Between the two of them, Jack Carpenter and Kotaro Nakamura have close to 100 years of experience as San Diego architects. Through their own work and their advocacy of good architecture and smart planning, they have been vital proponents for improving the city.
With the pair due to receive Robert Mosher Lifetime Achievement Awards from AIA San Diego later this month, we spoke about their careers and the state of architecture in our region.
The two are committed to modernist design, first seen in San Diego in the work of early 20th-century architect Irving Gill, carried forward following World War II by architects such as Lloyd Ruocco. Modernist architecture features unadorned geometric forms and basic durable materials such as concrete, wood, steel and glass. Connections between indoor and outdoor spaces are essential. Optimization of natural light is important too, and, in more recent decades, energy efficiency.
Carpenter, 85, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, was co-founder of Architects Larsen & Carpenter, responsible for dozens of San Diego projects including the Urban Training Center at Camp Pendleton, for simulated combat in tight urban settings.
The company also designed an underground addition at one of Carpenter’s two favorite San Diego buildings: the Salk Institute, by famed architect Louis Kahn.
Commissioned by polio vaccine scientist Jonas Salk, these concrete-walled research buildings, with their elegant teak windows, flank a spare courtyard divided by a narrow channel of water that aligns with the setting sun at the fall and winter equinoxes. When the addition was under construction, Carpenter visited to review concrete samples with a small group. He heard an unfamiliar voice say “I like that one.” He turned to find the great scientist standing nearby, and Carpenter replied “I like that one too.”
Qualcomm Stadium (aka Jack Murphy Stadium), Carpenter’s other favorite architectural landmark, was designed by fellow modernist Gary Allen. Carpenter led efforts to preserve and update it, but this Kandinsky in concrete, once rated as the best stadium on the West Coast, was demolished to make way for redevelopment including Snapdragon Stadium. Carpenter is not a fan. He thinks its light towers resemble giant fly swatters.
Among more recent buildings, he praises the Del Mar Civic Center designed by Miller Hull: low-key wood buildings that suit the coastal context, with a public oceanview deck at street level. In the spirit of modernist functionalism, it has built-in photovoltaic arrays that produce 50% of its power and automated clerestory windows to provide natural ventilation.
Awards documents describe Carpenter as an “unsung hero of worthy causes” whose impact has been primarily behind the scenes, as a “rainmaker” who brought new clients to Larsen & Carpenter and as an advocate for good architecture and planning.
He led a group of Balboa Park stakeholders to prepare a parking and circulation study and is a member of the Forever Balboa Park preservation group. He’s a founder of AIA’s Regional Design Advisory Council, campaigning for thoughtful architecture and urban design. Among other agenda items, Carpenter and RDAC urge city government to add a design review component to the planning process.
Nakamura, 69, moved away from San Diego last year to become chair of the department of interior design at Iowa State University. His expertise as an architect encompasses sustainable architecture, interior design, master planning and disaster recovery strategies. Projects range from residential to master planning, fire stations, libraries, parks, offices, schools and military.
Trained in engineering, he came from Japan in the 1970s to study with Eugene Ray at San Diego State University. Ray founded the environmental design program and was influenced by outside-the-box thinkers such as Buckminster Fuller. Nakamura went on to direct SDSU’s interior architecture program from 2015 to 2019.
RNT Architects, co-founded by Nakamura and Ralph Roesling in 1983, has won local and national awards.
Among Nakamura’s favorite RNT projects is the Inamori Pavilion at Balboa Park’s Japanese Friendship Garden. This modernist Japanese teahouse has screen-like doors that swing open to connect spacious interiors with exterior decks and surrounding gardens.
Nearby in Balboa Park, the renovation of the Botanical Building is nearing completion, based partly on a plan prepared in 2016 by RNT for the Balboa Park Conservancy. Nakamura considers this lush and gorgeous building a San Diego icon on the order of the Eiffel Tower.
When a tsunami leveled much of Sendai, Japan in 2011, Nakamura went to assist with the rebuilding effort. He says he discovered that what was needed was not just new architecture. The spaces between and around buildings — sidewalks, plazas, gardens, parks — would lead revitalization, encouraging human interaction and lifting spirits.
In a similar spirit of rebirth, RNT’s building at San Pasqual Academy for foster youth — a replacement following the destructive 2007 Witch Creek Fire — combines user-friendly architecture with outdoor areas such as a community garden that brings kids together.
RNT’s building for the DMV in San Ysidro is Gold LEED-certified for energy efficiency. It combines swoopy graceful lines, meticulous concrete work, banks of windows and a spacious interior featuring perforated stainless steel.
Asked about today’s San Diego, Nakamura recalled when he began his career in the early 1980s. Downtown was bouncing back following years of neglect. He witnessed the revival of the historical Gaslamp Quarter. Rundown buildings nearby were replaced with the nationally acclaimed Horton Plaza shopping center designed by Jon Jerde. Today, he sees a downtown full of “decay” and hopes that civic leaders including architects can bring it back to life.
Along with two Lifetime Achievement Awards, AIA’s Feb. 28 ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral will honor Bryn Young as Young Architect of the Year, and Richard Welsh with a Legacy Award for founding the Newschool of Architecture.
Dirk Sutro has written extensively about architecture and design in Southern California. His column appears monthly in Times of San Diego.