Re-Stitching Urbanism: Reclaiming Urban Voids through Architectural Intervention

Abstract

Mobility within urban environments has been a key issue since the widespread adoption of automobiles. With the increasing number of personal vehicles on the road, the importance of road infrastructure has grown, whereas the infrastructure needed to integrate human-scale movement within urban environments has diminished. Complex highway networks are often associated with occupying valuable urban landscapes and creating physical, social, and spatial barriers to urban development. This infrastructural occupation is exemplified at Auckland’s Central Motorway Junction, where almost 50 hectares of the city’s central zone have been dedicated to an extensive vehicular transportation network. With Auckland’s population expected to reach 2 million by 2030, according to Stats NZ, efficient use of available urban space is increasingly important. This thesis investigates the paradoxical nature of these infrastructural sites and proposes an architectural intervention to address the urban barriers and void spaces produced by the motorway network. The research combines a review of the theoretical literature, precedent analysis, and contextual and programmatic analyses to inform the final architectural intervention.

To establish an intervention that facilitates a variety of social interactions and engagement, the project does not propose a singular, defined programme. Rather, it investigates an adaptable network of programmes that encourage and accommodate functionally across a range of time frames. By integrating a sense of interventional impermanence, the architectural proposal reimagines the infrastructural landscape as a testing site for urban transformation, where the intervention and its programmes can evolve alongside its users and adapt to the environment