Architectural Projects Part 1 of 2
1952 - 1979 PROJECTS 1 through 63
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Part One lists 63 projects designed over a 26 year period.
This covers my first serious design work including my first
built project (#2 built without detailed drawings or
supervision) in 1958. The period ends in 1979 when Gail and
I left Kansas City (where she was born and we met) and moved
to Boulder, Colorado (via a summer in Washington DC with Barbara
Hubbard) and started the enterprise that is now MG Taylor Corporation,
AI and knOwhere.
Using
the SCAN FOCUS ACT Model, this first period - roughly
- is the SCAN period of my architectural work. During
this time, I worked extensively for other firms as a designer,
chief draftsman, field engineer and construction superintendent.
I also did a great deal of subcontracting, landscape design,
product and equipment design. These projects are not noted here
except for two pool and landscape works (#29 & #30)
which are seminal in their architectural implications.
The
Narrative
provides a synthesis of how these various works evolved and
fit together.
Part
One is divided into sections A and B. Section
A covers work designed in California, at Taliesin and in
New York (1952-1963). Section
B covers work designed in Phoenix and Kansas City (1964-1979).
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Work 1
1952
- Architects Office
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Project
Deign
Matt Taylor
Palo Alto, California
Study
There was an architect in Palo Alto whose work
I greatly admired. His name was Nickels. I asked him for
a job in 1952. He didnt give me one but, in retrospect,
I have to admire the way that he conducted the interview
apparently taking seriously a 13 year old boy dead set
on getting into architecture. I liked his office so I
took on the task of copying it with a few modifications
of my own. Having seen the finished work and then having
to work my way through recreating it, was, of course,
very instructive. His old office still stands in Palo
Alto and was recently remodeled with some loss and some
improvements. At any rate, this project was the first
that I had to think through the implications of
a floor plan and justify WHY everything was the way it
was.
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Work 2
1953
- Nichols Residence
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Major
Donald Nichols
Design
Matt
Taylor
Palo Alto, California
Built without my drawings or supervision 1959.
I attended the Palo Alto Military School (for the
8th and 9th grades) which was owned and run by Major Nichols
The major had property across the street one lot of which
was considered un-buildable. It was too narrow to get
a two bedroom, two bath house of conventional design on
it. I solved the problem in one weekend which involved
a layout trick or two which I was truly proud. The floor
plan was followed carefully, unfortunately, the elevations
and sections were not. Overall, however, the house was
successful and is considered very comfortable to this
day. It has been remodeled at least once. The Living Room
remains the best feature of this house. It is a 20 foot
by 20 foot open beamed space finished in natural wood
with a large brick fireplace. It is simple, lodge-like
and conducive to a number of furniture arrangements. I
understand the house was on the annual house tour in the
early 1960s. The last time I stayed in it was was 1964.
The picture was taken in 2000.
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Charles
McGregor
Design
Matt
Taylor
San Francisco, California - Marin County
Unknown
This is one of the drawings I showed Frank Lloyd
Wright when I interviewed with him to join the Taliesin
Fellowship. He said that it looked like some of the tents
at Taliesin. This was one of my first explorations with
structure as the major expression of a building. I designed
it and turned it over to the architect of the whole project
and never found out what happened. Maybe somewhere in
Marin County there are a bunch of carports that I designed.
Actually, a project like this is interesting and challenging.
The structure has a simple function and wants to be minimalist
and clean. At the same time, there must be enough mass
and presence so that it is not an ugly blight stuck on
the landscape. The scale is inherently strange because
you have a low building that can go on, horizontally,
way beyond the dictates of good proportion. I solved this
by creating a very simple treelike structure
with the parts cars featured as the subject
of the work. Well placed landscape was specified to bring
the structure down to earth.
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Project
Design & Present/Display
Matt
Taylor
San Francisco
Study
This Project was featured on TV and displayed at
the first multiple listing real estate office in San Francisco.
It lead to a series of events that convinced me not to
go to architectural school. It might have influenced Joe
Eichler to get into the apartment building business -
I hope not. The idea was to build one house
per floor in a 26 story building to sit on three acres
of land - the same density as a typical subdivision of
the time. A landscape of these would be to create a city
within a park rather than a park within a city.
