Gene Hoover House 1959
an alternative way of living

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This design for Gene Hoover, rendered in 1959, is my 16th work - out of over 200 - as of July 2009. It is an early work with a rich legacy reflective of its time and what was going on in architecture in the late 90s in California - and particularly in SoCal - where it was designed to be built.
 
This was one of my first designs for a client and not just an theoretical exercise or one where I was both designer and potential client. Even though the design never progressed beyond the schematic concept phase, I think the work met her requirements well. Had it been carried forward at the time, beyond the perspective sketch, many details would have emerged in the process to make the concept serve Gene’s idea of a living space. What these would have been, in detail, will never be known. The version of it represented here was created Design Development memory - the drawing being lost - and reflects that natural evolution of a project as it progresses from the Schematic to the Preliminary and into the Design Development level of expression. The result is faithful to the original intent and the ideas about the work that I had at the time. The primary difference is this: with this design I was seeking certain solutions and the work to make them practical would have been long and difficult. The work today, flowed easily from experience - I know how to build this work today. This is the difference of 50 years.
 
The idea of this work, in the specific, resulted from many conversation which Gene and I had about what was a useful and proper way-of-life and how an environment could both express and facilitate a philosophy of living. I had told her about my conversation, the year before, with Mrs. Pew when traveling between the two Taliesins [future link]. The design is also the result of its time and place. I had returned to California from my time with Mr. Wright, the post WWII building boom, with periodic up and down cycles, was still under way, Lloyd Wright, Eric Wright, John Lautner, Neutra and the Case Study architects were all practicing and Schindler was just recently gone as was, tragically, Gordon Drake. Eichler was at his peak mostly in Northern California. At the time, it seemed that the basic argument was won and that the future held great promise for eloquent, affordable, small homes which were intimate works of art. It was not to be although I had no idea of this at the time. It was an optimistic and naive time.
 
There were a number of architectural ideas on my mind which I was determined to get built: That spaces could be generous yet the overall house small if redundant, single purpose, boxes were eliminated. That an open and mostly glass house could be built on an average subdivision lot providing abundant privacy - refuge - and openness - prospect. Further, that the landscape of the house could be easy to maintain and productive in terms of edible food. That basic materials and simple building procedures could produce a luxurious result. That the structure could be built well of quality materials with a mixture of off-site and on-site prefabrication making this affordable. And, above all, a building could be designed and built based on a way-of-life which was different from the distracted consumer society which was then emerging.
 
These were ambitious goals and which determined my work selections for the next 12 years. They have remained a focus of my architectural efforts and with the postUSONIAN project we will realize them.
 
         
 
 

FEATURES OF THIS HOUSE:

 
 
 
         
 
 
HOUSE THIS HOUSE CAN BE CONSTRUCED TODAY:

 
   
 

Architecture is an art. As with any art, there is much in each work which both reflects the time and culture of its creation as well as the values and intentions of the artist be they known or unknown at the time.

I have always been self-aware of my creative process. In fact, I have made a deliberate process of becoming aware and employing this awareness to the act of making architecture. This is one aspect of my practice which I have come to learn is distinct about my approach. Even so, it is an enlightening experience to go back to a work now 50 years old and take it from the Schematic level held in memory - the original drawing, lost long ago, was a single perspective view - to a full Preliminary level rendered in a 3d Sketch Up model. Although I have tried to remain faithful to the original concept and to develop it here and now in a away consistent with how I would have proceeded at the time, there is no question a little bit of today will have found its way into this “old” idea. This is fine as one of my purposes for doing this reiteration - other than my ongoing project to document then entire body of my work - is to explore the utility of the Hoover House concept as it might apply to the postUsonian Project. These aspects I cover elsewhere in this writing. My focus here is on the experience of going “back” to the frame of mind when I was 21 and in my third year of professional work and remembering the time and place, the people I loved and the my expectations and desires most of which seemed for many years to be thwarted by a set of circumstances I did not understand.

As deliberately self-aware and intellectual my work process is - and considered extreme by many - there has always been another aspect which is intensely tactual and visceral. The dominate modality of my design process is emotional. An emotion so strong that most near me find it greatly disturbing. An emotion so strong that it has taken me decades to reduce the negative impact this can have on the social circumstances necessary to the execution of any project. In the case of the Hoover House, this was compounded by my feelings for both the client and her daughter and by this work being an early one at the moment when I was beginning to find my voice as an artist and mature my technique as a craftsman.

