CityScape: Design for Museum of Art’s West Wing Is ‘Powerful Architecture’ in Historic Context

Think of the fountain at the heart of Balboa Park, along its main pedestrian promenade, as the hub of the park, surrounded by more than 100 years of architectural evolution.

These buildings are worth considering as the San Diego Museum of Art unveils its proposed new West Wing within the exhibit “Foster + Partners: Architecture of Light and Space,” on view through April 27 next year. SDMA hopes for groundbreaking in 2026, the museum’s 100^th birthday.

“Foster” is world-famous architect Lord Norman Foster, whose company’s signature designs include Apple’s Bay Area headquarters along with major projects in Kuwait, China, Dubai, Sweden and other far-flung locales. At 89, Foster is an internationally renowned figure who still travels the world to oversee and lecture about the company’s work. He visited Balboa Park last month.

Foster + Partners’ SDMA addition would mark a new intervention amid the park’s historical and beloved Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, which dates from the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. It would replace the 1966 West Wing designed by Robert Mosher, which in turn stands where the 1915 Sciences and Education building once stood.

How might Foster’s building resonate with several decades worth of Balboa Park architecture? Imagine that you are an urban archaeologist. Visit the Foster + Partners exhibit. Trek over to a vantage at the fountain. Survey the collection of buildings around you.

Nearby is the House of Hospitality from 1915, intended by the expo’s supervising architect Bertram Goodhue as a fever dream that would disappear after the expo, making way for modern buildings as the city came of age. But San Diegans did not buy into that vision. Instead, they fell in love with the park’s Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. As a result, many original buildings have been upgraded and still stand, and when the House of Hospitality was deemed structurally obsolete, it was authentically reproduced in 1997.

Across the way, the 1915 House of Charm, home of the Mingei International Museum, was faithfully reconstructed around the same time as its neighbor. Three years ago, the Mingei was modernized by architect Jennifer Luce. Open and spacious, it is a people-friendly place and excellent showcase for the visual art, sculpture, handmade textiles, garments, glass and ceramic works and other handmade art from around the world that are the Mingei’s focus.

Which brings us to Foster’s new concept and its immediate context.

SDMA’s main building was designed in 1926 by leading San Diego architect William Templeton Johnson. It is a beautiful revivalist structure in the spirit of Balboa Park, with a front façade distinguished by life-size statues of Spanish Old Masters such as Velázquez, Murillo and Zurbarán.

To its right is the Timken Museum of Art, renovated in 2022 with first-rate gallery spaces, but from a distance, to be blunt, it still resembles your outdated neighborhood post office.

To the left is SDMA’s West Wing, the building that would be replaced by Foster’s addition. The museum has outgrown it, and it is in dire need of major renovation or replacement.

It’s tough to find fault with Foster’s proposed design, which mostly accomplishes a difficult task. It responds to its context by picking up proportions and forms from nearby buildings. It is powerful architecture within a historical context, and unlike contemporary museum designs by architects such as Gehry, Calatrava and Hadid, this one is muted rather than loud.

A spacious main entrance is an inviting alternative to the 1926 building’s narrow front doors. Walls of glass and a sinewy framework support ceilings and latticed overhangs. This framework would be almost imperceptible as you move into and through the spaces. A central atrium and pedestrian passages would be full of natural light. New galleries look fabulous.

In spite of its size—four stories above ground, one below—the addition does not seem intrusive, although it could use some separation from the adjacent pedestrian arcade that crosses the park. Its rooftop terrace (restaurant, sculptures, panoramic views of the Balboa Park and the San Diego skyline) is subtly incorporated, seemingly not obvious from below.

Even before Foster’s design was unveiled, criticisms began to emerge. Staunch preservationists would be pleased if, instead of a contemporary design, SDMA re-created the 1915 Sciences and Education Building. As with the Mingei, maybe a modern museum could work within a historical shell.

There is powerful nostalgia for Mosher’s existing building. Some San Diegans grew up with it. They spent afternoons at the Panama 66 café next to the sculpture garden with works by Calder and Nevelson. Some observers suggest that parts of Mosher’s building might be incorporated into its replacement. Or perhaps signature elements such as wrought iron gates or fluted columns could be on permanent view. Maybe a display dedicated to Balboa Park’s architectural genealogy could also include fragments or renderings of long-lost buildings.

Some wish Foster’s design had some “Wow” along the lines of the firm’s Techo International Airport in Cambodia, with its light umbrella-like roof; or the Great Court addition to the British Museum, with its “tessalating roof” of 3,312 carefully fitted glass panels.

Aside from public and city approval (like Mosher’s building, the new one would require exemption from park planning policy, now under revision, that mandates historical styles), the greater obstacle to the new West Wing will be funding. The cost is bound to be much greater than the $55 million makeover of the Mingei or the $105 million renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s main museum in La Jolla.

Probably most San Diegans including elected officials would welcome a distinguished new building by a world-famous architect. And with design refinements to come, along with museum Executive Director Roxana Velásquez’ boundless energy plus San Diego’s significant base of wealthy benefactors, realization of SDMA’s addition seems very likely.

Dirk Sutro has written extensively about architecture and design in Southern California and is the author of architectural guidebooks to San Diego and UC San Diego. His column appears monthly in Times of San Diego.

CityScape is supported by the San Diego Architectural Foundation, promoting outstanding architecture, landscape, interior and urban design to improve the quality of life for all San Diegans.