Globalization and digitization are making physical location less and less significant to human existence. Are we building a world where there is no “there” there? How will we know what we have lost?
Insight Labs is partnering with Phoenix architect Mike Davis to assess the components that make a place distinctive. We will also consider together how these elements of place can be treated responsibly by architects, planners, designers, and others who shape the spaces where we spend our lives.
Click here to see an index of all of the pieces in the “Elements of Place” series. The discussions will also inform a Lab on the future of community development in May 2012.
Andrew Benedict-Nelson: So far we’ve talked about the Sun and about water. What comes to mind when I say “earth”?
Mike Davis: The provider of all nutrients - we’re chemically composed of virtually the same material you find in dirt. We are made out of it and one day we’ll return to it.
I have always been fascinated with earthen-form structures. I haven’t had as many chances to do them as a commercial architect as I think I could doing houses that can be be more embedded in the ground. We’ve got a great heritage out here – the Native Americans built these phenomenal cave dwellings and other things in the canyons.
When I think of earth, I think of farms and growing things, but I also think of a material for building things. We make bricks out of it, adobe. You throw in clay and mud, a little straw, and you bake it in the sun. I think of pozzolana that we make concrete out of, which the Romans perfected. The earth ultimately provides us with all the resources we need to shelter ourselves from the rain and from the heat and the cold.
When you think of earth as a staple for construction, you also realize that everything else seems to have an influence upon it. The water makes it into mud, makes it slippery, erodes it, makes great canyons. All of that has an impact on the earth. It’s not like you would ever want to throw a blanket over it and protect it from all that. That change is what makes it interesting. It’s a bit of a sculpture, really.
The old saying is that water seeks its own level. The majesty of the earth is that it doesn’t. It has mountains and valleys, changes in height of nearly 30,000 feet above sea level and about 36,000 below sea level. That’s really pretty small in terms of the overall dimensions of the earth, but it results in changes of temperature nearly 140 degrees and an entirely different climate. Then there are completely flat places covered in vegetation that provide us with all we need.
ABN: I’ll be honest, I don’t know Arizona well enough to know if this is a relevant question, but how do you feel about sand?
MD: I don’t think of sand as having much value. It’s hard to build on. Most other types of soil suggest some use, whether it’s soft, rocky, loamy, etc. But sand…I can’t think of a more forlorn place on the Earth than a sand dune. That’s the place where you think, “I’m going to die. I’m just not going to make it.” Assuming I had adequate water, it would probably be more dangerous to go up a mountain than to walk out on the sand dunes. But it still strikes me as so sterile and unforgiving. It feels like it could kill you through disinterest.
We don’t actually have a lot of sand in Arizona. It’s more typical of Florida and other low, coastal areas. We have plenty of dirt in Arizona. But sand ultimately gives me an inhospitable feeling that is similar to salt water or being stranded our in the ocean. The desert – with the cacti and the rattlesnakes has a stark, surreal beauty. But there is something about the sand dunes or the middle of the ocean for that matter, that makes you think, “I am small, insignificant, lost, and not going to be here very long.”
Look, if they use it as a hazard on the golf course, it’s not a positive thing!
ABN: So what does an architect need to know to work in Phoenix dirt?
MD: Well, you would do well to work with indigenous landscaping materials. Though you know, for better or for worse, a lot of the ground we’re working with now is redeveloped farmland, land that was citrus orchards or cotton fields or other things. So it’s not like you’re preserving its original state when you put in bushes and cacti and so forth. That being said, I’m actually a big advocate of doing things like that when we can.
I’m a big believer in earthen-form architecture where the building feels like it is tied into the ground, where there is an experiential sequence between being outdoors and entering the building that has continuity to it. You don’t want to go from native landscape to some sort of baroque interior that is completely out of context.
ABN: Let’s talk about the sky. What comes to your mind in association with that element?
MD: I think of emotions. If there is anything that can put me in a mood of awe or reverence, it’s the sky. I think of the different times of day. I think of twilight and sunset. You can look at the clouds in the distance or the clouds close up, in pink or orange or amber, and you think, “I want to go there. I want to find out what that is.” It’s such a beautiful canvas.
Summer in the desert is just what I’m looking at right now - and its not exactly what I would call a “pretty” blue sky. It is more like blue steel – like iron. I won’t say it’s boring, but I won’t say it’s exciting either. Its a bit foreboding actually. I can understand how people get depressed with 90 days of cloud cover too – it’s the lack of change that bothers you. I’ve always been fascinated at how things look here as opposed to places with higher humidity. Everything is stark in the Southwest: the light quality, the brightness of the sun. I used to wonder about the Masters of painting used colors that were so subdued. Then I went to Europe and I found out that things actually look like that there.
So I’m inspired by the sky and the sunset. But in a way I’m also inspired by the clear air, the fact that it creates this backdrop we get to work against.
ABN: What do you think are some rules to keep in mind with the Phoenix sky?
