RIO RANCHO CAMPUS PARK

RIO RANCHO, NM

This project was a conversational outgrowth of many stakeholders in the Rio Rancho community.  We sat down with city officials, the neighboring university, community college, corporate leasers of large office real estate, and the regional hospital leadership. These stakeholders, their employees, members of the community and local residents will be visiting this park.  To our surprise, it was a memorable moment during the kick off meeting, several whiteboards and notes being taken in all four sides of a larger conference room, they came to consensus about several points of common values: land, people, our overlapping histories and respect. In our state, we start all meetings with a land acknowledgement.

We incant the responsibilities of public stewardship of resources and our positions to make lasting decisions. At the end of several days of meetings, written in one of the cardinal directed wall was written (approximate), ‘we value the land and its relationship to the 4 points of the Zia symbol, both in its orientation and its system of value inscribed in its virtues: four sacred obligations we all seek to meet.’  The obligations are “a strong body, clear mind, pure spirit and devotion to the welfare of family and community.”  Our design synthesis, over time, honors the three dimensional qualities of the Zia symbol. With these words, and notes, began a 2 year process to find an architecture that embodied the values of this convergence. The outcome was the SkyRoom pavilion.

The SkyRoom was conceived as a performance space with unique acoustics qualities that also serves a focal point for the campus park. This was achieved using a subtractive geometrical construct –large shed roofed structure with two cylindrical volumes creating habitable spaces.  The dynamically supported arch suggests threshold and entrance, as this is the entry point into the greater campus park. 

It was of utmost importance to the stakeholders that the project embody a spirit of New Mexico. With this goal, we aimed to create a pavilion that not generically referenced the Zia symbol and the four cardinal points but subtly traced these lines on the ground as light and shadow.  Two cylinders crossing, the pavilion houses this negative intersection of spaces. The project is situated in a windswept, inhospitable locale surrounded by large businesses and the city’s Town Hall.  One of the primary inspirations behind the design was to create a more hospitable community environment.

The site is dedicated for the use of the employees and nearby residents for the purposes of rest and relaxation. Material choices were referencing the earthen coloration and tones.  As the park and pavilion is situated in a desert context, the pre-treated steel with perforations was an ideal choice to allow the pavilion to act like a sound box, and allow sweeping winds to go through the structure. 

At night, the SkyRoom can emanate its own light through the diaphanous pores or it can be lit under the canopy via bright stage lighting.  This dual functioning condition as lantern, and sheltered lighting allows for the architecture to disappear or appear at night. The perforated panels allow this condition to occur.  

When just the “interior” lighting is on, the night is cut and made bright with just the limited emphasis on the curvilinear space underneath the canopy. Therefore, there is a dramatic emphasis on just the performance, or actors under the lights.  The highly reflective surface create the echoing and releasing of sound underneath the canopy that the NMPhilharmonic finds acoustically attractive.

Early math lessons were not lost on the design team, as the exercise of the bicylinder was the genesis of this project. The intersection calculation and unfolding of the intersection negative surface are the structural principle displayed in the SkyRoom. The structural engineer and fabricators were conspirators in this brainteaser.  We understood that the architect proposed the design and needed to propose the method of assembly.  We worked early and often together with the best proposals for dimensions and attachment.  Having a love of drawing as the “unfolding” of an architecture, we did exactly this. We laid flat, like a dress on a large table, our drawings and our models to “show” how to wrap the cladding around the project structure.  This time-tested method for sharing 3D information as 2D,  a verbal story captures the imagination of the cathedral builders to do what others have not done before. Showing and sharing became a method to build trust in the possibility of this pavilion being built. 

Photographs: Marble Street Studio