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Since the early years of colonisation, rural settlements in New Zealand have undergone much change. The built infrastructure that once supported close-knit rural communities has become largely obsolete, degenerating into disrepair. Within this context of rural decline, my thesis explores the relation between rural buildings and communal living. In so doing, I offer a conceptualisation of a new rural facility, as an incubator for new communal experience, appropriate for bringing rural and urban dwellers together. My focus is specifically community centred on rural halls within Taranaki's Stratford District. In offering a critical analysis of their demise, I contend that rural halls in New Zealand have undergone this change through processes of urbanisation. Urban dwelling has given rise to a lack of agricultural knowledge, providing a disassociation between urban residents and their earlier ties to the landscape and farm practices. The development of new forms of social life has aided an increase in the degree of physical separation between individuals and their neighbors. The traditional physical sense of belonging to a close-knit rural community has been transformed if not destroyed. Belonging to a community is, I contend, a vital psychological requirement for humans. My theoretical stance is that buildings can and do support a sense of community. From a regenerative perspective, there is arguably a trend of moving back to rural environments as people seek out alternative ways of dealing with the overbearing issue of contemporary urban living. The built rural infrastructure may be of importance to New Zealand's current and future generations. This thesis explores the possibility for a reinterpretation/adaptation of rural New Zealand halls in expressing physical rural 'communal life' in a contemporary context. Critical Regionalist and Adaptive Reuse architecture theories are utilised to test this contention. The design ventures a new archetype, a new hub for a rural settlement that will include new facilities, whilst extending and reworking the traditional social roles of rural halls. Through fostering a renewed form of communal life and providing an environment that fuses rural and urban skill-sets, this facility is intended to breath new life into these former rural communities and in particular, the abandoned rural halls.

A Future for a Rural Past: An Investigation of Rural Communal Life in New Zealand, through an Architectural Analysis of Rural Halls