Laguna Beach landslide (modern design quot;problemquot;)

Hi all - not sure if this is the right forum but nothing else seems to quite applicable. (if there is a more likely forum please let me know!)

I was reading a newspaper article by By Dan Weikel and Jeff Gottlieb of the
Los Angeles Times on 6/3/05 about the recent mudslide in Laguna Beach CA - some comments about one particular modern house that some people think may have been the cause of the disaster got me thinking about how unusual or modern designs are accepted (or not accepted) in established neighborhoods. Here are a few quotes from the article:

It sat on an unstable hillside, 6,300 square feet of concrete, stucco and glass overlooking the ocean -- an embodiment of the California dream, and to some an oversize symbol of coastal development run amok.

By Bluebird Canyon standards, the low-slung modernist house at 925 Oriole Drive was a palace that dominated the hillside like a miniature Getty Museum, dwarfing nearby homes.

But the mansion, built by investors in 2001, never sold and has never been occupied. Defects riddled the property, and the super-size house insulted the sensibilities of residents who dubbed it ``the mausoleum'' and thought it too big for the geologically sensitive area....Even before the house went up, its proposed design irked Bluebird Canyon residents. They showed up in droves at city Design Review Board meetings in June 1998 with pictures of the ocean views they would lose permanently. Others said the proposed home's scale would not fit into the neighborhood...

In another example closer to my own house in Los Altos - a very interesting very modern home with large glass roll-up industrial garage doors for open air living has been dubbed Jiffy-Lube by many of the folks living in more traditional houses nearby. I personally think it is a great design and much better than the Red Tile Roof/Stucco/Fake Tuscan McMansions that seem to be replacing most of the older, smaller houses in the area.

Any thoughts?

From what I can recall from the one picture I saw, this appeared to be a rather densely populated area, i.e., houses were close to each other. As such I think 6,300 sf is just ridiculously overscaled; I don't care what it looks like. And especially being in a relatively environmentally fragile area, I think it's particularly tacky. A McMansion by any other name...

As for the Jiffy Lube house... at least you can say it is an iconic house, albeit, a rather dubious distinction. Just because it's modern does not mean it's not ugly. But if it is as interesting as you say it is and people prefer their faux architecture houses, then so be it. As you know, the vast majority of people in this country have bad taste.

Agreed - this was the wrong design for that site (and it was poorly built, improperly financed - and was never occupied or sold!)

Having a remote or semi-rural location for creative and modern design is easier but not always possible. A lot of those wonderful Dwell examples seem to be located on 40+ acre plots.

Some communities have architectural review boards and/or some sort of public criticism process that can really hamper materials selection, inventive design or even color choices. I tried to use steel framing in a Palo Alto house but was advised away from that choice because the city inspectors are not familiar with that sort of residential construction.

Overscaled is overscaled no matter the design type. The Dallas City Council is set to vote on an Residential Stabilization Overlay Zone ordinance that would give neighborhood residents more say on the scale of infill projects.

[url href=http://www.preservationdallas.org/]Preservation Dallas[/url]

It is important to understand that any 'design' issues with the Laguna slide are engineering and planning issues more than architectural issues. Bad soil and overpopulation of the hillside were the real problem not the aesthetic of the houses.

Good response to site conditions might have helped, but piling a bunch of houses, pools and roads on unstable soil is the real issue.

I agree...I doubt the aesthetics of the house were the issue, but rather the engineering. I'm also sure it was way out of scale for the neighborhood. That and all these houses out in SoCA are build on mud hills. They're all sliding into the ocean. I don't think any of the hills in the area were really meant for building on.