2010 Interstices Under Construction Symposium Auckland, Friday 8 to Sunday 11 October Unsettled Containers: Aspects of Interiority Image based on Leonardo da Vinci: Studies of Embryos, c. 1510-13 Interstices Under Construction: “Unsettled Containers” is jointly organised by the School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland, and the School of Art and Design, AUT University (Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul and Ross Jenner). Unsettled Containers: Aspects of Interiority Is architecture a cult of the externalised ob- ject? Only four of 46 images of prize winning entries on the 2009 World Architecture Fes- tival website show interiors. This object-cult and neglect of the interior is symptomatic of architecture’s domination by a polarised nineteenth-century conception of contain- ment. So efficiently are interior and exterior sealed off from each other that they are fre- quently treated as discrete professional do- mains. However, inside and outside are always ready to be reversed – their boundaries full of tension and at points occupied by beings who awaken “two-way dreams” (Bachelard). In Benjamin’s Arcades Project, 19th century petit bourgeois encased themselves in their interior as in a “spider’s web, in whose toils world events hang loosely suspended like so many insect bodies sucked dry”. Today’s spaces can seem more involuted, fragile and unsettled. Phenomenological theories focus on the prox- imate qualities of architecture and a possible avenue for a new emphasis on the interior. Other approaches highlight different modes of proximity like digital, intimate involvements. The ability to say “we” may be a fundamen- tal condition of space, which creates interior spaces as spheres for dwelling (Sloterdijk). Like immersive plants, they elaborate human exis- tence and embed human relationships. Oppo- site forces create the climatised hothouses of luxury consumption, relaxation and privileged cosmopolitanism familiar to us today, in which nature and culture are indoor affairs and his- tory and the Other are left outside. How can interiority be conjugated in new ways? How do we draw the lines today? What constitutes interiority? What does it have to say about the institutionalised containment of refugee centres or gated communities or, in- deed, the openness of the Pacific? What is it like to negotiate the pae from inside? Where are the spaces of Self and Other? How do global and regional flows circulate in interiors? Is there a special relationship between interi- ority and possession? When is a set of walls an interior, when is an object a container, and when is a container a world? The keynote address, Disorientation and Disclosure, by Professor David Leatherbarrow seeks to unsettle the boundaries of the inte- rior in urban spaces. David Leatherbarrow is Chair of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design postgraduate committee. He is a world-renowned writer whose influence is recognisable in debates about the appearance and perception of architecture. He is currently working on a book about the relationships be- tween architecture and the city, arguing for the primacy of topography in both areas of design. Friday 8 October Opening Address Professor Jenny Dixon Dean of NICAI, The University of Auckland Rewi Thompson Architect, School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland Interior | Interiority Rick Pearson, Michael Major, Jennifer Walling, Peter Were, Christina Mackay Chair: Julieanna Preston School of Design, Massey University Drinks & Launch: Interstices11: The Traction of Drawing Introduction to Professor David Leatherbarrow Dr. Ross Jenner, School of Architecture and Planning, The University of Auckland Disorientation and Disclosure Keynote by David Leatherbarrow Dinner Vivace Restaurant, Level 1, 50 High Street, Auckland 4:00 - 4:30 pm 4:30 - 6:00 pm 6:00 - 6:45 pm 6:45 - 7:00 pm 7:00 - 8:00 pm Design Theatre, Conference Centre The University of Auckland 8:30 pm Saturday 9 October Containment | Exposure 1. foreign bodies Julieanna Preston 2. Ancient Modernists and a Dark Interior Dianne Peacock 3. Holey Interior Michael Milojevic Morning Tea Interior | World 1. A temporal inflection Suzie Attiwill 2. Fourth Wall Removed Kirsty Volz 3. Excessive baggage Michael Chapman Lunch Conference Centre, The University of Auckland 9:00 - 10:30 am 10:30 - 11:00 am 11:00 - 12:30 pm 12:30 - 1:30 pm Design Theatre, Conference Centre The University of Auckland Saturday 9 October Glass House | Hot House 1. Outside In / Inside Out John Roberts 2. Crystal Capital Sean Sturm and Stephen Turner 3. Restless Containers Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul Afternoon Tea Boundary | Control 1. Dizzy Immensities Sandra Lösche 2. Dividing Evidence Christina Mackay 3. Musings on Indoor-Outdoor Flow Kara Rosemeier Drinks Conference Centre, The University of Auckland Dinner O’ Sarracino Restaurant, 3-5 Mount Eden Road, Auckland 1:30 - 3:00 pm 3:00 - 3:30 pm 3:30 - 5:00 pm 5:00 - 6:00 pm Design Theatre, Conference Centre The University of Auckland 7:00 pm Saturday 9 October ALR5, School of Architecture and Planning The University of Auckland 3:30 - 5:00 pm Inside | Out 1. Staying Indoors With Sloterdijk and Latour Tim Adams 2. Samoan thought and the notion of the interior Lealiifano Albert Refiti and I’uogafa Tuagalu 3. To Free Borders of Interiority Azadeh Emadi Sunday 10 October Representation | Apparatus 1. Inscapes: Interiority in Architectural Fiction Stefanie Sobelle 2. In’a-space Judy Cockeram and JudyArx Scribe 3. Inside the Book Marian Macken ALR5, School of Architecture and Planning The University of Auckland Work-in-Progress Sue Gallagher: Head Space. Home Body. Albert L. Refiti: The Ring of Faciality Ross Jenner: Inner Poverty Jacky Bowring: Going Under Isabel Lasala: Architecture as Landscape Design Theatre, Conference Centre The University of Auckland Concluding Comments David Leatherbarrow Lunch Yum Cha at Dynasty Chinese Restaurant, 57-59 Wakefield Street, Auckland 10:00 - 11:30 am 11:30 am 12:30 - 1:30 pm Design Theatre, Conference Centre The University of Auckland 9:30 - 11:30 am Abstracts The abstracts in this brochure are shorter versions of the original, refereed submissions. Access the full abstracts at http://interstices- journal.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/2010- iuc-abstracts-published01.pdf Staying Indoors with Sloterdijk and Latour Tim Adams In our era of universal paucity of time, more and more philosophers are finding they have the time to consider architecture. At the fore- front of this tidal wave of new philosophical interest in architecture are Peter Sloterdijk and Bruno Latour. Sloterdijk has devoted a large section of his book Sphären III: Schäume (2004) to “Foam Architecture”, an investiga- tion of contemporary co-isolated existence that takes place inside of apartment buildings. For his part, Latour has written a series of ar- ticles for Domus magazine directly addressing an architectural audience. In February of 2009 the two joined forces to lecture together at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and this led to two essays being pub- lished in the Harvard Design Magazine (2009). This introductory essay will examine all these articles to find out just what Sloterdijk and La- tour have been saying to architectural readers and practitioners alike. Both thinkers are in fact focusing on the interiority of architecture. This presentation proposes that in the wake of his Spheres trilogy, Sloterdijk interprets ar- chitecture as the most important component in his revisionist history of man as the sphere- producing animal. Latour’s interest in architec- ture starts with laboratories and the media network that connects them. Science cannot take place without this interiority claims La- tour, yet this architectural interior is system- atically erased from the scientific process. The presentation concludes that instead of the architectural interior being something that is forgotten or downgraded, it is in fact the very centre of attention for this new generation of architectural philosophy, therefore we should not overlook this important contribution to the current re-evaluation of the architectural interior. Tim Adams teaches history and theory in the School of Architecture and Planning at The University of Auckland where he is also a PhD candidate. His specialist areas include theories of architecture, the writings of Western phi- losophers concerning architecture, 20th and early 21st century architecture and urbanism, Japanese and California architecture. His es- says and translations have appeared in Inter- stices, SAHANZ Proceedings, Cross Section: NZIA News, Z/X: Journal of the Manukau School of Visu- al Arts, Deleuze Studies and the German maga- zine Der Architekt. His PhD is on the writings of Daniel Payot, a French philosopher who spe- cialises in the history of philosophical discus- sions about architecture. Suzie Attiwill This presentation addresses the question of interiority through the discipline of interior design. It is motivated by the prevalence of phenomenological theoretical frameworks in the discourse and thinking of interior design. They assert a self who perceives and reflects the sensorial world through lived experience. Ideas of working from the inside out, and of the discipline as human-centred design, are frequently encountered in the discourse and practice of interior design. A different trajectory for thinking about in- terior and interiority is offered by Gilles De- leuze’s writings. Deleuze critiques the concept of interiority as something which exists inde- pendently. This could be taken as a dismissal of the concept of interiority. However, he also writes of the constitution of interiority as ‘ali- mentary’. In Foucault, Deleuze describes interi- ority as a process of inflection; an act of fold- ing and unfolding a line of an outside, affected by and affecting external forces. This shift en- gages the practice of interior design in differ- ent ways – highlighting interior and interiority as a question of design – and design as a pro- cess of selection and arranging in the process of form-making. Containers of space, subjects and objects are unsettled and the potential for the practice of interior design is amplified and opened. Interior design becomes a criti- cal practice, where the question of interior as a creative production (as distinct from a giv- en self/subject, architecture/object) connects with contemporary concerns. The presentation examines and critiques the implications of phenomenological ideas in re- lation to interior design and the potential of a re-positioning of interiority through Deleuze’s writings. Associate Professor Suzie Attiwill is the pro- gram director of Interior Design, RMIT School of Architecture and Design, Melbourne, Aus- tralia. She holds a MA (Design, RMIT), BA (In- terior Design, RMIT) and BA (Art History / Indian Studies, Uni Melb), Certificate in Ap- plied Arts (Textiles) and is currently complet- ing a PhD by research project in the School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University. Suzie has an independent practice which in- volves the design of exhibitions, curatorial work, writing and working on a range of inter- disciplinary projects in Australia and overseas. From 1996 to 1999, she was the inaugural ar- tistic director of Craft Victoria. She is chair of IDEA (Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association – www.idea-edu.com) and a founding member of the Urban Interior research group – www.urbaninterior.net. . A temporal inflection Excessive baggage: The architecture of the suitcase in surreal- ism and its aftermath Michael Chapman A storehouse of memories and of the literal embodiment of transience, the suitcase be- came, between 1918 and 1939, a container of avant-garde experimentation. It was an im- portant motif in early avant-garde strategies, hounded from place to place by the various political regimes. The suitcase was a surpris- ingly recurrent theme in surrealism (a move- ment obsessed with displacement and unfamil- iarity), essential to the reconstruction of the values of home, and all of the associations ac- companying that term. Two important friends of the surrealist circle – Marcel Duchamp and Walter Benjamin – both used the suitcase as a reflection of a broader cultural ‘homelessness’. It was not only a storehouse for domestic and bodily necessities, but for creative practice in general. In their work, the suitcase defined the limits of possession, identity and, most im- portantly, creativity allowing the individual to package their current projects in a nomadic and transitory form. Drawing from Peter Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde, this paper will look at the inter- section of architecture and interior in the suit- case projects of Marcel Broodthaers and Diller + Scofidio. Foreshadowed heavily by the work of Marcel Duchamp, these projects embody the subtle shifts that reconstructed notions of space and home in this tumultuous period of creative production. The paper will chart the transformations through which the suit- case became an architectural vessel where the cultural and political notions of homelessness were first