ABRAVANEL HALL VISIONING
SETTING THE STAGE: Abravanel Hall Master Plan and Visioning by Sparano + Mooney Architecture
MAY 08, 2025
When an architect is invited into the earliest master planning stages of a project, something important happens: a space opens up - not just physically, but also creatively and strategically. This is the moment when vision meets experience, when ideas begin to take shape through the lens of design thinking, long before materials are chosen or forms take final shape. For owners and institutions with a bold sense of purpose but a need for clarity, the master plan is where possibilities are tested, priorities are clarified, and the built environment starts to align with long-term goals.
At its best, a master plan is not just a technical roadmap - it’s a shared language between owner and architect, a framework that allows both parties to step back and look forward. It’s where our expertise in site, sustainability, and spatial flow meets the client’s aspirations for impact, legacy, and use. Whether guiding the development of a campus, a cultural institution, or a community space, the master planning process is our opportunity to ask essential questions, consider time and change, and chart a course that is both practical and visionary.
When Salt Lake County engaged Salt Lake City-based performing arts architects Sparano + Mooney Architecture to update the master plan for Maurice Abravanel Hall, we stepped into a complex and beloved cultural context, one that demanded both reverence for its history and clarity about its future. The Hall, home to the Utah Symphony and a landmark in downtown Salt Lake City, is more than a performance venue; it is a civic icon. Yet, like many legacy buildings, it faces evolving expectations around access, patron experience, user demands and urban connectivity. The task facing our Salt Lake City performing arts architects was not simply to envision a better building, but also to frame a future that responds to the changing rhythms of the surrounding city as well as to craft a cultural landscape that views a “Symphony Hall” with trepidation.
So first, Sparano + Mooney Architecture and our team of theater designers (including Theatre Projects), engineers and performing arts architects in Utah listened. The Utah Symphony | Utah Opera staff, musicians and board members, the Salt Lake County Arts & Culture Division, Abravanel Hall’s civic neighbors, and regular and potential users of Abravanel Hall were all invited to participate. We held in-person focus groups, interviews, venue and acoustical tours, and virtual listening sessions designed to gather vital insights from the key stakeholders. Comprehensive online surveys were conducted with those who were unable to attend in-person sessions. At each meeting we conducted Strength, Weakness, Threats and Opportunity assessments to build a baseline understanding, and ensuing discussions focused on both the presenter and patron experience and inside the hall.
And then Sparano + Mooney Architecture and our Utah performing arts architects began to look at Abravanel Hall; we dug through the storage rooms, climbed every staircase, crawled around in the fly loft, traversed the catwalks, and sat quietly in the lobby. The team reviewed existing building systems, technology, and front- and back-of-house spaces; studied previous masterplans and project plans and conducted extensive acoustic measurements.
Getting the acoustics right was a critical part Sparano + Mooney Architecture’s evaluation of Maurice Abravanel Hall. Originally designed by FFKR with acoustics by the renowned Dr. Cyril Harris, the hall has long been celebrated for its sonic qualities. During our listening sessions, we heard overwhelmingly positive feedback from patrons and regular users of the space. But the musicians - those most intimately attuned to the hall’s nuances - offered a more layered perspective. They could identify specific moments where the built reality of the hall didn’t fully match the original design aspirations, often pointing to subtle shortcomings that only become apparent through deep familiarity and repeated performance.
To better understand these nuances of Abravanel Hall, Sparano + Mooney Architecture worked with our consulting acoustician, Kirkegaard, to conduct a thorough acoustic assessment. This process combined traditional techniques with advanced instrumentation to analyze how sound behaves in the hall today. We began with the classic “red balloon test,” popping balloons in different areas to capture a raw, immediate sense of how sound reflects and decays. From there, Kirkegaard introduced a more precise method using an impulse sound source—a small, half-sphere device that emits controlled bursts of broadband noise. With microphones placed throughout the hall, we collected data on reverberation time, clarity, and spatial diffusion. These measurements allowed us to create a detailed acoustic profile of the space, highlighting both its strengths and opportunities for enhancement. In doing so, we laid the groundwork for improvements that respect the hall’s legacy while supporting its future as a world-class performance venue.
With the community outreach and facility analysis completed, Sparano + Mooney Architecture and our Salt Lake City performing arts architects turned our attention to synthesizing what we heard and observed in Abravanel Hall; distilling the mountains of data into seven key themes that would guide the masterplan from then on. Discussed by Sparano + Mooney Architecture in greater detail in the final Abravanel Hall Master Plan and Visioning document, the seven themes were: Acoustics, Location, Perception + Inclusion, Accessibility + Infrastructure, Technology, Support Spaces, and Wayfinding + Plaza Use.
As our Salt Lake City theater design team looks ahead, the master plan for Maurice Abravanel Hall stands as both a reflection of its legacy and a blueprint for its evolution. Through deep listening, rigorous analysis, and meaningful collaboration, our Utah performing arts architects charted a course that honors Abravanel Hall’s cultural significance while preparing it to serve new generations of artists, audiences, and community members. This process is more than a study of space - it’s a commitment to ensuring that Abravanel Hall continues to resonate, not just acoustically, but civically, for decades to come.
Whether through performing arts facility assessments, performing arts feasibility studies, performing arts venue programming, performing arts master plans or performing arts renovations and performing arts new design for landmark cultural facilities, Sparano + Mooney Architecture and our performing arts architects in Salt Lake City, Utah performing arts designers, Los Angeles performing arts architects, Mountain West performing arts architects and West Coast performing arts architects are here to help our clients set the (next) stage of their venues!
CONCERT HALL DESIGN
THE (PERFORMING) ARTS OF CONCERT HALL PLANNING + DESIGN
AUGUST 23, 2024
America First Performing Arts Center; Utah Tech University; rendering by Sparano Mooney Architecture
At Sparano + Mooney Architecture, our Los Angeles architects, Salt Lake City architects, and Western Mountain Region architects prioritize and specialize in the development and advancement of innovative concert hall design and performing arts architecture. Whether designing a new facility from the ground-up or renovating an existing venue, we eagerly and thoughtfully design performing arts centers that balance the beauty of a hall with the incomparable acoustics of these timeless spaces
For example, John Sparano, FAIA, has discussed the Newel + Jean Daines Concert Hall Renovation Project designed by Sparano + Mooney Architecture for Utah State University, which reflects the firm’s sophisticated yet delicate approach to form and function: For instance, the use of high-quality materials like birch wood paneling, which can help with sound absorption, and innovative technologies for acoustic tuning, which have been crucial to the success of this renovated performing arts venue. Our Utah concert hall architects have also focused on visual appeal, incorporating elegant façades as well as welcoming lobby spaces that reach past this threshold to the street – attempting to mediate and optimize the experience between passersby and the users within a concert hall space. The integration of balconies, grand glazing, and plazas creates further opportunities to integrate users and patrons, visually blur the boundaries between exterior and interior spaces, and create inclusive cultural spaces for the public.
While concert hall new-builds certainly remain critical to the longevity of the arts, perhaps more importantly concert hall remodels and performing arts center renovations are increasingly necessary to address evolving performer and patron needs, maintain a venue’s iconic relevance and functionality over time, and remain sensitive to the economic impact of a large-scale building project on an arts-sector client (and, therefore, performing arts audiences). As musical performance standards, audience expectations, and acoustic, theater and audio-visual technologies advance, older concert halls may require significant updates to enhance sound quality, seating comfort, patron amenities, and overall accessibility, as well as to accommodate different performance types such as pop concerts, spoken word and film. The historical value of performing arts venues such as Utah’s Abravanel Hall holds gravitas with most patrons. However, there is a responsibility to preserve cultural and historical significance while also adapting to the requirements of modern concert hall spaces and welcoming new audiences to the performing arts.
