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Sign


In a block of medium rise buildings in the CBD on Anzac Avenue, I found yet another little food court snugly inside a long narrow shop space and jammed full of various cuisines and different shops. The signage marks this out on the street - they attempt to draw you in.


In Melbourne, the Chinatown was where street signage was the most prominent. A cherry picker was there putting up a new sign. It's as if the heritage building that they were applying it to would change function with it. Such a programme is interchangable as different uses and people are injected into architecture. Same for the Imperial Building (which is talked about in this post about urban connectivity) - the ROXY sign on Fort Lane signals the bar on the rooftop (which apparently might be closed now?), the name Roxy coming from the theatre that used to be in that old building. Architecture is constantly repurposed - churches turn into bathhouses, theatres into rock climbing walls (which is what happened to the Capitol Theatre).


Signage plays a big part in pronouncing new function but also creating a connection with the street. And as we know from the Asian street, it adds to a vibrant bustling atmosphere.

Authentic

A building I designed in architecture school in 2008 has proved to be useful in illustrating the points of authenticity and market space for my thesis. Revisiting this project has been quite enjoyable. Here is a brief summary of the project and the issues that it raises and the City Farmers' Market in Britomart that it challenges.

Britomart Farmers Market project (2008)

Challenging authenticity with urban Auckland farmers market
Long section
This project explores the notion of the ‘authentic’ for an urban farmers market in Auckland. The site in 2008 was pre-development Britomart with the site utilized temporarily as an open air car park with a farmers market springing up every Saturday morning. It demonstrates the temporal dimension of urban public space and how its sense of place evolves over time.

Streetview image from 2009 - one of the perks of Google Streetview not updating Auckland for 4+ years. Of course, now the site has become the Country Club, an airy bar full of cigarette smoke and high end consumers.
The crux of the scheme is finding an ‘authentic’ for urban Auckland instead of transplanting the character of a historic or geographically displaced market typology. The scheme is situated in the vacant lot on the southwestern corner of Galway and Gore Street in the Britomart Precinct. The farmers market is designed to bring people in via an ‘exhibitionary pathway’, utilized in retail and museum design to slow down the pace of the viewer. The design worked with the imprinted history of the site, specifically the imprint left by a demolished building on an adjacent building. By bringing market-goers up via an escalator and allowing them to cross the length of the building, the imprint of Auckland’s past is put on display and acknowledged alongside a freely adaptable market of current day wares and produce. In this way, the architecture brings together past and present whilst working for a future condition that Auckland can call its own.

Cross section
This Farmers’ Market project challenges this notion of bringing an authentic quality from elsewhere into an urban context and character. The scheme was designed in 2008 and the site has changed dramatically by the time of writing in 2013. Some things last, however. The City Farmers’ Market that the project drew inspiration and created critique of still exists by popular demand. As in 2008, the website still states that it is an ‘authentic inner-city farmers’ market at the heart of Britomart in Auckland’s CBD’ – an oxymoronic reading between ‘authentic’ and ‘inner city’ as the source of this authenticity is uncertain. In 2008, the market charter had a requirement that stalls provide a piece of hessian sacking as a table cloth in an effort to create a faux ‘authentic’ aesthetic – this has now disappeared from the charter. Although it may help bring cohesiveness to the collection of stalls, there is the problem whereby striving for a character which is not authentic to Auckland to the heart of the Auckland Central Business District denies Auckland from ever building up its own farmers’ market character. Other requirements include using wooden crates and baskets to exhibit produce and limiting the use of plastic.



Aesthetics aside, material is affected and relevant to the architectural expression of this urban space and public place. On one side, Britomart station’s glass louvre extension to the heritage post office building sees the 20th century engage the historic character of Auckland. On the other side, the high end fashion shops and bars are clad in black metallic mesh and other contemporary materials. The controlled manner of conducting the City Farmer’s market is disjointed with the development of Britomart.

What are your experiences with this site and how it has evolved over the years?

Post-it2

A tweet from New York Times reporter Hiroko Tabuchi caught my eye. It was about a creative process that her husband was going through and tweeting about. Makes me want to have a post-it wall thinking process, too!
See other posts about creative uses of post-its: one of a wall for Mother's Day and another left by a creative barista.

