Abstract
FESTA was born in the aftermath of the devastating Christchurch earthquake of 2011. FESTA is Christchurch’s Festival of Transitional Architecture, initiated in 2012 as a way to reimagine a city in flux, finding its feet and redefining its spaces. The festival is now biannual, and in 2016 the main event – a night-time exhibition of temporary installations – was entitled ‘Lean Means’, and was curated by Jos de Krieger of Superuse Studios in the Netherlands. In keeping with de Krieger’s ‘Superuse’ practice, sustainability and reuse of waste materials were paramount. The installations were created by teams from Australasian design and architecture schools, allowing pedagogy and the real-world requirements of a large-scale event to meld impactfully.