Arizona State Centennial Celebration Pavilions

JRC Design worked hand in hand with ICON to create the first four of six traveling pavilions. The pavilions are 30x60 feet in size, soft sided tents and are portable mini-museums. The traveling celebrations of Arizona are built on a Thursday night, open on Friday, run through the weekend and are torn down and packed up on a Sunday night--for business to start on Monday-- as usual. They include interactive and educational components, artifacts and models in custom cases, hundreds of stories and images of Arizona history.

Client: ICON Themed Environments / Location: Phoenix, Arizona

Metro Light Rail Station Historical Markers

At historic locations on the 20-mile light rail system, historic panels were designed specifically for individual stations and their surrounding areas. City of Phoenix markers maintain a theme of significant architecture within that station's vicinity, while City of Tempe markers primarily carry a theme of geographic areas of interest, including the Rio Salado, ASU Sun Devil Stadium/the Butte, and the historic ASU Campus.

Client: Valley Metro / Location: Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa Arizona

Arizona Science Center:
A Journey into Phoenix's Past

A Journey to Phoenix's Past is 5400 square feet of exhibits located in various areas (and on various levels) throughout the Arizona Science Center. These historical exhibits, based upon artifacts from the Phoenix Museum of History, emphasize the importance of water, farming, housing, transportation, communication, music and commerce to the early settlers in the Valley. This is believed to be the first Science Center in the country to include such a large amount of historical exhibits among its hands-on science exhibits. The juxtaposition of the exhibits helps visitors connect the theoretical experiments with real world experiences.

Client: Arizona Science Center / Location: Phoenix, Arizona

Petersburg National Battlefield / Battle of Five Forks

JRC Design, in collaboration with the National Park Service, developed a series of graphic panels to create a communicative environment that would combine the complex military, civilian and political elements into a cohesive story – essentially providing an overall snapshot of this pivotal time in history that lead to the end of the Civil War. The panels posed unique challenges, such as composing a limited (and varying) selection of imagery with content, while maintaining a consistent system that would effectively convey the complete story and it's historical significance. Other key components in the system included character biographies, battle movements and period photographs and sketches depicting unique places and events from the campaign and its aftermath.

Client: Petersburg National Battlefield / Battle of Five Forks / Location: Petersburg, Virginia

Plants and People of the Sonoran Desert Trail

One of six specialized trails in the Garden, this system of components was inspired by the Devil's Claw (Proboscidea louisianica) that was used for food, fiber, medicine and other cultural purposes in their daily lives. The trail head provides shade while viewing the overall trail fauna and flora information used by Native Americans, while the stronger trailsides seem to grow out of the ground to provide specific information.

Client: Desert Botanical Garden / Location: Phoenix, Arizona

Cienega, Red Mountain Campus

Cienegas are a nearly extinct part of the southwestern landscape. Agriculture and urbanization have taken their toll on these once common desert oases. To study how cienegas work, the Science Department at the Mesa Community College Red Mountain Campus created their own, encircled by three college buildings. The plants are from the surrounding Sonoran Desert, the reptiles and fish are rescues from the Arizona Game and Fish Department. And the water for the small creek is recycled rainwater from the roof of one of the buildings.

JRC Design was tasked with researching, writing, and designing interpretive panels to tell the story of ciengas found in nature and on the campus. Panels were also created to provide information on the creatures that would be found within the Red Mountain cienega, including desert tortoises, various lizards, butterflies, frogs, and endangered Desert Pupfish and Gila Topminnow.

Client: Mesa Community College / Location: Mesa, Arizona

Sagamore Hill National Historic Site

Located on the northern shore of Long Island near the town of Oyster Bay, Sagamore Hill was home to President Theodore Roosevelt and his family. Our site visit featured a rare November nor’easter and the recent aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. It also involved extensive questions and answers of the Park’s historian, and walking the grounds with Park staff to gain a more complete understanding of the site. After creating a comprehensive Wayside Exhibit Proposal, which included story themes and thumbnail sketches of proposed panels, we did further research including reading Roosevelt's autobiography and period newspapers. We then wrote the stories, developed site maps and illustrations, and designed the stand-alone panels to engage visitors on topics such as the President’s family life, his philosophy of “Over, under or through, but never around,” the use of the land as a working farm, his adoration for nature, and political and social issues of the time.

Reaching outside the official boundaries of the site, several panels are located in the nearby town of Oyster Bay describing places and events of significance relating to Roosevelt’s presidency. In these instances, we also corresponded with community members and local historians to ensure that accurate and appropriate messages were carried through in the panel designs.

Client: National Park Service / Location: Long Island, New York

The HeArt of The Child

A series of projected videos developed in partnership with Espiritu Loci. Each video was made for a traveling lecture series and art exhibit that displays the artwork of the child to thematically spotlight the meeting between the mystery of God and the mystery of the child. The art exhibits and lectures are created and offered by CGSUSA. They were designed to continually display as determined in collaboration with specific regional hosts.

Client: Espiritu Loci / Location: Phoenix, Arizona View the presentation here.

Crossroads at Silverbell Park interactive panels

The Crossroads at Silverbell Park site has been a crossroads and meeting place for people for thousands of years. Evidence has been unearthed of habitation dating back 3500 years, with extensive use by the Hohokam people some 800 years ago. In the late 18th Century the site was part of the trail used by Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza, who was headed to San Francisco to establish a mission and presidio fortress. The park includes foundations for a ranch house, a bunkhouse, and a cistern, which were part of the Bojórques-Aguirre Ranch, one of the last remaining examples of Territorial period Mexican- American ranches in the area. JRC Design designed interpretive panels to tell the story of the site, based upon information and images provided by the town’s park staff, and archaeology teams that were involved in its excavation.

Client: Town of Marana / Location: Marana, Arizona