Orchids & Onions: Joke Wears Thin

In its 15th year, Orchids & Onions, which honors the best and worst of San Diego planning and architecture work, has to decide whether it wants to be “David Letterman” or “Face the Nation.”

During the awards show last Saturday night at Symphony Hall in downtown San Diego, it became painfully evident that the event must either find a way to take itself more seriously or degenerate into a carnival of name-calling and silly humor.

Local comedian and media personality Larry Himmel welcomed the audience to the “friendly sport of architect bashing.” His one-liners drew frequent laughs but shifted the focus from architecture to comedy, also echoed in judges’ comments but without any constructive criticism, which is part of the program’s stated purpose.

The program was presented by five professional design and planning associations. More than 500 projects were nominated by the public.

Orchids included:

* “The Boulevard” sign, which identifies the start of El Cajon Boulevard near Park Boulevard. Using giant ‘50s drive-in neon, designers Graphic Solutions returned dignity to this major San Diego thoroughfare.

* Del Mar Plaza (designed by the Jerde Partnership and McCabe Gish Architecture) and the Price Center at UC San Diego (by Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz with the Austin Hansen Group), both projects that, although they have architectural flaws, also have wonderful outdoor plazas.

* The James R. Mills building (designed by Delawie Bretton & Wilkes). This trolley headquarters at 13th and Imperial, with its well-proportioned clock tower, gives downtown San Diego an elegant landmark.

* Developers and planners of EastLake, the 11,000-home Chula Vista community now growing up around man-made lakes, parks, walking trails and other people places often ignored in new residential developments.

Among the well-deserved Onions were:

* The city of San Diego Planning Department and the University City Planning Group, for the inhospitable jungle of buildings in the Golden Triangle by University Towne Centre.

* Charles A. Miller, owner of the Egyptian Court apartment building on Park Boulevard, for removing all of his building’s wonderful Egyptian ornamentation. New owner Jim Nicholas accepted the award and said he plans to restore the building.

* Artists William Tucker and Luis Jimenez for their sculptures Okeanos and the Omni obelisk. Because of the shape of Okeanos, next to Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, the jury suggested that its owners might next wish to commission a pooper scooper. For the Omni piece, the jury wrote: “Where’s my rubber ducky and bubble bath?” The obelisk gives sort of a Disneyland effect.

The show’s lowlight came when, for the second year in a row, an Onion went to a progressive San Diego architect for a building also recognized by the architectural profession for design excellence.

Last year, it was architect Tom Grondona’s stark, white dental office in a traditional Kensington neighborhood, which had received favorable treatment in the architectural trade publications.

This year, architect Rob Quigley was given an Onion for his downtown office building on Cedar Street, which received a Merit Award from the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1985, when the building was just a design.

“Too much of a bad thing,” wrote the jury about Quigley’s quirky mix of forms and materials. “This shows what can go wrong when the developer has no control over design. Contextual architecture, rhythm and scale were paid fleeting lip service here and supplanted by the school of thought that too much is not enough.”

Quigley, who has won more AIA awards during the past five years than any San Diego architect, was clearly annoyed.

“I deserve this Onion,” he told the audience, attempting to roll with the aroma. “It’s been a 10-year struggle.” Quigley explained that this is the first time he’s been Onioned after several nominations.”

Subsequent remarks cut deeper.

Only half-jokingly, he explained how he tries to keep his ‘renegade reputation from melting into an abyss of good taste,” the kind of bland architecture he compared with “Muzak and prime-time TV.”

As for the jury’s comments, he disagreed with the implication that developers, not architects, should control design. He compared the idea with doctors being asked not to make their own medical decisions.

Quigley’s Onion is only one example of how Orchids & Onions fails to live up to its mission to be “a nonprofit community awareness program honoring the best and worst examples of our region’s planned and built environment.”

Where is the “community awareness” part of the program? Jury remarks that sound as cute as a David Letterman monologue are not an adequate explanation. The public needs to know the logic behind the choices.

Options exist.

Why not create a forum during which the jury and the winning architects discuss the merits and shortcomings of the work?

Instead of leading the public to believe that designs by people like Quigley and Grondona are simply stinky stuff that should be swept away, Orchids & Onions should let San Diegans hear not only what the jury dislikes about the buildings, but why the architects’ peers respect these same works, and what the architects themselves think about their designs.

A climate hospitable to innovation will allow fresh architecture to grow.

Aside from its misguided mission, Orchids & Onions managed to select a worthy list of winners.

Other orchids were: The Port of San Diego, for using ladybug beetles instead of toxic chemicals to control pests in a South Bay marsh; the downtown San Diego Trust & Savings bank, for historic preservation of its William Templeton Johnson-designed building; the port, for good landscape design by KTU&A; at the G Street Mole near Seaport Village; and the Advance Blueprint mural on Midway Drive.

Onions also went to: the county of San Diego for poor signage and landscape design at the County Operations Annex on Ruffin Road; La Scala condominiums in the Golden Triangle; the Del Mar Hilton, for its “pseudo Tudor” style; and West Ash Plaza, nicknamed “Godzilla’s Dollhouse”.

This year’s jury included architect Ed Grochowiak, interior designer Megan Bryan, landscape architect Rick Garbini, environmental expert Scott Fulmer, planner David Abrams, developer Walt Smyk and UC San Diego Facilities Design & Construction chief M. Boone Hellman.

DESIGN NOTES: Hot New York architect Billie Tsien lectures Nov. 14, 7:30 p.m., at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. . . . “In Harmony with the Land,” a show about local female architects, continues through the end of the year at the Museum of San Diego History in Balboa Park. . . . Architect Manuel Rosen lectures Saturday, Nov. 18, at 9:30 a.m., at the New School of Architecture, 1249 F St., sponsored by Friends of San Diego Architecture.