New Trends Are Seen in S.D. Design

Only a few months into a new decade, San Diego architecture is showing signs of significant breakthroughs.

Not only are local architects addressing social problems by designing interesting, economical buildings, but they are exploring architectural languages more suited to this area than ever before.

Four out-of-town architects came to these conclusions after spending two days here last week to select the winners of this year’s design awards from the local American Institute of Architects chapter.

Perhaps there was no better sign of the times than the sole winner of an honor award the top level of achievement): architect Rob Quigley’s J Street Inn downtown, a single-room occupancy hotel (SRO) done with plenty of imagination on a limited budget, but without some of the whimsical frills Quigley added to earlier projects.

“It was extremely well handled,” said juror Leigh Breslau of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Chicago. “The layout was good, the entry was well defined, the ground floor public spaces, such as the reading room, are well identified. Colorful tile mosaics outside help make it very unstigmatizing for its (low income) users.”

Overall, 16 winners were selected from 132 submissions. Awards were given in three categories: honor, merit (second level) and citation of recognition (third level).

Besides Quigley’s honor award, he earned citations of recognition for the not-yet-built Sherman Heights Community Center, the new Escondido Transit Center, the interior light fixtures at the Linda Vista Library and the Beaumont Building downtown, which contains the architect’s offices and penthouse residence.

The library award came under a new category called “Divine Detail.” Glass display panels at the Dale Fitzmorris dress shop in La Jolla, designed by M.W. Steele Group, became a second “Divine Detail,” in this case a merit award. Also new this year was the “Interior Design” category, with a citation of recognition also going to M.W. Steel’s dress shop. Jurors admired a low-key interior that lets the bold designer dresses sell themselves.

Quigley’s award for the Beaumont gave the architect some vindication; the building has been the subject of much debate, loathed by many, loved by a few and misunderstood by most. It received an undeserved Onion in last year’s Orchids & Onions program, the public’s idea of the best and worst local buildings.

“It’s so different from anything else, it certainly has an eccentric quality,” said juror Joe Esherick of the San Francisco firm Esherick Homsey Dodge & Davis. “For people who don’t want to view the unexpected, it must be a shock. But the closer I got, the more impressed I was. If people would imagine going into the building, enjoying the experience, they’d understand it much better. The idea that you make a snap judgment whether to like something or not is like judging people, not letting them speak to us and reveal their inner thoughts and aspirations.”

The winning projects were recognized last Saturday night during a program at the Aventine in La Jolla, a project designed by Princeton, N.J., architect Michael Graves. The Aventine borrows pseudo-classical forms and rich materials, and the setting offered quite a contrast to this year’s winners, mostly small projects done with a restraint the jurors found refreshing.

Clients--developers, public officials, and others--deserve some of the praise for this year’s winners, especially for their attentions to low-cost, socially oriented buildings that in the past have been written off as necessary evils. There seems to be a growing awareness that, even on projects with modest budgets, good architecture can be had.

Besides Quigley’s SRO, honors given to buildings with a social conscience included a merit award to Visions Architects for the Lemon Grove Community Center (for seniors), plus citations of recognition to Casa de las Madres, a not-yet-built home for unwed mothers in Escondido designed by Rene Davids and Christine Killory, Quigley’s community center, and the not-yet-built Marina Court downtown apartments by the Austin Hansen Group.

Breslau praised the Davids and Killory project for its floor and site plans, and called the forms “solid, recognizable, well massed.”

Juror Norman Pfeiffer of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer in Los Angeles liked the Marina Court as a good “background” building, and credited the architects for proposing various knock-out wall panels to allow apartments within the building to be configured in a variety of sizes.

The evening’s socially responsible aura continued through three public buildings honored. Though such buildings don’t address social problems, they are built with public money. As such, they do genuine social duty, inspiring a civic pride in public architecture that hasn’t been felt often in San Diego County in recent years.

Besides Quigley’s library and transit center, the other winning public building was a fire station in Sorrento Valley designed by Visions Architects (merit award), combining simple box-like forms in an interesting way.

San Diego’s new downtown convention center, designed by Canadian architect Arthur Erickson--with help from design consultants Loschkey Marquardt & Nesholm and San Diego architects Deems Lewis McKinley--received a merit award. Apparently jurors were able to overlook the poor city planning that allowed this massive but well-designed edifice to close off the waterfront from public views and easy access.

“There are just a lot of masterful things there,” said Esherick. “The sail structure on top is especially nice.”

The Tsao residence in Singapore, by Pacific Associates Planners Architects, won an award of merit. Jurors were impressed with the way the architects, led by Randy Dalrymple, subtly captured the architectural character of its city.

Other citations of recognition went to a not-yet-built visual arts facility by Neptune Thomas Davis in association with Rebecca Binder, and architect Richard Yen’s own studio.

Last, but not least, jurors gave a special “distinguished building award” to Bertram Goodhue’s California Tower in Balboa Park, the centerpiece of one of San Diego’s most romantic architectural groupings. Completed for the Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915, the tower was no architectural breakthrough, but in the context of Balboa Park, it gives a large set of buildings the kind of visual focal point most new developments so sorely lack.

One of the few negatives the jurors voiced was a certain sense of impermanence to some of the buildings, partly due to their materials (often stucco) and less-than-perfect detailing.

During the past three years, the AIA architects who run the awards program, including awards chairman Russ Stout, have invited jurors with credits on both large and small projects, hoping more large projects will be honored. This year, though, they found no worthy large projects, tending to confirm one’s suspicion that, in San Diego, big developers are still more knowledgeable about making money than making good buildings.