Terroir d' hood

Terroir, typically translated from the French as, "a sense of place," is a term largely associated with viticulture and uniquely local attributes.

The attributes that generate the

 aura of a neighborhood, and perhaps best define it, should not be bedimmed by presumptive semiotics, or colonializing instincts.  

The need for a culturally validated landscape consumes many home buyers, bewitched by radical traditionalism, unreceptive to resemanticising forces.

Intangibles, an obsession of sporting reporters, are always difficult to document.  Expertise is useful.

The Highest Office

(Continued from Quattra Catharsis. See The Trial throughline.)

Our meeting was kept secret, away from pining ears, the usual handlers, secret service, Michelle.
"There's a broad spectrum of real estate," the pres started, "you needn't limit yourself to sixty years of interest. Our markets require broader stimulus."

"I like the 1870's too," I fired back defensively.

The leader of the free world continued, "a man shouldn't live in times gone by, lest the shackles of the past become the restrains of the present."

"Last I checked your crib was in Kenwood, not Schaumberg, " I volleyed, no longer wide-eyed and retiring.

"True," he paused, before a change in tone, "you know what I dislike? When windows are set into walls, without any decorative treatment..."

"Moldings," I interrupted.

"Exactly, it looks like a shadow box, or a picture without a frame."

"Precisely," I nodded.

"Now this business with the quattrefoil, are you in continued danger, have you adequate health care coverage?"

"An HMO."

"I've been reading the blog, I'm a bit concerned."

"Judge not my entries as wahnbriefe," I asserted, "but as ubermensch-ian pursuit, inoculation, reconstitution."

"Reform," he questioned softly.

"Perhaps," I offered, "but first I'm going to kick some pre-cast ass!"

Quattra-Catharsis

(Continued from Firstly, the Bay Tradition 3/1/2009)

Unmasked, pathology fresh and gleaming, I could no longer deny the influences, the obsession with asymmetrical shingled masses, houses of wood, the shin-zukuri and gassho styles, the odd classical detail distorted, engorged, layers of wood, roof lines akimbo, wood.

No matter the obloquy, handicapped by outspokenness and the headwinds of time, I determined to muster on, without resent for the fickle Klieg and its current fancy, lofty post war boxes with lean pipe columns and glass walled bridges; nor, with animosity for chintzy foam appliques and purloined ornament.

Rather as I surveyed the steep, fog-bound uplands of Diamond Heights, the corkscrew rise of the Balboa Highlands, even the methane saturated bog of Playa Vista, my mind eagerly filed and sorted, crafting architectural treatise and style precis. Had I become a seer, freed from constraints of time, place, and culture?

I sought comment from the nation's chief.

Firstly, the First Bay Tradition

(Continued from Roots)

The body of influence lay decumbent, an autopsy proceeded, resembling the Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, attended by a human pyramid of blood-lusting surgeons, vampires transfixed by fresh dissection. The influences, pestiferous; the foolish notions, the valour, courage, rage, and misplaced affections, the pathology tortuously revealed as monkey tricks and nothing more.

The flight impulse took hold again, like a plane refusing to land, I charged through snowy hinterlands in the battered pickup, through places of great silence, quarries, and sandpits, uncongenial surroundings, past courts of public assistance housing, and the substantial Tudor Revivals of Hancock Park given an eerie nighttime immensity by patches of parti-color light from lawn height parabolics.

The third and most important revelation came not with the low-rumbling of drums or the hiss of steam, but as if overheard, a snippet of speech intercepted, the trailing words of an exchange between confidantes: the First Bay Tradition.

The First Bay Tradition was the handiwork of a radical group of architects, seeking to give San Francisco and environs a regional identity, fusing formality with rusticity, bold experiments in spatial arrangement intensified by unexpected detail and juxtaposition. The era of significance began in the 1880's and lasted till the great quake (if not the Great War). Site specific work, with spectacularly complex massing, shingle clad, and infused with local materials.

It was time to confront my maker.

Roots

(Continued from Mass Conspiracy, Ambush, Subterfuge, etc)

After a night of fighting in the streets, dispatching emissaries primed with all manner of architectural theory, desperation, and heavy penance, my focus became clear again.

Tested by so many years of undiscouraged belief in environmental possibilism, and maybe a few as an idle boulevadier, I ventured forth, undeterred by the harsh reputations of the wastelands, ranging far.

I located the first house I'd ever known with Craftsman style finishes, belonging to an elementary school chum, dark, unpainted wood, pocket doors, the dimness of the big bare sala.

My first taste of the late 19th century, a mammoth Stick-style hippie haunt, a great emporium of treasures from Pre Columbian burial grounds, pots, tiny silver arms, legs, rosaries, long tapestries wrapped in paper, bursting with pattern, wooden toys, beaded curtains, elaborately carved Newel posts, and lofty rooms of scandalous color, psychedelic posters by Victor Moscoso, carpet slippers, and bootleg recordings pirated at the Fillmore.

