Orchids & Onions ’08
Orchid winner The Pearl (photo by Aaryn Belfer)
More on the O&O awards, which I wrote about in this week’s Nightgeist:
Hosted by CityBeat alumnus Troy Johnson, the Orchids & Onions awards, which can best be described as Frank Lloyd Wright meets Mr. Blackwell, took place last week at Balboa Park’s Hall of Champions. The fest honored the best (Orchids) and the best of the worst (Onions) in the fields of urban planning, architecture and design.
“It’s not your typical awards program,” co-chair David Preciado told me, adding, “we look at those projects that could have been better, bringing to light issues that affect us as San Diegans.” And what makes for a well-deserved Onion? According to fellow co-chair Maxine Ward, “a myriad of reasons from city zoning and regulations to monetary concerns that impact the execution of a project.”
The ceremony honored such projects as The Pearl Hotel, Point Loma Nazarene’s green policies and the San Ysidro DMV. Onions included the proposed Lindbergh Field parking structure and Trilogy on 5th, which, as Troy put it, “achieves the uncanny ability of being schizophrenic and mundane at the same time.”
Part roast and part celebration, the city’s major architectural achievements were prized. “You know that the city is growing up when you walk down the sidewalk and it smells like food, not urine” O&O judge Kevin deFreitas said on the East Village redevelopment endeavor.
People’s choice awards were handed out by County Supervisor Ron Roberts, who remembered having that same responsibility years ago when he handed out an Onion to an office building on Midway Drive and the owner showed up to accept it escorted by a slew of Pacers girls. “Coincidentally, that was the same year the people from the Mormon temple received an award…. I can still remember the look on their faces,” he said with a chuckle.
After the ceremony, a nameless architecture student was seen unscrewing one of the Hall of Champions’ empty Plexiglas display cases and leaving a ripe onion as a pungent souvenir to be admired for the ages.
Everybody’s a critic…
For a full list of winners visit http://www.orchidsandonions.org/
