Vista, Calif. — Carrier Johnson and CULTURE, a provider of strategic design and green building services, announced the groundbreaking for a municipal building combining community and civic uses. Part city hall, part community facility, and part park, the City of Vista Civic Center is designed to be both a city landmark and community destination.

Scheduled to open in 2010, the new City of Vista Civic Center will consolidate city offices, an emergency operations center that doubles as a community room and event space, and the city council’s chambers into a single, environmentally innovative facility.

Using input from public forums, the project was designed to reflect the Vista community’s lifestyle and values, and will be a model for the many other significant redevelopment efforts currently underway in the city. The complex’s unique location lends itself to a multidimensional experience for both business and leisure activities. Design elements such as glass walls, courtyards, and a council chamber defined by a two-story waterfall, lantern room, and “light ring” — which illuminates the building at night and tracks the movement of the sun on the chamber walls during the day — deliberately blur the lines between indoors and outdoors.

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