Where am I?

"As an exploration of the vacant, worn, and dangerous, the inaccessible layers of the urban fabric are researched and gently prised open to be the spaces of this thesis. In delving into this exploration, initially, I couldn't help but question our collective understanding of space and its intrinsic value. These areas of the city shrouded in neglect and often marginalised by society, intrigued me, sparking curiosity about their potential use and possible integration back into our communities. 

This endeavour was influenced by Ignasi de Solà-Morales' literature on Terrain Vague, supported by three pools of thought, namely the theme of connection, journey and the unexpected. These themes were later taken and applied in the media of photography, collage, and sumi-e black ink painting informing the underlying concepts of, 'possibilities in absence' (fig1), 'building on the 'past' (fig2), and 'solids/'voids' (fig3). 

By employing an architectural mapping methodology, the thesis reveals a dual urban dynamic. Inspired by sumi-e depictions of positive and negative spaces (fig4), it explores zones of lightness — revitalized areas of Central Auckland (fig5) —and zones of darkness, the vacant lots of Auckland (fig6). As the two maps are superimposed, it presents a dichotomy of the city's urban activity, highlighting areas of progress and areas of stagnation and decline. The duality of the map captures the dynamism of the city and endeavours to bring to attention the presence and potentiality of the forgotten terrains scattered across Auckland's urban fabric. 

Methodologically, this thesis employs a multifaceted approach employing walking, photography, and rendering to stimulate discourse on the inherent value present within marginalised spaces. 

Rather than maintaining a distant observation of the four selected sites, the act of wandering became a form of intervention, surpassing the conventional boundaries that confine these locations. Attention was drawn beyond the obvious, seeking out the cracks and crevices in surfaces that often go unnoticed. This approach inspired a change in perspective, offering an alternative view of the city that transcends ordinary experiences commonly encountered in urban settings. 

The resulting photographs construct a cohesive visual narrative that authentically captures each space. The raw, untamed nature of these images became integral influences informing the subsequent design intervention, underscoring the importance of working with the site's existing qualities to accentuate its characteristics. 

In alignment with this objective, the rendering methodology integrates existing photographs with unconventional view ranges to create disorienting imagery. By presenting scenes that challenge traditional spatial perceptions, these renderings compel viewers to scrutinize their understanding of place and reality. This approach also initiates a profound philosophical inquiry inspired by Daniel Dennett's thought experiment, "Where am I? " (1978), thereby enriching the visual experience and prompting contemplation of both the environment and one's own presence within it. 

Ultimately, the aspiration of these final renders was for viewers to pause and question their surroundings with the query, "Where am I? " This reflection encourages a deeper engagement with spaces that defy conventional experience. 

"Reclaiming underutilised urban spaces is now de rigeur in the heritage hotel typology where the best rooms are insular havens with everything ensuite and with extensive endless views. These thesis imagines quite the opposite: intense engagement with the urban fabric. As with alberghi diffusi [a decentralised hospitality model], the city streets are the hotel's corridors, and breakfast is down the street in a public facility. 

Presented as a progressive and even uncertain journey, the hotel rooms are found on four otherwise vacant sites across 400m: the St James Theatre site at the south end and the service lane behind Vulcan Lane at the north end; between these, the Wellesley Street underground heritage toilets and 33 High Street facing Freyberg Square are the other sites. 

Each intervention of this thesis draws upon the site's history, materiality, and connection to the existing urban fabric, thus allowing for particularised architectural solutions to the neglectful treatment of vacant properties. On each of these currently under-utilised urban spaces, small interventions will be made leaving the site largely intact for other recovery work and reuse. The process is of a delicate weaving back into the urban fabric embracing evidence of past wear and tear while introducing new materiality to restore and accentuate the significance of the sites' many pasts: fresh, used, damaged and/or erased. 

A full version of the thesis can be accessed through the link below: 

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/68378

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Sola-Morales, Ignasi de. (1995). Terrain vague. In Cynthia Davidson (Ed.). Anyplace (pp. 118-123). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.   

Dennett, Daniel C. "Where Am I?" Lehigh University. Accessed Feb 18. 2024. Published 1978. https://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/Dennett-WhereAmI.pdf   "

Literally made [ largely ] in Japan, this [ literally ] dark reading of an outwardly very ordinary urban place, the Auckland CBD, originated with some very beautiful drawings of the minute signs of life sprouting from the inhospitable conditions in the worn pavements of Tokyo. The cultural-geographical leap onto larger scraps of open ground, demolition sites and the air above them, off of a 400 m stretch of Lorne and High Streets. With the city’s newest hotels now on the waterfront, an urban regeneration  project is at the heart of this deconstruction of the all-in-one block hotel typology and its claustrophobic interiority into a fragmented project elements carefully tucked into discrete, quiet, privileged positions in the intersticies of the umbilicus urbis. Programmatically the albergo diffuso hospitality model is distributed across four significant, but long abandoned, heritage conservation sites. Guests might have breakfast in their room in a steel bridge-building over the half-demolished St James Theatre, lunch or drink at the top of a high gilt fire stair off a Vulcan Lane service alley and have dinner in a converted former underground women’s public washroom on Wellesley Street. We are in the cracks of the city’s fabric; the author references kintsugi, the art of re-assembling fragmentary ceramics. The thesis steers clear of adaptive reuse and heritage architecture; rather the ephemerality of installations comes to mind. The exegesis takes us through a diversity of key theoretical works on urbanism, relevant Japanese craft sensibilities, and touches on surrealism. Parallels are drawn between terrain vague, places in limbo with the [ technically homeless in Auckland ] guests whose rooms we see, in the vertically attenuated drawings, perched in thrillingly vertiginous places surrounded by the unidentifiable backs of blocks and unswept sites below the exact address of which we cannot be certain.

By Michael Milojevic, supervisor