Awards Honor Designs for Managing Growth in State

Ten innovative and successfully built approaches to managing growth in California have been selected as the winners of the first Urban Design Awards competition sponsored by the California Council of the American Institute of Architects.

Projects chosen from the Los Angeles/Southern California and Northern California/Bay areas include examples of low-income and senior housing, adaptive re-use of existing buildings, mixed-use redevelopment and conversion of a hospital into affordable housing for the elderly.

The 1991 CCAIA winning projects from the Los Angeles/Southern California region include:

8522 National Complex, Culver City; Eric Owen Moss architect (Culver City)--a warehouse renovation of five structures linked around an internal wall.

Plaza Las Fuentes--Joint Entry, Pasadena; Housing and Community Development, Pasadena Community Development Commission, Moore, Ruble, Yudell (Santa Monica), Maguire Thomas Partners (Los Angeles)--a large-scale mixed-use redevelopment including a 300-room hotel constructed over a city-owned parking garage.

The Ocean Park Housing Cooperative, Santa Monica; Appleton, Mechur & Associates (Venice)--43 low-income units on five different sites done in the traditional California bungalow style.

The Exchange, Glendale; Glendale Redevelopment Agency-- successfully knits together the evolving retail elements in an older commercial downtown, with new and renovated buildings, extending the shopping environment from the Glendale Galleria.

7 On Kettner, San Diego; Jonathon Segal architect (San Diego)--the project developed a 6,000-foot triangular piece of land contiguous with a light-rail right of way into seven market-rate residential units.

Uptown District--Joint Entry, San Diego; SGPA Architecture and Planning (San Diego), architects Lorimer-Case (San Diego), Oliver McMillan and Odmark Thelan (San Diego)--two sites separated by a busy thoroughfare were developed as commercial and housing space to include 20 townhouses, 290 flats and 10 artists’ lofts.

In the Northern California/Bay Area, winners included the Mercy Family Plaza in San Francisco; Napa Town Center in Napa--Lady Shaw Senior Center, Joint Entry in San Francisco, and Delancey Street Foundation, also in San Francisco.