At first glance, the building is a pure cube nestled in the landscape. However, upon closer inspection, it reveals its contradictory contents. The building attempts to blur the line between figure and ground, mass and void, weight and lightness, between iconicity and anonymity, between formal invention and typological continuity.  The building uses two formal languages: the square for habitation and the circle for ventilation. The collision between these geometries produces circulation, light and views. The vent not only circulates air to the subway tunnels, but also directly sculpts its internal spaces and brings light deep within the building.

A Grand Complication

: [In Horology] a complication refers to any feature in a mechanical timepiece beyond the simple display of hours and minutes. 
 

A pair of haiku :

The secret life of...
Closed still closed to us; Exposed time
Surprise on the inside.

Frame of emptiness
A previous life exposed now.
Closed still closed. But seen.

The site is layered and composed of elements with very strong qualities, for example the BQE with its strong horizontal strata, the skyline of Brooklyn Heights and Manhattan with their vertical rhythm. The water, and the more organic landscaping in Brooklyn Park are also dominant presences in the site. I would like to consider the constructed object as that which is at the cross section of these fields and is made to interact with them by the force of certain views. The form has the potential to gain an fifth dimension in addition to that of space and time. Like a wormhole that was created in the aftermath of a collision of forces. It is a space of quiet intensity, where one can hide and experience an alternate world.

The design proposed an introverted and protective space in the noise park, where is filled with activities and interactions.

The building is divided in two systems as it’s suggested in the studio brief. It has the open space that’s composed of purely geometric volumes. They are sensitive to nature, and more importantly to nature light, that varies every hour of a day, every day of a year. There’s unique pattern created by sunlight for different spaces. They help make the elapsing of time visible. The leftover becomes the dark space for the infrastructures of the subway ventilation.

The design proposed a really strong connection between the ground and the subway 100ft below. It’s also between all the activities happening on the ground level and the people riding the train 100ft below. Especially the two domes that are reversed to each other. They transit sunlight and fresh air into the subway tunnel, creating a sudden and unexpected explosion of the space and lights. They also present the subway’s existence to the park in a more subtle way. By introducing the sunken garden and the whole here created from the collision of those two domes, the architecture brings up the darkness of the subway tunnel up to the park, as well as the noise and vibration each time a train passes by.

"...if boundaries constitute space, then public space only has meaning in relation to something that is excluded—a space excluded as private."

View from afar: The site is a field of object, a collection of columns.

View from within: The site becomes objects on a field. Columns on a surface.

The Precinct.

The field of objects delineates the precinct of public space. There is an inherent boundary created by field of objects.  As one approaches the site from the park the perception of the field of objects translates into objects on a field. The transition from field to object also marks the shift from a public to a more private space. When inside the field, the columns are read as singular objects and not a field anymore. Being inside a pocket of space surrounded by a several columns creates a sense of privacy and aloneness. The once public field of columns sheds into pockets of privacy amongst several columns on field.

The Mass.

As park goers arrive at the field, they will come upon the entrance of descension to the reading room below. The reading room is a room of objects. A large open space supported by a series of columns. This room evokes a sense of awe synonymous with that of a hypostyle hall. The oversized columns supporting the fifty foot ceilings dwarfs the human being. It is not about the human. It is about the structure, the columns, and the scale. The room speaks to the smallness and fragility of the human as one peruses through a book. Above ground, the essense of the hypostyle hall is repeated with columns extending towards the sky, releasing the exhaust air into the atmosphere. 

The Grid.

The underlying organization of the objects. The paradigm of order and regularity. A democratic organization of space. The grid provides an inherent understanding of a public space. The order it dictates and the regularity it imposes establishes the room as a public space.

The Brooklyn Bridge Park is a planned meandering narration which compresses and expands along the river’s edge; offering choices which regroup and diverge at various points, sheltered by the landscaped mounds. Boundaries govern movement; physical (or non-physical) distinctions, limitations, and opportunities chroreograph fluidity of a space and decisions. Upon entering the project, an individual (or group) will move through the space, guided or distracted by light and shadow. A user in motion experiences a dynamic space. A static user experiences a dynamic space. One will linger; one will become a wanderer within the expanded, the compressed; the light, the dark. 

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

A subway ventilation building and a reading room. A series of atmospheres shaped by light. 

Unfamiliar, awe-inspiring spaces result from the union of an infrastructural building and a library. A central sculptural wall contains the ventilation infrastructure; two straight outer walls contain the ventilation wall and demarcate the reading area around it. Sited in Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, the project creates a contemplative microcosm within the city.