H. Fairchild Steven, Architect.
“I for my part should think it much the reverse of a hardship if I had to read my books and meet my friends in such a place; nor do I think I am better off to live in a vulgar stuccoed house crowded with upholstery that I despise, in all respects degrading to the mind and enervating to the body to live in, simply because I call it my own, or my house.”
-William Richard Morris, 1888
Once upon a time, stucco was for the rich. Wood was affordable. Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman magazine’s first few issues feature palatial “bungalows” covered head to toe in exterior plaster. The quintessential arts and crafts home is something like a Tudor home, with white stucco spanning the spaces between dark wood members.
As the American craftsman movement matured from mimicry of British Arts and Crafts to synthesis of its ideals, the benefits of redwood as the ultimate utopian substance was realized. Stucco was more and more reserved for those who still fetishized the silly eclectically classical aesthetic aspirations of the Victorian age, but who had been shamed out of their Victorian-style homes. 
To an extent, you can say this regressive trend is alive and well in new construction. Stucco is almost synonymous with the neo-italianate drivel promulgated by the likes of Geoff Palmer and others currently littering the city with their insular, crime-ridden fortresses.
But stucco is just as synonymous with those buildings that look like they were coded into existence by a website designer.
While excavating, I uncovered something which got me thinking of more possible answers to one of the most persistent why’s stalking our minds as we look at the monumental task of undoing all the horrible decisions made by former owners of this house. That titular substance which has become so ubiquitous and notorious, is slathered all over our house. With all of the examples of successful de-stucco jobs being carried out in nearby neighborhoods, it’s easy to forget that someone once chose to put the stucco on. Thence comes the aforementioned why: Why in the name of all that is holy, would someone go about doing a thing like stuccoing a shingled bungalow?
Perhaps, as Alejandro Zaera-Polo contends, there is more to this than meets the eye:
The building envelope is possibly the oldest and most primitive architectural element. It materializes the separation of the inside and outside, natural and artificial and it demarcates private property and land ownership (one the most primitive political acts). When it becomes a façade, the envelope operates also as a representational device in addition to its crucial environmental and territorial roles. The building envelope forms the border, the frontier, the edge, the enclosure and the joint: it is loaded with political content.
But what if there was a substance which was purely representational and political, playing little or no “crucial environmental” role at all. Such a substance would need to have none of its own benefits when it comes to facing the elements. Let’s take a look at how stucco fares against the elements.
Element 1: Earth. Seismic activity is a constant in California. Displacements in the earths crust travel in waves through the earth to your home where rapid acceleration combines with your home’s mass to exert directional force upon itself. Stucco is incredibly heavy. According to the Portland Cement Association, stucco at normal thickness weighs 10.4 pounds per square foot. It is 655% heavier than wood siding, which weights in at just over 1.5 psf.Crunching the numbers on our porch I find that the stucco weighs more than all of the framing, siding, flooring and roof combined. Do you think your house was built to support more than it’s own weight as siding? Perhaps this is contributing to settling of old homes, which in turn causes stucco to crack, which doesn’t help its weather performance.
Element 2: Wind. Stucco actually stops wind just as well as wood, notwithstanding cracks. Luckily you have the paper behind the stucco, which really does all the work. See next element…
Element 3: Water. Even before cracking itself to pieces, a stucco system is incredibly porous. Just as water had to evaporate from the wet stucco mixture being installed, it let’s through water like a sieve, which then has to be wicked away by a layer of paper which must be meticulously applied and attached to proper termination points in a process appropriately called weeping. Whereas in the case of “breathing” wood siding a paper layer is merely insurance, with stucco, paper backing is a requirement. Why? It is not as permeable as wood is to air, so the water must be wicked out by other means.
Element 4: Fire. Stucco offers zero additional protection against fire in the real world. As a former LA fire captain explained to me recently, fire does not ignite walls. Heat rises along your wall, collects in the eaves, eventually igniting the roof. It’s Fire 101.
