Park Laboratory
Syracuse, New YorkSpring 2019, Syracuse University | School of Architecture
+ King & King Design Competition Finalist
Collaborator: Wendy Zhang
Critic: Amber Bartosh
Park Laboratory is a proposal for Downtown Syracuse to create a multi-conditioned park and public space that incorporates light, and greenery and provides new amenities to both Syracuse University and the community of Syracuse itself. We wanted to create an environment where we bring workspaces and indoor park under one roof while taking advantage of the environmental conditions of Syracuse where there is lots of snowfall in the winter.
We propose to accumulate and then melt the snow on the roof to provide water for the irrigation of the plants in the indoor park. The geometry of the roof is designed to be a self-supporting greenhouse roof which also solves the drainage issue. In terms of the roof materiality, we use curved glulam timber beams which provide a lighter-weight structure and produce less carbon print. An enclosed space is created with the use of polycarbonate sheets, which are much lighter than glass. The heat produced by the radiant heating system will rise to the roof and it will melt the snow with the help of heat tracing that’s attached along the mullions on the roof.
We wanted to reduce the work of the mechanical environmental control system so we created a series of micro-climates which has both conditioned and semi-conditioned space. The greenhouse helps us to use the clean air provided by the plants to supply fresh air into the conditioned lab and office space.
