Architecture Journal Articles
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Item The design of the Winter Gardens(Unitec ePress, 2023-12-31) Moore, Cameron; Unitec, Te PūkengaFirst constructed in 1916, the Winter Gardens in Auckland was William Gummer’s first public building in New Zealand. Listed as Category 1 by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust in 1989 and beloved by Aucklanders, the gardens remain under-researched in Aotearoa New Zealand’s architectural historiography. This paper aims to comprehensively analyse the Winter Gardens, exploring their historical context, architectural design, and the unique relationship between architecture and garden. This study sheds light on the distinctive architectural character of the Winter Gardens. The spatial organisation and layout between the indoor and outdoor spaces, the enclosure of space, and the structural system, materials and architectural elements that define this character can be understood by examining the architectural principles employed by William Gummer, learned during his time at London’s Royal Academy of Art and under the tutelage of Edwin Lutyens. This paper will also discuss the client’s motivations and the building’s construction history. This research aims to deepen our understanding of the architectural significance of the Winter Gardens in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.Item Is our heritage falling through the gaps?(ePress, Unitec|Te Pūkenga, 2023-12-31) Vadász, Viola; Jadresin-Milic, Renata; Khan, Iman; Unitec, Te PūkengaWhen it comes to an urban environment, the first things that often come to mind are the buildings, structures and spaces that surround us and have meaning for us. In Aotearoa New Zealand, we also have explicitly significant buildings and structures that we consider part of our heritage, despite being relatively young compared to many other nations. The country’s cultural heritage sites, buildings and objects are treasures of distinctive value. They can be roughly divided into four overlapping categories: archaeological sites, historic buildings and structures, places of significance to Māori, and cultural landscapes.1 All ethnic groups residing in Aotearoa New Zealand have contributed to the country’s cultural heritage, and “the result is an evolving mix of Polynesian, European, and also Asian, ways of seeing and doing, making each new generation of New Zealanders slightly different from the previous one and yet intimately linked to it.” These heritage sites and buildings are part of our urban and rural environment, and are assets with distinctive value and meaning to both Māori and Pākehā.Item Katamari Kart: A serious and hilarious sub/urban game for more serendipitous, playful and friendly public art(ePress, Unitec|Te Pūkenga, 2023-11-21) Berthelsen, C.; Rachev, R.; Bonham, A.; Waitematā Local Board; University of AucklandThe article presents the sub/urban game-method Katamari Kart, where people roam industrial and suburban areas collecting waste materials and progressively building a large and mobile public sculpture. This game-method departs from established concepts and practice in neighbourhood improvement as it tries to evade capital expenditure and embraces uncertainty and friction in bringing together various stakeholders, does not aim to look stylish or even be useful, decelerates daily life, promotes self-sufficiency in cultural life, and creates long-term wellbeing through play. That is, it is a degrowth approach to neighbourhood improvement. Rumen Rachev positions the Katamari Kart game-method as an expression of the ‘Kiwi way’ and discusses the role it can play in making our future neighbourhoods more serendipitous, playful and friendly, and a ref lection of the diverse people and things that reside there – all without capital expenditure or the support of the authorities. Finally, Alex Bonham, author of the book Play and the City: How to Create Places and Spaces to Help Us Thrive, discusses the Katamari Kart game-method in the context of adult play, our settler history, keeping up appearances, the Be a Tidy Kiwi campaign, play and wellbeing, and conflicting responses to frugality.Item Resilient hub(ePress, Unitec|Te Pūkenga, 2023-11-21) Hickling, B.; Fletcher Living Auckland CentralThe proposal describes a community hub; a site located within the suburban and urban built environment, made up of an arrangement of community-run buildings and facilities. Modern sustainable technologies and building typologies will be promoted and community interaction encouraged. Multiple functions will work in unison, with all members of the surrounding community interfacing with it. Through participation, collaboration and creative contribution, the Resilient Hub will demonstrate in a tangible, real-time way the connection between energy, water, food production, food preparation, food consumption, compost and energy use. The knowledge and practices gained will proliferate in community members’ daily practices and help to accelerate the uptake of sustainable technology, building construction and use. Involving the community at the design stage will further integrate the relevance of these sustainable methods. All these aspects combine to challenge us to think in a more integrated way about our future neighbourhoods and how all aspects of them are part of an interconnected systemItem The fires of ambition: Te Awa Tupua 2040(ePress, Unitec|Te Pūkenga, 2023-11-21) Taʻala, Ahlia-Mei; Tāmaki Paenga HiraUpon introduction, Māori will often, ask “Ko wai koe?”, or at the beginning of a pepeha, Māori might say, “Ko wai au?” The concept of ‘ko wai au’ is both a question and a statement in one. In one sense ‘ko wai au’ is asking “Who am I?”, in another, it is also stating who I am by saying “I am water.” Ko wai au – wai is me. So the question really asks, which waters are you from? Which are the waters that feed you, that nourish you, that have sustained you and given you life? Ancestrally, tūrangawaewae (a place to stand and belong) was founded within the centralised societal frameworks of pre colonial Aotearoa, based on whānau/hapū (family/sub-tribe), and it was formed in relation to the geographical features of a place: to the mountains, the rivers and the lakes that define a place. For Māori, water is central to who we are; and our waters have become inaccessible to us. For many of us, growing up Māori in New Zealand can be an extremely confusing time, particularly when living in urban centres, which applies to 84 percent of Māori, according to Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Contemporary urban neighbourhoods in Aotearoa do not reflect our whakapapa, histories and connections to whenua, disconnecting us from tūrangawaewae, providing an unstable environment to build our identity and culture on. We know we’re from here, but we don’t really know how, and what that means anymore. Not in the sense that our ancestors knew in detail how they were connected to every little part of the ecosystem that they were in. So if we don’t really know who we are, and where we come from, how do we then know where to go? How do we build an abundant pathway forward, without a clear understanding of the cultural, historical, ancestral, geographical and spiritual foundations that we live on? How do we connect to place? How do we build a strong sense of identity, when the awa (rivers) continue to be siphoned for money and power, the maunga (mountains) are quarried or built over, and the moana (ocean) is dominated by our built environment and polluted with our waste? And how do we connect to place, especially when we feel disconnected from our hau kāinga (true home)?