August Workshop

Another marathon workshop occupying two days as graduates presented their latest research work to a panel of leading practitioners and academics.  Thursday kicked of with a group of young researchers working with Nikolay Popov. The topics are divergent; Shanmugam Kangatharan is looking at water transport urbanism in Auckland, Gemma Gao is exploring how can urban parks be designed to act as evacuation places in case of volcano eruption in Auckland, Shoujun Chen is examining how we can create a model for the radical transformation of an industrial food system into a locally-based, sustainable model in peri-urban areas, new comer Kevin Zhu one of our leading BLA students in 2014, is working with Babbage Consultants on how we can design a GIS based tool to objectively evaluate Auckland brownfield redevelopment site, and lastly Quin Luo is attempting to find a solution to protect the coastal citizens’ properties, public infrastructures and natural reserves from sea level  rise.  However they are all united by an interest in addressing current urban issues in Auckland through connecting to the landscape.
Two distinguished landscape architects critically considered the research work, Michael Hawes associate partner at Boffa Miskell and Garth Falconer, founder and director of Reset Urban Design, and Dr. Giles Dodson academic from Unitec.
After a sociable lunch between students, supervisors and critics, the afternoon session kicked of with Xinxin Wang, presenting her research work into preserving a green network for Auckland as a regional city. Xu Gao followed with a presentation of his findings into how we can develop the Auckland coast as a part of urban area for the future.
The day finished with Qian Wang. She is working with children environment expert Sue Wake on exploring how school ground greening has the potential for enhancing children’s relationship with nature. .Nick Rae, director of TransUrban and David Mead, director of Hill Young Cooper, ably quizzed students
Friday kicked off with Shayne Noronha and Riyasp Bhandari, BLA 2013 honors students, presenting two waterfront investigations. Shayne is looking at rising tides and the future of New Zealand’s coastal communities with Reset Urban Design while Riyasp Bhandari is looking at using a sustainability framework to develop social spaces on urban waterfronts.
Zara Jawadi and Shasha Li (Nemo) followed. Zara is working with Jasmax on looking at using a triple-bottom line sustainability model to reimagine Auckland’s urban transport corridors, while Nemo is working with Auckland Transport on improving Auckland’s bicycle and pedestrian networks, through an analysis of Auckland’s urban landscape features and urban traffic network, to find opportunities to better connect Auckland’s open spaces. All four students are being ably guided by supervisor Daniel Irving.
Juan Molina senior architect and urban designer at CPRW Fisher and Evan Williams associate at Isthmus, interrogated the projects, helping the students development with a number of insights.
Rithy Heng kicked off Friday afternoon with his research, investigating strategies for the remediation of a brownfield site in Phnom Penh in Cambodia. Junjie Xu followed, presenting his work looking at how can landscape ecology assist in achieving sustainable outcomes for a brownfield development. Komal Bhatt finished the day presented her impressive research finding into how  a cemetery can function as a place of ‘Healing’ for the many cultural groups in Auckland. Penny Cliften has  skillfully directed both students. Bridget Gilbert director of Bridget Gilbert Landscape Architecture, Dushko Bogunovich associate professor of urban design in the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Unitec Institute of Technology  and Juan Molina, senior architect and urban designer at CPRW Fisher scrutinized the afternoon projects with great diligence.