ARCH 601 - Architectural Problems - Totalization
Fall 2020
Group Work with Han Zhu and Wanting Zhou
Designed as a brand image to promote Team USA, this project is a training center for professional swimmers with public access for leisure use. Within the building, competition pools wrap around a public circulatory volume; and floor plates are imagined to be pliable, folded to form a stack of platforms that are interconnected by ramps. Upon the folded plates, two sets of circulatory routes are developed for the public and the athletes respectively. These two routes interweave together the public’s and the athlete’s sequential experiences of the building, rendering them visually connected while physically separated.
As part of the Totalization studio design process, a dedicated mechanical system serving the pools and a double-skin façade are also designed for the building, bringing to it a degree of practicality complementing the theoretical design. The façade is designed as a glass envelope whose transparency varies to enhance the display concept from the building exterior. A layer of operable aluminum fins is also introduced to moderate solar gains while creating agreeable lighting environments for the building interior. Overall, conceptually and technically, this is a building of a continuous display - that operates like a billboard from the exterior, and a gallery from the interior.
