The May of 1949 issue of the magazine Architectural Record included an article that explored the question of whether or not there was such a thing as the "Bay Area Style". Thirty one year old Robert Royston was one of the designers whose opinions were solicited. Garrett Eckbo and Ed Williams, Royston's partners, also contributed responses for the article.

The term "Bay Area Style" first mentioned by Lewis Mumford in the New Yorker then bandied about at the Museum of Modern Art's symposium, attaining international prominence as an accepted phrase in the pages off the London Architectural Review has caused discussion, self-examination and, finally, concern on the part of many of the Bay Area architects as to whether or not there are any grounds for such a characterization. Among these were the members of Telesis, the Bay Area's group of younger architects, landscape architects, and planners, whose collaborative exhibit a decade ago drew thousands of visitors and was an enlivening influence on both the public and the profession. Prompted by a concern lest the term become so widely accepted that they would find themselves prematurely forced into a style, they asked the opinion of some of the men whose work is the object of the term. The Record presents these opinions and examples of the work of each contributor which show a wide variety of approach and solution.

Architectural Record - May 1949

Is There A Bay Area Style?

by Robert Royston

The word "style" as applied to architectural form in the Bay Area, is limiting and categorical. Actually, the common elements of expression though perhaps evident in a few houses and a few gardens, are certainly not to be found in our public buildings. They are mainly visible in the projected unity of purpose of a few individuals, in all the professions. This unity is based on a common objective - improvement of working and living environment, private and public, for the majority of the people.

The most important aspect of this unity of purpose is, I think, the spirit of collaboration and the unusually free interchange of ideas to be found here, not only among members of each professional group, but between individuals in all groups. Perhaps the best examples of this collaboration and interchange of thought were the now defunct Farm Security Administration and Federal Public Housing Authority whose design staffs included men from all the allied professions, placed side by side to work out total site solutions for multi family dwellings. ( Unfortunately, most of the latest and best work of this field died on the drafting boards) Their projected solutions, both in total space organization and building techniques, might have been an actual building renaissance had these agencies continued. Discontinuance of the agencies did not however, kill the impetus gained in architectural design and in site planning; the energy and knowledge was turned there upon to individual houses, gardens, public schools, and more thoughtful works within the limits of private capital.

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