News Room

Features reporter Mike Castellucci visits LPA's sustainable office space in the historic Wonder Bread building in East Village, San Diego. On track to achieve LEED Platinum certification, the space features grain silos that have been turned into collaborations pods, recyclable contents, LED lighting, natural ventilation, skylights, FSC certified workstations, and more.

Ross Becker: … because we are leading up to Earth Day; it’s coming up on Friday.

Sasha Foo: KUSI’s Mike Castellucci takes us to a downtown historic building that’s on track to receive the highest green certification you can receive.

Mike Castellucci: Look at this building on a downtown corner and it hits you like a brick wall. It must be stacked with history.

In between the new steel and glass high rises of East Village sits the old Wonder Bread building with a new life.

Rochelle Coles: Well, you know, healthy work spaces mean healthy bodies.

Mike Castellucci: Wonder Bread conjures up our childhood.This brick building dated in the late 1800’s used to make it. Now, its home to a number of new businesses.

Rochelle Coles: You can see these former grain silos right here. We left everything, left that base, made the top a skylight. And now these are collaboration pods. And it’s great because most of what you see is all made with lots of recycled content.

Mike Castellucci: This is LPA Architecture’s slice of the building.

Dave Gilmore: The beautiful part of opening up the front door and opening the back windows and letting the air come through from the ocean, you don’t need air conditioning.

Mike Castellucci: They figured since they are one of the country’s leading firms for sustainable design they’d create their own new office from an old building.

Dave Gilmore: This building obviously has a great, rich history…

Rick Musto: So we thought, what a great opportunity for a design firm to come in and it’s really an inspiring space.

Dave Gilmore: It’s got good bones to it.

Rochelle Coles: Like I said, it’s an honor for us to be able to come in and again, make a building from the late 1800’s, take it LEED Platinum, the greenest of the green.

Mike Castellucci: How could you possibly use old grain silos in a modern office? You turn them into collaboration pods.

Rick Musto: I’m standing on probably two-and-a-half feet of solid concrete. And so this was the base of a grain silo. And for us to utilize this in a productive way, we thought, what a great place to bring people together. Our office is about how we collaborate.

Mike Castellucci: This design firm wants everybody to know that green design can be hip and chic, even when they’re canvas. It started out as an old piece of white bread.

Is there still Wonder Bread around?

Rick Musto: I don’t know. We have some old vestiges of the signage. I did a little research online and I don’t think it is anymore.

Mike Castellucci: In East Village, Mike Castellucci, KUSI News.

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