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Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Gloria Dei Lutheran church is an E.L.C.A. Congregation located in Dana Point. domusstudio worked with the building committee and developed a Master Plan for entire campus. The first completed phase included the re-grading of the site allowing the parking to be pushed to the perimeter and freed up additional land at the center of the campus. A new natural themed Pre-School Playground was constructed to replace and relocate the playground to make room for the new Sanctuary.

The new Sanctuary was placed at the front of the campus for maximum visibility. The design is a total transparent Sanctuary which removed both the visual and physical barriers from the neighborhood and first time visitors… a church with no walls immersed in the community. The Sanctuary incorporates a 50’ operable wall creating an indoor/outdoor worship venue. The result has been a “community building” facility where members and guests mingle and visit both before and after Services, building strong social ministries, an important part of a church’s success. Although a very contemporary space, the liturgical elements and traditional instruments call upon their Lutheran Heritage and worship style. The church was consciously built to appeal to the next generation.

Because of the indoor/outdoor design, the landscape played an important role in the success of the campus. Natural limestone benches and decomposed granite meld with the white oak and polished concrete floors of the Sanctuary interior blurring the threshold and visually flow together. An exterior Font was cut from a limestone boulder and anchors the main courtyard. At the mouth of the rear canyon, a small gathering space was created offering an area of respite.

October 21, 2015

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito

UU Fellowship of San Dieguito

“It’s not just about renewing spaces. It’s also about a renewal of spirit”

Over time a congregation’s facilities can find themselves presenting as many challenges as opportunities resulting from periodic, and often disparate, improvements and alterations. Spaces no longer fit the needs of current activities, finding your way around becomes difficult, and as is the case with any structure they reach the end of their design life. Finding themselves in a similar position, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito embraces a time of renewal. As they put it:

“It’s about fine-tuning and enlivening our vision of who we are and what we want UUFSD to be. It is an opportunity for us to come together, to unite our voices and our spirit.This is our chance, here and now, to build our legacy from the ground up, while taking care not to tread too heavily on the earth with our own footprint, nor trample the footprints that our elders, our founders, have left before us. The time is now.”

To bring this new vision to life, the UUFSD building committee (self named the Dream Builders) worked with our team to develop a new Master Plan for their beautiful campus. UUFSD has a wonderful site in Solana Beach, California that is and will remain largely undeveloped. Their multi-acre site puts their congregation right in the heart of nature, a characteristic the congregation sought to accentuate with its Master Plan. Nature has however also taken a toll on many of the UUFSD buildings. With many buildings now either in disrepair or simply not suiting the current and upcoming needs of the congregation, the Master Plan focuses on reorganizing uses on the site and creating new spaces that will support the life of the congregation long into the future. This involves improvements to the outdoor amphitheater where the typical Sunday service is held, a new A/V building to support the amphitheater, new administration building opening to an enlivened outdoor campus core area, new youth building, and new preschool classroom buildings. Though these new spaces will serve the congregation well, the site itself presented some of the greatest challenges. With steep slopes and abundant plant-life to be preserved and enjoyed, the team worked hard to improve the way people move through the site in a way that took advantage of the site’s beauty. Improved walkways and paths throughout the site not only provide safer and more comfortable movement, they intentionally provide opportunities for people to wander, stop, think, and soak in the natural environment.

Through much dreaming, discussing, refining and effort the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito has synthesized and developed a plan to build a legacy that will help them grow, serve, and thrive for years to come.

October 5, 2015

Treehouse Truss

The Treehouse Truss

The Treehouse Truss is a home among the trees, cantilevering over a gorge to enjoy mountain views.

The owner wanted seclusion, a home that separated him from the noise and lights of neighbors and the city and allowed him to feel isolated. His combined computer and aeronautical background however encourages him towards projects which require maintaining connection to the grid; this prevented a more remote site location. With this technical background of innovation, the owner understandably desired a home designed to reflect that character, a character which would only naturally develop an innovative house worthy of notice. This heavily wooded site in Flagstaff, Arizona proved a suitable canvas for the task.

