PLANNING CITY CULTURE

An opinion piece in today's Dominon Post entitled 'Lack of Planning hurting Wellington' is an interesting read, providing some thoughtful, grounded consideration of where Wellington City is going. The author's focus on public events, activities and use of space seems to highlight the lack of discussion of people we usually hear in planning conversations.

However, the piece got me thinking, and I had a few queries. I noted down the following, intending to post in reponse to the piece. However, my thoughts got out of hand, and before long I had well exceeded the maximum character limit. So, I thought I'd post it here instead.

'I am somewhat concerned that your suggestions for change focus on new buildings primarily located on the waterfront. This response echoes two urban issues Wellington encountered in the 1970s and the 1990s. In the 70s, a large amount of the building stock was demolished to pave the way for the new with the dream that this would fix the urban issues of the time. The learnings from that were that new was not neccessarily better, and that in establishing the new, much of what was held dear as quintessentially Wellington was lost. In developing culture, we have to take care not to abolish culture.


Members of the public seem to understand that new doesn't solve everything: in the 1990s, there was much public outcry about council plans for doing exactly what you suggest: building large facilities (some public, some private) on the Waterfront. The result of years of public dissent was Waitangi Park - a lively, variable terrain which acts as a connective tissue between the cultural institution of Te Papa (which, sadly, turns its back to the Waterfront) and the leisure precinct of Oriental Bay.

If you look at Wellington more broadly, you'll notice that it's not so much places, but the linkages between them which we struggle with. While our compactness lends us the title of a 'pedestrian friendly city', wide vehicular streets, large block sizes, and few direct accessways from the city to the waterfront limit pedestrian exploration and engagement. (In this sense, to praise Jervois quay as a necessary 'strong boundary' seems ill-considered.) If I could walk the short distance from Courtney Place up Taranki St to the Film Archive without getting drenched, having my skirt blow above my knees, my ears blown out by four lanes of traffic and nothing to look at but a blank facade than perhaps I might be more inclined to spend more time - and money - there. Why confine your conceptions of 'performance' and 'culture' within four-walls, or outdoor amphitheatres? The city as a whole deserves to be considered as a site of our cultural endevours.

The suggestion is that 'our planning needs to bring them together'. Close, but not quite. Rather, I suggest, our planning needs to promote active, connected, and accessible cultural institutions which are not neccessarily 'together' geogaphically, but which, through consideration of wider urban planning issues such as Jervois Quay and Taranki St, are accessible as a group, and indicate their individuals roles within the broader cultural climate you wish to promote.The distribution of cultural institutions throughout Wellington allows a broader range of individuals to come into contact with them everyday; rather than relegating them to the role of weekend or tourist fare that is the waterfront.

The answers are not as simple as : but then, our creativity should make Wellington well placed to develop innovative, long-term propositions. Wellington 2040 - and the creative public marketing of this vision - was surely a good start. '

SPATIAL AGENCY


Spatial Agency is the project of Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till. Having burrowed my nose into the Spatial Agency book a number of times this year, I am only just finding the time to somewhat more casually limber through the website which presents an almost wiki-pedia-esque amount of opportunities to be lost in a web of links.

Broadly, the project looks beyond the traditional architectural focus on the look and making of buildings, instead considering a wider field in which architects and - they say it - non-architects can operate. The website is easy to get around, with simple 'where?' 'how?' and 'why' sections. The 'why' section touches briefly on ethics, establishing a particular pertinence to the theoretical grounding of my thesis:

"We take an ethical stance in architecture in the sense of 'being-for the Other', to 'assume responsibility for the Other'-with the Other being a 'mix of builders, users, occupiers, observers of architecture'. Basically, everyone who is affected by the production, construction and inhabitation of architecture. To have an ethical stance as an architect does not therefore mean to adhere to the 'ethics of the profession', but to acknowledge and work with the desires and needs of these 'others'."

As a side note, Till had some interesting comments to make about the recent riba awards:
"If RIBA student medal winners are harbingers of the future, the only role left for architects is to draw spectacular images of dystopia."
"RIBA Student Awards: Designs rewarded for visions of dystopia, dissertations for articulations of the real. Right way round?"
It is always reassuring when your own uncertainties are echoed by those with more 'weight' than you.

