How can you get a secondary View control to display in the same dnn skin pane as the primary view control?

Example:

left pane = navigation menu
content pane = primary view control for my module

User clicks a link on primary view control (say a category link), and the secondary view control displays - but takes up the entire page. The navigation menu in the left pane is gone now.

How can I keep all of the panes except the content pane from collapsing?

I thought about scrapping the 2nd view control and wrapping both pages into the primary view control (inside of panels or something) - and hiding / showing one or the other. But I'd rather make two user controls.