Machinaria: investigating transport architecture as a key driver for Durban progressing as an ecological city: towards the design of an inter-modal transport network node.
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Date
2017
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Abstract
Machinaria is an exploration of an architectural and biomechanical
hybridity as part of a 21st century paradigm
for architecture and environmental sustainability.
The dissertation investigates the potential of transport
architecture as an urban catalyst – a mechanism with
which to regenerate urban environments and reintegrate
socio-economic systems through an ecological
architectural lens.
In an attempt to redefine the perception of public
transport and transport architecture in 21st century
Durban, mitigate urban inaccessibility caused by spatial
oppression through the apartheid regime and redefine
Durban’s identity as an African city, the investigation is
based on an ‘urban wasteland’ which is reprogrammed as
part of a new African urban ecology.
The dissertation therefore blurs the perceptions of present
day distinctions between social, economical and natural
space and ecologies while at the same time placing focus
on the global cultural dependence of transportation.
If humankind is to survive the predicted crises of our
time, a 21st century approach to design must shift the
modern day understanding of architecture as ‘Machines
for living’ but rather towards that of architecture as
a living machine – a more complex approach to the
ecologies within architecture, both outward and inward.
Machinaria alludes to new ways of adaptive architectural
typologies in a rapidly changing world.
Description
Master of Architecture. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2017.
Keywords
Theses--Architecture.