Concert halls and their associated cultural programming were once characterized by a sense of exclusivity, formality and a projected sophistication – an appeal only to the “high-brow.” For decades, an equally-limited formula existed for how a concert hall should be configured, both technically and aesthetically: “The conventional wisdom for creating a great acoustical hall was a narrow, high, rectangular ‘shoebox’ model with a maximum of 2,500 or so seats.” However, contemporary architects view the year 1963 as pivotal in the shift toward the democratization of concert hall design, during which Hans Scharoun designed the 2,440-seat Berlin Philharmonie in “an aggressive attempt to tear down the traditional social hierarchies of the classical music world.” Recently, and as a response to the need to engage new audiences, there has been an even greater move than in the 60s toward breaking down that formality as part of a more foundational effort to engage a wider, more diverse audience. In survey after survey, respondents (especially those from a younger demographic) have voiced an opinion that this fundamental change includes a re-thinking of aspects such as: the types of music offered; the implied dress code; the cost of admittance; the time of day of performances; addressing barriers to entry; and even ticketing and seat reservation systems. The attempt to design spaces that reject class-based ideals behind performance-based art (and architecture) has therefore become critical in the modern architectural process of conceptualizing and realizing concert halls and performing arts architecture.
America First Performing Arts Center, Utah Tech University; rendering by Sparano + Mooney Architecture
For instance, Sparano + Mooney Architecture team member Dan Gasser, AIA, notes our recent concert hall feasibility study, concert hall master planning and concert hall renovation of Abravanel Hall, the internationally-acclaimed performing arts venue in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, as well as our concert hall design for the America First Performing Arts Center on the campus of Utah Tech University in St. George: He explains the importance of creating inviting glass lobbies for both venues in close proximity to the street that will draw in visitors and encourage participation in the arts. The lobby space has historically been a closed-off realm within performing arts venues – open only to those who had the cultural capital to step through the venue doors – but with careful planning and design, the lobby can become a vibrant and versatile space that adds value to the overall performance experience.
Through our concert hall renovation design and performing arts architecture, Sparano + Mooney Architecture has emphasized the potential of transparent concert hall spaces to make them more inviting and accessible for all users, as well as familiar to long-time patrons. It is our intent that implementing these improvements will increase the appeal of the performing arts and of performing arts architecture to new visitors and enhance both their current and future experiences with these important concert hall venues in our cities.
SOURCES
“The Best Buildings You’ll Ever Hear,” by Nicolai Ouroussoff, The New York Times, June 3, 2007 (accessed August 15, 2024)
PRE-FABRICATED HOMES
BUILDING THE AMERICAN DREAM: A Brief History of Pre-Fabricated Homes
JANUARY 19, 2024
Sparano + Mooney Architecture strives to create one-of-a-kind architectural designs that result in timeless, contemporary and sustainable homes for our clients. The uniqueness of the custom residences we design matches the singularity of our clients, and it is this inimitable quality of both that continues to drive our practice.
The homes we design are bespoke and cutting-edge, and require complex engineering to execute. However, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the practice of architecture was at times a wholly different affair that utilized the emerging modern manufacturing technique of pre-fabrication, which helped democratize housing design for growing populations across North America.
COOKIE-CUTTER FROM A CATALOG
Though pre-fabricated homes – also known as “pre-cut,” “kit” or “mail-order” homes – varied in aesthetics throughout their popularity, their raison d'être remained largely the same: to provide access to affordable housing stock that would suit the need for comfortable, climate-appropriate shelter, and that could be constructed simply and quickly. Manufacturers sold homes in varying sizes and styles, but provided at fixed cost all materials to construct the house (typically excluding concrete and masonry, which would need to be arranged by the customer). D.N Skillings and D.B. Flint published their catalog Sectional Portable Houses in 1861, marketing their buildings’ ease of construction as “so simple that two or three men without mechanical knowledge, or experience in building, can set up one of them in less than three hours.” Their designs were not only for home design: they also offered architectural plans for schools, offices, warehouses, and chapels. In 1883, L. Forest & Co. claimed their structures offered the “cheapest, strongest, and warmest portable houses on the market” to clients including immigrant settlers of the upper Midwest region, known for its harsh climate.
MODERN + MANUFACTURED
At the turn of the 20th century, the purpose of these buildings was honed and a plethora of designs for pre-fabricated residences was available to eager homeowners. Companies manufacturing these affordable pre-cut homes proliferated: Aladdin Houses and Liberty Ready-Cut Homes of Bay City, Michigan; Hodgson Portable Houses of Boston, Massachusetts; and “Presto-Up” Patented Bolt-Together Cottages of Chicago, Illinois all promised customers efficient residential designs that would be shipped direct-to-consumer then assembled on-site either by the homeowner or a local contractor. Prices varied – for example, the Sears Hamilton home cost $1,379 in 1916 ($40,673 with 2023/4 price-adjusted inflation), while the Sears Martha Washington model sold for up to $3,727 in 1921 (or approximately $60,170 today).
Sears is perhaps the most well-known producer of mail-order homes, and launched its Sears Modern Homes catalog in 1908. These kits provided all the materials and blueprints required for construction of Sears’ various models, and all the trimmings were included: light fixtures, cabinetry, hardware, gutters and garage doors. The guess-work (and, arguably, any individuality) was removed from the homebuying and building process. Customization was not unheard-of, but was largely left to the homeowner to tackle with their choice of interior furnishings and decorations. Homeowners did not seem deterred by a lack of agency – by the time the Sears catalog ceased publication in 1940, it is estimated that the company had sold up to 75,000 of these homes.
POST-WAR PRE-FABRICATED PERFECTION
These homes were popular especially in the post-war period, largely because returning GIs were able and eager to buy a home for their families but were simply unable to find the stock from which to purchase. In the aftermath of World War II, the private housing market was ill-equipped to provide homes to meet soaring demand. Many of the resulting pre-fab dwellings were modest, one-story models that offered the creature comforts that wartime austerity had stripped from the notion of “home.” These catalogs were not simply selling shelters; they were selling the American Dream.
One of the most striking examples of the post-war kit home is the Lustron, which capitalized on the boom in demilitarized manufacturing as well as government funding for construction companies able to deliver housing. Founded in 1947, Lustron sought to innovate and rationalize affordable housing by introducing mass-production techniques into the construction industry. The homes were assembled from pre-fabricated, enameled-steel components and assembled on-site by a local crew with the help of an accompanying manual. The brand was the subject of a nationwide marketing campaign promoting the Lustron’s modernity and affordability. Unfortunately, the cost of raw materials, difficulties with manufacturing and shipping infrastructure, and tenuous relationships with distributors, lenders and frustrated consumers bankrupted the company by 1951. Only 2,680 of these homes were ever built, and only an estimated 1,500 remain as icons of post-war architectural home economics.
After almost a century of immense popularity, the modern kit home’s appeal declined in the mid-20th century in favor of suburban tract house subdivisions, a form of inexpensive and abundant housing built in bulk by developers. As Utah and California architects who care deeply about the history of building design, as well as the history of American vernacular architecture, we are fascinated by the concept of the kit home. Though we specialize in designing sophisticated heritage homes and mountain-modern architecture in the American West, we are nevertheless indebted to the humble essence of architecture as a service that provides a basic human need – shelter. For this reason, our Salt Lake City architects and Los Angeles architects produce a wide range of sustainable residential architecture solutions that are carefully-crafted at multiple scales and that will serve generations to come on complex sites throughout the western mountain region.
“To Build a Lego House”, by Jeremy Pi, The Harvard Urban Review online, April 12, 2018
“Why do Cookie-Cutter Neighborhoods Exist?”, by Kate Kershner, HowStuffWorks online, May 2, 2012
“Lustron”, The Ohio History Connection
“Where Art Thou Hamilton?”, by Rose Thornton for Searshomes.org, accessed October 28, 2021
ANNE MOONEY: AIA COLLEGE OF FELLOWS
ANNE MOONEY IS ELECTED TO THE AIA COLLEGE OF FELLOWS 2023!
MARCH 08, 2023
To mark International Women’s Day, which celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, Sparano + Mooney Architecture is thrilled to share that principal and co-founder Anne Mooney has been elected to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows 2023!
Anne received the honor of FAIA status in the category of “Design” for her body of work that promotes the aesthetic, scientific, and practical efficiency of the architecture profession. Fellowship in this category is granted to architects who have produced extensive bodies of distinguished work that has been broadly recognized for its design excellence through design, urban design, or preservation. Anne was the only Utah architect to be elevated to Fellowship in 2023.