MD: The thing I come back to – unlike a Chicago or Manhattan or wherever – we’ve got some pretty significant beauty around here from our mountains and so forth, and I just think our architecture needs to be guided by that. In Chicago, there aren’t any mountains, so the buildings vicariously became the mountains; the reference points if you will. Then there are places like Vancouver and Hong Kong that have both mountains and tall buildings and are really spectacular. But especially here, based on the starkness and the fact that you can see for miles, as well as that there is little vegetation to hide them; buildings need to be thoughtful. They need to have a respect for the geography. That comes in terms of their form as well as their materials. I’m not saying the buildings need to be brown – in fact, because the mountains are so brown, blues and greens often provide a needed splash of color, like an oasis.
We have a vocabulary to work with that references the design done by the Native Americans and other cultures. But that isn’t always easy to translate into larger commercial buildings. Desert architecture often has narrow windows. People in offices don’t want to look out of a window with a two-foot light shelf. They would feel like they are in a jailhouse. I think we would do well here to emulate the forms of the rocks and perhaps give buildings here a little bit more geometry, rather than just going with rectilinear forms. I think we can capture the beauty and the light quality if the colors and materials we use are complementary to the landscape. They shouldn’t blend in so much that you don’t see them, but we have to recognize that we have something unique. This isn’t Dallas or New York or Los Angeles. It’s Phoenix. It should look like Phoenix.
Though one of the problems of a statement like that is that when you think of how a city looks, you generally think of its commercial architecture. There are numerous examples of really well done residential and smaller commercial buildings that we need to figure out how to better adapt into larger commercial buildings. We don’t have many good examples of massive desert architecture internationally either. I mean, you have the Pyramids, but that wasn’t the sort of thing you lived in. Unless you were dead.
ABN: Can you tell me about some buildings you’ve worked on where you’ve tried to do something like what you’re talking about here?
MD: There’s the Camelback Esplanade that we worked on from the mid-80′s through the late ’90′s. It makes reference to the mountains, the flat-top mesas and granite cliffs that pop up out of the desert and has a larger base footprint that grows progressively smaller as it got taller. But our “fearless leaders” on the Phoenix city council stipulated a height cap on the entire project of the arbitrary number of 135 feet, rendering it more akin to a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier than a desert allegory. And then through the exhaustive efforts of the general contractor to build it on the cheap; it ended up being clad in a simplistic green glass curtain wall that might as well be in “Anywhere,” USA. I think it’s a complex of buildings that could have been really phenomenal today.
ABN: So in a way we’ve talked about all four of the classic Greek elements now – earth, water, air, and then you could say we covered fire with the Sun. But I was wondering if you might have something separate to say about more terrestrial fires, given how frequently you folks have to deal with wildfires down there. Though I wonder if fire is a place or contributes to place in the way these other elements have.
MD: It can. A lot of times out here in the winter people will burn the wood of the pinyon pines, and the smoke and the aroma that comes off of those fires is just wonderful. It seems to be a part of the winter experience here. It can be a gathering place. The old idea of the hearth may be gone – it has become the electric range of the kitchen – but we still understand outdoor fires that way. Fire is a bit of a fearsome thing when you lose control of it, obviously, but I think of it as a friend that you have to pay close attention to.
The unbridled fury of the forest fire is something different. It is difficult to comprehend. I haven’t actually been around one, but I have seen what remains after them. We had one eight or nine years ago that burned around 470,000 acres and just recently had another that burned over 500,000 acres. You go for miles and see nothing but these 60-foot tall burnt black toothpicks. You think that these were once majestic pine trees, and it’s frightening.
In the Sonora Desert we have a fairly good amount of brush fires from people failing to clean up their camp sites and that sort of thing. It doesn’t take very long for the vegetation out there to dry because of the lack of rain, so one errant cigarette butt or match and 500 acres of that stuff is black. But the grass will grow and be is green again next year. The trees that were 150 years old – those won’t come back anytime soon.
But whether it’s the cowboy lore or the beauty of embers, I tend to think of fire as a welcoming thing, and not so much the raging inferno. It is a place. It is a place of gathering and friendship and warmth and romance and humanity and a good meal. Maybe that is why the kitchen is the place where people seem to congregate during social events at people’s homes. Maybe it’s an outgrowth of people gathering around the hearth or the stove in those old Northern European homes.
ABN: What might be the rules an architect should keep in mind in regards to fire or heat in Arizona?
MD There are probably not a lot of days you could freeze to death in most parts of Arizona. If you had a coat you could probably live outside for most of the year – you wouldn’t be comfortable, but you could live. So we may regard fire with less reverence here, just like rain doesn’t mean as much in places where they get 50 inches a year.
In many cases here, heat takes care of itself. You have to heat your home because you don’t have the ambient heat of all those human bodies all the time, but many commercial buildings need to be heated rarely, if at all. That’s not to say we don’t need heat to live – it can get pretty cold out in the desert. People are often not prepared for that. In places like the Midwest the ambient temperature may not change that much over the course of a day, but it virtually always changes here. There can be a 25 or 30 degree difference, which can be nice as long as you’re prepared for it – in many months you’re looking at the difference between 78 degrees and 108. But then there are times like in August where the heat sink effect means that you are only going between 95 degrees and 110. That’s when it’s time to go on vacation.
Previous Elements of Place discussion: “Use water to welcome” • Next in The Elements of Place: “Shelter, then celebrate”
Photos of Camelback Mountain (top) and 2006 Rodeo-Chideski fire (bottom) courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
