This year’s theme “Urban Living Santa Barbara” demonstrates the benefits of an urban lifestyle in Santa Barbara. Projects for this Tour include multi-family, single-family urban infill, mixed use, and live-work housing in the Santa Barbara area. Projects selected for ArchitecTours demonstrate thoughtful planning and design, and appropriate use of products and materials.
Peter Becker Architect
The Vhay-Pedotti Residence and Studio
Once part of an adjacent to the Nationally Landmarked Gonzales-Ramirez Adobe, this historic downtown residence and artist’s studio was originally designed in 1926 by Louis M. Vhay, a well-known artist and benefactor, using materials that were salvaged from the Arlington Hotel, destroyed in the 1925 earthquake. In 1956 Lutah Maria Riggs did a remodel and large addition which was published in Sunset Magazine for its remarkable open kitchen design. The current owner has spent over two years directing a very careful and loving restoration of the buildings and the gardens, along with numerous contemporary upgrades, to bring back a downtown live/work property that was intended to be in the same league as George Washington Smith’s Meridian Studios.
Thompson Naylor Architects
Victoria Garden Mews
The project team – owners, architect and contractor – were committed from the outset to make this project as green as possible. The contractor, a nationally recognized green builder, is also one of the owners and the project visionary. As a result, this project incorporates many green systems and products he has provided for clients for almost three decades as well as many of the most cutting edge technologies currently available. This builder, along with his wife and four of his closest friends, formed a partnership to make this dream a reality.
AB Design Studio
Funk Zone Adaptive Re-use
Adaptive re-use of old warehouse style buildings in the heart of the Funk Zone. Project will have multiple neighborhood and tourist serving tenants, including a new restaurant, wine tasting, wine store and brewery. Features include: rusted re-bar fencing, corten steel and rusted corrugated metal. Also bi-folding doors that provide canvases for local artist within the community.
James Gauer Architecture and Design
Bildsten + Sherwin Design Studio, Inc.
East Carrillo Street Residence
This small but stylish house and garden belong to Mary Lane Scherer and Jim Brous, former New Yorkers who still prefer city living. Designed by James Gauer, with Bildsten + Sherwin as architect of record, the house occupies a deep narrow lot for which the clients requested minimum house and maximum garden. The site plan places a 500 sf garage at the front, a 1500 sf house at the back and a formal garden in between. The architecture is an urbane and gracious sequence of indoor and outdoor spaces defined by simple stucco volumes, built by David Chase and recalling the work of Irving Gill, an early 20th century modernist who reduced the Spanish Colonial vernacular of Southern California to elemental geometric forms.
Peikert+RRM Design Group
Casa de Las Fuentes
Built in 2003, Casa de Las Fuentes is a 42 unit 100% affordable housing complex designed around courtyard style studio and one-bedroom units. Achieving a density of 57 per acre yet providing high quality environment for the residents, this project was designed as an urban infill project with sensitivity to the existing context and prominent location.
Casa de Las Fuentes was developed by the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara to address our community’s housing needs for the low to moderate income downtown workforce. The HACSB has responded with innovative solutions to the most critical affordable housing challenges. With compassion, attention to the environment, and sustainability Casa de Las Fuentes positively impacts their residents’ quality of life.
Peikert+RRM Design Group
Bradley Studios
The recently completed Bradley Studios, owned by the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara, was designed to specifically serve the special needs population in Santa Barbara. The craftsman-style bungalow project is woven seamlessly into the neighborhood and designed around a courtyard serving the 53 efficiency studio apartments. A community room, support services, and offices serve the affordable rental studios targeted for the low and extremely low-income downtown workers or special needs individuals. The project efficiency goals include solar panels and stormwater management consisting of permeable driveway surface and sub-terrain storage for runoff.
Ensberg Jacobs Design Architects
Kimball Residence
This classic 1920’s Spanish style bungalow was designed by architect Jack Myers for Dr. Lawrence Eder. In 1938 decorative ironworker Gunnar Thielst bought the home and added his artistic touches that still remain today. While charming, the two level, two bedroom, one bathroom home had unusual and awkward additions and no internal access between the two levels. The urban creek side lot had difficult sloping yard areas and older electrical and mechanical systems. Renovation and additions were clearly needed to make the house function for a young family of four and to bring the residence into the 21st century. 917 square feet were added to the 1,612 sf house. Except for the living and dining rooms, all the interior and exterior spaces were remodeled.
Ensberg Jacobs Design Architects
Townsend Centennial Craftsman
100 years ago, this charming Craftsman style house was one of the original homes to be built by the Old Mission—just down the street and within view. The gabled roof with signature circular vent, the large entry porch, the dark wood shingle siding, and white eave brackets, fascia boards, and trim is striking for this 1913 home. Also classic were two small bedrooms and one bath a wee bit small for everyday life and especially for family gatherings. The owner needed to gain a master bedroom suite in a way that would preserve the charm of the original house. The skillfully executed second story addition not only preserved this piece of Santa Barbara’s historic fabric, but brought the needed space by maximizing amenities of the constrained structure and site.
Kupiec Architects
Antioch University Urban Campus
Keeping Antioch University in Santa Barbara required the repurposing a 30,000 sf mixed-use property with a long history of commercial vacancy. To accommodate Antioch’s relocation and academic calendar necessitated working very closely and with timely cooperation of city agencies. This fast-track project was completed in less than a year and has strengthened the downtown corridor of Santa Barbara by creating a new educational and cultural center. AUSB’s new environment seeks to reflect the core values of the institution’s mission of social justice by creating a campus plan that maximizes openness, transparency, and environmental stewardship. This design strives to provide students and faculty with visually stimulating spaces that incorporate state of the art technology to foster the energy and spirit of the educational experience, inspiring imagination, inquiry and academic excellence.
DMA/MayerArchitects
the LOOP
The LOOP is an exciting award winning, mixed use student housing project located in the heart of Isla Vista CA, a vibrant college town a stones throw from the University of California Santa Barbara. In partnerships with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and SCE the project team utilized energy and water saving techniques to develop one of the most sustainable student housing developments in California. The LEED Silver project developed on a revitalized Brownfield site, lies on a busy pedestrian corner, with ground floor consisting of 3 commercial spaces, residential lobby, southern California’s first automated puzzle parking lift, and a carshare program. 48 Unique units occupy the three floors above, topped by an multi-use roof deck with unobstructed panoramic views of the Santa Ynez mountains, UCSB campus, and Pacific Ocean.
(TCMC)/MayerArchitects
Yanonali Lofts
This live work project in the city’s ‘Funk Zone’ was allowed to take a formal ‘risk’ and reach for the aesthetic of the converted warehouses along the coast. Commercial spaces are arranged around a courtyard; living spaces above connect with dynamic stairways and bridges. Every loft unit has a large private outdoor space, creating a green ‘pueblo’ near the city’s beaches. Gerhard Mayer lead the design team at the The Conceptual Motion Company (with Ed deVicente and Ryan Mills), and he completed the project for a different owner with his own firm.
