This tactic seeks to unsettle accepted spatial boundaries within Queenstown, by siting inventive fine-grain architectural elements and furniture at the threshold of private and public space. The proposed détournement of outdoor inhabitation aims to de-escalate the stakes of this legal (read: colonial) categorization, via an encounter with the work of acoustic ecologist, Gordon Hempton, who foregrounds the primacy of listening over seeing, and whose reconception of quiet unearths a deeply rooted font of colonial hubris. For Hempton, quiet is an affective energy which emanates positively through the eco-cultural fabric of a space.

This project does not seek to instantiate quiet via physical barriers, nor via the means of direct antagonism. Rather, this gesture seeks to cultivate a silence that emanates, in service of incidental eco-social encounters and thoughtful deliberations. Abundant in unrealized eco-acoustic affordances and highly exposed to public activity, this site possesses high potential for the subversion of everyday life. In this way, the maneuver aims to reshape social relations by providing physical frameworks by which quiet can emanate.