A community meeting hub with fitness components that could include a climbing wall, onsite childcare, a multipurpose classroom and an observation deck, covered by a roof that provides fresh water for lush rain gardens below.
This is from one of seven preliminary designs for a Health and Wellness campus in and around Memorial Field that 14 graduate students in the “ARC 695S: Advanced Architectural Design at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture” are conjuring up this spring semester.
“There will be seven different project designs, so you will get some wide-ranging ideas of what this property could look like, and one of the goals of the 2020 Parks Master Plan is connectivity of our parks in general, but this will be connecting Memorial Field to the rest of the park,” said Tyler Bybee, the director of Parks and Recreation. “Some of these con- cepts definitely could be used because they are studying trends in recreation construction. They are doing that due diligence and going and visiting other recreation centers in the area.”
Though currently just in the idea phase, key players in Taylor are interested in seeing a health and wellness center come together for that area, including the empty field at the corner of west Lake Drive and Davis Street, and they are meeting with students several times over the course of the semester to provide feedback.
Bybee said the city does have more immediate plans to resurface the track at Memorial Field, thanks to a grant from the St. David’s Foundation, but they hope to do much more in the future, with these designs being a key first step.
“It’s just conceptual drawings at to get the community excited about it because at some point we have defined that there is a need for that,” Bybee said. “But, mostly as a piece to start looking at funding and to generate community support.”
Nevertheless, students can offer an important perspective, said Taylor resident John McRae, a former dean of the architecture schools of both the University of Tennessee and Mississippi State University, who helped connect Bybee with the students through a former colleague.
“Students bring very fresh and new ideas,” McRae said. “I have seen consistently over my career how students can augment the work of others and to be honest, frankly come up with the most creative and innovative ideas because they are not hampered by the preconceptions they bring to the table from sometimes work experience that weren’t the best.”
In fact, Good Life Taylor, which had originally come up with the idea for a fitness park around the track at Memorial Field and had brought McRae into the planning, is putting fundraising on hold to see what the young people come up with first.
“The city was already thinking about the recreation center might be for that, we kind of had this idea, and it all synergistically came together that OK, here is the inspiration, here is an actual project,” said Good Life’s founder Julie Rydell. “It has been really cool to have so many wins for people. We get the benefit of ideas, and the students get practical experience of actually designing something.”
Architecture students Nataly Serrano and Nikki Gendelman, whose preliminary design features shaded courtyards and buildings with rounded shapes and red masonry in a nod to the existing architecture of Taylor, said it was an exciting opportunity for them.
“We want to bring people through the building and into the park and engage all aspects of the community,” Gendelman said. “It’s exciting to have real feedback, and we are only a month in.”
“It’s exciting to know that it’s not a fictional project, and we could give you some idea of what could be good,” Serrano added.
Cisco Gomes, the professor of the class, said the extreme pace of growth that Taylor and Central Texas are experiencing poses an interesting challenge for the students of how to enhance and preserve the city’s identity while changing the existing landscape.
“ This is great for us,” Gomes said. “Our first obligation is to educate the students. It makes a big difference for us to have a real community the kids can be exposed to and not just the ivory tower, to use that cliché, but it makes them think about solutions.”
