Bill Grover and Jim Watson (Nobel Laureate Dr. James D. Watson to the world at large) are not exactly the odd couple, but they clearly are distinct from one another. One is an architect, the other a scientist. One is patient; one less so. Bill is calm and speaks softly; Jim can be a bit more flamboyant – albeit all in a good cause.

That cause, architecture in the service of science, is the subject the duo’s upcoming presentation for the Centerbrook Architecture Series hosted by the Essex Library on November 11.

Bill Grover, 1987

James D. Watson with double helix

Bill is a founding partner of Centerbrook, which the American Institute of Architects determined in 1998 was the best in the land. Bill captured dozens of awards for his work and was reviewed by The New York Times, among others. Jim co-discovered the architecture of DNA in 1953 at age 25, jumpstarting an entire new era of scientific inquiry that continues unabated today. The past Director of the Genome Project, Jim is arguably America’s greatest living scientist.

Together, starting in 1973, Bill and Jim transformed Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s 115-acre campus on Long Island, shaping it gradually over four decades like a couple of sculptors working in malleable clay. Once little more than a sleepy summer camp, today it is a bustling, internationally acclaimed research facility where thousands of scientists and students make an annual pilgrimage. More than 400 resident scientists are trying to find the causes and improved treatments for cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s etc.

I joined the fray in the early 1980s and worked along side these two gentlemen. As you can probably guess, having a client who is really, really smart is not an unmitigated blessing. Bill was Zen about it. He would learn a thing or twelve. I think they both did. In fact, Jim’s most important contributions came from his heart. He cared about the place, about the little things, about how it looked, how it felt inside and out, from various perspectives walking or driving around campus – how it smelled even. Bill, in partnership with the lab’s commonsensical facility directors – Jack Richard and his successor Art Brings – knew how to get it done. Most importantly, Jim knew how to raise the money.

Jim and his wife Liz, an architectural historian, live right on campus; Bill designed their house. Jim would walk to work and keep his eyes open wide, coming and going. Liz would find shortcomings and prod for better solutions. If things weren’t right, we would hear about it. Jim didn’t necessarily want a specific solution so much as he needed to make sure that we had given a design careful thought and executed it beautifully. He expected us to care as much about the place as he and Liz did. He would rattle our cage from time to time to make sure each of us was using all four lobes on a particular problem.

The result of all that caring, thought and vision is a campus that has grown steadily while retaining an intimate village feel, its open spaces, its quiet lanes and pathways, its flora and fauna. Set in a well-to-do residential town, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is nestled into a hillside overlooking the water as if it was meant to be there all the time. It doesn’t resemble a collection of laboratories and support buildings. It looks like it’s a great place to live – or work.

What Jim and Bill realized together is that science is not advanced by test tubes alone.

View of Schaffhausen’s Altstadt from the canon fortress ‘Munot’

Owing to close family ties, I’ve been a frequent visitor to Switzerland.

Aside from the requisite sightseeing of astonishing alpine environs, the small city of Schaffhausen, first mentioned in the historical record in 1045, has served as my vacation base camp for more than 40 years.  Staying there so often has given me the opportunity to appreciate and study its urban fabric, architecture, and history in great detail.

Switzerland’s northernmost city, Schaffhausen is located on the bank of the river Rhein.  Its raison d’être lies just downriver.  The Rhein Falls, with its spectacular 75-foot drop, makes the river, once a major transportation route through central Europe, un-navigable.  Shipboard goods were unloaded at Schaffhausen – and stiff tariffs imposed – before they were carted a couple of miles to a point just below the falls (where additional duties were presumably levied).  This favorable situation made for a very vibrant and prosperous mercantile town, which grew dramatically between the 12th and 15th centuries, when its city “plan” (well, its non-plan, really) was shaped.  Its Altstadt, or medieval city core, has remained largely unchanged since.

The accompanying photos highlight one aspect of Schaffhausen’s built environment – the cheek-by-jowl density of buildings that over the centuries has produced countless collisions of assorted architectural styles, forms, and elements.  It is these oddities of juxtaposition – let’s call them Happy Accidents – that are the tastiest seasoning in its pot of bubbling architectural fondue.

It would be exceedingly difficult to intentionally design such a crazy, yet extraordinary amalgam of building parts, yet, here, the architecturally improbable almost naturally occurs, if perhaps only as the bright consequence of simple utility or some Swiss builders’ pfennig-pinching.  The honest delights that result aren’t one bit contrived – and therein lies their joy.

Some particularly fascinating examples appear here.  If I squint, I can see in them pure compositions of form and tone that one day I will make into some wonderful watercolor paintings!

Base station church tower Maasland, Holland

They have been with us for less than two decades and they are now a relentless necessity.  We’d sooner do without flush toilets than our cell phones.  If we can’t reach everyone from everywhere, or get the latest stock quotes while we’re on the treadmill, our business and personal lives are deeply compromised.

You’re in the Pet Food Aisle and you’re drawing a blank: does Whiskers distain Meow Mix or Little Friskies?  No problem, just pull your trusty cell out of its holster and call home.

