In April the San Diego Architectural Foundation was contacted by a gentleman named Steve Kappes regarding his 11 year old son Kevin’s interest in architecture. The enthusiastic father reached out to SDAF to obtain some guidance on how to enhance Kevin’s knowledge of the profession & to see if there were any local programs that Kevin could participate in. Luckily for Steve, SDAF Executive Director Leslee Schaffer responded to his request informing him of the upcoming La Jolla Historical Society‘s Young Architects Summer Camp in July of this year. Knowing that I am assisting La Jolla Architect Laura DuCharme-Conboy with the planning of the Summer Camp, Leslee cc’d me on her response to Steve regarding the program so I could field any additional questions he may have.

I decided also to follow up with Steve to let him know that in case he could not afford the $600 cost of the summer camp, that DBRDS would like to offer his son a day in our office to see what kind of work we do & to answer any questions he may have. Steve & I decided that with the summer school holidays approaching, perhaps a day in June was best & so, earlier this week 11 year old Kevin Kappes turned up in our office, massive bag in tow, wide-eyed & ready to talk design. Seeing the excitement on Kevin’s face we knew this was going to be a fun day.

As Steve & I introduced each other, Kevin set about unpacking his bag, placing on our meeting desk a laptop computer, 2 books & a notebook…the little fella was ready. As Steve left, assuring me Kevin’s mom would collect him at 3pm, Kevin & I got right into it. He told me he loved the formality of Roman & Greek architecture. He said he liked hotels, they seemed like fun to design. He was well versed on structure & form, on what he liked & what got him excited, but most of all, Kevin was a fully fledged 3D model maker using both ‘plank’ style building blocks to make real structures, as well as using a program by Lego called ‘Digital Designer’, a program with infinite block pieces & shapes. He showed us over 10 different designs he had worked on from a Gothic Hotel, to a Mega Mall, a Police Station & a house. All I could think was ‘slow down Kevin, I cant keep up!’. It was certainly eye-opening for Ivan & I to see this 11 year old elementary school student confidently producing & understanding the process of creating 3D spaces a good 15 years before we even started…this little guy was amazing.

Kevin told me he wanted to learn about the daily work for an Architect (which, yes, I tell everyone as I did Young Kevin that we are NOT architects, we are designers…standard legal disclaimer). He was not bothered, excited only about seeing some of our sketches, we decided that we would give him a complete task to work on, something that he could understand all the way from hand sketch to presentation image. So, we printed off one of our designs for a house in La Jolla & we tasked Kevin with taking the print to some trace paper & slowly, steadily tracing it by hand. Next, we asked him to color it using some markers, thinking about the color selections for the spaces of the house, he launched right into it.

Finally, We had him start to model the house in his Lego program, so he could now think about how it might look on the outside, all the while he was asking great questions about the layout, the function, the reason for the planning & how it related to the yard space.

We really enjoyed having Kevin in our office for the day. He brought an authentic enthusiasm for the design profession that sometimes gets lost amongst the daily grind of deadlines & paperwork…we can only hope that Kevin got as much out of the experience as we did. We strongly believe that education is a critical part of our profession. We are constantly educating friends & clients as to principals of sustainability through good design, or the value of the design process as a tool to improve how we live & connect, but also in the next generation. If you know a youngster who is passionate about any profession, find someone that they can shadow for a day, let them ask questions, encourage their curiosity…its so amazing to see how a young mind will inquisitively explore their passions in a way we often over look, or in a way that the ‘real world’ no longer allows you to see.

3 days after Kevin spent the day with us, we received an awesome package in the mail from him. Inside we found the following letter from Kevin which absolutely was the highlight of our week. He also sent us the final renderings of his Lego model which is very, very cool. Next lesson with Kevin we might teach him about the beauty of ‘flat roofs’.

In case you missed it, former San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders was on NBC San Diego’s ‘Politically Speaking’ segment last saturday afternoon with Gene Cubbison. While the segment itself was fine, there was one particular quote that had us here at DBRDS scratching our heads thinking ‘did he just say that, so care-free, like there is just nothing we can do about it’?

Its not so much what the former Mayor said, we deal with it everyday in our profession, its more how he said it. Sounding simultaneously defeat-us & content that ‘this is just the way it is’ was soul crushing. I mean, we all know the legislative passion California has for requested report, on report & red tape on red tape to get even the most minuscule of projects through the system…but for our former leader to simply shrug his shoulders as if to say there is nothing we can do about it is just wrong.

