M.Arch.(Professional), Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, 2010 / The world’s oceans, seas and coastal areas are today, in a critical state of distress, facing a greater array of problems and dangers than ever before imagined. With over half of the world's population living along coastal areas, there has been unprecedented commercial and residential over development. Pollution from cities and industry, anthropogenic waste disposal, oil spills, and intense over fi shing, increasingly threaten living and non-living resources in the coastal and ocean environments - adversely impacting and fundamentally changing natural ecosystems, and even threatening human health. Marine life and vital coastal habitats are straining under the increasing pressure of deteriorating sea water quality and the cumulative eff ects of excessive human use. The ability of marine ecosystems to produce the economic and ecological goods and services that we desire and need, have been substantially reduced. In some instances there has been a signifi cant decline of ocean wildlife and even collapses of entire ocean ecosystems. It is clearly evident that what we once considered to be inexhaustible and resilient is, in fact, fi nite and fragile. It is however, only through a high level and intense form of research and understanding, that we as human beings can begin to understand the ways in which we can help conserve such a system. Only once we understand the eff ect we are having on such an ecosystem, can we begin to understand the ways in which we need to change. It is only through research, and consequently conservation, that we will be able to identify how a relationship between human beings and the natural world can exist in a sustainable and symbiotic relationship. This thesis will explore how a man-made artifi cial intervention can and must have a signifi cant impact on the environment in which it sits, both directly and indirectly. Through the establishment of a rich research and conservation hub within a bio diverse ecosystem, a symbiotic relationship, whereby two completely diff erent systems work together to ensure the sustainability of the whole, is established