2012: Transforming the Bridge | 12137

Team: Michael Robitz, Merica May Jensen, Sean Franklin, Alexandra VanOrsdale

Location: New York, NY

Overview: PUBLIC WORKOUT MACHINE is a large-scale landscape workout
machine, a landscape treadmill spanning the length of the Detroit Superior
Bridge. PUBLIC WORKOUT MACHINE embroiders together landscape,
fitness, culture, and commute.
It seems that every city has one of these spaces, these decommissioned
post-industrial behemoths that lurk in the shadows of our cities waiting to
be remembered. We try to revive our cities with them, racing against their
death, a sort of hospice for our urban lives. We imagine that they will have
the same sort of cultural and economic impact that the High Line had for
New York or the Tow Path had for North Eastern Ohio. So, we spiff them
up with a fresh coat, and landscape them like they were our own
backyards. From them, we expect a new form of urban health.
PUBLIC WORKOUT MACHINE pairs the park, the machine for urban
health, with the treadmill, the machine for physical health. It imagines the
city as a site for outdoor recreation and fitness when, traditionally, our
workouts are housed in conditioned spaces. Instead, PUBLIC WORKOUT
MACHINE imagines recreation, fitness, and commute as an outdoor event,
a critical programmatic ingredient for the city.