HOME RENOVATION

In 26 pages devoted to the subject of remodeling (“Home Renovation,” July 8), exactly one architect is given less than 2 1/2 column inches of space, and this to comment on how not to exceed one’s budget. The message seems clear: If you want to overpay someone to produce your project as though it were merely a solution to the problem posed by all those pesky, hidebound rules, regulations and technical issues, hire an architect; but if you’re in the market to be dazzled, if only the latest “bold, angular shapes and idiosyncratically earthy palette” will do, if you too are after “that Zen quality” and want to be “connected to this other huge thing that is much bigger than we are,” then you need to find this moment’s hippest, coolest, hottest designer and assume that whatever problems may arise will be dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of his or her artistic revelation.

The reason that no one even thinks about being killed by structural collapse, caught in a fire trap or risking a dangerous fall when entering buildings today is that the regulations under which they are produced, while not perfect, actually do have some basis in laws of nature (such as gravity) and in the public welfare.

Licensing is the mechanism by which the state seeks to ensure that these principles are respected so that the public will not encounter dangerous buildings. I do not assert that no licensed architect designs ugly work, nor do I deny that architecture is essentially an artistic pursuit; yet I can’t help feeling that truly profound work is cognizant of its causes as well as its effects, integrating both the desires of the owner and architect and the requirements imposed by both natural and human laws into a harmonious, whole expression.

Los Angeles Times Magazine has chosen to concentrate on glossy surface effects, which is foolish enough; what is worse, you have done so to the point of holding up concern for the architect’s responsibility to ridicule.

MICHAEL EVANS Los Angeles