conceptualised, and later demar- cated and reproduced by the neo-avant-garde. Michael Chapman is a Lecturer at the Uni- versity of Newcastle where he teaches archi- tectural design, history, theory and research methods. His research has been published in journals such as ARQ, Architectural Science Re- view and Form/Work and presented at confer- ences nationally and internationally. His indi- vidual and collaborative work was exhibited at the Venice Architectural Biennale, Federation Square in Melbourne, the Museum of Mel- bourne, the State Library in Sydney and the Lovett Gallery in Newcastle. Together with Michael Ostwald and Chris Tucker, he is the author of Residue: Architecture as a Condition of Loss, which was published by the RMIT Press in 2007. He is also the director of hrmphrdt which is an architecture practice focussing on residential projects and art collaborations. In’a-space: Where CAD package met Alice, Sally and Bob Judy Cockeram and JudyArx Scribe The paper discusses the generation of archi- tecture in-world, in an attempt to identify as many variations in space as real time allows. The in-space is The Living Sketchbook, held currently on Linden Labs Second Life, which slides out into the actuality of some recent cross reality projects. Using the writing of Boyd (2009) and Mallgrave (2010) the paper show through case studies how, as we move between an inner-space and the middle-space of evolutionary experience in Architecture, the inner world will be dragged out into the cold light of the ‘homo-technologist’s’, the ar- chitect’s, gaze. In evolutionary terms, ground and stone gave way to the tools of geography and abstract property boundaries. Once, the experience of walking on gridded lines enabled those of sturdy physic and careful eye to map and claim ownership of the world. The twentieth cen- tury watched the stories of the world in film and reality television. The 21st century begins with Avatar, the unmanned weapons of war and a very different type of spatial experience through interactive fantasy in virtual worlds. By comparing Mallgrave’s observations with digital production in the Living Sketchbook, the paper argues for the force of the stone of virtual space, the materiality of the virtual world, in the development of human behaviour. The paper concludes with an exploration of the real-time writing of meaning into the ‘Si- mena’ (Simulation & Cinema) experience as a new playground for an old thrill: Architecture. Judy Cockeram (MArch, PG Cert AcadPrac) works at the School of Architecture and Plan- ning, The University of Auckland. She has been engaged in the delivery of architectural educa- tion for 15 years. In that time, the creative use of computers in architecture has become a topic too wide to cover in one career. She has specialised in the consideration of the space of learning and of shared creative practice in the virtual worlds of CAD packages and online multiuser interfaces. Currently she runs the Living Sketchbook project as a space for the development of creative collaborative behav- iours and exploration of Simena events. Judy has been known to do some graffiti knitting. To Free Borders of Interiority: Western and Islamic Approaches Toward the ‘Line’ Azadeh Emadi This paper explores aspects of cultural interi- ority through moving image. Interiority exists by acts of control and selection that produce a desired space of security and familiarity. It necessitates a boundary to limit or to exclude the foreign, to shape and differentiate interi- ority from exteriority. We can think of this boundary as just a line, which holds qualities of both interior and exterior – but is neither. As an open horizon, it provides points of ex- change, points for something new to start. Perceived as unoccupied and rigid, the bound- ary aims to exclude the unfamiliar in favour of the known, for a sense of security and com- fort. However, familiarity contains unfamiliar- ity, or the uncanny, and, at the very moment of suppression of the unknown (the stranger), interiority is endangered. Western modern culture has a long ‘Islamic’ genealogy, which shaped the foundations of contemporary Western civilisation. There- fore, the current wave in Western politics to exclude elements of Middle Eastern culture comes too late: the strange is already inside. A lack of acknowledgement may serve to protect a sense of interiority, familiarity and security, but it risks excluding significant con- tributions Middle Eastern culture can make to the world. The line’s lack of substance can, in Islamic art, offer freedom. By contrast, the lines bounding the interior tend to embrace and entrap. Can the freedom of line in Islamic art be productively explored to bring move- ment and flexibility to the borders of interi- ority? Can this exploration give rise to a new territory, a new interiority? Born in 1980 in Tehran, Iran, Azadeh Emadi im- migrated to New Zealand to begin her studies in Spatial Design (Performance Design). Her work revolves around issues of transnational space and space between cultures. Her quest is to explore and better understand the ef- fects of a widening gap between Middle East and the West, and Middle Easterners’ experi- ences and feelings in exile, in-between. Explo- rations of the body and its relation to space are important when she uses performative and cinematic installations to engage audienc- es through aspects of moving image. Aspects of her current PhD project developed while she lived in a space of displacement for eight months, in Germany and her country of ori- gin, Iran. Restless Containers: How to think interior space? A.-Chr. (Tina) Engels-Schwarzpaul In his Spheres trilogy and in Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk de- liberately set out to produce a grand narra- tive about globalisation and the crucial role of lived space for philosophy. This presenta- tion explores specific scenes arising from the differentiation of interior and exterior at dif- ferent times and in different places, taking its overall structure from Sloterdijk’s exploration. In Sloterdijk’s grand narrative, the sphere’s spatiality is a central motif in the changes caused by “terrestrial globalisation” between the 16th and 20th centuries. Sloterdijk trac- es the changing relationships to the world at large in parallel with ontogenetic aspects of space in human existence. Predispositions towards interior and exterior arising from these circumstances will shape the percep- tion of actual interiors and their relationship with exteriors. Each globe in 18th and 19th century European interiors manifested a new way of looking at the world. In 19th and early 20th century apartments, mirrors and curtains regulated the interpenetration of interiority and world, filtering and shifting interior and exterior. At this time, too, interior decorators made their appearance, as professional ver- sions of the ‘wild interior architects’ as which Sloterdijk regards all humans. Paxton’s Crys- tal Palace prefigured new instantiations of in- teriority: artificial islands of glasshouses and hothouses, theme-parks and resorts. Emerg- ing towards the end of Sloterdijk’s “terrestrial globalisation”, they interiorise the world on a global scale. Sloterdijk has been accused of arguing from a Euro-centric perspective. The paper will test this charge by juxtaposing his concepts with those that are original or germane to the Pa- cific region – where neither the material spac- es nor the inherent conditions of interiority function in the same manner. Dr. Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul is Associate Pro- fessor of Spatial Design at the School of Art and Design, AUT University, Auckland. Her re- search interests cluster around thresholds and interfaces in design, architecture, theory, and everyday life across cultures. Recent publica- tions include “‘A warm gray fabric lined on the inside with the most lustrous and colourful of silks’: Dreams of airships and tropical islands”, “Tillers of the soil/travelling journeymen: Modes of the virtual”, “At a Loss for Words? Hostile to Language? Interpretation in Cre- ative Practice-Led PhD Projects” and “Take me away … In search of original dwelling”. Dizzy Immensities: Multi-dimensionality and Inverted Space in Focillon and El Lissitzky Sandra Löschke The traditional conception of architecture is that of an absolute object – a static, solid form which delimits space by means of its concrete materiality: its walls, roof and floor. Architec- ture cuts space and creates a material bound- ary dividing an inside world and an outside world. This basic dichotomy has been seen as the basis of the aesthetics of architecture and has been considered tantamount to the prag- matic function of enclosure. But the very na- ture of materiality and objecthood came under scrutiny at the beginning of the 20th century – a crisis brought about by new discoveries in science and by the emergence of psychology. Architecture, although undoubtedly objec- tive in its concrete materiality, was subjected to this crisis of the object, too, and began its course of progressive dematerialization. Although contemporary interest in architec- ture focuses on the dematerialization of the external envelope, the paper suggests that the first push towards the immaterial came from the interior and can be traced in the writings of Henri Focillon and the first experimental rooms of El Lissitzky in the 1920s, in whose works the materiality of architecture is erod- ed from within. Here, ideas of the interior in relation to “multidimensionality”, “fluid space” and total “environments” are foregrounded. What role does interiority play in the transla- tion of abstract pictorial space into the space of architecture? How do we construct what Focillon termed “fluid space” in terms of real materials? What are the psychological under- pinnings which allow us to conceive of the geometric impossibility of spatial inversion - a world within a room? Sandra Karina Löschke is an Architect and Lecturer at UTS (Sydney). She studied at the Bartlett/University College London and the Architectural Association and now writ- ing her PhD thesis at the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on aspects of immateriality and atmosphere in modern architecture. Before coming to Australia, she worked for Foster and Partners and Stephan Braunfels on award-winning projects. Her own work was shown at the 2008 Venice Architec- ture Biennale and selected for the Abundant Highlights exhibition (2008-2010, shown in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Singapore, Bang- kok, and Kuala Lumpur). It was also included in the Australian Architecture Association’s 2010 tour program. She is a Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and registered in the UK. Dividing Evidence: an investigation of interior-exterior interplay in a century of alterations in New Zealand villas Christina Mackay In housing alteration, the power play between desire for exterior form and interior realm is a struggle. This study investigates the dynam- ics of this interplay by examining the detail of the changing occupation, built form and deco- ration of sixteen timber villas in Wellington, New Zealand. Originally, highly prescribed and articulated facades made strong public state- ments, but in subsequent alterations interior agendas had the upper hand in determining changes to the building form. Using one hundred years of ownership re- cords, historical photographs, building consent documentation plus measured and photo- graphic surveys undertaken in 2010, the evo- lution of the design of the interior, the exte- rior and their inter-relationship is exposed. These dynamics are examined with reference to the writings of Bachelard, Pallasmaa and Leatherbarrow. As Leatherbarrow proposes, the exterior image takes second place to ac- commodate requirements of everyday life. The interior usually extends out but rarely does the exterior claim back lost space. When the exterior form is manipulated for interior ends, this can be a private act or a brazen statement, the interior coercing the exterior with no- tions of grandeur and status. Many alterations seem to evolve naturally through the owners’ experience of dwelling. After a century, exte- rior cladding and features appear more intact than their interior counterparts. Perhaps this skin is more distant and therefore matters less to the occupants. Perhaps the strength in the design of the facade resists change. Analysis of past and present interventions provides hints of emerging attitudes and renovation tactics. Christina Mackay is a Senior Lecturer in the Interior Architecture programme, School of Architecture, Victoria University of Welling- ton. She teaches in the areas of design fabrica- tion and architectural practice. Her teaching and research is based on 25 years professional practice in architecture & interior design in UK, Middle East and New Zealand. Christina’s interests include the design of outdoor living spaces (with particular focus on protection from UV radiation) and the dynamics of build- ing alteration, renovation and remodelling. Recent publications include ‘Kitchen remod- elling in New Zealand: Issues of sustainabil- ity’ and ‘Environmental Shade for Protection from UVR – a design & teaching resource’. She is presently completing a BRANZ funded research project ‘Tracking house alterations (1890 – 2010) – case studies of 16 villas in Wellington, New Zealand’. Inside the book: the interiority of representation Marian Macken This paper presents the production of art- ists’ books as a form of alternative, comple- mentary three-dimensional architectural rep- resentation. The object and the archive are inherent aspects of the artist’s book. There is interiority to the book and to its contents. Conventional architectural documentation creates an envisaged building through drawing and modelling the location of scaled materials. The viewer gazes at these drawings and sum- mons up the interior: we are asked to two- dimensionally infer our inhabitation of space. A model is picked up and held, giving it a sense of closure and completion. Artists’ books alter the ‘apparatuses of representation’; in doing so, they bring interiority to the representa- tion of space, which tends to be lacking in the conventional set of design presentation pan- els. The openable codex format of the artist’s book offers both containment and exposure. The book does not try to offer a single image, or aim for the totality of grasp that a model does, nor does it aim for a synthesis of com- prehension. Books offer a sequential, episod- ic narrative that is codex-based, rather than plan-based. The book may also operate as a ‘folded model,’ which begins to have a spatial- ity quite different from the objecthood of the model. The book operates as a 1:1 object, yet may be made and read with scale and repre- sentation admitted. This paper proposes the artists’ books as a lens through which architectural representa- tion may be examined and critiqued: an alter- native, complementary representation to be explored as a new means of investigating spa- tial interpretations and propositions in three- dimensional form. Marian Macken is undertaking her PhD (by thesis and creative work) at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, examining the role of artists’ books as a documentation of architecture. She completed her Master of Architecture (Research) at the University of Technology Sydney on the topic of repre- sentation. She is a designer, part-time educa- tor and maker of artist’s books, recently the winner of the National Artist’s Book Award of the 2010 Australian Libris Awards. She has un- dertaken various visiting artist residencies, in- cluding the Australia Council Visual Arts Board Tokyo studio (2010); at University of the Arts, London (2008); and at Wai-te-ata Press, Wel- lington (2009). Holey Interior: Public Space in the Canadian Metropolis Michael Milojevic Canonical histories of Western architecture generally commence with interiors, natural cave interiors that is, while the urban public places we study are almost exclusively open air networks comprised of the interstices be- tween ground-level structures. Nolli’s 1748 Pianta di Roma reminds us that some urban public spaces are, indeed, fully interior. The undergrounding of essential utilitarian service spaces beneath Brown’s famously ‘smooth’ contiguous surfaces ‘class-stratify’ the site by reserving the park’s visible surface as ‘a place of appearance’ within prescribed vistas which masked critical utilitarian operations from the dominant view. Early 19thC interior and undergrounded public spaces were generally linked to transportation infrastructure and these strata, in response to aerial bombard- ment technology, were ‘armour plated’ in Le Corbusier’s design to protect the city’s vital arteries within fully interiorized plena below the cities’ proposed primary surface. The extensive Modernist interior public space networks beneath the open air roadway-side- walk-plinth-lobby continuum of metropolitan Canadian cities, in particular the +/- 30km villes souterraine or underground cities of Montréal’s RÉSO and Toronto’s PATH, are both strongly interior and public. Unremarkable, narrow and low with frequent changes of level, direction, dimension, finish and lighting these subsurface interiors offer the tactile, aural and olfacto- ry stimulation of small-scale retail activity at close quarters. These subsurface assemblages reference the overhead surface condition, be it a government building, department store, bank tower, mall, hotel, etc. But while holey [á la Deleuze and Guattari] they are, ironically, the most easily and closely electronically-sur- veilled and policed spaces in these cities. Michael Milojevic specialises in ancient and medieval architecture and the architecture of Canada. He is a regular contributor to the An- nual Byzantine Studies Conference and the an- nual conferences of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada and has recently cu- rated the travelling exhibition e+c architecture: the work of elin and carmen corneil 1958-2008 which is currently hanging at The Architecture Gallery, Dalhousie University, Halifax CA after opening at the Carleton University Azrieli SoA Ottawa and at the University of Toronto Dan- iels FoALD earlier this year. He has presented at a number of specialist Nordic conferenc- es including ‘The Universal versus Individual’: 2002 Aalto Research Symposium at the Uni- versity of Jyvaskyla, the 2003 First Utzon Sym- posium at the University of Aalborg and Heri- tage at Risk, DOCOMOMO Moscow 2006. Ancient Modernists and a Dark Interior: Junction Dam and a grave Dianne Peacock This presentation features two structures documented and filmed by the author. The first, Junction Dam (1943) in the Kiewa Hy- dro-Electric Scheme in North East Victoria is an engineered concrete buttress dam wall lo- cated in the sub-alpine Australian bush. A late 19th century grave in Melbourne’s St Kilda Cemetery is the second. The grave is capped by an elongated pyramid, an architectural form suggestive of Loos’ “mound in the woods, six feet long and three feet wide, raised to a pyra- midal form by means of a spade”. The grave is inhabited by a swarm of bees. Scenarios of occupation of two interior spaces are generated through observation, the taking of measurements and the processes of pho- tography and video. Images are reconfigured to prompt imaginatively engaged responses; ways of seeing each structure as other than it is understood to be. From here an account of settled–in unsettling containers is offered. Pas- sages in Benjamin’s Arcades Project relate vol- canic lava to upheaval, revolution and the sub- sequent flowering of culture. The discovery and exhumation of Herculaneum and Pompeii provoked the adoption of a rediscovered style. The presentation seeks to