San Diego calls itself ‘America’s Finest City’, but with this attitude, we will continue to do nothing but simply rely upon our great weather for our AFC title. We will continue to fall behind the rest of the state, the country & the world when it comes to dynamic public spaces & buildings, developing for civic & cultural value & the opportunity to become one of the worlds great cities. We will be content with mediocrity, rather than think outside the box for fear of the process getting in our way.

More than anything this city needs dialogue. It needs proactive community leaders that want to see San Diego evolve for the better through our next 100 years.

This is just not good enough. San Diego deserves better.

Mavrix Equity Vice President & Co-founder Erin Wicomb came to DBRDS in 2011 with an opportunity to help him redesign a 1,000sqft+, 1 bedroom, 2 bathroom New York style loft that he had recently purchased in the Historic El Cortez building of downtown San Diego.

The existing space was rather bare & predictable. The original beige kitchen cabinetry remained with the dated white appliance package. Oversized air conditioning ducts running through the space with no consideration of placement, while a highlight green color paint had been used in an attempt to brighten up the space. It seemed that while this apartment had evolved over time with each owner, no consideration had been given to make the 2 story space a cohesive loft. This was the challenge.

Being a high energy young entrepreneur, Erin wanted this loft to be a very contemporary, minimal loft, with a hint of texture & something unexpected. He specifically wanted a dynamic book shelf design for the entry way, a double height space with 18′ ceilings that could be viewed from all spaces in the loft. The introduction of angles into the bookshelf design was a simple reflection of how the floor plan felt upon entering the loft. From the front door the space seemed to extend diagonally away; we wanted to exaggerate this notion by introducing additional diagonal lines here. The randomness of the shelving design too was very intentional as reading is a great source of inspiration for Erin’s business life. Anyone who knows Erin will know that he talks 100mph about everything, from his passions, to Mavrix, sports & life…so we wanted to have a bookshelf design that reflected the energy that Erin brings to everything he does.

The color palette was a simple choice for this space – white to reflect as much natural light into the deep unit, contrasted with an ebony stained wood flooring & black painted concrete ceiling & exposed fire sprinkler pipework.

All photographs are © Darren Bradley Photography & DBRDS

Over the past 12 months I have invited a solid group of local designers into the DBRDS office for random Friday afternoon design dialogs. For full disclosure, I often entice this group of very busy designers into the our studio by offering a ‘tasting of sorts’, sometimes with beer, other times with whiskey, & so on. Either way, my intent is always to spark an interesting dialog for ideas in San Diego. What generally happens is we all get fired up & positive about the City & set about with sketch paper & markers, exploring design challenges one by one. The Friday afternoon group of dialoguers evolved each session, but the heart of this group were Ivan & myself, Landscape Architect David McCullough, Urban Planner & Dialog Provocateur Howard Blackson (if you dont already know Howard, watch this video to get a feel for how passionate this guy is about San Diego) & recent graduate & recent addition to the DBRDS team, Craig Howard.

This most recent design challenge was stemmed by a running club that Ivan was apart of which used the old Balboa Stadium running track once a week. Following our East Village Stadium concept, Ivan could not believe that this classical horseshoe stadium was hidden on the edge of downtown & promptly took me up there to see it. As we stood on the top edge of the San Diego High School car park to the south rim of the once beautiful seating layout, we were simultaneously disheartened by what once was & how poorly it has been demolished & neglected over the years. We were also inspired by the spectacular view of Coronado Bridge with Mexico beyond. Turning around to face North we could appreciate closeness of Balboa Park across the freeway with California Tower off in the distance. Fueled by this visit, Ivan set out to expand our existing downtown CAD drawing to stretch from the bay all they way up to El Prado dropping in building outlines through the City & the Park as he developed it. All of this lead us to lay out our site plan on our first little Friday afternoon discussion to show the team how amazingly, the seemingly forgotten Balboa Stadium lines up perfectly with the Plaza de Panama! Surely this no coincidence & this was something really worth exploring as a master planning exercise.

