SEEKING AN OASIS
Central to Auckland, integral to transportation. A linking passageway from sea to land to automobile. A gateway area, a threshold. A space that has yet to find its transitional potential. Currently locked in unnecessary bondage it shall be released and re-imagined, becoming an essential face of the city’s identity.
Busy streets and congested paths. Streets filled with familiar strangers with blurred faces going in every direction, each with their own itinerary. A destination controls our direction never allowing the freedom to wonder mindlessly without restriction. Familiar paths paint vivid journeys. Rolling, moving, stepping, pacing, stopping and giving way to bodily mass or to moving metal. The red eye appears at every corner, catching holding halting movement. No grand entrance no sense of anticipation and no satisfaction. More conversations are made between flying contraptions, which wait aimlessly resting upon its hard surface.
No longer are spaces bound to the threshold title. Opportunity and control is handed to the beholder. Human clusters unravel the element of surprise, breeding interactions.
An invisible barrier grasps the centre of the square only broken by wandering bodies. No sense of place to claim, no freedom to fuel the playful mind.
On site the bridges between bodies are broken, with little or no chance of accidental interaction. Physically they exist but in the mind they lie restless unable to day dream. Mentally they are tortured, they yearn to be lost somewhere distant.
Spaces that encourage rest from activity form places of destination. Perpendicular to transitional trajectories these resting areas capture and hold residents. Benches with subtle folds encourage slumber and relaxation, escape from the ever moving city landscape.
The faรงade, swathed in swatches of monotomous textures and colours, its face ultimately left patchy and incomplete. Its chaotic parameter creates confusion, these individual fragments do they make a whole? The rear facade sits discarded from the rest. Alley ways and grungy backstreets surface to mind. Pavements and roads are bustlling yet against this uninviting boundary they slip past.
During the night the site fades, disappearing with all presence lost. The subsistence of warmth and activity are absent, it is now no longer aware. Time is continuous, night is no end.
There is a need for refuge from the visual pollution and darkness. Distant conversations from kinetic and restful bodies translate into a sense of security amongst the proximity of vibrant existence.
An airy, pulsive threshold reveals a chaotic surge of chromatic sensory assault. The spontaneous sprawl leaking in from the night are transformed by the lights into creatures acting on the pulsing vibrations, flashing and the numbing thuds of bodies around them. The space is lit to generate hype. Piercing the darkness, dim warm light holds resting creatures within its reach. Intimacy can be felt between those who bathe in the glow.
The soul of the space is the magnetic presence of humans. Curiosity creates journey, they flow through, they inhabit they occupy. Atmosphere masks reality in spaces which are arranged to organize but not restrict freedom. Modules and levels create intimate areas to escape to imaginary worlds. Hazy screens mask the boundaries, the walls no longer exist, only the bodily mass that sways in tune. Obscure and primal movements, unfamiliar sights yet a pleasing to eye.
The resounding vibrations are foreign from those heard during the day, they are mixed, remixed, rewound and replayed. The night stays young, endless lights and sounds. The energy builds, shakes, climaxes and spills over and over again. The dictator feeds music to the masses, connecting them through pulsations and vibrations syncing their movements and desires.
The topology of the space should emulate a foreign landscape. Unfamiliar landscapes have the ability to either rest or stress a person depending on the subliminal nature of the guiding topology. Gentle slopes and inclines subtly escort people into areas best suiting their desires. There are none lost in the landscape, each indentation, each protuberance leading them on to a distinct area of activity or inactivity, the choice of remaining in a space is theirs alone. Horizontally designated areas entice activity, be it transportational or leisurely. Slopes and areas of concave gather those seeking rest and relaxation. Convex areas, points of altitude lead those seeking accomplishment to their summits.
Singular, spread trees, open grassy areas and variation of flora that brews a subtle sweet smell. Trees that are not bunched but spread, dappled and enticing. Humans feed on produce and clensed oxygen harvested through the locality of the green space.
An ocean of rest space is at the grasp of the user. It should not be restricted but determined by the imagination of the mind. Set aside from busy fast pace transnational space, lies static spaces. Places to stop and unwind and feel free from forceful pace. Natural lit spaces brings warmth. Seating spaces should only be suggestive resting spaces, never forceful. These are calm spaces, noise no longer exists.
A multidimensional activation of space. Malleable and diverse, encouraging and playful. Spaces that elicit movement, conversations, synchronisation and rest. Transitional activities unrestricted by times of day or night. An ever open, ever happening space, events and meetings, peaks and troughs. Transmigrational beings dispersed within a progressive space seeking stimulation.