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- Much of the work of
A. Quincy
Jones, FAIA, from the
1960s has been in the design of buildings for university
campuses and of office buildings. But he first gained
recognition in residential work in the postwar era when
the need for housing was acute. Born in Kansas City,
Missouri, in 1913, Jones was a professor of architecture
at the University of Southern California from
1951-67.
While in private practice in Los Angeles from 1937, his
houses set standards of excellence that affected all
house design of the postwar period, especially the tract
house, to which he was one of the few to give
architectural consideration. A characteristic of these
small houses was the simplified structural system which
allowed for spatial diversity, in contrast to the usual
static box.
Certain characteristics of Jones' large-scale work grew
out of his solutions for residences, particularly in
siting and in the development of flexible structural
systems. In his larger building, his experiments were
aimed at the integration of mechanical systems; previous
to his research, each system was treated as a separate
element, and their haphazard installation reduced their
efficiency and retrievable space. Two examples of this
are the 1959 Biological Sciences Building on the Santa
Barbara campus and the 1967 Chemistry Building on the
Riverside campus of the University of California. These
two projects are dominated by a heavy continuous cap
which houses an integrated mechanical system, and it is
expressed on the interiors by a prefabricated coffered
ceiling of concrete which carries conduits in the
channel.
This same scheme was adapted for the 1972 Annenberg
School of Communications at the University of Southern
California. The main entrance is interrupted by plazas at
two levels, the plazas serving as meeting places for
students, with one extended to a protected patio.
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