In The News : 2005

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Jerde's Horton Plaza Turns 20 yrs. old - Destination: Downtown

August 14, 2005
This article also appears on another site: San Diego Union-Tribune

Horton Plaza, still thriving after 20 years and millions of visitors, is celebrating a milestone anniversary this year. After its debut in August 1985, the colorful, trend-setting retail-entertainment complex did the lion's share of reviving downtown San Diego. A destination for urban shoppers, diners and moviegoers, the outdoor mall is teeming with distinctive architectural personality, a playful pastiche of faux architectural elements, tiled walls and fountains and quirky connections via bridges, stairs and ramps.

The success of Horton Plaza also brought international attention and commissions to The Jerde Partnership, the architecture and urban design firm that created it. Jon Jerde, who leads the firm, recently talked about Horton Plaza by phone from his office in Los Angeles with Union-Tribune architecture critic Ann Jarmusch.

Q: What was downtown San Diego like when you embarked on this redevelopment project? Were leaders determined to revitalize the area?

A: This is 20 some odd years later and we've been around the world 400 times by now. Horton Plaza was seminal. I mean, this was the big-deal project that launched many, many things. It's a pleasure to go back to it and think about it.

San Diego had been mothballed literally by the Navy. They parked all their ships up and down the waterfront and everything on shore was all the stuff you need to service a navy ... tattoo parlors, porno shops, whatever ... nothing traditional citizenry would (choose) to convey their civic pride and honor. Those (qualities) they found in abundance out in the subburbs. Most people in San Diego didn't know there was a downtown because the (I-5) freeway carefully dodges it and there would be no r eason to go down there, unless you were going to see a ship.

In the early 1980s, all these developers were eyeing San Diego County as one of the hottest if not the hottest of all time, markets in the region. But (then Mayor) Pete Wilson won't let them touch anything until they come and do his downtown first. (Developer) Ernie Hahn was the most obvious player in Pete's back yard.

There was a parallel (redevelopment) project nearby ... the (historic preservation and reuse of the 19th-century) Gaslamp Quarter ... which was also very successful and has nothing to do with Horton Plaza. There have been a number of (deliberate) moves around Horton ... the convention center, the new ballpark ... all reinforcing the idea of downtown.

Q: How did you get involved with Hahn?

A: I used to fly with him all over America, sitting beside him in the co-pilot's seat, looking for (tracts of developable) land. "There's one!" we'd say, and he'd mark it on his map. I did it as an assignment, to be his co-pilot.

Meanwhile, I was going on and on about my theories about habitation, community ... all these kinds of things that ended up being the absolute, No. 1 elements of Horton Plaza. Solving the problem of communality. ... (American towns had grown into cities and) nobody knew each other anymore. There was no focusing event (or place, such as a town square) that could give life to communities.

In hindsight, in many ways, Mr. Hahn (who died in 1992) showed himself to be a pretty neat character. There was a lot more going on than anybody saw, because it would have been the worst thing for him to show any side other than the industry side of being a developer, four-square gospel stuff.

He hired me (after a couple other architects didn't work out). The short version of the story is he gave me a chance to hang myself. Without getting in the middle of the whole process as (a developer) would normally do, he stood aside and let me do what I did. And that produced Horton Plaza.

It broke every rule in the book for the retail industry, caused a tremendous uproar (as an unconventionally arranged outdoor mall) and changed the industry forevermore. The only reason this all happened is that Ernie let me.

Q: Was taking this job a big professional risk for you?

A: I'll never forget when it opened. I came with my two little kids, then about 1 and 3 (years old), and their mom, and I had to give a speech. I said, "I've got to tell you, everybody, I'm scared to death. This project has been the scariest thing I've ever done, because everybody and their brother was snapping at me. 'You can't do that, can't do this.' So it's finally over. Whatever I couldn't do I did do, and now it's done."

Then, of course, Horton Plaza ends up being a wild success and nobody reminds me they were being negative about it.

Q: When did you know it would be a hit?

A: As it was coming (together) you could sense people's excitement. People can view things in their minds and get it. It was a downhill run toward success.

A commercial project with 1 million square feet of retail and a little bit of restaurants should attract 9 million people a year ... everybody knows that. That would be doing really great. Horton attracted 35 million people (in its first year) without being in a good location, so it was clear it was going to be a very unusual project right from the get-go. I think it's settled down toabout 25 million visitors a year now.

Why does Horton Plaza continue to be a people magnet and an internationally known icon for San Diego?

