The Mar Vista Tract As a Case Study - Skeleton and Infill As Applied to Housing Developments

THE MAR VISTA TRACT AS A CASE STUDY - SKELETON AND INFILL AS APPLIED TO HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS

Sone, Yoko; Matsumoto, Nobuko; Taguchi, Makiko & Kamei, Yasuko

Dept. of Architecture and Architectural Engineering College of Industrial Technology, Nihon University Japan

ABSTRACT

The Mar Vista Tract is a subdivided housing estate of 52 households in the Los Angeles suburbs that was developed in 1948. The architect, Gregory Ain, designed the houses with folding and sliding walls to provide flexibility in the number of bedrooms, ranging from one to three, in response to the changing life cycles of the inhabitants. Sixty years hence, among these buildings, as many as 51 housing units have been preserved (i.e. only one has been rebuilt), and the Tract has been designated as a Historical Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ), or historic district, of the City of Los Angeles. An adjacent subdivided housing development built contemporaneously provides contrast with its chaotic streetscape of two-story houses. The flexibility of housing unit plans that are adaptive to varying family structures over the inhabitants' life cycle as anticipated by the architect is cited as one of the reasons for their preservation. Through the history of modifications discovered in a survey of 90% of the housing units, this paper identifies those factors that afford the exceptional townscape of the Tract through the preservation of the housing units as the "skeleton" of the housing development, and analyzes this basis through a comparison with the adjacent development.

Keywords: The Mar Vista Tract, stand-alone housing development, alteration/remodeling, townscape

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INTRODUCTION

Skeleton and Infill in Stand-alone Housing

The Mar Vista Tract is a subdivided housing estate of 52 housing units developed in 1948 in the suburbs of Southwestern Los Angeles designed and planned by architect Gregory Ain and landscape architect Garrett Eckbo. All 52 units are single-story wood construction with identical plans consisting of three bedrooms, a living/dining room and bathroom, with a total floor area of 1,150 square feet. At the time, the sales cost was $11,000, which was high in comparison to similarly scaled houses in the area. (Figs.1 and 2)

As shown in Figure 3, this development was initially planned for 102 housing units; however, this plan was aborted due to the poor sales of the 52 units of the first phase. The remaining lots were sold to another developer, who altered the road configurations and constructed 57 conventionally designed built-for-sale housing units a year following the Mar Vista Tract development. This housing estate will henceforth be referred to as "the adjacent housing development".

The vast distinction between the flat-roofed exterior and housing plan of the Mar Vista Tract and the conventional built-for-sale salt-box type homes marketed toward the average homeowner is cited as the reason for the poor sales of the Tract units. In their apprehension regarding the sales of the remainder of the lots, the Federal Housing Administration terminated funding, which was the direct cause for the termination of the Tract development.

Sixty years hence, the disunified streetscape of the adjacent housing development provides a starkly contrasting example. On the Tract, only one unit out of the 52 has been rebuilt, while the remaining 51 units have kept their original façades. Moreover, as shown in Figure 4, the landscaped area of the Tract designed by Eckbo has greatly flourished, creating a unified and bucolic townscape. In 2003, the City of Los Angeles designated the Tract as a Historical Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ), or historic district. More recently, in addition to its appraisal as an exceptional townscape, the upward trend in attention to postwar Modern architecture and recognition of Ain as a notable architect have driven the real estate value of the Tract units to several times that of the adjacent development.

On the other hand, the adjacent development has followed the course of the average housing district in suburban Los Angeles; along with the rise in living standards after the war, every housing unit has been either rebuilt or extended, and homes with fenced-in front yards have emerged, resulting in a disorderly residential townscape.

This paper defines the factors that maintain the outstanding appearance of the townscape

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(areas seen as public) of the Mar Vista Tract as "skeleton", and the interior spaces and backyard that have been altered with the passage of time as "infill". In other words, this paper attempts to apply the Open Building concept to a stand-alone housing area.

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Mar Vista

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Figure 1: Site location of Mar Vista Tract Figure 2: Typical housing unit of Mar Vista Tract

Figure 3: Initial site plan (Left side: Realized 52 Tract units, Figure 4: The landscaped area of Mar Vista Tract Right side: Unrealized area which became the adjacent development)

Factors to Improve Residential Townscapes

In Japan, stand-alone housing built for homeowners are the most expensive personal asset for the average citizen. Most homeowners believe that while only the interior of the unit can be altered in collective housing, stand-alone housing affords the freedom to build or plant whatever they please. Yet urban lots for stand-alone housing are constricted with a distance of only 1 to 2 meters between them. If every homeowner were to build their homes without restraint, townscapes would become uneven and disorderly; this is the

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state of the townscapes of the suburban areas in present-day Japan.

