Born in a Thai-Myanmar refugee camp, San and his household have been resettled in Auckland in 2011 with the assistance of UNHCR (United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees) and the New Zealand refugee resettlement programme. He attended Otahuhu Intermediate and Selwyn Faculty earlier than enrolling to check structure at Te Whare Wānanga o Wairaka Unitec College of Structure.
San’s life and expertise instantly knowledgeable his profitable venture, which is entitled ပစ်တိုင်းတောင် (Pyit-Taing Htaung, Each time you toss it, it stands up) and asks the query: how can a community-based refugee camp expertise that features the constructing and occupation of vernacular structure assist handle alienation and construct resilience?
This yr’s Scholar Design Awards judges – Te Kāhui Whaihanga President Judi Keith-Brown, architect Vajini Pannila, and designer and researcher Matt Ritani (Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Koata) – stated San is a refined, elegant, intuitive designer.
“His impartial voice, confidence and maturity means past his years offers us an infinite sense of hope and optimism for the long run. We’re excited to current this award to somebody we consider has the potential to be an architect the world will comply with.”
The judges additionally awarded two Extremely Counseled tasks.
Cindy Huang from Waipapa Taumata Rau, the College of Auckland College of Structure and Planning, was extremely counseled for her venture, ‘Library-Metropolis’, which radically rethinks Auckland’s mid-city with a scheme that features an formidable plan to sunlight the Wahorotiu stream and construct a community of areas, techniques, communities and alternatives above.
Alice Reade from Te Herenga Waka Victoria College of Wellington College of Structure was extremely counseled for her venture ‘Go Public’, which is about creating neighborhood connection and addressing the pressing drawback of our nationwide housing disaster, particularly in Pōneke Wellington.
This yr’s Scholar Design Awards have been introduced and judged nearly, attributable to public well being restrictions.
Te Kāhui Whaihanga President Judi Keith-Brown stated the tasks the judges noticed have been all superb. “A number of of the overriding themes have been: civic mindedness, and caring for and giving again to communities; concern for our pure atmosphere, specifically our waterways; “joyful” structure – Sir Ian Athfield, Roger Walker and others from the joyful ’80s can be happy; and pedestrian-friendly structure that makes our cities extra equitable locations to reside.”
Twelve final-year college students from New Zealand’s three structure faculties — Te Herenga Waka, Victoria College of Wellington, Waipapa Taumata Rau The College of Auckland and Te Whare Wānanga o Wairaka, Unitec — have been chosen by their universities to enter the annual Scholar Design Awards, which carries a prime prize of $5000.
The Te Kāhui Whaihanga 2021 Scholar Design Awards are introduced by loyal supporter of New Zealand structure, Resene.
CITATIONS
Winner: Myint San Aung
ပစ်တိုင်းတောင် Pyit-Taing-Htaung; Each time you toss it, it stands up
The title of this refined and affecting venture refers to a conventional Myanmar kids’s toy that continues to be upright no matter makes an attempt to knock it down. This image of resilience and resistance is essential to understanding this venture, which is imbued with private lived expertise of rising up within the Thai-Myanmar camp.
San’s design for a household of architectural typologies that might be used to create a extra human-centric refugee neighborhood within the Southeast Asia area is a thought of and empathetic response to the query: How can refugee camp structure construct neighborhood reconnection, therapeutic and resilience? His response is each easy and sophisticated, and responds to each the worldwide refugee disaster and the trivia of life as a refugee.
Via using soundscapes, animations and hand drawings wealthy with intimate element, San has woven a strong story about folks and place, in addition to giving us a way that these buildings exist already, and we may go there; that actual folks have constructed them, and use them. His designs for typologies together with homes, a market, faculty, assembly home, lavatory block, and grownup training classroom, are delicate and delightful but practical and refined, with a strong sense of the social relations of architectural geometry.
This structure is grounded, mature, assured and clear, and expresses a wealthy cultural integrity imbued with compassion, dignity and an innate information of local weather and customs. San clearly understands how structure can encourage hope, and the way it can empower folks or diminish them, and makes use of this data because the underpinning for a venture that has actual potential to enact change on a world scale.
