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Valley Community Civic Center

This two-story community sports center celebrates the vitality of community athletics with a playful exercise on the tectonics of a pre-engineered steel shell. Taking advantage of the clear span ability of large ‘bent’ frames; the building develops a large-volume interior that accommodates two basketball courts, an indoor soccer field, and an indoor track. A separate volume houses entry, lobby space, lockers, and two retail tenant spaces.

The fenestration strategy involves the introduction of daylight through horizontal window bands that appear to strip away the thin metal skin. Openings at differing scales are intended to dissolve some of the massing of the building, and to create an ad-hoc, lively, and almost urbanistic pattern of light at night – a kind of city of sports destination for local youth and families.

Other architectural elements find whimsical expression at the open corner near entry, where the metal panel system’s wall girts – the Z-shapes that clip the skin to the frames – actually leap into a jumble of net-like intersections. In this way, the building looks to reveal its own components and begins to suggest dynamic movement and vigorous play.