What Kind of Building Would You Be?

“If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” 

Barbara Walters, TV interviewer of famous people, was good at getting celebrities to open up and share in ways no one else could.  Sometimes she would ask people what tree they would be.  (Katherine Hepburn said she would be a strong oak.) 

Her question reminds me of a common icebreaker, at least at church retreats; “If the church is a body, what body part are you – hands, heart, feet, voice, etc?”

And since I write about building, the obvious question is…..

If you were a building, what kind would you be?

I saw these unusual drawings of imaginary Beaux Arts style buildings last week at the new UC Berkeley Art Museum.   The artist is Achilles Rizzoli (1896-1981) who seems to have been another curious questioner.  But for him it wasn’t trees, or body parts, but buildings.

Rizzoli, eccentric son of Swiss immigrants to the San Francisco area, worked anonymously as a draftsman and artist and died in obscurity.  He lived with his mother his whole life; after she died he stayed in her unchanged house until his last day.  Few knew of his art, and he seems to have led a lonely life.

After he died, relatives found many of these drawings, tributes to family, friends and acquaintances, pictured as buildings, beautiful fantastic buildings.

Mother Symbolically Represented(The relatives almost threw the drawings out, but showed them to a Berkeley gallery director.  Now Rizzoli’s works are popular and lucrative in the “Outside Art” movement, untrained artists (although Rizzoli did study drafting) who are widely featured in exhibits and folk museums.)

He made more than one drawing of his mother as a “kathedral,” a large ornate church.  This one, he titled “Mother Symbolically Represented.”

The Mother Tower of Jewels, Mrs. George Powleson Symbolically PortrayedAnd this one is in honor of his neighbor, “The Mother Tower of Jewels, Mrs. George Powleson Symbolically Portrayed", in appreciation of her remark, ‘You are a jewel’ uttered March 8, 1935.”

It seems a casual comment, for his neighbor to call him a jewel, but it must have meant a lot to Achilles.  (He may also have been inspired by the Jewel Tower that had been the massive entrance to the San Francisco Pan Pacific Exposition a decade earlier.)  So Mrs. Powleson he imagined as a tower of jewels.

I showed the drawings to my husband (they are tucked away in a corridor at the museum – they deserve better display.)  I had read the label that talked about Rizzoli’s lonely and eccentric life, but Ron took one look at them and said, “He must have had a lot of fun drawing those.”

San Francisco Pan Pacific ExpositionLook up Rizzoli and the bios do emphasize his eccentricity and loneliness and mental instability.  But maybe he was just having fun.  And wanting to honor, in the case of these two, women who paid attention to him, cared for him.

We might be better off not to read a lot into why and how someone draws.  Or answers to question about trees or body parts.  Just let it be.

So I’ll answer the questions, and let it be.

I’d like to be a dogwood tree – strong but not towering and standing out, more low and full of surprises, especially in spring - beautiful colors, bringing pleasure to others.

The church retreat question?  For years I was the voice in the church body, but recently I’m more ears and hands.  Just as buildings and trees change, so do our bodies, over time.

As for buildings, I’d be a cozy welcoming little mountain hut, a little apart and with a long view, sturdy and strong through the long winters, but always with an unlocked door and a fire in the fireplace.

Thanks, Achilles, (and Barbara), for asking the question.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter

Fast or Fussy

There’s a group of guys in my canyon neighborhood who designed and built their own houses, and helped in the construction of each other’s houses.  I’ve heard many canyon building stories from before I first met these guys.  Since moving here I’ve watched them build, done a little construction with them myself, and spent many happy hours in their quirky hand built houses.  Here are some thoughts about different styles of building…..

The guys (it’s all guys) in our neighborhood who have built their own houses describe their building style in one of two ways: they are either fast or fussy.

Ric and Bob are fast.  They measure once, cut with a quick blast of the power saw, get the walls up in time for dinner. 

Ron and Owen are fussy.  They measure twice, cut with caution and sometimes with a hand saw so as not to bother the neighbors.  Some parts of their houses they have fussed about so much that they’ve never been finished.

