A space to gather, Aurora Pavilion pays homage to the agrarian pole barn — the working form of the farmland this land was before — while unfurling into the wing of a bird, a nod to Scissortail, the client’s first development together. Fully open-air, the 2,213-square-foot pavilion faces the pool rather than the street, joining lawn, living, and recreation into the neighborhood’s front porch and the heart of the community.
Project Statement
Before the neighborhood, there was farmland. Aurora Pavilion keeps faith with that history: its central spine takes the form of an ordinary pole barn, the working structure of the land that came before. The barn runs the full length of the building, and from it the roof unfurls, lifting like the wing of a bird caught mid-motion — at once taking flight and settling into cover. The form carries a second homage, to Scissortail, the client’s first development together and namesake of the scissor-tailed flycatcher, so the most utilitarian of rural forms becomes something light, expressive, and entirely its own.
The building is the gathering ground that gives a new community of 322 homes its center of gravity. Where most buildings present their best face to the street, Aurora turns the other way: it opens toward the pool, the heartbeat of the space, and orients every gesture to the water. Rather than an enclosed clubhouse, it is the neighborhood’s front porch — a genuinely open-air structure that treats shelter and landscape as a single continuous experience. With no walls to separate inside from out, the porch spills directly onto the pool deck, turf lawn, and play areas, letting a single family — or the whole neighborhood — occupy it at once: a parent watching children at play while others gather, lounge, or dine within the same space.
The architecture refines its rural vernacular rather than mimicking it. The unfolding roof produces a profile that reads as contemporary while remaining legible against the gabled rooflines of the homes around it. An exposed steel frame with expressed cross-bracing does the structural work in plain view, lending the space a sense of craft and tectonic honesty. A grounded base of warm brown brick anchors the composition, while board-and-batten, metal, and cedar carry the eye upward and filter light through the day.
Material restraint was deliberate. Brick, blackened steel, metal panel, and cedar were chosen for durability against constant outdoor exposure and heavy communal use, and for the way they age gracefully without finish-dependent maintenance. The open-air strategy also sharply reduces the conditioned footprint, letting the structure perform comfortably across Arkansas’s long shoulder seasons on natural ventilation and generous shade. In just 2,213 square feet, Aurora Pavilion turns a barn into a landmark — modest in footprint, ambitious in spirit, and built first for the people who use it every day.
