Tibby Rothman – Archive for AIA California

Dive Into New Code Amendments that Expand Options for Adaptive Reuse

July 11, 2023| Advocacy Updates| Tibby Rothman

By AIA California Staff

(July 11, 2023) During the week of June 26, the California Building Standards Commission voted to amend the California Building Code (CBC), ushering in a new era of opportunities for AIA California members and architects in the state. (Read AIA California’s press release here.)

The amendments expands CBC tools that support the adaptive reuse, renovation, or repair of existing buildings. The changes bring seven existing International Existing Building Code (IEBC) Chapters to California’s Existing Building Code (CEBC) for the first time. The CEBC is one of a suite of different codes that make up the CBC.

“AIA California believes these significant code changes will lay an excellent foundation in support of the retrofit and adaptive reuse of non-historic existing commercial buildings to residential and other needed uses,” says Mike Malinowski, FAIA, who led AIA California’s multi-year code change initiative for this. “The benefits will include revitalization of our communities, decrease in greenhouse gas emissions that occur when existing infrastructure remains in place, increases in much-needed housing stock, and new levels of architectural creative problem-solving in making these projects both code compliant as well as efficient and attractive.”

We asked Mike to take a deep dive into these changes for members. His response follows below:

Understanding the Code Change
The amendment changes the California Existing Building Code by adding the Work Area and Performance paths to the Prescriptive Path, make it easier to obtain to adapt, renovate and repair existing buildings in California.

Technically, the California Building Code has amended to California Building Standards Commission altered California’s Title 24 Part 10 Existing Building Code (CEBC) by adding Chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13 of the International Existing Building Code (IEBC) into the 2022 CEBC. Chapters 6 through 11 are being adopted by the Office of the State Fire Marshall (OSFM) which is one of the core state code adopting agencies. The OSFM must approve of any code change that could impact building life safety considerations such as fire resistance, exiting, and structural stability.

The IEBC is unique among the ICodes in that it allows the design professional code user to select among a number of different compliance paths: Prescriptive, Work Area, and Performance. Conforming with any one of these compliance paths result in a code compliant building. The CEBC has up until now included just a single compliance path, the Prescriptive. This limited the range of options. When this code change goes into effect on July 1 2024, California will have two OSFM adopted compliance paths: the Prescriptive, and the Work Area. The Performance compliance path, Chapter 13 of the IEBC, will not be formally ‘adopted’ in California, but it will be printed, and available for local communities to adopt if they so choose.

It can serve in any community statewide as an optional ‘reference tool’ in evaluating Alternative Methods and Materials, which has always been a part of both California and International Codes. The Alternative Methods and Materials is in effect a separate path, that is based on achieving the intent of the ‘regular code’ – and Chapter 13 has an extensive analysis system built into it that can assist both code officials and design professionals in considering ‘code equivalence’.

Each of these different compliance paths address specific building conditions and provide design professionals with approaches and options specific to specific project requirements. For example, the Work Area method has separate chapters for ‘repairs’, ‘additions’, ‘change in use’ and ‘alterations’ – with alterations further broken down into levels 1, 2 and 3. These various chapters allow a design professional to select the method most appropriate to a particular building challenge, ultimately resulting in diverse options for compliance. Understanding the suitability of each compliance path helps architects determine the most appropriate approach for their specific projects, ensuring compliance with the code while optimizing design, functionality, and sustainability.

Note that there are NO changes proposed to the existing Prescriptive Compliance path by these changes, so those design professionals familiar with that chapter, can continue to use it as they have in the past.

Training and Implementation
AIA California recognizes the significance of architects adapting to these new compliance paths and aims to support its members and other professionals in the state during this transition. Consequently, the organization will be launching training sessions in the coming months, offering architects the opportunity to familiarize themselves with these optional methods for retrofitting and reusing existing buildings. This preparation will enable architects to integrate the new code provisions effectively and creatively in their future projects.

It is important to note that although the changes officially go into effect in July 2024, many jurisdictions may permit the use of approved code provisions prior to their formal activation date, as the decision to make this part of California’s building codes has already been made.

1:1 | Inspire

February 27, 2023| 1:1, 1:1 Inspire| Tibby Rothman

Carmen Suero, Assoc. AIA, on the Stories of Clients

Carmen Suero, Assoc, AIA, on the Stories of Clients

By: Carmen Suero, Assoc. AIA, as told to Tibby Rothman, Hon. AIA|LA

What inspires us as designers and architects? Carmen Suero, Assoc. AIA, Principal, Good Project Company, kicks off a new 1:1 Q&A series.

