When Peter Devereaux’s firm, Fields Devereaux Architects and Engineers, finishes the restoration of the historicWill Rogers ranch house, you won’t notice a thing. That’s the golden rule for historic restoration, and FDAE are specialists in the field. California State Parks selected Fields Devereaux for the job with a phone call last October, but the deal wasn’t as casual as it may seem; after all, the firm has a sizable portfolio of historic restorations, including the El Capitan in Hollywood, the Green Library at Stanford and the Doheny Memorial Library at USC, all of which have received preservation awards, from the National Trust, the Los Angeles Conservancy and the California Preservation Foundation. Peter Devereaux, a Palisadian, is the principal and chief executive officer, overseeing the firm’s portfolio of projects and its 170 employees. One of the largest in California, FDAE is sort of a one-stop shop. With architectural and design engineering expertise, the company has partnerships with other firms, including I.Q. (Investment in Quality), which assists other architects with cost estimating and plan reviews; GreenWorks, a sustainable building firm; and Building Consensus, a general construction company. Devereaux, an Easterner by upbringing and schooling, found his way West, as so many have, following the opportunities. A native of the Philadelphia area, he graduated from Yale School of Architecture and was invited by the dean, Cesar Pelli’recognized as one of the 10 most influential living American architects’to stay and work at Cesar Pelli & Associates in Connecticut, which Devereaux did for a year. It was then the mid-1980s, when the economy was strong and the world at peace. Lured by the vigorous building spurt in Southern California, Devereaux accepted an offer from Edwin Fields to join his firm in 1985. ‘There was a lot of building going on, and it seemed there was a crane on every corner,’ Devereaux recalls. ‘I thought there would be many opportunities to design.’ And there were. From building condominiums to schools, the firm has been steadily expanding both in Los Angeles and farther afield to San Diego, Bakersfield and Riverside. The plan is to add new offices in Phoenix and Las Vegas. Over the course of his career, Devereaux has carved out an expertise in historic preservation and school design. He has built several facilities for the UC Santa Barbara campus and UCLA, and undertook much of the rebuilding at Cal State Northridge, which was severally damaged in the 1994 earthquake. Devereaux, his wife Sarah and daughters Jacqueline (a Louisville 9th grader) and Caitlin (a 7th grader at Corpus Christi) have made their home in the Palisades for the past 14 years. He has followed the news of the town’s ambitious civic projects, including the new gym and the library, and understands the intelligence of community involvement. ‘I get very excited about getting projects off the ground,’ Devereaux says, ‘and a big part of that is figuring out what the client wants and helping him define it.’ Not to be ignored are his skills in working with the challenge of balancing the wishes of the client or community and, in the case of public buildings, the often stringent government requirements. A good example is the public library in Park View Terrace, a semi-rural community near Hansen Lake in the northwest San Fernando Valley. Devereaux participated in workshops with the public and staff to collect information and ideas from stakeholders, and the design process was guided by frequent public review. The final product was cited by the American Institute of Architects as an outstanding example of an architectural design solution that protects and enhances the environment. To the layman, the building with its distinctively long east-west axis and handsome tower is aesthetically pleasing, but it is much more. A joint project with GreenWorks, the library is a model of a sustainable environment, where the air is clean, the temperature modulated and everything is energy efficient. Situated to take advantage of daylight, but no direct sunlight, about 80 percent of the building is naturally ventilated. Many of the construction materials are recycled, such as bamboo and cork flooring, and runoff water is captured and used for irrigation. Devereaux has broad experience building schools. Currently, the firm is designing a three-story elementary school for the LAUSD at Western and Third St. that will accommodate 600 children, all of whom will live within walking distance of the school. He has had conversations with LAUSD on the use of the Ambassador Hotel site, where the district is planning to build a high school in the densely populated mid-Wilshire area. A perfect example of the debate between historic preservationists and cost-analysts, the decision on the best use for the Ambassador site is still undecided. ‘The Ambassador could be adapted for a school,’ Devereaux agrees, ‘but I think I take the middle-of-the-road position, and am therefore hated by both sides. That building has more significance because of the events that took place there rather than for its architectural stature. It may be wiser to preserve pieces of it, such as the Coconut Grove, than to make LAUSD shoehorn the existing space into a learning environment.’ As the city becomes increasingly congested, more planning revolves around retooling existing structures. Devereaux is already engaged in the debate of redefining the neighborhood that downtown Los Angeles will become. With 3,500 units on his design boards in Little Tokyo and Chinatown,”really a drop in the bucket considering the size of Los Angeles”Devereaux still believes that the key is people not only working but living downtown. ‘Picking up the pace of building housing, that’s what’s going to make it happen,’ he says.
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