A New Agora
What: Urban Design (Concept)
Date: Published January 2021
Commissioned by: A+U Journal (Japan)
In collaboration with: Raphael Laude and Adam Lubinsky
Carried out in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch Earthquakes, this design-research project probes at architecture’s capacity to affect and embody an emergent polycentric urban condition: one ushered in by the effective elimination of the city’s central business district, overnight. The design process deployed typology, contextuality, and self-consciously ‘urban’ programming to explore the socio-spatial and tectonic opportunities of polycentrism within the selected Christchurch suburb of Sumner (an emergent sub-centre).
On the one hand, A New Agora is a radical and catalytic urban intervention, addressing the sub-centre as architecture’s project at a moment when Christchurch’s future was veiled in uncertainty. On the other, the project is a consideration and commentary on architecture’s multi-faceted, critical relationship with the city: ultimately arguing that the two must be treated as fundamentally intertwined, not least in the face of vast structural urban transformation.
Shortlisted for the RIBA President’s Medals Awards (UK)
Conceptual category - highly commended: AAA Unbuilt Architecture Awards (NZ)
Published in Interstices (NZ) + Habitat (Australia)
