Gateway Center
This welcoming, inclusive, and equitable public space was once a municipal parking garage, re-envisioned and re-programed as a premier social space for the community.
The Center complements the Park, an urban green public space offering year-round cultural, entertainment and fitness events, as well as passive recreation. Offering varied entertainment, cultural, intellectual, social and fitness programming during the day, and a rentable special events venue during the evening, the space was transformed into a multi-use, multi-purpose premier center for the city’s diverse community of residents.
Our team transformed a concrete box of an existing city garage building into a welcoming community space by inserting a luminous wood box hosting a series of social, educational and entertainment spaces. These programed spaces are sequentially organized facing a light-filled corridor along the existing south loggia of the building. This corridor is activated by a sequence of varied built-in nooks for serendipitous interactions: the Social Street.
The design focused on essential, edited forms to evoke a serene and unique experience for all users providing durability and ease of maintenance, while avoiding the typical solutions found in municipal government public spaces.
