On the Edge

Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

On the Edge

Natasha Perkins Simon Twose

On the Edge – Glamping: Design Investigations in the New Zealand Landscape © 2015 Victoria UIniversity of Wellington. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.

About the Editors Natasha Perkins:

Although every precaution has been taken to verify the accuracy of the information contained herein, the author and publisher assume no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for damages that may result from the use of information contained within.

Natasha has an academic and professional background in industrial, interior, product and furniture design and has 25 years experience in design and product development of architectural products. She holds a Masters of Technology in Product Development and her research focuses on the development of products within large architectural projects.

Natasha has exhibited prototypes at the Milan Furniture Fair and Tokyo Designers Week, and exhibited furniture in Australia, UK, Spain and Italy. She has received several awards including an international ‘red dot award’ in 2010. Currently she lectures in Furniture and Interior Architecture courses at the School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Natasha is of Ngāti Porou and Te Whānau-ā-Apanui descent.

Publisher: Victoria University of Wellington.

Editors: Natasha Perkins

Simon Twose Design:

Graphic Solutions Ltd

ISBN 978-0-475-10199-0 First Edition 2015 Printed in New Zealand Masters students: Polly Dawes – Researcher Hannah Diack Bronwyn Phillipps Matt King – Prototype fabrication Henry Velvin Special thanks to: Associate Professor Mick Abbott Haami Te Whaiti, Ngati Hinewaka Whakaoriori / Masterton Office Staff, Department of Conservation Mitch Holden Craig Christensen Melissa McNulty School of Architecture technicians and administration staff Julie Baga Alex Buckman The Research Trust of Victoria University of Wellington

Simon Twose:

Sponsored by:

Simon Twose is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, and runs his own architectural practice, Simon Twose Architects. His work focuses on design research, looking particularly at the crossings and transferences between architectural drawing and built space.

Twose recently exhibited his work at the 2012 Venice Biennale and was co-organiser of a design research symposium at the 14th Venice Biennale, 2014. His buildings have received several architectural awards and are the source material for his PhD, in which he is an invited candidate in the reflective practice programme at RMIT University. Twose is currently preparing work for the PQ15 Prague Quadrennial and is working on several built projects.

Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

On the Edge

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What is It’s in Our Glamping?

Nature: Conservation, Landscape, Architecture page 8 Lat Long (-41.601428, 175.326599)

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Introduction

Design Research

page 6

page 22

What is Glamping? page 12 Lat Long (-41.602174, 175.327318)

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Site & Context page 24

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5 Students, 5 Research Objectives

Research Themes

Polly Dawes - page 32 Bronwyn Phillipps - page 38 Hannah Diack - page 44 Henry Velvin - page 50 Matt King - page 56

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6 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

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Introduction Glamping, or glamorous camping, is a recent idea that has gained popular traction.

It involves camping that does not compromise comfort. It is designed to attract people who want to experience the outdoors without enduring its harsh conditions; a kind of chardonnay roughing-it. By adding luxury to the simple pleasures of inhabiting the wilderness, Glamping has elevated camping to a high aesthetic activity, allowing full appreciation of the natural environment – with just the right amount of architecture to enhance the experience. This makes Glamping an ideal vehicle to research how Landscape and Architecture relate to one another and, in turn, how Landscape underpins our spatial understandings.

This book is published in conjunction with the On the Edge exhibition. On the Edge brings together work from five Architecture master’s students at Victoria University of Wellington.

Their task was to design small Glamping shelters at Ngā Pōtiki, on the south Wairarapa coast and in doing so, rethink the relationship of Architecture and Landscape. The student researchers all focused on different facets of the question, using architectural design as a mode of enquiry. The shelters they came up with questioned many aspects of our engagement with the wilderness – some are a direct challenge to touristic expectations of luxury – but by being experimental, their work provides insights into how architecture and landscape can be understood in New Zealand Aotearoa. On the Edge offers these alternative views of Glamping to the wider community.

In this book, context is provided by Associate Professor Mick Abbott of Lincoln University, who discusses our intimate connection with the landscape and the often vexed relationship of conservation, landscape and architecture.

This sets the scene for a brief overview of the context for Glamping research: there is a glossary of NZ hut typologies, Glamping as a recent phenomenon is surveyed, and the Ngā

Pōtiki site context is described. The research context is described in a section on design research, something familiar to architecture schools but perhaps less well understood by those outside those spheres.

Design research is a way of testing and generating new thinking through the ‘iterative’ process of designing. In other words, the messy process of sketching, modelling and building prototypes becomes a design tinted lens, uncovering understandings that might not come to light with other research methods. Following this, each student’s design is summarised and key research themes expanded from their theses, binding the results of their individual investigations into one project. On the Edge presents a snapshot of master’s level design research, directed at the phenomenon of Glamping.

In the exhibition space, the results of the students’ yearlong research are arranged on three tables: table one shows design iterations, tests and prototypes – allowing a view into the creative design process that drives the research, table two shows finished designs, with each student’s Glamping proposal accompanied by a bound copy of their thesis.

A third table displays a 1:200,000 scale site model of Ngā Pōtiki, with each Glamping design located on the landscape with a latitude and longitude marker. A full size prototype of student Matt King’s wind shelter is installed in the gallery courtyard.

This book and exhibition presents the results of a year of vigorous thinking, testing and researching through architectural design.

One can imagine Glamping in these shelters, experiencing heightened soundscapes or being challenged by structures that move, mimic natural ecologies, or exaggerate the practical events that make up camping.

The five designs exhibit a rich resource of thinking on Architecture and Landscape, using Architectural Design as a research tool and Glamping as provocation.

Photo by Henry Velvin

9 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

It’s in Our Nature: Conservation, Landscape, Architecture

By Mick Abbott Landscape is at the heart of how we understand our relationship with this country.

It pervades our imagination. In the paintings of our artists – McCahon, Angus, Hotere, Cotton and many more.1 In the 100% Pure message of Aotearoa New Zealand that we take to the world with lush images of untouched mountains, forests, and coastlines. And in what we deeply value – as ‘kiwis’ who reminisce of childhood camping holidays, who call ourselves after a rare forest bird, and who march in the streets when mines threaten our national parks.

1

Docking. Two Hundred Years Of New Zealand Painting.

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A Wild Landscape

Ngā Pōtiki Landscape Photos by Henry Velvin

In our landscapes it is the quality of wildness that we find the most potent. We stand apart, as a nation, in the amount of land we have put aside to remain essentially unchanged from before the arrival of people: fully one third of the country is public conservation land.

These wild places have shaped our language.

The ‘bush’ is the largest single entry in the Dictionary of New Zealand. In this country we ‘go bush’, ‘bush it’, ‘bush-bash’, ‘be bushed’, and become ‘bush happy’. There are ‘bush shirts’, ‘bush tracks’, ‘bush cattle’, ‘bush bread’ and ‘bush bunks’. And people have been ‘bush doctors’, ‘bush-hands’, ‘bush philosophers’ and ‘bushmen’.2 In the nineteenth century the bush was that frontier which, as it was rolled back, produced the country’s timber, minerals, pasture and settlements – a vital resource that in the process of being consumed created the nation’s wealth.

In the twentieth century it was the mountains and remote lands that remained wild. Wilderness shifted its meaning to become a place of escape and personal challenge: a mix of Mulgan’s ‘Man Alone’ and Hillarylike achievements. Wilderness was a stage upon which individuals tested, and defined themselves: a place of ‘re-creation’.

If that is our heritage, then what is the possibility of wilderness this century?3 Hopefully more than is currently sought. It is revealing that in the coffee table books focused on this country’s conservation lands, almost always, images of people are absent. Endemic nature remains separate to us, something to look at, but also to stand apart from.

This sense of alienation also shapes the Department of Conservation’s management policies. Its overarching Visitor Strategy defines all people in public conservation lands as visitors. International visitors, locals and Tangata Whenua are all lumped together as visitors who ‘are welcomed as valued guests’,4 and who are expected to behave as such.

Of course people are more than visitors in our public conservation lands. They are essential to this country’s wild nature. Without an annual injection of many hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, and countless 2

3

Orsman. The Dictionary of New Zealand English.

Abbott and Reeve. Wild Heart: the Possibility of Wilderness in Aotearoa New Zealand.

4

Department of Conservation. Visitor Strategy.

11

hours and resources given through donations and volunteering, our public conservation lands would quickly become ecologically dysfunctional. Birdlife would plummet, forests would be ravaged, and soil structures and cover irreversibly changed.

A Part of Nature Why then this affinity for imagining ourselves as external to this country’s indigenous nature? Perhaps it is based in the potency of the Gondwana story where the land was kept apart from mammals for millions of years.

Before people, the land was untouched. Since our arrival it has been permanently despoiled; we are forever the corruptors of Eden.

While there is a bittersweet melancholy to this sentiment, it is also an illusion. Through what we eat, drink, wear, and how we live, we are part of nature. The challenge is in determining which nature we want to be connected to. Is it one based solely on exotic species, or is it threaded into the indigenous ecologies that belong to Aotearoa New Zealand?

As anthropologists Tim Ingold and Terhi Kurttila observe, becoming local is not a function of where we live but rather the ways we act. Different types of activities draw out different qualities of a place and a person. It is a process by which places become distinctive and people become enmeshed in their environment.

Belonging, they assert, ‘has its source in the very activities of inhabiting the land that both bring places into being and constitute persons as of those places as local’.5 Becoming part of this country’s enduring nature requires not only caring for our public conservation lands but also considering ways we let such places, and their distinctive ecosystems, shape our behavior.

For Tangata Whenua this process emerged from working with all that belonged here.

In this way, harakeke, kōnini, kererū, tōtara, kōura and nīkau are not just names of species, they are also part of a practice of mahinga kai that developed out of being physically and culturally sustained by the country’s distinctive flora, fauna and water life.

