Abstract:
As the city becomes more dense and concentrated with people and cars, the quality of public life is up for question. In the 21st century, there has been more focus on the importance of landscape and public spaces for the people of Auckland city as they want to escape out of the everyday work life. In the late 1920s when the automobiles invaded the city, it has greatly affected how cities were developed with improvements of the infrastructure. However to create a sustainable urban environment, this thesis proposes that a shift needs to change between cars to the people to create a city for the human city. The current condition of cars having more priority over pedestrian in Auckland CBD needs to be changed by developing open car park spaces into public spaces.This thesis is a case study to develop car park spaces in Auckland CBD into a recreational public landscapes. Traditionally, public spaces and streets have been two separate spaces and for different users but this thesis proposes that public spaces aren't limited to the boundary of the block and it can be stretched out onto the streets to continue the journey from the public space. The historical, natural and cultural elements hidden beneath the solid concrete ground of the car park will be rediscovered to bring back traces of what was lost during the development of the city. The selected sites to be recovered are car park spaces on Fort Street, Elliot Street and Wakefield Street. The focus of the thesis is to reveal and recover the lost natural elements the city is built on top of, to let the ground breathe. The additional urban landscapes will effectively strengthen the network of public spaces in the city, creating a desirable city for the people to live. The recovery of landscape will be explored through a number of different urban surface design strategies, looking at how materiality, folding and the manipulation of the ground surface can express the breathing of the ground and to create a range of public spaces for its different usage. The thesis will study on micro and macro scale, how the individual site will be recovered and the impact it will have on the greater city context.