Rush Creek Community Center


  • Caption
    Site Plan
Related people
Juliana Pollock (designer)
Jason Kentner (studio professor)
Karla Trott (studio professor)
Date
Spring 2019
Location
North and Central America->United States->Ohio->Franklin (county)->Worthington->Colonial Hills Elementary School
Description
This was a student project by Juliana Pollock for Jason Kentner and Karla Trott's course LARCH 3950 in Spring 2019.
" My design concept at mid review was to create two L shaped brackets that enclose the park and create rigid edges in the site. The L concept was created to imitate the similar L shape layout of many of the Usonian homes in the Rush Creek neighborhood. I wanted to create a community complex that tied the community building and the classroom building together, both of these buildings we had to integrate in our park designs. I wanted to place the buildings in a similar L to further emphasize my concept and to carry the design idea across my site.
Since the park is currently lawn, I wanted to keep a significant portion of it for mixed use recreation. The L on the right accommodates parking, bleacher seating for watching sporting events and an area for a potential playground. It also mirrors the grid of trees seen on the left. The L on the left is the community complex. The community complex holds the community building, which I imagined being a place with a small cafe or concession stand and the classroom building, where teachers and students could come and utilize the learning garden and to bring the classroom outdoors. The surrounding portion of the L is a crushed gravel path, lined with large square pavers and a grove of honey locust trees. It brings you from the street into the community complex and leads you to the existing trail which brings you to the school. This trail is currently being used by children in the area on their walk to school. I wanted to make a connection from the community complex to the existing trail to offer a more defined path for students to walk to school. The inner L is a concrete plaza with a variety of seating options. The trees are not as compacted in this area to allow for easy movement and to avoid blocking views to the field.
My transect model shows how the gravel path and the concrete plaza interact. I was inspired by Andrea Cochran's Birmingham residence as a precedent project. I wanted to integrate the large square pavers and crushed gravel to lead you around the site and provide a more defined circulation path. I also took ideas for precedents such as the tree bench seating at the Chicago Institute of art and raised vegetable planters seen in Lafayette greens in Detroit.
With my design, I am hoping to provide the rush creek neighborhood with a central community park. It is a space where families can come to watch their children play sports, a place for teachers and students to learn outdoors, and for students to travel on a more defined path to school. "