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Abrams,
Harold |
Russell Forester, AIA (1920-2002)
Born in 1920 in Salmon, Idaho, at age five Russell Isley Forester moved to La Jolla with his younger brother and mother – who notably served as librarian at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography where a number of the architect’s clients would later conduct their research. Russell’s father, an architect, had abandoned the family. Russell graduated from La Jolla High School in 1938 and later served in the Army Corps of Engineers (1943-46), where he began his architectural career as a draftsman alongside Lloyd Ruocco. Together, with other budding designers, the team designed ‘replacement depots’ while much of his free time away from the drafting table was devoted to drawing. Russell’s first wife, Eleanor, was born on December 11, 1924, to Eva Lucille Puckett and George Albert Hedenberg. Eleanor moved to San Diego with her mother and stepfather, Kenneth J. Darrell, in 1939. After graduating from Hoover High School she worked in a drafting position for Concrete Shipyards designing barges for the War effort. At Concrete Shipyards, she met Russell and they immediately hit it off, forcing the head draftsman, Lloyd Ruocco, to move their desks apart since Russell spent too much time turning around to talk to her. Eleanor and Russell married on April 13, 1946, in La Jolla. Mr. Forester opened his first office, at 7438 Cuvier Avenue, in 1948, as a freelance architectural designer. At this early stage of his career, he designed four houses for Lloyd and Betty Russell at 348 Vista de la Playa, his own home at 724 Rushville, a house for Ruth Dailey on Ludington Place and the Cromwell's home on Vista de la Playa. Inspired by- and at the urging of Lloyd Ruocco (not to mention financing from the GI Bill), Russell sought out formal architectural studies -- during 1950-1951 at the Institute of Design (later IIT) in Chicago where Mies Van Der Rohe and others were spreading the International Style gospel. Inspired by- and at the urging of Lloyd Ruocco (not to mention financing from the GI Bill), Russell sought out formal architectural studies -- during 1950-1951 at the Institute of Design founded as the ‘New Bauhaus’ in 1937 by Bauhaus educator László Moholy-Nagy. By the time Russell arrived at the campus, Serge Chermayeff was serving as its director. Russell later recollected that his foundation course focused on perception, space, light, proportion and texture. Eleanor and Russell returned to San Diego when his mother became ill. Russell’s formal studies, in Chicago, had a major impact on the development of his approach. While his early works, of 1948-49, were fairly traditional, Russell's work following his time at the Institute of Design were boldly 'contemporary'. His home designs in Scripps Estates Associates, near La Jolla Shores and elsewhere in La Jolla exemplify his new approaches in wood and glass. Eleanor and Russell built three family homes together before they divorced after 20 years of marriage - their first house at 724 Rushville Street in April 1948, a house on Hillside Drive in 1952 and a spec house in the upper Shores area in the early 1960s. Eleanor was an accomplished and successful interior designer. Her company, Eleanor Forester Interiors, based in downtown La Jolla, focused on both commercial and residential projects. She designed dormitory rooms for UC San Diego and a string of banks, homes for Robert Peterson, Harle Montgomery, Joan Holter, William Karatz, and the Sampson, Mayne, Muzzy, Fayman, Kimmell, and Marston families, among many others. Eleanor also did residential work in San Francisco, Hawaii, Mexico, New York, and Montana. Asked to write a monthly column for San Diego Magazine by editor Ed Self, she wrote the "La Jollans are Talking About" column in the early 1960s. Russell opened his first office at the time his Rushville Street home was “chosen by a distinguished jury as one of the top residences in the United States for Progressive Architecture magazine.” His second home at 7595 Hillside Drive was “displayed in an international architecture exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1952.” Eleanor and Russell spent a year in Spain in 1955-56 while he “worked for a firm of engineers and architects on U.S. bases in Spain” as designer and supervising architect. After two years, Russell returned stateside “as a designer on the Los Angeles airport for the firm Pereira and Luckman.” By the time he obtained his architectural license, in 1960, Russell had already completed a wealth of modernist structures including his second home at 7595 Hillside Drive in La Jolla.
