Cobblestone Park light boxes

The light boxes at Cobblestone Park are a joint Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington and Wellington City Council venture.

These light boxes are located in Cobblestone Park in front of Victoria University's Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation at 139 Vivian Street – view on Google Maps

Samples of soil showing the varying colours.
Horizons revealed

Current exhibition

Horizons revealed

Philippe Campays, Jacqueline McIntosh, Bruno Marques and Carles Martinez Almoyna

Cobblestone lightboxes from 15 December 2023 – May 2024

Window gallery 15 December 2023 – mid February 2024

At the core of sustainable design lies its response to a ‘spirit of place’. To be sustainable, we need an architecture that heals the heart, our biological systems, and the environment within which it resides. This exhibition questions how architecture might be shaped by and for the soil on which it is sited as it explores the conditions of the underground. Taking a series of soil samples from coast to coast in the Wellington region, it takes the viewer into the depths of soil horizons, to reveal not only the colour, but the texture, structure, values and proportions that comprise the unique identity of place.

The exhibition comprises 3 investigations:

Lightboxes

  • Soil flowers: The coloured fronts of the lightboxes show photographs of soil cones extracted from the earth to reveal the colours and textures and variety of soils sampled from a transept across the Wellington region from coast to coast.
  • Soil textures and structure: The black and white reverse sides of the lightboxes remove all pigment from the soils to reveal their values (saturation) and their textures first without modification and then using levels of abstraction.

Window gallery

  • The window display in the front of the School of Architecture addresses the proportions evident in the soil layers. A typical NZ hotel, designed with traditional proportioning systems has been redesigned to reflect the proportions evident in the soils below in three locations, Raumati, Featherston and Martinborough.

These earthbound spaces are the footholds of the senses--grasping points that stand fast against sweeping forces that are greater than individuals. They posit the potential for an architecture that can create points of sustenance for human beings; uniquely rooted places of nurturing for the future of all.

Past projects

Te Whānau Mārama
Leon Gurevitch

Ko Wai Au? | Who am?
Hannah Hopewell

Pupuke te Mahara
Bobby Luke

Kia niwha te ngākau
David Hakaraia

Two worlds/ two times
Daniel K Brown and Mizuho Nishioka

Bringing the German Pavilion Back Home
Jessica Wright

Transient Crossings: Embodiment in the Everyday
Stacey Mountfort

Christchurch through the Looking Glass
Ryan McCully

Prefabricated Architecture for a Circular Economy
Gerard Finch

Wai o papa: Waterlands (2016)

Wai o Papa, or Waterlands, is a Deep South project, one of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s national science challenges. This cross-disciplinary project investigates how science, art and design can assist Māori coastal communities on the Kapiti-Horowhenua coast adapt to the impacts of climate change. The images on the panels represented on one side, an estimation of the impact of 0.5, 1 and 1.5 metres of sea level rise on the coast between the Waikawa and Ōhau rivers; and on the other, the mouth of the Ōhau River at the lunar high tide.

Deep South Science Challenge: Dr Huhana Smith, Professor Penny Allan, Professor Martin Manning, Martin Bryant, Derrylea Hardy, Jane Richardson, Professor Murray Patterson, Abdallah Richards, Kevin Cartwright.

A Speculative Future (2015)
By Nicholas O'Connell, Holly Loft, Emma Erasmus, Tom Robertson.

Scraping the Sky: A Retreat Upwards (2014)
By Ben Allnatt, Declan Burn, Winston Dewhirst, and Tom Dobinson.

Digital Futures (2013)
By Simone Crane, Shiping Toohey, Jake Evill, Earl Stewart.

Glamping at Ngapotiki Reserve (2012)
By Jono Coates, Sarah Mokhtar, Daniel van Polanen, Tanya Mazurkiewicz , Michelle Hall.

First Light IN4MS (2012)
By Tobias Danielmeier.

Past projects gallery

Contact us

Pippa Sanderson, Senior Arts Advisor

Mobile: 021 454 039

Email: pippa.sanderson@wcc.govt.nz