Mid-Sem wha??

More Words.

Today is the end of mid-semester break for my university. Most students have a had a two week break. Second year architecture students have had a weekend. Despite this we've made it through the first hurdle - the rugby world cup opening day on Friday.

This semester we have been working on Design 4 , the 2nd semester design paper for 2nd years. It is a 1:1 (so life sized) fabrication unit which is done in groups. This year the challenge has been to design a folly and a event for the rugby world cup fantrail through myers park. Its all a bit confusing but we initially started designing as induviduals within our design group. We the group then picked the 5 designs they liked the best to preceed and we then arranged ourselves into groups to develop the design over 2 weeks. We then facade a jury - mainly for the folly part of the project, where we wittled it down to one folly design group. Our design group's approach from there on was to have a folly team - working on ironing out the details of the folly and event teams that would continue to work on 5 different events. If this sounds confusing thats because it is.

Neither of the designs I worked on for the folly made it through selection phases and I ended up working on the event side. This has been quite challenging because once the final folly was chosen we were required to adapt our event so that it had more of an aesthetic connection with the folly. For our group this was particularly challenging as the folly, and the event designs of the other events are all very angular and in most cases triangulated. They have a sharp, angular geometry. Our design was completely contray to this, very delicate with more curved lines. We tried to encorporate the ideas but got slammed at the next crit- session - with the man in charge of the paper suggesting we need to loose the triangulated geometry altogether. We have but I don't think we've come very far from there. We've come up with an idea sole using fabric and fans to create a ripple effect. The thing is its a very low level design which I can't see functioning well with any amount of crowds. Also we've only tested it inside, on the flat, when its not wet. Our site is outside, on a slope and it is likely to be wet - will it work?? Furthermore it doesn't really engage with the dance students we've been assigned to work with. To have them just dance around what we do is a bit pointless and demeening - its not really the point. We need the architecture to engage with them so that they can engage the public. Complicated - I know. One person in my group likes this design - I'm going to call them Spencer because I don't want to use real names. I have to agree with them in that it looks effective, I'm just skeptical at the same time. Also Spencer had the original design and is bound to like what's closest to it. I get the feeling that they don't really want to design for the dancers - where it is infact a great opportunity.

My other teammates dislike the idea, like me one of them doesn't really have a concept for what else to do. They are really against fans because its adding too much to the site and is a bit complicated. The other, Mark for our purposes, has suggested a ribbon wall which the dancers can stand behind. This is after another group has done an umbrella wall and many groups have chosen to have dancers in something. I'm not really wanting to just do what others are doing and the umbrella wall was a bit of a flop so I'm hoping we aren't going to head down that route.

To make things worse Mark and Spencer really dislike each other. Spencer dislikes Mark because Mark is a bit disorganised, has other commitments outside of architecture, and does not share Spencer's minamilist aesthetic approach. Mark dislikes Spencer as Spencer blatantly didn't want to work in a group, is very controlling (I'll have lunch when I'm good and ready!!!), believes their aesthetic is the only way to go, masks little work as a lot, is not very friendly, swore at her when something refused to print and got her boyfriend to yell at her. (there are other things but these are the easy to list things.)

This conflict has made my life messy and awkward as working on the event has been very tense. Our other group member has been working on the folly so also hasn't been around to difuse tension. He's done with that so should be coming back to help us soon. Also I don't really like Spencer. Well aspects about him. On the other hand I like Mark because he's friendly, but I don't think I'd choose to work with him again. I'm trying to not let that affect things, but its difficult. I just want it to be over quite frankly.

We haven't worked much on our own design during the break. Instead our whole design group has been working towards the first event as we have a lot of comunal pieces and the first one was always going to have the most pressure on it. I've been working with one of my friends, Simone, a lot on making a boardwalk. We've had others help but its been our baby. Its made of timber fencing battens (rough sawn) held together with fencing wire and u-pins (a kind of staple/nail thingie). Its actually been something of a success with THOUSANDS of people walking across it on the way to the first rugby game. We've also got a lot of compliments on it from design tutors - YUSS!!
We throughly annoyed everyone in our building - nailing it together over 4 days working from about 9am until 7pm - but it has been worth it. Annoyingly some people in our design group havent really helped out with it (or with anything) and some people are REALLY crappy at hammering it in - so much so that quality control Tim has had to fix pieces on several occassions.
As well as doing the floor there has been a lot of other communal elements made.

