Balancing Art and Architecture: Matt Liggins' Inspiring Journey

Join us for an invigorating conversation with the multifaceted Matt Liggins (Ngati Ruanui) as he shares his remarkable journey through the realms of architecture, art, and design. Matt dives into the exhilarating process of preparing for his TEDx presentation and the profound impact of forging relationships within New Zealand's art scene. We discuss the essential balance of isolation and interaction in the creative process, offering practical tips on staying organized and maintaining creativity amidst a flurry of projects. Matt's experiences and insights provide a captivating glimpse into the dynamic world of architectural and artistic innovation.

We unravel the story of building an affordable glass pavilion in Linton back in 2011. From the architectural nuances and budget constraints to the unique legislative differences between New Zealand and Australia, this episode is packed with personal anecdotes that highlight the challenges and triumphs of architectural design. We touch on the lifestyle contrasts across various New Zealand regions, sharing stories of surfing, weather conditions, and the camaraderie built through hands-on work in rural settings. This personal narrative paints a vivid picture of the architectural landscape and the heartfelt connections made along the way.

Wrapping up the episode, we delve into the complexities of designing large-scale art installations like the Euclidean Tower, exploring the collaborative efforts that bring these visions to life. We reflect on the challenges of medium-density housing design, advocating for simpler and more effective architectural approaches.  Matt's unique perspective on balancing work and creativity, combined with his profound appreciation for the artistic and architectural landscape, makes this episode a must-listen for anyone passionate about the arts.

Key Resources:

• https://www.mattliggins.com/
• https://tedxauckland.com/people/matt-liggins/
• @matt_liggins

Chapters:

• 0:00 - New Zealand Architecture, Design, Education
• 11:24 - Architecture, Design, and Personal Stories
• 18:52 - Creative Workflow and Personal Organization
• 28:39 - Geometry and Light
• 34:03 - Designing Sculptural Installations Through Drawing
• 46:40 - Balancing Work and Creativity
• 54:04 - Challenges in New Zealand Architecture
• 1:04:46 - Building Connections Through Podcast Conversations

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If you wish to contact us hit our DMs or email us on info@designprinciplespod.com

Transcript

Gerard Dombroski: 0:00

Welcome back to the Design Principles Podcast. We're back at it with your hosts, myself, gerard Dombrowski, ben Sutherland and Sam Brown. Just before we jump in, I just want to throw out a real big thanks to all you lovely human beings who have been listening in. We really, really do appreciate it and it's cool, it's amazing that you guys listen in and, yeah, wow, crazy. With that in mind, I just want to say that, while we love to discuss sort of architecture topics ourselves, but we also love to bring people in, like we have been, and it's just cool, I think, to give people in the architecture, design, art world a little platform to discuss their ideas, because I think lots of you guys out there have wicked things going on. There's a lot of meat out there in new zealand, I think, and it's pretty cool to be able to discuss so without further ado.

Gerard Dombroski: 0:57

This week we have the man myth, the legend, matt liggins. Matt has a multi-disciplinary lifestyle. Matt Liggins, matt, has a multidisciplinary lifestyle. I say lifestyle because it is, you know, a lifestyle rather than a profession of architecture, art and academia, of which we will discuss herein. Take it away, matty.

Sam Brown: 1:30

So, Matt, welcome. It's good to have you on, mate. Nice little pre-emptive chat we've already had.

Gerard Dombroski: 1:41

Yeah it's good to meet you guys, eh, I appreciate you coming on.

Matt Liggins: 1:44

I love this stuff, eh, I love just chatting about your work and meeting new people and it's great. New Zealand's a big place but a small place, but you don't often bum into people enough to have a long good chat and record it. Eh, no, definitely not.

Sam Brown: 2:00

I saw in prep for the interview, I saw your little TED Talk presentation that you did. How did that come about? That was pretty cool.

Matt Liggins: 2:07

Yeah, one of those who you know things.

Sam Brown: 2:10

Yeah, nice.

Matt Liggins: 2:11

Yeah, so my mate, joe Michaels, the artist who famously put the iceberg on the museum, he's good mates with Elliot Blade, who runs TEDx up here. Oh cool yeah, and we just had some beers at some pub and he's chatting away and he goes oh you, what are you doing? Oh, yeah, what are you doing? And he said, and he was chatting away and he looked at my work because, oh, you wouldn't mind doing your talk about it, would you know? I'm like, yeah, why not, man and uh. But yeah, you go, it's pretty scary. Yeah, like they give you workshops and things and you practice it and that so is it pretty profesh? Yeah, yeah it is, it's pretty professional. They run it like a business. You know, you, you have, you have these, uh, practice goes. And then they they say, oh yeah, change this, change that. And so they sort of frame your talk into a certain way and they help me get it down to to what it was and refine it, because I can blab on.

Matt Liggins: 3:05

Yeah yeah, totally For ages about shit.

Sam Brown: 3:08

15 minutes, pretty succinct though.

Matt Liggins: 3:11

Yeah, well, I think it was longer. I think they cut bits out, right. But yeah, I could have talked for longer. But you think about this generation, right? That's got the internet and Snapchat and Reels like their attention span's dropping eh. It's the 32 internet and snapchat and reels like their attention spans dropping. Hey, it's 32nd generation. Yeah, it's crazy man so like to get into 15 minutes.

Gerard Dombroski: 3:31

It's like eternity, let alone watch a movie or something you know it's quite it's quite surprising this whole podcast business like that, people actually tune in and listen to it. It's like maybe it's super short form and and long form for when people are going for a drive or now the best.

Matt Liggins: 3:50

They're the best for going for a drive like. I listened to your one with simon devitt driving when I was just down in palmy on on holidays recently and then I listened to uh molla his chat and he was great. I was really surprised, like from going from that show where it's all pretty straight and then his chat was great and loose.

Sam Brown: 4:13

That's crazy, Chris, so surprising. I mean, I feel like and I might be speaking out of turn here, but I feel like Grand Designs must have had to rein him in a little bit- and I was thinking to myself, man, let him go like he's got.

Matt Liggins: 4:27

He's got great things to say, and then, and then maybe the show is a bit generic and and people want that um, they want that, that bit of magic and they want to hear those things you wouldn't normally hear. And you know, I learned heaps from just listening to him about the cosmos and his building and, yeah, he's great.

Sam Brown: 4:42

He's a great um thinker yeah, it was pretty, it's pretty cool the passion and excitement is pretty inspiring yeah, and you guys know him from the welly scene because you guys are welly and I'm up here yeah, we he was, he tutored us and he was sort of a tutored us through university and has been a bit of a mentor for for ben in particular through the years. So of course it's a pretty I mean architecture throughout.

Matt Liggins: 5:06

New zealand's a pretty tight community, so everyone sort of knows everyone yeah, totally yeah, and just the friendships you get and how you, you know people go oh yeah, I'm going to uni, I'm going to do my degree and get out of there, but yeah, you forge these relationships and you meet these people you'd never meet, um, and you work with them outside and you hook them up with jobs and and you collab with them and yeah, there's heaps of exciting things that can come for it if you're up for it. You know you're open yeah, definitely.

