Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 9, 1995 TAG: 9507100139
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARTHA SLUD ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Jamgochian, a 70-year-old maverick architect, has worked nearly 30 years to fashion a jungle-like paradise of sorts replete with ponds, causeways, roads, a small beach, a heart-shaped island and a stone spire that will be his dream house.
``When I finish I'm going to drop dead,'' says Jamgochian, a robust yoga master who eats seven times a day to keep up his energy. ``It's all basically worthless - but gee it's fun. I don't feel 70. I feel 12.''
Jamgochian won worldwide attention in the 1960s for his bold ideas and flashy style. However, only two of his innovative building designs were ever completed.
``Instead of crying, I'll just do what I want to do,'' shrugs Jamgochian, the son of Armenian immigrants. ``I was born to create.''
Jamgochian gestures dramatically to a bulldozed dugout where he says he will build the centerpiece of the project - a circular house whose foundation will rise 50 feet. The interior will feature multiple levels and ramps.
The house's simplicity will evoke images of such classic designs as the Eiffel Tower, the Washington Monument and the Great Pyramids, Jamgochian says.
``This building is going to be comparable to those,'' said Jamgochian, who sports a shock of unkempt white hair and a broad grin. ``Not the structure, but the concept behind it.''
Jamgochian - long on ambition but short on funding - hopes to finish the house by 2000. That's a lofty goal considering he works alone and hasn't actually begun building it yet.
The rest of the project will take another 30 years to complete, he estimates.
Jamgochian toils 12 hours a day, seven days a week in ripped Marine Corps khakis and rubber boots to transform the former stone quarry into his architectural Eden. He bulldozes, mixes concrete and - much less now than when he first started - antagonizes neighbors and city building inspectors with the ruckus.
Some local contractors donate their scraps to him. He pays for other needs with the modest revenue he receives from properties he bought as investments years ago.
Jamgochian, who lives in a 1930s art deco home on the site, wants to give the project to Virginia Tech or another university to use as a satellite architecture school or alumni center. So far, no takers.
``Haigh is such a strange character,'' laughs fellow architect James Glave. ``He certainly has a high imagination. The unfortunate part is that in a city like Richmond, his work really didn't fit.''
Jamgochian became a Marine in 1943 at age 18, served in the South Pacific in World War II and rose to the rank of sergeant. He enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1946, but quickly realized he wanted to be an architect and switched to Virginia Tech. He won a scholarship to Princeton, where he earned a master's degree, then returned to Virginia where he taught nights at Tech, the University of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute, now Virginia Commonwealth University.
In 1962, newspapers worldwide published Jamgochian's design for a simple ``tree house'' style apartment building he devised for downtown Richmond. The building would fit a small city lot, he explains, because its column base would balance 15 floors that would branch out like tree limbs.
In Richmond, where history and tradition prevail, no one commissioned the structure, but it captured the attention of a local insurance firm that hired him to design its new quarters. After four years of wrangling over money and design, Jamgochian in 1966 concocted something that resembles three large metal rings sitting atop each other.
The building - sometimes dubbed ``The Flying Saucer'' - stands alone amid the bourgeois office and retail landscape of Richmond's suburbs. The exterior is sheathed with crinkled aluminum - an idea Jamgochian got on a whim when he was served a baked potato wrapped in foil at an architect's dinner.
``No one was more surprised than I was that it worked,'' he says.
One more project followed that year - a crescent-shaped house built for a flamboyant local used-car dealer. The exterior is wrapped with crumpled copper.
The ideas kept flowing but the clients stopped coming. Jamgochian says a design for two side-by-side revolving hotels in Virginia Beach caught the interest of some developers, but they balked.
``They thought it was great, but then like most clients they built something like a box,'' he grumbles. ``I don't understand it. They don't have any guts.''
But Jamgochian blames himself, too.
``I always say the wrong thing,'' he says. He says that's why he was never able to keep a teaching job.
At Virginia Tech, ``I told the dean students are copying everything out of magazines. That didn't seem to matter to him.''
In 1982, Jamgochian began making drawings of a hexagonal skyscraper with emergency staircases wending around its exterior. The idea came to him as he lay in a hospital bed after a household explosion burned him over half of his body.
``I took it to the fire marshal and he pooh-poohed it,'' Jamgochian says. ``I said, `That's because you've never been in a fire.' ''
Jamgochian likens himself to Louis Sullivan, a pioneer of modern, functional architecture who lived from 1856-1924. Sullivan was an outspoken critic of imitation historic styles who said contemporary buildings should reflect the times. His most famous student was Frank Lloyd Wright.
by CNB