Plan B Hive: An outpost in the hinterland

Paraparaumu, Kapiti Coast, NZ

PLAN B HIVE

AN OUTPOST IN THE HINTERLAND 40° 54’ 58.7016’’ S, 175° 0’ 54.0252’’ E

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Paraparaumu, Kapiti Coast, NZ

PLAN B HIVE

AN OUTPOST IN THE HINTERLAND 40° 54’ 58.7016’’ S, 175° 0’ 54.0252’’ E

Benjamin John Allnatt

A 120 point thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Architecture [Professional] Victoria University of Wellington, School of Architecture 2015

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank...

Sam Kebbell for his immensely critical and engaged guidance. And for humorously requoting that “there are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job.’"

Daniel Brown and Mark Southcombe, for their fresh perspectives in preparing me for Graphisoft. And to Victoria University, for support both academic and financial over the years.

Jayne, Rachel and Vioula, for being the unlikely 'Angels' to my 'Charlie'.

Tom and Winston, for the camaraderie in early morning chemexs and the late-night cycles home.

Lastly, most importantly, to my family, for always being there. Dad for your optimism, Mum for your wisdom and Sacha for your friendship.

And for endlessly encouraging a little boy who preferred drawing pictures over throwing rugby balls.

I'm eternally grateful...

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Figure 1 // Retreat Scenario: Establishing a ministerial outpost (far) <

Figure 2 // Physical model close-up overlooking region from underneath building

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ABSTRACT In May 2014, the New Zealand Government released plans that in the wake of a major Wellington disaster, parliament would temporarily shift to Auckland. This thesis instead proposes an alternative governmental 'outpost' on the Kapiti Coast. Functioning as a Disaster Research Centre, this would maintain the flexibility to support a temporary 'crisis parliament' post-catastrophe. The notion of an 'outpost' stems from observations of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and recognises how important sub-centres have been in supporting the city as it slowly recovers.

While this thesis tests a specific scenario, it becomes an example of establishing a resilient polycentricism between the city and its hinterland.

extreme scenario is matched by an extreme site, and investigates a settlement shift away from the coast to the more stable foothills. As a monolithic and singular form, it becomes a provocation for enlarged architecture in the hinterland.

Through the lens of architect and theorist Pier Aureli, the thesis explores a confluence between the political and formal mechanisms of architecture and the possibility they hold in structuring urban space. Projects by Aureliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s firm Dogma become primary case studies and inform the experiments carried out in developing Plan B-Hive. Ultimately the relationship with the somewhat totalitarian Dogma catalyses a reflection and critique of Aureli's ideology. The conclusion of this process forms a broader disciplinary discussion on the validity of dogmatism in architecture. This thesis interrogates whether through enacting certain amounts of dogma, architecture may regain a sense of projective agency in shaping urban space.

Identifying a 'peri-urban' condition, this thesis investigates architecture's role at the periphery, exploring alternative models of settlement to the existing exurban sprawl. These alternatives are explored through design-led research that culminates in a developed design presented as Plan B-Hive. Within a large quarry, the

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Figure 3 // Retreat Scenario: Establishing a ministerial outpost (close)

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND SCOPE

S T R U C T U R E A N D M E T H O D O LO G Y

V VII X XII

1 . 0 C O N T E X T: S E T T I N G T H E S C E N E

1.1 Parachute: Scenario

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1.2 Paradise Lost: Issues

1.3 Paraparaumu: Site

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1.4 Periphery: Urban context

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2 . 0 D E S I G N : P L A N B H I V E Site-specific proposal

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3.0 DISCUSSION: ON DOGMA

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3.1 The Dogma Doctrine: Case Studies + Literature

3.2 Cracks in the Doctrine: Design Process + Reflection

3.3 The Dogma Dilemma: Disciplinary Discussion and Conclusion

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203 207

WORKS CITED LIST OF FIGURES

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143 177

SCOPE

RESEARCH AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The design investigation begins with the site on the periphery of Paraparaumu, which is itself on the periphery of Wellington, and through the design process and subsequent reflection a series of research questions were developed and considered.

This thesis is very much driven by its peripheral urban context. The research intends to respond to the pressing issues of this context, including the unmitigated, low-density sprawl and subsequent urban formlessness. Therefore the investigation sets out to consider the periphery as a context within which to recover architecture's agency in relation to the structuring of hinterland space.

Contrary to what might be expected with a thesis titled Plan B Hive, this thesis is not at its core, an exercise in nationhood or the rightful rendering of democracy. Only in May, when the government released its evacuation plan, did the thesis take on the ministerial programme (as a possible contingency). This served to highlight the fact that businesses and institutions need facilities they can temporarily evacuate to in the case of disaster.

It is stressed that this thesis is not for a 'new' parliament, but is limited to exploring a ministerial disaster outpost. The thesis does not interrogate existing parliament design in any depth.

This prompts the following objectives: To imagine a city outpost offering a resilient link between Kapiti and Wellington. To investigate enlarged, even territorial architecture that can be an example for greater density, and to clarify the boundary between the urban and rural by enacting a limit.

Ultimately, this thesis presents Plan B Hive as a bold, resolutely formal design as an experiment in Dogma. Critically reflecting on this relationship with dogmatism, the research is motivated by the question â&#x20AC;&#x201C; how much dogma?

Considering the interest in the theory of Pier Aureli, it is important to note that he "argues for political architecture as an historical and critical category distinct from those moments in which architectural works, ideas and gestures enter the service of political ideology.

(Leach)." Aureliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concept is appropriated within the thesis, therefore the research seeks form that can act politically with regards to structuring the wider city, without necessarily becoming an instrument of politics.

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Figure 4 // Early Maquette: 1:500 Plaster and Foam (Left)

Figure 5 // Early Maquette: 1:500 Plaster and Foam (Right)

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R E S E A R C H M E T H O D O LO G Y This thesis adopts a design-led approach to the research. In its response to the contextual problems outlined, it stands as the primary research. Therefore the design experiments and final outcome serve as a vehicle to discuss broader disciplinary topics, some of which could not have been envisaged from the outset. This emphasises the design-led nature of the research, whereby The Design

MARCH

APRIL

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led to a tangential investigation, elucidating wider implications for architecture in general.

The research is presented accordingly: After uncovering the issues, The Design is presented first, followed by wider disciplinary discussion second (fig.7). The problems provoked design, and similarly The Design provoked discursive reflection.

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MAY

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Exploring generic 'outposts' for the hinterland, with a density more akin to the city.

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Superstructures: Beginning with territorial provocations for an enlarged scale. Initial 'hunches' tested within the design intensive over the first weeks of the thesis.

APRIL

What can the quarry support?

Calibrating capacity against dense hillside settlements, like brazilian favelas. Establishing that half the population of Kapiti may fit inside the quarry if a similar density was achieved.

Testing the antithesis of the superstructures by imagining infrastructures as a general system to inhabit any foothill location

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Figure 6 // Chronological design experiments.

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Imagining an infrastructural system to inhabit the foothills, slicing the topography into layers to create undulating bands of housing.

D E S I G N C H R O N O LO G Y The design process could be said to be highly oscillatory. There was the proclivity to research a thesis and then its antithesis, riding the vicissitudes of a such a structure.

Always exploring alternative ways to settle this difficult peripheral context, the design

MAY

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JUNE

experiments were highly iterative and ranged from institutional superstructures, to housing infrastructures, and finally on to the formal and material details of a singular resolute response (fig.6).

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J U LY- S E P

VOLUME

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O C T- N O V

nomos

FLEXIBLE PLANNING GRID

CITY

HOUSE

PUBLIC

PRIVATE

SPARSE

DENSE

FLEXIBLE

RIGID

LIGHT

HEAVY

VOID

SOLID

ANTAGONISTIC

COLLECTIVE

SPARSE

COMPROMISE

POLAR

INDIVIDUAL

DENSE

IDEALITY

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This led to the confluence of both scales of architecture - the formal outpost (as disaster research centre) surrounded by the informal micro-city that could support a mass evacuation from Wellington city.

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The government releases evacuation plan for parliament, within a wider evacuation for the general public.

Focussed on the central ministerial outpost. Experiments conducted were concerned with platonic and pure geometries, in line with the increasing influence Dogma was having on the design.

The bridge was selected for its light touch on the ground, its bold linearity and its ability to be repeated as an archetype across many foothill/valley locations.

Developed the bridge under the influence of Pier Aureli's term absolute architecture, as a separated, finite form in confrontation within the notion of fluid urbanism. The idea of the city was to be imbedded in the design.

A rational, minimal aesthetic was presented at the October review and critiqued as fascist.

Presented at the May review, it was suggested that the brevity of this thesis would limit the resolution of these two scales, and that focussing on the 'outpost' may prove more valuable.

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This led to experiments relating to the facade, to material, to transparency, and to form. Major changes were resisted however and the authoritarian criticism remained. Reflecting on this, the design became the primary research in a discussion on dogmatism in architecture.

THESIS STRUCTURE

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C O N T E X T: S E T T I N G T H E S C E N E The document begins by proposing a hypothetical governmental evacuation to the Kapiti Coast, which prompts an analysis of the exurban fringes. A test site is selected and analysed based on its heightened resilience capacity. After highlighting the lack of disciplinary attention on the 'periphery', the section concludes by speculating on the need for architectural intervention in these contexts.

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DESIGN: PLAN B HIVE The Design is presented as a developed and specific response to the scope and issues outlined in Section One. NB // The developed scheme presented will often be referred to as 'The Design' or 'Plan B Hive'.

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DISCUSSION: ON DOGMA The extreme response in Plan B Hive is positioned as a result of a sustained idolatry of Dogma and the theoretical polemic promulgated by Pier Aureli. The relational tensions between Dogma and The Design are outlined through an oscillatory process that prompts critique and reflection on Dogma's rhetoric. The section concludes with a disciplinary discussion on dogmatism in architecture, investigating whether this more emphatic deployment of form may be useful in recovering architecture's agency within the city.

NB // 'Dogma' the firm (capitalised) will always be differentiated from the concept 'dogma' (not capitalised).

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C O N T E X T: S E T T I N G T H E S C E N E

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

PARACHUTE

PARADISE LOST

PARAPARAUMU

PERIPHERY

THE SCENARIO

THE ISSUES

THE SITE

URBAN CONTEXT

DESIGN: PLAN B HIVE

PLAN B-HIVE A SITE-SPECIFIC PROPOSAL

DISCUSSION: ON DOGMA

3.1

3.2

3.3

DOGMA'S DOCTRINE

CRACKS IN THE DOCTRINE

THE DOGMA DILEMMA

LITERATURE CASE STUDIES

DESIGN PROCESS REFLECTION

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Figure 7 // Thesis Structure

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DISCIPLINARY DISCUSSION CONCLUSION

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SETTING THE SCENE PART 1

PARACHUTE The Scenario

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;A major earthquake in the Wellington region is one of the worst scenarios for a natural hazard disaster that could be faced by New Zealand. This is due to Wellingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population density, it being the seat of government, its economic importance and its role as a key transport hub.â&#x20AC;?

John Hamilton, 2010, Director of Civil Defence Emergency Management,

Setting the Scene Parachute

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Figure 8 // Damage after Wellington's most recent quake.

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Parachute Setting the Scene

"Crises are ultimately productive. They force invention. Breakdowns incubate breakthroughs.

Radical destruction gives way to new forms of production."

Mark Wigley, 2009

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HEADLINE - DOMINION POST FEB 2012

“DISASTER PLAN MOVES GOVERNMENT TO AUCKLAND” “PARLIAMENT AT NAVAL BASE” HEADLINE - NZ HERALD MAY 2014

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Figure 9 // Beehive in Ruins

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Parachute

HEADLINE - STUFF NEWS MAY 2014

Setting the Scene

“QUAKE FEAR: NO WAY IN OR OUT”

Setting the Scene

Parachute

THE EVACUATION SCENARIO Wellingtonians are continually reminded of the risk of disaster and the catastrophic implications that would inevitably eventuate.

With major fault lines lying on the primary transport arteries, Wellington will effectively become a dislocated island, with residents forced to escape the ruins on foot. This concern was confirmed when in May 2014, the government released plans that postdisaster, if the beehive was no longer adequate to house parliament it would temporarily relocate to Devonport Naval Base in Auckland (Fensome). Figure 10 illustrates key information from the plan as it was publicly released.

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n. Only in the most extreme circumstances would the Government activate its plan to relocate to [insert town].

“The Devonport Naval Base would be used for up to 14 days, and Parliament and the executive would then move to another temporary location in Auckland.”

164 KEY STAFF

“The Defence Force would be involved in evacuating MPs and staff by helicopter or aircraft.”

Setting the Scene

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12 staff from Department of Prime Minister

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7 staff from Office of the Clerk

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8 staff from ministerial and secretariat services

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5 staff from Parliamentary Council Office

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6 staff from Parliamentary Service

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Officials Committee for Domestic

ces, up to five staff from the

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PEOPLE

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Figure 10 // Summarised facts from Government plan.

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“The evacuation would occur within a wider evacuation of the injured, sick, visitors and vulnerable groups.”

Parachute

Governor General + spouse + 2 key staff

Setting the Scene

Parachute

A N A LT E R N A T I V E S C E N A R I O

This government plan has inspired an alternative scenario for a ‘crisis outpost' on the Kapiti Coast – a Disaster Research Centre that would temporarily house parliament after a disaster. As an alternative to the government plan, central governance would remain just that: south of the Bombay Hills. As has been suggested, “If you moved central government and all the functions that go with it, it is hard to see a future for Wellington as a major city” (Fensome).

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Setting the Scene Parachute

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Figure 11 // A: Current parliament site B: Proposed parliamentary outpost in Kapiti

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Setting the Scene

Parachute

LEARNING FROM THE PAST than a forced polycentricism. Managing the disaster from within the region would convey fortitude rather than fleeing to Auckland while Wellington lies in ruins. By proposing a Disaster Research Centre, the ministerially funded venture would focus on research and innovation, monitoring disasters and facilitating recovery. This type of facility would provide a role similar to disaster facilities already established overseas (fig. 13).