University City High School

Detailed scope regarding the upper athletic fields includes new dedicated fields for baseball only, softball only, soccer/lacrosse/field hockey, and a multi-purpose practice field. Additionally two new storage buildings, a restroom/concessions building, and a small parking lot are planned. At the baseball and softball fields, new scoreboards, dugouts, bleachers, bullpens, batting cages, and perimeter fencing will be provided. A new accessible path of travel will be provided to all fields.

Scope of work in the stadium includes the removal of two existing ticket booths and one storage building. New accessible seating will be provided at the home and visitor bleachers and new accessible athletic services buildings with new ticket offices, restrooms, and concessions will be provided for both home and away patrons. A new accessible pedestrian path of travel to the main stadium entry and entry plaza and a new small parking lot will also be provided via the reconfiguration of the existing outdoor tennis, basketball, and multi-purpose hard courts.

May 19, 2015

St. Patrick’s Catholic School

The Master Plan analyzed existing facilities and proposed renovations to existing and new facilities to support the defined needs of the congregation and school. The Master Plan was designed to be implemented in phases.

The first phase of the Master Plan is to improve the existing K-8 school portion of the campus. The solution replaces existing modular buildings with a new two-story classroom, library and computer lab building. Also included in this phase is a new Chapel. The viable portions of the existing buildings are proposed to be renovated to modernize and re-organize the spaces to work with the new building. The new school campus will have logical spatial adjacencies, a secure controlled point of entry, safe on-site pick up and drop off procedures, centralized administrative, faculty and staff facilities and new sports and play areas.

May 19, 2015

Francis Parker Upper School

The new ‘Heart of Campus’ building and courtyard forms the campus entry for students’ and visitor’s. As part of a phased masterplan, the building houses the school’s dining facility and covered dining terrace plus banquet and conference rooms, located above a portion of 270 car two-story underground parking structure. The remaining part of the parking structure was designed to support a future gymnasium and athletics complex. The rooms feature operable glass walls that allow for an indoor/outdoor connection to carefully designed terrace and spaces formed between and adjacent to the building. The siting maximizes views and takes advantage of breezes coming up from the adjacent canyon. The building forms and materials, including cast-in-place concrete, wood siding and copper cladding pull from the existing campus, enhancing a consistent design theme.

December 18, 2014

Malibu Presbyterian Church

In 2007 the “Canyon Fire” engulfed Malibu Presbyterian Church which was fully in flames less than five minutes after the flames began licking at it, resulting in a complete loss. The overall process took four years, beginning with meetings with church leaders and members to come up with plans that captured their desire for a memorable place to worship. Domusstudio took a year designing the new structure, which utilizes the most current construction technology and integrated design features to enhance the worship experience.

This project presented some challenging components. Malibu Presbyterian is located in the most stringent seismic zone, highest wind zone, and highest fire zone in California. Acoustical and view/visibility issues dominated the design beyond the technical code items.

From the start of the design, we were faced with conflicting desires between maximizing the view and providing an acoustically dead space for a contemporary worship style. The final design was basically a glass box which maximized all the views and visually presented itself to the community as open and transparent – not a closed black box. We teamed with Shen, Milsom & Wilke, LLC. out of San Francisco to acoustically treat and deaden the space within and to acoustically protect the neighbors from sound exiting the building required by a city sound ordinance. The result is a contemporary theater style venue that is acoustically equivalent to a black box type facility with amazing views to the Pacific Ocean. The main space also had to be acoustically separated from rooms located below. The use of resilient dampening isolators on the lower level’s walls, mechanical ducts, lighting, fire sprinklers and other mechanical equipment will prevent sound from traveling from the Sanctuary floor down to the lower level where Sunday school will take place during worship

The seating area of the main floor and the balcony used arched theater seating to create a sense of community and maintain as few as rows as possible to create an intimate venue.

In regards to fire issues, two-hour fire resistant stone-clad exterior walls were chosen to meet the code and architectural criteria. A single-sloped copper roof and non-combustible materials throughout also helped meet the fire requirements. Meanwhile, tinted laminated glass, high-efficiency lighting and mechanical systems were incorporated to improve energy efficiency and reduce the structure’s carbon footprint.

