EMERGE #2: Create highlights the opportunities that cross-discipline practice offers to our role as designers of the built environment and aims to bring together a group graduates and emerging practitioners to reinvigorate practice life with an evening dose of creation and discussion. With a focus on the title — Everyone deserves a home — Matt Liggins will discuss how some of his latest projects enable him to work outside the increasingly restrictive boundaries of standard architectural practice.

Join us to hear more about how Matt’s diverse field of creative pursuits — new residential houses, alts & adds, and public art installations — help him facilitate broader conversations around the social, cultural and political context designers operate within. Projects such as ‘The House of 9,873 Plastic Bags/House for the Homeless 2’ (2018), ‘Real Pyramid Schemer’ (2016-), and the recent ‘Vitruvian Tunnel’ (2019), have provided opportunities to critique and test topical ideas of identity, culture, history, religion and politics — often with a dose of architectural Insta-fame enabling his audience to capture their memories.

Throughout the event Matt will challenge the audience and invite them to discuss these themes through a quick-fire model making exercise, prompting action and encouraging us to embrace our creative streak in our day-to-day work as architectural graduates and architects who are playing a part in reshaping our cities.

Matt Liggins established Matt Liggins Studio in 2012, engaging with a diverse field of creative pursuits that includes residential projects across New Zealand and Australia and art exhibited individually and collectively in Sydney, Auckland and Palmerston North.

Matt graduated with an honours degree in architecture from the University of Auckland. After 13 years in practice in London and Sydney, he returned to the University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning in 2015 to take up a position as a Professional Teaching Fellow. Since returning to New Zealand, Matt has been a regular contributor to Artweek Auckland and Bright Nights. His installation ‘Real Pyramid Schemer’ was awarded a Gold Pin at the 2017 Best Awards.

EMERGE is a series of events that take place in Auckland and aim to open up the doors of architectural studios, new buildings and projects, and conversations between emerging professionals within the architectural profession. Organised by a volunteer group of architectural graduates and emerging practitioners, EMERGE events delve into understanding what being an architectural graduate and emerging practitioner is like, using the experience of our peers and leading practitioners to help drive the conversation and cultivate a strong collegial community. EMERGE is supported by the NZIA Auckland Branch.