Winter Lecture Series

Thursday 21 July Lecture Theatre 439

Debate on the Future of Auckland’s Urban Form — Parliamentary candidates for Auckland Central electorateJacinda Ardern (Labour) Nikki Kaye (National) Denise Roche (Green)

The Auckland Central candidates Jacinda Ardern, Denise Roche and Nikki Kaye debate the future of Auckland’s built form and explain how their parties would improve the quality of Auckland’s built environment.

Jacinda Ardern (Labour Party): Jacinda starting volunteering for Labour over 10 years ago because she wanted to help make New Zealand a fairer place, create opportunities for everyone, protect our environment, and maintain an independent and principled foreign policy. She is currently a member of the Justice and Electoral Select Committee and the Labour MP with responsibility for Auckland Central and the Coromandel.

Nikki Kaye (National Party): Nikki is Auckland Central’s first National MP and has an LLB from the University of Otago. Nikki was elected the deputy chair of the Government Administration Select Committee in February 2011 and she also sits on the Local Government and Environment Select Committee and the Auckland Governance Legislation Select Committee. Through her time in Parliament on these committees she has been heavily involved in the review of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill and legislation addressing Auckland local governance.

Denise Roche (Green Party): Denise is an accredited RMA Hearings Commissioner and has qualifications in not-for-profit management, labour studies, and journalism. She is currently on Auckland Council’s Waiheke Local Board and was previously an Auckland City Councillor, a community waste educator, union official, and a journalist.

Wednesday 27 July Lecture Theatre 439

Cameron SinclairFounder and ‘Chief Eternal Optimist’ (CEO) Architecture for Humanity, San Francisco

Cameron Sinclair trained as an architect at the University of Westminster and at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. During his studies Sinclair developed an interest in social, cultural and humanitarian

design. His postgraduate thesis focused on providing shelter to New York’s homeless through sustainable transitional housing. In 1999 Sinclair and Kate Stohr founded Architecture for Humanity as a charitable organisation that seeks architectural solutions for humanitarian crises and provides design services to communities in need. Over the past decade the organisation has worked in 26 countries on projects ranging accross schools, health clinics, affordable housing and long-term sustainable reconstruction. In 2006, Sinclair and Stohr compiled a bestselling book, Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises, and are currently working on a second volume.

Sinclair is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2006 TED Prize, and was recently selected as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. As a result of the TED Prize, Architecture for Humanity launched the Open Architecture Network, the world’s first open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design. Every two years this network hosts a global challenge to tackle a systemic issue within the built environment.

Sinclair is heavily involved in bringing socially relevant building into academia. He lectures regularly at schools in the United States and abroad, and has spoken at a number of international business and design conferences on sustainable development and post-disaster reconstruction. Sinclair is The University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning’s International Architect-in-Residence for 2011.

Wednesday 3 August Lecture Theatre 439

Ian AthfieldDirector, Athfield Architects, Wellington

Ian Athfield has been described as “a huge personality in New Zealand architecture.”Established in 1968, Athfield Architects began producing experimental and often provocative residential projects, including such landmarks in the history of New Zealand housing as the Buck House and the ongoing project for Ath’s own house and studio overlooking Wellington Harbour. In the 1980s the practice took on a wider variety of community and commercial buildings, and in the last two decades has produced significant and often audacious public projects such as Wellington’s Public Library and Civic Square, Jade Stadium in Christchurch, and the Palmerston North Public Library.

Athfield Architects has received widespread recognition, winning more than 60 national and international architecture and design awards, including 13 New Zealand Institute of Architects Supreme Awards. This work has been extensively published, both locally and abroad. In 2004, Athfield was awarded the NZIA‘s highest honour, the Gold Medal. In 1986, Athfield was appointed inaugural Professorial Teaching Fellow at Victoria University’s School of Architecture. In 1997 The University of Auckland named Athfield a Distinguished Alumni, and in 1996 he was made Companion to the New

Zealand Order of Merit. He is the immediate past President of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, and following the recent earthquakes in Christchurch has been named “Architectural Ambassador” to the city.

Wednesday 10 August Lecture Theatre 401

Rachel De LambertDirector of Design, Boffa Miskell, Auckland

Rachel de Lambert is a landscape architect and urban designer. She is Director of Design at Boffa Miskell, New Zealand’s largest environmental planning and design consultancy. Her first degree was in horticulture, followed by postgradute study in Landscape Architecture at Lincoln College. At the time this was the only avenue to qualification as a landscape architect in New Zealand.

For most of her working life Rachel has been based in Auckland, practising across the spectrum of landscape architecture from design through to landscape planning and assessment. She also has an interest in New Zealand’s heritage and cultural landscape, is a member of ICOMOS, and a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects (NZILA). She was appointed to the Mayoral Urban Design Taskforce and has served on various Urban Design Panels around Auckland.