Homes should be able to respond to the temporal changes such as the rise of their inhabitants' living standards as well as to societal changes. Furthermore, because inhabitants themselves change, it is necessary to address diversity in such aspects as family structure, personal interests and values. Interior spaces of the home and private exterior spaces (backyard gardens) correspond to such changes as they arise. The townscape of a residential area in its entirety with its public presence, however, should be something that forms over time with the cooperative contributions of each housing unit within a range of certain standards.

This paper proposes that the compositional elements of the townscape of the Mar Vista Tract provide potential as a skeleton for stand-alone residential areas, and argues this concept while comparing it against a conventional built-for-sale housing development as exemplified in the contemporaneous adjacent housing estate. Five field surveys were conducted on 41 Tract housing units between November 2003 and August 2005 (over a total of 51 days) to compile detailed investigations of the unit interiors and exteriors and to conduct interviews.

OUTLINE OF THE MAR VISTA TRACT

Architect Gregory Ain (Fig. 5) was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, to parents of Polish heritage in 1908(d.1988). After his studies at the University of Southern California, School of Architecture and work at the office of Richard Neutra, in 1935, he established his own practice where he designed a total of 193 houses. Influenced by Neutra and Rudolf Schindler, his architecture is replete with a light Californian Modernist and hygenic sensibility. Ain's socialist ideals sparked his endeavors to make housing accessible to the working- and middle-classes. His also applied efforts to research in low-cost housing and the manufacturing of industrial products in collaboration with Charles Eames. Ain taught at Southern California University from 1953 and served as the Dean of Pennsylvania State University School of Architecture in 1963. As one of his most representative works, the Mar Vista Tract best reflects his philosophical ideals. In 1950, a Mar Vista Tract housing unit was displayed in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Mar Vista's landscape architect, Garrett Eckbo (Fig. 6), was born in New York in 1910(d. 1999). With teaching experience in Japan, his designs were influenced by Japanese landscape design. While Eckbo collaborated with Ain on numerous projects, for the Mar Vista Tract, his contributions extended beyond landscaping into concept development and planning.

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Figure 5: Gregory Ain Figure 6: Garrett Eckbo

Comparing the Mar Vista Tract with the Adjacent Housing Development

Table displays an outline of comparative data on the Mar Vista Tract and the adjacent housing development. While the average site area of the latter development (540.8 m2) is slightly more than that of the Mar Vista Tract (637.8 m2), the average total floor area of both developments were originally approximately the same (95 m2 and 93 m2, respectively).

Between the years 1950 and 1980, the scale of the standard American dwelling increased from 800 ft2 (approx. 72 m2) to 1,600 ft2 (approx. 144 m2).1 This increase is also reflected in the floor areas of both the Tract and the adjacent development; currently, the average floor area of the Tract housing units is 149.9 m2 and that of the adjacent development is 163.9 m2. In terms of rebuilding, only one unit of the Mar Vista Tract has been rebuilt in contrast to ten new structures on the adjacent development. While lower than the average 44-year lifespan of a house in the US2, this rate is notably higher in comparison to that of the Tract. Likewise, while eight of the units on the adjacent development have been converted to two-story structures, there have been no level conversions made to the Tract units.

Initially, both developments featured a lawn and low hedging in the front yards (Fig. 7). Today, although the housing units of the adjacent development have the same volume of planting in the front yards, there is a difference in the volume of planting in the backyard areas. In comparison to the 47 Tract housing units with trees extending to the roof level, those of the adjacent development are kept low due to the use of the backyard areas as a utility space, and only 18 units (31.6%) have planting up to the window height. As apparent in the aerial photograph of Figure 8, the volume of planting along the streets is greater in the Mar Vista Tract; thus the Tract feels more lush in greenery than the adjacent development.

The average term of occupancy at the Mar Vista Tract is 22.2 years. Regarding occupancy over the past ten years, 16 units in the Mar Vista Tract have changed ownership in contrast to 92 units of the adjacent housing development. This comparison reveals the very low

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turnover rate of the Tract.

