Mahurangi Design Project

This project aims to create a learning environment that is conducive to three artists to practicing their unique crafts, as well as allow others to benefit from their experiences. Building across the lake on the other hand, takes advantage of its perspective to preserve the ruins as well as the setting.

The design process begins with following the technique that artist Rosie Booth utilizes to create her pieces: dotting a continuous pattern on metal and paper. This process led me on a quest to explore and understand how these dots could be interpreted, and subsequently reflected through architectural representations.

I discovered that my "dotting patterns" that I was also repeating onto metal pieces had similar properties to the form of tree roots on site as well as the decaying leaves. My architectonic form emerged from organic forms with an element of erosion, movement, and change.

As the roots of the trees sprawled over concrete ruins, the form crawling through one side of the lake to the other, connecting the whole site together. To integrate the form with the site, the root system has been inserted into the foundation and engaged around the structure to provide stability.