GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Architecture

  • Critter

    Teaching is the role of the institution.
    Education is the task of the student.
    The critic’s job is two-fold — to say what is on their mind and to give the student something new to think about.

    Two years ago, I was a critter for a Master’s studio in Hospitality Design. It was the last review of their academic careers, ending on the whimper of a zoom call.

    Day-long zoom conferences aren’t fun for the critters either, but I broke up the screen time monotony by grabbing the laptop and doing chores during presentations of students who had obviously mailed it in. It was nice that I could write a couple terse notes in chat, instead of giving them a tongue lashing as I might have done in person.

    In spite of this sterile environment, it was a pleasure to be reminded of the dream of Architecture. I’m so buried in the practice, I forget the possibilities. I have always had a practical bent, and this was a fun antidote. Of course everything was crazy and impractical. That’s the point. They’ve got the rest of their careers to be as boring as I am.

    Form, the design itself
    Formula, your process
    Formal, the craft – how you do it.

    The other benefit was learning from other architects. When I was in school, it always seemed like the critters were preening in front of the other critters. Now I know why — they were talking to each other! Wes Robbins stood out as an older architect who shared his rich experience throughout the review, including both quotes in this letter.

    Before this event I had attended a couple of “gallery” reviews where the folks pin up in the hallway and the critters mingle and chat. However, I’ve never been a part of a formal review.

    This is harder than I expected. It’s not easy to stay alert and judge stuff all day, with a hard shift every half hour. It was tiring to meet the students where they were at. I see why in-person reviews can go vicious. I could be sanguine about shoddy work cause housework salvaged the time. If I had to sit in a chair to watch the craft be disrespected by the worst of the presentations … whohooo …

    Hopefully the kids got something from their last event in school. By now, they’ve been in this cruel practice for two years. I hope they’re persevering and growing — this profession needs them more than they need us.

  • OPM.39 (notes on) Dream Big, Greg MacGillivray, 2017

    Dream Big is a modern industry propaganda film with the all-American narration of Jeff Bridges, sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

    It highlights the altruistic sides of the engineering profession — building a bridge in rural Haiti, earthquake analysis in Nepal, and teaching robotics to disadvantaged children. It didn’t convince my daughter to enter the industry, but I enjoyed the heartwarming reminder of why I got into this business.

    We joined this profession for a good job, but we didn’t just stay for a tidy nest egg. We change physical reality — we walk over, under, and into our projects. Other professions can’t provide such tangible results.

    Taken one step further, this is why I joined the government. There’s great psychic value in knowing that my projects will directly benefit the public. All real estate development involves spreadsheets, but my numbers come directly from the people to serve the people.

    It’s an awesome responsibility to be employed by my fellow citizens to spend their tax dollars. And it’s damn satisfying to hand them a properly constructed building, on budget and on time.

    ~

    Jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal passed away at 92 in mid-April. Ted Gioia celebrated his work with a great essay.

    I’m slowly borrowing Jamal’s albums on Hoopla, one week at a time (I’m currently enjoying Volume IV which has a great cover). Each of album so far has had a moment that sent tingles down my spine — 3 for 3 is a great hit rate!

    Of the three so far, my favorite is The Awakening, which was sampled by many hip hop artists (as outlined in this blog post and video). It’s easily a classic alongside Waltz for Debby and Brilliant Corners.

    ~

    black and white photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge focused on the suspension wires with a figure breaking the bottom frame in the foreground.
    Brooklyn, Bridge, Jet Lowe, 1982

    ~

    Thanks for reading!
    Justus Pang, RA

  • A wonderful failure, Architecture 101, 2001

    I dropped this studio on the last day in class.

    I would have failed anyways.

    I spent my undergrad focused on the arts, not theory, much less jumping into the insanity of A Thousand Plateaus, by Deleuze and Guttari.

    The studio was about the nomad. I picked the Truck Stop as my program and the site was the 16th Street Train Station, at the time completely abandoned.

    Unlike the aborigines’ in Bruce Chatwin’s Song Lines, I stayed completely lost the entire semester.

    I made a video of rubber ducks.
    I visited a port terminal at the Port of Oakland (before 9/11 you could just drive up and ask for a tour).
    I spelunked that Train Station multiple times.
    I drove inland to check out real truck stops.
    I mashed ramen onto a wood board (that didn’t go well).

