…is so rare for contemporary architects as to be almost inconceivable. Where early proponents illuminated the night, electrocuted elephants and made outlandish claims to shape the argument for electrification and pacify a skeptical public, current building practices take electrification as a given, and offer few alternatives to those who wish practice the recently fashionable ethic of do-without restraint.  Furthermore, while numerous practical technologies (and reasons) exist for living without electricity, doing so legally in new construction can in some cases verge on the impossible. Take for example the case of California, a state whose leadership in environmental policy sometimes exudes the well-meaning but inflexible discipline of Captain von Trapp. Although there is substantial debate amongst inspectors as to whether electricity to a dwelling is specifically required, there are a number of requirements within the code that allude to electrical requirements. In the event that your building official is willing to entertain the possibility of a design without electricity, these particular items in the code will take some unconventional thinking to overcome:

Space & Water Heating: The California Building Code (CBC) requires that the space be capable of being heated to a temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit 3 feet above the finished floor in all rooms intended for human habitation. Domestic hot water needs to be provided to kitchens and restrooms. Neither of these are impossible to accomplish, but they do require some thought: while numerous technologies such as wood stoves, non-electric propane furnaces and passive solar collectors can be used to satisfy this requirements, just be sure that no electricity is required for pump actuation or furnace ignition.

Lighting: The CBC requires lighting at particular locations throughout any dwelling, such as within inhabitable rooms, at the top and bottom of stairs, at exterior doors, attics, storerooms and garages. Kerosene, gas or battery powered luminaires may all be able to comply with these requirements.

Exhaust: Restrooms require exhaust ventilation which is normally provided by way of a fan. In the non-electric house, an exterior operable window may satisfy this requirement.

Receptacles: The California Electrical Code requires that power receptacles (outlets) be provided at particular locations, such as within 8′ feet of any point on a wall, adjacent to lavatory and kitchen sinks, etc. What is baffling is that nothing appears to require that they actually be electrified, leading to a situation where in some locales, electrical infrastructure needs to be installed, but need not be powered. Initially troubling, this makes a certain amount of sense from a official’s perspective and mimics the requirements in Pennsylvania for Amish structures, the intent being that if the house is sold to a less intentioned individual, that person is saved the opportunity to electrocute themselves with non-permitted work or hazardous tangles of extension cords. That said, this requirement (if enforced) has the effect of forcing the building to procure and install all the electrical infrastructure for a conventional dwelling, save the service connection to the utility.

Smoke Detectors: The California Health and Safety Code (13113?) requires smoke detectors to be located in specific locations within any dwelling (on each floor, at stairways, in bedrooms, and the hallways that serve them). Some municipalities require that the power source for these detectors be common to each and hardwired to the building’s electrical system (with a battery backup).

Owner-Builder Code: All that said, a few counties in California (Mendocino and Humboldt that I know of) have adopted a discretionary article of the state code, entitled Regulations For Limited Density Rural Dwellings. In these jurisdictions, owner-builders meeting certain criteria (for minimum lot size, for example) are exempt from providing electricity or wiring within their dwellings. The genesis of this provision was extremely contentious - Ken Kern’s seminal The Owner-Builder and the Code contains a fascinating account of the origins of this provision.

And a few words of advice:

These are just the California State requirements - due to the way that model building codes are employed, the building code in force in your city or county may be stricter (or perhaps more lenient) so you will need to do your homework or relive high school and pay someone to do it fore you.  Make friends with your local building official - like bureaucratic Cabbalists, code officials are often eager to engage in hypothetical discussions about loopholes in the code and the ever fleeting concept of “intent”.  But be warned - satisfying the building code may not be your largest problem. Skeptical lenders, and local zoning ordinances may further confound your efforts.

[Stay tuned in the coming days as I hope to be adding relevant code citations: BL.]

…that it is now possible to be bored while traveling 550 miles per hour, 7 miles above the earth’s surface. But anyone familiar with the trials of modern economy air travel knows that in the absence of in-flight entertainment, and the permanent exile of salted peanuts, this is more than merely possible.

