UC San Diego is returning to its roots as it gears up to build a $608 million permanent home for Sixth College with a nod to the “smart growth” approach to urban development.

What’s formally called the North Torrey Pines Living & Learning Neighborhood represents a return to UCSD’s 1960s roots of mixing student housing, classrooms, recreation and dining — this time in the same building.

The seven-building complex, seen from the southeast, includes academic-oriented buildings on the right and residential-dominated buildings on the left. (HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, image courtesy OJB)

There will be rooftop terraces, barbecue and fire pits, surfboard sculpting equipment in a new craft center, grand staircases, monumental entrances, a “jewel box” lecture hall and 15 housing concepts for 2,000 students. Some will enjoy ocean views from their 14th floor dorm rooms on the tallest building.


In a nod to the future, the three-story, 1,200-space underground parking garage is being constructed so that some spaces can later be converted to classrooms and offices if driverless cars, biking and mass transit reduce the need for parking in the decades ahead.

“The good thing about this campus is there’s a high level of concern for quality, but there’s also a high desire to be forward-looking and to do things that are cutting edge,” said David Harper, who leads HKS’ higher education practice and previously oversaw a similar but not as ambitious a project for The Ohio State University. “It really sets the tone and sets the standard that everybody’s going to have a hard time living up to and other universities will try. But it will be game changer.”

The 995,000-square-foot, seven building complex is a year away from a construction start. Completion is set for the fall quarter of 2020.


It is being designed by HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects and OJB Landscape Architecture (Office of James Burnett) and will be built in a partnership with Clark Construction.

It will occupy the 12-acre parking lot off North Torrey Pines Road between the UC Extension complex to the north and John Muir College to the south. Financing is coming from state funds, non-resident tuition, auxiliary revenues and fundraising.

Technology-oriented Sixth College with about 4,300 students has been housed since its 2001 founding at Camp Snoopy north of the VA Medical Center, the former site of the Camp Matthews Marine Corps rifle training base where past generations of undergraduates lived until their permanent college campuses were ready.

The East Quad lawn area sits next to two academic buildings for faculty, social sciences to the left and humanities to the right. (HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, image courtesy OJB)


Ridge Walk, looking north, will be relandscaped. To the left is the auditorium. (HKS and Safdie Rabines Architects)

Past college design trends

After World War II, veterans flocked to the nation’s campuses on the GI Bill and dorms often resembled their old barracks — spare, crowded and short on space. Some of UCSD’s earliest students lived in Quonset Huts left over from World War II.

“Most people back in those days didn’t come from extremely tremendous means anyway, so putting people in communal housing with little privacy and few amenities and baths and showers down the hall was appropriate,” Harper said.

By the 1970s and ‘80s, colleges adopted some of the planning concepts of suburban America and located dorms at the periphery of the campus, away from classrooms, libraries and other academic facilities.


At the turn of the 21st century, the pendulum swung back again in keeping with the back-to-the-city movement, and students moved into mid- and high-rise buildings at the center. They also were entertained with tanning beds, “lazy” river courses, fancy fitness centers and other amenities aimed at keeping them on campus. Various studies show students earn higher grade point averages when they live on campus.

Meanwhile, UC San Diego bucked the trend when its first college, named after founder Roger Revelle, opened in 1964, the same year UC Berkeley erupted into the Free Speech Movement.

The founding faculty sought to break away from Berkeley’s tendency to treat undergrads as numbers and envisioned 12 distinctive undergraduate colleges with about 3,000 students each.

Muir College followed Revelle College in 1967 with high-rise, bare concrete towers and, in 1970, low-rise Thurgood Marshall College. Earl Warren College opened in 1974, but its student housing was separated from its academic units, as was housing-only Eleanor Roosevelt College, founded in 1988.


Chancellor Pradeep Khosla hopes the new living-learning integration will promote renewed interaction and collaboration.

“It’s an extraordinary venture that will enhance our students’ experience, enabling them to learn and live in a dynamic environment,” he said.

