Cursed By Knowing The Numbers

The Measure R ballot initiative this fall for diesel powered light rail service between Santa Rosa and San Rafael was, on its face, not a bad idea.  The right of way is publicly owned.  The goal is to provide a reliable alternative to the single occupancy vehicle--primarily for Sonoma County residents commuting to San Rafael.  The $467 million plan would run 70 miles, have 14 stops, 14 diesel trains, and have an estimated daily ridership of 5,000 passengers.

The problem is that the taxpayers are being asked to pay $668 million in sales taxes for a concept without a land use plan in place and no firm evidence of ridership  in what are primarily low density communities.

The major points are:

• The North Bay--Marin and Sonoma Counties--has developed in a linear fashion along Highway 101--a natural for a rail corridor.
• Traffic on 101 from San Rafael in Marin to Sonoma, and through Santa Rosa is nasty much of the day.  Golden Gate Transit bus 75, a commuter bus from Santa Rosa to San Rafael, takes 100 minutes on average to make this trip.  This would drop to 55 minutes on the train.
• The advocates are focusing on the train, but not the land use patterns necessary to support it.
• Ridership estimates are soft, and construction costs are unpredictable at present.
• League of Women Voters analysis of this special tax measure is here.
• The MTC supports the measure.

The rub was, once I did my due diligence, was that these horn blowing, diesel powered trains are not a better transit alternative, and there has been limited enabling of transit oriented development at the nodes--particularly the southern terminus, where the largest opportunity exists.   And ridership numbers are really soft.

The southern terminus should be at San Quentin.  A connection to San Francisco via ferry would be a natural at the San Quentin transit village.  Odd that Assemblyman Nation, the same one that proposed the SMART legislation, has been so absent when it comes to changing the law to allow this transit village to develop.  And the money raised from the sales tax is would be 70% of what is needed at San Quentin to recast the old prison property into a transit village with 86 acres of open space, 2100 homes, a deep water ferry terminal and other elements of a transit village.

The built environment nodes along the proposed route have not been planned in the density needed to make the train service self sufficient.  MTC estimates the density around each station should be roughly 2200DU.  Larkspur requires a ten to fifteen minute walk from the proposed rail station to the ferry terminal.   Transit Oriented Development is a policy that the MTC and BART have come to embrace now as a way of building ridership and providing adequate housing and retail options--thirty years after BART was built.

Train service is overseen by the Federal Railroad Administration.  The regulation and oversight makes for perhaps the safest mode of transport in the US. But many rail advocates argue that the FRA regulations have not only come at too high a price (by making rail prohibitively expensive) but in many cases are completely nonsensical.

Asking for $668 million for a transit plan that does not tie out with a smart land use plan is not very attractive to me as a voter.  Providing alternatives to life dependent upon the single occupancy vehicle is a good idea, but this plan does not do that, on many levels.  Tie this service to the redevelopment of San Quentin as a Cinque Terre transit village, and you might have something [and my vote]--but not the way it is presented here.

...is the definition I found in today's NYT coined by David Bergman to describe design that is ecologically sound but doesn't show off the fact--

think of it as green without the granola.

Bamboo is a great material--easy to work with, non-toxic, [though it does smell like grass when you cut or rout it], and with a variety of looks.  One of the sources I check first is Plyboo.  And the look is changing, so that designs can avoid that dated look.

Green friendly--but not too crunchy.  Dimensionally stable, 30 to 50% harder than oak, and a material that regenerates in three to five years.  The material is engineered--it is a grass after all--so "plank" type or visually thickened applications demand a little creativity.

Other green friendly trends?

Daylighting.

Landscaping.

Biophilic Design.

Lighting.

Agnes Bourne, nearly a San Francisco native, graduated from Mills College, studied art and design first in Italy and then with Rudolph Schaeffer at the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco.  The school combined the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement and Asian art with a philosophy in which beauty and utility coalesced.  She had a San Francisco studio and showroom for 18 years and now runs her interior design, furniture and color design from Jackson, Wyoming.

Agnes was the interior designer on a home I produced in San Francisco almost ten years ago.  She epitomizes enthusiasm to me and is great fun to work with on projects--enthusiasm as faith in action. 

We had a chance to compare notes when she was in SF this past week

How do you get someone to understand the role color plays?

Take my crash course on color!  I ask a person to wear a color for a week and note in a journal the experience of wearing it, looking for it, listening for it, eating it.  If you approach color as a language, you can literally hear what the colors do.   The responses that come from the senses engaging with the color--where it is good, where it is bad--the response provoked in color.

