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There’s no deficit of sleek but largely indistinguishable, glass-wrapped apartment towers popping up in rapid succession in and around central San Diego, particularly in the city’s East Village, Bankers Hill, and North Park neighborhoods. With apartment construction surging 10 percent over the last three years in California’s second-biggest city, the building boom has seen apartment vacancies climb to a record 6.1 percent, surpassing the previous high of 5.7 percent during the 2009 recession. Just five years ago, vacancies hovered at 2.6 percent.

South elevation view. Photo © César Béjar

Such a glut of available—but not necessarily attainable—housing means more options, including some that break from the norm to offer something different. One of the most notable of these new arrivals is Kaya, a brawny yet breezy mid-rise just west of Balboa Park in Bankers Hill that creates housing density without being repetitive or resorting to a double-loaded corridor. Rising eight stories above the corner of Nutmeg and Third Streets with a hydraulic parking garage at its base, the building is split into four thin volumes to break up its massing and create a porosity between the city—including a small but high-traffic public park on a neighboring parcel—and Kaya’s 78 market-rate residences. In already architecturally eclectic (and significant) Bankers Hill, the project exudes a certain timelessness. “Kaya is meant to feel like it has always been there in a way—it's not trying to shout at you,” says the project’s architect, Jeff Svitak. “It's really meant to be in its place.”

Since establishing his now six-person San Diego office, Jeff Svitak Inc., in 2012, Svitak has garnered a reputation for designing elegant, context-sensitive multifamily and private residential projects in and around San Diego, with a particular strength for infill developments. (His own family home in North Park was featured by RECORD in 2018.) Per Svitak, roughly half of his practice’s work, including Kaya, follows a designer-developer model. Svitak’s approach—an “obvious benefit is control,” he says—is in the direct footsteps of local architect-builders like Ted Smith, Jonathan Segal, and 2007 Design Vanguard Sebastian Mariscal, whom he refers to as a mentor.

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Wall panels between the building slabs serve as pockets for sliding glass doors in the units (1); north elevation view from neighboring Olive Street Park (2); wood shutters on the ground floor open for natural ventilation (3). Photos © César Béjar

Owning the entire process aided Svitak in realizing the design he wanted with a budget that worked, beginning with Kaya’s top-to-bottom concrete structural frame. “This was important to us, because concrete gives you a real eighth floor,” he explains, calling the choice a “strategic selection based on the number of stories we wanted.” While California building code does not place height limits on concrete construction, such buildings with habitable floors over 75 feet are classified as high-rise developments, which triggers myriad fire and safety requirements. (Less costly wood-frame buildings, which must be built atop at least three stories of concrete per local code, can go up to eight stories; an 85-foot height restriction, however, results in low ceilings.) Kaya, which Svitak says, “fits between typologies,” hits the sweet spot: an eight-story building that circumvents cost-prohibitive high-rise requirements while featuring units with high ceilings (just over nine feet in most units and 14-feet-high in the eighth-floor apartments.)

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Open-air corridors on the upper floors (5) feature spaces for gathering and sweeping views on each end (4,6), Photos © César Béjar

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Central to the design are 14-foot-wide, light well–illuminated open-air circulation corridors that cut through the middle of the building’s four slender towers from end to end, forming what Svitak calls a “little street of patios.”

“You get these nice open spaces, which helps to break down the scale of the building into little micro-communities on each floor,” he explains. “People can come out of their units and have a gathering space where they can hang out with neighbors.”

Terrace and view from an unoccupied eighth-floor apartment. Photo © César Béjar

These units include studios and one-bedroom apartments, some with flexible dens. There are also four eighth-floor two-bedroom residences with impressive views of downtown and San Diego Bay. (The full-frontal view of nearby San Diego International Airport from one top-floor unit toured by this writer was thrilling, if not a bit anxiety-producing). Exposed concrete ceilings throughout add a rough-hewn, modern touch and complement the walnut flooring, stainless steel finishes, and terra-cotta tilework found in all units. Floor-to-ceiling sliding glass pocket doors in most apartments open to either traditional or Juliet balconies, enabling residents to bring the outdoors in and take advantage of cool coastal breezes. This feature allows the building, so finely attuned to San Diego's moderated Mediterranean climate, to function as a brise-soleil.

While Kaya’s upper-level outdoor walkways are engineered for neighborly interaction among tenants, it’s the ground floor that opens itself to the entire community. The north side of the building directly abuts and extends into the new Olive Street Park (completed at around the same time as the apartments), with a branch of popular local café chain Communal Coffee operating a walk-up counter at Kaya that’s accessible from outside. Patrons can either enjoy their purchases on a patio overlooking the park or head inside to the building’s lobby. While ostensibly a tenant amenity area, the lobby is too special not to share. During certain hours, it pulls double-duty as a sort of community living room, coworking space, and event venue. Svitak says that local businesses and community groups have used the lobby for a range of gatherings, including yoga classes and functions held by the San Diego Architectural Foundation.

Airy social spaces on the ground floor are meant to attract both tenants and the larger community. Photos © César Béjar

Reminiscent of a laid-back lounge at a far-flung tropical resort circa 1965, the lobby features lush greenery, original art, and Bali-sourced merbau (or Borneo teak) wood throughout, including paneling, window shutters, and furnishings custom-designed by Svitak’s firm. Envisioned by Svitak as a park pavilion of sorts, it’s a warm and inviting space—the rare apartment building lobby where you won’t feel unwelcome sipping coffee and staring at your phone for an hour.

Images courtesy Jeff Svitak Inc., click to enlarge