#gracefarms

SECOND IMPRESSION

When I first visited the River Building at Grace Farms two years ago I felt a chill about the place, with its dubious program and precious design. This community center, designed by by SANAA at a purported cost of 150 million dollars, consists of five small, separate, glass-walled pavilions (auditorium, cafe, library/bookstore, basketball court, and tea house) linked with a curving steel canopy. It seemed like a very grand, very expensive folly.

Visiting again, on a chilly, sunny, fall afternoon, the building left an altogether different impression. Rather than the pavilions, it was the canopy that emerged as the primary figure, cutting an easy path through the landscape. Walking beneath it while dipping in and out of the pavilions, it shaped a lively and loosely-structured promenade. The canopy’s low flat roof allowed views to slip through from each side, and its slender steel posts -- no wider than a coffee can -- sliced them cinematically, framing stretches of the forest and horizon beyond.

The curving glass walls had seemed, earlier, terribly diagrammatic, an element intended to allow the landscape “inside” and the pavilions to “disappear.” On this day they fashioned a compelling membrane between interior and exterior, catching and compounding reflections of sky, clouds, trees and lawn, complicating the profiles of the structures, and enriching one’s walk along them. The building surrendered to the grounds gracefully, making a gorgeous modern park.