More than a roof over your head.

The question, “How can architecture encapsulate the experiential value neglected by backcountry hut management strategies in New Zealand?” investigates the potential of an architectural rehabilitation, with a focus on the characteristics being lost through the supposed mismanagement of memory rich backcountry huts. 

Using the production of both objects and architecture to respond to this repression, a series of core experiential moments highlighted and refined.  This thesis’s approach is centered through personal experience and memorialized value, deeply engrained in the author's 16 years of outdoor understanding.

The definition of a hut, as defined by Department of Conservation, is as quoted. “an often small and temporary dwelling of simple construction”. The hut in this case is therefore an asset, a structural typology whereby people come and go, requiring maintenance, and services a defined purpose for all. The future of a lot of huts in New Zealand has come under threat. A vast underfunding, change of focus from service provision to cost recovery, and lack of consideration for user value have all put their future at risk. 

If the bones of the building was removed, what is the remainder? By stripping away all structural elements, what was left was the inverse of what most people visually saw; it was the smalls, cups of coffee, a cooker on the bench, the uncomfortable mattress, it was the furniture and the objects left still in time without an enclosure.

The following is an written exert from the author's video diary, recorded on a blizzard like evening in an alpine hut:

"Each of these furniture’s has a memory attached to them. The fire, a cold night in the Mackenzie Basin, wishing for the end of a windstorm with sooty ash blowing around the room. I woke in the night to see a group of mice, all huddled by the dying fire, trying to stay warm. I was certainly not going to join them. The bench, a master cook up, burning sausages, champagne, caramelized onions, a might feast in the middle of nowhere. We were the only people in that valley, eating like kings as if we were out for dinner in a fancy restaurant. The bed, a place of giggles, chatting long into the night with the new friends you made in the hut. You can pretty much guarantee that there will always be one snoring bunkmate, and if there isn’t one, it is usually you. The dry room, the sweet, sweet relief of taking our cold wet boots off, rain jackets sopping wet, hurrying to what feels like save your limbs from falling off right then and there. And the table and chairs, a communal gathering to play cards, total strangers bickering and laughing under the torchlight. The table becomes a storyteller in itself, both holding the etchings of peoples love life’s but also stories of triumph or disaster, burn marks from cookers, blood stains from injuries, and candle wax melting into puddles."

To fully understand the value of the inhabitant items, an experiment of creating furniture was undertaken, based on memory, not bound by the hut rule book. The furniture was set up in moments of snow, sunshine, rain, high wind, and darkness. These pieces were reduced in scale enough to carry by backpack, but still very much incredibly heavy. This was a test theory of the labelling of a hut, without the presence of the enclosing structure.