Architects at Work on Newport Coast
The Newport Coast development has been a boon to area architects, with thousands of custom-designed, multimillion-dollar homes going up on the seaside hills between Corona del Mar and Laguna Beach.
With architectural fees running 4% to 5% of a home’s construction costs and 2,925 homes now built out of a total of 4,500 planned, The Irvine Company’s premier residential project has generated tens of millions of dollars for the firms doing the designs over the past decade and has become the main source of income for some.
And they’re working for it. Not only do architects have to work with the topography and view lines of the Newport Coast and the needs, wants and whims of the homes’ owners, they have to do all that within design guidelines laid down by The Irvine Company and its chairman, Donald Bren. Specifically, the company mandates a European Mediterranean style.
Newport Coast housing designs are screened by The Irvine Co.’s architectural control committee, which provides workshops that help filter everything that goes on in the area design-wise.
The Irvine Co. has taken brickbats from some architects and academics, who say the company has squandered a chance to create architecture to match the coast’s spectacular views and instead opted for a safe, bland “sameness.”
Evidently, buyers approve of the company’s approach: home prices range from $600,000 to an eye-popping $20 million-plus. And the architects understand the company’s strategy.
“Bren is trying to create a unified environment as opposed to a hodge-podge of many different styles and aesthetics,” said Richard Manion, a partner with Beverly Hills-based William Hablinksi Architecture, who has designed a couple of homes in the area, including an Italian villa-style home in Pelican Crest II. “He’s trying to create a vision.”
“The Southern California climate is very similar to the Mediterranean Sea region so The Irvine Co. was looking for something that fits with that region of the world aesthetically,” said Richard Kranz, who heads up his own firm, Newport Beach-based Richard Kranz Architecture. “They are very defined in what they are looking for with regards to landscaping, as long as it would fit with the aesthetics found in southern France or Italy generally.”
Richard Kranz Architecture has designed several completed houses as well as five that are under construction. The company designs both classical and traditional Mediterranean styles.
“Classical has a little bit more ornamentation borrowed from Greek and Roman times,” Kranz said. “It can incorporate columns.”
Traditional Mediterranean style incorporates more informal architecture with things like white stucco walls popularized by the Santa Barbara style,a 1920s and ’30s revival of Spanish and Mexican architecture.
Architectural firms even ensure that typical landscapes for Newport Coast homes come dotted with freshly planted Italian olive trees and Cypress trees.
The Newport Coast has been a big boost for some smaller firms.
Irvine-based EBTA Architects put its sign on the first house it designed in the area, and that started the ball rolling for the company’s Newport Coast design work.
The company has designed 20 Newport Coast homes, including one of the first homes in Pelican Hill. The Newport Coast accounts for 50% to 60% of the company’s business, said EBTA partner Carlos Elenas.
Elenas echoed the views of other architects that have designed Newport Coast houses.
“The Irvine Co. guidelines offer a lot of flexibility so you can give things your own twist,” he said. “Each of the homes we’ve done comprise a mix of the lot, the view and what the client dictates,so each project presents unique opportunities.”
Manion said architects are seeing a greater interest in authenticity with respect to European Mediterranean architecture by prospective customers, fellow designers and, of course, The Irvine Co.
“I think before, a lot of the work was kind of a Californian interpretation,” he said of some of the Mediterranean-style building that was done in the ’80s and early ’90s.
Elenas also said that past designs were very loose interpretations of the Mediterranean style, with things like big sheets of glass that no longer are permitted.
“The Irvine Company is not allowing that anymore,” he said. “Everything now has to be within the confines of the true Mediterranean style.”
That means no expansive areas of glass or cornered glazing, Elenas said.
“You have to have cut-ups on all the windows,” he said.
To adhere to authentic Mediterranean style, houses have to have a clay roof, preferably with barrel tiles. All the windows have to be vertical in proportion,no horizontal proportions anywhere. The buildings have to have a solid appearance,not transparent.
The original builders along the Mediterranean coast of Europe “didn’t have the technology that we have to build, so everything was thick walls and really heavy punctures for windows,” Elenas said. “To help people take advantage of views we break windows up to give the look The Irvine Company is after.”
The owners have their ideas, too.
“Our older clients are people looking at homes as the last place they’re going to live while our younger clients do think of resale as they build,” said Elenas.
Architects point to a trend of younger buyers looking to create more open areas within the house and to open up areas of a house to the outdoors.
Elenas said the use of courtyards or expanding the living room to incorporate outdoor space has become popular in the area.
“Younger people in the area want their houses more open,they want their kitchens open to the family room,” said Rob Sinclair, a partner with Los Angeles-based Sinclair Associates Architects.
Sinclair’s firm has done 10 houses in the area,half of them with owners and the other half speculative. Around 50% of the company’s work is in the Newport Coast, and the company also has done work in San Francisco, San Diego and Las Vegas.
Many of the area homes also come equipped with state-of-the-art security and home entertainment systems typically more advanced than what most homeowners are accustomed to, he said.
“For example with one system if you go on vacation then the home will automatically replay the previous week of activities precisely as to when a person turned on various lights in various rooms,” Elenas said.
EBTA typically takes a year from the time they start until construction of a house can start, but “we’ve done some projects in eight months,” Elenas said.
Elenas said his firm recognizes that the area eventually will get built out, so EBTA, like other firms in the area, is leveraging its Newport Coast portfolio to pick up work elsewhere in California, including the Bay area and the San Fernando Valley.
“The repeat work we’ve done there has established us as a custom-homes architect,” Elenas said. “In our business, marketing those kinds of homes is extremely difficult because it relies almost solely on word-of-mouth and referral.” n
