Whitney Sander Talks about Green Building

Whitney Sander came Center Stage with Mark Gordon to talk about his work in the creating greener buildings.

Before founding Sander Architects, LLC, in 1987, Sander received his Masters in Architecture at Yale University, and was in the Peace Corps in West Africa from 1981-1983. Since 1991, he has taught Architecture and Art classes at Yale, UC Berkeley, California College of the Arts (San Francisco), and Woodbury University. As an architect Sander is the recipient of numerous awards and honors and is considered a leader in green architecture.

Profile:Sander Architects is the international award-winning firm whose approach to contemporary residential design has been making waves in the architecture world. Their Hybrid House uses components of prefab technology to create homes that are custom designed for each client. Homes that are not only green but also very high design. This is a time of extraordinary change for practitioners in the design fields and Sander Architects is a young exciting firm determined to be at the forefront of green architecture.

Recognition:Sander Architects has been awarded the Dedalo Minosse International Award for Architecture in 2002 and 2004, along with Pritzker Prize winners Richard Meier and Hans Hollein. Numerous other national awards include AIA awards in 1996 and 2003, Architecture Magazine's Home of the Year, and Architectural Record's House of the Month. Publications include magazines such as Dwell, GA: Global Architecture, New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as well as the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Their work has been widely published in books such as Another 100 of the World's Best Houses, noted architecture critic Michael Webb's Brave New Houses, Adventures in Southern California Living, and various titles by author James Grayson Truelove. Recently the firm was a semi-finalist in the 2006 Living Steel Competition - which highlights the firm in their "Featured Architects" section (visit the site) - as well as semi-finalists in the 2006 Global Green Sustainable Housing Competition, sponsored by Brad Pitt, to design low-income housing for post-Katrina New Orleans.

Philosophy:Sander Architects seeks to find a balance between poetry and pragmatics. Starting with essential elements: environment, program, site restrictions, we encourage forms to develop which satisfy these basic needs while embracing the possibility of the poetic. In this way, a house for an Orthopedic Surgeon becomes a covert study in anatomy: metaphorical skin and bones. The elements that make up an aerobics studio, its interior architecture and furniture, take on physical tendencies: tension, compresion, torsion, sinew. The entry for a sculptor's house is a 'vessel' whose propotions are based on a large-scale clay jar produced by the owner. These strategies are covert, not obvious, and allow the built environment to resonate thematically with the program and the people who use it. It is a strategy of innuendo, not declaration, a struggle with nuance, an attempt at quiet fertility. If the work celebrates what it means to inhabit, in grander terms, the work is a celebration of man's rhythms and rituals.

Idyllwild Performing Arts Center (IPAC)

Sander Architects won an invited competition to design the Idyllwild Performing Arts Center (IPAC), a new performing arts center for Idyllwild Arts Academy. IA is one of the country's top three domestic High Schools for the arts. The student body is represented by dozens of countries, including much of the Pacific Rim, South America and Europe. Sander Architects' site strategy was to place the PAC to one side of a present open parking lot, thereby creating a new green quad at the heart of campus. This space also aligns with Lily Rock, the dominant geological feature in the Idyllwild Valley.

The Building will be composed of a curved/sloped roof plane, which will be accessible from two different sides of the building where it will meet the adjacent grade. The Theater and Concert Hall masses will penetrate through this curved roof plane and will be sheathed in rusted cor-ten panels. The panels will have an irregular topography derived from abstracted verbal and musical phrases by composers and playwrights.

The entire roof will be planted with drought-tolerant greenery, and will be accessible from two corners which will meet adjacent grade. Overflow seating for the concert hall will be on the roof, and movies will be projected on a side of the theater fly tower, creating a large area for outdoor movie viewing.

IPAC's structural system will be composed of light-gauge metal building components. This will be an excellent example of Sander Architects' Hybrid construction concept. All steel elements will be manufactured off-site by existing steel building manufacturers using computer-controlled processes. The elements will be made from predominantly recycled steel, and will be shipped to the site for easy bolt-together erection. Sander Architects has had success with this system in residential applications under the name Hybrid House; part prefab, all custom (TM). The extraordinary cost savings we have found with residences will be even greater in IPAC, since the light-gauge steel building typically spans dozens of feet, and is perfectly suited for this application.