Bronya Webb

Oct 26

Hi Bronya! After all of your hard work over the years with SANNZ (making the website and managing the content) I’m excited we can showcase your thesis! We’ve known each other since undergrad, and I know that as you’re a mid-year start who has recently finished your thesis you’ll know the highs and the lows more than most and be able to offer your own insightful experiences to others as they come to finish their own!

First off, what’s your thesis about and how do you explain it when people ask?

Hi Cameron! Excited to be here, to share some thesis insights.

My thesis is about how we create ownership or connection to a space through movement. My thesis has a focus on home where I focused on my experiences with home as a temporary space. The project became about the experience of home in your 20’s, and how we are forming our own identity when we are living in spaces that we don't own. This is relevant for me, and I believe, to most people in our position.

The idea for the project was brought about from the first lockdown where we were all stuck at home. For me, it was a new experience of having my space reserved solely for living, being transformed into social, communal, and workspaces, all wrapped in one with day-to-day living.

Your thesis project is obviously very relevant not only to the moment that we are in but to where a lot of us are in life now. How did you take these themes and your personal experiences and craft them into presentable form?

I think ultimately all architecture theses end up being very personal whether we intend it to be or not. In this instance, I chose to use the personal as the foundation of the design.

My practice is typically very digital, so I wanted to branch out and have a physical form of working attached to my thesis. Partially so I wasn’t stuck working behind my computer the whole year and to use this experience as an opportunity to incorporate some of my other interests into my architectural practice.

While my exploratory stage was very physical, my final design stages were still digitally based. I wanted to push my style and investigate the world of dreamscapes. I made sure my thesis worked around these concepts but I didn’t have a desired outcome, to begin with. At the end of the day, it is about the process.

Tell us about your supervisor. Who are they and why did you choose to work with them?

Emma Morris!

Emma was a wild card for me as she was out of the field I was originally investigating. In the thesis supervisor presentations, she described her work area as the cross-over between art and architecture, which intrigued me and sounded like fun.

How did you approach the task of working with Emma to choose a topic and start your thesis?

Emma and I sat down (over zoom) and had a chat about her interests and skills, and what I wanted to do with the project. I wanted to explore a different style of rendering and create something physical. We started small, outlined ideas, and built off that. From those initial conversations, Emma offered me direction and suggestions across different avenues of research for me to explore.

She was fantastic through the whole process, encouraging my research without pushing me down any specific directions, but she also encouraged me to refine and analyse what I found as I was working, to get the most out of it!

Eventually, my thesis evolved to be about the concept of home, I defined home as existing generally in the internal landscape, as it is constructed not of walls, floors, and ceilings but, of memories, lived experiences, and perceptions. A house being the physical foundation of a home.

That’s a great opportunity to explore meaning. How did you take this and what was the output of your thesis?

I was working off the idea that houses contain homes, so I refined the concept of home to three functions. These were a place for resting, bathing, and gathering, and then developed designs that exist in heterotopic landscapes (solely in their own space, not subject to external influence). Each function of home became its own design. From there, the design process was to create a tangible object that embodies the reality of these spaces.

Bronya (She/Her) is a mid-year thesis start at the University of Auckland.

Once you had these three spaces, what was your methodology for creating your landscapes and objects? What were the strengths of these methods?

I began with taking note of my own movements and actions within these spaces. I then used these as the starting point for creating choreography, which I then captured through video and through the making of tapestries. The videos allowed me to view the movements over time, whereas the tapestries allowed me to observe the dance as an abstracted object in its entirety.

Architecture and dance have a different relationship to time, so the tapestry allowed me to transform dance into a form that then informed the design. This was essentially a sketch process but through movement and weaving, where the weaving mimics the body as it moved through space and time.

We’ve known each other a long time, and I remember that you took calculus as an elective in the first year of undergrad. What was the drive for you to use dance rather than a more typical and analytical process?

It is definitely a softer craft! I wanted to use my thesis year as an opportunity to do something that I hadn’t really done through my architectural education. Thesis is a type of research that you don’t get to experience out in the Industry. It was a good opportunity for me to explore and develop a greater understanding of theoretical concepts and how they can relate to architecture.

Speaking of theory, what are some of the key readings and influences you’ve come across while working on your thesis?

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone was huge with her book ‘The Primacy of Movement’! In the book, she talks about “how movement is the foundation upon which we build our understanding of the world and our place in it.” I understood this as when we spend time in space, we begin to understand it better. Along with other theories from:

Elizabeth Grosz, who is a philosopher who talks about how the body and the environment shape each other; and

Gaston Bachelard’s book the ‘Poetics of Space’ which offered a less traditional view of home.

These and other theories helped me to understand how we can feel more comfortable in a space, and how we can then make home from house.

A thesis is a long project which has many ups and downs. What part of your thesis year did you enjoy the most and why?

I enjoyed being able to spend more time developing a deeper understanding of the topic, and I enjoyed being able to do something more physical than I would normally do - even if it did still involve digital design on a computer at the end!

Home is deeply personal, and a manifestation of different experiences. You completed your undergrad at Victoria University before coming to Auckland to complete your master’s degree. How did you find these experiences and how has it shaped you as a designer and learner?

I really enjoyed my undergrad at Vic as it taught me many things. I chose to go to Auckland to have a different perspective which I feel my work has benefited from. Victoria was fantastic for my undergraduate but by the time I got ready to do my masters, I was way too comfortable. I feel that Auckland University has pushed me to grow in areas that I wouldn't have if I’d stayed comfortable.

You like to be outside of your comfort zone and have been fortunate to live overseas between leaving high school and starting university. How did these experiences contribute to who you are, your years of study, and your thesis project?

I think that all experiences shape who you are as a person and what you put back into the world - this is ultimately what my thesis is about. I think that it is only in recent years because I have traveled, that I have really come to appreciate the New Zealand vernacular.

Because I have been able to experience other cultures and places this allowed me to view our own culture and places through another lens. I lived and worked in London for 2 years and was fortunate to travel from there. Budapest in particular was a place that I really enjoyed from an architectural perspective. India was another great travel experience that definitely got me out of my comfort zone. It was an excellent opportunity to see a variety of vernaculars that exist outside of the western history that we frequently learn about at Uni.

Lastly, what advice would you give to future thesis-goers?

Try and enjoy it! I know that it’s stressful at times but try and remember how much of a privilege and luxury it is. You get to spend an entire year researching a topic that you are interested in which is not something that you’ll necessarily have another opportunity to do.

Thanks, Bronya! I can’t wait to see where your project takes you and where you end up!

Photographs and work supplied by Bronya Webb

Interview by Cameron Rossouw

SANNZ NZ

Bronya Webb

Alyssa Aisyah

Cameron Spicer