Extremely Counseled: Cindy Huang
Library Metropolis
Cindy Huang
The commercialisation of civic life and the continuing results of the pandemic have resulted in an Auckland metropolis hollowed out by company pursuits. What’s left of free and accessible public area within the metropolis when neoliberal agendas have conspired to dominate it? The downtrodden Auckland Central Library, the near-abandoned St James Theatre and the light ASB tower present the location for a radical rethink of mid-city that features an formidable plan to sunlight the Wahorotiu stream and construct a community of areas, techniques, communities and alternatives above.
The library constructing itself is changed by a revised typology and goal for libraries—one which radicalises the institutional framework round accumulating and managing information, and reorients it in the direction of social studying, a social-structural catalyst for shared information, activism, civic engagement and the democratisation of public area. Its footprint is enlarged by the deployment of social information ‘machines’, widgets that may be despatched out into town to reclaim its areas. From cellular cinemas to agricultural shells, these machines are instruments for studying that may be plugged into the city community and used to rewire it for the higher.
Above a reinstated and consolidated wetland ecosystem, a sequence of porous programmatic corridors foster neighborhood connection and information sharing. Kai Avenue acknowledges plethora of meals knowledges and practices; the Widespread Room is a neighborhood kitchen and public eating area; the Financial institution of Curiosities is each a repository and discovery area, like a shared reminiscence financial institution.
This detailed and complex, but compelling and highly effective venture is joyful, uplifting and galvanizing, however it additionally solves an issue: the cultural void of central Auckland. Firmly rooted in its website, rigorously thought of, and enlivened by a clear-eyed understanding of the place we’re as a metropolis and a rustic, Library-Metropolis offers a imaginative and prescient of a spot we wish to reside in proper now. Somebody name the Mayor.
Extremely Counseled: Alice Reade
Go Public: Structure as Activism
Extremely Counseled | Go Public by Alice Reade. A proposal for housing in Tangi Te Keo, Mount Victoria.
What if architects weren’t all the time involved with serving the wants of rich shoppers and as an alternative used their expertise and information to design processes, begin conversations and interrogate energy buildings? What if structure was about activism moderately than revenue?
These are questions that Alice is starting to reply on this completely distinctive, heartfelt venture, which is all about creating neighborhood connection and addressing the pressing drawback of our nationwide housing disaster, particularly in Pōneke. She argues that architects have a duty to be positioned and political brokers for change, and advocates for these in want, significantly the 1% of New Zealanders that suffer from extreme housing deprivation.
Utilizing image-making to suggest radical methods of rapidly housing massive numbers of individuals in unused city areas, Alice has composed a sequence of provocations designed to start out dialog and debate, and has created an structure of activism, moderately than plan and element. The hand-built element of her venture, a multi-purpose cart or trailer constructed from reclaimed and recycled supplies, is proof of her hands-on method to enacting actual social change, in addition to her acute tectonic sensibilities.
Alice’s fearless presentation of her work is imbued together with her ardour and dedication to fostering neighborhood dialogue, moderately than accepting the divisive nature of social media discourse and calling it ‘engagement’. Her intuitive understanding of the potential of structure to redistribute energy and uplift these on the backside of our housing hierarchy is thrilling, and we are able to’t wait to see how her pondering and follow impacts and evolves the housing disaster debate.
Extremely Counseled | Go Public by Alice Reade. The Cart in Tangi Te Keo, a motorcycle trailer to offer a cellular platform for neighborhood discussions.
FINALISTS
Waipapa Taumata Rau, The College of Auckland College of Structure and Planning
- Marty Clark-Dow
- Cindy Huang
- Maggie Hubert
- Rachael McKillop
Te Whare Wānanga o Wairaka, Unitec College of Structure
- Myint San Aung
- Rhiannon Churchward
- Siān Singh
- Khamis Shiblaq
Te Herenga Waka, Victoria College of Wellington College of Structure.
- William Creighton
- Chris Gandhi
- Alice Reade
- Maria Walker
See venture descriptions, full citations and pictures at nzia.co.nz
