Houses are square, and all that matters is functional, he was told. But James Hubbell had a different vision, building his family village/compound using no straight lines.
Most accomplished architects and builders are accustomed to erecting structures of any size and budget. However, they are somehow drawn to the purity and simplicity of a small temple, a chapel of sorts, no matter the denomination: Christian or any other faith. Artists and other eclectic creators show similar inclinations.
Why? Such places display concentrated effect, where the architect’s intention is at the mercy of the limitations —of space, budget, and utility. In the same way that, to The Little Prince, the beauty of an entire planet isn’t a matter of scale, creative freedom and expression don’t increase proportionally with size.
Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s small and humble Saint Benedict chapel, built on a steep slope in rural Switzerland, is one example. When we visited Seattle-based architect James Cutler, he also mentioned to us how much he had enjoyed designing a small church, a place where shapes, materials, and light must accomplish so much with so little. He invited us to visit the place, though we couldn’t then; one more excuse to return soon to the Pacific Northwest.
A few days facing the ocean
I can see anybody—whether a believer of any denomination or a secular person—appreciating this type of shelter, the humbler the closer to pantheism—a belief in Dutch philosopher Spinoza’s God, which he equaled to nature: “Deus sive Natura” (God, or Nature). Some of us seem to understand concepts like this one when exposed to the beauty of nature, or a building, or a good painting or photography depicting them (say, a picture by Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, perhaps from his book Genesis).
A tiny chapel is to ornate mega-buildings what a driftwood shelter is to ever-bigger mountain cabins.
We met James Hubbell’s work before we knew who he was. It was in summer, though this was August by the Pacific Ocean, where it can get refreshingly chilly at times. We had decided to organize a small family reunion. We met this time at Sea Ranch, the family-friendly community on the rugged Northern California coast two hours and a half north of San Francisco.
From our previous visits over the years, we could tell the place was not only inspiring but solitary and convivial at once, with a walking trail running along solitary beaches where driftwood washes ashore and the golden hour, either in the early morning or late in the afternoon, is just otherworldly. Today, Sea Ranch maintains most of its original allure, although success has come at a price —it’s an expensive place to own (or even visit).
I had read about the few landmarks in the area, for its low-key development, conceived in 1965 by a group of young architects and artists short in money but rich in ideals, was about emulating the place’s early inhabitants, the Pomo Indians, of “living light on the land” amid shared fields, oceanfront, and walking trails.
Ever since, the planned community has been about experiencing the local flora and fauna or going about one’s own day “rather than following a golf ball or something,” as Donlyn Lyndon, one of the original founders, told us in 2016. And, in this case, the invitation to enjoy the elements from the vantage point of any of the weathered wooden houses in the unincorporated community (inspired by local barns) isn’t aspirational PR: Sea Ranch is a place, but it also turns into a state of mind.
Pantheism and creativity: Sea Ranch chapel
We had been there a few days, enjoying many of the little things the place has to offer to the visitor’s perception, like the symphony-like advance of the ocean fog into the cliffs while walking early in the morning or the light-filled living rooms with generous windows overlooking the ocean from the distance (the houses are built at least 100 feet from the cliff, giving priority for a bluff trail along the entire 10 miles).
During the afternoon, instead of heading towards the ocean, I decided to take a marked path heading to the Sea Ranch Chapel, a non-denominational temple built in a lot on the side of Pacific Coast Highway 1, the scenic road traversing through the middle of Sea Ranch.
Surprisingly, I hadn’t seen any pictures of the building before, so I didn’t know what to expect from it. As I approached, I knew this was going to be the one structure in the whole community that departed freely from the sobriety of the rest of the structures, defined by Lyndon as “strong without being assertive, simple without being plain.”
From a distance, it was a small wooden construction that lacked the Platonic shapes of any functional building, and yet the organic roof going up in a shingle-clad cone wasn’t abstract either, as if it were a free interpretation of a traditional wooden roof. However, it was undulating upward this time like a strange marine plant or polyp attached to the sea floor while swaying in a gentle current. Or perhaps like a precious fungus in symbiosis with an old log returning to the soil as a mulchy nutrient.
