It was our family’s annual trip to the hills of Marin County to have dinner with the in-laws, or more correctly the mother-in-law.  My father-in-law Dick Beeler, a colorful character in his own right, died prematurely years ago while taking one of his daily swims in San Francisco Bay.  Dick was a writer and publisher of a group of small magazines serving the farming communities of California.   Lois, his second wife, has lived in the same house that Dick built in 1959 ever since.  For someone with an architectural focus, visiting the Beeler house is a step back into mid twentieth century modernism.  The architect Beeler hired created an almost perfect replica of Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House 22.  The only significant difference was the fact that he chose to frame it in wood instead of steel.  A visit to the house brings up visions of Danish modern, hoop skirts, skinny black neckties and episodes of Mad Men.

The Beeler family in Kansas City, ca. 1920

Lois, in her mid-eighties, still enjoys living in this hidden architectural relic, entertaining friends and neighbors and living an active senior citizen lifestyle.  She cooked us a lovely holiday dinner while my wife and sister-in-law caught up on family friends.  Lois had recently had some work done to the garage and in the process found a collection of family photo albums, slide collections, scores of reels of film and some amazing vintage 1950s camera gear.  She asked us to take a look and see if there was anything there we wanted.  I was stunned.  Out came bag after bag of family history.  The photo albums documenting my wife’s family from the early twentieth century on were copious and illuminating.

Dick Beeler's high school swim team

Dick Beeler led a short and illustrious life. He grew up in the mid-west, went the University of Texas where he was a star swimmer. He was selected for the 1940 U.S. Olympic team which was to be held in Finland, but was cancelled because of the outbreak of the war. He joined the army and like so many other soldiers returned to California after the war to start his magazine business. I met Dick toward the end of his career when he was editor of The California Farmer. I knew him as an engaging man with a quick wit and sharp pen, in much the same genre of Herb Caen or Art Hoppe. What I didn’t know was that he was also quite a photographer. I suspect that in the early years of his magazine business he did a lot of his own photography. His collection of family photos went from mediocre Kodak moments to quietly insightful shots of his children and the mid-century world they lived in. Those priceless albums induced a wave of nostalgia and awe.

Dick with his brother and sister ca. 1940

Snapshots are literally 1/60 of a second of a person’s life captured. That happy face can often hide a lifetime of sadness and woe. Yet the snapshot is also has an iconographic quality that has long been revered and feared by both primitive and modern peoples. Snapshots can speak volumes. They give us a random but useful history of a person, a family, a society. On some level, they tell us where we have been and who we are. Archivists and film makers have used snapshots to recreate entire epics; think Ken Burns. The snapshot is not a narrative but an associative document. We look at the snapshot and let our minds create the story from the visual clues it provides. The snapshot allows us to remember; it allows us to touch the past, if only for 1/60 of a second. Will future, digitized “Kodak moments” find their way into photo albums to be discovered generations hence, or be lost forever in the ether of cyberspace? Only time will tell.

Walking on to the conference grounds early on a clear warm fall Saturday morning, I felt somewhat intimidated.  I was interested in getting the pulse of the world of architecture, but I did not want to be an outsider looking in.  That fear was quickly dissipated.  A warm pat on the back arrived at the first coffee break.  It was one of several dozen clients that I would connect with over the course of the weekend.  Virtually every architect that I had worked with in the past two years was at the conference and most were in good spirits.  The conference committee had scoured the country and put together an amazing group of speakers who talked about architecture, the environment, how things are built, how our cities will evolve.  I was impressed by the breath of disciplines they corralled in one weekend.  I thought the best way to tie this together is just to write about three presenters.

Studio Gang, The Taipei Pop Music Center

Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects, Chicago

Jeanne Gang is really quite amazing. She is a multi-disciplinary architect who thinks and acts BIG, from high rise towers in Chicago to redesigning whole cities from Cicero to India.  What makes her work interesting are the questions she asks.  Putting people first in her designs seems to be her overarching design principle. She was just awarded a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, only the fourth architect to be so honored.

Matsys Design, S_Window, London

Andrew Kudless, Matsys, Oakland, CA

Kudless is a conceptual artist who studies organic forms and builds large constructs based on these forms.  His work ranges from collapsible paper lamps to designs for vast underground cities all based on an organic morphology.  His objects are very scalable and have the potential to be integrated into large building components.  He is definitely and “outside the box” thinker.

