A billboard advertising the re-opening of Christchurch Casino.
Liquefaction silt surrounding a power pole in Ferry Road, next to a cut-out of a smiling and waving David Carter, National MP for the Port Hills electorate.
Liquefaction silt surrounding a power pole in Ferry Road, next to a cut-out of a smiling and waving David Carter, National MP for the Port Hills electorate.
A photograph of tag writing on the support pole for the billboards next to the Durham Street overbridge.
A photograph of tag writing on the support pole for the billboards next to the Durham Street overbridge.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Replica of Tui ad billboard on a house at 739 Gloucester Street. This one appeared during the Rugby World Cup".
A photograph of the south side of the building at 112 Manchester Street. A contemporary billboard for Fortis Construction reads, "Let's build our new city together - kia kaha". It partly obscures an old painted sign for Polson's Decorators and Signwriters, which reads "Protect your investment. Paint your property regularly - and save money".
A photograph of street art by the DTR crew between Aldwins Road and Linwood Avenue. The artwork depicts an orange city behind purple tag art with DTR's mark on it. The wall with the artwork, is hidden behind a billboard for CPIT, and a bike rack.
A photograph of street art by the DTR crew between Aldwins Road and Linwood Avenue. The artwork depicts an orange cityscape behind purple tag art. The wall with the artwork on it is hidden behind billboards for Smart Real Estate and CPIT. A car is passing through an intersection in front of the artwork.
A photograph of colourful street art by the DTR crew between Aldwins Road and Linwood Avenue. The artwork depicts an orange cityscape behind purple tag writing. The wall with the artwork on it is hidden behind a billboard for Smart Real Estate, a roadside bench, and a power box with an Elvis poster on it.
A photograph of colourful street art by the DTR crew between Aldwins Road and Linwood Avenue. The artwork depicts an orange cityscape behind purple tag art. The wall with the artwork on it, is hidden behind billboards for Smart Real Estate and CPIT. Street lights and a car with a "V" advertisement on it are in the foreground.
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.