| The Editorial  The Unbuilt Projects
By Byron Kinnaird
Following last weeks feature of the Timber Design Awards, the announcement of the AAA Cavalier Bremworth Award Winners grabbed my attention immediately. Where the Timber Design Awards have the prestige of being constructed and flexed with the seasons and occupants, the Auckland Architecture Association 'Cav Brem' Awards have a youthful cheekiness to them, an unperturbed luminosity (quite literally it seems), afforded most obviously by the condition that they are unbuilt (mostly, it seems).
Congratulations must first be passed on to the Joint Winners of the Open Category: OH.NO.SUMO's 'Cupcake Pavilion' (which you can find out about here), and Patterson Associates 'Lighting up the Auckland Harbour Bridge' (more on them here), who were selected by the Judging Panel of Camilla Block, Simon Twose and Aaron Paterson. The Student Category was Awarded to AUT's Yosop Ryoo for "No Mans Land" (which you can catch a beautiful glimpse of here), which explores "eternal rest and cancellation of rest" in the invaded Symonds Street Cemeteries.
The Competition is notable for attracting a diversity of work which is rarely published, and a type of work in itself which is inherently more adventurous then seen in more conventional award programmes. The Runners-up and Merited entries for this years awards are incredibly exciting, with Mohamed Kheir's (student work) "The Stratified Lines of Deterritorialisation" portraying a dystopian drawn world reminiscent of Wellington Reiter's imagined schemes. A resurgence of hand-drawn worlds is also on show in the Merited "Rubix Muse", made by a collaborative fleet based at Jasmax, which proposes a brilliantly coloured 'building as vending machine', featuring ten modules of absurdly and wonderfully economised lifestyles from the Urban Campsite (at $5/hr, and 3x3x3m) to the Cousteau-themed Love Hotel ($50/hr for 3x3x3m). You can see much more of this project here.
With the help of projects created during the one-day invitational design charette as a part of Auckland's Architecture Week, there seems to have been an influx in more speculative entries in the Open Category this year, which I think should define this competition given its appealing and open-armed invitation. The awarding of the student work is also exciting, firstly they're the only architectural design prize alternative to the NZIA's 'travel awards', and secondly for their much broader canvas of students works regardless of year and institutional allegiance.
Congratulations again to the deserving winners, and if you are gutted you didn't enter, check out the Festival of Lively Architecture featured in this edition below, a French-based competition for temporary installations taking submissions now! | Calendar  | 4-29 NOV [NZ]
German Film Festival
Travelling New Zealand major centers through November.
25-28 NOV [AKL]
Unitec Grad Show
Exhibition and Performance from Architecture, Design & Visual Arts, Landscape Architecture, and Performing and Screen Arts programmes of Unitec.
Opening party 25th November, 5.30pm to late.
More info here
3-18 DEC [AKL]
Dulux BeST Design Awards
Exhibition Opening 6pm, St Paul St Gallery, AUT
St Paul Street, Auckland. Free and open to public.
| | The Products  | Climasystem from Aquatherm
The climatherm- pipe system has been developed especially for applications outside the potable water installation.
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| UPVC from Fabtech
FABTECH uPVC window systems are manufactured using the Rehau uPVC profiles and meet the Rehau Window Systems quality standards. FABTECH offers an advanced range of windows that can be mixed and matched for new buildings and replacement solutions. The FABTECH/Rehau quality sign stands for ambition and power. It assures quality, functional design and a long life cycle.
It shows that you can count on FABTECH and it is the surety for reliability of your clients and therefore also for your success. REHAUMulti has perfected the multi-chambered profi le for effective accoustic insulation. The door and wndow profiles have either two or three chambers that improve thermal performance and efficiency. FABTECH/Rehau Window Systems meet international quality and regulatory standards and are accredited by both international and national regulation bodies.
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|  | Floorspace
Floorspace now has two exciting new carpet tile ranges that we are holding stock of in New Zealand. The Tandus Ecobond carpet tile is a super-dense (12th gauge), solution-dyed, high grade (6,6) nylon on a recycled content PVC backing that exceeds the requirements of the GBC. 100% recyclable with a 15yr commercial warranty.
Currents:
In colours ‘Force’ and ‘Fusion’ –Inspired by oceanic wave movement and white-wash, currents illustrates the constant flow of water as it crashes into the coastline. Currents uses a textured loop construction to enhance the visual metamorphosis of the floor to changing natural levels of light in the built environment.
Designed by Lizzie Kang who was trained by Suzanne Tick in developing cutting edge textile art in New York.
Currents is a large scale pattern which will visually enhance larger open spaces and is coordinated with three other styles in the same fibre colours so as to be able to mix pattern designs and use a dual-scale effect for smaller or narrower areas and add a more organic feel.
Currents is priced for the most value conscious commercial client and has spec’s that will equal the best on the market in any price bracket.
