Urban Art Village

This October, Urban Art Village is back and bringing the buzz to its exciting new location: Takutai Square in Britomart!

Step into a vibrant pop-up village filled with ten imaginative and interactive structures, designed and built by talented students from the University of Auckland’s School of Architecture & Planning, AUT’s School of Future Environments, Unitec’s School of Architecture, and Victoria University’s School of Architecture.

For two full days on 30 and 31 October from 10am-10pm, Takutai Square will come alive with creativity, curiosity, and hands-on fun for all ages. Come explore, engage, and be inspired by the next generation of urban designers! You can also take in one of their free guided Art Walks through the precinct. Click here for more details.

Step into the world of Urban Art

The Hotbox

Cale Hooper, Oliver Aikawa, Benjamin Yeoman & Samantha Senior
An interactive installation where users collaboratively shift the installation from a collapsed envelope to a composed enclosure.  The hand-controlled pulley mechanisms mean this transformation depends entirely on human engagement; when the gates are released, the walls gradually collapse back to their untouched position.

Mawhitiwhiti: Jumping From Feathers to Leaves

Dirk Encela, Yusef Patel, Gina Hochstein, Carl Salas, Vaughan Shepherd with supporting team Rong Tian, Ranudi Samaratunge, Youlin Qi, Harry Gobbie
This installation is shaped around the timeless archetype of the treehouse roof. It's delicate leaves, carefully crafted through 3D Printing, bring the installation to life, catching light & shadow, stirring curiosity, and awakening delight.

More Than a Roof Over Your Head

James Holyoake 
James' thesis is a breakdown of the experiences found through the inhabitation of backcountry huts.  The furniture can be packed up, carried into new and uncharted sites, and then easily assembled to play host to a unique interaction, between people, furniture, and environment.

Wind Table

Eugene Kim van Dalen & Micheal McCabe
Wind Table takes inspiration from the idea of the Korean 'pyeongsang' which is a small scale timber architecture which facilitates a variety of collective & individual outdoor activities.  The structure creates an ephemeral space through a sky of delicate fabrics above the head which gently move with the wind on site like the willow tree silently moving with the breeze.

Claycore Canopy

Tessa Forde, Simon Glaister, Leonard Hobbins & Ollie Brockie | pre:fab platform
pre:fab wants to bring the power of natural building materials to the concrete jungle of the city centre with Urban Art Village’s first biodegradable installation: a large net of natural materials suspended over a block of raw material that can be sculpted by people willing to get their hands a little dirty.

What Hides Behind the Curtain? And what's that music?

Madison Edgecombe
The room will host temporal performances, but as soon as the performers are alerted the curtains are shut. Abruptly ending the music. Back into hiding.  Exploring quick pack downs & set ups. Enabling an easy change between performance.

Circular Studio

Pat Diswat & Benjamin Everitt
Circular Studio invites patrons to play a series of games & workshops through reused plastic containers with prizes to be won. The collected plastic from these games is then transformed into architectural composite plastic panels & many more wonderful products.

A Failed Roof

Calvin Feng, Philip Lee, Oliver Ray-Chaudhuri, Jack Wu | Bypass Journal 
A Failed Roof imagines a reading room in the city, constructed from fragments of the existing. Memories of previous attempted shelters, bamboo from a suburban garden, a grid of basalt rocks and scaffolding connections are recomposed into a space to read, gather and consi.der the shelter’s making and its future possibilities.

Double Poutama

Matt Liggins Studio and Dr Foothead
The double poutama portal to experience another world by a VR world created by Dr Foothead and Matt Liggins Studio.

Sunrise(t)

Artist: Mad Studio - Matt Liggins Studio and Angus Muir Design, Animation: Pixel Push, Soundtrack: Arli Liberman, Fabrication: Alistar Munro Design
The beauty of a digital sunrise is animated on a large scale physical pixelated screen to evoke the emotions of experience a sunrise & sunset.

Proudly brought to you by Heart of the City, Britomart & NZ Institute of Architects.