I started the SketchUp model a week ago from this posting. The completion of the model and this web piece will take another week or two given the load of comtemporary projects with which I am engaged. I was compelled to travel this path - certainly not a “practical” pursuit - by many factors a few which I understand. Some of these will no doubt be revealed in this document. I am reminded by my favorite quote from Atlas Shrugged, a book I read the year I designed the Hoover House: “to hold an unchanging youth is to reach, at the end, the vision with which one started.” To reach the vision with which on started...

Those who have read my web site will be familiar with the Solution Box [link: solution box] and 4 Step Recreation [link: 4 step process] Models. I have come to refer to this practice of architecture of which I am a part as tsmARCHITECTURE to stress the method not the design work of one person nor the dominance of a single personality as has been the practice model in architecture for too long. The key concept here is iteration. In this practice, each step in transforming an idea to a living reality has to be the recreation of the concept into a new form and expression appropriate for the intended use to which this unique expression of the idea is to be put. In the case of this rendering of the Hoover House design the intended purpose is composed of the following aspects:

To continue the process of documenting my entire body of work. I have come to understand that it is the body-of-work as a whole, even beyond the merit of individual works, which has significance to the practice of architecture. To focus on the seminal early works which have the seeds of what tsmARCHITECTURE is doing today.

To explore the Hoover House design for postUsonian Project applicability. The specific design may - or not - have contemporary application as an entire work. It may work for specific lifestyles and circumstances. It certainly has aspects which retain relevance to the emerging practice. As an owner-built home, on an infill lot, for an empty nester couple the Hoover House may be a good match.

To explore the prospect of taking SketchUp significantly beyond a design and presentation tool by developing its use in supporting all phases of the design/build/use process. This starts with returning the art of drawing to architecture and progresses to developing techniques for applying SketchUp as a seamless experience wherein all levels of design, engineering, contract documents and project documentation can be done in one media.

To remember. This is an ideal time to walk in the shoes of my 21 year old self. To breath the air of optimism of the post WWII dream of architecture for everyone. To reconnect to the intent of building affordable, sustainable, non-pretentious works of art. To discover the seeds that have blossomed into the work we are doing today. to remember two I loved and lost, one because I tried too hard, one because I did not. To recapture the SoCall energy which produced so many works I admired and stimulated several of my best efforts. To feel what I felt when I first drew this building. And, to learn why it was all lost.

Remembering is essential to dreaming. Both are necessary for the exercise of right-action in the immediate moment. 50 years ago, I never would have believed that the momentum of modern California architecture would stall as it did. 20 years ago I would not have believed that it would come back as it appears that it might. Yet, I never gave up the dream. It has, however, only been in the last few years that I have found a path to reinvigorate the practice.


Matt Taylor
Elsewhere
July 12, 2009
 
 
 

HOOVER HOUSE ANACEEDENTS:

 
When I designed this house, I had just returned from Taliesin and the whole experience of living there, traveling and seeing Wright houses and “watching” the man himself, was fresh on my mind. It was the Usonian Houses of the 30s and 40s which impressed me most particularly my visit with Mrs. Pew [link:]. One of my favorite occupations at Taliesin, besides the building activities which I preferred much more than than the drafting room, was sitting in the vault and going through the original drawings - nearly 70 years of work. To me, these drawings literally held and presented the essence of the designs and the passion which when into their creation. Yes, there was information necessary to build; more than this, there was a clear expression of why. One of the subjects of this web posting is the death of the art of drawing. Modern CAD “drawings” are diagrams full of what yet lacking nuance, context and flavor. They are a stripped down language, efficient and accurate and dead. The majority of renderings made for the purpose of promoting, selling and communicating architecture are slick, hyper-real and equally dead. Architecture as commodity is expressed in its representation as it is practiced in its real estate deals [link:].
 
