05 · La Jolla, CaliforniaSYNAPTIC
A research campus planned as connected cells rather than blocks, on the mesa above La Jolla.
SITE
La Jolla, California
Program
Research campus, housing
Medium
Plan, render
Reading
Neural cell as plan unit
01 Research
The site sits between the Salk Institute and North Torrey Pines Road, on the mesa above the coast.
Its neighbours set the terms. The Salk to the south is the most disciplined arrangement of research space on the coast; the road to the north is an ordinary arterial. The site has to negotiate both.
The existing approaches are fixed: the bus stop, the road, and the entrance from the south. Those three arrivals become the only points the plan cannot move.
Approach — the campus against the mesa, the coast beyond.
02 Observation
Research does not happen in rooms so much as in the connections between them.
The relevant model is the synapse: discrete cells that do their own work but are defined by where they touch. Adjacency, not enclosure, is what carries information.
Translated to a campus, that argues against a block. It argues for many small bodies whose value lies in the paths and thresholds between them.
03 Translation
The plan becomes a field of soft cells, each with its own courtyard, joined by a continuous connective path.
Every cell is drawn as a closed rounded figure containing planted ground and a ring of rooms. None is orthogonal, so no two cells meet at the same angle.
The path between them widens into shared ground and narrows into thresholds, and it runs uninterrupted from the bus stop through to the Salk and the south entrance.
Campus plan — cells, courtyards, and the connective path.
04 Architecture
Rounded volumes in warm plaster, glazed at ground level, with the planting brought up to the wall.
Each volume is domed rather than roofed, so the campus has no visible top edge and reads as a set of masses rather than a set of buildings. Glazing is continuous and low, which puts everyone at the same level as the gardens.
The curved retaining walls do the remaining work, holding the level changes and directing movement without gates or corridors.
Approach between volumes.
Interior court.
Ground level — continuous glazing, planting to the wall.
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