Design for the ‘90s

the 1990s, the best San Diego architects will let a changing society lead them to fresh designs.

People came to San Diego in record numbers during the ‘80s. As the city grew, architects produced designs on tight deadlines, with little room for careful, innovative thinking.

The leading architects of the ‘90s will have to do much more than crank out buildable plans.

They will have to carefully consider changing “programs”--the client agendas that serve as the starting point for designs.

In an era marked by high divorce rates and large numbers of single parents, houses are often occupied by combinations of fathers, mothers, friends, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. Residential architecture of the ‘90s will need to address this phenomenon with new forms of housing.

San Diegan Ted Smith is among a small minority of architects working on this problem. His experimental “go homes” of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s were affordable, flexible shells that could be adapted to varying life styles.

Smith’s newest project on Cortez Hill in downtown San Diego is a refinement of the “go homes.” The spaces will be more polished, more like conventional townhomes in their finish materials, but Smith has kept the idea of the “undesignated” space. Rooms may become bedrooms, family rooms or artists’ studios, depending on a buyer’s needs.

Smith and partner Kathy McCormick create the look of their buildings by borrowing design elements from nearby buildings and combining them in interesting ways. Their designs seem to fit a neighborhood in an odd way, then again, they seem totally new.

Finding such new modes of expression within the context of existing neighborhoods will present architects of the ‘90s with a tremendous challenge.

Other open-minded San Diegans are searching for architectural alternatives.

The ‘90s may usher in San Diego’s first “co-housing” community, in which a small group of people with varied ages, backgrounds, and relationships, but with common interests and principles, live together in a small neighborhood of 20 or 30 homes.

Pioneered in Scandinavian countries, co-housing communities offer a warm, family environment in an age when the traditional nuclear family is less common.

Some lucky architect will face the challenge of designing San Diego’s first homes suited to this alternative social structure.

Enlightened clients make an architect’s job easier. During the ‘80s, developers profited with speculative glass office towers in San Diego. Business came first, architecture second.

But developers are realizing that quality architecture can be a valuable marketing tool. It’s discouraging that name architects are sometimes hired to give a building star appeal, but as developers spend more money for designs, San Diego architecture is bound to change for the better.

Downtown San Diego desperately needs this commitment to thoughtful designs.

Among the new wave of downtown high-rises, only one departs from the pack with a visionary concept: the Emerald Shapery Center on Broadway, conceived by developer Sandor Shapery and executed by architect C. W. Kim.

Instead of some hokey imitation of a great Chicago high-rise, or a quirky glass box, this building has integrity based on its unifying design principle. Shapery became fascinated with nature’s crystal forms and their hexagon structures. He decided to design a project around these forms, which provide economies of space and construction, while giving the project a strong visual presence.

This imaginative project is scheduled for completion next summer.

Shapery was fortunate enough to find Japanese financial backers who appreciated his interest in architecture. Generally, innovation in local architecture has been hurt by the lack of San Diego corporations committed to quality designs.

It’s time for those with vision to step forward.

Great American Bank is leading the way with its Great American Plaza downtown. The design by architectural superstar Helmut Jahn isn’t his best work, but the project shows admirable commitment to architecture on the part of bank executives.

In the public realm, the city of San Diego hopes to build an architecturally significant civic center near 12th Avenue and Broadway. But only time will tell if the “design-develop” competition they plan to hold to select an architect will lead to a great project, one which sets a new standard for all San Diego.

For their part, San Diego architects have often followed the money, instead of ideals set down by the pioneering modern architects of the ‘30s--men such as Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, who thought architecture could change society.

There have been exceptions. Rob Quigley consistently devotes himself to challenging social problems, even if the pay is minimal. The designer of three interesting single-room occupancy hotels, where those of moderate means can get a small, clean room for a reasonable price, Quigley is designing a new community center for Sherman Heights, just east of downtown.

In a neighborhood plagued by high crime and drug wars, the architect has a chance to make an important contribution to progress.

When it comes to innovative forms and materials, very few San Diego architects seem poised for breakthroughs in the ‘90s.

Architect Eugene Ray, head of the environmental design program at San Diego State University, is fighting to change the attitudes of architects and society.

He’d like to see San Diego architects follow the lead of the Japanese, who are replacing traditional wood-frame construction with materials such as ceramic and stone. But building codes will need a lot of adapting to accommodate such methods here.

Only a handful of local architects are incorporating the forms Ray believes make the most sense: those based on nature, such as the geodesic domes pioneered by Buckminster Fuller.

Such shapes are energy efficient, cost less to build and create the most hospitable environments for human life when it comes to minimizing such harmful forces as electromagnetic energy, Ray said.

Even if architects enter the ‘90s with open minds, society isn’t hospitable to innovation, said architect Gary Allen, designer of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, one of the city’s few architectural masterpieces.

“One of the things that’s a real problem is zoning,” he said. “I think almost every project should be mixed-use now. To segregate housing is a real mistake. For every square foot of land to have a 24-hour-a-day life, people have to live and work on it.”

Echoing the criticism of out-of-town architects, Allen doesn’t yet see signs of architecture uniquely suited to San Diego.

“I don’t think we’ve ever come to grips with a regional vernacular,” he said. “There are plenty of Spanish tile roofs and arched stucco doorways, but that doesn’t signify a regional style we should be looking at with favor.

“The attempt to discover one is the important thing for architects--how to get that to work with 21st-Century building techniques is our main issue.”