Space Port City: Assembling Resilience for Bluff, Southland

Bluff, a small industrial fishing township, situated at the spit of the southernmost point of New Zealand stands isolated and desolate. A place that is static in time, with an uncertainty of the township’s future in relation to industries being threatened with closure. This project speculates the unknown outcomes of the inevitable closure of Tiwai Smelter and the impact it will have on the town’s future. It investigates this proposition to develop a methodology to represent site through drawing and how architecture can play a vital role for the people to reconnect to their environment.

Site is employed as an active agent across scales to construct three different architectural perspectives, each increasing in scale and complexity. These three experiments are an installation, observatory dwelling and finally a reimagined Bluff township as, Space Port City. Through the Installation, based off site, specific objects transform and create new possibilities that are tested through to the domestic scale. From the experimental research tests the proposed outcomes of the final design activate the site becoming New Zealand’s first Space Port, reinvigorating the isolated landscape. The three design tests recognise the process of site thinking, communicating and enabling the public to fully engage with their peripheral context.