This project is involved in a discussion about the role of abandoned and descaying architecture in city centres and their effect on identity loss. Newcastle has a condition where the unused and decaying buildings are in the central zones as past attempts to rejuvinate and develop these areas have failed.
This project looks at the re-use of an historically significant building Victoria Theatre that has stood in ruin for the past 60 years...
and the idea of a social tomb...
This project questions the typical and mundane aproaches to urban regeneration efforts based around retail siting directly oposite the GPT site.
This project instead proposes to renue newcastles abandoned CBD through the re-introduction of places of public pleasure, the dark, nocturnal, lost types of taboo spaces- places out of the fringes or corners of our culture.Typically these types of activities have been pushed to the outskirts of the city into the void or left over space-Newcastle has this rare oportunity becasue these void spaces are inside the city.
This project is concerned with activities of consumption, display, exchange and the architectural and urban spaces they take place in- the proposal incorporates a hotel, a nightclub, restaurant and bar spaces- all spaces concearned with consumtion and pleasure. This project is about the pursuit of pleasure and celebrating this pursuit in the urban environment.
The concept is BONDAGE AND THE MASK. Bondage being a metaphor of order and the mask being a metaphor of seduction. (both aspects in Tschumi's "The Pleasure of Architecture")
The mask relates to the public interface and their perception - the overall success of the project relys on the revealing and concealing of elements.
The mask operates as a threshold element...
A process of movement that liberates the visitor...
Acting as a mask should... with the illusion always that something is beyond or darkness is beyond. With major focus being placed on the ideas of freedom and containment, display and concealment and desire and disgust.
Gaining some inspiration from David Lynch's films exploring issues of the building as a curtain- something you can peep into and see a space of darkness and shadow within.
The main site strategy is the activation of theatre lane- which runs down the side of the theatre.
It is currently in disarray - probably beacuse developments have blocked it off at the end and down the sides....This activation causes a strong pedestrian route through the site and sets up a disjunction between Hunter and King Streets.
The ground floor houses all the public functions; the night club (located in the remains of the old theatre), a restaurant, bar, gym and public bathrooms. The concept of the mask is carried out through a series of threshold elements through which the public is filtered into the building- it is the type of anonymous space you can just disapear into.
Another major planning scheme inspired by Peter Greenaway films is the idea of pushing the by-products of consumption to the streetfront so in away the people become a mask upon themselves- pushing the grotesk functions of public bathrooms and waste disposal to the public interface to mask acts of consumption within the building.
The idea of the nightclub was inspired by reading into carnivalesque methodologies involving performance- public spectacle and joyful and grotesk consumption- these are ideas that are explored to invigorate the abandoned site.
The idea that the preservation of the inside or feeling of the space is more important that the typical preservation of the facade.
I wanted to reatin the spaces social presence in the city and its dignity.
Further reading into the carnival revealed the word "Carnival" came from the word "Carnivore" the act of consuming meat...
I have incorporated a butcher to act as a mask or threshold element for the nightclub.
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The concept of Bondage relates to the tightly bound program of the hotel-this project intends to critique the idea of a hotel especially the hallway as a form of bondage and the types of anxious feeling associated with traversing a hallway in the attmept to locate a room number.
I have begun looking at the idea of the hotel in terms of a site of tradgedy... the notorious celebrity overdose...the murder...the suicide...the scandalous types of activities that occur in hotels.
The idea that within the hallway you are someone completely different. The premice that these different worlds can co-exist side-by-side- the idea that you come to a hotel to escape reality and you are not required to act yourself and at 10am the next morning a new cycle of history begins in a room- a new mask is put on in the attempted illusion that this place is fresh and new.
I am currently exploring the idea of a fake or dual hallway that could both exaggerate feelings of anxiety and authority felt within the space as well as acting as an element that could lock down sections of the hotel as sites of tradgedy occur.
