1.
Title: Group Architects and the Auckland House
Speaker: Dr. Julia Gatley (President of School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland)
Abstract:
Auckland has a history of detached houses rather than terrace housing or apartment buildings. A firm from the 1950s, Group Architects, are particularly celebrated for designing houses that are often interpreted as a distinctly New Zealand form of modernism. This talk considers the Group, their houses and the extent which they may or may not be distinctly of New Zealand.
2.
Title: Urban growth management and the challenges of implementing high quality urban design in practice: Auckland's approach
Speaker: Dr. Lee Beattie (Vice President of School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland)
Abstract:
This presentation examines New Zealand's largest city approach to managing and accommodating future urban growth while seeking to protect its high quality urban and environmental qualities which make Auckland one of the world's most livable cities. A major element of this approach is the rise and implementation of high quality urban design solution to Auckland's built form, which will be explored through the use of a number of case studies and the statutory urban planning environment.
3.
Title: Emerging issues in Auckland's public space
Speaker: Dr. Manfredo Manfredini (doctorial tutor)
Abstract:
New recombinant factors emerging in urban public space counteract the increasing disjunction of urban places subject to commodification and privatisation. In low density cities within neoliberal political frameworks, these factors have developed peculiar places of social relationship: the integrated urban enclosures devoted to lifestyle consumption that are the latest evolution of shopping centres. These enclosures are heterotopic places mobilised by spectacle that quickly subsume the fundamental changes occurring in the relations between architecture and associative life in our contemporary post-consumerist, digital era. The talk gives insights in the new mall typology recently introduced in Auckland, exploring the important challenge they pose to architecture and urban design in defining the future of public space.
Manfredo studied architecture and urban design in Milan and Berlin. He has been engaged in individual and group research over a wide range of topics in architectural theory and criticism, as well as in design at architectural and urban scales.
4.
Title: Morphological processes, planning and reality: redeveloping the urban waterfront in Auckland and Wellington
Speaker: Dr. Kai Gu (Vice dean of International department, School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland)
Abstract:
The urban waterfront areas adjacent to the central business districts (CBDs) in Auckland and Wellington are under great pressure for change. Though the CBD waterfront areas in the two cities are similar in their size, history and political-economic contexts, the redevelopment processes in the past two to three decades have resulted in divergent patterns of built environment and different socio-economic consequences. In striking contrast to the waterfront area in Wellington, which has provided successful spaces and facilities for public life, the waterfront redevelopment in Auckland has inadequately protected character landscapes and public amenities. By applying the concept of urban fringe belts, this paper examines the morphological changes of the CBD waterfront landscapes in relation to waterfront planning and design in Auckland and Wellington. Unlike the predominant process of fringe-belt alienation in Auckland’s waterfront transformation, the fringe-belt characteristics, especially permeability and open pattern of land cover, have been maintained in Wellington’s waterfront area. The absence of both sound management strategy for the waterfront landscape and as an effective institutional framework explains some failures in Auckland’s waterfront redevelopment. The fringe-belt concept cannot only help to understand the dynamics of morphological processes, but also provide a basis for strengthening waterfront planning and design
Time: Dec. 9, 2015, 19:00--21:00pm
Venue: The first floor, multimedia classroom of Number 6 building
Organizer: School of Architecture, SCUT
