Locally, the project arrives at a critical time for Virginia Beach as it recovers from COVID-related rec center closures and, now that they’re back open, current and future staffing shortages. In 2020, VIA Design Architects completed the Virginia Beach Parks and Recreation Administration Building, which consolidates multiple offices from around town and facilitates Virginia Beach’s sustainability goals of environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and economic vitality.
Image courtesy VIA Design Architects.Īdministering all of these needs is a separate challenge altogether. In elevation, the dramatic slopes of each axial volume creates opportunities for a variety of spaces inside from airy to intimate. In plan, the building’s main axis is composed of two long volumes that saddle up to each other and contain common areas, break-out spaces, circulation, and offices. It would be too obvious to say “less is more” here, but the fact is that the less programmed today’s recreation centers have become, the closer they have gotten to actually accommodating community needs, which privilege flexibility over fixed amenity. The mathematics of the ideal recreation center have changed recently, however, measured less by how intricately they’re programmed and more by how adaptable they can be. The not-so-good ones were easy to spot because of their shabbiness, usually because of the cost of maintaining “more.” The good ones were regularly maintained and became community hubs. Pools, gyms, basketball courts, tennis courts, handball courts, playgrounds, ball fields, changing rooms, and offices-all defined spaces for specific activities.
Recreation centers used to be highly programmed places.
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