Sam Brown: 5:34

I mean, like what, how does how does that play into your involvement with education, particularly around auckland? You know uni and stuff and I saw last night uh, was it yesterday? You was it yesterday or last night or the other day you held that sort of workshop that I saw that on your on your story. That looked really interesting. Cool to get that sort of yeah, uh, student engagement.

Matt Liggins: 5:54

Yeah, that's it nah um, so that that just um. Yeah, the second thing I hear that, uh, sam's student network in england um, that's my dog, pugsy, shut up. You can see these construction workers working on the convention center that burnt down. You know he's, he sees their high business gives a back. But so anyway, yeah, the the sun's thing, I was just asked to do a workshop. So they, they ran this sort of um, uh, open day kind of question and answer for high school students from south auckland and in west a West Auckland who wanted to do architecture. So yeah, I know the crew, I know Sahil from uni and he's a pretty vocal guy, and they asked if I ran my City of Dreams workshop with the students after they had this Q&A with this panel from Unitec and AUT us and yeah, it would have been good for someone from down your way to be up there. But yeah, we just did this workshop. But yeah, the uni thing it's great.

Matt Liggins: 6:53

Man, like I practised for quite a while for other people, so I kind of ended up teaching. But I knew when I was a student and some of my mates reminded me they're like, oh man, you said in class, hey, imagine doing this for a job you know later on and I was like, oh, and then when I came back to teach, yeah, it's a great thing. So, yeah, I practiced overseas. Actually, I first practiced here for a year in Tauranga after graduating in Auckland and I worked for Dennis Pocock Architects in Tauranga in kind of small office and learnt how to draw up stuff. And then went to London for three and a half years four years I worked for a trust over there doing educational buildings all around the UK, sort of learned about brick and stone and being a project architect and running meetings and all that. And then, yeah, kind of left London and I was like, oh, man, got to kind of go somewhere warm, somewhere where I can surf. So I was like, okay, sydney.

Matt Liggins: 8:00

So my mate, lee from Parming, lee Vertigen, the ex-Olympic cyclist he's a good mate of mine, he's a great, great, great person so he was living over there and I was like, oh, I'll go over there. And, yeah, just hung out, ended up, he showed me Renato De Torre's house. I don't know if you know Renato De Torre, the Sydney architect. He did a big house in Cji, um, for his brother-in-law and um, it's like a big sort of Scarpa inspired concrete monolith on the coast and he's like check this out. And then I just emailed him and then got a job with him and I worked.

Matt Liggins: 8:36

Yeah, I worked for Renato for four years. I started my own practice after I left there after four years and did houses in Sydney and in a job in Melbourne for a mate and then kind of did that for another three years. Then I was like, oh man, I've been away for a while now and I was like I wouldn't mind coming home. So I contacted Sarah Treadwell, who I used to teach with, and Ross Jenner, and they said, oh yeah, come along. And then I met up with Andrew Barry and then basically started teaching Cool.

Sam Brown: 9:09

Yeah, good way to just sort of like put you know Ben was talking about earlier. You know earlier today how best to welcome Ben. Hey, ben Late comer. Sorry about that, it's all good mate, ben was talking about. You know, about designing your life.

Matt Liggins: 9:38

You know, it sounds like you've Sorry about that. Like you, you have to design your life. Like um, you design your career, you design your relationships and and things, and you've got to make it work for you. And I found out from doing for working for people. For, like, you know what's that? Nine years of sitting down in an office, being there at nine, leaving at five, get your lunch break, uh, doing cad predominantly, you know, and then finally being going to get out onto site and things like that.

Matt Liggins: 10:05

Yeah, it's an office job, right, we sit on a desk or in an office and you know, in London I have to wear a shirt and have a meeting, put a tie on. I had to get them to show me how to. You know, my project architect shout out to John Gray, who's an old Surrey architect. He was great, he took me under his wings and he, you know, he used to time a tie for me. You know, after the cafe, you know, if I didn't get any baked beans on my top and then, and he'd take me, then we'd go and have these meetings. But, yeah, like I, so I did that and then did CAD, did CAD for Renato, you know, when I went in there, um, it was 2008, the GFC had just happened and you know it was a small office and we did, you know, big houses, but it was only like three of us at the time. So I was, you know, he couldn't use CAD, so I was pretty much this CAD guy on Vectorworks banging away and then suddenly I was like, oh my God, my hands are sore. I've got RSI, you know from the shortcuts from ArchiCAD and Vectorworks, and the mouse. And I thought to myself, man, this ain't sustainable. And I was missing a lot of good surf. Like you know, you finish work, go to the beach and it's onshore. And I said to myself, look, my hands are stuffed, I know what I'm doing now. And I said to myself, my, I thought to myself, I've got to have a change.

Matt Liggins: 11:24

And then, right then that guy leo I told you about, he bought a property in linton. He got a sort of lifestyle block with a house on it and, um, and he's like we actually were back here one one time at the same time and he's like, come up, have a look. And we looked at this view and I'm like, oh my god, it's, it's got a great view. It's out of Palmy, 10 minutes and it's cheap. Places were cheap then and so he bought it and then we just moved the house off and then we did this new house for him on a really small budget. Like you know, it was what was it back in 2011,. It was what was it back in 2011, and, yeah, it was something like what is it? 1,500 a square metre and maybe 170 square metres or something. And, yeah, we built it really cheap and modest and he's still in there.

Sam Brown: 12:20

That's incredible. I mean like it's a beautiful piece of architecture For listeners. Obviously difficult with the audio format, but it's a beautiful piece of architecture For listeners obviously difficult with the audio format, but it's a beautiful glass pavilion. You know sweeping views, you know to sort of build in something like that for 1,500 a square these days is sort of it's unthinkable, eh.

Matt Liggins: 12:36

Yeah, yeah, that was back in the glory days, eh, and yeah, we kept it like 2.7 stud. It's just shadow clad with a stain, double glazed concrete slab, concrete rock around the fire. It gets nice and warm. We were there like a few weeks ago and he was just telling me how warm it is. We've actually done an extension. He's got three daughters now so we did another you know, extension out the side and just bookmatched it and ran it through and yeah, um, it was my first house and yeah, it was fun and it was actually right before the leaky home thing came in.

Matt Liggins: 13:09

And, um, I don't know if you know what it's like to practice in aussie, but you don't have to be a registered architect. But then, uh, to do building, to lodge a da, which is a building consent, yeah, it's different working over there, it's a lot easier and nicer as an architect to practice in aussa. But and then, yeah, I had to get it through council with these rfis and they said, yeah, you, because I, because I wasn't a registered architect, I didn't get registered at renato's. I should have, but I just kept working and and that. But yeah, we had to get it in right before the uh, all the legislation changed and you need to be registered or lbp. Yeah right, no surf and palmy, though how'd you cope?

Ben Sutherland: 13:43

yeah, there's no surf and palmy, but I'll to be registered or LBP. Yeah right, no surf and palmy, though how do you?