The AIA College of Fellows seeks to stimulate a sharing of interests among Fellows, promote the purposes of the Institute, advance the profession of architecture, mentor young architects, and be of ever-increasing service to society. AIA Fellows are recognized with the AIA’s highest membership honor for their exceptional work and contributions to architecture and society. Architects who have made significant contributions to the profession and society and who exemplify architectural excellence can become a member of the AIA College of Fellows. Significantly, only 3% of the AIA members have this distinction.
Anne has been recognized for creating compelling spaces that connect people with their communities and landscape. Over the past 25 years, she has helped Sparano + Mooney Architecture build a reputation for delivering landmark architectural designs for arts and cultural facilities, such as Utah museums, Utah concert halls, Utah and Los Angeles film and theater projects, and Utah and Los Angeles cultural centers for civic agencies and non-profit institutions, as well as mountain modern residential homes set in unique landscapes, including architecture in Park City, Utah; Deer Valley, Utah; and Sun Valley, Idaho. The firm’s first monograph, Sparano + Mooney Architecture: A Way of Working, was published by Hatje Cantz in 2022.
Together, Anne and Sparano + Mooney Architecture have have been consistently recognized for design excellence and have received more than 50 design and honor awards, including the 2017 AIA Western Mountain Region Architectural Firm of the Year and the 2013 AIA Utah Architectural Firm of the Year. Anne Mooney, FAIA, LEED AP, and John Sparano, FAIA, have both been recognized with the prestigious AIA Western Mountain Region Silver Medal, the highest award given to an architect in this region of the United States.
John Sparano was elevated to Fellowship in 2015 - now, eight years after his own well-deserved recognition, Anne too has been honored as a Fellow. We take this opportunity to celebrate Anne, her professional accomplishments, and what this award means for gender empowerment, equality, inclusivity, and visibility on International Women’s Day!
GRANARY ARTS EXHIBITION
EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT: The Center Can Not Hold @ Granary Arts
NOVEMBER 16, 2022
Sparano + Mooney Architecture is a community of architects and craftspeople in the American West, celebrating 25 years of great design this year from our architecture offices in Salt Lake City, Utah and Los Angeles, California. In our explorations of architectural design, contemporary challenges such as environmental conditions, cultural contexts, and occupant experience are woven around a central concept and a conceptual construct, or what we term a sculptural “heuristic device”. These devices serve as a point of departure through which a core idea is developed and embodied. As stand-alone works of contemporary art, these devices are separate from – yet crucially informative to – the resulting architecture. This belief in a foundational essence of architecture is why we were honored to be included in the forthcoming exhibition at Granary Arts, titled “The Center Can Not Hold” (November 18, 2022 – January 20, 2023).
Curated by Hikmet Sidney Loe and featuring works created by Sparano + Mooney Architecture’s principals Anne Mooney, AIA, LEED AP, and John Sparano, FAIA, as well as regional architect Hannah Vaughn, AIA, LEED AP (principal at VY Architecture), the exhibition conceptualizes the temporal nature of a “center” through the lens of architecture. We were invited to consider ideas of place. Positioning the geographical center of Utah and the town of Ephraim as the practical center for creative work, the collective and collaborative result is not architecture to be built, but is contemporary art that acts as a catalyst to mine conceptual layers of engagement with the past, the present, and the future. The ephemerality of the present moment – who occupies place, what traces remain of their existence – leads to questions of past occupation: how place is mapped, as well as concepts of erasure, remembrance, and memory.
The Sparano + Mooney Architecture team constructed a full-scale oculus, offering fragmented view of maps, altered by layering graphics, natural materials, and hand-crafted, stitched elements to reimagine the idea of “center” over time. Our understanding of the term “center” embraces the invisible presence of suppressed voices and alternative ways of experiencing a landscape. In our consideration, the idea of a center is dynamic, evolutionary and transitory, and embodies an ethos of multiplicity rather than the implied singularity of the word. This interactive construct invites the visitor to explore the piece from a variety of perspectives – some direct, others requiring effort to access and assess the view.
Within a white conic shell, maps of central Utah are visible. These standardized, logical charts serve as the background for a critique of what this and other maps both portray and omit. The uniform graphics, colors and symbols act as a singular, commonly-accepted, means of reading the landscape and suggest a comprehensive documentation of place. However, this system of information prompts a questioning of what might be missing, ignored or erased.
We also present an aerial photograph of this regional center, as well as an overlay of another set of patterns, color fields and line work that helps us consider the possibility of the presence of unrecorded and invisible human settlement in this landscape – the presence of the “other”. These overlaid graphics challenge conventions of representation, but also the notion that the map is a full depiction of this geographical area. The resulting juxtaposition challenges the viewer to contemplate what – and who – else might have inhabited and experienced these spaces and landscapes. The layered logic of this work suggests the presence of others – those not visible (or excluded from) within the gridded settlements and in the agricultural fields.
The surrounding conic enclosure creates an abstract physical and visual barrier between the viewer and the maps. Two separate and distinct spaces are created, as the ideas of connection and separation are explored. A series of apertures of different shapes and sizes is the observer’s means of visual interaction with the map. The views of the map provide a variety of fragmented “ways of seeing”, and highlight the understanding that both a photograph and a map offer singular (and limited) knowledge of a place, as well as its inhabitants. Each aperture is one of a collection of perspectives, offering fragmentary points of view. Each viewer leaves this presentation with a unique sense of the concept of “center”, based on their individual interaction and engagement with the work.
For us, the ideas explored in “The Center Can Not Hold” exhibition are inherently tied to our own architectural practice. Our work explores hyper-specific cultural cues culled from a project’s client, community, program and site. This research is used to construct a conceptual heuristic device, which in turn provides the architectural order and transcends convention. We also work to construct a more meaningful relationship between modern architecture and the experience of its inhabitants. Our work revolves around the rejection of the notion that order is generated from geometric logic external to the occupant or observer. Therefore, the underlying organization of the work of our Los Angeles and Salt Lake City architects is a deliberate choice to position people at dynamic “centers” of architecture and to let space and form unfold around a continuous, directional and experiential path.
We hope you will have an opportunity to visit the exhibition, and to challenge your own conceptions of place and presence in the search for a more meaningful response to one of the essential questions of architecture: Why?
MONOGRAPH LAUNCH
MONOGRAPH LAUNCH! “SPARANO + MOONEY ARCHITECTURE: A WAY OF WORKING”
SEPTEMBER 06, 2022
Sparano + Mooney Architecture is a community of architects and craftspeople in the American West, celebrating 25 years of great design in 2022. In honor of the firm’s portfolio, a monograph titled Sparano + Mooney Architecture: A Way of Working has been published by Hatje Cantz (Berlin).
Available for purchase now, the book highlights the dialogue between concept and location found in the firm’s work, as well as the architects’ commitment to sustainable and innovative buildings that are embedded harmoniously into spectacular mountain landscapes. The team's architectural solutions are rooted in tradition and history while also embracing cutting-edge technology, materials and details to reflect and elevate the broad communities the architecture serves. The studio’s collaborative process responds to overwhelming natural surroundings with restrained forms and innovative detailing of materials. This first monograph of the firm’s work offers an insightful perspective on developing architecture that thrives on – and is grounded within – the relationship between concept and place.
Together with a dedicated team, Sparano + Mooney Architecture is a collective of architects, clients, colleagues, makers and like-minded peers that shares a passion for design and sustainability in all that they do. The practice has grown steadily since its inception through the process of rigorous critical thinking and the completion of a wide range of architectural solutions. Carefully crafted at multiple scales, for various functions and to elicit a multitude of emotions, their work catalyzes the idiosyncrasies of each project to create a concept-driven design in the pursuit of architecture true to its time, place and circumstances. From micro off-the-grid projects, adaptive re-use of historic structures, and new-build institutional, commercial, cultural and worship buildings, to residential, civic, recreation and mixed-use projects, as well as master planning and urban design ventures, their portfolio of contemporary design work can be found throughout California, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico and beyond.
