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Rinehart Herbst installation at "MIX." (Photo by Pablo Mason)

What is San Diego’s design future? Can architects and designers help make the region more livable?

This summer, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s La Jolla exhibition, “MIX: Nine San Diego Architects and Designers,” asked some of the region’s promising designers to showcase their work.

The museum and its assistant curator, Lucia Sanroman, deserve praise for producing this excellent show. “MIX” offers a sampling of stellar home-grown architecture — Jonathan Segal’s innovative affordable housing in downtown, Sebastian Mariscal’s visceral display of building material dynamics, Public architects James Gates’ and James Brown’s clever conceptualization of an “architecture of the senses,” and Luce et Studios’ intricately detailed array of studio sets aimed toward working with diverse client “stories.”

The exhibition is visually compelling­ with photographs, sculpture, scale models, and drawings. The floor to ceiling montage in the Rinehart Herbst portion of the exhibit catches one’s eye, as does the short video showing Lloyd Russell’s work, which is equally provocative when the sound of an airplane landing near his award-winning R3 building in Little Italy reverberates around the gallery.

Yet as I walked through the exhibition, I was struck by a sense that, while these architects are crafting exciting new designs, their work, as shown, is not unified by a common message that will jolt visitors into thinking about the future of the San Diego region. I realize this was not the intent of this exhibition per se.

It so happens that a gathering of architects halfway around the world has been pondering questions about the future of another urban region. In Paris, French president Nicolas Sarkozy invited 10 architectural teams (not all of them local) to prepare a blueprint for the future­ of a “Grand Paris” project, if you will.

Paris’ great urban design challenge is that the historic center has become an enclave of wealth and architectural beauty while most of the suburbs are placeless high-rise slums housing the working class and immigrant poor. Central Paris has been called “the world’s most elegant gated community.”

^[2]San Diego suffers a slightly different problem. It has become a region of runaway suburbs, with no real center. We talk about infilling the older urban zones but in the end, many residents continue to prefer the suburbs. Our escalating sprawl now faces into a cone of wildfire potential, making the next wave of suburbs even more unsustainable. We remain wedded to our cars.

In Paris, the architect teams are posing a bold social design agenda that focuses not on individual buildings or even neighborhoods alone but rather, on how design can address the disconnect between the isolated, poor, soul-less suburbs and the center. The architects “macro” solution is built around the use of green belts, canals, parks along rail lines, and airports as “connectors” that would both stitch suburbs to each other and to the center as well as begin to give the lost satellite communities more of a “buzz,” a sense of place.

The San Diego region might well follow the example of Paris. Why not commission local urbanists, architects, and designers to craft a master vision? The current “MIX” show celebrates individual designers looking through their personal microscopes. The choreography of the show evokes this: placing studio displays in separate rooms.

Wouldn’t it be interesting, though, if the museum community, in tandem with local government, might commission architects to envision the future more broadly? Of course, to pull this off we would need the support of politicians, at all levels — the city, county and state.

It’s noteworthy that Paris’ design troubles caught the attention of the nation’s highest elected official­, the President. In San Diego, our elected officials have not consistently supported local design innovation. The decision to allow the construction of the oversized Sunroad building on Kearney Mesa (in violation of airport zoning height limitations set by the FAA), though later reversed, was an embarrassment. Some public officials did not vote in favor of regulating mega-store construction in city neighborhoods.

Architects working on the Paris project have come up with cutting-edge ideas that will reverberate around the planet: reinventing fragmented regions like Paris, using design as a tool to connect isolated communities.

This would be an ideal time to harness the energy of our region’s planners and designers ­at a moment when new projects are slowed by the recession. We should be asking about the regional impact of future designs ­on suburban decentralization, wildfire ecology, and auto dependency.

How can architects counteract an urban culture where city dwellers melt into exurban spaces whose very designs negate any sense of being part of a larger whole?

I urge museum staff, donors and local interest groups to rally behind the example of Paris. Let the excellent “MIX” show open the door for more design exhibitions that address the region’s future.

“MIX: Nine San Diego Architects and Designers” continues through September 6 at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, located at 700 Prospect St., in La Jolla. Information: (858) 454-3541; ww.mcasd.org ^[3]

SDNN contributor Larry Herzog is a writer, Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in City Planning in San Diego State University’s School of Public Affairs.