Everything Changes

Everything changes

As my Dad ages and the pages turn, I reflect on his values, and what I learn from him. I don’t see him enough but I see him when I can, while I can. In recent years when we meet he will often say “Everything Changes”. Not in response to a particular situation, but as a statement, as an undeniable reflection, a description of life. I think he wants me to understand and comprehend that our lives are part of a timeless flowing force. Environments are in flux. Interactions between people and places are in flux. Any semblance of permanence and stability is a temporary illusion soon to be adjusted by times erosion and ecological re-balancing of a wider picture we are a very minute part of. And so it is with design. Major architectural and landscape projects I invested several years realising have been changed, sometimes by others, sometimes positively augmenting a design, but not always sensitively or with a similar vision to mine. We have no rights over the objects and spaces we design and make. They are simply our contribution, our gift to the wider context. Environments effect people and their environmental contexts. Construction processes change places, often violently and destructively before they can be repaired and healed. Completion and occupation of a building changes place actively over time via interconnections to contexts that are forged. When new architecture or landscape becomes a seed for positive change, and it takes root and grows within and as part of a wider environment, it becomes integral to the place and survives and thrives. The place may also grow and change in ways we could not or did not imagine or can’t comprehend…

This is the context we design into as small parts of bigger interconnected systems. Ours is a world where simulations, mapping, parameter driven design and artificial intelligence self-learning systems attempt to define and manage the barely predictable. What is sought through these tools is control so we can be active agents of change. As designers we cope with unpredictable and infinite complexity by reducing and prioritising the information we are able to process, and we do this through abstraction as we design and refine. We start simple and add the complexity. As Pat Hanly the painter would say as he squinted his eyes while appraising a landscape “what are the big issues”. As designers what are our major moves in response to the big issues? And importantly, how will our design operate over time after we leave. What happens after we have handed our work here back to a client group and the community and environmental context it operates in? How is our design in some ways strategic, anticipating its effects on people and place and accommodating and facilitating of changes that might occur? How is it able to adapt as its contexts change. Because… everything changes…        

Ever the people.

As a student I worked for JASMaD in a sweet little six floor building in 2 Whitaker Place Auckland. It was a beautiful, well sited, modest, human scaled, resourceful, naturally ventilated building designed by the architects who occupied part of it. The windows opened and the flared red spandrels gave shade and sun protection. The floor plates were not too deep so everyone got natural light and outlook. The upper floor had gently sloping sarked timber ceilings, and a tiny upper attic level above that was a great place to gather and meet, crafted around an understanding of retreat.  It was located on the edge of a hill with glimpses of the harbour up Grafton valley. Entry was over a small bridge with gardens each side. It was of its place and time, its character based on its specific relationship to place and climate and the values and needs of the people who designed and constructed it. It belonged to place and actively contributed to and crafted the environment.   

The importance of this reciprocal relationship between place and people has become more urgent over time as the increasingly short term approach to building, and the realities of climate change and our effects on the planet begin to bite. No 2 Whitaker Place is now crowded in by developer buildings prioritising individual profit over the quality of architecture, landscape and place that they collectively create. Most of our environment is now built this mean spirited, exploitative way, as a temporary means for people with no real connection to place to extract short term economic value.    

I recently spent some time in another of Ivan Mercep and JASMAXs buildings, Te Kura Whare, Living Building created in association with Te Uru Taumatua Tūhoe, at Te Uruwera in Tāneatua, Bay of Plenty. This regenerative building is actively restoring the land and people. It is giving more than it takes. Its significance is in its integrity and integration of process and outcome. There has been a reciprocal interaction between building, people and place as the building was made, and this continues. As significant as the place are the people, Tūhoe with their embedded interconnection with place. This results in a deep respect and understanding of the natural environment, its needs, its timeless presence, its patterns of movement and change, and its reciprocal interrelationship with its people. This is beautifully expressed in Te Kawa document  te-kawa-o-te-urewera

