During my time with SHoP Architects, I was able to work on diverse and exciting projects that shaped the built environment of New York as well as important and symbolic structures internationally. Working from concept design through construction administration, I was able to focus on maintaining the integrity and beauty of our designs through the building process.
During my time with SHoP Architects, I was able to work on diverse and exciting projects that shaped the built environment of New York as well as important and symbolic structures internationally. Working from concept design through construction administration, I was able to focus on maintaining the integrity and beauty of our designs through the building process.
During my time with SHoP Architects, I was able to work on diverse and exciting projects that shaped the built environment of New York as well as important and symbolic structures internationally. Working from concept design through construction administration, I was able to focus on maintaining the integrity and beauty of our designs through the building process.
KELLY BECKMAN
NATIONAL PARK VISITOR CENTER | Valle Caldera, New Mexico
ARCH 202 // SPRING 2012 // GORDON WITTENBERG
Rice was chosen as one of ten universities to compete in the National Parks for the Future Competition. This partner design is for a new visitor center for the Valles Caldera National Preserve, a park featuring a 13.7-mile wide volcanic caldera in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico.
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Through extensive programmatic and visitor analysis, minimizing became an important goal in this project. Beyond simple benefits of less cost and destructive impact, a smaller building is more desirable to the users and promotes the main idea of the center- to get people outside and into the park. We aim to capitalize on the best of nature- emphasizing views and exterior relationships- while minimizing square footage through program combination, externalization, and off-siting. This puts an emphasis on the landscape, better fitting the needs of the users while maintaining a respectful relationship with the park.
Three ideas drove the design to maximize experience and put emphasis on the natural beauty of the park itself: 1) Private functions aren’t necessarily dead space, but can sometimes service an educational function. 2) Many types of people use the center and have different relationships and intentions with the park. This led to the creation of a “quick path” that intersects with a longer exhibition-based path at its most interesting points, to draw visitors to all aspects of the museum and the park as a whole. 3) Sustainability through focus on a small footprint and usage of energy producing mechanisms.
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The design is a campus like set up, with roadways hidden in the contours of the landscape, to optimize views of the park while maintaining a small footprint. Interactions between the roads, parking lots, walking paths, and the buildings themselves all point back preservation and optimization of the parks natural beauty.
