RECONSTRUCTING SUBURBIA
With land prices and population
increasing, there is a need for a new ideal home and land. Central Ponsonby is
quickly becoming a popular development due to its close proximity to the city,
a growing ideal for many New Zealanders; yet still maintaining suburban
qualities, an old yet strong ideal for the New Zealand home.
This design deals with high-density
living and the desire for visual privacy on a multi-family site. By designing 4
units with an internal focus, each family can maintain privacy, an ideal that
has grown over the last 50 years. This is achieved through controlling window
openings and the use of central light-wells that enable views across the house,
giving the illusion of larger rooms by visually borrow the adjacent space. Each
unit is self-contained with communal spaces explored in the entrance hallway,
guest toilets, shared laundry and parking spaces. The hallway acts as a
threshold between the street and the private units, a transitional space that
encourages interaction within the multiple families helping to create a
community within the site.
Outdoor living areas are an important
part of the New Zealand home and have been specifically designed to give each
of the four families a private outdoor space with consideration to each
families current phase of life. The design blurs the threshold between inside
and outside through the use of the central open-air light-wells and direct
outdoor living spaces.
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| Emma Farmer: Final Exhibition, June 2013. |
This idea of a blurred threshold is
further explored through the group installation designed to represent an ideal
for the group of 5 friends. The installation consists of three deconstructed
doorframes placed in a triangular configuration to represent three families (2
couples and a single friend) living together. It uses one point perspective to
show each doorframe as a whole with the central space depicting the
communication between the three (also portrayed with the poems etched down the
side of the frames). Inside and outside sounds are incorporated within the
frames to further blur the threshold and cause you to question what is inside
and what is outside. All three doorframes have the same central white framing
to signify their unity, but are clad with three different mouldings to
represent their independence. This idea of repeating something in a slightly
different way is also demonstrated in the individual design through the
continuous roof that connects the four family units as one house yet varies in
height and pitch to give individuality to each home. The building uses familiar
building materials, a weatherboard cladding and corrugated roof, to evoke a
traditional feel to the site in conjunction with new building technologies and
systems to create a uniquely new New Zealand home.
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