Retired architect’s steely cool Fairfield design
Immigrating to Canada ‘was the fountain of youth’ for New York-born retired architect
This Fairfield home’s interior walls and ceilings glow like warm amber from the Jurassic period, but its steely cool exterior is pure 21st century. Corrugated metal panels of silver and blue are set off by lipstick-red window and door trim, while a strip of ornamental grasses, hellebores and bamboo bisects a rugged rock “lawn.” The home is divided into two living areas and New York-born retired architect Andrew Beckerman lives in two-thirds (his tenant has the remainder). He is now designing a small cottage in the garden that he plans to offer with a rental subsidy for five years.
Like the owner, this contemporary house is a combination of lively style and energetic confidence.
“People sometimes come to the door to bravely ask if they can look inside, and when they do, they are surprised at the interior, because they think it will be corrugated steel too,” said the retired architect, an amusing raconteur.
It’s hardly surprising that Beckerman chose to create such a youthful, au courant space, considering he felt reborn after moving here from the States.
“My friends say grow up, act your age, but I tell them I’m only 11 in Canadian years. Immigration was the fountain of youth for me. When I came here, I hit the restart button and my life changed completely.”
Since arriving, he has carved out new roles for himself as an activist, volunteer and philanthropist.
HIV-positive since 1980, Beckerman has criss-crossed the country as chairman of AIDS Vancouver Island, not only talking about his own journey of survival but also the pain of others, “who live at the intersection of poverty, homelessness, mental-health and addiction challenges, infection and despair.”
He learned something about the latter during nine months of suicidal depression caused by the side-effects of early drugs for HIV. It gave him deep insight into why some step onto the path of addiction.
The avid art collector has also become a major patron of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and recently made a $750,000 donation of art.
“I’ve been collecting so long, I have more stuff than I can actually hang in my house and, not being an Egyptian pharaoh, I have no reason for all of this to be buried in my tomb.” He has also announced a $100,000 challenge fund for those wanting to support expansion of the Moss Street gallery.
Art has long been an integral part of his life, and his home is an ideal background for it, thanks to the glowing, golden walls and gallery-style lighting.
“I have lots of stuff squirrelled away in storage because I like to give paintings plenty of breathing room,” he said, except in two purpose-built vestibules, which he designed specifically to fill with art.
Contractor Max Huxley built the home, and Beckerman designed the main-floor walls and ceiling to precisely fit a series of 10-by-four sheets of glossy plywood, with no cutting or waste. “The sheets cost $135 a piece and my contractor originally ordered 100, but I sensed that was rather a lot, so I did a cutting diagram and ordered just 70.”
Two carpenters spent a month installing the plywood — “Being very careful because of the delicate maple veneer” — and in the end, the owner had only two left over. He sent just one sheet back and used another for his upstairs office desk.
Beckerman designed a large library on the second floor with an armchair by the window, and a second library on the main floor, facing the fireplace. Here he has arranged a selection of books, small sculptures and paintings — including the first painting he bought at age 11.
Beckerman’s interest in art was piqued at a young age.
“When my brother and I were kids, there was not a lot of money around, but we lived on a commuterrail line and once a month, my parents took advantage of cheap Sunday fares and free museum and gallery days,” said Beckerman, whose father, an interior designer, created apartments for Danny Kaye and Sophia Loren in the SherryNetherland Hotel in New York.
The owner got into collecting himself during graduate school, through friend Dorothy Goldeen, who worked in a gallery and eventually became part owner.
The young architect began buying prints to help support her, “then my parents followed my taste, buying every artist I bought, but with bigger pocketbooks, so they bought museum-quality pieces,” which he later inherited.
Beckerman’s collection is extensive. It includes Japanese woodblock prints, figurative art from the 1970s and 1980s San Francisco Bay area, bronze and stone sculptures, wood carvings, pre-Columbian pottery and both indigenous and Anglo art from the American southwest.
He has works by the renowned Chiricahua Apache Indian artist Allan Houser; by Fritz Scholder, who has been called the first Native American contemporary painter; by Joan Brown, a member of San Francisco’s Bay Area Figurative Movement; and by American painter and printmaker Gustav Baumann, a leading figure in the revival of colour woodcuts.
His home brims with unique pieces, such as a Navajo rug he bought at an auction of pieces from Forked Lightning Ranch, home of film actor Greer Garson, “my only brush with fame.”
While living in the States, Beckerman specialized in doing home modifications for people with physical challenges in San Francisco and elsewhere.