At four in the morning a few nights ago I found myself compelled to worry about the Trancas Park project.
To start with, I’m happy over the three million dollars being allotted for the project and also pleased if the working drawings have not yet been started. Hopefully, there is still time for a design change, because the Park project is like a pair of ill-fitting shoes, creating blisters and corns on the feet of wearers.
I have been a long-time architect in the City of Malibu, and since I’ve made my personal and working life here, consider Malibu my territory.
Though this park project is much too big and different for my involvement, I think I do know the proper procedure to get a good park done. With survey and geology on hand: Write a program in a joint meeting with the community getting down all thoughts and opinions, however outlandish, including the budget; make one, two, three or 10, if necessary, rough sketches strictly following the written program and lay them all out on the table for any and every comment (assuming, of course, only members of the community interested enough to come to the meetings will be the clients; probably represented by a member or members of the City Council.); under the theory we need all the brains we can get, at the end of the presentation only one of the designs proving practical and appropriate will be selected; working drawings, permits and building following.
In meetings of this sort, it is probable that some clients might describe something ridiculously beyond budget, impractical according to the site and inappropriate in some other way. The professional should guide the client in these matters while producing a cohesive, economic, state-of-the art design.
Ron Goldman, an award-winning professional architect working in Malibu, as well many other outlying communities, should not be criticized for his quick solution. He grasped the heart of the project immediately and came up with an outstanding design. Professionals do this. They see the hearts of problems quickly and come to correct solutions right away.
The 25-foot cuts and 10-foot fills of the original design, gouges and destroys the already existing flat land that is its natural gift. If a park is to look like it grew there, existing contours must be gently tailored and groomed and the site treated with respect, not bulldozed into something shamefully unnatural.
In architectural as well as life matters, I must know the fine line between opposites, particularly between reasonableness and unreasonableness, expediency and allowing necessary time to be correct, significant and insignificant economic savings, practicality and impracticality, and ignorance and mindfulness. It is important I stay on the right side of my line and though lines may be different for individuals, compromise can only be made through persistent explanations, time and motivation to find an intelligent compromise. It is my hope that such reasoning will take place before a huge mistake comes into reality.
Doug Rucker