Sculpting Infrastructure - A Temple To Nature
Authors:   , Esselink Ryan Cameron 
Published: December 2021

<p>Off the coast of Paraparaumu lies one of New Zealand’s most iconic tourist attractions, the Kapiti Island nature reserve. Home to many native plant and wildlife species, this island sanctuary offers a unique nature experience that is under appreciated. The now flourishing nature deserves to be honoured a respected by locals and tourists of the Kapiti region. To date there is no designated building where ticket purchases and bio-security checks can be undertaken for island visitors. No obvious link exists from the local shops to the beach front where the visitors depart. This presents an opportunity for a gateway building to create a slice of the Island’s nature on the mainland. In doing so this would honour and celebrate the sanctuaries nature, installing a level of reverence for the island as visitors pass through. This thesis looks to explore the possible synergies between nature, highway infrastructure and religious architecture types. In order to develop a critical understanding of each architecture type and the possible synergies, explorations involving mass, volume and symmetry were conducted. These specific qualities put the project into a tradition of monumentality. As an understanding of this tradition developed Louis Kahn became an important precedent for me. Just as the late Louis Kahn achieved presence in his buildings, I argue that monumentality could be used in developing a successful synergy between infrastructure and religious architecture types. In the same way monuments and temples typically evoke respect I believe a monumental building on the Paraparaumu beach front will install a reverent homage towards nature as visitors to the island pass through. Throughout this thesis the series of design experiments involving traditional monumental qualities explore the synergies between nature, highway infrastructure and religious architecture types. The exploration utilizes the gateway building as a project to test the possible synergies in context . Operating within a design-led research methodology, varied approaches using multiple mediums explored formal language, spatial experience, composition and proportion of monumentality. The final design, situated on an existing roundabout, is a cylindrical concrete temple connecting the shop and beach front. The form is a subtracted mass obtained through an exploration of subtraction and composition. This temple evokes the desired homage towards nature as its visitors pass through to the island. Although grand in size, I argue, because the temple is situated on a traffic island, the over bearing power of monumentality is played down, respecting its surrounding context. As the design process unfolded a shift occurred in the preferred method for experiments. In the early stages a reliance on a digital experimentation method existed, however a shift towards an analogue experimentation method occurred as an understanding of monumentality and possible synergies between nature, highway infrastructure and religious architecture types were realised. This shift in methodology, required more precision and rigor for each experiment, invoking a deeper understanding of each success and failure. Critically reflecting on this transition forms the discussion of my thesis, understanding the opportunities of Paraparaumu and how a modestly scaled building can be developed that still imposes its significance in the surrounding context.</p>