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2 New High-Rises a Rung Up the Ladder : Buildings: San Diego’s skyline is changing for the better, but there is still room for improvement.

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“The city’s new downtown high-rises are some of the nation’s best.”

Any San Diegan interested in design surely hopes to read such a statement some day--and agree wholeheartedly.

But the truth is, the architecture of downtown high-rises is improving only slowly with each new generation of buildings.

Among the latest examples are Symphony Towers, the hotel-office complex spanning the symphony’s concert hall, and a new Radisson Hotel.

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Although Symphony Towers, which opened last year on the block bounded by A and B streets and 7th and 8th avenues, marks a new sophistication in materials and forms, it misses several opportunities to do something uniquely suited to San Diego.

The project, the first downtown building designed by the internationally known architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (they also did the IBM office building in La Jolla), has a classy corporate profile from several angles. The triangular ridge of bay windows, which run up the center of the B Street facade, and two banks of rectangular bays flanking it, create strong, pleasing geometries while maximizing the number of offices with fantastic views.

Along A Street, where the new Marriott Suites Hotel has its entry, the twin curves of the front facade actually reflect the building’s function, a rarity in architecture these days. Behind them are twin spiral ramps the architects created to carry motorists into the multilevel parking garage.

But from the other two sides, the west and east, the complex presents an awkward combination of forms. Admittedly, it must have been difficult to sandwich the existing concert hall between two new high-rise towers, joined by a “sky lobby” above a parking structure. But these primary masses don’t merge into a coherent whole. On their own, the 34-story office and 27-story hotel towers are clean designs, but the vented walls covering the parking garage don’t provide a smooth transition between the office tower’s beautiful, polished granite and the hotel’s less-expensive stucco-coated panels.

Ground-floor retail uses can play an important role in bringing city sidewalks to life with people, but Symphony Towers doesn’t take such advantage. At the moment, the B Street ground floor has nothing to offer pedestrians, though the building’s owners hope to land a bank soon. A few small shops or a cafe would help.

At least the building’s ground floor windows are clear glass, instead of the cold, reflective panels that keep pedestrians from seeing people inside. This gives the building’s B Street level a pleasing openness, allowing glimpses of a large mural of symphony players being painted by Denver artist James Jackson.

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Parking access along A Street precluded ground-floor retail uses and pushed the hotel’s main lobby to the 12th floor.

Resting atop the parking garage, the restaurant, also on the 12th floor, could have been open to the sky and to views of surrounding buildings. Instead, the architects and developer gave the restaurant an inward focus. Natural light is only vaguely apparent behind opaque clerestories near the tall ceiling. The hermetically sealed eatery could just as well be in San Jose, Cleveland, or any other place a business traveler might visit.

One need only inspect the hotel’s indoor pool on the same level to see what might have been possible for the restaurant. Over the pool are several pyramidal skylights, and along a side wall are large, square windows. The combination of natural light sources creates a subtle play of light and shadow on the strong, simple architectural forms.

A final note: The architects deserve credit for keeping the rooftops clean, hiding mechanical equipment instead of mounting it where hotel occupants and office space tenants would have looked down on it.

The new Radisson, scheduled to open March 16 at Front at Cedar streets, was built by Concrete Dynamics, the same company that gave downtown San Diego the much-criticized Ramada Hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter. The Ramada owners eventually commissioned a mural to help hide an unsightly parking garage.

At the Radisson, in-house architects from the construction company used a similar functional approach to the one they used on the Ramada, mounting a hotel tower atop a parking garage base.

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The new hotel has a much more refined appearance, thanks in part to architect and San Diego City Councilman Ron Roberts, who pushed for several design changes.

Although the Radisson is no architectural breakthrough, it is a serviceable solution to the problem of building an affordable hotel. Rooms will go for about $75 a night, versus well over $100 at other downtown high-rise hotels.

Chris Boomis, president of Concrete Dynamics, won’t say that lessons learned from the Ramada helped make the Radisson a better building. He attributed its higher quality to a bigger budget: $27.5 million, versus $22 million for the Ramada. (With 330 rooms, the Radisson is nominally larger.)

Although the three levels of above-grade parking make for a boxy base, Roberts pushed the architects to give it detailing. They added windows, a tall steel entry arch and other items to make the building interesting.

Because the 22-story hotel is sandwiched between smaller buildings on the north and south, the base isn’t all that noticeable from these viewpoints.

From a distance, the building’s appearance is neither striking nor mediocre. The repeated pattern of balconies with horizontal railings breaks the building’s two wide sides into pleasing geometries.

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The exterior was originally going to be a light color, but it now has bright aqua accents. These may be a bit too “Miami Vice” for purists. Good architecture doesn’t need wild colors to be powerful.

In fact, the Radisson is made of concrete, and a bare concrete high-rise could have made a bold statement.

Alas, the American public associates concrete with institutional buildings.

Local architect Kotaro Nakamura summed up the difficulties in trying to make good architecture out of an econo-hotel.

“Tourists like Disneyland, Horton Plaza and Seaport Village. We may be underestimating them by saying this. I’m sure there are hundreds who appreciate honesty in materials and structure. But there is a thing called ‘typology.’ If a church looks like a shopping center, you don’t want to go there. Coating the concrete skin with stucco may be hiding the truth and beauty, but we’re not creating an art piece here. That’s where the problem is.”

In the harsh light of reality, Concrete Dynamics has done a much better job here than with the Ramada. Muralists need not apply.

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