Kind Words

“The work of the Masters of Landscape Architecture students was very strong and both broad in scope and deep in exploration. This is a sign of a comprehensive programme that seeks to extend the ambition of the students with projects beyond the usual strictures of such programmes. The scale particularly is to be acknowledged and it positions the study of landscape architecture in a larger geographic context alongside – and in some ways, well ahead of – traditional urban design programmes. This work, and this direction, is in its own way quietly ground-breaking, and is to be lauded.”

Tommy Honey, Dean of College, Whitcliffe College of Arts & Design

August Critics

Mike Thomas, Principal Jasmax.
Mike has over 16 years’ experience as a Landscape Architect, working predominantly in New Zealand, Hong Kong and China. He has extensive experience as a project design leader with a focus on design and delivery of public realm projects for local and central government agencies and commercial precincts. Mike set up and leads the Landscape Architecture team, one of the largest in New Zealand, in addition, he was a co-founder of the Jasmax Christchurch office, managing the regional studio for four years. Mike has led and participated in the successful design and delivery of streetscapes, civic plazas, parks, campuses and transportation infrastructure. He is as adept at the high level masterplanning of precincts and transportation infrastructure as he is with the detailed design of furnishings, plantings and surface finishes. His ability to craft individual designs for each project reflects his skills at listening and collaboration and the value he attributes to ‘sense of place’. Mike is able to engage in productive partnerships with clients, consultants and in-house designers to deliver ‘whole of site’ solutions that are comprehensive and complimentary to their urban and natural environments. He has championed an integrated design culture in Jasmax, where architecture, urban design, interiors and landscape coincide to deliver meaningful living and working environments.

Katherine Poi
Kaihautū Mātauranga Māori / Equity Transformation Consultant Unitec Institute of Technology. Expertise in designing and facilitating professional development in equity transformation; and partnership under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Kaihautū Mātauranga Māori
Working across Unitec to realise the implementation of the institute's Māori Success Strategy. Developing capability and supporting staff to embed mātauranga Māori in the activities of the institution, and specifically into learning and teaching.

Juan Molina
Juan Molina is a senior architect and urban designer at CPRW Fisher. Juan is a graduate of the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona and a Spanish Registered Architect,  member of the Collegi Oficial d’Arquitectes de Catalunya.  Juan was taught by luminaries, Enric Miralles and Ignasi de Solà-Morales and worked with Viaplana and Pinon on the early days of the ‘Plazas duras’ in Barcelona. He has over 20 years of experience as a practicing architect in New Zealand and Spain, projects include the master planning of Britomart with Cheshire Architects and designing a NZIA award wining projects with CPRW Fisher.

Dr Dushko Bogunovich
Dushko Bogunovich is associate professor of urban design in the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland. He studied architecture and urban planning at the universities of Sarajevo, Belgrade, Cyprus, Pennsylvania and California at Berkeley.
Dushko is a member of the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP); New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA); and the Urban Design Forum (UDF) of NZ. He was twice a Fulbright scholar; has won numerous urban design competition awards; has acted as consultant and advisor to local and central government in NZ; and had in the past contributed to UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO and Habitat projects. Dushko had also been a visiting fellow at the universities of Oxford, Bologna, Genoa and Wismar, and most recently was visiting professor of urban design at the Milan Polytechnic.

Glenda Fryer Member of the Albert- Eden Local Board
Glenda Fryer has served the people of Mt Albert for 15 years, as Local Board Deputy Chair and Auckland City Councillor. Glenda is a member of the Mt Albert Aquatic Centre Trust, with experience on Balmoral School Board of Trustees and Auckland Business Development Council.

