Spectral urbanism

Responding to the clearing in the 1970s of an estimated 15,000 houses to make way for the Central Motorway Junction in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, this research project presents a speculative architectural proposal for a wallpaper archive and a pedestrian bridge to a traffic island of regenerating trees at the centre of Grafton Gully. The wallpaper archive—intended to house a modest historic wallpaper collection by local heritage architects Salmond Reed Architects—and the bridge are cover for a larger recovery of historical significance eclipsed by the transport infrastructure. The architecture proposed intends both memorial and future-building functions and arises out of an investigation of practice-led processes centred on casting, modelling, printing, and photography. In doing so, this creative design research demonstrates a form of architectural renovation as storytelling, in which the past is recalled not through material restoration, but re-narrativisation—a process I have come to call spectral urbanism.