Public transportation has always has always excelled at the imposition of boredom. But in the post-9/11, post-profit world of airline travel, what was merely an accidental byproduct of uncooperative scheming by physics, labor unions, and Mother Nature has since been turned into big business business as multitudes of entrepreneurial corporations rush to fill the experiential void - a void that is now only occupied by unhappy passengers waiting to check in, waiting to board, waiting to push back from the gate, waiting to take off, waiting to deplane, and waiting for luggage.

Previously, a proto-industry, not yet mature, specialized only in entertaining the victims of airport hold rooms (the airline term for gate areas) with distractions such as bars, coin-operated televisions, video game arcades, newsstands, duty-free shopping and pay phones. Now, businesses are eager to distract consumers deprived of vacuous romantic comedies on board the plane as well: A vending machine at the Atlanta airport dispenses Ipods; movies and portable DVD players may be rented at one airport and returned at another; and boutique fooderies deliver in-flight meals at expense report prices. Perhaps most insidiously: airlines are beginning to allow mobile phone use while in flight.

For those with the cash to inoculate themselves with such measures, boredom may it seems be prevented. But given our culture’s scant remaining opportunities for boredom, it may be wise to remember Siegfried Kracauer’s admonition:

“If one were never bored, than presumably one would not be present at all, and would thus be just another object of boredom… One would light up on the rooftops or spool by as a filmstrip. But if indeed one is present, one would have no choice but to be bored by the ubiquitous abstract racket that does not allow one to exist, and, at the same time, to find oneself boring for existing within it.”

Incidentally, and in time for your next flight:

The Society of the Spectacle is available here as an e-book.

…the New York Times relates the story of Christopher Bell, musician and somewhat reluctant canoeist. Impelled by high gas prices, Bell has forsaken his Corolla during his summer tour, and is instead gigging between Buffalo and New York on the Erie Canal - infrastructure only slightly more contemporary than his canoe.

Image courtesy of the New York Public Library

…only recently deep.  Via LAist comes the news that Citizen George Wolfe is once again attempting to kayak the Los Angeles River from its modern source (the confluence of two smaller flood control channels in Canoga Park) to its mouth at Long Beach harbor. Wolfe attempted such a trip a year ago only to be foiled by law enforcement - the LA County Department of Public Works prohibits citizens from entering the water for any purpose, and institutionally at least they are consistent: official descriptions of the river indicate that it is regarded as more of a nuisance than a potential site for recreation.

Wolfe’s Aguirre-like foray down the river was provoked by the Army Corps of Engineers, who recently deemed the Los Angeles River to be an “engineered flood control channels” and not a “navigable river”. Remarkably, prior to the Army Corps noble nature interfering, the river was hardly a river at all, and certainly not navigable, at times disappearing beneath the earth or spreading across the landscape to form marshes of some significance. One such swamp is now home to Lawry’s The Prime Rib and Larry Flynt Publications.

A tentative itinerary exists here:

…of Nancy Shebesta, AIA, Architect and Principal of Sustainable Architecture, LLC in Lake Isabella, California. In what can be best described as bureaucratic poetry, the following is a portion of the official transcript of the Kern County Planning Commission meeting of January 26th, 2006.

Res. #14-06
CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT #3, MAP #64-18 – To allow the operation of a yoga institute
(Section 19.16.030.K.2) in an E (1/2) RS MH (Estate - 1/2 acre - Residential Suburban Combining - Mobilehome Combining) District - 145 Moore Avenue, Bodfish - STAFF RECOMMENDATION: APPROVE WITH CONDITIONS - CEQA Guideline: Negative Declaration (MMMP) - (SD #1) - Nancy Ivey by Nancy Shebesta (PP05221)

