SIGNATURE SINGULAR SPARKS
Using fantasy, surprise and whimsy, Carter
Sparks' lively homes are like nothing else

From the pages of the CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

At first glance, a home designed by Sacramento architect Carter Sparks can look like nothing -- just another ranch house, perhaps, or a slightly ungainly wooden box, or like any other stylish, but somewhat faceless, mid-century modern tract home, complete with low gabled-roof and glass clerestory windows.

"They're dull from the outside, yet intriguing," says Don Wolf, a Sacramento businessman who restored and remodeled two custom Sparks homes. "They don't look like much, like something rather mundane."

In fact, a Carter Sparks home looks like nothing else. Sparks was his own man in both life and art, and his houses are as lively and idiosyncratic -- and as fun -- as any you will find in the realm of California modern.

Sparks (1923-1997), who studied architecture at University of California Berkeley, was very much a Northern California modernist in the way he used natural redwood and blended his homes into the landscape. After working with the San Francisco firm Anshen and Allen (which designed homes for Joe Eichler), he set up shop in Sacramento and contentedly pursued a practice primarily designing single-family and tract homes.

Sparks -- who is best known today for designing some 4,000 tract homes for the Streng Bros. in the Sacramento and Davis areas -- also designed several dozen custom homes, including what his daughter, Jennifer Dare Sparks, calls 'Streng-modified' -- semi-custom homes that Sparks produced by altering standard Streng plans for individual clients.

Sparks was a true modernist. His houses have open-plans, walls of glass, and geometric underpinnings. They are all about function, not flash, materials are used honestly, and their wooden beams and posts clearly express the building's structure. But, unlike some followers of the modern movement, Sparks never lined up behind all of its orthodoxies. In that, perhaps, he was more modern than many of his cohorts, because modernism was never designed to become just another 'style,' with a standardized look.

Unlike strict modernists, Sparks' homes were about fantasy. His work is as close as you will find to Storybook Modern.

What makes a Carter Sparks home a Carter Sparks home?

It's not easy to say -- at first glance -- because his homes are so varied. Some look like ranches, some like redwood boxes. Others recall Berkeley brown-shingled cottages. Sparks designed a few that suggest Japan -- and even a few tract homes that suggest Egypt.

But a tour of several of Sparks' custom homes in the Sacramento area reveals a surprising continuity, both in signature details and in broader concerns.

1. Frame house: playing up an angle theme

The Frame home, built around 1957 for a close friend of the architect (Dr. Warren Frame delivered Sparks' daughter, and the Sparks family spent many holidays at the Frame's home), announces its theme, as so many Sparks houses do, at the front door, which rises to meet the sloping roof and slopes along with it.

The angled theme is maintained throughout the house, in interior ceilings, along the hallway to the bedrooms, in the slope of the fireplace, and even in one unusual exterior touch -- an up-light by the driveway that points at the sky. "It's like a beacon," says John Costa, who owns the home with Don Wolf. "People know the house is here."

Wolf also remodeled the house on Fair Oaks, which he used to own.

Sparks, who admired Asian architecture, also supplied Dr. Frame and family with a Japanese teahouse besides the backyard pool.

2. House of cantilevers

Just off busy Fair Oaks Boulevard sits another Sparks custom home, circa 1959, which looks at first like just another modern ranch. Again, the front door -- tall, elegantly paneled, and not quasi-medieval like some Sparks doors -- suggests that adventure waits inside.

Indeed it does. Visitors who step inside see several surprising changes in level as the floor steps up -- twice -- to reach an elevated living area. (Sparks, a fan of all things cozy, more commonly supplied his homes with sunken living areas.)

But more surprising still is the bravely cantilevered, built-in seating area -- also a common Sparks touch -- that runs along one wall of the house. It starts out in front of the fireplace, extends along the living room wall, and keeps on extending over a flight of stairs that leads to the rumpus room below.

As the cantilever hovers over the stairs, it functions as a dry garden, holding a sea of pebbles. But what it really looks like is a diving board. This is not a house that's safe for a family with rambunctious boys.

3. The architect's own home

The house Sparks designed for himself and his family shows what the architect could do when his budget was small. A boxy home with a low, glass-filled gable, the house has open-beams, oddly place windows, and a simple plank deck overlooking the backyard, which originally had a manmade river.

Sparks' characteristic details kept things lively -- his unusually shaped doorknobs and other hardware and the quirky, Asian-influenced light fixtures.

Originally, Sparks' daughter, Jennifer Sparks, remembers, few of the interior walls reached to the ceilings -- not even those to the bedrooms. The house has since been extensively remodeled, although it retains many of Sparks' characteristic touches.

