Stephanie Reich brings a dignity, balance of judgment, and intelligence to her role as urban designer for the City of Santa Monica that transcends any preconceptions one might have about an architect who is also a bureaucrat. Passionate about good architecture and about the truths of modernism, Reich is a born communicator and diplomat, who makes her arguments for improvements gently but firmly. A commanding presence, her long hair perfectly coiffed, always elegantly attired, Reich also is a living reprimand to any clichés about planning dowdiness.
She has a resume that would sink a battleship. She comes to the City of Santa Monica (a city of 100,000 with a daytime worker population of 300,000) with a thorough working knowledge of every aspect of the architect’s role, having worked in design and supervisory capacities in a series of distinguished design offices. Going backward from the present, Reich has worked for the City of West Hollywood as interim urban designer, had her own consulting firm from 2001-2003, and during that time worked with Siegel Diamond Architecture and AZ Architecture Studio. Prior to that, she worked with larger corporate office such as NBBJ, DMJM/Keating, and Zimmer Gunsul Frasca. She has also worked with smaller design offices, including Studio Daniel Libeskind, Morphosis, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Karahan Schwarting Architecture Company (New York), and David Beck Architects (Philadelphia). She has taught at Cornell and Woodbury University.
In her job as urban designer for the City of Santa Monica, she leads the staffing of teams for the Landmarks Commission and for the Architectural Review Board. She also provides project design review for individual development projects that go before the Planning Commission, and she provides the Planning Division urban design expertise on policy projects.
Reich arrived in Santa Monica in 2003, at an important watershed for the City. The architectural review process, involving the Planning Commission, the Landmarks Commission, and the Architectural Review Board, had become burdensome and complex. Because of her high level of professionalism, decisiveness, and apt judgment, Reich has been able to inspire a level of trust in all parties, which has made the review process easier for everyone. The Planning Commission, Landmarks Committee, and Architectural Review Board have full confidence in her stewardship, limiting the complications and uncertainties that inevitably result from design review by committee.
“The profession of architecture is broader than many architects realize,” says Reich. “I believe that most architects and the profession itself have unnecessarily narrowed what the profession of architecture can and does include. I couldn’t say that I’m practicing architecture in the conventional sense, although I believe I am helping shape the city, as I engage in a dialogue with architects about their projects. The breadth of my role here includes looking at the design of the city and each building within it in a holistic way. Understanding the practice of architecture as well as the making of architecture is vital. Being an architect is crucial for the part of the job in which I have a dialogue with architects about potential improvements to their proposals. Very often what I do is build alliances with architects to raise design standards.”
She continues, “Most architects, including myself before working in this job, find the idea of architectural review distasteful. Admittedly, the process in Santa Monica—before the implementation of the urban designer position—had an often unstructured approach and level of subjectivity, as is the case in many cities that have design review committees. The architect experiences these boards as an arbitrary process based on arbitrary grounds of judgment. What we found in Santa Monica was that the urban designer functions as an interface with the architect or other applicant, which often has the result of providing an improvement in the individual project. It provides an opportunity for the design to be valued in a way that the client may not have valued it themselves. I am an advocate for the architects to provide their best design, even when it may not be paramount to the client. This dialogue also helps address issues of scale and compatibility that are vital to the Architectural Review Board and to the community at large. Many architects, after engaging in this dialogue, find that it is helpful not only in moving them through the design review process; it also helps them improve the design in a way that appearing in front of seven individual members of a design committee, as part of a formal meeting, may not.”
And, she concludes, “My staffing of the landmarks and architectural review bodies, as well as teams of planners, empowers advocates for good design, sustainability, and preservation.”
The urban designer position as a role in government is a model that is beginning to catch on in California. Cities that are in the process of creating the position more recently include Glendale, Long Beach, and Santa Cruz. They will be lucky if they get urban designers with the clear vision, negotiation, and leadership skills that Reich has demonstrated in Santa Monica. The role of urban designer is a privileged role, in which the ability to affect projects transcends the normal scale of endeavor of the architect. It allows the urban designer to become a collaborator and an influence on the built environment in a much broader way than they can working on the design of one building, or even one urban design plan for a section of a city. This is a model that we hope will continue to spread and to attract architects of Stephanie Reich’s caliber.
Author John Leighton Chase, Assoc. AIA, is Urban Designer for the City of West Hollywood and a member of the arcCA Editorial Board.
Originally published 2nd quarter 2005, in arcCA 05.2, “Other Business.”