Current discussions concerning mahinga kai are vitally important, and not only for Tangata Whenua. The conversation is a challenge for us all. For example, opportunities exist to not only hold onto the cultural knowledge of a plant’s medicinal qualities, but to also fully explore the products and services, and the potential exports our native plants could generate.

Similarly we need to reconsider if our

environment, and consequently ourselves, would be better served by a plantation timber industry based on native species rather than pinus radiata.

And in terms of food is it possible to chart a knowing of the forest through hunting for food that is genuinely of this land, seeking to restock our forests with kererū rather than deer? What level of ecological richness would be needed to sustain flocks of kererū, and how could this be achieved?

The Place of Design A management approach might determine the policies required to better organise wild nature. But a framing of the environment as a resource from which to extract value is limited.

A more experimental orientation is needed – one that investigates which actions might closely involve us in the country’s ecologically indigenous qualities.

Such experimentation is inherently conjectural, creative, and ‘designerly’. Across a variety of design disciplines, forward-looking and innovative practices of this country’s nature are beginning to emerge.

In the field of industrial design, Good Nature (an industrial design company) with its user-centred design focus, has made killing pests appealing. In terms of social innovation, highly active conservation groups, such as the Supporters of Tiritiri Matangi, build communities based on values of volunteering, camaraderie and a welcoming of a diversity of skills and abilities. In recent landscape architecture projects our team has worked with Rio Tinto, Conservation Volunteers New Zealand and DOC to propose a new form of National Park based on experiences of restoration rather than preservation. Another project, with Ngāi Tahu Farming, instigates the planting of a distributed native forest within a dairy conversion. This forest creates a 20 by 10 kilometre stepping stone across the Canterbury Plains for kererū and tui to move to and from the otherwise isolated Banks Peninsula.

For architecture where are the most productive opportunities? A technical approach towards the environment – through the likes of solar angles, thermal mass and embodied energy calculations – often leads to generic and mechanistic outcomes.

At the other end of the spectrum, looking at an environment simply for its expressive potential suggests an affluence that comes across as indulgent. This particularly so in

those mega-room houses that tumble down sites to multi-car garages and private beaches, and also that solitary box, alone in a field that peels open to its view of a land and ocean ‘out there’; both types seemingly prevalent in current architecture awards.

In these approaches the way we behave remains unchallenged and unchanged. As such, architecture remains tasked with transforming a place rather than its people.

And this is why this exhibition is exciting.

While individual proposals examine specific opportunities for ‘glamorous camping’, the deeper driver at work is an exploration of how this country’s nature might prompt us to act differently, and what architectural forms could prompt this.

This exhibition challenges us to ask: how could we engage with the landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand? Not as a resource or a stage, but rather as the generator of innovative twenty-first century practices and behaviours that are responsive and distinctive to this country’s enduring nature.

Herein lies the value of what is exhibited: an exploration not of new territories, but of new relationships with this country’s most distinctive and most ecologically indigenous landscapes, suggesting possible ways to perform, and act in Aotearoa New Zealand as people of the land.

Bio Note: Associate Professor Mick Abbott is Head of the School of Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University. Trained as an architect, he was lead equipment designer for Fairydown and Hallmark. He has co-edited a number of books on landscape themes including Wild Heart: the possibility of Wilderness in Aotearoa New Zealand (2011), and also Beyond the Scene (2010) and Making our Place (2011). A regular columnist for New Zealand Wilderness, Mick also completed, last century, a 130 day solo traverse of the South Island’s Main Divide.

Current and recent research partners include Air New Zealand, Antarctica New Zealand, Conservation Volunteers New Zealand, Department of Conservation, Eden Project Cornwall, Fonterra, Kiwi Ranger, Ki Uta Ki Tai - From Mountains to Sea Trust, Ngai Tahu Farming and Rio Tinto.

5

Ingold and Kurttila. “Perceiving the Environment in Finnish Lapland,” 185.

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What is Glamping?

Slaty Creek hut built 1952.

Located in Ahaura River & Lake Brunner catchments area. Image source DOC

Camping, the ever-popular kiwi holiday, is undergoing subtle change. For those who like the idea of camping but aren’t so fond of the discomforts, luxury camping, glamorous camping or ‘Glamping’ has become a popular alternative.

To some, the idea of Glamping simply means a large tent, an airbed and access to toilet and shower facilities but this new global trend has taken camp comforts to a new extreme.

Glamping allows travellers to experience all the positives of camping without any of the ‘uncomfortable’ aspects.6 Glamping has replaced leaky tents and lumpy ground with luxury furnished tents, on site baths and food and wine to order, preferably against a stunning natural backdrop.7 Glamping is marketed as an experience that brings you closer to the wilderness – to get back to nature without giving up any modern day comforts. As the trend has gained popularity, tents, tepees and yurts have been joined by eco-pods, igloos and tree houses.

The unique structures often capitalise on their surroundings to help create the potent mix of glamour and wilderness that defines Glamping.

There is a spectrum of examples of lightweight and temporary Glamping typologies, from architecture to Art based

speculations: from Cockatoo island, Sydney to Andy Irving and Keila Martin’s Apocalypse Tent.

In the Apocalypse Tent, recently exhibited at the Dowse Art Museum, the authors explored ideas of habitation in a ‘…current doomed-filled predicament’. It used ‘lightweight systems and provisional building methods… in an unusual rehearsal in self-sufficiency, offering a different view of an apocalyptic crisis’.8 If managed correctly, Glamping is argued to be an environmentally friendly form of tourism, as the energy used in the construction and management of Glamping sites can be relatively small compared to that of a small hotel. Many sites incorporate solar power and composting toilets into their design while also re-using discarded materials.9 The temporary aspect of many Glamping sites is also a factor in minimising the harmful impacts of buildings on the landscape.

6

Boscoboinik and Bourquard, “Glamping and Rural Imaginary,” 157.

7

Maxwell, “BuzzWord”; Glamping Hub, “What’s Glamping.”

8

Irving and Martin; “Apocalypse Tent.”

9

Maxwell, “BuzzWord”; Glamping Hub, “What’s Glamping.”

14 THIS PAGE: Cape Palliser - Ngawi Camping Area RIGHT: Canopy Camping Escapes launched in 2012 by Liz Henderson and Sonia Minnaar.

Photo by Cameron Zegers Photography

Why is it Popular Now?

Origins of Glamping The term “Glamping” is thought to have been coined in Britain,10 and the concept has since gained global popularity, particularly in Europe and America. The notion of a glamorous camping shelter evolved from African safari tours and other adventure tour based camping, where American and European tourists created a demand for high quality accommodation in wilderness locations.11 While adventure tourism may have refined camping into something more glamourous, the luxury tent is a much older concept, with ornamented and well-appointed examples dating from ancient Egypt, Assyria and the Ottoman Empire. The Egyptians and Assyrians used tents to support military campaigns and they were often elaborately ornamented; with extensive gilding and fine materials. The Assyrian King Sennacherib’s (705-681 BC) tent contained folding chairs and portable furniture.12 The luxury, ornamentation and formal variety of the 15th to 18th century Ottoman Empire tent construction has rarely been surpassed.13 These tents played an important role in Ottoman urban ceremonial life and housed important diplomatic receptions.

Industrialised countries saw use for the tent again in the 19th century to provide economical, temporary structures to host middle-class leisure activities such as sport

and singing. These structures, along with those used in Paris for urban coffee shops and garden decoration, contained a hint of Ottoman culture.14 There is a long history of the Tent as a luxurious temporary shelter, as well as a simple utilitarian device, demonstrating efficiency of structure and economy of materials.15 This potential to juxtapose utilitarianism and luxury is perhaps why the tent is the predominant form of many contemporary Glamping examples.

10 11

Maxwell, “BuzzWord.”

Higgleton, Sargeant, and Seaton, Chambers Pocket Dictionary.

12

Drew, New Tent Architecture, 12.

13

Burkhardt, “History of Tent Construction,” 964.

14

Bußmann, “The Pavilion: A History of Enduring Transience,” 39.

15

Drew, New Tent Architecture, 13.

The popularity of Glamping has occurred after a wider resurgence in the idealisation of rural and nature based spaces.16 Post Modernity has seen an altering of the city dweller’s perceptions of urban and rural spaces, with the countryside being seen as the antidote to the pressure of city life.17 This shift in perception is alloyed to a desire for a kind of tourism that provides an ‘authentic’ and close experience of nature to provide an escape from every-day life.18 This desire to ‘get back to nature and basics’ is what makes Glamping, like its predecessor traditional camping, so appealing. Simple structures, such as tents, allow us to inhabit the landscape more intimately than in static and heavy buildings. They are responsive to changes in the wind, sun and storms and the barrier between inside and outside is reduced, bringing nature into the tent.19 While Glamping has expanded to provide accommodation other than just luxury tents, its essence remains to provide structures that allow for an intimate inhabitation of their surroundings.

16

Boscoboinik and Bourquard, “Glamping and Rural Imaginary,” 150, 157.

19

17

Ibid. 150.

18

Ibid. 154.

Drew, New Tent Architecture, 15–16.

15

16

17

LEFT: Andy Irving and Keila Martin’s Apocalypse Tent at Enjoy Public Art Gallery (2011) Photos by Andy Irving

A Green Sort of Tourism As a tourist activity, Glamping fits into a wider trend of nature based tourism and ecotourism. Travel and tourism are among the world’s fastest growing industries, however if not managed correctly this global growth may put biological and cultural diversity at significant risk.20 The sustainable development movement has gained considerable momentum over the 21st century21 and as a result the travel and tourism industry has had to adapt to a more environmentally and socially conscious market. The desire to travel will not simply disappear so the industry has responded to the green trend by offering ‘socially and environmentally responsible holidays’ along with green transport options.22 The result is ecotourism, a growing niche market that has developed within the larger travel industry.23 The World Tourism Organisation defines ecotourism as:

Tourism that involves travelling to relatively undisturbed natural areas with the specified object of studying, admiring and enjoying nature and its wild plants and animals as well as exciting cultural aspects found in these areas.24 While various other definitions of ecotourism exist, a review of contemporary definitions by Donohue and Needham identified the five most common themes: • • • • •

Location or natural setting Conservation Culture Benefits to locals Education25

Ecotourism is further distinguished from mass-tourism through its delivery to primarily small groups by small-scale business.

