Upper level plan
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The project redefines and provides new infrastructural elements to enliven a series of building edges and increase pedestrian traffic flow. These transitory spaces become a programmatic interface between public and private zones, and act to extend the space between both realms - ultimately grappling at a space of ambiguity.
This ambiguity is achieved through a number of material moves. Transparency is a key architectural component in defining spaces that create both edge and visual connection, with diversity achieved through layering and opacity. As an overarching method, layering of material allows for the preservation of the tectonics of history that exist on the site whilst permitting the intrusion of other elements. Pieces reclaimed from elsewhere along Front Street are re-appropriated to the site, thus detaching them from their pre-existing context and allowing them to act as self-referential elements. These objects are part of telling the narrative of the waterfront in a more condensed space, bringing in yet another layer of ambiguity through questioning.
This may be advanced further through moving art works as projections across a facade during certain events. A new cultural institution, with both a program and user group that are highly transitory, is seen to further extend this semi-public realm through activity and visual cues. The building’s entrance and social spaces deliberately mingle with the redefined public passages to increase movement through the current void space.
