Provenance

Archimedia is a New Zealand architecture practice with NZRAB and green star accredited staff, offering design services in the disciplines of architecture, interiors and ecology. Delivering Architecture involves intervention in both natural eco-systems and the built environment – the context within which human beings live their lives.

Archimedia uses the word “ecology” to extend the concept of sustainability to urban design and master planning and integrates this holistic strategy into every project.

Archimedia prioritises client project requirements, budget, functionality, operational efficiency, feasibility, and programme. Once these fundamentals are soundly established, Archimedia pursues a sculptural architecture expressive of individual or collective identity.

Hierarchy of  Design Strategies

Identity

• Archimedia practice architecture as “material identity” – a crafted expression of individual or collective “identity” – embodying a synthesis of people, place and time.
• Archimedia investigates “identity” with each Client and endows buildings with a perceptible meaning that expresses this “identity” – the philosophical parti for all Archimedia projects.

Human Experience

• Archimedia are ambitious for the betterment of both humankind and the environment.
• Archimedia approach design with the intent that human beings register an “experience” of architecture which uplifts their daily existence.
• Archimedia respect all cultures, their protocols and the connectedness of all humanity.

Environment

• Archimedia strive for “beauty”, the exceptional and the inspirational in each and every commission, irrespective of budget.
• Archimedia believe in positive intervention – sustainability that enhances eco-systems.
• Archimedia believe in tectonics – a poetic configuration of land, space and structure.

Collaboration

• Archimedia believe in relationships, collaboration between equals and the power of teamwork.
• Archimedia staff are consultative by nature and use processes that encourage user decision making wherever possible

Process

• Archimedia believe that the very best process and the very best technology are critical components in our quest for the exceptional.
• Archimedia will invest whatever resources are required to find the best design solution.
• Archimedia design process is research-based to bring together in a coherent way, strands of stories, history, culture, topography, typologies and tectonics to create a “narrative” that has evolved authentically from this research– a narrative which could only belong to the specific context of the commission.
• From this narrative of text and images, a wellspring of ideas is formed that directs design decisions made on a journey of creativity and refinement, pursuing a beautiful, functional, inhabited sculpture.

Philosophy

• Jo Noerro – “Architecture is a practical art – as a practical art it is brought into being to satisfy “purpose”. The satisfaction of purpose carries within it both an ethical and a poetic dimension.

  Ethics

  Wittgenstein offers a definition of ethics which can guide architecture – ethics is “ the enquiry into what is important – into the meaning of life, into what makes life worth living; the right way of living”

  Poetics
  Architecture must be beautiful – this need confronts the architect with the same issues faced by the painter and sculptor when making a work. However, this creates a tension felt only in architecture – whilst the architect acts on the work as an artist, the work of the architect is shaped by a set of needs that do not belong to the architect”.

• Marcus Aurelius – “Of each particular thing ask – what is it in itself, what is it’s nature?”
• Lord Norman Foster – “Redefine the typology” – effect change where it is rational to do so.
• Sir David Adjaye – “One can only make a better future by reflecting on the past”.
• Picasso – “A painting is a lie that tells you something about the truth”
• Jo Noero – “The reading of a building may be transformed by human agency”
• Dekleva Gregoric – “Architecture is a discipline characterised by materials”
• Kenneth Frampton – The tectonic – the poetry of construction – invokes a crafted superstructure / “roofworks” suspended above a re-built ground plane, creating between them a great transparency and a stage for human interaction.
• Kengo Kuma: “A building without shadow has no soul”
• Marilyn Robinson: “Liberate the building from mere function or self-interest and elevate architecture to poetic elegance experienced as a rich and hierarchical simplicity. Act with dedication, conviction, knowledge, ability, intent and respect”.
• Desmond Smith: “The full range of architectural tools to be studied, referenced and cross-referenced in a building”:
  • Space
  • Light
  • Form
  • Shadow
  • Form
  • Materiality
  • Proportion
  • Order
  • Structure
  • Character
  • Identity
  • Narrative
  • Function
  • Beauty
  • Tectonics
  • Craft
  • Simplicity
  • Spirit