Sitting on a bluff top over looking the ocean, this former 1940s Army barracks, is an absolute gem of a project that the community of Solana Beach worked hard to make happen. As a collaborative effort of community fund raising, contributions from the City of Solana Beach, the Americans with Disabilities Act funds, and pro bono design services by local architect, Stephen Dalton, the Fletcher Cove Community Center project came to exemplify civic participation at its grassroots best. Keeping the same small foot print as the original building (rather than following suite with the surrounding McMansions), the Fletcher Cove Community Center retains a certain modesty that lends itself to respect for the ocean, and the surrounding topography that make this site unique. As well, it creates space–something those of us once knew before the advent of zero-lot-line development practices in recent decades. With ADA compliance, and environmental stewardship as programatic directives paramount to this project (LEED silver was the target rating applied for with the USGBC), the Fletcher Cove Community Center is a poetic lesson in vernacular and literal interpretations of its context–in addition to its cultures past and present. This is reflected in details as subtle as its azure blue hue, and as emphatic as its wave action roof line. Additionally, by exposing the structure, the community center becomes an educational tool, in that it simplifies the understanding of the space and how it works; while formal simplicity is maintained by its shotgun-shack-aspect-ratio, and the porosity of window and door apertures that blur the boundary between indoors and out. http://www.ci.solana-beach.ca.us/csite/cms/369.htm  http://www.solanabeachcommunityfoundation.org/Home/fccc-remodel

Project Information

Project Address: 

133 Pacific Ave, Solana Beach, California 92075

Project Owner/ Developer: 

City of Solana Beach

Owner Contact Name/ Email: 

Solona Beach Community Foundation, friendsofsolana@cox.net, bryan.pruden@gmail.com

Project Architect/ Designer: 

Stephen Dalton, Architects

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