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Grounds of Interplay:

Between the spaces of the childhood imagination and the institution

The project proposes a campus on the site of the Brooklyn Central Power Station for the Administration of Children Services, reflecting the conditions of this interplay, providing a diverse series of spatial experiences, subverting the institutional and creating room for the childhood imagination.

It explores the tension between a flexible children’s world and the structure and order that support growth. – Through the adaptive reuse of the Brooklyn Central Power Station as a campus for the Administration of Children Services, this thesis attempts to negotiate architectural tension, acknowledging the interplay between new development and a historic building; between the city and the site as campus; between the public realm and enclosure; between utilitarianism and playfulness, between an industrial context and spaces of childhood imagination.
As children shape their emerging identities, their place-based out-of-school experiences, real and imagined - through play, reading and place-based experiences-, shape how they see their world in adulthood.

The site and existing building footprint of 20 500sft is re-envisioned to house offices for the ACS, temporary housing, an Afterschool Activities center with sport facilities, classroom spaces, a small auditorium, a cafe space and a multi-use sport field.

Usually informed by the need for functionality, institutional spaces leave little room beyond the strictly necessary. The project considers the interplay between organisation and childhood imagination, subverting the functional institutional nature of facilities and the city.

In the processes of architecture, the city can be seen as a
malleable landscape which adapts to the needs of the next
generation, building on the structures of the past and projectingour desired realities, our imagined worlds.