Archinect - News

Pioneering UC Berkeley professor Sim Van der Ryn dies aged 89

2024-11-18T16:06:00-05:00

Dutch architect Sim Van der Ryn, a pioneer of green architecture and a longtime professor at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, has died at age 89 according to the San Francisco Chronicle. He will be remembered for his experimental teaching methods and approach to designing buildings as ecological systems, both of which later became widely accepted as either field looked to embrace sustainability as its new baseline standard.

Van der Ryn's memorial page on the CED's website also credits his work with Murray Silverstein as leading the way for post-occupancy user studies. Dean Renee Y. Chow added her own context to his legacy at the school, saying: "Sim was one of the people who laid the foundation for CED’s ongoing commitment to resilience and environmental equity. He was focused on how to build in environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, socially just ways long before 'sustainability' was even a term in the architectural lexicon. His influence, on Berkeley and beyo...

Julia Morgan’s first home design lists for $1.9 million in Berkeley

2024-10-02T18:08:00-04:00

Julia Morgan’s first residential design completed after opening her own practice has hit the real estate market in the Bay Area after listing for the first time in 50 years. The 116-year-old home owned by architect Claude Stoller until his death last year in Berkeley is just steps from UC Berkeley’s campus and includes four bedrooms and 3.5 baths in a 2,555-square-foot envelope.

The listing is for $1.9 million. According to SFGate.com, which first reported the news last week, "The property is also a mix of Morgan’s original vision and contemporary amenities: The 4,182-square-foot lot hosts the home as well as an outbuilding — itself a diminutive replica of the main house — currently used as a studio, and a redwood board and batten garage with a 220-volt power outlet. Established maple and redwood trees as well as a vine-covered pergola put the finishing touches on this historic landscape."

Image: Peter Lyons/Claudia Mills Real Estate Team

Morgan, who designed the famed Hearst Castle ...

Billionaire-backed plan to erect a model California city qualifies for the ballot

2024-06-13T19:25:00-04:00

The billionaire proponents of a brand-new city that would rise from the rolling prairie northeast of the San Francisco Bay cleared their first big hurdle Tuesday, when the Solano County Registrar of Voters certified the group had enough signatures to put its proposal before local voters in November.

The plan calls for up to 400,000 residents to be housed nearly 60 miles from San Francisco on an over 16,000-acre land parcel currently used mainly for tomato, walnut, and plant nursery farming. The group responsible for the development, California Forever, has continued quietly surveying Solano County residents for their opinions since our last update in January. But, the LA Times says: “Project opponents said a recent [independent] poll they conducted found that 70% of the people surveyed were skeptical.”

What could come next might provide a case study for the long-held theories of Ebenezer Howard, Leon Krier, and other noted New Urbanism scholars.

Details emerge for billionaire-backed startup community plan northeast of San Francisco

2024-01-24T19:14:00-05:00

The once-secretive plan for a startup new community in Solano County, Northern California, is beginning to materialize as the company known as California Forever has begun publicizing details for their proposed development ahead of a potential November vote to determine its future.

Details made public with the start of a requisite petition drive showed a preliminary map, renderings, and area plan for the project, which would notably be the first large-scale demonstration of the "walkable city" concept designed entirely from scratch in North America.

Image courtesy California Forever

Billed as a future "amazing success story" by the company’s founder Jan Sramek, the development intends to construct some 20,000 new affordable residences plus a solar farm and network of public parks before 2040. The plan reportedly allows for further growth to support a population of up to 400,000. As the announcement post notes, much of the preliminary proposal is focused on creating missing middle ho...

Anti-democratic vistas: Plans for a new city in Northern Californian farmlands draw ire from concerned officials

2023-09-04T12:00:00-04:00

Over a five-year period, the company became the largest landowner in Solano County after purchasing more than 55,000 acres of undeveloped land. The company has paid more than $800 million since 2018, according to court records. [...] On the eastern end of Solano County, the city of Rio Vista is now surrounded by Flannery Associates land. Mayor Ronald Kott said that, like many Solano County officials, he had not been approached by anyone from the company to discuss plans for the land.

Similar to Marc Lore’s utopian vision for a new $400 billion Shenzhen-style city from scratch called Telosa, the secretive land grab-cum-startup city lies suspiciously close to Travis Air Force Base and is being marketed as a “new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space.”

Democratic Representative Mike Thompson told reporters last week he was “very concerned about our national security” related to the plan's proximity to the base. Some residents have reported “fear” in their dealing with the company, including concerns about retaliation. The company, meanwhile, maintains its secrecy is deliberate and intended to prevent possible real estate speculation on the part of landowners, a group of whom they have sued for collusion.

The U.S. is about to begin the largest dam removal project in history

2023-03-16T09:00:00-04:00

Preconstruction work is underway on the largest dam removal and river restoration project in U.S. history. The $450 million project will take out four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California to restore habitat and passage for migrating fish. Removal work will begin this summer, starting with Copco 2, which should be gone by this fall, according to ABC 12. The other three dams — Copco 1, the Iron Gate Dam and the JC Boyle Dam — will be removed by the end of 2024.

The projects were approved late last fall in the interest of protecting the local salmon population and other wildlife in the region. Local tribes will plant 19 billion seeds in the wake of the removals in order to boost the region's ecosystems, according to local public radio.

The removals are among the $3 billion worth of dam projects being funded under the new Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, though experts still say it isn’t enough to address the 15,600 dams across the country that are currently classified as “high-hazard potential structures” by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021.

Fougeron Architecture's 400 Grove mixed-use echoes classic San Francisco design

2017-10-10T17:59:00-04:00

Built in the heart of San Francisco's Hayes Valley, 400 Grove is a new mixed-use development designed by locally based Fougeron Architecture. At the corner of Grove and Gough streets, the project site opened up after the removal of the Central Freeway in 2003 to reconnect Hayes Valley with other neighborhoods.

When Fougeron started developing the project in 2013 for client/developer DM Development and DDG Partners, the architects focused on creating a space that provides a sense of residency and blends into the urban site. The project was completed in 2016.

Photo credit: William Timmerman Photography.

Based on the central mews typology, the building's angled, faceted exterior features wood dowels that echo San Francisco's traditional bay windows. Each of the 34 units are angled in a way to maximize views of the surrounding Hayes Valley neighborhood.

Photo credit: William Timmerman Photography.

Ph...

Architecture and the City 2014 celebrates in San Francisco for the month of September

2014-09-02T20:45:00-04:00

The 11th annual Architecture and the City festival officially began its month-long celebration during its opening night party this past weekend in San Francisco, California. The yearly San Francisco festival is described as the largest architectural event of its kind in the U.S. With "Home: My San Francisco" as this year's theme, the festival invites the public to join the fun with a variety of events and activities throughout the city.

Here's a few of the festival's events:

Find out more on Bustler.