Visitor’s Center

The Great Kemeri Bog National Park, Riga, Latvia

2018

This was a design competition entered by Charles Beck. The design creates a small village center with buildings grouped about a square, park and a court. Avoiding the temptation to create one large mega-building, housing all of the needed functions, Charles chose to design a walk-able and human-scaled urban place. Parking is spread throughout the design on streets rather than in one large parking lot in front of the building, which could inhibit beauty. As the building is public, it is treated with a large tower and a prominent entrance featuring three arches. The tower is located at the end of a visual axis originating on the approaching road. It functions as a observation deck, providing beautiful views of the park, including near-by views of the visitor’s center and its public spaces.

The architecture is inspired by the Latvian vernacular and other wood-based traditions, including Chinese and Japanese. Charles created a monumental building that feels appropriate in a national park due to the incorporation of wood log construction, vertical wood boarding, thatched roofs, simple metal finials, and vertical proportions. The winning schemes were all deconstructive or modernist, disconnecting from the rich Latvian heritage, and incorporated flat roofs which invite leakage from rain and snow.