The firm’s ethos is one of limitless exploration and an unwavering commitment to the heuristic process in creating architecture rooted firmly in meaning. With each project, the practice examines new ways to harmonize a regulating concept with the existing conditions of a site, program and fundamental building functions. Rather than imposing preconceived notions onto unique sites and environmental conditions, the eccentricities of any given program and site become the point of departure for that foundational idea. While anchoring each work in its specific circumstance, Sparano + Mooney Architecture endeavors to obtain a more meaningful response to one of the essential questions of architecture: Why?
Sparano + Mooney Architecture: A Way of Working explores this central question and to detail the firm’s heuristic design process. Ten key projects and associated images, drawings and a series of essays are presented, which tie the work to vernacular ideals and land art. Finding meaningfulness in everyday materials rendered extraordinary through creativity and craft, the book investigates what it means to work within the context of the American West.
The firm is delighted to have had the opportunity to collaborate with many individuals on the production of this book, a tactile object in its own right. Contributors include acclaimed architecture author Michael Webb and art historian Hikmet Sidney Loe, with graphic design by Salt Lake City-based Studio Michael Aberman. Project management and production was provided by Dorothee Hahn and Stefanie Kruszyk, respectively, at Hatje Cantz Berlin. The team at Sparano + Mooney Architecture is thrilled to present this publication as a record of its dedication to the profession, and the tireless pursuit of great design.
PROMOTIONAL EVENTS
Scheduled events will include the Salt Lake City launch in Fall 2022:
Salt Lake DesignWeek open studio event at Sparano + Mooney Architecture with the architects and book designer, Michael Aberman, will take place on Wednesday, October 19th from 5-7pm. A presentation will take place at 6pm, highlighting the collaborative process in the design and production of the book. Address: 57 W 2100 S, Salt Lake City, UT 84115 (parking on Richards Street)
The King’s English Bookshop monograph launch event will take place on Friday, November 4th from 6-7pm. Address: 1511 South 1500 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84105
The Los Angeles/West Coast launch is scheduled to take place in Spring 2023 – please contact us for further information.
BOOK DETAILS
Sparano + Mooney Architecture: A Way of Working
ISBN 978-3-7757-5058-5
Published by Hatje Cantz Verlag GmbH
Mommsenstraße 27
10629 Berlin
Germany
www.hatjecantz.com
DESIGN WEEK
DESIGN WEEK - OCTOBER 18-22!
OCTOBER 14, 2021
As a proud member of the Salt Lake City creative community, Sparano + Mooney Architecture is excited to welcome the 2021 edition of Salt Lake Design Week! This year’s event will be held in-person from October 18-22 at various downtown locations. As Salt Lake City architects deeply committed to producing, experiencing and helping inspire high-caliber design, we are eager to sample the multitude of events that this stellar event will offer.
Salt Lake Design Week promotes and celebrates the creativity of Utah architects and designers across a multitude of media, including architecture, product, interior, graphic, photography, digital, motion, fashion and advertising. This forum provides a vital platform for designers, businesses, professionals, students and members of the public to engage and interact with the region’s diverse and thriving design scene. The series of collaborative and inspiring events seeks to build a stronger local creative community, in turn raising awareness of the impact of design throughout the state and beyond. Significantly, Design Week is inclusive of all people and disciplines, and continues to engage, educate and motivate diverse participants in critical thinking about design.
The keynote address will be from The Office of Ordinary Things, a socially and environmentally-conscious design studio based in San Francisco that has been recognized by Creative Review, Dezeen and Fast Company. Additional events will include: “The Future of Design is Circular”, a panel discussion from Principal Design Company and Clever Octopus Creative Reuse Center exploring how to design in order to divert materials from landfills; “Make-a-Mari”, a workshop in which each participant will build their own Sedia 1 chair by renowned Italian designer Enzo Mari, facilitated by the Wasatch Design Collective; and “Designing for Non-Profits”, a collaborative session focusing on how the scale of social impact design relates to the scale of architectural and graphic design interventions; and several studio and agency tours, which form an integral component of Design Week. Tour stops this year include Gantry, Riso Geist, Struck and Made by Fell at Design Dairy. These tours offer eye-opening insight into the creative processes honed by some of the city’s most notable design firms. And, as part of Salt Lake Design Week, we invite you to visit the online Design Arts ’21 Exhibition, which features the award-winning Oikos Residence project designed by Sparano + Mooney Architecture!
Salt Lake Design Week is hosted annually by the Salt Lake City chapter of AIGA, the Professional Association for Design, and is presented by digital design and development agency, Underbelly. For more information, and to purchase tickets to selected events, please visit the Salt Lake Design Week website.
We’ll definitely be checking out this year’s events, but if we don’t have the chance to meet during Salt Lake Design Week, we’d love the opportunity to discuss our design philosophy and to create a unique work of sustainable architecture for your next cultural, civic, institutional, worship or residential project in the American West!
CRAFTOBERFEST
CRAFTOBERFEST @ THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES ZONE!
OCTOBER 06, 2021
As architects, we spend our days crafting thoughtfully-designed spaces and thrive when we are “in the zone” for our clients. We also thrive on the fact that our office in Salt Lake City is located within the heart of the South Salt Lake Arts Council’s Creative Industries Zone, which seeks to unite our community, residents, businesses and fellow creatives through an appreciation and implementation of art.
WHAT IS THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES ZONE?
The Zone is a “supportive and welcoming community stimulating local economic growth through creative, small businesses such as music, drink, dance, art, print, design, and craftsman industries that produce and sell hand-made products for local enjoyment.” It lies between 2100 South and Mill Creek (3000 S) centered on West Temple, and stretches between State Street and TRAX. Identified through an app, a collection of start-ups, artistic enterprises, and small service businesses nestled within this boundary offer unique events, public art and retail opportunities, and a collaborative social community. The Zone is walkable, bikeable and transit-connected, and businesses are located within both new offices and repurposed industrial spaces. Sparano + Mooney Architecture is proud to have our studio located among this stellar cohort.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ZONE
The Zone is the result of an arts district plan developed by the SSL Arts Council, in response to positive changes in the creative landscape of the neighborhood. Recognizing that this shift had caused people to want to relocate to the area to work, live and make, the Arts Council branded the Zone as a way of celebrating this creativity. In addition, this initiative helps support local artists by seeking out and offering opportunities to showcase their craft, and also provides easy access to the arts for anyone interested. Furthermore, the project has a positive impact on the greater community, fostering a shared sense of pride in our city and bolstering our collective efforts to create. In fact, “creative industries” are one of the United States’ fastest growing business sectors and are key to empowering a diverse society and economy. South Salt Lake is no exception, and contains a remarkable array of talent in the Zone, where art meets craft.
CRAFTOBERFEST!
To celebrate and promote the Zone, the SSL Arts Council regularly holds special events such as Craftoberfest, happening Saturday, October 9th from 1-5pm in the heart of the Creative Industries Zone at 2250 S West Temple, by Beehive Distilling. The event will feature guest mural artist Atentamente and there will be live music, artist booths, an art auction, food trucks, interactive art projects and craft beverages. Come along to celebrate art, creative businesses and the community!
ARCHITECTURE + NATURE
NURTURING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE + NATURE IN UTAH
SEPTEMBER 28, 2021
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!
LIFE IN SUN VALLEY
LIVING AND SKIING IN SUN VALLEY, IDAHO
SEPTEMBER 14, 2021
Sun Valley, Idaho is one of the best-known resort destinations among skiers internationally. It is especially popular with elite individuals, thanks to its easy access from the West Coast. Sparano + Mooney Architecture knows the location well – in fact, we are currently designing a new custom home for a client with roots in Sun Valley and looking to take advantage of all that Sun Valley has to offer in a permanent residence there.
There is much to love about Sun Valley – the surrounding region, its beautiful landscapes, the wonderful people and, of course, its architecture and its history. Needless to say, the Sun Valley of 2021 is significantly different compared to when Sun Valley Lodge first opened in 1936!
