Attributing and Defining an Unbuilt 1859 Architectural Plan for the Site of Trogir’s Medieval Walls

This paper discusses the attribution of an anonymous and unbuilt 1859 plan for a four-storey apartment building with commercial spaces on the ground floor, located on the site of the old town walls in Trogir. It proposes Josip Slade as the architect of the plan, interpreting Slade’s architectural language and the development of his approach to architectural heritage. An analysis of the project in a historical socio-political and spatial context, moreover, supports the conclusion that this was intended as rental property, and this paper therefore offers insights into the first known example of the tenement housing building typology in the nineteenth-century Trogir

From Print to Proposal: Exploring the Urban and Cultural Possibilities of Hataitai

<p>I am interested in the synergy between art and architecture. Art is typically graphic and architecture is typically spatial. This research investigates how an exploration of both graphic and spatial techniques might inform architecture. I explore this synergy between graphic and spatial within the context of Hataitai, Wellington. This suburb has the opportunity to grow, physically and socially. This research proposes a Continuing Education Centre that promotes a new cultural hub. This proposal responds to the suburb’s car-dependent nature and aims to enhance Hataitai’s cultural resilience What graphic and spatial opportunities does architecture offer to improve pedestrian infrastructure and enhance cultural resilience? I use the design proposal as a vehicle to investigate how art-led experimentation could influence the architectural language and design. I use printmaking as a creative starting point to explore the possibilities of art-led experimentation. From the prints, I investigate the ambiguity of depth and flatness, I then develop experimentation through physical modelling, hand drawing and digital modelling. The resulting design expands a weakly-defined pedestrian network and enriches the cultural fabric through an architectural language that explores both spatial and graphic overlaps.</p>

Configuring Taiwan’s Architectural Extensions

<p>Amongst Taipei’s contemporary urban skyline of skyscrapers sits a secondary layer of prolific informal structures latching onto the existing modernist infrastructures of Taiwan, most prominently multistorey residential buildings. These structures resolve the spatial issue of the urban environment on the surface level and communicate a certain expression of Taiwan’s way of life, but just as importantly, they serve as a critique of modernist standards and homogeneous space. This phenomenon is the result of the absence of planning and declaration of martial law under the KMT’s rule of Taiwan from 1949-1987. During this time, all top-down plans were reduced to one objective—to take over from China and return to the mainland (Illegal Taipei). During this time the government was negligent about these unrestrained developments in the city. In a 2011 exhibition titled “Illegal Architecture” Taiwanese architect, Ying-Chun Hsieh expressed a distinct view of this period. He wrote: Fortunately, while the government was concentrating itself on regaining the possession of mainland China and on promoting populism, which made it weak, people were given a chance to breathe. Their creativity was released, and fabulous urban life finally arose in Taipei… (Ching-Yueh) In recent years, the government has had a change of agenda; the demolitions of illegal extensions are now enforced and with it what has come to symbolise a Taiwanese’s way of life informed by decades of creative informal expansions and certain freedoms. Although government regulations emerge from safety concerns, this thesis argues that there is a superior procedure to overcome these issues without altering the culture: to create an architecture that references but does not imitate the context, therefore creating a new architectural language that retains the spirit of context and history of the everyday in Taiwan.</p>

