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Rec Meets High-Tech:
Suburban Complex Offers
Place for Leisure and Learning
by Denise Liebowitz
Main façade of the Southern Regional Technology & Recreation Complex.
A new breed of recreation center has arrived in commu- two to ninety-two years old. The Sorg team got it before
nities around the country. Once focused on organized we even put pen to paper.”
sports and gyms designed to keep restless kids off the
street and out of trouble, today’s neighborhood recreation “We have done quite a few of these recreation
centers foster an intergenerational culture of healthy centers starting with the Kennedy Recreation Center in
lifestyles, sustainable wellness, nutrition, and exercise. DC,” recalled Suman Sorg, FAIA, founding principal
Residents of Fort Washington in Prince George’s County, and chief designer of the firm that bears her name.
Maryland, wanted not only this new style of recreation “When we were selected by the Maryland-National
center, but also a community amenity that offered learning Capital Park and Planning Commission, they wanted
opportunities and technology training—a place that not and we wanted to do something different from what
only attracted bored teenagers but that also got everyone had been done here before. In the past, many of these
in the neighborhood off the couch and out of the house. suburban recreation facilities were done very traditionally
with bricks and mullioned windows—they all looked
“The community has been working toward this like big houses and very few architecture firms were
for decades” said Yvonne Johnson, AIA, architectural doing them.”
supervisor for the Maryland-National Capital Park and
Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) and project manager Sorg and her team envisioned a design that was
for the Southern Regional Technology and Recreation transparent, invited the public in, and connected with
Complex, which was designed by Sorg Architects and the surrounding residential neighborhood and the wooded
opened in the summer of 2013. “Early on they decided landscape to the rear of the property. “For me,” said
they didn’t want just another sports center. They wanted Sorg, “contextual architecture is really about modesty.
it to be a learning and leisure center with science and These are not McMansions,” she said referring to the
technology and a facility for learning new skills. They surrounding residential area, “they are suburban houses
wanted a place-making destination for everyone from and the scale and proportion of our building needed to
be modest.”
58 REC MEETS HIGH-TECH
