Ryan
Hodgson
Research
Question: How to Design Community Appropriation?
In
this project I will investigate how a change in infrastructure can facilitate
community appropriation. This research argues that past approaches to community
appropriation have tended to rely on generalised guidelines and assumptions. I
will explore how the understanding of urban context and the detailed
configuration of spaces on Dominion Road can aid design that produces spaces,
which will be appropriated by the community.
Betsy
Kettle
Research Question: How
can one create a community-based Resource Recycling Depot (CRD) that fits into people’s everyday
lives?
In the
last workshop a community-based, zero waste, recycling centre was defined. In the last four months I have been understanding the seeds
that give rise to the physical form of a resource recovery facility. To
accomplish this I researched the stakeholders, the landscape model, the process
model, the unique business of the
waste industry and worked on conceptualizing these unique combinations in designerly way and discovered
ten unique concepts that need to be imbedded in the core essence of resource
recovery design.
Existing
infrastructure was visited, gaps identified between the desired and current
practise, Auckland Council waste consultation reports read, an abstract site
concept developed, potential sites identified and conceptual site plans begun.
Challenges
have included
·
finding
a simple, graspable, description
of a complex resource stream
·
Squeezing
out a potential for
profit-making, a ‘way in’ , in an
already well-niched market place
·
Finding
examples of how the legislative framework/dominant private waste industry gives form to the public
waste infrastructure
·
Understanding why the Envision concept of a RRF challenge has not been
accomplished or even attempted in
other places in the past
·
Researching
the planning requirements for a RRF
·
What
makes Auckland’s situation unique to any place else in the world, both in terms
of challenges and potentials
To
overcome these challenges, I read
the Waste Assessment, a 1000 page document consolidating the many reports
prepared by Auckland Council in preparation for the amalgamation, reading the
new Council Waste Management and Minimisation Plan particularly searching for
business ideas that could involve community, and studying similar
community-based recycling facilities overseas within their unique legislative
frameworks.
Future
work will be around studying how to bring community into the facility, how to
spread tendrils of action from the RRF to the community, how to phase the
facility from first contractural work to full build out, looking within the
processing modules to understand and develop them in more detail.
Joanne Leather
Beyond
separatism
How
can an understanding of domesticated animal behaviour enhance current models of
subdivision design to privilege conservation and biodiversity goals in human
settlements?
Abstract
Traditional
approaches to subdivision led to an erasure of nature in favor of human
habitation and therefore a trend to separatism, a disparity as historically
humans separate themselves from nature, the landscape and the species that
inhabit it - the result a loss of connectivity in particular to rural and
remnant natural landscapes.
The
current phase of subdivision design uses nature as infrastructure e.g.
waterways, erosion control planting, recreation corridors. This research
investigates the potential for further integration of farming and habitat
conservation design into subdivi- sions.
This
dissertation uses research by design to look at how the domesticated species we
surround ourselves with and human activi- ties such as settlement and
production can be viewed as a means to achieve wider goals of
sustainability/biodiversity enhance- ment and not a barrier to it.
The
contribution I can make as a designer (and veterinarian) is to develop
strategies for an economically viable ‘Mainland Island’ settlement as a new
landscape exemplar. One, which provides new opportunities for intensified rural
settlement and community growth, simultaneously maximizes ecological
connections; provides safe habitats for threatened species, integrates the
different aspects of rural landscapes and human activities to achieve
sustainability and to add value and moral legitimacy with global and national
consumers. The resulting ‘Mainland Island’ settlement is an integrated part of
rural communities - protecting and promoting the rural landscape providing new
opportunities for tourism, recreation, education, rural production and
settlement. ‘Mainland Islands’ will be shown to have the potential to become
part of communities and the national open spaces linking New Zealanders to
their heritage.
Jack Haldane-Willis
Research Question: How
can shopping development promote peri-urban social life?
This research aims to re-conceptualize shopping (“Big Box”)
infrastructure and investigate its potentials to contribute to social life as a
component of peri-urban settlement.
Peri-urban “Big Box” shopping development today tends to be
isolated, situated away from or disconnected to main and residential centres.
