Third - and only - place

It is essential for all humans to feel a sense of wholeness through connections beyond our first and second places, our homes and workplaces. The Third Place is a convivial, accepting and unclaimable realm of the public - a rich and meaningful source of social interactions. It is grounded in the colorful local banter, in unintended incidental encounters, and is experienced through positive diversity rather than monumental swathes of public spaces. While every person has an individual catalogue of memories of their favorite destinations, this project is set to recall, interrogate, and utilize the common patterns of third places in society.

Representing a great struggle of publicness, the suburb of Ringwood offers a testing ground for reversing the process of constantly shifting forms of civic life. In the quest to articulate the immense spatial opportunities in this suburb and challenge the capturing of public life within its commercial mall, a process of recalling and experimenting with forms of vivid memories of third places sought to create a new palimpsest of destinations. Reconstruction of Ringwood town hall, extension of its train station, and reconnecting its new library with the public the same way third places do is seeking new alternatives to support public life in the suburban context.