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A Gymnasium to Celebrate People with varying “Ranges of Physical Abilities.”
Friends School Gymnasium
Detroit, MI
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Project Facts Project Site Location
The project site is located on St. Aubin Street North of Lafayette in Detroit, Michigan. It is adjacent to Friends’ School in Detroit, an existing elementary school based on the montesory system.
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Client
Friends’ School of Detroit
Building Design
Program 16,400 Free-Standing Gymnasium Addition that will accommodate the physical therapy and educational components for people with a varying range of physical disabilities. Programs Include: 1. NBA size Basketball Court, 2. Physical Therapy, 3. Education/Seminar/Counseling Rooms, and 4. Climbing Walls. What is important in this project is that this facility is not dedicated solely to people with physical limitations. Instead, it is intended to encourage and support all ranges of physical abilities to interact together and to play together. For example, the climbing wall allows someone with lower body mobility to compete with someone with little or no lower body mobility. Budget + Funding Project Costs Construction Costs
$5,800,000 $4,200,000 ($250/sq.ft.)
Sources of Funding: Public (City, County, State, + Federal) Funds, Private Foundation Grants, Donor Pledges, and School Endowment. Site Characteristics + Demographics
The site is located on St. Aubin, a north-south secondary street. Friends’ School of Detroit is adjacent to the intersection of St. Aubin and Lafayette, which is a major east-west artery that connects the downtown area of Detroit with the southern portion of the east-side residential neighborhoods. This area of the “east-side” is presently one of the more intact residential areas of the city. It is a combination of 1. small scaled single-family homes from the turn of the century, 2. large planned horizontal and vertical communities which were a part the 50’s and 60’s redevelopment, and 3. newly renovated “loft housing” on its periphery. The residents of this area are diverse in age, race, and economic resources. However, there is a larger developing population on either end of the “age bracket.” In other words, the area has a growing elderly and youthful population. Friends’ School envisions this gymnasium accommodating both populations. (Please see section: “Site + Neighborhood Description”) Zoning + Site Constraints
The area is primarily zoned for residential with institutional uses determined on need and density.There are no other unusual zoning restrictions for this building type in this area of Detroit. Construction Systems Primary Structure: Secondary Structure: Primary Wall Panels: Secondary Panels: Roof System: Schedule
Steel Cast in Place Reinforced Concrete Eternit Eflex: High performance fiber-reinforced building panels Aluminum Panels Standing Seam Metal Roofing
Presently the Project is in the fundraising stage. Drawings: To be Completed December 2004 Construction: To begin April 2005
Section Perspective (01)
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What is important in this project is that this facility is not dedicated solely to people with physical limitations. Instead, it is intended to encourage and support all ranges of abilities to interact and to play together. For example, the climbing wall allows someone with lower body mobility to compete with someone with little or no lower body mobility.
The residents of the area surrounding the School are diverse in age, race, and economic resources. However, there is developing a larger population on either end of the “age bracket.” In other words, there is a growing elderly and youthful population. Friends’ School has an internal need for a gymnasium, but also, they have envisioned it accommodating both populations. Because of the School’s outreach programs, it has also become aware of the inadequate services available within city limits for the physically limited urban dweller. What is important in this project is that this facility is not dedicated solely to people with physical limitations. Instead, it is intended to encourage and support all ranges of abilities to interact and to play together. For example, the climbing wall allows someone with lower body mobility to compete with someone with little or no lower body mobility.
One of the initial intentions of the program and design is to shift the idea, and terminology of “people with disabilities” toward “people with varying ranges of abilities.” In other words, the design celebrates and engages the mechanisms and activities that exist for varying levels of ability.
Programmatic Intentions
View (2) Southwest Along Macomb Street
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The design process is rooted in the notion of “montage”—defined here as the strategic searching, revealing, and uncovering of relationships and connections through the act of cutting and reassembly.The events of this building are woven and interwoven with other events and actions. Snow Fall
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ifts
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Climbing Walls on the interior and the exterior. Viewports connect the interior climber with the exterior climber. These walls allow someone with lower body mobility to compete with someone with little or no lower body mobility.
Key To Spaces 1. Main Gymnasium Floor 2. Climbing Walls 3. Physical Therapy 4. Education/Seminar/Counseling 5. Translucent Resin Bleachers
Montage of “Events....”
Translucent resin Bleachers
The space of the child.... The inhabitable space of the child has a finer grain than the space of a room. It includes the space under a dining room table, or perhaps the space under a chair or a stairway.This project, which is attached to an elementary school, looks to these spaces as a way to understand spaces as a sectional layering—spatial striation.
Braille is embedded in the floors of the side-lines of the gym, the main lobby, as well as the built-in benches.The participant in this architecture could conceivably read the surfaces of the building.