HEARING OPENED; NANCY IVEY INFORMED THE COMMISSION SHE TAUGHT YOGA CLASSES AT CAL STATE/BAKERSFIELD AND CERRO COSO COMMUNITY COLLEGE. SHE FELT THE PROPOSED FACILITY WOULD BE A GIFT OF GOOD HEALTH TO THE VALLEY. SHE EXPLAINED SHE HAD A HOME OCCUPATION PERMIT AND HAD NOT HAD ANY COMPLAINTS. SHE ALSO EXPLAINED THAT WHEN EDUCATIONAL FUNDING WAS LOW, THERE WAS A STRONG POSSIBILITY THAT HER CLASSES WOULD BE DROPPED. COMMISSIONER BELLUOMINI ASKED FOR CLARIFICATION ON CONDITION 4. IDA BLYLEVEN SPOKE IN OPPOSITION STATING IT MADE HER NERVOUS HAVING STRANGERS WALKING AROUND. SHE WAS CONCERNED ABOUT TRAFFIC AND THAT MOORE AVENUE SHOULD BE WIDENED TO 20 FEET. MARJORY McCLUSKEY WANTED TO LIVE IN A PEACEFUL RURAL COMMUNITY. SHE WAS CONCERNED ABOUT NARROW ROADS AND TRAFFIC. SHE FELT A BUSINESS WAS NOT COMPATIBLE. SHE HAD BEEN CONCERNED ABOUT WATER CONTAMINATION, BUT FOUND OUT THAT WOULD NOT BE AN ISSUE IF THE FACILITY WAS ALLOWED. WALT MUELLER SAID HE HAD PURCHASED HIS PROPERTY IN 1954 AND WAS OPPOSED TO THE PROJECT. HE STATED THE ROAD HAD BEEN PUT IN BY HIM AND MAINTAINED BY HIM. HE STATED HE HAD EXPENDED A LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY DEVELOPING HIS PROPERTY. HE ALSO SAID HE HAD NOT BEEN NOTIFIED OF THE PROJECT. MR. ELLIS LATER STATED MR. MUELLER WAS ON THE NOTIFICATION LIST AND SENT A HEARING NOTICE. MR. MUELLER FURTHER STATED THE PEOPLE IN SUPPORT OF THE PROJECT DID NOT LIVE CLOSE BY. HE WAS CONCERNED ABOUT THE NARROW ROAD AND TRAFFIC. HE ASSERTED THAT IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT FOR EMERGENCY VEHICLES TO RESPOND. JAMES MILLER SAID A COMMERCIAL PROJECT WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA FOR THE AREA. SAFETY AND TRAFFIC WERE ISSUES OF CONCERN. HE SAID IT WAS A GRAVEL ROAD, AND IF THERE WAS A FIRE, LIVES WOULD BE IN DANGER. HE SAID THERE WAS NOT A FIRE HYDRANT OR WATER AVAILABLE TO PUT OUT A FIRE. HE WAS CONCERNED ABOUT COMPLIANCE WITH CONDITIONS AND MONITORING THOSE CONDITIONS. THE COMMISSION HAD QUESTIONS REGARDING LEGAL ACCESS TO THE PROPERTY. THERE WAS DISCUSSION REGARDING RESERVATION OF RIGHT-OF-WAY AND BEING USED BY PERMISSION. DEBRA CHASE SPOKE IN SUPPORT STATING THE APPLICANT PROVIDED A VALUABLE SERVICE. SHE SAID SAFETY WAS AN ISSUE IN THE ENTIRE AREA AND THAT EVERYONE SPEAKING WAS FROM THE KERN VALLEY AREA. SHE ALSO STATED THEY WERE AWARE OF THE IMPORTANCE OF PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT. GARY FISHER, THE APPLICANT’S FATHER, SPOKE IN SUPPORT AND FELT THE PROJECT WOULD HAVE A POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE COMMUNITY. HE SAID HE HAD WATER TANKS FOR FIRE SUPPRESSION. HE ALSO SAID HE HELPS MAINTAIN THE ROAD. MICHAEL CALLEGY SAID DEVELOPMENT HAS GROWN IN THE AREA AND CONTENDED THE INSTITUTE HAS LESS OF AN IMPACT THAN THE ONGOING DEVELOPMENT. HE STATED THE FIRE TRUCKS COULD GET INTO THE AREA. THE COMMISSION ASKED IF MOORE AVENUE PROVIDED LEGAL ACCESS. MR. ELLIS SAID ENGINEERING AND SURVEY SERVICES DEPARTMENT HAD A HISTORY OF ACCEPTING IT AS ACCESS. MIKE MERK SAID THE PROJECT WAS EXACTLY THE TYPE OF SMALL SCALE BUSINESS NEEDED IN THE KERN RIVER VALLEY. HE EXPLAINED THAT PEOPLE WOULD NOT BE WONDERING AROUND. HE SPOKE OF TRAFFIC ISSUES. JENNIFER HAMMER SAID THE PROJECT WOULD BE AN ASSET TO THE VALLEY AND IT WAS A PEACEFUL AND RESPECTFUL PRACTICE. SHE SAID GRAVELED AND NARROW ROADS WERE NORMAL IN THE ENTIRE VALLEY. SHE STATED THAT EXTENSIVE FIRE PREVENTION TECHNIQUES WERE USED. ROBERT LOWE STATED TRAFFIC WOULD NOT BE AN ISSUE. CHRISTINE CORMACK WAS A NURSE AND REFERRED CHRONIC PAIN PATIENTS TO THE APPLICANT’S CLASSES. EMILY DIGGLES SAID SOME ROADS IN THE AREA ARE 16 TO 18 FEETWIDE AND FIRE TRUCKS CAN USE THEM. HEATHER BERRY SPOKE TO THE APPLICANT’S PROFESSIONALISM. SHE ASSURED THE COMMISSION ALL CONDITIONS WOULD BE UPHELD. SHE ALSO SAID FIRE SAFETY IS AN ISSUE AND CONCERN FOR EVERYONE IN THE VALLEY. BILL CHASE STATED MOST PEOPLE HAD EASEMENTS THAT WERE UTILIZED BY OTHER RESIDENTS. HE SAID EVERYONE IN THE VALLEY LIVED IN A FIRE ZONE. NANCY SHEBESTA, REPRESENTING THE APPLICANT, FELT THE APPLICANT WAS FORCED TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF CLIENTS OR WOULD HAVE TO WIDEN THE ROAD. SHE ASKED THAT TWO CLASSES A DAY BE ALLOWED. ALAN SHOLSHOSE SPOKE TO THE INTEGRITY OF THE APPLICANT. SHE STATED THAT PEOPLE ARRIVING OR DEPARTING WERE QUIET. SUSAN STEVENSON SAID THAT PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE VALLEY WOULD ATTEND THE INSTITUTE AND IT WOULD HELP THE VALLEY’S ECONOMIC BASE. SHE SAID SHE LIVED ON A DIRT ROAD AND DID NOT HAVE A PROBLEM ACCESSING BODFISH ROAD. RHONDA STALLONE FELT ALL NEIGHBORS SHOULD SHARE IN THE COST OF THE GRAVEL REPLACEMENT, NOT JUST THE APPLICANT. KATHERINE EVANS SAID MOST CLIENTS CAR POOLED AND FELT THE COMMISSION SHOULD CONSIDER TWO CLASSES. LINDA DIAZ AND PAT DOWELDER FELT THE FACILITY WOULD BE AN ASSET TO THE COMMUNITY AND WOULD HAVE MINIMAL IMPACTS FOR THE BENEFIT THAT WOULD BE GAINED. NANCY IVEY ASKED IF TWO CLASSES, ONE IN THE MORNING AND ONE IN THE AFTERNOON, COULD BE ALLOWED WITH NO MORE THAN TEN STUDENTS PER CLASS. THERE WAS DISCUSSION ON LENGTH OF THE CLASSES. PUBLIC TESTIMONY WAS CLOSED.

