Career
Jon Jerde is a graduate of the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California. After early years working at Charles Kober Associates on multiple retail projects, including Plaza Pasadena, Jerde was commissioned by developer Ernie Hahn for the design of Horton Plaza, across from Horton Plaza Park in downtown San Diego. The project is credited by some with single-handedly rejuvenating the city's downtown core by replacing several blocks of older structures with a new retail village concept. The design was a radical departure from traditional suburban mall design of the time. It is a five story outdoor retail complex, with the main passage being diagonally oriented to the street grid and at the time anchored by Nordstrom, Macy's, and a Sam Goody music store; and connected to a Westin Hotel and the Balboa Theatre, resulting in an urban mixed-use center. Its spatial rhythms include long one-way ramps and sudden drop-offs, dramatic parapets, shadowy colonnades and cul-de-sacs, and the design shattered many traditional mall-design rules such as lowering ambient arousal levels and protecting the maximal lines-of-sight to merchandise. Its fragmented spaces look and feel more like a postmodern art project than a traditional mall, and its festive colors were a contrast to the ubiquitous beige store architecture of the period. The project was completed in 1985.
Despite the unique and non-traditional retail design approach, Horton Plaza's radical design brought 25 million visitors in the first year, and as of 2004 continued to generate San Diego's highest sales per unit area. The project also sparked nearly $2.4 billion in redevelopment to the surrounding area and downtown core. Westfield currently owns Horton Plaza and is in the process of developing a series of expansions.
The Jerde Partnership developed its placemaking and experiential philosophy with the design and planning of the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics, which became the only profitable Olympics to date. Based on the success of both Horton (from a retailing perspective), and the Olympics (from a placemaking concept), the firm continued to evolve is creative expertise in creating retail and entertainment destinations, designing the redevelopment of Fashion Island in Newport Beach, CA in 1989; the hugely successful $680M Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota in 1992, the original Urban Entertainment Center Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles; the pirate show and facade of the Treasure Island Casino in Vegas in 1993; the Las Vegas Fremont Street Experience in 1995; and Bellagio in Las Vegas in 1998.
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