Surface Read
Swings
Sand Intermediate Process Diagram
Play with the building....not solely in the building....
3 Design Intentions....
3 2 Snow Accumulation
The site of the building now serves as the playground for Friends’ School Elementary. In response to this site condition, the proposed design views the building as something “you can play with,” as opposed to being solely a building “you play in.” The building becomes a place where swings are apart of its structure, the ground becomes sand (a sandbox), a portion of the exterior becomes a climbing wall or a skateboard ramp, etc....
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4 Transitory Space Space of the Child Snow Fort?
Section Perspective (01)
The building is designed so that snow will collect leaving a space between it and the building (a snow fort?).
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View (3) Vehicular Approach
Section Perspective (02)
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Key To Spaces 1. Main Gymnasium Floor 2. Entry Lobby 3. Physical Therapy 4. Education/Seminar/Counseling Behind Bleachers 5. Translucent Resin Bleachers 6. “Sand Box” 7. Swings 8. Removable Skateboard Ramps + Advanced Climbing Wall
Macomb
Views 1+2
North
View Towards North Therapy 11
Views 3 + 4
St. Aubin
Site Plan Detroit River
Lafayette
Key To Major Spaces
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
Downtown Detroit
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Play Courtyard
Existing School
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Braille is embedded in the floors of the side-lines of the gym, the main lobby, as well as the built-in benches.The participant in this architecture could conceivably read the surfaces of the building.
Vertical slots align through the entire building including the exterior walls. These visual “sight/site/cite� lines are positioned to celebrate the height of the wheel chair.
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Residential Neighborhood
Entry Lobby Gymnasium Physical Therapy (Mezzanine Above) Bridge to Existing School (Above) Education/Seminar/Counseling Rooms Ramp Entry from Community Side Climbing Walls Swings Sand Skateboard Ramp
Existing Church
Existing Parking + Drive
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“Light Gills”
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“Eternit Eflex” Panel System
Play Courtyard
Existing School
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Existing Elementary School
Spatial Striation
The site of the building now serves as the playground for the elementary school. Thus the proposed design views the building as something “you can play with,” as opposed to being a building “you play in.”
Existing Playground East Elevation
East Elevation Perspective
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Existing Elementary School
West Elevation Climbing Walls on the interior and the exterior. Viewports connect the interior climber with the exterior climber. These walls allow someone with lower body mobility to compete with someone with little or no lower body mobility.
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Clerestory above the bleachers
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Existing Playground
The design celebrates and engages the mechanisms and activities
that exist for varying levels of physical ability.
View toward South Therapy
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The mapping of events and rituals that we engaged in the preliminary design process was intended to use design as a form of analysis to change our “mind set.” It was not an attempt to ”understand what it is like” to be in a wheelchair or to be blind. The events that were mapped were: climbing walls, wheelchair basketball, dancing, use of play equipment, and way-finding. It is a creative act of design.
(Dance is often used in physical Therapy.)
Map of a Dance: Detail
Map of a Climbing Wall: Detail
Mapping Events
The design process investigated varying modes of play and therapy performed through varying modes of physical ability.
View South From Second Floor Bridge
“Sand Box”
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Play with the Building, not just in the Building
View South from Second Floor Ramp
View (4) Toward Residential Neighborhood
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Abandoned Railroad Friends’ School of Detroit
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Project Site
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Site + Neighborhood Description Site Description
Neoprene Building Skin
Bridge to Friends’ School
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“Sand Box”
The site is located on St. Aubin, a north-south secondary street. Friends’ School of Detroit is adjacent to the intersection of St. Aubin and Lafayette, which is a major east-west artery that connects the downtown area of Detroit with the southern portion of the east-side residential neighborhoods. This area of the “east-side” is presently one of the more intact residential areas of the city. It is a combination of 1. small scaled single-family homes from the turn of the century, 2. large planned horizontal and vertical communities which were a part the 50’s and 60’s redevelopment, and 3. newly renovated “loft housing” on its periphery. The residents of this area are diverse in age, race, and economic resources. However, there is a larger developing population on either end of the “age bracket.” In other words, the area has a growing elderly and youthful population. Friends’ School envisions this gymnasium accommodating both populations.
Detail View @ Swings oit tr De r ve Ri
Removable Skateboard Ramps + Advanced Climbing Wall
View of Site Looking North at Entrance Drive View of Site Looking Southwest
Detail View @ Climbing Walls Existing Playground
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Lafayette Towers Mies Van Der Rohe, Architect
Existing Playground
View of Site Looking Northwest View of Site Looking Northeast
View Southwest towards Downtown from Site
New GM Corporate Headquarters
Thank you for your time and energy in considering this package.