This idea came to me one day walking in Golden Gate Park
when I was supposed to be in church. I wondered what it
would be like if the PARK was the basic urban/suburban
setting and the buildings sprang up out of it.
Really not that hard to do but it would require a different
approach to infrastructure and transportation (see Work
#5). This work introduced me to certain problems
associated with building circular buildings and I worked
on the floor
plan - on and off - for several years tying to resolve
them. The main idea of the building has held up very well
and has been partially done (one apartment per floor condos)
several times in subsequent years - the landscape aspect
has not yet been implemented at any scale. My idea was
a landscape the scale of San Francisco Park with many
structures within it but not dominating the experience.
A good use of tall buildings. I still do not believe that
dense urban communities have to lack a park-like setting.
This project demonstrated this idea over 45 years ago.
Not only can affordable land-use economics be achieved,
the open area allows mixed use of the landscape - something
impossible with the typical subdivision layout. Now, (2001),
houses are being built lot line to lot line and there
is not even the old amenity of traditional setbacks and
yard. Windows look out at the walls of the house next
door - and down into their back yards. No midnight skinny
dipping here. Why not stack 20 or 30 of these on top of
one another and open up the land? the basic trick
of this version of the plan was that each floor foot print
was zoned so that only three-quarters of the
full circle could be built upon. On each floor, the foot
prints non_buildable quadrant flipped creating a
two story vertical open space. This way, each house
had 20 foot high outdoor balconies that was 25% of the
entire environment. How much they used the rest of their
slab was an individual choice. All this, of course, adds
up to a varied, interesting and changing elevation - another
improvement of the monolithic, fixed face of high-rise
concrete prisons. The idea was to impose certain restrictions,
provide the exterior skin (movable) system and leave the
rest to each individual owner. Larger dwellings could
be had by the owner purchasing two levels. The basic idea
is to make the structure of the building the equivalent
of land. All elevators, stairways and utilities came
down the center fireproof core of the building. Because
the structure of the building is simple, it is possible
to prefabricate the majority of the pieces and erect the
entire structure in a short period of time using the core
itself as a crane. This technique has been done with notable
success in recent projects (mostly outside the United
States). This project is one reason why I moved to New
York City in the early 1960s and worked
in construction. I grew weary of people telling me
that buildings like this could not be done. There, in
1962-1963, I built a project that was the equivalent of
40 of these towers in 14 months.
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Work 5
1957
- Transportation System
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Project
Design
Matt
Taylor
San Francisco
Study
An original piece of work that is relevant to this
day. A solution to mass transit that can grow organically
and utilize cars that can work on and off the system.
This would be a perfect way to introduce the Hypercar
today. The essence of the design was to employ existing
systems to make an integrated transportation system that
did not require great time and capital investment prior
to use. This problem is still not figured out. This design
fractured a great number of either/or dichotomies
and that is what will have to happen before we will ever
get mass transit that will work in the US.
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Work 6
1957
- House for Eichler Homes
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Eichler
Homes
Design
Matt Taylor
San Francisco Bay Area.
Not built
A disappointment. Joe Eichler and I actually had
quite a disagreement about this design with him contending
that people did not want to live in a triangular
house and me pushing for an even more compact affordable
design then the work he was then building. The Eichler
homes were becoming larger and more upscale - and while
this was fine - I wanted him to keep working on the basic
home. Unfortunately, we parted on angry terms and I never
saw him again. I often wonder what might had been if we
had been able to work together. Not being more patent
with this relationship was probably a big mistake on my
part. But these are things you dont know when you
are young and hungry to change everything.
