The Industrial Backyard: remedial waterfront design at Mangere Inlet

Abstract

The thesis addresses the growing disparities between the industrial landscape and the local inhabitants at Mangere Inlet, Auckland. The project addresses landscape and architectural design as a remediation tool and mediator between the industry, the water and the community along the waterfront. The thesis is a response to the degradation at Mangere Inlet caused by commercialisation and industrial expansion along coastal locations. The competing societal values placed on the inlet, formed between Māori inhabitants and early European colonialist, replaced the historical “food bowl” status of Mangere Inlet with pollution, waste and coastal reclamation. In the present, the degraded environment is indicative of the disconnection between the local community and the foreshore, where the land becomes an emotional and cultural burden on the inhabitants. The harbour water once nourished the local community, now it is a liability to the city’s development and progress. The research highlights the transitional nature of the landscape when influenced by natural environmental forces and human intervention. The remediation research highlights the principles of “ecology” can be applied to manmade landforms, where the act of environmental restoration is the rearrangement of natural and artificial processes and components within the industrial landscape. This design methodology forms an ongoing and accumulative post-industrial process on hybridised living platforms that are ideal for hosting cultural and architectural interventions. The design proposal is a remedial waterfront design at Pikes Point East, along the Mangere Inlet. The aim is to remediate the effects of reclamation and to facilitate the return of the waterfront asset to the public realm. The new waterfront design establishes a new cultural identity that enriches the urban lifestyle and provides an alterative public recreational space on reclaimed land.