Salt Rock Lifesavers Club, architectural interface: a gateway to a temporary realm of play
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Date
2020
Authors
Isaacs, Scott Patrick
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
The proposed development seeks to pay homage to the temporary realm of play that is the beach. It intends to play on the user experience by utilizing thresholds to channel interactions with both the building and landscape in an interface like manner as the user journeys through the intervention and into this temporary realm of play. The design suggests ‘a user interpretive realisation’ of the landscape as a social, natural, and economic incubator and stimulus whereby a sustainable interdependency between the user and the site is established. The proposal calls for the redevelopment of the Salt Rock Lifesavers Club which acts as the primary portal and entrance to Salt Rock Main Beach. Currently the Club exists in a constant state of repair vs disrepair, and offers very little benefit to its primary users and the public at large functionally, visually and as an experience. The development seeks to accommodate two primary clients: the existing Salt Rock Lifesavers Club which currently is the primary caretaker of the beach; and the KZN Sharks Board, which uses Salt Rock Main Beach as one of their launching sites for shark net maintenance and research. Salt Rock Main Beach is the primary public beach for Salt Rock. It is one of the two Dolphin Coast beaches currently used to host the Ballito Pro Surf Competition which is a World Surf League (WSL) event, this ranks it as one of the best surfing spots in South Africa. The Dolphin Coast, and in particular the stretch spanning from Salt Rock to Ballito attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. The beach is extremely busy over the December and April Holiday periods. The site is unique in that it offers a large enough park to accommodate music concerts which other beaches lack. Furthermore, the site has an ephemeral stream dissecting the beach which is currently dammed and separates the park and beach.
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Keywords
Aquatic sports facilities -- South Africa -- Salt Rock -- Design and plans, Coastal architecture, Dissertation (M.Arch. (Architecture))--University of the Free State, [2020], Aquatic sports -- Management