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Sportime at Randall's Island

This is a project by Zurita Architects and it is located at New York, NY, United States. There are six images for Sportime at Randall's Island.

: © Zurita Architects

Project images

Designer's statement

Sportime Tennis Center at Randall’s Island opened to the public this summer. Described by Parks Commissioner Benepe as “the best and most complete tennis center to be built in the last 30 years here in New York City” (NY Wednesday, July 22, 2009). This new center at Randall’s Island was designed mainly for the middle and lower-income recreational players in the city.

The center is run as a public-private partnership on NYC parkland and City parks permit holders can play for free. The facility has 20 tennis courts, including 5 indoor and 15 outdoor courts with stadium seating and a 16,000 SF (1,500 m2) club house. Within a modest construction budget, the design strategy was to create a building that incorporates the field house and a club house in a six-bay pre engineered steel structure sheathed in blue metal panels. This malleable skin suggests a light and vibrant form.

The club house is contained in the eastern-most bay of the building and is rotated to relate the entrance plaza. The fissure produced by this inflection introduces natural light to the building. The bleacher seating is conceived as a plane (for viewing) that penetrates the metal shell of the clubhouse becoming the horizontal plane of the mezzanine. In doing so, continuity is created between exterior and interior viewing planes. In the field house, a series of dormers emerges from the metal shell allowing cross-ventilation via a chimney effect that together with other techniques and materials reduce energy consumption and promote occupant health.