Located approx. one mile north-west of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus is beautiful Estabrook Park. Estabrook Park contains a beer garden, disc golf course, and plenty of rentable picnic areas. The real beauty of the park is the variety of ways you can travel to and experience it.
After taking many different modes of transportation to Estabrook Park I created the video above as a part of the design process for the Estabrook Pool House. Then I took the content of the video and analyzed it to find commonalities across the park. The video helped me create a few buzz words to start designing with, Over, Under, Foreground, Middleground, Background, Seep, and Embed.
With those words a conceptual model was created to explore the words found from the video. I created a layered block of plywood, plaster, museum board, and laser cut acrylic. All of the layers have pieces cut out creating internal pockets similar to an ant colony. I then poured half a gallon of clear resin through 4 holes in the top and let gravity take over. The next day it was cut into three pieces and examined with all the buzz words in mind. Model photos were taken and diagrams were drawn over to begin designing the pool house.
The Estabrook Pool house that I designed was constructed of all natural materials. Being located near a very popular beer garden I made a notion to separate the activities.
Like many parks but especially Estabrook the pathways created by the trees made for good portals to new activities. This is there Foreground, Middleground, and Background come into play.
The trees give depth to the wide open spaces inside the pool house. As you seep from space to space you will find yourself able to enjoy an intimate time in the sauna or a playful time in the large community pool located at river level.
When building the model I decided to use three materials to help convey over and under. The top and bottom layers are a solids created with a 3D printer. While the inner layers are pieces of thin laser cut acrylic. All held together by vertical basswood sticks. Those being the vertical structure, and the layers being the experiential structure.