A: In my world of architecture, I was one of the weird people. Most of the guys (architects) went to the elite, and talked to museum curators and rich people. They were interested in the intellectual world of architecture, coming from academia. I was very much a bottom feeder. I got real interested in the ordinary guy. There are millions and millions of ordinary people, and I'm one of them. ...

What I was really trying to do was develop ... a sense of community by keeping in mind all of us are ordinary people. Horton Plaza is designed for the common man to be communal. People are hosted. They're invited in with great good will, told to do what they want to do: sit down and watch people, take in the views, shop or grab lunch.

It's got to be the best place in town because so many things are going on in a concentrated area.

Q: What are some of the design elements that contribute to Horton Plaza's popularity with people of all ages and ethnicities?

A: Color, scale, the difference between solid and void. Very quickly it became clear that the big deal was the space between buildings. The openings are more important than the walls. This is all, of course, part of the continuum of the spaces between (arches, bridges, balconies, patios), so the space can go through the building, you know? This (concept of intimate public spaces threaded through a big, urban shopping mall) has built my career. I've become the famous man of holes.

Q: What do you say to those who criticize Horton Plaza for being too introverted and, these days, seemingly removed from the city around it?

A: It faces on the blocks around it (with different facades designed to respond to their neighbors) and it has things happening at the street level. For Horton Plaza, the (mostly retail) part of the project, I designed it onthe diagonal, which was the longest run that I could get, the longest amount of pedestrian area. It sort of dawdles its way along (from Broadway Circle near Third Avenue) and comes out the other side (First Avenue and G Street). All of that was a new concept.

If you look at my drawings, you'll see I was sure I would be able to extend Horton's diagonal (path through the city) to create very direct access to the waterfront, a shortcut to San Diego Bay. But, like things often happen, the fellow who developed the block across the street didn't know that.

How about those who get confused or frustrated trying to navigate the mall's interior "street" when they can't see or logically predict how to get from one level to another?

Getting lost is part of the design. Ray Bradbury wrote something about the luster of lostness, about getting pleasantly lost. There's nothing wrong with getting pleasantly lost. You seriously don't want to get "distressed lost." The reason people get lost is one side (of the "street") is a three-level project, and on the other side it's a four-level project. That will throw you off. But locals get to figuring out how to do it. It's actually quite easy.

Q: How would you change or update Horton Plaza now?

A: I had designed three levels of housing to go all over the top of everything and down the sides of the parking garage. They never built this, except for one little piece on the east side (Horton Fourth Avenue Apartments). Of course, at that time proposing to build housing above retail was a prophetic idea. Now it's the way (to go).

I feel great about how it looks and feels (when I visit) because (the owners) have been very fair and benevolent, and have not allowed the project to be ruined or invaded by some horrible thing. There are some sad additions (such as light fixtures and signs), but those are unboltable. A terrific guy in our office introduced the large animal-shaped topiaries after I asked him to freshen the place. The (multicolor stucco) facades have been painted many times over, so that's another thing you could do: Bring it back into color alignment, because, as we see in paintings, colors have a huge amount to do with one another, ... or (when they're mismatched) they have nothing to do with one another.

The light in San Diego is totally magical. ... It has luminosity in the air itself (due to moisture and light reflected off the ocean and bay). It doesn't need the sun to be luminous, it's luminous. That's why Horton Plaza had to be outdoors and color was the logical (tool to dress it up on a meager budget),because color would come to life in that kind of air. And it did!

Q: What makes you say Horton Plaza was a seminal project?

A: That was a very exciting period of time and everybody around me was very excited. It's hard not to not remember it as one of the great projects of your career.

The first project my firm ever did outside of America was in (Fukuoka) Japan. This (Canal City Hakata, a 9-acre retail, entertainment, hotel and business complex linked by a new canal) became the largest privately built project in the history of Japan, as it ended up. They came to me, and said, "All right, we've traveled the world, we've seen all the things that are going on. We want you to come to our city and build Horton Plaza."

"OK," I said. "The only problem is I can't build Horton Plaza because it won't move 50 feet. It's designed for right where it is in San Diego. But there will be your version of a Horton Plaza and I'll come over and see which one it is."

Now there are 25 million people in Horton, and I have 1 billion people (in other retail-entertainment complexes we've designed) around the world. We're on our way to 2 billion!

What I'm saying to ordinary people is I'm going to give them what they've been hoping for for years: a communal place of their own and the space between to experience the theater of their lives.

Related Images

Jon Jerde

Horton opening day

Horton architecture