Abstract:
Once a bay enclosed by two headlands forming the portage for successive Maori and colonial settlements and now a reclaimed urban center, the ground of Britomart has faced dramatic changes to its topography as new layers continue to relentlessly overlay and erase their very precedents, while the traces of these lost moments in time lay sheathed and sedated beneath the surface, in the ground of the city. The ground carries with it enormous weight and potency. Throughout histories and cultures the ground evokes ideas of creation, history, life and death. It is a fundamental component of our existence upon which we dwell. As a nexus notion the ground is deeply rooted in cultural, philosophy, archaeology, geology and architecture, inciting a multiplicity of meanings and connotations. A being at once an artifact of time, of history but also at the same time an active site under constant becoming. Yet the presence of ground in the urban environment within human perception has been suppressed by its abstraction as a surface for circulation, space for development and the embedment of utilitarian infrastructure. Its material essence commoditised, its form defined by artificial datums, the ground’s connotations of histories, heritage, nature and geology, its poetic presence have consequently been exiled beyond the contemporary city reserved for the natural landscapes or museums, the considerations of ground forced into the subconscious.This thesis attempts to reapproach the ground and its poetic potential through destabilising its latency, unraveling ground and its meaning and connotations, an Ungrounding. Poetic images of the grounds developed through exploring ground viewing the ground through itself many facade, impressions and connotation transgressing the bounding different mode of thoughts and discourses. Contemplating on the relationship between architecture, the city and the ground this thesis explores the grounds of Britomart and its poetic potential through the process of making, producing a series of artifacts and culminating into five speculative architectural envisioning of ground in Britomart, as Five Encounters of ground. The encounters and in turn this thesis are not conclusive definitions of ground but to be understood as disruptions to the subconscious navigation of the urban ground through confrontation and meditations. As thickenings this thesis hopes to extend of our awareness and experiences of our urban environments and as such our being within the world beyond the immediate articulated surface but to dwell within its poetic thickness.