Matt Liggins: 13:47

cope. Yeah, there's no surf and palmy. But I'll tell you something, and I know you guys are down in Welly and there might be some surfers watching, but there's a really good right-hand point break just past Whanganui and the east coast is real good, like north of Calfs Point. Just cold, man, just cold. I recently, last year, got surface air surgery on this ear because I was turning into a fish, you know, and they had to drill it out or they knock you out and so, yeah, but years of abuse in cold water and wind. As you know, you're from Welly, you know what that South Coast is like.

Sam Brown: 14:24

Eh, oh yeah, because at the moment it's brutal. Yeah, you've got a big storm came through.

Matt Liggins: 14:35

Eh yeah, I was down, and I was down in central otago earlier last week and earlier in this week and came home to wellington I thought it was going to be a bit warmer, but it was the opposite, unfortunately oh true, yeah, it's hard down there, like because I actually grew up in tokomaru, so you know tokomaru right, you guys are from, yeah, so so my, um, my family, had a dairy farm there and um, on my dad's side they had it for years um three generations and then so, right at tokomaru river, went through the back of our farm, which is the border of Hora Whenua. So I used to spend my time down there ailing and motorbikes and hay sheds and all that kind of stuff with my mates. So, yeah, it's crazy weather down there. Man, like we live in Auckland and if I show you out here, you know it's a beautiful day today, no wind, it is.

Matt Liggins: 15:30

Yeah, love it.

Ben Sutherland: 15:31

I've got all the windows open and I see you and Gerard wearing the babies.

Matt Liggins: 15:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Ben Sutherland: 15:40

I'm up in Auckland as well.

Gerard Dombroski: 15:42

I've finally got it to 20 degrees in here. Ah yes, she's central heating. It's more demoralising than anything else like realising how cold my workshop office is. Yeah.

Matt Liggins: 15:59

Gerard, I love your workshop, I love seeing you make all that stuff. Eh, it's so great Like making stuff. You can't beat it right, you know, yeah, you know.

Matt Liggins: 16:08

Oh, it's pretty good we need to get you up here, mate, and get you on the tools okay, um, my old flatmate was a, was a welder, and we welded these um stands for this, these sculptures I made. But yeah, you, you got a um hell of a setup. And I don't know if you know angus mueller he, he's my mate. Yeah, we bought a lot of stuff together, like um and that and it's great to see, like the, the computer spaces right, and then you got the workshop and you can jump between them. You get sick of cad or computers and you jump on and start making something. The balance between design and build, eh, when you've got two there, it's really healthy for you.

Gerard Dombroski: 16:47

Yeah, I think mine was a similar frustration as yours is that when you work for somebody for a while and then you kind of realise that, oh shit, I'm working an office job and it's like what. Like I was brought up on a farm and so I thought office jobs would be like quite a terrifying prospect as a child I thought if I was going down this road, if you could kind of balance between the two, that would be kind of a nice intermediary.

Matt Liggins: 17:16

So where was your?

Gerard Dombroski: 17:17

farm Waikato was where I was born and then Ingvercargill for 10 years. Oh wow, woodlands sort of area, yep, middle of nowhere, 20km out of Ingvercargill.

Matt Liggins: 17:31

Yep, now I know that area. My ex-girlfriend when I was studying was from Gore. Oh, right on, yeah, yeah, little town.

Gerard Dombroski: 17:40

We used to have our little like end-of-year primary school rugby things at the ice skating rink there. Oh true.

Matt Liggins: 17:49

And it would have been an outdoor ice skating rink. Was it an outdoor ice skating rink? That would just freeze over.

Gerard Dombroski: 17:57

Oh no, the Gore one was official.

Matt Liggins: 17:59

you know, it was a big old shed how do you, how do you find the balance between you know, because you do architecture as well and you practice and you do um, you do furniture and art projects. How do you find balancing those? Um, because you don't teach? Do you teach at all? Are you involved with teaching through the year?

Gerard Dombroski: 18:21

I have in the past, and it was it was epic. I loved teaching. Friend Tane's trying to convince me to do more teaching yeah, which could be fun. It just kind of activates something in your brain, I reckon teaching and then just ideas start coming out of nowhere and just other people coming up with ideas kind of feeds you coming up with ideas. Yeah, it's just this little hive of ideas. I found that awesome, like awesome to be around.

Matt Liggins: 18:52

It is man. The energy at uni is infectious. You know, the thing is because I work I don't know how you find this too I work at home by myself. So I'm a PTF, which is a professional teaching fellow. So I teach two days a week, one semester, maybe three the next, and so, like when I'm at home, I'm by myself, and then I go to uni and I'm surrounded with 500 students, right, you know, and I teach my design class and thesis and timber class, and it's just the perfect balance because I struggle to be creative around other people, like I love being by myself, I love my desk, I other people, I love being by myself, I love my desk, I love coffee, I love music and the cat and the dog and no one else is here, you know, the missus has gone to work and baby's at daycare and I work best with no one around.

Matt Liggins: 19:41

Good coffee, and I used to watch the news when I'd wake up democracy now for eight minutes and get inspired, or you know, kind of calibrate yourself, or you turn it off if it's too much or put music on, but the idea of being by yourself, it gets you into that flow state, that enlightened state to be able to think clearly and draw immediately and flesh out ideas super quickly on projects.

Sam Brown: 20:06

Do you find as well though it can be quite isolating when you're trying to develop ideas? I found that when I started at my practice and I was working from a basement just behind me here actually, and I found it really hard to come up with initial concepts because you don't have anyone to bounce ideas off. You've got no one to sort of like feed, feed your mind in a way, and I think, like like you guys talked about, having that university connection really helps with that. Obviously, like when you've got to put the pedal to the metal. You know, a bit of isolation working works for sure, but yeah, I found it really hard to to develop concepts or even just generate ideas in isolation yeah, um, I guess one.

Matt Liggins: 20:50

What depends what it is. But, like I, I try to work on lots of different things at once and um have different projects going at different stages. Some are made up, some are like real projects, some might be a new installation, some might be a house I'm working on and, um, I, I, I try to sketch, get it out and then sit it, sit it down, like I I put. I put projects and piles on the bed, um, and they're just drawings, and I just draw um with a, with a 0.72b because it's quick, and on an a4 cartridge. You know book with only on one side. And I have a methodology of working and I kind of rip the pages off if they suit the project or they stay in a sketchbook if they aren't a project, and I keep all my sketchbooks and so some things become projects.

Matt Liggins: 21:39

But yeah, I don't stress if things aren't happening, I just like, okay, leave it. And then you know, I might be on the toilet, I might be out surfing, I might be driving. It activates the brain and things might come up. And I always have a sketchbook in my bag. I take it with me and I just use it to write lists and do sketches and notes and things. So because I've got to, you know I'll forget because I've got lots of different ideas coming. Because I've got to, you know I'll forget because I've got lots of different ideas coming, so I try to get them down and then they won't go anywhere because they're on paper.

Ben Sutherland: 22:10

So what kind of things do you sketch? Do you sketch like house designs or details or like things that you like?

Matt Liggins: 22:21

What are you sketching? Yeah, everything that's a good point. Like I use it for a mind map so, yeah, so if I'm doing a house, so normally if I get a house, I would straight away google it, the address, and go to street view, google maps, have a look and just sketch out ideas. If I'm got this straight away energy. But, yeah, I write down things I find interesting books, music, bits of artwork.