To keep Whiskers purring, of course, the call HAS to go through.  And there’s the rub.  What we gave little thought to as our addiction grew was that total connectivity implied infrastructure, which isn’t always pretty – especially when it is given precious little forethought.  You can’t miss the sprawl: cell towers towering over pine forests, littering highways, atop pristine hills and ridges, sometimes “disguised” as trees-not-found-in-nature.  These fake trees are graphic testimony to the problem, but they are a sorry charade.  You stare at them longer than you do the silver blighters.

I have provided some examples at right that were taken one recent afternoon by Andrew Santaniello and me as we travelled from Princeton, New Jersey to New Haven, Connecticut.  Most adorn the Garden State Parkway.

Being an architect my personal pet peeve is the proliferation of cell antennas attached to buildings.  This is apparently an inexpensive and less contentious alternative to the much larger towers, and the building’s owner is paid a handsome fee.  Some of these communications conglomerates have convinced houses of worship to opt for mammon over architectural and spiritual integrity.

Saints, preserve us!  This commercial transaction is a Faustian bargain.  It is the first sign that the building isn’t valued, and other signs are likely to follow soon enough.  Of course, you and I, the great un-compensated, must live with the resulting side effects of this capitalistic, every-company-for-itself infrastructure.

I submit that we have to preserve precious lines of sight by standing up for our shared landscapes and architectural vistas.  I own a cell phone.  It is a fact of modern life, but it isn’t THE preeminent value.  We have to think of better ways to stay connected, as well as true to our aesthetic values.

Until advancing technology makes towers and antennas obsolete, here’s my suggestion for mitigating this proliferation of visual pollution.  Rather than having these unsightly things go up willy-nilly, at random intervals, and in various shapes, sizes and colors, the government should impose some infrastructural uniformity.  Telephone poles carry phone, electric, and televisions connections.  Something similar should be done for cellular phone transmissions.

Regularly spaced, similarly-sized towers and antennas along major highways with the capacity to carry high volumes of phone calls for more than one company would be preferable to the current, burgeoning hodgepodge.  And while we’re at it, we should make provisions for tearing these things down when their usefulness has passed – which I hope will be soon.  Can you hear me now?

Main Street, Chester, CT

In his October 2, 2009 blog entry, “Zoning Out the Best Laid Plans,” Centerbrook Partner Chad Floyd tells us about the unfortunate ramifications for communities all across the country, including 23 towns in Connecticut, which have adopted boilerplate zoning codes provided decades ago by a Florida company.  Well, change does occur here in the “Land of Steady Habits,” but sometimes you need time-lapse photography to see it.  Little by little, however, we are planning our zoning better, at least in one Connecticut town.

For the past 16 months I have been serving on a subcommittee of the Planning & Zoning Commission in my hometown of Chester.  Our mission is to completely re-imagine the zoning regulations for the town’s much-loved Village District.  The hope is that the new regulations will reflect the actual context and character of our pocket-sized town center, rather than some generic, homogeneous vision imposed by those alien, boilerplate zoning codes.

For decades now, virtually every parcel in Chester’s Village District has been classified in zoning parlance as an “Existing, Non-conforming Use.”  What this means is that although the current eclectic mix of two- and three-story structures are more or less situated cheek-by-jowl and cover most, if not all, of their respective lots, the currently required 20-foot setbacks from front, side, and rear yards, and the maximum lot coverage requirement of just 25 percent, would not permit a new building of even remotely similar size to be constructed.  This is, of course, completely ridiculous.

The only recourse an applicant has is to endure a lengthy and expensive process of zoning application and inevitable rejection, followed by an application to the Zoning Board of Appeals, where a series of hearings typically are required over a few months, at the very least.  This process generally requires the applicant to hire attorneys, architects, and engineers to provide assistance.  It takes all this to approve projects that should have been permitted by right.  Unhappily, Chester is not unique in this predicament – similar scenes play out on Tuesday nights in towns across the country.

Eventually, meaningful action was taken by the dedicated townspeople who serve on Chester’s Planning & Zoning Commission – and these folks serve voluntarily, mind you.  With the prompting from some “new blood” on the commission, they realized the need to act as a PLANNING and Zoning Commission – that is, to act PROactively, rather than just REactively responding to applications.  So among other worthy efforts, a special Village District subcommittee was formed in 2008.  Although I am not an elected member of the P&Z Commission, I was honored to be asked to serve on the subcommittee.

Our first task was to analyze the existing situations and patterns of development.  Although subcommittee members were very familiar with the Village setting, we soon realized that discussing matters from the confines of a conference room was difficult – we simply had to get out and walk the streets.

Saturday morning group jaunts became the norm, fostering meaningful discussion of perceptible dividing lines within the Village Districts for allowable uses, for height and bulk restrictions, and for design guidelines.  Over the months, color-coded maps were drawn, and easy-to-understand regulation language drafted.  While preserving the essential character of Chester’s existing built-fabric is important, we feel that we left plenty of room for contemporary interpretation.  What we certainly don’t want is some fabricated Disneyland version of “Main Street, USA.”

Our intent is that the new application process for proposed development in the Village District be clear, streamlined, and, for the first time in a long time, make plain ol’ sense.  If all goes according to plan, the new regulations will be adopted this year.

