Author: ciaraannmaher

Our Sea of Islands is a essay by Epeli Hau’ofa in the academic journal “The Contemporary Pacific” (Hau’ofa, E. (1994, Spring). Our Sea of Islands. The Contemporary Pacific, 6(1), 148-161). Written in 1994, the essay talks about the different views of the pacific in relation to size. Hau’ofa highlights the two views of the pacific being either “islands in a far sea” or “a sea of islands” (p.152).

The European view of “islands in a far sea” describes pacific islands and nations as small. The reason for this is that they compare the size of the pacific islands against there own large continental land. The Pacific view of “a sea of islands” talks more about the pacific being unimaginably large. This view comes from the origins of their culture and lifestyle including the legends of the islands. The people of the pacific view the land and sea as one entity and is therefore much greater than anything else.

Reading this essay really opened my eyes to a new way of thinking and made me start to realise that my way of designing and going about anything in life is based off a Western view and that something that may seem so illogical in my mind could be very much the opposite to someone with a different culture and belief system. I never realized how much of what I do is influenced by the culture I have been raised within.

The essay also made me realise that the same space can be viewed in many different ways, it just depends on perception. After reading this, when I design spaces, I want to be able to look at it in different ways and see the different perceptions within the space. I also want to understand the origin behind these views.

After collecting measurements of the gallery, I produced a draft of a 1:50 plan for the space on butter paper. This exercise I found time consuming as I needed to be careful and accurate and because the Te Ara Poutama is such an old building, it had many smaller details to consider. Below is a photo of my draft plan.

From here I started to express the thresholds in the space on my plan. The thresholds I wanted to explore were movement and light and temperature which I explored through colour. My main focus was on movement and how it correlates with the space. I expressed the heavy and consistent traffic that occurs outside the front of the gallery on Wellesley St. I showed the flow of people through the lobby outside of the gallery and then the flow throughout the gallery. Linking to my Project 1, I wanted to show how people entering the space move from a state of awake in the busy streets of Auckland City to sleep in the darker end of the gallery. As a person travels into the space they experience going through the threshold of awake and sleep as they move from a very public and busy street to a quieter and dim lobby space, into the brighter, less public gallery space and then down the gallery towards a darker area.

This week we visited the site and went into the gallery space. We took a series of measurements of the space both inside and out to allow us to create a plan of the gallery. I didn’t enjoy this part of the project as much as I would have liked and I think it was because I found it somewhat grueling and pedantic. I can often be a perfectionist and can focus on the smallest of details which can sometimes be a gift but it can also make my creativity shut down. Because this was at the very beginning of the project, my brain switched into logical thinking and I struggled to switch back to thinking creatively like I had done in Project 1. I was so proud and impressed of myself for jumping into the project with my eyes shut (literally) and seeing the amazing end result I was capable of. This measuring exercise really made me realise how differently I can think and also how I need to learn a way I can make myself switch between logical and creative thinking easily.

Although I may not have enjoyed this particular part of the project, it was good to get some experience in a bit of group work with my Spatial Design peers. A group of us worked together in collecting different measurements from different areas of the site. This allowed me to get a better insight as to the best people to work alongside with.

We not only visited the site to collect measurements, but we also visited to explore the existing thresholds present in the space. I was more focused on collecting all of the measurements I needed than documenting threshold moments in the gallery space but I did take a few photos.

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Visiting the site was crucial in understand and contextualizing where we were going to be designing and what we were going to be designing within. Although I may not have enjoyed this part of the project, I can understand the importance of these skills in any design process.

In studio this week, we brought together our research and chose what best depicted what we wanted to portray as a group in our site map. We focused on the natural aspects of the area surrounding our site, especially the waterflow of the Waihorotiu stream below Auckland City and the waterflow after rainfall on the surface. We used our combined research, maps and diagrams to portray our idea and interpretation of the site. This was our group site map. 

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Creating and presenting the group site maps really helped clarify what I needed to do for my own individual site map and how I was going to go about it. A prominent feature I had noticed in our exploration around the site was the movement and flow of traffic and people and how they moved throughout and worked alongside with the surrounding environment. In a way, the surrounding environment was the riverbanks that guided the moving life throughout the city.  