4. Clauss-Mayer house: rambling, rocky ranch

"It doesn't get more cool," Scott Mayer says of the front door to his Sacramento area Sparks home.

Mayer's door, an amazing assemblage both inside and out, is nothing less than a work of art. Outside, a series of heavy boards, neatly mortised together, step back into space in a ziggurat-like pattern. Inside, the boards form an asymmetric composition of two intersecting triangles. Adding to the play of geometry is the triangular doorknob.

The Mayer home was originally designed for its first owner, John Clauss, one of Sparks' best friends, and his wife Joan. In tone rustic and informal, it rambles around an almost U-shaped courtyard and looks over a wooded field. Like many of Sparks' homes, it suggests a mountain lodge because of its dark, natural wood walls -- and, in spots, a cave, because of its walls of natural rock.

Scott Mayer fell in love with the home right away -- but his wife Miriam did not. "I think he did a really exquisite piece of art," Scott says of Sparks' design of the house, which he calls, affectionately, "our old wooden boat."

Miriam was dismayed by some of the dark walls and by Sparks' characteristic use of rough stone in immense fireplace walls -- and in such odd places as the kitchen backsplash. Sparks delighted in using stone that was rough, weathered, and often encrusted with life.

"It was a little too much for me," Miriam recalls. So Scott sheet-rocked the backsplash. The Mayers also covered up the rock wall in the master bedroom, but kept the similar wall in their sunken living room.

The Mayers lightened up the bedrooms by replacing board-and-batten redwood siding with sheetrock on the upper walls and painting the redwood on the lower portions.

5. Moulton house: woodsy Berkeley in Sacramento

Jim and Emily Moulton's home overlooking the American River in Carmichael demonstrates the value of natural wood panels. Even on the brightest days the interior is relaxing and without glare.

The Moultons, who commissioned the Streng Bros. to build the home in 1972, worked directly with Sparks -- who was a friend -- on one of the most customized of all the custom Strengs.

The house, which is shingled, suggests something you'd find in the Berkeley Hills. The Moultons' thinking was, "We are out in the oak trees. Why don't we have a Berkeley-looking house?" says Emily, who grew up in a brown-shingled Berkeley Hills home.

Although the house makes use of the standard Streng materials, including wooden paneling, Sparks added some unusual features -- including mitered glass corners. Sparks -- who loved skylights, and provided Streng homes with their unique, skylit 'atriums' -- also got the inspiration for an unusual skylight here -- directly over the Moultons' bed, a touch that allows the couple to see the stars before falling asleep.

"Carter said, 'How would you like a skylight over the bed?' Wouldn't that be exciting?'" Emily recalls.

The home has a full complement of Sparks' lighting fixtures (here, Japanese-influenced sconces) and the standard Streng brick chimney,

"He loved the process of creation," Emily says of the architect. "The process was more important than the end result. He said, 'If you don't like the process, you shouldn't be doing it. And that went for life, too."

Carter Sparks' signature details Judging by his architecture, Carter Sparks enjoyed fantasy and romance, good conversation, a sense of shelter, and dramatic touches. His houses are sculptural, and can be whimsical, but they use space and materials economically. He enjoyed using the same natural wood indoors and out. Warm, dark walls play against broad expanses of window wall. A Sparks house often follows a strict geometry but, despite his fondness for Asian design, is rarely modular. He also designed freeform, ranch-like plans. Front doors are often over-scaled, often with unusual hardware. Interior doors are often hidden. Windows, in both custom and tract homes, are frequently oddly placed and shaped -- strange verticals near corners, or mounted at floor level. They are all about obtaining the best views and light. Windows, either clear or translucent, often join glass to glass at corners. Skylights provide light over laundry rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and even beds. Sparks also brought in light through clerestory glass. Details, including the lamps he designed for many homes, are often Asian. Redwood or other wooden siding is used in its natural state, often untreated and allowed to weather naturally. Nail ends show. His houses often resemble tents, with ceiling beams converging on a center point, often a fireplace surrounded by skylights. Whenever possible, Sparks divided rooms with partial walls that don't reach the ceiling. He used slatted walls and curved walls for dramatic spatial effects. Cantilevered hearths often extend along walls to provide seating or work areas. Sunken conversation pits and niches provide sheltered areas. Simple wooden decks lack railings. Kitchens tend to be small galleys, arranged for maximum efficiency. They often open to a family area via an open counter. Sparks got creative with his concrete aggregate pavers; some look like abstract canvases. A Sparks house is full of surprises.

Photos: David Toerge, Glenn Fishback (courtesy Jennifer Dare Sparks and Kurt Fishback), Dave Weinstein

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