Transform


Last week I flew over to Melbourne to attend architecture conferences run by our Australian counterparts. I attended Transform, a fringe event to the national architecture conference Material. Underscored by 'Altering the Future of Architecture', it was a fitting title that reflected the day's programme.

Transform architecture conference Melbourne equity
One of the many panel discussions.
Initially the conference was pitched to me as an event about gender equality. The primary instigator was Parlour (women, equity, architecture), so naturally the increasingly discussed topic of women in the workplace was at the forefront of the participant's minds. On top of this important equality discussion, the event was about the profession in general and the themes discussed were applicable to all, not just women.

The crux of the workshops and talks was,

"If architecture was more inclusive would it also be in a stronger position?"

It was a lot to think about within the space of a day, especially with the perpetual dialogue between various practitioners, academics, students and foreigners. Listening to various positions on the subject, engaging in workshop discussions and taking part in frenzied networking (also known as tea breaks) certainly gave a full bodied experience around the issue of transforming the status quo of the profession. Undoubtedly, everyone left the day with a more open mind about what 'architecture' as a profession is in the 21st century.

A formidable project taken on by the team at Parlour was to create a set of guidelines for work equity, a list of pressing issues for the workplace: pay equity, leadership, recruitment, mentorship, negotiation, long hours, part-time work, flexibility, career break and registration. The 'equity guidelines' that are at a draft stage at the moment (and are open to feedback so do leave a comment for the Parlour team) are specifically tailored to women in architecture, but are weighty food for thought for anyone in the industry - male or female, student, graduate or established practitioner, alike.

Round table discussion.
Any industry undergoes constant change but during the last decade the architectural profession appears to be breaking the mould a bit. The diversity of the career path in architecture was elaborated on via panelists talking about their approach, whether it be by branching out to other disciplines, different funding models or reinventing architecture as we know it. It was so good to have the discussion at such a scale for Australia/New Zealand.


This discussion will come to NZ in the form of Architecture Week 2013 - Architecture + Women NZ (A+W NZ) is holding a similar event – A+W NZ's core team was there at the conference, seeing how a similar event could be run here. There will be keynote speakers along with an exhibition and possibly a designed pavilion erected for the week. The visibility of the architectural profession, equity issues and the role of women in architecture will be the focus of the event. I'll let you know more as it develops.

Drive

Many may have noticed the Drive Social billboards up around NZ. My first impression is that it's to combat road rage, if in a very passive approach of doing so. Looks like I'm right - the crux of the concept is that if you know who your fellow drivers are then you will be a better driver.

Bit of a leap there.. high hopes for a billboard-website campaign. The billboards have been pretty uninformative, they didn't really carry all that much of a message until you partake in the lengthy website infographic at http://drivesocial.co.nz/.

Drive social campaign cyclists
Bit of guerilla street art over the large billboard image.

What I find more interesting is what some cycling enthusiasts in Whangarei. A bit of handle bar tape and there you have it: "don't forget about the cyclists!" Someone makes a good point about the campaign too, although the net links us where real world connection are often unlikely it still seems like a round about way to 'be' social:
"It seems that a campaign encouraging you to drive to work in an isolating automobile, then use a computer device to communicate with a human, who is often metres from you, has its heart in the right place, yet is going about things in a very roundabout way."
For a bit of an article about the newly defaced billboard, a form of engagement to the campaign I suppose, see the Northern Advocate article. Thanks to @nzdodo and @kaupapa for tweeting this.

Boom

How do you feel about Auckland's population boom? This is the topic of discussion as our city plans for the future. With the amalgamation of 7 different councils and the drafting of the Unitary Plan, there is much food for thought and bureaucratic logistics to be had.

This is what they thought in the 1960s:


A quaint short film on how they saw the city developing jars with many of the ideas we now have around urban planning, design and architecture, particularly around sustainable development. Many are outdated modernist concepts.

A brief summary: cars, cars and more cars; highways and carpark buildings were amazing; unsustainable urban sprawl created the Kiwi dream.

And once I get around to it, I'll have some blog posts about my (very architectural) trip to Melbourne!