UCSD Makes Good Choice

In 1988, when University of California regents approved plans for a new architecture school at the University of California, San Diego, the speculation about its direction began.

Would the university go the safe route and lure a seasoned academic away from some respected Eastern institution? Or might they take a chance with a visionary?

By selecting Philadelphia architect Adele Naude Santos to head the new undergraduate and graduate architecture programs, subject to approvals expected next month from the Faculty Senate and UC’s Board of Regents, administrators at UCSD have given the new architecture program a shot at becoming something special.

One of her first tasks will be to “search for the best faculty we can find in the world,” Santos said. Initially, she hopes to hire three professors. She said the master’s program may start first, although Ticho said undergraduate classes could begin next year. The graduate program will begin in the fall of 1992.

“I was attracted by UCSD’s desire to do something original. Architectural education has been in the doldrums for a long time. Here is a chance to do something unusual. The reports I read on the formation of the school were really interesting. Good thinking had taken place. There was a genuine interest in trying to not only be excellent, but in innovative ways.

“The real question in education is whether we’ve done the best we can do. I don’t think we have. There are flaws in the methods by which we teach. The methods we’re using in graduate fast-track programs are the same as they used when I got my architectural education in six years.

“What UCSD has been saying is, ‘Here we are a major research institution, we would like to think of an architecture school engaged in research.’ That isn’t something that’s been tried.”

Santos envisions several possible areas for research, everything from industrial to environmental design, from the design of entire buildings to pieces of buildings to new modes of suburban development. Before deciding on Santos, a 15-member selection committee that included several local architects pared a list of more than 100 candidates down to two finalists: Santos and William McMinn, dean of the architecture school at Cornell University.

The two offered quite different directions.

Santos is South Africa-born and raised. She is a practicing architect and an experienced educator. Her undergraduate work was at the Architectural Assn. in London, and she went on to earn graduate degrees from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

She practiced primarily in South Africa from 1968 through the early ‘70s, then spent the rest of the decade working on a a variety of academic and design projects.

From 1981 to 1987, she chaired the architecture department at the University of Pennsylvania. But unlike academics who make a living in architecture without hoisting a drafting pencil, Santos has a long history of designing buildings that consistently earn praise from her peers.

Much of her work is in Japan, which made her even more appealing to a fledgling design school on the opposite rim of the Pacific Ocean. For Misawa Homes in Japan, she proposed new ways of using a ceramic building material. For SDC Corp., her largest Japanese client, she has designed five buildings and is working on a sixth, including a home, offices and a boutique.

McMinn, by contrast, built his reputation almost entirely on academic prowess.

After heading the architecture department at Louisiana State University for four years during the early ‘70s, he went to Mississippi State University to head a new school of architecture in 1974. He stayed for 10 years, and the school grew up successfully, said a member of UCSD’s selection committee.

Since 1984, McMinn has been dean of architecture at Cornell.

Though the most interesting choice for UCSD seems obvious, the office of UCSD Chancellor Richard Atkinson, which made the ultimate decision, at one time favored McMinn, according to one insider.

Vice Chancellor Harold Ticho, who spearheaded the selection process for the chancellor’s office after the committee made its recommendations, declined to comment.

Whether administrators made an inspired choice, or whether the gods somehow gave Santos a last-minute push, her selection seems divine. She combines years of educational experience with a genuine interest in design, research and the many pertinent social issues facing architects today.

Last year, she won a competition to design 40 units of affordable housing for a site in a dense Hollywood neighborhood, one of several low-cost housing designs she’s become known for. The simple yet elegant housing modules she proposed, with their barrel-vaulted roofs, private courtyards and abundant natural light, stood out as mature design solutions next to the trendy creations submitted by her competitors.

UCSD’s selection committee was clearly enticed by Santos, which isn’t surprising.

This week, she personally telephoned a reporter just to say she would be delayed 15 minutes in giving a promised telephone interview. That kind of humility is a rare asset in an age of egotistical architectural superstars.

“I was impressed with the creative sparkle in her eyes,” said architect Rob Quigley, a member of the selection committee. “She seems like someone who can size up a situation and take charge quickly. I was also impressed because she’s very concerned with the substantial issues of architecture, yet not illiterate in the more aesthetic issues.

“Her interest in Japan is very significant. She’s open to an interface with Mexico. Some of the people we interviewed were in fact Hispanic, but much less intrigued with the geographic and cultural potential we have for setting up unique liaisons with Mexico.” (Santos’ surname is from her former husband, architect Antonio de Souza Santos.)

Quigley was a guest lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania for two months last year. He never met Santos there, but he did get a strong sense of the kind of architecture school she helped shape during the ‘80s at a school defined in the ‘60s under the leadership of romantic modernist Louis Kahn.

“There was a real emphasis on the human side of architecture,” Quigley said. “They were really concerned with broader issues of architecture, and lots of Ivy League schools aren’t.”

“Kahn never taught me,” said Santos, “but I was there when he was the leading guru. I think he was a very important architect. If I learned anything from him, it was more in the spiritual sense, a kind of poetic vision that was very interesting.”

This creative, reverential outlook intrigued the committee, who knew that the San Diego school’s first months would be crucial.

“The person who takes this responsibility will set the tone for the next several decades,” Quigley said. “She’s the kind of person who makes things happen. The University of California system is such an overwhelming machine that once the school is entrenched, the options will be severely limited. When a new school like this is invented, you have a short grace period where there’s lots of fresh air, opportunity, potential. We think she will seize the opportunity early on.”

Santos appealed to both young, aggressive designers like Quigley and mature veterans of the local architectural scene like Robert Mosher, also a member of the selection committee.

“She is absolutely at the top of list. As far as I was concerned, she has a superb background,” Mosher said. “She supports the design studio concept, which many schools these days are not keen on. She believes in the value of history, all history, but especially architectural history. She also supports a strong undergraduate program.”

Her new job officially starts July 1. She plans to hire a partner to run her Philadelphia office, now in the midst of several important projects, including the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania and a large indoor swimming complex at Albright College in Reading, Pa.

After stepping down as dean at Pennsylvania in 1987, where she continued to teach, Santos received numerous offers to head other architecture schools. But she wasn’t interested. In fact, she didn’t consider the San Diego job a strong possibility at first.

“Merely being a dean as another feather in one’s cap didn’t interest me,” she said.

Besides designs using new materials, Santos has been working on solutions to social problems for Misawa Homes.

One experimental housing complex, proposed for a dense urban site, would use “sky terraces” to provide residents with light and their own small swatches of outdoor space. Another prototype would house several generations of a family. The San Diego housing industry could use such a dose of fresh air.

At UCSD, Santos hopes to have a hand in shaping campus architecture.

“We do have a role to play. It’s very important that there be a representative of the architecture school in the group that looks at campus architecture and planning.”

Eventually, of course, Santos will be involved with the design and construction of UCSD’s first building for the new school, which is included in the university’s construction plans for the next five years. No money has been allocated.

In Santos, who said she is committed to the new job for at least the five to seven years it will take to launch the school properly, UCSD has landed a leader with the potential to make great things happen.