The Volume, the Surface, the Inhabitants

Abstract

Investigating ceaseless environmental flux within architecture and its site, this thesis explores design-based research in the ephemeral environment of the south-western coast of New Zealand’s North Island. The extremities of this tenuous environment deem it inhospitable to human habitation, with social conditioning stalling the development of contemporary architecture in environmentally dictated locations. This concept of ‘social vs environmental’ challenges the traditional architectural doxa that privileges unrestrained boundaries and neglect for exterior influences, and offers a mode by which to amalgamate social predispositions and environmental conditions. I open up these social and environmental grounds in order to elucidate and further extend a design praxis that is of this time and place, for while there is an awareness of future extreme climatic conditions, there is less research that considers how these conditions may be inhabited and designed for through contemporary architectural practices. This thesis suggests three categories of ceaseless flow apparent within the chosen environment; the vast undetermined rhythms of the ocean, the chaotic yet subtle movement of the air, and the powerful schisms of the ground. Three resultant spatial typologies are created – an oceanspace characterised by tidal patterns and mobility, an air-space which is indistinguishable yet constantly present, and a ground-space that is both a surface and a volume with the ability to uproot all sense of stability. These assertions are theorised and tested through three architectural experiments: Breakwater House which tests an Architecture of Resistance in order to occupy and maintain social conditions, Peak House which practices an Architecture of Flow allowing the exterior environment to merge with the interior, and Delta House which forms an Architecture of Adaptation, through blending these two extremities and forming a seasonal environment in between the monumental and momentary, between exterior and interior, and between environmental and social. In discussing and presenting these speculative spaces, this thesis moves between the Volume and the Surface, environment and social, resistance and the acceptance, with the aim of destabilising architecture’s socially discursive boundaries, causing its societal limitations to become temporary and fluid within the dictating environment. Abstract.