Suburban interventions : understanding the values of place and belonging through collaboration

Abstract

How can a socially defined project facilitate meaningful knowledge transfer between community, corporate and institution? In order to address this question, this paper focuses on an ongoing live project in suburban Auckland New Zealand begun in 2010, undertaken by a post-graduate student and researcher collective. The collective currently creates subtle interventions sited within local cyberspace, and through this current project will employ impermanent and small-scale design to advocate for a series of neglected and disputed sites.

It explores the impact and value the presence of artists and designers working within local communities can have, and “champions the role of the artist in the development of the public realm, and their intuitive response to spaces, places, people and wildlife” (Wood 2009, p.26). The significance of this project is that it promotes a collaborative and multidisciplinary methodology that works with community groups to advocate to corporate entities for a wider social and environmental awareness of specific sites. This paper aims to explain the processes and findings of the project to date through both its successes and failures. It also proposes the possibility of the methodology being transferred to undergraduate and post-graduate study as a tool to promote multi-disciplined collaborate project briefs that focus on community well being ...

One of the most important findings from the first project in Memorial Avenue was the fact that the local residents had a complete aversion to what they perceived as a “design” proposition. The notion of a designer coming into their neighbourhood with a plan to place a design into or onto the landscape without their request was unacceptable to them. So the document prepared for the heritage walkway proposal contained nothing that could be called landscape design for construction, and it was vital that no sense of urgency or externally driven timetables were introduced to the process, and that the document was seen as a gift and a celebration of their landscape, culture and heritage instead of a plan and an agenda for development.