Oak Hill Park Community Building
Danville, California

For a remote park in the Town of Danville, at the end of a canyon a-gainst the western flanks of Mount Diablo, LDA is designing a Community Building. The focal point of Oak Hill Park is a large lake, highlighted but a fountain. Heavily forested and surrounded by rocky grasslands, the Park is an island in the middle of a semi-rural com-munity of stately homes on large lots.

The Community Building is dominated by a multipurpose room overlooking the lake that will become, at the request of the building committee, a stunning location for weddings and other social affairs. From this request, LDA has created a modest sized room that opens onto a series of cascading terraces overlooking and backdropped by the lake. A glass wall blurs the line between inside and outside, letting in the incomparable view and inviting visi-tors to enjoy the entire Park.

The second half of the project is a wing housing 3 classrooms with a focus on arts programs. Located adjacent to the Tot Lot, this part of the building is deliberately low and unassuming, in order to familiarize toddlers to the scale of classroom buildings they will soon attend. This part of the building is lit by ample skylights and a broad operable wall that, again, plays to the joining of inside with the outside.

Tucked under the existing sycamore and oak tree canopy, the building follows the City Fathers’ wishes to recall the gabled old west roofs of the Town’s central core, yet stays low to respect the natural aspects of it’s rural setting of riding trails and backyard stables.