15/09/2014

Wide range of free events planned for Auckland Architecture Week 2014

From the 23-28 September the New Zealand Institute of Architects (Auckland Branch) is presenting a week-long festival of architecturally themed events and activities, most of them free.

The organisers of Auckland Architecture Week 2014 have put together a programme of events that considers the identity of Auckland, addresses architecture at both public and private scales, and recognises that the most important part of architecture is people.

City-focussed events include an ‘Auckland Conversation’ featuring Auckland Council design champion Ludo Campbell-Reid, Hobsonville Land Company executive Mark Fraser and NZIA President Pip Cheshire and fellow Cheshire Architects director Nat Cheshire – two designers who have been influential in the regeneration of some of the city’s most popular areas. Auckland – the Rise of a Design-led City (Thursday 25/09, 7:00pm) will focus on how integrating design thinking, the adaptive response to place, context and culture, can be Auckland’s competitive edge – its point of difference in the world.

Auckland Architecture Week also covers the topic of Auckland’s identity. At the group exhibition, Auckland Redefined (opening event Friday 26/09, 7:00pm), five of the city’s best architectural photographers, Patrick Reynolds, Mark Smith, Jackie Meiring, Samuel Hartnett and David Straight, present visual responses to a question posed by NZIA President Pip Cheshire: “Auckland has used the ‘City of Sails’ to promote itself in the past. Isn’t it time we came ashore and defined Auckland by what it is, not what it is next to? What image of Auckland will evoke the spirit of our new city in a way that the billowing sails on the Waitemata once did?”

Another event that considers identity, albeit at a national level, is Last Loveliest Loneliest in Venice (Thursday 29/09, 1:00pm). This year, architect David Mitchell was creative director of New Zealand’s first national exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Like all other national exhibitions at Venice, New Zealand responded to a provocation by Biennale curator Rem Koolhaas: do modern buildings, regardless of country, all look the same? New Zealand’s exhibition, Last Loneliest Loveliest, is a proposition about where New Zealand architecture has come from, where it might go, and how the islands in the South Pacific are connected to the wider architectural world.

Heritage protection – or lack thereof – for modern buildings is a current concern for Auckland. At Modernist Buildings under Threat (Sunday 28/09, 3:00pm) architectural lecturer and author Julia Gatley, conservation architecture specialist Adam Wild and HOME editor Jeremy Hansen will discuss reasons why modernist buildings with good architectural pedigrees, such as Tibor Donner’s Auckland Administration Building, sit in a heritage-protection blind spot.

Auckland Architecture Week also has an international aspect. This year’s Metro Glass Public Lecture (Friday 26/09, 6:00pm) will be presented by Mexican architect Enrique Norten, founder of the esteemed practice TEN Architectos. Norten is currently working on a wide-range of projects with significant international profiles, including the Guggenheim museum in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Auckland Architecture Week’s activities also address architecture at a human scale. On Sunday 28/09 (1:00pm), actor and television host Peter Elliott will present The Art of the Architect – Live, a discussion with some of the well regarded architects who appeared on the popular television show. How do you choose an architect? What should you expect? What are the high and low points of the design process and, of course, what was making the TV show really like? The discussion will feature award-winning architects Lance Herbst, Malcolm Walker and Tony Koia.

Also on Sunday 28 September (11:00am), Bungalow vs Architect – a conversation about one of Auckland’s most popular, but “belligerent, resistant to change and difficult to extend” housing types. Architects Pete Bossley, Megan Edwards and Graeme Burgess, who feature in the upcoming Random House book Bungalow, will debate their own and other’s successful approaches to extending and renovating bungalows with the book’s editor, Nicole Stock.

The Auckland Architecture Week programme contains more than 20 events, including an architectural tour of recent award-winning buildings presented by the Auckland Architecture Association; a presentation on the famous French architect Le Corbusier and the influence of colour on his designs; a considerable number of architectural exhibitions covering a number of themes; a discussion on the joys of small home design presented by HOME magazine editor Jeremey Hansen; an Architecture New Zealand presentation of the recent film festival movie Exhibition; the inaugural awards dinner for Architecture + Women NZ; an Urbis magazine social event, and more.

The full programme with event locations can be downloaded here. All events can be viewed online at: http://architectureweek.co.nz/. Find updates and additional information on the New Zealand Institute of Architects - Auckland Branch facebook page.

The week’s principal sponsor is AUT University. The majority of events will take place at AUT’s Sir Paul Reeves Building and venues include the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, the St Paul Street Gallery and the Academy Cinemas.

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