Playful and Mundane Pool Archipelago, 2024
평범하고 즐거운 수영장 가는 길

Harvard GSD
Option Studio “Pool Time: Collective Equipment for Living”
Advised by Ryan Neiheiser and Xristina Argyros

Queens, New York, United States of America

link to studio description

Pool Archipelago examines the relationship between Astoria Park Pool and its surrounding park through small architectural interventions, redefining public space. By introducing entrance gateways, the project explores how architecture can mediate between boundaries and shared environments, questioning the meaning of publicness. These gateways transform the pool’s rigid seasonal enclosure into a more porous urban space, encouraging interactions between swimmers and park visitors year-round.

Functioning as both access points and shared amenities, the gateways integrate pool facilities with park activities. They offer changing rooms for swimmers while also supporting recreational and social uses in the park. In summer, they provide direct pool access, while in the off-season, they ensure continued use of pool amenities, enabling park visitors to engage with the space through indoor programs and events.

By hinging the pool and park through these gateways, the project envisions a more adaptable and inclusive public space. Drawing from Hannah Arendt’s concept of public life, it fosters an environment where people coexist, observe, and interact beyond swimming.

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1936

2024

Every time I listen to “Camp,” a track from Beenzino’s Nowitzki album, I feel like I can actually smell dirt. There’s something about the melody and the lyrics that brings it out. And when that smell comes to mind, so does the old military housing I lived in between 2018 and 2020, right in front of the runway. I think about the washing machine randomly placed in the corner, the shower room tiled completely in white, the dusty drill yard, the long stretch of runway, and the underground radar bunker, lit up with flickering green lights. At the time, all I wanted was to get out. But somehow, when I hear this song, I remember it all with a strange sense of warmth.

I’ve never been sure I fully understood what nostalgia means. But this might be the closest I’ve felt to it. I’m guessing most Korean men who’ve served in the military would also say this song smells like dirt. And as they listen, I imagine they picture completely different places tied to the same kind of experience.

Thinking back, I realize that feeling was probably somewhere in my mind when I was designing the pool house doors. I wanted to make a building that felt kind of like that song. Something plain, maybe even boring, but not in a bad way—spaces that anyone might have passed through once in their life. I just tried rearranging them a little, letting them overlap with other kinds of places. That’s why the project ended up with the title Playful and Mundane, a pairing that doesn’t quite match on the surface but made sense to me.

When Ryan, the instructor, asked if I needed a rendering of the shower room, I told him I didn’t think it was necessary. I figured just describing the space would be enough for people to recall their own memories of a shower or bathhouse. I don’t know if it actually worked for those who saw the project, but I still want to leave those kinds of gaps in my work—places where people can fill things in on their own.

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Jeongwoo Kang 강 정 우

Jeongwoo Kang
강 정 우