Description:

The latest commercial development in Titirangi—the gateway village at the foothills of the Waitākere Ranges—seems incongruous with its forestscape. This new building's scale, materiality and mass emerge as something alien and detrimental to the village's culture and cherished urban imagination. This project stems from the suspicion that feelings of dis-belonging, and identity loss coincide with alien architecture and globalisation.

Indeed, the necessity for construction coincides with Aotearoa's population growth—this work does not resist this demand. However, it aspires to dismantle preconceptions of sprawl, suggesting that it can manifest without withering people's tacit understanding of their homescape. As the Waitākere Ranges are the geographic spine of Tāmaki Makaurau, the landscape's value manifests in the sentiment people share with its unscathed wilderness—forged through years of ancestral lineage. This project, therefore, offers an imaginative rescripting of a commercial building—what if this structure was designed through a place-privileging lens?

The rescripted building consolidates a therapeutic complex—'Fringe House'. The titular 'Fringe' is positioned firstly through Titirangi's translation—'Fringe of Heaven'—and secondly through its peripheral occupation at the city's edge. The complex is triadic: 'The Terrace'—a meeting place and kitchen; 'The Cabins'—therapy spaces; and lastly, 'The Makerspace'. These typologies leverage Titirangi's natural landscape, bohemian community and art culture—set to amplify architecture's kinship to place. Modernism is deep-rooted in Titirangi's vernacular history. Its modernist buildings are highly valued due to their sincere reconciliation with Waitākere's panoramic sights and dense bush. Their lightness and transparency blur a sense of inside-ness/outside-ness.

'The Terrace' is transparent, framing fleeting views to the Manukau Harbour from Titirangi's streetscape. The structure is set back from the footpath—to foreground native bush and align with the neighbouring heritage building, Lopdell House. Columns and downpipes are forest-like, coming in and out of alignment with surrounding trees. ‘The Terrace’ interplays between outside and in, blurring building/forest, column/tree, roof/canopy. A series of glass pavilions make up the building—touching the ground lightly and stepping with the sloped site. Each roof module is canopy-like, bowed to capture rainwater with copper gutters. This metal will develop a green patina—a gesture to neighbouring Te Uru Gallery and celebration of Titirangi’s wet climate. Downpipes funnel rainwater to detention-aqueducts following the lower path. Water is part of the occupational experience.

Positioned adjacent to the temporal art market, 'The Makerspace' channels the public through an ascending stairwell. The first point of connection is the adornment of the exterior walls: a terracotta tile designed to match that which exists in the building's background. Lopdell House's roof tiles are repatterned here, the structure's body related and tethered to its context.

'The Cabins' are bunkered down the sloped site. A promenade sinks into the forest, the path weaving between Kauri and Tōtara. Dense bush veils the cabins. Wet soil and manuka draw an aroma of calm. Upon arrival, a large overhang cantilevered above the path suggests entry.