Bed

Here's a blog post talking about how I did a small project of my own - building a car bed in my Nissan Tiida hatchback for small road trips.

Pro-tip: always reverse into the best view.

Ever since going camping in my friend's Honda Fit - a relatively small hatchback - I started thinking of what I could do with my own car. My workmate also removed the back seats from his van and created a plywood haven with a kitchenette, providing inspiration. Staying in Airbnbs and motels/backpackers can get a bit samey and I've always wanted to give the character-filled camp sites a go without the drama of a tent.

The Honda Fit has the advantage of having the back seats lay down flush with the boot floor, so add a foam mattress and you're sorted. My Nissan Tiida is a different story - the seats laid down are quite a bit higher than the boot so it needs something to raise it up.

The Tiida is longer than it looks and with the front seats pushed as far forward as possible, there is just enough length for me lying down. Anyone shorter should be fine!

The car bed in it's set up state, mattress in. You can see the storage space underneath.

Chuck bags up the front, less used items underneath, the arm rests/door pulls hold our phones. 

Putting my architect skills to good use, I measured it up and started drawing.

Lying down in the car, I could get a sense of how much room I would have to sleep. Headspace is an issue, but it is passable. The simple X-shaped baffle support was the brain child of my fellow architect Han. Highlights the importance of bouncing ideas off others. One of my engineer friends thought up something far too complicated. Go architects!

I ended up purchasing a single sheet of 1.2 x 2.4m plywood (12mm thick) and cutting them into panels. Then a few cut outs and some sanding later, it was all done!

A bit of planning before prefabrication, always best to use material as efficiently as possible. I also made sure the plywood was E0 grade which means that almost has no toxic formaldehyde emissions as we would be cooped up in the car with it.

All it needs is a bit of set up and a thin self-inflating mattress. Unfortunately the head space isn't very much but it's alright as a sleeping platform. Feels like a capsule hotel in Japan. The upside of building it up a platform is that we get storage space inside the baffle construction.

A few details: we made 'curtains' with suction cups to stick to the inside of the windows. For the back seat windows we opened them up a crack for cross ventilation and put mosquito nets over the doors.

None of it is permanent, it's just a few plywood panels that can be removed through the side door. To drive, we just slide the panels on top of each other and slide the front seats back to driving position.

Now we can do weekend road trips easy as!

AW2013

It's right in the middle of Architecture Week 2013 and numerous events have been happening in Auckland and, I understand, across the country. The main event is the exhibition at Silo Park (open 9am to 6pm all week and weekend), and the fun opening night that went with it. Even though the weather has been Civil Defence warning worthy in some places, there was a great turnout to the lunchtime panel discussions and last night's discussion at Jasmax.

The exhibition shows a wide range of work including non-architectural work by architectural graduates. As good as Urbis Design Day.

Is Architecture Week merely an inward-looking industry event? It happens every year and is open to all. Yet you don't see the public engaging with architecture and more specifically, architectural design. It doesn't get the attention that other creative industries receive - the international film festivals, art exhibitions, music events and even Taste (I learned today it involves 18 countries worldwide). What is it about Kiwi culture that seems to disregard architecture as a creative profession that is worth getting to know?

Anyone can say this is a pretty model of a building, but very few in the public audience could point out what's good and bad about the design.

Having been to Open House in London and Dublin, I can see how great architectural design can be appreciated by the public who come in swarms to see different buildings and hear about their conception. Open House is an international programme that allows the public to visit buildings that are usually not open to the public. Our version of this? The budding AAA tours that happen on a sporadic basis. If you're not in the architecture industry, you probably didn't even know we have an Auckland Architecture Association. Or not to mention the elusive New Zealand Institute of Architects.

The Longroom at Trinity College Dublin. A huge line of people waiting to be toured around the immaculately designed educational facility. It is completely free. No such large scale event like this in New Zealand.

There are many architects who believe the public do not need to understand or engage with architecture. In some way, people cannot avoid architecture so are already 'engaging', however, there is a lot more that needs to be done in terms of education and a shift in ideology toward architecture to ensure the survival of the profession and good design in our city.

