Government Canyon Visitor Center

Photo credit: Chris Cooper

Land Use & Community

The Visitor Center promotes community and sense of place by enhancing connections to nature through immersion in the landscape. The building itself envelops visitors passing through its native-plant courtyard, while generous walkways and porches front the landscape, providing spaces to interact with and enjoy the surrounding natural environment.

The exhibit space, the Visitor Center's main focal point, is an open-air, screened room perched amid the native-grass landscape, providing visitors with a greater sensory connection to the land than can be provided indoors. Benches and bike racks allow hikers and cyclists to enjoy the shade of porches and trees.

The creation of the Government Canyon Natural Area prevented a planned housing development from being built on this land, limiting suburban sprawl while providing public access to a region where access to public land is severely lacking. The site provides 40 miles of hiking and biking trails for community education and recreation. The entry is located along established cycling routes, and cyclists are regarded as an important user group. Parking was designed around existing vegetation, and parking can be accommodated during peak use periods using unpaved areas.

Green Strategies

• Responsible Planning
  • Ensure that development fits within a responsible local and regional planning framework
• Properties with Excessive Impacts
  • Avoid contributing to sprawl
  • Avoid properties where damage to fragile ecosystems cannot be avoided
• Support for Appropriate Transportation
  • Provide storage area for bicycles

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Our thanks to the ENERGY STAR program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and to the U.S. Department of Energy, and to BuildingGreen, Inc. for hosting the submission and judging forms.

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