Christine McCarthy

Toward a Definition of Interiority

This article examines theoretical aspects that contribute to a definition of interiority. The author argues that interiority is not an absolute condition that depends on a restrictive architectural definition.

Before the Rain Humid Architecture

According to Engberg, “Humidity is that in-between state. It is the storm pending. The bulging part of weather, all moist and dense, and hanging in a kind of limbo state of being. Like a large droplet of water, it suspends, tremulous in the moment before bursting or evaporating off.” This article explores the interior architecture of humidity. In particular, it draws from an experience of humidity in Darwin, Australia, in early October 2001 before the monsoon season. The article examines how this specific climatic condition produces an architecture independent of building. With humidity, the mechanics of enclosure are independent of what is conventionally understood as architecture as, in humid contexts, “the dialectics of inside and outside multiply with countless diversified nuances.” The article also examines notions of enclosure and intimacy, and considers the architectures of the shadow and of air-conditioning in humid climates. Kristeva’s notion of abjection informs this discussion.

Re-thinking threats to architectural heritage

This paper proposes the need for heritage strategies and policies to engage with the psychological literature on risk perception because current heritage processes exclude many groups of people due to the psychological processes that are favoured in current procedures. Risk perception research has affected mitigation strategies in the realms of natural disaster planning (for example, earthquake preparedness) and, more recently, climate change mitigation. The paper outlines relevant psychological research and highlights areas that have the potential to inform heritage loss mitigation.

A Barcelona Pavilion

more pertinent in relation to the Barcelona Pavilion,2 whose initial three dimensional manifestation3 was fleeting to say the least and has only comparatively recently been re-realised in a construction ’on the original site in 1985-6’ (Evans 1990: 56). Relocated electronically on the ’pages’ of a CD Rom issue of Interstices (1995-fi), Matiu Carr’s Barcelona Pavilion is accessed via the contributors’ ’page,’ (which places Carr as contributor/author/architect and perhaps the Barcelona Pavilion as New Zealand architecture), and from the marginal title image of Gill Matthewson’s paper (which discusses Lilly Reich’s role in Mies van der Rohe’s projects). Here that which is conventionally and historically known as van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion is traced from lines which make dif-

Incidental heritage: difficult intangible heritages as collateral damage

Abstract Within the context of ‘negative’ and ‘intangible heritage,’ this paper explores Burström and Gelderblom’s proposition of ‘difficult heritage,’ with respect to Bückeberg, the site of the Third Reich Harvest Festival, as a site where collective moments of cultural shame occur. The paper then considers homelessness within this theoretical framework to ask whether those aspects of our inherited and contemporary culture, which are difficult and culturally shameful, are able to be accommodated within the framework of intangible heritage. It proposes homelessness as difficult intangible heritage which is produced as ‘collateral damage,’ an indirect byproduct of other pro-active cultural processes and community values.

In Suspension: Standing on Archaeology

Glass floors require the trading of architectural intuition for faith in the invisible as structural. They heighten the awareness of standing above something; the refraction of glass, conveying a jewel-like preciousness; its reflections, momentary glimpses of solidity. In many in situ archaeological sites, glass floors reveal the gaps between body, weight, and archaeological feature; an awareness of the destructive power of gravity threatening the object of archaeology below. Standing on this “solid” air conveys supernatural levitation, but, at height, can also instil a disconcerting and visceral fear because the floor cannot be seen. The article examines architectural instances of glass, specifically in sites of art, tourism, and archaeology, and predominantly in floors, which suspend occupants above, or at least confuse the relationships between floor, feet, and standing. It is particularly interested in the difficulties of assuming that glass provides an uncomplicated visual relationship between viewers and in situ archaeology.

Inappropriate Solicitations: Advertising the O.K. Block

The architectural profession, by definition, distinguishes itself from the trades, and a conservative attitude to advertising is symptomatic of this hesitancy with popular engagements and the commercial realities of making money. Advertising was, hence, discouraged and mediated by euphemisms such as “education” and “collective advertising”, which promoted the profession, rather than an individual architect or practice. This paper examines the progressive business practices of one New Zealand architect (Edmund Anscombe) in this context, with particular reference to both his advertising practices and the parallel trajectories of his architectural practice and the business of a patented building product. It examines Anscombes advertising practices, with a particular focus on the way he advertised the O.K. Block, and how it contrasted with the dominant discourse within the New Zealand architectural profession about advertising and challenged the ineffective legislative and regulatory framework supposed to restrict such activities and perpetrate a specific notion of the profession and the architect.

Glazing over the Past: Thoughts on Interior Archaeology

ABSTRACT This article examines the subject of interior archaeology as an instance where history and interior architecture matter. Interior archaeology is defined as that situation when the archaeological excavation of a building site reveals significant historic objects that determine an alteration in building design in order for these archaeological features and artifacts to be in situ and inside. The ground and historic time (phenomena that are both exterior to the building) are mediated by the new buildings envelope in order to conceptually bring them inside of architecture and the temporal present. Three central city archaeological sites in New Zealand are examined in relation to the particular role that glass, as a building material, has played in constructing and mediating this theoretical context. They are: Te Aro Pā, Old Bank Arcade, and Wall Street, all of which were redesigned in order to accommodate mid-nineteenthcentury material that evidences New Zealands colonial history: Te Aro Pā whare, Plimmers Ark, and the Corduroy Track respectively.

Partial architectures: post World War II New Zealand government housing

Partiality is an attractive theoretical notion for many architects. Such a thematic positioned completion as potentially ambiguous. The subject of this paper, the New Zealand rural part house, also challenged simplistic notions of completion, specifically through the deliberate designing of partiality and incompletion into the architecture of house. The part house was an indigenous architecture produced in the post World War II housing shortage. Deprivation produced the part house as an initiative to enable the re-settlement of ex-servicemen. As a result, an extreme architecture was built into these rural houses which tested the very definition of domesticity and influenced an experimental government scheme for low-cost housing throughout suburban New Zealand: the partly-built or partially-built houses (also known as the Wilson and Hammond houses) of the early 1950s.

Camouflage Military Upholstery and Interior Disguise

This article examines the World War II gun emplacements at Castor Bay, Auckland, New Zealand, as a site of camouflage. It explores the architectural mechanisms and development of camouflage and the implications of these for interior upholstery and coverings.This article examines the World War II gun emplacements at Castor Bay, Auckland, New Zealand, as a site of camouflage. It explores the architectural mechanisms and development of camouflage and the...