Configuring Taiwan’s Architectural Extensions

<p>Amongst Taipei’s contemporary urban skyline of skyscrapers sits a secondary layer of prolific informal structures latching onto the existing modernist infrastructures of Taiwan, most prominently multistorey residential buildings. These structures resolve the spatial issue of the urban environment on the surface level and communicate a certain expression of Taiwan’s way of life, but just as importantly, they serve as a critique of modernist standards and homogeneous space. This phenomenon is the result of the absence of planning and declaration of martial law under the KMT’s rule of Taiwan from 1949-1987. During this time, all top-down plans were reduced to one objective—to take over from China and return to the mainland (Illegal Taipei). During this time the government was negligent about these unrestrained developments in the city. In a 2011 exhibition titled “Illegal Architecture” Taiwanese architect, Ying-Chun Hsieh expressed a distinct view of this period. He wrote: Fortunately, while the government was concentrating itself on regaining the possession of mainland China and on promoting populism, which made it weak, people were given a chance to breathe. Their creativity was released, and fabulous urban life finally arose in Taipei… (Ching-Yueh) In recent years, the government has had a change of agenda; the demolitions of illegal extensions are now enforced and with it what has come to symbolise a Taiwanese’s way of life informed by decades of creative informal expansions and certain freedoms. Although government regulations emerge from safety concerns, this thesis argues that there is a superior procedure to overcome these issues without altering the culture: to create an architecture that references but does not imitate the context, therefore creating a new architectural language that retains the spirit of context and history of the everyday in Taiwan.</p>

From Print to Proposal: Exploring the Urban and Cultural Possibilities of Hataitai

<p>I am interested in the synergy between art and architecture. Art is typically graphic and architecture is typically spatial. This research investigates how an exploration of both graphic and spatial techniques might inform architecture. I explore this synergy between graphic and spatial within the context of Hataitai, Wellington. This suburb has the opportunity to grow, physically and socially. This research proposes a Continuing Education Centre that promotes a new cultural hub. This proposal responds to the suburb’s car-dependent nature and aims to enhance Hataitai’s cultural resilience What graphic and spatial opportunities does architecture offer to improve pedestrian infrastructure and enhance cultural resilience? I use the design proposal as a vehicle to investigate how art-led experimentation could influence the architectural language and design. I use printmaking as a creative starting point to explore the possibilities of art-led experimentation. From the prints, I investigate the ambiguity of depth and flatness, I then develop experimentation through physical modelling, hand drawing and digital modelling. The resulting design expands a weakly-defined pedestrian network and enriches the cultural fabric through an architectural language that explores both spatial and graphic overlaps.</p>

Friends, Enemies and Bunkers

<p>A biosecurity centre on Kapiti Coast is required for checks on visitors venturing 5km out to the nationally significant nature reserve, Kapiti Island. The shorefront lacks a public building connecting to Kapiti Island. The proposal for a visitors centre is the vehicle for this design-led research. This thesis experiments with architectural form in a coastal setting exploring some specific approaches to form-making. New Zealand architects often rely on metaphors as a method for making form. For example using mountain ranges or a waka as a referent. International theorists like Pier Vitorrio Aureli argue for a more self-referential logic. Architect Ron Witte explains that a good architectural ‘figure’ comprises architectural references like programme, technology and form. The removal of its representational obligation gives the figure its strength. How does a good figure work without the dependence of an external referent? Can the referent be removed allowing the figure to work internally? Derivation from earlier sources is also commonly used in making form often resulting only in the abstraction of the image. Winy Maas and Adam Caruso both acknowledge that ‘novelty is nonsense’. They argue that references from the past should be used as existing knowledge and built upon. How can past sources be used for their value in knowledge rather than their use of imagery? This thesis is organised into a series of parts with experiments around figuration and form-making each looking at a particular use of a referent. Experiment one looks at form-making through the derivation of ‘heroes’. Experiment two focuses on abstracting and using the metaphor of a waka. Experiment three explores anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures through the architectural language developed by John Hejduk. Lastly, experiment four abandons these figures and buries the building in the site’s dunes. The form and façade of the building refer to the work of several Swiss architects including Valerio Olgiati and Christian Kerez for their use of ornamentation in heavy buildings. The outcome and implications of this design-led research address a disciplinary exploration of the referent and its use in making a form. The final design proposition extracts six formal principles used in common with works from Olgiati, Kerez and Caruso. The proposition is re-built on top of existing knowledge, offering a particular approach to form-making.</p>

