Janice Kay and Michael Batter of Batter Kay Associates have been building single-family, multifamily and commercial projects for the past 40 years, primarily in the San Diego area. Specializing in modern architecture, the award-winning couple has nearly 400 projects in their portfolio.
A distinctive, clean, crisp geometry is a fundamental part of each design, whether commercial or residential.
Batter said that they have been influenced from school by Le Corbusier, a Swiss/French architect who was a dominant figure in the rise of modernism in France in the early part of the 20th century. He said that their style is also called the “International Style,” which started at the Bauhaus, an art school in Germany, in the 1930s. The International Style became a generic term for modern buildings by architects that include Corbusier, Walter Gropius in Germany, Jose Luis Sert in Spain and Mies van der Rohe in the U. S.
Back to Del Mar
The couple met while they were attending the Harvard School of Design. Kay, who moved to California at six weeks old, grew up in Del Mar. Batter was born in Connecticut. After graduation they moved back to Del Mar in 1975 to begin their careers.
“What we were really trying to accomplish when we came out here, especially growing up in the East Coast, where houses were always introverted almost, and, here we live most of the year outside,” Batter said. “So the goal was to bring the inside of the house out and the outside of the house in and at the same time, create what we like to think of as sculpture — the three dimensionality of the box, so that’s kind of where the vocabulary came from — we’ve been pretty consistent with that all the way through.”
Batter said the houses they’re doing today are a lot more sophisticated than the ones they did 30 years ago, but they employ the same philosophical concept.
When the couple arrived in Del Mar in 1975, it was in the middle of a recession and work was hard to find.
“We then came up with this idea of building a spec house,” Batter said. “Because we didn’t have anything to do.”
Batter said he was eventually able to land work at M.H. Golden Construction Co. as a project architect/manager and Janice stayed at home and worked on the spec house.
“We finally got the design for the spec house done, which was difficult in those years,” Batter said.
Kay said it was the first house they designed and built together and ended up living in it for 30 years, with a few renovations to it during the decades.
Former Hotel Del Mar
Hundreds of projects later, they now live in what was once the last remaining building of the old Hotel Del Mar at the bottom of 15th Street on the ocean. They bought it and remodeled it 12 years ago. Coincidentally, the building that is now Batter Kay’s home is the building where I worked for Psychology Today in the 1970s. When I described the location of my office on the second floor, Kay said “that would be Michael’s study.”
The inside of the former office building now bears no resemblance to the chopped-up, uninspired interior of what was once my workplace. It is now an open-concept, airy, clean-lined space, with crisp white walls and large clear windows out to the sea.
Batter said that because they’ve been building homes in the area now for so long that several of their original clients are coming back to them for renovations to accommodate “empty-nesters” whose entertaining and living requirements are now quite different.
In other cases, new owners of original Batter Kay-designed homes also contract with them for renovations and updates.
Batter described a recent renovation on a home they originally built in La Jolla where some of the bedrooms went away to make room for larger gathering places, the entry was restructured and bigger, more people friendly bathrooms were created.
Revisiting a Project
“We got one opportunity to renovate a house we designed where the original owner, or maybe a contractor, had made changes to it as it went through construction,” Batter said. “So we got to rectify that 30 years later, it was kind of fun to do that.”
Kay said they have also done quite a few condominiums and duplexes throughout the county, in addition to a few commercial projects like the former computer manufacturer Kaypro Corp.’s research office, school, shipping and storage facilities and the La Jolla Country Day School master plan and nursery school.
Kay said that every project is so different and so personal that no one project stands out in particular.
“We just love solving problems, I don’t think I have favorites,” Kay said. “It’s always a puzzle and it’s really fun, we’ve been exposed to all kinds, all sizes of budgets and homes, and I think that the buildings have lasted really well.”
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