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Work 7
1957
- Artists Studio
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Betty
Blankinship
Design
Matt Taylor
Palo Alto, California
Unknown
A fun design, simple and small. I designed it just
before leaving for Taliesin and lost contact with the
owner. I do not know if it was ever built - I keep looking
for it. There is something about this design I have always
cherished. It is perhaps one of the cleanest and simple
projects I have ever done. The budget was minimal and
the requirements few. A place to paint, display work and
have an occasional party. It was to be built in a back
yard of a traditional Bay Area Shingle-Style home in Pal
Alto. The bay area shingle style houses always inspired
me and this work was to be horizontal wood board and batten
in side and out. Colored concrete flooring, skylights,
a brick and tile fireplace and a carpeted sitting pit
completed the arrangements. A quite setting, an embracing
shape, simple, warm materials.
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Work 8
1957
- Public Swimming Pool Facility
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City
of Redding, California
Design Development
Xxxx and
Matt Taylor
Redding, California
Built
One of two works on this list done while in the
employment of an architect. These public swimming pool
facilities were built for the City of Red Bluff while
I was at Taliesin. After returning and working again for
the architect, I got to enjoy using them.
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Work 9
1957
- Circular Hillside House
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Design
Matt Taylor
San Francisco Bay Area
Study
My second attempt at the circular idiom and a precursor
to the Copper House (#17) although it was not designed
with gunite in mind. It was this work and #13 that
stimulated my search for an inexpensive and exact way
to execute circular forms. This design is notable for
its simplicity of lifestyle. In this regard, it
was in the mainstream of the Arts and Architecture (magazine)
post WWII movement. In form and idiom, of course, it was
not. I worked on this floor plan - on and off - for about
three years. The paper was nearly worn out when I exhausted
what it could teach me. By the time I was done,
I had a good grasp of how to work the layout and aesthetic
issues associated with the circular form.
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Work 10
1958
- Taliesin Studio
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Matt
Taylor
Design-Build-Use
Matt
Taylor
Taliesin West - Taliesin, Wisconsin
Not Built
If I had stayed at Taliesin this is what I would
have built. It was designed for Wisconsin and, while cantilevered
off of a hillside, has almost exactly the same floor plan
as the Hoover Residence (#16) which was designed
for a typical suburban lot a year later.
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Work 11
1958
- Cabin for Coffee Creek Ranch
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Coffee
Creek Ranch
Design - Build
Matt
Taylor and Jack Rapp
Trinity Center, California
Not Built
A project lost to youthful stupidity. Jack Rapp
and I designed this work together. We were supposed to
build it but then confusion set in.
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Work 12
1958
- Home and Studio for Matt Taylor
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Project
Design
Matt Taylor
Newport Beach, California
Study
My first employment of FLlws concrete block
system. This work was strongly influenced by Lloyd Wrights
home and studio in Hollywood, California. I still have
a great fondness for the textile block
system that Wright and his son Lloyd developed.
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Work 13
1958
- Gunite
House
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Project
Design Study
Matt Taylor
Southern California
Precursor to Cooper House (Work #17). The technique
of employing precast concrete elements for structural
members and edges and tying it all together
into a monolithic structure with gunite was developed
with this project exercise. The texture and color of the
finish was to match the sand and rock of the landscape.
This building was conceived to be on a California bluff
facing the ocean. Today, it would be called an earth-sheltered
house as all of the roofs were designed to be planted
and to act as outdoor living areas. The North and east
sides of the house were recessed in to the landscape.
The South and West exposures opened to the sea. The idea
was to disturb that natural landscape as little as possible.
The site in mind was the bluffs found below Newport Beach.
I wanted the texture and the color of the building to
match them exactly.
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Work 14
1959
- Ocean Mega City
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Design
Matt
Taylor
Southern California
Study
My first thoughts on a dense, mixed use
city scale building. This idea came right out of the blue.
There was no influence or preparation for it. I was driving
down the coast highway and thinking about urban sprawl
and suddenly the idea hit me: why not super dense
structures with lots of space around them. In a
way this follows from the Apartment Project (#4) but employs
a much great density and use of volume. The Apartment
Project was still composed of one-story buildings stacked
21 time high. This Mega City concept started to look into
the concept of the real use of three dimensional space
as it related to the human interactions intrinsic to an
urban environment. WHY do people like cities and
how can we have the life and density without the negative
consequences?
