style housing for upper-division students. Targeting transfer students and other upper-division students, the design had to compete with similar style apartments found in off-campus housing. The project was redesigned and resumed in the Fall of 2021 as students were returning to campus, thus resuming the need for student housing. According to Bussard, the redesigned structure features “two spiral forms that have lower scale potential urban blocks for student housing, [ranging] anywhere from four to six stories.” This design “grounds the building site” and creates courtyards with the buildings spiraling up to towers, which are 22 and 23 stories tall. This arrangement creates multiple courtyards in which students can spend time and enjoy common space. The design also features stepped massing, and exterior design inspired by the nearby canyon as well as an expansive glass curtain wall. UCSD’s Pepper Canyon West project has a unique design in response to its position adjacent to a new pedestrian gateway for the university. Two of the area’s public transit options–the light rail trolley (LRT) and commuter shuttle for the buses–have stops at this site on the campus’ east side, which, prior to these recent developments, had been largely undefined. With the area defined as a campus transit hub, the goal was to extend the campus’ pedestrian mall–Rupertus Walk–to meet the LRT station. In doing so, the campus maintained the goal of creating a diverse neighborhood, and one of the main goals for the Pepper Canyon West project was to respond to the area’s diverse context and complete the budding neighborhood. Another aspect of the Pepper Canyon West Project was redesigning the eponymous park at the LRT station’s base. Running alongside the project is Pepper Canyon Park, which rests in a type of canyon/arroyos common throughout the San Diego area. The park was disturbed during the construction of the LRT
station, and Perkins & Will was tasked with redesigning it. According to Bussard, their goal in doing so was to fit the redesigned park within the urban, campus context while incorporating traditional landscaping. The new project’s spiral forms along with its building site allowed for the construction of multiple courtyards which provides ample space for students to hang out in. The goal in creating this design was to take advantage of San Diego’s weather by pushing programs from the inside out, which also allows for the structure to transition from high- rise housing to contextual buildings that wrap and meet the edges of the building site. Earlier design versions create dense arrangements that disrupted the ability to create meaningful outdoor spaces, and Brussard notes the particular challenge in altering the design to create a space that not only has interesting gateways and campus context but also one that features “pools of daylight and beautiful landscaping zones that students will want to use.” Bussard says there was a desire to create a space that was “fairly dynamic” and sought to create a stronger sense of expression within the apartment units. To do so, they began looking at the typologies of these units in an effort to standardize them. Using five or six base unit types, the team extrapolated to multiple versions depending on the conditions. Bussard notes that this process of standardizing units helped them achieve equity in terms of students having a similar, collective experience while occupying the building. Like with other areas of the building, the design started from the inside out, which benefited the architectural design by allowing the team to “think carefully and strategically about where community spaces like lounges and outdoor terraces would be constructed in the building.”
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Spring 2024 csengineermag.com
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