Matsys: Manifold Installation at the AA Projects Review, London

Dr. Dickson Despommier, PhD., Columbia University

Despommier is a parasitologist who has wandered afield and become a leading researcher and advocate for indoor farming.  Modern plant research has discovered that plants actually only require about 5% to 10% of the visual spectrum of light to grow.  This can be provided economically by LED lighting opening up the possibility of true indoor farming in urban environments.  Old factories in rust belt cities can be turned into productive indoor farms producing 10 times the crop output of their land based cousins. By consolidating labor and transportation, these new farms offer up exciting possibilities for dormant urban space and could solve food shortage problems later in the century.

For anyone interested in design solutions and visionary views to solve the world’s problems, the Monterey Design Conference put a lot on the plate for one weekend.  I often think  of us who went to architecture school thirty years ago holding out the hope that we could, through good design, solve some of the world’s problems, or at the very least, not fill it up with ugliness.  It is encouraging to know that a handful of visionaries are actually trying to do just that from a multi-disciplinary approach.

Hotel Bristol Lobby, San Diego

This year we worked extensively with one medium sized boutique hotel organization, Greystone Hotels,  shooting most of their properties. They waited close to four years and then finally decided it was time to update all of their photography.  Buildings get remodeled. Hotels target different client bases.   Marketing strategies change.  A great photo can be an invaluable marketing asset in any venue.

Hotel Bristol Bar, San Diego

Using digital technology, we can not only enhance what we capture, we can substantially change the environment.  For example, on the ballroom shot taken at Hotel Bristol in San Diego, we did not have enough linen for all the tables.  We were able to clone additional tables and then add them to the image.  The day we shot the ballroom space was gray with unremitting cloud cover.  As a precaution I shot a skyline shot the day before and conveniently stripped it in.  It was a seamless production.

Bristol Ballroom

Shooting hotels is fun because the people who work in the hospitality business are all about creating fun spaces for guests to enjoy.  Working with dedicated hoteliers and restaurateurs is almost always a positive experience.

Component Images of Photo-merge, Sunol House, Swatt Miers Archts.

One can debate the virtues of film versus digital and there are advantages to each medium.  With film, the object was always to create the perfect image because trying to improve it after the shutter had closed was difficult if not impossible.  With digital cameras, the object seems to be to collect as much raw data as you can so that you can reassemble the image in post production. The perfect image we all lust for is something that happens much later.

Sunol House, Photo-merge Assemblage, Swatt Miers Archts.

Recently I shot an assignment for Swatt|Miers Architects that called for some major computer doctoring to create images that could not have been done any other way.  The photo-merge concept has been around for a long time and subsequent software improvements have made it much more robust.  Adobe has incorporated a fairly good photo-merge tool in later versions of  PhotoShop.  Today, even point and shoot cameras come with some rudimentary merge software. The key in the process is to have the camera rotate on the nodal point of the lens and lap the images so that the merge tool can “cut and paste” from each image to make the composite.  The image you see above was composited from four individual shots and stitched together by the P.S. merge tool.  Short of bringing a man-lift on site and parking it precariously on a significant slope, there was no way to get this view of the building.  What is most remarkable is the rectilinear correction that the software created.

HDR Composite Images, Sunol House, Swatt Miers Archts.

HDR or High Dynamic Range imagery has also been around for a long time.  In the film era, the likes of Ansel Adams and yours truly mixed Pyrogallic acid developer to suppress highlights and extend tonal range in black and white film.  No, I am not as old as Adams, but I did mix my own chemicals back in the days of black and white and used the same formulas he used to control highlight density in my negatives.  Today that same effect is achieved in digital photography by creating multiple exposures of the same shot and then using sophisticated software to blend the lights and the darks into a pleasing composite image.  In the image above was created using NIK tools HDR Efex Pro and PhotoShop.   There are a variety of techniques one can use to get to the same place including hauling a ton of strobe lighting to the site and lighting the scene with several thousand watts of light.  But that does take time, an assistant or two and serious effort. HDR doesn’t work all the time and cannot get you out of a black pit, but with a deft hand and a favorable environment, it can produce some pleasing results and certainly speed along a day’s shoot.

Final HDR image created from composites

A few years back when we were still shooting film, doing eight shots in a day was about the limit.  In today’s digital world we are closer to twenty.   The digital revolution has lightened photographer’s equipment cases and moved much creativity from the camera to the computer.

