Sticks & Stones / Steel & Glass. Anthony Poon
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California loves its piers, and the piers here last longer than they do on the rest of the Pacific Coast or the East Coast. They aren’t lashed as often by major storms, and a long, sloping shelf receives and holds the concrete pilings. Hermosa’s pier, like the pier in every other beach town, was a place to fish and drink, or just do nothing. Piers are potent symbols of civic pride. We don’t build up so much here; we often build out.
The competition was stiff, with some of the biggest names in Southern California as well as many international entrants in the running. Leading the group of jurors for the competition was teacher, practitioner, and community and industry leader Charles Moore, recipient of the 1991 Gold Medal from The American Institute of Architects. His 1978 Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans had captured worldwide attention and earned him a reputation as one of the original voices of Postmodernism.
The mighty local design studios of Morphosis and Eric Owen Moss Architects were believed to be the frontrunners. Greg and I would be the minnows.
Our design strategy was to consider the waterfront, the plaza at the foot of the pier, and the surrounding beach area as a blank canvas for a broad public space. Our philosophy was that the redesign should be a backdrop for the many activities of visitors to the beach: the bicyclists, the volleyball players, the families looking for recreation, the couples on a romantic stroll down the longest pier on the West Coast. In contrast to our competitors, who proposed hotels, shopping centers, and other large buildings, we ambitiously and simply proposed public space.
A slight tilt in our plaza design created long steps down to the sand, offering access to the beach while forming an amphitheater from which to watch the sun set. We envisioned a sweeping 250-foot elliptical shape carved out of the plaza leading up to the lifeguard tower, which would provide casual seating and organized traffic. We eschewed a focus on the retail shops; instead we added trees, wide sidewalks, benches and chairs. Public amenities.
Open space, taking advantage of the already beautiful surroundings. Public space.
We presented our scheme on four thirty- by forty-inch boards in an unusual manner. Rather than the expected architectural drawings, models, and computer renderings, we made heavily textured collages of colored paper, magazine clippings, and newspaper scraps. Our architects’ statements were printed like fortune-cookie papers, red on white. Our montages were sandwiched between a clear sheet of acrylic on top and a blue piece of acrylic on the back. The blue acrylic glowed like California sky and Pacific Ocean water when light hit it.
We thought it was magical, beautiful. This aesthetic technique was innovative but also risky. Would the jurors appreciate our concept and presentation style, or would they not even understand our unconventional approach?
Our mantra for this project: People and nature have defined the design, not the architects. With this thesis, we submitted our long-shot, upstart entry into a big-time, big-name, international design competition.
We ended up winning, and then losing and winning subsequent rounds of voting and revoting. It’s a saga not for this moment, but I did learn that my architecture road was going to be a long one—a competitive, creative, maddening, and soul-fulfilling one.
I never lost my affection for public space, for architecture that is for everyone, including a little kid on a swing, or a kissing couple, or chess players.
Part One: Architecture for Good
BLASPHEMY
Nothing requires the architect’s care more than the due proportions of buildings.
VITRUVIUS
Greg and I were midlevel architects on a Seattle firm’s design teams working on gargantuan architecture for sports and entertainment: football and soccer stadiums, basketball and hockey arenas, venues for performing arts and campus sports. For this firm, Greg and I even submitted a proposal for the main arena for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
Young and newly certified to practice, we were working on large-scale structures that many people would see, enter, and enjoy. For our age, we were fortunate to have influential roles in the Los Angeles satellite office.
After earlier stints where I had primarily designed custom residences, this shift to sports buildings was startling and thrilling. From designing structures for a family of three or four, I jumped to designing stadiums for thousands and thousands of spectators. Some large homes I laid out consumed twenty-five thousand square feet; a big-city sports arena complex can occupy over one million square feet. That’s a 4,000 percent shift in scale and material.
Perhaps because the Seattle partners in the firm wanted the high-profile pro league or major university work seen through their West Coast myopia, I lucked into a small Midwest college project that would become “mine.”
My assignment for the next three years would be a 400,000-square-foot convocation center for Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. The new building would contain a 10,000-seat basketball arena, a 30,000-square-foot conference center, a 700-seat banquet hall, a 500-seat dining hall, and supporting kitchens, offices, locker rooms, restrooms, storage and mechanical spaces, and all that a complex like that entails. Brand-new, blank slate, ground up. Mine to do.
Projects like this are typically staffed with a principal-in-charge (the executive team leader), a project manager (the seasoned architect), and a group of architects led by the creative efforts of a project designer. At the modest age of thirty-two, many years ahead of my career schedule, I was named project designer.
Yes, me.
And even though I wasn’t licensed in Ohio, architects without a license can practice if the firm they are with has licenses, so I was able to work in Ohio and later in Illinois in collaboration with a local firm.
The leaders of Xavier University warmly greeted us at the campus kick-off meeting. I dutifully followed in my place behind the leaders of the firm, as was proper. They would set the overall project goals, and I was to design it, and despite my cockiness, I was petrified. This wasn’t a ten-hour architectural licensing exam; this wasn’t a pier in a beach town, or a house. Small college or not, this was a big deal, for them and for me.
The principal-in-charge had bigger fish to fry, as he led architectural teams for NFL and NBA projects. A mere collegiate project couldn’t keep his interest. Then, in the first month of the project, the bean counters back in our West Coast office determined that the architectural fee being paid by Xavier didn’t cover the cost of the number-two person on the job, the project manager.
So I was left standing. One architect to do the work of three.
Limited experience.
Limited management resources.
What I did possess was determination. I was smart enough to figure things out as they came to me and dumb enough not to know when to be intimidated and scared. With no intention of becoming the road kill of corporate fallout and politics, I proceeded with keen ambition and irrational courage.
Every other week for over two years, Delta Airlines delivered me to Cincinnati, where I marched onto the Xavier campus accompanied by one supporting colleague. I ran meetings of dozens of campus leaders from seemingly every department and office: from the religious leaders of the campus to staffers in finance, athletics, administration, and facilities to alumni. Again, my ego and stupidity sheltered me from the fact that I should have been worried.
Though the job was overwhelming, my self-esteem ran high. I’m sure many in attendance at the campus meetings asked themselves, “Who is this youngster architect?” But with the rehearsed bravado in my presentations, I bulled my way through, undaunted.
The Cintas Center was ambitious and monumental and is still the largest building on Xavier’s campus. I dubbed my vision “a city within a city.” Many projects that propose new buildings near established sites involve