DECELERATOR: ENVIRONMENT + COMMUNITY CENTER
Site Studio, 2011
Slow down and refocus.

If arriving by car, visitors ascend via a gracious promenade to a series of pavilions hovering above the flood plain.  At an upper level observation deck, one can pause to gaze across the river to the old steel mills, then turn and continue  along the tapering pathway between the pavilions.  At its widest, the pathway encourages small groups or individuals to move slowly past light-filled pavilions: the community kitchen, reading room, conference room, and communal dining with a view of the gardens and river.  As the hall narrows and darkens, it encourages large student groups to move more slowly, before refocusing their attention through the lens of each classroom to the forest, the river, the gardens, or the railroad.

Below the pavilions, an existing parking lot is transformed into a sheltered farmer’s market, and a concrete retaining wall is replaced with step-benches leading down to a new boardwalk along the river’s edge.

Connecting pedestrians from the commuter rail platform and the parking lot to the bike trail and river, the Decelerator acts as mediator between high speed and low-speed, city and landscape.

The concept of framing our relationship with the landscape through an industrial structure was inspired by witnessing the interaction of local fisherman under a train bridge with the polluted outlet of the Nine Mile Run River, and slow but inevitable regrowth of nature.

Copyright © 2014 Alexandre Kinney