One of the few positive aspects of this terrible recession is the fact that I have had the time to touch base and have lunch with some interesting people that I have known and worked with over the years. Randall Whitehead was a young lighting designer who walked into my studio twenty years ago looking for great stock shots for a book he was writing on residential lighting.  We were able to supply close to half the book’s images and helped out on subsequent projects.   Alas, Randall became a renowned designer and lecturer and our lives drifted apart.

Private residence, Carmel , CA Wm David Martin, A.I.A.

After a significant hiatus, Randall has come back into focus.  We had just photographed two wonderful houses in Carmel Valley for David Martin, A.I.A. and Randall had done the lighting.  On a sunny spring afternoon, I visited him in his Potrero Hill studio in San Francisco to share lunch and talk shop.   18^th Street is one of those hidden San Francisco commercial streets that has a truly timeless urban character, with family restaurants wedged next to grocery stores and dry cleaners.  We slipped into a packed lunch place an ordered up a surprisingly tasty fare of American food.  Aside from the tattoos on the waitress’ arms, we could have been in Iowa.  Arnold Palmers and Tuna Salad sandwiches with a side of curly garlic fries filled the alimentary needs of the afternoon.

Private residence, Carmel Valley , CA. Wm David Martin, A.I.A.

Whitehead has been as hurt by the recession as much as anyone.  His speaking engagements have shrunk from 24 to one or two a year.  His consultancy work has also been struck with a dearth of jobs.  But the eternal optimist shone through over lunch.  Whitehead had important information to share for everyone in the design industry.  In a short 45 minutes he penciled out how the lighting industry is on the cusp of the greatest changes since the introduction of the fluorescent tube.  Lighting in both residential and commercial buildings will be completely different in a very short time, he said.  Manufacturers are bringing to market revolutionary lighting prototypes that are energy efficient, pleasantly color balanced, and GREEN.  A new type of fluorescent fixture, CCFL lamp, http://www.lightronics.com is being developed for residential use.  It has a base 2200° K color balance and is dimmable.  A dimmable LED that changes color on dimming is in the works. You can find them at: http://www.pharox-led.com/cms/us/home And finally, a compact fluorescent lamp is being manufactured that has no mercury and can be recycled. Here is the source for green fluorescents:  http://www.vu1corporation.com/

As the economy slowly revives and new buildings are commissioned, lighting both inside and out will have an entirely different look, one that is necessarily more energy efficient, greener and easier to look at.  Next to transportation, buildings are the second largest consumer of energy in the United States and lighting is a major component of that use.  Making lighting more energy efficient may save our planet, and making it more pleasant to look at may save our sensibilities.

Last week I was asked by Steinberg Architects to photograph a California Junior College Athletic Center at Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley.   The project was an upgrade and renovation of a fifty year old facility badly in need of a facelift.  Arriving early in the morning and expecting few people, I was surprised to find nearly every space filled with a huge cross section of the Pierce College community doing the things necessary to keep them healthy and engaged.  From exercise classes for seniors, to ballet and karate classes for college kids, to exercise classes for the severely handicapped, to championship college sports teams, nearly every constituency was represented.  This was a community college where the adjective “community” actually meant something.

Dance Studio, Pierce College

The State of California is broke and it will take a number of years and some very clear thinking in Sacramento before we will dig our way out of this financial hole.  That being said, the State’s community college system is an incredible bargain for both the State and its students and one that continuously reaps benefits for a broad spectrum.  I think politicians and citizens alike realize this and will continue to fund and support this vital asset.  Preserving and extending the life of the physical environments of these colleges will be a State priority in the coming years in spite of our dire economy.  This is money well spent.

Yoga Class, Pierce College

Digital 101: Some technical notes on shooting in difficult spaces.

Gyms, pools, and locker rooms were not designed for photography.  Shooting in these environments can be challenging.  I remember trying to shoot a basketball game in film a number of years back using available light with almost disastrous consequences.  Today’s sophisticated digital cameras now have sensor speeds that can go to 6400 ISO.   Using remotely triggered strobe lighting and high ISO settings we can illuminate large spaces, and stop action.  The digital noise created from the high ISOs can be meliorated by using Photo Shop third party software plug-ins.  Using a universal white balance tool, a pleasing color balance can be had under almost any lighting condition.