It is fun to make a color go through its paces--put it in the light, make it shiny, make it flat, make it fat, make it thin.  We just saw the movie Flushed Away, and the colors carried so much of the plot without doing anything.

Other elements I work with:

• Adjacency--the effect of putting one color next to another gives you a third color.
• Texture--where it is the smoothest, the roughest and how you work the gradient in between.  Where texture becomes structure.
• Translucency.
• Form.
• Flow!
• And you can't forget function...

How do you set out to understand what the project wants to be?

The interview process is where you establish the kernel, the house haiku, the essence of the vision that becomes the project.  What are the essential elements?  Ecstatic?  Views?  Light? Peacefulness?  The haiku is the anchor, the touchstone of what the home or space wants to be.  The most successful projects are where the haiku is set at the beginning, is constantly referred to during design and construction, and is evidenced in the final product.

The design voice is in service to the idea, to the project's haiku.  All elements of the design are in service to the haiku, the project essence.

Thoughts on architects?
Frank Gehry and I had a series of great conversations about a project and he told me Architecture Evokes Passion.  What does passion do?  Inspiration, nothing passive about great architecture.  Your environment really affects your well being.

Tom Kundig and I have done a couple of projects together and the challenge is to do interiors that do not detract from the architecture.  The interiors must augment the response of the architecture, not an answer that takes away from the architecture.  His sense of detail is strong, not fussy.

Grant Marani, a partner at Robert A. M. Stern Architects, facilitated a great experience in true collaboration, authentic accountability and good humor on a San Francisco home.  These three elements provide a solid foundation for great results during the design process.

Heath Ceramics has been a great source for custom shapes and colors and inspiration for me.

What would you like to design that you haven't done?

Macro  >>  Design a house that has no waste in process and function.  Imagine a nest...nothing is wasted and it all returns to the environment when its job is done.  The only power consumed was the energy it took to gather and build it.

Micro Object of Desire >> Mattresses.  Goose down mattresses.  This would be a challenge, a missed opportunity, an amazing feeling--so rested, even temperature, support.

How has moving your practice to Jackson Hole furthered your practice?

The biggest lesson I have learned in Jackson is how to listen, listening to the environment in all the ways that one listens.  Listening apart from language.  Listening with all your senses.  Listening to understand.   There is a lot of trust and purpose in nature. 

Watching how wildlife responds to their environment.  They are purpose driven, but also take time off.  Particularly coyotes...

You begin to feel the difference of a granite mountain--it is a different thing, a different feel from sedimentary formed mountains--heavy mountains vs. not so heavy mountains...

Two things you want to do?

See the Massive Change exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Green House exhibition at the National Building Museum.

Any advice on building a practice in San Francisco?

Get your team together.  In all areas.  Construction.  Lighting.  Architecture and where the handoff occurs from design to construction.  Understand the project schedule and work with a team where everyone buys into the schedule.

An article in Business Week about Sophisticated Cellars got me thinking about the cellars I put in the homes I produce.  The first book I reach for when scoping the opportunity is How and Why to Build A Wine Cellar.

Why a wine cellar when winemaking techniques have improved to the point where most wines are enjoyable the day you acquire them?  Three reasons-

• it enhances the experience of collecting and appreciating wine;
• it provides an optimal environment for storing expensive, collectible wines--an effective storage solution is a fraction of the cost of the wine being stored;
• it enhances the value of your property.

The first question is capacity.  How many bottles?  Large format bottles?  Other types of storage?

  Second question is the primary and secondary functions of this space.  Long term storage?  Entertaining?  Actually practicing oenology? 

Third question is location.  Putting the cellar underground is the traditional option--great temperature control, away from light--really a highest and best use. Other options are in a detached structure--the more of it underground, the better.

The two enemies of wine are heat and light.  The fundamental job of the cellar is to prevent these two elements from happening to your collection.  It is the cycling of temperatures that prematurely age your wine--wine does not like change.  The other job of the cellar is to impress your wine drinking friends with your collection--which calls for light, and then perhaps a table, and a great racking system.

Temperature--I find that reds age optimally at 50-55d F.  Whites can take about five degrees higher in ambient temperature.  Humidity is not as big an issue, unless you are storing wines for a really long time.  The concrete walls should be enough.

Things to consider--

Diamond shaped bins are a bad idea in earthquake country.  The bottles dislodge too easily during a seismic event.  Minimize these bins in your cellar.

If you are using wine storage units, they can be noisy at night--so be careful where in the home you put them...you don't want to be woken to the sound of the compressor cycling on [again].

Resources:

Designer.  A Marin based Designer.

Racking

Split System Cooling Units.

Packaged units. 

WhisperKool units.