    One night, my buddy threw a pack of cigarettes on a desk and we spent hours hashing out a grand scheme that looked promising.

    The next morning I reviewed it with my professor. She agreed it was a good start.

    I pulled out my drop papers. She happily signed it to avoid failing me.

    That was my last day of class at UC Berkeley.

    section drawing of a train station with trucks in it, pencil on trace paper

    The main takeaway from the studio was to trust myself.

    Raveevarn Choksombatchai was a brilliant professor who would ask pointed questions every time I met her. As a young designer, I earnestly took in every critique.

    Her pedagogical approach was to be the devil’s advocate. She stress tested my convictions. That would be a fun studio nowadays, but I wasn’t ready.

    Her challenges convinced me to reassess everything every time. Starting over twice a week is a great way to get nowhere.

    I’ve since realized that the grand concept is only the seed of a project. Part of the designer’s job is to say “fuck it, good enough, move on”.

    There are plenty of problems at that next scale. Architecture is more than a conceptual art; it’s also a craft. Design challenges will confront you at every level along the way.

    Don’t let (yourself or someone else) stop you at gestalt.

    plan drawing of a train station with trucks in it, pencil on trace paper

    I’ve gone in quite a different direction from those high concept Berkeley days. Indeed, I don’t design. In the past five years, I’ve done four sketches, my last one locating one door in a short corridor.

    But the lesson of this failed studio still lingers.

    Not a painful barb, but a gentle reminder to trust myself.

    My ideas aren’t perfect, but I know they’re good enough for taking that next step — cause analysis paralysis is so much worse.

    I don’t think you can ask for a more impactful lesson coming out of college.

    elevation drawing mixed with a pencil trace of interior photographs pencil on bond printout

  • BOMA Calcs, 2008

    The past two weeks have been a flurry of due diligence. Leadership has identified several vacant office buildings for purchase. It’s a great idea to lower our spending on leased private office space.

    But they want to move-in immediately. So our team is fighting for the money and time to properly upgrade these buildings. We spent the week drafting memos and cost estimates to convey the real cost of this effort.

    It brings me back fifteen years. One of my first assignments after grad school was to prepare a BOMA leasing calculations of a two story, 80,000 SF office building.

    The complex had undergone years of undocumented renovations, so it was a tedious exercise in measuring all the tenant suites over several days. But it held occasional delights, like stumbling into the Lyndon LaRouche book warehouse and that office full of trophy heads with “school of hard knocks” motivational plaques.

    I seem determined to de-glamourize my profession, but it comes from a place of love. It is a blessing to find a career where even the shit-work comes with its amusements.

    First Floor Plan of a rectangular office building with an atrium.
    First Floor Plan
    BOMA Spreadsheet for the First Floor

  • Gallagher Residence, Ron Bogley Architect, 2003

    I had the most fun at the start of my career as a designer at a small design-build firm.

    Due to a quirk in Berkeley zoning regulations, we worked on a slew of small 500sf additions to little bungalows dotted around the city. They usually involved adding storage and a second bathroom, usually as part of a new master bedroom suite.

    I enjoyed the challenge of squeezing in all the program, integrating modern building techniques with old craftsman styles, and TBH hand drafting is just more fun than CAD.

    I wonder if the Gallagher’s are still enjoying their enlarged home, two decades after their renovation.

    Floor Plan. Our drawings were typically “builder’s sets” — enough to for the owner to bid the project and get a permit. They would pick out the finishes themselves.

    East Elevation, the view from the rear.
    South Elevation, along the driveway and back yard.
    Bracket Detail, simplified from the original building, but stayed in the language of the main house. This detail was originally drawn on graph paper, and then photocopied onto a clear “sticky note” that was applied to the vellum. This would let the sheets be run through our office blueprint machine (for checksets). However, final drawings were reproduced on bond paper (large format xerox’s) at the print shop.

  • Sure Thing Chapel, Code Analysis

    I have a perverse desire to so the unglamorous side of my profession, and without something flashier at the top of my mind, let’s do it again!

    Five years ago, my neighbors mentioned that they were taking over an old shop on Fremont Street to create a wedding chapel. They were planning on a minimalist buildout, but still needed an architect to analyze the conversion from a Business Occupancy to an Assembly Occupancy. Such a change increases the risk of the space since cramming a bunch of people into a room is is inherently more dangerous than stocking merchandise.

