Chiara Shim
Victoria University of Wellington
Following the University of Auckland’s lead, Show Us Your Thesis is making a come back at Victoria. To kick it off, we talk greyhounds, coding and aquariums with Chiara.
SANNZ: Hi Chiara! What’s your thesis all about?
Chiara: It’s a creative body of work that explores how hue, saturation and brightness can replace physical materials to evoke emotion and responses, and it’s in mixed realities.
SANNZ: Who is your supervisor and why did you choose to work with them?
Chiara: I kind of have 3 supervisors, my main supervisor is Tane Moleta and my other supervisors are Marc Aurel Schnabel and Andre Brown. So Tane Moleta is my main supervisor, and he’s really great because he’s open to ideas and I really wanted to be supervised by someone who was really interested and enthusiastic about what I wanted to do, and yeah that’s why I’ve got Tane!
SANNZ: When you started your Masters just over a year ago at the start of fourth year, did you think your thesis would take this direction?
Chiara: Probably not, I didn’t think it would take such a digital direction, but now its not only digital but also analog, so it’s kind of mixed but I knew that I wanted to do all kinds of new things in my thesis year, all these different things and put them together and some of them don’t make sense, so maybe in a way I thought it might be in this direction. I also didn’t expect to be learning how to code, but it’s always a fun challenge to learn new skills!
SANNZ: What are your plans for next year?
Chiara: I want to work in a firm, hopefully in Wellington, but I’ll just have to see what happens, can’t plan too much!
SANNZ: Do you feel that architecture school has prepared you for the realities of working in the industry?
Chiara: I mean I wouldn’t really know, because I haven’t worked properly in the industry, but I’ve worked over summer in firms. I think that it would prepare me a decent amount, but you know you can learn how to do stuff but you’ve got to actually do it before you know if you can, if that makes sense.
SANNZ: Do you work while studying/how many hours? How do you find the balance?
Chiara: I tutor, I’ve tutored every semester of masters, and it’s about 8 hours a week and it’s pretty easy to manage but it means that sometimes I have to work later, or work at home or work on weekends, to help make up for the lost hours.
SANNZ: If you could design a building anywhere in New Zealand, what type would it be and where?
Chiara: I think Wellington really needs an aquarium, just like lots of fish. Plus there would be lots of blue, which is so relevant in terms of my thesis - blue girl! Napier has an aquarium but Wellington needs one too [laughs].
SANNZ: Have you got a particular site in mind?
Chiara: Even in Island Bay could be kind of cool, because they have the marine reserve. It could be a non-traditional aquarium, like a nature reserve, ethical something or other… conservation.
SANNZ: How do you ‘switch’ your brain off after a long day at uni?
Chiara: I don’t really switch it off but I’ve learnt to slow it down. I do that by just doing other stuff, like anything, I have a dog, pat him. You can find me going for long nature walks on the weekend or getting sweet treats with my archi pals. Oh and I also like to cook!
SANNZ: Teach me something I don’t know.
Chiara: Greyhounds are the oldest dog, they were the first dog recorded and that was in the bible. I didn’t phrase that well but they are the oldest breed of dog!
SANNZ: Wow!
Images of work + Verbatim the Greyhound provided by Chiara Shim
Interview by Alice Cooke
