strat coffman*






 


 










































Several decades ago this building in northwest Detroit housed a tool and die business. Now it holds an occupancy permit for a private club called Body Zone. Its Instagram profile describes it as a “members only male health club,” which captures something about the clientele without naming it. Often operating in the gray folds of legal ordinances and urban areas, spaces like Body Zone have always juggled many roles at once: lounge, video theater, live performance venue, dance club, STI clinic, gym…

As the cushions get strapped around these rails, and unstrapped, piled, hung, folded, and rolled, 𝔗𝔥𝔢 ℜ𝔞𝔦𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰 flirts with multiple uses. Its function remains conveniently open to interpretation, to club members and city officials alike, inviting play with different acts under the cover of its ambiguity. It finds here a zone to the side of named positions and legal labels, a zone for “a certain social excess.”*

Read more at archleague.org.

*Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red Times Square Blue, New York: New York University Press, 1999, pp. 90. 2024
Installed at Body Zone
Detroit, MI

Exhibited in the League Prize Exhibition 2024, “Dirty”
The Architectural League of New York
New York, NY

TEAM
Strat Coffman

Upholestery: Nancy Lynch (Side Stitches), assisted by Sabrina Ramsay, Valeria Velázquez, Sydney Sinclair
Supported by Body Zone