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San Diego, California
Let’s burn for a while before we fade out
I go to the AIA Conferences (just about) every year and I was really looking forward to going to San Diego this year since it broke the AIA’s current streak of repeat host cities. Sure Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco and Chicago were fun, but I haven’t been to a new city with the AIA since Las Vegas in 2019. And even though I have been to San Diego at least four or five times before (depending on how you count), an AIA Conference trip is always different. It’s a chance to spend some time there and, despite an especially jam packed schedule, a chance to start to really start to understand the place and what makes it special. So, with that in mind, come join me as we start understanding San Diego together.
I took a morning flight out of JFK and landed in the brand new Terminal 1 at San Diego International Airport, an easy to use airport that feels right sized, although a rail link to downtown would be a big improvement. From the airport I paid for an Uber to my hotel and started walking uphill all the way to Balboa Park, a place I had never really been to, not counting all of those times I drove there in a rental car to go to the zoo. What makes the non zoo parts of Balboa Park especially interesting is its history- it was built for a exhibition in 1915 and a lot of the buildings were adapted to become museums or cultural buildings.
Even though I (mostly) walked up Park Street to get to Balboa Park, once there I doubled back over El Prado and the bridge just to get this view of the California Tower, an (almost) 200 foot tower designed by Bertram Goodhue that dominates the park, or to be more accurate, dominates the park from certain views like this one.
The California Tower is part of the Museum of Us, a museum once called the Museum of Man that has some pretty interesting displays including a temporary exhibit on cannibalism that is shockingly not anti-cannibalism (it’s not quite pro-cannibalism, but then again, anything not anti-cannibalism is, well, noticeable). Cannibalism aside, the museum occupies the building with the dome and offers additional tickets for a guided tour that take you up an easy 125 step climb to the lowest level of the tower. Above that, the other two levels are visible and declared unsafe for lots of reasons, among them are handrails and guardrails that are far below what the law considers safe. Also on view is the seismic bracing which our helpful guide said made the California Tower the safest building in San Diego. So remember if you’re in San Diego and there’s an earthquake, walk uphill to Balboa Park, buy a ticket and then a second ticket for the next hourly tower tour (they sell out so you may have to wait), then simply join the slow moving tour and climb your way up to safety.
As for the view, it’s just as spectacular as you imagined it would be.
The most spectacular building in Balboa Park is not the California Tower but the nearby Botanical Building, also designed by Bertram Goodhue. It is a conservatory like no other I have ever seen in that the greenhouse building is an all wood structure with no glass panes- it’s just open to the outside and the already perfect weather San Diego seems to always have. All that wood not only creates amazing shadows but also just enough shade for the inside to feel noticeably cooler. The building was recently restored and while I’m sure all of those plants inside have their own stories, the real star there is that spectacular, jaw dropping ceiling, an experience that needs to seen and felt in person to truly understand it.
Balboa Park is huge and there is so much to see that I actually spent parts of two days there. But since we all lead busy lives, I have condensed a lot of that to these eight pictures. I bought a $75 (almost) all museum pass and saw as many as I could, although opening hours and changing exhibits kept my overall museum count down to nine, These included the flagship San Diego Museum of Art (which is about to get an interesting new addition by Norman Foster), the aforementioned Museum of Us (yay cannibalism!), the Tinken Museum of Art (free and small but worth a stop), the Mingei Museum (one of my favorites), the Comic-Con Museum (not included in the $75 Balboa Park Explorer Pass and the only one I wish I skipped), the San Diego History Museum (could have skipped this one but it was included in the pass), Centro Cultural de la Raza (out of the way and worth seeing but really small) and the San Diego Model Railroad Museum (if you use the process of elimination, you can probably figure out which of these pictures is from there),
Even with two days there, I really enjoyed my time in Balboa Park and could have spent even more time there lingering in the courtyards, seeing even more museums, watching the locals and, in the event of a disastrous earthquake, waiting for the next tour to climb the California Tower to safety.
My $75 Balboa Park Explorer Pass also got me into the Japanese Friendship Garden, a garden that takes advantage of the topography by starting high and descending into a ravine, providing great opportunities for waterfalls and all sorts of dramatic views, none of which are pictured here. The garden is exceptionally well designed but at (almost) every turn you are reminded that you are in San Diego and not Japan. Maybe it has something to do with the climate, or the views past the garden, or the fact that the concrete sidewalks are too wide and too American, but as you walk the paths there’s no mistaking that this is not a Japanese Garden as much as it is a San Diego Japanese Garden. That is not meant to be a slight in any way, I actually really appreciate that it is its own thing.
That first day was really long. I started in JFK at 5:30 in the morning which, if you do the admittedly simple math, means that it was really 2:30 in the morning Pacific Time. And despite attempting to sleep on the plane, I still somehow stayed awake all the way through a San Diego Padres game, one they eventually lost after eleven long innings.
Petco Park is officially my 21st Major League Baseball Park, which is honestly a lot and makes me think that it’s getting to be time to start planning trips to see those last nine stadiums. As for Petco Park, it was designed by Antoine Predock and is often listed among the best in baseball and, after seeing a game there, I thoroughly understand why. The stadium is just beautiful, the seating and views and field are great, and behind the outfield there is a wonderful plaza where you can just hang out and watch the game on a giant tv while you can still get a view of the field. I doubt any of the nine parks I still haven’t been to will be able to top that.
I started off this slideshow with the grand idea that this week would somehow let me know Sa Diego, but I knew from the start that was a hope more than a plan. My time this year was limited for all of the reasons that you might expect, and what time I had was booked pretty solid before I even got there. I did not have time to walk through neighborhoods or really understand the city, but I still found whatever minutes I could to make quick stops to places like this, the Central Library designed by local architect Rob Wellington Quigley. Even in a short visit, I made it up to the top floor roof deck and all the way down, floor by floor by floor to see every angle and every view I could.
I was in San Diego for five days and three and a half of them were very focused on AIA26, the reason I came to San Diego in the first place. This was my 19th AIA Conference but the very first time I participated as a speaker- I was a member on a panel discussion about running high school architectural design competitions. I feel that the talk went well and was honored to do it, but it did take a big chunk of my time away from what I might otherwise find myself doing. Still I did manage to attend all three keynotes- Padma Lakshmi (I had low expectations but she ended up as charming and interesting as you might expect), Charlene Li (AI, AI, AI, repeat) and Sameh Wahba (World Bank guy and the best presentation overall). And for at least the third consecutive year, I ended up skipping the always exhausting trade show floor altogether, not out of malice but just because I never found myself with enough time to see it.
