Bella McMahon
Urban Apertures
Moving Image and Sound as a Vessel for City Making
Immersive apertures weave through the existing skeleton of Commerce Street Carpark, exposing a blurred threshold between centre and cityscape. A leaking in and out of aural and optical scenes, environmental and experiential, begins to explore city-making through the physical and unconscious forces at play in our urban landscape.
Addressing our urban realm as a body of life, embracing movement and sound, Urban Apertures seeks to evoke a sense of city-making in the transient location of Fort Lane. Large gold apertures pierce the expansive concrete facade, blurring the threshold between the immersive cinematic experience within and the urban landscape beyond. Projections and amplified audio radiate through the landscape as the interior surface of the immersive apertures become public screens, vessels for city-making and a beacon to all city dwellers.
Within, the language of the Commerce Street Carpark’s existing skeleton was built upon as ramps pave a winding path up through the city’s canopy. Organic curves and bulbous forms throughout hint at a bodily origin - the orifices that weave through our body which are chambers of life and sound. Voids frame the expansive apertures, evoking a feeling of intrigue as distorted gold reflections of activity and experiences on floors above peek through.
Level five is the epicentre of not only optical but also aural distortions as Auckland City leaks in. Immersive apertures seek to reframe the landscape and reimagine the city’s voice from the floor to the canopy and emergents. Isolation of these scenes exposes “an unstable series of forces which are both external and internal, physical and unconscious.” (Anish Kapoor, 2016). Upon descent, the audience retraces their steps, experiencing the design in a new light, revealing undiscovered visual, aural and emotional qualities.
Materials - gold leaf tiles, concrete, moving image, sound, reflection