Yeoman argues that the new eco-ethical conscience is here to stay and as a result tourism in New Zealand will have to take note of ecotourism methods.26 As the public grow more eco-conscious people may be less likely to travel to New Zealand due to the distance and impact on the environment. The food miles debate demonstrated that overseas consumers were willing to forgo New Zealand imports due to the perception that food that has travelled a greater distance has a larger carbon footprint.27 It may therefore become imperative to offer eco-friendly tourism and travel options to offset the perceived negatives of travelling here for international visitors.

Glamping as a form of tourism can easily be adopted by New Zealand, whose primary tourism commodity is its landscape.28 Even before the trend arrived here, Glamping concepts were already being adopted. Over the past 25 years the Department of Conservation (DOC) has provided a more comfortable hut to suit a wider range of travellers:

brief, Glamping provides a unique vehicle through which to investigate how we relate to our landscape as place of beauty, changeable climactic conditions, unique ecological systems and cultural identity. The student projects in On the Edge are in response to such questions.

Wood, “Ecotourism: Principles, Practices and Policies for Sustainability,” 7.

20

21

Wood, “Ecotourism: Principles, Practices and Policies for Sustainability,” 7.

23

24

Undoubtedly, the new DOC hut designs have been aimed at encouraging less experienced people to enjoy the hills by providing some degree of comfort, including double glazing and insulation.29 However there is an opportunity to create accommodation that engages with its surroundings more intimately than the traditional DOC hut. As an architectural project

Singh, Ecotourism, 146.

Yeoman, “Can New Zealand Be a True Green Destination That Goes Beyond Tourist Perceptions of 100% Pure?”.

22

25

Singh, Ecotourism, 146.

Donohoe and Needham, “Ecotourism,” 195.

Yeoman, “Can New Zealand Be a True Green Destination That Goes Beyond Tourist Perceptions of 100% Pure?”.

26

27

McKie, “How the Myth of Food Miles Hurts the Planet”.

28

29

Ministry for the Environment, “Environmental Values.”

Barnett, Brown, and Spearpoint, Shelter from the Storm, 27.

18

Nature Space

Pods

Tents

Typologies Luxury Tent

Safari Tent

Large, beautiful canvas tents that are fully furnished with real beds, carpets and other home comforts.

These large colonial style tents are common accommodation for African Safari organisations. The spacious rectangular interiors allow for simulation of home spaces.

Domes

Eco Pods

These dome shaped structures can be seen as a modernised version of the tent. They are constructed from a combination of materials including wood, steel and tensile membrane fabrics.

They are relatively easy to construct and often have a minimal impact of their surroundings.

Eco-Pods are similar to cabins and are built from sustainable and recycled materials. They combine compact size and energy efficient systems to achieve a small ecological footprint, especially in comparison to traditional forms of holiday accommodation.

Tree House

Igloo

Tree houses can take form as either an updated version of the traditional tree house or an architecturally innovative structure placed in the trees. They are typically accessed by ladder and provide fantastic views of the forest below.

Originally built by the Inuit, glampers can stay in these dome shaped houses that are usually built from blocks of solid snow and insulated with hides

19

Tepee

Transport

The traditional structure of the American Indians. Today wooden poles are arranged in a triangular shape and tied at the top before a weather resistant canvas is wrapped around the poles to create a warm and spacious accommodation.

Cave

Fully furnished natural underground spaces.

Yurt

Yurts were historically built withstand Mongolian winters and are ideal for all year round glamping accommodation.

Constructed from fabric wrapped around a wooden lattice framework yurts have a low, wide, cylindrical base and a conical roof.

Caravan

Caboose

Traditional campervans that have been placed in beautiful locations so the glamper can enjoy the ‘home-on-wheels’ experience without all the driving.

Detached train carriages that have been repurposed for comfortable holiday accommodation.

On Water

Structures that either float directly on water or are supported above water level on columns or stilts.

The Americas

Europe

Global Glamping Treehotel

Whitepod

Harad, Sweden

Switzerland

This hotel offers five unique rooms in the forest area around Harad. The rooms have been designed by some of Scandanavia’s leading architects, providing accommodation from the avante garde to the more traditional.

Source: treehotel.se

EcoCamp

Africa

Resort at Paws Up Montana, United States

These eco-friendly domes, located in the Torres del Paine National Park, come with private bathrooms and gas heaters.

Visitors can go hiking, cycling, skiing or on safari trips before coming back to the communal domes for locally-sourced meals and lounging.

Source: ecocamp.travel

The Resort at Paws Up is located in the Blackfoot Valley in the wilderness of Montana. Luxury safari style tents come with fully equipped ensuites, electric fans and heaters and access to a camp chef. A variety of guided activities are available including: archery, fishing, horse riding, hot air ballooning, clay bird shooting and water activities. Source: pawsup.com

Western Tanzania The camp is located in Mahale National Park on a beach overlooking lake Tanganyika. The thatched tents have luxury furninshings and ensuite bathrooms and are tucked back into the forest line. The chimps are the camp’s main draw but visitors can also go hiking, swimming and kayaking.

Source: nomad-tanzania.com/west/ greystoke-mahale

Lake Retreat Nainital, Uttarakhand, India

Asia

Whitepod offers luxury geodesic domes for guests to stay in while experiencing the Swiss Alps. Located on a ski resort, guests can go skiing, dog sledding, snow trekking and paragliding or have a massage at the onsite wellness centre.

Source: whitepod.com

Patagonia, Chile

Greystoke Mahale

This camp has five furnished Swiss tents with plumbed ensuite facilities and provides all meals. The area is perfect for bird watcing, hiking, fishing and boating.

Source: glampinghub.com

Longitude 131°

Australia

20

Yulara, Australia Longitude 131° is a luxury-tented lodge facing Uluru in the wilderness of UluruKata Tjuta National Park. A touring programme is designed for guests to experience the landscape and the on site restaurant provides both indoor and outdoor meals.

Source: longitude131.com.au

Mbulia Conservancy Nairobi, Kenya This lodge is located in Tsavo West National Park and enjoys views of the Ngulia Hills and Mt Kilimanjaro. The camp has 8 luxury tents with plumbed ensuites and common facilities include a pool and dining area. Guests can go on bush walks to view and track wildlife and take cultural visits to local villages.

Source: glampinghub.com

Tent River Camp Bangkok, Thailand The Safari Tents River Camp overlooks the famous River Kwai. The spacious canvas tents are settled on a wooden base and have private verandas and bathrooms. The camp provides adventure activities such as biking, trekking, canoeing and bamboo rafting and guets can also visit the Mon tribal village for cultural performances.

Source: glampinghub.com

Kangaluna Camp Gawler, South Australia Part of the Gawler Ranges Wilderness Safaris, these luxury safari tents, with access to private showers and toilets, are set in the stunning wilderness region of the Gawler Ranges. Guided tours allow visitors to experience some of South Australia’s finest scenery and wildlife.

Source: glampinghub.com

21

Canonici Di San Marco Marc

Cosy Under Canvas

Teapot Lane

Italy

Wales

Leitrim Ireland

This resort offers luxury tents, placed over a wooden floor in an expanse of parkland and wheat fields. Each tent can sleep between 2-6 guests and has a spacious bedroom, lounge area and bathroom equipped with a shower and hot water. Source: glampingcanonici.com

This glamping site is set on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park, allowing for plenty of outdoor activities to keep gusts occupied. Guests stay in fully furnished geodesic domes with wood burning stoves and a timber deck.

Source: glampinghub.com

Teapot Lane offers a country getaway with a variety of glamping accommodation options.

Guests can choose from luxury furnished yurts complete with king size beds and wood burning stoves, the tree house and a bell tent in summer.

Activities in the area include surfing, horseriding and hill walking. Source: glampingireland.ie

Vintage Airstream

Tree Spheres

Clayoquot

Abiquiu, New Mexico, United States

Qualicum Beach, British Columbia, Canada

British Columbia, Canada

The ultimate tree house accommodation, the Tree Spheres are built using boat building technology and suspended in the West Coast Rainforest. Gusts have access to shared washing, cooking and sauna facilities and can take part in nature tours in the area. Source: glampinghub.com

Clayoquot Wilderness Resort is a short flight from Vancouver where visitors can stay in luxury safari style tents. Visitors can go, whale watching, bear watching or try archery, zip lining and kayaking.

Communal tents provide wi-fi access and a games room. Source: wildretreat.com

Authentic Huts

Agafay Desert Camp

This 1960´s Airstream is located in 23 acres of desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico and is protected against the intense New Mexican sun by an authentic ramada.

Airstream is small yet comfortable and fully equipped. Visitors can go hiking or climbing in the surrounding desert environment. Source: glampinghub.com

Gorah Elephant Camp CampMarc Addo Elephant Park, South Africa This resort offers luxury tents, placed over a wooden floor in an expanse of parkland and wheat fields. Each tent can sleep between 2-6 guests and has a spacious bedroom, lounge area and bathroom equipped with a shower and hot water. Source: glampingcanonici.com

Zambezi Valley, Zambia

Marrakesh, Morocco

This glamping site is set on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park, allowing for plenty of outdoor activities to keep gusts occupied. Guests stay in fully furnished geodesic domes with wood burning stoves and a timber deck (glamping hub).

