[Noozhawk’s note: One in a series about Santa Barbara’s historic architecture.]

Almost six years ago, this series was started to highlight the uniqueness, beauty and history of Santa Barbara as we look for ways to add to and revitalize its downtown.

It has been several years since the last essay, and much has happened, including a number of talks, presentations and articles.

Some of these include a 2021 Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation lecture series, “Santa Barbara Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow,” as well as making easily available a 1999 symposium on De la Guerra Plaza, which included incredibly insightful discussions on what makes a great city, and the importance and character of public spaces.

In addition, the last several years have added a few new twists to the discussion, including a test-run with no cars on State Street downtown, which created a more pedestrian-friendly, outdoor dining experience.

All this during a very challenging time in which communication and decision making in all sectors — private business, state and local governments, the news media, and even our personal lives — certainly took a turn for the worse.

A reactive, fear-based and stress-filled approach to public interactions was the norm, rather than thoughtful dialogue and reasoned decision making.

However, it seems that with smart minds, good dialogue and well-thought through designs for the downtown, there is potential for a very good development of Santa Barbara’s core.

Pressure Is On

Working within a top-tier city like Santa Barbara is both a great honor, and a great challenge.

The reason is simple. When you work with a masterpiece, the instant comparison and judgment is unavoidable. What might seem like a very good design in Bakersfield or San Bernardino would probably be sub-par when placed in Santa Barbara.

All designs in Santa Barbara — from small landscape features, to buildings, to large urban designs such as paseos and plazas — deserve to be brilliant. The bar is, and should be kept high.

The Perfect, The Good and The Great

As the saying goes, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” And this can be true, as striving for perfection at all cost might keep from recognizing and accepting a perfectly good solution.

As a member of the Historic Landmarks Commission, this complaint (or a version of it), is sometimes levied against the commission, with the feeling that it is pushing for absolute perfection, rather than accepting a “good” design.

This is certainly an important consideration and must be taken into account when judging designs.

But there is another pitfall that should be avoided, as business author Jim Collins points out in Good to Great:

“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”

Fortunately, the people of Santa Barbara have been handed a gift of a truly great city that many generations worked hard to create.  We owe it to those who came before us, as well as the generations to come after, to always push for an “A” or even “A+” level design.

The best approach for Santa Barbara is not to insist on the perfect, nor to settle on just the good. Instead, we must demand the great!

How to Add to a Great City

While the process of adding to Santa Barbara may seem daunting, here are some steps that may be useful in developing a design worthy of Santa Barbara.

Step 1: Appreciating the Past

Intimately understand the origins, and current state of the property. Learn the history of how it fits within the greater whole of the city’s development. What elements are similar to others within the city? What are different?

If your project is downtown on Chapala Street, what are the characteristics of the rest of Chapala, and how might your building help create a cohesive whole?

Step 2: Looking Forward to the Future

Define what is being created and/or proposed, and how and it will improve the property, neighborhood and city.

If it is part of an old typology — such as a paseo, plaza, etc. — then having a thorough understanding of how it relates to similar examples (and how it might be different) is key, so that it has a clear and identifiable character, and not just a mishmash of various designs.

For example, El Paseo has a character of one- and two-story buildings with interwoven covered and uncovered passageways that open onto multiple outdoor “rooms,” creating an experience of surprise and delight within the city block.

La Arcada Plaza, on the other hand, is much more rational in plan, with two mostly symmetrical paseos cutting through the block, intersecting at a formal fountain, framed by continuous, tall, two-story buildings.

Both are beautiful paseos, but each has its own character and feel of a “Santa Barbara paseo.” Equally important, each paseo knows what it is, and what it is not.

Once you can clearly name or define what is being proposed, you can start answering particular design questions, such as how tall should the structures be, and what should the roof forms look like? What materials and patterns should the hardscape be? How does this design help make the surrounding neighborhood better?

Step 3: The ‘Vitruvian Filter’

The first recorded architectural treatise by ancient Roman architect Vitruvius outlined three key principles that all good architecture must have, namely firmitas (strength/built to last), utilitas (usefulness) and venustas (beauty).

These principles are universal, and in general have been true of nearly all civilizations throughout time.

Firmitas requires buildings to look solid and strong, and be built well to last a long time rather than looking like a temporary instillation.

This also implies the use of materials and building methods that allow the building/city to improve with age.

Interestingly, this is a very sustainable way of building, since buildings do not need to be torn down every 50 years due to the failure of cheap materials.

The utilitas filter requires the design to function well for the job it is meant to do. “Form follows function” is a way of thinking about this principle.

A paseo that dead-ends in the middle of the block rather than continuing through to the other streets frustrates the public and is not functioning as a good paseo. It lacks utilitas.

Finally, does the design have venustas, or beauty? A good litmus test for beauty is whether it will attract people to take pictures, and even spend time drawing or painting the place.

Venustas is much of what Santa Barbara is known for, but is often difficult to define.

Venustas also tends to last the test of time, helping the building/place to be loved for generations to come. This contributes to a long-term, sustainable city, as people tend to take care of places they love.

The Future of Santa Barbara

What does a future, improved-upon Santa Barbara look like? The short answer is that it might be any number of great designs … as long as they are great.

We know this is possible because over the past five years two AIA charrettes, with hundreds of professionals volunteering their time (scroll down for the 2020 charrette) demonstrated a range of very creative and excellent design solutions, many of which rose to the level worthy of Santa Barbara.

Our goal today should be to keep the bar high for the work we are doing now so that people in the 2120s will look back with gratitude for the effort that Santa Barbara of the 2020s put into making a better, more beautiful city.