Eastside Regional Recreation Center / Perkins&Will + In*Situ Architects

El Paso’s new Eastside Regional Recreation Center is an expression of light, landscape, and culture in a fast-growing part of the Chihuahuan Desert. As the first completed projects in the larger 92-acre park, the recreation center and water park transform an extreme, high-altitude desert basin into an inviting social sanctuary for the community, with a competition-class aquatics facility, gymnasium, senior center, outdoor aquatics park, and a public art installation, Oasis Sombrio, by Dallas-based artist Brad Goldberg. The project is anchored to its rugged site with cultural and geological references to the nearby Hueco Tanks State Park, a destination for people in earlier times where they harvested rainwater pooled in the natural rock basins. Cultural artifacts, including stone carvings and petroglyphs that date back to 6000 BCE, combine with the natural environment.