A close-up photograph of a sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate being installed on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
An artist's impression of the installation 'Etch-a-Sketch', created as part of the LUXCITY event. Tutors: Anna Tong, Chris Holmes
A montage of photographs of the installation 'Tonic', created as part of the LUXCITY event. Tutors: Annabel Pretty, Cesar Wagner, Peter McPherson
A photograph of an installation on the corner of Manchester Street and Worcester Street. The installation is titled "Archrobatics", and is part of the LUXCITY event.
A photograph of a vacant site on the corner of Manchester Street and Worcester Street. This is to be the location of the Archrobatics project, which is part of LUXCITY.
A close-up photograph of a sculpture titled Illuminate, on a vacant site on Worcester Street. The sculpture was created by students from Unitec's Architecture department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of people watching a model posing in a large inflatable ball as part of the In Your Face installation at LUXCITY.
A photograph of a vacant site between Manchester Street and Latimer Square. The site is to be the location of Kloud, a large-scale installation which is part of LUXCITY.
An artist's impression of the installation 'Etch-a-Sketch', created as part of the LUXCITY event. Tutors: Anna Tong, Chris Holmes
A photograph of the installation titled In Your Face on the corner of Gloucester Street and Manchester Street. The installation is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of people walking among the large inflatable balls that were part of the installation titled In Your Face. The installation is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of the installation titled In Your Face on the corner of Gloucester Street and Colombo Street. The installation is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of the installation titled In Your Face on the corner of Gloucester Street and Colombo Street. The installation is part of LUXCITY.
The suburb of New Brighton in Christchurch Aotearoa was once a booming retail sector until the end of its exclusivity to Saturday shopping in 1980 and the aftermath of the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The suburb of New Brighton was hit particularly hard and fell into economic collapse, partly brought on by the nature of its economic structure. This implosion created an urban crisis where people and businesses abandoned the suburb and its once-booming commercial economy. As a result, New Brighton has been left with the residue of abandoned infrastructure and commercial propaganda such as billboards, ATM machines, commercial facades, and shopping trolleys that as abandoned fragments, no longer contribute to culture, society and the economy. This design-led research investigation proposes to repurpose the broken objects that were left behind. By strategically selecting objects that are symbols of the root cause of the economic devastation, the repurposed and re-contextualised fragments will seek to allegorically expose the city’s destructive economic narrative, while providing a renewed sense of place identity for the people. This design-led thesis investigation argues that the seemingly innocuous icons of commercial industry, such as billboards, ATM machines, commercial facades, and shopping trolleys, are intended to act as lures to encourage people to spend money; ultimately, these urban and architectural lures can contribute to economic devastation. The aim of this investigation is to repurpose abandoned fragments of capitalist infrastructure in ways that can help to unveil new possibilities for a disrupted community and enhance their awareness of what led to the urban disruption. The thesis proposes to achieve this research aim by exploring three principal research objectives: 1) to assimilate and re-contextualise disconnected urban fragments into new architectural interventions; 2) to anthropomorphise these new interventions so that they are recognisable as architectural ‘inhabitants’, the storytellers of the urban context; and 3) to curate these new architectural interventions in ways that enable a community-scale allegorical and didactic experience to be recognised.
<b>In the late 1960s the Wellington City Council surveyed all the commercial buildings in the city and marked nearly 200 as earthquake prone. The owners were given 15 years to either strengthen or demolish their buildings. The end result was mass demolition throughout the seventies and eighties.¹ Prompted by the Christchurch earthquakes, once again the council has published a list of over 630 earthquake prone buildings that need to be strengthened or demolished by 2030.²Of these earthquake prone buildings, the majority were built between 1880 and 1930, with 125 buildings appearing on the Wellington City Council Heritage Building List.³ This list accounts for a significant proportion of character buildings in the city. There is a danger that the aesthetic integrity of our city will be further damaged due to the urgent need to strengthen these buildings. Many of the building owners are resistant because of the high cost. By adapting these buildings to house co-workspaces, we can gain more than just the retention of the building’s heritage. The seismic upgrade provides the opportunity for the office space to be redesigned to suit changes in the ways we work. Through a design-based research approach this thesis proposes a framework that clarifies the process of adapting Wellington’s earthquake prone heritage buildings to accommodate co-working. This framework deals with the key concepts of program, structure and heritage. The framework is tested on one of Wellington’s earthquake prone heritage buildings, the Wellington Working Men’s Club, in order to demonstrate what can be gained from this strengthening process. ¹ Reid, J., “Hometown Boomtown,” in NZ On Screen (Wellington, 1983).</b> ² Wellington City Council, List of Earthquake Prone Buildings as at 06/03/2017. (Wellington: Absolutely Positively Wellington. 2017). ³ ibid.
Part 1 of a video contributed by Henry Allison, a participant in the Understanding Place research project. The video has the description "Henry Allison talks about his experiences at the brewery on St Asaph Street during the earthquakes, and about the architecture that was lost in the central city".
A photograph of a vacant site on the corner of Manchester Street and Gloucester Street. This is to be the location of a large-scale sculpture titled Altitude, which is part of LUXCITY.