Anyway on to the first event. (not ours)

We laid our path out on thursday - the plan had been for friday but it takes awhile and is heavy so we decided to risk leaving the heavy pieces out over night. One of my friends came down and helped us for a bit which was really nice. I hadn't seen any of my non-architecture friends in what felt like awhile and when they left I was in a very smiley and good mood.

On Friday morning we helped the first event group put up and weigh down their event tripod pieces and attach the fabric. Our lights (LED's that can be control on a laptop or via dmx controller) arrived just in time, as did speakers.

In my opinion the event was a success. The dancers did a mixture of things - dancing inside the structures - pressing their hands and faces through the fabric (Miaka scared quite a few children doing this) and doing more coreographed things as a group outside the structures.

During the daylight hours the light wasn't all that effective - it didn't spread far enough and just got a bit lost. But at night there were some fantastic shadows and silhouttes being achieved.

So many people saw the event and I think enjoyed it. I've always found New Zealanders to have a standback kind of attitude to anything weird or different but they seemed to get into it. Maybe it was the party atmosphere. Maybe it was the alcohol consumed prior. Either way it was more successful than I had thought.

Alot of people thought our design group was going to be a bit boring compared to some of the others but I heard many of the nicai staff praising our efforts as the ones that got people really engaged. - YUSS!! - To grahame who labelled our group as dull and unexciting - suck on that - your group wasn't nearly as successful :P.

I just wanted to comment at the end of this rant that Auckland was really buzzing on friday. All day really. It felt really good - still with that safe, southern hemisphere thing, but amped, happy, excited. It was quite electric. Apparantly Queen St and the entire downtown area was packed.

I didn't get to see much of anything to do with the opening, I've myskyed it and will watch it later. I did see some fireworks when we were packing up but I really wish I'd seen more - I didn't get to see any that took the form of pohutakawas and things - just great giant spheres of fire that radiated out from the centre. They were awesome - it was quite strange though as from the distance we were away from them the sound reached us later than what we saw. Massive big bangs became like thunder - it was chilling - in a pleasant, exciting kind of way.

A lot of people have been quite critical of how auckland handled the world cup. The "party central" filled up and the transport sucked. Honestly I'm not surprised. Auckland has a history of public transport failures, New Zealand has one of those cultures of underestimation. The thing is I can, too a degree, overlook those issues. Auckland managed to host something, it managed to get people excited. Auckland, in otherwords has potential. This potential needs to be capitalised after the world cup. There needs to be reasons to draw tourists into the city (its normal just a pitstop for people wanting to see the rest of the country) and reasons to draw people in from the suburbs.

It was the density that contributed to the success of the night. It doesn't always need to be THAT packed. But it needs people to come in not just for work. Its hard as Auckland is such a sprawling city thanks to the propogation of the 1/4 acre section and decades of planning. My grandma went back to the UK and told people she lives 25 miles from the centre of auckland. The people in the UK didn't believe she lived in auckland - she does. We need people in the city - maybe that means the removal of the car, maybe that means better transport - but it also means entertainment. I don't know exactly how or what should be done but I'm a little bit excited to see how auckland develops. I may be disappointed as NZ lacks the capital of other countries but recently proposed plans - to be rolled out over 30 years look exciting. I hope it doesn't let itself down.

After the buzziness of friday i made it back to uni with a couple of friends. Someone set the rugby up on our projector screen and about 10 of us watched the 2nd half from chairs and tables. Its funny how it seemed quite normal to spend friday evening in the architecture studio. Just like how it didn't feel funny to spend mid semester break at uni - including saturdays and sundays.

I've taken the last two days to relax -its been quite blissful, although on the first day I struggled to relax. Its back to uni tomorrow - yay (saracastic). Well its about a month and a half until summer holidays so I think I can make it.

xox

p.s. I'm a bit sleepy so this might not make sense, also its hard to explain the dynamics of design this semester with groups within groups.

Sorry there are no photos again. My camera died well and truly I think. check out http://diversion4d.blogspot.com for photos - we havent put any up from the event yet there are some progress pictures.

Also I'm surprised (pleasantly) NZ has got into the party spirit - it seems very un-kiwi. I guess it is rugby afterall. I'm impressed with my country (finally).