2024 DCC Award Winner
Directors Place, T.B. Penick & Sons, San Diego, CA
First Place: Architectural Cast-in-Place Concrete Structures, Over 5,000 SF
Director’s Place is a new 150,000 SF, five-story warm shell research and laboratory building that features dramatic views of the Sorrento Valley area towards the Pacific Ocean and Torrey Pines estuary. The building features a nearly 50/50 split of life sciences research labs and office space.
The building's architectural features and interior lobby design were inspired by the nearby coastal cliffs of Torrey Pines. Striations, layers, textures, time, history, stories, erosions, carved, earth tones, natural, and organic - all concept words that helped guide the design. A two-story high Lithocrete sedimentary wall anchors the double-height lobby space. The colors and textures of the wall were carefully selected to mimic the striations of the Torrey Pines cliffside. Light coves track from a tiered ceiling on Level 2 down the face of the wall, creating an eye-catching, immersive art piece. The flooring was designed to create a line in the sand – a metaphorical juxtaposition in the space. One side resembles the cliffs, and the other picks up on the ocean’s movements.
Creamy white terrazzo flooring with flecks of sediment neighbors the sedimentary wall, representing untouched sand. This flooring carries up a cantilevered monumental staircase and across the Level 02 mezzanine. On the opposite side, dark blue, almost charcoal-colored terrazzo flooring represents sand that has been touched by the ocean waters, acting as a landing point for a wood-clad soffit and columns, reminiscent of a pier. The dark Terrazzo flooring flows into the elevator cabs, touching each level of the building as they rise and fall. Both the sedimentary wall and terrazzo flooring carry to the exterior of the building further enhancing the concept.
We worked closely and early on with Delawie, the project architect, and Ground Level, the landscape architect to bring their vision to life and proposed the Lithocrete sedimentary wall system as the best way to simulate the striations & layers of the nearby cliffs. We also assisted in the development and installation of the interior terrazzo and exterior Lithocrete paving.
Pouring the full-height 30’ tall sedimentary wall was quite the challenge. First off, a hole had to be cut in the ceiling in order to be able to boom pump the concrete in. Also, since we had multiple integral colors, we had to have multiple concrete pumps and concrete trucks for each color which was logistically challenging since the site was small and there wasn’t much room. The wall itself was challenging since it featured 8 distinct alternating layers which were each made up of different combinations of etch and color per the architect’s design intent. This required a lot of attention to detail to achieve the design intent. Lastly, the exterior Lithocrete paving was poured using White Cement and had a very fine crushed mirror glass embedded on the surface with a light etch.
More to come.
