LeFrak Center at Lakeside Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York

The makeover of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, by Tod Williams Billie Tsien architects is the recipient of one of the 2015 AIA Honor Awards, for a multipurpose public space.
Revamping city parks is no easy task, but when you look at the results of the LeFrak Center at Lakeside Prospect Park, by New York-based Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) winner of one of the 2015 AIA Honor Awards, you realise that a challenge like that can be really stimulating.

Brooklyn’s Prospect Park is a 235-hectare area in New York designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux that opened in 1867 – highly popular with the locals and part of the collective memory. 
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects sought to retain the existing parkland but wanted to make more of the existing ice-rink, only used for part of the year, and turn it into a public facility that could be used throughout the year. The result is the LeFrak Center, a year-round, almost 7,000-square-metre recreational facility.ùNow there are two ice-rinks for winter, then in summer one of them turns into a roller skating rink and the other into a large water-play fountain.

The LeFrak Center blends harmoniously into the parkland: its horizontal, L-shaped plan and stone retaining walls make it look almost like an extension of the landscape. The TWBTA building is not designed to stand out as a star, it aims to be a useful addition to the nature offered by Prospect Park. A design approach that was also honoured by the AIA.

(Christiane Bürklein)

Project: Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA), http://www.twbta.com/
Location: Lakeside, Brooklyn, New York
Year: December 2013
Photography: © Michael Moran / OTTO.