Temporality
Temporality - (Oxford english Dictionary)
noun (pl. temporalities) the state of existing within or having some relationship with time.
One of the interesting things about a cruise terminal is although it has a very specific brief and programme to deal with the function of the building, the actual space unlike an airport terminal is only used intermittently. Given the scale and cost of such a building one of the issues such a project should have to deal with is how can such a temporal space be re-appropreated for some other function or what are the implications of this temporality of the building. Particularly for a cruise passenger terminal, a facility that undergoes radical changes in the intensity of flow due to the seasonality of activities, this mobility is a crucial aspect in the design of the terminal.
Given London’s history of large temporal structures such as the millennium Dome, which sits adjacent to the site, it is an interesting comparison to make. The Millennium Dome which ended up costing £750 million only functioned as its design purpose for 1 year now it is all fenced off waiting for a master plan to be realised so it can once again be utilised. Although a proposed cruise terminal would create a different condition to that of the millennium Dome, in the sense that the building function would have to be re-appropriated short term between cruise ship arrivals and departures, instead of long term. It does raise similar questions like how can you create a space which can function both as something very specific like a cruise terminal and be used as something else. Is the answer to create a large shed like structure which can then be filled as it needs?
The project below is the competition entry by Reiser + Umemoto for the Yokohama terminal which express the idea of temporality through the structure of the building, they refer to this as the 'incomplete'. In their own description of the project Reiser and Umemoto refer to the differing senses of the incomplete. What can be taken as incomplete is present in both the concept governing the project and in the way the envisaged structure would work to enact it. In regard to the Structure their position is to propose a tradition shed building. What guides the tradition is the creation of uniformity. The structure would have to sustain and maintain a spatial dimension that admitted only one determination.
