The new community center is a pavilion-style facility that blends with the surrounding landscape and recreational facilities. Photo by Sharon Riesdorph Photography.

Summary: Berkeley, Calif.-based Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects
designed the 6,400 square-foot community center at the 23-acre Orange Memorial Park in South San Francisco. The Parks and Recreation Department of the City of South San Francisco was the client on the project. The new community center is a pavilion-style facility that blends with the surrounding landscape and recreational facilities. The materials combine sustainable western red cedar and Alaskan yellow cedar with natural basalt stone and glass for light, transparency, and horizontality. A sense of naturalness is evoked from the materials.

Thirty-foot overhangs help contribute to the modern park expression. Photo by Sharon Riesdorph Photography.

Iconic symbol for the community
“The client wanted to have a community center that would complement the other facilities,” says Marcy Wong, LEED AP, a partner at Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects. “There is a large soccer field that serves as a nice foreground for the new building. There is a creek to one side of the site, and on the other side there is more park, where some distance away there is an aquatic center. From the major street you can see across the soccer fields to the site. The client wanted the building to be an iconic symbol for the community to see.” Wong adds there was also an existing parking lot.

Basalt stone, common to the area, complements the wood without interfering with it. Photo by Sharon Riesdorph Photography.

Wong says the firm and the city wanted the Orange Memorial Park community center to be sustainable. Also, outdoor functions needed to relate to the indoor multipurpose activity room, which can be subdivided to up to four rooms by a partition. “On three sides of the room there are windows and glass for transparency,” Wong notes. “On those sides there are outdoor terraces that are a functional extension of the building.” The fourth side is stone covered wing that houses the lobby and office. “The sustainability aspect was integrating the outdoor and indoor spaces with the site orientation. The orientation was important with regard to the sun and is on a north-south axis.”

A modern park expression

Outdoor terraces are a functional extension of the building. Photo by Billy Hustace Photography.

The combined elements create a sense of lightness, transparency, and horizontality. Photo by Sharon Riesdorph Photography.

Thirty-foot overhangs also contribute to the modern park expression. “The overhangs give it a powerful pavilion-like look, says Logan. “They protect the terraces adjacent to the building from rain and sun.” The combined elements create a sense of lightness, transparency, and horizontality. The cedar also provides carbon sequestration.