The quatre-cuadrado lurked, sometimes contemptuous, sometimes sullen, offering high-sounding sentiments about Baja Alta and our Spanish fathers.
Once or twice a slight faintness came over me, as I aligned the tumblers of influence. The revolutionist forces lay ahead.

Mass Conspiracy

(Continued from Ambush, and before)

Were the citadels closed?


Off-season at the spirtual oasis?





How does Clark Kent change, I wondered, in the cell phone world?

Had I the stamina to continue, or would I be replaced, by a pod-grown replica, incapable of feeling, perfectly charmed by finely honed granite, breakfast bars, and pre-textured drywall.

My chi was jammed.

Ambush

(To make sense of our narrative, backpedal dear readers.)

Trapped on a lonely, winding stretch of North Berkeley road. Penned on one side by geology's run-stuffer, storey-high outcroppings of Northbrae Rhyolite, a smooth, creamy-yellow rock. On the other by a steep gorge, the sole domain of hardy hillside flora, blackberry brambles, and other sedimentary remains.

Face to face with the fearsome foil, devoid of architectural or cognitive context, like some acephalous ghoul, defying natural laws, nose thumbin' at the herald of reason and verity.

Without the means to disarm or negate, I considered again the teachings of Sun Tzu: The army's disposition of force (hsing) is like water. Water's configuration (hsing) avoids heights and races downward.

Instantly, I stepped off the hillside, seeking a soft landing in the swollen creek below, a pursuit impossible, shades of Butch Cassidy.

The battle for me lay elsewhere, but I needed to regain strength. I needed to revisit purity.

Subterfuge

(Please see Quattrefoil 1/10/09; Blind Windows 1/20/09; and Noir or Au Revoir 1/27/09.)

Could I shake the quatre-square? I moved around plenty, doing the unfamiliar, paying for things in cash, and wearing a hat.

Occasionally I'd catch glimpse of the devilish foil, but typically and consolingly in a more disciplined, intrinsic setting.

Was it the beginning of detente, or merely a ruse?
I consulted Sun Tzu, "Warfare is the way of deception."
Best to stay on guard.

Journal entry #665

6:22 a.m. North Berkeley

Waking thoughts free of concern with superfluous decoration. Focus instead on deep dish pizza, other forms of gothic tracery, their appropriation by local, influential architect Bernard Maybeck, and an afternoon program of unfinished Orson Welles' movies at the Pacific Film Archive.

To Do List: Climb Indian Rock
Call 22 clients
Lunch at Plearn
Go to P.F.A.

Little did I suspect the ambush that lay ahead (image below).

Noir or Au Revoir?

I lit out of town, fleeing the ubiquitous quatrefoil (see Quattrefoil 1/10/2009 and Blind Windows 1/20/2009), bedizenment du jour, past churches, filling stations, cantilevers, walls of glass, stray dogs, lawns, barbed wire, grown-ups in suits, beauty supply stores, and a housing development which rose along a hillside in a continuous row, each roof rising above the next like gymnasium bleachers.

I needed to put distance between me and the rampant deployment of this irrelevant ornament. Was I in search of pure form like some post jugendstil dodo, playing real estate hooky, or just plain desperate for blog material?

Either way, I pulled off Interstate 5 well after dark, to Harris Ranch Inn & Restaurant in Coalinga. A glowing fountain, like some Celtic effigy, a four leaf clover turned poison ivy, barred my entry. "Curse you quatrefoil," I blared.

Carne Asada would have to wait, sustenance would come in a different form, in a shingled form.

Blind Windows

Usually employed to enliven an otherwise featureless elevation, Blind Windows appear with great unpredictability and without regard to style.


Remarkably ornate treatment on a highly visible corner property. Symmetry or balance is served.



A comic pairing of ersatz ornament: spare, blank frames and Gothic detail turned chintz (the accursed combined-with-square quatrefoil).



Another corner Italianate with dual treatment and icky opportunistic signboard.

Quattrefoil

An aesthete like myself complaining about ornament, sounding a bit like cranky Adolph Loos or some early modernist tea totaller? It's true. Another quattrefoil-esqe tracery employed as arbitrary "architectural enhancement," and I'm likely to duff up some fool.

Sure I love the four-lobed pattern divided by cusps, possibly originated in the ceramic revetments of Spanish and oriental mosques. Particularly when utilized in the Venetian Gothic, and the bizarro Mission Revival (see variation with multi-light window top). But just fashioned of foam and adhered to any old flat wall? Well, every man's got his limits.

"No, no, no," I screamed, at one apparent homeowner, post stucco applique, "it's a colonial revival cottage, not a flippin' would be Mediterranean."
I feel you law man, it's hard to keep order out here.

I don't know what's more offensive, 'Fried Chicken, Chinese Food & Donuts,' or that turd of an ornament, which is also a bit cartouche-like, an oval panel with crested or scrolled borders.

Clearly, this requires continuation......