Adaptation: A Design Response to Environmental Change

Shelly Bay, on the coast of Wellington’s Miramar Peninsula, is home to an abandoned New Zealand Defence force site with historic and significant buildings and structures, but with limited access. The site’s current use is host to small creative businesses, showcasing an existing established creative and artsy soul - an inspired community. At present, site issues limit this community to prosper and attract the public realm - the Bay is a run down brownfield site, it lacks connectivity across the site and to its natural assets, and sea level rise with future prediction

Design Intent: Shelly Bay will be transformed into a multi-disciplinary Creative Arts Hub that will underline the creative identity of Wellington City, and in particular, Shelly Bay, enabling and embracing varying forms of expression and innovation. The Creative Arts Hub will revitalise and repurpose under utilised brownfield structures, provide greater connections through the site and from the hill to the ocean, while supplying adaptive design solutions against the threat of sea level rise by the year 2080 (60 years). It will become a place where people will go to share, show, make and live within a vibrant and colourful community.