Granite Reef Community & Senior Center

Recreation

The Granite Reef Community and Senior Center provides an integrated system of services, resources and opportunities to help people improve their lives, neighborhoods and community through recreation, social services, health and wellness services. The facility serves as a remarkable example of environmentally conscious design, and was instrumental in bringing about the City of Scottsdale’s policy requiring LEED Gold Certification for all its new municipal construction projects. Every aspect of the design of the Granite Reef Senior Center takes careful account of the arid desert environment that is its home. With its predominantly north/south orientation, daylight and shading are used to great effect. The sweeping brick volume at the center of the building serves as a defining element and provides tremendous thermal mass that maintains indoor temperatures within the human comfort range. At the south-facing patio, transparent solar panels are both functional (generating 4 kW while shading the patio) and are an elegant design feature. Below the panels, activity spaces visually and physically spill out onto the patio. On the roof, another solar array generates an additional 30 kW. The friendly and inviting quality of the Granite Reef Senior Center is created by its sensible circulation system, vistas into and out of activity spaces, portals to large activity rooms that are human in scale, and visually interesting and intriguing architecture.