Deer Valley Rock Art Center

The Deer Valley Rock Art Center is a simple but unique building in the Phoenix landscape. The structure is constructed out of precast concrete with black rocks embedded into the façade. Combined with weathered steel, it appears as a timeless yet modern link to the native cultures of the past. The 650-square meter facility provides spaces for exhibit presentations, laboratory research, classroom teaching and curatorial preservation of ideas and materials related to the study of rock art. It's located at the base of a long earthen dam, and the building itself actually spans the flood control outlet. The architect's intent was for the funnel-like, boomerang-shaped plan geometry to serve as a metaphorical time machine connecting the visitor between the chaos of suburban contemporary Phoenix and the sanctuary of the sheltered natural desert landscape of the Hedgpeth mountainside, where a quarter mile long trail leads to over 1500 primitive petroglyphs dating from 900 - 1100 A.D.