Rehabilitating the ruin

Abstract

The ‘condition of the contemporary amputee’, involves the notion of a technological augmentation to facilitate a reinstatement of completeness, to the dis-abled or in-complete. Exponential advancements in technology have rendered the conventional prosthetic, merely a static object echoing the silhouette of the lost form, obsolete. Today, amputees are foregoing cosmetic covers of foam or silicon that disguise their prosthesis, in preference to the cyborgian gleam of steel and titanium. The prosthetic has been redefined from obsolete appendages to desirable objects of fashion.

This thesis considers how the social and cultural conditions of contemporary prosthetics can aid the treatment of historical architecture, or the architectural ruin. Fixated on the past, strategies toward architectural restoration generally restore a built artefact to a condition that is reminiscent of its original state, and perpetually maintains that condition. This thesis likens these strategies of restoration to the conventional prosthetic and posits a new strategy to engage with the built artefact that is forward looking and is concerned with an engagement to contemporary culture.

As a means to test this innovative strategy of rehabilitation, this thesis aims to fashion an intervention for the severely damaged Christchurch Cathedral, in Christchurch, New Zealand. The aspiration of this thesis is to re-instate the Christchurch Cathedral into a state of completeness that is concurrent with contemporary culture.