Three (actually four) Architects
The three architects that designed Bauer Wurster Hall had never worked together before and never worked together again. The design process was fraught to say the least, but this again was William Wurster’s intent. A mistrust of unanimity underlay his belief that a variety of perspectives would elicit good design.
University officials were wary of design by committee, but this was Wurster’s chosen method, based on an experience when serving as dean of architecture at MIT in the late 1940s. Asked by MIT to recommend a design team for a planned university building, Wurster suggested assembling a group of five un-like-minded architects from the MIT design faculty, including Vernon DeMars, then a visiting professor. The completed project, a 12-story apartment building thereafter called 100 Memorial Drive, ultimately won recognition and numerous design awards. The MIT design team remembered a long and contentious road to consensus, but Wurster conveniently forgot this, emphasizing the value of a design process engaging “strong people, each with a different slant.”
Wurster never articulated the specific reasons he chose DeMars, Esherick, and Olsen to design the building that would later bear his name, but all had been hired to the Architecture faculty by him. Looking back, DeMars speculated that he and Esherick were chosen for their humanist approaches and Olsen for his formalist standpoint, which could act as a foil for the other two’s romantic tendencies. In turn, Esherick saw his and Olsen’s concrete and rational approach to building circulation and planning in contrast to DeMars’ tendency to the picturesque and experiential. When questioned on the potential difficulties of the arrangement, Wurster was undaunted. “At least,” he said, “they can work at cross-purposes together.”
Vernon DeMars
Vernon DeMars was born in San Francisco and earned his BA in Architecture from UC Berkeley in 1931. Between 1936 and 1942 he served as District Architect for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) designing schools, community centers, and affordable housing for migrant farmworkers in California. In 1943 DeMars joined the National Housing Agency in Washington DC. Following World War II he became a visiting professor at MIT and then in 1953 joined the Architecture department faculty at UC Berkeley, where he taught until 1975.
DeMars’ architectural practice revolved around large-scale urban projects, with an emphasis on housing and community development. He formed several partnerships with architects, including those with Donald Reay, John G. Wells, and Carl Maletic, but was also a founding member of Telesis. His major projects included a general plan for Diamond Heights, Easter Hill Village public housing, and San Francisco’s Golden Gateway development.
At the time Wurster selected him for the design team, DeMars had just won the design competition for the new UC Berkeley Student Center in collaboration with Donald Hardison.
Joseph Esherick
Joseph Esherick was born in Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in architecture in 1937. He moved to San Francisco the following year where he worked part-time for structural engineer Walter Steilberg before securing a full-time position in the office of Gardner Dailey. Esherick opened his San Francisco architectural firm in 1946 and taught at UC Berkeley from 1952 until 1985.
Esherick was a major influence on residential design in the Bay Area.He established a partnership with George Homsey, Peter Dodge, and Charles Davis in 1972, and the firm became Esherick, Homsey, Dodge, and Davis (EHDD). Esherick’s major projects include numerous residences, the store and demonstration houses at Sea Ranch, the Cannery in San Francisco, UC Santa Cruz’s Stevenson College, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
When Wurster tapped him to join the design team, Esherick had just spent an extended time with Louis Kahn in Pennsylvania. Kahn was a friend of Esherick’s uncle, Wharton Esherick, who was a well-known sculptor and custom furniture designer. Kahn’s influence can be seen in the chunky structural expression in Esherick’s McIntyre House in Hillsborough.
Donald Olsen
Donald Olsen was born in Minneapolis and received his BA in Architecture from the University of Minnesota in 1941. He won a scholarship to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design but had to defer with the outbreak of World War II. During the war years Olsen found himself in Richmond, CA where he worked at the Kaiser Ship Yard designing large manufacturing and office buildings as well as housing, railway systems, fire stations, and schools.
Once the war ended Olsen obtained his Master’s in Architecture from Harvard, graduating in 1946. After a brief stint in the office of Eliel and Eero Saarinen in Michigan, Olsen returned to Berkeley where he worked for a brief time for Ernest Kump, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and finally Wurster, Bernardi, & Emmons. In 1954 Olsen began his own practice and joined the Architecture faculty at UC Berkeley, where he taught until 1989.
Olsen’s career focused heavily on residential design. Inspired by teachings of the Bauhaus and the curriculum of Walter Gropius while studying at Harvard, Donald Olsen transported the International Style of modernism to the Bay Area. Olsen’s unwavering loyalty to modernism drove his career as a practicing architect and an educator.
Donald Hardison
Given the difficulties of an artificially assembled design team, it is hard to believe it originally had four members. The architect Donald Hardison was selected by Wurster to join DeMars, Esherick, and Olsen in the design of the new building. Although Esherick had never before met him, Hardison had a close professional relationship with DeMars, the two having worked on large projects in the past and recently joined for the winning competition entry for the new student union complex. Hardison was on the team, Esherick suspected, because all of the other team members worked at a smaller scale, and “Bill didn’t think that any of us could do the construction drawings” for such a large project. Hardison made his best effort to negotiate the divergent priorities of the participants but ultimately left the design team in May 1960.