Orchid 
Situated atop 220-foot ocean bluffs, the Ted and Jean Scripps Marine Conservation and Technology Facility (MCTF) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) breathes new life into the last standing structure of four that comprised the 1960s-era Fisheries Science Center.
This project honors the original center’s design while functionally contemporizing the remaining modernist structure. Using architectural concrete and wood siding, additions appear as natural extensions of the campus, while the original concrete structure received modernized finishes.
In addition to adding teaching and research laboratories, the building’s expansion used the remaining pads of demolished structures to create functions that benefit the public, including: space for a rooftop café; a catering kitchen focused on sustainable seafood; an ocean-facing terrace that can host outdoor events; and adjacent to this, a flexible classroom/conference room with walls that open to draw in fresh air and facilitate indoor-outdoor events.
This project hid surface parking beneath the terrace to create a more serene destination, and removed parking from the cliff’s edge to make way for a public coastal overlook that connects to an existing coastal trail. The MCTF project makes it possible for everyone to access a highly scenic location that previously provided little opportunity for public use.