From the functional to the ornate, Central Valley architectural designs take on a myriad of forms, all with one thing in common: Each one started as a concept.
No matter where one looks in Fresno and the surrounding areas, the designs — whether residential, commercial or nonprofit — have been born of client needs, space allocation and the architect’s own imagination.
“We try to accomplish a bunch of things simultaneously,” said Kevin L. Crook, the Irvine-based architect who designs floor plans for McCaffrey Homes in Fresno. “We don’t set out to be Frank Lloyd Wright or this plan or that plan. From a floor plan aspect, it’s more about hitting the square footage (the client) is asking for.”
Though Crook professes a fond admiration for Wright’s designs, cost is king nowadays, and the interior design comes well before the look of the exterior facade.
For the residential designer, Crook said the first goal is to make the most use of space, keeping costs per square foot as low as possible. They literally cut corners because when corners or similar design aspects are created, it takes engineers longer to complete the final floor plan.
“Any time you create corners (within a structure), it costs money,” Crook said. “I’m looking as efficiently as possible to meet (the client’s) criteria, making sure walls stack, plumbing stacks, taking out corners and still having a home everyone wants to live in.”
While square feet are a driving force in single-family home designs, the surrounding environment plays a larger role in multi-family and commercial structures.
Jamie Lee Dronyk, a junior associate at Taylor Teter Partnership, said the biggest influence in a building’s design is the site where it will be located. At the beginning of a project, Dronyk will visit the place of the future structure to get a feel for the surroundings.
“A project should be rooted to its site,” Dronyk said. “Cookie cutter just doesn’t work.”
One of Taylor Teter’s most recent designs, the H Street Lofts in downtown Fresno, was heavily influenced by its industrial location near railroad tracks.
“The project wanted to have a dialogue with the train tracks,” Dronyk said. The multi-family, mixed-use structure was created with that industrial feel in mind. Duct work was kept exposed, and the exterior design was given a rugged technical look while remaining artistic and livable.
Due to the area’s propensity toward vandalism and crime, Dronyk said the building itself was used as a means of security rather than surrounding it with some type of fencing.
“We used the building as a means of security without it looking like a prison yard,” she said.
For Crook, whose designs for McCaffrey recently won a gold award from the Pacific Coast Builders Conference, classic designs can also play a large influence on the look of newer homes.
“I will go into specific communities and study them,” Crook said. “What about them has stood the test of time? The homes didn’t have to be expensive in more austere times. That’s what we’re trying to do today.”
With over 58,000 architectural students enrolled in various programs throughout the U.S., and well over 132,000 architects already in the work force, designers are having to ramp up their creativity and draw on past experience to stay competitive.
It doesn’t hurt to cater to a specific market, either.
Victor Fabionar, a Fresno-based architect, started specializing in the design of community health centers 27 years ago after a client asked him to create his first one.
“I’ve stayed busy,” Fabionar says of his nearly three-decade long career. “I found a niche in community health clinics.”
Though Fabionar will consider the areas in which the building will be erected as an influence on his design, his main concern is the end users: the clinic’s staff and patients.
Because Fabionar grew up in the farm laborer community, he feels a deeper obligation to the clinics, which are often built in rural areas.
“I’m more sympathetic (to clinics),” he said. “I try to provide a more dignified environment.”
Whether it’s a 1,000-square-foot outpatient clinic or a 15,000-square-foot health center like the one he designed in Kerman, Fabionar tries to make sure the floor plans accommodate all the services the facilities will provide.
While it’s hard enough to create a structure that pleases everybody involved, architects face many other challenges in their day-to-day designs.
In residential cases, Crook said it’s getting beyond the cookie cutter template seen in so many of today’s housing developments.
“That’s really the challenge, to come up with (designs) that might be varied in floor plans from one to two stories,” Crook said. “If you can do that in the same community, then you have a very eclectic street scene. That’s kind of what we’ve done.”
There are also budgetary restrictions, especially when dealing almost strictly with nonprofit clients. Fabionar noted construction worker wages have to be 20-30 percent higher when a project is federally funded, and that reduces the funds available for the actual structure even more.
“Nonprofits don’t always have a lot of money, so you have to tailor the design to meet those budgets,” Fabionar said.
Other challenges involve dealing with city governments, coding issues and permits, Drobnyk said. In the end, she said, it always comes back to pleasing everyone.
“It’s getting everyone on board with the design, and finding a balance between everyone’s requirements,” Drobnyk said.
Though each design has many factors, architects say the main influence is generally their own career.
“It all comes back to the same thing,” Crook said. “My major influence is my experience. I’ve drawn so many plans over the years, I know inherently what works and what doesn’t.” |
