Architecture Ransom Notes

Conventional wisdom says that less square footage in a house means a more affordable house. Building a 2,000 square foot house should sell for more than an 1,800 square foot house on the same lot. This convention is not necessarily true, but it doesn't stop planning commission members from utilizing this logic to force smaller square footage homes in effort to bring prices down. Not all square feet are created equal. For example, one square foot of house on a main level is substantially more valuable than one square foot of house on a basement level. Basements, even with window wells, are dark and cold spaces that tend to not be as pleasant to be in compared to above ground living which has much more opportunity for light. Two story houses achieve higher density, therefore can achieve lower costs per square foot compared to a single family home. Land in the Bay Area is expensive. A house that takes up more land will cost more for the house you get. At a planning commission ...

Official movie poster The movie Little Pink House was released last Friday (in Berkeley at least) in what should be one of the most important films this year. It is an excellent, gut-wrenching film about someone just like you or me, with a strong performance by lead actress Catherine Keener. It covers Susette Kelo and the Institute for Justice 's fight against eminent domain abuse by New London, a town in Connecticut. Eminent domain is a legal process whereupon a government may take private property, with just compensation, for public use. However, jurisdictions have abused this government power to seize private property for the benefit of other private parties. These typically includes taking the homes of those less well off and giving them to wealthy interests such as major developers or corporations. Even Constitutionally compliant seizures have resulted in abuse such as lowballing appraisals to the landowners. In California's controversial high speed rail projec...

The San Francisco Chronicle published an article  about artists fleeing San Francisco due to its high cost of living, as part of its Grass is Greener series. It chronicles several artists moving to other cities such as Seattle and Los Angeles to escape the high rents in San Francisco. Art is extremely important. Sure, some art, maybe even most art, is just eye-candy, to simply stimulate the visual senses, not that there's anything wrong with that. But the most profound art unlocks hidden insights into our own character, expresses the perspectives of the artist, provides commentary on society, or locks in historical context for future generations. Unfortunately, having a roof over one's head is more important than art, and the art scene is being pushed out by this simple truth. When the housing supply is restricted to the whims of city planners and no growth neighbors, land costs go up and things less important than this basic necessity start to get pushed out. Murals i...

In my previous post , I wrote about how city agents acting beyond what they should be doing create pancake architecture and how it creates aesthetically displeasing architecture. Now I will go into how a city can pigeonhole architects and developers into pancake architecture and how that increases the costs of construction for arbitrary reasons. So back to the Fremont Small Lot Design Guidelines we go! In DGL 2.2.3, the city prescribes setbacks from one house to another in one story and two story situations, with a helpful diagram on the side. It states that between houses, one story elements must be 10 feet apart, one story to two story elements must be 12 feet apart, and two story to two story elements must be 15 feet apart. In a situation where you're trying to maximize densities like, say, during a housing shortage, exercises are run to try to maximize square footages per acre of land you have to build on. This allows you to get to house sizes demanded by the market as e...

Pancakes are delicious. Who can hate a soft and fluffy stack of pancakes, browned on the edges, with a golden square of butter on top and maple syrup dripping off the sides? When I think of pancakes, I think back to the stack of delightful macadamia nut pancakes I had at  Boots and Kimo's in Oahu where we risked missing our flight out just to get a taste in. Not that missing a flight out of Hawaii is ever really a bad thing. Pancake architecture, however, leaves a different taste in my mouth. It's not a real phrase, as far as I know. I don't know that any architecture school out there teaches "pancake architecture". Some of my colleagues derogatorily refer to it as "wedding cake" architecture, but I prefer the term pancakes because weddings are always meant to be celebrated as a beautiful synthesis of two people. Pancakes are sometimes just pancakes, and when not executed well, which is more often than I'd like, you get a powdery undercooked goo t...

The East Bay Times published an article concerning the difficulty of building, using the North 40 project in Los Gatos as a prime example. It goes into some length about how the project has been held up for twenty years in a stalemate fight between the developer and the neighbors. It ultimately ended up in a lawsuit which the developer won, clearly having rights to build on their land. Although I disagree with state directed housing supply mandates (enforcing property rights is a much better approach), it is interesting to see some of the other statistics the article revealed concerning the woeful lack of housing cities have permitted: 97 percent of cities and counties failed to keep pace with housing needs The article also cites research that found it takes on average 17 months to attain approval for projects and that these delays can add 30% to the price of new homes. It's a rarity for me to see California projects go from initial architectural contract to construction d...

People living in single family houses like looking out of their backyard into open space. It's a feature I would love to have for my own house. When someone has had that amenity, like any other luxury, it's tough to let it go. The problem is that someone's right to a view ends where another's property rights begin. That someone likes their view out their backyard does not mean the person who owns the lot behind that person should not be able to build a house on their own property. We designed a small community outside a large gated community in the East Bay and held a few community meetings where we invited neighbors to discuss the development. This land was a horse ranch and was situated alongside the main road into the gated community. On the other side of the road was a row of backyards inside the gated community. The new houses would not have been close to the existing houses so the impact was not significant by any means in context with Bay Area housing. They wou...