    My boss was kind enough to write up a simple hourly proposal for a basic code analysis. I set up shop at the PublicUs coffeeshop around the corner, field verified the space, hyper caffeinated to save my neighbors on fee, and banged this out in a day.

    The clients did all the work from there — I take zero credit for their enormous investment of sweat equity for the buildout.

    In the past few years, I changed jobs, we moved, a pandemic happened, and they moved. I never got to see the place in action, but their original partner is still running the place so if you want a cool spot to get married (or elope!) check out Flora Pop and her Sure Thing Chapel in Downtown Las Vegas.

    A single sheet drawing with an architectural code analysis for a Tenant Improvement showing an occupant load of less than 50, allowing the clients to use the space with minimal modifications.

  • Gables Tanglewood

    I left Ziegler Cooper ten years ago. They’re a fine architecture firm, but in the wrong part of continent.

    My parents were in San Jose, her parents are in Las Vegas, and fate had told us it was time to go back west. The heater in our apartment blew out, filling the place with acrid smoke. Instead of fixing the busted equipment, the landlord released us from the lease (turns out he was selling the property and it’s now a parking lot).

    My two years at ZCA revolved around this 300 unit, 8 story luxury apartment behemoth on the outer ring of this suburban metropolis. I was the job captain for this project, but we were understaffed so I drafted about 80% this set, from the start of Design Development until halfway through Construction Administration. (We did this in AutoCAD, so Gables Tanglewoods must be among the last generation of projects at this scale that wasn’t documented via BIM.)

    It was great experience for a guy who had only worked on small residential and tenant improvement projects. I learned a ton from the older architects, like proper waterproofing principles and how to squeeze every square inch out the building code from Rafael.

    I also picked up how a more corporate firm works. You have to stand up for yourself in the corporate environment, unless you don’t mind being run over. Sometimes it’s not a horrific trade (I got a ton of experience in a short amount of time) but I realized I can’t sustain such a pace for my career.

    One day, we’ll visit Houston again. Along with pilgrimages to the Menil and the Orange Show, I’m going to saunter into the lobby as prospective tenant so I can finally get a tour of this place that I didn’t get to finish.

  • Parking Garage Apartment Parks

    15 years ago, I presented my thesis project, so let’s relive the past!

    It started in the Spring of 2007 when I was studying abroad in Rice’s Paris exchange program. For thesis prep, I explored the idea of increasing density in Southern California which suffers a simultaneous lack of housing and paucity of public parks. Looking back, I suspect my brain was a mix of wonder at living in a real metropolis and a nostalgia for home.

    I focused on the suburban city of Alhambra when I visited my grandfather that summer. I sited the project on a parking lot in front of Ralph’s Supermarket, proposing a big new structure along the street. I added new shops at grade level, moved all retail parking below-ground, and built a multi-story suburban landscape of apartments on the upper floors of the parking garage (the gimmick is that you get to park next to your apartment!). The remainder of the old asphalt parking lot was converted into a large public park, daylighting the buried storm culvert and connecting the adjacent school and church.

    I’ve always been a luddite as an architect, so I finally learned Rhino and rendering for this project, only to never use these skills again. This was also the last time I made a physical model in my career. And as with most other architecture students, this thesis got me a degree and hasn’t seen the light of day outside of the occasional job interview.

    There are more images and the thesis book for download on my online portfolio.

    A series of diagrams showing the relationship of the project to the site. In the 00's Rem Koolhaas was king and Rice was more of a diagram factory than a design school.
    A series of diagrams showing the relationship of the project to the site. In the 00’s Rem Koolhaas was king and Rice was more of a diagram factory than a design school.

    PS. After writing this, I texted some old classmates who I haven’t contacted in years, it was fun catching up!

  • Building 1300

    Our home renovation was the first project under my stamp. The second was this renovation at Building 1300.

    It was built as a residential center the disabled. Fifty years later, it’s an administrative building. We removed two kitchens, freeing up space to become an indoor exercise activity space for the clients and a training room for the staff.

    In school, we design majestic pretend structures. Sometimes we get to participate in marquee IRL projects — my wife worked on curtain wall details for an addition to an iconic museum and I’ve played a part on three university building projects.

    But really, Architecture is a mundane practice.

    We make incremental improvements to what’s around us. We get paid to make the world a little better.

    Four years ago, I left private practice to become an Owner’s Project Manager for the State of Nevada.