November 20, 2014

Chen Residence

This home is situated on a hillside overlooking the San Dieguito Lagoon, the Del Mar fairgrounds and the Pacific Ocean. It is situated on a .66 acre lot. The project consists of a 4,650 square foot home with a large expansive deck, a 400 square foot Guest House and a 500 square foot garage. The cantilevered roofs cascade down the sloped hillside anchored from a stone clad tower.

The long overhangs provide sun control and prevent heat gain to a very transparent home. Building materials include stone, copper, ipe wood siding and plaster. Sustainable features include photovoltaic cells on the roof and a gray water collection and storage system for the site irrigation. The design was a collaboration between the homeowners and the studio with an array of design ideas. The is an example of biophilic design where the lines are blurred from the interior to the exterior spaces, satisfying the innate desire of humans to connect to their natural environment.

November 20, 2014

La Jolla Farms Residence

Recycle! Discipline and restraint are two words that are not often associated with a residence of this scale, and yet this approach is precisely the one taken for this remodel. This home is actually the recycling and greening of an original house built, and then once already poorly remodeled, on this four acre, bluff-top, ocean fronting site. The structure, the materials, and many of the components of the original house were recycled along with the entitlements. The simplicity of the forms and the limited material palate are extraordinary in this scale of home, and in this neighborhood of wealth.

A primary goal was to create a home for the long term for a sports-minded family that was quiet and private. In addition the home also needed to provide much more expansive space on occasion for large-scale charity fundraising events, and business entertaining. The house is designed into three zones, family living, recreation, and entertaining. The experiential sequence is of a continuous unveiling of transitional layers from strong and secure more perimeter benchmarks, to more progressively open semi-public, and then safe and private spaces for living.

A secondary goal was to restore and protect the fragile bluff high above the beach below. Planted in sweeping drifts, native and naturalized grasses replaced the mowed, water consuming, grasses of a previous three-hole private golf course. The grasses animate the bluff and ridges while retaining the slope. Additional plants that require little water were selected to provide patterns of color and texture when viewed from the house.

November 19, 2014

La Jolla Shores House

The challenges of this site, and goals of the client were formidable. The small site was on a small and fairly busy corner in a beach community, and the goal was a home with openness, yet privacy, and sustainability on a fixed budget. The design evolved to open outward and visually borrow space and capture views from the open two sides. The transparency allows the beach atmosphere to engulf the home. Very important strategic privacy is provided by window locations, low fencing and carefully placed vegetation. The two interior facades are very solid in contrast to the two open facades.

The sustainability of the home was achieved by both passive and technical means. Square footage was minimized and the simplicity and economy of forms, helped maintain the low construction cost. Material selections were chosen for economy, sustainability and raw aesthetics. The planks of the exterior bridge are recycled boards from the old Temecula water tower. The design decisions proved that a sustainable home could be built without additional costs.

Technical items of the home include all LED lighting, solar hot water heating for both domestic water and bedroom radiant floor heating. Perhaps the most obvious and visual technical features are the glass solar collectors which also work beautifully as the trellis elements for the house facing South and West. They become an integrated and aesthetic feature of the home, not an add-on, filtering the light while they produce electricity.

The plan is simple and open, allowing for spatial overlap and interaction to maximize the apparent size of the home’s more modest size and budget . The indoor/outdoor blending architecturally further expands and enhances the unique living possibilities that can only occur in this moderate climate and is an excellent example of biophilic design practiced by the studio.

The project won a San Diego AIA Merit Award, and was the grand prize winner of the Pacific Coast Builders Conference, Gold Nugget Award 2014 and is featured on dwell.com.

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Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito

UU Fellowship of San Dieguito

Treehouse Truss

The Treehouse Truss

University City High School

University City High School

St. Patrick’s Catholic School

St. Patrick’s Catholic School

Francis Parker Upper School

Francis Parker Upper School

Malibu Presbyterian Church

Malibu Presbyterian Church

Chen Residence

Chen Residence

La Jolla Farms Residence

La Jolla Farms Residence

La Jolla Shores House

La Jolla Shores House

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