Architecture Week is open for all - this year it is themed Architecture + Women and touch on issues of equality and equity. Do check out their programme and visit some of the events. Next weekend I will be helping with a workshop at Silo Park that lets the public get hands on with discussing housing issues. 

I managed to get onto on of the panels through Kathy Waghorn's Fluid City project, community-engaging architectural installations.

Important

A message to the paparazzi by Benedict Cumberbatch, known to some of us as the 'new' Sherlock:

Benedict Cumberbatch to paparazzi: "Go photograph Egypt and show the world something important." pic.twitter.com/l0ADTHnZOU
— Ellie Hall (@ellievhall) August 17, 2013

Some food for thought as to where our photography/journalism talent is going or not going.

Eco-mobility

What ifs: a future with eco-mobility.

Auckland, New Zealand, may be a small-scale city compared to others around the world but it has its share of mobility issues. It certainly isn't ‘eco-mobile’. Give us the slightest drizzle of rain and suddenly traffic jams up. Our public transport system? A prime target for casual hate sentiment. On a bad day it even has its own hashtag on Twitter.

Our lingering problem is that Auckland grew out generally unplanned. A few centres formed then the rest was haphazard 'fill the gaps' development. An extensive coast-to-coast tram network was removed in the modernist 1950s in favour of cars, cars and more cars. That unfortunate mentality remains today – it is our symbol of freedom, a part of the Kiwi dream.

But now in the 21^st century, we have the knowledge and, hopefully, the drive to create more sustainable transport options for the future of our cities. In an attempt to experience the local day-to-day of Melbourne, Australia, I chose to travel everyday by train in from the suburbs. The transport card reminded me of similar systems I used around London and China – the hallmark of an integrated transport network. Of course, there are the things to be expected: an occasional late train, thinking "why did I ever resort to public transport?" But all in all, the robust infrastructure allows you to go anywhere around Melbourne without a car.

There is always a rivalry between New Zealand and our neighbour Australia. Auckland, like many cities around the world, is going through some growth pains. Transport infrastructure, such as the City Rail Link, aimed at a future Auckland is being introduced, sparking great debate. Although we may beat many Australian cities on the ubiquitous liveability scales, this won’t continue if Auckland grows at its current rate without further thought and action.

"We know there is still a lot of work to be done. Our transport infrastructure puts us behind other cities on the international indices, and handicaps our people and our economy."
- Mayor Len Brown, Mayor of Auckland 

It’s just so hard for people operating in a car-centric city like Auckland to even imagine what it would be like to be in an eco-mobile city. We don’t know what it is like to live in a cycling city such as Amsterdam or drive around in an eco-mobile vehicle.  We don't know how it feels to be in a city without a desperate need for cars and smelly diesel buses! Connecting with other cities with different technologies and new ideas on eco-mobility gives us more insight to improve our city's transport.

The Eco-mobility World Festival 2013 happening later in the year calls upon the ‘global village’ to explore these ideas. The Korean city of Suwon takes on a very practical challenge to prove the merits of eco-mobility. Using technologies and approaches from across the world, the Haenggung-dong neighbourhood is going without cars for an entire month during the festival. Is this an incredible feat? Or will be it effortless? We shall see! This is where some people will get to experience eco-mobility in the flesh. For the rest of us who aren’t at the festival, this knowledge will be shared over oceans to start changing our thinking around daily transport; a different philosophy in getting from A to B. 

Personally, I can’t wait to see what comes out of it!

Transform

Last week I flew over to Melbourne to attend architecture conferences run by our Australian counterparts. I attended Transform, a fringe event to the national architecture conference Material. Underscored by 'Altering the Future of Architecture', it was a fitting title that reflected the day's programme.

One of the many panel discussions.

Initially the conference was pitched to me as an event about gender equality. The primary instigator was Parlour (women, equity, architecture), so naturally the increasingly discussed topic of women in the workplace was at the forefront of the participant's minds. On top of this important equality discussion, the event was about the profession in general and the themes discussed were applicable to all, not just women.

The crux of the workshops and talks was,

"If architecture was more inclusive would it also be in a stronger position?"

