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A few years ago, in the Before Times, I stayed at a boutique hotel with guest rooms made from shipping containers. The photos online looked cool: Rustic, minimalist, industrial chic. A kind of Restoration Hardware meets The Boxcar Children vibe.

They looked cool up close, too, though the weekend I spent in the oblong metal box was a mixed result. The free-standing casitas were hip and unique but clumsy and permeable to outside noise.

The housing shortage and affordability crisis have increased pressure on state and local governments to embrace alternative approaches to getting people into homes. Shipping containers as a building material have been having a moment for some time, as a trendy innovation if not necessarily a broad movement. Reusing materials like excess cargo containers is an ecologically-conscious and economically viable strategy.

There are millions of unused shipping containers around the world taking up space. One reason for this is that it’s expensive to ship empty containers back to their country of origin. In most cases, it’s cheaper for freight operators to buy new containers. The result is a massive surplus of rectangular metal boxes that could become a home, office, hotel, retail space, or almost anything else.

The most prominent local example using freight containers as a construction medium is Quartyard, an event venue and urban park constructed from repurposed shipping containers on city-owned land in East Village. Originally conceived by NewSchool architecture students for a master’s thesis, the project revitalized a blighted vacant lot. The open-air space feels like an extension of the streetscape, with strings of lights illuminating an arty gathering area. Painted containers ring the perimeter, housing food, coffee, and beer vendors, with two-high stacks of containers backing a stage in one corner. Local architecture firm RAD LAB, whose founders designed and created Quartyard, has continued using freight containers in its projects. I asked the firm’s co-founder and CEO Philip Auchettl about the appeal of shipping containers from a design perspective.

The backyard office-slash-ADU RAD LAB designed for Angela and Cris Noble.

Natalia Robert

“I think people enjoy them on multiple levels,” the Australian-born Auchettl says. “The basic level is that it is a reclaimed material. There is an abundant amount of these containers in the United States. Secondly there’s the cool factor, and people just like shipping containers from an aesthetic standpoint. We do a number of different commercial projects, but also single-family homes, hotels, or an Airbnb, where people want to take Instagram photos. It’s the novelty of staying in a shipping container versus a stucco box. It’s not boring.”

RAD LAB also designed a shipping-container accessory dwelling unit (ADU) for Angela and Cris Noble, who operate the unit as a home office and short-term rental in the backyard of their Talmadge home.

“I really gravitate towards minimalistic design styles,” Angela Noble says. “I’m not much on that unfinished style that some people choose with containers. Ours is really polished. It looks a bit more finished than some of the more rustic ones you might see.”

A flurry of new laws intended to streamline housing construction have been recently passed in California, including SB9, which makes it easier for homeowners to build ADUs on their property. Depending on the lot size and shape, a modular unit like a shipping container could make sense for adding a pied-à-terre.

“If your property lends itself to their shape, I think it’s a suitable material,” Noble says. “We commissioned a custom design, which wouldn’t be very cost-effective. We paid for architecture, structural engineering—we did everything. But if there was one design you could recreate hundreds of times, I could see that being a cost-effective solution to help with the housing crisis.”

Gary London is a real estate advisor and University of San Diego instructor. In a 2016 Union-Tribune story, he expressed doubts about the potential of shipping containers as a construction material. I asked London if his opinion had changed or evolved.

Shipping containers create the backbone for urban gathering space at Quartyard in East Village.

Courtesy RAD LAB

“What’s evolved is that housing needs are even more acute than they have ever been,” London says. “So to the extent that we’re pulling out all the stops in how we deliver that housing, I’m all for it.”

“The key issue is, ‘What’s the point of containers?’ The few that we’ve seen around town, the point has just been eccentricity,” London tells me. “There’s some interest there, but that’s hardly a solution to housing issues. Containers will only represent a solution if they can be delivered and built substantially cheaper than any other kinds of housing. I’m all for that. I just don’t think it has a big imprint in terms of delivery of housing in San Diego.”

Auchettl, the Aussie architect with shipping container projects all over the country, is similarly pragmatic. “I think the housing crisis in the U.S. is much bigger than what material we use to build housing,” he says. “Ultimately, a shipping container itself is just one very small part of what goes into a building. Nothing changes in the interior finishes, the drywall; it literally just ends up being the skin and the skeleton of the building.”

Dwellings made from shipping containers are a compelling articulation of industrial home design style and minimalist philosophy. They definitely look cool. Are they a game-changer? Maybe not. Maybe that’s not the point.

The post Shipping Container Homes: Novelty or Necessity? appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Alex Morgan with daughter Charlie

San Diego Wave FC

Updated October 21, 2022

Alex Morgan can hardly believe her good fortune.

“This is where me and my husband always said we wanted to settle down and have a family,” the U.S. women’s soccer star says of her new hometown, San Diego. “It was a long-term vision for us. I never thought I would be able to be here and play soccer.”

