Parsons The New School for Design has joined with NYC Parks & Recreation via the Design Workshop, its innovative design-build studio led by graduate architecture students, to create a new pool pavilion for the Highbridge Pool and Recreation Center, a WPA–era bathhouse in Washington Heights.
Join us after the break to learn more about The Splash House.
Splash House will be the first of a five-year plan initiated by NYC Parks & Recreation to improve New York City’s public spaces. Splash House is an outdoor pavilion that allows the recreation center to remain open year-round and offer more recreational programs to the Washington Heights community. Currently, due to the Center’s dual function, recreation programs must be suspended over the summer and the interior is converted to accommodate the space required for the large number of pool–goers. Splash House reorganizes the current circulation and provides new changing and locker areas. Natural systems of light, ventilation and water make a lightweight and efficient porous structure, which remains sensitive to its historic context.
The Design Workshop provides pro bono architectural and construction services to nonprofit organizations while giving graduate architecture students the rare opportunity to both design and build a community facility. Since its establishment in 1996, Design Workshop has helped meet community-based organizations’ needs, ranging from green space to educational and recreational facilities for children. Parson’s has provided the NYC Parks and Recreation with its expertise and background through the masterplanning and various design phases throughout the Splash House project.
For more information, visit http://sce.parsons.edu/labs/ design-workshop-parsons/.
[via http://parsons.edu]
