Erik Mar
East Valley Animal Services Center

Surrounded by layers of built and natural (planted) light “filters”, the Community Room is simultaneously visually open and visually screened, inviting in passersby whilst maintaining a level of privacy and separation from the street for the occupants. Glazed, potentially with silkscreened glass serving as sorts of advertisements for the Center’s services, and up to 14’ in height, the Community Room volume both establishes the building corner and also defines entry from both Vanowen Street and the public parking lot.

The Dog Kennel area is treated as a large formal garden within a soaring arboretum-type roof and structure. Fronting on Lennox Street, across from a public park, this volume both extends the park while providing an alternate, more protected landscaped experience. The dynamic roof structure, organized around a series of “umbrellas” allows for all of the public walkway areas to be roofed and therefore protected whilst leaving many of the kennels open to the sky, adding to the open air ambiance. By enclosing the kennels within a single large volume at the lower levels while leaving the upper levels largely open, we aim to address the inevitable acoustical and olfactory concerns that will arise in the community and also to address some of the temperature control issues that arise in the semi-arid Valley microclimate. Roofed with both opaque membrane roofing and with semi-translucent photovoltaic panels, the “umbrella” structures will provide both protection from the elements as well as playful shadow patterns throughout the day.

The staff support spaces are treated more conventionally, both for reasons of economy and for reasons of visual and conceptual counterpoint to the “feature” spaces of the Community Room and the Kennels. The goal for these areas is to provide the maximum in efficient, durable, and flexible spaces to ensure the smooth operation of the facility.

As usual, all of the base drawings are done with PowerCADD and WildTools, 2D compositing with Illustrator and Photoshop, and 3D modeling and rendering in Form*Z.