Author Paul Adamson, AIA, is an architect and co-author of Eichler: Modernism Builds the American Dream. He is a founding member of the Northern California working party of DOCOMOMO (Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement) an intentional modernist preservation group devoted to education of the principles of the modern movement and preserving its built works. Mr. Adamson has written several articles on mid-century design, including an essay on postwar American planning for the book, The Modern City Revisited, published by SPON Press in 2000, and articles on the Eichler Homes for Echoes magazine and the London-based academic quarterly, Journal of Architecture. Since 1994 he has been a design architect with the San Francisco-based firm, Hornberger + Worstell, where he is a senior associate.
For the past ten years, I have been involved in a variety of educational and public advocacy efforts focused on the Bay Area’s recent architectural history, both collaborative work with local institutions and individual efforts, including lecturing and research.
I am a founding board member of the San Francisco-based northern California working party of DOCOMOMO (Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement). DOCOMOMO’s mission is to espouse the ideas and concepts of the modern movement and to help preserve its built work. Following the example of the European branches (the organization was founded in the Netherlands), the local group has, since 1995, been documenting significant examples of modern architecture in San Francisco, compiling a series of profiles, or “fiches,” intended for eventual hardcover quarto publication. Additionally, we host several public events each year, including tours, lectures, and film presentations, typically featuring the works of mid-century architects and designers.
Although the group is not as widely recognized as more established preservation organizations, advocacy efforts such as lobbying to save the Daphne Funeral Home in San Francisco, a classic 1953 piece of California Modernism by A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons, have helped raise our profile. Public recognition has given us some political leverage; architects and their clients, preparing for planning approval for proposed alterations to mid-century buildings in the city, look to us for advice and support. Additionally, civic institutions, including the San Francisco Planning Commission and the Landmarks Board, seek our council; I am one of two board members who sit on SHPO’s modern committee to assist their preservationists when evaluating resources of the recent past.
My initial interest in local modern architecture led me to study the Eichler Homes, first in graduate school in New York, then more in earnest after returning to San Francisco. As I gathered more information, I began writing articles for journals and magazines and co-curated a travelling exhibition of Eichler photographs, artifacts, and newly reconstructed details. Collaborating with the editor of the newsletter Eichler Network, I developed a series of articles that formed the basis for the book, Eichler: Modernism Rebuilds the American Dream, published by Gibbs-Smith in 2002.
My architectural taste has always leaned toward modernism, and I found intellectual encouragement in graduate school at Columbia University in the 1980s, where a staff of influential modernist historians emphasized the social potential of architecture. The most senior among them, Kenneth Frampton, preserved the orthodoxy. I remember him critiquing a student’s residential plan analysis that incorrectly lumped kitchens in with the social zones. Professor Frampton set the record straight, declaring emphatically, “the kitchen is a laboratory for the production of food!” Mary McLeod, a noted Corbusier scholar, argued strenuously that modern movement designers should benefit those who followed. After taking a group of students to visit Pierre Chareau’s jewel-like Maison de Verre, she questioned its place in the modernist canon, because it failed to provide a model for reproduction. Gwendolyn Wright, a leading historian of American residential architecture, pointed out the effects architecture and planning could have on the values and quality of everyday of life.
Here in the Bay Area, we are blessed with a benign climate and spectacular physical surroundings that have inspired a particularly sensual brand of modern architecture. In my experience, many local architects have only a tenuous relationship with this legacy (perhaps because so few of them are natives), but there is a wealth of exemplary design contemporary architects can tap into for innovative, often inexpensive ways of making good architecture that fits our regional needs.
By recording, celebrating, and lobbying for the protection of regional architecture such as this, my colleagues in DOCOMOMO and I aim to raise awareness of regional culture and, thereby, expectations for contemporary work. One motivation for writing the Eichler book was to demonstrate by example the potential for good design even (or perhaps especially) in the all-too-often mundane context of the suburban tract. Implicit in my appreciation of the Eichlers is encouragement for designers and builders to hone their craft against the lessons of earlier masters. Further, it’s a form of consumer advocacy; by defining our regional body of historic resources —a legacy by which contemporary and future work might be measured—the general public, city-dwellers, and suburban homeowners alike, as well as builders, might be encouraged to pursue alternatives and adaptations for our own time.
Originally published 2nd quarter 2005, in arcCA 05.2, “Other Business.”
