dc.description.abstract |
Aotearoa has not always been a land of inclusivity as it is today. The history of New Zealand’s immigration policies and attitudes towards the South Asian community is a highly controversial chapter in the national story. The narratives and presence of early South Asian immigrants have been trivialized and omitted within local historical texts. This manipulation of historical occurrences are linked to the existence of several problematic immigration policies, particularly ‘New Zealand’s ‘White Policy,’ and the formation of ‘the New Zealand White League.’ This thesis challenges the deliberate disconnection made between migrants and place, within Aotearoa’s narrative of nation-building.
Thus, my thesis question is: What may be the architectural representation of South Asian migration, in Aotearoa? And what forms could this take?
This study formulated a historical narrative that establishes an intertwined understanding of people, architecture, and place, through the methodology of collage, commingle, and crossing, seen in architectural theorist Marco Frascari’s concept of the ‘Architectural Monster.’ Frascari’s vision of the environment in which exist within is understood as a monster, a hybrid which is a form assembled from several pieces shaped by socio-political, cultural, and environmental contexts that derive from cultural flows. The etymological origins and representation of the architectural monster is used to demonstrate the cultural diversity that exists in our environment, through re-establishing relationships between architectures that previously were assumed separate and view them as being intertwined.
This design project understands how the global circulation of architecture, concerning the Bungalow, the Mughal style, and the Indo-Gothic style have developed in India, and migrated and met with New Zealand, resulting in transformations in the built environment. This thesis seeks to show that hybridism, followed by the use of architectural styles, should be the way of designing for the future.
The design strategy aims to formulate a representation that reflects the movement of architecture, people, and cultures in the form of an arts centre for Sandringham Road, Auckland. Allowing these practices to migrate across the city as smaller interventions is also equally important to this study. |
|