Architect Rob Quigley says the ultra-efficient cooling system for the museum’s public spaces is too radical for typical office buildings. (photo/alandeckerphoto.com)

Standing near the middle of The New Children’s Museum, principal architect Rob Quigley grins as he watches pink stripes painted on the concrete entry bridge he designed. Few people know the museum as well as the high-profile architect. He first encountered it when it was in UTC, was on a Downtown advisory committee that recommended its current home and spent time there with his daughter when she (21) was a child.
So when he was invited six years ago to design its replacement, he jumped at the chance. “Nothing can be more fun for an architect than designing something for kids,” he says.

Quigley credits former executive director Kay Wagner and her board with approving a concrete and cavernous design that does not intimidate or call for quiet. His favorite description of the museum is a “place where kids can get goopy.” “It is not meant to be pretty,” he says. “It is not meant to be precious. It is meant to fulfill its role of engineering creativity.”

The building also must be functional, including providing the staff virtually total supervision of its floor from the loft-like administrative offices. Quigley recalls standing on the floor with architects from his office and watching Teagle at her desk, working at her computer, talking with someone on the phone and reaching through her window and directing artists on the floor. “We thought, ‘yes, the architecture is working.’”

When starting on the tri-level project, Quigley pushed for sustainability at a time when green was just another color. Rooftop solar panels are part of the architecture. Most day lighting comes from large windows and glass walls. The most daring decision, and also one that saved big construction and operational dollars, was to have no mechanical heating or air conditioning system in the public areas. Instead a cooling tower exhausts hot air while computer controlled windows open at the right time of the morning drawing in air that flows across the basement garden. Quigley says such a system would not be possible in buildings for office workers. “Here, no one would tell us it has to be exactly 71.2 degrees or we will sue you,” he said. “There was leeway to allow a more sustainable lifestyle.”

Quigley also says the Island Avenue site, and the children’s park across the street designed by Spurlock/Poirier, will anchor the western end of Downtown.

As an amenity, he says, it will serve San Diego for generations, while his building will last at least 100 years. “It’s concrete,” he says.