MetroABQ Blog

Welcome to world-renowned Architect Predocks New Urbanist-inspired La Luz del Oeste, a wonderful & community built amid five acres gardens & greenspaces, sitting upon acres of forever Open Space along the Rio Grande Bosque.

Architect Predockalso known for local projects like the Rio Grande Nature Center, the Aperture Center at Mesa del Sol & George Pearl Hall School of Architecture on the University of NM Campus (pictured Below)-designed La Luz del Oeste early in his 50+-year career, between 1968-1972.

The Rio Grande Nature Center sits serenely in the middle of the MetroABQ's North Valley, surrounded by almost 800,000 people. Designed by Architect Antoine Predock, it is a stark departure from many of his other projects, namely the George Pearl Hall, below, & La Luz, above.

From the Society of Architectural Historians SAHArchipedia: Located on Central Avenue, along the universitys southern edge and across the street from the earlier school (a converted furniture store), George Pearl Hall at once mediates between the campus and the city, and recasts the image that John Gaw Meem had codified in the 1930s for this pueblo on the mesa.

Antoine Predock attended the University of New Mexico (UNM) from 1954 until 1960, before then earning his architecture degree from Columbia University in 1962, and he says that the invited competition to design the new School of Architecture and Planning was one he had to win. While the design evolved over the eight years it took to complete the project, in response to changing budgets and the programmatic addition of a library, Predock held to his original intention to create a building that would teach students about the making of architecture.