The challenge that Tūhoe set themselves as integral parts of the Te Uruwera ecology is to walk the talk, to let their actions speak. They see a timelessness, a longer timeframe, and are making sure but steady changes to how they live and work over time, making the big difference needed through the integrity of many small everyday actions. The architecture of Te Kura Whare, the way it was conceived and made, the way it operates for its people and guests, its value as a Living Building exemplar, and its wider long term effects over time challenge us all. Our architecture affects its environment in it's making, over its lifespan, and after then. We all need to regularly reconnect with our places, and work together to actively regenerate them through our work.    

architecture and representation

My master’s research titled Inscription was completed in 1996. It is an ambitious investigation of architectural theory and practice relationships from a time before the great many theory anthologies were published. Since that time much of my research has returned to the implications of materialised design and architecture considered as intelligent, discursive, formal, objects and spaces.

Architecture may depend on drawing and writing to be realised, but it stands on its own after then. Architecture is. It does not need writing, drawing or photographs to be. An experienced architect and many others can read architecture and many of the ideas, contexts and influences it embodies from the work itself. I find joy discovering a hidden gem of architecture, not written about, but still present, still engaging its contexts and visitors. In a similar manner architectural representations such as drawing and writing are also their own creative objects with an integrity not dependent on other media. Architectural research may or may not be directly or closely related to particular architecture or design. It combines systematic investigation with new writing that reflects on the research investigation and its outcomes.

The complexity, scale, and spatial and environmental condition of architecture combine to create a rich, multiple, experiential character that communicates through senses at times overwhelming our capacity to understand. Writing is a more reflective, considered, direct, specific medium, more suited to critical reflection and to communication of ideas.

Design-led research occurs through non-written media, investigating a question, problem or clear intention over time with associated written critical reflection, analysis and conclusions. We might dream of a day architecture alone is considered enough evidence of intent, and for an educational system that facilitates a more direct engagement with architecture as artifact, but we know, deep down, the very nature of architecture as an academic and  professional discipline, and of its dispersal over the planet, together reinforce an interdependence of architecture with its associated representations.    

In praise of Mastery

The banner for this section of the site is an image from the 2008 Awaroa Masterclass with Richard Leplastrier, Peter Stutchbury, Lindsay Johnston and Ian Athfield that was the first of several masterclass experiences for me. Many stories were told, and lifelong friendships forged. Wisdom from the elders is passed down through a process of exchange between good people together experiencing great architecture and extraordinary places, and working together on common problems. Real communication requires trust from all parties, and trust takes the time it needs. Mastery also takes time to emerge. Its a positive value of aging and experience. What is lost in energy is gained in depth of knowledge of the nature of relationships between people and places. Everyone has stories they know to be a true from significant experience.

Great teaching occurs when there is space for it, with not only need and hunger, but also sensitivity and listening from two sides, when there are some gaps, silence, a moment for pause and reflection. Often for me this also happens in an active moment, when an experience is occurring, and a need to learn surfaces. It is then a significant moment of possible learning and exchange seems to arrive. And when the learning really occurs its a glorious shared moment, a free passing and taking of a baton between. So when we learn we are in the right place and head spaces, and moving together with someone in a similar direction at the same moment. A rare thing. When this happens its a privilege and is some how sublime... Thanks to Masters Richard Leplastrier, Peter Stutchbury, Britt Andresen, Glenn Murcutt, Lindsay and Kerry Clare, Lindsay Johnston, and especially our own Ian Athfield. My other important architectural Mentors include, Mike Austin, Sarah Treadwell, Ivan Mercep, John McClean, Michael Payne, Joanna Margaret Paul, Peter Beaven, Paul Walker, John Gray, Daniel Brown, Julianna Preston, Maibritt Pedersen Zari, and my |Design Lab_ colleague Peter Connolly. Masters indeed.