Russell was among the first wave of San Diego architects to emphasize the benefits of ‘steel and glass modernism’, championed elsewhere by the likes of Mies Van Der Rohe, to commercial and residential clients here. From his La Jolla practice, Mr. Forester enjoyed a number of commissions by local art patrons Lynn and Danah Fayman as well as restaurateurs like Bob Peterson. For Peterson (Foodmaker CEO), Russell pushed Mieisian modernism into pop culture by designing the first Jack in the Box restaurant in 1951. As Jack in the Box ‘machines for dispensing food; (Forester, 2001) grew to well over 200 drive-thru restaurants inside 20 years, Peterson would also have Russell design the Family Tree, a more elegant setting for dining in San Diego, as well as his personal residence. In 1962, San Diego & Point described Russell’s artwork as arresting, constructivist, severe, functionalist, and mainstream all in the same article. Of the second home he designed for the Russell family, the magazine stated “the house….has a quiet elegance and air of privacy. The feeling, both inside and out, is one of discipline without rigidity, elegance without opulence.” Russell Forester spent three decades juggling his passion and vision for fine arts and architecture only to give up the latter for the former in 1976. With the aid of his second wife and architectural firm partner, Christine, Russell began his full-time career as a painter and sculptor when many of his contemporaries were retiring or at least retiring their modernist principles for safer ground. “Had it been up to him, he would have gone directly into the arts (rather than architecture). He liked the Bauhaus ideology of diverse disciplines,” remarked widow Christine Forester. “Had he been an artist since his 20s he may have not been as productive. Russell was often discouraged from pursuing his art. By the time he devoted himself full-time to art in his 50s, there was a sense of urgency. By this time his hand was very secure and there was little waste and few mistakes,” said Mrs. Forester. Russell Forester defined architecture as problem solving. From his Philosophy of Practice: We believe that good architecture grows out of a thoughtful, direct and imaginative approach to each owner’s individual problem. Our unique systems approach to the total project from the feasibility studies through design and finished construction gives us an economic and functional solution. Our understanding of the complexity of each client’s problems and the professional and artful solution to his needs is our concern. In our practice all functions (architecture, feasibility studies, planning, interiors, color or graphics) are based on a systems approach to the total concept. We know the broad scope of thinking and the individual talent that is brought to bear on each commission. It is unsurpassed. We are entering a new age of building. An age in which a new set of ideas is taking hold. These ideas are not solely technological in nature: they are also philosophical. Relating first to larger questions of environmental planning and then concern for the isolated technical details. Russell Forester’s career melding art and architecture was honored by his unusual FAIA recognition. Rather than his career of progressive building designs being honored, Mr. Forester was recognized by his AIA colleagues for his contribution to art and architecture aesthetics. Russell believed the central tenet to integrity of design was his residential client’s lifestyle. Some of his clients would later become patrons of his artwork –filling their Forester-designed homes with Forester-designed artwork. Clients like Lloyd Russell, Danah Fayman and Bob Peterson commissioned Russell time and again. Clients may have understood him better than his colleagues in architecture.