THE NATION’S FIRST SKI RESORT
Sun Valley is considered to be the nation's first destination ski resort. It was built by developer and Union Pacific Railroad chairman W. Averill Harriman. Harriman happened upon the idea for a winter ski resort after noticing an increased interest in winter sports following the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.
He reasoned that opening a winter resort somewhere in the western mountain region would be a good way to increase ridership of Union Pacific trains running between the West Coast and Midwest. He spent more than a year looking at sites before finally settling on what would eventually become Sun Valley.
What impressed Herriman and his team most was Bald Mountain. The location was ideal due to its lack of dense wood and severe winds. Even better, the region experienced ample snowfall and its fair share of sunshine. Sun Valley Resort was born with the purchase of more than 3800 acres. Some seven months and nearly $2 million later, the resort opened with the promise of providing "winter sports under a summer sun”.
SUN VALLEY ARCHITECTURE
As you might expect, the greater Sun Valley area is home stylistically to the quintessential ski lodge. With three mountains to choose from, homeowners typically look for spacious, comfortable settings that are as centrally located possible. And because the area is very attractive to the glitterati, big tends to be better (and beautiful) in the region.
Modern mountain contemporary is the rule of the day. Architects and builders design here with a keen eye on the natural environment. Wood and stone abound. Interiors tend to be modern and open, mimicking the vastness of the region, with an emphasis on large spaces to entertain friends and family visiting from out of town.
In this part of the world, the views are everything. These ski-in mountain homes are built with floor-to-ceiling windows that offer opportunities for breathtaking scenery night and day. Many of the area’s older vacation homes are purposely rustic yet in no way lack comfort or luxury. A certain elegance and refinement exist here, perhaps rooted in the fact that the resort was not accidental. It was designed to be a vacation destination right from the start.
A GREAT PLACE TO LIVE + SKI
In the 80+ years since W. Averill Harriman first began developing the resort outside of Ketchum, Idaho, the Sun Valley area has grown and matured. It is one of the best places to live and ski in America. The weather is fantastic, the outdoor recreation is outstanding, and the people are warm and friendly.
Sparano + Mooney Architecture would be honored with the opportunity to design your new Sun Valley home. Whether you're looking to move permanently or establish a vacation getaway, our expertise in mountain modern architecture will help you realize your dream of owning a luxurious ski lodge in a renowned resort town.
If Sun Valley is not a convenient locale, then let's talk about Utah, Montana, Colorado or Wyoming! We also work to deliver mountain modern architecture to clients in Park City, Deer Valley, Big Sky and throughout the American West.
DESIGNS FOR SUPPORTIVE HOUSING
CIVIC ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN FOR INDIVIDUALS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS + THE HOMEKEY PROJECTS
AUGUST 16, 2021
Sparano + Mooney Architecture is committed to improving the communities in which we live and work. As civic architects and housing architects who collaborate with municipalities across Southern California, we believe wholeheartedly that excellent design can not only bolster a cityscape, but profoundly affect residents’ lives. With this influence in mind, we are honored to have the opportunity to provide homeless architectural solutions for project Homekey in partnership with the County of Los Angeles.
CIVIC ARCHITECTURE PROVIDING AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Homekey is an innovative enterprise between the County of Los Angeles and the State of California to “purchase and rehabilitate hotels and motels, and convert them into permanent, long-term housing for people experiencing homelessness.” Homekey builds upon Project Roomkey, an initiative among the County, State and Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to secure motel and hotel rooms for seniors and medically-vulnerable citizens experiencing homelessness, to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. With more than 161,000 people in the State and 66,000 people in the County experiencing homelessness, and especially during a global pandemic, the supply of well-designed affordable housing is more prescient than ever.
Evolving from a measure to curb the pandemic to an attempt at curbing the homelessness crisis, Homekey makes available nearly 630 new rooms for permanent housing units, and will provide essential services and stability for our most vulnerable neighbors. In early 2021, the sites began operating as interim lodging. While this solution certainly eased some of the hardship, the need for long-term housing was still urgent, which is why Homekey is such an essential and socially-valuable investment for these communities. As Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the Center for Vulnerable Populations at the University of California, San Francisco, has noted, Homekey has spearheaded the key factor to helping solve homelessness – providing permanent, supportive housing, and not temporary shelter. “Some people need services that go along with that housing, and some people don’t. But the really essential thing is that without the housing, the services don’t work,” Kushel has said.
During the onset and height of the pandemic, officials recognized the abundance of unused commercial properties such as motels and hotels, and the County decided to use funds from local, state and federal sources to acquire these premises and make improvements to the architecture. Conversion of existing buildings saves a great deal of time and cost compared to constructing new facilities from the ground-up – crucial savings during public health emergencies. Congress recently approved $5 billion to turn hotels across the country into housing, and the State of California committed nearly $3 billion to expanding Homekey over the next two years. With this funding in place, and through innovative homeless architectural solutions, Sparano + Mooney Architecture is in the process of converting former Motel 6 and Holiday Inn sites in Long Beach and Harbor City into permanent housing and support facilities for the Homekey project.
CONVERTING HOTELS INTO PERMANENT HOUSING
With this civic architecture project in the County of Los Angeles, the goal is to retain existing design layouts, while updating the properties and providing ADA-compliant housing options at each site for the County’s most vulnerable residents. Each unit will supply a kitchenette, with a refrigerator, microwave, hand-sink and cabinetry, and comfortable living quarters with private bathrooms, new furniture and storage closets. Additional amenities will include ADA-complaint offices, laundry conveniences, and public-restrooms. Upgrades to telecommunications infrastructure and security parameters are also integral to the refurbishment. Residents will have access to communal outdoor areas such as gardens, pet relief and play areas, bike storage and shaded tenant recreation spaces. Each location will have 24-hour security and will offer meals. On-site services may comprise counselling, addiction treatment and recovery, mental health support, and job placement services.
These measures will create dignified, safe and habitable living conditions in the architecture, and will allow residents to be independent as much as possible. As Michele Griffin Young, an elderly homeless citizen caring for her severely diabetic son John, has noted, access to this form of housing has been lifesaving. When Young and John lived in a car, keeping his insulin cold was difficult and precarious. Through the County’s initiatives, Young and John were able to secure accommodation at a converted Travelodge. “We had a refrigerator to keep the insulin in. And we had a microwave…[T]here was food every morning and food every night and our own showers and bathrooms. And everything was just fantastic.”
The Homekey project is so much more than a nuts-and-bolts refurbishment. To SMA, this focus on civic architecture is a chance to take action and help address a public health crisis in the State of California and County of Los Angeles. It is an occasion to give back to the communities that have provided our team members life-changing experiences of our own. It is an opportunity to use housing architecture to advocate for social welfare and justice. We are proud to be civic architects in Los Angeles, and to be working on profound projects like Homekey to address the challenges of our time though our work in architecture.
COVID-19 + ARCHITECTURE
COVID-19, DESIGN, AND HOW WE ARE DEALING WITH IT
APRIL 16, 2020
At the very start of this year, only a mere three months ago, we don’t think there could have been any way to anticipate just how drastically things have changed globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As our staff have begun working remotely we have encountered some challenges, but also opportunities to rethink how we work as individuals and as a team.
Earlier last week, founder and principal of Sparano + Mooney architecture, Anne Mooney virtually ‘sat down’ with design journalist David Sokol to discuss some of the ways SMA is dealing with and adapting to our new world order. In an article for Architectural Record, “Architects Share Best Practices for Working from Home,” Mooney shared that her most immediate challenge after getting the at home work stations operational, has been maxed-out Internet connectivity, “with all our neighbors also working at home, along with the kids tackling online school.” In the same article, Eric Höweler from Höweler + Yoon Architecture reported, “For us, everyone is on Remote Desktop. We have 22 workstations that seem to be working without operators—like the studio is possessed.” With the SMA staff working from home in both Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, there is a similarly eerie of feeling in the studios.
