Nurturing the Relationship between Architecture + Nature in Utah
The Aurora Villa. Photography by Hangfei Zhang
When someone learns that Sparano + Mooney Architecture has an office located in Salt Lake City, they often ask “is there any architecture in Utah?” This response prompts reflection on the nature of our environment, both natural and constructed. The City and its surroundings are renowned for spectacular visual scenery. From the red rock deserts of the southern part of the state and the awe-inspiring Bonneville Salt Flats, to Salt Lake City’s rocky mountain backdrop and its west desert expanse surrounding the Great Salt Lake, contemporary Utah architects have immense natural inspiration to draw from. However, because we are surrounded by some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, sometimes we miss the outstanding built work in our State. Though we are modern architects in Salt Lake City, we nevertheless implement timeless design principles inspired by nature, and we regularly turn to the spectacular Utah landscapes in our sustainable building designs.
The first thing architects working here grapple with is the fact that there is no way to compete with the Utah landscape. Rather, our work is about engaging in a sensitive dialog between site and architecture to produce modern architectural designs that equally respond and contribute to the context. Inspiration is found through nature – in southern sandstone arches and deep sculptural canyons, in northern rocky sites with high winds and heavy snow loads. The four distinct seasons offer a continually changing landscape, and Utah skies provide many sunny days for ideal access to solar harvesting and places to still access dark starry skies at night.
THE CITY, CRAFTSMANSHIP + CREATIVITY
Salt Lake City offers more of a blank slate, architecturally-speaking, than other areas of the country. A rich history of indigenous places and people is still largely untapped as a source of wisdom. The region has a Western vernacular tradition from ranching and farming roots, which has provided the basis for some great contemporary architectural interpretation. The City is also home to world-class craftspeople who work in raw materials such as metal, stone, wood and concrete. The tradition of craft meets contemporary conditions such as water shortages in the American West, resulting in products such as beetle kill pine, now locally crafted into a variety of wood applications. Innovation and principles of sustainable building design are to be found all through the region when you start looking for it.
Salt Lake City – and indeed surrounding communities like Emigration Canyon, Park City and Sundance – has an untapped potential for great architectural design that doesn’t exist in many other places. Creativity and innovation in architecture is embraced when people are open to new ideas and approaches to design. The strong economy and business sector in Utah help foster this creative growth, as financial and tech companies bring in open-minded, sophisticated clients who have an appreciation of design – well-travelled architectural aficionados who understand the important dynamics between contemporary architecture, site and nature.
SOPHISTICATED VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE INSPIRED BY NATURE
We do have a history of bringing in outsiders for major architectural commissions in Salt Lake City. When the City imports architects like the New York office of Thomas Phifer (for our Federal Courthouse) or the Canadian-Israeli architect Moshe Safdie (for the design of the main branch of the Public Library) we get an outsider’s perspective on our City, along with some great architecture. In the case of our City Library, while it is one of the best public spaces in our City – both indoors and out – we also got an architectural formula of Safdie’s from a previously-built environment in the very different locale of Vancouver, BC. More original architecturally – although perhaps less popular among the public – is New York architect Thomas Phifer‘s design for the Federal courthouse. This is a building that makes you feel something visceral when crossing through its massive threshold of justice. The building’s program is perfectly reflected in the scale, abstraction and intensity of the architecture. Phifer and Safdie have reacted to the City, Utah’s natural wonders and the programmatic needs of their clients uniquely, and offer a sophisticated but not necessarily a vernacular viewpoint.
As sophisticated mountain modern architects in our own right, and as educators helping train the next cohort of design professionals, we firmly believe in Salt Lake City’s potential – that as Salt Lake City grows up confidently into its status as a major metropolitan powerhouse, we can also expect to see a new generation of architects stepping into the primary role of defining the architecture of the City, with a self-assurance equal to any import. In fact, a more nuanced understanding of the richness of Salt Lake City and Utah’s natural and historic context that we can expect our architects to bring to their work is cause for continued optimism for our built environment. Stay tuned!