Local band, Plasticine Heroes, performing at Gap Filler's "Film in the Gap!" project in Beckenham.
Local band, Plasticine Heroes, performing at Gap Filler's "Film in the Gap!" project in Beckenham.
Local band, Plasticine Heroes, performing at Gap Filler's "Film in the Gap!" project in Beckenham.
Members of the public at Gap Filler's "Film in the Gap!" project in Beckenham.
Students from CPIT writing on notebooks at the Words of Hope project.
People watching a film at Gap Filler's first project at 832 Colombo Street.
The sun setting over Gap Filler's "Film the in Gap!" project in Beckenham.
Local band, Plasticine Heroes, performing at Gap Filler's "Film in the Gap!" project in Beckenham.
The sun setting over Gap Filler's "Film the in Gap!" project in Beckenham.
A woman performing on one of Gap Filler's painted pianos in Sydenham.
Object Overview of 'Ashburton District engineering lifelines project: Earthquake hazard assessment'
People watching a film at Gap Filler's first project at 832 Colombo Street.
Lyttelton band, Runaround Sue, setting up at Gap Filler's "Film in the Gap!" project.
An article from Navy Today April 2011 titled, "Project Protector Makes a Difference".
An image from a Navy Today April 2011 article titled, "Project Protector Makes a Difference". The image shows the HMNZS Pukaki, Otago and Canterbury alongside each other at the Lyttelton Port. The earthquake response was the first time one ship of each Project Protector class had been in a New Zealand port together (outside of the naval base).
A photograph of large wooden flowers erected on an empty site in Kaiapoi.
A photograph of volunteers standing beside a fence made from wooden pallets, at the site of the Poetica Urban Poetry wall.
A photograph of volunteers painting the Poetica Urban Poetry wall.
A photograph of a woman reading poetry. She is standing in front of the Poetica Urban Poetry wall.
A photograph of the Poetica Urban Poetry wall. Details of the opening event are chalked on the wall.
A photograph of a woman applying filler to a concrete-block wall, in preparation for painting it to become the Poetica Urban Poetry wall.
A photograph of members of the Kaiapoi Menzshed group standing in front of the stands they have built for an outdoor art gallery.
A photograph of large wooden flowers erected on an empty site in Kaiapoi.
A photograph of the Poetica Urban Poetry wall.
A photograph of a woman reading poetry to an audience. She is standing in front of the Poetica Urban Poetry wall.
A photograph of volunteers painting a mural in Kaiapoi.
A press release about Gap Filler's 29th project, the Transitional City Audio Tour.
A photograph of the potato stamps which were created by Jen McBride for Gap Filler's Have a Steak in Your City project. The potato stamps were used to create the poster for the event and to decorate the paper napkins which people used to eat their steak. A number of these paper napkins are in the background of the photograph.
In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, a state of polycentric urbanity was thrust upon New Zealand’s second largest city. As the city-centre lay in disrepair, smaller centres started to materialise elsewhere, out of necessity. Transforming former urban peripheries and within existing suburbs into a collective, dispersed alternative to the city centre, these sub-centres prompted a range of morphological, socio-cultural and political transformations, and begged multiple questions: how to imbue these new sub-centres with gravity? How to render them a genuine alternative to the CBD? How do they operate within the wider city? How to cope with the physical and cultural transformations of this shifting urbanscape and prevent them occurring ad lib? Indeed, the success and functioning of the larger urban structure hinges upon a critical, informed response to these sub-centre urban contexts. Yet, with an unrelenting focus on the CBD rebuild - effectively a polycentric denial - little such attention has been granted. Taking this urban condition as its premise and its provocation, this thesis investigates architecture’s role in the emergent sub-centre. It asks: what can architecture do in these urban contexts; how can architecture act upon the emergent sub-centre in a critical, catalytic fashion? Identifying this volatile condition as both an opportunity for architectural experimentation and a need for critical architectural engagement, this thesis seeks to explore the sub-centre (as an idea and actual urban context) as architecture’s project: its raison d’etre, impetus and aspiration. These inquiries are tested through design-led research: an initial design question provoking further, broader discursive research (and indeed, seeking broader implications). The first section is a site-specific, design for Sumner, Christchurch. Titled ‘An Agora Anew’; this project - both in conception and outcome - is a speculative response to a specific sub-centre condition. The second section ‘The Sub-centre as Architecture’s Project’ explores the ideas provoked by the design project within a discursive framework. Firstly it identifies the sub-centre as a context in desperate need of architectural attention (why architecture?); secondly, it negotiates a possible agenda for architecture in this context through terms of engagement that are formal, critical and opportunistic (how architecture?): enabling it to take a position on and in the sub-centre. Lastly, a critical exegesis positions the design in regards to the broader discursive debate: critiquing it an architectural project predicated upon the idea of the sub-centre. The implications of this design-led thesis are twofold: firstly, for architecture’s role in the sub-centre (especially to Christchurch); secondly for the possibilities of architecture’s productive engagement with the city (largely through architectural form), more generally. In a century where radical, new urban contexts (of which the sub-centre is just one) are commonplace, this type of thinking – what can architecture do in the city? - is imperative.
A photograph of a dusty monitor in an earthquake-damaged building on Poplar Street taken during the Residential Access Project. The Residential Access Project gave residents temporary access within the red-zone cordon in order to retrieve items from their homes after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Dislodged bricks can also be seen around the monitor.