NEWCASTLE CIVIC STATION REDEVELOPMENT
The University of Newcastle, 2019
Background:
Following the replacement of the Newcastle city rail corridor with the less intrusive Newcastle city light rail, many heritage buildings have been left without purpose.
Our site included one such building, the defunct civic station, and the adjacent lot.
DA plans indicated this valuable space would soon become home to a cafe, low income housing, and several tasteless box-like buildings proposed by the University of Newcastle.
Our job was to do better than the real designers.
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The scope:
1000m2 fast housing residential space
1000m2 for eateries and restaurants
2000m2 of "urban farm" space
3000m2 of start-up business space
Solution must be designed with sustainability as a primary focus
DESIGN PHILOSOPHIES:
My design solution was permeated with cynicism only appropriate of a theoretical work, while still grounded to the realities of its plausibility.
Practical urban farming is a technology, not an architecture. We know not what form it may take, hence designing around it's existence is futile.
Were it ever to truly successfully exist, urban farming will have the capacity to co-exist with existing infrastructure. Supporting this claim, and describing the unsustainability of urban farming, I calculated the net carbon emissions of various farming methods, were they to occupy the area of site, compared to the yearly emissions of a single car. Leading me to choose to omit urban farming from my design. By simply limiting car access on site - encouraging the use of public transport - if only 1 resident or worker forsakes owning a car, the design becomes many times more sustainable than lining the entirety of the site with agriculture.
The existence of start up businesses can enforce a societal hierarchy around wealth. The design should reflect this.
Start-up businesses are typically operated and run by small teams and individuals, competing to secure funding from wealthy individuals, larger companies, or governments. It can be seen as the poor competing to serve the rich. As such, the ground floor of the design is designated to blue collar work, the mid levels are designated towards white collar work, and the top floor is entirely luxury, low density penthouses, the private property of the wealthy. The material use on each level exhibits this.
Start up businesses, by nature, have the capacity to enact widespread environmental destruction. A building housing such potentially harmful entities should never be truly sustainable.
Once a startup, Google now uses approximately 1.5% of global electricity, 260 million watts. This building may well nurture a similar company. As such, biological concrete, concrete with the capacity to house mosses and lichens on its surface, has been used on nearly all west, south, and east facing external walls to create a facade of sustainability. A lie, a facade to project sustainability, however, completely at odds with the internal workings and dealings, its true nature.
