Theatre District Living & Learning Neighborhood (LLN)

View of the TDLLN complex from Podemos. (Samuel Sharp / BuildSD)

Over the past several years, many of UC San Diego’s eight undergraduate colleges have received renovations and new construction, as the university seeks to expand housing capacity and the incoming student housing guarantee. However, in 2023, the university inaugurated Eighth College as the newest undergraduate college on campus. The same year, the college gained its first permanent home–the Theatre District Living & Learning Neighborhood (LLN), although a significant number of the beds were not completed until later due to construction delays.

The new Theatre District LLN is located on a ten-acre site near the La Jolla Playhouse, along the Ridge Walk Trail. This places it in stark architectural contrast with nearby Galbraith Hall, a 1965 modernist masterpiece that once served as the UCSD campus’ central library. The site is marked by five residence halls surrounding a central walkway known as The Ramble. The site also includes a bamboo garden, recreational facilities, and an underground parking garage.

Eighth College’s bamboo garden at night. (Samuel Sharp / BuildSD)

The neighborhood’s architecture is strikingly modern, but lacks many identifying elements that other campus neighborhoods have. There’s no naturalistic woods like in Muir College, or the exposed stone textures of Marshall College, or even the bright colors of Never Turn Your Back on the Ocean in Eleanor Roosevelt College. To some degree, it seems as if Eighth College was given a home before it was given a community, a culture, or an identity.

That’s not to say, however, there’s any lack of cultural amenity nearby the TDLLN project. While there are no new residential dining facilities or markets in the neighborhood, it is home to a new third-party restaurant–Dora Ristorante. A review from The UCSD Guardian praised the restaurant’s “fine dining” experience but noted the lack of student patrons. There are also plans for the future Station8 “public market” to fill space in the neighborhood. The name of the neighborhood also gives its clue to the surroundings–the world-famous La Jolla Playhouse is right next door, alongside the panoramic La Jolla Vista View (1988, William Wegman) engraving, John Luther Adams’ 2017 sonic installation The Wind Garden, and Richard Fleischner’s La Jolla Project (1984), often referred to as UC San Diego’s “Stonehenge” by students.

The buildings are named Azad, after the Persian, Hindi, Bengali, and Kurdish word for “free,” Podemos, after the Spanish expression for “we can,” Pulse, marking the legacy of the LGBTQ+ community, Sankofa, after a Twi word that encourages “learning from the past to inform the future,” and Survivance, after a Native American Studies term for “survival” combined with “resistance.”

TDLLN viewed from the window of a Route 101 bus. (Samuel Sharp / BuildSD)

Ridge Walk North is the second LLN to be built on campus. The term LLN indicates a mixed-use area of campus specifically designed to support residential, retail, and academic uses. Sixth and Marshall Colleges are also housed in LLNs, with Sixth College having relocated from the former “Camp Snoopy” dorms to the North Torrey Pines LLN several years ago, and Marshall College having more recently relocated to the Ridge Walk North LLN.