PUBLIC BODY BUILDING

a new YMCA for Coney Island

2019 | MIT SA+P | critic: Rosalyne Sheih

Coney Island has a long and storied history as a repository of technology - a paradise and dumping ground of exciting pieces from world fairs and the playground of entrepreneurs and inventors: from the placement of the centennial tower in 1877 to the construction of Dreamland in 1904.

INVENTIONS + INNOVATIONS THROUGH CONEY ISLAND’S HISTORY

This proposal capitalizes on the same need for escape that fueled Coney Island from its start. The proposal is a binary—it creates both an escape from and embrace of the increasingly prolific landscape of technology.

Funded by the tech giants of the present and future to store fitness data for thousands of users worldwide, this new iteration on the Y claims this digital content as an essential program of the Y of the future, while also providing refuge from the same ubiquitous surveillance. The proposal references the Y’s lineage as a refuge for cultural and social revolutionaries and refugees, and offers it a new meaning in the context of ubiquitous computing and tracking.

bottom: MODEL: FACADE REMOVED, top: FACADE PIECES: SAMPLED FROM LOCAL ARCHITECTURES, APERTURES PLACED IN THE FRONTIER, FALSE WINDOWS DEMARCATE THE REFUGE

In an effort to remain viable during an era in which more people are finding ways to work and work-out remotely, this Y houses the changing program of fitness, creating space for the data drives interlocked with places of refuge. A gradient of digital protection and accessibility defines the design of this Y. Where one once had to go somewhere to be connected to the digital realm, the opposite is now true.

SECTIONS SHOWCASING THE INTERTWINED REALITY OF THE TWO ZONES IN THE YMCA

This Y provides for this inversion in the technologic perspective with an analog space, buried under a layer of catwalks to store data drives and steel panels to block signals.

This exists as a place for escape from constant connectivity. One could move singularly through this space if they so choose, and the means of circulation and repetition of program allow for two completely separate readings of the project.

These spaces may exist as separate paths (below), but as seen in the above section , they weave together to be inseparable in the organization of the project.

UNROLLED SECTIONS THROUGH THE TECHNOLOGICAL FRONTIER AND THE PROTECTED DATA REFUGES

The heat that the never sleeping drives produce heats the hot tubs and saunas, while light through an upper pool - perfectly positioned for streaming swimming competitions - illuminates a lower swimming hole, the slow drone of data drives akin to the white noise of crashing waves, only broken by the gentle splash of a high diver plummeting to the water below. The rock-climbing wall is positioned as a cooling tower to aid in air circulation, while a residential block reaches into the sky adorned with receivers to ensure efficient and prompt data reporting. The two zones live in constant tension and symbiotic harmony with the interstitial space below the data drives houses a middle ground – an area somewhere between the technological frontier and the analog, a slippage between the extremes.

SITE MODEL

This Y seeks to weave together the narratives of the increasingly digital world, both social and economic: stories of the necessity for a place of reprieve from technology as well as it’s inevitable integration and proliferation.

PLAN GIF - top down

ELEVATIONS

PARALLEL PROJECTION