|
Little Red Wagon |
||
|
Copyright © 2001 by Dave Badtke |
||
|
Last Saturday was beautiful. Clear. Bright. Spring broke through, if only for a weekend, and I’m sure that if I had found a high-enough perch, I would have been able to see San Francisco through the morning mist. But there was no time for that. My wife and I were off to a charrette. A what? you say. Une charrette. A cart. A wagon. Off to a wagon? you say, more perplexed than before. I also had to look it up. (www.charrettecenter.com) Students of architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris were given difficult problems to solve in a fixed amount of time—they were given tests. When time was up, they placed their designs, which one can imagine were drawn on large sheets of paper, or perhaps were actual models, into a cart that was pushed through the aisles, perhaps a red cart, une petite charrette rouge à bras, a little red wagon perhaps, pulled by the teacher’s pet or the fellow who had fallen into disfavor, pulling the laden cart as his penance for designs that affronted Parisian aesthetic sense. The word stuck as the name for a design process that embraces holistic brainstorming and visioning sessions during which interested parties and stakeholders throw desires, requirements, city codes, designs and land-use issues into a cerebral hamper—what would we do without large white paper pads on easels?— from which pop, after the usual wonders of meeting prestidigitation, various solutions to ridiculously difficult problems: Les voilà! Well—maybe not. After all, it does sound like design by committee, doesn’t it? Our charrette was run by Nanette Watson, an Oregon developer and real estate analyst who has been active the past decade in smart development and historic housing renovation in the Portland area. She told us a lot about what she has accomplished and about her vision for the Benicia Arsenal. She was a very bright, engaging leader, but I’m not sure she actually led us in a charrette. To begin with, there was no wagon at all, neither a red one nor any of any other color. This sounds petty, I know, but the charrette didn’t go as I had expected. The morning began with an informative bus tour of the Arsenal narrated by Harry Wassmann, historian of the Camel Barn Museum, who seems to know just about everything about Benicia. (If Harry is not writing a book about what he knows or at least making an audio recording of his vast knowledge, we should all stop by the Museum and give him a hard time!) Our last stop was the powder magazine with it’s beautiful sandstone columns and ceiling crafted by French, Italian and Irish stonecutters. The event was held at Reed Robbins’ magnificent Jefferson Street Mansion, where we had lunch. I was lucky to be sitting at the table with Beverly Phelan, Director of the Camel Barn Museum, who recounted numerous Benicia stories. (My comments about Harry’s book and recording career apply equally to Beverly.) The charrette followed, but brainstorming didn’t really happen, perhaps because the two rooms on the ground floor of the Mansion were overflowing with people, Nanette being forced to pirouette in the passageway between the two rooms, and the visioning seemed overly complicated and cloudy, and we never really seemed to get to any design at all. Interesting ideas and desires were offered in abundance by an enthusiastic group, and the meeting ended with the promise of a future report to City Council, though this latter knowledge is hearsay since by this time I had wandered off, my short attention span having commanded my feet to head for the back porch to talk of many things: of trees, and views, and artist’s lofts, and cabbages and kings, and Council members none, and why, save Planning Commissioners two, others hadn’t come, and whether, in the short and long, our city’s leaders have ears. (Remember, it was a beautiful day.) So, absent closure, I decided to fill my own little red wagon with desires and designs. I encourage everyone else to do the same: 1) Pacific Bay Homes should keep the cork oaks, building new homes around them, thinning them to create Zen water views, integrating the trees into the structures, allowing them, if need be, to poke straight through roofs to the sky. 2) And all this faux, Georgian look-alike stuff makes me nervous. The Jefferson Street Mansion, Clock Tower and Commandant’s House are unique and will be all the more so, and treasured more, if Pacific Bay’s designs are inspired. You want people to say there were no creative architects in 2001? 3) And Pacific Bay should restore the Commandant’s House, create a park, bike path and improve the roads. 4) And for goodness sake, let Ms. Robbins have music and weddings and more at Jefferson—write her rights into the code. 5) And next time, when there’s a charrette, hopefully Council Members will choose to attend. I, for one, know they have ears: I’ve seen them. |
||
|
- Dave Badtke can be contacted at: www.CarquinezReview.com; Dave@Badtke.com; PO Box 763, Benicia, CA 94510; or by calling 707-745-5540.
|