“Healthy Land and Water Institutional Building in Kenilworth” – Life Beyond the Plantation
The brief required to establish an architectural entity providing facilities to support an experimental transition for Imbil State Forest. The focus of my project is to dedicate a space for waterway scientist to research on the polluted surrounding waterways, whiles creating an opportunity for the researchers and a highly supportive community to come together under single roof to collaborate and learn about the waterways. With an encouragement to shift from a sustainable to a regeneration mindset, the building system revolves around this concept will lead to improving the quality of the waterways.
The waterways is a habitat to many aquatic creatures, essential for farmers, host many recreational activities, its essentially the heart of Kenilworth and Mary River wider community. The water is the backbone to a healthy ecosystem and the issue is water pollution is worsening year by year through climate change and also the failure of natural filtration system.
European settlers colonised areas near the water banks to cultivate agriculture. With the need of access to water for livestock grazing, riparian areas were removed which causes the influx of polluted river waters.
The idea of sustainability is not enough, its not just about developing a productive, and healthy landscapes and habitats, but to effectively engage with its entirety of what makes the water place healthy, which leads to the idea of regeneration, shifting from sustainability to regeneration mindset which the concept of regenerative culture is a resilience take of an ability to recover.
In essence the institute is a place to bring awareness of elements surrounding the waterways which directly impact its health, particularly focusing on soil and water bank planting. Adopting an idea of a place to “Learn, about regeneration, “Collaborate with researchers”, “Cultivate the idea of regeneration, setting precedence to Kenilworth ” .
The building revolves around a self generating system which materials needed will be internally generated through community activities then harvested before transferring to other sectors needed within the institute. Composting from food waste will generate soil which will be applied for communal plant growing activity, riparian regrowth laboratory and breakout space planting. Plants from the community planting zone will be used for breakout space plant and other areas within the institute. And water holding facility from roof runoffs , will be stored in water tanks ready to be used for plant watering when needed.
The field station houses facility for onsite water catchment testing for the community and scientist. The location of the building acts as a connection between the road to the river, smoothly transitioning from the car, into the building to pick up the gear and exiting on the other side to the waterways to conduct their research.
Christopher Ho
Through Chris’s University career, he finds his passion in design processes, the enjoyment of seeing a building from conceptual stage, to a functioning, working master piece. He enjoys creating visually appealing diagrams for users to understand his thoughts at a glance, underlying particular aspects which cannot be described in words. He’s passionate about using raw materials, fused with innovative design to solve environmental or day to day social issues but overall Architecture, has embedded a philosophical mindset, on the way he perceives built environments.
