Grossinger's Indoor Pool Recreation
About the Project
During the summer of 2021, I conducted an independent study on how to use the architectural software, Revit, for historic recreations. Revit is primarily used for new construction or renovation projects in which architectural drawings are scanned and used for the creation of the digital model. For this project, I wanted to see if it would be possible to recreate a scaled digital model of a building that was recently demolished and only had a floorplan in existence.
The building I focused my project on was one that was near and dear to my heart, the indoor pool at Grossinger's Resort. Grossinger's was once a world famous resort in the New York Catskills Mountains that was part of the Borscht Belt vacation area. The indoor pool was a modern masterpiece of the resort and opened in 1958. The resort was abandoned and eventually completely demolished in 2018. I had the chance to photograph it twice before its demise.
Depsite only having a floorplan to work with for the Revit model, I spent many weeks reconstructing the entire building by comparing photographs of every angle. It was in essence a trial and error project as the complex beam system of the ceiling was very difficult to construct with the lack of measurements and placement diagrams that would be used in professional projects.
