Adoration of the Joint

At many sites across New Zealand, industrial demands and the built environment have taken precedence over considerations for neighbouring natural settings, with a lack of threshold or transitional space between the two often leading to heavy contextual clashes. This is a prominent issue where the Korokoro Recreation Reserve meets the numerous industrial sites at Cornish Street in Lower Hutt, Wellington.  The aim of this research is to address these fragile contextual issues with an architectural intervention that acts like a joint on multiple theoretical levels, furthering our understanding of how architecture can contribute to the landscape, establishing a narrative between two conflicting conditions while establishing a transitional threshold between them.  Marco Frascari and Kenneth Frampton write on the theory of synecdoche in architecture and the capacity of details as generators, evidencing the skilful joining and consideration of parts, defined as ‘a process of signification’ resulting in synecdochal architecture, in which a part is made to represent the whole and vice versa. When architecture evidences synecdoche, a sensitive viewer can understand an architectural intervention’s underlying meaning and understand architecture as a set of dialogues. Through these means of enabling a greater understanding of architecture, the humble joint provides a didactic role, and through this didactic capability people may come to see and understand the important role that architecture can play in the context of its natural environment.