The Pavilion

Bend Parks & Recreation District

Built for year-round play, this open-air recreation and event center creates an inviting community atmosphere and serves as an international model for the expression of how elementally elegant a building’s fundamentals can be.

Size: 30,000 sf + 10,000 sf support structure
Location: Bend, OR

Awards:
2021, IOC IAKS Awards, Innovative and Sustainable Sports and Leisure Facility, Bronze
2017, AIA Portland Design Awards, Merit
2017, Athletic Business, Facility of Merit

Both highly functional and iconic, The Pavilion sports complex features an iconic canopy sheltering an NHL-size ice rink that in warmer months serves soccer, skateboarding, basketball and other sports. Support facilities provide spaces for equipment rentals, locker rooms, concessions and a multi-purpose room.

The Pavilion embodies an “extraordinary clarity to the design idea. . . simple, clean and powerful.”

David Sorg
Juror for the 2017 Athletic Business awards

The structural steel trusses are enclosed with a cement-panel fascia and a soffit of plywood smoothly crafted in 5,000 individually installed slats with acoustical absorption above. The use of wood provides visual warmth and references Bend’s natural environment and history as a mill town.

The Pavilion complex offers a park-like setting with a covered gathering shelter, sculptural seating, fire pits and an adjacent terraced courtyard. To achieve the client’s directive for a bold civic gesture, the roof form is expressed as single sharply contoured plane rising from the gently sloping site. Winter evenings bring the facility to particularly glowing life.

The fritted perimeter wrap — made from highly durable ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) screens the desert’s punishing prevailing winter winds and summer sun.

The support building and shelter exteriors are enclosed in a rainscreen system with painted cement-panels and durable steel plate finish at the vulnerable lower surfaces.