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| | Permapave
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Permpave is specifically engineered, porous that allows rainwater to flow through the body of the paver, thereby returning it to the watercourse. Permapave provides a practical and economical solutions to controlling stormwater pollution, outflow, and soil rehydration. It filters 100% of gross pollutants from storm water run off, reduces the burden on current storm water infrastructure, whilst providing the durable surface required by our urban way of life.
Developed in Australia and used worldwide, the PermapaveTM paver systems are made under license in New Zealand.
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|  | Eldorado Stone™ from Hard as Rocks
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Although this lightweight stone veneer can be specified on new homes and other projects it can also be applied to most existing buildings without the need for a building consent or structural alterations.
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| Thermagenius from Leap Ecosystems
The THERMAGENIUS Integrated Heat Pump Water Heater by LEAP is brand new solution to your water heating needs.
THERMAGENIUS is a 300 litre Hot Water Cylinder and Heat Pump Water Heater in one, providing an indoor alternative that not only looks nice enough to sit next to your other appliances, it is also an excellent performer.
With efficiencies in excess of 300% THERMAGENIUS will work year round to extract energy from the air to heat your water. Unobtrusive, easy to install and cheap to run, THERMAGENIUS is a smart way to heat the water in your home.
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|  | Celcrete
In times of increasing environmental awareness, any material that looks thepart, keeps your home whisper quiet and leaves a tiny ecological footprint is surelya giant step forward for us all. Celcrete is just such a green construction innovation. This aerated concrete building material has been popular throughout Europe for years, and is now widely used in Australia, the United States and Japan.Today, Celcrete cladding panels and solid-block building systems bring NewZealand house builders the opportunity to achieve a masonry home at economic costs.
Celcrete’s cellular makeup means it is a one fifth of the weight of standard concreteand is easy to install. It can be cut, drilled, channelled and shaped on site, using conventional hand or power tools. If all this wasn’t enough, Celcrete ismade from raw, abundant materials and is free of pollutants and toxic substances.Celcrete is offered in exterior cladding panels, solid blocks, load-bearing panels,interior wall panels and veneer blocks.
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| The Tech Bit  Polyflor Templates for Revit BIM Projects arrive.
By Jason Howden, IT Systems Manager - Archaus Architects
As a leading manufacturer of floor coverings, and directly represented in New Zealand by James Halstead Flooring. Polyflor is the first Resilient Vinyl Flooring Manufacturer in New Zealand, through Productspec to invest in REVIT format, making it quicker and easier for you to create your floor surface finishes and enhancing your designs.A wide range of colours that is continually increasing, has been created into REVIT format, across the many variety of product ranges Polyflor has to offer.
For more information view the Polyflor Range on Productspec or watch the video link.
“The Polyflor Revit floor templates allow me to quickly test different surface finishes in my Revit BIM Projects without having to source the individual digital images of each flooring type to include in my 3d visualisations.” Jason Howden – Archaus Architects. | The Website  | Odosketch
From design agency Odopod based in San Francisco, comes this playful, and hugely usable sketching interface. Set up as an online gallery of sorts, the site essentially gives you a clean canvas, a bunch of marker pens (ranging in size and colour) and a free reign to sketch what ever you like onscreen.
What sets this particular site above other online sketching interfaces, is the subtle but hugely usable and intuitive responsiveness of the markers on the 'page'. Responding simply to the speed of the pen motion (using your mouse or stylus), the width of the markers expands, giving the experience an incredibly smooth and expressive feeling. Other pretty functions include a speedy 'reload' which plays back the entire sketch chronologically, as well as the ability to save your sketches. Worth a try for entertainment, or more serious dabbling in the digital arts. | | The Chair  | Typo Chair by Michael Bom
Hugely reminiscent of the Freitag up-cycling ethos which has transformed trucking canvas into unique and sturdy satchels, the Typo Chair is constructed of recycled billboards of Finnish Birch. Formally, the planar and fragmented construction suitably echoes the modulated history of the material, with a nod to low-tech typographic collage as well.
Featured recently also was Bomdesign's Boeklampen, another beautiful up-cycle, so I might have to leave them alone after this, although as a (de)parting comment, I would absolutely love it so much more if the craft of these objects could somehow be designed more economically, a feature which I failed to mention earlier is the shamefully high price of these objects, this chair will set you back over a grand. Tsk tsk.
| | The Portfolio 
|  | Matt Taylor
1. 'Skullduggery' T-Shirt, Burp Boutique
2. Big Science (detail) Editorial Wired Magazine
3. Big Science (detail) Editorial Wired Magazine
4. 'Rockers' T-shirt, Graniph
5. Dance Crazes (detail) Editorial, Mixmag Magazine
6. 'Great Escapes' (detail) Little White Lies Magazine
7. Ubik book cover (detail)
8. 'The End of the Tunnel' (detail) - The Ride Journal
9. The Wild Hunt T-shirt, Tee Fury
| | The Competition  | Festival of Lively Architecture
It's that time of year again for Montpellier to gear up towards it 5th Festival of Lively Architecture, with a call for installation entries on the theme: 'Between shadow and light'. Launched by the association Champ Libre, the compeition invites young architects and landscape architects to "propose a journey to the visitors, sort of an architectural discovery in the middle of the city."