Another interesting fact I learnt was that there were streams that used to runn above ground through Queen St and surrounding areas and that when the city was being developed, they were preserved and built on top of. This amazed me and me realise that there are many layers of movement and flow in our city, both above and below ground.  

Another interesting fact that I looked more into in my research was the old military tunnels beneath Albert Park. After doing further research into the tunnels I learnt that they were closed after World War II and haven’t been used since. Auckland Council has also talked about for the last year about reopening the tunnels as a public walkway to allow the public to move about our city’s extruded landscape easier and more efficiently. This along with the underground stream, waterflow on the streets of Auckland City and the constant, already existing movement and flow of traffic and people above ground, would help in creating a series of layers of movement to the city, an example of how a city never sleeps. From this research and information, I was able to create a site map that highlighted and depicted the layers of flow and movement in the surrounding area to the St Paul St Gallery Space 3.  

In order to represent the layers of the area, I used both white paper and butter paper. On the base piece of whitepaper, I recreated the underground stream to show the flow beneath the surface and the origin and beginning of the city. I also showed the section view of the Albert Park tunnels to highlight the other possibility for flow and movement that we don’t necessarily consider or see when exploring the above surface world of our city. This page acted as the underlay and base for my site mapping. 

On the top layer of butter paper I drew some sketches of different views of Albert Park and scenes from when we moved towards the site and positioned them out to create the effect of movement from one space to the next. The fountain, a prominent feature in Albert Park, was the beginning point for me. It created the repetition of the water and flowing aspect of my site map. The bridge depicted in this document not only evoked movement but also represented the threshold between the space of Albert Park and the space of St Paul St Gallery 3. Further though the journey of moving from Albert Park to the site depicted in my site mapping, I focus more on the building the site is situated in and its details.

Together, these documents show the layers of movement and flow in and around my site and also highlights the fact that the space we occupy isn’t solely made up of what we can see, hear, taste, touch and smell.

This week we started Project 2, Site Mapping: Threshold. We began the week with exploring the surrounding environment of our site, St Paul St Gallery Space 3. We walked across to Albert Park observing and recording sights, sounds, smells and textures. As we moved through Albert Park, a prominent feature that I noticed was how peaceful it was. It was almost a little capsule of serenity surrounded by trees protecting it from the outside hustle and bustle of the city. The trees created a visual and sound barrier around the park. I liked this concept of there being a moment of time captured in the middle of the fast pacing city.

On our way to the Park, we travelled across a bridge above Wellesley St. This really highlighted the intense amount of movement just around the university and the site. From a higher point of view and being above the flow of traffic emphasized the magnitude of traffic and also allowed me to get a better understanding of the foot traffic in the area too. As it is right next to the university, there is a large amount of consistent foot traffic up and down the pathways.

While at Albert Park, I did some sketches and took some pictures that I thought linked to my threshold I explored in my Project 1, the point between dreaming and reality. These were some of the images I collected during time at the park.

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After spending some time at Albert Park, we moved back across the bridge onto Wellesley St. From here we spent some time travelling up the road towards our site, taking in the smells, sights and especially noises that surrounded us. Here are some images from moving up Wellesley St.

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Once we reached the building we entered through the front into the main lobby. The lobby was a very odd space. Although it had high ceilings, the dim lighting made it feel almost enclosing. Once entering the lobby, it felt like I was stepping out of the rat race of the city and watching it from afar. The once loud noises of vehicles and people going past became muffled and this combined with the dark and stagnant feeling of the space created and eerie atmosphere. These are some of the images I collated from inside the lobby space.

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After exploring the inside of the lobby, I ventured outside to explore some of the close up details of the building and entrance from the exterior. Here I discovered some of the history of the building and also started looking at it from different views. These are some of the images from the exterior of the Gallery.

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Although a lot of my images are just visual representations of what I saw and experienced, a prominent feature I noticed was the intensity and flow of movement, not just of vehicles and people but the way everything in our surrounding environment moves and works in harmony. Even aspects that are abrupt can be peaceful in the way that they interact and work alongside other factors.

After exploring the environment and space surrounding our site, I did some research on Albert Park, the Te Ara Poutama building and other interesting features around St Paul Street Gallery Space 3.

