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Aaron Anderson, principal of San Diego–based architecture firm Studio Anderson, likes telling stories. That’s why he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be an architect or a filmmaker. After receiving his B.Arch. from Arizona State University, he moved to L.A. to give the film world a try. “I was so naive,” he says. “After a while, I came home to San Diego, and to architecture, with a vengeance.”
Anderson worked for a San Diego firm that specializes in entertainment retail design before deciding to set up his own shop. But then one day he walked by the office of Jennifer Luce and her firm Luce et Studio [RECORD, Design Vanguard, December 2005, page 78]. “I thought, ‘If there’s anyone I’d want to work for, it’s Jennifer,’ ” he says. Anderson walked in and got a job. Working with Luce before establishing his own firm gave him the opportunity to flex his creative muscles with such projects as the Nissan Design America corporate offices in Farmington Hills, Michigan. “One important thing I learned from Jennifer was the love of new materials,” says Anderson. “She has a team of people constantly researching such things as plastics, resins, rubber, coatings, and new techniques for cutting metal. I’ve taken that with me.” Anderson says his three-person practice has been given projects that he calls “little miracles”—a showroom for a high-end Italian kitchen design company, a collaborative renovation for a 10,000-square-foot restaurant in San Diego’s Gaslamp District, a space dedicated to the serious (and soapy) business of dog washing. “City Dog is in an area where all the old industrial buildings are being renovated,” says Anderson. “The area is an eclectic mix of artists, young professionals, homeless shelters, affordable housing, and rehab centers. It is so diverse that there was a lot to draw on in terms of narrative ideas. The space is literally 12 inches from the trolley tracks, so there is always a dynamic mix of people milling around the front door. That energy definitely defined the industrial, artistic direction of the space.” Born and raised in San Diego, Anderson says he’s encouraged by the new construction. “San Diego has always been a developer-run city,” he says, “but things are becoming less cookie-cutter.” While Anderson has fewer projects in this, his second year on his own, he says they’re more substantial, such as the house he’s designing for San Diego dessert-maven Karen Krasne, and a potential gig in Thailand. He’s also teamed up with fabricator Chris Puzio for a proposal to design a fire station in San Diego’s Little Italy, a design that uses the elements of air, fire, and water as metaphor to tell a tale about the building and those who will work there. “These aren’t my stories,” says Anderson, “they’re about the clients, or the spaces, or the purpose. Everything gets boiled down to purpose and meaning. I thought that if you wanted to connect with people and tell a story, you had to do it through film. But architecture accomplishes that too.” |
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Click for a slide show of images.
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