Jonathan Gibb: The Latest Architecture and News

Designed for the Boral Brick Awards 2011-2012, ‘The Urban Cloak’ proposal by Jonathan Gibb is an addition to an existing inner city 2 storey brick building, to adapt and add a multi-levelled apartment building. A cloaked figure; standing amongst the debris of style, industry and waste: veiled by a multiplicity of individual bricks, reading as one. At once a sun and rain screen, and veiling against on-lookers sight. The existing building is left, but affected by the new. Its old roof is discarded and the paint of the facade shed, revealing the identity of the brick. More images and architects’ description after the break.

No.8 Wire is a paper architecture explorative analysis of the house, relative to the landscape of central Otago. As the title declares, the aesthetic is a bold foray of built form placed in conversance to the surroundings. The historic use of No.8 wire has entered into the cultural lexicon of many countries, especially the New Zealand concept of resourcefulness and creativity; best described as New Zealander’s ingenuity and adaptability.

Designed by Jonathan Gibb, the concept of No.8 Wire and its associated ideals of adaptability have been used to give emphasis to the juxtaposition of a house within the expanse of a landscape. The intimacy and concept of what constitutes a home has been simply portrayed by use of the gable end, used as an indoctrinating device to express the essence of suburbia’s aesthetic, a figure and ‘sign’ of what may constitute a home. Abstracted and re-formed into a self sustaining entity, self referential through mirroring, offset and re-expressed as a didactic expression of space.