Something that inspires me is people’s stories. Having the opportunity to hear clients’ stories and then work with them to express those stories through design—is part of the ethos of our practice.

In our neighborhood, Leimert Park, we’re working with a business owner who wants to reimagine her space. She has been in the community for almost 20 years; she has gone through the Metro line construction, she has gone through COVID, and now she’s looking to the future to see how her space can offer new ways to serve the community. This informs us as we collaborate with her to develop the storyline of her business and its connection to the neighborhood.

The Japanese Institute of Sawtelle is another project that exemplifies why a client’s story is so important and why they inspire me.

The Japanese Institute of Sawtelle has been a part of the Japanese American community in Los Angeles for almost 100 years. Today it is a community center that offers linguistic and cultural education, as well as physical activities that continue to connect the Japanese American community in Los Angeles. Built by Japanese Immigrants on land purchased by the community pooling their resources, the center served as the point of embarkment and return from the internment camps.

This is an incredibly important story that guides how we honor the legacy and rich history of a place while also helping them to modernize and re-envision the center to adapt to the changing needs of their community.

Renderings: The Japanese Institute of Sawtelle. Designed by Good Project Company

1:1 ACT

February 15, 2023| 1:1 Act| Tibby Rothman

Michael Anderson, AIA’s, Plan to Increase Home Ownership for Black and Brown Communities

by Tibby Rothman, Hon. AIA|LA

Michael Anderson, AIA’s, work tends to involve big questions. The latest from his firm Anderson-Barker, is the Accelerated Wealth and Transit Development program; it could be his most ambitious.

The plan, essentially, reverses redlining (Anderson, himself, prefers to say it makes amends) and creates a pathway to wealth accumulation for Black and Brown people through property ownership.

The question it answers is: how to keep (and increase) homes in the hands of Black and Brown owners, and communities, while providing a vehicle for residential renovations, furnishing infrastructure and environmental improvements, and increasing affordable housing stock.

A firm-generated project, Anderson is presently engaged with an established think-tank, to produce an economic impact and risk mitigation study that would serve as a basis for him to gain and formalize support from local officials, and more pertinently secure the federal funding it needs.

For Anderson, this type of big thinking, is not unusual. His work frequently intersects not only architecture, urban planning, city building, and public policy, but the identification and securing of financing. In fact, when we asked him “what the most important thing about architecture is,” that’s where he started.

Michael Anderson, AIA: What I want our profession to start looking at is that architecture shapes quality of life. We are still, sort of, looking at architecture as the historical practice of, almost, how it was created to do work for people [with wealth].

But now, as diversity has expanded, as more people are conscious about buildings’ influence, I think architects should also start considering our role as: how to direct capital investments into making life better for communities.

Firms tend to have their niche. If you’re an affordable housing developer, you can grow very well, based on low-income tax credits and your clients’ nonprofits. If you’re doing airports, you can do very well. But the gap is the underserved communities—what are their needs? So, I see architecture starting to figure out more the financial: [how to make financing] happen, where it’s needed most.

I didn’t become an architect just to do great buildings, I wanted to become an architect to make communities a better quality of life.

[Concurrently] if we start to look at how to influence real estate developers and capital sources… if architects [do] that, they will probably have better pay, because you’re influencing the money that architects do architecture with.

AIA Ca: The Accelerated Wealth and Transit Development program leverages existing elements of the Metro’s Transit Oriented Communities initiative specifically for Black and Brown communities, increasing quality of life in many ways.

MA: It targets investments around the Metro light rail transit stations of underserved communities–such as South Los Angeles, the Crenshaw community, and the West Santa Ana Branch corridor, which is in South East Los Angeles—a 90% Latino community.

It has three components. The primary component is for existing families, to remodel their house into a fourplex. And the other housing component is for middle income families, workforce people–if you’re black or brown—to get a subsidy to purchase a brand new four plex, in a Black or Brown community around these transit stations.

If you’re an existing homeowner, you get about $250,000 in federal subsidy. It’s called Remodel Mom’s House. If she has a Craftsman house, [it’s] basically modernize[d] to function in the 21st century, with solar panels, battery packs to store energy and more. And she would add three, prefabricated units, one a three-bedroom, and two, one-bedroom units. [To access] the federal subsidy, one unit would be designated very-low income for 30 years. This a cheaper way of making affordable housing happen and spread it to the community.

First-time buyers, they would get about $500,000 to $600,000—if you’re Black or Brown, to [subsidize purchase of] a brand new fourplex, prefabricated house.

