This interdisciplinary project engages with two pressing issues – a) threatened ecologies and extinct species in Aotearoa and b) safety in public spaces at night – to propose an urban installation that is performative, cinematic and instructive.
The increasing use of technology in architecture, such as screens and digital media, allows for virtuality to combine with reality in constructed environments. However, what does it mean for the natural environment, especially in a time when human-centricity has led to the Anthropocene, putting human and non-human species under threat?
On the flip side of this absolute human creation is the Symbiocene that addresses the multiple species we share the planet with as “more-than-human”, thereby countering humanism’s culture-nature dualism. Nature blooms without the need for control and shapes itself over time to form its own landscapes.
By utilising the highly synthetic media of digital technology and screen imagery, an entire world can be revealed to the public that requires care and attention. Cinematic technology can help us engage with other lives and ecosystems, whether through documentary filmmaking or as an audio-visual public installation of screens. Such screens can provide a dynamic environment in sites that pose a risk after dark, transforming them into places for communal gathering and public experiences.
My thesis therefore aims to tie together urban architecture and cinema with the more-than-human. Critically analysing city park precedents that successfully amalgamate flora and fauna with human-centric infrastructure, the research investigates how a hyper-cinematic installation can establish an environment that creates awareness on fragile ecologies while also improving public safety after dark.
Auckland’s Albert Park, which is notorious for being dangerous at night, provides the prime site for this investigation that is predicated on creating a central performative event space with an urban greenway running through Auckland Domain, Myers Park, and Symonds Street Cemetery. Through rewilding, this expanded greenway ties together the ancient Waihorotiu and Waipapa streams of Tāmaki Makaurau that thread the threatened ecologies, extinct species, cultural and geological changes throughout the history of Auckland’s landscape. The projections and communal spaces in the greenway utilise hyper-cinematic mechanisms to create a safer space at night, connecting Auckland’s key parks to form a green urban oasis.
