ARCH602 | Kutan Ayata [Spring 2020]

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Partner: Zhiqi Sheng

Awards: Published in Pressing Matters 9

As our cities grows, the demands of contemporary urban life diminish the chance to explore outdoors on a regular basis. Certain outdoor recreational activities such as cycling, rowing, climbing, diving (and others) find new appropriations within the bounds of the city in the confines of constructed environments. While the degrees of difficulty and thirst for fitness can be satisfied in a utilitarian manner in these artificial terrains, what typically cannot be experienced in them are the totality, sublimity, and majestic qualities of the grand outdoors.

By hybridizing a contemporary program of recreational free-diving pools with the aesthetic typology of the Bernd and Hilla Becher Water Tower series, a new urban artifact emerges from its urban context. The object of the interior free-diving pools is encased within the overall reptilian exterior object of the building itself.

Everyday materials that we are already familiar with (i.e. exterior shingles and interior pool tiling) is further manipulated to create a more bizarre aesthetic, such as polymer printing the shingles to look dramatically aged an weathered and lining an iridescent film over the interior pool tiles for a more “sublime” aesthetic. Looking into Baroque topologies in plan, the recreational program of the pools are primarily condensed into a singular core near the center of he design with program acting on the perimeter. The central core of the program becomes inversed towards the top of the structure with a singular oculus, creating a level of sublimity rarely found in the design’s urban context.