One other goal is to make the complex as environmentally sustainable as possible and to achieve the rarely awarded “platinum” rating by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

Key elements will include photovoltaic cells to power the garage, aerobic digesters to turn food waste into electricity and fertilizer, natural ventilation (student housing and faculty offices windows will be all be operable), low-water using landscaping and energy conserving lighting and fixtures.


“Everyone will experience the university’s commitment to sustainability from the moment they step foot on the new campus,” said HKS design director Thom Greving.

The west quad includes a small performance stage and basketball court. (HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, image courtesy OJB)

Sixth College’s new home will be divided in two, the living-focused west and learning-focused east with Scholars Drive running down the middle with various buildings on both sides mixing both elements.

The two eastern-most buildings will house the humanities and social sciences departments and faculty offices, linked by sky bridges, plus public terraces on the midlevel and rooftop decks and classrooms on the bottom.


At the southeast corner of the campus will be a stand-alone 650-seat auditorium, resembling a glass jewel box with views to the exterior.

Adjacent to the auditorium, the college’s six-floor “living room” building will include upper-story apartments; a 12,000-square-foot second-floor craft center with surfboard sculpting, glass-making and woodworking equipment open for a fee to the entire university and public; a coffee shop and market; and operational offices.

On the north side of the learning complex is a 13-story, mixed-use building with apartments and residential suites on upper floors, a lecture hall and and retail space on the lower floors and the college provost’s administrative offices.

The two western residential buildings of 13 and 14 stories will include rooftop decks and mid-level terraces, with one-, two- and three-story configurations.


The parking garage will be built below the eastern buildings with the top level convertible to four classroom or office spaces if parking needs decline in the future.

The 650-seat auditorium will glow at night and can be blacked out with curtains during the day during lectures and slide shows. (Safdie Rabines Architects)

The interior courtyards feature a more formal, raised area to the east and an informal lawn area to the west for volleyball games, a basketball court and a small stage for student performances. There is no college pool, spa or fitness center, since such facilities are located elsewhere.

Kyle Fiddelke, landscape architect and project director with James Burnett’s Solana Beach-based firm, said the plan will include green roofs, a community garden and a variety of trees (but no eucalyptus), plus drought-tolerant and low-maintenance shrubs and plantings.


Scholars Drive will run through the middle but be designed to slow traffic and accommodate walking, biking and skateboarding.

Architecturally, the building carries on UC San Diego’s eclectic design, heavy on the concrete side, but this time relieved by pieces of Trespa manufactured wood panels — a combination incorporated 50 years ago by famed modernist architect Louis Kahn at the nearby Salk Institute.

Looking east from from North Torrey Pines Road, the Sixth College residential towers will include ground floor public spaces as well. (HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, image courtesy OJB)

The upper levels of some of the building have been bent in a boomerang fashion to maximize shading and minimize wind gusts.


Scholars Drive will run down the middle of the college but be designed to slow down traffic and separate cars from bike paths and pedestrian walkways. (HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, image courtesy OJB)

While Sixth College construction proceeds, the university is revising its long-range master plan. Campus Architect Joel King said College 7 will likely be built on the parking lots south of Revelle College and College 8 on the UC Extension land between Roosevelt and Sixth’s new campus. Extension’s offices and classrooms are slated to move to south of the Price Center as part of a reworking of the administration center and arrival of San Diego Trolley service.

Related story:

Construction starts on UCSD’s downtown outpost


Chancellor Khosla after 4 years

7th College in the planning stages

The ground floor of the humanities building will include public spaces where students, faculty and visitors can meet. (HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, image courtesy OJB)

Looking west through a large ceremonial portal, the academic buildings will serve social sciences departments, right, and humanities, left. (HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, image courtesy OJB)


A pedestrian promenade, looking west, borders the north side of Sixth College. (HKS, Safdie Rabines Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, image courtesy OJB)

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roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley