Gardner Dailey- Second Bay Region Style
Tradition & Diversity of Work
http://www.gardnerdailey.org/highlights.htm
Gardner Dailey - Berkeley Profile
http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/cedarchives/profiles/dailey.htm
Early Work
Over the course of four decades, Dailey became one of the leading architects in the Bay Area, winning several national competitions having many of his buildings recognized in architecture and shelter magazines. As early as 1929, just three years after establishing his architectural practice, he was featured in the publication California Arts and Architecture for his design for the Arnold House in Hillsborough. This house was built in an eclectic Mission Revival style, and features generous use of stucco and S-shaped roof tiles. Two sets of French doors led out to a private rear courtyard. The simple plan divided spaces into distinct rooms connected by corridors. This building seems to have little in common with Dailey's later, more recognized work.
Rural Residential Work
Although Dailey's departure point was in the use of historic styles, by 1937 he had adopted a keen interest in modernist designers of the period. This interest marked a dramatic shift in his work from his use of picturesque and revival styles to a more modern idiom. The Liebes House, also in Hillsborough, lacks the overt stylistic references of the Arnold House and begins to resemble what became known as Bay Area Modernism, characterized by the use of natural materials, a concern for site and a preoccupation with joining interior and exterior spaces. The Liebes House incorporates its hillside site with an entry level landing, leading down to the formal spaces or up to the private areas of the residence. The house is built of brick on the lower floors and board and batten on the upper level. A low-hipped slate roof hangs wide eaves over the home. The spaces of the building interrelate through the interaction of interior and exterior spaces. The two-story entry hall has no doors, creating a vertical interaction among the spaces. On the first floor, a raised patio is accessed from both the living room and dining room, providing both an exterior space and a connection between the two rooms. A covered loggia and a landscaped entry area also provide inhabitable exterior spaces for the home. Lacking any overt decoration, the only grand gesture in this well-planned but humble home is a two-story window wall on the rear wall of the entry space. The large paned window punctuates the building and draws attention to the center of the composition.
In the 1938 Lowe House in Woodside, one can observe further refinements in Dailey's residential modern work. Sited on a gentle rise, the house is one-story and roughly T-shaped in plan. Exterior walls are wood, finished with concrete. Bands of windows divide the lower walls from the deeply overhanging hipped roof. As a one-story home, this project lacks the sectional interest of the Liebes House, but again, the main entry space is the central focus of the plan, located where the leg and the crossing of the "T" meet. The plan is divided simply, with private bedrooms in one end of the crossing, kitchen and servant spaces in the other, and the living room, the main entertaining space, in the leg of the "T". Again, a large terraced area is nestled in the corner of the plan connecting the living and dining rooms. The Lowe House attracted much attention in the press, and House Beautiful awarded it first prize in the west in 1938.
The homes that Dailey built for the next 15 years shared much in common with the early Liebes and Lowe Homes. Built in rural areas, these sprawling one- to two-story homes generally featured the use of natural materials, especially redwood. These homes generally were sheltered by hipped roofs ranging in depth, increasing as sites moved closer to the sun-beaten central valley. In plan the homes were usually made of two or three legs, with a formal entryway linking them. In addition, the entryways were carefully designed to blur the line between interior and exterior. Exterior paving materials flowed under the door and into the interior vestibule. Exterior entry areas were carefully arranged and landscaped, usually covered by a portion of the building. Plantings were frequently located near the door on both sides. Exterior patios or loggias spanned between legs of the building, creating exterior spaces and connecting interior spaces. While large windows frequently served as the focal point of a design, they never overwhelmed the walls.
Dailey was also a proponent of "the room without a name," frequently called the living room on drawings. Unlike a formal sitting room, this room could be comfortably inhabited by residents and easily converted into an entertaining room for guests. This informal attitude, as well as a desire to harmonize a home with its site, connected Gardner Dailey with his modernist counterparts. He encouraged his wealthy clients from Marin County to Modesto to build his elegant version of the "California lifestyle." These homes exemplify much of what is regarded today as Bay Area Modernism.
Gardner Dailey's urban residences are less confident than his rural residences. Early on in his career, he developed a solution to the sprawling rural residence and later commissions gave Dailey the opportunity to adapt and improve upon this basic design. His various urban residences, however, did not show a great deal of commonality or continuity. Dailey most successful urban residence was a small house built in Pacific Heights for Walter Heil, the director of the De Young Museum (1944). The home is set in the rear of a narrow, steep lot and the majority of the space is reserved for a garden. Even the garage, necessarily located at the street, is set into the existing hill and has planting on its roof. Entry into the home is on the middle level, with formal spaces above and bedrooms below. This arrangement not only reserves a great deal of the land for the garden, but also provides magnificent views for the majority of the living spaces.
