Design for Disparity: Working in Future, Going Home to Past
Norman Emerson, a public policy consultant who lives in a traditional California stucco bungalow in Porter Ranch, works in a glittering, modernist high-rise in Warner Center Plaza.
“Home is a refuge from the modern world, which tends to be visually and emotionally sterile,” Emerson said. “When people can make a choice about the kind of architecture they prefer to spend time in, they seldom choose the modern style.”
Tamara Stein, a lawyer who has an office on the 29th floor of a modern Century City commercial tower, lives in a clapboard house in Encino.
“Working in a modern building makes me feel thoroughly professional and efficient,” Stein said. “But I wouldn’t like to live in a house in the same cold style. I want my home to be warmer.”
Office buildings, stores and banks in major commercial cores such as Warner Center, Universal City or Sherman Oaks are usually modern in design, clothed in sleek, glass skins that sparkle in the sun and dazzle the eyes. Their interiors are cool, airy and decidedly untraditional.
The houses that surround these modernistic structures are built in a manner that is anything but modern. Their design may be traditional Mediterranean or Tudor, Craftsman, California bungalow, New England cottage or Western ranch house. Although these residences may have been built at the same time as their commercial neighbors, they seem to be worlds apart in character and taste.
This conflict of styles, particularly visible in the buildings seen all over the San Fernando Valley, poses the question: Why do people who work in modern buildings prefer to live in structures reminiscent of the past? Is there a kind of deep-seated cultural schizophrenia at work here, a love-hate relationship with the modern world that splits our spirits in two?
UCLA Professor George Rand, an architectural sociologist, says: “Many people are disturbed by the rapid contemporary social and economic changes that never seem to let up. They can’t control what’s happening out there in the public working environment, so they retreat from it to a space that has some link to a calmer past.
“In a sense, we are all stretched between the all-too-stressful future and the seemingly stable past. Our architecture reflects this almost unbearable tension.”
Projects honored by the house-building industry, those that greatly influence the architecture of many successful subdivisions, reinforce an impression of the overwhelming traditionalism of the home market.
The Gold Nugget Best in the West awards, for example, which are handed out by the Pacific Coast Builders Conference and Sun/Coast Builder Magazine, “annually salute the outstanding achievements in architectural design and land-use planning for residential projects in the 14 Western states.” Last year, the award went to the “Beverly Hills Spanish” style Westridge tract development in Calabasas Park.
Westridge models, with titles such as Montecito, San Marino, Santa Barbara and Carmel, offer mini-estates with white stucco walls, red-tiled roofs, classical Italianate windows, arched entries and gated courtyards crowned by Washingtonia palms. Prices range from $500,000 to $700,000.
When he rolls through the remote-controlled gate, the master of the Montecito leaves the modern world behind--apart, that is, from an array of technical appliances, including microwave ovens, Jacuzzis, electric trash compactors and electronic security systems.
Michael Rabin, senior vice president of the Van Nuys-based Anden Group, which developed the project with Harlan Lee & Associates, said he “followed his gut instinct” in deciding on the design for Westridge.
“People like classic homes,” he said. “They all want something their parents had, some sense of continuity in a changing world.”
Westridge architect Bill Pauli said the design was based on the feeling that “the Mediterranean style says Southern California to most people.”
“Buyers just don’t like modern designs for their homes,” he said. “The very few that do have to consider a modern property’s poor resale value out there in the market.”
A glance at The Times’ weekend Real Estate section confirms the preference for the traditional in subdivision house designs in all price ranges.
-- The Morrison Estates in the North Ranch area of Westlake Village offers white stucco and red-tiled roofs on 2,500- to 3,500-square-foot houses selling for $346,000 and up.
-- Canyon Crest in Granada Hills (selling for $250,000 to $400,000) features homes with vaulted ceilings, cultured onyx marble bathroom vanities and custom-designed fireplaces.
-- Rock Ridge in Santa Clarita offers shingled country cottage-style residences with “large living rooms with vaulted ceilings,” selling for $140,000.
The names of many subdivisions also reveal the bias toward the traditional and the countrified. Words like meadows , creek , heritage , glen , laurels , arbor and vista are scattered about to sweeten prospective buyers’ palates. A particular favorite is country club, which conjures images of privilege and exclusivity in idyllic and protected rural surroundings.
Many residential subdivisions market a romantic version of a mythical Spanish past with the use of evocative names like Laguna, Rancho and Santa.
(The popularity of this mock-Latino mythology began with the 1881 publication of Helen Hunt Jackson’s famous novel “Ramona,” which told the story of a beautiful girl brought up in a hacienda near Los Angeles during California’s changeover from Mexican to American territory. Southern California became Ramonaland in the popular imagination, even as the actual Latino residents of the area were treated with little respect by the dominant Anglo community.)
The roots of the cultural split between the styles of a modernistic urban workplace and a countrified suburban home run deep. In pre-industrial times, the craftsman and the merchant often worked out of their homes. There was none of the great divide between family life and work life that we suffer today.
But with the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries came the mechanization of the workplace. To achieve economies of scale in mass-production and ensure a huge increase in the amount of ever-cheaper products available for a new consumer class of factory workers, it was necessary to standardize the assembly line methods of making goods. This mechanization had to happen in factories, not in the home.
Now our homes are a refuge from stress, strain and alienation in the modern world. Since the contemporary working environment is so essentially impersonal, since it offers little emotional security and almost no sense of place we can personally relate to, we reach back into the past for comfort.
If “home is where the heart lies,” the modern world lacks heart. It is full of technological marvels and excitement, but it is also jarring, competitive, graceless and insecure. It has no soul.
“If you’re looking for a prestigious location of quiet country charm, welcome to Walnut Ridge,” stated an ad for a subdivision by Lewis Homes. “Our homes distinctively blend Old West values with today’s most efficient construction methods.”
Can we really have it both ways, as this pitch suggests? Or are we faced with an incurable and deepening cultural schizophrenia that could end up splitting us down the middle?
