of wrought iron and clear glass surrounding the light source. No way, he said. He talked about the glare of looking at the light source when going down the street. Okay, fine. So we specified the glass to be frosted so the light would be diffused. He then threw a hissy fit, demanding all the lights be indirect and we eventually settled on a blase 1990s style modern light. On a Santa Barbara. For some reason.
Nearly the entire board spent nearly two separate public hearings furiously misunderstanding our client's proposal for gates. From the beginning, our client wanted gates along individual drive aisles for security. Not the entire site. Of course not. There is a great park in the community, there was never a desire to close off the entire community from the public. But it took two separate sessions for them to finally realize the gates would only section off private drive aisles which serve two buildings each and no other public amenity. Then they were fine with it. What a waste of everybody's time.
The authoritarian mindset
Perhaps the most disturbing was the authoritarian mindset exuding from the DRB. To be fair, it was mostly emanating from two of the people there, both architects. One of them was the ideal board member, if you're into having a free society. He said nothing except to say that he had nothing to say.
In one of the early sessions with the new makeup of the board, one of the architects started expressing his desires for the project and the other architect turned to him with a smile and said excitedly, "Well, just say what you want and we'll get it". He had an accent from the northwestern region of Europe. I don't know which country he's from, exactly, but no, that's not how things are supposed to work in America, a supposedly free country. The government does not get to demand things of private citizens on the whims of a wannabe dictator.
The board member that threw the hissy fit about the lights, when we came back with the frosted glass proposal, yelled at us "NO, I WANTED INDIRECT LIGHTING!!" You wanted? Okay, go buy your own piece of land and install indirect lighting. You don't own this property. You're not a future buyer. You aren't the architect on this project. Even if you were the architect, you should have learned in school that you're not supposed to take the "I want" or "I like" approach because unless you're your own client, it's not your property. What the architect wants is irrelevant to the project. The job of the architect is to guide the client to something the client wants and loves. What a city design board member wants should be even less relevant since he has literally no investment whatsoever in the project.
We later learned we were not the only ones who suffered at the end of the petulant feet stomping of board members drunk with power. Our client, after the DRB sessions, met with the mayor and apparently, numerous other applicants to build housing in the city has met similar resistance and demands, well overstepping the bounds of what DRBs should have control over. They delayed projects for months on end and forced land owners to add more and more cost to their projects for aesthetic reasons while people can't afford to put a roof over their head.
Continued on Part 3.
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