The New Zealand winners of the British Council Cityscapers: By the Throat scholarship have been announced.

Rangituhia Hollis and Daniel Davis will join sixty other students and practitioners from the UK, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Singapore for a two-week studio at the University of Edinburgh from March 31 to April 12.

The international studio of visual artists, architects, urban planners and designers examines the connections between cities and bodies, using the merging metropolitan areas of Edinburgh and Glasgow as a means to explore the permeability of public space. The New Zealand winners of the British Council Cityscapers: By the Throat scholarship have been announced.

Rangituhia Hollis and Daniel Davis will join sixty other students and practitioners from the UK, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Singapore for a two-week studio at the University of Edinburgh from March 31 to April 12.

The international studio of visual artists, architects, urban planners and designers examines the connections between cities and bodies, using the merging metropolitan areas of Edinburgh and Glasgow as a means to explore the permeability of public space.Adept in both physical and digital realms, Dunedin-born Daniel Davis has worked at a macro scale on the multi-billion dollar Calgary Hospital in Canada, as well as getting down to the bits and bytes of coding websites.

He believes "Geographic borders have long lost their significance to everyone except the politicians bound to them. With softening intellectual property rights and the explosion of 'crowd sourcing', a new industrial revolution will take place - machines now manage repetitive physical tasks, and soon complex mental tasks will be controlled by computers."

Daniel helped organize ctrlshift 07, bringing together architecture students from around the Pacific in Wellington, using Second Life as a marketing/communication tool. Tutor (and later employer) Jon Thompson recalls "an explosive year of dedication, exploration, and ingenuity" engaging with a student who had "sharp wit, independence, analytical undertones, and brewing decadence".

Find out what else Daniel has been percolating at NZ Architecture.

Rangituhia Hollis has a background in visual arts and bicultural social practice, and this interesting combination feeds into his moving image work, which focuses on urban identity and relationships through the structures of gaming, animation and home video. Rangituhia believes "we make meaning through our banal activities in real spaces", and he looks forward to "getting close to the source of the old colonial British Empire to explore the implications of appropriating place".

Rangituhia has devoted himself to fine arts study for the past decade, starting at EIT in Napier and then heading north to AUT, MIT, and now the University of Auckland.

Tutor Tessa Laird says "His astute eye makes us aware of truths we would prefer to gloss over - it is rare to come across a student working at such a sophisticated level with such effortlessness. Rangituhia's works ask more questions than they answer, and this, I think, is the hallmark of truly engaging artwork ". See for yourself on Youtube

Studio Director Richard Goodwin of the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales (Australia) says "I see the city as a three-dimensional journey, and I believe in the dissolution of architecture as we know it. My vision for the city is of architecture as a process of becoming rather than a grid of pedestal objects. This studio will test the parasitic connection between public and private zones, between the skin of the constructed environment and the innards of our structured lives".

More information

British Council is the UK's international organisation for educational and cultural relations, operating in 109 countries around the world to strengthen relationships between the UK and those countries. British Council New Zealand connects aspirational young New Zealanders with the best of contemporary UK by building networks of opportunity in the spheres of arts, creative industries, science and education

Cityscapers: By the Throat will support the professional development of the next generation of 'cityscapers' through collaborative work on design briefs in UK cities, building an international network of talent. The New Zealand judging panel included Nuala Gregory (University of Auckland), Ludo Campbell-Reid (Auckland City Council), Peter Shand (Manukau Institute of Technology) and Anna Cameron (British Council). Finalists were Beth O'Brien (highly commended) - Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University, Callum Strong - Victoria University School of Architecture & Design, and Sarosh Mulla - University of Auckland School of Architecture & Planning.

Cityscapers participants will work in cross-border, cross-discipline teams, modelling the intercultural environments they'll work in during their professional careers. The studio will produce a full colour printed catalogue and DVD, as well as an exhibition that will tour to participating countries in 2008/9. Previous studios have been held at The Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, The Willem De Kooning Institute, Rotterdam and the Milan Politecnico.

Cityscapers is the first of three annual studios which the British Council plans to support over the next three years. Cityscapers is part of the British Council's Creative Cities project - a three year (2007-10) collaboration between people in East Asia and the UK, working to develop cities with successful knowledge economies where global citizens can thrive. Creative Cities addresses a broad range of issues played out on the city canvas - community, urban regeneration, connectivity, identity, mobility, alienation, learning and sustainability. The distinctive personality of the creative city helps more people to think, plan and act creatively, to grasp opportunities and solve problems inventively. With Creative Cities, British Council supports the development of the essential features of creative cities - openness, networks, effective leadership at all levels, good design and creative entrepreneurship.

British Council Australia Director Christopher Wade says "The World Bank notes another two million people are living in cities in East Asia every month and the British government says we need to build another three million homes in the UK by 2020. Urbanisation is now a major strategic challenge for every nation. Cityscapers is about supporting the outstanding people who will shape our shared urban destiny to develop the vision and networks which will help them meet this challenge. It's a vital contributor to the British Council's aim of strengthening the relationship between Australia, New Zealand and the UK by enabling talented young Australasians to develop lasting collaborative relationships with people in Britain."

12/03/08