Matt Liggins: 22:47

I'm constantly screenshotting Instagram or Google images of things as a recording of what they are, even emails. I'll screenshot the email just so I remember, because I'm a visual person. So anything that's recorded visually is useful for me. But, yeah, when I sketch and I teach my students to do it, sketch drawing shows your thinking and you have a record of your thinking and you can go back chronologically and see, you know, and make rough iterations on things. So, yeah, so plan detail section, details, artworks and plan section or XO. Yeah, but I just love drawing, like I've always, always drawn. I always did art and kept drawing at school and for me, it keeps me sane Having a sketchbook writing down stuff. It keeps me how would I say my mind clear, like if I didn't write down all the time, my mind would be a mess and I don't like digital lessons. Yeah, get it out and put it in a little folder or a file like a computer file you know what I mean.

Ben Sutherland: 23:57

Yeah, that's definitely when I start procrastinating. The most is when I've just got too much running through my mind. I don't know what to prioritise, so you can't just sit there thinking about a little bit of anything and then it's like, oh my God, I'm getting absolutely nowhere.

Matt Liggins: 24:13

Yeah, and so another hack I have when I told you about my filing system on my bed is anything that's immediate like I've got to do it today it goes to the right, and anything that goes to the left is not as important. If there's another row, it's, like you know, in the future. So I used to do that, I still do it, as a way of trying to prioritize where I'm at. And another thing and I tell the students this as well is I only worry about one thing at once. Like you know, you've got all this stuff in your head out. One thing at once. Like I, you know you got all this stuff in your head. I'm like, well, look, you've got this task to do. You, you know, like they might have a design, we were in design but they're worried about tech. And I'm like, look you're here, do your design as soon as it gets done, do tech, or vice versa. So trying to do two things at once is not healthy, and I know dean merckett used to do one house at once, right?

Matt Liggins: 25:03

yeah they wouldn't do two houses at once, always one house after the other one.

Ben Sutherland: 25:07

Yeah, I've got a similar thing on a smaller scale where I try and just achieve one task, one major task a day. So I'm live with the daily task and then if I, you know, it's a task that has to be big enough to, like you know, have some sort of meaning behind it. But if I achieve that one task that it feels like I've accomplished something you know during the day, and then everything else is kind of just a bonus yeah, that's it, man, that releases your dopamine like the first thing I always do.

Matt Liggins: 25:39

Well, I had ocd as a kid so my room was spotless, like I had to have everything perfect and aligned, and I'm glad I got rid of it somehow. So I have it a bit but um. But yeah, first thing I normally do is I wake up. And now now I wake up and I go with the daughter maybe or something, and then get rid of the dog and catch it. That goes, but make the bed. You know, you make your bed and you feel like you've accomplished one task for the day, and then you just think of that like hey, I've got things to do and I will just work through the system of doing these tasks, and then you concentrate on that one thing I need to do for work today and do the next one tomorrow.

Sam Brown: 26:20

It's a good way of balancing everything, because I imagine, matt, you're pretty, you know you've got a lot of things coming from a lot of avenues. You know the architecture side, the art obviously you know you can see some of the stuff behind you on the video and also the education thing. Like that's a lot of things coming from a lot of different angles to sort of balance. So you know it's good to have a system, that's for sure. I mean, how does the art fit into all of this?

Matt Liggins: 26:44

Yeah, so the art thing probably comes from the frustrations of working as an architect Also like. So I've always liked art, like I was always that kid in the class in Tokumaru that would do the drawings and, you know, win the competitions of the little clay man, the Mexican man sleeping on the thing. But I've always liked art and I've always thought about doing, you know, fine arts. But the art projects they came about by, I guess, in Sydney. When I finished working for Renato after those four years I was like man, I just want a break. And so I was living in Waterloo and we had a big courtyard so I just spent the whole summer painting, painting and painting and painting and had a show. And that whole art thing came about really by when I was working with Renato.

Matt Liggins: 27:38

This artist moved in next door and I'd just been home for summer. My sister goes hey, I got your book on Brett Whiteley. I don't know if you know brett whiteley, the australian painter, and uh, he's very famous australian painter. He, um, he was. He. He won a competition when he was young. He went and went and worked in london and, um, new york, but anyway, he, his best man was Michael Johnson. So my sister got me this book, art and Life, and I read the introduction and it talked about Michael Johnson and this guy moved in next door to Renato's and I could smell this oil paint and then he had this sign Johnson on the door. And then I saw him come down the hallway and he's like 70-odd and then I said, oh, you're not Michael Johnson, are you? And he goes, goes, oh, I am. And then we just started chatting, we became friends but he inspired me because he was a great colour field painter as well and he inspired me to be an artist, like to balance the two.

Matt Liggins: 28:39

So, working in Renato's office, you know, doing big houses in Hamilton Island and concrete, you, you know in-situ concrete bought a form highly detailed and sculptural and it was stressful. You know what it's like. You know you're in an office and getting stuff built and then next door was Michael Johnson's Smokey Siggy's listening to like music and that, and so, yeah, he kind of inspired me to follow the art thing and then all my installations basically came about. When I got back to New Zealand I had a friend I've got a friend whose mum was running Art Week and she knew I taught and she said, oh, do you and your students want to do some stuff for Art Week and so, yeah, I ended up doing the pyramid schema, that little pyramid that I set in to do people up. Yeah, polycarb number no, no, the pyramid is the little….

Gerard Dombroski: 29:36

Is that the little drawing, one that you set in?

Matt Liggins: 29:37

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, if you go to YouTube and type in my name, you can watch a little video that Sirip made. But basically I was frustrated with how hard it was back here for cost of living, like it is now, and I thought I can cheer people up by sitting inside this pyramid scheme and uh and meet, meet random people, have a conversation, find out what makes them happy in life, do a drawing and give it out to them so they can have a reminder when times get tough that what's important is your family, your friends, food, you know, uh, whatever so certain triangles yeah secret man in a pyramid yeah, it was a bit weird, it was a bit kind of confessional, um, so, yeah, so I started with the pyramid schema.

Matt Liggins: 30:21

then I was like, yeah, so after that I was like I'm going to do something else for Art Week next year and me and my mate Kyle, we built the plastic bag house at Angus's, angus Mewes, so it was basically I thought I was sitting in this little pyramid on a beer crate right, and I was like man, this is small and uncomfortable, why don't I just make a bed? So next time I can just lie on a bed and have a sleep bed. So so next time I can just lie on a bed and have a sleep, okay, so, so, yeah, so I had the spare bed and uh, and then the whole design was based around this little queen-sized, uh, futon. And then I we built this sort of, um, you know, um, 32 mil, um, ply, um, yeah, we just um, got my mate, who's a doiner, just to rip it, draw it up and rip it into these equilateral triangles. And then, yeah, that was the plastic bag house and that was with polycarb 8-mol, twin-mol polycarb and LED lights from Angus.

