The Orchids and Onions Awards is a San Diego based organization that is committed to promoting excellence in the built environment. It acknowledges the outstanding (orchid) and terrible (onion) built projects in the San Diego Area through an annual awards event.
The categories of the awards are: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, Interior Design, Historic Preservation, Planning Policies, Public Art, and Urban Design.
Given the interest of this blog, I’ll only briefly describe the winners of the Sustainable Design Category. I will also discuss several of the nominees in future posts.
The Sprinter Rail: Connecting Oceanside to Escondido via light rail.
The Sprinter Light Rail line is 22 miles long, has 15 stations and serves the northern communities of San Diego: Oceanside, San Marcos, Vista, and Escondido. Service began in March 2008, (when gas prices were at their all time high) and saw high ridership in it’s first few months of operation.
Image 1: Map of the line. Notice how it parallels Highway 78.
This light rail line also connects to Palomar Community College and Cal State San Marcos. A trip from Oceanside and to Escondido Costs 2 dollars, 1 dollar for seniors, and takes 53 minutes. In it’s first few weeks of operation it saw ridership at about 8,000 and ridership is expected to be at 11,000 by the beginning of 2009. In addition, it was expected to reduce round trips by car from Escondido to Oceanside by 5,000 per day but has only reduced trips by 1,600.
Another thing I like about this project is the rail trail that is planned to run along the entire rail line. This trail promotes cyclists and pedestrians to get to the station without using their car. It is already built between Escondido and Vista and the rest of the trail to Oceanside is currently being designed.
Image 2: A Section of the Rail Trail
Image 3: pedestrian bridge to the College Boulevard station
Image 4: A station. It looks like it is in the middle of no where, there should be dense development around the station so people can take advantage of the convenient rail line.
Pont Loma Nazarene University: Photovaultaic Roofing System
A 450 kw photovaultaic system is the first of it’s kind at this San Diego university. It provide 80% for six of its buildings during peak energy use. This roofing system is just a part of the university’s ambitious plan to become a carbon neutral campus. Other programs that they have initiated are: food composting, water recycling toilets, all new product purchases from recyclable products (even computers??), and to achieve a sliver LEED rating on all new buildings. Another goal of the university's program is to teach all the students about the importance of sustainable design and conservation, which is probably the most important to teach a new generation how to conserve effectively.
Image 5: The Photovaultaic panels are on the right side of the arched roof of the gym....Notice how well it blends in with the ocean!
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