It was in my studio and lecture where I learnt of the Waihorotiu Stream and the military tunnels below Albert Park. These amazed and interested me so I decided to do some further research into them. The Albert Park tunnels were constructed in 1942 as an air raid shelter for the day time population of Central Auckland as New Zealand was at risk of invasion during the second World War (The History, n.d., http://www.albertparktunnels.co.nz/the-history). The 3.5km tunnels could hold up to 22,000 people according to Adam Jacobson (Auckland Council backs proposal to reopen WWII air raid tunnels in Auckland’s CBD, March 2018, https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/central-leader/102012410/auckland-council-backs-proposal-to-reopen-wwii-air-raid-tunnels-in-aucklands-cbd) until they were closed off at the end of the war. Today, plans of reopening the tunnels for foot traffic have been proposed and there is a real possibility of these plans going ahead. This would create a new flow of life back into the tunnels and under our city. The proposed idea really excites me and I would love to be able to one day help redesign similar spaces and projects.

The Waihorotiu Stream was a big surprise to me. The idea that a stream that once existed in the center of our city is now running below our feet amazes me. I learnt that the stream was covered over when the city began to develop and become busier and Auckland was then built on top of it. The stream is the origin of life flow and movement for Auckland City. This is a map showing the Waihorotiu stream and the approximate shoreline of the 1840’s.

Along with the map showing today’s underground waterflow, I also explored this map showing the waterflow in Auckland City’s now urban landscape after a heavy rainfall.

The building in which our site is situated is part of the Auckland University of Technology City Campus. The page “History of AUT” featured on the official AUT website (https://www.aut.ac.nz/about/our-history) gave me a series of information about the history of all the campuses and where the original AUT began. The now Te Ara Poutama building was originally built between 1905 and 1906 as a part of the expansion of the Auckland Technical School. Upon opening this building, the institution changed its name to the Auckland Technical College and in 1913 the college was renamed the Seddon Memorial Technical College. At this point the only building on Wellesley St that was part of this institution was the Te Ara Poutama building. In 1963 the institution was renamed again to the Auckland Technical Institute (ATI), and as it grew further was pronounced the Auckland Institute of Technology (AIT) in 1989 which remained its name until it was formally announced a university in 2000 where it became AUT. I never realized the extent of AUT’s history until doing further research into it. The Te Ara Poutama building is the oldest building on campus and it amazes me that throughout its whole life it has been a part of educating the people of New Zealand.

Today the building is mainly home to Student Services and the Maori and Indigenous Development Faculty. What amazes me about this building is that for the past 113 years, this building has homed the brilliant and creative minds that wonder through its halls. I always considered AUT a new and modern university, and even though it is in many aspects, this revelation of the history of not only the Te Ara Poutama building but the University as a whole opens my eyes to the amazing triumphs AUT has achieved and makes me furthermore proud to be a student.

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Te Ara Poutama Building on Wellesley Street in Auckland, New Zealand.

This week we presented our work from over the past three weeks. The presentation gave me the opportunity to explain my work and also get feed back on how it can be improved. From this, I have been able to start thinking about how I can develop my concept and project with the help of my pairs

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From the presentation, I have been able to identify where my project can be improved. In order to create more of a gentle a soft flowing effect with the suspended element of the wire, I should consider enlarging the model and giving it more height to allow the suspended wire to move more freely. This would create a better representation of the threshold between dream and reality.

In order to achieve this, I might start considering Es Devlin’s work to influence my own. Devlin’s designs are often large in scale and dramatic. Some of her designs are quite simple (like my own) but are made very effective with the use of scale to make them more dramatic. I feel as though that this might be a good direction to take my model in.

I also identified the lack of suspension in the photo. I was so focused on creating softness, distortion and shadow with the light in the photograph, that I forgot to include the essence of the suspension of the wire. Being able to identify these points really helpsme in developing my project into something better.

On the weekend I took about 70 atmospheric pictures of my final model. These were some of the best.

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From here, I cut paper frames to help me select a zoomed in shot of one of the photos that best represented the essence I have been exploring in my A2 drawing and model.

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After exploring different angles and view points, I decide on a photograph that I thought best represented the threshold between dream and reality.