In 2012, a year after the Christchurch earthquake, a reporter wrote that the “empty city-centre is a dark smudge, [surrounded by] suburban lights” (Manhire). As a mass exodus to the less damaged periphery was witnessed, the inoperability of the city-centre plunged the region into a more permanent state of polycentricity, and “indeed, the survival of the city depended on it” (Hoare and Webby, 31). This thesis acknowledges this and aims to develop a prepared polycentricism, rather

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Figure 12 // Ideogram - A piece of the centre at the periphery: Exploring a resilient polycentricism

Setting the Scene

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Parachute

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Figure 13 // The Tokyo Rinkai Disaster Prevention Park (2007) functions as a centralised operations base for disaster prevention. It houses emergency response facilities as well as institutions that compile disaster-related information and coordinate emergency disaster measures.

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Setting the Scene

Parachute

D E V E LO P I N G A R E S I L I E N T P O LY C E N T R I C I S M The enormous land area of Kapiti confirms the possible carrying capacity, and the resilience role it can offer as a potential disaster relocation zone for Wellington residents (fig. 14). But while arterial routes are being strengthened, there is still "a concern for Wellington city [in] the limited options to temporarily relocate businesses to the periphery of the regionâ&#x20AC;Ś

Indeed, for many corporates (and potentially government), relocation to another centre may be a preferred option" (Chapman). Designing a governmental outpost in the hinterland will be a political example for further outposts that could be established by Wellington businesses more resiliently connect the region to its city.

"The word resilient derives from the Latin resiliere, meaning to â&#x20AC;&#x153;jump backâ&#x20AC;? ... from a disturbance or crisis" (Glavovic and Smith, 125)

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Setting the Scene Parachute

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Figure 14 // Comparative regional areas indicates Kapiti's definitive carrying capacity.

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Setting the Scene

Paradise Lost

Setting the Scene

Proposed Supercity agglomeration Paraparaumu [ regional subcentre ]

KAPITI COAST POP.

49,104 .67 p/ha

Parachute

DENSITY

Wellington [ national capital ]

WELLINGTON CITY POP.

190,959

DENSITY

6.58 p/ha

WAIRARAPA

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Figure 15 // Wellington and surrounding regions with comparative density of Wellington and Kapiti illustrated.

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Figure 16 // As seen from NASA space station, Wellington's isolation due to fault lines and mountainous impasses becomes obvious. Comparatively, Kapiti's coastal plain openly connects to the rest of the North Island.

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Setting the Scene

Parachute

The Issues

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Parachute

PARADISE LOST

Setting the Scene

SETTING THE SCENE PART 2

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PARADISE

Figure 17 // Kapiti Island Nature Reserve. Aerial taken during early site flight.

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Paradise Lost

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Setting the Scene

The Kapiti Coast stands as one of the Wellington regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most prominent subcentres. It is a large swathe of fertile land, bounded by dramatic ranges and pristine beaches. Originally blanketed in wetlands and native bush, it was once referred to as the 'golden coast'. Like most hinterland regions of New Zealand, it was a real paradise (Maclean).

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Setting the Scene

Paradise Lost

P A R A D I S E LO S T ?

Figure 18 // Once an ecological wetland, the coast is now fully covered by low rise suburban grain.

Aerial taken from light aircraft tour of the site.

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Paradise Lost

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Setting the Scene

No longer referred to as the 'golden coast', there has been a consistent squandering of the once paradisiacal landscape through industrial extraction, intensive agriculture, and rapid residential sprawl as it has long been "one of the fastest growth areas in the country” (Harris). Clearly, “urban sprawl has come to New Zealand…and unconstrained development at the urban periphery can increase pressure on infrastructure and social services, leading to adverse environmental effects, social division, and escalating living costs” (Department of Internal Affairs, 2014).

The result of this sprawl has developed a thinly spread concrete array, a de-saturation of neither dense urban vibrancy or serene rural capaciousness.

Waikanae Beach

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p/ha population: 3,051

Waikanae East

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p/ha population: 2,178

Peka Peka

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p/ha population: 1,710

Waikanae Park

5.2

p/ha population: 2,178

Waikanae West and Waikanae North

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p/ha population: 3,549

Paraparaumu North

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p/ha population: 3,573

Otihanga

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Setting the Scene

Paradise Lost

p/ha population: 1,206

Paraparaumu South

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p/ha population: 4,938

Paraparaumu Central

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p/ha population: 8,685

Raumati Beach

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p/ha population: 4,848

Maungakotukutuku

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p/ha population: 978

Raumati South

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p/ha population: 3,594

N Kapiti District 1:64,000 Kapiti Coast District

Population densities

.67pph Pop: 49,104

Persons per hectare: p/ha

Wellington City

6.58 pph Pop: 190,959

Information from 2013 Census Statistics New Zealand and ID New Zealand Drawn by Gwena Gilbert

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Figure 19 // Low density - .67pph in Paraparaumu versus 6.58pph in Wellington.

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Rural

Long sections

Retirement village

Setting the Scene

Lifestyle / small rural

Cul-de-sac development

Beachfront infill

Medium-density centre

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1:8000 Existing Urban Grains Figure-Ground snapshots illustrate the spectrum of existing urban grains within the region

Information from Google Earth Drawn by Ben Allnatt

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Figure 20 // From sparse to sparser: the individualized rural sprawl can be identified most alarmingly in plan.

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Paradise Lost

Lifestyle blocks

Setting the Scene

Paradise Lost

F U RT H E R P R O O F The urban agglomeration of Paekakariki, Waikanae, and Paraparaumu demonstrates a built density ten times less than Wellington (fig.19). No productive farming land or natural bush is included in this highlighted area (fig.21). Zooming out, the total population of the Kapiti Coast is around 50 000, but has a total regional area of 730 km², which is larger than all of Singapore. Alarmingly, a single 1km² square of Barcelona’s Eixample district can support the same population (Walker and Porazz).

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Setting the Scene Paradise Lost

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Figure 21 // The current urban area (red). With a population less than 50 000, this compares to 1km² in Barcelona (juxtaposed in white).

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SETTING THE SCENE PART 3

PARAPARAUMU The Site

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HEADING FOR THE HILLS Kapiti faces risks similar to most New Zealand coastal settlements: eroding shorelines, liquefaction, flooding, tsunamis and earthquakes. Most of the region's current urban area is implicated by at least one of these risks (fig.22).

Setting the Scene

Paraparaumu

This outpost is to be a resilient retreat from the capital, however Kapiti is not without its own risks. In selecting a site, it was appropriate to consider resilient settlement at a local level too.

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Figure 22 // Coastal risks cover almost all existing settlement areas

Figure 23 // Common foothill condition along coast.

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Setting the Scene

Paraparaumu

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From a resilience standpoint, ideally the region would be resettled as a thin, dense band along the base of the foothills, rather than along the coastal risk-zone. This supports the notion of creating resilience by choosing sites wisely based on lowest possible risk (Glavovic and Smith). If this major resettlement occurred, there would be the potential to regenerate the original wetlands that could then function as ecological reserves, as well as resilient buffers for the settlements behind.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Protecting natural coastal marshes and wetlands that soak up and absorb flood waters, dune and beach systems that act as natural seawalls, ... are all positive steps that increase long term resilience.â&#x20AC;?

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Figure 24 // Current suburban sprawl of the flat coastal plain.

Figure 25 // Proposed thin band of dense settlement along the more stable foothills.

(Glavovic and Smith, 135)

Setting the Scene

Paraparaumu

RETREAT TO SAFETY

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FOOTHILLS

PARABOLIC DUNES / FORMER WETLANDS

LINE OF COAST

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Figure 26 // 3D Transect through Paraparaumu.

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Setting the Scene

The site chosen from within the settlement band illustrated in figure.25 is the Paraparaumu Quarry (fig.27). In a strange way the quarry is a dramatic rendering of the towns' etymological history: Paraparaumu means â&#x20AC;&#x153;dirt from an earthen ovenâ&#x20AC;? (Maclean). There is something eerie in the way the large Paraparaumu quarry looms large over the town, a vast pit exposing the charcoal hues of the earth below. The quarry appears as an obvious urban scar and exists not only as poor planning decision but forms a backdrop to a town that seems to lack pride in its public realm.

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Paraparaumu

THE SITE

Figure 27 // Quarry looming behind Paraparaumu township, aerial taken on descent into Paraparaumu airport.

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Setting the Scene

The terraced plateaus form an inverse pÄ formation and is the kind of 'manufactured landscape' photographer Edward Byrtynsky would have included in his topophiliadriven images (Burtynsky). However, despite a fascination with these dystopic scenes, Byrtynsky derides the processes that created them â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is an importance to [having] a certain reverence for what nature is because we are connected to it... If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.â&#x20AC;?

(Burtynsky)

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Paraparaumu

D I RT F R O M A N E A RT H E N O V E N

Figure 28 // O.5m site contours, (Black, deepest point = 17m above sea level, White, highest point = 153 m above sea level).

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Setting the Scene

Paraparaumu

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Figure 29 // Wider Site Transect_1:5000, Modelled from Fijian Kauri.

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Figure 30 // Aerial from coast through to Nikau Valley (least dense suburb).

Close proximity of quarry to town centre, SH1 and train (red) to Wellington.

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FROM QUARRY TO CAPITAL The extreme site mirrors the extreme scenario.

Currently, the greywacke rock is used for aggregate in the Transmission Gully resilience link to the Capital. Once the highway is complete in 2020, the vast pit (measuring 70,000m² in area and almost 100m deep) will leave behind more than sufficient space for accommodating the large piece of governmental infrastructure proposed

Setting the Scene

Paraparaumu

(fig.32). As an opportunity to ameliorate a decimated hillside, The Design can symbolise an environmental reparation by the government.

The transformation would also consolidate a shift from an industrial extraction economy to a post-fordist production of knowledge; a political gesture for a smarter, more environmentally-aware nation.

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Figure 31 // Ideogram_ Excavating an escape scenario.

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Setting the Scene Paraparaumu

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Figure 32 // Vast scale of quarry has an area larger than entire parliamentary precinct.

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The Urban Context

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Paraparaumu

PERIPHERY

Setting the Scene

SETTING THE SCENE PART 4

Setting the Scene

Periphery

OUT OF SIGHT - OUT OF MIND As a hinterland outpost, The Design becomes a chance to explore the oft-ignored urban context. Compared with the city-centre, there has been a consistent lack of focus at the margins, which often witness explosive, unmitigated and haphazard development.

However, “while the periphery is full of pathos it is also full of potential” (Mcguirk).

Years earlier, OMA co-founder Elia Zenghelis also remarked that “historical distinctions between town and country are being eroded…this inexorable process forms part of a broader entropy, the logical conclusion of which is the potential obliteration of life on the planet” (2007).

The discipline can no longer describe the city and the countryside as two separable conditions as they barely exist as such. Rather, what exists is the latent opposition between city (dense collective space) and urbanisation (endless consumption of territory by individual dwellings). Under the entropic capitalist tendencies of urbanisation, the steady disappearance of a defined exteriority to the city is witnessed.

In an initiative run by Moscow Urban Forum, Archaeology of the Periphery (2014) literally ignores the city-centre as a means to sharpen the focus on previously invisible outskirts (fig.33). Rem Koolhaas has derided architecture’s unbalanced preference to discuss the city, rather than the countryside: “A significantly larger section of the world, falls under neglect and lack of knowledge” (2014).

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"The forces that feed the crisis intensify and strengthen in the periphery of vision, outside the centre" (Tahl Kaminer, 26)

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Figure 33 // Moscow City outskirts.

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Figure 34 // Panorama from Nikau Heights overlooking Paraparaumu and Waikanae towards Kapiti Island.

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Setting the Scene

Periphery

HOW TO PROCEED AT THE PERIPHERY? Acknowledging these problems, an extreme scenario, on an extreme site, at the extremity of the city, has become a combinatory brief to allow a 'provocation for the periphery'. In doing so it may sharpen a formal consciousness of architecture’s engagement at the margins, exploring its role in these often ignored areas.

The following chapter presents the developed design, Plan B Hive, as particular response to the issues outlined in this chapter.

Because of this phenomenon, recent pleas for disciplinary attention and solutions have become more widespread. Roemer Van Toorn speculates that perhaps one of architects’ new roles should be to “define where the city ends and the countryside begins?” (11). Similarly, Wiel Arets stresses that as city and landscape become increasingly blurred, “the need for borders becomes clear. It should again become obvious where the city ends and the countryside begins” (71).

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Figure 35 // Settlement patterns from city to hinterland. Hong Kong, Barcelona, Texas, Kabul.

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PLAN B HIVE 2.0 The Design

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A PROVOCATION FOR THE PERIPHERY While our cities are becoming more dense, vibrant and sustainable by the day, our regions are the forgotten siblings of the nation, under-resourced but over-consumed. Much of Kapiti is currently a single-storied concrete carpet that de-saturates a possible paradise into a consumptive, pallid blur more post-war American sprawl than idealized New Zealand hinterland. It has become disquietingly clear that ‘standing upright’ is a trick we’ve yet to master here.

However, we live in a place enormously more malleable than others; young, naïve, small by comparison. And our regions are even more malleable. This means that there is an opportunity for architectural interventions in the hinterland that will have a kind of potency that is not possible within the ‘noise’ of the city. The design is a provocation and discussion on architecture’s relationship with its context and of how we occupy this land, how hard we hit the ground, what space we create around the built and what we leave behind untouched.

“This is a city and country in the thick of radical transformation…Using our little cities, last, loneliest, loveliest, I hear, as the fecund launch pads from which to reach into the bowls of entire worlds that have the hubris to think that they are already finished…and start meddling with their innards.”

Nat Cheshire, 2014

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Figure 36 // West elevation.