In the late 1958 to early 1961 period of my SoCal experience, I became aware of and saw for the first time the work of the Art + Architecture Case Study Program, its architects, as well as the work of Schindler, Lloyd Wright, Greene and Green, and John Lautner. When traveling between the two Taliesins, I had met Bruce Goff and later spent a week of 16 hour days with him in 1960. This week of personal instruction I consider to be my formal education in architecture. Bruce introduced me to the work of Gaudi and, more than any I had met to this date, the synthesis of philosophy, art, music and architecture, a topic which had occupied my mine from my first stirrings of interest in the the late 40s [future link:]. Anyone who knew Goff will understand what a gift this was. At Bruce’s insistence, I studied - again by books - the Europeans although most of my understanding and appreciation of this body of work has come in my last two decades. In my prior San Francisco period, I visited the work of Maybeck, Wurster, Warren Callester, Jack Hillmer and, by books, Gordon Drake - a great talent who unfortunately died very young. I also studied, and had great respect for, the developments of Joe Eichler whom I knew personally.
 
I learned from all of these designers, builders and architects. I was influenced by all of their work and aspects of this rich legacy can be found in the Hoover House. Most of all I learned from myself as I continued the self-education process I started in 1948, continued through my pre-professional period, and carry on to this day. This self imposed curriculum has focused from the beginning on the following questions: How does architecture fit into the bigger picture of society, economics, ecology and Planet Earth? How is architecture made? What makes it work? How does architecture effect human thinking, feelings, health and ability to be productive? How can it be produced at scale with quality, affordably, without exploitation, as a work of practical art? How can design-thinking be applied to all aspects of the human enterprise? How can the integrity of individual works be kept intact? How can the entire process from design, manufacturing, building to using be an integrated practice? These actually were on my mind from the time I became aware of architecture and decided it would be my life’s work. Don’t ask me how but remember this is the boy who really did read the 1947 addition of the Encyclopedia Britannica - which remained with me until I went to Taliesin in 1958 - from cover to cover [link: 1947]. I do not claim the questions, just my ongoing effort to answer them.
 
During my time in Southern California - a place very different than the northern regions of the state - My focus was on three aspects of architecture and building. First, I worked - in 60 to 80 hour weeks - mostly for architects and developers doing large home subdivisions and apartment projects. I did the drawings, including the subdivision plot plans, for thousands of houses and hundreds of apartments. At the end of the period, I was chief draftsman with five assistants doing a $40,000,000 (in 1960 money) subdivision of apartment buildings at Universal Studios. I also spent a period of time working for a swimming pool company as forman of a gunite crew with occasional other duties tying steel and setting tile. My interest here was learning how gunite could be applied to the construction of serious architectural projects and I became recognized as somewhat of an expert in this area. The swimming pool company I worked for also became a client. My third area of focus was the design of six projects - #12 through #18) three of which were for clients. The three client projects were seminal works for me as it was with them I created the foundation of my design philosophy and matured my ability to get “on paper,” in a buildable form, exactly my architectural goals and ideas. Lloyd Conrigh [future link:] acted as my mentor and architect of record for these works.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

SoCal IN THE LATE 1950s :

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE tsmARCHITECTURE PRACTICE MODEL:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

NOTES ON SketchUp AS A TOOL:

 
 
 
 
 
 
Where Did It All Go?

The remains a question which haunts me to this day. Where did it all go? The body of work accomplished - what was then called arts and crafts, modern, organic and bay area style architecture - in the first half of the 20th century in California alone is staggering. Its value is just now being recognized with millions being spent to renovate long neglected buildings. At the time I was doing the Hoover House, the American Pool Building and the Cooper House, I had every expectation that these were first steps in a long career building on and extending this tradition. It took nearly 15 years of relentless designing and building before I was to give up this expectation. The assumptions I had about an architectural practice were built on shifting sand.

I did not give up the goal nor the ideal of it. The market went another way. I was not surpised to see this in other areas of the USA yet did not expect it in California. There were several factors driving this trend. Three, I think are the most imprtant. First, the consumer society - dispite the example of some notable large works - is not philosophically compatable with this tradition of architecture. Second, the practice models and building methods in place ultimately did not meet the economic and scale demands of the second half of the century. Third, the architects representng this school of architecture failed to collaborate, build the case and project a brand capable of speaking though the noize - they were overwhelmed trying to survive while competing with one another for the left over crumbs of a fading market.

There are two paradoxes here. First California, particularly the southern region, which was at the time the best host for this kind of architecture was also the birthplace of the culture which nearly obliterated it. Second, the issues which were most on my mind to “change” in terms of life style, size and practice models turned out to be the very characteristics of this tsunami of cultural change. I did not see this. No matter how well you fight the battles, if you are fighting the wrong war you will lose.

 
 
posted: July 12, 2009 • revised: July 21, 2009
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