Matt Liggins: 31:16

So that was the second of the three, because I said to myself oh, I just want to do three triangular projects. And then the second one, sorry, the third one was the Vitruvian Tunnel, which was so Angus goes. Oh, we can do this new installation for Bright Nights for Keane you know, it's my first light festival and he goes, what do you want to do? And I said, oh, I had to think about it. And I was just thinking about the triangle. I looked up at the lights one night inside the Placid Bag House and saw the sort of you know, the symmetry lines reflecting back and I thought, man, that's cool. And then the triangle. I thought, man, this is, I want to do something, I can stand in there. So I scaled it to the Vitruvian man drawing by Da Vinci.

Gerard Dombroski: 32:02

Yeah, I actually came across that in Taupo. Was that in Taupo? Yeah, yeah yeah, a in.

Matt Liggins: 32:07

Taupo, yeah, that's it. I did a tour and it was there just half of it, though there's the back half that no one could afford. So everyone got the triangle part, but I thought the coolest part was actually this part at the end which went orthogonal with a skilling roof a few budget cuts people can't afford it.

Matt Liggins: 32:27

so I did with a skilling roof. Yeah, a few budget cuts, oh yeah, people can't afford it, eh. So I had both the tunnels out for Bright Nights. It was at the Kia World Class New Zealander Awards in Sky City. For one night they just had the front triangle, but we just set it up in the short time and then it always went out as just the front triangle. And then I had a show at Tamanoa in Palmy and they had enough money to do both. So it was awesome to get the back half out. And now it's still sitting in mum and dad's garden, flat-packed on some crates with a tarp on it, waiting for the next show.

Gerard Dombroski: 33:01

Waiting for the next budget. You've done some epic projects with like the light and all your light projects.

Matt Liggins: 33:08

Yeah, nice strong geometries, sort of repeating yeah, I think you know geometry, you know um, a big thing, big thing was always get away from the classical symmetry and things. But I love um, I love platonic solids and I love um the relationship of different shapes. So, yeah, the Euclidean Tower came from after having the actually. So the Euclidean Tower actually came from this ego tower. From behind that you might see. I did the ego tower, which is this architect's ego, with a scale wall next to it 1 to 500, that you know, everyone's like hey, my building's taller, hey, my building's bigger. But you know, a model is scaleless until you put a scale ruler next to it, right, and it proves how stupid the whole ego is to say, hey, mine's taller or better. And so that was my first tower. And then I thought, hey, I got invited to do a festival in Turama for Turama Festival in Albert Park with the explore crew and I started designing it.

Matt Liggins: 34:14

Covid happened, but it was delayed for three years. But they gave me money each year to keep working on it. So I did the Euclidean Tower based on Euclidean geometry, which is point line, plane geometry, which is how you draw shapes. You know, with a pen you might just touch the pad, there's a dot that's a point to a line, and then follow it around to a shape that might be a triangle, so that becomes the plane. And I just wanted to create something. So from the outside it would be the point line at the top on a line column, and then you look inside it and there was your oculus as you look up it and all these different shapes, sort of you could look through them and you could look through to the point and the line at the top. So yeah, that's where that one came from.

Gerard Dombroski: 34:59

It's kind of like one of those things that you look through as a kid and your kaleidoscope.

Matt Liggins: 35:04

Yeah, yeah, kind of like a kaleidoscope on the sides, and I still want to get it back out there like it wasn't. It wasn't, it wasn't exhibited again yet. Um, because it it needs a high app like it's 9.6 meters high, so it needs a high end to lift all the bits that you sort of screw down and you've got to go up there on the ladder. I didn't do it, jared and Tim did it to hook all the cables up. So it's a big install. But I did think at the end of it I could get mirrored ACM or a mirrored vinyl wrap and do the whole inside in it in mirrored vinyl and the top of it. There's actually a triangle, sorry, a square on an angle at the top and I was thinking, man, it could be awesome to play with that, or one-way glass. And you know, keep revising it how much?

Sam Brown: 35:54

how much design iteration matt goes into these sort of installations, or are you sort of just like throwing it out there and using the actual installation as sort of your iterative design process?

Matt Liggins: 36:05

nah, no shit, no, it's too expensive. Eh, like, um, like they cost quite a bit, um, because they're so large. So I like I say before, I slow cook ideas um over time through drawing, and they might just be a primitive drawing of the idea from history and then I'll play with it into an arrangement where I can think about how it might relate to a space for people in there and what sort of effects or translations I would like to achieve. But yeah, just drawing and drawing and and drawing and I try to nut it out as much as I can.

Matt Liggins: 36:39

And then I, and then I used to go see Scott, my CNC fabricator, just to chat to him about it. He's like, oh yeah, if you did it this way, it's easier. And da, da, da. So he knows about his, his specialty, which is great. And also at Angus's Rob, rob does all the CNCing and he you know meetings with Angus and Rob just to suss out, hey, try this, try that that would work. And so they've got really good experience in building. Like, I don't think I'm that good a builder but I can design. But yeah, utilising their experience to flesh out, once you've got your design, what's the best way to fabricate it and then build it.

Sam Brown: 37:16

Are you model making through this process or is it purely drawing?

Matt Liggins: 37:19

Yeah, it's sketching the whole time. And then Angus jokes about this too, because he always makes a Rhino model. I don't know Rhino, but all these installations I actually draw them up in 2D on ArchiCAD. So I'll just draw them up in vector lines and I actually never make a 3D model. So the 3D models were just for marketing and um, there's no free model of the euclidean tower. I had to. Someone else made a 3d model of the vitruvian tunnel. Um, and then and then the latest work that mean angus did, color theory, where we built the color wheel. We just did sketches and then he actually modeled it up in three hours. That has placed an audity point and made a model of the of the color theory work, the latest work we did nice, it's quite.

Sam Brown: 38:05

It's quite an interesting way of working. I mean, I'd amazing how your mind must be able to sort of design in three dimensions because so much of the work is so such a three-dimensional, tangible type experience. But you're doing it all, you know, in this, in an essence, in 2d. Yeah, it's, you know it's even it's quite traditional in a way. You know, if you think, like, like you said, maybe it comes back to your early days. You know, drawing everything up in vector works to a degree, but you know, like I, I find that really difficult. You know, working only in today, I'll quite quickly move, moved into 3D modeling, and it was one of the chats that we had quite early on in the podcast. We sort of challenged ourselves to do a little bit more modeling. Ben, how's that going? But yeah, I think it's just fascinating, you know, just to hear someone else's approach to design and you know, it's kind of remarkable that you can take something from 2D and the final products are three dimensions without having that sort of stepping stone in between.

Matt Liggins: 39:04

Yeah, yeah, because I'm old. Eh, I'm 47. I don't know how old you guys are, but I'm an old dad. My daughter's just about two. So I did tech drawing at high school, right, and that was pretty much orthographic projections right. And this is before CAD came in. So we had drawing boards, set squares, t-squares, so I did tech drawing from third form to seventh form and absolutely loved it, like, and I think it's that analog learning of before the digital came in. I use it as my way to design because I know it's accurate and I'm not worried about form. It can mean that I am at the end, but it's not the form that's a driver. It's maybe the limitations of materials or how things are going to go together, or getting the proportions right that I can break it up into different sizes or whatever. But yeah, I'm quite tight when I get onto CAD, but before that I'm as loose as a goose with my sketches.

