Work Experience
Nicholas James Dunning
2016- OTO Group -10m2 studio workshop, Mangawhai, New Zealand -School Road Extension, Kingsland, New Zealand -Davies Stair renovation, Epsom, New Zealand -Fourth Ave Extension, Kingsland, New Zealand -Bach house, Taupo, New Zealand -Dakota Hairdressing Salon, Ponsonby, New Zealand
2016 Arkitema Architects
About me I was born and raised on the coastline of New Zealand and I’ve carried the lessons learnt from my childhood throughout my life. I travelled to Denmark and Sweden to study architecture and I came back to New Zealand and set up my own architectural and design practice, keen to help create the wonderful New Zealand that I saw in my mind when I was overseas. My experiences both in work and at school have encompassed large, public projects, through residential, down to the detail of small pieces of furniture. I am an enthusiastic and creative person, fully engaged with the architectural and design world. I work well in a team environment, and find the comradery provides me with a drive to produce great work. My methods combine computer imagery with hand drawn techniques, as I feel this brings the scale of the human body into the work. I am also passionate about wood working and making physical items, alongside drawing them. I aim to combine art and architecture, to effectively engage people and their environments to produce the highest level of work that I can achieve.
-Kv. Leopold, Uppsala, Sweden -Salabacke, Uppsala, Sweden -3D studies for housing in Gredlby, Sweden My role as an architect with Arkitema was working with housing through modelling and sketching, seeking to provide warm and well lit units on a variety of income and space scales.
2014 Schmidt Hammer Lassen 6 months internship -Christchurch new main library, New Zealand Sketching, visualising, modeling, -Haderslev skate and park facility, Denmark Sketching, visualising, modeling, illustrating -Middlefart new town hall, Denmark Visualising, illustrating -Aros next step extension, Denmark Sketching, visualising As an intern in the competition department at SHL, I was provided with the opportunity to work on different projects of different scales in a team environment.
2012-2013 Assemblage Architects -Portass private residence extension Sketching, drafting, modeling -Taylor private residence extension Sketching, drafting, modeling These projects were extensions on existing homes where we worked to make something modest more special. I worked under the supervision of a senior architect where he gave me the sole responsibility of producing all of the construction drawings from sketches that he had created. He taught me many things
about how to approach building with existing structures and the many intricacies of the design process.
2011-2012 Richard Priest Architects -Private beach house Drafting, modeling Working as the sole employee for Richard Priest meant that I was granted an intimate insight into how a small architectural practice functions. Richard was the person who inspired me to become an architect when I was only 6 years old and I was extremely grateful to be able to work for him. 2011 Ghanain Student Housing
-400 student dorm building taken from concept design to final manufacturing drawings.
Education 2013-2016 Aarhus Arkitektskolen, Masters of Architecture 2010-2012 Victoria University of Wellington, Bachelor of Architecture 2005 -2009 Auckland Grammar School, New Zealand Languages English (fluent) Danish (conversational) Spanish (conversational) Competences
4 Tohunga Crescent Parnell 1052 Auckland New Zealand Born: 1991 Tel: 022 309 0531 Mail: nick@otogroup.nz
Rhino Sketchup Autocad Revit Photoshop Illustrator InDesign Hand drawing Hand drafting Model making Woodworking Photography Interests Diving, spearfishing, sailing, skiing, photography, art, hiking,
Artist’s Retreat This is a cabin studio project that I have designed and is in the process of being built. The cabin is situated in the bush in Mangawhai and follows similar lines along which my Creative NZ proposal aims to achieve. I am inspired by the natural beauty of New Zealand and I wanted to situate my cabin right in the bush where the Piwakawaka like to hang out. The building brings in the surrounding flora and fauna, unlike standard buildings which seek to define what is in and what is out. The project is a collection of my passions: woodworking, drawing, architecture and art. The cabin is meant to be a quiet spot, filled with light and warmth for artists to come to and stay for a while.
Construction Process
Process photographs showing the cabin’s incospicuous external appearance the and explosion of natural wood and light on the inside. The cabin embraces the bush around it, giving the occupants a different way to experience the site than a traditional building might offer.
Working Drawings
50x60cm ink on paper Section and plan depicting the building as it inhabits the site and how it unfolds onto the landscape around it.
Art I have always pursued various artforms and my current professional work reflects the process that I have gone through. I enjoy working with a range of media but I particularly focus on pointilism and ink drawings. Art works alongside my architectural project. It is the visual medium in which projects are conceptualised and portrayed, before they are built. I find it beneficial for all aspects of my work to depict nature in various forms as it is integral to every level of my methodologies. I find inspiration in the landscapes of my life, the coast and Northland being the main source of creativity.
50x60cm ink on paper
Woven
A study of woven flax.
The Green City
50x50cm ink on paper A play on words of the danish word ‘Grøn’ meaning green on a brand of beer, I wanted to look at a city inhabiting the waste of our society, but on a micro scale. This was part of a series also looking at cigarette butt gardens and bottle cap sail boats.
28x35cm ink on paper
Artefacts
In this series, I wanted to create fictitous polynesian artefacts. Each object looks useful but is fabricated from different elements of Polynesian myth and lore. I am drawn to the symbolism of flax and how it can be used in pacific art, and this plays a strong role in this series.
Together We Will Find The Light
40x50cm ink on paper A drawing for mental health issues and the benefits of group therapy.
