Recently, guests gathered for dinner—surrounded by some of the planet’s oldest and most important tilt-up wall panels—at TCA’s inaugural Icon Dinner at La Jolla Woman’s Club. Powers Brown Architecture’s Jeffrey Brown, FAIA, FTCA, spoke on the significance of the structure and how the project continues to influence design and construction practices today. 

The dinner and storytelling event was at the center of a series of tours in the area exploring iconic tilt-up and concrete works of architecture hosted by UC San Diego, Gensler, Lake|Flato Architects, HGW Architecture, and Francis Parker School.

Guests arrived on March 29 and had a private, docent-led tour of the famed Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The Salk Institute has been described as one of the most significant architectural sites in the United States and has garnered accolades for its design and preservation. Salk’s original buildings, designed in the early 1960s by preeminent American architect Louis Kahn in collaboration with founder Jonas Salk, were declared a historical landmark in 1991. The tour was followed by a reception at La Valencia Hotel, a renowned landmark on La Jolla’s distinctive Prospect Street, commanding the village bluffs with panoramic views of the pacific coastline and beautiful La Jolla Cove.

Prior to the Icon Dinner on March 30, guests toured a trio of award-winning buildings at the University of California San Diego. “I was happy to participate in a dialogue with industry partners and host tours with our colleagues at Francis Parker,” said Matthew Smith, architect for UC San Diego Capital Program Management (CPM). “Tilt-up has afforded us opportunities on campus that wouldn’t have worked with cast-in-place or masonry, and our design teams and builders handled these opportunities beautifully, delivering curated design on ambitious timelines and budgets.”

ARCHITECT Magazine recently featured the projects in a studio session hosted by Paul Makovsky, ARCHITECT editor-in-chief.

The event closed with a tour of the campus of Francis Parker School, a private, independent, coeducational, college preparatory day school for students in junior kindergarten through grade 12. “When people visit Parker’s Linda Vista Campus, they are in awe of the beautiful buildings,” said Michael Cain, director of security, environmental health, and safety for Francis Parker School. “Few people appreciate the means and methods used to create such a beautiful space. The event put architects, engineers, owner representatives, and contractors all in the same space at the same time. Holding space to converse with people from another discipline helps further the work performed in the field from design to postoccupancy.”

Future iterations of the event are being planned for 2025 and 2027.