San Diego, California, USA
Jonathan Segal has decided to create a housing building in the heart of Little Italy, San Diego in order to prove that urban living could be both affordable and environmentally efficient as well as high-quality regarding its design. The project’s name is The Continental and it is a concrete and steel construction with floor-to-ceiling glazing.
The Continental was awarded recently with a 2020 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
One of the main drivers of this increase in costs is parking. Parking takes up a tremendous amount of space, drives up construction costs, and delays construction. If we can maintain the proximity of workers to their work, we can eliminate the car. Unfortunately, urban living has become too cost-prohibitive; developers are focusing on luxury 2-bedroom apartments over parked with expensive amenities.
The original notion of the project was to create a two-part party; a family townhome with its own commercial space below, and a demonstration prototype project that would eliminate parking and provide efficient workforce micro-housing.
The townhome would promote growing families to return to an urban environment, and the micro-housing would solve the affordability and housing shortage problem in the State of California.
Each project wanted to have its own identity, and the townhome was situated to claim the corner. Unfortunately, neighborhood pushback inevitably required 11 parking spaces. With only a 5,000 square foot postage stamp lot, this project has 42 apartments, 5 of which are very low income, commercial spaces on the ground floor, and a distinctly separate single-family home.
At nearly 390 dwelling units per acre, this project could quickly be multiplied and replicated throughout urban transit areas. Core uses of the building are pushed to the neighboring property lines opening up all street frontages to natural airflow and daylighting.
Similarly, instead of burying the laundry in the basement, the common laundry area becomes a community gathering space. Tenants can now enjoy the fresh air, other building residents, and the view of San Diego bay while completing their laundry on the top floor of the building.
The micro-housing project element embraces and surrounds the corner single-family home referred to as ‘The Cube’.
The Cube floats above a commercial space with floor-to-ceiling glazing. On the living level of the Cube, a massive planter extends out and holds a 25-year-old strawberry tree suspended in mid-air. The home’s privacy and shade are provided by this tree to the south, and it filters and cools air through its shading leaves as it enters the home.
The main structure consisting of the micro unit’s rooftop is covered with solar panels and HVAC, all core services are fully offset by rooftop solar, and the building exceeds Title24 requirements by 16.9%. The lower rooftop of the 3-bedrooms residence is a large rooftop garden, lined with citrus trees and drought-tolerant grasses.
The emphasis on providing a long-term green building is also evident in the low maintenance requirements of all of the surfaces of the buildings. This is the solution to California’s Housing Crisis.
Project: The Continental
Architects: Jonathan Segal & Development Company
Client: Jonathan Segal & Development Company
General Contractor: Jonathan Segal & Development Company
Photographers: Matthew Segal