    I’m the ultimate middleman — I don’t deliver nothing. The Architect designs the project. The Contractor builds it. The Agency uses the facility to serve the public.

    I just shepherd the team to deliver the project on time and on budget, hopefully at an optimal quality.

    My tasks are unremarkable. Calculate estimates. Send emails. Meetings and phone calls. Double check drawings and dollar signs. I shuttle documents around our bureaucracy.

    My position is five steps below the Governor on the org-chart, but it’s blessedly free from politics. The Citizens elect our Politicians. They determine our directives. The Division gets it done.

    But nothing happens without people.

    My big paradigm shift after taking this job was realizing that work is all about relationships. As a professional architect, I delivered tangible documents. Now, my only unique skill is familiarity with the government bureaucracy.

    I’m here to balance the conflicting demands on a project, negotiate the cross incentives within the team, and chart a path through the process.

    It’s not always daisies. On Friday night, I dropped the velvet hammer on a flooring manufacturer for delaying another project. It’s my duty to be fair and firm as a steward of taxpayer dollars.

    I grasp the checkbook, but I work for those who do the real work. Construction isn’t easy, but I hope to make it satisfying. I try to conduct myself with honor and enable each team member to to do their best. I care about each of us, in our roles and as individuals.

    This is our work. Let’s make the most of this precious opportunity.

    Maybe even walk out with a smile.

    This Kitchen Demolition project did not go smoothly. It started as an extensive renovation with a consultant architect, but the agency suddenly realized that the funding was about to expire.

    With that nasty deadline, I could only deconstruct. I slammed demolition drawings on AutoCAD LT and pushed it out to bid. The contract was approved, signed by all parties.

    Then COVID hit.

    The Capitol feared we were at the precipice of a depression and killed this little project. (Of course, the cancellation dragged out amidst the pandemic confusion, leaving the contractor in limbo for more than a month.)

    By Spring 2021, the looming depression became an economic rebound. The Agency revived the project.

    The Contractor held their bid, we waded through a swamp of paperwork, moved the cash into the right budget account, and those kitchens disappeared!

    We celebrated with a twelve pack of Dr. Peppers.

    Construction is only straightforward after it’s done. Every project suffers its twists and turns.

    We can plan, but only so much. When chaos hits, the universe forces us to negotiate. If we choose to collaborate, these frustrations can cultivate relationships beyond mere project roles.

    June came and went this year. The twelve month warranty expired — the only part of our job without hiccups.

    Wednesday morning, I returned a missed call.

    His voice quivered.

    Tracey passed away.
    I thought you should know.
    She really enjoyed working with you.

    ䷨䷆

    one small project
    client and contractor
    respect
    notice beyond this vale
    greatest honor of my career

  • OPM.31 Our Heros

    Last year, my friend posted a note when Helmut Jahn was killed in a bike accident.

    We’ve hit the age when our heroes are leaving us.

    I looked at Helmut’s website. He had an impressive portfolio, but the page stopped scrolling.

    When starting my career, there was an infinite supply of next-projects. An endless row of residential remodels lined my future.

    Thirty houses later, it stopped. I went corporate and never came home.

    Jump again and my government pension plan has given me a logical retirement date and a biennual cycle.

    Nevada’s legislature meets every odd numbered year when they give us projects. If the economy stays perfect, I will be assigned a big project every four years and five small projects every other year.

    At most, I’ve got five more buildings and fifty small remodels.

    Wait! That’s it?

    ~

    The night after the news, my dream mind visited San Francisco to search for an old friend. I went into a cafe. The barista pointed towards the BBQ joint down the street. As I walked along the shaded tree lined sidewalk, I woke up and remembered that Andrew passed away a decade ago.

    Our heroes may not be famous, but grasp them tight while they’re here.

    ~

    Who are your heroes? How are you honoring them?

    ~

    This Corridor Crew episode is an exit interview with a member starting his own channel. The guys discuss the need for consistent production and loving the craft. It’s not about the product, it’s the doing.

    Seth Godin writes about three skills that will keep one employed. He challenges us to learn the art of “initiation“. Go make shit happen.

    Here are some lovely photos by David Alrath of Skovshoved Petrol Station, designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1936.

    ~

    Firemen Parading, USA, May 30 circa 1900, Bain News Service

    ~

    Thanks for reading! Please subscribe if you’d like the next letter in your inbox.

    Justus Pang, RA