Julian Rennie
After working in London for 4 years from 1986 to 1990, Julian returned to New Zealand to set up in private practice with his partner Rose Dowsett.
Julian was invited to join the Landscape staff at Unitec on a permanent basis in 1999, and since then his role within the Department has evolved from model making classes through to perspective drawing classes, and into Landscape Construction studio sessions. This later role has this year expanded in a wider overseeing role of Landscape construction issues across a range of studio years for the greater benefit of more students.
2009 saw Julian graduate from within Unitec's Department of Education with a Graduate Diploma in Higher Education, which has established his activities within learning pedagogies.
Julian remains a practicing partner within rennie dowsett architects, with which he continues to win prizes and awards, most recently in 2009, he was chosen as a finalist, (1 of 10 out of 139 entries), and prize winner in Housing New Zealand's The Starter Home Design
Julian also was awarded a Highly Commended Prize in Housing New Zealand's 100 Years
Research:
2010 saw Julian commence his Research activities and he travelled to four conferences around the world presenting various papers based on his observations and educational field trials held here within Unitec, two such papers relate to providing better feedback and summative assessment events for student learners.
Another paper, showcased a representation strategy, (developed with the Landscape Model making sessions, and since taken up by students), of how digital cameras could be slipped inside 3D models and the resulting images can are very compelling and life like, and thus providing a quick, yet cost effective presentation technique.
Julian continues to research interfaces between Art, Colour, Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

Megan Rule
Megan Rule graduated with honours from the Auckland School of Architecture in 1992 and worked on award winning projects, including Axis Building, D72 (Commercial Refits) and St Helier Residence with Auckland practice Patterson Co Partners until 1998. Prior to completing her degree she traveled extensively while based in the UK working for large commercial practice RHWL. In 1995 Megan participated in an international summer school based out of Macerata (Marche region) and Rome, Italy. From 1998 an extended break from the industry evolved into establishing an independent practice, South Pacific Architecture in 2000, with an expanding interest in the investigation of spatial and material context to produce environmentally sensitive enduring architecture.
Guest Lecturer Auckland University School of Architecture 2003, 2004, 2005.
Member of the NZIA NZ Awards Jury 2005, 2006

Marita Hunt Isthmus
Marita is excited about the potential of dense urban environments, and the opportunities for designers to make cities healthy, liveable and stimulating places. She joined isthmus in early 2015 as an Intermediate Landscape Architect and is highly talented and motivated with an eye for identity, diversity and community. Marita completed her Masters at Victoria University in 2012 and her thesis investigated overlapping national and local identities in a complex urban site in Wellington. She has previously worked in practice and as a teaching fellow at Victoria University.

August Abstracts

Vandita Ahlawat
Beyond Net Zero Neighborhoods:

How can the inherent pressures of urban sprawl be used as an opportunity to design communities as net-positive resources for our natural environments?


This research explores the impact of the expanding city through a lens of long-term urban resilience. Despite the apparent negativity associated with urban sprawl, case-studies show that net-zero neighborhoods are economically feasible, and can provide some ecological significance to community design. The critical problem of community development actually rests in the assumption that development is necessarily damaging to natural systems. From this, the designer’s role must then be to mitigate the level of expected damage. Yet, the pressures of development may offer opportunities to enhance our natural environments. Whereas projects that seek a net-zero energy communities are increasingly able to meet greenhouse gas and carbon targets, what is needed is an urbanism that understands community design as net-positive value to ecological and social environments. The goal of this project is to design a model community that achieves this goal by exploring the relationships between net-zero neighborhoods and resilience theory.

Lahari Iynala
Students are increasingly anxious to achieve specific results in K12 education, especially with the weight of University entrance and applications for professional post secondary schools that gear students toward choosing lifelong practices of professions. While many studies have focused on most suitable educational curricula to best prepare students for careers and future learning, there is still little attention given to the environments that actively shape learning and understanding. This research explores how spatial environments of K12 educational facilities may become more directly engaged in the curricula and pedagogy of K12 learners, and do d ii a way that support engagement with both discovery and invention within subjects. The goal of this project is to understand how the landscapes and built environment can be designed as an active learning environment that ultimately supports and promotes deeper understanding and love of learning, and relaxed and yet motivated learning capacity in students.



Kael
Reclamation Park
My research question is how to make coastline in Auckland more accessible to public? The aim of project is to deal with this issue in different types of coastal areas and make coastline and foreshore more accessible to the public. there will be an introduction at first which introduce some limitations to get access to the coastline, some problems and debates in New Zealand. Then there will be methods includes case study, classify different types of coastal area in Auckland, choose a site as example and my own design to deal with the issue.

