place5 iterations

place3 iterations

place1 iterations

place4 iterations

cross-crit

We had cross-crit yesterday, and I found the fresh perspective both helpful and encouraging. Judy said my work was strong and showed a lot of potential. However what I have deviated away from is the 'people' or 'story' aspect. How do you experience these spaces? How do you approach? What do you see? How do you feel, what do you touch, hear, think? What do you do here and how can you be a part of it? She also reminded me of the sense of celebration in what I am doing... these are not just sad spaces, they are also spaces that celebrate those who lived, those who are still living in Christchurch. This is really for them.

cross-crit presentation: 3 images + written summary

iterations of my first place using language reminiscent of earthquakes

project declaration revisited

The studio brief called for a new city fiction for Christchurch. A speculative proposal is called for through design research. This project proposes a series of instruments in a linked system throughout Christchurch, from which will rise moments of transcendence, or opportunities to move to another ‘place’. Linked by more than the aesthetic, through sensory clues like materiality, texture, and use these interventions will signal an awareness of memory, of the loss and destruction caused by the series of Christchurch earthquakes. My proposal is a city that functions as a living memorial.

Architectural interventions will operate as a permanent, coded system, a route through central Christchurch de-codable through collectivity to signal meaning and moments of sacred or spiritual. Collectively they will create a frame that records loss, tensioning the past and the present, and looking to the future with hope. These interventions will be placed strategically and in series to reflect the many earthquakes, with some points or interventions more disruptive of the surviving urban fabric than others. When encountered in sequence they will signal or trigger disjunction and loss. Five of the fifty-two spaces will be developed in detail, using a spatial language reminiscent of earthquake movements, such as cutting, thrusting and sliding. I will also explore pressure, pressing, texture, negative and positive play through model-making. The design of these spaces will allow speculation as to the other identified locations for interventions.

My coded system will need to work within Christchurch’s remaining and new urban fabric. This is an investigation into how to represent the series of earthquakes that have struck Christchurch since September 4 to renew ownership for those still living to the heart of their city. It will mean negotiating form and materiality, memory and place, individual and collective memory, and the temporary and permanent.

... now time for some long overdue model iterations and explorations!

placement strategies

After a series of trials and tests to decide on placements of my interventions, I have a current strategy for tackling distance across the urban fabric:

Each circle on the diagram is an earthquake termed an 'event' by the eqc (each has a different insurance claims date), the distance between them is a scaled version of time since the first earthquake. 10m is 1 day.

This is 52 places. I'm not suggesting dramatic interventions in every place, earthquakes not as significant may only have small-scale coding, like a texture change or inscription, points will all reference the Feb 22nd radius or 4 spaces (darkest line) as the most significant. The larger red circles are the ones I will focus on. They are 7 spaces of great variety including a playground in a residential area, a river/restaurant/built-up areas, Hagley Park open space near river, a car park in an industrial run-down area, a historical church (now to be demolished) and a residential area.

See google map: http://maps.google.com/maps/myplaces?vpsrc=0&ctz=-720&abauth=f8f4da70:8xCgu-sOJVsAKdeYfcTISwXZu3I&vps=1&jsv=365b&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=23.875,57.630033&ei=RN1uTvTQK4iSkQX9j8WIDA&num=10

scale play

this.is.it.

If I had to sum up my project in one image, this would be it.. this is what best represents what I am trying to do. Its the last day of the uni break, and time for some serious critical thinking.. my mid-semester crit street furniture did not make me happy. Passive ugliness.. I need to conceive of these spaces as a whole, and develop some transcendent and dramatic moments within them.

intersection

 My next step is to develop some scale-play images, and do model iterations to develop a set of steps for my code system.

surface texture studies: plaster and fabric

I ventured to the Salvation Army a few weeks ago to find some sad, unneeded clothing to cut up and use to experiment with impressions and the ideas of presence/absence in casting. 'To cast' implies the discarding of the impression-maker or original. Can I effectively communicate 'lost' people through impressions of clothiing/fabric? Is this something I want to do?

jean pocket

shirt sleeve

shirt front buttons

jean's zip

jean's front pocket

shirt collar

my hand-maps

In adjacency to the work posted below, I have been developing my ideas analogue-ly.

feedback and thoughts over break

Feedback was very positive during my critique in week 6. My ideas and strategy are strong, though I feel like my 'coded system' still needs a lot of work. There were comments that my street furniture images were too 'passive,' which I concur with. I have been wrestling with this idea of street furniture, and am not sure whether I want to restrict myself only to this.

I want to think about my 'system' as a series of conceived spaces, textures, sounds and aesthetics/materiality. A material (like the coded red brick, or fabric/concrete surface manipulations), a signature puncture within volumes of space, water as a key sound, and the moves cut, thrust and slide as key moves to my formal language. I want to look closely at my 20 chosen locations and find out what they need.