A Renewed Summer of Pools

Opened in June 1936, the Hamilton Fish Park Pools was the first of eleven municipal aquatic recreation complexes built by New York’s controversial master builder, Robert Moses, over the much-publicized “Summer of Pools.” Today, many of these swimming facilities are in need major renovations. Moreover, spaces of recreation and education represent a key civic realm in the contemporary city. What forms of civic architecture can reinvent these everyday public spaces to create a new commons for a twenty-first century Manhattan?

Students were asked to develop a proposal that reorganizes the Hamilton Fish park and its historic pools in order to create new connections to the neighboring public school and library, provide better access to the public and especially to nearby NYCHA residents, and create a new civic space of recreation and education.

Initial research exercises emphasized analytic drawing as a practice for understanding urban dynamics and architectural precedents.