Autumn has been a time of project tours and awards.
This month began at the Ted & Jean Scripps Marine Conservation and Technology Facility at UC San Diego, where SRA presented the sustainable design strategies for this adaptive reuse project. Organized with AIA San Diego’s Committee on the Environment (COTE), attendees learned about the building’s history as a 1960s-era Fisheries Science Center and its transformation into a facility for academics and research on marine environments. This LEED Gold certified project will soon be highlighted on the COTE website as an example of sustainable design in practice.
SRA led San Diego Architecture Foundation as well as the Urban Land Institute on tours of East Village Green, a new urban park in downtown San Diego’s East Village neighborhood completing construction later this year. Designed with OJB Landscape Architecture, the park includes a new community center that opens to a plaza and multi-functional event lawn, a children’s park, large and small dog off leash areas, a performance pavilion, and below-grade parking among other amenities and interactive designs. Learn more here.
This month SRA also celebrated at Circulate San Diego’s 2025 Momentum Awards, with Sustainable Growth Award given to the City of San Marcos and Sea Breeze Properties for North City. Master planned by SRA nearly two decades ago and continuing to be developed today—with current projects including 222 North City and the CSUSM Student Housing and Wellness Center, among others—this downtown district in San Marcos, California provides a variety of housing, live/work, education and entertainment options in a pedestrian-oriented urban environment, and responds to the needs of nearby California State University San Marcos.
With November hardly halfway through, SRA experienced yet another moment of celebration: team member Carlos Chaparro’s drawing of the Miho Museum in Japan was selected as one of the top submissions sent in to Architectural Record’s 2025 Napkin Sketch Contest, an annual nationwide search that invites architects to share their creative drawings. You’ll find Carlos’ sketch and other winners featured in Architectural Record’s November issue, available now. Congratulations, Carlos!
For more updates—including a look at all the sketches our team submitted to this year’s AR Napkin Sketch contest—visit SRA’s Instagram at @safdierabines or find us on LinkedIn.
Photo by Paul Mercado of Pink Media