Pueblo Culture Center and Museum, Northern New Mexico, 1993
Dennis Holloway, was invited by pueblo tribal officias to collaborate with Tewa artists and intellectuals to prepare a master plan and design for a new Pueblo Culture Center and Museum, located in Northern New Mexico, to be the focus of Tewa cultural restoration and revitalization. He was also the architect of the first phase of the Center and Museum construction, the building program of which included: The Sun Tower, Artist Demonstration Workshop, Pottery and Sculpture Studios, Traditional Cooking Preparatory Kitchen, Museum with Collections Archive and Auxilliary Facilities, Theater, and Story Telling Room. The building walls are constructed with traditional mud bricks, and the supporting roof structure is round wooden beams of locally sourced peeled trees. The 4-story "Sun Tower", containing ceremonial gathering spaces and an art gallery, is the tallest adobe structure in the U.S.; steel reinforced concrete bond beams, supporting floor and roof beams, are placed at the top of each floor level, and the walls are "battered" (sloping) inward toward the top parapet. Recently, the buildings were resurfaced with mica-infused plaster, giving the buildings a shimmering appearance, recalling how the Conquistadors discribed their first sightings of the pueblo villages, which were built with glittering mica-infused mud, resulting in the Spanish description of them as "cities of gold".
Published reviews of this project:
1. Contemporary Native American Architecture, Cultural Regeneration and Creativity, by Carol Herselle Krinsky, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 108-109, 233-236
2. Contemporary Native American Architecture, by Dr. Carol Herselle Krinsky, in Khan Academy Web Site:https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-americas/native-north-america/native-american-contemporary-art/a/contemporary-native-american-architecture
3. New Architecture on Indigenous Lands, by Joyce Monice Molnar and Frank Vodvarka, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2013, pp. 162-170