THERE WAS A MOTION BY COMMISSIONER BABCOCK TO APPROVE THE PROJECT WITH AMENDMENTS TO CONDITIONS 4 AND 6 AS FOLLOWS: CONDITION 4 – “INSTRUCTION HOURS SHALL BE 8:30 A.M. TO 7:30 P.M. ON WEEKDAYS, WITH A MAXIMUM OF 12 STUDENTS ON THE PROPERTY AT ANY TIME. TWO CLASSES ARE PERMITTED DAILY, MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY; ONE MAY BE HELD IN THE MORNING BETWEEN 8:30 A.M. AND 12:00 P.M. AND ONE CLASS MAY BE HELD BETWEEN 12:00 P.M. AND 7:30 P.M. EACH CLASS SHALL NOT EXCEED 1 1/2 HOURS IN DURATION. ANY CHANGE IN THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS OR INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF CLASSES PER DAY ALLOWED UNDER THIS PERMIT WILL REQUIRE THE APPROVAL OF A MODIFICATION OF THIS CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT AT AN ADVERTISED PUBLIC HEARING.” AND CONDITION 6 – “APPLICANT SHALL APPLY THREE INCHES OF GRAVEL TO ON-SITE PARKING AND OFF SITE ALONG MOORE AVENUE WHERE IT CONNECTS TO THE EXISTING GRAVELED PORTION OF THE ROAD. THE GRAVEL TYPE AND WIDTH SHALL MATCH EXISTING GRAVEL ON MOORE AVENUE. AFTER ITS INITIAL APPLICATION, THE APPLICANT SHALL SUBMIT PHOTOGRAPHS AS VERIFICATION THAT THE GRAVEL SURFACING REQUIRED BY THIS CONDITION HAS BEEN APPLIED. THAT PORTION OF THE ROAD REQUIRING THE APPLICATION OF GRAVEL SHALL BE INSPECTED AND MAINTAINED ANNUALLY.”

