Design and Visual Arts Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10652/1459

Browse

Now showing 1 - 5 of 15

The Piki Toi
(AP2 Open Access Journals, 2020) Woodruffe, Paul; Unitec Institute of Technology
Piki Toi is a project that seeks to create artist/poet role models and heroes from within a marginalised community who have experienced homelessness and incarceration, who can go on to inspire others to acknowledge their own value and in turn create a circular system of healing.
Collaborative housing as a response to the housing crisis in Auckland
(Unitec ePress, 2018-07-25) Trapani, Paola; Unitec Institute of Technology
RESEARCH QUESTION: If housing is a PSS [Product/Service System] in transition to which the paradigm of the functional economy can be applied, how do we redefine the role of designers who want to work in this field? According to future projections based on current demographic growth trends, Auckland’s population will reach two million in 2033. Since the city is already afflicted by a serious housing crisis, at the beginning of 2017 the newly elected Mayor Phil Goff set up a task force. Formed by representatives of various stakeholders, it was given the task of producing a report with strategic and tactical guidelines to mitigate the situation. Unitec researchers were invited to respond to the report, which came out at the end of 2017, in the form of three think pieces towards the Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities National Science Challenge. This paper is a new iteration of one of these think pieces, focused on collaborative living, and expands on the new role that designers should play in this field. Its ideological position is that the house cannot and should not be considered as a commodity on the free market; nor should focus solely be on bringing down prices by increasing the number of houses on offer. Over time, housing might evolve to being more about social (use) value than exchange value. Other models of the production and consumption of household goods are documented throughout the world as alternatives to mainstream market logic, using collective procurement mechanisms to cut construction and marketing costs with savings of up to 30%. These experiments, not limited to achieving financially sustainable outcomes, are linked to new social practices of collaboration between neighbours. The sharing of spaces and equipment to complement private housing units also leads to social and environmental sustainability. This paper is a longer version of a Building Better Homes Towns and Cities National Science Challenge think-piece commissioned by BRANZ for publication in early 2018.
New spaces and boundaries within the village Poutasi Village, Upolu, Samoa : the Fatu Feuʻu Art Centre.
(Otago Polytechnic (Te Kura Matakini ki Otago), 2012-11) Fuluifaga, Aanoalii; Unitec Institute of Technology
Discusses the development of an Art Centre with Artist Fatu Feuʻu at the newly built Fatu Feuʻu Art Centre Centre (FFAC), constructed as part of the Poutasi rebuild following the 2009 tsunami disaster.
Mapping Place.
(Loughborough University (Leicestershire, UK), 2014-02) Woodruffe, Paul; Unitec Institute of Technology
The use of a site-based drawing methodology as a tool to map place was undertaken in the belief that it is possible to think of maps not as representations of an established reality but as a tool to produce new realities, and that the act of drawing on site, with the pressures that come to bear during this action, assist the artist to engage in “fields of relations rather than arrangements of objects.” (Marot 2003:-iii), something considered vital to site analysis. This drawing approach considered many aspects of site analysis that Manuel de Sola-Morales wrote about in “A matter of things”, one of these was a desire for a methodology capable of revealing what de Sola-Morales describes as the “force of the peripheral place”, and exploring “the void between disconnected objects.” The work also demonstrated an ability to reveal “the void and the interstitial lands as positive material.”(de Sola-Morales 2008:-197), it achieved this through the use of irregular shapes to define objects and “white space” to present the tensions between these objects. It also defined varieties of peripheral space through categorizing characteristic conditions of the site, and challenged the use of purely digital analysis methodology described by de Sola-Morales as; “the sterile securities of analysis.” (de Sola-Morales 2008:-197). This site-based drawing when conducted alongside photography and GIS mapping, can address an established theory that “the science of space must be assessed at several levels,” (Lefebvre, Elden, Brenner 2009:-171) and that approaching spatial problems “cannot consist of one formal method, logical or logistical.” (Lefebvre, Elden, Brenner 2009:-171). With this methodology the suggestion of contradictory use of the site is more possible. This drawing on site is not only useful in ensuring a complete site analysis, but it also acknowledges that “everywhere, people are realizing that spatial relations also are social relations” (Lefebvre, Elden, Brenner 2009:-190). It does this through provoking the viewer into conversation around social uses and relationships within the sites by avoiding a direct meaning that could be agreed upon. Unlike drawings that adhere to the rules of perspective and scale, where logic can be deduced from the rendering, and a consensus reached on the nature of the site structure, these site drawings do not conform to the rules of pictorial realism or structural measurement, and so can achieve “a resultant cognitive shift enabling preconceptions about landscapes to be downplayed, and ways of analyzing landscapes to be enhanced.” (Griffith 2005). The choice of colours and the decision to use a painterly form of line-work in these drawings is made in the hope that a “turn toward artistic forms of representation can bring social research to broader audiences” (Leavy, 2005:-55), and that the drawings can somehow through the mystery and appeal of artistic colour work along with a strong sense of narrative can democratize discourse on space and place.
Culture in Motion : A mobile, inflatable auditorium brings arts programming to a tsunami-devastated region of Japan
(Forecast Public Art, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, 2014-08-20) Tan, Leon; Unitec Institute of Technology
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake, one of the most powerful in recorded history, hit Japan, and was followed by a devastating tsunami. The catastrophe claimed more than 18,000 lives and left vast swathes of the northeast severely damaged if not destroyed. In the Tohoku region, whole towns were swept away; the force of the quake even moved Honshu Island nearly eight feet eastward. To make matters worse, the tsunami also led to system failures at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, resulting in the release of massive amounts of radioactive material. More than 160,000 residents were forcibly displaced from their homes due to the danger of radiation poisoning. Ark Nova is an ambitious project initiated by Michael Haefliger of the Lucerne Festival (a Swiss international music festival founded in 1938) as a gesture of compassion for, and solidarity with, the survivors of this disaster. Conceived as a mobile, inflatable auditorium with a 500-person capacity, it brings music and art to the Tohoku region with the hope of healing psychosocial traumas. According to the organizers, Ark Nova, meaning new ark, takes inspiration from the biblical narrative of the great flood and Noah’s ark. The ark is also inspired by the ancient Japanese notion of marebito—“sacred guests” who arrived from foreign lands with special religions or festivals that rejuvenate society. Like the mythical Noah’s ark, Ark Nova is intended as a symbol of renewal and recovery after a tremendous disaster. It is a visitor bringing those vital elements out of which culture is periodically composed and recomposed—namely, music, dance, improvisation, and ritual interaction. The mobile architecture results from the collaboration between the Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor and the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki. Kapoor is renowned for large-scale abstract sculptures such as Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millennium Park and Sky Mirror in Nottingham, England. Isozaki is perhaps most famous for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Team Disney Building in Florida, and, most recently, the Qatar National Library. Their concert hall consists of an inflatable membrane modeled after Kapoor’s Leviathan installation inside Paris’s Grand Palais in 2011. The structure is about 120 feet long and is made of PVC-coated polyester. It comes fully equipped with stage and sound rigs. The entire hall and its equipment pack down into a truck, making it easily transportable.

Browse

Recent Additions