Similar enough to a vernacular building and symbolic enough to let the viewer’s imagination dream, the shape was open to interpretation without giving too many conscious clues nor trying to imitate any object or organism openly—and this eluding the realm of the kitsch while stating its personality. I’d learn later that, to achieve the local aspect, the builders had used redwood siding (dried and molded in place to create the whimsical shapes), the usual cedar shingles to cover the roof (pervasive until asphalt made places uglier and unable to age gracefully), and stones from around the property for the visible foundation and low walls functioning as bearing structure. On the outside, the wood siding going up at an expansive angle under the roof reminded me of a delicate mushroom gill, the thin-walled structure surrounding the mushroom’s stem.
Dynamism and movement in art (and construction)
As I kept walking, the chapel’s roofline swooped and swirled in the evening light, and I thought of the birds I had seen that same morning diving in the water to eat some fish as the water glittered with the light reflection. Whoever had designed it, I thought, had spent some time by the water, perhaps at Sea Ranch or somewhere else, but he was certainly intrigued by the oceanic influence of Coastal California.
I could see the chapel showing its beauty, just like plants or sea creatures do. Until then, I had unconsciously reacted to a building (I had understood it, if you will) only when walking amid Gaudí creations. I could tell that the walk was going to be worth it. “That’s quite something,” I thought, though the interior would be more conventional; it couldn’t get better inside. I was gladly wrong.
For a moment, I feared the place wouldn’t be open; no cars were at the little parking either. A car up or down Highway One and the occasional bird were all you could hear. I approached the Gaudiesque heavy-looking door, made of solid teak with a central stained-glass window in multiple colors and a floral, or perhaps butterfly-wing shape.
After marveling at the way the door’s translucent stained glass revealed a part of the place’s interior, I tried to open it, and I was in. Suddenly, I was transported to a very intimate, comfortable, almost ergonomic world in which the motives became a tribute to the Pacific and its eternal fog: as in any other temple, they were a few benches for people to sit, though this time they were hand-carved out of redwood, resembling an iteration of a bench by Gaudí I saw when we visited “The Cathedral,” a hollowed-out, mammoth cement silo transformed in the incredible living room at Ricardo Bofill’s La Fábrica home-studio outside Barcelona. But this chapel’s benches were a more critical accent here, as the interior is only 350 square feet (around 32 square meters).
The floor, paved with irregular stones, blended with the structural low walls, making a confluence at a central mosaic dominated by tonalities of the ocean’s blues, from dark blue to indigo to turquoise. The irregular height and width of the conical interior siding invited me to marvel at how the light was piercing through the multicolored windows (as if I were inside a free-style version of Paris’ Gothic masterpiece of color, the Sainte Chapelle). Stones at the bottom, followed by redwood siding, culminated on a free-form, white plaster ceiling embellished with embedded seashells and sea urchins. I sat at the bench and just enjoyed being there, like a Jason-inside-the-whale of sorts.
How James Hubbell worked: A special collaboration
I walked back to the place we were renting, and then we gathered with the rest at one of the places. I tried to describe the chapel to Kirsten and the kids, but my words weren’t up to the task, so we returned the next day. I realized that, sometimes, enjoying such a place requires a meditative mood and a bit of introspection, for it’s not the place’s spectacularity per se that may move us, but just feeling that we are there and that we can perceive its beauty, and its ultimate sense. Modernity’s noise and buzz and hurry sometimes get in the way.
I later realized how fortunate I had been not to get any description of the place by anybody from the Bay Area knowing it; a few days later, somebody mentioned: “You were in Sea Ranch… Did you visit the little temple that looks like a witch?” Descriptions are certainly in the eyes of the beholder, but bringing the building’s complexity to a witch is reductionistic at best; plus, it sort of ruins the goal of not seeing anything in particular when going around it.
Later that night, I went online dove into the rich oceanic artistry of James Hubbell, an accomplished polymath and craftsman capable of sculpting art pieces or designing exquisite stained glass born in Long Island who had traveled the world before settling for good in San Diego, Southern California, in the 1950s, an area that would become his place—and that of the family he’d raise with his wife, Anne.
