Reflective Retreat Center
The Reflective Retreat Center is designed to serve the purpose of a place where people could come to contemplate about their individual lives. Situated in Frick Park, the center needed to be incorporated with the surrounding park, demanding an element of public in a very private program. There are several paths which run through Frick Park, although there are several parts of the park that cannot be discovered while staying on these paths. The concept for this project is derived from the idea of discovery and thus encourages the visitors to get off the path and enter into the lesser known, thus breeding thought and contemplation.
The concept of pulling people off of determined paths into an area of no paths, the retreat is designed such that people have the choice of choosing their own paths to walk around. To further explore this idea, the gras is planted and mowed down so that the ability to orient in the space is difficult due to the constantly changing experiential quality of the space.