James Martin and Stephen Hooper have been successfully picked by The New Architects and Graduates group (NAG) and the Adelaide City Council to design a shelter in the Adelaide Parklands.
A key element of the design competition is to promote Adelaide’s emerging design talent. The brief called on submissions to address the enduring idea of Adelaide as the Festival city amongst the ‘Narnungga Urban Forest’, a reclaimed site to be transformed through indigenous plantings and sustainable landscaping. The shelters will be built to serve as venues for future performance and festival events.
James and Stephen entered under the team name ‘Flock’ and took the idea of the festival to inform the design methodology. Seen not merely as shelter but as a filter between the natural and built Adelaide parkland aesthetic and as a backdrop and stage for festivals and public gathering. The structural forms are modelled on the movement and transience a native bees flightpath with the intensity of the bees activity relative to the four seasons. The spaces spread wider for the warmer summer months to accommodate larger gatherings to more narrow spaces for the cooler months to create cosy and intimate spaces that shelter from the elements.
The design hopes to represent a festival of spaces that modulate like a bee throughout the day between dormant and active, modulating in plan and elevation whilst breaking apart in section.
