Santa Fe County Administrative Complex

Photos by Marble Street Studios

The new 62,000sf Administration building and a new parking structure design provides the opportunity to consolidate many Santa Fe County functions in a downtown campus. The new building design references the surrounding historic context, and creates a contextual yet contemporary identity for the new Administrative Complex.

The Administration Building is a one stop shop for multiple County departments. The design concept utilizes a naturally lit public central corridor to create an “Avenida” similar to an alley way you might duck into in downtown Santa Fe. This Avenida creates a public thoroughfare that allows equal access from both the pedestrian entrance from the plaza side and the new parking garage. The Avenida is flanked by a 2nd floor balcony with decorative steel stairs and railings and the varuous department “storefronts” that overlook the shared public lobby below, and provides controlled public access to the departments. The plan provides a separate employee access to minimize the congestion and provide security. The design provides fixed walls along the “Avenida”, around the core program of restrooms and elevators, as well as partitions between departments. This open plan provided the design team the flexibility of layout within each department.

The exterior of the building is contemporary pueblo design. The window elements directly relate to the historic designs of John Gaw Meem and allow the design to utilize daylighting but minimize unwanted heat gain. The orientation and the form of the building also passively contributes to providing natural daylight and shading to reduce heat gain and in turn promote lower energy use.

Materials are incorporated to reference the historic building fabric of the surrounding area including stucco, stone, distressed metal, and deep set white framed punched openings. The east elevation of the design incorporates stepped massing and pedestrian scale trellis portals. Historic building techniques are incorporated including flat parapets, stepped massing, large battered walls, and vernacular use of trellis portals that tie this building into the historic fabric and character of Downtown Sante Fe.

The Parking Solution is a two-level parking solution is provided with separate entrances at grade, and provide a total of 234 parking spaces. The garage elevation is minimum in height to create an amenable relationship to the existing residential buildings surrounding it. This design allows separation between public and staff parking, as well as provides an additional level of security for staff and fleet vehicles. The exterior of the parking structure is textured paint to simulate stucco, and distressed metal screens to reference the cast-iron detailing of the historic context. The elevations are designed to be open but secure. The use of naturally ventilated structure eliminates the need to mechanically ventilate the structure, which in turn reduces the energy consumption of the building. This parking area has a view of the aspen grove courtyard and plant screen to create a connection to nature (Biophilia) when in the structure, and helps to filter air around the garage.

The building is incorporated to coordinate with the existing site topography to minimize land disruption and work with the existing drainage and is designed to be a pedestrian friendly scale and relate to the surrounding buildings and streetscape. Water is always carefully considered, conserved, and celebrated in our work. The central courtyard stormwater is directed from rooftops into large acequias along the upper plaza on the main building level. The acequias carry the captured rain water to a stone “stormwater sluice,” creating a cascade of stormwater down a sloped stone embankment.

Client: Santa Fe County, Santa Fe, NM

Size: 62,000sf and site integrated parking structure. New Construction

Project design as Principal Architect at Studio Southwest Architects