Poché.: Bloomfield Recreation Center

Concept & Execution

Courtyard

Longitudinal Section

Cross Section

Rear Elevation

Site Plan

Our first project of third year was a recreation center for the town of Bloomfield just outside of Pittsburgh, PA. When we went to meet with the people living in the community, they told us about how their town was becoming increasingly divided culturally. There is a rift forming between the young working professionals moving into the area, and the senior citizens, who have called Bloomfield their home for years. They came to us to present their opinions of what they would like to see in their community. Many of them said they were simply looking for a space that would draw people out of their homes and out into the community. They wanted to re-awaken the sidewalks - to promote business along their main streets and interaction between community members.

My goal with my community center was to create a courtyard that would draw people in off of all the major streets and through the building. In order to activate this courtyard, I designed each of the three recreation center buildings open out onto it. The interaction between the courtyard and the buildings was modeled loosely off Frank Lloyd Wright's design for the Hemicycle House.

Precedent Analysis: Wright's Hemicycle House

Entry to the Hemicycle House

Entry to Rec Center Courtyard

Due to the topography of the site, a tunnel was necessary if this particular entry to the courtyard was to align with the street that terminates at the edge of the site.

In order to create opportunities for people to sit, play or lounge in the courtyard without depending on furniture, there are a series of overlapping slabs. This form was inspired by the highway overpass that creates an implied division down the middle of the site. If you look at the longitudinal section of the site, you will see the horizontal plane of the bridge.

This horizontality that begins with the slabs in the courtyard ripples out into the rest of the project, as if the slabs were rising up out of the earth and becoming the roof slabs of the buildings.

In keeping with this concept, the floor of each building in the recreation center is at a different height. An additional benefit of having floors at all different levels was that the building would be able to follow the natural slope of the topography more closely. Unfortunately, depicting the differences in height of each floor relative to all the others was a huge struggle in plan. There are four different levels described in these plans: