CityScape: Tijuana, Mission Valley, shine as Orchids & Onions honor region’s best urban design

Fresh air is a rare commodity inside San Diego’s high-rises, where inoperable windows
and sealed interiors are standard for maximum control of heating, cooling and air
treatment.

By contrast, the new 10-story EAT building in Tijuana, with operable windows
and open interiors that provide plenty of fresh air, is the best of this year’s crop of
Orchids & Onions, recently presented in Liberty Station by the San Diego
Architectural Foundation.

Seventeen Orchids and four Onions plus a People’s Choice award were handed out Oct. 2. Orchid honorees ranged from Del Mar Heights School (the Grand Orchid) to Balboa Park’s
Botanical Building, a couple restaurants, four landscapes (three of them by Schmidt
Design Group) and four public art works.

Onion recipients included the stalled makeover of the once-vibrant Horton Plaza shopping mall downtown and the potential demolition of San Diego Museum of Art’s west wing, beloved by fans of sixties modernist architects Mosher Drew, to make way for SDMA’s expansion.

Contrary to what you might be thinking, the EAT building does not take its name from a
restaurant or food. This new corporate headquarters for AFAL Group was designed by
Mexico City-based Estudio MMX, and they tell me that their projects all receive three-
letter acronyms based on building type, client, and location. EAT stands for edificio, AFAL Group and Tijuana.

EAT is a place that employees will savor. It is framed, from bottom to top, with exposed
concrete columns, headers and diagonals, combined to create lines and spaces that
exude the energy of an abstract painting by Malevich or Mondrian. Landscaping softens
the edges outside and inside, where tendrils of greenery spill over railings into soaring
spaces.

Concrete, stone, steel and wood are not painted, stucco’d, drywalled or otherwise
covered. In raw form, they provide both structure and beauty that feel timeless.
Especially striking is a double helix staircase: twin spirals of stairs that twist around
each other.

You get a sense of primal solidity and permanence from the structure, as you might from
indigenous ruins. In fact, in a video tour of the building, MMX partner Emmanuel
Ramirez says that the architects began by imagining “what this place was like before
being a fully occupied city. What we wanted was to return that original geography to the
building.”

Winner of the top-prize Grand Orchid, Del Mar Heights School (elementary) was
designed by DLR Group architects. The building’s expansive site is spectacular, with
ball fields and outdoor areas taking in sweeping ocean views that stretch from La Jolla
to Del Mar. Low buildings minimize impact on the surrounding residential neighborhood.

They are covered in board-and-batten vertical siding in earth tones that resonate with
nearby sandstone bluffs. Classrooms, the Learning Commons, multi-use room and
other spaces have plenty of glass to bring in daylight and views. Beautifully crafted
concrete is used inside and out, from benches to low walls, an informal amphitheater
and backstops for wall ball.

Public art Orchids went to four projects, led by the Exchange Pavilion, a temporary installation designed by Heleo Architecture + Design with artist Daniel Ruanova, in conjunction with last year’s World Design Capital San Diego Tijuana 2024.

Sited in Balboa Park’s Plaza de Panama, the swoopy orange structure incorporates a steel frame, translucent panels and LED displays with a scroll of inspiring messages in English and Spanish.

During WDC 2024, the pavilion was the site of design events and a magnet for visitors
who stopped by to relax on cubes and benches beneath the tent-like shelter. Since
WDC 2024, it has been moved to a permanent site in Parque Esperanto in Tijuana. This
new pastoral setting gives the pavilion a fresh identity. Unfortunately, this location does
not have electricity, hence the binational messaging that originally gave the work a lot of
its punch has been forfeited.

Two Orchids for public art went to architect/designer Janelle Iglesias, one for a piece
at the Beyer Boulevard San Diego Trolley station in San Ysidro, the other at Pacific
Highlands Ranch Library in Carmel Valley, east of Del Mar.

Text is key to both pieces, incorporated to spell out words reflecting our multi-cultural border region.

At the library, a rectangular courtyard has walls and flooring of terra cotta tiles that each carry one capital letter outlined in relief. These letters combine to spell out messages of learning, togetherness, art and exploration, in English, Spanish and Kumeyaay. One wishes that the letters were more easily legible, but it’s worth sitting in the courtyard for an hour,
parsing the hieroglyphics.

Two landmark projects earned Orchids for preservation. The Botanical Building in Balboa
Park, was designed by Carleton Winslow for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition,
and restored by a team including Platt/Whitelaw Architects and historic preservation
architect Milford Wayne Donaldson. The Hotel Del Coronado, originally designed by
James Reid, was restored by Heritage Architecture & Planning.

Both have received extensive coverage, for good reason. These extensive and painstaking restorations of landmark buildings more than a century old, beloved by San Diegans and known worldwide from postcards, will remain as popular icons for generations to come.

Schmidt Design Group won three of four Orchids presented for landscape architecture,
for designs of vital outdoor spaces within large new urban developments. Two are in Mission Valley – 80 acres of open space at San Diego State University’s new mixed-use project in
Mission Valley, which is anchored by Snapdragon Stadium, and and Creekside Park, at
the 4,800-unit Civita mixed-use project, which I wrote about in a profile of Schmidt earlier this year. The third was for Tecolote Shores South Playground on Mission Bay, with extensive play areas for kids.

The fourth Orchid for landscape architecture went to Torolab for Mirador/Acesso, an architectural installation in Esperanto Park, not far from Heleo’s pavilion.

Two far-out restaurants won Orchids with their vibrant interiors: Lou Lou’s Jungle Room
at the Lafayette Hotel, which calls to mind frenetic big band dance scenes from old
movies and Leila in North Park, inspired by Morocco’s architecture and bustling
markets. Leila features arches and colorful tiles, along with gorgeous fabrics and light
fixtures.

Other Orchids went to the Lyceum Theatre restoration and the Convoy District’s new 30-foot-tall gateway sign marking Convoy’s Pan-Asian Cultural District.

An Onion went to The Royal of Rancho Penasquitos apartments for “an addition to an
existing apartment complex with no flair or imagination,” the program said. Another
Onion went to the renovation of the Scottish Rite Masonic Center in Mission Valley, a
failed attempt at creating classical drama with tall columns that must feel embarrassingly out of their element.

The People’s Choice Orchid went to Innato restaurant in downtown Tijuana, by Haro
Space Design, with its neon marquee, tall paned-glass façade and vintage furniture,
including a TV console suitable for viewing “Leave it to Beaver.”