Sasaki in Context

Happy summer 2024! This is the first edition of Sasaki's quarterly newsletter. Subscribe to hear more about our new work in sports and other sectors.

Athletics, Rec, and Wellness highlights

The Lawrenceville School Tsai Commons and Field House—As of May 2024, the Lawrenceville School's new field house is open to students. Tsai Field House brings together recreation, wellness, athletics, and dining into one interconnected environment to enhance student life.

The completion of Tsai Commons and Field House marks the second phase of implementation of the Lawrenceville School master plan, also by Sasaki.

Universidad de Lima Recreation and Wellness Center—The award-winning recreation center has created a new hub for student life on an urban commuter campus in Lima, Peru. The first step in realizing Sasaki's campus master plan, the center has become a key public realm destination for Universidad de Lima's 20,000 undergraduate students.

The design blurs the threshold between indoor and outdoor space, combining conditioned and open-air fitness programs, and preserving continuity at the plaza level from the building's central atrium to the campus public realm.

New York University John A. Paulson Center—This below-grade fitness facility in the center of NYU's campus is part of a new multi-function complex (led by Kieran Timberlake and Davis Brody Bond) that combines classrooms, performing arts, housing, dining, and gathering spaces. Sasaki designed a 120,000-sf athletics and recreation space to replace the existing gym on site.

Program elements include a 4-court gymnasium with an elevated track, 6-lane pool, fencing room, wrestling room, dedicated varsity performance weight room, sports medicine, 12-athletic team locker rooms, squash courts and 3,500 square feet of cardio and weight-training space. 

In a recent article of Athletic Business titled, What to consider when planning, building, or renovating a college rec center, designer Emily Parris offered four strategies for designing a rec center in 2024.

In Passive Frontiers: Lessons from Lima Rec and Wellness Center, architect Chris Winkler describes the process of creating an active campus hub using passive environmental systems.

NYU's coverage of their new Paulson Center athletics facility included a day-in-the-life video of one of their star basketball players on the day of their first game in the new facility and a tour of the athletics facility by the new NYU wrestling team.