All these guys love to get together and tell stories about working on each other’s houses.   “Remember when we all went over to Bob’s and helped him finish his deck?”  “One day they just showed up and before I knew it the new shower was in and working.”  The fast builders are usually the stars of these stories.

Fast seems to be preferable to fussy, because it’s, well, fast.  You get the roof up before it rains, the framing filled in before winter, the wiring done so you can set up the TV that night.

In our culture we want things to come fast, not slow.  Immediate gratification, same day delivery.   There’s a hugely popular series of movies called “Fast and Furious.”   We like most things, including movies heroes, to be fast and furious, not slow and gentle.

But it was not a putdown by the fast ones that some of the builders in our neighborhood are called “fussy.”  No, it was the fussy ones themselves who came up with this label.  Owen and Ron are sort of proud to be fussy.  To them it means they are deliberate, thoughtful, and yes, a little indecisive sometimes, but in a sympathetic way.  (Should the bookshelf go here, or there?  How about over there?)  They care a bit more about detail, and final appearance.

Owen is the only one of the group who actually made a living as a builder.  And since he was a self-described fussy builder, he charged by the job, not the hour;  “I’m too slow to charge for the time it takes me.”  But the final job was always very good.

Ric learned how to build fast as a young laborer rewarded for speed.  Later he became a songwriter and a poet and actually made a living as a traveling troubadour of sorts, in schools and churches and conferences.  On breaks from the road, he would build onto his house.  (These guys are always adding on, it’s never done.)  He did it fast because he had to get back on the road.

But he also built fast because he had learned building while putting on plays.  He would say, “I don’t really build for the ages, I build sets.”  Some of the walls in his house were a little thin and wobbly.  His son in law, who is a contractor, a real builder, says he would sneak over to Ric’s house when he was gone and rewire the plugs, to make sure they were safe, because they had been done so fast.

That’s a problem with fast. Is it safe?  Will it last?   I’m all for getting things done, but I prefer done well, especially if I’m living there.  There may need to be some fussing, fussing over some details, to make it last. 

I looked up fussy in the dictionary.  It’s usually a negative term.  Consider these definitions:

1. Easily upset; given to bouts of ill temper: a fussy baby.

2. Paying great or excessive attention to personal tastes and appearances; fastidious: He was always fussy about clothes. 

3. Calling for or requiring great attention to sometimes trivial details: a fussy actuarial problem. 

4. Full of superfluous details: "It can indeed be fussy, filling with ornament what should be empty space."

But I don’t see fussy as always negative.  I can be a little fussy about the “right” way to do things.  And I am married to one of our canyon’s fussy builders, so I have made my peace with attention to detail and the sometimes incomplete projects. 

And while Ron can be a fussy builder (in a very sympathetic and adorable way,) he is not, as in the definitions above, especially fastidious or easily upset.  And the house I live in is not fussy at all.  No superfluous details, or trivial features. 

Perhaps he and Owen should call themselves “careful,” “deliberate,” “builders for the ages.”  But they like the term fussy.  It’s sort of a loving way of not taking yourself too seriously.

In the same way Ric is sort of self-deprecating when he says he builds sets, not houses.  His really is a fine house.  He and his wife raised four kids there.  These guys are pretty humble, none of them brag much about their houses, how amazing it is that they actually designed and built their own houses.  There aren’t a lot of people who can do that. 

Some of these guys I have been writing about have died, but their very cool houses are still there, tributes to these builders who were as unique and quirky as the houses they built.  Whether fast or fussy, they’re still standing.

Copyright © 2106 Deborah Streeter

McMansions

Is there anyone who actually likes McMansions? 

Well, presumably the people who live in them, but they probably just call them “my house.” 

In common usage McMansion is a term of scorn.  It seems to be used to describe any giant house that one thinks is excessive, gaudy, or poorly built. 

I’m not sure it’s really an architectural criticism or just jealousy.  I don’t want to live in that kind of house, but then, I probably never will.

McMansion sometimes refers to those gaudy mass-produced really giant houses, often in a new subdivision at the edge of town, thrown up fast and a little shoddy.  They cover much of the lot, not much yard, crowded one right next to another. 