The front façade of the Heil House is white plywood, while the other elevations are stained redwood. On the front, the building is only two stories high, with the lower floor built into the hill. The second floor entry area is cut out from the face of the façade, and the third story hangs above it, creating an exterior vestibule which shelters visitors and blurs the lines between interior and exterior. The main front door is set at a 30-degree angle to the face of the façade. A secondary door is also located in this alcove, parallel to the face of the building. Set on the face of the façade, two French doors lead from the entry area and a bedroom directly outside to the lush garden. On the upper story, the front façade has two windows, one high rectangular window located above the sink, and a large second window, more correctly described as a conservatory space, jutting a few feet out from the face of the building and providing floor to ceiling fenestration in the sunroom. The conservatory windows also correspond to skylights in that area. On the rear façade, ribbons of windows mark each level, and the third story again protrudes out from the second floor. A single door on the first floor provides access to the steep hillside at the rear. The building has a flat roof, making the entire composition appear rather cubic. In lieu of any level of exterior ornament, the large protruding conservatory window becomes the central focus of the composition.
Within the house, a U-shaped stair connects the three levels and dictates, in large part, the arrangement of rooms. By using the stair as a divider, Dailey reduces the number of building elements necessary, simplifies the plans and unifies the house. A clear and efficient plan allowed Dailey to pack generous interior spaces into a small footprint. By saving the greater portion of the lot for a garden, and providing ample access between the house and garden, Dailey approximates the relationship of interior and exterior that worked so well in his country homes. In addition to the lush private oasis to the front of the house, the rear windows provide incomparable views of the San Francisco Marina, Bay and the Marin Headlands, carving out a home with both a rustic relationship with the land and a sophisticated appreciation for the city.
Later Civic and Institutional Projects
While best known for the defining influence he had upon Bay Area modern homes, Gardner Dailey worked on a number of larger public projects over the course of his career, beginning with the Brazil Pavilion at the Treasure Island Exposition of 1939. Clearly modern in design, the main façade of the elevation consists of a two-story vertical space, with a mural of Brazilian life covering the façade. A one-story wall intersects the building on one side and emerges from the other, as if woven into the structure. At the same time, Dailey worked on the Biltmore Beach and Cabana Club in Santa Barbara. Unlike the straightforward brand of modernism seen in the Brazilian Pavilion, the beach club is closer to Miami Streamline Moderne in spirit, with a hexagonal tower marking one end of the main façade.
During World War II, Dailey's office had several government commissions. In 1941 his office designed a system of mass-produced building elements to quickly erect barracks buildings. In 1942 his office designed and built the West Coast Maritime School, a complex of barracks, classrooms and dining facilities clustered around a large, trapezoidal open space. The buildings, designed and built quickly as part of the war effort, were praised as "(one of) the top jobs produced for temporary war use." The majority of the buildings were built on stilts, making effective use of land contours, while minimizing the temporary complex's impact on the site. Existing trees were also incorporated into the building to further soften the blow of the building on the land. Even in this large complex, Dailey focused on creating a sympathetic relationship between the building and its site.
Dailey's most prominent public building was the West Coast Headquarters of the Red Cross (1948). The unadorned exposed concrete building was rather unassuming from the main façade. The beauty of the building came in its relationship to a central courtyard in the center of the complex. The office space in the building was designed as one large room with desks arranged within it to facilitate office communication and allow maximum views into the central court. On the roof of the building, a sun deck wrapped around the building providing an additional exterior area for employees. Even in his office buildings, Dailey provided both a constant view of natural forms and an exterior space for employees to use.
Later in his career, the office of Gardner Dailey became much more involved in large institutional projects. In 1943 Dailey became the chief architect-engineer for the Amazon Division of the Rubber Development Corporation of Brazil. In the 1950's the office designed a courtyard -apartment building for American Embassy personnel in the Philippines. Dailey also did a considerable amount of building for the University of California. In addition to several buildings on the Berkeley campus, Dailey's office created the long-range development plan for the Davis campus and built the initial campus buildings.
Dailey wrote little about his buildings or the overarching theory that informed his design. When asked by Architectural Record about the existence of a Bay Area Style, Dailey responded that, "...if there is a Bay Area Style it is because there are and always have been Bay Area People." Further, he credited San Francisco's geographical distance from western culture centers, the frontier spirit of both architects and clients, a native commonsense and the influence of the "Orient" in creating what could be seen as a distinctive "Bay Area Style."
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