The first line back: Creating lightness along the coast

Abstract

The desire to live along the coastline needs to be met by a change in the way we build in this shifting environment. Nationally and internationally, the built environment has created solid barriers along the coast. The solidity and permanence of much coastal architecture restricts the movement of both people and landscape. Paraparaumu Beach on the Kapiti Coast has all these characteristics. It sits at the intersection of a shifting coastal landscape, an impermeable urban fabric, and discontinuous public circulation.

A light architecture is proposed at this site by applying three formal moves. These are elevating the building, allowing a porosity through circulation, and dissolving the fabric of the building. Elevating responds to the environmental risk of living along the coast. Porosity allows a publicness by increasing circulation. The density of the project is dissolved by a repetitive architectural language. The formal moves of elevating, porosity, and dissolution are discussed in three sections:

Elevating the project is discussed in relation to the architectural piloti, how to touch the ground and the consequence of exposing the ground.

As an alternative to both risk and privatisation, a light, elevated boulevard becomes the basis for both public and private life along the coastline. Through lifting the main floor above the ground, the environmental risks involved in continuing to live on the first line are minimised. Due to global warming the environmental risks include increased storm events, sea level rise, and erosion. Policy makers, and residents have conflicting views for solutions along the coast. ‘Managed retreat’ is a key method for risk reduction but has met resistance from residents. This method of risk reduction is a likely outcome for Paraparaumu Beach, but by elevating the scheme, the landscape under and around can be strengthened by soft management systems.

Porosity is discussed through orientation, circulation, and programme. It is then evaluated against Steven Holl’s work.

The public boulevard addresses the loss of public space along the coast due to the exclusivity of development. This is also due to the privatisation of our natural landscapes through technicalities of foreshore and seabed legislation (Peart, 2009). Multiple walkways weave across the project, guided by the concept of porosity.

Dissolution of form is reasoned through the process of ‘embracing the frame’, the idea of the repeating line, the influence of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, and as a critique of modernism through its contrasting motive within the landscape.

The repeated architectural language allows the form to begin to blend into the landscape. This repeated tectonic is proposed as an alternative for density.

The current tendency to build solidly is shifted into the realm of lightness by elevating the ground floor, allowing a porosity through circulation of people and landscape, and dissolving the buildings within the landscape.