TRUTH in ARCHITECTURE

It’s been quite some time since my last posting. Things have been festering. It has been 18 months since I moved from Chicago to Redondo Beach, California and I’ve given myself adequate time to acclimate to the different aesthetics.

At first, it was the vegetation. How strange everything seemed with palm trees, hollyhock, eucalyptus, all sorts of strange pines and, of course, the Chaparral. All this was so visually alien to me that I never felt at home. I was a visitor; on vacation.

But with the passage of time, my eyes have grown (no pun intended), accustomed to the beauty and variety of plant life here in the South Bay of Los Angeles. Having said that, I can now look past the plants and see why I’m so frustrated. The houses of the South Bay are offensive. There, of course, are a few exceptions, but when I say “a few,” I mean “a few”!

And as an architect myself, I just can’t fathom this. Every, single day, I troll the internet for new real estate listings. When we moved to Redondo Beach, we leased our home for two years since we weren’t certain where we should settle down. So, I’m looking for a home to purchase and there’s not a single home that mere mortals can afford that has any type of aesthetic quality. I don’t have $3M-$6M to plunk down on a house so I’m pretty  much stuck looking at what would otherwise qualify as “dog meat” properties.

Maybe it’s like a restaurant with a fantastic view. They don’t have to work hard to make their food and service great, since people will keep coming back for the view.  The houses of the South Bay are so atrocious since people will come here anyway for the sun, the ocean, the mountains and the mostly perfect weather.

This is what must go on in home builder’s heads:

“Why bother building homes of any quality or style. People will buy whatever crap we build, so let’s build it cheap.”

Where are the architects? I once read that only 10% of all buildings in the US involve an architect. I think that percentage is far lower here in Redondo Beach. I include in this onslaught, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Torrance, Palos Verdes Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills, and Rolling Hills Estates. I’m not even going to bother talking about the even more appalling areas of San Pedro and Lomita.

I care about where I live. When I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep at night, the space I occupy is critically important. Everything I touch and see has an effect on my well being. If it weren’t for the fact that we can look out of our windows and see the blue sky, feel the velvet air and see the ocean, I’d shoot myself. If this were anywhere else in the the country, I’d be dead by now.

So I’m stuck looking for a lot to build our own home. Of course, there aren’t any lots available since this is Southern California where any piece of land worth living on has been snatched up and destroyed by a home builder already. You have to overpay for some horrible house so you can remove it and build something worth living in.

You’d think that with the hard-press of the modern movement out here, the housing would be of a much higher caliber. WRONG!

Southern California is a text-book case for the uglification of America.