THERE WAS A SECOND BY COMMISSIONER WAYNE. THE MOTION CARRIED.

Image of the Kern County Administrative Building via The California Digital Library

…Reyner Banham’s rapturous descriptions of freeway overpasses or Le Corbusier’s exclamations about Buffalo’s grain elevators, infrastructure is often sublime. But wonderment in the built environment is obviously not limited to objects of grand scale, and sometimes the most remarkable (and wonderful) examples are knitted almost invisibly into the fabric of the city.

One such example are the urban oil wells of Los Angeles. Though the development of Los Angeles was first as a ranching community and more famously as the center of the film industry, between 1896 and 1930 Los Angeles was solidly an oil town. In 1923, Los Angeles was credited as producing 1/4 of the world’s total petroleum supply. In a sense, culture in LA was born of oil - some of the city’s most prominent citizen philanthropists such as J. Paul Getty, Armand Hammer and Edward Doheny, won their riches in the oil industry. But even as Los Angeles aged and the growth of the film and aerospace industries diversified the economy, the oil remained.

Though increasingly complicated due to the population growing up around it, the now urban oil wells continued to produce. During periods of low prices, small producers were bought out or abandoned. During periods of scarcity, specialist concerns moved in and reactivated capped wells. Innovations in well drilling technology allowed single well sites to extract from ever larger areas and with greater efficiency, even as the total quantity of oil in the fields diminished.

Now, out in the open or careful disguised between the logistics yards, mini-malls, single family homes and golf courses of Los Angeles, the wells remain, quietly extracting some 75,000 barrels a day. Sometime this fall, I’ll be producing an exhibit detailing this phenomenon in conjunction with the Center for Land Use Interpretation.

…stands the cinder cone known as Amboy Crater. An active volcano as little as 500 years ago, the crater was a notable stopping point on the portion of Route 66 between Ludlow and Needles. Locale lore holds that sometime during the mid-forties a smoke plume was seen pouring out of the cone, prompting authorities to close the road until the smoke’s origin was discovered to be a trash fire choreographed by local teenagers, and not a volcanic eruption.