Gerard Dombroski: 40:14

Yeah, I'm just looking at your website, for for those listening, I recommend going to ligginsmatcom is yeah, that's the art one, yeah, but matt liggins.

Matt Liggins: 40:25

And then it takes you the art or architecture. I kind of. I got told by philip cox, who's one of michael johnson's good mates, to split them up, don't overlap them.

Gerard Dombroski: 40:33

I have a separate architecture and a separate art yeah, I like that it has the uh junction page where it comes up with the two levels yeah it's nice. But going into, like I've just been following along this chat, looking at your like colour theory page and you can see down there in the sketches, like you're running through, like all your details as well as like some quite mechanical as well as conceptual, you're obviously thinking about the whole spectrum, like junction details pretty early on.

Matt Liggins: 41:05

Yeah, I think a lot of that came with Angus. So with that work it's like an engineering object, right, so it rotates. So we built the colour wheel so we could rotate the primary colours on the triangle on the inside. And that's top, hung with a rotator, that sort of sits on a frame that sits on all the panels and then underneath is a big steel frame that supports the base, which has a bigger rotator in it, and then that rotates the hexagon, which is a lot bigger. And then we had to have some tolerance so they can rotate independently, clockwise and anticlockwise so three forms right and the two inside ones are rotating yeah, it's three.

Matt Liggins: 41:45

It's three. So the inside is a triangle primary colors. On the outside of that is the is the hexagon, which is the three secondary colors which you, when you mix the primary colors, and then the outside is the deca colours which, when you mix the primary colours, and then the outside is the decagon, the 12-sided shape which is fixed, which has all the mixtures of the three primary, three secondary and three tertiary colours. And the idea is that you have a controller and you've got this joystick that rotates the triangle and hexagon to colour mix all these different colours and different colour combinations.

Gerard Dombroski: 42:20

Yeah, yeah, I think the process of delivering like well, sculpture installation is it's pretty much exactly the same as architecture, like you're going through the same thought processes and deliveries, like it's just like the frame of a sculpture is just a bit faster, like, yeah, I think that's a huge appeal to me. In making sculpture and art and objects, whatever is that you kind of get to play with ideas a lot faster and kind of, whilst you're mixing onto an idea, it's an overall iteration, I guess yeah, you get more bang for your buck, hey, like doing a movie is like doing a.

Matt Liggins: 43:00

Sorry, doing a, you know a house is like doing a movie, hey.

Matt Liggins: 43:04

Or doing three houses is like a you know lord of the rings or something you know, and it really takes it, takes it out of you and like, especially, the idea of control.

Matt Liggins: 43:15

Like you know, when you're doing an artwork and it's just you and the fabricator and builder, you know you've got all the choices and you know doing a house is is great, don't get me wrong. It's like people need them and they feel so great inside a good house and a good space, but like I mean so many people involved in that process. So, as you know, you know you get the, a client, then you get the, then you get your site, then you get counsel coming in and you get so many different people and if they're not aligned, they you can slowly get eaten away at what you want and it's so hard sometimes you work so hard to get certain things manifested and and these little things that someone might see on a, on a, on a on a thursday night, on a, on a um a TV show, the block and go, oh, let's do that. And you're like oh man, I was thinking about that 15 years ago and things like that. You know, matt as well.

Sam Brown: 44:07

It's kind of like correct me if I'm wrong, but in most cases are you doing your art for yourself, whereas if you're doing architecture it's very rarely. If ever for yourself, it's always for someone else. That's sort of like that differentiating point as well. You're sort of your own client when it's your artwork. Yeah.

Matt Liggins: 44:24

Yeah, well, the client is the festival, but you're the artist. But yeah, I've never, I've always travelled and have never put down roots anywhere but to do my own house one day. But one day maybe, new build or do an Alton ads on my parents and pal me If we ever end up there. But yeah, it would be amazing to do your own house one day. But man, it's expensive to build. It's expensive.

Sam Brown: 44:54

Don't get me started.

Matt Liggins: 44:58

Like in an ideal world. Eh, like you know, we'll be back to 1,500 a square metre and sites would be 200 grand and you know we wouldn't have leaky homes and we wouldn't have to detail our arse off and do these like tell a builder how to suck eggs and things like that, just to get consent. But, yeah, that's a dream. One day, maybe. Utopia, right? Yeah, the utopia in the architectural world. Hopefully it's coming one day. But you know it's so expensive to get all your consultants and all these new regulations and you know it's gone nuts over here.

Sam Brown: 45:34

Yeah, it must be nice sort of having that and, gerard, you must find it the same. Like you know, my practice it's just it's all in architecture and so you know it's just constant frustration essentially. Obviously it's super rewarding but it's tough, I mean, for you guys. Having that outlet, you know, that artistic or that sculptural or that furniture outlet, must be so nice. Having something that's so much more freeing, to kind of turn to when things get a little bit stressed oh, totally, as they age, you're like it, but you need both.

Matt Liggins: 46:05

Hey, I don't know if you realize you do one for too long and then you start going man, there's no constraints and I can do whatever I want and then and then. So it's nice to be able to, yeah, to fluctuate them, and and I guess that's one of the reasons I decided to teach is so I get my consistent pay and consistent work. And then if I get a house, it's great, and if you get an art project, it's great, but yeah, so teaching for me has really let me be able to do it. But yeah, they're so different when you practice both of them, but there are some overlaps too.

Gerard Dombroski: 46:40

Yeah, I find, like the process is, I kind of try to feed into each other a bit, but I guess sometimes, I don't know, sometimes some artwork just seems a little futile.

Matt Liggins: 46:55

Yeah, no meaning, you know it's a little bit extravagant, or the idea it's not changing anyone's lives or it's not, and you know it's not educating them at all and it's a little bit um um hedonistic yeah, and I got into art and furniture specifically to influence my architecture.

Gerard Dombroski: 47:16

So then it kind of seems pointless to then stay too far away from architecture. So then you jump back into architecture again, but then it's like you're running three companies or whatever yeah, three hats, giving like a couple hours here and a couple hours there. I need to take some of you guys' tips on time management.

Matt Liggins: 47:37

Yeah, so that's a good. Hey, that's a good point, though, like you know, you just said you do a bit there one day, or on a day you might have three things to do, but I try to keep it simple so I can just do one thing for the day and then it's hard to jump. Yeah, it's hard, like if I teach I'm it's hard for me to do other work when I come home from teaching, and so, yeah, I don't think it's good to mix them over the day, if you can. I heard that Corb would paint in the morning and do architecture in the afternoon. I don't think I could do that, but I do have naps. Like you know, a bedroom is right there.

Matt Liggins: 48:09

I work from home, so like it's a luxury of being by yourself at home and no staff. So I've got a technician in Palmy that does all my building consents now, my planner, sam Gifford he's in Wellington and my engineer, cass Goodwin's in Crossrook. So I've got a team that aren't here. So we just, you know, zoom meetings and stuff. But yeah, if I ever get like overloaded and tired, I love napping, especially after having a kid and uh, I go in there and I'll lie down, put a podcast on or a doco or youtube or something, or even read a thesis I've got to examine and then just fall asleep and then get up and go again and it's a reset for me and I think I think everyone should have that little bed in the office to have a sleep at lunchtime, because you're more productive yeah, it doesn't sana.

