OTL’s Role:
IQHQ at RaDD
LOCATION
San Diego, California
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
OJB Landscape Architecture
PROJECT OVERVIEW
- Design
- Build
- Architectural Fountain
- LED Lighting
- Stone Fabrication
On the downtown San Diego waterfront, IQHQ’s Research and Development District brings eight acres of office, retail and public space to the life sciences company’s new campus. Amid its high-rises, OTL designed and built a sandstone boulder water feature, giving tenants and visitors a quiet reflecting pool beside which to pause.
PROJECT
CHALLENGE
The water feature sits at ground level directly above a parking garage, so both the massive natural stones and the equipment needed to move them had to fit within the building’s structural limits. Sourcing boulders large enough for the design, durable enough for long-term water flow and matched in color and texture to the surrounding landscape proved its own challenge.
OTL’S
SOLUTION
OTL’s artisans cut and stitched several smaller sandstone boulders together to read as larger, monolithic stones, chiseling by hand to mask every saw mark. Skilled crews set the finished boulders on shims to fine-tune spacing, then hand-sanded each surface to perfect how water would flow across it.
PROJECT
IMPACT
Today, that reflecting pool offers soothing waterfall sounds by day and glowing lights by evening, a serene respite tucked into a district that continues drawing new visitors to its shops, restaurants and green space.
