Part 1 - Decent Home unable to provide or attain a house for themselves, why should their homes be [so] different

to that of the average New Zealand home? I dont think that you can ever satisfy people in New Zealand. Theyre not happy that weve got ... the Otaras of today. But then they also dont believe that our tenants have got a right to live in a street next to anyone else. (Schrader, 2005, p. 241) State houses are designed/constructed/created through along the base guide lines of the Decent Home. These guidelines are composed of minimal areas, which have been recently reduced, and purely scally driven with little to no thought given to their inhabitation or inhabitants. Policy posits state housing as a temporary shelter housing tenants till a time that they are nancially/physically/mentally t to move into the private market. They are essentially proposed as a temporary solution to a different problem, which they consequently do not by any means advocate the idea of home. The above two points are not foundational problems but rather the resultant of policies conceived/established/ voted by the wider population, they represent the ideologies of the wider population and in this sense state housing can be seen as a cultural product and a point for critique of a foundational problem. The individualistic/capitalist/post-modern society of New Zealand views these tenants as a burden in their dependency. This view comes from a capitalist driven society in which monetary value is the base line even if at the price of community and the fellow man.

Part 2 The Architecture, Disjunction & Tectonics Above Part 1 identies the social and political problems existing within state housing and consequently its role as a form of cultural production. Going beyond state housing as an idea to its physical manifestation in architecture a new medium/grounds for investigating/exploring/challenging these ideas/problems presents itself. To reiterate/clarify there are two primary architectural problems. Firstly, the relationship between the external, the social ideologies towards state housing, and the internal, the inhabitation and inhabitants, and secondly, the idea of home as a space or rather as a place for one to dwell in the heideggerian sense of the word. The rst posits state housing as a cultural product of the external and acknowledges its inherent disjunction with the internal. The second, although identied as primary, can be understood as being encompassed by the internal and it is from this position that the relationship can be interrogated from the inside (and transcend) out to form a concluding critique/solution. The disjunction of this relationship can be found within the architecture of state housing essentially in the tectonic approach utilised to design, or rather dene, space. Spaces are derived from a table of guidelines outlining dimensions and quantitative requirements using the rational of a Cartesian coordinate system. This tectonic approach doesnt consider space in the architectural sense that one could experience, but rather as a series of independent objects driven by objectives(tivity). This tectonic is continued into the materiality that is then left to determine spacial quality, but, consistently, the product is derived from a process driven by disconnected economic functionality, materials are constructed from an external conscious and disjunction continues. The resulting construction then becomes, as a result of objectivity, a temporary solution (becomes redundant in its function as a home) without consideration of the subject or subjective space. This is evident in the many blocks of state housing constructed of poor quality materiality (short life span/fast deteriorating/ high maintenance [even attempted fashionable aesthetic]) suggesting of a temporal nature and thus decay occurs overtime and the buildings fall into a state of near disrepair, the physical architectural solutions are confronted with the same problems that exist in the instigators of the solutions. The immediacy to resolve the problems of state housing permeates through to the architectural solutions, this isolated continuity presents itself as the cause of the ensuing disjunction, and the momentary consideration of a solution exists as only a eeting moment.

Part 3 Time, Place & Home Contrary to common belief, cities exist in time rather than space: This is part of what makes them places. Or rather, we ought to say that cities make space timely, and so change our own relation to time. [Investigation into the built form with inspiration taken from] political, architectural and philosophical sources, in particular the branch of philosophy known as phenomenology investigates the conditions of conscious experience. The experience at issue here is the one of being in place, with place understood in this instance to be an urban location. M. Kingwell Dwelling Exterior Dwelling Path Archive This references the tectonic approach I have undertaken for this project exploring the ontological aspects of construction down to materiality in the formation of space. This tectonic approach considers the subject and subjectivity of space in which the realm of time, place and home exist.

Section

Part 4 Typology, Form & Programme Although no single identiable typology exists for state housing complexes they are still identiable due to elements that come as a result of the previously identied tectonic approach combined with an arguably consequential detachment, or lack of home/place even ownership in a sense, from its inhabitants. This stereotypology is the result of the prescriptive guidelines identied previously, they produce, continuing on with regard to site and form (elements often associated with typology), site less objects, the lack of acknowledgement of site in the formation of space reinforces the detachment from the subject and introduces the idea of detachment from community. Additionally the arbitrary adjustment in roof pitchs and cladding colours and materials in recent projects only reinforces this detachment. Another signicant problem with the existing stereotypologies of state housing is their programme/formal relationship. Families, due to averagely higher number of people, are allocated single units, and couples or individuals are allocated units in complexes. The problem with these allocations is that under current legislation if your family is too move out you will be then relocated to a different unit with no guarantee that it will be in or even near your prior home. The previously identied problems/solutions address the second primary problem and to move out to the wider rst primary problem.. [to be continued]

Dwelling Exterior Dwelling Path Archive

Plan

[To be continued..]