Contamination Intervention
-The broad nature of the brief meant that I had to create a process that would allow me to come up with three sites as well as their programs. I decided to use mapping to help me determine what my functions should be and then to use that function to help determine my locations on the map.
-The first thing I did was to study a map of Auckland. I discovered that the motorway stood out visually as an insertion into the city and I thought for a while on how that insertion affected its surroundings. This brought me to the notion of a neuron and how it transports information throughout the brain using electrical impulses. I then decided to think about what kind of people get funneled through the city in the same way that electricity quickly transmits through the neuron.
-I decided to focus on tourists and the fleeting nature of tourists and how they affected the environment that they inserted themselves into, particularly in a negative way. I created diagrams that depicted various activities and locations that attracted the most tourists in order to locate my three sites. This investigation landed me with the three sites that I have chosen (Ponsonby Road, Corner of Queen Street and K Road, and the bottom of Queens Warf). Once the sites were chosen further investigation was done to determine their programs.
-In the end I discovered that Ponsonby didn’t provide enough accommodation, so I decided to place a hostel on its site. I also planned to put a public toilet near K Road and a bus terminal at the end of Queens Warf.
-Next I needed to strengthen the relationship between the three sites. During my investigations I found that all of the sites have had some sort of history of contamination. The Ponsonby Road site was once a petrol station and is the worst contaminated of the three locations, which is why I developed it further. The site near K Road had a history of being covered in rubbish and the Queens Warf site can deal with the pollution of the Hauraki and so on.
-Now that I had a site and a function to develop I needed to start designing. I determined to focus on the Ponsonby road site so I researched which parts of the site were the most contaminated. Then I extruded the various parts of the site to create a form. The areas with the greatest level of contaminants were extruded the most. The underground pipes were contaminated with hydrocarbons, which lead to the creation of a circulation system through the building.
-The use of materials is also influenced by the concepts of contamination, the negative effects of tourism, and neurobiology. I used rammed earth to create the feeling of the polluted earth being lifted into a place where the tourists sleep. The corten steel and titanium are metals on different levels of the galvanic scale, therefore they are wrapped around each other to show how one entity can corrode another through the transfer of electrons.
-The rooms are then meant to act as hard intrusions into the more natural circulation space. They are also lifted off of the ground as if to be trying not to touch it. They are lifted higher where the contamination of the soil is greater.
-The main entrance also forces the tourists to enter the building by going underground. The idea is to create a mockery of the tourists that houses them while also depicting how they “contaminate” their environment. Their first interaction with the building is to enter into its depths and then they are lifted to a place that is extruded still from those same depths.
-The building is also meant to display the idea that it is also possible to make amends for contaminating the earth. The spaces below where the building is lifted off of the ground are covered in tall grass and planted areas to evoke the idea that beneath the layer of corrosion there is still new growth and life and hope for renewal.
-Many of the rooms are also introverted to face inward rather than outward. It denies them views of the city and rather forces them to look at themselves or the hidden planted courtyards just out of their reach. It basically is meant to house the tourists in a way that sort of shuns them from their surroundings.
