InBerkeley

Berkeley stands as the nation’s bulwark of progressive thinking, encouraging the new and diverse. Right? There are many areas where there is some truth to Berkeley’s proud self-image, but one field where the opposite holds sway is architecture. Listen to tales of getting things built — or, more often than not, not built — and you’ll hear a constant litany of planning battles, design compromises, and knock down, drag out fights.

To make some sense of what’s going on, I went to talk to Kava Massih. Massih’s eponymous architectural firm has had a significant and, to my eye, positive impact on Berkeley’s built environment. Since its founding in 1996, Kava Massih Architects has completed works ranging from the Pyramid Brewery, to Epicurious Garden, to T-Rex BBQ, to a number of works on the UC Berkeley campus. But KMA is most visible now for the recently completed Berkeley Bowl West, which garnered an understandable rave review from the San Francisco Chronicle’s excellent architecture critic, John King.

I met Massih in his calm office just down the street from Berkeley Bowl West. We wandered over to the Bowl and chatted over sandwiches in the cafe. (Full disclosure: Massih and I are also regular tennis partners.)

IB: Why does it seem so difficult to get good modern buildings in Berkeley?

KM: One of the things I’ve always been surprised at is that progressives see architecture as the opposite. The more liberal you are, the less you see development as a good thing. Yet trying to hang on to the status quo is a conservative trait.

IB: Is the status quo such a problem?

KM: I’m not sure what great urbanity we’re protecting. There are no great parks, no great public spaces, no great boulevards…

IB: Tilden is a great park.

KM: But Tilden isn’t part of the urban fabric. The UC Berkeley campus master plan is by Olmsted [designer of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and New York's Central Park]. That’s great. We haven’t really had that kind of ambition since.

We do have some good houses, but they are scattered around. But you look at someone like Maybeck. In his day he was throwing all the rules out the window. Now he’s the god.

IB: How did you get something as bold and modern as Berkeley Bowl West completed?

KM: It took seven years. Right at the start, everyone said this is going to be great, and it still took seven years. It’s not easy to live through the process here were you’re constantly under attack.

Architecture takes so many resources to get something built and running. It’s so easy to screw it up because there are so many variables that can take it in the wrong direction. Someone says, “Why don’t you make the roof curved?” And you think, why not, just to get it through. It’s really hard to keep going with a design. There are so many pressures.

IB: Is this a particularly Berkeley problem?

KM: No, it’s not just Berkeley. We recently did the DA offices in Martinez. That was for the county of Contra Costa, so we didn’t even need approval by the city. But we presented it anyway. Someone stood up and said, “We only needed a house painter and the DA went off and hired Picasso.”

IB: What do you think about the Downtown Area Plan?

KM: Well, it was very watered down. The issue for me is that the less density we have in Berkeley, the more sprawl there will be elsewhere. You’ll continue to have people commuting from Tracy. But it’s impossible to tell someone we’re putting up a tall building next to your house. That new building may house 400 people, but no one thinks about the good environmental consequences of that.

If Berkeley can’t intensify its use with the environmental credos that are so powerful here, I don’t know where it can happen.

Architecture

Billie Jo Armstrong, lead vocalist for Green Day — the band that put in years of hard graft  playing Berkeley venues such as Gilman before hitting the big time — is putting his custom-designed home up for sale at the end of the month. The price? A cool $4.85 million.

The 5-bedroom, 7,000 sq ft home in upper Rockridge is a vision of good taste and restrained elegance (above) — although there are some tell-tale signs it was inhabited by a rock star with a sense of mischief.

Read my story, on SFGate, here.

[Photo: www.homesbyheidi.com]

Architecture, Celebrity Billie Jo Armstrong, Green Day

Photo from Rael Fratello Architects

Wow. UC Berkeley architecture professor Ronald Rael has some novel ideas for the reuse of the east span of the Bay Bridge. Looks great.

Architecture

The 636 solar panels atop the new Berkeley Bowl West building at 920 Heinz Street in Berkeley must be doing their job pretty well.  Tomorrow, the market’s owners are receiving a $167,029 solar energy rebate check from PG&E.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, representatives from PG&E and Sun Light & Power President Gary Gerber will be on hand, too, no doubt to promote solar energy, boast about what a great job they’re doing and to get their photos taken. In preparation for tomorrow’s event, southeastern Berkeley and parts of the downtown area were plunged into darkness early this morning to remind citizens of just how important electricity is to our daily lives. No word on whether Berkeley Bowl West was affected by the blackout or not.

The solar panels atop the acclaimed Berkeley Bowl West facility are expected to produce 149,633 kilowatts of electricity per year, and were installed by Berkeley-based by Sun Light & Power.

You, too, can attend the rebate-receiving ceremony. It will take place at noon on Friday at the Berkeley Bowl West.

Architecture, Business, Environment, Events, Government, Green, Politics, West Berkeley

One of my favorite spots in Berkeley is Greenwood Common, a grouping of perfectly preserved mid-century modern homes — one or two of which have killer Bay views — masterminded by architect William Wurster.

Waverly Lowell, curator of the Environmental Design Archives at UC Berkeley, has a newly published book about this idyllic place. It is Living Modern: A Biography of Greenwood Common.

Architecture, Books, UC Berkeley Architecture, North Berkeley, William Wurster

Photo by Kava Massih Architects

John King approves. Read why the Chronicle’s architecture critic likes how Kava Massih Architects approached the task of designing Berkeley Bowl West here.