The isolated nature of this type of development is explored by many authors
(e.g Garreau J (Edge City) as a condition in which large format retail tends to
appear. “Big Box” mall development tends to sit at the periphery of settlement
where development is most unobstructed and cost effective. The overarching
consideration of cost and desired disconnects from centres and settlement
suggests to me a strong economic focus for these types of development. Early
visions for shopping mall development incorporate ideologies that seem to
express concern for how shopping mall infrastructure might redefine the
contemporary city. Victor Gruen is widely acknowledged as being among the
earliest figures in shopping mall design (Sze Tsung leong). His vision for the
shopping mall visualized the mall as a unit of urban planning which acted as a
central player with specific relationships to residential areas, schools, work
environments, recreational areas etc. The mall was seen as an instrumental
component in a settlement assemblage. In New Zealand, today “Big Box” stores
and environments seem to connect primarily to patterns in automobile use in
establishing a dialect between the confined shopping environment and society.
Within the shopping centre this focus becomes evident with car parking
occupying similar floor areas to retail space, both of which far outweigh
social, environmental or cultural spaces.
In my view, retail centres such as Westgate and the types of shops they
contain are becoming, if not already are the primary means by which our society
does most of its shopping. At this
stage I have observed an interesting relationship between retail centres and
their users. Users of spaces like westgate or Albany mall are happy to visit,
shop and return home (generally to the suburbs) happy to not have the non-human
scale shopping centre in their settlement. The retailers with an economic focus
are interested in turnover thus are happy for consumers to arrive, shop and
leave. Zoning is an instrumental tool in maintaining this disconnect (Allan A).
This is the status quo. However, given increasing use of shopping environments
by society, the increasing costs in using automobile transport, homogenous
settlement environments implemented by zoning controls, etc, I feel there is a
design challenge in dealing with the disconnects between shopping environment
and settlement, retail centres and social outcomes and the contribution of
retail environments beyond shopping and economics.
Whilst embracing the requirements and logics around shopping
development, I would like to explore how shopping infrastructure might
contribute to social life in general and specifically how shopping
infrastructure might contribute to social life and settlement in peri-urban New
Zealand. Focusing on Huapai/Kumeu, I am interested in how the application of
design might enable shopping development to position itself as a valuable
component of this emerging settlement in peri-urban New Zealand. A return to
the ideologies presented by Gruen at conception of shopping environments. Thus
far development strategies for Huapai/Kumeu maintain the disconnect between
settlement and large format retail environments by creating a “town Centre”
proper at Huapai and a Large Format/Industrial centre at Kumeu. The decision
here seems disconnected from the realities of shopping tendencies today. It
would be my speculation the there is potential for the town centre at huapai to
struggle economically against the centre at kumeu and for this to have social
impacts on both centres. I am interested in the potential in the application of
design to enable these two centres to become one in a way that a settlement
centre is developed that maximizes potentials across all aspects (social,
economic, environmental and cultural) At a contextual scale the focus will
predominantly be on planning and spatial connections that establish a strategic
position for large format retail infrastructure within peri-urban settlement.
Focus for this strategy/positioning will be equally weighted to producing a
viable shopping development whilst promoting social life and investigating how
large format retail infrastructure can positively impact on settlement
structure. At a finer scale the research will look to develop a design for a
viable shopping centre in huapai/kumeu that maximizes the potentials for the
mall to be a social space and offer the community potentials beyond shopping.
Jennifer Parlane
Research
Question How to design industrial areas for public enjoyment?
The perception of
industrial areas is that they are often one dimensional and isolated parts of a
city; they are the marginalized areas of a city. function (both economically
and in a design sense). They are highly un‑planned and they lack appeal for
most people. Metaphorically speaking, they are like the poor cousins of the
city; perceived as dirty, labeled as undesirable and left to their own devices
to survive ‑ and survive they do (flourish in fact). For this reason,
industrial areas are a fascinating landscape of contradictions and
juxtapositions. With their purely
functional buildings, the industrious work force, the whir of machines and the
surprising ways in which nature takes a foothold on these manufactured landscapes,
the industrial world has a cool seductiveness about it.
