The city is comprised of primary and secondary urban functions which facilitate the formal and informal activities of urban life.
Whilst the primary city is manifested in organized and pre-defined social structures, the secondary city is the manifestation of the spontaneous and flexible events and structures which generate the unpredictability and flux of urban reality.
Based in Paddington, the project focuses upon an area in which an attempt has been made to exclude the unpredictability of the secondary city. The project proposes a series of interventions comprising spaces accommodating public services and interactive elements that blur the perimeter of an area of privately controlled commercial developments adjacent to the station.
‘The Secondary City’ challenges the mono-functionalism resulting from these major redevelopments by introducing responsive layers of secondary spaces and activities into the existing divided and hermetic urban situation.
The project experiments with the structures of primary and secondary urban functions, spurns the idea of an idealised centrality and asserts that unanticipated activity, enacted within specific time periods, is the true generator of urban life.