For the first level of the project, we’re targeting [the area around] 18 [Metro] transit stations of predominantly Latino and Black communities.

The second two components [are] basically infrastructure improvement. […] It’s a way of creating a horizontal beautification throughout communities where, even if somebody doesn’t remodel their house, the neighborhood, still, it’s beautiful. It makes it a safe environment. And also, it creates an abundance of local jobs. Basically, what we’ve done is: we’ve taken the model that was used to approach building suburbs and we reverse-engineered it in terms of a modernization, community project for underserved communities.

The third component involves sites identified by the community during design workshops that Metro held in regards to the light rail line coming in. Developers producing housing and commercial spaces on properties identified by the community.

AIA California: Something that’s fascinating to me is: you didn’t just approach elected officials and policy-makers about implementing the project, you went after financing on a federal level.

MA: One of the things I found out [over time] is while there are a lot of studies of underserved communities, there’s never a next step involved in terms of implementation. Nothing happens without capital.

When President Biden [was] elected, he made an executive order to advance racial equity: Justice 40 is an Executive Order that says out of the $1.2 trillion in investment in the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, and the $490 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act, 40% is to go to underserved communities, indigenous communities, as a priority.

So, what we did is use those Executive Orders to lobby for funding for these projects, because often what happens is: underserved Black and Brown communities, Communities of Color, they get out-politicked when funding is approved.

The federal funds that have been approved must be allocated by 2026. The benefit for Los Angeles accessing these funds is the Accelerated Wealth and Transit Development project is what’s called a shovel-ready strategy.

AIA Ca: You directly connected with the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank.

MA: I’ve talked to [them] to gain their interest, […] to hear what their response was. They liked this project, tremendously, they said, because it makes amends to communities that were redlined.

It’s a vehicle to implement Justice 40. It becomes the government’s way of saying “I harmed you, I’m going to make amends and make it possible for you to catch up in a way that’s mutually beneficial to everyone.” And they also like it because: if a person loses their job, they still have three income units, so they don’t lose their assets.

AIA Ca: You’re also having conversations with private capital.

MA: I’m seeking social impact investors. […] One of the key things about this strategy is that we have designed it so that it creates a return on investment and profit in three areas.

There’s an economic profit. There’s a return on capital profit and profit to local and federal government. There’s a social profit in terms of correcting the quality of life and communities. And then there’s an environmental profit, because underserved communities, housing stock, that is pre-1970s, has a huge impact on our emissions, our CO2 gases that are put out, and by modernizing so many of these facilities and underserved communities, we lower the greenhouse gas impact, the carbon emissions that are put out, and we make it climate smart. And having this occur around transit stations, makes for a better transit passenger experience encouraging more people to use public transit,

So overall, the strategy is to start making Los Angeles and California show a way that’s replicable–have modernized and underserved communities so that we can make a better quality of life but also improve our impact on the environment.

AIA Ca: Your earlier commissions included Compton MLK, Jr, Transit and Community Center, and Metro Housing in Compton. Did facilitating these types of projects inspire your interest in public policy or were you already interested in public policy, and started going after these kinds of projects.

MA: I became an architect to try to figure how to make Black and Brown communities places where everybody wanted to live. My experience growing up—most Black communities were only getting affordable housing developments or low-income housing, and I saw that as having a negative impact on the quality of life because you’re still creating low-income impaction.

As I started in my career, started working on different studies in Crenshaw, I started to see what the redevelopment agencies were doing and what didn’t work. […] At the same time, we did some studies on Third Street Promenade around 1984 and ’85. And [I saw] how Santa Monica made Third Street Promenade successful through infrastructure, public space, and parking structures.

I started analyzing what worked in other communities and what wasn’t being applied here and underserved communities. I looked at the evolution of West Hollywood, which was an unincorporated area becoming a city and how its development spiraled up, how Santa Monica Boulevard could beautify. And I started just transforming real life solutions in terms of how to make deals in our communities. And so when you drill down, the thing you learned is: where do they get the money from and how each city leveraged capital to build each project.

I realized transportation funding has the greatest influence for beautifying existing communities. And I started looking at how do I apply that to Black and Brown communities.

This interview has been edited and condensed for flow and brevity.

1:1 | Practice

February 7, 2023| 1:1, 1:1 Practice| Tibby Rothman

1:1 | Practice, The Biggest Challenge

Jeremiah I. Tolbert II, AIA, NOMA, on The Mindshift and More

By Tibby Rothman, Hon. AIA|LA

When we logged onto Zoom to interview Jeremiah I. Tolbert II, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP, for this first in a series about Practice, we were immediately interested in his Zoom background. Tolbert explained that what we were seeing was the loggia of a 94,000-square-foot project he designed for his eponymous firm Tolbert Design Architects.

