Cityscape: Mingei showcases ‘elegant simplicity’ of midcentury furniture

Balboa Park is famous for its historical Spanish Colonial architecture, but right now some of San Diego’s finest midcentury modern designs are on view at the Mingei International Museum at the heart of the park. “Inside the Design Center,” which runs through April 12, demonstrates how the San Diego Design Center at 3603 Fifth Avenue became the hub of a midcentury design movement led by architect Lloyd Ruocco and his designer wife Ilse.

While the building, completed in 1949, became the nexus for a vital modernist design community, the focus of the exhibit is not the innovative post-World War II architecture of Lloyd and his peers. Instead, it’s the furniture, ceramics, woodwork, textiles, and other finely crafted items that could be seen in Ilse’s showroom there.

As with the best midcentu