Having been drawn into the world of the Resource Management Act, council hearings and the Environment Court, Rachel has returned more recently to focus her work alongside Boffa Miskell’s landscape architects in the field of design, advocating for quality public realm, and landscape to support and enrich our increasingly urban lifestyle. Her design philosophy is based on thorough understanding of place, use and longevity. The office’s work has received numerous awards; most recently St Patrick’s Square won the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects’ 2010 George Malcolm Supreme Design Award, and this project was also a finalist in the 2010 World Architecture News Urban Design Built Projects Awards.

Wednesday 17 August Lecture Theatre 439

Implementing the vision… Penny Pirrit Manager Regional and Local Planning, Auckland City Council

Penny Pirrit is the Manager of Regional and Local Planning for Auckland Council. She is responsible for six units with total staff of 300 which deliver a full range of Policy and Planning services to Auckland. These include

policy and bylaw development, community and cultural policy, area spatial planning, city transformation projects and development of the Unitary Plan, the new district plan for Auckland.

Prior to Penny commencing her current role in November 2010, she was General Manager Transport for Auckland City Council. In that role she was responsible for policy development, asset management, delivery of transport capital works programmes, parking services and community safety education and delivery of key projects such as the Central Bus Corridor.

Penny was also responsible for initiating and leading the development of Auckland City’s groundbreaking spatial plan Auckland City’s Future Planning Framework, which won the Nancy Norcroft prize for Excellence in Planning at the 2010 New Zealand Planning Institute awards.

Wednesday 24 August Lecture Theatre 439

Kobus MentzDirector, UrbanismPlus, Auckland; Adjunct Professor, The University of Auckland

Kobus Mentz is founder and Director of UrbanismPlus, a specialist urban design practice dedicated to sustainable urban change. Based in Auckland and collaborating internationally, Kobus is regarded as one of Australasia’s leading sustainability-based urban designers. He has contributed significantly to advancing urban development practices in the region through his projects, publications, professional training, regeneration strategies and some of the first spatially-based sub-regional plans.

Trained as an architect and with postgraduate qualifications from the Joint Centre for Urban Design, Oxford, he draws from considerable international experience in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, China and Africa. He has undertaken numerous growth strategies and urban regeneration projects including the Greater Christchurch Urban Development Strategy (registered as international best practice by CABE), Melbourne 2030 Growth Strategy (recognised as the most complex growth strategy undertaken in Australia), Hamilton City Centre Strategy, and new town University Hill, Victoria, Australia. Mentz was co-author of People + Places + Spaces, New Zealand’s first guide to sustainable urbanism and the forerunner of the nation’s Urban Design Protocol.

UrbanismPlus has received numerous national awards for work in its various spheres of activity, including the Urban Development Institute of Australia Award for Excellence, the Property Council of Australia Award for Best Master Planned Community, and the New Zealand Planning Institute’s Alfred O. Glasse Award in recognition of Kobus’ outstanding services to planning. Kobus is an Adjunct Professor at The University of Auckland’s Master of Urban Design programme and has delivered training for approximately 800 mid-career professionals in New Zealand and Australia.

For more information and podcasts: www.creative.auckland.ac.nz/fastforward

All lectures are free and open to the public. Attendance at all lectures earns 10 CPD points.

Lectures start 6.30pm

Engineering Lecture Theatre 439 and Lecture Theatre 401, Building 401, 20 Symonds Street, Auckland Central

Le Centre pour le Bien-être des Femmes, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Africa (2007) Design: FAREstudio, Italy; photo by Cariddi Nardulli.

Sustainability Lecture Series

For more information and podcasts: www.creative.auckland.ac.nz/futureproof

All lectures are free and open to the public. Attendance at all lectures earns 10 CPD points.

Lectures start 6pm

Lectures are located in the Design Theatre, NICAI Conference Centre, Building 423, 22 Symonds Street, Auckland Central

Min Hall’s work utilises earth, strawbale and other ‘natural’ building materials.

Tuesday 19 July

Zero Waste/ Doorway to a Low Carbon EconomyZero Waste champions have been connecting the sustainability agenda with wasted resources for decades. But lots of people are still missing the links between resource conservation and climate change. Our recycling and resource recovery systems deliver fewer benefits than we imagine because we are trying to use technical solutions to solve social problems. What do a farmer from Waitakaruru, a social innovation leader from Cardiff and a resource conservation expert from New South Wales have in common? These poster boys for the global Zero Waste movement are working together to bring us climate change solutions through increasing soil carbon, real recycling, city to soil programmes and community energy companies.

Mal Williams is CEO of Cylch, the Welsh Community Recycling Network. He is spokesman for the UK Campaign for Real Recycling, and founding member of the Zero Waste International Alliance. His passions: managing change in the face of environmental threats and the social enterprise business model.

