GLFEA/UD-Mercy Architecture Lecture Series

Architect Mark Horton finds
'design in everything'

Detroit, Nov.7 – In the first of the 2001-2002 series of lectures organized by the University of Detroit-Mercy's School of Architecture, San Francisco, Calif., architect Mark Horton showcased his practice of "traditional architecture…without any pretense or judgment" as a means of "affecting peoples' lives, at some level or another." In his view, good architecture provides a positive "interference" with life if it both delivers creativity and inspires the future practice of it. "Design does count," Horton says. "Unfortunately architects haven't taught the world about it."

Sponsored by the Great Lakes Fabricators & Erectors Association, the UD-Mercy lecture series will continue on Nov. 14 with a lecture by James Timberlake, FAIA, of Kieran Timberlake Associates, Philadelphia, Pa., before taking a break until mid-January, when a group of three additional lectures will begin. Free to the public, all of the lectures begin at 6 p.m. in the General Motors Lecture Hall at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 315 E. Warren Ave., Detroit.

Horton, who opened Mark Horton/Architecture in 1986, also originated the 3A Garage architectural gallery in San Francisco. The gallery provides a forum for architects to discuss design issues and it also serves as a venue for local, national, and international exhibits. The gallery is devoted to architectural material, including drawings, models, and artistic installations, as well as books and magazines on the craft. Horton's firm has garnered numerous recognitions, including an award of honor for design excellence in the 1997 Best of the Bay and Beyond Awards given by the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Examples of the firm's work include an innovative student residence hall, currently under construction, for the Oakland campus of the California College of Arts & Crafts (CCAC); as well as the Little School, the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center & Housing Project, and the Bluxome Street Live/Work project, all in San Francisco. More on Horton's work can be accessed at www.mh-a.com.

For the UD-Mercy lecture, Horton presented slides on ten of his firm's projects, including four that are just now rising out of the ground. His design for the CCAC residence hall attempts to meet the college's need for a five-story structure that not only provides 127 beds for students but redefines the entrance to a cramped campus as well. The building's architecture is unmistakably modern, with a rectangular block connected to an elliptical "object building" clad in zinc. The bottom two stories are of reinforced concrete, containing parking and public areas, with the residential portion of the building clustered in the upper three stories, which are framed in wood. The design is striking, considering the building's setting, but Horton admits winning approval for it took some convincing.

'Design Doesn't Happen in a Vacuum'
"In the bay area of San Francisco and Oakland," he told his audience, "if you do anything that doesn't have Victorian gingerbread and bays, you will run into a huge amount of opposition." The residence hall is to be completed next spring. To bring such buildings out of a computer and into reality requires strong relationships between architects and their clients, Horton stressed. "Design doesn't happen in a vacuum," he explained. "Architects don't control the world and, I'll admit, they will never control it." Architects are in the business of taking a client's needs, ideas, and solutions, putting a sound foundation under them, and making them stand in a way that improves physical space. Not having specialized in architecture, most clients need help in categorizing, prioritizing, and refining their concepts. In the conception of a project, an architect has to understand the client's goals and provide expertise in reaching it, Horton said.

"I call it solution delineation," he explained. "It's the art of making real solutions out of the solutions others have developed. In other words, somebody figures out what they need, and now they want an architect to translate those needs into architecture. Well, in a number of instances, it's appropriate for the architect to also help those people figure out why there may be other ideas that will make the final result of their projects better ideas." Knowing how to make such recommendations and when to bring them to the table is part of the personal side of the practice of architecture that theory often neglects. "Art doesn't preclude competence," he contended. "Architects need to be telling people what they need to hear. Not just what they want to hear."

Horton's view is that good architectural design can be incorporated into any project, even those that appear too driven by cost considerations or an overly condensed construction schedule. "Everything is design," he said. "Why can't it be?" Architects have to possess enough competence to rise to the challenges imposed by such constraints. To illustrate this, he discussed a low income housing project, where he was able to convince a charitable organization that needed a new community center to reconfigure its goals, combine its project with a low income housing developer, and bring both the center and the housing into being. He also outlined a day care center that renovated and reworked an old gymnasium into classroom and play areas, with the use of an S-shaped interior curve.

Examples of his residential work include a three level home in the mountains of California's northern Sonoma Valley designed to accommodate great depths of snow, and a silo-style, three level guest house clad in slats of corrosion resistant steel. And, in perhaps a humorous reference to the success record of the roofing in residences designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Horton noted: "Good architecture doesn't leak. If it leaks, it's not good architecture."

Next Up
On Nov. 14 the lecture series will continue with a lecture by James Timberlake, FAIA, principal in Kieran Timberlake Associates, Philadelphia, Pa., A registered architect in six states and the District of Columbia, Timberlake received a bachelor's degree in architecture from UD/M and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an adjunct associate faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Architecture and has been an Eero Saarinen distinguished professor of design at Yale University. A fellow of the American Academy in Rome, he received the Rome Prize in 1982-83. Along with his partner, Stephen Kieran, FAIA, Timberlake is the inaugural recipient of the AIA College of Fellows' Benjamin Latrobe Fellowship for architectural design and research. The fellowship, entitled, "The Design Research Laboratory – Architecture 2025," explores the "emerging interface between architecture as high art, materials science development, assembly, and service."

The remaining lectures in the series will be held early next year and include:

• Jan. 16, 2002: Karen Bausman of Karen Bausman & Assoc., New York, N.Y.
• Feb. 13: Nader Tehranu of Office dA, Boston, Mass.
• Feb. 27: Odile Decq, from Odile Decq & Benoit Cornette Architects, Paris, France.