Teen’s Plan Is a Winner
The architect cites a Frank Lloyd Wright influence in his design of this Mission Beach home. It’s visible, all right: the horizontal lines emphasized by the overhangs of flat roofs, the open interior plan, an Oriental sensibility the architect describes as “a lantern shoji mode (that) allows inner incandescence to flow outward.”
But more interesting than the Wrightian roots underlying this gem of a house--only a conceptual design at this point--is the fact that it sprang from the mind of 17-year-old Torrey Pines High School senior Kelly Lee, who says he’s not even sure he wants to be an architect.
Last week, the San Diego chapter of the American Institute of Architects announced the winners of its high school design competition, and Lee’s house came out on top among 50 entries from 18 San Diego County high schools, winning the $300 first prize.
Finishing second and third were Andrew Meyers and Heather Freyer of Poway High and Mission Bay High, respectively, and there were three honorable mentions.
Contestants were asked to design a residence of 2,800 to 3,200 square feet with three bedrooms and a variety of other essential rooms, for a long, narrow oceanfront lot in Mission Beach. They were free to dream up imaginary clients.
Perhaps high-schoolers have more traditional values than they did 20 years ago; nearly all entrants, including Lee, designed their homes for families of four--married couples with two children.
“That was one disappointment,” said Sandy Gramley, a San Diego architect who chaired the awards. “I was thinking they’d come up with a movie producer who needed a screening room, or a baseball player who wanted a batting cage. But most just did regular kinds of families.”
All six winners displayed above-average abilities in creating functional floor plans. They seemed aware that today’s home buyers want an open kitchen-family suite for casual living, and a large master suite that serves as a safe haven from the stress encountered in the double-breadwinner families most of them chose as clients.
“Any one of these houses is as good as stuff that’s built out there,” Gramley said.
But when it came to translating two-dimensional plans into three-dimensional design concepts, most of the results were awkward, at best--poorly proportioned, sometimes boxy knockoffs of existing styles.
Although Lee’s design also owes a heavy debt to history--in this case, Wright--his execution was head and shoulders above the rest.
His talents are all the more impressive because, unlike most of his competitors, Lee is not enrolled in a drafting class at his high school, although he has taken classes in the past. He said he worked mostly on his own, seeking advice from one of the voluntary AIA advisers only when he was nearly finished.
“He came to me about three weeks before the deadline and said, ‘What do you think?’ ” said San Diego architect Roy Davies, the adviser Lee consulted. “I said, ‘Wow, this is incredible! How did you do this?’ The only thing I did was some shade and shadow studies to show him how to graphically indicate what was going on with his design. I suggested he do the whole presentation with ink, with no color.”
Lee heeded some of this advice. His four presentation boards, which included the required range of architectural drawings, are crisply rendered in black ink.
“He is definitely a talent,” Davies said.
Judges for the awards (San Diego architects Marc Tarasuck, Gary Nogle and John Maple, all of whom do a lot of residential work) found only one major flaw with Lee’s design: On the north side, where it would face a large condominium building, he used lots of windows--not giving his clients much privacy.
But in the tried and true tradition of bull-nosed architects who stand by their work in the face of criticism, Lee defended his design.
“I planned to put shrubbery, bamboo, reeds, a stone fence or a wall there,” he said. “It just seemed like it needed the windows there, to be what I was picturing. I’m a bit inflexible when it comes to designing for a site that really exists. I guess I haven’t had that much experience.”
High school students don’t hear much about architecture in their required courses, according to Lee. He has studied architecture only through an advanced-placement European history class.
“There should be some, because it is a form of art--it would be nice if they stressed it more,” Lee said.
Such additional course work might raise the quality of the buildings students commission when they go on to become lawyers, bankers, developers and city planners, even if they never become architects. Lee has learned enough on his own to develop opinions.
“I don’t like I.M. Pei much,” he said of the internationally known New York architect. “It seems there’s not much humanity in the work. It’s mostly structural and kind of cold, scientific design.”
Of postmodern architect Michael Graves’ Aventine project in La Jolla, a collage of abstracted classical forms, Lee said:
“It’s interesting. I really don’t know if I should say whether I like it or not, because I’m not that well educated as to the good things or bad things. For what was there before, it seems out of place, but I think there is going to be a lot more development nearby, so perhaps in several years it will be a landmark site. I don’t like the color, though. It seems a bit too--brilliant. Maybe they should have toned it down a bit.”
And, in Lee’s own Del Mar Terrace neighborhood, a new, characteristically quirky project by San Diego architect Ted Smith is now under construction amid the coastal bluffs.
“It’s pretty ugly,” Lee said. “It doesn’t seem appropriate for the neighborhood and the character of the land. To cut away an entire hillside to put in this kind of creation--I don’t like it.”
Lee has never had any designs built, but already he is a veteran of architecture competitions. His design of a house in the mountains placed second in last year’s competition held by the San Diego chapter of National Women in Construction, and he also received an award for a residential design he submitted for display at the Del Mar Fair last year.
The son of an artist mother, who does pottery, and a father who is a professor of electrical engineering at UC San Diego, Lee is divided between artistic and scientific career ambitions.
“I either want to be an architect or a theoretical physicist,” he said.
Apparently, the Lees are adequately impressed with their son’s talent. They have mentioned the possibility of letting him design a house for them a few years hence.
“I don’t know if that’s a joke or not,” Lee said. “That would be 10 or 20 years down the line, if at all. If I’m an architect.”
The odds are in his favor.