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Work 15
1959
- Health Facility
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Deign
Matt Taylor
Newport Beach, California
Study
This is the first time and, so far, the last time
I turned my attention to the hospital as an
environment. Hospitals I avoid. There are a lot of sick
people there and not just the patients. These are SYSTEMS
focussed on disease. Typically, the patent is placed in
a non-active, socially isolated environment where they
are helpless and passive. What I designed was an environment
that facilitates HEALTH. If you approach the design
from this perspective you discover that the traditional
hospital design it almost totally 180 degrees wrong. Every
message to the ALL the users of these traditional
environments are wrong. This layout places the patient
in a garden and still deals the the many logistical issues
associated with trauma, disease and healing. Now 40 plus
years later, modern practices are moving in this direction
but the architecture still lags behind. This is the last
place you want an INSTITUTIONAL environment.
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Work 16
1959
- Residence for Gene Hoover
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Gene
and Herb Hoover
Design
Matt Taylor
Costa Mesa, California
Not Built
A work of love on two levels. Gene was a wonderful
person and one of the first - and few to this day - who
understood what I wanted to do with a house. The design itself had a great deal of Usonian House and Schindler sensibility in it as well as influence from the Art + Architecture Case Study House Program. The ghost of Gordon Drake is also present.
The Hoover House was direct and simple in its module, form and use of materials yet offered a great variety of daily living experiences within the limited landscape of the typical subdivision lot.
The lifestyle it promoted was simple and contemplative.
Not the way most people live today. The 1950s building
boom was well under way and I was working for a large
developer in Southern California producing one house plan a week for a subdivision of $40,000 dollar homes (a substantial cost for its time). The consumerism and distracted life-style patterns
that have now blossomed into full bloom were already
evident. This work was my counter-statement. 50 years later (as of this entry July 2009) it may be that this approach will again find a market. There is much here to inform the postUsonian Project [future link]. The renewed interest in the small post WWII modern houses [future link] and the “not so big house” movement [future link] and the renewed interest in Eichler’s work are encouraging signs.
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Cooper
Family
Design-Build
Matt Taylor
Southern California
Not Built
Revised in 1999 for Northern California. I consider
this to be my first mature work. I had been building up
to this design for several years and executed it with
ease and confidence. I had intimate experience with the
building method I was to use. The clients were in tune
with the work and it fit their desired lifestyle perfectly.
They were one of the first - and last - clients that saw
the process of living the way that I did - and still do.
They wanted to see the building method demonstrated and
that was to be done with the American Pool Building (Work
#18) which failed to get financing. I moved to
New York shortly thereafter and lost contact with the
client.
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Work 18
1960
- American Pool Building
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American
Pool Company
Design-Build
Matt
Taylor
Southern California
Not Built
One of the big disappointments. I poured more into
this project than any work to date. It was a crushing
blow when the bank turned down the financing. It took
me six months to develop the design. The property was
challenging but the result would have been spectacular
This was my first commercial building and it started my
detailed thinking of how the environment can augment business
processes. The VC
Morris Shop informed this design a great deal although
the final result was turned inside out from that example.
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Work 19
1961
- Enright House
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Design
Matt
Taylor
New York City
Project
A project out of the Fountainhead.
I have been working this project in my mind for 40 years.
Elements of it can be found in the tri-module house (#20),
the Bay Area Studio (#96) and the Xanadu (#97)
projects. Rand provided an extremely provocative and demanding
architectural theme. One well worth designing and building.
With the rise of the new boutique hotels in cities like
New York, the Enright House theme may find itself a home.
In a world of thematic architecture like is
seen in Las Vegas, I do not understand why there is not
some works of authentic themes - works that
promote a unique experience of reality without drawing
from some overt historic reference.
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Design
Matt Taylor
New York City - New York countryside
Project - Basis of Bay Area Studio (#96)
Does a system building have to be dull? Why are
buildings flat? Why do the sprawl all over a lot? How
can modern materials and means create an organic
result? How can strength be built-in the structure
- intrinsically? This concept lead directly to the Prefabricated
Bridge idea (#21) which questions the entire design
and deployment method of small and medium scale bridge
building. It also led directly to the later concept of
the Sears House (#49). Of all my work, this was
the deepest dive into modern materials. This
was to be an almost totally metal building. Bucky explored
this arena with the Dymaxion
House. There have been many attempts to build conventional
hoses out of steel and aluminum. I wanted to exploit the
medium in an entirely new way.
