Good Partnership

To merchant builders, who buy land by the tract and sow it with houses, architecture is usually something to do without. Architects, they feel, are too prone to run up costs with perfectionists' details, and too preoccupied with niceties that are wasted on development customers, who don't care much what a house looks like so long as there are plenty of appliances in the kitchen.

A notable breakthrough has been made in this architect-builder standoff, and made by one of the top builders in the U.S. — California's Ross William Cortese, who is discovering that architecture is not only selling his buildings but cutting his costs.

Privacy & Chats. Builder Cortese (rhymes with daisy) specializes in retirement housing. When he was cranking up for his third retirement community—at Walnut Creek in the San Francisco Bay area—he decided to give an architect a crack at it. The result has made $250 million Walnut Creek, now abuilding, one of the most talked-about developments in the U.S.

The architect Cortese picked for his experiment was the West Coast's well-known Warren Callister. "We've been selling everything else in these retirement projects," he told him. "Now we want to try selling architecture."

Callister delivered it. Walnut Creek's roofs lift the eye, its patios are big enough to let the sun in, instead of being the penumbral little fakes so beloved of corner-cutting contractors. And there is no scamping of the invisible details. Air-conditioning ducts are oversized to eliminate duct noise, water pipes are oversized to eliminate water moaning, walls and ceilings are fully insulated, and almost every partition is a floor-to-ceiling storage wall. Doorways are 36 in. wide to permit easy passage of wheelchairs, wall plugs are 2 ft. off the floor to minimize stooping, light switches are at fingertip height, about 30 in. off the floor for effortless flipping by an arthritic arm.

More subtle is the Callister-Cortese planning for easy sociability. Gardens are planted around the laundry rooms, for example, so that women with no clothes to wash may still have an excuse to sit in the lounge, enjoying the view and a chat. Walkways are planned with many corners for accidental meetings, and there is a gazebo, where free coffee and tea are served. "People want some privacy but not all the time," says Callister. "They want action and legitimate excuses to meet each other —so we have all these clubhouses and courtyards and meeting rooms."

More Excitement Ahead. Having taken a chance on architecture, Cortese was pleased to discover that he had more than he had bargained for. "Callister helped us get lower costs than we could have got without him," says the project manager.

Callister sees the future of architecture in developments. "I don't think people are going to buy the old-fashioned homesteads any more," he says."They're going to buy the projects that provide the greatest excitement, activity and adventure. When architecture provides that, it lives."