Prospect Wetland Center.
Civic rooms beneath a new groundline, connected to four ponds and the working landscape of Prospect Park.
A field house that is experienced as a landscape first: public rooms sit beneath a shaped surface of paths, openings and water.
The project rethinks Prospect Park’s maintenance compound at Prospect Park West and 7th Street. Developed in Dragana Zoric’s Spring 2023 studio, it brings a gallery, amphitheater, community gathering hall, offices and storage together with park operations. Rather than placing an isolated building on the ground, the proposal makes a new ground that can contain the building.
- Context
- Pratt Institute · Advanced Design
- Semester
- Spring 2023
- Designer
- Siyue You
- Instructor
- Dragana Zoric
- Site
- Prospect Park maintenance compound, Brooklyn
- Status
- Academic field-house & landscape proposal
A building inside the ground.
The new topography shelters civic spaces beneath its surface. Circular and oval openings connect these rooms to daylight and to the paths above. The section becomes the main instrument of the project, joining enclosed rooms, open gathering areas and a planted surface within one continuous landform.
Early sketches pair excavated pond areas with backfilled soil over an interior gallery. A shared courtyard and amphitheater establish a public center, while office extensions and vehicle storage keep maintenance functions within the same composition. Building and landscape remain closely interdependent rather than being designed as separate layers.
The proposal is read through landform, water edges, circulation and rooms beneath the surface.
Water as a public landscape.
Four ponds form a wetland gallery, proposed as a reservoir connected to the nearby artificial lake. Openings and paths bring that water landscape into contact with the interior program. A playground, walking route and plant garden add different ways of occupying the site.
The design tests boundaries between wet and dry, constructed and unconstructed, formal and informal space. Rim paths and bridges give the ponds a role in circulation as well as in the view. Water storage and the wetland gallery are developed together as parts of the proposed public landscape.
Seasonal atmosphere study of the wetland proposal.
From grading to an occupied terrain.
The studio sequence moved through grading and hydrology, topographic assemblages, site research and design. Physical contour models make the relationship between landform and intervention visible. Digital views then test how rooms, glazed edges, paths and circular openings meet the shaped surface.
Program diagrams bring drainage, truck loading, parking and storage into the same conversation as the gallery, community center and outdoor theater. The resulting proposal seeks a public identity for the maintenance landscape while preserving the practical activities that keep the park working.
Associated lighting and material study for the waterscape gallery, developed in INT 218 Color Materials Lighting.
Siyue You, Spring 2023, Dragana Zoric’s Field House studio at Pratt Institute. Academic proposal developed through a studio working in dialogue with the Prospect Park Alliance. The lighting and material board was developed separately in INT 218 Color Materials Lighting.
