ARCHITECT AARON GREEN
When Joe Eichler met architect Aaron Green --
a 'lost' Eichler development that broke the design mold

From the pages of the Eichler Network newsletter
By David Weinstein

With its soaring, beamed cathedral ceiling topped by a skylight, the Mischel house of Palo Alto could be a church. It is, in fact, an Eichler home -- but with a difference. Designed by architect Aaron Green in the early 1960s, the home is unique in the Eichler canon for several reasons.

Most noticeable are the stylistic differences. Thanks to its shingled, pyramidal roof with-broadly projecting eaves -- instead of Eichler's usual flat or gabled composition roofs -- the Mischel house resembles a tent. The shingles provide a historically evocative, woodsy warmth and deliberate drama that contrasts with Eichler's usual straight lines and understated cool.

The Mischel home is also unique architecturally because it represents the closest Eichler ever came to working with his hero Frank Lloyd Wright. Green (1914-2001), a loyal Wrightian, ran the master's West Coast office from 1951 until Wright's death in 1959, overseeing such major Wright projects as the Marin Civic Center while also running his own practice. It was Wright's only branch office.

The home has a unique history that opens the door on a lost Eichler community -- designed but never built -- that would have been both startling and playful and stylistically unique in the Eichler canon. A 1961 site plan calls the neighborhood 'The Highlands' and shows 59 homes, but other documents indicate that up to 99 homes were planned. They would have been built on the northwest section of Eichler's San Mateo Highlands, which began construction in 1956.

The homes would have been built on Laurel Hill Drive and Court, Seneca Lane, and Westpoint Place. Eichler later filled some of these lots with homes designed by architect Claude Oakland. "They broke the mold a bit for Eichler work," says Jan Novie, president of Aaron G. Green Associates, Inc. "They got a little curvilinear." Novie worked with Green until his death.

The Mischel home was a prototype for one of three Highlands models and was dubbed the 'Sunspot,' for its skylight. Another model, the 'Arrow,' featured a V-plan with a powerfully diagonal gable roof that suggested a house about to shoot through the air. The third plan, the 'Semicircle,' would have been the only curvaceous house Eichler ever built. Its wall of floor-to-ceiling glass formed an ellipse, opening onto a deck. Architect Daniel Liebermann, who worked on the project at Green's office, calls this design "the frying pan."

The Mischel house appears to be the only home ever built using a design from this subdivision. It is not known why Green's designs were never built. It may have involved the cost of developing the hillside lots, construction costs associated with Green's plans, or both. How the project started is clearer.

Eichler, who'd had his modernist epiphany while living in Wright's Bazett house during World War II, had always wanted to work with Wright. Green did a later addition to the Bazett house. Legend has it Eichler approached Wright early on and was turned down. Liebermann's story is typical. Before contracting with Anshen and Allen at the start of his homebuilding career, Liebermann suggests, Eichler went to Wright and Green in their shared San Francisco office. "Probably they thumbed their noses at him," he says. "They didn't know Eichler. He was a spec builder."

What is for sure, however, is that Eichler approached Green in the late '50s or early '60s for site planning and design for the Highlands. Green was as Wrightian as you could get. "Everything I know about architecture I know from Frank Lloyd Wright. There is no question about it. That is my whole direction," Green told Tobias S. Guggenheimer, author of "A Taliesen Legacy: The Architecture Of Frank Lloyd Wright's Apprentices."

But like all of Wright's top followers, rather than copy Wright, Green incorporated Wright's principles of organic architecture into his own style. "Organic architecture has to do with relating to the immediate site, the client's program of needs, the climate in which the building exists, a natural and logical use of materials, whether structural or aesthetic," he told Guggenheimer. "It is a very direct, simple philosophy that I can't see how anyone could deny."

Green carved out a niche of his own, and was particularly known for environmentally sound designs that blend in well with the landscape. Green's designs were bolder than Wright's in expressing their underlying structure, using structural elements for rhythmic decoration.

He did large public buildings, about 50 individual homes throughout California, and large public housing projects including Marin City near Sausalito and the New Hunters Point Community in San Francisco. "He was very proud of it," Liebermann says of Marin City. "He really tackled it in a very noble way. There was nothing patronizing, that it wasn't important architecture, that he was going to build a bunch of barracks there. He was going to build permanent, fireproof, proud, handsome, concrete buildings."