On top of dealing with technical difficulties and lack of usual, daily interaction with colleagues, what to do about the halting and delay of projects? In another article by Sokol for Architectural Digest “What to Do If Your Project Is Put On Hold or Canceled,” Mooney discussed the option of potentially diversifying revenue streams, and working on in-house projects that may have been on hold because of lack of time and attention due to the demands of other projects and deadlines.
For SMA, this could be the time to start working on turning some one-off designs including furniture pieces from the studio’s various architecture projects into a collection. “With an online shop, we can share these with the world and move into production and manufacturing,” Mooney predicted. “And if we have even more time on our hands, we could develop a little more depth in the line.”
Although the times are uncertain at best, SMA remains committed to maintaining our track record of best practices, excellent design, and continual support of our colleagues and clients.
AURORA VILLA OPENS
DESIGNED BY SPARANO + MOONEY ARCHITECTURE, HOTEL AURORA VILLA OPENS TO GUESTS IN FAIRBANKS, ALASKA
MARCH 31, 2019
Ephemeral and enchanting, the Northern Lights have fascinated and haunted human beings with their spectral presence for millennia. However, only over the past decade has there been a distinct surge in international tourism to the remote and icy locales above the Arctic Circle where the Aurora Borealis can best be viewed and photographed. The recently opened Aurora Villa, a boutique hotel designed by the architects at Sparano + Mooney was created with the specific intention of viewing and experiencing the Borealis within the comfort and coziness of the lodge.
The Aurora Villa, located outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, is becoming known internationally as one of the best places in the world to view and photograph the Aurora Borealis. The modern resort project includes guest rooms and suites, public living spaces, a lobby and reception area, and dining space with large glazed openings oriented to the view of the northern lights. Outdoor spaces include decks for photography, a hot tub area and an entry court. Extreme climate conditions were considered during the development of the design and its sustainable aspects, incorporating a highly insulated building envelope and energy-efficient materials and systems.
SOURCES
-Williams, Ingrid K. “Drawn to the Lights.” The New York Times (Printed February 17, 2019)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/travel/northern-lights-tourism-in-sweden.html (accessed February 17, 2019)
EXHIBITION: NEHMA (COLLECTING)
NEHMA OPENS WITH EXHIBIT: Collecting on The Edge
SEPTEMBER 20, 2018
The moment is finally upon us! Sparano + Mooney Architecture’s re-design of the museum building for the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) in Logan, Utah is now open. NEHMA celebrated its grand re-opening last weekend, and our architects were honored to be in attendance. It was an incredible night filled with live music, gallery talks, fantastic artwork, great company and a tour of the museum architecture, of course! The current exhibit, Collecting on the Edge: Part 1 is on display now through December 15, and we must say – it is extraordinary. Collecting on the Edge: Part 2 will be showing next year January 17 through May 4. Collecting on the Edge features the work of 172 artists west of the Mississippi River since 1920.
Utah State University was able to originally construct NEHMA in 1982, through a generous donation made by Nora Eccles Treadwell Harrison. Over the past three decades, NEHMA has developed a one-of-a kind collection of modern artworks from the American West – works that have been largely overlooked in the mainstream art history narrative. George Wanlass, the great-nephew of Harrison, has been instrumental in developing this amazing design collection. His eye for artistic significance is impeccable – looking not at the monetary value of a piece, but instead its inherent quality and the context of its creation.
Educated on the history of modern Europe, Wanlass’ understanding reflects the evolution of contemporary culture. This understanding promotes his skill in deciphering the best works of art, many of which he has shared with the museum, with a focus on collecting significant pieces that he believes will either soon disappear, or become very costly. Wanlass loves researching, traveling, and meeting with collectors and artists in pursuit of obtaining these works for NEHMA.
The list of incredible artists showcased in this exhibit is extensive, but a small taste has been curated for your enjoyment below. Can’t make it to the museum for an in-person visit? A new book published by the museum, aptly named, Collecting on the Edge, is available for purchase through the University Press of Colorado & Utah State University Press and Amazon. We do hope you get the chance to witness this captivating exhibit! Feel free to contact us with any museum design inquires. We love being part of designing sustainable, beautiful architecture for the arts and cultural community!
FORT MOORE TIME CAPSULE
ARCHITECTS’ UPDATE: Fort Moore Memorial Time Capsule Discovery
AUGUST 24, 2018
In July of 1957, residents of Los Angeles placed a time capsule in the Fort Moore Memorial monument. Almost 60 years later to the day, a time capsule was discovered in the flag pole base during the Fort Moore Memorial Restoration project the architects at Sparano + Mooney Architecture are currently working on.
A letter from the former president of San Francisco State College, Dr. Glenn Dumke, proposed a time capsule and a list of items to be included, but it was uncertain whether this was ever done. What a great surprise to discover the time capsule existed! Staff from the Department of Public Works and the Arts Commission found the time capsule. Art Conservator, Donna Williams, says it is unclear whether the items in the capsule are the items that were originally proposed.
The time capsule was made from several copper sheets, folded and soldered together to form a container. The materials and technique of making this container perfectly preserved all items, including photographs, documents, and a manuscript describing the memorial concept. Plans are in the works to digitize all items found in the time capsule for public viewing. Discussions are also underway to decide what to put into this generation’s time capsule, to be placed back in the same spot where the original one was found.
The Fort Moore Memorial in downtown Los Angeles, California marks the spot where residents first raised the American flag in 1847. Check out this link to the news story, and see if you can spot Sparano + Mooney Architecture Principal Ludwing Juarez and Associate Jorge Beltran in the video. What would you put in the time capsule for 2078 discovery?
SPOTLIGHT: CAMILLE ERICKSON
AN ARTIST AMONG US: The Art + Paintings of Camille Erickson
MAY 15, 2018
Without doubt, the Sparano + Mooney Architecture team are talented, driven, and creative. We work hard to deliver thoughtful design solutions to our clients, not to mention our commitment to an exceptional client experience and harnessing first-rate business acumen. Of course, our Salt Lake City and Los Angeles architects are highly skilled at turning numerous iterations of ideas and sketches into renders and plans. Putting pen, pencil and brush to paper is a key aspect of our practice and drawing skills are essential to the profession. But did you know that our team member Camille Erickson, head of Accounting and Human Resources, also produces beautiful paintings and is an enormously talented artist in her own right? We are astounded by Camille’s talent, and her ability to use both her left and right brain with equal flourish. We interviewed her to discover more about her work.
When did you first begin to draw/sketch and paint?
My mom is an artist and teacher and she had me drawing and painting as soon as I could hold a brush or pen in my hand. My first drawing that she kept is from under the age of 1. Although, I became very interested in art when I was in high school. I took classes in jewelry, drawing and painting and that is where I realized this was something I had a passion for. I then studied painting and drawing for my undergraduate degree, followed a number of years later by a master’s degree in accounting.
How did you learn to draw/sketch/paint?
I learned to draw and paint by watching my mom, taking classes, watching the great Bob Ross, and watching other family members of mine who are jewelers, cartoonists, and painters.
Did anyone in particular teach or inspire you to design your creations?
Besides the constant exposure to my mom, family members and the art galleries my mom took me to as a child, some great 20th century painters, Wayne Thiebaud, Chuck Close, and Edward Hopper, inspire me. I especially like Chuck Close’s prints and that got me interested in Japanese wood block printing (ukiyo-e) and etching. I learned this printing technique from a master Japanese printer at the Center for Book Arts in New York.
Do you still love painting as much as when you first began?
I do love painting even more than I did when I first began. I was just learning the mechanics of painting, how to mix color, how to prepare a canvas, and how to draw with paint. Now, when I see other people’s work I have more of an appreciation and love for what other artists create. I was at the Getty Museum with our office a few weeks ago and I saw these amazing paintings by Peter Rubens. I was particularly inspired by the under-painting/wash and detail in which he had painted the figures in a deep brown paint – they reminded me of a drawing. I see the world differently through the eyes of an artist and I love that art can evoke emotions.
Camille Erickson, ‘Salt Box’
Why do you paint? What inspires you?
I am inspired to paint; make jewelry, ceramics, prints; or draw a simple sketch because I see something that I want to make or remember. I would say one of my biggest inspirations is light and how light interacts with the space around us. In school, I was trained in classical figure painting, drawing, and sculpting, although lately I am not focused on the figure as much.
