Peerwise Review of Lu-man Riches work

This is the review I wrote of the team we had to critique for our first peer wise assessment last Tuesday. We reviewed team 13, who you can find here: Lu-man Riches.

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What is a city? This question rang as fundamental in my mind as I observed Lu-man-Riches work, Ultimate City. The interesting textures, small blotches of colour and unique use of quadrilateral collage immediately grabbed my attention, but something that I found infinitely more interesting was the way that the three pieces looked at the idea of a city, how it was concrete, cramped and artificial, and how this had a very dystopian feel to it.

Their first piece, a section, focused on materials, and the gap between the past and the present. Influenced by J.G. Ballard’s novella of the same title as their overall work, this section alluded back to the story with the presence of cars, sitting on front of the building as if abandoned. The building also appeared abandoned, and there was no human presence in this image, as if there was a lack of life in this dystopian world. However it was the textures of this image really caught my eye. Materials, Eman Al-azi, one of the architects from Lu-man-Riches informed me, show emotion. The materials of the building were dark and appeared wrecked. Paint ran down over the windows. The windows themselves displayed normal, even happy looking interiors, however these were blurred, to symbolise that they were something of the past. The materiality of this image suggested that this dystopian city had not always been this way, and the warm colours of the blurred window scenes emphasised this, emitting an atmosphere of something better, something happy.

In contrast, the final two pieces of Lu-man-Riches work appeared far from happy. At first glance these two images appeared rather gloomy with their high contrast on grey scale. However, they have a secret. Throughout the images there are small areas that remain coloured, poignant reminders that there is in fact something else to this city: it is not just a desolate, empty space. These colours emphasize the idea that there are utopian elements within the dystopian environment. Although at first glance it just appears to be a bleak, industrialised space, these colours remind us of the hope for a utopia. This idea is not obvious at first glance, so it helps to hold the attention of the viewer, who must then pose more questions on the very nature of a dystopia and utopia. Can there ever be just a dystopia or a utopia? Does one have parts of the other?

Furthermore, the use of collage in the form of squares as tiny components creating clouds added a detailed element to the images that added an intriguing quality to the images. These drew my attention and gave the space an overall more playful and friendly feel, which might make visitors more inclined to visit a place that seems so dreary and cheerless at first glance. This attention to detail will come in very useful for Lu-man-Riches future work and they are already researching obscure materials for two hotels, which they have been commissioned to design in the city and on a natural island site. This project relates back to this work, Ultimate City, but will focus more on the difference between an urban and a suburban area, with cities being industrialised and artificial, and suburbs being green and organic. Lu-man-Riches architects, Eman Al-azi, Alicia Lin and Richard Fiftia, expect to have completed the designs by November this year. If their designs have nearly the thought that went into Ultimate City, they will undoubtedly be very good. I await them with anticipation.

My first laser cut

After 3 days of working on the file (and figuring out how to use illustrator!) my design team (Studio L.I.M.) finally collected the first laser cut pieces for our plant room. They're like a puzzle! Our idea is that the plant room should look like a simple shape on the outside, but be more complex within, linking in with Manu's theme of deception and illusion. This is enhanced by the fact that each opposite wall has bars in the exact reverse to the other side, so that when you view the elevations straight on it appears to be a solid, as opposed to two walls, so the viewer's perception of distance is compromised by our illusion. The thin bars make it easier to look out then in, similar to the façade on Jean Nouvel's Institute du monde arabe in Paris. They would also create interesting shadows within the space, similar to those cast by Manu's needle model representing claustrophobia. Combined with the almost cage-like bars, give a dystopian, claustrophobic air to the space.
We also wanted a movable roof, with sliding rafters that can also act as shelves for plants to sit on. Having a roof that is able to move means that the lighting conditions of the space can be altered, which is important as plants will need lots of light. There are also spaces within the exterior walls where shelves can be slid into, with just their ends sticking out the sides, hinting at the interior.

Truss

Pictures of the truss we built on Wednesday. It held 6 bricks and unlike the others didn't snap- it just curved too much and slid out of place! The best group's truss managed to hold 8, so ours was the second best. Not bad for an hour's work!

Atmospherical Models

My model symbolising the flow of water.

A model symbolising impassability vs. pass-ability.

A model symbolising crowding. The pink rubber band represents the individual within the chaos of the crowd.

My model representing the blur of passing cars in the mania that is rush hour.

My initial model representing crowding, but could also represent Manu's theme of claustrophobia.

Initial Site Visits

I thought it was about time that I actually upload some of the photos we (studiolimarchitecture.blogspot.co.nz) took whilst on our now quite numerous amounts of site visits. The entire site spans from the Strand at the beginning of Parnell rise to Britomart and then to St Andrew's Kirk on Symonds Street. 

There were a lot of spiky things alongside the railway line, some of them looked quite sharp...