Adjacent Housing Mar Vista Tract Development Year of Development 1948 1949 Conditions at Time of Total Housing Units 52 57 Development Average Total Floor Area 93 95 Garag e A rea 33 37

Average Total Floor Area 149.9 163.9 Average Site Area 637.8 540.8 Current State (As of Aug. 2005) No. of Rebuilt Units 1 10 No. of Two Story Units 0 8

Turnover units over 10 yr. period 16 92 *Note: The average of the turnover units over the past 10 yrs.

Table: Outline of the Mar Vista Tract and the Adjacent Housing Development

Figure 7: The Mar Vista Tract and the adjacent housing development (Left hand: The Mar Vista Tract, Meier Street, Right

hand: Adjacent development, Westminster Ave.)

Figure 8: Aerial Photograph of Current Conditions (Left side: Mar Vista Tract, Right side: Adjacent Housing Development)

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The Basis of the Maintained Excellence of the Mar Vista Townscape —The Skeleton in Stand-alone Housing

There are five elements of the design of the Mar Vista Tract that serve as the basis for the exceptional maintenance of its townscape: 1) The use of a four-foot module; 2) The flexibility of the unit plan; 3) The connection of the service core to the street; 4) The large-boned "skeleton" of the streetscape design and integration of adjacent outdoor areas; and 5) The pride of the inhabitants and intimacy of the community. The following is a description of these elements.

Use of a Four-Foot Module

Ain's purpose in unifying the design of all Tract housing units was to simplify their construction and reduce building costs. Along the same vein, he applied a four-foot module to each component of the units so that they could be mass-produced, while eliminating waste in material and reducing costs.

Simple extensions to the Tract units are facilitated by the internalizing the four-foot-high sections beneath the eaves and simply disassembling and repositioning the same modular-based exterior fittings. Many of the original Tract inhabitants added extensions to their units in this way, and also used the four-foot module for subsequent extensions. The premise for applying the four-foot module to extensions is the maintenance of the height of the eaves (i.e., the ceiling heights). A townscape of buildings that maintain the heights of the roofs and exterior fittings will likewise maintain the overall appearance even after extensions are made.

The same logic applies to the traditional townscapes of Japan. Traditional Japanese homes are entirely composed of 90-centimeter modules, and the roof configurations that vary according to region are formed from the standardized beam members (i.e., eaves) that connect the columns. Due to the unity of the roof forms and standardized size of the openings below, traditional Japanese townscapes maintain an overall unity despite their composition of independently built houses.

Flexibility of the unit plan

Taking into consideration the growth of the inhabitants' children, Ain separated the rooms with sliding and folding doors that allow a variation of four plans with one to three bedrooms (Fig. 9).

Similar to the traditional houses of Japan, the flexibility of the plans of the Tract units are separated by movable partitions; this concept was applied in response to the increase in the number of children per household and their growth against the historical backdrop of

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the baby boom ignited by the return of WWII veterans. However, this application of flexibility to the number of bedrooms that corresponded to the growth of children was used only by the original Tract inhabitants. Subsequent inhabitants optimized the flexibility of the unit plans for various other purposes.

Through a series of field investigations, it was found that 31 out of the 41 households surveyed keep the folding walls open to create a space integral with the living area. And in 13 out of 41 units, the sliding walls are kept open to create a single bedroom area, while only six of the 41 units surveyed close them to form two bedrooms, while another six units use the rooms for entirely different functions. At present, there are no Tract residents using the three bedroom configuration, and there are no households with a nuclear family structure with a full-time housewife and husband surrounded by their children as envisioned by Ain at the time of planning.

Not exclusive to the Mar Vista Tract, from the time after WWII up to the present, there has been a trend in diminishing family sizes, aging populations, lifestyle diversification and an increase in the average of residential area. At Mar Vista, the average household family unit is 2.1 people, where consequently the reduced family size allows for more space per person. Although 95 m2 may appear constrained for the present-day nuclear family, it is ample space for a household unit of 1-2 people. Even in the case of nuclear families, only a maximum of about ten years would be necessary for the use of two children's rooms, and after the growth and independence of the children, only the parents, or one or two inhabitants will remain. Thus, in the design of homes, flexibility is an important factor to allow for an increase in room size in accordance to the decrease in the size of the family unit. The flexibility of the plan in residential design serves toward the changing life styles and diversity of the inhabitants, allowing a family to continue to occupy the same housing unit throughout their life cycle.

