Happy Birthday SOLA!
Woodstock. First Man on the Moon. But that wasn’t all that happened in 1969. New Zealand’s first programme in landscape architecture got underway at what was then Lincoln College. Now we’re celebrating the School of Landscape Architecture’s 50th Birthday! There’s a week packed full of things happening. The events began last night with the opening of the Major Design Exhibition at the Town Hall. This year’s theme is ‘Au,’ the symbol for the element gold on the periodic table, very fitting for a 50th celebration.
Current staff at SOLA.
Today’s a day of celebration at the Lincoln University campus, with graduates and staff joining us from around the world. Along with cake cutting and champagne popping we will take time to reflect on the past, and look forward to the future.
This landscape installation celebrates 50 years of SOLA. Beside it sits Graham Bennett’s Oversight sculpture.
Everyone gets involved in unveiling the installation.
The achievement of the milestone of 50 years will be commemorated with the unveiling of a landscape installation in the SOLA courtyard. Designed by SOLA staff, the installation is a meditation on the sense of time passing, a darker line drawn into the landscape, like writing in the sand on a beach. The amoebic form carries a text that begins with the whakataukī: Titiro whakamuri. Kōkiri whakamua. Look back and reflect so you can move forward.
Adjacent to the new installation is the impressive vertical form of the sculpture Oversight by Graham Bennett. Bennett’s sculpture is based around issues to do with water, and features a rotating figure at the top of a tall mast, surveying the scene.
He was sculptor in residence at SOLA, with the sculpture purchased from funds raised from an art auction for the 40th anniversary of the department and the opening of the building. The wider setting is formed by a mountains to sea narrative related to the Chris Booth sculpture, from his time as sculptor in residence at the University.
The completed 50th Anniversary landscape installation is shown in the aerial view with the black-pigmented concrete band rippling through the concrete.
The “new” landscape architecture building.
The dedicated landscape architecture building which opened in 2009, Bennett’s sculpture, and the new installation all contribute to a sense of the unfolding legacy of landscape architecture at Lincoln University.
Class reunion photographs were taken on the sunken lawn
We’re looking forward to meeting up with graduates and past staff and continuing the conversations through into Thursday and Friday at the 2019 NZILA Firth Conference, Disruption – whakahīoi.