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Plan B Hive

If as a nation we want to preserve big landscapes, we need to make big, dense buildings. The mega-rural is a provocation for a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;city densityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in the hinterland to preserve the distinction between the built and the unbuilt. To define clear urban interiorities and clear natural exteriorities. In creating mega-rural buildings, concentrated density helps to preserve untouched wilderness. As a bold gesture, it can stand as an ennobling feat of civicness and regional pride, at the scale of infrastructure rather than stand-alone building. <

The Design

MEGA-RURAL SCALE

Figure 37 // A monolithic scale, it is a civic backdrop behind Paraparaumu town centre. Yet its scale still pales compared to the vastness of the quarry.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fragments become islands, voids become landscape ...large distances and plots provoke super-size design approaches.â&#x20AC;?

(Segal and Verbakel, 10)

Plan B Hive

The Design

O P P O RT U N I T I E S W I T H I N DISPERSED EXURBIA:

<

Figure 38 // Wider site transect _1:5000, Modelled from Fijian Kauri

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ON THE EDGE

Plan B Hive

Displacing governance to the periphery converts power to an edge condition, forming a boundary to the space it governs rather than concentrically ruling from its core.

Symbolically, this promotes a surveying back in on the civilisation it tries to manage, but similarly establishes a binary with the natural landscape it also has a role in protecting.

Like an ancient rampart or Maori fort it is protective and emblematic of retreat.

But rather than just defending the people, it defends the natural, a blockage of the continued excavation of the hillside, limiting the expansion of the urban fabric.

Etymologically, ‘Paradise’ came from an Old Persian term, pairi-daêzã. ‘Pairi’, which literally means ‘around’. ‘Diza’, in modern Persian stands for ‘fort’ or ‘enclosure’. The Indo-Iranian verb ‘dhaizh’ also translates ‘to construct out of earth’.

Hamed Khosravi, 2011 <

The Design

The idea of ‘retreat’ informed a strength of gesture. Its liminal positioning on the margins of the current ‘town’ led to the conception of the building as a city wall, like that of the Greek polis.

Figure 39 // Building as boundary, defining an urban interior versus natural exterior.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;By formalising the border that separates urbanisation from empty space, it proposes an absolute limit - and thus defines the very form of the city.â&#x20AC;?

(Aureli and Tattara, 10) 59

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RUAHINE STREET

â&#x20AC;&#x153;While marking the land and

tracing the limit are the primordial forms of establishing the settlement, their consequences extend to all coformations of people and powerâ&#x20AC;?

(Aureli and Tattara, 10)

<

Figure 40 // Site Plan - Main access from Ruahine Street.

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Plan B Hive

The form is a pure and monolithic span across the quarry valley, a muted line in the landscape. It is an autonomous box, secure and emblematic of this retreat to higher, more stable ground. The pure orthogonal volume juxtaposes the unusual, austere scar left by the quarry. Its elevated volume requires minimal further excavation and preserves the useable flat ground below for disaster overflow functions. The singularity of the gesture is elevated escape, a piece of necessary resilient infrastructure that safely separates itself from the city. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If politics is agonism through separation and confrontation, it is precisely in the process of separation inherent in the making of architectural form that the political in architecture lies.â&#x20AC;?

(Aureli, Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, 10)

< PREVIOUS

Figure 41 // Plaster and Foam Maquette 1:1000. <

The Design

BRIDGING THE GAP

Figure 42 // Early sketches of scheme.

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Plan B Hive

The Design

CITY WITHIN A CONTAINER The building is configured as an elevated container (136 metres by 36 metres), with myriad programmes dispersed across five heterogeneous floors, forming a veritable coresample of the city and its composite of parts.

Typical research facilities are supplemented by dining areas, cafes, a gallery, auditoria, baths,

library, secure bunkers and temporary hoteltype accommodation with associated backof-house services. The building is an emblem of the city, therefore the need for the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;idea of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and its constitutive parts to be encapsulated in the singular form becomes important.

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Plan B Hive The Design

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FOLLOWING

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Figure 43 // Ideogram: Wellingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban grain supplanted into volume of building.

Figure 44 // Early before/after image conceiving dual programme.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;The pure essence of form is void; its absolute lack of any content, a generic hollowness calling for continuous process of instrumental re-appropriation. Pure form has no function, being just a precinct - a definitive border for any content - its programmatic indeterminacy allows for multiple uses â&#x20AC;?

AFTER

(Frankowski and Garcia, 77)

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Plan B Hive

The Design

CONTINGENT SCENARIOS Because of the possible ‘before’ and ‘after’ scenarios, there is an element of programmatic indeterminacy. Flexibility and contingency are paramount, and thus the design aims at a ‘hard’ structural perimeter with a ‘soft’ interior - a secure volume that can accommodate inevitable flux. The openness and flexibility instils an aspect of resilience, and the capacity for contingent change, whether enforced by crises or slower paradigmatic change.

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BEFORE

AFTER

Plan B Hive The Design

LIBRARY/INFORMAL HUB RESEARCH OFFICES CONFERENCE ROOMS MEDIA ROOMS TEMP. ACCOM. FOR VISITING RESEARCHERS LARGE SPORTS/DRILL AREAS COVERED PLAZA MEDICAL TRAINING AREAS PUBLIC VIEWING PLATFORM SUPPLY/DATA STORAGE

> > > > > > > > > >

PARLIAMENTARY CHAMBER MP OFFICES DISASTER RECOVERY UNITS RESPONSE COMMUNICATIONS TEMP. ACCOM. FOR POLITICIANS PUBLIC CONGREGATION AREAS MAKESHIFT ACCOM. AREA EMERGENCY TRIAGE AREAS ROOFTOP HELIPAD TEMPORARY BUNKER

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Figure 45 // Despite absolute contingency, simple programme overlaps were considered. This helped to imagine possible arrangements and scale of spaces that would enable fluid circulation routes.

Figure 46 // Front perspective illustrating possible contingent shift into temporary crisis parliament

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Figure 47 // Sectioned Axonometric - An elevated ark.

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1_ AUDITORIUM 2_ PLANT ROOM 3_ COMMERCIAL KITCHEN 4_ BASEMENT SERVICE DROP OFF 5_ SECONDARY CORE 6_ INFORMAL/SERVICE ENTRANCE 7_ INTERNAL STREET 8_ AGORA / CHAMBER OF PARLIAMENT 9_ COVERED PLAZA 10_FORMAL ENTRANCE 11_PRIMARY CORE 12_FORMAL VEHICLE GARAGE 13_WAR ROOMS 14_CHANGING ROOMS 15_BATHS 16_BUNKER 76

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<

The Design is modelled on a plate girder bridge and is supported by two large cores that ground the building into the quarry.

Beyond each of these cores are base isolated pads that ensure dissipation of seismic loads.

Floors float free within the large exoskeleton, creating a porous strata, within one giant flexible space. Further lines of structural vierendeel trusses down the centre to support both the free section and the continuous plan.

What seems like a repetitious array from the exterior is actually a pluralistic assembly of zones.

Figure 48 // Longitudinal Section A-A 1:500 at A3.

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LEVEL G Figure 49 // Plan_1:500 at A3 1_ RAISED + COVERED PUBLIC PLAZA 2_ OPEN PUBLIC PLAZA 3_ FORMAL ENTRANCE 4_ INFORMAL/SERVICE ENTRANCE, RAISED FFL SHOWN IN LONG SECTION 5_ BUILDING PERIMETER ABOVE

Entering from the underside is a humble procession into the building. The two circulation cores are differentiated to create hierarchy and intelligibility of entrance. The left core is open and inviting as the formal entrance, with exposed elevators and a wider dual staircase. The right core is a more discrete, service entrance that has access to the service drop-off area at level 1.

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LEVEL 1 Figure 50 // Plan_1:500 at A3 1_ AGORA / CHAMBER OF PARLIAMENT 2_ INTERNAL STREET 3_ W/C 4_ PRIMARY CORE 5_ INFORMAL/SERVICE ENTRANCE 6_ SECONDARY CORE 7_ PREP AREA 8_ STAFF COMMON ROOM 9_ DINING HALL 10_CONFERENCE 11_CLASS ROOM 12_WAR ROOMS 13_PRIVATE OFFICES 14_BASEMENT CARPARK ACCESS 15_COMMUNICATIONS 16_ ENTRANCE TO BUNKER [CLASSIFIED] 17_ COMMERCIAL KITCHEN

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Plan B Hive

Imbibing an ‘idea of the city’ and its constitutive parts within the finite container, the planning principle mimics that of the urban realm connecting the two structural and circulatory cores. A central ‘street’ runs through the centre, a light-filled chasm reaching the full five storey height. Branching off this street are laneways and group work pods. Running between these geometric solids are studios

that can be rearranged as universal flexible space. The scale of spaces lie on a continuum from small and individual at each end, towards the larger more collective spaces at the centre, supporting ranging clusters of people and knowledge. The rhythmic fenestration mimics this shift in scale, a gradation from solid and private to open and collective.

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The Design

ORGANISATION

Figure 51 // Close-up of Level 1 plan shown in full on previous spread.

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LEVEL 2 Figure 52 // Plan_1:500 at A3 1_ AGORA / CHAMBER OF PARLIAMENT 2_ INTERNAL STREET 3_ W/C 4_ PRIMARY CORE 5_ INFORMAL/SERVICE ENTRANCE 6_ SECONDARY CORE 7_ PLANT ROOM 8_ LAUNDRY 9_ DINING HALL 10_CONFERENCE 11_CLASSROOM 12_CHANGING ROOMS 13_HEALTH CENTRE 14_GYM 15_OFFICE KITCHEN

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LEVEL 3 Figure 53 // Plan_1:500 at A3 1_ AGORA / CHAMBER OF PARLIAMENT 2_ INTERNAL STREET 3_ W/C 4_ PRIMARY CORE 5_ INFORMAL/SERVICE ENTRANCE 6_ SECONDARY CORE 7_ AUDITORIUM 8_ CAFE 9_ LIBRARY 10_CONFERENCE 11_CLASSROOM 12_BATHS 13_ PUMP ROOM 14_ PRIVATE OFFICES 15_ GALLERY

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LEVEL 4 Figure 54 // Plan_1:500 at A3 1_ AGORA / CHAMBER OF PARLIAMENT 2_ INTERNAL STREET 3_ PRIMARY CORE 4_ STANDARD ROOM 5_ INFORMAL/SERVICE ENTRANCE 6_ SECONDARY CORE 7_ AUDITORIUM 8_ LARGE ROOM 9_ LIBRARY 10_BATHS 11_ GALLERY

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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;HOUSESâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; OF PARLIAMENT Following the governmental plan elaborated in 1.1-Parachute, 82 rooms include 164 beds, temporarily accommodating the full list of high-profile evacuees if necessary. While the design functions as a disaster research centre, the rooms function like a hotel, offering temporary accommodation to travelling visitors, researchers and students.

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LEVEL 5 Figure 55 // Plan_1:500 at A3 1_ AGORA / CHAMBER OF PARLIAMENT 2_ INTERNAL STREET 3_ PRIMARY CORE 4_ STANDARD ROOM 5_ INFORMAL/SERVICE ENTRANCE 6_ SECONDARY CORE 7_ AUDITORIUM 8_ LARGE ROOM 9_ LIBRARY 10_BATHS 11_ GALLERY

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A LIMINAL CONDITION <

Figure 56 // Transverse Section B-B_ 1:500 at A3. In suspending the building, it is a solid totally bounded by space; a platform for space above, a canopy for space below. The axiality embodies the edge condition between natural and urban realms.

1_ INTERIOR AGORA / CHAMBER OF PARLIAMENT 2_ EXTERIOR AGORA / COVERED PLAZA

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A SHIFTING FAĂ&#x2021;ADE

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With a sense of idiosyncratic rationalism, the facade displays the shift between the ordered and solid ends - towards the suspended centre where the tectonic transitions into lightness and flux. The dogmatic grid shifts from solid punctured wall to a more transparent array of shifting columns, conveying a sense of antagonism and democratic compromise at the centre.

Figure 57 // Physical Model_1:200, White card & Perspex on 3-D CNC routed base.

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Figure 58 // Building as framing device for Kapiti beyond.

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Figure 59 // Building as shelter and canopy for public agora below.

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Figure 60 // Early sketch of interior â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;streetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; with sky-bridges. <

Figure 61 // Interior street with past, present and future leadership. Informal communication occurs between the ground level and the upper levels with niches within the structural grid.

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Figure 62 // Central ‘Agora’

At the centre, the street opens into a large ‘town square’, a central void as an inverted ziggurat. Expanding as it reaches the ceiling, library terraces are created at each level, forming one giant hub for congregation and crossdisciplinary exchange. Post disaster, this can be closed off from the internal ‘street’ to become the chamber of parliament. An internal ‘agora’ where the fundamental agonism of democracy is played out, moveable furniture promotes any arrangement.

Terraces on upper levels become galleries for media and the public to openly observe the process.

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Figure 63 // Auditorium with window through to exposed rock face beyond, a reminder of the geological precarity that underpins the research.

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Figure 64 // A hedonistic retreat from â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;dirty politics.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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Figure 65 // Individual contemplation.

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Figure 66 // Usually a viewing platform for the public to see down in to the central chamber, the roof becomes a contingent helipad - the governor general seen arriving here.

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Figure 67 // The pure span appears to dissolve into the hillside. The approaching wave signifies the safety of the suspended mass and marks transition into the temporary â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;crisis parliamentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

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Figure 68 // Occupy Paraparaumu - A public arena for demonstration.

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Figure 69 // A bright beacon in the night.

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Figure 70 // Sunken to the level of the plateau behind, the building becomes a canvas reflecting the landscape, and a framing datum for Kapiti Island.

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ARCHETYPE FOR THE HINTERLAND Other than the Paraparaumu quarry there are many more poorly positioned industrial sites along this coastline. It could signal the first of a series of resilient outposts in the hinterland.

Supporting knowledge flow back to the city, in the case of disaster, they will form preestablished sister-sites for institutions to rely on in disaster.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Like the archetypes we have seen before, the task of architecture is to reify ... the political organization of space, of which architectural form is not just the consequence but also one of the most powerful and influential political examples.â&#x20AC;?

(Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture 42)

Plan B Hive

The Design

The Design is conceptualised as an archetype, each time formally distinct but governed by the same generative principles - of forming a threshold between the urban and the rural. As a new vertiginous urban condition, this dense string of foothill structures will confirm the necessary shift to safe ground.