How does painting influence your professional work?
Working in an architecture firm like Sparano + Mooney Architecture is truly the best of both worlds. Kind, interesting, artistic and creative people surround me all day, while I am doing accounting, and this reminds me of the importance of staying creative. It is inspirational to be surrounded by the building models and the creative process that these “ideas” originate from and that is truly amazing.
Have you ever exhibited your artwork?
Yes, I have exhibited my work over the years. In high school I was in a student show at the University of Utah’s Museum of Fine Art. I have also shown my work in Helper, Utah; The Arts Student’s League, New York; and the Utah Women’s Artist Exhibition, Utah.
What is your favorite subject matter?
That’s pretty tough to narrow it down to a single subject matter. By medium I could select it: for painting and drawing it is the human figure, with metalsmithing and sculpture I am drawn to functional objects, and with printmaking it is still life objects.
What is your favorite medium?
I paint in oil; however, these days my favorite medium is clay. I just started working with clay this past summer.
Camille Erickson, "ukiyo-e woodblock print"
Do you like talking about your artwork and talent or do you prefer to keep it private?
For many years, I didn’t like talking about it, and I think that has changed, as it has become a more direct part of my life. I am producing work every week and that makes me more interested in discussing it. For me, sharing it is the best way to get objective feedback and helps me to continue working.
When is your favorite time to draw/sketch/paint, and do you have a favorite place to draw?
My favorite place to work is any place that I can remove all other distractions and really focus. Sometimes, that is at home, other times my studio, or just sitting somewhere. I draw at home every night. Since my son entered the 1st grade he picks an image for me to draw on his lunch bag. We started this tradition almost three years ago. This has been one of the best ways for me to stay active with drawing. My high school art teacher Marjorie McClure required us to draw daily in a sketchbook. I remember, with such dread, having to produce those sketches and trying to find a subject matter to draw. I still have all of those sketchbooks and it is great to have them to look back to.
Camille Erickson, "Master Chief Lunch Bag"
How do you title your work?
I generally don’t title my work. Mostly because it is not something I feel I am particularly good at. I tend to use titles, like “figure drawing 1” or “painting of a pear.” I know that isn’t very creative and my husband, who is a writer, is always encouraging me to explore the titles a bit more. I agree with him that a good title can actually make a piece of art better.
Would you like to add any closing thoughts?
Thank you Mom for dragging me to the museums and libraries as a kid and exposing me to art. I’ll never forget going to my first nude figure drawing class with my mom when I was barely 16 years old. Or how she would have us look across a rainy day landscape and pick out the colors and brush strokes like it was a painting!
We are so grateful to count Camille as a member of the SMA team and can't wait to see what she creates next...
ADRIAN VILLAR ROJAS AT LA MOCA
ADRIAN VILLAR ROJAS AND SPARANO + MOONEY ARCHITECTURE CREATE “THEATER” AT MOCA
DECEMBER 11, 2017
Sparano + Mooney Architecture and our team of Los Angeles architects and designers have established a fantastic working relationship with The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, and we were delighted when the institution approached us to provide architectural services and interior remodeling for their latest exhibition of cutting-edge contemporary art, titled Adrián Villar Rojas: The Theater of Disappearance. We have also collaborated with MOCA on acclaimed shows by Matthew Barney and of works from the 1990s at the museum, and were more than happy to partner on this occasion to bring Villar Rojas’ eclectic and boundary-defying art to The Geffen’s savvy audience.
For this show, Sparano + Mooney Architecture worked with Villar Rojas’ proposed layout for the exhibit, made modifications in order for it to comply with current codes, such as building and fire, and also collaborated with structural engineers to ensure columnar components of the space held up.
Adrián Villar Rojas (b.1980) is a South American artist whose work embodies the abstract, abject and ephemeral. His object-based “environments” and gallery-specific interventions exist in a liminal space void of typical past/present/future dichotomies. Food waste, raw meat, concrete, geological formations and flora and fauna are juxtaposed in his work, and the viewer is asked to contemplate at what stage a “work of art” is created. Is it when the items are conceived? Installed? When they are revealed to the first visitors? Or when they break down, morph and decay? These so-called “post-human” artworks – some of which are inert sculptures, some organic totems and manufactured fossils, some inorganic relics – certainly defy canonical, art historical categorization. And, perhaps that is Villar Rojas’ motive: to treat the exhibition space as an evolving realm that promotes decomposition and obsolescence of these alien art forms, and to comment critically on the commercial nature of the institutional art world. Though the work may be at times obscure, there is nevertheless a romanticized notion to his approach. Villar Rojas creates art that is at once otherworldly and visceral and in doing so, we are confronted with contemplating uncomfortable truths about our own material existence in time and space.
Villar Rojas’ approach to curating his work is unique, but is strikingly similar to how we approach our own work as contemporary architects and designers. Villar Rojas produces art that is uncompromisingly site-specific; he often spends a great deal of time in the spaces he will exhibit his work in order to understand the limits and potential of these architectural interiors, and to garner as much understanding of the social, cultural, geographical, and institutional contexts as possible. In this way, Villar Rojas is able to consider the “poetics of space” and how a venue’s structural setting deeply affects a visitor’s perception of his work. At Sparano + Mooney Architecture, we explore hyper-specific cultural cues culled from each project’s client, program and/or site. This research is used to provide the architectural order and transcend convention. We too seek to construct a more meaningful relationship between modern architecture and the experience of its inhabitants. Therefore, the underlying organization of our work is a deliberate choice to position people at dynamic centers of architecture and to let space and form unfold around a continuous path of travel. Though our fields are quite different, we feel an affinity to the approach used by Villar Rojas and are pleased to have been a part of this exhibition at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. We look forward to the next opportunity to collaborate with this awesome Los Angeles museum and cultural institution!
WABI-SABI CONSTRUCTION UPDATES
CONSTRUCTION UPDATES FROM THE WABI-SABI HOUSE
SEPTEMBER 28, 2017
We are excited to report that construction is well underway on the Wabi-Sabi House in Emigration Canyon, Utah! Our Salt Lake City architects and designers have been hard at work in collaboration with our wonderful and inspirational clients, as well as our dedicated team of consultants – including Living Home Construction and Structural Design Studio – to make the dream of a tranquil, mountain modern home a reality.
Wabi-sabi is an ancient tenet of Japanese aesthetic culture. It is a philosophy of beauty that embraces the imperfect, the incomplete and the transient. Wabi-sabi architecture espouses simplicity and honesty in expression, those modest things in our world that express beauty as they weather and age. In conceiving this house and while walking the site, the work began to coalesce around an idea of textures, materials, and expressed joinery and connections.
This 4,000 square foot home, designed for a young family, celebrates a unique elevated Utah mountain site with a rare and direct connection to nature. The design was conceived as an expression of both static and dynamic elements, referencing the relationship of the mountain and the vegetation and wildlife on the site. The entry design is a perforated wall with segmented views of the site and surroundings. Upon passing into the architecture, the occupant is presented with a long corridor offering a path lit by a skylight running the full length of the volume and illuminating a textural wall, and is also presented with a framed view of the mountains to the west. As one progresses through the space, the shift in program is presented with the public volume in line directly with the canyon view. The architecture includes a basement level that incorporates a creative office space with a private outdoor patio. The living-room fireplace is mirrored by an outdoor fireplace and both create places for family and friends to gather.
Materials, including CorTen steel, were selected to reference the site and are crafted to express their constructed connections and detailing. This approach to materials extends to the selection of interior elements, fixtures and furnishings. The vegetated roof is planted with local grasses and serves to camouflage the home design into its context. The residence sits within its mountain site with minimal disturbance to the landscape, which is augmented with native and drought-tolerant plants and trees.
With excavation, concrete and sub-rough plumbing complete, the project is moving into framing with a critical stage – steel – currently in progress. We are very happy with how the texture and finish of the board-formed concrete has turned out, and look forward to seeing how this feature will relate to our exterior wood cladding finish in the coming months. The steel wall trusses require a few weeks of detailed site assembly and field welding. The project is now officially “out of the ground”, and one can begin to get a sense of form, scale and views that will be captured by the architecture on this spectacular mountain site in Utah.