I chose this image because it represented the state between sleep and awake where our dreams merge with our reality the best. Focusing in on this point of view allows the image to highlight the string. This shows how the harsh lines of reality are often fuzzy in this state which the frayed string shows. The view also allows us to see the floating and suspension of the string creating the sense of reality being suspended in a dream world.
The suspended wire in the image shows the flowing feeling throughout the model, a feeling we experience within this threshold.

The shadows are very prominent and important in this photograph. I used the afternoon light cast through a window to create the soft shadows in the background and a gentle and calming ambience. I wanted to create shadow that didn’t necessarily make sense in relation to the actual model. By creating shadow that didn’t replicate the model, the photo is able to add to the narrative of how reality is not always as it seems when we are suspended between sleep and awake.

The shadows created by the string show the distortion of reality made by dreams. These shadows also remind me of Peter Pan, how Peter’s shadow runs away from him and is often not tethered to him. This story is very similar to the narrative of my project, how Wendy and her brothers are caught in a state where they don’t know what is a dream and what is reality.

The harsh horizontal shadow to the left of the image is distorted and blurred as it travels behind the model. The plastic sheet creates the distortion of the shadow, much like the film/screen we look through when experiencing the point between or dreams and the reality around us. When waking up, there is no definite point where our dreams end and reality begins and this causes them to, only for a moment, merge together into one experience.

This week we focused on model making. We used the ideas and forms from our A2 drawings to inform the models we made. I have never done any model making before so I was a bit nervous as to how I would do in the exercise. We started with four small models, only having six minutes to do each one. This stressed me out but ut allowed me to generate some ideas in 3D form and it got me used to model making quickly.

I transferred the use of line into my models and also replicated the distortion between dream and reality (a defining aspect in my drawing) with the platic and fabric.

After, this model making, I arranged the pieces into a spectrum from Interior to Exterior. I found that my models were quite evenly spread over the spectrum. The point of this was to find the gaps we had missed and filled them. I was pleasently surprised that I had covered a broad spectrum when creating my models without consciously thinking about it.

From here we created a fifth model that filled in the gap inthe interior to exterior spectrum. As my models were evenly spread, I decided to create a model that was an extreme of the interior point of the spectrum and another that was an extreme of the exterior point.

For the interior model, I used part of a pillow case to create an interior that wasn’t as transparent but still had a soft and flowing aspect. I also used the pillow case to highlight the sleep/awake threshold.

For the exterior model, I created a suspended piece. This form created less of an interior space in comparison to my other models which was my aim. Not being able to be held up by itself created less of an interior space, therfore expressing more exterior characteristics.

From here I arranged my models on an axis made up of two spectrums: vertical – light to dark and horizontal – heavy to weightless. It was here that I found a gap in the dark and weightless section. This didn’t surpirse me because quite often these two terms contridict each other. To fill this gap, I then created a model that created a dark interior space using cardboard which gave it a dark atmosphere. To then create a weightless feeling, I implemented the suspended and hovering aspect with the wire.

With this exercise, I was able to create a broad series of models that still all linked to the main idea of my drawing, the threshold between sleep and awake. Although I don’t like the end result of all of these models, I am pleased with some of the ideas and aspects I was able to identify in these models that I can take with me to develop my idea.

One of my favourite aspects of these models was the suspension. This really replicated the feeling and idea that when we dream we are suspended within this infinite universe. Even though we may dream we are walking on the hard ground or sitting on a chair, we don’t actually feel it because we are suspended within the idea. When inside the dream, everything makes sense but when we wake up and look in from the outside, everything is distorted and unclear. The threshold between sleep and reality is the point in which we travel from the inside of our dream universe and into the real world. with the model making I began to realise that I wanted to focus more on the threshold between dream and reality when transitioning from asleep to awake.

Another aspect I really liked in these models was the use of plastic. I liked it because it could help create a space but didn’t visually block the space off from the outside world. The plastic allows you to look into the space through a screen that often distorts what is inside. The plastic is almost represents the screen we look through when we are at that in between stage of sleeping and being awake where reality is distorted by our dreams.

After creating these smaller models, I realised that I wanted to focus more specifically on the threshold between dreaming and reality. When I started designing my next, larger model, I thought more about representing this threshold while using the elements of my original models that I like as starting points.