I learned that the Sea Ranch winged-roof building, almost ready to move or take flight, was a unique collaboration between two artistic personalities, James Hubbell and Kirk Ditzler. However, this was not a conventional collaboration. The commission for the non-denominational chapel had come from Robert and Betty Buffum, Sea Ranch residents who also looked for a place for Hubbell to stay while studying the project. The Buffums contacted their friends and neighbors at Sea Ranch, Pat and Lyle Ditzler.
That’s how Hubbell ended up staying at the Ditzlers’ deceased son Kirk’s bedroom. Hubbell felt mesmerized by Kirk Ditzler’s drawings scattered throughout the room. A navy pilot and a zoologist, Ditzler had skillfully drawn all sorts of seashells, bird swings, and other aspects of his direct observation of nature, which crucially inspired James Hubbell’s chapel. To him, this collaboration was also an homage to the memory of Kirk and their parents’ love and one of life—and nature—affirmation. In a way, the chapel designed itself, and James was the right conduit for the very special design to come to fruition.
Understanding the mountain
I liked what I had seen, though learning about the story behind it made it even better. I found a 1989 KPBS little documentary about Hubbell, where the artist explained the special way he understood matter:
“I use a lot of different materials in different ways, and very closely together, things like tile, cement, wood, and brick… I’ve never understood matter and spirit as being separate, in the same way [that] I can never understand that materials can’t be on friendly terms with each other.”
Art and Vision of James Hubbell, KPBS, 1989
Nonduality. I was in. Knowing this, I kept reading about James Hubbell, who was still alive and living in Southern California, though at 92, his health was fragile. Somebody mentioned that the property where Hubbell had landed in the Cuyamaca Mountains east of San Diego in 1958, transforming it into their artsy family compound and rebuilding it after a 2003 fire, was open for people to visit as the Ilan-Lael Foundation.
We finally visited in the Spring of 2024. We were staying in Santa Monica, so we drove to the mountains near Julian, east of San Diego, and met Marianne Gerdes when we arrived. We were so lucky to get in touch with Gerdes from the Ilan-Lael Foundation, very knowledgeable about the place—and genuinely passionate about it.
The Julian mountaintop compound that the Hubbells’ had built over the years while raising their kids, then turning it into a Hobbit village of sorts to host their arts education foundation, was a place of wonder.
As soon as we stepped out of the car and Kirsten went to look for Marianne Gerdes, I set for a little walk of documental recognition and couldn’t help but turn my camera on and photograph things as I stumbled upon them for the first time. We found Marianne and enjoyed the tour around the place, trying to keep our awe in check to produce the video.
Love of the primitive
We had reached the Hubbell’s Julian property from Los Angeles, after driving for a long time on straight mega-highways full of cars going through the dynamic, prosperous, and never-ending suburban megalopolis of coastal Southern California. It felt refreshing as we turned east and entered the mountains and forests of the interior.
By the time we were half an hour into our walkthrough with Gerdes, our trip and visit felt already like a creative, unique antidote that good art has to offer against the “inferno of the same,” the bluntness of commodified experiences, and a perception of reality that still relies on rational and industrial frameworks. To Hubbell:
“Most important is my infatuation with nature. There is also my love of the primitive and naive, gothic architecture, the arts and craft movement, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gaudí, and the pleasure of working with the material of stone, wood, cement, clay, metal, glass, and mosaics.”
‘In Harmony with Nature’: Works of organic architecture by artist James Hubbell on display in Los Angeles, Nathaniel Bahadursingh (Archinect, April 4, 2022)
The story of the Hubbell’s compound, as told by Marianne Gerdes, was compelling. Born in Mineola, Long Island (New York), James Hubbell grew up in several places along the Northeast. An aunt influenced his artistic potential, which he pursued after joining the Army and returning from Korea. Eager to explore art and learning by doing, he and his wife bought the 40-acre rural property in Wynola, a community in Julian, and started working in 1958.
But the Hubbells didn’t want to go as fast as possible so they could focus on a more conventional, money-earning career. Just when modernity was forging ahead, they created their own parallel universe. Their compound was meant to host them and their growing family humbly, grow their food, shelter their creative work, and eventually become the headquarters of their foundation: a way to share with others what they had learned over the decades.
They never borrowed any money to get it going or expand the property, only adding more structures as they needed them—and could afford the time spent and the little materials that weren’t found locally or even within the property.
