Exhibitions
Events
On display
The Human Scale
Film
Past event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
A documentary that questions our assumptions about modernity, exploring what happens when we put people in the centre of our equations.
Fifty per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By 2050 this will increase to eighty per cent. Life in a mega city is both enchanting and problematic. Today we face peak oil, climate change, loneliness and severe health issues due to our way of life. But why? The Danish architect and professor Jan Gehl has studied human behaviour in cities through forty years. He has documented how modern cities repel human interaction, and argues that we can build cities in a way that takes the human need for inclusion and intimacy into account.
Related reading: Film, Documentary, Architecture
Commentary
The Lines That Are Left
Of landscape itself as artefact and artifice; as the ground for the inscribing hand of culture and technology; as no clean slate.
— Joanna Paul
The residential Red Zone is mostly green. After each house is demolished, contractors sweep up what is left, cover the section with a layer of soil and plant grass seed. Almost overnight, driveway, yard, porch, garage, shed and house become a little paddock; the border of plants and trees outlining it the only remaining sign that there was once a house there.
Interview
The fault is ours: Joseph Becker on Lebbeus Woods
There was a packed auditorium at CPIT in Christchurch this August when visiting San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator Joseph Becker delivered a lecture on architect Lebbeus Woods. And it wasn't hard to guess why. In addition to many other achievements, Woods is renowned for his highly speculative project, Inhabiting the Quake. Senior curator Justin Paton spoke to Becker about Lebbeus Woods, and what Christchurch might learn from him.
Article
Laying out Foundations
Looking broadly at the topic of local architectural heritage, Reconstruction: conversations on a city had been scheduled to open at the Gallery but will now instead show on outdoor exhibition panels along Worcester Boulevard from 23 June. Supplementing works from the collection with digital images from other collections, curator Ken Hall brings together an arresting art historical tour of the city and its environs.
Article
Miles: A life in architecture
Best known for the Christchurch Town Hall and Wellington's Michael Fowler Centre, Sir Miles Warren is the doyen of post-war New Zealand architecture, the first New Zealander to be knighted for services to architecture, an Icon of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand, and a leading figure in the arts in Christchurch. The garden at his Governors Bay home, Ohinetahi, beautifully crafted by Miles with his sister Pauline Trengrove and her husband John, has also secured for him a reputation as one of our most remarkable garden designers.
Article
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation
Over several years I have worked on a Scottish landscape called, immodestly, the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, speculating with scientists and others on the fundamental laws and forces behind nature and what they might mean to us. Using growing nature to conjecture on what is basic to the universe is an old practice common to gardeners, but it raises some unlikely questions.
![LASFF: Agua [Water]](/media/cache/15/11/151175e43875dfef1e69925528becdd1.jpg)
![LASFF: El Agente Topo [The Mole Agent]](/media/cache/32/7d/327d7bee8719e6dc2ddef1531f7f6ff3.jpg)
![LASFF: Fresa y Chocolate [Strawberry and Chocolate]](/media/cache/d4/4c/d44c7e4c93e63d258778c8f2d531232f.jpg)