The camp of luxury cotton tents is only a small hike away from the imperial city of Marrakesh and faces the imposing snow-caped Atlas mountains. Activities designed to enjoy the great outdoors include dune buggy driving, camel and donkey treks and even a longetrek with a mountain guide and mule transport for equipment (glamping hub).

Tented Camp

Safari Tent Adventure

Floating Cabins

Rishikesh, India

Okkampitiya, Sri Lanka

The camp is at the base of the Himalayas on the banks of the river Ganga, guests stay in comfortable twin share tents with separate showers. The camp has no electricity and all meals are provided in the dining tent. Visitors can go river rafting, rock climbing, swimming and hiking or take part in outdoor games at the camp. Source: glampinghub.com

The luxury-tented lodge is situated in the Weliara jungle, luxury tents are minimally furnished and have their own toilets and verandas. Meals are cooked on a natice style wood fire and the staff will take guests on guided wildlife tours through the wilderness. Elephants are common in the area and can often been seen from the lodge itself. Source: glampinghub.com

Koh Andet Island, Tatai, Cambodia The glamping site is located on the southern coast of Cambodia, close to the city of Koh Kong, where guests stay in tented lodges on platforms that float on the lake. An on site chef prepares meals from local produce and guided jungle trekking tours and kayaking trips are available. Source: glampinghub.com

Avant-Garde Camping Company

Bamurru Plains Safari

Eco Beach Resort

Kakadu, Australia

Broome, Australia

NSW, Australia

These safari bungalows are located to the west of Kakadu National Park on the Mary River floodplains. Each suite comes fully furnished and has access to a private deck and bathroom facilities. The lodge offers Barramundi fishing safaris, local wildlife can be seen from the safari bungalows and an onsite restaurant provides meals.

Source: bamurruplains.com

This wilderness resort provides fully furnished luxury safari style tents with access to an ensuite and fly screen ventilation. The retreat offers a variety of activities including guided fishing, hiking, yoga and whale watching. The resort also offers tours that offer an insight into the culture and history of the local region.

Source: ecobeach.com.au

This service provides pop-up glamping tents for your chosen location in New South Wales. A variety of bell tents are available and come with furnishings and lighting fixtures.

Source: glampinghub.com

22 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

‘Design research in architecture cannot … be conceived as synonymous with the immensely broad subject of architecture, or indeed architectural practice, rather, it is a significant seam that runs through design work with a particular focus on the creation of new insight and knowledge.’30

Design Research At Victoria University of Wellington School of Architecture the 5th year of study is undertaken as a 12 month research thesis.

This allows students to engage in an indepth study through the medium of design.

During 12 months, design becomes a series of acts of discovery that unfold, turn in on themselves and expand outward. This vigorous and often messy process focusses attention on knowledge gained from a designerly understanding of space and with it, the potential to make rich non-linear connections.

This emphasis on the often tacit aspects of an enquiry through design research is now firmly established and has garnered many publications. Murray Fraser, in a recent address at a Symposium on Design Research at the Venice Biennale, commented on how design research has gained a new maturity whereby the multiple and non-linear lens given by design now no longer needs incessant justification as legitimate research.31

Each student in this research cluster pursued design in a rigorous manner, using a particular method geared towards their research objectives. Site recordings, models, digital and analogue drawings and large scale prototypes became the ways and means to investigate their propositions, which inevitably evolved as the iterations multiplied. The goal was to design ‘Glamping pods’ as well as to gain understandings of the wider issues, using the inherently circular mode of designing as the research method. In designing, the circularity of the process can be seen as an active way of engaging with a context, be it theoretical, conceptual or physical, with both the context and the research proposition influencing one another in a kind of friction relationship.

30

Fraser, Design Research in Architecture, 2.

31

Moloney, J., Smitheram, J, Twose, S., (Eds), Architectural Design Research: Why, Who Cares, How.

Lat Long (-41.601917, 175.327774)

23

Student presentation of design concepts

24 Rock walls – both european and Māori are still evident on the site. Photo by Natasha Perkins

Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

Lat Long (-41.601917, 175.327774)

Site & Context The site for the design research is Ngā Pōtiki Reserve, a Department of Conservation block located two and a half hours drive from Wellington City, just north of Ngawi and Matakitaki-a-Kupe (Cape Palliser). It is an aggressively beautiful and barren landscape with a rich pre-European history and unique ecology. The site has steep greywacke cliffs with foothills created by earthquake strewn rocks. A line of gravel beaches fringes the foothills. The site is battered by winds from the Cook Straight and has a delicate ecology of miniature plant species, sea animals, and other fauna.

Māori have had a presence in Ngā Pōtiki for 800 years and used the foothills for the cultivation of Karaka trees. Ngā Pōtiki is a perfect example of ‘dominance of landscape over architecture’ enshrined in NZ law (in the Resource Management Act, 1991). The unique geography, history and ecology of the site provide a rich context for exploring architecture in relation to the New Zealand Landscape.

The Wairarapa region consists of three

different environmental zones – a mountainous hinterland, (the Aorangi Mountains), a complex alluvial valley (Wairarapa Plains) with associated rivers and lakes, and a narrow coastal platform.32 The Aorangi Mountains and narrow coastal platform are clear features of the Ngā Pōtiki Reserve block. The Ngā Pōtiki Fan, a large slope of re-deposited gravel, extends out of the Waitetuna river valley into a forested shingle scree. Further up the coast the screes descend all the way to the ocean and this form, of mountains, scree fans and gravel beaches, is the predominant landscape. The Waitetuna Stream cascades down the centre of the site in several waterfalls and pools and then winds down between a carpet of trees on the Ngā Pōtiki fan to the East, and rock strewn tussock land to the West. The Ngā Pōtiki site is rich in subtle variation and the Glamping projects are designed to engage with the landscape at an intimate scale.

32

Leach, “The Prehistory of the Southern Wairarapa.” 11.

26

Human History Ngā Pōtiki, though geologically young, has the country’s longest history of human settlement. It was first inhabited by Māori, 800 years ago, who altered the landscape considerably through extensive horticultural production. There is archaeological evidence of both permanent and shifting Māori settlements as tribes retreated to semipermanent camps inland to avoid bitter winter conditions.33 Approximately 249 archaeological sites have been recorded in the region and stone wall complexes are still evident along the coastal flats of the region.34 Several are visible on the site, running perpendicular to a more recent stone wall, thought to be European.

In 1250 AD the indigenous population hit the maximum land capacity of 300 people. The Ngāti Hinewaka tribe still regards Matakitakia-Kupe (Cape Palliser) as wāhi tapu ‘a sacred place’, despite abandonment in the 16th century due to a mini ice age that altered the climatic conditions at the site and made it difficult to cultivate crops.35 After a period of absentee ownership, European settlement occurred in 1846 when the Cape Palliser block was initially leased, then freehold. The New Zealand Government allowed run holders to purchase large expanses of land in 185336. These areas were pastoralized and grazed with sheep and cattle.

The Ngā Pōtiki block was renamed White Rock Station and leased by a succession of farmers37. The land is still being farmed but was passed into Department of Conservation hands and is now a public reserve despite Ngāti Hinewaka having ownership of the coastal strip used for access. The compounding effects of cultivation, introduced species and a naturally harsh climate have assured continual change and degradation of the pre-human ecology of the site. The ‘natural’ character of the site is very much due to a history of human occupation.

33

Ibid. 21.

34

Ibid. 13.

Harris, “Rengarenga Lilies And Māori Occupation At Matakitakia-Kupe (Cape Palliser): An Ethnobotanical Study,” 271-286.

35

36

Harris, “Māori Land Restoration: The Matakitaki-a-Kupe Project,” 46–47

Miskell, “Wairarapa Landscape Study 2010; Landscape Character Description Report,” 80.

37

BELOW: Site location map (NTS) showing approach to site.

Source Henry Velvin TOP RIGHT: Early site study analysing the fundamental ecological, geological, and climactic conditions.

Source Henry Velvin RIGHT: Site study photos Source Henry Velvin

27

Wind

Flora and fauna

The wind rose diagram shown is based on data collected near White Rock, which is located 7 km north-east of the site. This shows that the most frequent and highest velocity winds come from the SSW and NNW. The strong southerly winds are considerably colder than the northerlies. Because the coastline is exposed to the south, it is frequently battered by crashing waves and dramatic weather events. There are significant localised variances in wind patterns, due largely to the range of shelter and complex channelling caused by the mountains.

The coastal plateau is a somewhat arid environment with limited shelter from the sun.

The low rainfall and high winds result in dry soil conditions, making it difficult for many species to thrive. Instead, only the particularly hardy species, which have evolved to cope in such conditions, inhabit the plateau, finding shade and water which gathers around fallen rocks.

The extreme exposure of the site, as well as stock grazing, has prevented the growth of large trees and the majority of flora consists of low-lying grasses and shrubs. There are also some coastal variants of larger inland species that have evolved to cope with the severe environment.

Although seemingly desolate and to a degree uninhabitable there is a vast array of native and introduced species that make up the unique ecology of the NgÄ PĹ?tiki coastal plateau. The various species occupy their niches within the system and overlap in impact upon the success of one another. Understanding these dynamics and thinking critically about the role of the humans within these is essential to ensuring the health of the ecosystems.

Water Contributory hydrology: although annual rainfall is low due to the coastal location of the site, there are a number of different hydrological systems contributing water to the coastal plateau.

Sun Because the coastal plateau is a thin margin that runs NE-SW and is enclosed by the Aorangi mountain ranges to the NW and the expanse of the Pacific Ocean to the SE, it receives full sun from morning to early afternoon year round.

In winter, however, the sun sets behind the mountains mid to late afternoon.

28

ABOVE: Map of Soundscape Zones.

