324 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
Phase 2
The program of the final project was to design a new Museum of Sports and Athletics
located along the Hudson River Park on the west side of Manhattan. It was antici-
pated that the different realms that would affect the architectural outcome, such
as tectonics, landscape, museum, culture and technology would present competing
and complimentary agendas of varying importance and shifting order. The students
would establish a conceptual response and generate design parameters or a system
of constraints to ‘negotiate’ with the intelligence gained in phase one. The result of
this 'negotiation' would be an architecture of shifting 'gradients', of simultaneous
difference and continuity, an architecture of High Performance.
- Understanding the site
In understanding the site as an isolated lot removed by the very linear paths of traffic,
city edge and park, and its former life as a transfer station for garbage, Becca sought
to re-appropriate the site as a point of transition within the city. The program of a
triathlon center will re-enable the site to serve as a transfer point. The transition
between sports (swimming to biking to running) mandates a design that in turn
transfers between the water, road and city. A third layer of transfer will be carried via
the circulation, enabling movement between the city and the river while negotiating
between the interior program, the exterior program, the park and the surrounding
context. The diagram of the building on the site acts as a block, disrupting and
redirecting existing north-south flow in order to reinforce the building as a gradient
between the interior and exterior—drawing people into the building.
figure 12
To optimally achieve this vision, Becca coded the site in terms of the spatial condi-
tions developed in phase one. For example, the area where the building touches the
water, the spatial condition “submerge” was used. The key issue was to read and
understand the site using the same spatial language developed in phase one. This
coding process facilitated an easy transition from phase one to two.