Interchanging animation

Abstract

This dissertation is rooted in the premise of stitching together and creating relationships between components and conditions that define a place and its essence. Through architecture, the project focuses on the creation of interconnections between these and subsequent reciprocal complementation and animation. The town of Bela-Bela developed radially around the Warmbaths fountain, which served as the settlement genesis and origin. Due to the water s mystical, mythical and medicinal allure, favourable weather conditions and the serene natural environment, recreational facilities were envisaged and developed here to accommodate the intersection with the water and natural environment enveloping it. The recreational facilities and the town were conceived to be inseparable entities but have evolved to operate independently through privatisation and insulation of the physical and metaphysical nucleus to the place: The central gardens and fountain. The site of investigation is the eastern boundary condition of the Warmbaths Forever Resort. The CBD and major transportation infrastructure ring this site and extend into the urban and rural environment. The urban intention is to create a condition that re-instils a public relationship between the nucleus and the urban context, while the programmatic intentions are to facilitate and reference the characteristics and conditions that define and make up the place, so as to interconnect and animate the town and the everyday with the extraordinary that presides. The architectural intentions are to enable an interchanging animation between architecture, the natural environment and the context, while creating a sensorial intersection with the inherent poetics of the water from the fountain and those from the natural landscape.