Last years winners and entrants (10 are to be selected this year) can be checked out here, with a great variety of small-scale interventions on show. The application is due December 15, which doesn't give you too long to get it together, keeping in mind the application should include some appropriate references of your work (competition, realisation, installation...) and a blurb on the project thematic. Successful entrants are also awarded a reasonable sum of funding towards the realisation.
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| The Video  | Trans-form-ers Video documentation
If you didn't make it along to Trans-form-ers installation event as a part of Architecture Week, the student projects which explored ephemeral and dynamic forms of spatial intervention have been documented here in several videos by the participating students from the University of Auckland, AUT and Unitec students of Architecture.
Although the video's show only a glimpse of the 45 projects on show across two buildings, they give a great sense of the occasion from both perspectives of the students (in development and process) and the audience, who are seen bustling around and through the interventions.
Pip Chesire managed to make his way around every installation on the night, and awarded 'Non Inflate' with first prize (hard to miss on the video), and 'This Way Up' as runners up. Highly commended (or 'heroic failures') were awarded to 'Dynamic Folding', 'Belladona' and 'Stretch'.
The all-important Public Vote on the night went to 'Spacebook', followed by 'Non Inflate' in second, and This Way Up in third. A great event and project, which is commendable for getting innovative and gutsy student work out to the public.
| | The Object  | ShapeMaker Blocks from millergoodman
Doritos Packaging Concept by Petar PavlovIts pretty hard to top the plastic fantastic chips packaging, certainly from a recyclers point of view, but there is something economical about sealing food in a bag and selling it. This brave attempt by Petar Pavlov is somewhat like a 1960's view of futuristic space-food, so automatically quite cool, but the achingly literal use of triangular geometries is either inspired or cheesy (like that pun).Although it seems unlikely this concept will go ahead, there are some great perks, first off a harder package will keep those triangles of goodness rather more intact, as well as being able to form an eating bowl of sorts, and they do look pretty sharp on the shelf. My only and main concern would be the pesky need for a second skin of packaging for freshness, or you'd have to use an infused cardboard-plastic hybrid, which I figure would be chilling out in the landfill for a few centuries. As a special treat, check out this surprisingly dark advert for Doritos. Brilliant. | | The Book  | Rainbow in your Hand by Mahashi Kawamura
Initiated as a personal project in 2007, the Rainbow in your Hand book was quickly published by the curious Japanese bookstore Utrecht. The book is a clever one-up on the standard (but under-rated) flip-book, but rather than seeing an animation on the page, it creates a three-dimensional rainbow right there.
Winner of a prestigious ADC Silver Cube award, Rainbow in your Hand is deservedly catchy design, which exhibits some subtle but clever innovation on the spaces of books, other examples of which have featured in Spe[a]k over the last few weeks.
Another experiment from Mahashi Kawamura, An Arbitrary Point P, similarly explores three-dimensional reading, this time including a set of 3D Glasses which enlivens each diagram and image for the reader. Well worth a look, and a think about. |
| The Event  | Unitec Grad Show
In case you missed my mention in the last issue of Spe[a]k, Unitec's Graduate exhibition will be opening this week on Wednesday evening, and after the Auckland schools did an epic job of Architecture Week and Trans-form-ers (check the video in this edition), Unitec is now announcing its Grad Show, which like Wellington did earlier in the month, will celebrate a range of its programmes in one exciting exhibition.
This Wednesday November 25th, from 5.30pm until late we're promised - and I don't doubt it from the Asylum - Carrington will host graduate work from Architecture, Design & Visual Arts, Landscape Architecture, and Performing and Screen Arts, the latter being a fantastic and unique inclusion, which will include performances on opening night. The exhibition will only be on for three days until the end of the week, so make sure you get down to check out the formidable work on show, like Daniel McEwan's dark drawing here. |
| The Project  | Bodies in Urban Spaces
Premiered at the Festival Paris Quartier d’été in 2007, the 'Bodies in Urban Spaces' performance was devised by Willi Dormer, and has since explored Berlin, London, Paris and Philadelphia, each with intriguing and arresting style.
The roaming performance is an ephemeral intervention in diverse urban architectonic environments, with the intention to "point out the urban functional strucutre and to uncover the restricted movement possibilities and behaviour as well as rules and limitations."
Video documentation of the impressive and playful performance can be viewed here, which illustrates the relationship between the performers and the audience, who are guided by the fluid group through public and semi-public spaces. "A chain of physical interventions set up quickly and only existing temporarily, allows the viewer to perceive the same space or place in a new and different way - on the run."
A particularly well documented featurette of its performance at the Philadelphia Fringe festival can be veiwed here. |
| The Closer
Let me know if there are any issues out there going undiscussed, or fantastic projects doing unseen or unheard of, we would love to see and hear about them. Its nearly summer apparently, although climatically things are being a bit grim, I hope things are winding up well for the end of the year.
Yours from well indoors,
Byron Kinnaird
Spe[a]k Editor
speak@productspec.net |
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