It was a lot to think about within the space of a day, especially with the perpetual dialogue between various practitioners, academics, students and foreigners. Listening to various positions on the subject, engaging in workshop discussions and taking part in frenzied networking (also known as tea breaks) certainly gave a full bodied experience around the issue of transforming the status quo of the profession. Undoubtedly, everyone left the day with a more open mind about what 'architecture' as a profession is in the 21st century.

A formidable project taken on by the team at Parlour was to create a set of guidelines for work equity, a list of pressing issues for the workplace: pay equity, leadership, recruitment, mentorship, negotiation, long hours, part-time work, flexibility, career break and registration. The 'equity guidelines' that are at a draft stage at the moment (and are open to feedback so do leave a comment for the Parlour team) are specifically tailored to women in architecture, but are weighty food for thought for anyone in the industry - male or female, student, graduate or established practitioner, alike.

Round table discussion.

Any industry undergoes constant change but during the last decade the architectural profession appears to be breaking the mould a bit. The diversity of the career path in architecture was elaborated on via panelists talking about their approach, whether it be by branching out to other disciplines, different funding models or reinventing architecture as we know it. It was so good to have the discussion at such a scale for Australia/New Zealand.

This discussion will come to NZ in the form of Architecture Week 2013 - Architecture + Women NZ (A+W NZ) is holding a similar event – A+W NZ's core team was there at the conference, seeing how a similar event could be run here. There will be keynote speakers along with an exhibition and possibly a designed pavilion erected for the week. The visibility of the architectural profession, equity issues and the role of women in architecture will be the focus of the event. I'll let you know more as it develops.

Boom

How do you feel about Auckland's population boom? This is the topic of discussion as our city plans for the future. With the amalgamation of 7 different councils and the drafting of the Unitary Plan, there is much food for thought and bureaucratic logistics to be had.

This is what they thought in the 1960s:

A quaint short film on how they saw the city developing jars with many of the ideas we now have around urban planning, design and architecture, particularly around sustainable development. Many are outdated modernist concepts.

A brief summary: cars, cars and more cars; highways and carpark buildings were amazing; unsustainable urban sprawl created the Kiwi dream.

And once I get around to it, I'll have some blog posts about my (very architectural) trip to Melbourne!

Dirt

Roland Reiner Tiangco's 'Dirt Poster' is only for those who get their hands dirty, a call to action as much as a clever way to communicate a message. 

Can't be more true, in my opinion.

Thesis

Some of you may know that I'm doing a Master of Architecture (prof) degree at the University of Auckland. As this year is my final year, I'll be preparing a design thesis - this is basically partly a written thesis (although not as intense or comprehensive as a PhD thesis) and an architectural design project. The latter involves designing a building based on your research and researching by designing.

And so it begins, the final push before actually starting a career in architecture. Some of my fellow thesis people are starting blogs about their thesis work. Although I'm not sure what the intention is (my supervisor and I had a bit of a discussion about this), blogging and the creative process is a very compatible thing. That we have to write as well as create makes it all the more a union. Often blogging is underutilised or, even more sadly, ditched before the water is deep.

Considering the prospect myself, I thought 'hey, I already have a successful blog with lots of readership and a plethora of creative gems from years and years of collecting!' So I thought I'd record my thesis blog on Creative Collision as a way of keeping it up and processing my thoughts. I did also consider just writing a post which said, 'hey guys, see you next year when I finish my thesis and recover from the subsequent implosion.'

Blogging about your creative process is one of the most personal things a creative person can do. Not to mention my thesis is of a very personal topic - exploring my family's roots and Chinese culture in the Auckland context. It is so exposing and you need determination to get through putting things that is happening onto the public realm. Basically, you need balls of steel. Particularly if you get "constructive criticism".

I do invite you to comment on what I am doing and I'll try my best to make it palatable for a wider audience. By the end of the year, hopefully things will have gone swimmingly.

I've created a new label 'Thesis' to keep the thesis posts marked. They will be about creative things and hopefully in line with the rest of the blog. There is also the option to subscribe on the left hand bar (just enter your email address). More pretty pictures to come.

Trust

With the advent of 'internet piracy', the music industry is changing and there are some who are embracing new ways to make a living with making music (as well as those who resist of course). A great example is Amanda Palmer, whose style is a mix between punk and cabaret. Personally not my flavour of music but wow, the way she goes about sharing her music is powerful stuff.

