Ranui: the body is a temple, the suburb is a crack house

MArch (Hons) Unitec 2015

With a strong interest in health and the crossover between architecture and other fields, Kelly’s masters project focused on highlighting the relationship between social well being, architecture and the suburban environment. Working on the premise that we could provide more choice in the way we live and interact socially, the project used utopia, transgression and deterritorialisation as a means to subvert the West Auckland suburb of Ranui, opening up possibilities for different ways of inhabiting it.

We live on a small island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Our urban fabric is generally a very loose weave: low rise buildings, huge amounts of open space, and a sprinkling of people in between. This is not just an incidental aspect of our built environment; it is a heavily ingrained part of our identity. We are constantly on the look out for ways to get away from other people: to escape to the bach, away to the beach, camping in the middle of nowhere, taking the boat out – just far enough so as not to see anyone else. And this is fine, until we come to the suburb. The glorious open spaces of the suburb that – if we are not careful – hide in its folds our heart disease and depression and domestic violence and desire to suicide.

A focus on individual health – the ‘body as a temple’ idea – is of no use if our suburbs are treated like crack houses – an unfortunate place to pass through, piss on and get out of as quickly as possible. This project looks at the suburb through the lens of health, specifically social wellbeing. Looking at possibilities for the suburb, and what opportunities await. Questioning what the dangers and advantages of our island mentality are, and how we can better provide fertile ground for facilitating our health needs. Research provided evidence of the quiet suffering of ill-health, the result of poverty that can be easily contained within a banal suburban landscape. The even quieter racism, and subtle class divisions that run deep, and who's spatial relationship can’t be ignored. Suburbia initiated as a social fantasy, ‘to withdraw like a monk and live like a prince -this was the purpose of the original creators of the suburb,’ but as a society (local and global) our social needs and demands change over time. They also change throughout the course of our lives, vary according to our nationality and cultural environment and our individual identity. How these needs are met impacts hugely on our health. The boundaries of connection between ourselves and wider families, neighbourhoods, communities, cities are fluid and changing. We simply need more or less from the people around us differently at different times. Our current suburb typology is very rarely able to deliver, and this reflects in our poor social wellbeing. We could provide more choice, in the way in which we live socially.

In Utopics, Marin, writes ‘Utopic practice wedges itself in between reality and its other. It sketches along this space (transgression itself) and produces a term that neither reduces it, nor neutralises it. Rather it dissimilates and exposes it: this is the essence of the utopic figure… ‘In these utopias dream and reality, desire and political struggle, are magically mixed – and confused.’

There are two steams that run close to edge of the suburb perimeter, they become potential boundaries that provide a possibility for Ranui to disconnect from the mainland. Ranui became an ‘Island’. The Island is a way of exploring the perimeters and boundaries of identity and where they are placed. A firm boundary is marked around the perimeter of the suburb, and social connections within are fortified, as interactions increase.

The common pavilion is a simple, open structure that could allow for gathering – a place to meet. It caters for 40-50 households. Observation from case studies suggested that one way of bringing people together is to necessitate the shared care of something. The pavilion provides this, and there is room for it be to appropriated over time, to cater for differences in use or the users of the street. Children love having space to move around, to ride bikes and run. currently local fitness groups around Ranui get together in parks but localised sheltered spaces would be welcome, nobody like to do zumba in the rain. Fruit trees can be planted, vegetable plots developed. If you live in a big household you might like somewhere to go to have an argument, or an intimate encounter. Or both. Some climbing structures could attach to the building, ropes could attach to the exterior of the wall, basic play equipment invites occupation.

The suicide tower highlights something that we much prefer not to talk about. The tower consists of 8 platforms, on the top platform, the only one over 49m meters high which is the height at which one will most certainly die- there is room only for one person to stand. The lower 7 levels are larger, and all have safety mesh around the bottom -one can maim oneself but will likely live.

The project involves an indication of restructuring, of how we turn inwards and face outwards. Providing choice for how we can manage our social interactions, which might have a positive impact on our health. The peripheries of home widen to include markings of a neighbourhood that caters for all manner of social interactions, facilitating the depth of connection with our boundaries -those around ourselves and with the wider world. Our neighbourhoods are the space between the wider collective and us as individuals; we could begin to nourish and propagate this space as an extension of ourselves. The result is a kind of individual collectivism. The possibility of wildness emerges, as the temple and the crack house intertwine.