10 houses

84 hotel rooms Baths Gym Auditoria Gallery Cafe Dining Hall Industrial kitchen Library Chamber of parliament Offices Conference rooms Meeting rooms Carparks

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Figure 71 // Comparison of land area versus amenities. A model for a density not common in the region, the megarural proposition is as an immensely compact settlement.

Figure 72 // Building as political and replicable archetype.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;In order to make the city, architecture must be conceived as an example, that is, as a potentially repeatable form.â&#x20AC;?

(Aureli and Tattara 20) 113

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Figure 73 // Dense transmogrified archetype for a continued foothill condition.

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DISCUSSION

ON DOGMA 3.0

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3.0

DISCUSSION: ON DOGMA Chapter Introduction

Plan B Hive has been presented as a provocation for the hinterland. It responded to the problems of the periphery, namely the region's sprawl, formlessness and lack of resilience. The bold formal response in Plan B Hive is positioned as a result of a sustained idolatry of architectural firm Dogma, and the theoretical polemic expounded by Dogma's creator Pier Aureli. This chapter interrogates the fluctuating influence Dogma had on The Design, and more broadly the disciplinary tensions this elicited in the process. The structure is as follows: The chapter begins by describing the initial infatuation of Dogma’s ‘doctrine’. The texts of Dogma’s founder, Pier Vittorio Aureli are interrogated, and the polemic from these texts is traced through Dogma's oeuvre.

3.1 DOGMA'S DOCTRINE PIER AURELI'S LITERATURE DOGMA CASE STUDIES

3 . 2 C R A C K S I N T H E D O C T R I N E This section follows to uncover the ‘cracks’ that appear when Dogma’s Doctrine falters, at which stage the design process becomes a juxtaposition between Aureli’s polemic and other alternative precedents which are used to critique some of Dogma's ideology.

DESIGN PROCESS CRITICAL REFLECTION

The final section reflects on the relationship between The Design and Dogma and the tensions that surfaced. In responding to The Design’s fascist connotations, the discussion critically reckons on the role of dogmatism in architecture in a broader disciplinary sense.

3.3 THE DOGMA DILEMMA DISCIPLINARY DISCUSSION CONCLUSION

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3.1 Literature and Case Studies

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Dogma's Doctrine

DOCTRINE

On Dogma

DOGMA'S

Dogma's Doctrine

3.2

3.3

DOGMA'S DOCTRINE

CRACKS IN THE DOCTRINE

THE DOGMA DILEMMA

On Dogma

3.1

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dog·ma /’ dôgmә / On Dogma

noun

a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. synonyms teaching, belief, tenet, principle, precept, maxim, canon;

"the dogma's of faith" from Greek dogma ‘opinion,’ from dokein ‘seem good, think.’

(Oxford Dictionary)

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Dogma's Doctrine

1.

"Architecture is like dogma, a deliberate decision upon the undecidable, doctrine without proof."

Dogma (Gallanti 66)

T H E A L LU R E O F D O G M A

On Dogma

Dogma's Doctrine

Literature

find a legitimate basis for shaping our cities” (Steele 3). Counter to this assumed urban heterogeneity (Mastrigli), they have been described as committing to “an extremist attitude” whereby “the deliberate autism” of each project relieves the need for stylistic innovation and instead allows a concentration in reimagining the city (Gallanti 69).

The work of Dogma proved alluring throughout this thesis, primarily because they speculate monumental architectures as alternatives to the laissez-faire neoliberal development of the urban realm.

They are definitively absolute and territorial in their schemes. They hope to reinvest in architecture’s agency over the virulent aspects of urban sprawl. As a common motive across their projects, they aim to demarcate boundaries and produce stoppages, clearly arguing that boundaries are the very grammar of the city (Aureli, Obstruction 5).

Fundamental to Dogma’s doctrine is the belief that both architecture and urban planning have withdrawn from effectively participating in urban propositions. The salient conclusion to be drawn is that resolution can only be found via atypical scales, signalling a need for enlarged, even territorial, fields of action (Steele 4). Pier Aureli and Martino Tattara remark that -

For Dogma, “the city is ultimately the only object for and method of architectural investigation: conjecture about the form of the city is the only way to answer the question, ‘why architecture?’” (Aureli, Obstruction 5). Brett Steele, current head of the AA, discusses that “at the core of Dogma’s project lies a rearticulation of the relationship between architecture and the city” (Steele 3) or perhaps more precisely, the making of autonomous architectural form in order to project an idea of the city. Such a project is antithetical to the expected separation of architecture and urbanism. Dogma provide architectural schemes contrary to the “increasingly fashionable notion that it is only through ‘informal urbanism’ that we might

Large-scale design is not simply a theoretical position but rather a concrete way...to respond to a mutating relationship between the urban and the rural, and the recognition of landscape and infrastructure as tangible design ingredients.

(43)

While these points elucidate the inital allure of Dogma with regards to Plan B Hive, it became important to deepen the understanding by uncovering the theoretical premise behind the provocative projects.

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Figure 74 // Quotes from Dogma's doctrine (Gallanti 66).

Overlaid on their project Stop City (2007).

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T H E P O S S I B I L I T Y O F A N A B S O LU T E A R C H I T E C T U R E an Absolute Architecture 1). Acknowledging this, Aureli hopes to reactivate architectural form in the debate, addressing the social and cultural power architecture has to solidify representations of the world through exemplary built propositions.

On Dogma

Dogma's Doctrine

As the theoretical force behind the works of Dogma, Italian theorist Pier Vittorio Aureli’s writing opens up new ways to look at architecture, the city and politics. The confluence of these three topics directly aligns with the aim of this thesis for a political, architectural provocation for the city (or periphery). While “the city is often depicted as a sort of selforganising chaos” Aureli argues the antithesis, declaring “the city is always the result of political intention, often in the form of specific architectural projects.” (Aureli, The City as a Project 352).

The two main theses of the book are: 1) that architecture only makes sense within the political, social and cultural dimension of the city, and 2) paradoxically, this architecture should be a finite form in opposition to this context.

Acknowledging that most of the salient concepts from his earlier book The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture within and against Capitalism (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008) are made succinct and more approachable in his second book, this thesis relied primarily on the concepts elucidated in The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (MIT Press, 2011).

This highlights the constitutive paradox of Aureli's thesis, where absolute architecture is the "individuality of the architectural form when this form is confronted with the environment in which it is conceived and constructed" (ix).

It is not absolute in the conventional sense of 'purity', but rather in it "being resolutely itself after being separated from its other, namely the city" (ix).

Similar to the work from his office Dogma, this text is perhaps his most polemical and operative, and Aureli describes it himself as being the “most romantic of [his] work” (Discussion with Sven-Olov Wallenstein). Aureli teeters on the edge of quasi-manifesto and focuses on re-identifying the role of architecture in transforming the city, a battlecry against the common jingle that architecture can no longer control urban phenomena.

Therefore, a sharpened formal awareness in architecture is a prerequisite to engage the city socially, culturally, and politically. “But what form can architecture define within the contemporary city without falling into the current self-absorbed performances of iconic buildings, parametric designs, or redundant mappings of every possible complexity and contradiction of the urban world?” (2). Aureli answers his own concern with:

As he frames it, “[architecture’s] growing popularity is inversely proportional to the increasing sense of political powerlessness and cultural disillusionment many architects feel about their effective contribution to the built world” (Aureli, The Possibility of

“a counterproject for the city – the archipelago – by referring to a specific architectural form that is a counterform within and against the totality of urbanisation” (2).

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On Dogma Dogma's Doctrine

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Figure 75 // The Bible: The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, Pier Vittorio Aureli (2011)

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TOWARD THE ARCHIPELAGO In contrast to the integrative apparatus of urbanisation, the archipelago envisions the city as the agonistic struggle of parts whose forms are finite and yet ... are in constant relationship with the “sea” that frames and delimits them.

Aureli's idea of autonomous architecture is made resolute by imagining that architecture is form as obstruction amidst urbanism’s fluidity.

Essentially in forming the city, architecture has the ability to enact stoppages, walls, boundaries, and limits. The limit becomes a recurring concept, not just in the text but in the works of Dogma, where architectural form obstructs the formlessness and fluidity of urbanisation. This reconnects with the book's overall premise for an absolute (and therefore finite or separated) architectural form:

On Dogma

Thus the concept of the archipelago is of discrete 'islands' forming the city as a composition of separated parts. Aureli surveys four architects whose work was the making of architectural form but whose real project concerned the city: Andrea Palladio, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Étienne LouisBoullée, and Oswald Mathias Ungers. Aureli argues these figures transformed the modern city through the elaboration of specific and strategic architectural forms. They do not envision an overarching plan, rather they work towards site-specific interventions [or islands] that inevitably form, in Unger's terms, an ‘archipelago’ (fig.76). In each case Aureli emphasizes how the project of a specific architectural form is "at once an act of radical autonomy from, and radical engagement with, the forces that characterized the urbanisation of cities" (xiii).

"The possibility of an absolute architecture is thus both the possibility of making the city and also the possibility of understanding the city and its opposing force – urbanisation – through the very finite nature of architectural form” (xiv).

In now considering absolute architecture as an island separated from but within the city, Aureli then concludes by making the case for the 'idea of the city' to be embodied within the building itself: The City within the city is thus not only the literal staging of the city's lost form within the limits of architectural artifacts; it is also, and especially, the possibility of considering architectural form as a point of entry toward the project of the city (227).

In embodying the 'idea of the city', architecture can become a political and formal vehicle to reclaim a critical project for the city. Through the specificity of form, absolute architecture is separate to, and establishes a limit against the totalising flows of urbanisation. Overcoming the endless analysis and diagramming of urban phenomena, Aureli instead seeks to recover architecture's agency to make more decisive and concrete projections for the future city even when the city has no goal for architecture.

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Dogma's Doctrine

(Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture 11).

Figure 76 // City within the city, Berlin as green archipelago.

O.M.Ungers and Rem Koolhaas. 1977

Figure 77 // Paraparaumu’s urban grain lends itself to Unger’s concept of the archipelago - sparse islands amid amorphous urbanisation.

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On Dogma

Dogma's Doctrine

THE EDIFICES OF DOGMA Case Studies In the following section, this project for the city so lucidly established by Pier Aureli is enacted within the projects of his firm Dogma. The selected case studies reveal a deployment of an absolute architecture as a means to confront the wider city. Concepts like 'the limit' and 'the city within the city' are imbedded in the monumental and obstructive forms, making clear Aureli's reverence of the archipelago as the most successful device with which to approach the city.

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Stop City

On Dogma

A Simple Heart

Dogma's Doctrine

City Walls

Ramones

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STOP CITY DOGMA

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On Dogma

Stop City is an array of vertical megastructures, combining eight high-density islands in an archipelago for 500,000 people. The premise is that growth is confined upwards, while the obstructive forms demarcate a great void of deep forest. Almost four decades after Archizoom’s No Stop City, which was a conceptual rendering of the capitalist metropolis (Branzi), Stop City demonstrates its antithesis. While Archizoom conceived the city as boundless urbanisation, Dogma’s project instead articulates a definitive border that separates urbanisation from void space.

In doing this, "it proposes an absolute limit – and thus defines the very form of the city" (Aureli and Tattara 10).

Dogma's Doctrine

>

The scheme practises the limit in two ways: Physically, by establishing a stoppage to the endless growth of the city, and more conceptually, suggesting architecture should deny the drama of architectural novelty and newness and instead define “prototypical forms of density: living and working spaces that would counter the lifestyle of individualism and laissez-faire propelled by neo-liberal urban policies” (Aureli and Tattara 10).

ALL IMAGES

Figure 78 // Stop City, Holland-Italy (2007)

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A Simple Heart posits the 'City' as a vast campus, signalling the transformation of industrial areas from fordist to post-fordist modes of production. “The traditional ‘divisions’ of the city – between public and private space, between work and living, between culture and market – are no longer relevant” (Aureli and Tattara 22).

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collaged ‘sea’ Imagining the sea between the islands i.e Urbanisation

Dogma's Doctrine

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ALL IMAGES

Figure 79 // A Simple Heart, Northwest Europe (2002-2010)

The ‘absolute’ island within the archipelago

On Dogma

Once again monumental and pure autonomous form seeks to civilise and contain the contents of the existing urban fabric, by creating a 'city within the city' - dense urban agglomerations of people and production zones. Rather than ‘designing’ the interior sea representing urbanisation, it is rather a juxtaposed collage of city tropes to render the containment of urbanisation by the rigid formal perimeter.

design

CITY WALLS DOGMA

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On Dogma

City-Walls is a competition entry for a South Korean alternate capital city. As the defining principle, Dogma speculate an antithesis to typical urban development which moves from the centre outwards, instead reversing development from the “periphery towards the centre, with the aim of fixing the city’s limits while allowing flexibility of development towards its core” (Aureli and Tattara 52).

Dogma sharpens the contrast between the city and its exterior by enacting clear boundaries.

And once again they deny iconicity - “our design of the city is deliberately restricted...a non-iconic minimum design that is necessary for the flourishing of urban coexistence” (53).

Dogma's Doctrine

"This abstraction represents a new monumentality always on the verge of dissolution, disappearance."

(Aureli and Tattara 52) <

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Figure 80 // City Walls, South Korea (2005)

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RAMONES DOGMA

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Continued abstraction persists in Dogma’s project Ramones, a design for a Taiwanese public park. As the main feature, Dogma speculate a pure and autonomous bridge, very much a megaform, to borrow a term from Kenneth Frampton. Once again Dogma denies figuration, and attempts to frame multiple programmes in one absolute 'island'.

As they describe, “the bridge does not have an inferiority complex regarding the surrounding

landscape: it does not have to be organic, or clumsily imitate some natural form. As a nonfigurative architecture, the bridge is simple, basic, archetypical” (Aureli and Tattara 66).

What also stands out is the relationship between urban development and open space, between what is built and what is nature. This tension between opposites is “a tension that the project is destined never to resolve but rather to sustain” (Mastrigli 117).

