Thinking about building

Sophie Bannan, Andrew Just, Amiria Kiddle, Mark Leong & Nick Sargent, Nicholas Mangan, Hamish Shaw, Blaine Western

Opening Friday 24 October 5.30pm

I could tell you how many steps make up the streets rising like stairways, and the degree of the arcades’ curves, and what kind of zinc scales cover the roofs; but I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing. The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past.

- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

In a city where significant building projects are in preparation or underway, discussion seems bound to the steps, curves and measurements of building plans, instead of addressing the broader context and aspiring to meaningful architectural relationships. Staging a return to ideas, Thinking about building provides an opportunity for several local architects to think beyond the pragmatics of design, alongside artists who have utilised various examples in architecture to elaborate on the ideas that they represent.

From a study of the urbanism at Christchurch’s Church Corner to the fascist principles underpinning the EUR region in Rome; analysis of preeminent 1960s Christchurch homes to the Walter Burley Griffin incinerator of Pyrmont, Sydney, these architectural studies aim to reveal a more complex and discursive understanding of building.

Public Programmes

Saturday 25 October, 4pm
Field Theory: A Stadium Project launch

Sunday 26 October, 2-5pm
Sophie Bannan: Modern Living tour
Reenacting the 1969 'Modern Living' inspection of six architect-designed homes, originally organised by the Canterbury Society of the Arts, Sophie Bannan will facilitate a tour of the same premises around Christchurch, ranging from Opawa to Fendalton. Reservations to physicsroom@physicsroom.org.nz

Saturday 29 November, 2-4pm
A Walter Benjamin discussion at The Arcades Project, corner Durham & Kilmour St