Innholdsfortegnelse for May-June 2020 i Architecture NZ

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUGMENTED REALITY: To see the virtual scale model pictured right in augmented reality, scan the QR code above using your mobile phone camera. Follow the link to: ar.contextarchitects.com/ArchNZ IN THIS TIME OF RAPID AND unprecedented transformation – a global pandemic, the proliferation of technology unicorns, a shift toward mobile working – the need for greater flexibility and new ways of collaborating with clients and colleagues has never been stronger. The rise of technology, particularly over the last decade, has cast a digital web over the world, connecting people, nations and markets in ways once unimaginable and spawning a myriad solutions to improve our communication, collaboration and productivity capabilities. No industry, architecture included, is immune to this technological revolution. Clients want personalised service and a platform on which their…

IN 1999, THE AMERICAN BOOKSTORE CHAIN Borders opened a huge outlet on Queen Street. Its stock must have been as large as every other central city bookstore put together, with shelves of magazines, books, music, videos and two cafés threaded through a warren of spaces and levels that burrowed down into the basement of a flamboyant new cinema multiplex. Borders was the first of a new style of superstore to arrive in New Zealand – stores that included a café and a programme of events – and marked in retail the start of a casualisation that had begun in institutions a few years earlier with café-equipped libraries designed by Athfield. Like every idea, this one could be executed with varying levels of commitment and success. At its best, it instigated…

Combobulation Station UNCANNY ARCHITECTURE FOR UNCOMMON OBJECTS Earth has long staged a hospitable host to humans. However, insatiable consumption has damaged the future of its hospitality. As a new ecological equilibrium unfolds, not only does a physical transformation occur but, so too, must a cognitive transformation. Combobulation Station proposes a cognitive re-orientation in the ecological visions at neighbourhood-scale architecture. Taking note of the prevalent and imminent imperative to incite structural shifts in our material culture, a theoretical investigation re-portrays the everyday Anthropocene. Culminating as the ‘Combobulation Station,’ an uncanny anthropocentric re-interpretation of community recycling centres facilitates the processing, sorting and transferring of inorganic waste. This station represents a reaction to the feelings of discombobulation of current climate conversations, where the familiarity of everyday habits has been fragmented, provoking the uncanny…

ONE IDEA OF A THEORY OF DRAWING IS that a drawing is a collection of ideas similar to any architectural theory. My theory of drawing has developed from the engagement with the drawings of architects and artists I have studied and the influence that has had on my output. GOURD HOUSE TOWN The Gourd House Town drawing started from a mistake when trying to draw our Tall Hut project for the Sculpture on the Gulf Pavilion 2019 competition. The drawing went in the wrong direction, in that the pencil didn’t quite do what was in the mind’s eye. I have found that it is important not to question these mistakes too much. Sometimes, it’s better to rely on what’s in front of you and work with that. The resulting drawing…

IT WASN’T A SURPRISE WHEN THE SITE visit was cancelled. New Zealand had just moved to Alert Level 3 so the “no visitors allowed” edict from Metlifecare’s chief executive Glen Sowry seemed entirely sensible. Safety first. But, it was also paradoxically disruptive of a key design intention for the first stage of the company’s Gulf Rise retirement living at Red Beach on Auckland’s Hibiscus Coast. “Typically, retirement villages have had big fences around them, gates that get locked at night,” says Sowry in a promotional video. “But what you’ll see when you arrive at Gulf Rise is that it won’t feel like a gated community, it will be much more connected. And, from a design perspective, we feel it’s going to be a real step up.” Sounds great. Yet, in…

IN NO LESS THAN THREE editorials in under a year, Chris Barton has repeatedly flagged his concern around the lack of any real response from the architectural community addressing climate emergency. While addressing the negative effects of demolition and construction on our planet’s health, he has dismissed the usual arguments for ‘progress’ to instead focus on pure environmental responsibility (‘On Longevity’, Issue 4, July/August 2019), as well as critiquing the effectiveness of the Architects Declare movement1 (‘On Declarations’, Issue 6, November/December 2019). A third recent editorial addressed the same topic (‘On Complacency’ March/April 2020, Issue 2), this time in a slightly less diplomatic tone. After several attempts to prompt some kind of leadership or vision from the profession, what I hear now is exasperation that, despite a global environmental emergency…

AN ASSERTIVE NEW LIBRARY HAS EMERGED IN Johnsonville’s town centre on Wellington’s road north from the western suburbs of Karori, Wadestown and Khandallah. Immediately noticeable for its angularity and tallness on the street edge, its openness and the welcome it signals, it is an unexpected architectural moment, highlighted by its contrast to the otherwise mundane built context. Johnsonville was named after the first colonial settlers of the area. Beginning as a clearing in the bush on the original Māori path north to Porirua, over time it became an important stop on the journey from Wellington, the terminus of a train line north in 1886, then a farming hub, and a rural service centre, before suburbanisation from the 1930s. It is also a crossroads between the two major northern paths and,…

UP CLOSE AND FROM A DISTANCE, THE University of Auckland’s new Faculty of Engineering, Te Herenga Mātai Pūkaha, aka B405, says, in the immortal words of Rem Koolhaas, “fuck context”. When he said it in S, M, L, XL, Koolhaas was talking about supersized buildings: “Bigness is no longer part of any urban tissue. It exists; at most, it coexists. Its subtext is fuck context.” B405 by Jasmax exists big time – 114m long, 42m wide and 12-storeys high. Its bulk and prominence on the Symonds Street ridgeline dominates the campus with staunch ‘don’t-mess-with-me’ stance. B405 is the new boss in town, the new centre of the University, making the previous centre, the adjacent Edward Scissorhands cutting and thrusting Auckland Business School look positively puny. At a cost of $224…