Project Description
Hermoso Park, a 50-year-old municipal recreational area located in South Phoenix, serves a multi-generational, close-knit community with playgrounds, sports courts, walking trails, and open green space. Hermoso’s city youth program welcomes up to 100 kids each day for after-school meal programs, classes, leadership councils and play. A passionate neighborhood association was vital toward making the project a reality. Originally slated for landscape upgrades, the project grew with additional city funding to include a new 4,000sf recreation center, an 8,000sf skate park, additional restroom buildings, ramadas, and play areas. The Faye Gray Recreation Center building now sits at the park’s epicenter with a design that stretches a limited program, budget and sustainability mandate to achieve an environmentally sensitive, flexible, and inviting home base for the neighborhood. The project shifts the typical room-by-room city program to a singular space – a gesture of unity and efficiency that includes teen/youth rooms, conference space, story room, computer zones, a warming kitchen, and lounge. The small footprint strives for big impact with abundant light, disappearing walls, intimate gathering spaces, and bright colors. Using millwork to divide areas and eliminate space-intensive storage rooms, the center reads as family room flanked by bright green perimeter walls, in high contrast to the exposed concrete structure yet compatible with the building’s natural surroundings.