On Dogma Dogma's Doctrine

“As a generic and abstract structure the bridge...stubbornly avoids any figurative reference, any metaphor: it is what it does.”

(Aureli and Tattara 66) <

ALL IMAGES

Figure 81 // Ramones. Taiwan (2011)

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3.1 DOGMA'S DOCTRINE

On Dogma

Dogma's Doctrine

Section Conclusion Dogma's oeuvre is extreme, monumental, and austerely 'simple'.

Above all, Dogma are emphatic in the way they envision territorial provocations in any context.

Aureli, in revising a contemporary ‘autonomy’, has been placed at the end of a long-spanning rationalism lineage.

This is not surprising considering his fascination with the city, and that rationalism is fundamentally “about architecture and cities – asking which architecture and what city?” (Heijden 371). Furthermore his interest in the agency of form in engaging a project for the city mirrors the fact that “rationalists recognize the primacy of form in architecture, and continue to seek it” (Dunster 375).

This section has established the allure of Dogma with regard to this thesis, both through the theoretical polemic structured by Pier Aureli and the ideology he enacts within his designed projects. Across text and design, Aureli is consistently critical while still being "burdened with society’s conscience and ambitions" (Leach 38).

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3.2 Design Process and Critique of Dogma

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Cracks in the Doctrine

DOCTRINE

On Dogma

CRACKS IN THE

Cracks in the Doctrine On Dogma

3.1

3.2

3.3

DOGMA'S DOCTRINE

CRACKS IN THE DOCTRINE

THE DOGMA DILEMMA

“Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”

Steve Jobs

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crack /krak/

a line on the surface of something along which it has split without breaking into separate parts.

Cracks in the Doctrine

1.

synonyms space, gap, crevice, fissure, breach, rift, interstice;

“a crack between two rocks”

1.1 a vulnerable point; a flaw.

“the boy spotted a crack in his rival’s argument” (Oxford Dictionary)

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On Dogma

noun

CRACKS IN THE DOCTRINE

On Dogma

in the Doctrine’, when Aureli’s logic became vulnerable to critique. Design experiments and alternative buildings were analysed, resulting in either continued adherence or apostasy in relation to the Dogma doctrine. This chapter juxtaposes the Dogma paper provocations against palpable projects, marking the end of a serial monogamy with Dogma.

The critical fascination with the work of Dogma and Pier Aureli has been established in 3.1 Dogma’s Doctrine. The transcription of similar tenets into this scheme, contributed to varying levels of dogmatism within the design process. Having already presented Plan B Hive, chronological experiments from preliminary to developed design are discussed in a way that exposes the disciplinary tensions that arose through enacting Dogma. The methodological process consisted of enacting elements of ‘Dogma’s Doctrine’ only to uncover ‘Cracks

DOCTRINE

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(Dogma’s Ideology)

There follow 6 separate clusters of process work, each following the tripartite sequence of Doctrine > Crack > Experiments.

CRACKS

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Figure 82 // Section Structure diagram.

Figure 83 // images.

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EXPERIMENTS (Finding alternatives)

(Flaws in Dogma logic)

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Cracks in the Doctrine

Section Introduction

A matrix of design process

VOLUME

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VOLUME

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FLEXIBLE PLANNING GRID nomos

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COLLECTIVE CITY PUBLIC

INDIVIDUAL HOUSE PRIVATE

CITY COLLECTIVE SPARSE PUBLIC

HOUSE INDIVIDUAL DENSE PRIVATE

SPARSE PUBLIC COLLECTIVE

PRIVATE DENSE INDIVIDUAL

PUBLIC SPARSE COLLECTIVE COMPROMISE

PRIVATE DENSE INDIVIDUAL IDEALITY

COLLECTIVE COMPROMISE SPARSE

INDIVIDUAL IDEALITY DENSE

COLLECTIVE

INDIVIDUAL

SPARSE COMPROMISE

DENSE IDEALITY

DENSE IDEALITY DENSE

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IDEALITY

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FUNCTION BEFORE

BATHS CHANGING ROOM SIMULATION ROOM

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BATHS CHANGING ROOM WAR ROOM

FUNCTION BEFORE FUNCTION AFTER

BATHS CHANGING ROOM BATHS SIMULATION ROOM CHANGING ROOM WAR ROOM

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D R I V E W A Y D

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R I V E W A Y D R I V D E R W I A V Y E W A Y

E R V I C E SS E R V S EI C R E V SI C E S

3 C I R C U L A T CI OI N R C U L C A TI RI C O U N L C A TI RI C CI O U N R L C A U TL AI O T NI

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CONFERENCE GUEST ACCOMODATION LIBRARY

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CLASSROOMS COLLABORATIVE STUDIOS LEARNING COMMONS ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS

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L OFFICES O B OFFICES COLLABORATIVE B STUDIOS LEARNING COMMONS Y ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS

LIBRARY

ARMY/AIRFORCE/NAVY COORDINATION AID ORGANISATION

CONFERENCE GUEST ACCOMODATION COMMUNICATIONS

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OFFICES LEARNING COMMONS

CONFERENCE GUEST ACCOMODATION LIBRARY

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3

CONFERENCESTUDY GUEST ACCOMODATION PODS CLASSROOMS/STUDIOS CONFERENCE GUEST ACCOMODATION DISASTER TEAMS L PARTY MEETINGS COMMUNICATIONS OFFICES

TOWN SQUARE ‘HUB’

CONFERENCE GUEST ACCOMODATION

L O B B Y

PRESS GALLERY

CONFERENCE GUEST ACCOMODATION ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS SIMULATION ROOMS OFFICES ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS OFFICES CLASSROOMS COLLABORATIVE ARMY/AIRFORCE/NAVY COORDINATION STUDIOS LEARNING COMMONS AID ORGANISATION PRESS GALLERY

LIBRARY LIBRARY TOWN SQUARE ‘HUB’ PARLIAMENT CHAMBER

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS L CIVIL DEFENCE O B COMMUNICATIONS B GUEST ACCOMODATION DISASTERCONFERENCE MANAGEMENT Y

MEDIA PARLIAMENT CHAMBER

DISASTER MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE GUEST ACCOMODATION

CONFERENCE GUEST ACCOMODATION ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS L COMMUNICATIONS OFFICES O ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS B OFFICES COLLABORATIVE BL STUDIOS CIVIL DEFENCE LEARNING COMMONS O Y B MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS B DISASTER MANAGEMENT Y

O N

FUNCTION AFTER

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CHANGING ROOM WAR ROOM

D R I V E W A Y

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C I R C U L A T CI OI N R C U L C A TI RI C O U N L C A TI RI C CI O U N R L C A U TL AI O T NI

S E R V I C E S

D R I V E W A Y

S E R V I C E S

S E R V I C E S

D R I V E W A YD R I V E W A DY

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I VD ER WI AV YE W A Y

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R

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PLANT KITCHEN

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KITCHEN

AUDITORIUM PLANT AUDITORIUM KITCHEN PLANT KITCHEN

O N ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS

ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS LIBRARY

ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS L O B B Y

ACCOMODATION FOR POLITICIANS

ARMY/AIRFORCE/NAVY COORDINATION AID ORGANISATION

CIVIL DEFENCE

PRESS GALLERY

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

MEDIA PARLIAMENT CHAMBER

COMMUNICATIONS

DISASTER MANAGEMENT

L O B B Y

C I R C U L A T I O N

AUDITORIUM PLANT KITCHEN

PLAN 3X3 INFORMAL MEETING POD 6X6 SMALL SEMINAR SPACE PLAN

9X9 CLASSROOM / CONFERENCE SPACE 3X3 INFORMAL MEETING POD 6X6 SMALL SEMINAR SPACE 15X15 LECTURE THEATRE / STAGE 9X9 CLASSROOM / CONFERENCE SPACE 3X3 INFORMAL MEETING POD 6X6 SMALL SEMINAR SPACE 15X15 LECTURE THEATRE / STAGE 9X9 CLASSROOM / CONFERENCE SPACE Extra-public 36X15 PARLIAMENT CHAMBER WITH 8-15m Stud PUBLIC GALLERY

Public 5m Stud

Crush 4m Stud

Individual 3m Stud

Public 5m Stud

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Individual 3m Stud

Public 5m Stud

Crush 4m Stud

15X15 LECTURE THEATRE / STAGE 36X15 PARLIAMENT CHAMBER WITH Extra-public 8-15m Stud PUBLIC GALLERY ACCOMMODATION Lightest structure / load Largest fenestration

36X15 PARLIAMENT CHAMBER WITH Extra-public ACCOMMODATION 8-15m Stud PUBLIC GALLERY

Heaviest structure / load Finest fenestration Individual 3m Stud

Lightest structure / load Largest fenestration

Heaviest structure / load Finest fenestration

Lightest structure / load Largest fenestration

Heaviest structure / load Finest fenestration

ACCOMMODATION

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D H P R S

VOID FLEXIBLE SPARSE ANTAGONISTIC LIGHT

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On Dogma

Cracks in the Doctrine

1

T H E D O C T R I N E : Megastructure The enormous projects of Dogma are alluring as they offer territorial settlement strategies that can support entire cities. For example, each individual tower of Stop City measures 500m wide by 500m high and supports 60,000 people. By replicating Dogma’s extreme monumentality, the entire population of Kapiti could be accommodated in a single building, rather than occupying an area the size of Manhattan.

revealed the magnitude of Dogma’s scheme and marked the initial observation of Dogma’s mirage, in that Dogma couldn’t seriously imagine these immense blocks popping up all over the bulging banlieue’s of Europe?

Instead, Dogma’s project must be a provocation, an extreme rendering of density, rather than an imagined reality.

Like No Stop City before it, Stop City is a designed parable to critique the norm of an individualised sprawling hinterland. This austere imprisonment of 60,000 people in one building is by no means a feasible scenario.

It expresses one of the cracks or tensions in Dogma’s project, that while a level of increased density and collectivism is required, the forced communitarianism at this scale can only be seen as an exaggerated response. This would inevitably lead to danger, poverty and disillusionment on a scale even greater than witnessed in an example like Kowloon Walled City generations earlier (Girard and Lambot).

T H E C R A C K : Too Big The alluring scale of Dogma was transcribed to imagine megastructures that cover the entire quarry (fig.84, fig.85). While these initial experiments served as a test of the quarry’s capacity, they dwarfed the township below and were oppressively large for the hinterland setting, not to mention clearly too large for a ministerial ‘outpost’. But furthermore, at 40 stories high, the largest of the preliminary designs shown here still pales in comparison to the 160 stories in Stop City. This process

148

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On Dogma

Figure 84 // Early experiment that explored territorial megastructures in the form of a large dam.

Cracks in the Doctrine

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Figure 85 // Later experiments that explored megastructures versus smaller repeated infrastructures.

149

On Dogma

Dogma’s megastructures proved too enormous, therefore The Design experimented with a tempering of this extreme scale, while still attempting to formalise an urban limit.

Built projects including Arthur Erickson’s Lethbridge University (1968), or Francis Pouillon’s Climat de France (1957) clearly demarcate a boundary condition and a marked scale shift within their suburban and rural environs.

Instead of Dogma’s monstrous walls, these superblock projects became precedents for the mega-rural proposition in Plan B Hive, which would be more appropriate for a primarily single-storied Paraparaumu. Considering the scheme is at the margins of the hinterland, a large superblock could still provoke the shift in scale and density desired (Fig.86).

The resurgence in monumentalist thought is seemingly driven both by a dissatisfaction with current forms of urban hybridity and illegibility ... to rethink the ways in which cities can be reorganised, or perhaps, more appropriately, reconstituted.

(Justin Fowler 631)

<

Cracks in the Doctrine

E X P E R I M E N T S : Superblocks

Figure 86 // Superblock scaled experiments.

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LETHBRIDGE UNIVERSITY (1968) Alberta, Canada - Arthur Erickson

CLIMAT DE FRANCE (1957) Algiers, Algeria - Fernand Pouillon

On Dogma Cracks in the Doctrine

<

<

Figure 87 // A vast groundscraper amongst open plains, immense in scale but far from dystopic like Dogma. Arthur Erickson said of his vast campuses, Lethbridge in particular, that their monumentality â&#x20AC;&#x153;takes the human out of his ordinary, human fire-side existence. Ennobles him, lifts himâ&#x20AC;? (Arthur Erickson: The Lost Interview, 2009).

Figure 88 // Climat de France was a dense neighbourhood supporting around 6000 housing units, and is surrounded by three roads. All the component parts of the city are bounded within its finite enclosure marking its existence a dense, monumental island within an otherwise low density context. The scheme represents a collective inhabitation of space without the extreme socialism demanded by Aureli.

151

While Dogma design enormous forms, they also speculate enormous territories within and around these forms. For Aureli, this enables Dogma to imagine the ‘urban sea of the archipelago’ within which finite architectural islands can be inserted. In City Walls (p.137), they start with the simple cruciform, yet imagine the varied urban spaces that could be framed by a repetition of this archetype.

Similarly, as described in A Simple Heart, they design a rigid square form within which they collage a dense, gridded fabric representing a generalised urbanisation. In collaging urban tropes they can speculate ways to occupy vast areas of land without overtly designing every part. For The Design, being able to reimagine a larger territory rather than a single architectural object, became a way to imagine compelling alternatives for the wider Kapiti region.

However in imagining this wider urban setting, Dogma can rely on pure geometries and urban grids to facilitate this collaging, namely because of the flat topographies upon which they design. This is not nearly so simple when designing for a difficult, idiosyncratic site like the Paraparaumu Quarry. It becomes crystal clear that Dogma do not do curves. The wider context could not be sampled and replicated from a flat urban grid (fig.89) because as defined earlier, the risks of the flat coastal land are too great. A more resilient inhabitation of the foothills was needed but this required specific design due to the unusual and difficult site (fig.91). Once again the cracks begin to appear in Dogma’s totalising logic, where their requisite orthogonality is not appropriate or even possible on such a challenging site.

