Third rail FiTnessJurgen Mater H. + Marc KushnerSpring 2012We have become a society accustomed to having things on-the-go. Nowhere is that more obvious than in New York City. Whether reading the Post or the Times on the train, listening to music on an iPod while running in Central Park, or getting a coffee and a bagel during the walk to work, everything is on-the-go. This project explores the potential of “on-the-go” architecture by inhabiting moments and spaces of motion and mobility with architectural programs which have traditionally been considered static.

The hottest gym in the Lower East Side is now underground. Not only providing a first-class fitness experience, Third Rail Fitness is also a forum for performance: the human body is put onstage adjacent to, and within the subway—a space historically used for display and performance. For years, musicians have performed in stations, and wandered from car to car playing music or singing. Break dancers and pole dancers entertain passengers, and improvisational comedy groups take to the subway to amuse and engage riders. New Yorkers, it’s time to flex your muscles, sweat a little, and show off that body.

The fitness car allows the gym to permeate throughout the subway. Riders have the opportunity to workout during their commute without ever leaving

the train. The reach of the gym would expand from a single neighborhood to Manhattan, Brooklyn,

Queens, and the Bronx.

la línea BajaRichard PlunzFall 2012Beginning in the 1970’s, Puerto Plata was chosen as the site for the experiment of a new model of luxury tourism: the all-inclusive resort. At first, things were seemed promising, tourists began flocking to Puerto Plata. But a pattern emerged. Visitors remained at the resorts, and nevr had or were given a reason to leave to explore the city of Puerto Plata and experience what it had to offer. Tourism dollars went offshore to large international hotel companies and very little was reinvested into the community. Over the years, neglect of the city, beaches, water, and the resorts themselves began to negatively impact the desirability of Puerto Plata as a tourist destination. Industry, commerce, and tourists left to other parts of the country. Funding, development, and advertisement quickly followed, leaving Puerto Plata awkwardly searching for its identity and questioning its future.

Can architecture change an attitude? La Línea Baja imagines a post-resort Puerto Plata. A city should be all-inclusive, not a resort. The resorts have failed. To support the livelihood and well-being of the poeple and businesses of Puerto Plata, future tourism must engage the downtown. By offering incentives to open and invest in local businesses, the ammenities and features of the all-inclusive resorts can be dispersed throughout the city, allowing different groups of people, products, ideas, and activities to mix together. These interactions and exchanges will invigorate the existing local businesses and services in the city and provide potential for new ones. A revitalized network of public spaces and transit will ensure a steady influx of people, allowing for a sustained and prosperous local economy.

Malecón

Parque de la Restauración

Puente Viejo

la CiTTà indusTrialeSoo-In YangFall 2010The history of the city of Hoboken cannot be told without the account of the thousands of workers and industries that flourished during its early days. Today, Hoboken suffers from a condition many American industrial cities share. Because industry has moved or stopped, the lack of jobs has caused the population to steadily decline over the years. Hoboken is unique, however; from most post-industrial cities, because of its importance as a transit hub and its proximity and easy access to Manhattan. Because of this, the population has been steadily increasing since the 1990’s. However, the city largely remains jobless.

The project puts the citizens of Hoboken back to work! It introduces a new industry to Hoboken: construction waste recycling. Situated in an area that produces the most construction waste in the country, the housing is manufactured completely from recycled materials. When complete, the existing infrastructure provides a means of exporting recycled construction products all over the county, sustaining the new industry for the long term.

MuseuM oF PossessionsKarla RothsteinSpring 2010An epitaph provides an opportunity to briefly encapsulate the life, work and spirit of the person who has died, but reading one rarely gives a deeper sense of who a person was. Graveyards are teeming with “beloved” parents, children, and spouses, witty quotes, religious verses, and literary passages. Such monotony is not befitting a monument purportedly honoring a unique individual’s life. Instead, our lives can be mapped through the accumulations of material possession. While the importance of particular items may be short lived, others become embedded into our rituals or our personal memory. These relics, the things most important to us, will make up the Museum of Possessions’ collection, allowing each exhibit to tell a rich story about a person’s life.

The tombstone and epitaph offer a reductive glimpse and ignore the basic truths which lie in the rhythms of patterns of objects that defined life. Instead, in the Museum of Possessions memory will be mapped as a curatorial exploration of personal objects, possessions and materials, offering an intensely intimate understanding of the individual. Some exhibits create tapestries offering glimpses into broad cross sections of society while hyper-specific exhibits create mesmerizing fields and aggregations of one particular object. These two systems operating within the museum’s accumulation galleries choreograph a new juxtaposition of personal mementos, unearthing commonalities and disparities between lives while choreographing a larger cultural landscape.

The aim of this project was to develop a set of construction documents for a building. Structure, egress, HVAC, cladding, and solar shading were all considered. The intent of the design was to celebrate structure. The building is essentially a large glass box with a steel skeleton floating over two concrete cores. The expression of the large steel truss was the focal point of the design.

MegaTrussAnton Martinez + Winnie KwanSpring 2011

Field oF dreaMsKevin Cimini + Chris Hoxie

Spring 2011“The ball field itself is a mystic creation, the

Stonehenge of America” writes Roger Kahn in A Season in the Sun. Baseball has always been an

important part of my life, and when asked to model an architectural space to render, I chose the ball park. The dugout became a reinterpretation of the primitive hut,

and the field a version of the manicured garden.

Grass Dirt: Infield Dirt: Mound Chalk Aluminum Metal DeckingGalvanized

Metal

Chain Link Transparency

MapLight Leather Dark LeatherConcrete Wall Concrete FloorWood: Bench Wood: Bat 1 Wood: Bat 2 Wood: Bat 3