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Shaping the face of downtown Palo Alto - Architect Ken Hayes infuses University Avenue with strikingly modern touches, by Molly Tanenbaum, 7/18/2007
Link to original article
If you want to know what Palo Alto will look like in 10 or 20 years, ask architect Ken Hayes.
The go-to architect for buildings throughout the city, Hayes has worked on the insides and outsides of upwards of 80 projects between Hamilton and Lytton avenues -- and has been slowly transforming University Avenue.
His projects range from his warm, stucco La Strada restaurant to his cool, gray Palo Alto Bicycles building to the sleek, angular Jos. A Bank Clothiers -- which won a design award from the American Institute of Architects last year.
While many local architects come before the city with their proposals several times per year, Hayes has been known to have several projects at public city hearings in one week.
Developers of properties beyond downtown have also been knocking at Hayes' door. Among them are three neighborhood shopping centers in Palo Alto: Jim Ellis for a new Trader Joe's building as part of Town and Country Shopping Center's $25 million renovation; John McNellis for a mixed-use grocery store and apartment building at Alma Plaza; and John Tze for yet-unknown upgrades to Edgewood Plaza.
He has also designed modern, mixed-use structures on El Camino Real with ground-floor stores and offices beneath condos, such as Starbucks building at El Camino Way and an under-construction medical office building at Park Boulevard.
"I don't know how this happened. I really don't," Hayes, 48, shrugged. "I guess you do a good job and people call you back."
One person who has called him back is Alex Giovannotto, whose family owns La Strada. Hayes is now working with Giovannotto on a new restaurant next door, at the corner of University and Florence Street.
Giovannotto chose Hayes and his Redwood City-based staff of 12 for the new al fresco restaurant in the former US Bank building because of their "unmatched combination of design creativity, consummate knowledge of Palo Alto's planning and building processes and a reputation for creating quality projects that enhance the vitality of the downtown area," he said.
Other repeat clients include companies such as Apple Inc. in Cupertino and IDEO in Palo Alto.
Hayes says his attraction to downtown Palo Alto projects lies in the challenge of integrating new designs in with classic Palo Alto architecture that are respectful of their traditional, Spanish Colonial-influenced surroundings.
Steel, industrial materials and "the play of light and glass" are strong elements in the spaces Hayes creates, in which designers innovate, couples dine, shoppers browse and people live.
"We're not building Spanish missions anymore," said the blue-eyed Hayes, who is lean and confident and has hints of silver in his hair and an affinity for black clothing.
"Architecture doesn't all have to be reminiscent."
Jos. A. Bank best represents Hayes' gravitation toward modern curves, angles and materials. The men's clothing store features steel, shiny glass and sharp corners.
Positioned next to a Spanish mission-style building, Jos. A. Bank also blends in with its gray stucco and roof that curves down toward the walkway between it and its neighbor, exemplifying Hayes' focus on the "dialogue that's really important between the building and public spaces."
Hayes is also currently working on a project to restore a 1925 University Ave. storefront by architect Birge Clark and build a new, modern building next to it that takes cues from Clark's Spanish Colonial-style work.
"You can tell that he loved what he was doing and the materials he was working with," Hayes said of Clark, a prominent Palo Alto architect who contributed to designing 450 buildings in the Palo Alto area between 1919 and 1989.
A visit to Hayes Group's Redwood City office makes his own passion clear. He saves the tiny, white models and drawings for each project -- even the ones that didn't get built, such as a prior proposal for renovating Alma Plaza and a mixed-use building on California Avenue -- in the hopes that they'll have a use someday.
Working 14-hour days, however, he doesn't spend much time thinking about his own possible legacy.
"To think that a Hayes Group project will at some point be historic is baffling," he said.
Originally from Pleasanton and now residing in Emerald Hills with his graphic designer wife and a son and daughter, Hayes says he never thought twice about his career path.
"From as early as I can remember, I was going to be an architect," recalled Hayes, whose childhood playground was a "jungle gym" of wooden frames of new housing developments going up in his hometown.
He studied architecture at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo before establishing his professional roots in Palo Alto, where he began work for the architecture firm Holland, East & Duvivier. He later teamed up with architect Virginia Schutte to form the Schutte Hayes Group in 1989 and finally set out on his own in 1996 with Hayes Group.
He is presently known among local developers as the architect for developers seeking smooth passage through the so-called "Palo Alto Process" of getting building approvals.
"Ken is the best architect practicing in Palo Alto who has familiarity with Palo Alto zoning," said developer and property manager Jim Baer, whom Hayes credits with imparting extensive knowledge of Palo Alto city planning.
Equipped with fancy PowerPoint slide shows of his proposed projects, Hayes woos the Architectural Review Board that evaluates and approves building designs in Palo Alto.
While the board "doesn't give him a blank check," Chair David Solnick said, "the one difference with applicants like him and others is we do have confidence that he's going to do a complete application."
The Architectural Review Board recognized Hayes' work on the IDEO headquarters with a design award in 2005.
"His [award] was absolutely unanimous," Solnick said.
The building on Alma Street and Forest Avenue merges the old with the new by sprouting a modern, warehouse-like structure out of the existing red brick shell of the former Ellison's Auto Body shop.
"I think it's one of the best-made buildings in the city. It brings in something new and modern and of today without trying to copy what was there nor detracting from what was there," Solnick said.
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