architecture for unclaimed time
On top of it SESC May 24swimmers circle a rooftop pool above the city center Sao Paulowhere the towers close and the street runs far below. Paulo Mendes da Rocha and MMBB placed the water on the fourteenth floor of a former department store, giving recreation one of the widest views of the building. THE pool it seems almost excessive for its setting, and that’s exactly why it works — here, precious urban space is set aside for game.
The architecture of leisure begins with this kind of urban choice. Where can one spend time without buying a meal or moving to another destination? Parks and public baths respond through open space and water, while squares create space for more leisurely activity among other people. These parts are often described as amenities, a term that makes them sound optional. Their construction says something more stable. They give unclaimed time a permanent location and allow rest to become a shared urban experience.
SESC May 24, Paulo Mendes da Rocha and MMBBSao Paulo, 2018 | image © Nelson Con
making room for play
São Paulo has a long architectural pedigree for this idea. At Lina Beau BardiThe iconic SESC Pompéia, a former factory is transformed into a community center for culture and sports, where recreation occupies the same political space as exhibitions and performances. Visitors cross concrete bridges between the sports towers, gather inside the old industrial halls, or linger on the grounds between scheduled events. The building treats coexistence as a use in itself, leaving enough openness for people to decide how to spend an afternoon.
Decades later, SESC 24 de Maio develops this ambition within the compressed city center. The former Mesbla department store became a fourteen-story complex for leisure and culture, with the swimming pool at the end of the journey up. Recreation emerges through a type of building that was once dedicated to retail, and swimming becomes part of the city section.
SESC Pompéia, Lina Bo Bardi, São Paulo, 1977-1986 | image courtesy of SESC
after the mall
In the center think, MVRDV makes the same argument by deduction. Tainan Spring it occupies the ruins of the former China-Town Mall, which were removed and recycled as part of a city master plan. Its underground parking now forms a sunken public square with an urban lagoon bordered by plantings and a shaded portico. Water rises and falls with Taiwan’s rainy and dry seasons, while fog lowers the temperature during warmer seasons. People wade through the shallow pool or sit on its edge as concrete shards frame the open plaza.
Conversion leaves economic change exposed. The floor space when organized around consumption becomes a place to stay and the former mall remains visible inside its replacement. The old foundations emerge beside the water as pieces of public furniture and large ruins. Tainan Spring gives leisure a physical claim to the city center, using a failed commercial structure to support the time that comes without transaction. Its strongest gesture may be the absence of a fixed purpose. The lagoon can host play or relief from the heat and works just as well as somewhere to pause.
Tainan Springs, MVRDVTainan, Taiwan, 2020 | image © Daria Scagliola
where public investment is located
At the Morris Houses in the Bronx, The Urban Conga begins with a neglected set of concrete bleachers that residents had identified as a priority for renewal. Common Corner it maintains the tiered structure and designs new forms of use throughout, combining accessible seating with climbing surfaces and a platform for performance or reflection. A forced-perspective mural runs along the elevations and back wall, while reflective elements and affirmations chosen by residents transform the bleachers into a recognizable communal space.
Developed through workshops with Morris Houses and NYCHA residents, the playground hosts exercise and conversation while leaving room for someone to simply sit. Rest occupies the same ground as play, thus giving an underutilized part of the public housing landscape a wider social role.
common angle, The Urban CongaThe Bronx, New York, 2025 | image courtesy of The Urban Conga
leave to stop
Tour About Loutrainstalled by Leopold Banchini Architects for Concéntrico 2025 in Logroño, pushes the argument into the center of a traffic circle. Wooden walls enclosed an inaccessible fountain and turned it into a temporary public bath with hammam and basins of cold water. The project occupied a piece of the city designed entirely for movement, and then gave it over to bathing and resting. Cars continued around its perimeter while people changed clothes inside, got into the water and spent forty-five minutes in a new communal interior.
Its temporary lifespan also reveals the limits of such interventions. Once the festival was over, the roundabout returned to traffic and the fountain lost its public use. Permanent leisure architecture requires more than a convincing installation. It depends on budgets and maintenance, along with opening hours and social permission. A bench can invite someone to stay, while policing or an enemy detail can overturn that invitation. The right to rest is built through architecture and then supported by the rules governing who can occupy it and for how long.
Tour of the baths, Leopold Banchini ArchitectsLogroño, Spain, 2025 | image © Gregory Sivera
an open framework for leisure
At the Parc de la Villette in Paris, Bernard Tschumi it treats leisure as an open framework rather than a fixed schedule, laying out a grid of bright red lunatics in the former slaughterhouse area and leaving the ground between them available for wandering, gathering and improvisation. Completed during the 1980s and 1990s, the park resists the pastoral image of nature as sanctuary, using paths, grass, structures and event spaces to keep movement unpredictable.
Visitors can traverse the site with a destination in mind or drift among its fragments without much work. The architecture gives play and inactivity in equal measure, turning a large part of the city into a place where possession remains loose and public time is left self-directed.
Parc de la Villette, Folie N4, Bernard Tschumi ArchitectsParis, France, 1982-1998 | image © Trevor Patt, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
This article is part of designboom’s PLAY chapter, which explores what would happen if form did not follow function, but pleasure. Discover more stories that celebrate joy, imagination and play here.