Digital cameras and imaging software are changing the face of architectural photography in a dramatic fashion.  We can now photograph spaces with real people doing real things and create images much closer to how our eyes perceive the environment.

State Championship Women's Volleyball Team Practice

Palo Alto, California looks like any town U.S.A. Its 1920s cottages sit on quiet, tree lined streets that look like they were borrowed from the set of a laundry commercial.  Nestled behind these folksy facades are unassuming garages that have been the literal birthplaces of the world’s computer and internet industries.  Young entrepreneurs, like Jobs and Wozniak, Hewlett and Packard and Brin and Page all started here to create the worldwide empires of electronic machines that think and tie us together from Berkeley to Berlin to Beijing.

It was here in this birthplace of the personal computer, the i-phone and the internet that I knocked on the door of an interior designer in 1980, almost by accident.  Portfolio in hand, I was looking for work from a graphic designer who shared an office suite with this designer. The graphics designer cut my presentation short and sent me next door.  Unannounced, like a Fuller Brush salesperson, I marched in and introduced myself. The designer was Ruth Soforenko.  Most people would have shooed me away, but Ruth quietly listened to my presentation and then invited me to work with her and the A.S.I.D. to photograph an upcoming Decorator Showhouse.  This was the beginning of a business relationship that lasted for over thirty years.

Woodside, CA residence. RSA Design

Ruth was more architect than designer.  She thought about how her clients wanted to live and then created environments that fit their lifestyles. In an era of “more is more,” Ruth’s work was often spare with the exception of her use of vibrant color to liven a space.  It was both modern and traditional, always seeking a balance.  Ruth was fortunate to work in a place with many newly minted millionaires, but her work was never ostentatious.

Ruth was a kind and motherly soul.  Rarely would we have a conversation where she would not ask about my wife and kids. She was the Jewish mother I never had.  She took herself and her work seriously, but had a sense of humor and always cared about other people.

Three weeks ago I got an email from an editor friend who happily announced that they were finally going to run in their May issue the last house I had photographed for Ruth.  Little did we know that Ruth would be gone only a few days later.   She was one person who truly did work to make many lives better.

Stephen Kanner, F.A.I.A.  1955 – 2010

Last year I wrote and photographed a book on the rebirth of the Modern architectural movement in California.  It was a monumental undertaking and I was grateful for the assistance of many people.  I was very familiar with the architectural community in the Bay Area, but much less so in Los Angeles.   That was until I met Steve Kanner.  He embraced my project, introduced me to many of L.A.’s leading architects and was a constant spring board for ideas and advice.  That’s who he was.  He saw the big picture in a way few people do.  In addition to running his vigorous Santa Monica practice, he was actively involved in the L.A. design communities.  He started a museum of Architecture and Design in L.A.  He was president of the A.I.A.  He had a significant hand in reshaping Westwood Village.

Oakland Hills House, Kanner Architects

Stephen was a native son and lived most of his life in L.A. His father and grandfather were both architects and also active in the So. Cal. design communities.  He told me, as a kid, he remembered luminaries like Buckminster Fuller and Charles Eames stopping by for dinner.  Kanner was very much an L.A. person and his designs were the embodiment of So. Cal. Culture: bright, free-spirited and populist.  He was not afraid to work with popular culture icons and redefine them.  One of his most noteworthy projects was the In-N-Out Burger in Westwood.  Its intense red and orange forms shoot out almost in cartoon like fashion on Westwood Blvd.

Steve was one of those people who worked every day to make L.A. livable and fun.  His untimely death leaves a significant void in L.A.’s design world.

It was cold last night; cold enough for the frost to convince my Persimmon trees to shed most of their bright orange leaves for the winter.  I have two trees, a Hachiya and a Fuyu. The Fuyu is quite prolific producing baskets full of plump orange fruits that supply us and several of our Asian neighbors for weeks, but the Hachiya is another story.  Its football shaped fruit are spare and sometimes none at all. This year I could only count one or two fruit on the Hachiya tree peeking out from under its thick leafy canopy.  Then the leaves fell revealing two dozen or so hidden fruits.  What a happy surprise!

