Dreyfuss and Blackford by ACC Art Books

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Foreword Pierluigi Serraino

Introduction

History

The Early Years

A Defining Moment

The Firm Develops

Dreyfuss + Blackford Architecture Today

Practice

Workflow Process Development

Human-centered Design

Projects

California ISO Headquarters and Operations Center

Museum of Science and Curiosity

Sacramento State University Union Expansion

Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) Headquarters Rehabilitation

County of

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A firm’s trajectory over an extended period of time results from the combination of factors. The chemistry between the founders, the energy of the collective they gather in their office, the quality of their designs, the type of clients they bring in, and being at the right place at the right time are part of that powerful mix. Ever since the founding of Dreyfuss + Blackford Architecture, these components have all been present. Through a felicitous intersection of circumstances, talent, personalities, entrepreneurship, and luck, a generalist practice was born in Sacramento, California in 1950 and grew at an exponential speed, rare even by the national standards of the era. Those same characteristics remained at the firm and, in turn, became self-propelling drivers across the workforce over multiple generations. The rewards for the company were tangible: peer recognition, financial robustness, diversity of project types, prized commissions, talent knocking at the firm’s door, and more. But its longevity and relevance are possibly the most cherished achievements in its seven-decade existence. This brief historical sketch shows that the legacy of this office is essentially multidisciplinary and pluralistic. With its aim of producing long-lasting designs, the firm’s quest to produce enduring designs continues to this day.

Albert M. Dreyfuss (1920–2017) and Leonard D. Blackford (1923–2014) had uncommon affinities. They reinforced each other’s nature, and their mutual support became the basis of their lifelong partnership. They shared more than a professional bond. Theirs was a friendship. Their homes were close to each other. According to colleagues, they rarely, if ever, had a significant argument about the firm. They had a symbiotic relationship. Their firm’s rapid growth was the organic outcome of this affinity, absent from the behavioral side effects of prima donnas. Rigid notions of division of labors were nowhere to be found. In their practice, design finesse—from conception to execution—was the result of distributed authorship, where the individuals’ contributions to the project accrue to the point of becoming fused into the built outcome. They promoted and fed a culture around overall higher quality and knowledge sharing through teamwork. That same culture is present in Dreyfuss + Blackford Architecture today.

Throughout his life, Dreyfuss never forgot his small-town Louisiana roots. These roots, he said, gave him an attitude that each job was important and that he would do whatever it took to complete it to the best of his capacity. He strove to develop long-term relationships with his patrons, who became allies in the firm’s ascent. In resisting the temptation to specialize in a particular building type, a business aim increasingly common in the architectural profession at the time, he set the course of the firm for decades to come.

In Blackford, Dreyfuss found his closest ally. As a northern California native, Blackford brought a landscape sensibility to the firm’s enthusiastic embrace of modernism. That formula was most impactful in adding warmth to the restrained designs of the architects’ early work.

The duo’s rise to prominence from their modest start was swift. Their association with John Lyon Reid, a noted San Francisco–based mid-century architect who specialized in education facilities, brought ongoing school projects that sustained the firm in its early years. In addition, occasional noneducational commissions came up nut Tree (1959) in vacaville falls squarely into this category. What started as a request for a masterplan turned into a detailed project where leisure, shopping, and play found a distinctive postwar graphic sense and spatial synthesis.

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) Headquarters (1960) constitutes a breakthrough for the office both in its structural challenges and the demands of its design. The two young architects, accustomed to wood frame construction, exhibited impressive mastery designing large-scale buildings using the steel skeleton. That milestone marked the beginning of a run of distinctive modern buildings. In January 1966 Dreyfuss & Blackford Architects made the pages of Fortune magazine, where the Asclepius Medical Offices (1964) were featured next to the works of Richard neutra and victor Christ-Janer. Their projects were also included in the legendary Arts & Architecture magazine as well as in Architectural Record and Architectural Forum

The founders designed more than a few single-family residences throughout their careers. Prior to the start of the partnership, Al Dreyfuss was the architect of the Home of Tomorrow, a

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prototype single-family residence targeted for the middle class showcasing the latest advances in kitchen appliances and careful orientation for maximum environmental benefit. In 1952, the Freedom Gas Home was another demonstration project featuring the amenities and mechanical advancements symbolic of comfort on postwar California. In 1957, Dreyfuss & Blackford’s special relationship with SMUD led to the firm’s participation in the then well-known Electri-Living Home program sponsored by Living for Young Homemakers magazine, which solicited residential prototypes along the West Coast by notable designers. Among the other participants providing innovative ideas for homes were Palmer & Krisel in Los Angeles and Paul Hayden Kirk in Seattle. In Sacramento, Dreyfuss & Blackford designed a compact single-family home where artificial lighting played a decisive role in the occupants’ quality of living. This comprehensive investigation of the newly mechanized California home demonstrated the range of design exercises the firm engaged in.