All that being said, we have had a lot of fun developing an idea that we think has some merit. An idea based on the notion of ‘building towards cultural and social value always equates to economic value.’ An idea that literally proposes to bridge the gap between Balboa Park & downtown created by Interstate 5. There has been a lot of great ideas & proposals on way’s to reconcile elements of Balboa – from the 1960′s Bartholomew Plan, Vicki Estrada’s 1980′s evolution of this with an emphasis again to remove cars, to the more recent Dr. Irwin Jacob’s ‘Centennial Bridge’ idea, to PUBLIC Architecture’s James Brown’s proposal to ‘Take back the Freeways‘ (as presented at TEDxAMERICA’S FINEST CITY at the Newschool of Architecture & Design) & remove a section of Interstate 5 all together. These are all great ideas, these are all worth talking about & most importantly these are all ideas by people who care about this City & want to see San Diego live up to its tagline of America’s Finest City!

This week our idea expanded beyond our studio sessions in this article by John Lamb of City Beat San Diego. You can read it here: http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-11663-reclaiming-balboa-park.html

Our idea was also picked up very quickly by William Adams, Creator of local design blog UrbDeZine. We hope it sparks discussion & we hope it gets people thinking.

In late 2012, I was invited to be a judge for ENR’s California sector of ‘Top 20 Under 40′ awards. With three rounds of voting, we collectively reduced the overwhelming group of entries down to the Top 20.

The awards ceremony is set for later in the year, however you can read all about the 2013 honorees at the ENR website here.

Sasha Favelukis (Partner of Sequoian Hard Money Lenders) came to DBRDS in late 2012 with a project in the Historic El Cortez building in downtown San Diego. Sasha had recently purchased a 600+sqft 1 bedroom + 1 bathroom condominium located on the north-west corner of the building on the 5th floor. With fantastic views across downtown towards the San Diego bay & an overwhelming ‘beige on beige’ existing color scheme we set about measuring the space for the redesign – you can see below the photos of the space as it was when we first saw it.

Built in 1927 the El Cortez building was originally designed as an ‘apartment hotel’ containing 85 hotel rooms & 32 apartments. It was designed by Architects Albert R. Walker and Percy Eisen & was the tallest building in San Diego at the time & over the years it has accommodated some pretty prestigious guests from U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, & Gerald Ford, as well as singers Bing Crosby & Elvis Presley.

In the 90′s as local developers began to plan the run down buildings renovations, this particular condo was created by combining 2 hotel rooms into 1 & this is the configuration in which we had to work with. As with most interior remodels in condominium buildings we were limited to maintaing the existing plumbing locations (kitchen & bathroom) & so from a planning view we simply removed a couple of walls to increase the feeling of space in this efficiently planned unit & to open up the bedroom to the living space a little better improving the flow of areas, sharing of natural light & cross-flow ventilation.

Our philosophy for this redesign was very simple; we wanted to

• improve the flow of the space – we achieve this by demolishing the interior non-loadbearing kitchen side wall & by relocating the entry into the bedroom to align off the entry
• brighten the condo by introducing white as a base color with some textural elements – we achieve this by contrasting a dark stain bamboo flooring with a white oak kitchen & linear bench element, and by adding softness to the space through shear draperies
• to maximize storage – we achieve this by designing a 3′ deep kitchen which allows for double the length of cabinet & drawer space to compensate for the efficient ‘Australian style’ kitchen design, as well as designing a custom linear bench which runs the length of the kitchen, dining & living space for additional storage & seating. These were built by the Pacific Design & Construction carpentry team with everything being overseen by site manager Dave

Above is a photo also of the project team with Ivan & myself on the left, Sasha (client) on the back right & Alan Loghman of Pacific Design & Construction at the front right.

Always wanting to collaborate with other local creatives, we engaged Mike McAllister & team from HOLD IT HOME to provide the appropriate furnishings & they did a great job as always! We also collaborated with local Gaslamp Quarter lighting experts Tim & the team at Urban Lighting to source our lighting selections, as well as Pacific Drapery from North Park for the window furnishings.

This condo has now been placed on the market – for enquiries you can contact Brian Wood with the Damico Realty Group who can be contacted here should you wish to learn about the sale.

Last but not least, we again engaged our great friend Darren Bradley to photograph the space for us as only he can, I think you will agree he did a fantastic job capturing the remodel, especially with the help of our IT geek & model, Ms Heather Eves (principal of I.T. Heroes).

