Artist Pae White was commissioned by the Centre City Development Corporation, the Port of San Diego and the City of San Diego to create a public art proposal in collaboration with the design team for the first phase of the North Embarcadero redevelopment project.

Pae proposes to treat the restroom with raised, concrete letter surfaces and a bright, glossy orange interior that reflects light at night through openings near the top of the structure. Pae has also worked alongside the architects to design two pavilions, a café building and an information center which will all be located on the north-south promenade of the North Embarcadero, roughly adjacent to the entrance to the Broadway Pier.

Both the restroom and the pavilions feature words inspired by Richard Bach’s novel, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and which draw attention to the behavior of seagulls in an urban, seaside habitat. The text covers both the top and underside of each pavilion roof and, in some places, breaks through to allow filtered light and shadows in letter forms onto the ground beneath. Both the café building and the information center take their shapes from the letters in the pavilion roofs above. The translucent buildings, made of colored glass in dawn and dusk hues, seem to be extruded from the ceiling to the earth. Construction of the restroom, pavilions and buildings is part of the first phase of the North Embarcadero redevelopment which is scheduled to begin in 2010.

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