AD1 Queenstown: Towards a Southern Alpine Architecture

Lucy Lee

Virtual Realities of Theatrical Architecture

Exterior perspective by Lucy Lee, 2012.

Within the context of alpine tourism, specifically film tourism, the project acknowledges Queenstown as a film set, whereby New Zealand is perceived as Middle Earth.

The notion of virtual realities is derived from the initial conceptual-spatial exploration of hard and soft, here, understood as a hard and soft reality. This explored the notions of deception, paradoxes and spatial illusions, displacing what one sees and what one thinks, such as the Penrose Steps in Inception and the cinematographic technique of foreshortening used in The Lord of the Rings to deceive size and spatial relationships.

Hence, the project is fundamentally about film, a theatrical architecture for a theatrical or virtual site. The programme is a new museum of cinematography and scenography. In effect, it is two buildings in one. The museum in principle is an interweaving of two narrative labyrinthine sequences, which constitutes an important paradoxical or illusory concept of the design – inaccessible space. One route is for the film makers (the crew and actors forming the spectacle) and the other route is for the tourists (the spectators). The two routes cross, but they do not touch, they appear to be accessible to each other, but one cannot gain access to the other, appropriately providing for a functional and programmatic separation of activities. There is, however, an exception, the theatre or auditorium (which scenographically overlooks the landscape beyond as in a Greek theatrical backdrop), which appropriately permits the meeting of the two groups of people using the building, as a climax to their narratives – a meeting of the virtual and the real in theatre.

Axonometric diagram of the dual paths by Lucy Lee, 2012.

Interior perspective by Lucy Lee, 2012.

Level 1 Plan by Lucy Lee, 2012.

Advanced Design 1, MArch(Prof) Semester 1, 2012

Tutors: Dr. Ross Jenner & Adrian Lo

Lucy Lee in conjunction with ALO