Their buildings were also meant to have a human scale—small and medium-sized buildings where they could do everything by hand. They pulled rocks from the ground for the foundations and finishes, milled and kilned their own wood, made adobe bricks, and worked on the mesmerizing finishes that create unique perspectives, from whimsical doors to delicate stained-glass mosaics that tell stories.
Stained glass and other craft
James’ early trips around the world, and others he would take with his family along the years, would enrich his perspective and polymath drive. However, his pantheistic vision was already set from the beginning. So, when the Hubbells’ four sons (Torrey, Drew, Lauren, and Brenna) were teenagers, they had a new half-buried home, made by hand for them (and with their help and input).
The so-called Boys’ House was indeed a place of wonder. Half-buried into the hill, and hence cool in summer and warm in winter, it resembles the interior of a seashell or an animal burrow where different nooks (charming, comfortable, light-filled thanks to round stained-glass openings at different heights) created “the ultimate gopher cave,” said Gerdes.
It took ten years to finish the cathedral-like stained glass for the bathroom, door, and windows, feeling “like an underwater experience.” Perhaps, the way I felt while experiencing this burrow-like protective place with no straight angles is how people may have felt centuries ago when visiting a richly crafted place. One doesn’t marvel at the used material but the craft —and the time, skill, and determination we know it requires to deliver.
We also learned that the Hubbell place had been affected by the destructive 2003 Cedar Fire, which turned out to be a cruel test of resilience for the family, the place, and the structures themselves: all the buried, half-buried, and adobe structures within the property survived the fire with minor damage, whereas the flames didn’t spare the rest, trees or structures.
Twenty years later, all the original structures and the native chaparral are back in their prime, and our visit was a testimony of it.
As Kirsten published the video on our visit last Sunday, I read through some of the comments. I learned that the existence of places like the Hubbells, and work as the one done and inspired by James Hubbell, gives hope to some people. Just the fact that such a place, hand-built over the years, can be the outcome of the drive and determination of artistic minds and families learning about existence is a testimony to beauty, to the enchantment of reality, to life affirmation.
Self-expression and life purpose
Some people have expressed over the years, on private emails and also in comments to videos, that they would love to leave a more conventional existence of working around the clock to pay some obligations (many acquired with little meditation or need) and settle somewhere to get to know what they are capable of.
It’s not a life for everybody, though having found a life purpose is one of the factors that philosophers and wise people we can trust have told us that can carry fulfillment (or tranquility, areté, eudaimonia, self-actualization, self-realization, nirvana, übermensch, or however you want to call it). Viktor Frankl calls it “meaning,” whereas in Japan there’s a concept for it: ikigai, or “a reason for being.”
It’s not easy to forget about conventional life and leave the superficial zeitgeist behind to explore one’s own manual work, intellectual creativity, or whatever suits best for any case. When we look retrospectively at lives apparently very rich and well-spent, like that of James Hubbell or many others we have covered in video stories over the years, there are many things that these personalities share among themselves.
They have often been lucky enough to see the work or been mentored by original creators of several disciplines. They aren’t afraid to work consistently on things that have a high intrinsic value and quality but a low public reward, at least at the beginning. They can work on a vision for days, months, years, or decades. They can learn and recognize the worth of others.
We recently received an email note from somebody young and talented who watches Kirsten’s videos. He’d be glad to help us with anything we could think of, though we see an artistic, hard-working young man in search for a project he can focus on. Among the things I’m expecting to do after I finish this post, I want to write to him to suggest Kirsten’s last video as something he should watch. And I wouldn’t mind talking to Marianne, from the Ilan-Lael Foundation, about him.
The least that can happen is an inspiring visit to the mountains east of San Diego. Or we may spark something much more consequential. Let’s not underestimate our worth, it’s never too late if (and when) we are up for it.
Those (like one commenter) highlighting that working for years on stained glass masterworks like James Hubbell, or similar tasks, are things almost impossible to accomplish by the regular mortal, they may have a point. But testing one’s capacities is already something that can shake many preconceived ideas we may hold about others —and ourselves.
One case in point is Cam Shift (don’t miss Kirsten’s video with Cam and Janeen), who left the Bay Area with his family and created his own creative mountaintop village out of leftovers and on a budget. As far as I can tell, he keeps exploring his own creative boundaries.