What is a park? According to Frederick Law Olmsted: a sense of enlarged freedom. In essence, a relief from buildings. It makes sense that NYC Parks and the Public Design Commission (PDC) required our project to be as non-intrusive as possible. But how do you achieve that? How do you make a building disappear?

Our strategy was simple: bury the clubhouse and half its bulk will hide. Bury the exhibition courts—including their necessary bleachers—and instead of a stadium sitting on top of the park, people (and the park) will get a concealed arena like no other: a 15,000-square-foot clubhouse and two new, partially buried, stadium-exhibition tennis courts.

As Skip Hartman, Co-Founder of New York Junior Tennis & Learning (NYJTL) puts it: an intimate experience, the only small theater in the city for tennis.