Between Instability and Rejuvenation: Negotiating Strengthening and Heritage

Abstract

The case for altering architecture, and particularly interiors, has been examined in Scott’s On Altering Architecture with the encouraging thought that function alone is not the determinant for destruction but that social progress, economic function and aspects of behaviour are entwined with the issue. Earthquake Prone Buildings along Cuba Street in Wellington New Zealand may be obsolete in terms of their structural stability but this eclectic precinct of cafés, shops, creative artists and lifestyles has created an identity that is iconic of Wellington. If these buildings are too unsafe during or after an earthquake and are to be demolished, what then for the eclecticism of Cuba Street? Can there be mediation, for example, between earthquake strengthening and heritage buildings in order to reinforce existing ideas of place identity within Cuba Street? This thesis proposes to use Homi Bhabha’s Third Space as a way to negotiate the polarities of heritage and strengthening, retention and intervention, which have arisen from the earthquake prone policies in Wellington in order to rejuvenate Cuba Street’s place identity.

This thesis is primarily an interior architectural project that will address pragmatic structure. The negotiation of built fabric with the intervention of earthquake strengthening requires analysis of both the existing significance of these buildings and the structural outcomes required by the New Zealand Building Code in order to understand what must remain unchanged. The duality of tangible and intangible heritage allows a greater affinity of the existing fabric with the new intervention and contains the “practices, representations, expressions and … cultural spaces that are transmitted through generations and are constantly changed by people’s interaction with the (built) environment”¹. This means that the functions, spaces and inside/outside relationships of the buildings also influence the continuity of heritage practices. The site for this experiment is a block of three buildings in the Cuba Street Precinct. The programme for this site seeks to incorporate the existing functions of snowboarding retail and the new function of adventure tourist accommodation into a transitional adventure boutique space. The interiors will therefore be a response to current winter sport cultural phenomena, seek to express how multiple spaces negotiate the threshold of the in-between and reflect technological differences between the current ideas of strengthening interventions in existing heritage fabric.

¹UNESCO “Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage” chptr. 1 article 2.