Historic Hillcrest Building Becomes Hub for New Ideas
By: Ray Huard, San Diego Business Journal
SAN DIEGO – McCullough Landscape Architecture and RDC architects are turning part of the historic Hillcrest Design Center that they share into a creative hub for the San Diego arts and design community.
They’re calling it Futuro Space in honor of the UFO-like Futuro House that was erected in the building’s parking lot in the 1970s at 3605 Fifth Ave.
“We hope that it’s really a think tank for urban ideas,” said Sean Slater, Senior Principal at RDC.
“Many people have a great memory of that spaceship that ‘landed’ back here in the 70s, before many of the buildings around here were even built,” Slater said. “The Futuro House was used as a meeting place. It was a creative meeting space in the back of the building here for 15 or 20 years and then it kind of fell into disrepair.”
Futuro, the house, is gone, moved to Idyllwild, where Slater said that it is used as a bed-and-breakfast inn.
It lives on in in San Diego in the form of a stylized blue neon sign on an exterior wall of the Design Center, and in the futuristic discussions that McCullough and Slater hope that it will inspire.
“The San Diego Design Center is more than just a place. It is a symbol of San Diego’s artistic and creative history, and a space where minds and ideas thrive,” said Frank Wolden, an urbanist with RDC. “It is a place for productivity, collaboration and innovation, and a forum where ideas that will shape the future of San Diego.”
Collaborating with RDC and McCullough Landscape in creating Futuro Space is Graham Hollis of Blue Sapphire Holdings, which owns The Design Center.
The three-story Design Center is the handiwork of the late architect Lloyd Ruocco, often called the most influential modernist architect in San Diego. His work, as exemplified in The Design Cener, is known for its simple combination of wood and glass.
A photo montage and accompanying narrative on an interior wall of Futuro Space tells a little bit of the history of the Futuro House and the Design Center and of Ruocco.
The center has high exposed ceilings with extra-wide windows that wrap around the building, and a wooden awning with slat space to allow sunlight to enter, varying depending on the time of day.
“For those aficionados of modern architecture, it’s probably one of the premier mid-century modern buildings in San Diego, said David McCullough, principal landscape architect at McCullough Landscape Architecture.
Because of its historic significance in San Diego’s architecture, the building itself wasn’t changed to create Futuro Space.
“It’s pretty great the way it is,” Slater said. “We added a continuous workstation along the window wall so there’s an entire wall of windows sort of facing Balboa Park. We did workstations there so people could literally plug in.”
Futuro Space is a mix of small and large meeting rooms and an outdoor patio.
“It’s an opportunity for people to get together and talk about ideas and make connections as well,” McCullough said.
Since it opened at the end of 2023, Futuro Space has been used by such groups as the Urban Land Institute, the American Institute of Architects, the San Diego Architectural Foundation and Citizens Coordinate for Century C3, which counts Ruocco among its founders.
Slater said that Futuro was inspired by a similar project that RDC and Studio One Eleven have in their Long Beach headquarters.
McCullough said that Futuro House was “born out of a little bit of frustration.”
“You hear all these people with all these great ideas for what could happen here, but they’re all isolated,” he said. “They’re all doing their own thing, and at some point, I think we’re more effective as a community if we’re kind of working together on these things.”
Read the original story here
For event inquiries, please contact: Dalane Nash, dalane.nash@rdc-s111.com