Liebermann was also a Wrightian, having apprenticed with Wright at Taliesen. "In some respects I think Aaron's earlier smaller buildings were better than Wright buildings," Liebermann says. "They were a little more open and a little quieter and a little smoother. They weren't Wrightian cookie cutters," he says. "They were subtle interpretations of the basic genre."

Berry von Hungen Groth, an architect who worked for Green in the early 1960s, says Green "was equally good at every facet of architecture, which is rare, very rare. When Aaron would conceive of a building, he thought of the structure, he thought of the volume, he thought of the overall, he thought of the site. Sometimes he would go out and stay overnight at the site to see the changes of the light."

Green was a superb draftsman and artist, and when he hunched over his drafting table with a client or draftsman, von Hungen Groth says, "He worked very much like Mr. Wright." He was also a hands-on builder when need be, Novie says. "He loved to build. He was just great at it." When one client faced financial problems midway through a job, he says, Green finished the construction with his staff.

Green, a dapper dresser, was well liked by clients and fellow architects. Although Green emulated 'Mr. Wright,' as everyone called the master, Green skipped the formality. Many people called him 'Aaron.' "Aaron was a great guy, sort of a father figure to my generation," Liebermann says. "During the war, he was a pilot, a Flying Fortress, so he was kind of a hero to us."

Green's was a busy office at the start of the 1960s, overseeing the Marin County Civic Center, a complex that presented site challenges and was mired in controversy. (Some county politicians, who had never liked Wright from the get-go, tried to halt construction mid-way through.) Green had to handle the project on his own because Wright had died just as construction was starting.

Liebermann says Green gave him the opportunity to do site planning and design work. Liebermann worked under Green's watchful eye, and says he designed in the Green style. Also working on the project were other architects from the office, including the late Donald Hoppen, and Ted Matoff. Novie, who is attentive to Green's legacy as Green was to Wright's, says Green used his assistants merely as draftsman, and provided all the creative direction himself. And von Hungen Groth asserts: "If it came out of Aaron Green's office, it was an Aaron Green design."

Despite other demands on his time, Green remained intensely involved with the building of the Sunspot model, and attentive to details, Mischel remembers. He became friendly with Green, and later had him design an addition and pool and terrace. In later years, when Green lectured at Stanford he would bring students by to visit the house.

Liebermann, 73, had worked as a landscape architect, and that helped him deal with the steep site, he says. He was also familiar with Eichler homes, having landscaped close to 50 of them. Eichler's original approach to the Highlands site was anything but organic, Liebermann says. "He was going to build a typical Eichler one-story benched slab flatland house on this roll site by creating massive benches."

But the grading bids came in high. That may be why Eichler came to Green, Liebermann suggests. Green's solution -- minimal grading, dividing the site into three gradiant zones, and developing one model for each zone -- the Arrow for the steepest, then the Semicircle, and the Sunspot for the least steep. The master plan involved pie-shaped or triangular lots set in cul-de-sacs, and driveways that approached the houses from above. Homes were arranged for privacy. They looked out at the view, Liebermann says, but not at each other. Most had southern exposures for maximum light and warmth. Dirt that needed to be excavated was bermed for additional privacy.

The goal: "How to do an economical development, tract if you will, which is the least disturbance of the site," Liebermann says, "and the buildings were derived from that site. One of them actually didn't dig in very much, it pretty much floated over because the site was so steep," Liebermann says of the Arrow. "The other two adapted to the site, with very little grading."

The Arrow was a bridge-like structure "out on stilts, a big platform," he says, "with a partial lower floor with bedrooms. The whole thing was a gable." "The principle grading involved the middle design," he says of the Semicircle, "which is the most dramatic one -- which is sort of like my typical building. "Take a frying pan and saw the pan in half, you have half a pan and a handle. Make the handle into the carport. The half-a-pan is two stories, the lower half are the bedrooms, the living room was upstairs." The Arrow and Semicircle were two-story plans with open living areas above and bedrooms below. Both floors had radiant heat.