parachute pavilion

pabellon de usos multiples, 600m2
2005, adyacente a la torre ‘parachute jump’,
coney island, ny, usa

nicolas d’angelo
arquitecto

exhibido en van allen institute, nyc

seleccionado para publicacion, ‘coney island, the parachute pavilion competition’

︎︎︎ imgs

In Coney Island, the present feels more like the future of a recent past, the Riegeleman Boardwalk as impressive a place as the Central Park but a lot more marginal, a place where identity is not cemented by an idea of stability, but by one of potential abandonment, continuous change.

In this land of artifacts, of constructions as mechanisms, of moving machines, a notion of post modernity is hard to escape, it embraces it all. Architecture might only serve to recreate, to meticulously complete space with small fragments of material that merge with the rest.

It is less clear now if this project grew out of its own will or of the process of gluing together hundreds of tiny pieces to construct an understanding of the tower, of its bold beauty. At some point it just wasn’t easy not to think in circles, hexagons, dodecagons, sixes, twelves, facets, floating in the air.

The Pavilion is inserted on the site as a tripartite building that completes the void left by the elevated boardwalk with a plinth containing exhibition space, a shop, and a few offices. A free space above is hovered over by a rotating steel structure which projects from a reinforced concrete core that cuts through all three levels with services and circulation. People coming from the parking lot can walk through the plinth out to a grass slope that will lead them to the boardwalk and the beach, or back to the green roof, in a space that is visually open to the tower, to its feet. Upstairs, the slow but constant rotation of the building creates the peculiar: the view becomes a movie, a continuous strip of Coney Island scape.

parachute pavilion

multi-use pavilion, 600m2
2005, adjcent to the oarachute jump,
coney island, ny, usa

nicolas d’angelo
architect

exhibited at the van allen institute, nyc

selected for publication, ‘coney island, the parachute pavilion competition’





In Coney Island, the present feels more like the future of a recent past, the Riegeleman Boardwalk as impressive a place as the Central Park but a lor more marginal, a place where identity is not cemented by an idea of stability, but by one of potential abandonment, continuous change.

In this land of artifacts, of constructions as mechanisms, of moving machines, a notion of post modernity is hard to escape, it embraces it all. Architecture might only serve to recreate, to meticulously complete space with small fragments of material that merge with the rest.

It is less clear now if this project grew out of its own will or of the process of gluing together hundreds of tiny pieces to construct an understanding of the tower, of its bold beauty. At some point it just wasn’t easy not to think in circles, hexagons, dodecagons, sixes, twelves, facets, floating in the air.

The Pavilion is inserted on the site as a tripartite building that completes the void left by the elevated boardwalk with a plinth containing exhibition space, a shop, and a few offices. A free space above is hovered over by a rotating steel structure, which projects from a reinforced concrete core that cuts through all three levels with services and circulation. People coming from the parking lot can walk through the plinth out to a grass slope that will lead them to the boardwalk and the beach, or back to the green roof, in a space that is visually open to the tower, to its feet. Upstairs, the slow but constant rotation of the building creates the peculiar: the view becomes a movie, a continuous strip of Coney Island scape.