"Come as you are" was the motto instilled by the Reverend Robert Schuller, Hon. AIA when he commissioned the Garden Grove Community Church located on the Christ Cathedral campus in Orange County alongside "a prophet of clean, crisp Modernism", Richard Neutra in 1961. The idea was centered around the idea of a "drive-in church" to accommodate the increasingly busy car-centric lives of American families.
Despite the unfortunate demise of dozens of Neutra's public buildings and private residences spanning his 50-year career, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange acquired the campus in 2012 with the goal of restoring and preserving several of the buildings, including the Arboretum. Contemporary upgrades to make the spaces more energy efficient from replacing single-pane glazing and installing underfloor air distribution to eliminate the need for roof top units were undertaken following the mantra "WWRD" or "What would Richard do?".
Although the infamous architect brings immediate attention to this saved project, it also exemplifies the importance of preserving mid-century modern architecture as timepieces of a not-too long ago era that some of us still recall with nostalgia and others long to experience.