2019

Protest Academia

Jeremy Priest

Final Lightroom

Protest Academia is a narrative-driven exploration into how occupational protest may be used to defend and facilitate creative practice within future academic climates. This research facilitates a body of work that discusses the importance of the physical environment in architectural education, as well as guardianship of and autonomy over that environment.

The architecture positions itself within a hypothetical, yet increasingly realistic pretence, in which the University of Auckland’s academic landscape is colonised building by building by the faculties of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - the institution’s most financially efficient pathways. In response, a new School of Architecture is developed on the University’s city campus.

The school itself is an occupation of space. Extending from Symonds Street, through the new Design Programme and School of Engineering facilities, a 180-metre long bar discusses academic segregation, transparency, amalgamation, collaboration and autonomy.

There is a conscious balance throughout the work between the serious and the satirical. The project is often exaggeratory, and at points wilfully irrational, but maintains a desire to be as sincere as possible in its message. There is a consistent use of both metaphor and collage as a means of subversion and interrogation, allowing the work to explore a future based on speculation while remaining grounded in the present moment.

The project was born out of the closure of the University of Auckland’s Architecture and Planning Library on July 1, 2019. 

 
Whole 1 Whole Light Room
The Occupied Bar
A Top Lightroom
Section one, Corporate Camouflage
A Half Lightroom
B Front Lightroom
Section two, The Sawtooth
C Top Lightroom
Section three, The STEM Cell
C With D Copy
D Front Long
Section four, The Mountain
E Smoke Lightroom
Section five, The Construction Site
E Long
Portfolio Print Dragged 1
1:100 Section, 2000 x 1100mm
Jeremy Priest Pres 2
Work displayed at the NZIA Student Design Awards