Brick bay Folly winner FEMME-LY VELUES: A vibrant celebration of women in design
Images Sam Hartnett Photography | samhartnett.com
Words Tegan Dunn
Titled Femme-ly Velues, the folly was designed and built by young architects Claire Ford, Elise Cautley and Jennifer Gao who won the annual Brick Bay Folly competition, now in its 9th year.
As the title suggests, Femme-ly Velues is an expression of both femininity and feminism. Playing on the traditional term ‘family values’, the design is a celebration of the growing presence of women in architecture and construction. Fittingly, this is the first all- women team to win the competition.
Architectural follies are generally understood to sit somewhere between architecture and sculpture, and the competition is aimed at students or young graduates of architecture, challenging the winning team to transform their design into a reality.
Responding to the competition brief, the team members - now working in professional practices in Auckland and Wellington - began with an idea to explore ornamentation and its role within architectural history. The designers were inspired by skills they were taught by their mothers, and in both the initial proposal and finished folly, there is an allusion to the fabric crafts of sewing and weaving.
The folly’s form emerged organically from an afternoon of conversation and sketching to become three ‘bodies in space.’ As the design evolved, so did its complexity, mimicking the accumulation of layers within a woven piece. Ford explains: “First, the warp of the loom (vertical elements) is established, then the weft is run through, with horizontal lines running back and forth. Finally, when the elements are tensioned and compacted into a final piece, it becomes known as ‘the work’.”
The challenge then was how to translate ‘the work’ into an architectural structure. After a period of design experimentation, consultation with project mentors and careful refinement of the construction details, the finished folly is a brightly coloured combination of woven canvas and latticed timber, described by the team as ‘a small family of looms.’ Utilising 272 linear metres of timber and 9 square metres of canvas, the folly expresses a gentle and joyful mood. The timber at the base recycled approximately 30% of the timber from the previous folly built on this site (The Nest), honouring the history and character of ancestral follies at Brick Bay.
Just as textile-based projects utilise the intricacy of small parts to build the finished piece, Femme-ly Velues demonstrates a clever balance between the matrix of subtle construction details and seemingly effortless conceptual experimentation. The vibrancy of colour is a celebration of feminism but also playfulness, joy, and, in the true nature of a folly, a sense of humour and whimsy. Femme-ly Velues can be experienced by all visitors to the Brick Bay Sculpture Trail, open 7 days a week.
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