The Porirua Transcripts: Affect, Atmosphere and Place

Porirua is a young city in many respects, but the relationship this city has to the landscape in which it lies is deep-rooted. The connection between the harbour water, the land and the people that dwell there contribute to a sense of place. But, the extensive development of Porirua’s urban realm in the recent times has resulted in inner-city planning schemes and architectural projects that turn the city’s back on the natural landscape and the ephemeral qualities that evoke a sense of place. What remains is a disenfranchised population that is unaware of the relationship between land and water within Porirua’s urban centre, and is consequently unable to recognize the effect that further urban growth will have on the landscape in years to come. Therefore, the research in this thesis explores the proposition that architecture holds a vital role in facilitating and amplifying the relationship between people and a place. This proposition is explored through a design-led research methodology that adopts and employs both analogue and digital design methods for the extraction, design, and occupation of ephemeral and atmospheric qualites of place. Furthermore, the methodology in this thesis requires the use of both research for design and research through design. This will provide the basic structure whereby a literary and physical context is established that situates the research in an existing theoretical body of knowledge. Design chapters follow this context chapter utilizing the information to generate a body of architectural work that responds to the research proposition. The body of architectural design work consists of three iterative experiments that increase in scale and complexity, architectural interventions include: an installation, a house and a public building. In each design iterative methods of representation were fundamental in the process of extracting, amplifying through design, and occupying atmospheric and ephemeral qualities. Architectural outcomes and iterative design explorations demonstrate the importance of drawing from ephemeral and atmospheric qualities of a place in order to generate architecture that can amplify the connection people have to Porirua.