A pavilion constructed from fragments of the existing for the annual Urban Art Village in Auckland’s central city.

Our point of departure was the dormant memory of another, failed roof devised for a previous iteration of the event, dispiritingly foiled by a sudden gust of wind. Half-achieved and half-remembered, the roof remained a dream that gnawed at our minds, mutating from translucent tarpaulin to transparent corrugate distorting the blues or greys of the sky above.

The corrugated roof is elevated on a structure of bamboo posts and columns, harvested from a suburban back garden and secured together in the logic of scaffolding. The steel connections secure the bamboo into the suggestion of a room on the urban pavement, a rationalised reminder of the ‘forest’ in which we foraged the material.

A partial screen of fabric planes recall the partial shelter of the bamboo grove: harsh wind transformed into a delicate rustle of leaves and the occasional downpour filtered into a light shower. The curtains trace the contours of the sky and caress the rocks below, interior buffered by the outside world.

Tie down straps fix the construction to a memory of another place. An existing grid of basalt boulders and stainless steel pipi (Te Rou Kai / Pipi Beds by Ngāti Whātua artists and Chaz Doherty, 2003) mark the site of Tāmaki Makaurau’s original shoreline, a faint trace of lives once lived here.

Today, the once-foreshore is animated by life of a different kind, the dull pavement embellished by a flurry of many overlapping urban existences. Our room invites passersby to linger a little longer amongst the rocks, a temporary reclamation of the square as a place to read. As the sun shades and the shadows of the city deepen, the room becomes illuminated, a light to read under or a beacon to orient oneself.

With Calvin Feng, Philip Lee, Jack Wu and Iman Raza Khan