Gerry Gillespie is President of Zero Waste Australia and founding member of The Zero Waste International Alliance, now working in the Australian Department of Environment and Climate Change. His latest project: City to Soils, connecting city organic recycling with farm production systems.

Max Purnell is a Waitakaruru farmer. Former trustee of the Agricultural Marketing and Development Trust (AGMARDT). His passions: knowing and growing soils, building soil carbon, connecting farmers’ practical knowledge and experience with science and research.

Tuesday 27 September

Earth, Straw and More in the 21st CenturyEarth, strawbale and other ‘alternative’ or ‘natural’ building materials are predominantly the domain of owner-builders and ‘do-it-yourselfers’; few architects include them in their palette. As a result, there is little information about their performance and potential. By investigating their history, their properties, current practice and new developments, the role that these materials can have in providing a self-sufficient and energy-lean housing stock can be better understood.

Min Hall has been practising architecture in the Nelson region for three decades. Her work has received a number of awards, and has appeared in national magazines. Min was a member of the inaugural NZIA Environmental Group, and was the NZIA representative on the SANZ committee that drafted the 1998 Earth Building Standards. Currently she has taken time out from practice to carry out academic research at Victoria University into the performance and potential of ‘alternative’ building methods. She also teaches part-time at Unitec School of Architecture.

Tuesday 4 October

Phase Change for Low Energy BuildingsPhase change materials (PCMs), which melt and solidify at a specified temperature range, can be employed effectively to store energy as a latent heat of melting. They can be used to increase thermal mass of buildings by mixing them with building materials such as gypsum or concrete. In this presentation, the results obtained from extensive simulations and experimental measurements conducted during the last six years, using office-size timber constructions with gypsum board impregnated with a PCM, will be presented and discussed. It was found that in summer,

the use of PCMs kept the office interior temperature at the comfort level, while in winter it provided an efficient means of storing solar energy passively. The presentation will also include examples of some commercial PCM buildings constructed in Europe.

Mohammed M. Farid is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at The University of Auckland and Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, London. He has published more than 280 papers in international journals and refereed conferences, six patents, six books and ten chapters in books. Farid has received a number of international awards and was invited as a keynote speaker to a number of international conferences worldwide. His main interest is energy storage and energy manage-ments, biofuel, biodiesel and pyrolysis of waste products for fuels.

Tuesday 11 October

From High Altitude to High RisePrefabrication offers many advantages including improved speed of construction, higher quality workmanship and reduced wastage of materials. Two case studies will be presented that illustrate the prefabrication process and team involvement from early design stages through to completion.

Knoll Ridge Fire Damage ReconstructionOvercoming the many challenges faced – building code, working at altitude, extreme weather conditions, the RMA, construction constraints and the limited weather window for construction – the team (RAL, Stanley Group, HB Architecture and Dunning Thornton Engineers) provided an innovative solution.

University of Auckland Student AccommodationPushing the boundaries of volumetric off-site fabrication, Stanley Group and Dunning Thornton collaborated to provide a solution-driven product for The University of Auckland. This 16-storey twin tower block is the largest structure of its type in the country and is built using woodframed modules that sit within a steel and concrete framework. When

completed it will offer 442 beds for students attending the University.

Gary Caulfield is Business Development Manager of Stanley Construction Auckland and has responsibility for new business for the Stanley Group of companies: Stanley Construction, Stanley Ecobuild and Stanley Modular. He is an active member of the Project Management Institute and a member of the NZ Green Building Council Core Credits Group. He is an innovative thinker with more than 20 years experience in the construction sector, the last seven in New Zealand. Prior to coming to New Zealand he spent a number of years in the Private Public Partnership sector on educational and healthcare projects. Gary is a board member of PrefabNZ the catalyst for prefab collaboration within NZ.

Tuesday 18 October

Positive DevelopmentLeading sustainability advocates have called for closed loop systems or circular metabolisms, perhaps since Kenneth Boulding’s metaphor of ‘spaceship earth’ in the 1960s. These are systems designs that use the waste from one process as a resource for another. However, closing resource loops is not enough to achieve sustainable develop-ment. To move toward a truly impact-neutral system, we would have to retrofit cities so that they give back to nature and community more than they take. This talk will feature examples of eco-innovations that, in combination with urban structures and spaces, can produce net positive social ecological and economic outcomes while mitigating the urban climate and increasing environmental and human health.

Janis Birkeland is now a professor of sustainable design in New Zealand, having most recently been professor of architecture at QUT in Brisbane. Janis worked as an urban designer, architect and lawyer in San Francisco before moving to Australia, where she turned to academia. She has run many tertiary, postgraduate and professional development units on sustainable systems, has written over 100 papers and has given over 100 invited talks on this area. Her books include Design for Sustainability (2002) and Positive Development (2008).