When Rob Quigley presents his design for the new Children’s Museum to the San Diego City Council on June 18, the politicians will be examining a development style that Quigley calls “vernacular construction.” It is how people would build without architects, he says.

Indeed, the simple tilt-up concrete style is popular in warehouse building. The sawtooth arrangement of the museum’s roof, and its 30-foot-wide and 200-foot-long bays were inspired by the nearby linear park. Quigley says the construction method is one that will both contain costs for the museum and allow kids to be kids.

The 53,000-square-foot museum essentially is being built in an air-rights deal above the parking garage for the 36-story Pinnacle Museum Tower. That $150 million development by Canada’s Pinnacle International will include 182 condominiums in a single 384,982-square-foot tower with 526 parking spaces. Ground should be broken late this year or in early 2003.

The new 53,000-square-foot Children’s Museum will feature a sawtooth roof and a 92-foot glass chimney.

By partnering with Pinnacle to redevelop the existing museum site, the Children’s Museum gets funding to help cover much of the $12 million cost of its new museum while Pinnacle gets a development that is nearly 80 percent reserved before ground has been broken.

The condo tower was designed by San Diego-based Austin Veum Robbins Parshalle. The design team included Douglas Austin, principal-in-charge; Eduardo Savigliano, project director; and Pablo Collin, project manager.

While AVRP’s architecture has a large influence on the full-block site, Quigley says he never looked at the tower design, nor early work on the museum portion.

“It looks like two architects did it; two independent designers who weren’t collaborating,” Quigley says. “I really didn’t care what the design of the high-rise was. I didn’t want to see it.”

Taking advantage of San Diego’s natural attributes is a big part of the design, from a facade that blends into a park to a roof that will let in the sun. “Natural light is great for artists,” says Quigley, who also foresees getting a donation of photovoltaic panels to generate electricity.

One thing that power would not be used for is air conditioning the main gallery space. Instead, Quigley is depending on shading from outdoor trees and a glass elevator inside that turns into a 92-foot-tall glass chimney and will function like a solar cooling tower, pulling hot air out the top. “This system is only possible in a building where people are willing to open windows,” he says. “The design is meant to celebrate San Diego’s climate, which very few buildings do here.”

The first and most public bay will present the museum’s face to Island Avenue and a new park across the street. Three speed bumps in front of the museum will calm traffic, allowing children to cross safely.

Visitors will enter the museum through a three-story atrium that will feature a cafe with outdoor and indoor eating areas.

The idea, Quigley says, is to make the museum part of the urban fabric. “The museum has to engage the city,” he says. “That is one of the challenges.”

The second bay will have a street-to-street view corridor between Union and Front streets. It also will feature the braces used in the building. “We will leave them so kids can understand the physics of the construction,” he says.

If the City Council’s reaction is anything like CCDC’s, the museum design will win easy approval.

“It is exciting; it is creative in scale,” says Hal Sadler, a CCDC board member and chairman of Tucker Sadler Noble Castro Architects. “It is smaller and we have been trying to increase densities and floor area ratios in the Downtown community. But there are places where lower densities fit and this is one. It is a rare opportunity for Rob and for the city and certainly for CCDC to have a signature building devoted to children. So much of this project is in sympathy to what we are doing, planning for and looking forward to for the next 20 years.”

Among the most enthusiastic about Quigley’s design is Doug Hutcheson, a Leap Wireless executive who is chairman of the Children’s Museum board: “I think Rob has done a beautiful job of bringing light and openness, and capturing an environment that is really going to allow our mission at the museum, which is learning through the arts, to be brought home to the kids.”

Quigley calls Island one of the greatest pedestrian streets Downtown — it runs through the Gaslamp Quarter into the ballpark site — and Hutcheson agrees. “This will make the end of Island an icon,” he says.

While major funding and program hurdles for the museum remain, accomplishments such as the Quigley design and recent news that its elementary school was rated among the tops in the county, and that it can add grades seven and eight, make the future look bright.

“Here is this organization that nobody said ‘could,’ and one that hasn’t had a tremendous amount of public support, that has really had to do it on its own,” Hutcheson says. “The staff and the people on the boards have really kept their heads in it and come up with something that will be an incredible addition to the Downtown revitalization.” Just like people would design.