Designing America

The Wall Street Journal Online
By June Fletcher


Ask someone to name the most influential residential architects working in the U.S. today and the list is likely to include Frank Gehry, Robert Venturi or Richard Meier. But how many would have the name Aram Bassenian?
While homeowners may never have heard of Mr. Bassenian, they may well have seen some of his work. During his 36-year career, the Newport Beach, Calif., designer estimates that builders have used his designs to produce hundreds of thousands of homes from coast to coast.
Mr. Bassenian is a production architect, part of a small, largely unknown cadre of designers who specialize in the sort of mass-produced homes typically found in housing developments and subdivisions. Working as self-employed consultants for national builders like Centex Corp., Lennar Corp. and K. Hovnanian Homes as well as for some regional and local builders, these architects, and the hundreds of designers and draftsmen who work under them, churn out dozens of plans a year for everything from million-dollar luxury residences to midpriced townhouses.