<

Cracks in the Doctrine

T H E C R A C K : Requisite Orthogonality

Figure 89 // An experiment that extends The Design as a series of city walls, containing the urban grid of Barcelona, confining the entire population of Kapiti coast in a densified 1km² micro-city.

Figure 90 // Creating a more idiosyncratic ‘sea’ of the ‘archipelago’, within which sits an absolute island.

On Dogma

T H E D O C T R I N E : Collaging the City

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2

152

On Dogma Cracks in the Doctrine

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Figure 91 // Combined experiments imagining a wider territorial inhabitation of foothills. Useful for creating a novel urban context for the whole quarry site.

Infrastructural shelves that follow the contours and allow participatory/informal inhabitation of slopes.

153

On Dogma

Cracks in the Doctrine

E X P E R I M E N T S : Idiosyncratic geometry So rather than simply collaging a gridded urban context on the site as Dogma would do, it was important to conceptualise and design a wider inhabitation of the unusual quarry slopes. Alternative precedents, including Rocinha Favela (fig.94) and BIG’s Montenegro Terraces (fig.95) were analysed to inform how settlement might develop along the foothills in a more topophilic and indeed idiosyncratic way. These projects are the antithesis of Dogma: bottom-up, informal and radically site-specific. As already shown, experiments were tested on the quarry slopes (fig.91), and what resulted was an excavated infrastructure that became a system to build on any gradient in the same way. Creating horizontal slabs at every second ‘floor level’ meant that the resulting urban form was a direct result of the foothill’s geomorphology and thus suggested a possible way to inhabit other vertiginous

regions. This limitless system of inhabitation drew parallels as a vertiginous version of Archizoom’s No Stop City (fig.96)where urbanisation was nightmarishly presented as a constant sea of services and flows (Branzi).

This new context was to surround the formal ministerial outpost, highlighting it as an ‘absolute island’ within the informal ‘sea of the archipelago’.

However, the confluence of the formal scheme within the informal scheme started to greatly increase the scope of the thesis. It was acknowledged that attempting to resolve both fully would be difficult due to the brevity of the thesis. The Design consequently focussed solely on the more formal outpost, yet this experiment proves extremely useful in demonstrating the tensions between the formal world of Dogma and the informal alternatives.

>

<

<

Figure 92 // Early scheme combining a wider informal infrastructure for housing/emergency overflow, with a formal civic centre.

Figure 93 // Later iteration solely focussing on the central formal building

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MONTENEGRO TERRACES (2000) Budva, Montenegro - BIG Architects

ROCINHA FAVELA (1950 ONWARDS) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Informal Settlement

NO STOP CITY (1968-1972) Archizoom

<

Figure 96 // Formless architecture embodying capitalist urbanisation. “The dots and X’s represent the architecture of a city. Or better yet, they represent the basic condition required for a city to exist: the minimum infrastructure for living, according to which the city reproduces itself” (Aureli, More and more about less and less 8).

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Cracks in the Doctrine

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Figure 95 // The hotel project explores an excavation of the existing site to develop a scheme that simply traces the form of the existing topography, highlighting the latent idiosyncrasy.

On Dogma

<

Figure 94 // The enormous favela was used as a means to calibrate and provoke a hyper density over difficult landscape. With over 55 000 people p/km² this would mean the quarry could support a community of over 12 000 people (half the population of Paraparaumu).

On Dogma

Cracks in the Doctrine

3

T H E D O C T R I N E : Pure Geometry

T H E C R A C K : Naively simplistic

The formal world of Dogma is dictated by a sustained interest in simple geometric figures. They use them to “thereby skip that humiliating moment for architects when they have to desperately search for some interesting form” (Steele 5). This becomes incredibly alluring because without the need to invent new forms, they can focus on “more pressing architectural issues”, namely the “expression and projection of ideas about the city” (5).

Dogma’s blunt, straightforward and explicit forms prove appealing because considering Plan B Hive is for a parliamentary outpost, this thesis could quite easily have become tangled in matters of figurative iconism and the novel expression of nationhood, when in fact the scope is more concerned with how a resilient disaster facility can explore and challenge the way we occupy these landscapes.

The allure of pure, empirical geometries was explored with a mixture of platonic and basic geometries on the site (fig.98). The pure span across the valley was eventually pursued as it required minimal excavation and left the most flat ground to be used for civic gathering and post-disaster congregation. This initial span emulated the pure geometry of Dogma’s projects. As the initial pure gesture was interrogated further, it was acknowledged that this gesture was too rigid and ultimately appeared naïve and unresponsive to the actualities of site. By enacting the absolutism of Dogma, once again cracks emerged in the ‘Dogma Doctrine’ where - it was understood that their obvious and absolute geometric form is rarely considered beyond the initial ‘top-down’ gesture. Never explored at the small-scale, the schemes avoid detail at all costs. Dogma speculate from a safe distance that subsequently produces unresolved and ingenuous designs upon closer inspection.

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Figure 97 // The empirical geometries of dogma.

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PURE RING

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PURE SPAN + PURE AMPHITHEATRE

On Dogma

PURE DOME

Figure 98 // Typological experiments experimenting with levels of platonism and purity.

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Cracks in the Doctrine

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TOP

E X P E R I M E N T S : Infrastructure planning and the heroic ego of the individual architect. . . through architecture’s contact with the complexity of the real” (Allen 52). While maintaining functional continuity, bridges deploy an extensive catalogue of strategies for dealing with site irregularities. Reframing Plan B Hive’s absolute form as crucial infrastructure also supports the established need for contingency in the design. “Infrastructures are flexible and anticipatory. They work with time and are open to change.” (Allen 52).

On Dogma

Cracks in the Doctrine

The relentless purity of Dogma was questioned and this prompted an analysis of buildings that retained a clarity of gesture while acknowledging site idiosyncrasies (fig.101 and 102). Rather than a pure block, the scheme was interrogated according to a bridge typology because bridges are equal parts autonomy and site specificity (Allen).

Developing The Design as an infrastructure allows “a way of working at the large scale that escapes suspect notions of master

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Figure 99 // Developed sketch that describes the relative purity in elevation and signalling of major entrance core on the left versus the informal core on the right which hides behind the natural slope of the contours.

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Figure 100 // Developed section sketch that portrays the contextual moments where the building ‘kisses’ the quarry walls, while the cores are positioned according to the quarry’s varying ground levels. The Design combines aspects from the built precedents, sunken into the hillside like Gregotti, then resting as a pure span across the valley as in Ellwood’s design.

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LOW-INCOME HOUSING (1976-79) Cefalù, Italy- Vittorio Gregotti

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Figure 102 // The Art Centre is an inhabited infrastructure that supports large, uninterrupted spaces through externality of structure and a flexible grid plan. Most alike Dogma, this pure, almost formally autonomous span rests atop the site’s plateau while acknowleging site idiosyncrasies by allowing access points and a road to pass underneath.

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Cracks in the Doctrine

THE ART CENTRE COLLEGE OF DESIGN (1977) Pasadena, California - Craig Ellwood

On Dogma

Figure 101 // The project takes advantage of the mountainous terrain by spanning transversally across the ravine. Very much enacting a limit, “as if to protect the fabric of the old city from the fringing of the suburbs” the series of blocks act like screens (Rykwert 72). Sunken into the topography, a large part of the base rests on the ground, more akin to an aqueduct than a bridge.

On Dogma

Cracks in the Doctrine

4

T H E D O C T R I N E : Generic Grids

T H E C R A C K : Monastic Monotony

In seeking further flexibility for Plan B Hive, Dogma’s reliance on grids is appealing in the way they use this flexible construct to tame and frame the complexities of the modern city. Despite architecture’s episodic involvement with complexity (including the current fetishism for parametric forms), inevitably the grid always re-emerges to deny an entropy towards total chaos. For Dogma, the grid is the most powerful form of spatial indexing, and the most important nonfigurative aspect of the city (Aureli, More and More About Less and Less 9). Aureli is not alone in this thinking, as the grid “lends legibility and order to the surface while ...remaining open to permutation over time” (Corner, 31). Dogma’s reverence for the grid proved enticing, especially considering the need for The Design to support a programme shift and the contingent scenarios that inevitably follow post-disaster. Jeremy Till believes that “architecture is through and through a contingent discipline, but architects have to a large extent, attempted to deny this contingency” (120).

Mimicking the purity and genericity of Dogma’s grids, the early plans of The Design relied heavily on a rigid grid (fig.103). However, the regular spacing of zones and structural elements was subsequently acknowledged as too monotonous and began to err on monastic, or at least extraordinarily socialised.

This lack of hierarchy is common in Dogma projects and elucidates the dilemma of total genericity versus the power of an architect to structure space in ways that are flexible but also particular to programme, place and people.

This suggests that Dogma denies those more specific conditions of actual, sited buildings such as access, sunlight, and views.

<

Figure 103 // Many of the preliminary plans of The Design were too regimented.

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On Dogma

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9X9 CLASSROOM / CONFERENCE SPACE

INDIVIDUAL

3X3 INFORMAL MEETING POD 6X6 SMALL SEMINAR SPACE 15X15 CHAMBER OF PARLIAMENT / GREAT HALL 9X9 CLASSROOM / CONFERENCE SPACE

SPARSE

DENSE

15X15 LECTURE THEATRE / STAGE CHAMBER OF HEDONISM

36X15 PARLIAMENT CHAMBER WITH PUBLIC GALLERY

Extra-public 8-15m Stud

Public 5m Stud

Crush 4m Stud

Individual 3m Stud

COMPROMISE

ACCOMMODATION

Lightest structure / load Largest fenestration

Heaviest structure / load Finest fenestration

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Figure 104 // Subsequent process experiments maintain the grid but avoid the monotony of Dogma’s rigid adherence.

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IDEALITY

Cracks in the Doctrine

6X6 SMALL SEMINAR SPACE

The relentless austerity and repetitiveness of Dogma’s grids urged an analysis of buildings that sustained a sense of the grid yet were still particular to place and programme. Similar to the projects of SANAA (fig.107) and Elemental (fig.108), Plan B Hive developed a stronger exterior exoskeleton in order to support a more fluid interior. It is a somewhat ‘Miesian’ flexibility with harder edges, equally impervious to functional obsolescence but encased in a heavy, immovable shell. Within the building, many experiments with various grid deformations ensued (fig.104), and resulted in a spatial gradient from smaller spaces at each end, towards an open and collective centre.

The pure form became carrion for programme to scavenge within, a process defined by constant reshuffling until the field of parts settled logically. While The Design’s suggestion of the grid is more consistent towards the centre, promoting flexibility, towards the ends the planning comes in to conditioning with the hillside. Walls bend away from the dominant orthogonality in plan and section, demonstrating a more site-specific response (fig.105). Programme locations become much more reliant on their proximity to access points, views and sunlight, and are structured around more considered narrative sequences.

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Figure 106 // A segment of the plan shows the grid that expands and contracts along a continuum, responding to the site condition of being imbedded at the ends (heavy and closed) and suspended in the middle (open and transparent).

On Dogma

Cracks in the Doctrine

E X P E R I M E N T S : Specific Grids

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Figure 105 // Developed design representing the thicker, rhythmic exterior frame, with the gradation of openings also forcing the grid to expand and contract.

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ZOLLVEREIN SCHOOL (2005) Essen, Germany - SANAA

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Figure 108 // Elemental opts for a Strong monolithic materiality replacing transparency with timelessness. Within the rhythmic exterior form, the invocation of the grid is more subtle, while still determining an ordered and flexible interior.

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INNOVATION CENTRE (2014) Santiago, Chile - Elemental

On Dogma

Figure 107 // While a very ordered grid is adhered to, through asymmetrical cores, partitions and windows, the space is flexible yet distinct and idiosyncratic. Strong perimeter structure allows the interior to become fluid and freely planned, while varying stud heights add diversity to the spaces.

On Dogma

Cracks in the Doctrine

5

T H E D O C T R I N E : Separateness

E X P E R I M E N T S : Lifting + Inclusion

The notion of the ‘limit’ in each of Dogma’s projects, and more broadly the concept of the ‘separateness’ elucidated by Aureli, became a compelling mechanism to imagine an outpost that could provide a retreat from both disaster and also from the constant flow of urbanisation. Aureli employs Mies Van der Rohe’s plinth as a typological example that both integrates and simultaneously separates the architecture from the city, therefore confronting the space of urbanisation (Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture 34). As Aureli remarks more generally, “architecture as the project of the finite, and thus separated, form(s) ... makes explicit and tangible the inexorable separateness of the city, since the city is made not only of flows but also of stoppages, wall, boundaries, and partitions” (10).

The Design entirely embodies this demand for ‘separateness’, while the elevated nature of the bridge avoids blocking the site with an impregnable wall as Dogma might do.

While early experiments with amphitheatres endeavoured to soften the amount of separateness implied by the ‘limit’ (fig.109), the design instead developed a simple plaza to allow complete openness at ground level.

T H E C R A C K : Too confrontational

Similarly the elevated form of Plan B Hive allows a transgression of the user to inhabit the threshold of the limit itself, rather than being aggressively confronted by it. Still inexorably ‘separate’ from the city, Plan B Hive frames space below as a covered agora for public occupation and engagement.

Herman Herzberger, commenting on Lina Bo Bardi’s Sau Paulo Museum of Art (fig.110) notes a powerful dialogue between lightness and mass, and that “when underneath the building, you feel absolutely no sense of oppression due to the immense presence above you” (106).

Bo Bardi’s elevated container is definitively separate from, but still radically tied to the city, and is not confrontational like the walls of Dogma.

Yet in emulating this call for ‘separation’, Dogma’s projects are entirely confrontational.

The ‘limit’ established by the aggressive forms are in fact oppressive by nature and work against the ‘openness of form’, especially at the ground floor, necessitated by seminal urbanist Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities 1961).

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Figure 110 // Despite its Brutalist style, the Museum of Art creates a covered ‘agora’ for demonstration and public congregation and has provided a platform for activism since its inception. Without the need for any deterministic amphitheatre, the simple plaza is a flexible space that is continually occupied.

