Joinery: People and Place has developed from a curiosity in investigating how an understanding of place evolves within a specific site. This research project explores how one’s relationship with site can be strengthened through devices that invite engagement and interaction. Initial Investigations into various joinery systems has informed multiple techniques that offer a potential application within a suburban context, as a means to facilitate new connections between people and sites.

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The project is focused on the significance of the natural environment in the suburb of Taylor’s Lakes. The site is located at Watergardens Town Centre, concentrating on the lake that runs through the busy shopping precinct and middle of the suburb. The lake has influenced the names given to the suburb and main shopping precinct. However, the section of the lake that runs through Watergardens is built over or faces the back of buildings, therefore the lake is neglected. A small motor and pedestrian bridge connects opposite ends of the shopping centre together whilst simultaneously hiding the lake for passers-by.

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Through applying joinery techniques to construct human scale interventions, the local citizens are encouraged to interact with the site. These interventions aim to highlight and draw attention to the existence, importance, and significance of the lake that runs through the middle of Taylor’s Lakes without removing or destructing the existing structures in the site. They invite pedestrians and drivers passing over the bridge into an overlooked, unused space situated in a highly popular area in order to evolve the local community’s understanding and relationship with the site and therefore the suburb.

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Elements of joinery and connections have been explored at multiple scales; from moments of human connection with the physical environment, through to an urban scale that considers the natural joinery systems that connect towns and bodies of water.