Her main game is trust: trusting fans, couch surfing & crowd surfing (which she talks a bit about in her TED talk - showed above, well worth viewing) and allowing those fleeting moments of interaction with people to form that trust. An extremist devotee of trust (compared to most of us anyway), it has served her well. She keeps coming back to one of her jobs standing on the street as an 8-foot bride, kind of like busking for money. Short moments of bonding, the experience of being acknowledged (good and bad), and an apparently steady income taught her this new path of music making.

If she comes to Auckland for a free gig or something, would love to see her work her magic. She also has a very well populated Twitter account which has helped with real time crowd/fan engagement.

Lady

Here's a bit of pre-Banksy feminist guerilla art, going against the general wave of the times.

Hotere

With great sadness I report the passing of Ralph Hotere, one of my favourite artists and an outstanding example of an artist-activitst. Described as the 'warrior artist' he uses his art as an arsenal to fight issues of injustice, destruction of the environment and of deep spirituality.

The courage displayed in his work pervades the ongoing timeline of NZ history - points such as Aramoana,  and activism for being nuclear-free - to artworks of enormous presence such as Godwit/Kuaka, inspired by a Maori chant and the godwits' migration it was originally a piece welcoming people to Aotearoa at the Auckland International Airport's arrivals area. Now the 18 metre long Godwit/Kuaka is displayed at the Auckland Art Gallery for all to see.

Rest in peace Ralph Hotere, you've given us so much. And I hope very much we will see your courage and conviction in all generations to come, not only in art, but with all that we do.

Tiny2

Last time I featured micro-housing, I mentioned architect Gary Chang's trendy and transforming little apartment. Today I saw a picture on Twitter (thanks @MrGeorgeClarke) which really shows the other side of 'compact living' and it's not pretty. Unfortunately, that is the norm for many people in Hong Kong and other over-densified places, including slums and badly planned apartment blocks.

The photos seems to be taken by the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), who stands up for human rights in HK. One space, barely large enough for someone to swing their arms in encloses bunk beds, a makeshift kichenette, bathroom/dressing/household shrine and a dining area. An incredible use of space with improvisation like I've never seen. 

@MrGeorgeClarke People aren't just living in cramped spaces like this in Hong Kong...tragically it's happening everywhere! pic.twitter.com/rdRHeIvGYa

Hopefully these days more regulation allows for better baseline design for accommodation. The remaining stock of these terrible living spaces serve as a reminder than for many, a space to call home is greatly different from our expected standards.

Critical

I recently happened across a fairly old article about architectural critique (Why Don’t We Read About Architecture?), not by people like me that has studied the art of architecture, but by the layperson public.

“Buildings are everywhere,” writes Alexandra Lange, “large and small, ugly and beautiful, ambitious and dumb. We walk among them and live inside them but are largely passive dwellers in cities or towers, houses, open spaces, and shops we had no hand in creating.”

We live around and inside of architecture. Our cities are largely made up of buildings that define spaces. So why are most people so passive about it? Walking down the Auckland CBD one day with a friend, I commented on how one of the high rises near the waterfront was sleeker than the rest and elegant against the rest of the skyline. My friend said "ugh that's disgusting." To be honest, in many a situation I've heard that gut gag reflex.

Say for art criticism, you really don't really bump into art, especially the ones more open for layperson flak, unless you enter a gallery. But architecture is everywhere. You can't avoid it, yet there seems to be little appreciation for buildings, more importantly, good design and the effort that is put into it. The dreaded phrase in the architecture industry is a notified resource consent (in which everyone and their dog can comment about something they know nothing about, or give an isolated opinion against the greater good). Of course, this passivity can also act by allowing 'bad architecture' into the field - people just don't care.

What are your thoughts on the matter? I'll be inviting a few planner friends here to comment too.

Dream

A short film of Ian Ruhter's photographic process reveals a practice of inspiration. Often a camera is used as a mere tool for capturing images, but Ruhter's 'camera', which is held in a baby blue truck, exposes the lives of others (pun intended), or more accurately, their way of life.