I spoke with Morgan on a cool, cloudy morning before practice with her new team, the expansion San Diego Wave Fútbol Club of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). The club trains at the Polo Fields in the shadow of the Rancho Santa Fe foothills. A light mist carries the smell of fresh-cut grass and nearby horse stables as we talk on the side of a perfectly manicured soccer pitch.

Morgan is a SoCal kid, born and raised in eastern Los Angeles County. “A lot of my memories are right here at the Polo Fields, for a Surf Cup or coming down with my family for soccer tournaments,” she says. “Then, getting to know [her husband] Servando in college, I got to visit San Diego a lot more. So it wasn’t that far away from us, and now to be able to get to know the community on a personal level, it’s so fun.”

Alex Morgan and daughter play soccer

San Diego Wave FC

Morgan’s husband Servando Carrasco is a San Diego/Tijuana native and a professional soccer player himself. They met as undergrads at Berkeley, then followed each other around the country and world throughout their careers. Late last year, Morgan engineered a trade from the Orlando Pride, her professional club of six years, to Wave FC. They’ve settled in coastal North County, where they’re raising their 2-year-old daughter Charlie.

Alex Morgan and daughter – strong

San Diego Wave FC

Morgan is a big star in the soccer universe. She played a major role for the U.S. national team in a FIFA World Cup Final at barely 21 years old, scoring a goal and notching an assist in an overtime loss to Japan. She won Olympic gold the following year, then helped lead the American women to consecutive World Cup trophies in 2015 and 2019.

Most recently, Morgan and her teammates scored a historic victory in a battle for equal pay. She was one of five U.S. women’s soccer players who filed a wage discrimination claim in 2016. The players contended that they had been systematically underpaid for years compared with the men’s national team. The women’s team has won four World Cup titles since 1991, while the American men have never won the World Cup, nor have come close to doing so in modern history.

It was the beginning of a long and contentious campaign that culminated in a landmark agreement splitting compensation equally between the men’s and women’s national teams, the first such deal in any sport worldwide. The U.S. soccer federation finalized separate contracts with the men’s and women’s players’ unions in September. The new agreements include identical pay structures for appearances and tournament victories, revenue sharing, and equitable distribution of World Cup prize money.

“It’s a huge step forward for soccer and for women’s sports,” Morgan says. “It’s already made a huge impact in the last six years of challenging the norm, breaking down barriers, and helping other women athletes fight for their value as well. We saw the long-term effect of this fight, and we all committed to it. It is definitely an accomplishment to be able to stand here today and know that we have equal pay treatment with our male counterparts on the international stage.”

Alex Morgan and team

San Diego Wave FC

Crucial to that accomplishment were players with a significant platform leading the charge, athletes already making good money who gave up hundreds of hours of their lives to fight for an important principle with tangible results.

“I think you have to use your voice if you have the platform to do so,” Morgan says. “I am fortunate enough to be one of those people. Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn, Crystal Dunn—all of these players, myself included, really tried to use our voice. We know that we’re not going to be the ones who will benefit the most from this equal pay agreement moving forward. I only have a few years of soccer left. The ones who are going to reap the most benefits are the next generation.”

Morgan sees a lot of unrealized potential in San Diego and projects a bright future for her new—and ideally last— professional club. “I think there is something very untapped about San Diego,” she says. “Each person right now has a big part in how this team will be embedded in this city. The direction that this club and this crest will go, whether it’s lateral, whether it’s up—it’s not going to go down.”

San Diego’s first top-division women’s soccer club has a heavyweight franchise core. Billionaire Ron Burkle, a part-time resident of a $30 million La Jolla Farms estate, is the team’s owner. Team president Jill Ellis won back-to-back FIFA World Cups as head coach of the U.S. women’s national team, and head coach Casey Stoney brings an extensive pedigree as a player and coach in English soccer.

Alex Morgan kick

San Diego Wave FC

With all that background and experience in the front office, Alex Morgan’s star power and goal scoring conferred instant credibility to the new franchise on the field. Morgan won the Golden Boot as the league’s top scorer with 15 goals, and Wave FC became the first NWSL expansion team to make the playoffs in its first season.

“We’re setting up something amazing, bringing women’s professional sports to the city of San Diego for the first time in many years,” Morgan says. “I think that’s important because it increases accessibility for the next generation, for the girls. Not only playing soccer, but sports in general, here in the city and the greater area of San Diego, to look up to us and have that dream of wanting to be a professional athlete.”

It’s striking how down-to-earth an athlete of Morgan’s stature comes across. She is genuinely grateful for the opportunity here. “This is the first city since growing up in Diamond Bar where I feel at home,” she says. “It’s where I see myself living indefinitely, raising my children and having a family here.”

Morgan says she’s “already in love” with San Diego, though she concedes she still has a lot to learn. “I intend to and want to,” she says about growing her knowledge about her new home base.

“I want people to also understand something amazing that we’re building here,” Morgan says. “And that I’m very proud to help bring this women’s team to San Diego. We’re so proud to represent this city and we’re here to stay for the long term. We can’t wait to have a massive fan base, hopefully bring great success to this city and championships as well.”

