Circling Communities

There are works of architecture that are concerned with the user and others that are heavily concerned with form. Although the best buildings are concerned with both, it is often that one is compromised for the other.  The site for this thesis is contested by four diverse communities; a surf club, a recreational park, a holiday park, and the surrounding houses. In developing a proposal for the site, the aim of this thesis is to explore design processes and formal strategies that will create an architecture concerned with both.  Throughout this thesis there are a series of design experiments which view the building from different directions according to the design medium. When using diagrams and mass models I have viewed the building from above (plan). When using a refined drawing technique I have viewed the building from the side (section). I have then used both physical and digital models as a way of translating the two-dimensional views into a three-dimensional building.  This shift in design media has revealed that the plan and section can have opposing formal qualities. These qualities, simplicity in plan and complexity in section, have allowed me to address both the social and formal concerns of designing on a site like this.