Gerard Dombroski: 48:59

What's what's sujima from? Sana naps at the office oh there you go, man.

Matt Liggins: 49:04

Yeah, so I I agree with you. I reckon honestly you just you can go again and it feels like you've got. You know 365 times two days in your life. You know every day is that the?

Sam Brown: 49:17

Is that the trick to the 36-hour day?

Matt Liggins: 49:20

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, try sending a client some hourly for that hey.

Sam Brown: 49:29

It was thinking time, I was dreaming.

Matt Liggins: 49:32

Hey, yeah, that's something that doesn't get. That's hard to put a number on. Hey, is your thinking time of your conceptual work? It's impossible.

Sam Brown: 49:41

I find that one of the hardest things. When you're, you know, particularly working for yourself and you're trying to calculate billables, and it's either thinking time or it's like planning time, and whether that be like setting up new jobs or trying to get work or you know, whatever you know, you look at your day and you're like where have I actually sat down and build work? And you're like I haven't, you know. But yeah, in saying that, you've spent the entire day working on projects, but it's too hard to quantify, you know yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Liggins: 50:13

I used to hate having to fill out time sheets at Renato every 15 minutes like a lawyer, and yeah, it was hard, man, and just the pace of being in a practice like that, you're exhausted. I remember when I started I used to come home from work and fall asleep before the news came on. You know, you know you're so tired and drained and you've got nothing, and I thought to myself, man, I've got nothing to give, like I can't like. I thought to myself, man, I've got nothing to give, like I can't, I can't. Like I want to have my own firm one day, so I'll just learn as much as I can. But you know, to keep working for people and give them everything, it's hard, man, and especially, you know, half the time people don't even know what you contributed to that thing. But I guess not everyone wants to take a risk to run a practice and have the ups and downs and you don't know when the next. You know you don't know when the next um fees are coming from, and you know.

Gerard Dombroski: 51:03

But you know you've got, you know, fees coming out for rent and um, all that other stuff and it's just, it's not easy, you know yeah, it's definitely luxuries to to both approaches, but yeah, it's kind of hard to work for somebody else when you have I don't know, a whole bunch of ideas that you desperately want to work on. Yeah.

Matt Liggins: 51:25

And what about Jared, your piccolo, that little cabin? You did that, didn't need consent, did it Nah?

Gerard Dombroski: 51:33

Nah, so you just fire away really on that one, don't you that? Was all made out of rubbish and, yeah, we pulled apart another little shed that was down by the railway line. So then I kind of chopped up. That was cut into 1200 by 24 just plywood sort of frames, so we kind of repurposed a bunch of those. Yeah, that was a really fun project of working with, I guess, exactly what you have. Yeah, I don't know, I was quite surprised that we came out with that process at the end.

Matt Liggins: 52:12

Yeah, I think it's one of the best buildings. You know that, and some of Patchwork's stuff that's been done lately Like I honestly think and Bill Mackay has a strong view on it too that there's too many rules in this country for planning, and you know, you live here and you can. You know the council tells you what to do. But man, if people haven't got a, you know they're sleeping in their cars and they're sleeping rough, and why aren't we just able to? Just well, they're sort of easing up on it now, but I just think, man, shelter just to have the water off you.

Gerard Dombroski: 52:49

Yeah, there should be a basic right of being able to make a structure without fear of somebody coming and ripping it down if it's just keeping you dry.

Matt Liggins: 52:54

What is it in that triangle? It's food, shelter, clothing. So why don't we say to people hey, look, you can wear what you want. You don't tell people what to wear, you don't tell people what to eat. But what about if you let people go? Hey, shoreland, I'll let you build what you want, but you know, obviously no one's going to buy it and buy it for much money. But you're cold, like I just think that like I've got a big housing issue and look what's happening with Kairangaroa at the moment, and all this and you think to yourself man, maybe we just need to go back to the old batch days and simplify things so people can at least have that basic right to build a basic shelter for themselves.

Sam Brown: 53:34

Yeah, it's definitely something to be said for deregulation. I know Ben's always up against it with his medium density stuff.

Ben Sutherland: 53:40

That's all I do is fight the council day in and day out.

Matt Liggins: 53:44

How do you do it? Ben, how do you do it, mate? Honestly, how do you do it? Four?

Ben Sutherland: 53:48

hours sleep a night. That's how I do it, because the rest of the time I'm just lying again thinking about how annoyed and frustrated I am.

Matt Liggins: 53:59

No, that's not healthy man. Four hours sleep is not good.

Sam Brown: 54:04

This is coming from a man with a two-year-old as well, Ben.

Matt Liggins: 54:08

Yeah, I heard you had to pick up your daughter from daycare the other day. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Brown: 54:14

I'll have to go and get her in about 15 minutes as well.

Ben Sutherland: 54:18

Yeah, yeah, I do my full time. So, anyway, he's actually just going for a nap, yeah it's napping.

Matt Liggins: 54:23

And who did I speak to the other day? Yeah, rata. I said to Rata I don't know if you know Rata up here, great guy. And I said, oh, he goes. Yeah, I've just become really good at napping because he's got a young girl. But yeah, man, you know those big, complicated, medium density stuff with so many services happening and council regulations, even the design guidelines. I don't agree with half of the rules in there about changing materials and break it up. It becomes expensive. Like you know, we should be simplifying our design, simplify the envelope, simplify materials and don't try to do too many gymnastics that look crap, you know. For instance, look at like Hotel Britannia, just a simple sort of tile facade with offset windows, job done. You know our sensibility here is whack and it's expensive and it looks like shit. It's like, you know, you can't give everyone all these rules and then they look terrible and the status quo here is, you know, the award for mediocrity is terrible, like it's crap. You drive around and everything's in ice. The townhouses that they put in are just junk.

Gerard Dombroski: 55:30

Yeah, that rule for breaking facades up is just bullshit, yeah.

Matt Liggins: 55:34

Like Crossland, do some great work with you know, just move some windows or just keep simple forms and one material and it's such a frustrating rule but also just going back to what you were saying about the cost of materials and everything I mean, that's the reason.

Ben Sutherland: 55:51

Everyone just builds this hamster nook rubbish because it's just cheap and careful. They just do it for as cheap as possible and it still looks like crap. So it's no rubbish because it's just deep and careful, they just do it for as deep as possible and it still looks like track. So it's unfortunate. Yeah.

Matt Liggins: 56:04

Yeah, but you know design, you know, with being a good designer, working with a small budget and doing something nice is more about a sensibility. Eh, yeah, you know, we've all got decisions to make and it's like sometimes the first decisions architects make on an approach for something is whack for one design and two for cost, and I don't know whether we've got this hotchpotch too much hotchpotch here that we don't know what to look at. There's too much stimuli or we've got too many different periods. But it's a shame that we um, you know peter, I'm ashamed that we don't have a good rationale for medium density and townhouses. Like peter barber I don't know if you know him the uk architect does some amazing work with brisk, brick and um. Yeah, and material choices are whack. But also, yeah, the way we design, yeah, it's um, it's all over the place yeah, it's immediately out there.

