Abstract:
The perception of New Zealand as a paradise - a society built on the foundations of egalitarianism - insists indefinitely, but nevertheless so do issues of inequality. This thesis proposes a framework for Suburbia Social co., the ideal human zoo, the supposedly democratic and enchanting public landscape that welcomes everyone into a quest of finding enjoyment. At the same time, the human zoo employs speculative architecture as an instrument of branding and framing for the professional manipulation of power and control. Intervening with the system of routines, the project represents an escape from the spaces of commodification and exchange and encourages ludic practices, for space acquires meaning through the actions performed by its creative practitioners.1 The proposition introduced is aimed at disrupting the normalised decorum of urban life through a re-imagination of the country's social services system: a scene where de-individualisation takes place and identity distinction vanishes. Radically transforming a site of immobility and ignorance, the architecture acts as heuristic stimulants for participation. Boundaries blurred, notions of monetary value and mechanical time diminished, it is everyone's opportunity for curiosity and wandering but simultaneously its participants remain subjects of control, their willingness exploited to contribute to the construction of the disguised utopia: a paradox of transgression and restraint. Assuming the role of the wanderer, the author undertakes a practice that engages with the thrilling and sometimes overlooked encounters of the everyday. These are translated into a series of narratives, fabricated testimonies and collages that inform this thesis' production of architecture which focuses on its performance. Journeying into the heterotopic fantasy, Samuel Butler's Erewhon inspires this project's remarks on the unattainable utopia and the continuous repression from centralised government. The processes are analysed under the themes: transience, encounter, play and democracy. While acting as an apparatus of gentrification in Panmure, this thesis provokes commentaries on the ever-present issue of class struggle as a result of the consumerist spectacle, and the shenanigans of the society of control this neoliberal arcadia has become.