TACOS EL UNICO

The newest location of Tacos El Unico sits on a corner lot that fronts a thoroughfare near downtown Santa Ana. The design draws inspiration from Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion to contemporize the existing architectural language of the chain’s other locations.

We considered the design from two perspectives: the street, or the fast-moving car, and the diner. From the street, we wanted the design to reflect the formal and succinct presence that Southern California’s informal taco trucks have to the passer-by. From the diner, we wanted the space to slowly suggest multiple dining atmospheres that would encourage return visits.

To effectively accomplish this within the given site constraint, the design organizes the service programs in a series of rectilinear volumes that form an ‘L’. They frame an open dining space that is partitioned by a series of walls that blur the indoor and outdoor experience through their breezeblock materiality. These walls are then hybridized with the overhead gathering shell. Select walls become anchoring elements that join the roof plane in subtle curves. This draws understated connections to the kitschy mission architecture that defines many of the chain’s other locations. A material and color palette of cream stuccos and terracotta bring a warmth and texture that aligns with the traditional architecture of Southern California.

The design concept gathers its lighter elements through a series of heavier ones. This results in a built form that, at a glance, presents itself rather clearly but continues to shift, as one moves closer, through the play of transparency and light, the opening and closing of views, and the arrangement of fluctuating dining atmospheres, reminiscent of brief glimpses of the past in novelty.