Alyssa Haley from Te Whare Wānanga o Wairaka Unitec School of Architecture is a finalist for her project 'Nuts and Bolts: Empowering Communities Through Making'.
Project description
Nuts and Bolts manifests as a temporary, adaptable and relocatable community makerspace and tool library that democratises access to tools and encourages an environment for making. In our consumer-driven world, it promotes a sharing economy and a culture that values making over purchasing.
The design-for-disassembly approach is a viable architectural solution to reduce the production of materials and waste associated with the construction industry. Facilities are designed to be flexible and accommodating, so they can be dismantled and reassembled in new configurations to adapt to new sites and community needs. To this end, the project proposes three separate configurations on three different sites to investigate the opportunities and limitations afforded by the architecture.
Primarily, the research aims to discover the benefits of making for a community served by a little-to-no cost facility. This coincides with a secondary aim to discover how temporary architecture yields the possibility of reaching a wider audience than its more permanent counterparts. These aims are explored to aid in designing a well-informed makers’ facility – down to its nuts and bolts.
Jury citation
Community is at the heart of this project that strives to solve several contemporary issues through an adaptable design approach. This clutch of community spaces prioritise making over purchasing, which supports the societal expectations of a more sustainable future. They are humble in form, perhaps a nod to the honesty and integrity embedded in their intention. Designed for disassembly, they are a testing ground for the democratic nature of architecture and how it can serve a community as well as the environment.
This is an extremely thorough examination of bringing craft into the creation of adaptable spaces. A building not knowing its future can be unsettling at first, however, this affords the potential to create community spaces and connections that are powerful and engaging influences at any moment in time. Alyssa has offered incubators of ideas and community connection and opportunity.
