PERFORMANCE SPACE FOR FRESHKILLS PARK

This project proposes an informal event space located on the North Mound of Staten Island’s Freshkills Park, designed to host small concerts, lectures, readings, and other performances. It is organized around three primary spaces: a lobby, a terraced auditorium, and an accessible roof. Central to the design is the architectural relationship between sky, ground, and corner, and the ways in which each contributes to the diffusion of light through the space.

Both the lobby and auditorium are capped with domed ceilings with skylights that connect to light catchers atop the roof. These spaces are enclosed by perforated walls, which allow occupants to glimpse the exterior stairways that wrap around the domes and lead to the roof, while simultaneously bringing natural light into the interior. The corner condition is adapted from Herzog & de Meuron’s Ricola Storage Building. The facade is composed of suspended wood panels hung from the structural frame supporting the domes. At the corners, gaps between these sheets allow light into the space.

The ground condition is informed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, the form of which is built up from the ground through the stratification of horizontal volumes and elements. As the panels on the facade approach the ground, their height gradually decreases, producing a sense of compression beneath the larger volumes of the rooftop light catchers. This compression is in dialogue with the stratified layers beneath the Freshkills mound itself, a former landfill. The architecture only touches the ground at 10 points, columns from which the panels are suspended. This gives the appearance of a volume floated ever so slightly above the ground, allowing light in from below.

Composed of parallel planes, the light catchers are the first glimpse of the architecture from the base of the mound. As one moves around the site, the light catchers present shifting views and silhouettes, with circulation around the mound continually revealing new spatial and formal relationships.

Analysis drawing of Bibliothèque Nationale by Henri Labrouste, showing its structural frame supporting a a punctured domed ceiling, diffusing light from the light catchers on the roof