In confronting increasingly larger buildings with more complex programs, the firm needed to master the skills of managing human and material resources in order to retain the quality of its designs. Its work on the expansion of the San Francisco Airport was one such occasion. Dreyfuss + Blackford’s broad proficiency allowed it to handle building types of widely different sizes with ease. Its community was formed from a tradition of thoughtful application of design principles, as opposed to specialization that can lead to creative atrophy. Invariably, such operational choice prompts a process of cyclical changes in design responses to specific problems, yet firmly anchored to the strong roots of the firm’s origins.

Equally important, as the practice expanded its scope of work it grew philosophically and technically through cross-fertilization with artists, among them Wayne Thiebaud, and collaborations with other prominent architects, such as John Carl Warnecke, James Polshek, and Frank Gehry. These encounters were and remain opportunities to deal with a wide array of design approaches invariably informing the attitude toward the making of architecture. By expanding its design influences, the firm allowed changes to the

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Electri-Living Home, 1957.

modernist tone established in its early work. But as skills are determinants in providing competence, defending the craft of making buildings requires an inner engagement the members of the Dreyfuss & Blackford are invariably invested in.

In the most basic sense, the practice of architecture is a commitment to the present with eyes on the future and the heart in the past. That commitment is imbued with optimism: design will make the reality we all live in better. As elemental as this conviction, it feeds the design ethos of Dreyfuss + Blackford of today. Spatial clarity, rather than image, is the office’s primary goal. That target is always understood as part of something bigger. This understanding led the designers to reflect on both the built and the natural environments in their designs. The firm’s focus on the environment was already evident in the 1980s in the CalPERS Headquarters Lincoln Plaza north (1987). This is a skillful exercise in making a building out of landscape and hardscape. That attitude continued throughout the portfolio of Dreyfuss + Blackford works produced in the ensuing decades.

Thinking about architecture as part of an ecosystem puts it at the center of the firm’s concern for the judicious handling of natural resources. This concern can be expressed in a variety of architectural idioms. For Dreyfuss + Blackford, modernism, updated with the environmental lessons learned from the disfavor the style went through, remains the response to the needs of twenty-first-century society.

The firm has remained generalist in scope and has completed or initiated a varied assortment of commissions. Its most recent projects add noteworthy designs to the culture of California’s Central valley community that contains much of their output. The State of California, 10th and O Streets Office Building (under construction), for example, with its thoughtfully considered siting and environmental systems, provides a new identity for this public institution. The arresting design of the County of Santa Clara Animal Services Center (CSCASC, 2021) features an artificial topography with folded roofs and a carefully landscaped courtyard for animals to roam free. The Museum of Science and Curiosity (MOSAC, 2021) reactivates the abandoned Power Station B

(1912) by Willis Polk into a new museum complex, creating an icon for the city.

Dreyfuss + Blackford has a notable history of engagement with Sacramento. It promotes design awareness through educational venues, such as the annual AIA Central valley Experience Architecture event and the Architecture Matters Design Forum. Teaming with the public is the common thread of all these endeavors. This outreach has proven to be mutually beneficial because it helps to clarify to the architects the extent of what they can contribute beyond designing buildings. That tradition of giving back to the community is an integral part of the practice’s identity.

While technology and construction techniques are certain to change over time, the longevity of ideas is subject to altogether different considerations. Friendship, opportunities to transfer knowledge, fostering clients as patrons and allies, and working to grow artistically and professionally remain the most enduring values Dreyfuss and Blackford themselves handed down to Dreyfuss + Blackford Architecture, a legacy worthy of multigenerational consideration.

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Asclepius Medical Offices, 1964.

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Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) Gas Safety Academy Winters, California, 2017

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Following a 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California, PG&E took measures to improve its technical training system and began planning for a new, consolidated training facility. This facility effectively combines several state-of-the-art training programs at a single site. The site planning design creates clear and simple connections between components and defines outdoor areas for gatherings and informal classrooms.

Architecture at its most basic is forming space around a predetermined need. A factory is designed with the sole intent of producing a building that will produce something else. The technical brief for a factory is quantitatively defined by maximizing efficiency and production. The factory workers cannot easily be quantified, and historically their qualitative needs have often been overlooked in design briefs. If architecture aims to be successful, it must consider the people who interact with it and understand their perspectives.

This text outlines some of the processes Dreyfuss + Blackford has developed to put people at the forefront of its designs. We design environments that not only support the functional needs of every potential user but also exceed those demands. We strive to create spaces that invoke joy, excite creativity, and make lasting positive impacts on all.

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Study for UC Davis Sacramento Campus Mobility Hub, 2020.