Jennifer Luce, principal and founder of LUCE et Studio Architects has shared her vision for the Mingei International Museum renovation in San Diego. The design is featured in a video by Jeff Durkin of Breadtruck Films. The Mingei is a nonprofit that collects, conserves and exhibits folk art, craft, and design objects in Balboa Park. During the building’s centennial, a $55 million campaign began to renovate the structure.
The COVID-19 pandemic quickly shuttered the doors of businesses, schools and workplaces across the world. From telecommuting to virtual events, cities have experienced less noise, traffic and pollution. Filmmaker and Director Jeff Durkin of Breadtruck Films recently began to capture these quiet moments on the University of California San Diego campus. Taking inspirations from science fiction series Tales from the Loop, he set out with his children to explore over 100 acres of modern architecture.
Why do we remember buildings, locations, and experiences? Even a place visited in our childhood can conjure emotions that make an impact on us through the memories they create. Angela Brooks and Larry Scarpa explain that the work of Brooks + Scarpa Architects aspires to make a lasting impression out of even a brief encounter. “We try to leave something behind,” says Scarpa, “something ingrained in people’s memory that sticks with them.”
Because we are the architect acting as the developer, we eliminate the change orders, we eliminate the RFIs, we eliminate the job directives - there's basically no chocolate mess, we don't have anybody to answer to.
In this video from Breadtruck Films, San Diego architect Jonathan Segal speaks about how his business model of acting as a developer for his own architectural projects helped in the construction of his latest mixed-use project. The building - a seven-story concrete and glass structure which he named "Mr Robinson" thanks to its location at the corner of Robinson Avenue and Park Boulvard - was constructed in just 14 months as opposed to the 2 to 3 years that he would expect with the usual setup of architect, client and contractor (or "the bad triangle" as he calls it).
Watch RNT Architects discuss The Quad, their new Business, Arts & Humanities building for San Diego City College in this short video from Breadtruck Films. The result of seven years of "doing the drawings...watching the construction... building the volumes and the spaces," The Quad brings together two faculties that are "different in purpose and function differently" to create a "place for learning and social interaction."
"Big things don't happen overnight," says architect Rob Quigley, speaking to Breadtruck Films, "and civic buildings certainly don't happen overnight." The words ring true in the context of Quigley's San Diego New Central Library, which opened in 2013 following a protracted 17 year period of design and construction. After conceiving of the design in 1996, Quigley's plans for the library were "put on the back burner" when planning authorities chose to halt construction on the project in favor of a new ballpark. Construction eventually recommenced years later, in what has since been described as "absolutely a surreal experience."
In this video Quigley describes the driving force of "creating an architecture that responds honestly and authentically to who we are," and how the library has come to be a "symbol of [San Diego]'s commitment to learning and literacy."
"The beauty of [architecture] is the payoff. That building has created a better place for people to live and a better lifestyle for people." A mixed use building that brings together craft beer, street tacos and modern housing, California developer Jonathan Segal's "The Northparker" has helped transform the once blighted area Northpark into one of San Diego's most up-and-coming neighborhoods. Breadtruck Films shares just how a single building created community and changed a city in the video above.
Jeffrey Durkin, director of Breadtruck Films, has shared with us this insightful short film on Jonathan Segal’s new concrete and glass house in La Jolla: The Cresta. According to Durkin, “The film explores the relationship between nature and architecture, father and son, and how clean minimal design can save us from the suburbs.”
