An aerial photograph of New Brighton with the pier visible in the distance.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street. There is a shopping trolley in front of the artwork.
A photograph of street art on the shutter of a shop in Brighton Mall. The artwork depicts flamingos, and is signed 'Muz Flamingo, 2013'.
A photograph of street art on the shutter of a shop in Brighton Mall. The artwork depicts flamingos, and is signed 'Muz Flamingo, 2013'.
A photograph of street art on the shutter of a shop in Brighton Mall. The artwork depicts flamingos, and is signed 'Muz Flamingo, 2013'.
A photograph of street art on the shutter of a shop in Brighton Mall. The artwork depicts flamingos, and is signed 'Muz Flamingo, 2013'.
A photograph of a sign on the side of the Palms mall reading, "Your home for shopping, back soon".
A sign above the closed shutter of a building in Wainoni reads "Open 7 days". The photographer comments, "A Sunday afternoon ride to New Brighton, then back via Aranui, Wainoni, Dallington, and Richmond. Not a cheerful experience. Open 7 days. This Wainoni car parts shop was definitely not open today".
Road cones and a detour sign in front of a graffitied building in Wainoni. The photographer comments, "A Sunday afternoon ride to New Brighton, then back via Aranui, Wainoni, Dallington, and Richmond. Not a cheerful experience. Car parts shop, Wainoni. The lack of activity in the east is spooky at times".
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.
A PDF copy of a poster like those created on the All Right? Poster Generator. The poster features the responses from a number of Christchurch residents about what makes them feel good, such as "When I see the remarkable creative spirit and energy in my quake-damaged seaside suburb. Andrew, New Brighton." The posters were placed around the city at locations such as cafes, doctors surgeries and fish and chip shops. All Right? posted this poster on their Facebook Timeline on 10 May 2013 at 4:06pm.