Raha Mahmoudi
4 in 1
From the second-year graduate studio Open House, Spring 2021
Faculty: Barbara Materia, Thomas Kelley
About the studio:
The athletic club of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is perhaps one of the most genuinely American architectural types. This studio asked whether it is possible to reimagine the American athletic club for the contemporary city. By looking at the clubs and other historical and contemporary examples of multifunctional buildings, it aimed to design an urban container for diverse programmatic demands—a semi-private structure with an enhanced public component.
About the project:
Where the meaning of a building is assumed to lie in the relation between people and people, people and knowledge, and people and things, this project explores a fourth dimension: the relation between people and animals, as an alternative to the conventional forms of social interactions in an athletic club. The building consists of four different environments with corresponding programs separated by story-high truss platforms.