draw these readings of burial and discovery through a discussion of the sealed but porous container of the grave and the interiority of a wall, through to the possibilities offered by interiors re-discovered and re-imagined. The presentation incorpo- rates images and excerpts from two short vid- eos: Ancient Modernists and Dark Register (Bees). The first video depicts Junction Dam from a point of view suggestive of a scene more char- acteristically architectural than infrastructural. The second focuses on the threshold of the beehive. [1] Loos, A. (1910) Architektur. Dianne Peacock is an architect based in Mel- bourne, Australia, where she is a PhD candi- date in Architecture and Design at RMIT Uni- versity. Her thesis Spatial Mystery and Parallel Works is undertaken through creative practice. Her practice has produced exhibitions, in- stallations and zines in addition to built and unbuilt work. Dianne teaches architectural design studio and at RMIT developed ‘Paper, Scissors, Blur’, a course in collage and mixed media in architecture. She has written for ar- chitecture and art journals in Australia and New Zealand, including Architecture Australia, Subaud and Natural Selection. In 2009 she es- tablished Subplot, a Melbourne based architec- tural practice. It operates alongside the pro- duction of writing, collage, and video works. foreign bodies, somewhat unpacked Julieanna Preston with Stuart Foster, Jessica Payne and Wendy Neale J.G. Ballard’s 1966 story The Drowned Giant ob- serves the process of ‘going inside’ an enor- mous cadaver washed ashore. Over a short period of time, the body is excavated, dis- sected and strewn across the city as structural and ornamental elements. In April 2010, three forty-foot containers holding the Somewhat Different: Contemporary Design and the Powers of Convention exhibition were deposited in the parking lot adjacent to the Old Museum Building in Wellington. Over the course of four days a team unloaded, unpacked and set up the exhibition. The initial thrill of touching, playing and sitting on objects made by some of the most famous designers in the world was soon clouded by the objects’ familiarity. Though clever, the objects appeared dated and amongst them lingered promotion of modern- ist and Northern European values seemingly unaware of the context, the island, on which they had just landed. Instead, attention was drawn to the practical, precise, fugal and cal- culated designs of the crates. Our presentation builds upon the coincidence of Ballard’s story and the experience of un- packing this exhibition. It offers another story constructed as a visual adaptation of fictocriti- cism which “performs as well as problematizes the key manoeuvres of fiction and criticism… as an interplay of writing ‘positions’ and with the specific or local contexts that enable the production of these ‘positions’.”[1] The visuals factually report upon the shipping crates as if they were the body of the giant under close inspection. The crates tendered a proposition about interiority: What could live in here? [1] Robb, S. (2001). Fictocritical Sentences. Julieanna Preston’s research investigates mate- rial agency within interior environments and politics in the form of site-situated installa- tions and published essays. Stuart Foster ex- plores digital modes of construction infused with traditional craft methods. He has re- cently launched a series of curated interactive exhibitions for the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. Dr. Jessica Payne is a material responsive de- signer whose work confronts preconceptions of textiles. Julieanna and Jessica’s visual essay “HYPO-matter” (2010) exemplifies their mu- tual concern for the power of material play to reveal meaning in the creative process. Wendy Neale is a furniture designer focussed on con- cepts of recycling and the generation of nar- ratives by objects, often engaging in forms of trade and exchange in keeping with her own design philosophy. Interiority: Samoan thought and the notion of the interior Lealiifano Albert Refiti and I’uogafa Tuagalu This paper argues that the notion of the inte- rior is highly fluid in Samoan thought, travers- ing the concept of vā and its applications to Samoan spatial practices. Dichotomies of in- terior/exterior, inside/outside are common in architecture. It is also commonplace to regard these binaries as polar opposites, in which one term or state necessarily excludes the other. By contrast, space is a foundational concept in Samoan thought. The term vā translates as space, which is conceived as relational, a space between. There are two types of vā: vā fealoaloa’i (social space) and vā tapuia (sacred/ spiritual space). In terms of interiority, these are not opposite poles of a continuum, but can be thought of as a double helix-like, intertwin- ing series of relations: for every social vā, there are sacred underpinnings; for every sacred vā, there are social expressions/forms of that vā. There are positional and directional binaries that locate the vā in question: tai (seaward)/ uta (inland); i totonu (inside)/fafo (outside); pe- riphery/centre. There are also tuaoi (bound- aries) whose shifting and negotiated borders separate (and merge) the vā between entities. Interiority, in psychological terms, takes on a different meaning in this context. The Samoan self is social: the individual’s sense of self only has meaning in relationship with others. So, Samoan behaviour should be determined by the actors’ understanding of their social con- text. Interiority in Samoan thought is there- fore very fluid. The paper explores the spaces of the malae (village green) and the interior of the faletele (meeting house) as sites of this interior fluidity. I’uogafa Tuagalu (MA Hons, Dip Libr) has pa- rental affiliations to the Samoan villages of Satuimalufilufi and Tauese. He studied Pacific History under Dr Hugh Laracy at The Uni- versity of Auckland and has long been inter- ested in the use of Samoan concepts in the telling and understanding of history. He cur- rently provides academic support to students at AUT University. Lealiifano Albert Refiti is a senior lecturer and a PhD candidate at AUT University, researching the spatial and cultural dimensions of Samoan architecture. Albert has a B.Arch (Hons) from The University of Auck- land and studied towards an MA in Architec- ture at the University of Westminster, U.K. He lectured at The University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning, Unitec School of Architecture and Manukau School of Art and Design before taking up his current position. Outside In / Inside Out: Landscape, aesthetics, and