Image Polly Dawes Right: Sound propagation, sound sources and sound modifiers across the site. Image Polly Dawes

Time

Sound

Temporal conditions of Ngā Pōtiki span from geological time to the immediate and sensorial. Earthquakes have an obvious influence on the landscape, the most recent being the 1855, magnitude 8.2 earthquake which caused significant movement along the Cape Palliser fault. The coastline is edged by raised terraces that point to such dramatic events approximately every 2500 years.

Changing seasons and weather operate over smaller time scales, as evidenced by the tortured shape of the trees. Summers are dominated by long hot windy droughts with prevailing north-westerly winds and the winter has wild southerly storms.

There are also movements that figure the landscape at very small time scales; from tide and wave action to the shivering of ferns and slow flow of the Waitetuna stream.

Ngā Pōtiki’s soundscape is dramatic and elemental, devoid of the sounds of human occupation and dominated by those of the environment. These sounds reflect the site’s coastal location and wildlife presence, and physical features further modify the site’s sounds by amplifying, masking or attenuating them. The ground of the coastal flat is predominantly soil covered in a layer of vegetation, an acoustically porous material.

This results in a greater attenuation of sound across the site than there would be if the ground were acoustically hard. This prevents the site’s soundscape from being completely dominated by the sounds of the sea, which fade as one moves away from the coast or close to the land surface. The result is several discrete soundscape ‘zones’ across the site, each with unique characteristics.

29

30 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

5 Students, 5 Research Objectives Lat Long (-41.602254, 175.328654)

The five students tested landscape relations thorough the design of Glamping pods. Their proposals put preconceptions of landscape into question through iterative design. Polly Dawes, for instance, privileged aural experience, and developed small shell-like structures that accentuated sound-field conditions of the site.

31

Soundscapes

Hannah’s Hut

On Edge

In Polly Dawes’s research, architecture became a device to heighten awareness of the acoustic life of the landscape. This prioritisation of aural experience was in reaction to the predominance of vision in landscape conceptions. She recorded soundscapes at various scales, designed shell-like accentuating devices, and tested these in digital software. The shells were scattered across the landscape according to natural sound sources and were to be experienced by going from one point of intensity to another. The intention was to merge visitor and landscape, as both receptors and emitters of sound.

Hannah Diack looked at Māori tikanga (protocols) with communal eating. She critiqued the lack of Māori conceptual influences in the conventional hut. She developed a Whare Kai (eating house) as the focus of a group of small sleeping units dispersed through the site. The protocols of Māori communal eating informed a building that dug into the ground, in reference to traditional ‘hāngī’ cooking practices, and was enveloped in a faceted roof, which distilled geometries from work by the celebrated Māori architect John Scott. The research pointed to ways of thinking about NZ landscape in counterpoint to dominant Pākehā (European) conceptions.

Matthew King designed a series of pavilions that pursued the pleasures associated with practical, everyday activities. Matt isolated key rituals of camping – collecting water, making fire, gaining shelter from the wind – and produced a series of designs. These were tested at full size, on site, and the results bound in to more design tests. Practicalities of occupying landscape were considered, and shifted in interesting ways; problematized, ironically, by the experimental approach to practicality in the design.

Page 32

Page 44

Non-Static Wilderness

Groundcover

Bronwyn Phillipps designed kinetic shelters that attuned the occupant to affective registers in the site. She developed woven structures that responded to wind and occupation. These were designed through manipulation by hand, and then tested at large scale on site. The temporality of the structures and the design process was allied to the temporariness of camping. Bronwyn developed a ‘stick weave’ system of moveable envelopes that were designed to respond to wind and able to be manipulated by the inhabitant. Her interest was in creating a non-static architecture that reflected temporalities of the site.

Henry Velvin was interested in how architecture could participate in landscape ecologies and designed a group of buildings that engaged with the site’s vast yet delicate dynamics. Henry took the Department of Conservation (DOC) backcountry hut as an anti-precedent, and critiqued the apathetic approach to the development and care of New Zealand’s conservation estate. He designed with the aim of expanding public ecological literacy, using structures that provide inhabitation at the same time as opportunities for visitors to engage with natural ecologies. A series of pavilions collected water, encouraged plant and animal life and allowed visitors to participate in conservation activities. In doing so the project developed a way to assimilate ecological conservation into built form.

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Page 56

32 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

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Polly Dawes

Soundscapes This project uses architecture as a soundscape mediator to activate a heightened level of engagement between landscape and people.

Western society historically regarded sight as a privileged sense and artistic devices introduced in the Renaissance have shaped the way we relate to landscape through architecture. Architecture is commonly treated as a frame through which landscape is viewed, accustoming us to being spectators of rather than participants with our surroundings.

To shift away from this static relationship this project prioritises acoustic considerations over visual ones, appealing to the dynamic and immersive sense of hearing to invite participation between architecture, landscape and people.

R. Murray Schafer’s Soundscape Philosophy

informs a design method where the architecture composes an acoustic environment in the landscape.

The architecture is dispersed both formally and acoustically through the landscape, blurring the distinctions between them, physically and acoustically. Appealing to the auditory sense shifts how people relate to landscape through architecture, so that it becomes a framework within which landscape can be experienced.

The architecture performs as a soundwalk as the spaces and their acoustic qualities have been consciously composed, inviting the occupant to experience the site and architecture through an acoustic journey.

This actively informed the design process and helped shaped the arrangement of the final design

33

34

Coast

Sleep

River

Wash

Plain

Sleep

Sky

Eat

Main Living Spaces 1. Focal Point A. Coast B. River C. Plain D. Sky 2. Sleeping Pod 3. Bathroom 4. Kitchen

35

Design Description The programme is dispersed across the site and the development consists of two distinct formal elements that work together to provide for acoustic experience and inhabitation. The elements are: the sound reflecting panels and habitable membrane pods.

The design responds to sound via three mechanisms: • Site Responsive • Site Receptive • User Responsive The Site Responsive elements make up the approach to the main habitable spaces. As you traverse the site you encounter a series of acoustic structures that form a pathway to the main intervention. The long panels act like Aeolian harps, wind movement causes the strings to vibrate and produce a humming

sound. Smaller interventions function like ear trumpets, inviting the occupant to listen to magnified sounds along the ground and river’s edge. These interventions provide an acoustic experience of non-visible aspects of the site.

The shells are the Site Receptive elements and project acoustic focal points between the habitable spaces to form illusory spaces.

The shells are based on a parabolic curve and focus incoming parallel soundwaves to a single point, amplifying distant sounds at this spot.

Acoustically, the architecture projects itself over the landscape, creating points of interest that encourage the occupant to move between landscape and architecture.

The habitable membrane pods are User Responsive and react to sounds of occupation.

TOP: Design development sketch ABOVE: Listening Ears amplify sounds from the river edge LEFT: Plan of the main living spaces, 1:200

36

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Detail: Exterior Membrane 1.

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Outer membrane: PTFE Coated Glass Fibre Fabric Membrane Over Supporting Structure PTFE coated tape over curing rubber Structural truss member, 20mm stainless steel circular section Air Gap Insulation support layer: wire net Mineral fibre insulation (100mm) 50x50 5mm stainless steel fixing plates fillet welded to truss members at 500crs 40x50 5mm stainless steel clamping plate M8 stainless steel bolts to clamp wire support net in place Inner Membrane: Fabrasorb acoustic e membrane

37

Interior Spaces Interior spaces are formed by membrane pods and contribute to acoustic experience by responding to sounds of occupation.

Kitchen The kitchen sits in a shell that cuts into the ground and the moulded floor provides usable interior ground surfaces. Sounds of weather or birds above are amplified at the focal point, bringing sounds from the sky to the ground level.

Inside the food preparation area is placed along a curved LVL wall that acts like a whispering gallery. When a source is located close to a circular wall some of the sound rays hit the surface at a shallow angle and are continually reflected around the room. The walls prevent lateral spreading of the sound waves so even a whispered conversation is audible along the edge of the wall. When two people are preparing a meal the sounds clattering pots and chopping food, even if only quiet, travel back and forth along the wall to acoustically connect them.

Bathroom The bathroom provides a wet space for cleaning off dirt and washing clothes, when the shower is not in use clothes can be dried in this space. Acoustically it responds the primary

use of this space – the use of the shower.

Reverberation accentuates the sound of water hitting the floor to create an encompassing sonic experience. Reverberation is caused by the build-up of reflected sound in a space, extending the amount of time a sound is heard for. Longer reverberation times can reduce speech intelligibility (Mommertz 15). The concrete floor panel provide hard surfaces, with low sound absorption coefficients (Appendix 2), for waves to reflect off. The bathroom’s internal membrane also contributes to reverberation as, contrary to expectation, PTFE coated fabrics reflect sound.

Sleeping Pod When entering the sleeping pod the noisy, rugged site is left behind, replaced by a quiet interior. The bed is created from a soft, white mattress that lifts from the ground and wraps around the interior to provide a space for relaxation and rest. When sound reacts with a material the energy is reflected by, absorbed within and transmitted through the material (Long 249). The sleeping pods act like semi-anechoic chambers to provide silent counterpoints in the acoustic pathway and heighten awareness of the other acoustic spaces. The pods absorbent mechanism serves to contrast the shells, which amplify via reflection.

TOP & LEFT: Detail development

39 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

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Bronwyn Phillipps

Non-Static Wilderness One of the most captivating qualities of the New Zealand wilderness is its temporality; season’s, weather, night and day, are multiple interconnected systems in flux. These temporal systems are intricately linked and determine the feel of the environment. Architecture is designed to resist this temporality, with lights, shelter, warmth and more. The limited engagement between interior and exterior also removes environmental conditions that have positive impact. The fixity of architecture, in its resistance to the uncontrollable, to the temporal flux inherent in the environment, limits the potential for wilderness architecture to relate to its constantly changing context.

