An Architect Uses Concrete, Glass and Steel for A Modern Mixed-Use Building

Mr. Robinson from BREADTRUCK FILMS on Vimeo.

Developer/architect Jonathan Segal, FAIA, designed a mixed-used building in San Diego with little more than exposed cast-in-place concrete and floor to ceiling glass.

Located in the city’s Hillcrest neighborhood, the seven-story building offers a mix of office suites, ground-floor restaurant and café, five courtyards, 36 market-rate and affordable apartments with exterior exposure on three sides, and cantilevered balconies. It also offers three sides of glass in every unit, filtering that bright Southern California light into each one.

“We basically took a cube,” the architect explains, “and started to erode these canyons within the cube and the canyons develop the light shafts and created these fingers, and daylight comes back all the way back 30/40 feet into the space,” the celebrated San Diego architect says in the video.

The firm essentially used black and white (its two favorite colors) and glass and concrete to execute the project. “It’s just not easy to build buildings out of concrete,” he says. “You build it basically once, and it’s done. There are so many parts that live within that 9-inch slab system.”

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