I see them as I drive around San Jose and in the East Bay, hundreds (thousands?) of them being built at the edges of communities, along the highway and climbing the hills, often on land that had been open space or farm land, but now is ugly giant house right next to ugly giant house.

To my eye they are pretentious and excessive  - who needs that many bedrooms and baths and garages?  And they have a reputation for being poorly and cheaply constructed and with no recognizable architecture style, or several conflicting ones.

Am I just being a snob? 

People also use “McMansion” for the big ugly new house that is built after a smaller “normal” house is torn down.  The new excessive house sticks out next to its older neighbors, and crowds them.  That happened in my old neighborhood in Redwood City.  A block of charming 1920’s California bungalows with little front and back yards is slowly being replaced by massive stucco pink chateaus with not a lawn in sight.

Who am I to judge? People need a place to live and they have the money.  Some of these houses in the McMansion subdivisions are actually cheaper than big houses in gated communities or old money neighborhoods, because land is cheaper outside of town, and the homes are mass produced, giving folks a chance to be first time home owners. 

Or do I sound like a mortgage hawker before 2008, come get your McMansion?

I wrote a couple weeks ago I wrote about how if my house burned down I would rebuild it smaller and more energy efficient.  IE, not a McMansion.  But I went on to report that most victims of the 1991 Oakland Fire built bigger homes after the blaze.  I had a small subtext of disapproval – what was wrong with the old design?  Well, it was cramped, I guess.  Why not add some room, have more bathrooms?   Must we all wait and share as our parents did, haven’t we improved some things?

OK, so I’m conflicted here.  I approve of individual choice and comfort and more people being homeowners.  Live and let live.  I don’t care to hear what people think of my house.  But I object to ugly excessive energy-wasting monstrosities and wish I didn’t have to see them.

Not unlike my feeling about McDonald’s, the fast food chain for which McMansions are named.  Cheap mass-produced food and identical franchises around the world.  I hardly ever go to a MacDonald’s.  But I am aware that they are an inexpensive choice for lots of folks, and I know they are trying to improve their brand (more salad, cage free chickens, etc.)

Wikipedia helped me understand the concept “mcwords” and my feelings about them.  We scorn things like “mcchurches” (megachurches) because, in the words of Wikipedia, they “evoke pejorative associations with the restaurant chain or fast food in general, often for qualities of cheapness, inauthenticity, or the rapidity and ease of manufacture, and for heavily commericialized or globalized things and concepts.” 

But as I sit here typing on my Mac, is it not also a commercialized and globalized product, not really cheap, but affordable, and no less a “mcword?”

No great resolution here.  I think I must just live with my snootiness and judgmentalism re how the other half live, and seek a wee bit more understanding and compassion.  And remember that the world is not perfect nor built to my design.  I could also try every once in a while to weigh in with my elected officials on the next vote to turn that local farm land into a subdivision. 

Progress, not perfection.  I can live with that.  In my house so far superior to that monstrosity down the road.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter

If Your House Burns Down

If you ponder construction, as I do in this column, sometimes you have to face the possibility of destruction, and think about rebuilding….

Photo: Brant Ward, The ChronicleA friend of mine was on vacation in Europe when he found out that his beloved big old family lakeside house in Oklahoma had burned down.  His grandparents had designed it and his father had built it in the 50’s, beside a lake, and generations of cousins had gathered there summers and holidays.  Struck by lightening in the middle of the night, it was gone in just a couple hours.  No one was home, or living there at the time.  A neighbor discovered it in the morning, a smoking shell.

From Switzerland, hiking around Mt. Blanc, he posted old photos of the house, and new ones his cousins had sent him of the fire’s aftermath, just the massive rockwork foundation and charred remains.  He wrote (grieving through Facebook) how hard it was to be so far away, while cousins and nieces and nephews streamed in from all over the country to mourn the loss, sift through the ashes, share old memories.

And to talk about how to rebuild the beloved home. The stone foundation was still intact and strong, and they even found the old plans.  A cousin was a contractor.  They had good insurance.  After many family meetings they agreed on a design.  Now he posts rebuilding pictures while he spends extended time there.