20x35cm ink on paper
Summer
A dyptrich of summer elements.
Venetian shrine study
100x100cm ink on paper A study of various shrines found around Venice. Each one is unique but by bringing them together we see their common traits.
40x60cm watercolour on paper
Alone, Together
A piece for my brother, sitting on a hill looking out over nothing.
University Projects During my time studying in Denmark, I was heavily inspired by the craft based approach of Danish cabins and their intimate use of the outdoors. Throughout Scandinavia, windshelters, cabins and lodges are open to the public and create a larger sense of belonging in the wild for the locals and visitors alike. The style and construstion methods that are applied are also inspiring. I drew upon these heavily, while included my background catalogue from New Zealand.
AFGANG PROJECT
My graduation project was a design for a mental health retreat within Aarhus. It was a project that sought to create a warm and inviting space for people suffering from depression. The key themes of this project was light, spatial atmosphere, a spectrum of intimacy and tectonics.
AFGANG PROJECT
I chose this topic as I feel that it is an important part of society that is overlooked and has a stigma associated with it that blocks people from seeking help. I created a new type of mental health centre that would allow people to come together and talk about their own problems or help other. It is this type of informal space that we are missing in out modern cities.
AFGANG PROJECT
I worked with a series of models and sketches that evolved through literary research. It was this iterative process of creating spatial forms from research material and then bringing these separate entities together that lead me to the final design of spaces that feed off each other.
AFGANG PROJECT
The project uses overlapping spaces to create a spectrum of intimacy so that people can gather in groups and share stories or be on their own but still feel engaged in a sense of community. The project evolved by building each space from the inside and then creating different scenarios where different spaces joined to see what would work best for the parameters that my research had set up.
Woodcut In my journey to combine my art and woodworking, I came across woodcut printing. I am inspired by the work of Paul Landacre and , who I feel both capture the imediate beauty in nature through their black and white imagery. In all of my endeavours, I am a believer in the process. I work with New Zealand swamp Matai and all of my sketches are done on slate. or bits of wood that I collect from the site of what I will be depicting. The beauty with woodcut printing is while the print is the final goal, the woodcut itself is a thing of beauty.
Abel Tasman afternnon
40x60cmwoodcut print on paper Dense bush rolls down to sandy bays with Kahurangi in the distance.
20x30cm woodcut print on paper
I’ll see you there
Walking out to the lighthouse on Mahinepua peninsula with the sun shining on the ocean around.
Storm over Mahinepua
20x30cm woodcut print on paper Changing skies over islands in the Far North.
SHL Architects In my 8th semester I spent 6 months with Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects in Aarhus. I worked in the competition team on a range of projects which included a new town hall in Middelfart, a 10,000m2 library in Christchurch, New Zealand and an extension of the Aros art museum. The Christchurch Library was built upon traditional New Zealand symbolism but with a Danish sense of design. The library is a new take on how this type of building can be used in the city, for different types of media, displays, presentations and who can access information. We worked with a firm in New Zealand to realise this project and international communication became important in establishing who needed to do what and when. In Middelfart, the town hall is to be combined with residences and a shopping area to create a revitalised centre. I worked in an eight person team on this project and I learned a lot about streamlining the design process so that everything is done in time. The proposal in Haderslev aimed to create an active and adaptable play environment that used the upper levels as sports courts and recreation areas, stepping down to a swimming area and sheltering car parking below. I worked with two architects and another intern on this project over the course of four weeks. My main tasks were sketching and modeling in the early phase and then producing the diagrams and final visualisations at the end of the project.
CHRISTCHURCH LIBRARY MIDDELFART RÃ…DHUS HADERSLEV SKATE AND PARK
Performativ parkering/Flow/Visuel kontakt/Dynamisk/Levende/
15/
Furniture projects My time in Aarhus, from being surrounded by inspiring design and having access to workshops, has provided me with an interest in woodworking. I enjoy the craft aspect to is and having a completed item at the end of the process. I think that by working more with furniture and other design scales, my architectural skills can be improved in different ways. My inspirations come from Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen and Finn Juhl, who all worked with different scales and in the end, each discipline informed the other to push their work further. Working with wood and how elements join together is something that I would like to explore more in my career, to understand better how buildings and space can be put together to better articulate our ideas.
I’ll see you there
Chair in beech and kauri This chair was built out of the need for a classically inspired office chair that would hold contemporary shapes in a timeless way. Drawing inspiration from the beach and driftwood, the seat is made of stitched kauri that is hand polished. The frame of the chair is Danish Beech and is delicate and fine.
I’ll see you there
Chair in tawa and leather. Made from recycled timber found in a bookcase, the chair adopts its past reading heritage and is suited for relaxation and reading. The joints are all glued and were inspired from early boatsheds found in Whangaroa.
Do Seople Still Read These?
Magazine rack in beech and leather. The magazine rack was an exercise in if I could make something of a high quality and learn from 60’s Danish design. I designed and built the rack to hark back to the golden age of design and it is a style I would like to bring to architecture.
Photography Alongside all of my other creative pursuits, I enjoy using photography as a way of representing the world around me. I am drawn to natrual scenery and my time in the outdoors is when I am at my most calm and satisfied. Photography enables me to show others what I see before I am able to draw it for them. It helps me connect with the world around me with an imediacy that architecture or wood cut printing isn’t able to do so.
Nepal
Italy
New Zealand