SKETCHING EVENT MAY 2025

the architects Aidlin Darling Design; Andrea Cochran Landscape; and the construction management team from SC Builders.
Set within an existing oak woodland on the site of a former parking lot, the Windhover Contemplative Center is comprised of a 4,000-square-foot art gallery and a series of tranquil outdoor spaces dedicated to exhibiting Nathan Oliveira’s work as a vehicle for personal renewal. While the artist and Stanford professor passed away in 2011, the center realizes his dream that his paintings, inspired by poetry and the landscapes around Stanford, be displayed in a dedicated, contemplative space immersed in nature.
The long, narrow building, on a one-acre site, is bounded by a major campus thoroughfare, a heavily used bike path, and a large dormitory. The carefully choreographed entry sequence provides an experientially rich transition between the bustling campus and the chapel-like gallery: a crushed stone path leads visitors through a grove of ginkgo trees and past a tall wall of bamboo, allowing them to shed the outside world before entering the center. Within the building, the interior spaces merge with a series of outdoor rooms intended for quiet contemplation. Wide panes of glass and vertical fins frame views back out to the woodland and courtyards. At the rear of the building, a still reflecting pool defined by a rammed earth wall, a weathered steel screen, and a stand of bamboo are designed to quiet surrounding distractions and turn visitors’ focus on the ephemera around them. At the core of the building, a Zen-inspired courtyard opens to both the sky above and the adjacent oak woodland, offering views of a meditative labyrinth nestled among the trees beyond.