THE DITCH

Having spent a week in Auckland recently, I have once again been musing on what it is that so captivates me about my city of Wellington, and (not to be too harsh to Auckland) thinking about some of the great urban change that has been happening there in the last five years. Amid all this urban-dreaming two city-specific Aussie blogs have caught my eye in the past week. 
  • The Melbourne Urbanist,which interestingly enough is written by Dr Alan Davies who is neither Architect or Urban Planner by profession, but  a principal of Melbourne-based economic and planning consultancy, Pollard Davies Pty Ltd. While this means that the blog has significantly more numbers, graphs and analytics than a typical urban commentary, it is also refreshing to get a more holistic and -dare I say it - less dreamy perspective on how a city grows and breathes.
  • Canberra Lab, then, might fit somewhere at the other end of the scale, collecting pieces under such labels as 'unbuilt work', 'street critique' and 'half a thought', but provides some great light commentary on what has traditionally been a rather sombre urban scene. 

POST NOW


Open publication - Free pu blishing - More architecture

rcc studio #01 - [from] crisis [to]

Some really interesting pieces on the relationships between the built environment and the notion of crisis, pertinent with my Masters thesis research this year which began with an examination of the continual call of 'crisis' within architecture and linked this call to 'external' crises, be they ecological, economic or political.


I am particularly drawn to Ramiro Aznar Ballarin's 'Mapping London Crisis: The relationship between outbreaks and riots.' It provides analysis and spatial considerations which seem to give more weight to the recent President's Medal Award winning student project robots of Brixton, in which Kibwe Tavares re-examines the 1980's Brixton riots for future architectural (and robotic) potency. The admittedly incredible film accompanying the project is below.



Robots of Brixton from Kibwe Tavares on Vimeo.

SUBURB AS ALTERITY


Open publication - Free publishing - More thesis

Because I'm just about there...an architectural thesis from the ever-intriguing Nick Axel whose name may ring a bell as the architect behind the aphoristic 'Architecture is...' project. (Worth a look!)

In the thesis project his ability to travel from quite complex theoretical ideas (in this case, alterity), through design processes to a specific design outcome which has plausible consequences for a real scenario is once again on display. 

POTENTIAL FUTURES


Lecture: Potential Futures for Design Practice from Rory Hyde on Vimeo

I can't say that the University of Sydney has cropped up in my sphere of architectural thinking or web-surfing very often; but on this occasion I am glad it has! Rory Hyde explores a number of 'proactive design' models which he has both considered, engaged in, and propelled through his interesting professional life. While I feel like Hyde sometimes gets caught up in the 'coolness' of the projects, he has some very astute comments about the role(s) of built environment professionals inherently spanning from large global strategists to small everyday questions about how individuals occupy the bathroom.

HOMETOWN BOOMTOWN



MY TOWN.

Following the Christchurch Earthquakes, and subsequent demolition of a large number of historic buildings which were severely damaged in the quakes, there has been a continual mumble going on in Wellington about our own historic buildings. A number of them are categorised 'earthquake prone' - meaning they must either be seismically strengthened or demolished in the next 15 years.

It is interesting to see that our current policy is not unlike that of the 1970s, when a significant number of historic buildings were demolished. Many of these buildings were landmarks, whose titles, despite the  buildings having been gone for over 30 years,  I have used to denote places in the city my whole life. Places like 'Perrett's Corner', and 'Dukes' retain their titles, but the beautiful buildings which developed them as special spaces in the City are no more.

This wee film makes my heart ache with the concern of what my city will be like in another 30 years if this process is repeated again in the post-Christchurch hysteria. At one of the 'Talking Cities' lectures, someone made the point that numerous lives were saved by street awnings which stopped bricks from historic facades falling on to pedestrians. Perhaps this, rather than demolition, is an interim response worth pursuing.

MELNIKOV

The Melinkov House by Konstantin Melnikov. via ArchDaily.
An interesting relationship between architecture and politics in the first half of the century russia. Strangely, having read The Lacuna, I can't read Lenin's name without thinking of Mexico: so there is some strange semblance between this building and Mexico that I can't quite figure out. In any case, it's interesting that it wouldn't look out of place in the desert. 

Drawings after the break. 



CLOSE


Emma Cocker.

After something of a break, I seem to have looped back to my old interest - the strange interrelations of text, space, and reading. Emma Cocker's Blog 'Not Yet There' always has something new and...well, closer, to offer. This image, entitled Close Reading (G.D. T.F. 1993) is part of an ongoing series that investigates the practice of close reading or of an ‘explication de texte’ as a critical tool for destabilizing language, for breaking up the linear unfolding of language into discontinuous fragments. Close Reading performs a close reading of Gilles Deleuze, The Fold, 1993, in an attempt to render the text itself as an unfolding of pleats and stutters.