This website uses cookies as well as similar tools and technologies to understand visitors' experiences. By continuing to use this website, you consent to Columbia University's usage of cookies and similar technologies, in accordance with the Columbia University Website Cookie Notice
P.S. 64 is subject to an ever changing ratio of human intervention that maintains the site and natural forces that will reduce it to rubble. At every stage, the building is a product of aggregate influences acting on its structure, appearance, and use. Using a pile of soil as an analogy, the various shapes that come about in the pile are the product of the local forces that made them. This cause-effect relationship inspired a system of thinshell vaults that use earth as formwork and recycled rubble as building material. The shells penetrate P.S. 64 as it stands today to support the remaining structure and to create a variety of spatial conditions, ranging from secluded, cave-like cloisters, to undulating, lofty atria.