James Develin's Gym

This is a two story gym designed for the city of Philadelphia which incorporates appropriate spaces and equipment for athlete injury recovery.

The problem posed in this design challenge was to make a gym space capable of creating a safe place for people to work out and recover from injuries as well as making it a friendly and communal space. This problem needed creative and fresh new ways of making a city space friendly and open for many people to enjoy even during covid-19.

For my research I started out by looking at what James wanted in this gym. James wanted a flexible gym space that promotes health and wellness for athletes. This included any athletes recovering from serious injuries. I looked into what rehab required and some of the equipment it would need.

For the rehab part of the gym I looked into hot and cold tubs, rehab equipment and a place for physical therapy. I also looked into storage ideas such as putting things on walls or hanging something on the ceiling to create more storage without having to use as much room. I also looked into more flexible gym equipment. Things that could be used for more than one exercise. I also looked into ceiling heights and gym sizes.

Lastly I looked into some of the incomes and populations. For this I found that 1.5 million people live in Philadelphia and of that 23% live in poverty and 8.7% have no health care.

Some of the things I thought were important were natural light, spacing/distancing, equipment mobility and aesthetic. For this I wanted to make an open main gym area as well as rooms for physical therapy and space for children to stay while parents workout or recover. I thought about opening up part of the second floor to create a more open space and to let more light and air flow through the building. I thought about storing things on the walls and maybe hanging things on the ceiling but also found ways to take up less space with some of the bigger equipment so things can be moved around as necessary.

For this step I used Tinkercad and created a two floor building that had 10 foot ceiling height and had a 2:1 scale.

First floor: For the modeling I started off by making the first floor and creating rooms for the lockers, storage, hot and cold tubs, medical experts and the bathrooms.

• When you first walk in there is a reception desk for any questions or new guests
• There is a big open workout space with plenty of storage and equipment ready to be moved and used as necessary
• To the left there are locker rooms and storage and on the right there are bathrooms for anyone to use
• There are three rooms past the bathrooms for physical therapy and check ups or exams.
• The room in the back is for the hot and cold tubs and has dividers that can be used if wanted for privacyI
• also added another room in the back for any children to stay safe and have fun while their parents are exercising
• There is also plenty of storage space next to the locker rooms and a set of emergency stairs in there as well.

Second floor: An elevator as well as some stairs make it easy to get up to the second floor for anyone and there are mostly employee spaces and a room for yoga or other classes.

• After getting off the elevator there is an employee bathroom to the right and a mechanical room to the left.
• Also a meeting room and mini kitchen for employee use, as well as offices.
• Then for any classes of yoga, hiitbox etc. there is a big room with big open windows to allow natural light in.
• Lastly, there are pieces of abstract art and a balcony to open up the space a little more.

Nothing is made perfectly the first time so I had to change and add a few things in this gym. The first thing that was needed was a communal area. James wanted somewhere people could come to gather so I created a set of stairs that could be used to sit and gather (socially distanced) but also could be used to workout. I also remembered he wanted solar panels of some sort of clean energy source so a few solar panels where put on the roof.