Description:

This project embarks on an axonometric journey through the concept of inversion, shedding light on the hidden underground spaces of the city, specifically Auckland’s underground railway links. The design integrates into Auckland's Karangahape Road City Rail Link Station and the Pitt Street Lane Box, offering slices of light and darkness as users transition between surface and subterranean spaces on their daily commute through the urban labyrinth of the city.
The project's primary purpose is to rejuvenate and integrate Auckland’s underground railway spaces into the fabric of Karangahape Road, enhancing the social and cultural significance of the railway link as an active network hub beneath the city.

The slip in between the new and the old:

The proposed interventions at each end of the new train stations currently under construction serve as “shadows/ghosts” to the main entry spaces for the City Rail Link stations. It establishes connections between the design of the new train station and the historical underground systems and above-ground spaces, aiming to bridge the gap between modern development and heritage. The project achieves regenerative outcomes as the resulting train station design becomes a recollection of the historical underground bathrooms and sites that were lost. The ghosts of the site include the Pitt Street underground bathroom, later transformed into a café. The café’s layout was then replicated in the proposed design for Beresford St/Pitt Street, integrating the functions of the bathroom/café back into the site. The Mercury Plaza, once a vibrant supermarket and food court, is also reintroduced into the project in the Mercury Lane/Cross Street design and attaches itself between the Mercury Theatre and the new train station, emerging through the alleyway in between the two buildings.

By repurposing historical spaces and integrating them into modern transit hubs, the design not only caters to commuter needs but also celebrates Auckland’s lost cultural heritage and fosters sustainable design, social cohesion, cultural awareness, and economic well-being. It transforms previously neglected areas into active, functional spaces that enhance public engagement and urban vitality. By integrating natural light and shadow through innovative design techniques like cyanotype printing, the project enhances environmental sustainability. It transforms underground spaces into dynamic, light-filled environments that reduce energy consumption and connect commuters to the city's history through visual storytelling.

An original architectural response through drawing:

The project innovates by challenging conventional axonometric drawing to create a new form of expression in architectural media, shifting its role from a representational tool into a dynamic design catalyst. Using the concept of inversion, three aspects foreground the investigation into the underground: above/below, light/darkness, and conceal/reveal. Specifically, the design focuses on forms generated by the axonometric’s unique 45-degree angle and the experimentation of various material mediums, such as cyanotype drawing on fabric, plaster and paper. The use of cyanotype as a central medium allows for opportunities to transform the architecture into a canvas for light, shadow, and time. The underground train station uses light thresholds such as slits, openings, and voids to achieve this effect. The underground rail link is revived into life through the elemental (light) and the physical (drawing).

The cyanotype process applied to architectural space creating a phenomenological experience:

Cyanotype printing is a key process creating the “inversion” or negative photographic image on a dark blue surface – the light-sensitive surface is exposed to the sun to ‘develop’, tracing the shadow of the objects placed on the surface. When this technique is applied to enlarged scales such as building surfaces, hanging fabric, walls and floors, the daylight that pierces into the pattern screens hanging beneath void spaces allows light to refract shadows onto the building surfaces. Inversion occurs as the ‘shadows’ become ‘light’ and the dark underground space becomes ‘light etched’ into a canvas of time marked by the play of light and shadow. The daily commuters journey into the underground train station becomes an atmospheric journey whereby the mundane experience of moving through an overly stimulated transportation terminal is subverted. Instead, every movement through the passage of the underground is transformed into an evolving canvas of time where light and shadow transforms architectural space, prompting us to pause in our hastened steps and notice the epiphanic moments of ‘change’ on the walls, surfaces and circulation routes of the underground.