Marty Clark-Dow from Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning, is a finalist for his project 'The Museum of Auckland'.
Project description
This project centres around a fictional building called the Museum of Auckland, or MOA. It began as an investigation into museum architecture, curation and exhibition - with an emphasis on heritage architecture: how it is protected and treated within Auckland and New Zealand as a whole. The primary purpose of the MOA is as a museum of Auckland's architecture, using the built environment to tell the city's history, and encourage a more widespread understanding of it, leading to the protection of heritage buildings.
The design draws on an all-important theme of a museum institution - the evolution of time. By following this field of inquiry, a creative writing piece is adopted alongside the building design, as a means to critique the representation of architecture, both culturally and conservationally. This pushed the design component into the realm of a fictional story, where the use of 'paper architecture' as a medium was explored. The building almost becomes the main character for this story.
The way the design is built around a narrative shows generations of one family - the Wakefields - recording their personal (architectural) stories in order to demonstrate the ambivalence and contradictions inherent in heritage preservation endeavours. The narrative and design highlights there is no perfect answer to these issues, and by using a design project like this, with a drawing approach in the realm of free academic expression, a fresh perspective could be brought into the field of heritage conservation.
The description of the project as ‘An Evolutionary Tale for Auckland’s Architectural Heritage’ sums up the design - simply, it is the evolution of a building over hundreds of years.
Jury citation
Part speculative fiction and part architectural thought experiment, this project is all about how architecture evolves over time and what heritage protection could look like decades or centuries from now.
Centred around a conceptual Museum of Auckland, or MOA, this waterfront museum of architecture is a container for our colonial past, including its values and prejudices, and is also a giant vessel or ark designed to preserve history. Imagining a past, present and future for this building, Marty contextualises the project at its inception, redevelopment and post-climate-change states, and shows the ways our buildings can become multi-generational narratives.
MOA is itself a mega-structure that demonstrates an ambitious architectural mind at work, and a grasp of design complexity and engineering reminiscent of the great industrialists of the Victorian era. Container ship structures merge with existing museum typologies to create something awe-inspiring that is also a sensory and site-specific experience for visitors.
Exquisite images and animations layered with a compelling narrative have produced a beguiling presentation and thought-provoking project.
