The Bateson Building, Sacramento, California, 1977–81, and the Design of a New Age State explores an origin of architectural sustainability in the 1970s California governmental programs of Governor Jerry Brown and the circle around Brown and his consultant Stewart Brand, a countercultural entrepreneur. Focusing on the Bateson Building, designed by State Architect Sim Van der Ryn and his team to be the world's first large energy-saving, climate-modulating building, Simon Sadler traces the ambition of the first Brown administration to reinvent the state as a unified ecology founded on New Age principles, notably those drawn from the second-order cybernetics of anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who served as an adviser to the governor. Drawing on archival and published sources from government, environmental policy, cybernetics, and architecture, Sadler recounts an ambitious ecological agenda that included the new Office of Appropriate Technology, a projected space program, and a water atlas for the state of California. Sadler argues for a reconsideration of the history of sustainable and postmodern architecture alike.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
December 2016
Research Article|
December 01 2016
The Bateson Building, Sacramento, California, 1977–81, and the Design of a New Age State
Simon Sadler
Simon Sadler
University of California, Davis
Simon Sadler is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. His publications include Archigram: Architecture without Architecture (MIT Press, 2005), The Situationist City (MIT Press, 1998), and numerous articles, chapters, and essays about American and European counterculture. http://arts.ucdavis.edu/faculty-profile/simon-sadler-0
Search for other works by this author on:
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2016) 75 (4): 469–489.
Citation
Simon Sadler; The Bateson Building, Sacramento, California, 1977–81, and the Design of a New Age State. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 December 2016; 75 (4): 469–489. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2016.75.4.469
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Client Account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.