WAI TE MATA OBSIDIAN WATERS
A TRANSITIONARY EXPERIENCE A series of perspectives through the journey from the city to the ocean
A LAYERED REVEAL
A WET WORLD OF STONE
A DRY WORLD OF WOOD
A WORLD OF FLOTATION
FINAL RELEASE - THRESHOLD
Anticipation of the end experience
An Animated space - hydrotherapy
A contemplative space
A still space - lessened mass
Hidden behind a veil - a view to the ocean, sense of immersion between abstraction and nature
Our environment is the defining character of our self-image. A place is what can distinguish one experience from another. The key to this differentiation is material; the physical and tangible things we encounter is what can connect us with the immediate surrounding context.
Amagerforbrænding Waste Energy Plant, Copenhagen. Denmark / Bjarke Ingels Group
This project is in many ways situated on an edge condition. It is a place in the outskirts of Copenhagen, but also the centre for new recreational activities. It divides the local area in two, with factories on one side and housing on the other. It is a place you know from afar, but where few people ever go. On one hand the city of Copenhagen on the other hand Amager. The aim of the project is to tie all these opposing forces together, forming an identity for a new place in Copenhagen, the aim being to turn it into a place in itself – a destination where people will travel to. The architecture intensifies the relationship between the building and the city – expanding the existing activities in the area by turning the roof of the new Amagerforbrænding into a ski slope for the citizens of Copenhagen.
Mirage, Tinos Island, Greece / Kois Associated Architects
The Mirage residence is situated on steep sloped rocky plot facing south overlooking the Aegean Sea. The location allows benefiting from wonderful and panoramic views of the landscape and seascape, thus the goal was to integrate the building into the landscape like it was part of it. The living space is covered by a rimless pool that produces a visual effect of water extending to the horizon, vanishing and merging with the seascape. From a distance especially if viewed from the path of approach, on a higher ground, the only visible feature of the house is the water, acting as a narrative framework within which the user initiates an interaction of water, architecture and landscape, instituting a sense of wellbeing.
Anning River Aquatic Resort, China / Studio Shift Architects
In order to promote and accommodate year-round tourism, the Aquatic Center’s design features complete indoor pool facilities including swimming and diving pools, leisure pools of varying natures and temperatures, play pools for children and on-site spa facilities. However, the focal point of the concept is clearly the swimming lagoon, which has been carved into the site between the riverbed and the bronze metal structures. Given the size of the lagoon, Shift was very careful in employing a design that would ensure the lagoon would remain a sustainable amenity. Rather than draining the city water system to fill their pools, the overall system capitalizes on the abundant Miyi rainwater and the adjacent Anning River as primary sources.
Eco Boulevard in Vallecas, Madrid, Spain / Ecosistema Urbano
Social: The project evenly spreads the amenity of open green space throughout the city, stitching together historic ethnic and economic boundaries. Public space is created for diverse socialization and play. Environmental: Beyond a sustainable water system, the project creates a significant city-wide reduction of urban heat island (UHI) effect; increased organic filtration of pollutants and CO2 in the air; filtration of pollutants and heavy metals out of rainwater. Energy: Reducing levels of runoff entering storm-sewers significantly reduces energy loads (and GHG emissions) because pumping and treating rainwater in a single centralized location is energy intensive.
Ocean Pools, Medellin, Australia / Luis Callejas - LCLA Office
As seen in a similar to Alvaro Siza’s pools in Leca de Palmeira which are masterpieces of landscape intergration, making the most of a dramatic, rugged coastal landscape, the pools in Australia focus on the domestication of a wild aquatic territory. This experience is similarily replicated of an inland ocean, of swimming in a protected territory surrounded by waters with completely undomesticated conditions, and thus serve as the outermost pieces of architecture at the edge of an island nation. It forms an interface between the city and the ocean in a country were anything that is not the coast is a hinterland.
Les Cols Pavilions, Girona, Spain / RCR Arquitectes
As is customary in the work, this RCR project aims to create a space with an atmosphere conducive to a certain specific and unique experience. This is not a silver space for the rest of the bustle, or the simple isolation of urban stress. The Pavilions in Les Cols propose a way to spend the night in communion with the outside world, especially with the sky, but also to land nearby. An experience similar to that offered to sleep outdoors, but filtered through the lens of architecture and culture that, therefore, forced to learn and take something strange and exciting for our ancestors was very normal.
Suncheon Wetlands Center, Korea / Gansam Architects’ G.lab
Gansam Architects have designed a visitor’s center that works to both enhance and protect the wetland that it is built on. It’s no easy feat, but the architects have succeeded in creating a minimally invasive project that goes with the ebb and flow of the tides. Suncheon Bay in Korea is a 3,550 hectare Ramsar-protected wetland. Within its shallow salt marshes, one can find over 25 threated species. It is important not just for its ecological attributes, but for its contribution to the production of fish, seaweed and mollusks, designed to meld with the surrounding mountains and wetland, showcasing its surroundings while protecting them at the same time.
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PROPOSAL Architecture is often utilized as a tool of urban revitalization. They must become markers of a particular time and place in a city, and can attract attention. One vital aspect to this project is to consider the well being of the environment, with particular attention to the remediation and reinvigoration of Waitemata harbour. The project manifests itself architecturally as an ecological /climate research center that can become a potential site for the unfolding of public life; revealing a previously hidden reality of urban existence. Its also based on a simple concept, creating a journey through a series of internal environments, that reflect the narrative experience of the public, before opening up to a key threshold on the site, where the user feels a sense of immersion within the landscape. This can be offered by the addition of a highly immersive experience of bathing in and by the sea, surrounded by the ocean, instated by the creation of new swimming and bathing facilities