In the fall of 2004, we announced the Dwell Home II Design Invitational with the hopes of establishing a model for sustainable home building in the 21st century. Los Angeles residents Glen Martin and Claudia Plasencia offered up their plot of land in Topanga Canyon as the testing ground, and Escher GuneWardena Architecture was selected to build the winning design: a 2,000-square-foot home nestled deep in the rolling hills about two miles from the Pacific Ocean.
Though we were anxious to get to work right away, we quickly learned that this would be a game of hurry up and wait. Almost any structure in the United States is subjected to some type of plan-approval process, but the Dwell Home II had an extra hurdle to clear due to its proximity to the Pacific and the fact that it fell under the auspices of the California Coastal Commission (see “A Sea of Paperwork,” Dwell, March 2005). With neither the architects, the homeowners, nor Dwell ever having worked within the CCC’s jurisdiction before, we were surprised to learn that the wait to get a hearing before the commission could be months—or, as it turned out, just over a year.
As fall 2005 faded into winter, we finally learned that our hearing had been scheduled for December 16 in San Francisco. We were ready for some heavy questions, and homeowner Glen Martin, project architect Bojana Banyasz, and I were well prepared for our defense. On the 16th, Martin and Banyasz jumped on a 6:00 a.m. flight with building plans and even the oversized and fragile Dwell Home II model in tow.
As the first hearing of the day got under way, we witnessed what we presumed we’d be in for: A developer and attorney stood up to present their case for a large project just outside San Francisco. As angry neighbors crowded the brightly lit and suffocating conference room to argue against the building in question, a drama worthy of Court TV slowly unfolded.
All of this set the stage for a nervous lead-up to our hearing. Happily, however, the Dwell Home II received approval in under a minute. Although the project still must clear plan check and go through plan check corrections, the longest wait is now behind us. We are looking forward to finally breaking ground to commence what has, up until this point, seemed more like a dream.