But they are not recreating an identical copy of the old house.  They’re adding more sleeping porches, making the family room bigger, improving the heat. They are keeping the signature rockwork foundation and the general line of the house, but expanding it for the needs of the family today. And putting on a roof of fire resistant shingles.

1991 Oakland Hills FireWhen our friend told us this story, it got my husband and me thinking about what we would do if our house burned down.  (We live in the woods, in a fire dangerous area - it’s probably more a case of when, not if it burns down.)  Would we rebuild?  And would we rebuild the same kind of house or a different one?  When Ron designed and built this house 45 years ago, he was a young bachelor and first time builder.  In 1969 there were no requirements for conserving energy (windows, insulation etc).  Some parts of the house don’t have the seal of approval from the county.  (We’ve added a room or two or three since the building inspector left – please don’t tell Monterey County.) 

So we are older and wiser, our needs are simpler, and there is room for improvement.  We imagine we would rebuild.  But not on the steep slope we are on now, rather on a lower more accessible spot on our property.  And that we build smaller and downsize a bit, for ease and energy efficiency.  We would lose some of the dramatic views, but it would be a more sensible house. 

At the same time we would probably keep some of the same features of the old house, as did my friend and his family: local materials, open beam ceilings, wood burning stove.  It would be a leaner version of our beloved old house.

Others I talked with about this possibility agreed - they would certainly rebuild, but smaller.  (I am aware this is a first world problem, that we own a house and have fire insurance.)  But we, and many friends, are of an age where downsizing and ease of living are appealing.  What about folks who are younger or live in the suburbs or cities, what would they do, or have they done, after devastating fires?

I looked up what happened after some big California fires in the past.  In 1991 the Oakland Hills Fire raged for three days in a compact residential hillside neighborhood and destroyed 3000 homes, 25 lives lost.  Follow up stories revealed some interesting trends:

-folks who had lost loved ones in the fire mostly did not want to return or rebuild – too painful and they moved away.

-but most did rebuild, saying it was part of the healing process, to prove they were not undone by the forces of chance or destruction and that they could chose the future, not stay stuck in the past.

-no one build the same house.

-and no one built smaller.

1991 Oakland Hills FireThe Oakland Hills neighborhood had been old, when houses were smaller and yards were larger.  Huge old trees and too much brush kept folks a little isolated, there was not a lot of neighborhood camaraderie.  But with it all gone, down to smoking foundations, and (unlike my friend’s house) with the stark memories of loss of life as well as home, they realized how very much had changed.  And how there was no going back. 

For some, no going back meant taking the insurance money and moving away, from sorrow or because they could get so much more away from the expensive Bay Area. 

For others, the rebuilding was part of the healing. They connected much more with neighbors than they had before, from shared sorrow and loss, and just from more open space.  They saw a neighbor rebuilding and they said, I could do that. They encouraged each other.  Their views of San Francisco and the Bay had been tremendous and valuable.  But with the old trees burned they could see more of that great view. They decided to build higher, and started to realize they could improve also, a bigger garage, more bedrooms.  The new houses have much more square footage, and are more modern.  And they are of very varied design, when before they were more similar.  They cover much more of the lot, less yard.  And speculators came in after the fire and built new homes on previous open lots, taking advantage of that value and view.

Such a different outcome from my imagined smaller house or my friend’s attempt to recreate the past with a few improvements.  But then my friend’s house, and ours, are the only houses in sight in a rural area, while Oakland was a dense neighborhood of upwardly mobile folks.  Our homes are as much about the past as the future.  The Oakland survivors do still have memorials and still tell the fire stories, but they are all about the future.

You look up “burned homes – rebuild?” and get links to stories about the Oakland Fire, the Santa Barbara Fire, the Lake County Fire, the Dome Fire, the San Diego Fires – it goes on and on.  It many cases the burned houses were on the edges of open space, even in Oakland and San Diego, on windy hillside roads with too much brush.  I remember thinking, well, if you are going to live in such a dangerous place….and then looking around at where I live, and rewriting that list of what to take in case we are forced to evacuate.