Industrial areas are
also a vital component of a city, occupying significant tracts of land and
often found close to sensitive ecological areas. In this post‑industrialist era, where sustainability and
even ‘livability’ are the desired goals, and accommodating an ever‑increasing
population is an ongoing pressure, can industrial areas become more dynamic and
more responsive to the people that work within them and the ecologies that
inhabit them, while at the same time, maintaining their core function of being
economic hubs? Can discovering
opportunities for public enjoyment create multi‑functional landscapes that can
achieve the new growth paradigm; the accommodation of economic development and
population growth, while sustaining the spirit of community and of the physical
environment?
To demonstrate the
relevance of the industrial landscape in our current climate, and a design
approach that considers environmental, social, and economic aspects, this
thesis analyses the industrial area around Mangere inlet, Auckland, an area
that epitomises the challenges faced by post‑industrial New Zealand. The site
presents vast potential for redevelopment.
The main objective of
this thesis is to show the existing industrial landscape is a complex resource,
which can be recovered, re‑used, reintegrated and enjoyed by the surrounding
community. Additionally, the
intention of the overall design strategy is discussed in a manner such that it
can be used as a resource for other designers for non site‑specific challenges.
James Walker
Globalisation is the dominant factor in the structuring of landscapes
today.
Counterurbanisation is a secondary process that has emerged as an effect of
globalisation. It involves the restructuring of urban settlement patterns, whereby
settlement arrangements decentralise in decreasing densities over a given space,
whilst becoming increasingly interconnected as they extend into rural
landscapes.
During this restructuring, system dynamics contained within both rural and
urban landscapes undergo a process of exchange in the socioeconomic
organisation of a given space.
The following design research is an investigation into the effects of this
exchange, the problems it incurs and solutions to these problems.
Rural and urban system exchange occurs when generalisations are applied
to the socioeconomic organisation of a given space. Such generalisations are
held within state models of spatial development.
As such urban systems, conceived as the topological space in which this socioeconomic
development occurs, have become the dominant mode of landscape intervention. Globalisation
has thus become increasingly viewed as a dualistic process whereby the regional
will supersede the local.
The urban rural duality, by default of this conception, has become an issue in
the reformation of rural landscapes today. Globalisation, represented in this
dualistic way necessitates a confrontational relationship when opposing systems
come into contact with one another. However, globalisation in itself doesn’t necessitate such a
duality.
Such representations of globalisation have created an unnecessary approach to
landscape intervention, in which, during the process of counterurbanisation, local
socioeconomic systems are exchanged for regional socioeconomic systems.
When a landscape intervention involves the exchange of such systems,
opportunities for the development of rural goods and services within these evolving
landscapes are lost. Such representations of globalisation have brought to the
forefront of landscape intervention the future nature of rural landscapes and the
associated restrictions regarding the development potential of the goods and
services they provide.
Today counterurbanisation
approaches, regarding rural landscape development, fit into two categories of
thought; those that assert the ‘irremediable urbanisation of the country side’
as postulated by Lefebvre and Berry, in which the process of landscape
evolution is seen purely from the realm of the urban; and those that assert
that both rural and urban are intrinsic to the transformation of space during
the process of globalisation.
The former holds to the segmentation of systems, the changeability of the city
and the ‘right to the city’ as our global conditions evolve. The latter holds
to synergism between rural and urban conditions, whereby new socioeconomic
systems of organisation are produced. Therefore the question of the new, or Novelty
as Whitehead called it, has become of crucial importance in the restructuring
of socioeconomic spaces. The following design research will investigate the
conditions required for novelty during the counterubanisation of rural
landscapes. The research method involves four stages:
- Investigate the
conditions in which socioeconomic conceptions, driven by dualistic representations
of globalisation, lead to the exchange of local processes for regional
processes, and demonstrate how novelty can occur after the initial
representations have been established.
- Investigate the
conditions required for Novelty to occur in a selected rural landscape unrestricted
by socioeconomic representations, and analyse how other countries are
creating such conditions.
- Use this
information to explore through design, the Ideas (expressions) from which
rural and urban conceptions arose, and reveal through the exploration of
these Ideas the conditions required to produce novel socioeconomic
situations.
- Explore through
design the potentials for novelty in creating truly sustainable healthy socioeconomic
spaces.
Mathieu, N. Rural-urban context in France: French Vexin and Pays de
Caux,
RURBAN
Internal Report, Paris: UMR Ladyss, 2003, pg. 1-4
