Vernon DeMars, 97 - Architect Helped Start Design College at UC Berkeley
Bob Feigel
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-demars7may07,1,3403498.story?coll=la-news-obituaries
OBITUARIES
Vernon DeMars, 97; Architect Helped Start Design College at UC
Berkeley
By Mary Rourke - Los AngelesTimes Staff Writer
May 7, 2005
Vernon DeMars, who helped establish the College of Environmental
Design at UC Berkeley and designed several prominent buildings on the
university's campus, died April 29 of complications from a stroke. He
was 97.
DeMars, who was also one of the first Modernist architects to design
housing projects for migrant workers in Northern California, died at a
hospital in Oakland, said Kathleen Maclay, a spokeswoman for UC
Berkeley.
DeMars was known for his "planned chaos" approach to designing
multiple dwelling spaces, in which he placed buildings of different
shapes, sizes and styles side by side. In his view, European
Modernism's uniform structures and grid-patterned layouts were too
sterile.
He put his theory to practical use as a member of Telesis
Environmental Group, a collective of San Francisco-area architects,
landscape architects and city planners that he helped found in 1939.
The group designed a plan to expand the Bay Area that took into
account transportation, landscaping and environmental concerns as well
as housing and commercial space. They recommended that bankers,
lawyers and technology experts be included in such projects from the
early stages.
The group's proposal for the development of San Francisco was
exhibited under the title "Design for Living" at the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art in 1940 and had an influence on post-World War II
development projects for the city.
"Telesis offered a rational growth plan for the Bay Area," said
Harrison Fraker, current dean of the College of Environmental Design.
"The idea of inter-collaboration is why this college was formed."
Thanks in part to DeMars, the college's program includes courses in
architecture, city planning and landscape architecture. He was
chairman of its architecture department from 1959 to 1962.
DeMars conceived his ideas about variety and personal detailing for
urban development projects as the district architect for Western
states for the government-sponsored Farm Security Assn. from 1937 to
1943. He designed low-income housing for migrant workers in Yuba City
and Porterville, Calif., and in Chandler, Ariz. Fraker said that
DeMars used the most up-to-date wood-frame technology on the projects
and worked with architect designer Garret Eckbo, a pioneer of modern
landscape architecture.
The most successful of DeMars' early projects was Easter Hill Village,
a public housing development in Richmond, Calif., that he designed
with architect Donald Hardison and landscape architect Lawrence
Halprin in 1954.
The complex mixed apartments and townhouses in a carefully planned
environment with curved roads and public gardens. There were front and
back yards and outdoor clotheslines, luxuries for low-income housing
at the time.
A number of architects and their students toured Easter Hill Village,
which came to be seen as a forerunner of upscale planned communities
of the 1980s and '90s. The American Institute of Architects singled
out the complex in 1957 as an example of "American architecture at its
best."
DeMars, who was born in San Francisco, graduated from UC Berkeley in
1931 and spent a year doing graduate studies in design at the
university. He worked as a visiting professor in architecture at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1947 to 1949 and went to UC
Berkeley in 1951, first as a lecturer and then as a full professor of
architecture. He later became chairman of his own department.
In 1964, he was one the architects who worked on the design for
Wurster Hall, which houses most of UC Berkeley's College of
Environmental Design.
He was also one of several architects who designed a complex of four
buildings on campus: Zellerbach Hall for lectures and performances,
Eshleman Hall for student government offices, the Martin Luther King
Jr. Student Union and the Cesar E. Chavez Student Center, which
supplies study spaces. The project was completed in 1967.
DeMars retired in 1975 and became a professor emeritus of
architecture. He also received a lifetime achievement award from the
American Institute of Architects' California Council in 2003.
DeMars' work was included in a number of exhibits that featured
progressive approaches to multiple dwellings. "Built in the U.S.A.
1932-1944" opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in
1994. "10 Buildings in America's Future" opened at the American
Institute of Architects in Washington, D.C., in 1957 and later toured
the Soviet Union.
His wife, Betty Bates, an artist and costume designer whom he married
in 1940, died before him. He had no immediate survivors.
Contributions in his name can be made to the College of Environmental
Design, c/o Lawrence Lawler, College Relations, College of
Environmental Design, UC Berkeley, 235 Wurster Hall, MC 1820,
Berkeley, CA 94720-1820.
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." - Woody Allen
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