Architect Christian Rice's Plans

from Crown City Magazine - February 2020

by Crown City Magazine

Bringing Electricity to Navajo Land

Christian Rice's Tropical Modern design meshes indoor-outdoor spaces to play and entertain.

MEASURED APPROACH

By SAMANTHA BEY

Christian Rice’s love for architecture started during his childhood in Fort Worth, Texas, where his parents’ home was one of the first in a development. “I was surrounded by new construction all the time,” he remembered. “I loved sneaking onto job sites and walking around trying to figure out which rooms would go where.”

He had a knack for space planning. Several decades later, that talent would be put to use designing homes in Coronado. Rice attended the University of California, Berkeley from 1992 to 1996. He had an interest in architecture and took some design courses, but many of the required environmental design classes were very time-intensive and he was hesitant to commit to a career path so early on. Knowing he had the option to pursue a master’s degree in architecture, he majored in economics and enjoyed Greek life as a Phi Kappa Tau, building friendships that would one day bring him to Coronado and launch his architectural firm. After graduating, he moved to San Francisco and worked in advertising and marketing, but he knew that wouldn’t be satisfying in the long run. “I was constantly drawn to the most creative aspects of business,” he said.

With a few years of work experience under his belt, he decided to get that master’s degree in architecture attending Arizona State University from 1999 to 2002.

MEASURED APPROACH Architect builds small local firm from ground up

The open design of the Rice's house brings in fresh air and a tropical feel. Below, the family – Allison, Zach, Zoe and Christian Rice – relaxes in the living area.

“Having those years of work experience before grad school was awesome,” he explained. “It made the school experience so much richer. I got to relive a little bit of the undergrad fun but really appreciate the education.” Rice also appreciated studying architecture in Arizona’s climate. “Having to pay attention to heat gains, where the sun shines, and how to create indoor and outdoor spaces that make desert weather palatable was a great way to learn how to factor those elements into designs,” he said.

After graduation, Rice moved to Atlanta to join his family who relocated there. He took a job with a small architecture firm there, grateful for the opportunity to start working in the field and to start

chipping away at his grad-school debt. But a lot of his buddies from Berkeley had made their way to sunny San Diego, and, in 2004, after a two-year stint in the south, he made the sojourn to California. His friend and his parents owned a property in Coronado on the corner of 5th Street and D Avenue with a small apartment in the back. Rice moved into the apartment and started a job with a small firm in La Jolla.

“It was a great time to get my foot in the door,” he said. “It was the pre-recession boom and there was so much work and not enough people to do it all, so the projects were rolling in,” he remembered. But while business was good, he wasn’t really meshing with the new firm and only stayed about three months.

It was at that point he unexpectedly began his own company. The owners of the property where he was living hired him to build a duplex on the lot, and just like that, Christian Rice Architects began its first ground-up project in Coronado. “That project really got the ball rolling and one thing led to another.”

The duplex was very contemporary; a look, he said, that was quite unique at that time in Coronado. “There were only a couple other contemporary homes in town back then, so this project certainly raised some eyebrows,” he said. “But contemporary design has made a lot of headway since then with many more homes around town now. I’ve always felt part of what makes Coronado so special is the eclectic mix of architecture we have and it seems only natural that contemporary design should have its place here, too.”

Since he no longer had a place

This Rice-designed home mixes Craftsman elements, such as exterior shingles, with a modern, open floor plan.

Indoor and outdoor spaces are completely integrated with vanishing glass walls on both sides of the living room. The home also features an extensive outdoor living room with fireplace for year-round comfort (top).

to live because it was now his building site, Rice moved to the Gaslamp District in downtown San Diego, where he met Allison Koop. Koop grew up in Coronado but was living in Hermosa Beach. The two hit it off and are now married. In 2006, they decided to move back to the island. Around that time, the friend for whom Rice had built the contemporary duplex sold his half and bought another property nearby. He hired Rice again to build a single-family home on the lot. This time, Rice built a large Spanish-Mediterranean home. As he wrapped up that project, Rice was

approached by an Arizona developer who owned the adjacent lot to build a contemporary triplex building. “Just like that, referrals were booming,” he said. “And I just built from there.”

By 2011, he had enough business to hire another architect, and he hired one more each year

until his firm had five architects. “I’ve found that five architects is what works,” he explained. “It allows me to stay involved in every project, which is important to my clients and to me, and it helps us not take on too much. It’s a good balance.” To date, his firm has worked on more than 100 projects. A special architectural challenge came in 2016, when Rice tackled his own family home. He and Allison had purchased a funky midcentury modern home on a big lot in 2009 and happily lived there as they began having children (daughter Zoe, now 9, and son Zach, now 5). They had planned a remodel, but Rice said the home was aging and it made more sense to start over.

“We got to work with a blank canvas,” he said. They built an exquisite indoor/outdoor concept