I have a fondness for Persimmons that dates back several decades to a time when I lived in Japan.  It was actually a poor country when I lived there, still rebounding from a disastrous war that left most of its cities in ashes.  Because of overly protectionist trade policies and limited domestic agriculture, the diet of the average Japanese was quite limited.  Any protein was expensive and fresh fruits and vegetables were rare.  A bowl of noodles with a slice of tofu and a sprinkling of green onions was dinner for most people.  Sushi was what businessmen snacked on with clients after work at ubiquitous Sushi bars.  It was an expensive treat limited to those on expense accounts.

Sometime, in the late fall, a miraculous bright orange fruit started appearing in the local markets. Apple like in shape and texture, it became a surprising local treat for an American used to the amazing cornucopia found at Safeway.   Its subtle sweetness and delicate taste filled a need I didn’t know I had until it was gone.  At the beginning of winter, this fresh fruit was a visual and gustatory treat from the surrounding grayness.

Every year around the Holidays, my Persimmon trees sit for several weeks in my front yard bare of leaves and resplendent in bright orange fruit, looking almost like Christmas ornaments.   For me, the Persimmon tree is symbolic of ourselves and I dare say, our economy.   Sometimes our strengths and assets are only revealed under the harshest of circumstances.

This recession is not over, but like the Persimmon tree, our strengths and assets have been revealed. The list of what needs to be done is long, but for the world’s greatest meritocracy the path to recovery is apparent.  2010 has been better than 2009 and 2011 will certainly be better.   Politicians may make bad decisions, but our society and our economy have strengths that continue to show themselves even in the harshest of times.

Sacramento is California’s state capital and houses most of its state offices.  The twin office towers on P street housed the  state’s social services department.  Designed and built in the late ’60′s, the buildings are a good example of mid-century modernism adapted to the intense climate of the Sacramento Valley. Although the shell buildings had weathered 50 years well, there were a number of conditions that needed immediate attention. The building interiors contained a large amount of asbestos and the steel frame needed seismic reinforcing.

California State Office Building 9, HGA Architects

HGA Architects and Engineers was selected to lead the retrofit design team.  A central, two story entry hall was designed to connect the two buildings at plaza level and provide security for both.  Along with the creation of a new shared lobby, a new childcare center now fills over half of one tower’s ground floor and a new cafeteria will serve both state employees and the general public.

Over 3000 tons of asbestos laden material was removed and major seismic x bracing added to the entire structure. All building systems were upgraded to current standards and numerous energy saving controls were installed. The new buildings have over 15,000 square yards of carpet made from recycled materials.

Building Lobby

The architects eschewed high end furniture and finishes and instead used lots of recycled materials and some surprisingly attractive furniture from California Prison Industries.  If you ever wondered what some of those unfortunate guys locked up in our prison system are doing, here is an example of their labors. This project wasn’t cheap, but it did end up saving the state a considerable amount of money.  The retrofit of these buildings has probably given them another 50 years of useful life.

Second floor conference room with furniture made by prisoners

Carmel Valley Villa, Duxbury Architects, Los Altos, CA

One of my first projects in architecture school was to design a house for the Mojave Desert using a variety of passive solar devices to control the extremes of heat gain and loss.  That was in the 1960s. Nowadays, I have to laugh a little when people get excited about “green design.”  I think the concept has been with us as long as people have been building.  Vitruvius, the Roman architect and chronicler, has a few chapters on it.  While the “nothing is new under the sun” concept is usually universally applicable, it is always interesting to see smart architects take old ideas and give them a new form in their work.

Recently we went to Carmel Valley to photograph a new house by architect Peter Duxbury that integrates old and new energy saving concepts in an artful way.  Set on a sun drenched hillside 2000 feet above sea level, the house is cut into the hill with the lower living areas and garage partially below grade. The roof on these portions is earthen, providing a natural layer of insulation.  A ground source heat pump re-circulates water from 400 feet below the house to provide energy efficient cooling.  Hidden rooftop photovoltaic arrays deliver a positive daytime output to the existing grid.  Deep eaves limit the heat gain from broad expanses of glass.  Rain water and gray water are captured and stored for landscape use.

Study At Night

Best of all, the house doesn’t look like a space ship or high school science project.  It hugs the hill with its roof lines gently angled to match the hill’s contours.  Stone exterior walls that provide a degree of heat absorption and insulation are intermixed with stucco and windows.  The interior spaces flow together easily with breathtaking views of Carmel Valley and the Pacific.  Being eco-friendly and living seemingly on top of the world may seem like an oxymoron, but at this Carmel Valley villa, they just might pull it off.