“The overall design goal was to set a City Hall/Library and public space as an integrated indoor/outdoor public forum in harmony with the hilly, canyon country of the Conejo Valley, with an architecture that is at once both glassy and open to grand view vistas, and at the same time is itself anchored and in rhythm with the rolling landscape,” said David Goodale, design principal of Gonzalez Goodale Architects of Pasadena, CA.
To meet this desired aesthetic, the architects selected 20,000 square feet of various-sized pieces of honed Ticul sandstone from Southland Stone USA, Inc., for the exterior design. The stone, which Goodale describes as “burnt orange” in color, was used to provide a sense of anchoring to the landscape. “The stone was selected for its color vibrancy and its complementary nature to the colors of the surrounding hillside and canyon landscape,” he explained. “The selection was made early, and searches for other stones that were both natural and color intense yielded no comparable result.”