Roll On - Roll Off

During the final months of 2011 the New Zealand government revisited a 50 year old proposal to move the inter-island ferry terminal, currently located in Picton, to a site bordering on both Lake Grassmere and the Clifford Bay coastline. This thesis is based around the design of the new terminal facilities.The primary goal of this research is to develop a model for a new inter-island ferry terminal that responds to its surroundings and explores Norberg-Schulz theory of genius loci. This thesis is born from the work of a number of theorists whose arguments surrounding the concept of place have strong relation to passenger terminal architecture.   Through the combination of Lynch’s theory of concretised space and Norberg-Schulz’s theory of genius loci the design case study proposes a new passenger terminal that has been designed to express the dynamic nature of travel and critique the notion of the terminal as a “waiting room” while still maintaining required terminal function. Internal terminal functions such as shops or staff areas are localised to nodal structures that sit within broader space. This allows for the expression of the locality while still providing a level of internal flexibility for the user. Therefore the terminal becomes a space of endless possibility and enjoyment rather than a soulless and leftover space as many terminals are perceived to be. The site for this design is of utmost importance to the project. This means that the outcomes discussed are directly relevant to this site alone, no other location could yield identical results.   This project is not undertaken as a feasibility study but as an architectural study exploring a concept through design. Therefore the outcome is not a technocratic one but an exploratory one.