The Palo Alto High School Sports Complex wraps around an existing pool and replaces two gyms, a boys’ and a girls’: the former built close to a century ago, the latter stemming from Title IX.

Ambitious, right? Considerably more so knowing that Tolbert Design Architects, with its span of public, private and university commissions, is a solo practitioner office.

So, this series, devoted to sharing approaches to challenges for practices and career paths starts there.

AIA California: What is the key tenant to success for Principles of solo or small practices?

Jeremiah I. Tolbert II, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP: I did [the Palo Alto High School Sports Complex] by myself, but the key is, you’re never doing anything by yourself. The key is collaboration. [For instance] working closely with the general contractor made this project a success. The project had to go through DSA [Division of State Architect], and getting through DSA, you have to go through hoops. As a solo practitioner, especially, you can’t do it by yourself. Recognizing that it takes a team to create good projects, it makes your life so much easier. It really does.

AIA CA: What has been the largest challenge for your firm and/or your career? How did you respond to it, and what was the outcome?

JT: The hardest thing as a solo practitioner, and my career, was trying to balance work and life. I’m sure [it’s a challenge] for all careers, but even more so for architects, who are nocturnal. For someone like me, I got married, I have kids, and so the all-nighters or almost-all-nighters don’t work very well anymore when you have kids that wake up at 6am regardless of what time they go to bed.

AIA CA: How did you address it?

JT: I’ve been working for myself for thirteen years, and I’ve completed over 100 projects of various sizes. So, earlier, before the kids, I was cranking them out. But now, it’s a little bit more strategic.

I had a mindset shift with my project and client selection. For example, when clients are interviewing me, I’m actually interviewing them to see if they would be as good for me as I would be for them. That’s beneficial because good clients allow you to do good projects.

No one really knows if a client is going to be great until you’re really working together but being able to manage expectations and deadlines and that sort of thing [is important.] It comes down to communication because a client could be absolutely spectacular but if you’re not good at communicating and managing their expectations, then it could quickly turn.

AIA CA: As President of AIA East Bay, you launched a mentoring program to support underrepresented Black and Latino junior high school students and then opened up a second program, The Ripple Effect, in which you trained university students at UC Berkeley to mentor high school students. What do you advocate that others do to reduce barriers to Practice?

JT: That’s actually a little tricky. Because I would encourage people to do something that they have a passion for, and I don’t want to say, “you should do it this way” if you don’t have a passion for it.

I only became an architect because of my second-grade teacher, who gave me the term “architect.” It was [through] an in-class writing assignment: “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

I knew like five careers back then, you know, businessman, teacher, firefighter, policeman—that sort of thing—and my exotic one was astronaut. But, I had done that for a writing assignment in first grade already. And I was stumped because I was tired of saying “policeman,” or “teacher.” When my teacher saw I wasn’t writing (I normally was a student who would) she asked me what was wrong. I replied, “I don’t know what it’s called.”

She said, “Describe it to me. What do you like to do?”

My exact response was, “Well, I like to draw and build things.”

She said, “Oh! That’s called an architect!”

My 8-year-old brain exploded because I had never heard that word before. For some reason, it was a big word, like “onomatopoeia”, it was just magical. So that inspired me. I was exposed early and never let go of the word “architect.”

That’s the evolution of my [philosophy] about having a passion.

My passion is: let me expose youth of color to architecture and the design-built world who wouldn’t otherwise have that opportunity. It’s quite powerful what we do, because we affect the built environment, and how people move through space, and how we live, work and play.

In my classes, I’m not trying to reproduce a bunch of architects per se; however I’m definitely exposing them to design-thinking and letting them know that they could choose any career path that they want when armed with this type of knowledge.

When I was [attending] Cal Berkeley, I went to school with a lot of people who studied or majored in architecture, and they’re not necessarily doing architecture. They may work at Apple, or they may work as furniture makers, or developers, or all sorts of career paths. A friend just told me that he’s opening up a new division for Tesla. The one thing they all have in common is that their background training is design-thinking which allowed them to enter and succeed in other career paths.

Giving [students] the tools to be able to maneuver within the world better, and be positive civic agents-of-change within their own communities is the basis of what I want to provide them. So if there happens to be a development happening in their own neighborhoods, they can help speak up for their community—that’s what I’m trying to produce. If they all descide to become architects, that’s just a plus!