This project explores an interactive architecture that is adaptable to the temporality of its context. It also seeks to create a design that attracts people to a wilderness setting and amplifies a person’s awareness and connection with the natural environment.

This project proposes that non-static architecture creates a stronger connection between people, architecture and the natural

environment. If we explore the notion of space as undeterminable and deformable, it can become less defined in the mind of the occupant, thus creates the possibility for repetitive moments of surprise and connection with each encounter.38 A fluid semi-permanent shelter is designed, constructed of a woven structural system responsive to both weather conditions and the occupants. The activities that occur within these structures maximise the nonstatic potential for movement and create a constant interaction with the landscape.

The interplay between uncontrollable flux and controllable movement in the structures provides a challenging context that heightens the inhabitant’s awareness of the relationship between people, architecture and natural environment.

38 Bhatt, Mehul. Dylla, Frank. Hois, Joana.

“Spatio-terminological inference for the design of ambient environments.” Spatial Information Theory. Berlin: Springer, 2009. 371-391. Print.

40

ABOVE: Model manipulation to find forms that exhibit the most movement RIGHT: Image series showing the transformation of structure

41

Design Description The programme is divided amongst a series of discrete shelters that are dispersed across the site. They are positioned with large expanses in between to force immersion in the environment while allowing a sense of ownership over the transitional space. Each shelter is positioned to force connection between architecture and wilderness. This is achieved through careful arrangement of each shelter so that all view shafts look from the interior to frame another shelter as well as the coastline.

The non-static nature of the design is mainly achieved through the kinetic, woven structural system. The structure consists of a flat weave, with each joint consisting of three sticks. Each member in the structural system is composed of three sticks bound together at each end.

Where three of these groups of sticks intersect they are interwoven to create a movable sliding joint. Each end of the stick group is connected to another to form a woven lattice structure that is flexible and transformable.

Each shelter is covered by a flexible membrane that is supported by this stick structure. The structure can be manipulated by the occupant and the force of the wind. Service areas such as those in the kitchen and washing spaces are more permanent/static insertions into the landscape. These are placed alongside the boulders on site and provide a counterpoint to the non-static, diaphanous enclosure.

Kinetic Structure Weather

People Movement

Sun Dry Calm Hot Touch Attachment

Shade Wet Windy Cold Vision Detachment

People Wind/Structure Sun Dry Calm Hot Touch Attachment

Shade Wet Windy Cold Vision Detachment

People Wind/Structure Sun Dry Calm Hot Touch Attachment

Shade Wet Windy Cold Vision Detachment

People Wind/Structure Sun Dry Calm Hot Touch Attachment People Wind/Structure

Shade Wet Windy Cold Vision Detachment

42

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Detail: Stick Weave to Membrane Joint

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3 x laminated bamboo H3.2 treated 8mm diameter rods to form stick weave structure 2. Cylindrical extrusions, stainless steel 316 grade 3. M8 wingnut, 316 grade stainless steel 4. M8x35mm Hex bolt, 316 grade stainless steel 5. Membrane - unclassified as requirement >30% stretch 6. Hold plate, 316 grade stainless steel 7. M8x25x2mm pannel washer, 316 grade stainless steel 8. Membrane rubber seal 9. M8 wingnut, 316 grade stainless steel 10. M8x25mm coach bolt, 316 grade stainless steel 11. Custom finger joint bracket, 316 grade stainless steel 12. Custom cylindrical stainless steel 316 grade bracket

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Bedroom - Double

44 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

Mi Relatio

45 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

ichael and Kress, ‘A Historical View of onshipes between Humans and Plants,’ 3

Lat Long (-41.601998, 175.327592)

Hannah Diack

Hannah’s Hut Known for its beautiful scenery, New Zealand’s natural landscape is precious to our identity. Tramping is a huge part of New Zealand’s outdoor culture. One of the key features of this outdoor culture is the network of tramping huts enjoyed by many people, locals and visitors alike. The key purpose of the Department of Conservation (DOC) huts within New Zealand’s Conservation estate is shelter. There is little attempt for the huts to reflect their natural context or the people who use them. In this respect, existing DOC huts are rigid. As a country with strong Pacific/Oceanic origins, the Māori culture similarly contributes largely towards our identity. DOC, however, does not intentionally manifest these origins in its architecture, overlooking New Zealand’s Māori heritage.

Although elements of the DOC huts are successful, they do not facilitate the level of integration between people, natural context and built form that I am proposing. With a focus on particular Māori values, this project aims

to investigate how the relationships between people, natural context and built form can be strengthened; hence challenging the rigidity of existing DOC huts.

While encouraging these relationships, the proposal seeks to maintain and intensify the New Zealand tramping hut culture. This culture lies in the rituals of cooking, eating and gathering. Prior to, during and following a meal, various people gather together, play cards, chat, tell stories and meet new people.

It is these interactions that are fundamental to the overall experience of tramping.

Five ‘criteria’, derived from Māori values and architectural concepts inform the design.

These are as follows: proximity + orientation, human scale, community, between-ness and responsiveness. The proposed outcome addresses these five criteria and forms a strong relationship between people, natural context and built form. Through strengthening these relationships, ‘Hannah’s Hut’ challenges the rigidity of existing DOC huts.

46

Creation Myth

The Design

From Te Kore (the great void where nothing existed) and Te Pō (the perpetual night of darkness) comes the Māori story of creation.

In this darkness, imprisoned between their parents who were locked in a never-ending embrace, lived the children of the gods – Ranginui (sky father) and Papatūānuku (earth mother).

The love between Ranginui and Papatūānuku was so immense that they could not bear to be apart. Yet, by clinging to each other, the parents were also keeping their six children from the light.

That was until one day when, as Ranginui stirred, a single beam of light shone from Papatūānuku’s armpit onto her children.

Amazed by this radiance, the children yearned to free themselves and enter the world of light.

So the children began to work on breaking the embrace that had kept their universe dark for so long. But their parents’ love was strong and their efforts were fruitless.

Then the mighty Tāne Mahuta (God of the forest) lay on his back and dug his shoulders deep into his mother’s body. With his legs, Tāne pushed against his father and, with all the strength he could summon, attempted to let light into the world.

Ignoring his mother’s cries to stop, Tāne pushed even harder and the bond between his parents began to tear. Drawing on his very last reserves, Tāne fully extended his powerful legs, forcing Ranginui to the heavens and flooding the world with bright light.

Today, when Ranginui’s tears fall from the sky as rain onto his beloved Papatūānuku, it is a reminder of his grief and longing for her.

Papatūānuku’s pain is visible in the red ochre clays of the earth, still stained by the blood drawn during the separation.

The design is oriented along a pathway that runs from the ocean to the mountains. Set on the coastal plain is the communal whare kai, which contains all of the cooking and dining facilities. Moving up the path toward the mountains are four individual sleeping pods as well as washing and storage facilites.

Whare Kai The whare kai space is communal and is where all visitors to the site are encouraged to cook/dine/live (whilst not outdoors). One wooden table in the middle of the building hosts all these functions. The middle of the whare kai is recessed into the ground and the dining table sits within the shallow pit.

Grounding the whare kai is one large, solid concrete mass. This concrete mass sits within the landscape and acts as an extension of the landscape. A strong bond is formed between the whare kai and Papatūānuku.

The roof is constructed of large steel sheets, which allow it to be relatively thin.

It is important that this roof has lightness (aesthetically) to it. The sharp geometries of the roof form create interesting and dramatic shadows + light qualities within and around the whare kai. Alternating roof planes appear to be reaching from the ground towards the sky or vise versa. The contrast between the solid concrete grounding and the light steel roof is reminiscent of the relationship between Papatūānuku and Ranginui.

The longitudinal facades of the whare kai are composed of a series of large vertical wooden louvres. When inhabitants + weather conditions permit, these can be opened.

Separating the ground and the roof (Papa + Rangi), these wooden louvres are reminiscent of Tane Mahuta (God of the forest) who separated his parents.

47

LEFT: Early concept development RIGHT & BELOW: Concept models & drawing

48 BELOW: Sleeping pod concept models BOTTOM & RIGHT: Sleeping pods in the landscape

49

Sleeping Pod The design has four individual sleeping pods that progress up the hill behind the whare kai. The small rectangular form means that there is no excess space. This smallness also encourages guests to predominantly spend time in the whare kai.

Each sleeping pod is divided into two separate halves, each with a double bed.

Sheltered storage is provided beneath the pod, either side of the ladder.

The individual sleeping pods are separated from the common whare kai and are no less than 20m in proximity to this shared space.

Each pod is separated by roughly 10m. This not only provides privacy for visitors but forces them to go outside and engage with the landscape in order to occupy the common space.

Access into and the arrangement of the sleeping pods is dictated by the contours of NgÄ PĹ?tiki Reserve. Based on the gradient of the hill, the two halves of each sleeping pod are different. At the lower end people must climb a ladder to access the pod. However, at the upper end, inhabitants can walk straight in. The design of these pods responds to the needs of a range of visitors. For example; if an elderly couple want to stay in the huts it is likely that they would not want to climb up the ladder of the lower half of the pods. They could, however, stay in the upper half where access is much more user friendly. The proposed scheme is flexible to inhabitancy – accommodating various visitors. The architecture of the sleeping pods and the concrete pathway/stairs therefore facilitates a strong relationship with the landscape and visitors to the site.

50 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

Lat Long (-41.601115, 175.326648) Lat Long (-41.601540, 175.328922)

Lat Long (-41.604164, 175.325124)

Henry Velvin

Groundcover The rise of ecotourism is linked with a growing intrigue of ‘isolated’ locations and a desire to explore remoteness39. Given the ever present preconceptions which revere New Zealand as a unique, clean, green paradise, there is both and obligation to and benefit from careful consideration of the development of New Zealand’s ‘off the radar’ places, especially in relation to how they promote conservation efforts.