Friends, Enemies and Bunkers

<p>A biosecurity centre on Kapiti Coast is required for checks on visitors venturing 5km out to the nationally significant nature reserve, Kapiti Island. The shorefront lacks a public building connecting to Kapiti Island. The proposal for a visitors centre is the vehicle for this design-led research. This thesis experiments with architectural form in a coastal setting exploring some specific approaches to form-making. New Zealand architects often rely on metaphors as a method for making form. For example using mountain ranges or a waka as a referent. International theorists like Pier Vitorrio Aureli argue for a more self-referential logic. Architect Ron Witte explains that a good architectural ‘figure’ comprises architectural references like programme, technology and form. The removal of its representational obligation gives the figure its strength. How does a good figure work without the dependence of an external referent? Can the referent be removed allowing the figure to work internally? Derivation from earlier sources is also commonly used in making form often resulting only in the abstraction of the image. Winy Maas and Adam Caruso both acknowledge that ‘novelty is nonsense’. They argue that references from the past should be used as existing knowledge and built upon. How can past sources be used for their value in knowledge rather than their use of imagery? This thesis is organised into a series of parts with experiments around figuration and form-making each looking at a particular use of a referent. Experiment one looks at form-making through the derivation of ‘heroes’. Experiment two focuses on abstracting and using the metaphor of a waka. Experiment three explores anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures through the architectural language developed by John Hejduk. Lastly, experiment four abandons these figures and buries the building in the site’s dunes. The form and façade of the building refer to the work of several Swiss architects including Valerio Olgiati and Christian Kerez for their use of ornamentation in heavy buildings. The outcome and implications of this design-led research address a disciplinary exploration of the referent and its use in making a form. The final design proposition extracts six formal principles used in common with works from Olgiati, Kerez and Caruso. The proposition is re-built on top of existing knowledge, offering a particular approach to form-making.</p>

Mosque Architecture in Cyprus—Visible and Invisible Aspects of Form and Space, 19th to 21st Centuries

A comprehensive analysis of Cypriot mosque architecture between the 19th and 21st centuries, from the Ottoman and British colonial periods to the present, does not exist. The phase after 1974, after the division of the island into a Turkish Cypriot, predominantly Muslim north and a Greek Cypriot, mainly Christian south, is especially insufficiently studied. This paper aims to interpret Cypriot mosque architecture and its meaning(s) through a comparative analysis, considering cultural, religious, and political developments. Based on an architectural survey and studies about Muslim Cypriot culture, this study investigates formal and spatial characteristics, focusing on the presence/absence of domed plan typologies and of minarets which, as visual symbolic markers, might express shifting cultural-religious notions and/or identities. Inconspicuous mosques without domes and minarets dominate until 1974. However, with the inter-communal tensions in the 1960s, the minaret possibly became a sign of Turkish identity, besides being a cultural-religious marker. This becomes more obvious after 1974 and is stressed by the (re)introduction of the dome. Since the late 1990s, an ostentatious and unprecedented neo-Ottoman architecture emphasizes visible and invisible meanings, and the Turkish presence in Cyprus stronger than before. The new architectural language visually underlines the influences from Turkey that North Cyprus has been experiencing.

Intensity at the Edge

<p>There is an inherent relationship between New Zealanders and the coast and has become part of our culture and identity. The coastal threshold is a place of emersion in time, surface and weathering process of materials and the marks and traces of time, this thesis explores architectural expression on Wellingtons coastline. This project proposes the design of a series of six interventions along Wellington’s south coast. This research explores how architecture can respond to the temporality and extreme contextual conditions of the diverse landscapes. By developing an inherent architectural language of shelter that identifies and embodies the contextual and programmatic narrative, this thesis proposes for the occupation of site through a protective and experiential architecture.</p>

Intensity at the Edge

<p>There is an inherent relationship between New Zealanders and the coast and has become part of our culture and identity. The coastal threshold is a place of emersion in time, surface and weathering process of materials and the marks and traces of time, this thesis explores architectural expression on Wellingtons coastline. This project proposes the design of a series of six interventions along Wellington’s south coast. This research explores how architecture can respond to the temporality and extreme contextual conditions of the diverse landscapes. By developing an inherent architectural language of shelter that identifies and embodies the contextual and programmatic narrative, this thesis proposes for the occupation of site through a protective and experiential architecture.</p>