Back to school: former merchant housing maven Rodney Friedman gets new respect designing campus housing

Residential Architect, Jan-Feb, 2003 by S. Claire Conroy

"So we abandoned the module. But they were carefully dimensioned houses. No cut plywood, beams a certain length, lots of glass, four corners," he continues. "They took 48 hours to frame and cost $8.95 a foot in the '70s." His builder clients were, consequently, very happy--not only were the houses cheaper to build, they could charge a premium for them. And the buyers loved the cathedral ceilings and soaring staircase volumes. Their 1,200-square-foot houses suddenly felt large and grand.

In those days, there was a market for Modern design--at least in forward-thinking California. "No one was excited about Mission-style," recalls Friedman. "Our career is full of design firsts. But we could only do this with the right clients--cowboy entrepreneurs, not MBAs. Guys who took risks."

stern thoughts

Friedman doesn't see many risk-takers in the merchant housing profession these days. Indeed, he thinks the industry teems with scaredy cats. He's most bitter about what happened down in Orange County, Calif., where he did some of this best early work. Everyone still admires Promontory Point, a 520-unit townhouse and apartment development overlooking the bay in Newport Beach that he designed in 1976. When his client, Berkeley-trained architect Ray Watson left The Irvine Company and Don Bren bought it from the Irvine family, contemporary design eventually bit the dust. Bren's preferred style is Spanish Mission, and that's what he's commissioned for acre after acre of subsequent Irvine development. And the architects who wished to continue working in the hottest market in California gave him what he wanted. "That's why I hate these guys," says Friedman. "They're my friends, but I hate them."

"They got scared," he postulates. "If someone walks in, they fill their expectations. They're happy providing a service. Is it architecture? No, it's trivial."

He blames Post-Modern architects for repopularizing traditional styles and squelching the public's tolerance for Modern architecture. He thinks architects like Robert Stem, Philip Johnson, and Michael Graves cost him much of his housing practice. "Someone asked me recently, do you want to get out of housing?" he recalls. "I said, no, I want everyone else to get out of housing. Cleanse the profession."

Still, Friedman knows you have to please your client to pay the bills. Not all the work he takes nowadays would delight the Bauhaus boys. But he finds a way to tweak each building to make himself happy and elicit a smile from other closet Modernists. "We always leave traces for the trained eye. The window detailing on many of our more traditional dorm buildings, for instance, is clearly not evocative of their period style. They still fit in. Clients can't tell the difference," he says.

corbu for you

Best of all, the work underwrites the jobs he's most excited to land--the civic buildings for small California cities. He's done one for Redwood City, and one for Emeryville that's just a few blocks up Park Avenue from his office. It won a 2002 Gold Nugget Grand award for best office/ professional building under 50,000 square feet. It's a handsome building, one that would make any Modern architect proud. It's also got one of his "traces for the trained eye": "From the rear, it looks like Villa Savoye," says Friedman.