architectural interiority John Roberts Gottfried Semper argued that large indoor spaces were, historically, external spaces. Vin- cent Scully points out that Classical Greek temples both housed an image of the deity, and formed an image of his qualities in the landscape. Semper’s notion can be extended to suggest that the conceptual roots of an- cient indoor spaces may lie in landscape spati- ality and the enclosure of exterior spaces. Al- var Aalto, Hans Scharoun and Jørn Utzon have taken landscape form and outdoor space as design resources: indoor spaces in their work can be seen as outdoor spaces enclosed with ceilings and roofs. In a more recent example in a local landscape, Richard Leplastrier’s 1975 Palm Garden House embodies ideas of land- scape, architecture, ideal living, and the in- terweaving of cultures. David Leatherbarrow notes the deep-seated presence of natural space in architecture in “Space in and out of Architecture” (2009). His reflections suggest the presence of a profound human feeling for the natural world, a sense which offers a radi- cal foundation for understanding the aesthet- ics of architectural space. This paper considers the interplay of outdoor and indoor space in ancient architecture, in works by Aalto, Scharoun and Utzon, and in the Palm Garden House. It suggests that ar- chitectural aesthetics may be closely tied to landscape aesthetics, to human empathy for natural spaces. There appears to be a surpris- ing continuity, from ancient to recent times, of an idea that the beauty of the natural world provides a template for the aesthetics of the built world. John Roberts teaches architectural design, drawing, and site studies, and supervises RHD students in the M.Arch program, at the Uni- versity of Newcastle, NSW. He recently com- pleted an M.Phil (Arch) on the role of land- scape in architectural aesthetics, titled Alvar Aalto’s Muuratsalo house, understood through Jay Appleton’s prospect-refuge theory. John Roberts is currently researching sky, clouds, terraces and horizons as they contribute to architec- tural design and experience. Other research interests include the Chinese garden, the ar- chitecture of Alvar Aalto and Jørn Utzon, and contemporary house architecture in eastern Australia. Recent papers include “Prospect and Refuge in Chinatown: Landscape aesthetics in Sydney’s Chinese Garden of Friendship” and, for SAHANZ 2010, “Clouds and Sky Ceilings: Landscape symbolism and the architectural imagination. Musings on indoor-outdoor flow Kara Rosemeier Is indoor-outdoor flow a virtue? Interchange between these spheres is – if real estate agents are to be believed – exceedingly desir- able for residential dwellings in New Zealand. It is facilitated with large apertures that ren- der the building envelope transparent and al- most invisible. The epitome of indoor-outdoor flow is the ability to move away a boundary to the outdoors completely – ranch sliders are the preferred architectural solution – there- by turning the home functionally into a cave, while seemingly extending the living quarters with an annexation of the outdoors. Often overlooked in this conception is the fact that an only notional circumference utterly fails as a semi-permeable membrane, allowing the resulting appropriation to be bidirectional: weather and creatures can go with the flow, too! Indoor-outdoor flow is very much a New Zealand calling, and thus has to be classified in a New Zealand context. This paper explores the drivers of the de- sire to surrender containment, and its obvi- ous trade-offs like loss of privacy and com- fort, intrusion by contaminants, insects and rodents, and other forms of leakiness. It will take into account the heroisms of “roughing it”, the myth of living in a winterless climate, the narrative of New Zealanders as outdoorsy people, comparing this with the notion of “my home is my castle”. Also put into the mix is the elevation of nature as a respected, noble antagonist: are we at battle with nature, or in its bosom? Does this all fit together somehow, or are New Zealanders’ aspirations for their abodes in need of being turned inside-out? Kara Rosemeier, Dipl. Ing. (Architecture), MPlanPrac(Hons), is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture and Planning at The University of Auckland and part time lectur- er in the architecture programme at Unitec (Auckland). Her thesis evaluates parameter of indoor environmental quality, and the relation between ventilation strategies and indoor air quality. She has been managing director of a company specialised in energy efficient build- ings; advisor to a German federal state regard- ing energy efficiency in the building sector; lecturer at Germany and New Zealand univer- sities; and seminar provider for builders and architects. Her research has been published widely. She moved to New Zealand perma- nently in January 2005. Inscapes: Interiority in Architectural Fiction Stefanie Sobelle The term ‘inscape’ can be used to describe the realm of the interior in opposition to a surrounding exterior landscape. The paper will discuss these architectural inscapes as they are presented in fiction, under the premise that a novel is another container inhabited, challenged, and subverted. Writers have long portrayed houses as haunted and penetrable. In William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, hous- es are not capable of sheltering their inhab- itants but become characters themselves. As Faulkner imagines the complexities of do- mestic space, both novel and home become volatile, uncertain constructions rather than sources of refuge. For Faulkner, any merging of inside and outside is threatening and dys- topic. Such literary unhomeliness is exacer- bated in the late twentieth-century when the theoretical discourses informing literature became progressively intertwined with those of architecture. The houses of architect Peter Eisenman, for example, aim to complicate the relationship between inhabitants and struc- tures, mirroring the textual constructions of postmodern novelists, such as Don DeLillo’s. For DeLillo, interior space is a frontier of ex- ploration into the future of the novel. The meeting points between literature and ar- chitecture provide new perspectives and lead to an evocative sub-genre, which privileges do- mestic architecture as an organizing principle for narrative construction and explores the aesthetic and political implications behind the arrangement of inhabited space. I will discuss the treatment of architecture by several writ- ers who treated the book as a physical struc- ture in which we dwell – with its own interior and