Sravani Khambhampati
Desokota City in Auckland NZ
 How can the urban cities help in developing the neighboring peri-urban area?
 How can we reduce the growing carbon footprint of new urban development (India) through preservation of existing groundwater, flora and fauna?
 How can we save the existing landscape in urban development and make use out of it for aesthetic pleasure?
 How do we inculcate landscape architecture into upcoming construction?
 How can a developer be persuaded to install low maintenance landscape?
 How can the provision of green space in Andhra Pradesh be based on ecological principles?
The new state is developing occurring like Malaysian Town and Singapore Town which are just copies of eastern development pneumatic urbanism and have nothing endogenous representing our environment, heritage and culture. Ultimately because of this they will be unsustainable.
My reason for choosing this particular field for research stems from having witnessed massive changes in the natural environment around my home. Being aware of the adverse results of damaging the natural landscape of a place with reckless abandon, I wish to make a contribution towards helping prevent said damage without causing a dent in the development of my country.
Which landscape architects/ architects have developed ideas and techniques the methodology to ensure an environmentally sustainable model for new urban development?
The path I propose to take for arriving at solutions to the above problem is to learn as much as I can about both contemporary methods of landscape architecture, and urban development. Based on research via extensive case-studies of contemporary landscape architecture (both sustainable and otherwise), I intend to contribute towards developing methods of sustainable landscape. The end result of my project would be to arrive at more sustainable alternatives to the traditional methods of landscape architecture, while not compromising on real estate value. Further, I wish to explore methods of landscape architecture which could be more affordable, while not compromising on aesthetics or sustainability


NGUYEN THIEN NGAN
Vertical Village in the heart of CBD
Auckland CBD area has been focused to be leading New Zealand’s business and economic development. The initiation of building projects ,which mostly occupied for commercial and residential purposes, is growing progressively in Auckland CBD area .Due to high migration net flows and blooming of business activities in Auckland CBD, these building projects appears to be essential in order to capture the society demand and also adapt the population growth.Traffic congestion therefore becomes a high burden on the residents who must commute to and from work in Auckland CBD, especially on Queen Street. It has affected the employee commuting issue and also their productivity. A large number of organizations also support their employees by providing flexible workplace to adapt the trend of business process.With many people now working longer hours, it has become increasingly important for their work to fit in around other commitments, family and a social life. The flexible time has to be offered by all employers if a worker can provide a good case for it, but with the increase in enabling technologies, mobile devices, the traditional office is becoming superfluous as increasingly remote worker and home working becomes ever more realisable. Therefore, the project is about to bring back the principles of Model Village in a smaller scale and also use the ideas of  Office-tel concept into the same building design, based in Auckland CBD. The scheme is envisioned as hybrid programs that does not only combine office spaces and compact residential units. The self-contained building design does not only encourages communication between neighbours, strengthening the sense of community but it also provides fully amenities and public areas within the building.

Andrea Murray

The Christchurch Residential Red Zone -A Memorial Landscape Honouring Displaced People

The Red Zone, known as the RRZ, feels like a very sad place.  Even a brief drive through the vacant land disturbs the viewer.  It has a dark cloud of loss hanging over it.  The viewer shakes their head; how can that vast space (1000 acres) be used in a way that is honest and meaningful to the people?  10,000 people lost their sense of place on the land (Turangawaewae- Place to Stand) after the earthquakes, in addition to 185 families losing a loved one. It was the ‘Land’ and its extraordinary power that caused the deaths and the displacement of so many.  Maybe it can be the ‘Land’ that helps the people of Christchurch heal and gain a sense of closure?   The Red Zone as a Memorial Landscape is not about making everyone forget about earthquakes and the pain of loss, in fact the opposite.  A Memorial Landscape should honour the disaster and all the displaced people who lost more than their homes, a Memorial Landscape to honour a sense of  place on the land,  Turangawaewae.

This loss of place on the land is a huge global problem, (as are earthquakes and tsunamis), the enormity of such problems can make us feel out of balance.  A Memorial Landscape in Christchurch should honour both disasters and displacement and aim to restore a response of balance to the visitor. Creating a Memorial Landscape should not try to make us forget, rather it should make us remember displaced people and that we are grateful to have a place on the land (Turangawaewae).

August Timetable