Whether intentionally or otherwise, Ruhter's practice brutally disassembles the 'American dream' - that it is not for everyone, nor is it essential for a happy existence. Finding your own happiness is in your own hands and no one else's. The truck travels around documenting the American existence. Certainly he can't document ALL of it (most of it would be pretty banal anyway) but he sure has a knack of finding the more interesting characters around.

"The LA skyline photo is so important to me. That fence symbolises every fear, every doubt. Once we went over that fence, our trip to America began." 

Using a full plate film technique, crisp details can be blown up. He can inhabit the camera - in the film you can see the world in reverse around him like being in a giant pinhole camera (some spaces are made for this purpose). Doing both portraiture and landscape/cityscape photos, it links the peculiarities of the city with those inhabiting it with their particular stories. The technique reminds me of the chemigram, the imperfections mirror the imperfections of humans.

Blogger's note: I need to stop talking about photography for a while... this blog is becoming a photo blog or something!

Tiny

Three great examples of tiny homes.

A while back I saw the video about Gary Chang's apartment in Hong Kong, curiosity piqued by the YouTube title "A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms". Seduced by the idea I watched the entire video (along with Chang's jolting Hong Kong English) and was mesmerised by the permutations that the shifting modules can create, apparently, 24 different spaces.

A more recent example is the New York apartment of Treehugger's founder. With an eco-efficiency mindset, the design of his home was crowd-sourced and ideas selected. The final solution makes use of some really excellent product design to supplement a much simpler sliding spaces arrangement.

It highlights the move away from 'rooms' at all, but space and how we use it. Micro-houses are already a huge thing in Japanese architecture due to tiny sites. These apartments economise space even further by thinking about the specific programmes of the space with a bit of human intervention. Rather than sprawling houses on huge pieces of land (and a lot of lawn maintenance), the inner-city lifestyle has increasing appeal and design is making it all the better.

Whether it's the constraint of a tiny site or just a compact way of life, this sort of design is never short of innovation. Even garages have been converted into stylish small homes, a touch of architecture and a boatload of thought lets just enjoy the smaller side of life. Gems surrounded by stone.

Thanks to Nico and Alice for the great examples behind this post - love it when people feed me ideas and awesome creative things! I, for one, can't wait to design such cool little environments someday when I become an architect.

Onwards

Just noticed that my blogging count for this year is right on the number of posts last year: 73. So I thought, onwards and upwards, lets keep it up and keep pushing the limits! As you can see with the archive, last year wasn't even as many as 2010, when I had 77 posts. It's that thing which many a creative person gets to - the creative block/writers block etc. When you don't feel like it (and it isn't strictly essential) why do it?

Eventually I end up breaking the blogging drought (like this one at the beginning of this month about the Mentawai people). Today I want to talk about something I watched yesterday: Skyfall. In many ways it is in the same situation as I. At a milestone (50 years) and choosing to continue, onwards and pushing the boundaries that define the franchise.

You either think it's incredibly lame or really cool but I thought Skyfall was a screenwriters' break from the formula. As a person who has watched all the Bond movies (dad is really into the Bond franchise) except Quantum of Solace, there are few that actually go beyond the usual 007 scenario to actually interrogate who Bond actually is.

In one of the films (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) Bond gets married then his wife gets killed almost instantly - one of the few times that actually delved into Bond as a person, not the womaniser, adventure craver that he often is. Brutal and breaking, did it show how little chance that Bond can be a regular person?

Most of Skyfall was a perplexing mixture of a truly psychological villain and a setting all too familiar but at the same time foreign to the Bond franchise - London and the UK. The brief escapades to Turkey and Shanghai alluded to the usual rush but then literally quietened down to the recesses of Scotland. Forging the past of James Bond and whittling out the relationship between M and 007 would have been a real work of creative wit.

Add the tumultuous situation of the political pressure at M's seat of power and then you have the real deal. It had hints of the subtle jiving of JK Rowling's Harry Potter at the British government and, in general, of institution. That is, if you choose to read it that way.

Without spoiling anything, I reckon Skyfall is a game changer for the franchise. This is the 50 year mark and with an extremely different world of criminality as a subtext, Bond will have to reinvent himself to make it work. They ended this chapter of James Bond with great poetic effect and double take moments that made you think over. Goodness, they even broke out a poem right in the midst of crisis.