One only has to look at the ceiling of Park Prospect Apartments to understand Russell’s fascination with repetition. Many of Mr. Forester’s commissions include rows of small round light bulbs -- these “dots, lines and light” (Forester, 2001) are recurring themes in both his art and architecture. Whether using rows of light diodes, or punctuating his painting and sculpture (sometimes in steel) with a sewing machine, the linear repetition reflected this dots-in-line theme. From his La Jolla home, Russell grew fascinated by coastal mist seen through the expansive glass walls. His art often reflects coastal mornings by painting, washing, and repainting and the use of gauze to reflect this misty feeling. Russell’s architectural designs varied in material and style over the decades (1948-1976) while always retaining central design principles – the problems the client needed solving; and how the whole project was vastly more than the sum of its parts. Clients of Russell Forester / Associates Inc. grew to expect a variety of things, central to which was his unquestionable integrity of his designs, passion and vision. During much of Mr. Forester’s architectural career, San Diego’s mid-century design aesthetic was comprised of a “lack of homogeneity in materials and approach to reflecting the region. People continued to come (to San Diego) from other elsewhere and clients wanted styles (reminding them of) from where they were from,” Mrs. Forester summarized. She continued, “He was a brilliant man, extremely talented, cut to the chase, detail oriented, never lost track of detail within content/ context of project “whole was definitely the sum of the details.” Partial List of San Diego Projects Bailey, G. Newton ("Newt") and Doris P. Residence (1954) Bronowski, Jacob
and Rita Residence (ca. 1965) Brown, Dr. James D. Residence (1967) Byerly Residence (1969) Callahan, Richard and Lucille Residence Addition (1969) Cromwell, Townsend Residence (1949) Cromwell, Townsend and Katherine Residence (1955) Dailey, Helen Ruth Residence (1948) Dill, Robert and Gloria Residence (1955) Driver, Robert Residence (1955) Edison, Simon and Helen, Residence (1974)
Family Tree Restaurant (1965) Fayman, Lynn & Danah
Residence #1 (1962) Fayman, Danah
Residence #2 (1969) Fayman Industrial
Building (1966) Forester, Russell
& Eleanor Residence #1 (1948) Forester, Russell
& Eleanor Residence #2 (1952) Forester, Russell Spec House (1962) Forester, Russell & Christine Residence (1971)
Forester Office Building (1973) Frautschy, Jeff
and Frances Residence (1954) Freitas Residence (1968) Gewalt Residence (1956) Gist, Richard and Allison Residence (1955) Gross, Max Hudson and Louise J. Gross Residence (1963) Herman, Edmund
& Elsie Residence (1961) Inman, Douglas and Ruth Residence (1955) Jack in
the Box Mark I design (1951)
Jack in the Box, Mark II design (mid 1950s)
Jack in the Box, Mark III design (early 1960s) Jack
in the Box Jack in the Box Offices Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box Jack in the Box
Jefferson Gallery
(1965) Jones, Chalmer E. Residence (1962) Klapper, Roy B. Residence (1957)
La Jolla Country
Day School Fountain (1967) La Jolla Veterinary Hospital (1950)
Mayne, Don & Marilyn Residence (1962) Mayo Residence
(1951) Means, Rodney Residence (1962) Miller, Paul G. Residence (1959) Moore, David and Claire Residence (1955) Nelson, Ralph B. (ret) and Sigmund Wald Residence (1961) Olsen Residence
(1950) Park Prospect
(1964) Patten, Stanley, R/Adm Residence (1961) Peterson, Robert
O. Residence
(1964) Poppendiek, Heinz and Elizabeth Residence (1965) Private
Residence (1963) Private
Residence Private
Residence (1961) Private Residence
(1961) Ridland, Mr. and Mrs. Residence (1961) Russell, Lloyd
and Betty Residence #1 (1948) Russell, Lloyd
and Betty Residence #2 (1962) Russell, L.E.
Residence (1962) Sampson, Horace
and Dorothy Residence (1972) Schmidt, Dr. A. G. Residence (1961) Schreiber, A Residence (1956) Shor, George and
Betty Residence (1954) Shumway, George and Ann (Revelle) Residence (1955) Signori, Al and Frances Residence (1968) Smith,
Com. & Mrs.
W.A. Residence Remodel (1949) Spiess, Fred and Sarah Residence (1955) Sunset Engraving (1963) Tompkins Residence (1962) Urey, Harold and Frieda Daum Residence (1954) Whisenand, Dr James M. and Mrs Juanita Residence (1958) Wood, Elizabeth Residence (1953) Zane, John Residence (1959) Zemlick, Maury Residence (1967)
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