The Lab was a joint project between the architecture and spatial design faculties of AUT University, The University of Auckland and UNITEC. These institutions worked alongside students, local academics, designers and architects to develop a series of two to three week-long interdisciplinary design projects.

About the team

Sirkes Dankha

Sirkes completed the National Diploma in Architectural Technology (NDAT) in 2009, followed by the Bachelor of Architectural Studies (BAS) from which he graduated in the summer of 2012. Sirkes is currently in his 1st year of the Master of Architecture professional program. Sirkes has been living in New Zealand for the past 8 years; he joined Māori studio for the opportunity to further explore Māori history and culture. He is excited to be a part of a design team, and to construct a real project and see it come to life.

About the team

Ina Klinkhardt

Ina is a 25 year old exchange student from Germany. Ina chose New Zealand for exchange as she is very interested in the relationship between a building and its surroundings. Ina chose Māori studio because of her interest in the Māori relationship to nature and natural building materials and for the opportunity to learn more about Māori culture. Ina works in a cinema in Germany and is interested in films, music and projection techniques, especially the lense and light breaking options/boundaries. Ina hopes to complete a postgraduate degree in architectural lighting design in the future.

Home, land, homeland

In the scheme of things, people haven’t lived in New Zealand for very long. Looking at our relatively short history, it has been suggested that in this country ‘we are all immigrants’. This studio’s title, ‘Ideal Home(land)’ reminds us that it’s these waves of migration which have brought our population to these shores. And it’s the promise of home and land at the centre of ‘The New Zealand dream’ which continues to lure many to make New Zealand their homeland.

IDEAL HOME(LAND)

As the ideal of the Kiwi ‘quarter acre dream’ becomes more and more distant for many, we need to explore new ways of accomodating Auckland’s expanding population on the finite footprint of land within the city’s existing borders.

Will everyone keep talking about housing in Auckland? I hope so. Why should we ever stop?

In describing our part of the Lab to friends of mine, they all tend to echo the same sentiments: “that’s really relevant right now”. And of course they are right. Auckland is growing at an unprecedented speed for this country, and the discussion around how we will house our population has been fast and furious over the past year. But hasn’t this always been the case? Aren’t we constantly reinventing our ideal vision of the home through policy, art, architecture and media?