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SÃO PAULO MUSEUM OF ART (1968) Brazil - Lina Bo Bardi

On Dogma

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Figure 109 // Amphitheatres were combined with the bridge gesture in experiments to create more inclusion underneath the building. While a useful experiment, the amphitheatre confused the linearity and legibility of the bridge completely. Furthermore the large stairway seemed grandiose, and weakened the idea of formal ‘separateness’.

6

T H E D O C T R I N E : Complete Abstraction T H E C R A C K : Representational autism

On Dogma

Cracks in the Doctrine

Aureli derides architecture that engages solely as stylistic commodity. Accordingly, Dogma’s projects attempt to deny any hint of ‘iconicity’, or the opulent expression of capital. This is achieved by either being the most basic white walled structure with regular niches or more often, completely blank surfaces altogether (City Walls p.115).

This refrained simplicity inspired by Dogma’s abstraction continually encouraged critique of The Design as seemingly ‘fascist’. This marked the most resounding ‘crack in the Dogma doctrine’ yet. In transcribing the Dogma aesthetic (or lack thereof), the building in its whitewashed regularity became tangled in a tendentious ideological predicament. Being a real proposition, The Design actually required obvious details like windows and structure a triviality often spared by Dogma’s autistic abstract monuments.

As a conceptual move aligned with the absolute aesthetic reduction of Dogma, The Design attempted to deny iconicity by being an absolute form articulated in the simplest manner, more focussed on the building’s relationship with the space around it and the project it has in mind for the city. Refrained and simple, a plain square grid with subtle shifts in the line of glazing was initially experimented with as the only form of expression (fig.111).

This reveals the final dilemma in the Dogma doctrine: does Dogma avoid the necessary?

Ironically, Dogma’s attempt to remove all stylistic tropes in fact just establishes one anyway; a reductionist, purified minimalism.

The ‘fascist’ label signalled that The Design had developed in a bizarre direction. It dominated conversation about the work rather than any of the desired categories: flexibility, resilience, periphery, or the city. It prompted a series of iterative experiments that attempted to quell the fascist branding, and marked the greatest apostate rejection of the ‘Dogma Doctrine’.

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On Dogma Cracks in the Doctrine

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Figure 111 // October review: Subtle changes in thickness and glazing creates a shift from punctured loggias to monolithicness at the centre. Top: front perspective, Bottom: Physical model, 1:500, Acrylic and Foam

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E X P E R I M E N T S : Facade studies Instead of the extreme autism of Dogma’s abstract forms, The Design went through innumerable experiments to avoid the fascist reception. The iterations focused on scale, rhythm and proportion in order to move away from the pure grid. Establishing that the blank forms of Dogma were untenable for The Design, Aureli’s reverence of the work of Caruso St. John seems surprising, especially for the relative importance he places on the expression of their facades. In fact, Aureli goes further to denounce any bare surfaces: “The wall cannot exist as a bare surface or a neutral line. This would read as an extrusion of the plan, confirming the absolute tyranny of the latter. Instead, to fully achieve its potential as an active, independent figure of architecture, the wall must become an ornament, hence wall as facade.”

On Dogma

With this quote, Aureli commits heresy against his own Dogma. Or perhaps this illustrates the fact that while he is deliberately provocative in his own paper architecture, he recognizes that buildings in reality need to articulate their expressive potential as actors within the city.

While for Dogma it is not their main concern, it is therefore to be skipped and more pressing issues can be confronted. Acknowledging this hypocrisy, façade experiments on The Design continued (fig.112). Looking to built precedents once more, The Design aimed for a kind of monadic laconism with subtle rhythms. This is more akin to the notion of the architectural “monolith”: “which does not aim at abstraction, nor does it share the minimalist aspiration to non-referential objecthood. Rather, it seeks to maximise the expressive potential of common architectonic configurations by condensing their figurative allusions into one eloquent gesture.

(Machado et. al 12)

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Cracks in the Doctrine

(Aureli, Form and Resistance 25)

Figure 112 // Myriad facade experiments aligned with built precedents that explore similar means of expression and tectonic quality.

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E X P E R I M E N T S : Material and Form Avoiding the fascist response

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Figure 113 // Materiality: From white to wood. Shifting material instantly softens the aesthetic and denies the fascist connotations. But this was a complete renunciation of the desire for a strong fortified retreat, carved from the quarry stone itself.

On Dogma

Figure 114 // Transparency - Increasing the glazing and curving the panes was an attempt to soften and distort the reflections to limit the starkness of the facade. Yet this just relied on expensive products, negating the anti-commodity, anti-iconic motivation.

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Figure 115 // Form: Breaking the orthogonal. Experiments aimed to relieve the orthogonality of the interior. Yet again the billowing forms seemed overly playful for a defensive Disaster Research Centre.

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Cracks in the Doctrine

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“The concept of gradual changes in geometry, understood as precisely constructed shifts...create the character of volumes ‘in transition’.”

(Simon Ungers 10)

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Figure 116 // The final developed elevation

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On Dogma

Section Conclusion This section has uncovered the ‘cracks’ in Dogma’s doctrine, when parts of the ideology faltered as they were interrogated through the design process. Alternative precedents were threaded with design experiments to illustrate when the levels of dogmatism were tempered within The Design. <

Cracks in the Doctrine

3.2 CRACKS IN THE DOCTRINE

The following section extends these initial cracks to discuss in a broader sense the tensions that are likely to develop when architecture enacts dogmatism. Not dismissing the initial allure, or the potential problems, the section discusses the tension between these poles as ‘The Dogma Dilemma.’

FOLLOWING

Figure 117 // Design process sketches

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DOGMA DILEMMA 3.3 Critical Reflection and Disciplinary Discussion

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The Dogma Dilemma

3.2

3.3

DOGMA'S DOCTRINE

CRACKS IN THE DOCTRINE

THE DOGMA DILEMMA

On Dogma

3.1

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di·lem·ma On Dogma

/ di’lemә / noun logic

“dilemmas, by definition, are difficult to handle because no decision is without its costs: whatever the outcome, someone is going to be upset.”

(Oxford Dictionary)

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The Dogma Dilemma

1. a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two

or more alternatives.

synonyms quandary, predicament, plight, problem, perplexity, confusion, conflict;

WHY THE DILEMMA? Design Reception The fascist provocation is cause for necessary reflection. Interrogating whether it is indeed valid or spurious, it is also necessary to explore what tensions this raises in a disciplinary context. This topic segue embodies a quality of truly design-led research. While this topic was never intended as an early objective, the research may be enriched by a discussion on validity of this response. This is also made in relation to the earlier aims for a ‘provocation for the periphery’, which has most certainly eventuated, but perhaps not in the expected way. The dilemma elucidates this tension between the dogmatic desire to provoke, and the democratic desire to please.

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Figure 118 // Presenting The Design, November, NZIA Graphisoft Competition, Auckland.

Figure 119 // Anecdotal evidence compiled from remarks made by academic reviewers.

On Dogma

The Dogma Dilemma

The most resounding ‘dilemma’ in aligning with the rhetoric of Aureli has been The Design’s seemingly irreconcilable totalitarian reception. Despite the many alterations made after the initial fascist critique (fig.112), while the response became less pronounced, Plan B Hive still received authoritarian criticism (fig.119). The continued fascist remarks caused an ongoing paranoia that the design was no longer desirable, or indeed viable. While there are definite and intended ironies in the project, with hints of dystopic scepticism, The Design is also devoted to the real possibility of resilience and an improved urban future.

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“

“YOU SEEM TO HAVE MADE EVERY INEXORABLE FASCIST MOVE?” “I THINK THIS IS A BRIDGE TOO FAR REALLY.”

Academic Review, October, 2014

“THIS PLAN FOR THE 164 POLITICIANS, IS IT AN ACTUAL SCENARIO? IT’S ALMOST LIKE NAZI GERMANY.” Academic Reviewer, October, 2014

“I LIKE THE FASCIST QUALITY, BUT YOU HAVE TO OWN UP FOR THAT.” Academic Reviewer, October, 2014

“THIS IS THE KAPITI COAST BRASILIA (LAUGHTER).”

Academic Reviewer, November, 2014

“I WAS GOING TO SAY IT’S THE KAPITI COAST CASA FASCISTE (LAUGHTER).”

Academic Reviewer, November, 2014

“

“THE ONLY THING THE BUILDING LACK[S] [IS] A DICTATOR-FRIENDLY BALCONY.”

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Academic Reviewer, November, 2014

The Dogma Dilemma On Dogma

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Figure 120 // Fascism: A provocation for discussion.

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On Dogma

fas·cism / ’faSH,izәm/

1. an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government

and social organization synonyms totalitarianism, dictatorship, despotism, autocracy

“a military coup threw out the old fascist regime”

(Oxford Dictionary)

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The Dogma Dilemma

noun

FASCISM AND THE CITY

On Dogma

The Dogma Dilemma

A critical discussion “Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism” that fundamentally opposes egalitarianism (Turner 162). This is far from the ideological views intended for this project. It is important to expose whether critics misuse the word simply to refer to the scheme’s minimal aesthetic or whether they think the scheme presents a programmatic determination with fascism as a concept.

George Orwell once wrote that “the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless…” used to illegitimately describe “farmers…

Ghandi…dogs and I don’t know what else” (1944). Confirming this, Richard Griffiths said in 2005 that ‘Fascism’ is “the most misused, and over-used word, of our times” (1).

as democratic, because democracy should inevitably look much less formal in geometry?

Perhaps more like the figuratively plural and economically exorbitant Scottish Parliament?

(Black 11).

Especially in a New Zealand context it seems that large, singular architecture is tremendously rare. Instead, what is much more common is an architecture of formal dispersion and fragmentation. Perhaps it began with the ad-hoc hillside agglomerations of Ian Athfield (fig.122) and Roger Walker in the 70s, only to be followed by an interest in Deconstruction and Critical regionalism in the 1980s and 1990s. Andrew Barrie notes during this period; “both our lively geography and evolving bi-culture...was invoked to explain the ‘aesthetic of fragmentation’ apparent in local projects” (29). However he notes that we are long past this, partly due to the painfully literal Christchurch earthquake, when “such subversions of structure and stability as deconstruction had sought were ‘resisted’ by architects for good reason” (38). Yet we still seem afraid of singular gestures and resolute form, something that has long been second-nature to Eurocentric architecture.

Considering the major thinking intellectual signalled by Rem Koolhaas’ hyper-rational

Perhaps the pejorative word was used because of Plan B Hive’s established relationship with Dogma’s work, and the architecture they present as “doctrine without proof ” (Mastrigli 66). Aureli and Dogma are specifically interested in the Italian Tendenza, (including the work of architects under Mussolini like Aldo Rossi and Giuseppe Terragni), which could be why Dogma’s similarly finite and stark projects might elicit the same fascist slurs (fig.121). Does the absolute formality of their schemes, and indeed this design, thwart chances of ever being appreciated

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Figure 122 // Athfield House+Offices (70s-ongoing).

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The Dogma Dilemma

Figure 121 // A Field of Walls, Dogma (2012).

On Dogma

The Dogma Dilemma

methodology and theories of ‘Bigness’ (fig.123), while these have been discussed in New Zealand, they have rarely been enacted (40).

the kaleidoscope of metropolitan forms of life” (21). Virno continues, acknowledging obvious “antistatal impulses” prove that today’s fascism “stands as the antipodes of historical fascism” (24). Disregarding its prior image of top-down power, fascism is instead the spontaneous and undirected informal urbanism (fig.124), which “has become the most powerful way of mastering the city and its conflicts” (Aureli and Tattara 10).

This suggests that rather than collective and singular form, perhaps what is more fascist is today’s privatized, dispersed and fragmented urban development. To counter this entropy, Dogma deny so called ‘bottom-up’ strategies, and reinvigorate the architectural project with “its proper mission: to establish a principle of order through which to frame and construct forms of inhabitation” (10).

In fact, in New Zealand, bold form is the opposite of what is often defined in planning guidelines. In the Kapiti Coast District Plan (2007) developments should “ensure that the low density, quiet character is maintained” (C1.1), ensuring buildings “within outstanding landscapes are located so that they will not be visually dominant” (C10.1) while “earthtone colours are generally preferred”(D2.25).

Under these precepts, architecture is encouraged to conceal itself through weak, fragmented form and faux New-Mexican references. This results in pallid, miniaturised architectural form whose endless dispersion causes more widespread detriment to the landscape than if collective, singular form had been allowed in the first place.

So while establishing that theoretically, bold and singular form does no longer necessarily imply fascism, perhaps the fascist response is tied to the aesthetic of the façade. This was speculated previously that by changing the material to wood (fig.113), it is almost certain there would be no fascist connotations. This highlights the alarming oversimplification that fascism just equals a combination of rational geometries, vague classical tropes, and the use

Dogma describe this predilection for urban privatisation and formlessness as the contemporary urban and political fascism.

This view is inspired by philosopher Paolo Virno’s recent hypothesis that today, postmodern fascism “does not thrive in the closed rooms of the ministry…but rather in

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On Dogma

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Figure 124 // Caracas, Venezuela, Informal urbanism.

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The Dogma Dilemma

Figure 123 // Shenzen Stock Exchange, OMA (2013). The complexity of the contemporary city requires a radical sobriety of form (Imagining Nothingness 198-204).

On Dogma

The Dogma Dilemma

of light-coloured stone; when in actuality, “Fascist Rome was not conceived as an ideal metropolis…in broadly uniform aestheticarchitectural style” (Kallis 42). Rather “the hybridity and volatility of Mussolini’s pronouncements...reveal an inconclusive and often contradictory image of what his ideal ‘Third Rome’ was meant to look like in the end” (43).

they should be apprehensive of the dark shadow left by the Nazi legacy, and its hijacking of stripped-classism. Examples exist of architects having to similarly deny fascist brandings. James Stirling was denounced for ‘celebrating fascism’ because of a classical scheme for a gallery in Germany (Sudjic).

More recently, commentators suggested that David Chipperfield’s Museum of Modern Literature (fig.126) was fascist because of its use of columns (Marcus). Chipperfield responded sardonically that: “it’s unfortunate a certain type of stripped-down classicism became the in-house architectural language for 20th-century fascism. Can an architectural language recover from such an association?