And I’m looking forward to having a few more Tuesday nights free…

Essex, Connecticut, 1881

Newspaper editorial writers, generally on a tight deadline, often characterize architects – along with developers and engineers – as heavies overwhelming local land-use boards in pursuit of nefarious, land-gobbling sprawl.  We may be easy whipping boys, but the reality is that here in Connecticut, and in many places across the nation, architects would love to create sociable, dense urban communities with open space set aside in perpetuity, a practice generally known as New Urbanism.  Unfortunately there are many obstacles — the biggest, worst, and most entrenched being antiquated zoning codes that make sprawl all but inevitable.

Zoning codes began to appear in Connecticut in the boom years following World War II, a time when few questioned the American Dream of owning your own patch of land.  Writing zoning codes from scratch would have been a daunting undertaking for town volunteers at that time, so the codes were purchased lock, stock, and barrel from supplier companies eager to make money distributing zoning boiler plate.

One of the largest such suppliers is the perfectly respectable MuniCode, which since 1961 has supplied zoning codes to 23 Connecticut towns and cities.  Not bad for a company located in Tallahassee, Fl.  You might ask what a Tallahassee outfit knows about the special character of the New England village of Westbrook?  Probably not much.  So over time, Westbrook has taken on the suburban look of MuniCode’s 1,600 other client communities across the United States, which is a shame.

This is but one of many ways that the character of our special places erodes.  Eventually every place begins to look like every other place, and Connecticut’s forested landscape becomes as chewed up with mini-estates as the desert around Tucson is with ranchettes.  Sprawl in Connecticut is advanced almost every time somebody pulls a zoning permit.  Good intentions about rational planning become academic when someone goes in for a permit.  At that point it’s too late for lofty thoughts.  All that matters is how well you meet the zoning code.

Zoning is, in effect, the codification of a town’s self-image.  Developers, architects, and engineers are smart enough to know they must conform, or they will suffer.  Zoning appeals are no fun; they are expensive and unbelievably time-consuming.  Even once you reach the Board of Zoning Appeals level, staff and board members do not welcome blue-sky discussions about alternative ways of doing things.  Sprawl may not be what an enlightened segment of the population wants, but it’s what our zoning codes demand, so sprawl is what we get and what we’ll continue to get until we change our zoning codes.

On the whole, our codes are nonsensical.  In my town of Essex, as in most Connecticut towns, it would be impossible to use the town’s zoning code to build anew the very hometown Essex citizens today love.  Few aspects of the urban density that make Essex village special are allowed by the town’s zoning code.  In a new Essex, buildings would be too far apart, and they would be placed too far from the sidewalk.  There would be too much space around each dwelling.  Houses would be too far back from the water.  Streets would be too wide, and houses wouldn’t be tall enough to have the elegant proportions of those built in the 18th, and especially the 19th centuries.  The village would be spread out and suburban in feel.

You could have the best architects in the country working on a new Essex, but by following the Essex zoning code they’d arrive at something different from our town.  The disconnect is not unique to Essex; it’s typical of most Connecticut towns.  Zoning codes in Connecticut and other states have failed to evolve with planning philosophies because volunteer boards tend to be overly impressed by the authoritative look and sheer weight of their codes.  Documents so massive get taken for granted, like the Bible.  Imagine rewriting the Bible, complete with cross-references, mathematical calculations, and technical definitions!  The impetus would have to be huge and the benefits obvious.  Unfortunately, they are not.  Knee-jerk reactions to the idea of dense neighborhood layouts are usually negative.  New Urbanism is accepted only after very involved presentations are made, and too often not even then.

But zoning codes can be changed, and there is plenty of help out there for it.  Ironically, it is developers and designers who have led the way.  Enter Leyland-Alliance, a developer who earlier this decade attempted to introduce a New Urbanism development on a former airport property for the Griswold Airport property in Madison.  Its dense village layout of 127 housing units on 42 acres was designed by the team of Duaney Plater-Zyberk and architect Robert Orr, veterans of the seminal New Urbanism town of Seaside in the Florida panhandle.  You’d think this would be a no-brainer, right?  Wrong.  The scheme has been mired in controversy for years.

And what has been the rallying cry of local citizens?  Too dense!  Despite receiving requisite approvals, the developers faced likely legal appeals, so on Sept. 30, 2009, after years of effort, they agreed to sell the land for $9.7 million to a conservation organization.  Future developers no doubt will take notice: don’t make waves, just follow the rules, however stultifying and outdated they may be.

We have a very long way to go in order to relearn the art of making sociable, humane neighborhoods, and we know that suburban sprawl is here to stay.  But there are enough tracts of virgin land still left, and of course there are enough brown field sites around, that ample opportunity exists for bringing the combined principles of New Urbanism and conservation of open space to our communities.

To be successful at it, we’ll have to go right to the root of the problem and rewrite our zoning codes.  This will require noisemaking from the media and from other shapers of public opinion, and it won’t happen without top-down leadership from state government in some form.  And, contrary to conventional wisdom, it is the architects, developers, and engineers who have been true standard-bearers for change in the Land of Steady Habits.