(2) The Beginning

Further along my mother especially wanted to send me to the

Bishop's School in La Jolla, a posh community in San Diego.  Oh

yes, I forgot to mention that I was born and bred in San Diego.  But

I never did manage to get the hang of surfing.  Kind of disgraceful

for a Southern California boy, but there it is.

I had no complaints attending the Bishop's School.  It had a 

spread out campus, and I loved its buildings designed by a

couple of famous early California architects: Irving Gill and

Carlton Monroe Winslow.  (Actually I should say that they were

"transplanted" Californians, in that they were originally from 

the East Coast.)

Anyway, for some unknown motivation on my part I was fascinated

by the buildings at the Bishop's School and in my spare time tried

to find out more about these two architects.  Irving Gill stood out,

in that he actually lived in San Diego.  He started out building

cottages for workers, eventually moving into bigger and better

buildings.  And he was even into what is called the "Arts and

Crafts" movement, which fascinated me and led me to discover

one of America's greatest architects: Frank Lloyd Wright.

By the time my days at the Bishop's School were almost over, I

made mention that I wanted to become an architect.  My father

already had planned that I would go to Stanford, but I put my

foot down and declared that I had already selected California

Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo--a town situated

near the central coast of the State.  My parents were less than

pleased, but I was adamant.  I had done my homework and knew

that the architectural program at CalPoly was one of the best in

the country.  So finally my parents relented, and eventually my

application was accepted--and I was on my way to San Luis Obispo.

I  enrolled in a typical five-year baccalaureate program in

Architecture.  And eventually I began to focus on Environmental

Design.  Following this approach, we learned about integrating

the natural beauty of a given landscape with modern architecture.

Indeed, we even studied really early indigenous architecture,

such as Native American dwellings and transposing their designs

into modern building designs.  And need I say that we also became

well trained learning how to "marry" computer programs with the

proposed fabrication of our building projects.  Of course we weren't

involved in creating real buildings, but rather made models.

One really good part of our architectural program at CalPoly was

spending some time actually going to usually a major city, even

sometimes abroad, to study a famous building and see how it

might play into our thinking.

I chose to go to Canada, where I spent about a month studying

the Vancouver Convention Center West.  As advertised, it was

designed to "bring together the natural ecology, vibrant local

culture and environment, accentuating their interrelationships

through the architecture."  Need I say that this great convention

center impressed me no end.

One of the center's features was a six-acre "living roof."  It was

landscaped and boasted some 400,000 native plants and grasses.

Also this green roof served as an insulator when it came to air

temperatures--reducing heat in the summer and protecting from

heat loss in the winter.  Besides this, this wonderful living roof

actually provided a habitat for birds, insects, and small mammals.

The center also boasted an underwater habitat or artificial reef for

barnacles, mussels, seaweed, starfish, crabs, and other kinds of

fish species.  I found it interesting that the center's architects had

collaborated with marine biologists in this particular part of the

project.

I began to realized with this stay in Vancouver that modern 

architects really had to work with not only other trades, like those

in construction, but also with other professionals in different

disciplines.  This colored my sense of being an architect in an

even more positive and creative way,