Yes, I think it can, because in the end what you’re talking about is a column and beam” (Marcus). And indeed it was subsequently awarded the prestigious Stirling Prize, proving that the majority of the country is well past being afraid of some stone columns.

While Plan B Hive doesn’t have the hallmark fascist architectural traits (fig.125) of insignia, massive columns, or deep porticos, it does sometimes have square windows and is constructed from concrete. Is this enough, along with a governmental programme, to be considered fascist? Leon Krier once claimed that “classical architecture paid the harshest penalty of all at Nuremberg, implicitly condemned to an even heavier sentence than Speer”, highlighting the unfortunate fact that any style attributed to a totalitarian regime is doomed never to be apolitical again (Sudjic).

Even the Italians, who have reason to be most weary, having lived under fascism’s regime, have moved well past a paranoia of white walls with regular openings. Later this year, internationally acclaimed fashion house Fendi will move in to the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (fig.127) undeniably confirming the transition

Yet, The Design is not a true classical building either, so why are New Zealand critics continuing to lament it as fascist architecture?

Consistently ranked one of the safest, most happily democratic nations on the planet, what are we scared of ? Perhaps in Germany

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On Dogma

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Figure 126 // Museum of Modern Literature, Germany, David Chipperfield (2007)

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The Dogma Dilemma

Figure 125 // Palazzo della CiviltĂ Italiana, Giovanni Guerrini (1939)

in a world in which more than half the global population now inhabit urban space, and in which, moreover, its very boundaries with the rural are becoming progressively uncertain, it seems more clear than ever that contemporary politics must itself be irreducibly urban in some form.

On Dogma

The Dogma Dilemma

from fascism to fashion, scary to sexy, and dictator to dressmaker (Karmali). This confirms that even in the most ideologically tangled countries, previously ‘fascist architecture’ does not continue to be derided for its past affiliations to political regimes.

(Cunningham 12).

However, perhaps even a level of fascist engagement has a role to play here - under fascism, Italy was fundamentally concerned with the urban and were extremely eager for “debates on major architectural matters… [which] turned out to be surprisingly open, public, wide-ranging, and acrimonious (BenGhiat 20).” Some touched on the overall structuring of modern urban life: “for example, how the rapidly increasing trend of urbanisation should be managed in relation to the interests of the countryside…how the expanding city impacted on its surrounding region…and how matters such as population density…should be mediated” (Kallis 43).

Put more simply, “the revolution in our time has to be urban, or nothing” (Harvey 4).

The Design did not intend to provoke an ideological shift in the power structure of politics; far from it. Yet what it did attempt to do was highlight the primacy of form in defining urban limits; furthermore, to project a new denser type of inhabitation for a hinterland region that is typified by formless, privatized sprawl. If large-scale, resolute form can only be seen as fascist, then what tools do we have to chart an alternative course?

This provocation of fascism is therefore partly fortuitous if it brings with it a project for the city, at the very least by sparking debate over architecture’s political role in redefining urban form. Recent disciplinary discussions in fact confirm this debate as a necessity, because:

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On Dogma

Figure 128 // 432 Park Avenue, Rafael Vignoly (2015). At 1.2 $Billion, and with only 104 apartments, the tower is a primal scream of capitalism. Far from egalitarian, it certainly attests to contemporary architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transcription of a neominimalist, abstract aesthetic.

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Figure 127 // From Fascism to Fashion: Fendi move into Palazzo della CiviltĂ Italiana from 2015

â&#x20AC;&#x153;[Pure form] has been fascist and democratic, tyrannical and populist, capitalist and communist, commercial and spiritual, ecological and destructive.â&#x20AC;?

On Dogma

The Dogma Dilemma

(Frankowski and Garcia 22)

Palazzo della Civilta Italiana, Giovanni Guerinni, Rome 1942 Haus de Gaertners, Claude Ledoux, Chaux, c.1789 Pyramid of Cestius, Giambattista Piranesi, Rome, c.1747

Modena Cemetery, Aldo Rossi, Modena, 1971 Spaceship earth, Walt Disney Imagineering, Orlando, 1983 Palace of Peace, Foster+Partners, Astana, 2006

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Figure 129 // Collage of Pure forms through history

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School of Management, SANAA, Zollverein, 2006 RAK Convention and Exhibition Centre, OMA, Dubai, 2008 Le projet triangle, Herzog & de Meuron, Paris, 2008

On Dogma

The Dogma Dilemma

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C O N C LU S I O N

On Dogma

The Dogma Dilemma

Looking Back Plan B Hive ultimately presents a provocation for the periphery. Firstly, it explored a topological shift to the foothills, and resulted in a distinct formal response to a valley condition.

It marked a reparation of an already damaged site in order to frame a new public space. On an urban level it responded to its latent liminal site and established a city boundary in order to reflect densified development back towards the existing ‘centre’. As a mega-rural monolith it proposes a model of built density as an extreme opposition to the existing sparseness.

In this way, while on one level it is a site and programme-specific scenario, it can be seen to be driven by wider urban objectives. As it stands, it is not an exercise in nationhood or rightful democracy, but a finite architectural example of an alternative way to settle these forgotten peripheries. It becomes an example for the region that relies on the concept of separation and stoppage as a structured resistance against urbanisation’s limitless flow.

The design process was then interrogated in order to elucidate moments of adherence and apostasy with regards to Dogma’s oeuvre.

This structure was important in that the latter (discussion and reflection) allowed the former (design) to be seen as a critique or mediation of dogma – interrogating its virtues and its dangers as a radical doctrine meant to provoke reactionary focus on the city as architecture’s project. The partly tendentious reception of The Design, namely the validity of the fascist critique, was discussed in a disciplinary context. Returning to the initial objectives for a provocation for the periphery, it is now useful to elaborate on the limitations and opportunities of dogmatism in architecture in a more general sense. Can unproven ‘doctrine’ and radicalism still contribute to architecture in a meaningful way? Can there be a balance between extremist provocation and complex, actual reality? And if so, how much Dogma?

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On Dogma The Dogma Dilemma

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Figure 130 // Early maquette of Plan B Hive.

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HOW MUCH DOGMA? Looking Forward

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While architecture is happily integrated in our consumer culture, the role of the architect in society becomes all the more pressing. If what we design doesn’t ‘sell’, will we still design it? Plan B Hive attempts a balance between provocation and pragmatism.

This oscillation or tension is arguably characteristic of many cultural responses to recent global events. In an age of financial crisis, political instability, climate pressures and natural disasters, these responses tend to “oscillate between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy” (Vermeulen and Van den Akker 5).”

The provocative tone was primarily fuelled by Dogma, who propose somewhat terrifying urban visions. But in doing so, they catalyse reflection on the dilemmatic future of human settlement by shifting the focus to the broader city and the land required to sustain it. Plan B Hive similarly attempts an urban provocation for density and resilience. But it also tempers the level of extremist polemic compared with Dogma’s more radical absolutism, by applying such a doctrine to a real, highly contextual scenario. It is an example of a softened dogma, slightly less formal and dramatically more realistic. It becomes a test that interrogates the amount of dogma necessary, juggling polemic and practicality.

The Design seeks to protect mankind from possible chaos on one hand and yet denies a fully entropic redemption on the other, exposing the dialectical tensions in such a scenario. While being a fundamentally resilient outpost, it is a political archetype that concretises a largely ephemeral and precarious undercurrent.

In a time when peripheral urban contexts are undergoing violent morphological change, Plan B Hive ultimately provokes a disciplinary question in the way we settle these landscapes.

While it contains lines of dogmatism, and it is certainly emphatic, this may be necessary to chart an alternative route away from a frightening urban dilemma, instead imagining one where the architect can slowly regain a grip over the form of the future city. Might we be better off if all architecture had a little dogma?

Plan B Hive attempts to therefore oscillate between the negative and the positive.

Essentially preserving oscillation as its only persistent characteristic, it critiques the situation while remaining subservient within it.

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Figure 131 // How much Dogma?

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;And we will laugh at the days when you spent the entire evening talking about some European you've never met who designed a building you will never see because you are too busy working on something that will never get built.â&#x20AC;?

(Annie Choi)

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Figure 132 // Close up of Plan B Hive elevation 199

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Figure 133 // Early sketch

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WORKS CITED

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Deconstructivist Architecture in New Zealand.” SAHANZ Conference: 30, vol. 1 (2013) p29-40. Web. 01/02/2014 <http:// www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/ pdf_file/0005/531527/S01_03_Barrie_ Architecture-to-a-Fault.pdf>

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Berlage Institute, (2003). Print.

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Black, David. “Scottish political plots thicken in Miralles parliament saga.” Architects’ Journal Vol. 1. London. (2000): 11. Print.

Aureli, Pier Vittorio. The City as a Project.

Berlin: Ruby Press, 2013. Print.

Branzi, Andrea. No-stop City: Archizoom Associati. Orléans: HYX, 2006. Print.

---. Discussion with Sven-Olov Wallenstein. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, 2012.

Web Video. 08/09/2014. <https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=7NNlxltFvVA>

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FIGURES LIST All figures not attributed are authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own.

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Figure 8

Damage after Wellingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most recent quake.

Source: <http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8946666/ Wellington-streets-deserted-after-quake>

Figure 9

Beehive in Ruins.

Source: <http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/ aftershock-2008>

Figure 10

Summarised facts from Government plan.

Source: <http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/ politics/10025688/Disaster-plan-moves-Government-toAuckland>

Figure 13

Tokyo Rinkai Disaster Prevention Park Source: <http://www.gotokyo.org/data/en/smartphonespot?page-id=23487&PHPSESSID=7krvt6tpv5edfr464s 78tjv6h1>

Figure 15

Wellington and surrounding regions Source: Density information from 2013 Census, StatsNZ

Figure 16

As seen from NASA Source: (2011) <http:/photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ SRTM?start=200>

Figure 19

Low densities Source: Density information from 2013 Census, StatsNZ. Redrawn by Gwena Gilbert.

Figure 22

Coastal risks Source: Redrawn from <http://www.kapiticoast.govt.nz/ Planning/District-Plan-Review/Natural-Hazards/NaturalHazard-Maps/>

Figure 33

Moscow city outskirts.

Source: <http://issuu.com/mosurbanforum/docs/ archaeology_of_the_periphery>

Figure 35

Settlement patterns Source: <http://www.viralnova.com/29_stunning_ satellite_images/>

207

Figure 74

Manifesto overlaid on Stop City Source: Aureli, Pier, and Martino Tattara Dogma : 11 Projects. London: AA Publications, 2013. Print.

Figure 76

Berlin as green archipelago Source: <http://projectivecities.aaschool.ac.uk/news/>

Figure 78-81

All Dogma case studies Source: Aureli, Pier, and Martino Tattara Dogma : 11 Projects. London: AA Publications, 2013. Print.

Figure 87

Arthur Erickson: Lethbridge Source: <http://www.arthurerickson.com/educationalbuildings/>

Figure 88

Climat de France Source: <http://socks-studio.com/2014/01/22/climatde-france-1954-1957-in-algiers-by-fernand-pouillon/>

Figure 94

Rocinha Favela Source: <http://www.guiadasfavelas.com/en/?page_ id=1263>

Figure 95

Montenegro Terraces Source: <http://www.big.dk/#projects-mont>

Figure 96

No Stop City Source: <http://www.designboom.com/interviews/ andrea-branzi/>

Figure 101

Low-income Housing: Vittorio Gregotti Source: Rykwert, J. (1996). Vittorio Gregotti & Associates = Gregotti Associati. New York: Rizzoli.

Figure 102

Art Center College of Design: Craig Ellwood Source: <http://socks-studio.com/2013/11/07/a-line-inthe-landscape-craig-ellwoods-1977-inhabited-bridge/>

Figure 107

Zollverein. SANAA Source: <http://www.archdaily.com/54212/zollvereinschool-of-management-and-design-sanaa/>

Figure 108

Innovation Centre: Elemental Source: <http://www.archdaily.com/549152/innovationcenter-uc-anacleto-angelini-alejandro-aravena-elemental/>

208

Figure 110

Sau Paulo Museum of Art: Lina Bo Bardi Source: <http://www.archdaily.com/537063/ad-classicssao-paulo-museum-of-art-masp-lina-bo-bardi/>

Figure 112

Facade experiments - all precedents from: Source: All from <http://www.archdaily.com/>

Figure 118

Presenting the design, NZIA Graphisoft.

Source: Mark Southcombe Photography

Figure 121

A Field of Walls, 2012 Dogma.

Source: Aureli, Pier, and Martino Tattara Dogma : 11 Projects. London: AA Publications, 2013. Print.

Figure 122

Athfield House: Ian Athfield Source: <http://www.catherinegriffiths.co.nz/01-athfieldarchitects.html>

Figure 123

Shenzen Stock Exchange: OMA Source: <http://www.dezeen.com/2013/10/08/omacompletes-shenzhen-stock-exchange/>

Figure 124

Caracas, Informal urbanism Source: <http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ ID%3D3537%26URL_DO%3DDO_TOPIC%26URL_ SECTION%3D201.html>

Figure 125

Palazzo della CiviltĂ Italiana Source: <http://www.italiainfoto.com/gallery/eur-roma/ p5770-palazzo-della-civilt-e0-del-lavoro-roma.html>

Figure 126

Museum of Modern Literature: David Chipperfield Source: <http://www.bustler.net/index.php/article/ chipperfields_museum_of_modern_literature_takes_ stirling>

Figure 127

From Fascism to Fashion Source: <http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2013/07/18/ fendi-moves-headquarters-to-palazzo-della-civilta-italianoin-rome>

Figure 128

432 Park Avenue: Rafael Vignoly Source: <http://www.designboom.com/architecture/ rafael-vinolys-432-park-avenue-to-become-the-tallestbuilding-in-the-hemisphere/>

Figure 129

Collage of pure forms in history Source: <http://waithinktank.com/Book>

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PLAN B HIVE

AN OUTPOST IN THE HINTERLAND

Benjamin John Allnatt 2015

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