'Architecture as Art' Coming to Cruzio

Come Friday, sketches by eight local architects spanning 40 years will adorn the walls of the common workspace. The retrospective is part of First Friday Santa Cruz.

The architects include Matt Thompson, Mark Primack, Clarke Shultes, Dan Townsend, Daniel Gomez, Bret Hancock, Christopher Yonge and William C. Kempf. They count the Dream Inn, New Leaf downtown and the Good Times building among their work, designs that have helped to define the community. 

"If you go to any other town in America, it wouldn't look like this," said Krissie Olson, a Cruzio coordinator. "They have shaped it. This is Santa Cruz and these people have helped shape the way we look. That's profound."

Modern and traditional buildings will be shown in a variety of media, from pencil drawings to computer-generated images.

Olson said she hopes the display will spark a conversation about the direction architecture is moving. That dialogue will be further facilitated by a June 6 discussion on the future of architecture held at Cruzio.

"It's much the same as the conversation surrounding the newspaper industry," she said. "Hand drawing is becoming a lost art. Do we lose our humanity and the nuances of architecture when we move to computers? Or do we have images that aren't possible with hand drawings?"

While Friday's display aims to inspire a deeper level of thinking surrounding architecture, Olson said that the heart of the evening is the professionals and their visions.

"They're not used to having their work on display like this," she said. "They'll actually be able to talk to the public about why they chose a particular painting or drawing. People will be able to get behind what they were thinking when they were creating the dwellings we've seen."

The Architecture as Art First Friday display is Friday, June 1 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Cruzio Building, located at 877 Cedar St. The June 6 lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Cruzio Building. Sign-up for the event here.