Muddy Urbanism: a project for The Lab at "If you were to live here . . " the 5th Auckland Triennial

Abstract

International curator of the 5th Auckland Triennial Hou Hanru described The Lab as the Triennial’s “intellectual core ( . . .) functioning like a machine of knowledge (. . . ) a kind of brain for the whole project”. The Lab was a joint project of the architecture and spatial design faculties of The University of Auckland, AUT, and UNITEC. Working under the Triennial title “If You Were To Live Here . . . ” the Lab’s role was to act as a catalyst for the critical examination of urban life in Auckland and New Zealand. The Lab physically took form in the Chartwell Gallery at Auckland Art Gallery. The Muddy Urbanism Lab was developed by Kathy Waghorn (University of Auckland) with Triennial and Auckland University guest Teddy Cruz, Professor in Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at University of California, San Diego, and co-founder of the Center for Urban Ecologies. Working with post-graduate architecture students from the University the research focussed on the Whau River, a tidal waterway bisecting the inner west of Auckland, creating a portage that connects the Waitemat? and Manukau harbours. Pre-colonisation, the Whau was one of the main active frameworks of social connection and economic production along the coastlines of T?maki Makaurau. In the colonial economy it played a crucial role in the settlement and urbanisation of Auckland’s west, as both a transport route and as a source of clay. No longer a transport route, and for much of the recent past a boundary between municipalities, it has increasingly become the site of multiple conflicts across jurisdictional, economic, land use and natural systems. Muddy Urbanism engaged in the critical mapping of the Whau in order to visualise the many conflicts that have been hidden from institutional thinking and to propose new interfaces between urban policy, ecological systems and community participation for the regeneration of this catchment that may be applied across Auckland. The research was presented in large scale prints, models and projections and the Lab became the venue for an associated public programme.