The Conscious Community

Portola Valley Town Center is a social experiment gone right. One could tell that the community allowed itself to participate in to design influence. Unlike The City of San Jose’s City Hall that was mainly influences of the big wigs, the Portola Valley community wanted to make sure that its new structure would fit and be “as comfortable as old shoes.” There is no pretentiousness in the sight. It’s literally a center for the town; It is a place of welcomed gathering as it should be in a representative democracy. A person in the community would go to the center to check out a book from the library or simply play some basket ball, but then find himself or herself stopping by the town hall to hear the latest legislation then remark with a valuable perspective or opinion. The reason this place is so inviting is because of the site location, proportions of the building and choice of materials.

When heading to Portola Valley, one drives through the mountainous windy roads of the Sierras. It is one of those drives one takes to relieve the stresses of city life to reconnect with nature. It is a place where one is glad to have limited cell phone reception where one’s lawyer, one’s mom, and one’s bill collectors will have to just wait. After the winding mountain road one feels this sense of welcome as the town center sits in what appears to have once been a meadow. At first glance one can only tell that city hall or a library exists in what looks like very new modern barns; it’s an appropriate approach to the design of the buildings. We notice that the building roof shapes complement the gentle slopes of the rolling hills in the background. The open spaces invite the sun to shines warmly on the buildings and orchard that sits at the rear of the sight. The main entrances to each of the buildings, although not as grandiose as roman or gothic arches, are an upward flaring of the roofs with slatted sun shades on the vertical instead of the horizontal. The shade allows the building to stay cooler during the day. Then at dusk openings allow the sun to enter making the building warmer. Aside from the site location and building proportions, the Town Center truly paid close attention to the choice of materials.

The choice of materials was is king at this location. The natural wood siding with an inconspicuous clear finish so that the buildings remain with the appearance of freshness. The standing seams follow the vertical lap siding and match the metal posts in materials and paint color. The paint color choice is excellent as it blends perfectly well with the smoke colored trees in the mountainous backdrop. In the landscape, one can tell that there was a conscious effort to make the site blend with nature as much as possible. The decomposed granite paths are a common choice when creating walkways in a more natural setting. However, when keeping in mind the importance of cleanliness in the new buildings, a resin is added to hardened the paths so as to drag as little of the fine grains into the nice new buildings as possible. When concrete is used on this project, the color matches that of the decomposed concrete creating a seamless visual transition between materials along the walkways. To bring the project closer to the hearts of the people whom use it, little touches are added like leaf impressions in the concrete, and tree trunk wrapped steel columns in the insides of the buildings.

The architects of this project where successful in making the Portola Valley Town Center “as comfortable as old shoes.” It’s nice and fresh, yet comfortable and looks like it belongs there next to the halo of Redwood trees and adjacent the reopened creek which is filled with native plants. Walking around one can see the kids playing ball and people looking out from behind the curtain walls enjoying the scenery. The only thing I will critique in a less favorable fashion are the copper lamps in the library. They are a little too nautical. Other than that, the building is a success. This conscious community has what it wants; a social experiment gone right.