Building block

Abstract

The Architecture School at Victoria University of Wellington does not have a name. It stands as an isolated figure, removed from the main body of the university. This image is a stark contrast to the symbolic and powerful forms that make up the greater campus of Victoria University of Wellington.

Mark Wigley notes that architecture schools have a history of operating on the fringes of the university institution, a discipline that floats between science and art - a prosthetic intrusion introduced only to strengthen the wider institutional body.

This thesis argues that digital technologies are shifting the classical university campus from a site specific model to that of centralised siteless model. Campus architecture, like the discipline of architecture, has come to operate on the fringes of a larger body.

Digital technology has rendered a cultural disposition that inherently concerns itself with architecture. Homogenization poses a momentous threat to architecture and the loss altogether of identities and experiences tied to architecture.

This thesis focuses specifically on the threat this poses on the architecture of the university campus and how the institutional form of an architecture school can refocus the prevailing paradigm of architectural sitelessness and educational centralisation to that of an architecture of resistance, rigour and solidity - an education that is a manifestation of its place, land and people.

The significant role narrativisation, locality and experience play in constructing a meaningful architecture will be tested through a sequential recount of the genesis of Victoria University of Wellington. The symbolic Hunter Building will act as the vehicle for design exploration.

The university is one of few institutions that have seen a millennium pass by; it is a body in a constant state of flux. The campus, despite predictions of its end, is unlikely to turn away from its physical body; what is more likely is that digital technology will render a university environment that requires a different institutional arrangement.

This thesis concludes by proposing that this alternative institutional arrangement needs to facilitate and promote the rigours and forces of a physical campus in the ever-increasing digital-scape by acknowledging and accepting the school of architecture as a super-structure that will strengthen and protect the foundation upon which a university is built, promoting tangible, meaningful spaces and local identity.