George Sweeney’s Structural Integrity

George Sweeney. Photo by David Fairchild

George Sweeney. Photo by David Fairchild

For over four decades, architect George Sweeney has championed an aesthetic for the Peninsula, as an architect and architectural juror

When the Peninsula forefathers formed the Palos Verdes Art Jury in 1923, their goal was to assure an architecture consistent with the peninsula’s ruralism,

Over the past four decades architect George Sweeney has been a leading proponent and protector of that aesthetic, both as a member of the Palos Verdes Art Jury and the Rolling Hills Architectural Review Committee and as an architect.

“George has been involved behind the scenes in a great many homes. He doesn’t get credit for all of them because it’s an Art Jury or ARC thing, but he fixes bad architecture,” said architect and Art Jury member Criss Gunderson. “He’s been instrumental to the aesthetics of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.”

Sweeney’s family moved to the South Bay from Illinois in the 1950s, when, as he recalled, “It was all open fields and truck farms, and you could rent a horse for $1.50 an hour.” He once rode a horse up to his family’s front door to spook his mother.

Entry loggia of the Collana home in Palos Verdes Estates. Photo courtesy of George Sweeney

Sweeney planned to become a commercial artist.

“I’ve always been interested, even as a child, in art, architecture and history,” he said. But a community college professor advised him there was more money in architecture.

As a young married man, Sweeney decided to follow the professor’s advice and enrolled in the architectural program at the University of Southern California in 1971.

“The architect is more limited in some ways in his art, though Wright called it the ‘mother art,’” Sweeney said. “But if you look at the great Gothic cathedrals, you could say you agree with him.”

After USC, he and his wife Cathy toured Europe, where he studied the architecture that most appealed to him.

“The historical styles, I think, relate to me — or I can relate to them,” he said.

When Sweeney returned from Europe he joined a Beverly Hills architectural firm doing commercial projects. But he was living in Palos Verdes and quickly tired of the commute.

One weekend in 1976, as he cruised around the Peninsula, he saw a real estate office and inspiration struck.

“I went in, and asked if people were looking for architects,” Sweeney recalled. The agent was impressed with the drawings Sweeney had brought along, and asked what he would do with a particular lot.

Sweeney went home and got to designing. The real estate agent liked the work, and started sending clients Sweeney’s way.

“I had 12 projects in less than a year,” Sweeney said. “I just fell into this as a living, and I didn’t have any desire to get super rich. I just wanted to get by.”

“His name is synonymous with traditional architecture. He’s one of the great experts in Southern California,” said architect Jeff Dahl.

“George has a way of going back into antiquity to express the style. There are so many architects today where it’s only about the pizazz of the building. George is a master craftsman,” Dahl said.

“It’s like going to school every time I’m with him. He’s made me a better architect, just by being around him and listening.”

Many architects, Dahl said, don’t understand things as basic as how a column fits in with what it’s intended to support, either in engineering or aesthetics.

“Structure is the great form giver,” Sweeney said. To illustrate his point he explained the role of windows.

In the 11th Century buildings were stone-on-stone, brick-on-brick, with no reinforcement. The walls were thick, to ensure the stones would stand. The buildings were often narrow and vertical. The  windows were kept away from load bearing corners.

Entry court pavilion for a home in the Monte Malaga Neighborhood.

Windows are a weak point in a building. The engineering of the time required windows to be stacked, rather than staggered to create an even wall load.

“There’s logic; they weren’t done arbitrarily, or to look cool. They were designed to fit the structural needs of the systems and materials of the time,” Sweeney said. “Arches are used for structural reasons. If you wanted bigger windows, that’s how they were used. The barrel vault is an arch that covers a whole room.”

The purpose of the Palos Verdes Art Jury is to make sure a project isn’t just good, but that it’s also in keeping with the style it represents, Sweeney said.

“Modern buildings that attempt to be Mediterranean are too complicated,” Sweeney said. “We try to control that here, so the buildings look good and are an honest, faithful representation of a structural representation in stone.”

Redondo Beach architect Luis de Moraes submitted his first project to the PVAJ 20 years ago. His review had red marks all over it, among them comments asking why certain details mattered.

“I was around 30 years old and cocky,” de Moraes said. “You wonder, why is that so critical when maybe one neighbor is going to see it? But they’re being sensitive to good design — not that it doesn’t matter if someone will see it, but that it matters to exercise good design judgement.”

Going through that, he said, made him more aware of what makes good design, and how to preserve an identity.

According to Gunderson, the Art Jury decisions are as much for the building itself as the community.

“There are thousands of decisions to be made as one designs a building, and each one has to be justified. If you start making things up on your own, eventually something is going to fall apart,” Gunderson said. “It may be during construction. It may be an engineer saying they can’t engineer it, or it’ll cost a fortune. Or a client will come back and say ‘this functions horribly.’”

The balance, he said, involves, function, structure and aesthetics, issues he has often debated with Sweeney, going back to the early 1970s, when he was a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a draftsman in Sweeney’s architectural firm.

“Because George’s influence, I sought out professors who shared his opinion that design is rational,” Gunderson said.

Design, Sweeney said, is also key to community.

“Architecture is central to our lives. It affects the way we live on a daily basis, not only functionally, but aesthetically. How you feel about your life might depend on how you feel when you walk out the front door,” Sweeney said. 

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