Adjaye Associates-designed contemporary art center has been opened to the public yesterday in San Antonio, Texas. Named Ruby City, the new building comprises an art center with three public spaces located on Camp Street in downtown San Antonio, Texas.

Commissioned by the Linda Pace Foundation, a 1,300-square-metre art center houses the Foundation’s growing collection of more than 800 paintings, sculptures, installations and video works by contemporary artists from around the world. The $16-million project has been privately funded by the Linda Pace Foundation.

Adjaye made Linda Pace's dream real for Ruby City which has emerged as the vision and mandate of the Foundation's founder and dedicated art collector Linda Pace - who died in 2007 - sketched the initial inspiration for the ruby structure after waking from a dream.

Adjaye Associates revealed its first design concept in 2015 then released the new renderings in 2017, giving out more realistic look to the building. 

The art center is made of a series of angular surfaces that are painted with ruby color. Adjaye takes his inspiration from a sketch of a ruby structure drawn by the artist, collector, philanthropist and founder of the Foundation Linda Pace, after she saw it in a lucid dream.

Adjaye's design passionately embraces the references of the past with a new embodied form and vision. The structure features a distinctive exterior skin that will be clad in deep red panels of precast concrete with glass and mica aggregate and the structure will shimmer in the light.

"Linda Pace was a visionary and humanitarian in the trust sense. She wanted nothing more than to enrich and improve the world through art. It is incredibly humbling to be entrusted  with a piece of her legacy," said Sir David Adjaye, principal of Adjaye Associates.

"Our goal for this project has been to capture the essence of her dream by creating a space of where contemporary art inspire both artists and the wider community," he added.

The red planes are punctuated by strategically placed lenses that will overlook CHRISpark and a new sculpture garden. Largely rectangular, the building features a dramatic rooftop of sloping angles and skylights that rise to varying heights and echo cut-away spaces at the building’s base.

The entrance plaza, formed by the building’s cantilevered structure and the ground floor lobby, share the vibrant ruby color pattern establishing a dynamic and porous relationship between indoor and outdoor elements. 

A grand staircase takes visitors to a series of gallery spaces, which feature concrete floors with white walls and ceilings to allow the extensive collection to take center focus.

Adjaye Associates worked with the local teams on the project including Alamo Architects, Executive Architect - Norton Company, Project Management - and Whiting - Turner, General Contractor.

Adjaye Associates was recently commissioned to design The Abrahamic Family House on Saadiyat Island. Adjaye Associates was established in June 2000 by Founder and Principal, Sir David Adjaye OBE. 

Receiving ever-increasing worldwide attention, the firm has offices in London, Accra and New York and completed work in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

The practice’s largest commission to date, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened in 2016 on the National Mall in Washington D.C.

All images © Dror Baldinger courtesy of Ruby City and Adjaye Associates.

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