We look forward to bringing you more updates as the home’s construction progresses. The anticipated completion is July 2018 – watch this space! We are specialists in contemporary residential projects in the American West and would love to hear from you if you are interested in bringing your own vision of your dream home to life!
LOOP BENCH
LOOP BENCH
AUGUST 07, 2017
For Sparano + Mooney Architecture, great design at all scales is at the heart of our practice. We are urban architects based in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. As you may know we are engaged in developing architecture, urban designs and products and deliver these thoughtful, innovative and contemporary designs to accommodate our client’s vision and lifestyle. Yes, we design large-scale buildings – museums, performing arts centers, recreation and aquatic centers, mountain-modern residences, and centers of worship – but we also apply our creativity to smaller scale manifestations of our architectural mindset and are eager to continue developing this facet of our practice. This is why we were thrilled when a client contacted us about our design competition winner, the Loop Bench, and commissioned us to produce one as a memorial for installation in a specially-selected spot along the beach strand in the City of Manhattan Beach, California.
Originally conceived for the City of Manhattan Beach Cultural Arts Division, our Loop Bench prototype takes the native ocean flora along the Manhattan Beach coastline as its point of departure. Our process for the design of this bench began with a survey of the natural jetsam and flotsam that presents itself on the shoreline of Manhattan Beach every day. This quotidian detritus revealed the presence of simple aquatic forms of “soft-shelled” sea life with many of the organisms having a hollow, tube-like architectural structure. Seaweed, kelp and other plant material were among the forms studied for the design.
The bench is a simple, solid concrete “loop” derived from a section or slice of the basic tube structure of much of the sea flora studied. It is curved with a slight undulation in the long direction and square in the short direction with eased edges. It is constructed using a mold and cast with high strength, fiber-infused concrete known as Organicrete®, which requires no metal reinforcement, with its overall dimension being approximately 2’ x 9’ and a weight of 1,600 lbs. The architects selected a bright white concrete, hand-toweled smooth with a power buffed, glossy finish on all surfaces. The bench structure sits on a deeply recessed, 1” high concrete plinth creating a visual separation from the sidewalk and a deep shadow line around the base of the bench. If desired, text can be etched into either the top or side of the concrete surfaces. The first bench that has been completed was installed for the aforementioned client on the Manhattan Beach Strand this summer.
We would be delighted to discuss a bespoke commission of the Loop Bench with you! It is designed to be situated outside, so would make an ideal and beautiful addition to any private project, and would be equally suited to a civic location such as a transportation hub, public park, or recreation center. Or, alternatively, there is no reason this sleek design object couldn’t also be placed inside as an objet d’art. We worked with Tyler Blaine of Modern Craftsman to help create this unique piece, and retain the mold for the work, meaning we are able to produce additional benches upon request.
We are also delighted to announce that this newly constructed project has recently garnered a Design Arts 2017 Award! A juried exhibition of the work will be on display at the Rio Gallery between September 8 – October 20, 2017, with a closing reception and celebration on October 20 from 6-9pm to coincide with Salt Lake Gallery Stroll and Salt Lake Design Week. We hope to see you at the reception and look forward to discussing the award-winning Loop Bench with you then, or give us a call in the meantime if you’re interested in commissioning your own Loop Bench!
SEARCHING FOR MEANING IN ARCHITECTURE
SEARCHING FOR BEAUTY, MEANING AND TRUTH IN ARCHITECTURE AND MUSEUMS
MAY 08, 2017
It should be no secret that, as architects specializing in arts and culture projects in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and the American West, we adore museums. Their hallowed galleries contain priceless paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings and objets d’art, but they also possess the residual stories of the artists themselves, countless visitors who pass through, talented curators who bring the exhibits to life, and architects who have helped realize those storied spaces. It is a pleasure and a privilege to roam the creative displays and learn from some of the most influential museum designs in the world, just as Anne Mooney and John Sparano did recently on their European tour of London and Paris where they visited Sir John Soane’s Museum and the Tate Modern in London and the Louvre, Picasso Museum and the Rodin Museum in Paris. The inspiration drawn from these stalwart institutions absolutely helps inform our own design process, and we are excited to incorporate new ideas into our own museum projects, such as the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) at Utah State University.
Sir John Soane’s Museum is truly a hidden gem in London. Founded by one of the most inventive architects of the 18th and 19th centuries, Sir John Soane (1753-1837), the museum was originally a home, office, architecture academy and space for Soane’s collections. Rebuilding and adding on to the property over a number of years, Soane embarked on an ambitious project: to turn the space into an educational monument to architecture and a museum of architectural models, casts and drawings organized in a rational, if eclectic, manner. Soane also graciously opened his collections and home to students, hoping the examples presented would aid their studies. In 1833, Soane bequeathed his home and its substance to the public and asked that they be preserved and kept open and free after his death. As he intended, his collections continue to inspire. For us, this project is all about the architectural section: letting light into a mass through strategic cuts in the architecture’s floor, walls and roof. The gallery walls open to reveal Soane’s immense collection, and open yet again to connect spaces through carefully considered sight lines. The organization of the museum may seem chaotic, but in fact, Soane designed the juxtapositions carefully and purposefully to affect the visitors’ experience of his collections. We were in awe of the space and its contents.
Since it opened in 2000 in the former Bankside Power Station, the Tate Modern in London has consistently broken attendance records with its thought-provoking exhibitions of international modern and contemporary art. Swiss architects Herzog + de Meuron converted the industrial structure while retaining much of the original character of the building, and also completed an addition to the museum that opened this year to house new gallery, performance, education and administrative spaces. The iconic power station, with its brick construction, imposing central Boiler House Tower chimney, and broad edifice that abuts the River Thames, has welcomed more than 40 million visitors and has presented acclaimed exhibitions by artists such as Ai Weiwei, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Rauschenberg and Damien Hirst; the permanent collection is home to an entire room of moody Mark Rothko paintings, and controversial installations have included Doris Salcedo’s subterranean chasm titled “Shibboleth”, a giant crack in the Turbine Hall’s concrete floor into which overzealous patrons (in)famously slipped and fell. The Tate Modern is impressive in its scale, use of materials, and successful conversion of historic architecture into a beacon of modern art and architecture. It beckons us time and time again.
The Picasso Museum, or the Musée National Picasso, in Paris has recently re-opened after a major renovation and it is a delight, as well as an important example of the state’s commitment to preserving and showcasing creations by one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. The museum is unique in its arrangement of the works within the asymmetrical footprint of the historical building, which was built in the 17th century as a private courtyard home in the Italian Baroque and French classical style. The challenges of exhibiting in variable gallery spaces are embraced rather than fought, resulting in a quirky yet intimate setting for Picasso’s paintings, sculptures, and drawings and his personal collection of art by old and contemporary masters. As you move higher in the building, the rooms become smaller in scale and labyrinthine. Each room is a surprise waiting to be discovered, offering unique ambiances around every corner and glimpses into other spaces.
After visiting these exceptional treasure troves of art and architecture, we are inspired to continue work on our own museum project: The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University. As part of the USU Fine Arts Complex, the renovation to NEHMA includes the design of a three story, approximately 7,600 SF addition on the west side of the existing campus museum as well as renovation of parts of the existing museum. The expansion’s primary goal is to provide a new entrance for the museum, creating a stronger campus presence and connection. It will also: allow for the relocation of administrative offices to a new area in order to provide research space for scholars and curatorial staff; provide shared presentation and teaching and learning spaces suitable for visiting artists, elementary school visits, seminars and classes in art, design and art history; increase available climate-controlled, secure storage and exhibition space for the collection; and preserve emergency and loading dock access for operational personnel. Construction is underway with projected completion in 2018.
Our trip to London and Paris was an incredible learning experience and we are excited to apply these lessons to our practice and projects. Do you love museums? Do you have a museum, arts or culture project you want to begin? Give us a call and let’s talk art and architecture!