Vernon DeMars, 97; Architect Helped Start Design College at UC Berkeley

Vernon DeMars, who helped establish the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley and designed several prominent buildings on the university’s campus, died April 29 of complications from a stroke. He was 97.

DeMars, who was also one of the first Modernist architects to design housing projects for migrant workers in Northern California, died at a hospital in Oakland, said Kathleen Maclay, a spokeswoman for UC Berkeley.

DeMars was known for his “planned chaos” approach to designing multiple dwelling spaces, in which he placed buildings of different shapes, sizes and styles side by side. In his view, European Modernism’s uniform structures and grid-patterned layouts were too sterile.

He put his theory to practical use as a member of Telesis Environmental Group, a collective of San Francisco-area architects, landscape architects and city planners that he helped found in 1939.

The group designed a plan to expand the Bay Area that took into account transportation, landscaping and environmental concerns as well as housing and commercial space. They recommended that bankers, lawyers and technology experts be included in such projects from the early stages.

The group’s proposal for the development of San Francisco was exhibited under the title “Design for Living” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1940 and had an influence on post-World War II development projects for the city.

“Telesis offered a rational growth plan for the Bay Area,” said Harrison Fraker, current dean of the College of Environmental Design. “The idea of inter-collaboration is why this college was formed.”

Thanks in part to DeMars, the college’s program includes courses in architecture, city planning and landscape architecture. He was chairman of its architecture department from 1959 to 1962.

DeMars conceived his ideas about variety and personal detailing for urban development projects as the district architect for Western states for the government-sponsored Farm Security Assn. from 1937 to 1943. He designed low-income housing for migrant workers in Yuba City and Porterville, Calif., and in Chandler, Ariz. Fraker said that DeMars used the most up-to-date wood-frame technology on the projects and worked with architect designer Garret Eckbo, a pioneer of modern landscape architecture.

The most successful of DeMars’ early projects was Easter Hill Village, a public housing development in Richmond, Calif., that he designed with architect Donald Hardison and landscape architect Lawrence Halprin in 1954.

The complex mixed apartments and townhouses in a carefully planned environment with curved roads and public gardens. There were front and back yards and outdoor clotheslines, luxuries for low-income housing at the time.

A number of architects and their students toured Easter Hill Village, which came to be seen as a forerunner of upscale planned communities of the 1980s and ‘90s. The American Institute of Architects singled out the complex in 1957 as an example of “American architecture at its best.”

DeMars, who was born in San Francisco, graduated from UC Berkeley in 1931 and spent a year doing graduate studies in design at the university. He worked as a visiting professor in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1947 to 1949 and went to UC Berkeley in 1951, first as a lecturer and then as a full professor of architecture. He later became chairman of his own department.

In 1964, he was one the architects who worked on the design for Wurster Hall, which houses most of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design.

He was also one of several architects who designed a complex of four buildings on campus: Zellerbach Hall for lectures and performances, Eshleman Hall for student government offices, the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union and the Cesar E. Chavez Student Center, which supplies study spaces. The project was completed in 1967.

DeMars retired in 1975 and became a professor emeritus of architecture. He also received a lifetime achievement award from the American Institute of Architects’ California Council in 2003.

DeMars’ work was included in a number of exhibits that featured progressive approaches to multiple dwellings. “Built in the U.S.A. 1932-1944” opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1994. “10 Buildings in America’s Future” opened at the American Institute of Architects in Washington, D.C., in 1957 and later toured the Soviet Union.

His wife, Betty Bates, an artist and costume designer whom he married in 1940, died before him. He had no immediate survivors.

Contributions in his name can be made to the College of Environmental Design, c/o Lawrence Lawler, College Relations, College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley, 235 Wurster Hall, MC 1820, Berkeley, CA 94720-1820.