Rethink Design Plan

Most San Diegans would agree that our public buildings do a poor job of expressing our city’s character, or inspiring our citizens. Yet, with the upcoming Civic Center competition, we are losing an unparalleled opportunity to create a city core of great buildings, since the proposed competition will emphasize developer “qualifications” instead of quality design.

There are two fundamental problems with the proposed process:

1. The overall emphasis of the judging is on developer’s financial status, rather than architectural design. This is just the type of “bottom line” thinking that has helped create our national image as an uncultured city of cheap buildings.

2. By emphasizing past architectural experience, young, new design talent will be eliminated and the number of potential designers severely restricted to those who are the current media stars.

Instead, I propose a competition format which will deliver both the best design available and create savings for the city (rather than just a guaranteed maximum cost, with the builder profiting from any savings). This competition would be in four stages:

Step 1: An open international, anonymous design competition to be judged on architectural merit (rather than the proposed statement of qualifications process, which becomes a political contest instead of a design competition). An open competition has historically been the best method to discover dynamic and appropriate design solutions, such as the Sydney Opera House, and to recognize new talent.

Step 2: From the first-stage design submissions, select five proposals to be further developed, in conjunction with construction managers, cost estimators and other technical support, to ensure that the winning design can be built within budget. The design teams should certify that the proposal can be built within budget, at risk of redesign, or elimination.

Step 3: Select a winning design and commission the team to create construction bid sets.

Step 4: Finally, the winning project should be competitively bid among qualified construction contractors and awarded to the low bidder with the stipulation that 90% of any savings below the project budget will be returned to the public and 10% will be awarded to the design team for their cost-saving effort.

This method is a realistic recognition of the extra work required of a designer to create a great design within cost limits, rather than by simply “gold-plating” a project with expensive materials.

The people of San Diego would be the final winners with a combination of financial savings, and world-class design.

LEE BRYANT PLATT

San Diego