Santa Fe University School of Fine Arts

santa fe, new mexico

type : proposal
status : complete

Project Overview
This project explores the convergence of land-form and built-form through a series of strategic tectonic moves that generate both structure and spatial narrative. Conceived as a studio arts building, the project operates as a hybrid of landscape and architecture, an integrated topography where form is derived not from figure, but from deformation, pressure, and fold.

The proposal considers how creative practices can be supported by a spatial framework that is itself expressive of artistic processes: fragmentation, juxtaposition, emergence. A folded horizontal datum gives rise to lifted plates, tapered voids, and embedded masses, creating a sequence of sheltered studios, outdoor courtyards, and informal zones of congregation.

Design Strategy
The building is embedded in a pleated terrain, where sloped planes and planar seams define both architecture and landscape as part of the same operative system. This pleated field is not a literal mimicry of topography, but a constructed ground that negotiates between natural logic and architectural intention. The result is a series of sculpted voids and emergent forms that frame views, shape light, and orchestrate circulation.

Between these horizontal tectonics and the angular surfaces of rising built mass emerges the fissure: a dynamic interstitial condition where architecture reveals its internal structure and spatial relationships. These fissures are not only physical gaps, but conceptual ones, allowing for light to enter, sight to escape, and the rhythms of artistic production to expand outward.

Circulation and Spatial Organization
The layout reveals a sequence of layered public and private zones, academic spaces, art studios, and social gathering areas, stitched together by a series of exterior walks, ramps, and stepped transitions. The use of inclined roof planes and protected undercrofts reinforces the sense of movement through terrain rather than across a floorplate.

Interior and exterior relationships are blurred by threshold conditions: overhangs that press low to the earth, apertures that slice the roof plane, and voids that draw the sky downward into the project’s center. These moves are formal but not decorative, they are spatial decisions driven by light, access, and experiential choreography.

Material Implied Logic
Though rendered here in study model materials, the tectonic expression suggests a dialogue between earthbound mass and industrial surface. The vertical forms read as folded metal, implying a skin that resists and reflects, while the grounded volumes suggest concrete or rammed earth, anchoring the proposal to site and time. This duality of material intent reflects the conceptual duality of the project itself: the structural permanence of architecture and the experimental temporality of creative practice.

Conclusion
This design proposal is a spatial and conceptual landscape for making, a terrain where architecture becomes part of the creative act. Rather than occupying the land, the project participates in it, folding up from the ground and opening itself to the forces around it. Through its careful negotiation of landscape geometry, circulation, and tectonic language, the project becomes both a container for and an expression of the artistic processes it supports.

© [wpsos_year] Ken Marold USA, Inc. All rights reserved.