The emerging architecture, design, art, culinary and cultural scenes of Tijuana will take center stage on Friday in a day-long event hosted by the San Diego Architectural Foundation.

“We felt that people on this side of the border really don’t know about this resurgence that’s been taking place in Tijuana,” said foundation president Margit Whitlock. “They’re building like crazy, they have an amazing culinary scene, they are making all kinds of craft beer, it’s kind of like South Park.”

The tour, called “Feast for the Heart: The Tijuana Renaissance,” is the foundation’s first in Tijuana, and is a fundraiser for the organization. It includes a VIP bus tour from San Diego for 100 people— already sold out — as well as a ticketed evening culinary fair reception at Tijuana’s hilltop cultural center, the municipal Casa de la Cultura. It will be followed by a two-hour forum featuring speakers from both sides of the border.

The organizers are stressing the cross-border ties that connect Tijuana and San Diego. According to the program, the two cities are “increasingly seen as a single urban region and economic zone with diverse backgrounds and common interests. So the question must be asked: Are we really one city or two?”


Speakers at the evening forum include some key actors in Tijuana’s changing urban scene, including developers, architects, urban planners, as well as a historic preservationist.

Whitlock said the idea for the tour came about last year after she and other members of the foundation’s board of directors accepted an invitation to visit the city from the Bustamante Realty Group, which represents many of the city’s high-end developments. “We were just blown away by the quality of the architecture,” Whitlock said.

Tickets for the culinary fair reception, (from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.) and for the forum, (from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.), can be purchased at the door at the Casa de la Cultura above downtown Tijuana, Avenida Paris 5, Colonia Altamira. The cost to attend both is $75; $20 for students. A ticket for the forum alone is $20.

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com


@sandradibble