Ben Sutherland: 57:03

Yeah, it's immediately here peter barbers.

Gerard Dombroski: 57:07

Um, I had to google that one because didn't know his name that's that one I was showing you a while ago being that multi-unit with all the archways and, yeah, nice recess. Ah, yeah, that's like an awesome example of.

Ben Sutherland: 57:21

Yes, oh yeah, Absolutely yeah that's really cool Super simple, super clean.

Matt Liggins: 57:28

Yeah, and you know, you just make little changes and you keep the materials the same. I don't know whether it's the boomers that have just the boober planners that are stuck in their ways and it's so hard to change things in this country. Maybe we just need time to move on a bit and we can actually, you know, rethink about the way we're building and how we're building and look overseas, look, look, you know, go and go and spend some time looking at some of his work and um and just seeing what really works and what's got longevity and what's got better materiality than what we're doing.

Ben Sutherland: 58:04

How much of this do you think is like influence from the council or regulations, or how much of it is just that people have bad taste in this country?

Sam Brown: 58:17

I was about to say this, ben, because I think a lot of it. Yes, people have bad taste in this country. I was I was about to say this, ben, because I think a lot of it. Yes, okay, council's to blame. And yes, okay, there are some issues with regulations and building code etc. Etc. But I also definitely think that and no offense to general public listening to this but, like, most people have really bad taste and I don't know if it's just us coming from a design background and we can sort of like understand and read nuances of what's good and what's not. But, you know, maybe it's not even bad taste. It's that I'd say. New Zealanders as a whole are a very safe society, so they like to just go with what is normal or what the general public like. They don't really like to take risks. You know, I think that's maybe the issue.

Matt Liggins: 59:00

Yeah, maybe it's the Anglo. What was that?

Gerard Dombroski: 59:01

Whatever latest house Richard McCall's built yeah, like a Skyline garage or something or whatever.

Matt Liggins: 59:09

You know the culture, new Zealand culture, the Anglo side of it. Right, you know it's all about conforming, right, all the houses I lived in London for four years and I know what a english townhouse looks like and and all this. You know, um, but, yes, it's that wanting to fit in with everyone else, it's, uh, stupid rules of um, looking nice at the front but not having a space that people can use, the setbacks, the little fence and da-da-da, all that old, shitty rules that we have here. But, yeah, it's a shame. You can dig deeper than just architecture. As a culture. You know, we're pretty bland and we're isolated as an island and we don't have much to do with other countries. Right, you know, you're New Zealand, you're Aussie, you're Indo, you're Bali really, they just go to Bali or you might go to asia, but, um, because we're isolated, yeah, I, it's, it's things stick here, they come through and they stick, and they might not be for good reasons.

Matt Liggins: 1:00:08

And you know, uh, um, over infatuation with rugby and those sort of idols, and the news is to blame. Like, you watch the news and you get to the sports section and it's 15 minutes of rugby, people talking the same thing and you think to yourself, man, who's watching this? I don't even think rugby heads watch rugby anymore. And you know, there might be some other thing on, like Tour de France or surfing competition. It's not even there, it doesn't even reached it. And even there might be some amazing arts accomplishment, like the Biennale winning the Golden Lion this year, and it doesn't even get on the news. That's crazy, yeah. And the demographic isn't the demographic it was.

Gerard Dombroski: 1:00:54

Yeah, I remember back in the day Rota rua guy sam sudden kayaker, was like a three time world champ for like extreme down river kayak racing three, three years in a row or something. And I remember watching it live and then was like just disappointed that it never made any news or anything. You know, like somebody sending it on a world stage and nobody cares. But I'd almost argue that like architects have a role to play, I guess in the conversation too. Like there's I don't want to shit on NZAA, but like the Institute of Architects, I guess in my opinion would be nice to communicate to the public more what architecture is, and I just think an awesome thing would be just booking out like an ad slot on basic TV for like little 30 second snippets of some good architecture, or like just sowing more seeds to the world yeah, the rest of the world what architecture is. Nobody actually knows what architecture is and like nobody gets to inhabit or see much architecture from like the footpath.

Gerard Dombroski: 1:02:15

So there's no relationship here like so, if you don't know what architecture is, how are you supposed to choose architecture?

Ben Sutherland: 1:02:23

so I close my mind what people think is good design yeah, they think it's like big and I was like oh, this is great. This looks great. Amazing space. Is that because I've actually never experienced design, or what is it?

Sam Brown: 1:02:41

because it just it's mind-blowing sometimes I think that's it, and I'd say that most of the public's interaction with design or architecture, uh, you're like shows like the block or grand designs or something and like, okay, that's a fine medium for getting information out there, but it's visual only you have go in, you have to experience these things to actually understand them, you know.

Matt Liggins: 1:03:02

Yes. Another thing is too a lot of those shows have whack. They don't even tell the truth. You've got to know exactly how much things are going to cost. Like Dom I don't know if you know Glamazina Dom he was just telling me about he was watching a show once and they were talking about having this thing with all this glass and they took the budget and straight away it was not achievable. And you've got to be honest. Shows like that need to be honest. Even awards need to say what the budget was and how much it cost, because you can do anything with heaps of money, but the skill is to do something amazing with a small budget. And if you're not awarding that, you know we're just going to drive the preconception of what architecture costs and what it's really like away. And even you know clients have no idea about the process of things and what's involved in each part. And yeah, there's a lot of misinformation that. Yeah, it would be nice to clean it up a bit somehow.

Gerard Dombroski: 1:04:07

Yeah, there's another awards category. Bang for buck.

Matt Liggins: 1:04:10

Oh, definitely, man. All those awards need to have the budget or price per square metre, and yeah, yeah, a lot of it's very service level A.

Gerard Dombroski: 1:04:19

So the more meat you can put in that potato, the more meat in that pie the better.

Sam Brown: 1:04:30

Meat in the potato, that's an interesting one, gerard. Meat in the potato pie. Meat in the potato Shepherd's pie for dinner. Shepherd's pie Cool, I might have to love and leave you guys in a minute.

Gerard Dombroski: 1:04:46

As with every podcast, we're starting to get some real meat towards the end of our time.

Sam Brown: 1:04:51

I know you just start warming up, hey.

Matt Liggins: 1:04:53

Just getting revved up and frustrated. But yeah, I'd like to end it just to say, yeah, good to chat, man. Like honestly, it's awesome to meet you guys and it's not in person, but if I come to Welly, I'll come say hi. If you come to Auckland, come and say hi, man.

Sam Brown: 1:05:10

Yeah, grab a beer, be cool. It's cool. I mean, we've had this actually with a couple of guests where you know we had them on and then, you know, just continued the conversation, you know, out in the wild for want of a better term, and you know it's really lovely to kind of continue that dialogue and make new connections. So thanks very much for coming on, matt.

Matt Liggins: 1:05:30

Oh no, thanks, man, I've enjoyed it and yeah, it's been fun, man, hopefully some people got something from this rant today. Eh, cool, a bit more, a bit more ranting needed. Awesome guys.