Explore San Diego Architecture This Weekend

Speaker 1: 00:00 This weekend is going to be special for architecture lovers in San Diego. The San Diego architectural foundation will host the fifth Oh San Diego O stands for open house, nearly 100 sites spread across Balboa park, banker's Hill, the Gaslamp downtown East village Barrio Logan point Loma LA Jolla. And core Nado will open their doors for tours and it is all free. Joining us to talk more about this exciting event is Maxine ward, the director of the San Diego architectural foundation and Elsa Savia from the San Diego history center. Welcome to you both. Thank you for heaviness. So Maxine, I'll start with you. Um, for someone who isn't familiar with the AU tours, what should they know? Well, first and foremost, it's free. We welcome everybody to come and join us. So we are opening the doors to about 93 different sites all over the city. Like you said, they all have architectural, historic or cultural significance and a really, we're just encouraging the public to come out and learn more about what the San Diego built environment really has to offer. Speaker 1: 01:04 And that's everything from things that have, you know, a great history, things that are uniquely San Diego and obviously great architecture because that's what, um, the San Diego architectural foundation is all the byte whereby promoting great architecture and design right here. And Elsa and tell me about the San Diego history center's involvement in this event. You have a San Diego history centers involved because we are opening our doors to team up with Oh because it's such a great program and it gives people something to do, something fun, something to learn about. And so for us at the San Diego history center, we have our research archives in the lower level with 47 million million items. I'm in maps, ephemera, photos. And so what we're going to do is we're going to have a historical documents from maps and architectural drawings of buildings that have been built in San Diego. Some that changed a little bit and some that were actually never built. Speaker 1: 02:04 But we still have the drawings in our archives. And so people are going to get a chance to come and see that. And then we have a second museum. The Cera museum and procedural park near old town, people can also get a free tour on the weekend and come see the Serra museum and find out why it's so iconic and why it's such an important site to learn about, which is the proceedings. Uh, 1769, the [inaudible] people lived in this area for 12,000 years and then, um, the Spanish and the soldiers came 250 years ago. So it's just, you know, it all comes together and it's just a great thing for people to, um, experience. Yeah, a lot of history tied in there. Um, you know, when we, I think of great architectural cities, places like Chicago, New York, Paris and London all come to mind, but when it comes to architecture, San Diego has plenty to boast about as well. Speaker 1: 02:53 Right, right, right, for sure. And I think it's, it's interesting you mentioned a couple of those cities because open high San Diego is part of a worldwide movement. It's open house worldwide and internationally there's about 50 other cities that do the same type of program, one weekend a year. And we are the, um, the third city in the United States after New York and Chicago, both having amazing, iconic skylines and architecture. So we're really proud of that, that, um, you know, our finder here in San Diego, Suzanne freed stat, she's a native point Lowman and, um, she really has a passion for this and she wanted to celebrate everything that San Diego had to offer and say, you know, we've, we're just as great. Right? So, um, you know, this year we have the hotel Del Coronado, which is obviously iconic, has a great history culturally and architecturally. So that's one example of something that people all across the world knows that uniquely San Diego then. Speaker 1: 03:50 And then on the architectural, um, side, the sulk Institute is also participating and that is a Louis can building. Um, it's, uh, it's world renowned architects come from all over the world actually to San Diego to visit it because it's so well published and so well known in architectural circles. Oh, you know, I'm wondering what are some secrets architecturally speaking of the San Diego area? Ooh, well, I mean, I know some secrets. I would say that the Sarah museum in BAU and not in my ballpark, the Sarah museum in procedural park. A lot of people think that it's the mission, the first San Diego mission, but it's actually not. It was built in 1928 and it was the San Diego historical society, which is now the San Diego history center. So there's a lot of um, information there. Um, so it sounded like a secret, but it's something that people don't know about. Speaker 1: 04:46 Yeah, I got one too. So, um, we have a couple of walking tours of some streets in San Diego that are a little bit off the beaten path. Um, so one is seventh Avenue, which is actually where the Marston houses, which people may already know cause it is, it is open. Um, but then there's albatross street and so that's another kind of little hidden street and bankers Hill and it has a lot of urban girl houses on there. Um, and so we're going to be doing walking tours with some experts of both those streets so people can learn it by the, um, the development of those little enclaves. And why there are collection of very special architecture. Hmm. Very interesting. Now the event begins this Friday and it runs through Sunday. How do you suggest people take a or at least plan to take advantage of as much of it as possible? Speaker 1: 05:33 I mean it seems like it would really be just about impossible to see every location that's out there. Yeah, that's right. So, um, I like to call it an architectural smorgasbord. Um, we do recommend that you do a little pre-planning because um, we have a lot of, um, resources available online@ourwebsiteatsdarchitecture.org. There you'll find all the site listings by neighborhood. Um, we also have a downloadable map. We have an app for the second time that people can download. It's called archi maps and it's available, um, on the Apple store and so forth. We also suggest that people check in at hubs. So we have nine neighborhoods participating and each one has a hub. And if people check in there, they will be able to get the map, talk to our volunteers who could maybe make some suggestions for the weekend. But really there's a lot of resources out there so you can kind of plan your own weekend. Speaker 1: 06:28 Absolutely. And it's more than just wonderful architecture. And tell us about some of the events associated with the tours. Okay. Well we do have a couple of special events that are happening in LA Jolla. Um, we're collaborating with the Scripps institution of oceanography and they are, um, obviously as a campus they have multiple buildings. They are from different eras, so they are opening multiple buildings, having tours. You can go on the pier, uh, meet some of the scientists, go in some of the older buildings. There's some mid century buildings right there. And it's just a beautiful ocean front campus to wander a rind. Um, we're all still having some dance performances there. I've been speaking with Maxine ward from the San Diego architectural foundation and Elsa Serbia with the San Diego history center. Ladies, thank you both for joining us. Thank you for having us. Thank you.