Navajo Nation, Crownpoint, New Mexico

Above: View of the Navajo Technical University and Crownpoint as seen from our site.

Below: View of our site as seen from the entrance to the Navajo Technical University.

Physical site model showing student housing on the bottom left, community center in the middle, and mixed generational housing on the top right.

Activity Loop

Diabetes and obesitiy are two major health issues afflicting the Navajo people. The Activity Loop, with various exercise stations, incorporated into the path system encourages a healthy living style. Bike share locations provide a healthy alternative to move around Crownpoint, a town dominated by the automobile. A health clinic located within the community center provides classes on healthy living as well as physicals.

Water Flows

Through analysis of the natural flow of water off the site, housing was strategically placed in areas of low risk of flooding. Additionally, a series of check dams in these areas mediate, slow, and capture the flow of water to create a series of check dam parks for residents.

Check Dam Parks

This diagram demonstrates the varying functions of the check dam parks. While some are designed to retain water, allowing it to infiltrate, others simply attenuate flow as it travels to the next dam. These parks then correspond to the level of physical activity happening within. More active areas, such as those for games and sports, allow water to pass through while quieter areas, such as those for reading, are designed to retain water.

Check Dam Reading Garden

Plan and section describe a typical eddy dam typology for passive activity. The capture of water during rain events allows for the build up of organic material, thus encouraging a wider array of vegetation growth. This vegetation provides shade to in users, creating a habitable space within the desert landscape. In the event of flooding, the water flows through the bench and over the dry stacked wall. A detail of this wall section can be found here.

Student Housing

A view of the student housing arranged along an outcrop on the southwest side of the site. Interspersed are community gathering spaces with various programming opportunities.

Mixed Housing

The Eastern side of the site is dedicated to family and mix generational housing. These units vary from two person homes to four person homes, with the potential for eight if both halves are owned by the same family. Mixed generation families are important to the Navajo and this housing scheme allows for the growth of families over time. Each house is hinged around a cistern, filled by runoff from the roof. The roof structure is enlarged to increase surface area for water capture, maximise shade, and create community between the houses.

Mixed Housing

Student Housing Gathering Space

A perspective view studying materials in the gathering spaces among the student housing. This particular space has planters, to retain water, oriented around a central fire pit.

Hinging for Space in the Navajo Nation

Site: Navajo Nation; Crownpoint, New Mexico
Collaboration: John Lewallen
Studio Critic: Laurie Olin + Tony Atkin
PennDesign Spring 2015

The hinge offers a new strategy for responding to the dire need for housing, water, and sense of place on the Navajo reservation. By turning family residences into essentially duplexes, shared courtyards provide residents with a comfortable new space to escape the sun and strengthen familial and community bonds. The larger shared roof area means a much greater ability to capture precious fresh water during the infrequent rainstorms. A series of check dams, hinged between residents, create habitable shaded gardens due to their ability to retain water while reducing the impact of flash flooding. These gardens, as well as placing the homes along natural outcroppings on a topographically diverse site, reconnect residents to their unique landscape, offering a variety of public and private spaces and unobstructed view corridors, while still achieving a required population density.

This new neighborhood of family and student housing is hinged around a central community center, offering a variety of shared programs and spaces for a people with a deeply rooted culture of making, evidenced by the recent success of the local technical university’s fabrication lab and culinary institute. This flexible node offers a space to learn, make, and strengthen community, familial, and cultural bonds.

Hinging family and student housing around shared resources, and the entire community around a common center, the Navajo cultural traditions of making and close familial connections are nurtured in shared, shaded space.