Architecture, Retail, West Berkeley Berkelely Bowl West

Pure democracy and representative democracy continue to duke it out on the streets of Berkeley as the petition drive to bring the downtown Berkeley development plan to a vote of the people approaches today’s deadline to reach 5558 valid signatures. Opponents to the petition include many political and business leaders, who have been unusually vocal in their support of the current plan and have mounted a strong defensive campaign against against the petition drive. Proponents of the referendum are reported to be paying some signature gatherers $2 per signature while complaining about tactics being used to deter signers.

Opponents of a downtown Berkeley development plan were still on the streets Wednesday gathering the 5,558 signatures needed by Thursday to put the plan to a citywide vote.

City Councilman Jesse Arreguin, 25, who is behind the campaign to overturn the Downtown Area Plan, which allows for taller buildings, more housing density, more open space and which imposes green building requirements, said he is “cautiously optimistic” his group has enough signatures to go forward.

via Berkeley Voice/Inside Bay Area.

Architecture, Business, Downtown, Politics

Good to see that one of Berkeley’s frat houses is getting a makeover — at least on the exterior — given the state of many of the fraternity and sorority houses in Berkeley.

This one is on the corner of Piedmont Avenue (otherwise known as “Frat row“) and Channing Way.

Architecture, University

[Photos: Urban Bay Properties.]

Architecture, Property Architecture, Berkeley real estate, Property

Twitter founder Biz Stone loves his Berkeley cottage at 1409 Greenwood Terrace (or so he tells us, on Twitter of course), but he’s putting it on the market for $575,000.

Designed by noted California architect William Wurster as his own studio in 1960, the cottage has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and is located just above Cordonices Park.

See photos here.

Architecture, Property

A thought-provoking, and thoughtful, post this morning on Transbay Blog following Berkeley City Council’s decision to approve the Downtown Area Plan which allows for taller buildings in the heart of the city.

The presence of an anti-growth attitude in Berkeley has famously been vocal and insistent. And while this perspective may have once been deemed to be “progressive,” in a city that prides itself on setting the definition of that word, we now know better. What’s actually progressive is accepting growth that is dense and well-situated to avoid sprawl; reduce energy use and emissions; concentrate new development where it can utilize existing infrastructure; and encourage walking, bicycling, and transit use.

Read “Downtown Berkeley’s Growing Pains” in full here.

[Photo credit: Transbay Blog.]

Architecture, Downtown, Environment, Green living

The Berkeley Art Museum has posted a virtual tour of their planned new building by Japanese architect Toyo Ito. The proposed site is on Oxford Street, between Center and Addison. The current building on Bancroft Way does not meet seismic standards, and renovation costs would equal or exceed the cost of a new building.

The New York Times architecture critic, Nicolai Ourousoff, recently profiled Ito, writing:

His work can be maddeningly difficult to categorize. No two Ito buildings look exactly alike. There is no unifying aesthetic style, no manifesto to advance. You can never be sure what Mr. Ito will do next, which can be thrilling for architects but nerve-racking for clients (another reason, perhaps, that his work isn’t better known).

What his buildings do share is a distrust of simplistic formulas. His career can be read as a lifelong quest to find the precise balance between seemingly opposing values — individual and community, machine and nature, male and female, utopian fantasies and hard realities.

His ability to find such balances consistently has made him one of our great urban poets, someone who has been able to crystallize, through architecture, the tensions that lie buried in the heart of contemporary society. It makes his work especially resonant today, when much of the world is drawn to one form of extremism or another.

Architecture, University

A team of twelve teenagers was put in charge of designing a new $5.2m Berkeley-Albany YMCA teen center which will begin construction this fall on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Center Street in downtown Berkeley. 

YMCA CEO Fran Gallati admits the experience has not been pain free, but “it’s been a good experiential process for these kids and we’ve had a lot of good adults guiding them”. 

Read the full story in the Berkeley Voice.

Architecture, Downtown Architecture, Downtown

As reported in the Nichi Bei Times (left) via the Berkeley Daily Planet, the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission has voted to designate Japanese-American artist Chiura Obata’s former studio on Telegraph Avenue a landmark.

Though the Commission didn’t feel that the structure itself was worthy of notice, the building’s cultural significance rendered it worthy of landmark status.

Obata, who died in 1975,  had a successful career as a painter and was a faculty member in the Art Department at UC Berkeley from 1932 to 1953.

Read the full landmarking story here.

Architecture, Arts Architecture, Arts

Several Berkeley residents have demonstrated their commitment to architectural preservation again this year by putting enormous time, effort and money into restoring some of the city’s most interesting homes.

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) has just announced the winners of its annual Preservation Awards. Included in the prize list is Ballantine House (above) at 1512 La Loma Avenue.

This beautiful cottage was designed by John Ballantine in 1924 as his family’s home. Having lost a home in the Berkeley fire of 1923, Ballantine, who worked in the office of noted architect Henry Gutterson, made sure to choose fire-resistant materials — including a slate roof and concrete blocks that imitated stone — when building the house.

However, the home was not designed with earthquakes in mind, an issue that has now been thoughtfully addressed by its current owners who have overseen a skillful reconstruction of walls, beams and fireplace — even built-in cabinets — to ensure an invisible upgrade to 21st century standards.

For full details of all this year’s preservation winners, visit the BAHA website.

And for fans of Gutterson’s architecture, it’s worth knowing one of his Berkeley homes is currently for sale at 715 The Alameda — and its price is on the way down. It listed for $1,900,000 and is now at $1,675,000.

[Photos: Daniella Thompson, 2009, BAHA.]

Source: Home Girl.

Architecture, Property Architecture