Infill Housing Newtown (Second Year, Second Semester)

In 1999 newtowns only basketball hall was destroyed by a fire and never rebuilt. This infill house provides the community with a court and community garden space which can be used by all ages. The house on the property is for a retired couple from a sporting background who want to give back to the community through the maintenance and caretaking of these spaces. The design is based on a combination of stadium seating and watch tower architecture creating an “overseeing” architecture for the clients to reside in.

The site is located at 70 Daniell Street in the heart of the Newtown community one of Wellington City's richest suburbs.

Student Housing Project (Second Year, First Semester)

This project was based around medium density student housing. The site is located on the corner of Tasman and Rugby Streets in Wellington City.

Three typologies were designed 3, 5 and 6 person flats based around a communal courtyard space. The 6 man flat typology was explored further and more developed than the other two typologies. The form for the three buildings was based around the basic square. This square was then cut in two different places and the new pieces were slid and pushed to create three distinct buildings, the space created by these buildings becoming the shared courtyard space.

Peka Peka Batch Design, Technical Drawings (Second Year, First Semester)

In this project a small batch design was developed and detailed in accordance with NZS3604.

Barriers & Thresholds (First Year, Second Semester)

This project looked at the different barriers, physical and visual, and different thresholds that occur in architecture.

The Parasitical Folly (First Year, Second Semester)

This architectural folly project looked at the parasitical relationship between the cockroach and the wasp. Focusing on the way the jewel wasp burrows insides the cockroach and destroys it from the inside. From this I began to look at how spaces could be scoured out, having what seemed like an undamaged exterior to the complete desolation of the interior. I used the incredible colour contrast between the bright wasp and dull cockroach to help distinguish what in the space had been desolated/scoured and what had been the cause of this desolation. The colour contrast became a clear way to establish the parasite and host within the folly. As modelling developed, I began to look more at how the wasp creates a cocoon inside the cockroach shell and investigated the idea of space within space.

The final solution is a scoured outer shell that is dull and grungy. Inside the folly is the "space within a space" a bright cocoon shape with an explosion of colour coming out of it. This shape dominates the interior and heavily contrasts the dull damaged interior walls of the surrounding shell. The colour explodes out further in the folly bursting its way through the outer casing looking for the next space to destroy and scour out. Users walk past the folly and see the rough outer shell and the colour explosion protruding out in places. This encourages them to investigate further and they can move into the folly and see the destruction and desolation caused by this brightly contrasting interior space.

Nature & Architecture at Scale (First Year, First Semester)

This project looked at how architecture and nature interact at different scales. Specifically how the relationship between the natural and man-made takes a dramatic swing as the scale adjusts from 1:5000 down to 1:10. The project output was a set of 5 models each at a different scale.

(From left to right) The first model at 1:5000 shows the dominance of nature and its power over how we arrange our cities, at this scale man-made has to fit within nature. The next model at 1:1000 still shows natures dominance over our built environment at a large scale. In the central model at 1:500 the play between natural and man-made becomes tougher as we are able to shape our environment much more. Second from the right is at 1:200, the man-made begins to control nature and place it within the spaces where we need it and want it. Finally at 1:10 man-made controls nature, we put plants in boxes, we tidily tuck it away into the spaces where we need it.

The material choices here were simple. Man-made was highly processed, industrially clean white plastic whilst nature was the earthy, warm, textured radiata pine.

Babushka Dolls (First Year, First Semester)

This set of architectural babushka dolls became about unravelling and revealing space. Each doll had a mechanism that when released, drastically changed the shape and form of the original space and revealed another space hidden inside.

The "unfolding" of space was one of the main design drivers for this babushka doll project.