exterior. New literary forms give way to new textual spaces, spaces that become sites of protest and possibility. Dr. Stefanie Sobelle received her PhD in Eng- lish and Comparative Literature at Colum- bia University (New York), where she taught a course on space in the American literary imagination. She has also taught courses at The Cooper Union and Sarah Lawrence Col- lege in New York, and at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where she is currently an As- sistant Professor of American Literature. She has published in BOMB, Bookforum, and The Fi- nancial Times and her essay “The Architectural Fiction of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Georges Perec” is forthcoming in Writing the Modern City: Perspectives on Literature, Architecture, and Modernity (Routledge, 2011). She is working on a book, The Architectural Novel: Postmodernism’s Literary Construction Sites. Crystal Capital: The Business of University Building Sean Sturm and Stephen Turner For Peter Sloterdijk, the Crystal Palace ex- pressed the “global inner space (Weltinnen- raum) of capital”. What is disclosed in the en- closure of the splendid University of Auckland Owen G. Glenn Business School building is the pantheistic affect of transnational or “tran- scendental” capital. The architecture of this glasshouse is transcendental, a negative monu- mentality, affording a Crystal Palace-like sense of transparency, lightness, flotation, vacuum. Its pantheistic affect is generated by three main features: generous atria, curved rather than rectilinear surfaces, and the use of glass as prima materia. This is the negative theology of neo-liberal Gothic, now aspiring outward to all places, rather than upward to heaven. Neo-liberal Gothic aims both to immaterial- ize and interiorize, to capture a positive void of investment space for transcendental capital. The glass and steel exterior displays the trans- parency and integrity of its inner processes, practices and products. Today the University is business. However, the design-drive of transcendental capital makes human fallibility an excrescence. All the machinery of education is screened out; the all-but-translucent architecture is mir- rored in the apparent transparency of its pro- cesses, practices and products. Education ap- proximates to thaumaturgy. The human scale is discounted, via amplification and wireless connection, in favour of the telematic and the telemetric. The danger of this disclosure of the one space of the transcendental university, a space that grows in us and in which we grow as teachers and learners, is that it closes out the many human foibles by which education flourishes: just talking, being idle, sharing, char- ity, invention. Dr. Stephen Turner teaches in the Depart- ments of English and of Film, Television and Media Studies at The University of Auckland. Dr. Sean Sturm teaches writing at The Uni- versity of Auckland and at the Manukau Insti- tute of Technology. Stephen and Sean research postcolonial and writing studies. Stephen has published essays on settlement and indigeneity in local and international journals and antholo- gies. Sean has published essays on settler liter- ature in local and international journals. They are working together on a book about teach- ing writing in the university. At bottom, their research interests are united by a concern with pedagogy, with the education of writers in the classroom and of good citizens in the national arena. Fourth Wall Removed: Womens’ Liberation or Entrapment? Kirsty Volz 1950-1960s Australian dramatic literature her- alded a new wave which canonised a unique Australian identity on local and international stages. The suburban home provided the back drop for this post-war evolution. Little has been written about how the spatial context may have influenced this movement, as Austra- lian playwrights transcended the outback hero by relocating him inside the post-war home. 1960s mass produced homes subscribed to a new aesthetic of continuous living spaces ex- tending from the exterior to the interior. They employed spatial principles of houses designed by Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe and Loos. Writing about Loos’ architecture, Beatriz Co- lomina described the “house as a stage for the family theatre” which involved “both actors and spectators of the family scene” [1]. Audi- ences were also accustomed to being specta- tors of domesticity and could relate to the representations of home in the theatre. Addi- tionally, the domestic setting provided a space for gender discourse; a space in which con- testations of masculine and feminine identities could be played out. This paper investigates whether spectating within the domestic setting contributed to the revolution in Australian dramatic literature of the 1950s and 1960s. The concept of the spec- tator in domesticity is underpinned by Beat- riz Colomina and Mark Wigley’s writings. In- terviews and biographical research contribute to an understanding of how playwrights may have been influenced by spectatorship within the home, exploring the playwright’s own do- mestic experiences and seeking to determine whether seeing into the home played a vital role in canonising the Australian identity on the stage. [1] Colomina, B. (1992) The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism. In Sexuality and Space. Kirsty Volz is a Master of Architecture student at the Queensland University of Technology. While having worked in both architecture and interior design for a number of years, Kirsty has also worked with theatre companies in set and production design. Having experienced the tension that often exists between the designer and the dramatist she developed an interest in the relationship between architec- ture and the theatre. Kirsty currently works as a tutor in architecture and interior design stu- dios as well as running a collaborative studio in theatre production design. Notes We gratefully acknowledge receipt of The University of Auckland Distinguished Visitor’s Award, as well as the contributions to Professor David Leatherbarrow’s airfares made by the Universities of Melbourne and Tasmania, VUW and AUT University. Our thanks to all who have generously contributed advice and time: Arlette Galich, Azadeh Emadi, Belinda Robinson, Benita Kumar Simati, Christopher Titford, Des- na Jury, Divya Purushotham, Elizabeth Tjahjana, Hana Hong, Jessica Mentis, Judy Cockeram, Julia Gatley, Mark Jackson, Megan Ritchie, Natalie Guy, Rachel Ruckstuhl-Mann, Rameka Tuinukuafe, Ross Collinson, Sarah Treadwell, Sharee Martin, Tracey Holdsworth and others. David Leatherbarrow: Green Line Café