Housing Fit for 007: Architect-developer Jonathan Segal named his 29-unit apartment building 'The Q,' after James Bond's resident gadgeteer. The tricks used here, though, are subtler than a shoe dagger.
When architect-developer Jonathan Segal named one of his recent buildings “The Q,” he says he was looking for “the cool factor, the debonair suaveness” of James Bond. Q is, famously, Agent 007’s gadget inventor, creator of dagger-edged shoes and mini–rocket launchers that masquerade as cigarettes. For this building in San Diego’s Little Italy, Segal aspired to Bond’s sleek sophistication, rather than a tricked-out design. But he did not anticipate the need to perform his own Q-like feat of swift transformation as the program changed, midconstruction, from offices to housing.
Since launching his firm in 1989, Segal has mainly focused on market-rate residential work. Performing simultaneously as designer, client, and builder, he has completed 17 multifamily projects in San Diego, taking on challenging lots and derelict structures in undervalued neighborhoods on the upswing. This time, he says, “I got the idea to do an office building instead. They seemed to get better rents and cost less to construct.” And Little Italy is an increasingly desirable downtown district lacking offices. Set along a scenic harbor, it was once a commercial fishing neighborhood that declined with the local tuna industry and the construction in the 1960s of a freeway plowing through it. More recently, galleries, boutiques, and mixed-use residential projects have gentrified the area.
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