Description:

Here in Aotearoa, New Zealand, we are fixated on owning a detached family home on a quarter-acre section. This is what New Zealanders have interchangeably dubbed the “New Zealand dream” or the more patriotic version: the “Kiwi dream”. The Kiwi Dreamer is a response to the nightmare reality of this dream. Disguised by a series of propped cardboard-cut-out-like elevations, like a Potemkin house, the collage appliquéd home “puts on a façade”, both in the architectural sense and the cliché. The front, sides and rear display a picturesque Ponsonby villa with a picket fence, dainty mailbox, manicured hedge, and an egotistical beamer (BMW) parked out front. However, when investigated closer, the components are tactile, meaning that the public uncovers the truth of the so-called “Kiwi dream” and the lifestyle that supposedly tags along with it. An accompanying looping video blasting through a Y2K dated television compiled a history of Aotearoa, New Zealand’s strange postcolonial identity in all its idiosyncrasies and idiocies. Onlookers described the installation in varying levels of disgust or praise, from “Mum, it’s like the earthquake house at the museum!” to “Mum, what’s stolen land?” to a real estate agent that quite frankly didn’t understand he was at the butt of the joke. Nonetheless, the installation would later be coined a pixelated villa meets “kid’s playhouse with adult content”. This project is a celebration of the pixel, collage, satire and architecture that implicates social contexts beyond the built environment. By design, the Kiwi Dreamer advocates for alternative architectural practices in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

The complete cost of the 3x3 metre project was around 1000 bucks of Heart of the City’s allocated funds, most of which was blown on the large format printing, while the timber was supplied by a team member’s contractor friend via begging. The various other miscellaneous objects, materials and doohickeys were sourced from second-hand sources... my Mum's tool shed, the side of the road, TradeMe and, of course, Facebook Marketplace — oh, how I love you. This is the Kiwi Dreamer, the Kiwi Schemer, the Kiwi Ain’t All It Seems-er and the Kiwi Believer: a 3x3 metre villa reproduction constructed with 90x45 pink timber to make a larger-than-life doll house, all cloaked in an election campaign like signage skin.