Abstract:
The current conditions of Auckland’s waterfront land persist the growth of an industrial port on the city’s foreshore. This allowing of immense reclamations in contrast to Auckland’s repulsion towards Bigness is the prime motivation for this thesis. This thesis argues instead for a dedicated condition that venerates water and therefore inherent to Auckland. Given the disposition towards water, this thesis seeks for architectural precedents that have negotiated the uses of water, foreshore and the ocean. These precedents belong in the research titled under four themescapes, each devoted to a period of occupancy in the history of Auckland’s urban foreshore. Informed by these precedents this thesis provokes through a design intervention over the port land and develops its relationship to the Waitemata Harbour. This once private, reclaimed plain is reimagined through the notion of waterscape and as a vision that encapsulates an urban foreshore. It competes with the deposition of Auckland’s waterfront history, layers of occupancies and the artificiality of the landscape. It examines the tendency of an architectural proposition for water, hybridising the opportunities among landmass, water and the Waitemata Harbour. This thesis aims to utilize the architectural and urban potential of the reclaimed land in order to provide a method of approaching the inherent Bigness of the site. The methodology explored in this thesis combines traits of the history with relevant precedents, breeding drawings that respond to the conditions of the site. Through a series of critical positions, this thesis further emphasises the vitality of Bigness and defends the nature of aesthetics that are under prejudiced perceptions.