Maintenance. The ultimate selling point for stucco is its promise of low maintenance. Tired of painting your wood siding? You probably don’t live in California. Out here people paint their homes when they want to change the color. Stucco installation costs $6 to $8 per square foot to install. Even a pretty badly kept wood exterior can be restored for less than the price of stuccoing! Meanwhile, here in a seismic city, stucco is notorious for its cracks. In fact, the selling point of Spanish lace over the more stylish smooth stucco is that you can’t see the cracks. But if you can get over the cracks, the dangerous weight, the ugliness, the porosity, the irreversibility and the damage to your homes value, you are in luck…
With no benefits to speak of, it then functions as a pure ideological envelope substance. Safely out of the realm of mechanical performance, quality and even safety, and solidly planted in the world of impressions we can see all of it’s many benefits. It is different things to different people. Landlords, flippers, long term residents and short term residents are presented with individualized projections.
Stucco homes are still built of wood. The wood holds up the house, the paper forms the functioning component to the envelope, the staples hold up the paper, and the stucco provides everything else. Sometimes it’s the look of rugged, cheap, low-maintenance ugliness. Wood is no longer considered practical, because next to new building materials, it is pretty.
The more the building resembles nature, the less it protects us from nature. Wood siding cannot compete with stucco on these terms. The ugliness and plainness of stucco assures the landlord is not giving the tenant too much amenities for free. For the flipper, it offers a ready tool ensuring he’s not letting taste, respect for the community genius loci, or any other hindrances to effectively fulfilling her role seep into his conscience. This comes in handy while pulling the wool over the eyes of inspectors and potential buyers looking for structural problems which would otherwise be magnified by the grid presented by wood siding. For the long term homeowner and the tenant alike, it offers a feeling of isolation from a dangers outside. Looking roughly like concrete, and suggesting to the mind that its solidness extends through the wall’s thickness, it’s easy to see it as an armor, keeping out the elements as well as intruders, dirt, bullets and the world at large. Thus, it plays a vital psychological role in reinforcing the ultimate political trend of our time; The atomization of society. No sharing of internet, media or molasses. No borrowing tools. No gifting. No block parties and outdoor screenings. Most of all, no reminders that you are surrounded by fellow humans who may share some of your same struggles. In short, perfect consumers.
Craft and Stucco
Although the word ‘craft’ now conjures up images of dry macaroni glued to paper, the philosophy nonetheless exists, unanswered and irreconcilable to a world which got lost and is spiritually stuck in the Victorian era in the worst way. Indeed the marks of this era are as radically alive as ever. Mechanization, wealth concentration, inequality, alienation of labor are as strong as ever, while the craft ideal in architecture went off to Germany to die at Bauhaus. Whats more, everything got even uglier. In News from Nowhere William Morris bitches about the “ugly suspension bridge”. He reportedly lost his lunch upon viewing the glass building at the London World’s Fair.
Luckily, Morris had no idea that how much worse things were going to get.
By comparison to the newest iterations of supposedly utilitarian design, the industrial era Morris describes appear charming. And yes, even its utility is suspect. Owing to the express benefit of new building methods — that they are optimized for lower labor costs — they constitutionally impede economic growth. Wealth concentration is inefficient. Wealth must flow for an economy to function, and only people of modest means spend enough to keep the economy alive and healthy for all participants. What will we do with this huge superfluous labor force? You guessed it. Whether it be prison, cheap credit, bailouts, welfare or the new guaranteed basic income ideas even gaining support from police agencies, we will throw away all of the gains from cutting labor costs on keeping the resulting economy afloat. An odd concept of utility, you might say. But even utility must subordinate itself, that the all-important dance of lights may continue.
I have not gone off subject. These were all matters the Arts and Crafts movement concerned itself with. One was cognizant of what the state of the world around us had to do with the very home and objects we surrounded ourselves with.
We get the architecture we deserve.
New construction is the site of illusion’s zenith in architecture, and it sells like hot cakes. There is no room for “truth in materials” when the house is built of flakes of wood glued together into boards. As we saw above, the stucco covers this chintzy structure with an appearance of hand-made masonry, or concrete. But it is not only the ignorant who partake.
The benefits of stucco we discussed above are as real as the marks on your screen, which you’re staring at right now…represented in liquid crystal substrate which has been mined by someone, somewhere, getting paid something…for your sake, hopefully not too much.