Vernon Armand DeMars was born in San Francisco, California, in 1908. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1931. After jobs with the National Park Service and travel in the U.S. and Europe, DeMars worked in the offices of Clarence Mayhew (1935-36) and John Reid Jr (1935) and then went to work for the Federal Resettlement Administration for two years (1936-37). He spent a year in charge of planning and design of a small housing development company which was unsuccessful followed by six months employment as Head Draftsman for the S.F. Bay Exposition Company working on buildings for the Golden Gate International Competition. Between 1938 and 1943 he served as the Architect for the USDA Farm Security Administration’s regional office in San Francisco. The FSA provided housing to migrant farm workers, planned and built rural camps, schools, clinics, and community centers, and constructed wartime housing for over 7000 military personnel. During his tenure with the FSA, DeMars collaborated with landscape architects Burton Cairns and Garret Eckbo, and planners Fran Violich and Corwin Mocine, to make lasting contributions to the field of planning and low-cost housing design. Projects included the Farm Workers’ Center at Yuba City, California, the Cooperative Farm and Workers’ Housing at Chandler, Arizona, and the Woodville Farm Workers’ Center near Porterville, California.

In 1939, DeMars, and other designers including Burton Cairns, Joseph McCarthy, Garrett Eckbo, T.J. Kent Jr., and Francis Violich co-founded Telesis, a city and regional planning organization that was the inspiration for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), a public policy think tank on planning and government. He married Betty Bates in the same year, with whom he collaborated on several major projects throughout his career, including one in 1944-1945 that explored the possibilities of row housing and greenbelt planning for the Ladies Home Journal. Betty created the interiors of the models for a traveling exhibition based on the project, entitled "Tomorrow's Small House." She also designed a series of banners for the 1967 opening of Zellerbach Hall at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1943 DeMars joined the National Housing Agency in Washington DC as Chief of Housing Standards, where he was engaged in research on post-war housing. He subsequently served two years with the Navy as Naval Aide to the Governor of Puerto Rico and advisor on Public Works. After the war he remained on the East Coast and was recognized for his design contributions to the Bannockburn housing cooperative near Washington DC, and the Eastgate apartments in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which housed MIT faculty. From 1947-1949 he was visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he got to know William Wurster, Dean of the Architecture School.

In 1951 DeMars reestablished himself in Berkeley. He lectured in the Department of Architecture for the College of Environmental Design for two years before becoming Professor of Architecture in 1953. He chaired the Department from 1959-1962 and eventually became Professor Emeritus upon his retirement in 1975. Before joining the UC Berkeley faculty he consulted for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency on Diamond Heights, Hunter's Point and the Western Addition neighborhoods, and produced a report for the Mutual Security Agency’s Special Housing program for miners in the Ruhr, Germany. During this period he also collaborated with architect Donald Hardison on several projects in Richmond, California, including Easter Hill Village public housing, which was noted for its attempt to bring individuality to residences in a low-income development. He and Hardison would later submit and win a joint-venture proposal in the competition for creating a new student center and world-class auditorium at UC Berkeley.

DeMars and architect Donald P. Reay established the firm DeMars & Reay in 1955, continued in 1966 as DeMars & Wells with John G. Wells, a principle in DeMars & Reay. The firms’ emphasis was housing and community development and covered a wide range of building types and planning problems, demonstrating a diversified architectural approach and flexibility in design application over the next twenty-two years. Major projects accomplished during DeMars’ tenure as principle with these firms included the Capitol Towers apartments in Sacramento; San Francisco’s Golden Gateway Redevelopment project (with Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons); Mililani New Town in Oahu, Hawaii; the Mt. Angel Abbey Library (with architect Alvar Aalto); the University of California at Berkeley’s Student Center and Zellerbach Hall, and the College of Environmental Design’s Wurster Hall. DeMars & Wells dissolved in 1977 and was followed by DeMars & Maletic with principle Carl Maletic. The firm's major project was championing the cause of rehabilitating the San Francisco Ferry Building and expanding Embarcadero Plaza after the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished in 1991. The project was a continuation of DeMars' longstanding interest in Willis Polk's concept of creating a major plaza in front of the Ferry Building.

In addition to his many AIA awards, DeMars was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and received the Award of Honor for Design Excellence from the Bay Area Chapters of the American Institute of Architects in salute to the Student Center and Zellerbach Hall on the Berkeley campus as “in the tradition of the great European urban plazas and spaces.” In 1975 he received the Berkeley Citation, the campus’ top honor, and in 1999 the College of Environmental Design honored him as a distinguished alumnus. DeMars received a lifetime achievement award from the American Institute of Architects and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Environmental Design in 2003. DeMars died in 2005.

Sources:

Biographical clip files, Environmental Design Archives