39

Carter and LeCuyer. (Eds.). “Off the Radar”, 6.

52

53

ABOVE: Panoramic view, showing how the building sits in the landscape with the gabion structures leading to the building

The architecture of New Zealand’s conservation estates and its untamed wilderness and wildlife sanctuaries is informed by the attitude we have to the environments they inhabit. In the case of our backcountry environment it is a well-intended ‘hands off’ approach exemplified by the ubiquitous backcountry or DOC hut. Huts and temporary accommodation such as Glamping are often based on the idea of minimal intervention and impact; to reduce architecture’s effect on the environment. This hands off approach is sympotmatic of how environmentalism in architecure denies and active role for the human aspect40 and is measured by how small its negtive impact is rather than how big its positive one is. This approach has instilled ideals which severely limit the potential to explore new approaches to conservation architecture in New Zealand, specifically aproaches which poistively contribute to the ecology they are situated in.

The effect of a building’s life-cycle inherently has far-reaching effects on the surrounding ecologies. The development of

Conan and Kress, “A Historical View of Relationships Between Humans and Plants”, 3.

40

infrastructure causes the displacing of soil, removal of existing species, altering of wind patterns, changing of water movement, both above and below ground, altering of ground temperature etc. Through a more in-depth awareness of environmental systems and the ramifications of buildings sited within them, a more fully integrated design can be achieved.

This approach points to the possibility that buildings can positively integrate with existing ecologies. If architecture is understood as a part of an area’s ecological system it can engage with it in a positive way and contribute to conservation efforts.

Public awareness is a limiting factor in the development of conservation initiatives. Focusing on positive impact over minimal impact in the context of Glamping accommodation creates a unique opportunity for the visitor to engage with conservation efforts. By facilitating public awareness of conservation efforts, Glamping projects provide an opportunity to increase public ecological literacy. Through educating the public, such a project would contribute to the wider sustainable development movement.

Henry Velvin tested these ideas in his design for series of Glamping pods integrated with the ecology of the sites.

54

Rain water Wire mesh Greywacke gabion fill

Rain water filters through upper gabion infill and collects on membrane layer Wire reinforced bituminous membrane Subsurface water filters through lower gabion infill returning to natural hydrological systems Allows subsurface run or to pass through the lower gabion and continue

55 LEFT: View location key BELOW: Exterior view looking North into the manuka forest BELOW RIGHT: View south looking through shade house towards the sea 3.

2.

1.

Water Filtration/ Plant Cultivation Acting as an extension of the existing hydrological dynamics, the biotope diverts a small amount of water that would otherwise flow directly to the water table. Using it as a self maintaining system for irrigating coastal natives which typically inhabit saturated soils and wetlands. Additionally the plants contribute the first stage of filtration allowing for programmes associated with services for human occupation.

Water collecting pathways are assembled out of modular elements and can be positioned at varied depths relative to the ground surface.

Positioning the membrane above ground level avoids the collection of surface and sub surface ground water. In this case surface water is allowed to pass beneath the membrane layer and continue as it naturally would.

1.

2.

56

57 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

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Lat Long (-41.602665, 175.327764)

Lat Long (-41.604142, 175.325146)

Matthew King

On Edge In the past everyday actions were linked closer to nature. For example to dry your clothes you would require a sunny day; now we can use dryers anytime we like. These home appliances provide convenience but sever the connection we have to our exterior environment. Therefore in order to create pleasure out of the everyday we need to reconnect practical activities to nature.

This project tests the potential of the practical and pleasurable through considering architecture as a device. The project functions as a testing ground, utilizing smallscale architecture to test pleasures in the undertaking of everyday actions.

The site is very remote therefore practical aspects such as resource collection will be part of the everyday experience. Resource collection, transportation and function will be examined through the use of new innovative mechanisms; these devices will manipulate constructional and archetypal elements to harness the natural elements on the site of: fire, water and wind. The reconsideration of these practical elements is designed to enhance encounters between users and the surrounding environment.

Through architecture that problematises occupation, everyday actions become new exciting memories of dwelling in nature.

Early investigation into the site highlighted the presence of three site conditions. These three conditions are: 1.

• • •

Enclosed, gentle Sheltered Warm Quiet

2. Open, flat • Hostile • Exposed • Rugged • Strong winds 3.

• • •

Semi-protected, rough Undulating Swampy Steep

The three site conditions present opportunities to test how modifications of practical constraints effect the occupation of small scale dwellings.

58

VIEW TOWARDS HILL

VIEW TOWARDS SEA

4050

Roof Level

02 109 01 109

REST

2550

Viewing Platform

FOLD DOWN

1430

Platform Level 2

PULL UP TO ENTER

WASH

210

Platform Level

0

Ground Level

Fire - Retreat The fire design is located near the entrance to the site within the semi-protected, rough terrain. The design primarily functions as a single dwelling but due to the hostile nature of the site it also functions as a communal retreat, a space that the other occupants of the water and wind design can potentially reside in if and when extreme weather occurs. It functions therefore as a more substantial dwelling than the following two designs. The design encases a fireplace and utilises the protection from the existing large rock. The large rock also is utilised to structurally support the upper floors.

Due to the terrain consisting of swamp ground, the areas that would be occupied most of the time are designed as raised platforms.

The programme is dictated by the idea of retreat. The design accommodates primarily two people but has the possibility to adapt to sleep five. The imagined extra three people are from the other two dwellings, water and wind when the dwelling is to operate as a retreat in bad weather. The dwelling also contains a small kitchen, cooking is done on the fire, wood storage and clothes drying racks, a toilet and a shower.

The design explores the archetype, the wall and how it may be transformed. The design contains two moveable screens that explore this idea of transformation. The screens function as a faรงade, a door and drying racks for clothes. This idea of multi-function was influenced by the idea of the campground, a place whose flexibility allows common elements to become complex devices.

COOK

59

Water - Inversion The second design water, operates as a more marginal structure than that conveyed by the fire design. The design was conceptualised as a triangular structure orientated at collecting surface water from the nearby hills.

The design is situated within the manuka tree canopy. The manuka trees utilise the water runoff from the hills. The design uses the same resource, however in a slightly different manner. The design collects water from the roof of the building. It is the most sheltered structure; it is protected from the wind by the manuka and in the same sense the most private.

The design at a maximum can hold two people. It contains two fold out beds, two small wardrobes, a kitchen and a shower.

This design utilizes the ground as part of the internal floor, a play between inside and outside.

All that defines the two is a small retractable canvas screen. The concept was originally based on the archetype; the roof. The primary structure consists of four trusses that have been placed horizontally rather than a typical vertical orientation. This transformation took a practical structure and made it impractical (weak) but through detailing and re-orientation of individual members the truss once again became practical. Through this form of inversion it became clear that innovation within the term ‘practical’ is definitely possible.

60

Wind – Intensification (Prototyped Design) The third design, wind is the most marginal of all the three dwellings. Its very nature is to test the boundaries.

It is located in the most hostile location of the site. It is surrounded only by tussock grass, open to the prevailing North West winds.

The design consists of one fold out bed, a deck, a small wardrobe, kitchen and a shower.

It exists as the most marginal structure and therefore only accommodates one user.

The design consists predominantly of three walls. The occupational elements of the building literally fold out of the walls. It can essentially flat pack and be disassembled into two small wall components. The wind design is orientated perpendicular to the predominant wind direction. The dwelling contains vertical wind generators (adapted from the windbelt design invented by Shawn Frayne) that harness the wind force of the site and convert it into useable electricity.

The wind generators are quite loud so moveable louvres enable the wind to be directed or completely shut off to reduce noise.

The design critiques the archetype: the wall, parts of the wall fold down into floors, sinks and shelves. The fold down bed is juxtaposed next to a permanent bed structure which during the day operates as a deck. Through this contrast in operation intensification of occupation is achieved. The same space is used for two different functions creating multiple experiences for the user.

1. Wind belt wall 2. Fluorescent battens 3. Battery

1.

2.

3.

62

Research Themes Questioning How We Experience and Inhabit Our Landscape Landscape and the great outdoors are both concepts that we are so familiar with we rarely stop to consider how they have been informed by cultural preconceptions. The beauty of nature has become associated with the myth of a pure and untouched natural environment.41 Visitors travel to places deemed beautiful to obtain panoramic views, the method that Western society regards as the natural way of viewing landscape.42

Vision The way we view and relate to landscape has evolved from Western attitudes to vision and artistic conventions. The invention of linear perspective during the Renaissance resulted in the assumption that the rays converged at one sovereign eye, with the beholder, “… the privileged centre of perspectival vision…”43 Jay attributes this attitude to the withdrawal of the spectator from the scene. Further contributing to this withdrawal was the positioning of the spectator indoors, continually looking out at landscape from the inside.44 It can be argued that this convention led to what Preston describes as the basic condition of an interior, “…to support the power of vision extending from the inside out.”45 If this Western visual tradition has accustomed us to viewing landscape from indoors then architecture has become a frame through which landscape is viewed.

The notion of architecture as a framing device perpetuates the idea of landscape as simply an image to be viewed from a comfortable distance. In contemporary New Zealand domestic architecture houses are commonly placed at the edge of wilderness and large expanses of horizontal window glass is a desirable trait46 to frame the view beyond.

This demonstrates, “New Zealand’s general infatuation with landscape as simply a view.”47

The obsession with landscape as an image and architecture’s quest to capture and frame the perfect view are symptomatic of Western’s society’s dependence on sight as a sense, which has historically been privileged throughout Western philosophy.48 As a sense it is external, and avoids direct engagement, it works effectively over large distances to encourage the viewing of objects from afar.49 By thinking of landscape as an image and appreciating it primarily through a sense that encourages distance and separation we can become distant and unengaged from the landscape we aim to experience.

