A corporate fitness center : an example for the reuse of the Empire Stores, Brooklyn, N.Y.

The proliferation of over 500 fitness programs for the employees of American corporations marks a turning point for the way American corporations regard employee and corporate health. Typically, sports facilities were the province of recreation or education facility planners. A category of sports activities has been isolated, however, for its cardiovascular characteristics and is the basic component of a fitness program The physiological characteristic which are of concern are those activities which contribute to the "training effect" of the heart or the ability of the heart to pump blood and oxygen to the body. The benefits of this conditioning are manifold. Longitudinal medical studies indicate that there are positive relationships across a large population for aerobic exercises or exercises which demand oxygen and decreased risk of heart attack in later life. While the correlation between exercise and good health seems merely the confirmation of good sense, it is a recent occurrence that this relationship has been quantified by corporations and utilized to increase "corporate health," through the construction of fitness facilities for employees. The intention behind this thesis is to explore the existing information about fitness centers and design a facility as the reuse of an historic building in Brooklyn, New York.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1982

Author dc:creator

• Georgopulos, Diane Theodora

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gary Hack.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/74298

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/74298