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Work 21
1962
- Prefabracated Bridge
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Design
Matt
Taylor
New York City
Study
This was my first concept of integrating computer
modeling and architectural design - a technique developed
further with the Sears House concept (#49). The
concept is that highway overpasses should be able to be
erected in a matter of days not weeks and months. A system
of of prefabricated components, a design strategic intrinsically
more integrated to to the real stress diagram of the loads
involved, and a computer program that could be site administered
would allow the scenario of a completely deployed, site
specific, system of construction.
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Work 22
1962
- Garden Restaurant
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Deign
Matt Taylor
New York, New york
Study
Many restaurant designs follow a theme. This always
bothered me because it is rarely done in an authentic
way. Besides that, most are historical in their approach
echoing some pale version of a time and place that either
no longer exists or cannot be replicated. In addition,
the logistical design of restaurants could not be worse
if that was the design intent. There is little privacy
between tables and the miles of walking required by the
server adversely effect the intrinsic economics of the
system. This design, get at all there of this design challenges.
It is based on a theme that derives from its own
nature not some prior manifestation. It uses three dimensional
space and zoned planning to create privacy AND density.
It is organized, from the onset, around the logistics
of serving food. It turns the server into a proprietor
of a station and the facilitator of an experience.
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Work 23
1962
- Resort Facility
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New
York Development Partnership
Design-Build
Matt
Taylor
New York City - Upstate New York
Not Built
Another Rand inspired project based on the resort
described in the Fountainhead. A group of developers became
intrigued with the idea and approached me to design it.
Nothing came of the project, however. The grammar of this
project is closely related to the modular system of of
Renascense III (#90).
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Work 24
1963
- Floating Home for Max Stormes
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Max
Stormes
Design-Manufacture
Matt
Taylor
New York City
Not Built
My first nautical attempt and a radical departure
from the typical house boat configuration. The goal was
to create space with architectural quality in a small
mobile floating environment.
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Work 25
1963
- Multimedia Theater
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Design
Matt
Taylor
New York
Study
This design was for a multimedia theater environment
. the idea was that a far greater mix of live and media
materials was possible than was the norm in the 1960s.
The house was designed to create a significantly greater
sense of audience involvement than was typical then. The
concept also deliberately facilitated a transition form
the energy of the street to one appropriate for the abstraction
of art. participants walked through a series of environments
designed to act like a physical overture.
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The work designed in California, at Taliesin and in New York
(1952-1963) constituted 25 projects over eleven years. Most
of these were studies. Of the 10 commissioned works, 2 were
built - both without my involvement. I spent most of my time
during these years working for architects and builders learning
the crafts of architecture and construction - about 10 percent
of my time was working directly in various construction trades.
You might consider this period my basic education. As
designer and chief draftsman, I executed hundreds of track houses,
several dozen semi-custom homes and apartment buildings and,
as field engineer and construction superintendent, over 20 million
dollars worth of construction.
In
my mind, there was always an intimate relationship between
the design work and the professionally executed work that made
up my employment. Each informed the other. The design work told
me what I needed to learn and the executed work told me what
I was able to build - thus design. This period was my basic
education.
SECTION
B of Part One covers work designed in Phoenix and Kansas
City (1964-1979) where a greater percentage of work was built.
Theoretical and exploratory projects, however, still dominated
my attention. The subtle, underlying development was a growing
awareness to the need to build based on a new paradigm of use.
Part
1a Part
2 of 3
Part
3 of 3
Narrative
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posted
March 24, 2001
revised
June 24, 2001
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(note:
this document is about 50% finished)
Matt
Taylor 650 814 1192
me@matttaylor.com
Copyright©
Matt Taylor 1958, 1960, 1962, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978,
1979, 2001
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