Vernon DeMars

Vernon Armond DeMars
Born	February 26, 1908 San Francisco, California, U.S.
Died	April 29, 2005(2005-04-29) (aged 97) Oakland, California, U.S.
Employer(s)	DeMars & Reay, UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design
Notable work	Wurster Hall
Movement	Telesis, Second Bay Area Regional Style
Spouse	Betty Bates DeMars (?–1987; death)

Vernon Armond DeMars (February 26, 1908 – April 29, 2005) was an American architect and professor at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. He specialized in Modernist housing projects and public housing complexes.

Biography

Vernon Armond DeMars was born on February 26, 1908, in San Francisco.

As one of the principal members of the group Telesis founded in 1939; and he helped develop what Lewis Mumford called, the Second Bay Area Regional Style. He, along with Joseph Esherick, designed Wurster Hall, Sproul Plaza and the Student Center at the University of California, Berkeley. While working as a visiting professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), DeMars co-directed a student research project that led to a 12-story faculty housing project that at the time Architectural Record magazine called one of the 50 most significant buildings in the United States over the past century. He assisted his former colleague Alvar Aalto in his construction of the library at Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon.

DeMars, along with his architectural partner Donald Reay, taught at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. The pair designed the Golden Gate Village complex in Marin City, California, which won recognition from Progressive Architecture magazine in 1960. That location has come under more interest as of late as gentrification threatens its destruction rather than rehabilitation.

External links

• Finding aid to the Vernon DeMars Collection at the Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley