Inhabiting the Shadow A [building] is a fragment of a whole that somehow, some way, embodies a sense of prior times. Even in its incompleteness the fragment suggests a greater entity once whole. [It] provokes our memories. It whispers that we should reconsider the past, that we should think about what has been. Marc Treib, Remembering Ruins, Ruins Remembering
Located at 68-71 Tasman Street sits the remains of what used to be the Boys’ and Girls’ Institute (BGI), alone, cold and only a distant memory for the Wellington community. It was originally built as a boys boarding home in the early 1900’s, and identified as the S.A Rhodes Home for Boys, which still masks the facade to this day. In the 1970’s it became the Boy’s and Girls’ Institute and was converted into a recreation centre for the Wellington district. This redevelopment saw the installation of a swimming pool in the ground floor, protruding through the original foundations to ground its placement within the community. However, in 2007 the land was passed on and sold to Foodstuffs, who saw this site as mealy a space for residential development. Up until the time of destruction, the Boys’ and Girls’ Institute was a place where the children from the entire Wellington district came to gather, take part in afterschool activities and gain the confidence and skills for swimming, one of the most important skills for a child to develop. After much debate and petitioning, sadly the Boys’ and Girls’ Institute on Tasman Street was no more, and now all that stands is the historical facade and the buried concrete foundations of the swimming pool.
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Inhabiting the Shadow takes the past children based programmes and combines them to become a kindergarten, housing small children from the age of three months old to the age of five. This age range is arguably the most important time for not only a child’s development, but it is the time
where they learn the most fundamental aspects of daily life, from infant, to child, adolescent to adult. They learn to simply say “yes” and “no”, they learn “please” and “thank you”, they learn about respect; how to treat their peers and their elders. Because of today’s materialistic society both parents are encouraged to return to work to meet their personal needs and desires. Nowadays, a child is brought into this world and is sent to a pre-school education so the parents can return back to work, sometimes before the child is even one month old. There needs to be a constant development of pre-school education, which starts with a good design. Gunter Beltzig, owner of a children’s furniture and design business, Playdesign, explains the following in his book Kindergarten Architecture;
We know now that the sensory stimuli a child receives from his environment are vital to his development. Psychological studies have explored the effects of architecture on the behaviours of young children. The architect’s task is to take these theories into consideration while adapting the design process to the spatial needs of a child. It would be out of place to speak of the concept of space itself as a factor in education, since education is based on human as well as environmental contributions, which affect the development of children’s potential and their interaction with their surroundings.1
There are three elements to the design of this kindergarten, beginning with the existing facade and shell. Standing to this day is a red brick facade which is detailed with specks of baby blue and covered in battles wounds from years gone by, yet it still salutes to the building it once was. A place for which children can be free to learn, to explore, to test their own boundaries and develop foundations for the adults they would later become. Housed within the existing shell is theh introduction to the learning process; the entrance to the kindergarten, which is reformed back to the original entrance of the BGI. As the child enters the safe, strong and supportive construction, 1
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they have the ability to witness the progression which they will take during their time at the facility. Within the existing, there is a small cafe, and held above in the first floor, facing the afternoon sun is the sleeping area for the toddlers. Both these spaces are disengaged from the existing, held to the original columns by a clipping mechanism, so both the existing and the intervention can be witnessed together; the past and the present can be envisioned as one entity. Here, there is an acknowledgement to the history of the building; keeping is sacred. There is an understanding that the intervention is used as a reminder of what was once there, acting a ghost, shadowing the stories of the past. Secondly, the intervention begins to reach back and inhabits the historical and buried foundations of the swimming pool, which acts like a voyage for the child emulating the rituals and rites of passage as a child grows up; a historical beginning transforming into contemporary thresholds based on the rituals of play, sleep, eating and learning. As the child progresses from infant to toddler (three months to one year), they progress vertically to the educational development spaces, held within the middle core of the intervention. This tower allows the child to observe where they came from, the infant area, and what they are becoming; the vertical progression from toddler to adolescent, and later an adult.
Vertically, I allow the adult to realise they are also a participant of the child’s development and are included within the design intervention. Where the offices for the adults where once held within the ground floor of the original design, they have now been pushed through and reach the summit of the original building, becoming a double height space and a contemporary reminder of what was once there. The result; the ability to witness of the progression of the child, which occurs horizontally through the design intervention, and consequently the child can look up vertically and witness the progression of the adult.
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The intersection of these two progressions, horizontal and vertical, is the place which is housed within the remaining mystery of the only place left in existence.
Inhabiting the Shadow is a project which challenges the boundaries of the interior envelope. It is a piece of architecture which inhabits the shadow of the original building, but within itself is a piece of architecture (the majority of the design, which reaches out behind and on top of the existing), interior architecture (encased within the existing) and landscape architecture (the playground, which is installed within the foundations of the swimming pool). It could be argued that for a relatively small population, the sheer size of this kindergarten is too large for the number of potential inhabitants. However, the design of this kindergarten is challenging the arguable restrictions with which New Zealand pre-school education is currently housed within. Mark Dudek, a specialist international researcher into the field of kindergarten architecture, has written several books on the subject of how important and significant the architecture is of kindergartens, and how it contributes to the development of the children held within. In one of his publications, Kindergarten Architecture – Space for the Imagination, he points out the following;
Statutory child care regulations and existing technical guides, usually compiled by experienced educationalists rather than architects, provide precise (often minimal) space and programmatic standards for designers ... [there should be a way to] illustrate and explore the practical and aesthetic concerns of those architects and nursery school leaders who have, in our view, gone some way towards the design of ‘high quality’ educational environments for young children.2
This vision relates to how the design of this particular kindergarten is not restricting itself to the compulsory guidelines of what a kindergarten should entail, but rather challenge the boundaries and expand the envelope of what is possible with the space provided. This space allows the child to explore in their own terms, at their own pace, encouraging the child to walk up and down stairs, over bridges, through thresholds found on their own adventure throughout the space. 2
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Inhabiting the Shadow is an historical reminder, an existing memory and a contemporary acknowledgement. Fundamentally, it is a kindergarten for children to grow and become individuals who can appreciate where they came from and how they got there. To understand what they learnt not only in the prescribed academic education, but also what the history of the site has taught them; to appreciate what has been before them and how it can influence the future generations.
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Bibliography
Beltzing, Gunter, ed. Kindergarten Architecture. Barcelona: Ginko Press Inc., 2001. Brosterman, Norman. Inventing Kindergarten. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2002. Dudek, Mark. Children’s Spaces. Oxford: Architectural Press, 2005. Dudek, Mark. Kindergarten Architecture - Space for the Imagination. 2 ed. London: Spon Press, 2000. Tidwell, Philip. “Place, Memory and the Architectural Image.” In Archipelago, edited by A. Richard Williams, 149-55. Arizona: Osimo Press: Exclusive distribution by the University of Illinois Press, 2009. Treib, Marc. “Remembering Ruins, Ruins Remembering.” In Spatial Recall, edited by Marc Treib, 195-215. London Routledge, 2009.
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