I thoroughly enjoyed this indescribably different take on 007.
4.5 stars
Feel free to let me know what you thought of it/this rather high rating in the comments.

Mentawai

Time to end this blogging drought! Having been to China, it was a great cultural overload even for me. And without a way to access Blogger, Facebook or Twitter due to the Great Firewall, I've felt pretty oppressed. I am still taking my time processing the many photos I took of my China trip + ancestral village, so those will come in due course.

On a side step, I saw this fascinating video of Joey Lawrence trekking through the Mentawai with waaaay too much equipment to photograph the remnants of this rare and rich way of life (ignore how this is a huge advertisement - I swear I could have done just as well with my cranky old Sony DSLR).

"Hello people from the entire world! Come to the islands of Mentawai quickly. Right now, the Mentawai are still alive. I am still alive. But when I die, you will not see my culture any more."

Cultures like the Mentawai are dying out. A series of photographs show the old grandfather (I presume) with their grandchild, the elder in the traditional garb and the younger donning common western clothes. There must be a handful of cultures that still keep so true to how they have existed for centuries. It is this same handful of cultures that slips out of one's grasp like sand from the palm of one's hand.

One can only hope that the hauntingly moving chants and traditions are carried onto those with the Donald Duck T-shirt and muscle tees. Maybe.

Throughout China I've seen an enormous disregard for historic artefacts - there's just so much of it and the pressures of the current age quite easily stamp them out. Often is the sight where an old stone abode crumbles to the weather to be replaced by a really ugly new and much taller building. But that is for another blog.

Disparity

Murals have featured a few times on the blog, but none at the scale of Hendrik Beikirch's (aka ECB) latest mural in Busan, Korea. It's street art on steroids, transcending the street to become 'city art' with a scale that rivals Daniel Libeskind's gleaming skyscraper.

Placed on Busan's fisher union building, the 230-foot long mural is manually painted with no guide, relying only on instinct and the gesture of the hand. Depicting a wrinkly old fisherman, it is visual food for thought about the disparity of wealth in Korea (also applicable to many other countries in this day and age). Even the architecture performs the part in this commentary, with a staunch rectangular prism in Modernist white, next to the curve-topped, blue glass towers. The message is that the economic boom of recent times has not reached everyone, despite the hypothetical trickle down effect, and many still live in a harsh world where in old age one must don the protective fishermen gloves.

The mural reminds me of JR's street art, also of large portraits but with a different take. The common theme of using portraiture in highly public art is that it connects to every one of us. The eyes implore our own minds of the issues we do not see or would rather not see.

Women

Can you imagine a city exclusively for women? It may soon be a reality in Saudi Arabia where plans are being made for a city with no men, allowing women who want to seek a career to do so without breaking Islamic law.

I am unfamiliar with Islamic practices so I won't comment about the traditions that spur this development in Saudi society. However, it demonstrates the importance and struggle of fundamentals that underlie any city. With this marked example of providing facility to women to mitigate the strict rites and regimens of their culture, a unique step in urban planning is created that would probably not be witnessed in any other place.

At least in fiction, the notion of a womens-only environment isn't completely new. The ecofeminist novel The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper explores society where genders are purposefully segregated in a post-apocalyptic setting. The idea is drastic - at least for Western and other egalitarian cultures.

In a way, it is great to see such a strong will in urban planning come into play. Usually the hallmark of utopian thinking (ironically most which did not succeed due to the unrealistic idealism), has planning practice been dulled by a please-all, compromise approach? Although the gender separation probably wouldn't work in other cultures, Saudi's setting and resources could see something that works and may even change the culture in which this development sits.

Pose

The charity Cordaid, with the the help of advertising big guns Saatchi and Saatchi, have devised an evocative campaign where first world consumer products are compared to the cost of an essential item for life in Africa. The photographs depict people in high fashion poses with luxury products in their native environment - the juxtaposition is jarring and is strangely alluring in its fakery. The cost of each is compared to essential resources and wow, does it punch the message home. 

The perfect satire to your standard 'stunning model - glamorous product' ad, these photos are making people dish out for the cause.