This Model originally had a suspended curved wire (one used in the final model) hanging from the front of the structure but I had started developing this model further before I realised I hadn’t documented the model.

In this model, the string represents the certainty of reality. The way that the string is frayed and fuzzy shows how reality becomes unclear and blurry within the process between coming from a sleeping state into an awake state. The suspended wire (not shown in the image above) showed a flowing movement both in its shape and motion, creating the sense of serenity we often experience when dreaming. The plastic was a way to create an interior space without blocking it off from the world around it. It gives the view an opportunity to look through the window/screen and see the threshold between dreaming and awakening to reality. It blurs and distorts what is behind it creating the sense of confusion around reality due to a dreaming state.

Something that was noticed about this model was that it replicated the elements in my drawing but separated them. My drawing shows the layering of these elements and this model explores these elements separately. In order to develop this model, I wanted to remerge these elements in way that they worked together in harmony in a 3D form.

For my final model, I layered all the main aspects of my previous model. I moved the suspended wire to the middle of the frame and surrounded it with string. To add to the weightless feel of the model, I tied the sting to clear nylon, making the string look like it is floating. By layering these aspects, it brings the model together and describes the narrative of the piece better.

This week in Tutorial, we watched a YouTube clip about set designer Es Devlin and her work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH3-EHaE2o4&feature=youtu.be). Devlin does a lot of stage set design for some of the biggest pop stars in the world. I found this clip very interesting because stage set design for concerts was never something that I had really thought about before until now. Now having watched this video, stage set design for shows like concerts really interests me.

The way Devlin works on and approaches her projects and the way she talks about them so openly and proudly inspires me. Although this clip was only a short film, I noticed the way she worked and went about her projects.

Not only am I inspired by her and her work process, but I am also inspired by the work she has produced. I first looked at her stage set designs for concerts and I loved how they were interactive, taking the factor of how a person moves and interacts with a space to a new level. This is one of the elements that makes her work stand out and so memorable. I love ideas that are a little bit different and not the status quo; they stand out more and create more conversation.

Another aspect I really admire about Devlin’s work is how dramatic it is. Not all of her work is complex, some of it is very simple but what emphasizes it is the dramatic scales she often uses.

Es Devlin also does a range of work for brands such as Louis Vuitton and Chanel but is most well known for her set designs for world-renowned pop stars.

At the moment, I am not sure how Devlin’s work can influence mine but having this knowledge about her and her work gives me the ability to look back and reference her work further down the line. Being able to identify spatial designers that inspire me will help inform my ideas as I work through my own design process.

This Week I read an extract from the book The Lure of the Local by Lucy Lippard. Although this was an assigned reading, I quite enjoyed the piece and it made me begin to question and think about what a space really is and what it’s constructed of.

In this piece, Lippard questions the meaning behind space and place and the labels we give to describe them. “Around here,” she writes, provoking the question of what is meant by this. I get a sense that “Around here” describes the familiarity of a place to its inhabitant; a place of common use. “Around here” is familiar whereas “Out there” is the unknown.  

When Lippard writes about how a “place can be peopled by ghosts more real than living inhabitants,” I feel that she is describing how the atmosphere and feeling that is given off by a place is not necessarily due to the people that inhabit it, but that the memories and history of the place can often create a stronger, more noticeable presence. This is one of my favourite lines in this piece because its not only poetic but is also thought provoking and carries a lot of meaning with it. 

A question is brought up by Lippard, writing “if place is defined by memory, but no one who remembers is left to bring these memories to the surface, does a place become noplace, or only a landscape?” This interests me because it creates the idea that a place is created by its own memories and history, not the memories of those who inhabit it. This made me realise that a place’s memories can often be a defining factor in the atmosphere of a place.  

I enjoyed this reading because it made me question how we, as humans, look at space in a visual way and made me realise how much more there is to spaces and how many factors there are to a space without us consciously knowing it. I like how this piece made me question myself and created a realisation for me that now allows me to look at spaces in different ways. I can now see how the atmosphere of a space plays a massive part and how this is created through familiarity, memories and history of both the inhabitants and the place itself. I now have a better understanding of what makes a space a space.