A more civically minded explosion was contemplated in the early 1960’s - a Los Angeles Times article from June 27, 1963 describes a collaboration between the San Bernardino County Highway Department and the Atomic Energy Commission that contemplated the use of atomic blasts to create a road cut through the adjacent Bristol Mountains. The project was likely related to the AEC’s Operation Plowshare project. Running from 1961 through 1977, Plowshare was intended to readapt cold war nuclear munitions for non-military uses such as the widening of the Panama Canal. Though no public project ever came to fruition, testing for the project yielded remarkable results.

Two miles from the crater sits Amboy, California, a city which has managed to garner media attention unwarranted by its size alone (in 2003 the population generously numbered 7). The entire city was sold on Ebay that same year, only to be lost to foreclosure shortly thereafter later. Amboy’s salvation came as a result of the remains of the Roy’s Drive In complex which comprise the majority of the city’s structures - in 2005 the owner of the Juan Pollo rotisserie chicken restaurant chain purchased the property with promises of restoring the structure and re-opening the gas station. As of last week, water and gas were both available for purchase from a man wearing a sidearm - openly displayed belt holstered handguns are legal in California as long as they are not carried loaded.

Narratives of UFO contact often start with a few common elements. Consider the Ohio’s famous Portage County Sitings as related by Jerome Clark:

Portage County Deputy Sheriff Dale F. Spaur reported for duty at the sheriff’s office in Ravenna, Ohio, at midnight, prepared to work the early-morning hours of Sunday, April 17, 1966. An hour or two later he hooked up with Wilbur “Barney” Neff, a mounted (auxillary) deputy who ordinarily worked as an airport mechanic. THeir routine police duties brought them to the southern part of the county (located in northeastern Ohio, just to the east of Cleveland and Akron) and to a road near Atwater Center where a motorist had collided with a utility pole. They sent the man to a hospital, arranged for the car to be towed, and called in a repairman to fix the pole. Because the morning was chilly, they drove east to Deerfield to buy coffee for themselves and the repairman. They arrived back at the accident scene around 4:45 a.m.

As they drank coffee and chatted with the repairman, they overheard radio traffic between Portage and Summit counties. Radio operators and deputies were chuckling about an Akron woman who had called in a report of a bright object “as big as a house” flying at an alarmingly low altitude over her neighborhood. The three listeners joined in the laughter.

Back on duty, Spaur and Neff noticed a rusted out car parked on the side of the road. Parking their cruiser, Spaur would get out to investigate.

As he walked, Spaur glanced over his right shoulder and observed a moving light visible through trees at the top of a small hill along the road.

[...]Suddenly, without saying a word to one another, the two [deputies] broke for the cruiser at the same moment. When Spaur’s hand touched the door handle, he had the strange thought that the car would vanish. The encounter was so shockingly at variance with any reality Spaur knew of that on some level he felt as if he had stepped into a dream where anything could happen. Once inside, Spaur gathered his wits sufficiently to radio the sheriff’s office and speak with a sergeant, who ordered him to wait there until a car with a camera got to the site.”

Antoine Predock is reputedly enamored with UFO photos. Although I’ve never met the man, I imagine that the grainy photographs of saucers, cigars or delta shapes hovering over the landscape resonate with him for the same reasons that they resonate with me. Like the account above, they show an ordinary landscape, populated by average folks. Really banal shit - parking lots, office buildings, traffic accidents, Richard Dreyfus as an electric company lineman. And then something extraordinary happens.

Most architects are blessed with enough Photoshop skills to do an unconvincing facsimile of UFO photo - similarly, most architects possess the skills to design an unconvincing facsimile of an extraordinary space. For Predock (and for me), one hopes that one day we’ll see the real thing - until then, I’m going to continue post unconvincing facsimiles.

Have an image you’ve created of a UFO and a piece of famous architecture? Send it to me - I’ll post the good ones.