Design and Bulk Review Criteria & Illustrated Design Manual and Hillside Zoning Standards — Oakland Hills Fire Area
As Supervising Planner for the City of Oakland’s Community Restoration Development Center Arnold Mammarella drafted design guidelines for the rebuilding of approximately 3,000 homes destroyed by the Oakland Hills Firestorm of 1991. Arnold worked with a fire area advisory group of residents, designers, and developers to define design issues and objectives, and was assisted by Planning Division staff in developing photographs and illustrations for the attractive and well-received design manual. Adjunct to the illustrated manual was a five-minute video on residential design pointers for rebuilding in the fire area produced with assistance from KTVU Oakland.
Design regulations for new homes came after the first few hundred homes rebuilt immediately after the fire drew community criticism for their size, bulkiness, poor hillside site planning, impacts on neighbors’ views, and inconsistent design quality. While the initial expectation was that most homes would be rebuilt with a similar size and design, the vast majority of rebuilt homes were completely new designs and on average 75 percent larger than their predecessors. There was also recognition that vegetation on the scared hillsides needed to be restored, but regulated, to improve fire safety.
The manual addressed the challenges of design and construction on steep hillsides in fire-prone areas including how to distribute building mass on a hillside, how to manage building bulk and not block views, where to locate driveways and garages base on site topography, how to incorporate fire safe usable outdoor spaces on hillsides and reserve open space between houses, and how to approach landscape design and plant choices for hillside re-vegetation and fire safety.
Arnold Mammarella also participated developing hillside zoning standards for the fire area, which were needed to set numeric standards for varying slopes and site configurations that had previously received minimal attention in the zoning code. A Hillside Fire Area Overlay Zone with Fire Recovery Hillside Zoning Standards and Design Review Procedures were outcomes of this effort.
Later as a design review consultant and program advisor Arnold Mammarella assisted staff to update and make citywide design guidelines based largely on those created for the Oakland Hills Fire Area. This included refining standards for view preservation as well as addressing privacy and solar access issues with new guideline text and illustrations. He also assisted staff with the study of revised zoning regulations based on the Fire Area’s overlay zone that could be used citywide.
A few illustrations from the original hillside residential design guidelines are shown here.
