The City In-between: Exploring the Potential of Terrain Vague Along the Western Rail Corridor

Abstract

Cities are not static forms, they grow and decline, their footprint evolving over time as forms are added, removed or changed. As these layers of built form, infrastructure and landscape develop, incompatibilities can accumulate, new components may not interact with existing adjacencies, programmatically or materially, forming what is defined as interstitial space, the in-between. In an urban context interstitial space can be seen as residual space that partitions inhabited space, often it can be perceived as a threshold or transition, or a moment between active forms. As it permeates the urban fabric it becomes an invisible lattice which binds its perceived surface together. In this respect, interstitial space begins to be connoted as ‘Terrain Vague’. Terrain vague defines space which is either vacant, unregulated or undefined which sit between or on the peripheries of active infrastructure and architecture. Examples of Terrain Vague include abandoned industrial sites, polluted fields, the verge along rail lines or the uninhabitable space between partitioned forms. Often these spaces are deemed malignant, indicative of issues within a city or precinct: a by-product of economic recession, a decline in resources, or simply careless or unavoidable design decisions. However terrain vague also represents potential, the opportunity to form new relevant functions, recover adjacencies within neighbourhoods, and knit new connections and cohesion into the existing urban fabric. These conditions exist within Auckland city and pertain to a potential network of interstitial space. An intelligent use of this space could help address current issues such as housing shortage, and the issue of dislocation and mobility between living, work and leisure within the city. The strategy of this thesis then was to network these various elements of interstices via the existing railway. The railway infrastructure infiltrates precincts and neighbourhoods disrupting organised space with its linearity, creating an agitated edge in which interstitial space tends to permeate. These adjacent interstitial spaces then form a network of potential which can be utilised to ‘knit’ the city together, by programming these sites with culturally and socially important aspects of their adjacent precincts. However, these points of programme collection can be transformed into points of distribution through a system of transient architectural components which move across the city via the train. The railway is then transformed into a radical system of collecting, and distributing not only people but components of the city itself, aspects of social or cultural importance, resources and ideas can be plugged into sites temporarily, influencing that specific precinct, directly. This ideally creates a dynamic field of interchangeable programme and architecture that reacts to and informs the overall connectivity across the city.