Amanda Yates
Amanda Yates is a registered architect and academic. She began her research-based architectural practice, Archiscape, in 1999. Archiscape explores space-making as a discipline of time as well as space – space is conceptualized as experiential and event-based. Amanda’s focus in Archiscape is on the formation of spatio-temporal environments and performative architectures rather than on architecture as discrete and hermetic artefact. This focus is influenced by Amanda’s ongoing interest in indigenous architectures and built environments, particularly the architectural landscape of the pa. Her research operates via a practicing of theory and a theorising of practice – concepts are explored through building and writing in a reciprocal and reiterative practice. Amanda’s architecture has been described as “a significant achievement in new century housing in New Zealand” (Honey, T. (2003). Seduced in the Sounds. Architecture New Zealand, Nov/Dec. 81-83). Amanda has continued to develop this design-based research since joining Massey University's Spatial Design programme and is currently the co-director of SuRe, the College of Creative Arts Sustainability Research Network and SCAPE, the research studio for Spatial, Cultural and Performance Environments. She is the New Zealand Theatre Architecture Curator for the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space 2011 and is a trustee of the Friends of Futuna Charitable Trust established for Maori architect John Scott’s Futuna Chapel. Amanda’s whakapapa (ancestral) links include Ngati Whakaue, Ngati Rangiwewehi, Rongowhakaata, and Ngati Pakeha.
Research interests: performative architectures, theories of time and the event as these relate to space-making, indigenous built environments and regenerative design – these research foci intersect and overlay in Amanda's writing and making.