San Antonio, TX
Partner: Adam Wells
"the Knot"
Program: café, artist studios, art exhibition space,
public pool, basketball courts, youth-sized baseball field, food truck
vendors/kiosks
The site for this project is located next to Blue Star, a
growing contemporary arts complex south of downtown San Antonio.
It includes 3 patches of land located along the San Antonio
River and is situated between the historical King William’s District and the
Southside neighborhoods.
Our objective was to create a new community center, bringing
together these two neighborhoods in an urban context, as well as linking the
site to the natural ecology of the adjacent river.
In discovering our parti, we examined the notion of horror vacui (i.e. “fear of space or the
empty”) and the knot in examples like the Book of Kells and the Gordian Knot & the Surgeon's Knot.
We designed a network of pathways or threads that flow from our main building, which occupies the
central section of the site. These threads disperse from it and fill up the
space, allowing access to the site from almost every angle. This establishes a sense
connection between the two neighborhoods in the manifestation of a new unique
common territory.