Alex Morgan on the field

San Diego Wave FC

Alex Morgan San Diego Wave FC

San Diego Wave FC

Alex Morgan and daughter at beach

Alex Morgan/San Diego Wave FC

The post Alex Morgan Rides the Wave to Her New Hometown appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Snapdragon

Noelani Sapla

Anyone who’s driven through Mission Valley recently could not have missed it: A structure resembling an open jaw, with light towers jutting into the sky like electric guitar heads.

No, this isn’t a recreation of Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s Snapdragon Stadium, the brand-new home to San Diego State University football, San Diego Wave FC soccer, concerts, and other events.

I talked to prominent supporters of the teams before and during a stadium unveiling. They are fired up to move into their new home field.

“I am so excited that Division I women’s soccer will be part of the new stadium from day one. It’s so cool,” says Googie Daniels, president of Sirens SG, the supporters’ group of San Diego Wave Fútbol Club.

Tanner Askey, a San Diego State student and leader of The Show student section, is equally excited. He thinks it’s “absolutely sick. It blew my expectations out of the water.”

Wave FC

Courtesy Wave FC

That “sick” new stadium marks a revival of the long-neglected location. The previous tenant, the former San Diego/Jack Murphy/Qualcomm/SDCCU Stadium, hosted three Super Bowls, two World Series, two MLB All-Star Games, the annual Holiday Bowl, a monster truck extravaganza or two—along with some notable triumphs and countless heartbreaks for the Padres and Chargers.

The DNA of the old stadium is embedded in the new one, physically and spiritually. Ninety percent of the former building was reused and recycled—including 210,000 tons of Jack Murphy Stadium concrete that were crushed for the foundation. A statue of Jack Murphy himself, the sports writer whose advocacy ushered in the modern era of San Diego sports, stands sentry with his dog Abe near the northwest entrance.

Snapdragon is the centerpiece of SDSU Mission Valley, a future western campus of the university. The project will include housing, a hotel, retail spaces, an Innovation District, and more than 80 acres of parks and open space, including a 34-acre River Park. The development will eventually enable SDSU to add up to 15,000 additional students.

SDSU scrimmage

Derrick Tuskan

San Diego State earned the right to purchase the site through a voter referendum in 2018 when a citywide measure won a resounding vote over a competing soccer stadium proposal from private investors. Local tech powerhouse Qualcomm paid $45 million over 15 years to name the stadium after its mobile technology platform (though, for you poets, Snapdragon is also the name of a perennial flower native to San Diego). The new football stadium is on par with other world-class soccer temples.

The field is designed to accommodate a regulation international soccer pitch. San Diego State would love to partner with a future MLS franchise, and the stadium has been designed to incorporate canopies in the future to create an atmosphere like that of Europe and modern American soccer stadiums. Overhanging canopies are a roof over seating areas which, in addition to sheltering fans from the California sunshine, would help to reflect noise back onto the field.

“We took a canopy into consideration when we designed the building,” says Derek Grice, Executive Associate Director of Athletics for Mission Valley Development at SDSU. “We created voids and super columns in the four corners that would allow us to build a canopy should that be desired in the future.”

Snapdragon’s seating bowl starts close to the field, immediately rising at a steep angle to keep fans close to the action. All seating is chair-backed with no bleachers, which is unique for a college stadium. After being exiled in an elevated corner at the former stadium, the student section was given prime placement. The Show (the name of SDSU’s student section) is now in the field-level north end zone.

SDSU Football

Derrick Tuskan

Plush private suites and premium club spaces—the main revenue drivers for most sports stadiums—will attract alumni and local corporations. A “hype tunnel” runs alongside the Field Club, giving fans an up-close look at the players running onto the field. A unique seating area in one corner features metal countertops and office-like rolling chairs.

The design is distinct and quirky. The Piers social area—featuring a cantilevered slab that extends out over the seating bowl—is a nod to our oceangoing lifestyle. Trapezoidal angles conjure Mesoamerican architecture, and seat colors are arranged in a randomized pixelated pattern.

Art and features around the facility echo the heritage of the site, located a short distance from the first California mission, which itself had been the Kumeyaay village of Nipaguay, and Mission Valley’s more recent history of dairy farming is also referenced. Local artists Chris Konecki, Celeste Byers, Channin Fulton, Neil Shigley, Nathaniel Hall, and others contributed paintings, murals, sculptures, and other works to the stadium.

Grice says he’s “fortunate to be part of something as transformational” as he thinks the stadium project will end up being. He’s excited for “not only what the stadium itself is going to do for the community and for our athletic program, but for what this 166-acre development is going to do for San Diego.”

The swath of Mission Valley land continues its evolution. Gone are pro teams, expanses of asphalt, and years of civic turmoil. Coming is a dynamic university campus with a new stadium as its cornerstone. A river runs next to it, connecting the city with its past, present, and future.

The post ​​The Jewel of Mission Valley: New Stadium Snaps Into Focus appeared first on San Diego Magazine.