It’s good to plan and good to know it’s all temporary and good to know it’s just stuff, and that the most precious possession is life and family…..And good to hear stories of rebuilding, small or large, going forward.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter

Looking East

Asian Art Museum of San FranciscoI went to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco this week because I’m interested in the art and I love the building.  

To be honest, I find Asian art intriguing but a little exotic and hard to relate to.  Even living in very pan-Pacific California, I feel like I don’t really “get” so-called Asian culture. 

At least I now know to say “so-called Asian culture,” because I read this graphic when I first walked into the museum:

"Asia is a term invented by Greeks and Romans, and developed by Western geographers to indicate the land mass east of the Ural Mountains and Ural River, together with offshore islands such as Japan and Java. Culturally, no "Asia" exists, and the people who inhagit "Asia" often have little in commn with each other.

But the building!  It’s not a new building designed to look “Asian,” but an almost 100 year old Beaux Arts civic classic.  Built as the public library soon after the 1906 earthquake in the new Civic Center, the building was transformed in 2003 to house a huge art collection from 40 countries (18,000 objects, largest museum of Asian Art in the west.)  The architect, Gae Aulenti, also led the transformation of the Quai D’Orsay train station in Paris into an amazing art museum – she specializes in such repurposing of old buildings.

I wrote here last spring about another repurposed building, a California country club that became a research lab and then later a church. I wondered then, as I did this week at the museum, what remains of a building’s past when its purpose is changed?  In the reconstruction, what should be kept, as heritage or inherently essential, and what can or should be changed?  

When the museum building was a library it had some Art Deco murals that many people loved, but they were deemed incompatible with the building’s new purpose.  The plan was to destroy them, but at the last minute they were moved across town to the European art museum.

I wonder, do buildings have souls, and do they remember their past?  Does the library building next door look across Hyde St. to its modern successor building in confusion or affection?  Does the grand staircase, with all the inspiring quotes above it, about how reading ennobles the soul, think – Where did all the books go?

Hirochige’s Kyobashi BridgeI made the trip to the city because I wanted to see an exhibit called “Looking East: How Japan Inspired Monet, Van Gogh and Other Western Artists.”   Created by Boston’s Fine Arts Museum, this lush collection of paintings by Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, Pissarro, Munch, Gauguin and many more, Frank Lloyd Wright chairs and Tiffany desk sets and kimonos and turn of the century magazine layouts argues for the deep influence of Japanese prints and style and culture on Western art from 1860-1910. Works from different continents are hung side by side to show the influence of east on west. 

MonetIt was good to be reminded how these western artists of a century ago whom we have enshrined were very open to new perspectives and subject matter and technique.  Indeed they were hungry for it, stifled by convention and the academy’s traditional requirements.  The diplomatic opening of Japan to the west opened up creative spirits as well, of artists across Europe and American.

In the same way that my spirits were opened up last week.  After seeing, for one example, how Utagama Hirochige’s Kyobashi Bridge influenced Monet’s painting of a bridge at Giverny, (where he had his own collection of 200 Japanese prints) I went upstairs to see the permanent collection.  I immediately felt a connection and artistic appreciation of Asian images that I had not had before. 

I had acquired, thanks to the special exhibit, a set of “museum eyes,” my phrase for the new way of seeing that comes after intense time with art.  For an hour or so after you leave the building, everything looks like art.  For me, after looking at western art that I was somewhat familiar with, through the lens of Japanese art, the permanent collection’s prints and screens and swords and ceramics came alive as art, not interesting historical or anthropological artifacts, as I had sometimes limited them before.

Museums give you that little sticky tag to wear to prove you’ve paid, and at the Asian, it has an upside down A on it.  All the employees have shirts with the same skewed letter.  The website says they chose this as their logo and symbol to make the point that this is a new way of looking at Asian art, a new perspective.

Indeed, housing this collection from another continent in a classic western building forces this new perspective, turns the A upside down.  Both the art from a thousand years before the building, and the contemporary avant garde works all ultimately overshadow the building, which too is forced to look east.

I saw the A in a new way also, with my own (museum) eyes and my own heart.  The artwork said to me: Open up, turn up side down.  By looking east.  Or in my case, west (as the building also faces) across the Pacific, to those 40 countries we call Asia.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter