La Jolla Shores Lifeguard Station

Observation Tower, First Aid Facility, Locker Room & Offices

Design Consultant  |  Completion 2013  |  La Jolla, CA

Through intensive public workshops and effusive review process we were constantly instructed by residents to make the new station ‘as invisible as possible.’ In contrast to the monolithic 1970’s outdated & inadequate station, our solution placed the new buildings to the north of Kellogg Park, in front of the existing parking lot allowing the reclamation of precious view from the park and adjacent homes. Although the program of the new facility was more than twice the existing building, we minimized the impact on view by rotating the buildings 90-degrees (perpendicular to the beach) and breaking up the building mass into 3 pieces; First Aid Services, Lifeguards’ Locker Rooms & Offices and Observation Tower. The Observation tower became a slender and dynamic gesture that signals the building; a concrete cantilever arm leaning toward the beach that maximizes views of the beach while minimizing the visual impact for the neighbors.

Hector M Perez

in collaboration with Ralph Roesling
Roesling Nakamura Terada Architects (RNT)