Aquatecture: Aqueous Public Space in the Community

Abstract

The disconnection between humans’ curious yet unrelenting relationship with the aqueous and the increasing mundanity of the public swimming realm forms the basis of this thesis. In exploring a sector that is now largely restrained by bureaucratic schemes, this thesis suggests a revised, locally appropriate public aquatic architecture for the community and its swimmers. This thesis speculates on the dawn of man’s earliest interaction with the aquatic, highlighting the romantic notion of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis and continues into the discussion of the convergence of swimming and bathing with man-made spatial environments. The introduction of constructed aquatic elements and environments leads this thesis in a local direction and argues that the history of Māori aquatic pastimes have a renewed significance. Building on the New Zealand focus, the contrast between the naturally based Māori traditions and the arrival of the modern swimming pool following colonisation, is considered. The influence of modernism on work of this typology leads into a design precedent study of the New Zealand public swimming pool, in anticipation of a manifestation informed and aligned through the juxtaposing of these historic precedents. Together with a selection of notable global contemporary design precedents, the research as a whole advises a re-evaluation of public swimming at the site of the Wilsons’ cement works ruins at Warkworth. The sites preexisting aquatic relationship and established popularity, form the foundation for proposing an anachronistic and amalgamated architecture - a constructed expression of disparate historic triumphs made relevant to contemporary society. The proposal, with reference to an aqueous context, balances the expanse of nature and the sanctuary of the artificial, and facilitates communal necessities while assisting an alternatively inventive form of aquatic recreation and interaction.