An optical object to foster circulation as a physical and social act

Using a compact massing strategy to preserve open space, the exterior results from extruding the project’s largest program, an indoor track. This simple form projects an autonomous object that is paradoxically both indifferent and deferential to the surrounding archipelago of stadiums. Within this archipelago, the center serves as link between two transit stations, and a gateway to the community.

The seemingly simple site strategy belies the complex interior spatial and social conditions. Chance encounters are fostered by juxtaposing different programs, users, and spatial relationships via transparencies, atriums, and extended, generous processional routes. These routes and exciting spaces promote circulation as both a physical and social act: a means to encourage active circulation to see and to be seen. The tower is crowned with an exterior viewing platform, a fitting culmination of an optical experience that encourages awareness of the way we relate to our surroundings, each other, and our bodies.  

Juxtaposing disparate functions around atriums foster provisional heterotopias--spaces apart from themselves--to critique fitness and body culture

Geometric operations derived from the largest room, the indoor track, order the building's plans 

L15 Track and Tennis Courts  

L8 Basketball Court and Therapy Center  

L5 Childcare, Classrooms, and Computer Labs 

L2 Library, Subway Entry, Member Services, Diving Atrium 

Trussed Tube Perimeter Structure with Spanning Floor Slabs (L)
Processional Circulation (R)  

Processional Circulation routes promote exercise and chance social encounters 

An Urbanism of Stadia Objects: the building references the context of sporting facilities and anchors new Willets Point axis while retaining its figural autonomy 

Elevations in Relation to Citifield Stadium
Vertical fins modulate the simple extrusion of the largest function, the indoor track

Long section juxtaposes disparate functions, provoking a sense of sociability and self awareness within this city in a building 

Tennis courts above and basketball court below