By considering landscape as a single image, a momentary snapshot, one of its most captivating qualities can be overlooked: its temporality. Weather systems, night and day are all temporal systems that are intricately linked and determine the feel of the environment.

By de-temporalising landscape through static images we lose an understanding of how these changing systems contribute to a holistic understanding of our environment.

A de-centering of vision, in favour of hearing, was the focus of Polly Dawes’ design research.

this architectural trend is to meet the constantly changing individual, social and environmental demands.51 Non-static architecture can provide shelter from the environment while questioning the need for fixed, static boundaries. It provides a means for architecture to react to changes in environmental conditions, to create a stronger connection between people, architecture and the natural environment.

Non-static architecture can embody movement through transformable structures that react to changing environmental conditions such as wind. In doing so, such structures provide protection from the elements and a unique spatial experience. As this movement is dependent upon site conditions, the buildings transformation reveals the often-overlooked relationship between a building and its surroundings. Employing a non-traditional approach to roof, walls and floors through a fluid structure removes social expectations of space and wilderness and creates room for a person to have a new experience and form new connections with their surroundings.

Bronwyn Phillipps pursued such structures in her designs.

Temporality Architecture is designed to resist temporality, and provide protection from the elements. Shelter presupposes a division between interior and exterior, a split between areas of exposure and areas of protection.

As a result, by rejecting interaction with its surrounding environment, architecture detaches the occupant from their immediate surroundings. This proves problematic for a Glamping shelter where the aim is to get closer to nature, rather than to remove oneself from it.

The argument for buildings to be interactive and responsive, for architecture to be nonstatic, is counter to a tradition whereby buildings are built to endure50 and provide a fixed separation between the interior and exterior environment. The motivation behind

41

Bell, Landscape: Pattern, Perception and Process, 63.

42

Crandell, Nature Pictorialized.

43

46

Jay, Downcast Eyes, 54.

44

Crandell, Nature Pictorialized, 67.

45

Preston, “The Great Indoors,” 115.

Preston, “The Great Indoors,” 116–117.

47

48

Ibid. 117.

Jay, Downcast Eyes, 22; Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 15–16; Jenks, Visual Culture, 1.

49

Jay, Downcast Eyes, 24–25.

El-Khoury, Marcopoulos, and Moukheiber, The Living, Breathing, Thinking, Responsive Buildings of the Future, 13.

50

51

Fox and Kemp, Interactive Architecture, 12.

63

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Practicality With the desire to get back to nature comes the desire to get back to basics and dwell more simply. But what are these basics we wish to return to? The New Zealand backcountry hut is one response to this desire for living simply. The backcountry hut employs simple architecture built to withstand the demanding and unpredictable climate of the hills and mountains. These huts are pragmatic and utilitarian, built to only accommodate the essential needs of those who utilise them.52 However, can the boundaries of the practical be pushed to create new forms of dwelling in the wilderness? Just as we question our preconceptions towards landscape we must also question our conceptions of what is practical.

In a desire to return to basics, an architecture that simply reiterates conventions of practicality limits the potential for new exciting forms of dwelling that might grow from this desire.

Some see the notion of a ‘pragmatist aesthetic’ as absurd, as the pragmatic often considers the aesthetic as purposeless.53 Such an aesthetic can be achieved through combining the practical and the pleasurable.

Architecturally this can be achieved by considering architecture as a device that carries out functional activities. Innovation can be created through placing common elements in unusual locations or positions that disrupt preconceived experiences of that function.

This form of humorous play reminds us of the pleasure in ‘doing’, slowing down our fast paced lives long enough for us to experience it. This act of slowing is one of the reasons we seek the wilderness in the first place, a chance to reconnect to nature, a chance to take a moment to enjoy the seemingly mundane day-to-day tasks we usually take for granted.

52

Pickering, Huts: Untold Stories from BackCountry New Zealand, 16.

Ockman, The Pragmatist Imagination: Thinking About Things in the Making, 117.

53

ABOVE: Digitally printed components.

Photos by Jess O’Brien

64

This slightly inconvenient manner of dwelling relates back to camping experiences.

It is the very notion of being able to dwell in a hostile environment with little convenience that makes it special. It can be seen as a form of Glamping for traditional camping enthusiasts, those who see soft feather beds as ruining their nature experience. Reducing the architecture to its bare necessities and problematizing occupation provides an experience of ‘toughing it’ in nature that is intimate, extreme and ‘glamorous’ in its own way. Matt King researched these concerns in his ‘practical’ Glamping shelters, one of which is shown as a full size prototype in the On the Edge exhibition.

Architecture and Conservation Experiencing landscape is not all that is required of ecotourism, which also aims to aid conservation efforts and educate visitors on the ecological and cultural aspects of the place they are visiting. Glamping is often perceived as ecotourism due to its low impact through Glamping resorts’ use of clean energy sources and the temporary nature of the accommodation having little impact on the land. While this prompts thought about sustainable energy use, conservation is concerned with our environmental impact beyond just gas emissions.

In placing Glamping accommodation in pristine natural settings it is likely that some of these sites will host fragile ecosystems. The effect of a building’s lifecycle inherently has far-reaching effects on the surrounding ecologies. The development of infrastructure causes the displacing of soil, removal of existing species, altering of wind patterns, changing of water movement, both above and below ground, altering of ground temperature etc. Huts and temporary accommodation such as Glamping are often based on the idea of minimal intervention and impact; to reduce architecture’s effect on the environment. Through a more in-depth awareness of environmental systems and the ramifications of buildings sited within them, a more fully integrated design can be achieved.

This approach points to the possibility that

buildings can positively integrate with existing ecologies. If architecture is understood as a part of an area’s ecological system it can engage with it in a positive way and contribute to conservation efforts.

Public awareness is a limiting factor in the development of conservation initiatives. Focusing on positive impact over minimal impact in the context of Glamping accommodation creates a unique opportunity for the visitor to engage with conservation efforts. By facilitating public awareness of conservation efforts, Glamping projects provide an opportunity to increase public ecological literacy. Through educating the public, such a project would contribute to the wider sustainable development movement.

Henry Velvin tested these ideas in his design for series of Glamping pods integrated with the ecology of the site.

Architecture and Culture Another key aspect of ecotourism is providing an experience of the cultural aspects of a place. New Zealand is a country with strong Pacific/Oceanic origins and New Zealand’s indigenous culture is integral to the New Zealand identity. Current Department of Conservation (DOC) huts may embody certain characteristics of a Māori worldview but this is arguably an accidental outcome and this indigenous identity is largely ill-considered in the DOC hut architecture.

Māori have a deep connection with the land as evidenced by the term Tangata Whenua, ‘People of the Land’.

Our ancestors’ connection to the whenua (land) was evident not just in the way they shaped the land, but also in their everyday lives. They slept on the ground. Cooked on and under the ground and ate on the ground. Māori were very much at one with the whenua.54 This relationship between the natural environment and humanity is important within

Māori culture. Māori architecture embodies a culture that is founded upon a strong bond between its people, their land, ancestors and community.

Building elements of the wharenui represent various elements of the human skeleton/body and its scale is sensitive to the human body.

These elements have a spiritual basis and their importance derives from how they represent a person.55 To Māori, “…the…house is not like an ancestor, it is the ancestor.”56 Sitting between Ranginui and Papatūānuku, mediating the relationship between sky, ground, mountain and sea, the Wharenui, as body, is a symbol that highlights the intense bond that Māori have with their natural context.

Māori have a way of life based in a deep sense of community and hospitality (manaakitanga).

The marae is a place where people can gather for special occasions 57. Through shared spaces and encouraging a communal way of living, relationships between various people are facilitated by the architecture; people are united under one roof, in one space and encouraged to interact with one another.

It is fitting then that architecture placed within the New Zealand landscape should acknowledge Māori culture through its design and connection to the landscape. By referencing concepts of Māori architecture, Glamping accommodation can reference New Zealand’s cultural heritage and encourage a direct experience with its conceptual concerns.

Hannah Diack’s whare kai and sleeping houses focus attention on such questions.

As a new tourism trend, Glamping offers an architectural brief that can challenge the way we interact with our landscapes through architecture. Each student pursued a particular research theme through the design of small scale Glamping shelters that offer creative solutions to dwelling more intimately with New Zealand’s landscape.

54

57

Douglas, Mackenzie and Bennet, “Whare Māori.”

55

Walden, Voices of Silence, 149.

56

Brown, Māori Architecture, 52.

Harawira, Te Kawa O Te Marae, 72.

65

Assembly of 1:1 glamping structure prototype.

Photos by Jess O’Brien

66 Glamping: Design investigations in the New Zealand Landscape

Lat Long (-41.601949, 175.329148)

Conclusion In New Zealand, architecture and landscape are close bedfellows, but it is an uneasy pairing. Our national identity, suburbs, even our cities are a strange amalgam of veneration for the natural and greedy acquisition of its qualities. Our most celebrated houses are crisp figures in beautiful settings; nestled in native bush, with expansive views of the sea or mountains; and these are praised for their simple intentions: as ‘elegant sheds’ in poetic concert with their surroundings. This somewhat touristic assumption, that New Zealand architecture is in a comfortable relation to its landscape context, was critiqued by five Master’s Students and the results of their research are presented in the On the Edge exhibition, which this book accompanies. The Students attempted to give an architectural agency to wilderness, and in doing so highlighted New Zealand architecture’s complex relation to landscape.

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Glamping Line breaks: glamp|ing Pronunciation: /’glampiŋ / noun British • informal

A form of camping involving accommodation and facilities more luxurious than those associated with traditional camping:

“glamping is likely to satisfy any city slicker seeking a little refuge in nature—without foregoing any of life’s luxuries”

Origin early 21st century: blend of glamorous and camping. “glamping, n.” OED Online. June 2003. Oxford University Press. Web. 31 March. 2015.