Abstract:
This thesis aims to enrich and enliven our understanding of contextualism in architecture. While the issue at hand is one that has consistently been debated throughout the history of architecture, reverence of context is too often associated with a preservationist or historicist methodology that inclines towards generic design solutions operating under the guise of respect for the past. Its predominance in the Postmodern theories at the end of the 20th century has brought about a tendency to direct its discussion towards the aesthetic relationship between new design and existing buildings, particularly with regard to historical neighbourhoods. The need has long since risen for a reassessment of the ism of this subject to accommodate the wider, multi-faceted nature of context that contemporary architects recognise today. A new understanding is proposed through an exploration of architectural phenomenology, that which is illustrated as the poetics of architecture. Extending into hermeneutics and narrative theory, phenomenology addresses the problems plaguing context today, including dominance of aestheticism and neglect of the temporal dimension. The design of a mixed-use visitor interpretive centre in the historical Upper Symonds Street area explores the possibility of a phenomenological contextualism; a sensibility that rejects the object-driven architecture of spectacle in favour of the continuous experience of place. Phenomenology is thus employed as a lens with which to revive and shed some much-needed light on a tired, often misguided and seemingly perfunctory topic.
