Britomart

We have an exciting update from our Landscape Architecture team! Our Nohonga designed for the Te Nohonga Tuarua Seat Design Challenge Round Two, has now been officially installed at Britomart. The event is organised by Brick Bay, Britomart, Resene, and the NZILA.

The challenge

Back in June, our Landscape Architecture team were announced as finalists in the Te Nohonga Tuarua Seat Design Challenge Round Two. More info HERE. The design brief was to come up with a concept relative to climate resilience. Our teams design is titled Mataora, and it references the circle of life, a hinaki form, and a weaved net. It talks about the journey of life, through learning, discovery, change, and adaptation. Being finalists meant that we were able to take the design to the next stage, which is building and installing at Britomart.

Now that our design is officially installed at Britomart, it will then be later be stationed at Brick Bay. This morning there was a ceremony for the Nohonga down at Britomart. There was a blessing before some short speeches from the sponsors and then a short intro from each team to their Nohonga.

Interview with Jeremy Hansen from Britomart

Jeremy Hansen from Britomart, interviewed our team as “one of two design teams are thinking about climate resilience while sitting down.” Below is an excerpt from the interview:

JEREMY HANSEN:Part of your Nohonga seat is modelled on a hīnaki or eel trap. What made you choose it as a metaphor?

JOSEPH MCCREADY: The location we’re designing for in Britomart is sort of on the historical precipice between fresh water and salt water. That’s the realm of eels, tuna. Māori would’ve harvested tuna at river mouths that would’ve exited into the Waitematā Harbour. Most hīnaki were actually constructed of quite relatively fragile pieces, but as a whole, through the amazing design and construction over probably generations and generations, all those quite fragile parts combined to create quite a strong structure that’s designed to provide sustenance to people. So we’re playing with that form and cutting through it. If you cut a slice right through a hīnaki you end up with quite a round shape, which then gives us the chance to use a bit of designers’ licence to connect it to something bigger: cycles of life, birth, death, changes of season and that sort of thing.

CHARLOTTE GRIEVE We wanted it to be playful from the start. So the net kind of lent itself to that, a play element inserted within just a regular thing. When you look inside the circle you notice the use of color, which has just been through application of paint. And then we’ve used the colorful net, so to try and give it some impact.

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JEREMY HANSEN:How does your design respond to the theme of climate resilience in its material selection?

CHARLOTTE GRIEVE We have tried to use recycled materials where we can – the that we’ve used for the seat is from off-cuts from our manufacturers.

JOSEPH MCCREADY The first concept used concrete, and so we went through design iterations to try and reduce the weight and the embodied carbon in the seat. We landed on a folded sheet of steel and some recycled timber. It’s very simple. You have the volume and the permanent kind of look and mass without actually having to use the concrete.

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JEREMY HANSEN: How do you feel as landscape architects about your ability to mitigate climate change?

CHARLOTTE GRIEVE: I reckon it’s about making places usable, but not just for humans, for all types of species. You can make a space that humans can inhabit and socialise in and whatnot, but you can also introduce plants that can hold a whole ecosystem for other species. So it’s just sort about making New Zealand and the world habitable for everyone, not just for us.

JOSEPH MCCREADY: When I first started out, everything was quite tortured and mono-cultured, with very manicured lawns and hedges and straight lines, with all the effort and maintenance and costs and inputs that come with that system. But I think over the last 15 or so years, people have started to relax a bit more. And so you see more meadows, more naturalised planting types.

CHARLOTTE GRIEVE: That being with nature, not dominating it.

JOSEPH MCCREADY: It’s chilling out, relaxing a bit more and letting things sort be what they are rather than forcing them to be something they’re not. I kind of see us as that interface between natural systems and architectural form. I think landscape architects do a good job of providing for ecosystems and natural processes to happen in and around those buildings.