Figure 9: Typical plan and four types of room configurations

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Connection of the service core to the street

In consideration of improved efficiency of housework for women after the war, Ain positioned the kitchen in the center of the house and close to the entrance. Accordingly, the entire household domain including the front street, foyer, living room and bedrooms could be seen from the kitchen (Fig. 10). Likewise, the bathroom and water-use areas were located alongside the kitchen facing the entry, while the living room was placed facing the backyard. This organization maintained the privacy of the kitchen and as an extension of the living room, the backyard could be used as an outdoor living space.

As shown in Figure11, at the time of the Tract development, in the typical American built-for-sale home, the entrance and living rooms were arranged facing the front yard along the street in front of the house, whereas the kitchens and water-use areas were located against the backyard, and bathrooms were also located the furthest from the entrance. When renovating a building, kitchens and water-use areas are the most costly. Consequently, in the event that changes in life styles necessitated remodeling in a Tract housing unit, since the kitchens and water-use areas faced the entry, extensions were made to other parts of the house. This resulted in few changes to the appearance of the façade, maintaining the original townscape (Fig. 12).

In traditional Japanese cities, in all stand-alone residences, whether machiya (townhouses) or nagaya (tenement houses), the service/utility areas are located in the same part of the house. In the city, not only is it economical from the angle of urban management that service/utility areas of a house (those with strong connections to the urban infrastructure) have fixed locations, there are other advantages, such as the patterns of daily life that reflect the service/utility areas of a home (eg. the relationship of the kitchen to the dining area), establishing a conventionally accepted understanding of its public and private spheres.

Figure 10: View of Living and Kitchen areas from the backyard

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Ally

The front street

Figure 11: Typical postwar American built-for-sale housing unit

Figure 12: Conditions of Alterations

Original plan Alterations with no change to unit façade

Alterations that affected the unit façade

Rebuiltion

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Large-boned "skeleton" of the streetscape design and integration of adjacent outdoor areas

The housing units of the Mar Vista Tract are dispersed along three 66-foot wide broad streets. Flanking the streets, between the houses and the sidewalks, there is a common green area on which trees with different fragrances are planted in an arrangement of one variety per street. As it can be observed in Figure 13, while at the time of development, these trees were no taller than a dog, at present they are over 20 m and fill the skies above (Fig. 14). Although the townscape envisioned by Eckbo was a bit simpler (Fig. 15), he understood that the large trees would become the features of the street space, and thus one can appreciate that an exterior designer tends to consider the passage of time more than an architect.

As shown in Figure 16, the planting design is integrated and unified between neighboring housing units. In comparison to typical built-for-sale housing units built independent of one another, the integrated front yard spaces produce a coherent residential townscape that, even sixty years hence, other than one unit with a low wall with a flower bed, most units left the exterior space untouched, allowing it to flourish as intended.

Figure 13: The newly developed Mar Vista Tract Figure 14: The present townscape of Mar Vista Tract

Figure 15: Photo of Tract under development Figure 16: Front yard lawn area

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Inhabitants' pride and intimacy of the community At the time of development, since the Mar Vista Tract was not accepted by the mainstream, as it was reflected in the poor sales of its units, its original inhabitants were mostly comprised of intelligentsia who appreciated the value of modern design and Gregory Ain supporters. A majority of the subsequent occupants were either acquaintances or relatives of the former residents. Most of the owners of the Mar Vista Tract units who bought them at present inflated values are those who recognize the excellence of the design and are affiliated with the arts. Stemming from the long term occupancy of the Tract units in comparison to other developments, the resulting hierarchy of the residents serves as the basis for an intimate neighborhood community. Furthermore, amid the circumstances of the designation of the Tract as an HPOZ, interest has risen from one housing area to another, inciting efforts to restore renovated the Mar Vista Tract units back to their original design.

SUMMARY

Through a comparison to the adjacent housing development, when the following factors become the skeleton for a stand-alone housing development, as in the Mar Vista Tract, they can provide the basis for the formation of an attractive townscape: 1) Housing units designed with a module that applies to all parts of the house. 2) A flexibility in the plan that avoids the use of fixed walls. 3) A fixed location of service/utility spaces in relation to the road and a generous site that allows for extensions and rebuilding without altering the appearance of the streetscape. 4) The pride of the inhabitants for their home and residential area and intimate communities.

REFERENCES

Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work and Family Life, W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., Revised Edition, 2002)

American Housing Survey, 1987, 1993

o http://www.census.gov/hhes/housing/ahs.html

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