Bringing The Interface Realm To Consciousness... Exploring The Potential Of Social Synergies Between Private Residences And Public Open Spaces

<p><strong>The direct interface between designated public space and private residential suburbia is an unexpectedly common phenomenon that rarely gets paid attention. An estimated 35km of private residential properties are bound to publicly experienceable space in Wellington City suburbia, yet this realm has not been explored thoroughly.</strong></p><p>This phenomenon is much more varied, rich, and complex than anticipated. Rather than attempting to provide a firm design method/guideline this research seeks to bring attention to the dynamic, intricate relations between body and space, ‘public’ and ‘private’, and suggests an alternative way of thinking about how we, as designers, approach suburbia edge design, and suggests a departure from the binary conception of space being just ‘public’ or ‘private’.</p><p>The ambition for this research is to explore the public/private interface realm in medium density suburbia in steep terrain, the meeting of public and private, and the meeting of flat and sloped terrain. It aims to give attention to the bigger realm through this specific condition, embrace it consciously and treat it as a designer would.</p><p>A detailed analysis of the edge conditions opens this realm of discovery and reveals the many conditions in which a social synergy between public and private can occur or not. The objective is explored through the ways public and private users/dispositions respond to the body-space relations. It requires various local site investigations to get a sense of the way landscapes get us to experience and develops alternative methods of representation to open up this realm and allow me to explore this. To understand the intricate relationship between body and space, detailed and accurate documentation of the ground section profile and vegetation has been collected through Lidar scans. Careful and purposeful representation through imagery and text allows me to communicate the experience and the assemblage that produces this, but also forms a language of representation through which I can analyse international examples, to discover that this is a rich realm that has only vaguely been explored.</p>