The Museum of Boys: Redesign of the Shelly Bay Army Base Warehouses into a School for Boys

Abstract

The Shelly Bay 'Museum of Boys' is a youth hostel that aims to challenge the contemporary notions of temporary accommodation and provide alternative constructive engagements to the negative influences of our society that are prevalent in the youth of today. The 'Museum' aims at the acquiring, preserving, conserving, restoring and displaying of youth. The existing warehouses are translated into an 'industrial playground' that allows for the celebration of boys being boys and their transition into adulthood. The organisation system of the hostel/school emanates from a central point, a symbolic lighthouse and watchtower. An east/west Gangway and a north/south Gantry Arm, both emerging from the tower, act as critical thresholds. The east/west Gangway is elevated off the ground and provides access pathways, while acting as a threshold dividing the housing and activities of the boys to the south from the bunkers and headquarters of the supervisors and adults to the north. Pointing southward towards the city is the taut Gantry Arm that acts as a flying fox and crane system, dividing the boys' areas of restoration and sleep to the west from areas where more active and ruckus youthful activities take place to the east. The base and northern end of the Gantry Arm enclose adult management headquarters, containing the conference area, lounge, lookout and self-contained faculty apartments. On the southern (youth) side of the Gangway axis is an activities fort and playground; enclosed below are classrooms that open up to the wharfs and the lecture theatre that staggers down into the hard earth. Sprawling from the base of the lighthouse is the dining area, where feeding casually takes place in the rough cages and staggered steps.