San Diego, California
CitiPlace is a six story residential apartment building with 140 rental units and two street level retail spaces. The project site is located in downtown San Diego’s Cortez Hill district, and is bordered by Ash Street to the south, Front Street to the west, and First Avenue to the east.
The units consist of ground level loft units, studios, and one and two-bedrooms that are targeted to young professionals looking for an urban lifestyle. The project also includes amenities such as a fitness room, screening room, community room, lap pool, and roof garden. The street level retail spaces anchor the building at the corners and are designed to accommodate neighborhood services. Two levels of underground parking are provided in addition to encapsulated at-grade parking that is behind the street level retail and residential spaces.
The building’s design concept began as a series of juxtaposed and intersecting planes that vary in color and texture and present a clean, modern composition to the city. The smooth white façade panels are at times suspended above the ground and at other times anchoring the building to the ground. Blue corrugated metal serves as the backdrop. Bold horizontal elements penetrate these vertical layers in places to serve as balconies, sun shades or roof overhangs. The Front and Ash corner of the building is defined by stacked floor planes that break out from within the building. Floor to ceiling windows and colored translucent panels further accentuate the horizontality of these planes. At First and Ash, a vertical framed-glass popout, held in place by the cantilevered roof plane, marks the corner.
