Beyond Brutal

Abstract

The ambivalent and rather melancholic fate of a campus of nine New Brutalist buildings in Karori, Wellington instigated a research investigating the potential for architecture to re-engage with buildings from our recently rendered past. Common to many New Brutalist buildings around the world, the Karori Campus has become shrouded by a patina of appearance-based public perception and insensitive alterations over the course of its lifetime, making its exceptional heritage values difficult to perceive and appreciate. A renewed vision for Karori Campus is paramount for its heritage values to be maintained for future generations. The strategy of adaptive reuse is employed as an attitude through which architecture can re-engage with and re-envision existing New Brutalist buildings for its relevance in contemporary society. Acknowledging a building’s heritage values and legacy for future generations is a fundamental step in the practice of adaptive reuse. The first two chapters of this thesis are dedicated to the investigation of Karori Campus in regards to the legacy of New Brutalism and the historical timeline of the campus in the Karori Community. Through literature review and archival research, the previously concealed heritage values are traced and exposed. Architecture is treated as an accumulated layering of history, processes and ethics beyond a static concrete state. The final chapter of the thesis contains the formation of a design proposal for the revival of Karori Campus into Karori Complex. Employing the practice of casting and formwork, the materiality and processes of past sensibilities are re-engaged and abstracted to inform the design and programme of the new vision for the campus. As mass is suspended to reveal original formwork, the thesis suspends heavy perceptions of Brutalist buildings to reveal the rich ethics and processes of a movement to be appreciated, re-engaged and even inhabited by contemporary societies today. Architecture is pursued as an informed and interwoven amassing of past, present and future: able to be learned from and constantly adaptable if we take the time to look Beyond Brutal.