S.D.-Flavored Buildings Win Design Awards

This year’s American Institute of Architects San Diego chapter design awards provide solid evidence that a new generation of architects in San Diego is developing a distinctive regional architecture.

More than ever, local architects are paying close attention to the culture, history and climate of this area, instead of drawing on imported stylistic trends. Thankfully, the superficial historic references of 1980s postmodernism and the sometimes frivolous fracturing of 1990s Deconstructivism haven’t caught on here.

Perhaps there is a reason why this year’s 18 winners, named at a ceremony Saturday night, seem to hang together so well. For the first time, the jury consisted entirely of California architects: Daniel Solomon, Stanley Saitowitz and William Valentine, all from San Francisco. (Frank Israel of Los Angeles canceled due to a family illness.)

“We knew they would know what California is all about, and that is what happened,” said awards Chairman Randy Hanna. “They knew the culture and the history, and they didn’t have to waste time deliberating over those kinds of issues. They were able to get straight into the architecture.”

Awards were presented in three categories: Honor, Merit and Citation of Recognition. The program took place on the unfinished top floor of a downtown high-rise; attendance was sparse--under 300, down from 400 last year.

From a field of 106 entries (130 last year), only one project was deemed worthy of an Honor Award: the new Church of the Nativity in Fairbanks Ranch, a joint design venture between the Austin Hansen Group of San Diego and Moore Rubell Yudell of Los Angeles (led by internationally known architect Charles Moore).

Two historic San Diego projects were singled out for Distinguished Building Awards: the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, designed by Bertram Goodhue and built between 1921 and 1925, and the Bishop’s School in La Jolla, especially Irving Gill’s three buildings built between 1910 and 1916. Subsequent remodels and additions by other architects include a chapel by Carleton Monroe Winslow from 1917.

Jurors were generally impressed with San Diego architecture. However, Saitowitz cautioned that attention to detail seems lacking here, possibly because the dry climate is forgiving of careless construction.

For example, the Uptown District, designed by Lorimer-Case Architects and SGPA Architecture and Planning, won an Award of Merit. Jurors were impressed with the way the project knits an older neighborhood together. However, Saitowitz was especially disappointed with the Hillcrest project’s poor detailing. He reportedly tapped on some trim that looked like solid concrete, only to find that it was hollow.

The jury’s pointed criticisms of the Uptown District generated the evening’s brightest sparks. Both Saitowitz and Solomon told the audience they wished the project hadn’t cloned the forms of nearby buildings so literally, and Saitowitz confessed that he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if one of his projects had been as poorly constructed.

Accepting the award, SGPA Principal Mike LaBarre told the audience he disagreed with the jurors. After the awards presentations, LaBarre approached Saitowitz and told him he felt the jury’s emphasis should have been on the positive qualities of winning projects, not criticism.

LaBarre was the only architect to publicly blow his top. Others seemed to accept criticism as a sometimes painful, but nonetheless useful tool in an architect’s evolution.

After all, the jurors even found something to criticize about the Church of the Nativity, the lone Honor Award winner. The building is a near-perfect example of regional architecture. An inviting courtyard serves as an outdoor communal “room,” an extension of the interior spaces. The courtyard is minimally landscaped with drought-tolerant plants. Rooms around the courtyard capture views and fresh air with many windows and French doors. A romantic wood-beamed pergola links the main church to a smaller chapel, further celebrating the area’s warm weather, and the interior of the church is alive with natural light that washes softly over white walls and exquisite wood details.

Valentine praised the building’s “great inside space” and “extreme attention to detail,” while Solomon observed that the building provides a grand civic presence in a ritzy community where most of the money spent on construction is dedicated to private homes.

But Saitowitz suggested that the church could have been an even stronger project had the architects relied more upon their own invention and less upon nostalgic references to early California architecture.

San Diego architect Rob Quigley, who continues to refine his intriguing approach of collaging traditional and untraditional forms and materials, captured more awards than any other architect.

Quigley won two of this year’s three Merit Awards: one for La Pensione, an 80-room single room occupancy hotel with ground-level retail, to be built at India and Date Streets, the other for the Tustin Ranch Golf Course Clubhouse/Country Club. He also received a special Divine Detail Citation for the aluminum accordion doors on the Reed residence in Point Loma.

Along with Quigley’s residential winners, seven other residential projects received awards.

Architect Jonathan Segal accepted an Award of Merit for 7 On Kettner, a group of town homes he built on a small, unwanted wedge of land next to the railroad tracks in downtown San Diego.

Jurors praised the way the building reaches out to the sidewalk with individual entrances to units; the building is extremely friendly to pedestrians.

Segal also picked up a Citation of Recognition for a not-yet-built 16-unit residential loft project at Columbia and Fir Streets downtown. Like 7 On Kettner, this project is pedestrian-friendly.

Other residential projects receiving awards were: the Steele residence remodel in La Jolla, M.W. Steele Group; the Albachten residence, a tasteful remodel of a small 1920s bungalow, Joe Cristilli; an unbuilt, eight-unit, low-income courtyard housing project in Escondido, Davids-Killory Architects; and the Ralphs residence in Fairbanks Ranch, Austin Hansen Group.

Architect Jeanne McCallum received a Citation of Recognition for a small San Diego duplex that Valentine praised as a prototype for “in-fill” housing, in dense urban neighborhoods.

Keniston & Mosher Architects’ won a Citation of Recognition for a city storage and maintenance building in San Diego. The building was the most aggressively energy-efficient winner. A “trombe wall” of concrete block stores the sun’s warmth during the day and radiates it well into the chilly early morning hours, when workers arrive.

Additional winners were: The East West Design Complex on Fourth Avenue downtown, designed by Roesling Nakamura Architects, Citation of Recognition; the not-yet-built 2nd Avenue Medical Office Building by Richard Yen & Associates, Citation of Recognition; and the not-yet-built Institute of Geophysics & Planetary Physics, Unit II, at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography, by Liebhardt Botton & Associates, Citation of Recognition.

While the jurors were impressed with what they found in San Diego, they also felt that the two Distinguished Buildings will give local architects something to shoot for for years to come.

“There’s a kind of authority and calm and serenity there that only the church among this group of buildings began to approach,” Solomon said. “They make the rest of the buildings seem a little bit frantic.”