All photographs of the final product are © Darren Bradley Photography & DBRDS

For the second year running, the La Jolla Historical Society is hosting its ‘Young Architect’s Summer Camp’ in July 2013. Continuing her leadership role is local Architect Laura DuCharme-Conboy (who also sits on the Advisory Board for the NewSchool of Architecture & Design) joined by Pauly from DBRDS.

The Summer Camp starts the week of July 15-19 for Middle School students, following into the week of July 22-26 for High School students. Activities will include hand sketching (1-point & 2-point), site visits to local prominent homes from traditional styles through to modern, as well as an introduction to Google Sketchup, model making & a design assignment complete with a final presentation. Its going to be a busy week as Laura & I have met several times already & have locked in our very busy itinerary & as well as the parameters for the personal assignment. It’s sure to be a good combination of education & expression as the students are exposed to multiple facets of Architecture & Design.

The goal of the camp is to inspire & educate students about their built environment while giving them a glimpse into our profession…a shared vision of the San Diego Architectural Foundation for whom I am the current Vice-President, so I look forward to collaborating with Laura on this great program & continuing my involvement in San Diego’s Architectural community.

Spots are limited, so if you have a child in middle school or high school, or know someone who would be interested in participating in the camp, please check out the link below & get signed up!

http://lajollahistory.org/education/young-architects-summer-camp/

In case you didn’t know, the San Diego Museum of Art (recently partners with the San Diego Architectural Foundation for the recent ‘Let’s Talk About Building Together’ talk) is currently hosting an exhibit called ‘Beneath the Moon II: Journey Through The City’, an interactive sculptural art piece by Miquel Navarro, originally commissioned by the Center Pompidou in Paris, France. Fun for kiddies & adults alike to place with elements of the built environment…go check it out!

Since opening our office some 5 years ago, we have measured over 100 houses & condos all over San Diego. Sometimes simply to document the ‘as-built’ floor plan for sales & marketing, sometimes to analyze the development potential providing clients with multiple options for any additions & alterations in preparation for permit approvals.

Unfortunately, the majority of the housing stock we have measured is of extremely poor design & construction quality. In most cases, the houses are nothing more stucco boxes with absolutely no consideration of site, urban or environmental surroundings, views, solar orientation or context.

Every now and then we might come across a Craftsman or Adobe style of housing which is of much better quality, however even those have a very limited relationship with the Southern Californian climate & environment with generally a series of small spaces & windows. We do love however the ‘front porches’…these are perfect for a shaded outdoor space.

Recently though, we were invited to measure another house in La Jolla, which turned out to be a house designed by San Diegan born architect Cliff May. Cliff May was a prolific designer of thousands of “California Ranch-style” homes in San Diego, Los Angeles & Santa Barbara, & this site measure turn into a real treat of a challenge for us.

The house was constructed in 1936 on the La Jolla Hills with north shore views overlooking the ocean. The plan of this 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom house is that of a ‘courtyard’ house, where all the rooms revolve around a main central courtyard & exterior covered pathways to each space. Facing both the internal courtyard & the external surrounding views of the ocean & hillside, residents could wander between spaces via the courtyard, or though each room of the house which links each space internally, rather than the typical ‘corridor’.

While this ‘courtyard’ style house certainly has some traditional elements, namely the pitch roof with the expressed wood eaves & terra cotta roof tiles evoking the traditional Spanish adobes in Southern California, it is undeniably also a modern home by virtue of its planning & relationship to its site & context. May used large expanses of glazing to give the house a feel of lightness & connectedness with its surrounding landscape. His narrow floor plan design allows the house to absorb the sunlight from all sides providing modest-sized rooms a sense of lightness & openness that traditionally designed homes do not achieve.

Quite often we speak about the ‘quality of light’ in a space, & this is a perfect example of how that light can be used to enhance the spaces of a modest single story home. There are no displays of extravagance or opulence in this architecture, but it feels absolutely wonderful. The value of this house is allowing the residents the experience of connecting with the outdoors, the sunlight, ocean views & sea breezes. As Doug Kramer points out on his website dedicated to Cliff May houses in Southern California, “what made Cliff May exciting to anyone interested in home design was his drive to perpetuate ideas of livability rather than façade. His passion was designing homes that were in harmony with the way people wanted to live.”

Much respect Mr. Cliff May…you designed a beautiful Southern Californian home. We enjoyed drawing, measuring, learning from & interpreting your plan…all 3+ hours it took us to do so.